Humanity Endures

Part 2 - The Senate | Chapter 2

There was power in the appearance of righteousness; Cehlarxan had found a way to practice morality in politics, and this gave him a casus belli on all of his peers. Somehow, even Cehlarxan's personality appeared to be kind, gentle, and forgiving, so that people all across the Empire loved him — the bastard. Lassarha's stranglehold on much of what was supposedly an independent body was bound to anger the man — because Lassarha had forged and passed her bill through dishonorable and deceitful means, she had infuriated him, even though the words were synonymous with the word "normal" when under the lens of politics. For this precise reason, that they tended to upset the order of things, Lassarha found the righteous to be above all one thing: annoying. Were she slightly more aggressive and amoral, in that moment of intense loathing, she would have wished to see Cehlarxan dead. Organizing such a thing would not have been too difficult that day, for assassins were cheap enough to the ruler of a planet, and though the Capital Complex and its most important areas — such as the Senatorial Chamber — were usually guarded by their own detachment of "Wraith" operatives, most of these had been sent to join the recently-departed expedition to Light's End, meaning the only person still protected by them was the Imperator. Besides its elite, and now-absent, protectors, the Senatorial Chamber was terribly lacking in defence against even poorly equipped assailants, the rows upon rows of ornately-dressed senatorial guard lining the bottom echelons of the room notwithstanding — they were armed to kill things that they could see, and to stop the most bellicose senators from killing each other, not to detect and hunt down an invisible, professional killer. Thankfully, only senators and their assistants knew about this momentary security defect: the chances of anyone being able to exploit it were remote.

Scanning the opposite end of the rectangular, hopelessly ornate chamber, and skipping over the faces of those whom she had just out-voted, Lassarha grimly confirmed her ally's observation. Cehlarxan's arms, as well as those of his closest compatriots and somewhat unlikely allies, were folded, their faces bent in a sneer that collectively threatened to spoil the glorious sight surrounding them, as they stood in stark contrast to the rest of the jubilant hall. The fact that the Senate was one bill away from dissolving for the month, cause for celebration in and of itself, had no effect on them.

Lassarha's ally had been correct; interestingly enough, Cehlarxan was joined in his aggravatingly righteous indignation by Felakax, the oft-unscrupulous planetary consul of Uulcax, and a moderate enemy of Cehlarxan himself. Beside him, the planetary consuls of Nahmatiix and Kalithihar, named Heralax Tekran and Litharhn Tekran respectively, were united against Lassarha. Their countenances marred with terrible grimaces, Lassarha could imagine why Kalithihar's leader had joined against her — Kalithiharians hated everyone else, but Tehkria most of all — though why Nahmatiix had done so was utterly perplexing. Heralax — one of the more ruthlessly ambitious senators that Lassarha had known — was also a potent politician, a skilled administrator, widely adored, and unscrupulous enough to be respectable, though Lassarha had assumed he was too intelligent and too cowardly to ever challenge her without good reason. Sadly, though, he was challenging her now, and Lassarha remained ignorant of what this 'good reason' was; Nahmatiix brought with it several allies, and though almost all of those had voted with Lassarha on the most recent issue, Lassarha assumed that this was for appearances' sake. Ihndrastar and Uulcax also had a fair number of supporters, though thankfully, Kalithihar brought nearly no one else into whatever vile coalition it had apparently joined, with even these few allies being moderately-weak colony worlds. Kalithihar was rich, it was powerful, it had one of the strongest militaries in the Empire, and it exported its niche specialties to the rest of the galaxy; however, as it was rife with separatism, and tended to regard the rest of the galaxy with a cool hostility at best, Lassarha had assumed the pariah of a planet had no diplomatic standing to speak of.