Weekly: Emotion. Daily: Love and Giving
Shattered Expanse
Astam Azirrik
The Measure of Devotion
Species: Karian
Caste: Tang
Role: Imperial Delegate to the Karian-Human Peace Council
Astam Azirrik had never understood why devotion required an enemy. He was Tang. He had been born beneath the banners of the Empire, educated beneath them, prayed beneath them, and expected that one day he would die beneath them. He believed in the Karian Empire with an intensity that many humans found uncomfortable. Its history was his history. Its victories were his victories. Its failures wounded him personally.
Astam believed Karian civilization was among the greatest achievements in the Expanse. He did not apologize for that belief, nor did he hate humanity. That distinction had made his career considerably more difficult than it needed to be.
Humans were arrogant. Astam would say so freely. They were impulsive, divided, culturally inconsistent, historically shortsighted, and possessed of an almost pathological inability to accept their proper place in any hierarchy. They were also courageous, ingenious, adaptable, and maddeningly difficult to defeat. Astam respected them.
Among certain Karians, that was nearly as unforgivable as loving them. Astam did not love humanity. He loved the Empire. Yet that devotion had led him to a conclusion increasingly unpopular among his people – the Cold War served neither civilization. A permanent enemy was not evidence of strength. It was evidence of failure.
The Empire and the humans had stared across borders, armed fleets, fought proxy conflicts, traded accusations, maneuvered through neutral governments, and prepared generations of soldiers for a war that neither side could afford to win. Astam wanted something better.
He spoke about peace with an emotion unusual in Karian diplomatic circles. His speeches were passionate rather than clinical. He talked about Karian children who should inherit universities instead of fortifications, about human merchants who should cross Karian ports without being regarded as spies, and about soldiers whose highest service to the Empire might someday be ensuring that their weapons were never fired.
His opponents sometimes accused him of loving humans more than his own people. That accusation could make Astam genuinely angry. He wanted peace because he loved his people. He wanted the Empire to prosper. He wanted Karian civilization to survive another thousand years. And he refused to believe that hatred was the only proof of patriotism.
When the Sarginian Kevuth Vramothame requested a private audience with him, Astam assumed he was about to receive another polite lecture about diplomatic restraint. Instead, Kevuth offered him a seat on a proposed Expanse council intended to reopen formal negotiations between the Karian Empire and the Human Confederation.
For several seconds, Astam said nothing. Then, to his later embarrassment, he wept. Kevuth did not appear embarrassed for him. The Sarginian simply waited.
Astam had spent much of his adult life being told that his dream was premature, politically impossible, strategically naïve, or dangerously sympathetic to humanity. Kevuth told him something different.
“Your people have noticed your devotion.”
Not his moderation, not his usefulness. His devotion. Kevuth understood.
Astam accepted before the Sarginian had finished explaining the appointment. During the months that followed, the two became unlikely companions. Astam could never reliably determine whether Kevuth was male, female, or whether the distinction even meant anything useful among Sarginians. Eventually he stopped trying.
He simply came to love Kevuth. Not romantically. Not even in the easy fashion of friendship. It was the love one sometimes develops for someone who sees something worthwhile in you before history has decided whether you were right. Kevuth had given Astam trust. More importantly, Kevuth had given his dream legitimacy.
Then someone murdered him.
Kevuth Vramothame lay dead upon the polished stone of the Karian capital. Astam stood over the body while security personnel pushed spectators farther from the scene. Emergency lights flashed against the immense towers surrounding the plaza. No one had told Astam who was responsible, they did not need to.
True Faith.
He knew it with the terrible certainty of instinct. Only True Faith would be brazen enough to strike a Sarginian delegation in the heart of the Karian capital. Only they could convince themselves that murdering one of the beings responsible for maintaining the political architecture of the Expanse was an act of patriotism.
A Morad investigator crouched beside Kevuth’s body. That meant there was a Herald nearby. Astam slowly looked upward. Thousands of windows stared back from the surrounding towers. Balconies. Transit bridges. Rooftops. Nothing. But somewhere among them, a Herald waited. Watching. Its charge was dead. Sooner or later, something would answer for that.
Astam looked back down. He had imagined this day differently.
There should have been diplomats arguing across tables. Translators whispering into headsets. Karian ministers complaining about human concessions. Human delegates complaining about Karian arrogance. Kevuth quietly moving between them, nudging impossible negotiations another fraction toward agreement.
Instead there was blood on the stone. Astam felt grief. Then anger. Then something much more dangerous. Hatred. For one brief moment he understood True Faith perfectly. He wanted someone punished. He wanted their meeting halls torn apart. He wanted their leaders dragged before Imperial courts. He wanted every Karian who had whispered approval of their rhetoric to understand what they had helped create.
