Hours before the start of the AN conference
Shuni Gedaliah yawned as he awoke. He felt like he’d slept for hours, and in fact he had. Still, they were a few hours away from Esþursia. He grumbled. Perhaps a dislike of air travel was a bad attribute for a diplomat, but that ship had sailed. Or, perhaps, that plane had left the runway.
He got out of his chair and paced the plane.
“You should relax, Shuni,” Sagiv Bareket remarked as he pulled out a velvet bag, removing two dice from them, and tossing them gently across the tray in front of him.
“Pacing won’t speed up the plane.”
“I just need to stretch my legs,” Shuni said with a smile. While it’s true he hated air travel, there was no point in complaining about it. Besides, the jets afforded to diplomatic staff were a few steps up from flying commercial.
“Do you want anything while I’m up? I could use a seltzer.”
“No thank you,” Sagiv said with a grin as he tossed the dice again. Shuni shot his deputy a glance as he got the bottled seltzer from the fridge, returning to where he, his deputy, and a few of their aids were.
“Dice… dice… dice… you could have loaded however many movies or tv shows you wanted onto your phone, brought any book you want, or hell, any game you wanted, and you bring dice.”
“I find a pleasantness in the simplicity,” Sagiv said as he gently tossed the dice again.
“My Cohen hated dice growing up,” Shuni said.
“A game like chess relies on mankind’s mind. An expression of free will and divine inspiration. Chess is chance.”
“Not really,” Sagiv replied.
“Every time I toss them,” he said as he tossed them again, “the numbers they make are determined by factors. Gravity, the roll of them against my palm, how much I may be sweating. Even the air! It’s not chance, it’s just determined by forces we can’t control. With chess, like the dice, the pieces can only move in so many ways depending on the situation. Chess just gives us the illusion that we have more control than we do.”
“You are far too into dice for a twenty-nine year old, I swear to Shaddai,” Shuni said as he sat down and sipped his seltzer.
“You should be into music and Men of Honour and girls,” he said with a chuckle, having fun teasing his assistant.
“Who says I’m not into those too?” Sagiv replied with a friendly smile.
Shuni shrugged.
“So we’re two hours out from Fjármagn.”
“Yes. And when we land we’ll embark to the conference. We should be there in time to meet with Dr. Rajaratnam beforehand.”
“Excellent,” Shuni said with a nod. It was good to meet the Syrixian representative before such an event. It gave them a chance to talk about the events that would soon be upon all of them.
And Dr. Rajaratnam was a great choice. He was a believer in the project. And he was a symbol of a new Syrixia. He was someone the Liberal-Labour coalition that Shuni and his staff belonged to were happy to see gain prominence in the Empire.
“Did you think this would ever come about?” Sagiv asked. He was giddy. A force to project democracy… it was something that was deemed too… unwieldy in many foreign policy circles.
“The funny thing about it is that we talked about something like this when the coalition came into power, four years ago,” Shuni said as he sat back in his chair.
“There was a belief among certain segments of the government that the Iterian League and META, if pooled together, could form something like this. Of course the overt democratic terms of the project would have to be toned down. Astragon and Skanda, Diyar…”
“Rafhazan,” Sagiv finished for his boss.
“Exactly. The compromises and…well… you know Meteranns.”
“I hear the Santonian response will be given at the conference.”
“The conference is going ahead as if they will decline. Playing it safe. And you know… that’s smart of them.”
“You know something I don’t?” Sagiv asked, sounding a bit dejected. The Santonian Revolution was one of the great historical watermarks in the history of representative government.
“No, but I know Santonians. You saw how close the META referendum was over there. If they join it won’t be now. They’ll think on it, you’ll see. After they wrangle with their own malcontents too.”
“Malcontents?”
“Same as us,” Shuni shrugged.
“The far righters, the far lefties, the people who would rather scream then debate.”
“Our coalition partner is Labour,” Sagiv reminded his boss.
“Exactly,” Shuni winked.
“And we had to do some work to shut the fringes up about this. Don’t be fooled. Saintonge has those sorts too. You should know that.
Isn’t your sister living in Saintonge now? Living with that chess player?”
“Politics is NOT the source of tension with Netty,” Sagiv replied.
“Ohhhh,” Shuni chuckled.
“It’s serious then.”
“The two chess players? Yes.”
“So you…” Shuni made a motion, as if he were declaring a checkmate on a board. Sagiv just rolled his eyes.
“You know, your distaste for chess makes a lot of sense now,” chuckled.
“It’s serious stuff, ok? If they marry, if she becomes Santonian then…”
“Ahhh yes… conversion to become a Catholique,” Shuni replied, sipping more seltzer water as he put on his best Santonian accent.
“Netty says it’s no big deal, mom and dad disagree.”
“And you?”
“What does it matter what I think?”
“You’re her brother. I’m sure what you think means the world to her.”
“You say that like you want me to have a certain opinion,” Sagiv replied tentatively.
“It’s not my family, and it’s not my business,” Shuni said as he put the water down in a cup holder and leaned forward in his chair, towards his young deputy.
“But while I understand where your parents might have concerns, I don’t think which version of the same book we all read is enough to rip families apart. Do you?”
Sagiv tossed the dice gently again.
“I guess we’re all like the dice. Just forced into where we are thanks to stuff beyond our control.”
“Poetic, and flowery, and overly wrought, but yes,” Shuni said with a grin as he leaned back in his chair.