Astam closed his eyes. His faith had taught him that devotion was measured by what one was willing to give. True Faith gave hatred. Kevuth had given trust. What would Astam give? He opened his eyes.
“My lord?”
One of the Imperial security officers was waiting for him. Astam looked once more at Kevuth. “The council will convene.”
The officer hesitated. “Delegate Azirrik, after this attack—”
“The council will convene.”
“Security will recommend postponement.”
“No.”
The word came harder than Astam intended. Several nearby officials turned toward him. Astam lowered his voice.
“If we postpone, they have succeeded.”
“Sir, a Sarginian delegate has been assassinated.”
“I can see that.”
“There may be further attacks.”
“There probably will be.”
The officer stared at him. Astam surprised himself by smiling. It was not a happy expression.
“Then True Faith had better learn something about devotion.”
He knelt beside Kevuth. For a moment, Imperial protocol, caste, politics, and the watching officials ceased to matter. Astam placed one hand gently against the Sarginian’s shoulder. Kevuth had given him an opportunity. Astam would give something back. Whatever was required. His reputation. His career. His safety. His blood, if necessary. The peace council would meet.
Humans and Karians would sit at the same table.
They would argue. They would insult one another. They would accuse one another of atrocities stretching back generations. There would be walkouts, threats, impossible demands, and moments when every rational person involved would declare the entire undertaking hopeless.
Astam would bring them back. Again. And again. And again. Not because humanity deserved Karian friendship. Not because the Empire had been wrong. Not because centuries of hostility could be washed away by pleasant words spoken around a table. He would do it because Kevuth Vramothame had believed that peace was possible. And because Kevuth had believed Astam Azirrik could help make it happen.
Astam rose.
Above him, somewhere among the towers, the unseen Herald continued its vigil. Astam wondered what it felt. Perhaps machines did not grieve. Perhaps Sarginians had never taught them how. Astam looked down at Kevuth one final time.
“You gave me your trust,” he whispered. His voice nearly failed him. “So I will give you my promise.” The Karian straightened beneath the banners of the Empire he loved. “We finish this.“
Blood & Suns
Ella “Betsy” Haerig
Affiliation: Monolith
Codename: Betsy
Cell: Old Glory
Heritage: Mixed Über/Unter
Status: Priority Field Operative; Reich Most-Wanted
Reputation: Hero, terrorist, patriot, murderer—depending upon who is speaking
There are people who join Monolith because they discover the truth. Ella Haerig never had that luxury. The truth was waiting for her in the cradle.
Her father was a Brutal Über, bred by the Reich to be stronger, harder, and more controllable than ordinary humanity. Her mother was an Unter, a woman whom the same society had decided was inherently beneath him. Whatever circumstances first brought them together, affection followed, and affection became something considerably more dangerous. They loved one another and under the Reich, that made their relationship a crime.
The state could tolerate carefully sanctioned breeding. It could tolerate pleasure within prescribed boundaries. It could tolerate relationships that reinforced the racial and social hierarchy upon which the Regime depended. What it could not tolerate was choice and Ella’s parents chose one another. Then they chose their daughter.
When her mother’s pregnancy could no longer be concealed, they understood what discovery would mean. They had no illusion that apologies, connections, or her father’s status would save them. A Brutal Über who violated the prescribed order was not merely disobedient. He was evidence that the order itself could be rejected.
Through a trusted friend, they made contact with Monolith. They could not save themselves but they could save Ella. The infant disappeared into a network of false documents, safe houses, couriers, sympathetic doctors, and people who never knew more than the single piece of information necessary to keep her moving.
Her parents were arrested shortly afterward and both were executed. Ella has no memory of them. Everything she knows about them fits inside a thin Monolith file – a handful of photographs, two identification records, and a few secondhand recollections. And the knowledge that, when confronted with a choice between themselves and their child, they gave her away so that she might live.
It was the first gift Ella Haerig ever received and her entire life has been an attempt to repay it.
Ella was not adopted by one family, she was adopted by a cause. Her childhood was spent among safe houses, underground facilities, resistance families, old operatives, intelligence officers, medics, couriers, and people whose names changed depending upon which door they walked through. Monolith tried to give her something resembling a childhood and sometimes it even succeeded.
She had teachers. She had birthdays. She had people who tucked her into bed and people who scolded her when she misbehaved. She learned history from books the Regimes had banned and geography from maps upon which borders were discussed as temporary things rather than eternal truths.
She also learned why doors were locked, why lights sometimes had to remain off, and never to ask someone’s real name in front of strangers. She learned that an adult could eat breakfast with her one morning and simply be gone the next, and most importantly, nobody had to explain to Ella what the Regimes were capable of. They had killed her mother and father because those two people had loved the wrong person.
Monolith did not need to indoctrinate her. If anything, some of her guardians occasionally tried to temper her hatred. One elderly operative once told her that hating the Reich was not enough. Hatred could sustain a person through a battle, but it could not sustain them through a lifetime. If Ella intended to spend her life fighting tyranny, she needed to decide what she was fighting for.
That question changed her and the answer defined her – freedom. Not Monolith, not revenge, and not even the destruction of the Reich. Freedom. The freedom of two people to love one another, decide what happened to one’s own body, to speak, and to disagree. The freedom to fail, to leave and choose one’s leaders. The freedom to choose one’s own life.
Ella gradually understood that her parents had died for precisely that principle without ever calling themselves revolutionaries. They had chosen and the Reich had killed them for it. From then on, Ella’s devotion ceased to be about avenging her parents. It became about making their choice ordinary.
Ella inherited more from her father than his name and blood. The Über traits within her were unmistakable as she matured. Strength came easily, so did aggression.
More troubling was the emotional architecture bred into the Brutal caste. Brutals were designed to experience powerful drives while possessing an extraordinary ability to contain and direct them. The Reich wanted soldiers capable of tremendous violence without becoming uselessly consumed by fear, rage, or panic.
Ella inherited that control. She also inherited what must be controlled. She calls it the Beast.
The name is deliberately melodramatic, and she knows it. Among people she trusts she occasionally jokes about it. But the practices she uses to control it are anything but jokes. She exercises every day. She practices breathing disciplines. She learned tai chi, initially because an instructor thought the slow movements would frustrate her. They did. That became precisely why she continued.
Control the hand, control the breath, control the thought, and control the emotion. Never deny that the emotion exists.
Ella can become extraordinarily angry without appearing angry at all. She can be terrified while her hands remain perfectly steady. She can watch someone she cares about bleed and continue giving orders in an even voice. People who encounter her only during operations often mistake this for emotional detachment.
The Reich has built an entire mythology around it. Their reports describe Betsy as cold, unfeeling, and predatory. A woman capable of killing without remorse. There is enough truth in the description to make the lie convincing. Ella Haerig can kill without hesitation but that is not the same thing as killing without feeling.
Ella chose her codename herself – Betsy, after Betsy Ross. The choice earned more than a few raised eyebrows within Monolith. It seemed almost sentimental for a young woman who had already developed a reputation for being anything but. Ella did not care. She liked what the name represented – not a general, not a president, and not some warrior standing triumphantly over the bodies of enemies. A woman remembered for making a flag.
Whether every detail of the old story was historically accurate mattered less to Ella than what the story had come to represent. Someone had to stitch the pieces together. Someone had to make the symbol people would gather beneath. Ella understood that.
Her cell became Old Glory. The name remained even as its membership changed. People were reassigned, retired, disappeared, or died. Old Glory remained. And Betsy remained with it. Over the years, the cell acquired a reputation inside Monolith as the team sent when something absolutely had to succeed – extraction of a compromised asset, destruction of a strategic facility, recovery of intelligence too valuable to abandon, rescue of operatives everyone else had written off, or support for a cell suddenly trapped behind tightening security.
When Old Glory does not have an assignment, it is frequently kept available precisely because someone, somewhere, is going to need them. There are Monolith operatives who have never met Ella Haerig but know her codename. Some tell stories about her that Ella herself insists never happened. Others tell stories she refuses to discuss. She has become something approaching a folk hero within the resistance. She hates that but she also understands its value. People fighting a war their grandparents could not win sometimes need proof that victory remains possible.
If Betsy has to become part of that proof, she will tolerate it.
The Reich knows her too. There, the stories are considerably different. Betsy is one of the most wanted Monolith terrorists operating within Reich territory. Propaganda broadcasts have blamed her for assassinations, bombings, sabotage, disappearances, industrial accidents, military defeats, and acts she could not possibly have committed. In some accounts she is barely human – a mongrel product of forbidden blood, an unstable Über aberration, a fanatic raised from infancy by terrorists, and a murderer without conscience.
Parents in some districts have even frightened children with stories that Betsy comes for people who betray the Reich. Ella finds that one particularly distasteful. Monolith intelligence has collected several official depictions of her. She keeps one – it shows a severe woman staring directly at the viewer, her face almost expressionless beneath the words – SIE KENNT KEINE GNADE (She knows no mercy.)
Ella keeps it pinned inside a storage locker. Someone once asked her why.
She answered: “Because they don’t know me.”