“Mothers and fathers will be mothers and fathers, for good and for ill. When it’s the latter, siblings need to stick together,” he winked.
As he winked he caught sight of the co-pilot approaching from the cockpit. He cocked his head. The plane wasn’t scheduled to land for two more hours.
“Is everything alright?” he called. The pilot smiled, nodding before he got close enough that he wouldn’t have to yell.
“Everything’s fine sir. Just a minor issue the pilot wanted me to make you aware of.”
“Oh? What is it?”
“Turbulence.”
“Turbulence?” Shuni asked. That was rather… mundane. “He can just flash the fasten seatbelt sign if it gets bad.”
“It’s really bad turbulence,” the copilot replied. And in a single motion pulled a gun tucked into the back of his pants, shooting Sagiv between the eyes.
The whole thing seemed to happen in slow motion. Shuni didn’t even register what was happening at first until it was too late and his young assistant had been killed.
“SAGIV!”
The armed guards moved in immediately before half of their number took out the remaining ones by surprise. Just as Shuni went to cradle his deputy the co-pilot had pistol whipped him to the ground. Shuni looked up, vision blurry… before he passed out.
He looked up, blurry-eyed as he came too. The rest of his staff… and the security guards not part of this insurrection… all secured in the back kitchenette of the plane.
“Who… what’s going on?” he asked as he pulled himself to his knees, finding that he was the only one not tied at the ankles or wrists with zipties.
“Ah, Ambassador.”
Shuni looked beyond the armed guards… guards he assumed were Iraelian soldiers, to the man who had spoken. The man standing next to the co-pilot. He looked… familiar. But he couldn’t quite place him. He was wearing black tactical gear, as was the co-pilot.
“I see you’ve awakened.”
“Who are you, what’s going on?” he asked, though he had an idea.
Shavians. It had to be Shavians.
“Who I am,” the man who appeared to be the ringleader said, as he approached, “has been of shockingly little concern to you this entire time.”
He motioned for one of the guards to grab Shuni and bring him to him.
“Whatever you do to me, or anyone else, the Iraelian government will not give into Shavian demands,” Shuni said angrily.
“You’ve already failed at whatever ‘noble’ goal you’ve set for yourself.”
The man though, he was older now that Shuni could see him. Was he Shavian? He could be… but he could also be Aydini, Diyari… or even Syrixian. And he didn’t seem defiant… instead he chuckled softly.
“Shavian? No, no Ambassador. My interests are far… broader. And have been for some time.”
“Then what do you want?” Shuni asked. His shock was giving way to anger. Especially now that he could see Sagiv’s dead body again, just a few rows away.
The man didn’t answer right away. He just pulled a pair of sunglasses out from a chest pocket on his gear, looking at them for a moment before he slipped them on.
“How quickly the men and women of the people overlook them, eh?” he asked.
And then it clicked. Him wearing those sunglasses. That beard. He was the pilot! He’d only glimpsed him for a moment when they’d boarded but…
“You are… or were… on your way to a conference to embolden democracy,” the man said.
“And yet, you didn’t even recognize the man farrying you across the planet. The hypocrisies of the ‘democratic’ elite laid bare, wouldn’t you say?”
Shuni was furious, but he also knew losing himself wouldn’t help anyone. Nor would playing this terrorist’s pedantic pseudo-philosophical games. So he kept what he had to say simple.
“Who are you? What do you want?”
The ringleader removed his glasses, stuffing them back in the pouch on his chest before zipping open another one, his right pocket.
“Who I am is a tricky question, Ambassador. No one cared who I was…” he began to remove rings from his pocket, sliding them onto his left hand.
“Until I put on the rings. And by then I was a different man.”
He made a fist with his left fist, each finger, including the thumb, ringed. Rings that displayed seals of a language Shuni didn’t recognize. But he didn’t have to. Because he knew who this man was. And the pale look that washed over his face told it all. He was looking at a ghost.
A whisper among the Foreign Office. Amongst the intelligence community. Whispers. Rumours.
Of the Ten Rings.
Only the ghost was real and he was…
“Satrap, we’re ready,” the co-pilot informed the ringleader.
“Excellent,” the Satrap replied, slipping the remaining five rings onto his other hand as he brushed past Shuni.
“WHAT DO YOU WANT? WHAT’S YOUR PLAN?”
The Satrap turned, smiling.
“Crashing this plane. With no survivors.”
“WHAT?” Shuni called out as the armed guards gunned down the personnel trapped in the back of the plane as two others grabbed him, securing his arms and ankles with zipties.
“WHAT? WHAT’S HAPPENING?” he called out as the plane began to shake. Shake because of another plane that was flying up behind them.
The Satrap and his men all began donning masks for breathing, and soon one was forced over a struggling and protesting Ambassador Gedalliah, before one door to the plane blew open. Frantic, violent wind blew out of the cabin, as the bodies of the executed prisoners were sucked out over the ocean. The ones who weren’t were eventually pushed out.
Shuni was held down by two armed guards bracing themselves against the seats as men in harnesses and on cords entered the plane through the blown out door. Shuni was dragged, struggling as he was into a harness and secured. Frantically screaming and trying to free himself.
And then… the Satrap leaned into him.
“Now is not the time for fear, Ambassador. That comes later.”
It was the last thing he heard before he was sucked out of the plane… dragged by his harness as he screamed to high heaven… passing out from shock before he was pulled into the military grade cargo plane that was raiding his doomed transport.
Deshi Basara by Hans Zimmer, 3:19