Her team does. That is where the Reich’s portrait of Betsy falls apart completely. Ella loves her people. Not abstractly, and not in the way commanders say they love the soldiers beneath them while calculating acceptable losses. She knows them, she remembers birthdays, she knows who takes sugar in their coffee and who pretends not to be afraid of confined spaces, she knows whose marriage is failing, she knows whose daughter has started school under a false name, and she knows which operative needs silence after a mission and which one desperately needs someone to sit beside them.
New members of Old Glory often find this disorienting. They expect Betsy and they get Ella. She cooks when she has the opportunity, listens, gives away personal possessions with little hesitation, writes letters for people who cannot safely write their families themselves, spends nights sitting beside wounded operatives who were afraid to sleep, and held dying agents’ hands.
And she remembers the dead. All of them.
There is a private list in her quarters containing every person who has served in Old Glory since she assumed command. No ranks, no codenames. Just names. Ella understands that devotion to a cause can become an excuse to stop loving the people for whom the cause supposedly exists. She refuses to allow that to happen to her.
Freedom is not a flag. Democracy is not a speech. Self-determination is not a political slogan. They are people. Specific people. Messy people. Frightened people. People who sometimes make terrible decisions once they are finally allowed to make decisions for themselves. Ella believes they deserve that right anyway.
Ella owns almost nothing. That is partly necessity. A Monolith operative who may need to disappear in minutes learns not to accumulate possessions. But with Ella it goes deeper. She has given Monolith virtually everything a person can give. Her childhood, adolescence, adulthood, safety, and name. She has sacrificed any possibility of an ordinary career, and any realistic hope of walking openly through the place she considers home. The Reich knows her face well enough that extensive precautions are necessary whenever she enters controlled territory.
There will probably never be retirement for Ella Haerig. There may not even be old age. She knows this but she continues anyway. Not because she wants to die for Monolith. Ella has very little patience for people eager to become martyrs. She wants to live for Monolith. That is harder. Dying requires devotion for a moment.
Living requires waking tomorrow and choosing the cause again. Then choosing it the next day. And the next. After the failed mission. After the captured cell. After the informant. After discovering that someone they rescued returned willingly to the Regime. After watching liberated people argue among themselves. After seeing resistance factions become petty, selfish, frightened, or cruel. After learning that freedom does not automatically make people good.
Ella chooses it anyway. That is her Devotion.
There is a question Ella sometimes asks young Monolith recruits. – “Do you love freedom, or do you hate the Reich?” Most initially think the two answers mean the same thing. Ella tells them they do not.
If hatred is all they possess, the Reich will eventually define their entire existence. Every action will become a reaction. Every victory will require an enemy. If the Regime finally falls, they will discover they have no idea what comes afterward.
Ella hates the Reich. She makes no pretense otherwise. But hatred is not what has kept her fighting. She loves what might replace it. She loves the possibility that someday a child like her will be born and nobody will care that her father was Über and her mother Unter. She loves the possibility that two people will choose one another without asking permission from a ministry. She loves the possibility of newspapers insulting elected leaders. She loves arguments in public squares. She loves elections in which her preferred candidate loses. She loves the idea of people making choices she personally thinks are foolish.
Because they are their choices. That is what her parents died for. Not Monolith. Not Old Glory. Not Betsy. The right to choose one’s own path.
There is an old joke among Monolith personnel that if the organization ever becomes legitimate enough to run a propaganda campaign, Betsy will be on the first poster.
Ella despises the suggestion. Everyone else knows it is true. Not because she is Monolith’s greatest killer, not because the Reich fears her, and not because Old Glory receives priority assignments. Ella Haerig represents something far more dangerous to the Regimes. She is proof that devotion does not have to come from indoctrination.
The Reich spends enormous resources manufacturing loyalty – drugs, propaganda, eugenics, education, surveillance and fear. Ella possesses something they cannot manufacture. She believes. She has seen Monolith fail. She has seen its people make mistakes. She has disagreed with orders. She has argued with superiors. She has buried friends because someone made the wrong decision. And she remains.
Not because Monolith owns her, because it doesn’t. Every morning Ella Haerig remains free to decide that she has given enough. Every morning she decides she has not. Perhaps that is why the Reich finds Betsy so frightening. Their ideal citizen obeys because obedience has been engineered into them. Ella Haerig was born from an act of disobedience. She was saved by an act of love.
She was raised by people who gave her the freedom to understand what both meant. And she has devoted her entire life to giving that same freedom to everyone else. One person at a time, if necessary.One generation at a time, if necessary. For as long as it takes.
This inspired this new character option for Blood & Suns: Mixed Ancestries