Struggle. Taste of power

Chief SCK

The chief of the Slavyansk column was on an outing near Luhansk, looking into a Maquis sabotage seven months ago. At that time, the SCK and Imperial Army units had been ambushed: the Maquis had fired on them and blown up a tunnel. Then the tunnel also flooded. He claimed at the time that he had only lost two of his Boers and several Imperial Army Boers, but in reality it was much worse. Almost ten times worse. He had to use all his powers to shut up both Minister Donhra, who had to "redeploy" 38 of his Boers on paper. And the chums from the Ministry of

Transportation and Material Supply, who in reports had to depict completely the wrong things to be repaired, and take materials about the servants to be repaired from completely different places. And supervision from the central apparatus, which came to check and assess the losses. It was good that there were those who were not likely to make a peep without being asked, given what had been dug up on them.

Zakinhr looked at the tunnels, where repairs had just been completed a couple of days ago, and remembered what he had been through. He had been walking on the edge of the abyss, for the loss of two legions of 18 Boer SCK and seven legions of 46 Boer of the Imperial Army would not have been forgiven even conditionally. He would have been shot and tortured, because no one would have believed that it was possible to lose so much on purpose. Even though it wasn't on purpose. He was just beaten by the Maquis then… Yeah, it happens. There are times when the Maquis win, and they win big. Then the Slavyansk column was left without its assault forces, and all that was left were security drills in each of the sectors and a few special purpose drills in Gorlovka. We had to revise the entire security structure in the region…..

And the bet was on the Kiwis. Expand their presence, allocate additional resources to them, and organize the whole thing with self-governance of one sector and then the whole faction. To free the security drills from there… At the same time, of course, to remove any possible influence of the Inquisition there. But that wasn't the first priority. It was at the same time, though it should have seemed to everyone who was even a little bit aware that it was about the confrontation between the Church and the SCK… And who knew that this very step would aggravate all the relations between them…

Zakinhir wondered now if he would have done the same thing if he'd known how it would turn out, and he wasn't so sure anymore. Back then, he had thought that only coolness and subtle calculation had helped him survive. Now the other side of the coin was demonstrating that he had simply dug himself another hole, much deeper than the first. Allies in a war against the Church are not easy to find, unlike allies against the Maquis. And it's too late to backpedal now. And what are the options?

It is unrealistic to return chums to the mines of the Donetsk-Makeyevka group. There are not so many plagues in the subordination, and the miners there have become very strong. They now produce twice as much as before. There's no need to guard them. Know your stuff, get your resources. The Center and all the ministries liked it very much. Except for the Church, of course… You can't go back to the way it was… And you can't explain everything to the Church either. Now their goal is Anankhr, and they are eager to achieve it. And obviously to achieve something more than just to tickle the nerves of a member of the Central Committee of the Empire….

The only thing left is to go to the end and fight back against the Church more and more harshly. So that they would be afraid to go any further. Let them really think that self-government in the Donetsk-Makeyevka group is a pre-planned action. And Zakinhr organized a provocation against Dolonokh, the priest of the main temple of the Empire, located in the capital — Chum-Batu, at the mouth of the Volga River.

Dolonoch was neither a metropolitan nor a priest of the central administration of the Church, but the temple of which he was abbot was the largest, most famous and important temple of the entire Jah faith, the Temple of the Black Stone named after the Grand Inquisitor Torquedoch. In this temple were held the ordinations of metropolitans and patriarchs, as well as services for the benefit of the most important persons of the Empire.

I had to bring in my old informant, Juninhr, who had served as a notary and had been present at many church trials, including the torture of the Inquisition, certifying the "legitimacy" of the secular authorities. He didn't know much, but as a witness he was pretty good. As in this case.

Zakinhru managed to dig up an old case of an interrogation during the "week of repentance" in which Dolonoch was present. The procedure had been certified by Uninhr as a notary.

Everything seemed to be conducted according to the regulations, but some circumstances could say that the process was biased, such as the fact that some items were used several times during the torture, which was forbidden by the instructions, and the justification was that the items had been used "incorrectly" before. In addition, the start time and end time did not match the time of the service — it turned out that Dolonoh had to leave at least twice during the process, which meant that either he was not the one conducting the service or the interrogation was not taking place in his presence. Either option was unacceptable. But at the end of it all, the chum tortured and then executed by the Inquisition was an employee of the Ministry of Transportation and was being held as a witness in a treason case. His burning thus interfered with the process of investigation of an important case, and in turn could well be blamed on the intentionality of this step to cover up the traces of the crime.

Everything "from" and "to" in this case, of course, was turned upside down by Zakinhr. The time that was not beaten for questioning with worship was simply adjusted — the notes were made by hand, and a few lines were slightly changed in them, for the good of the handwriting and the figures themselves suited the possible correction. Chum, who was executed, was in reality "still" a witness, and he had not yet been reclassified as a defendant. And, no less importantly, the case was about treasury theft, not about state treason, which also radically changed the essence of what had happened.

But in this way Dolonokh himself was brought to the article on high treason and was now kept in a special isolation center of the SChK in Chum-Batu. The signal to the Church was unambiguous — the SCK would get to anyone it wanted, if necessary. And right now, Zakinhr was really hoping that this would cool their ardor in some way, at least by changing the target from Ananhr to someone else. That said, the most surprising thing was that he had yet to receive any signals from the SCK Center. No approval or reprimand. It was as if he had been given a free hand to act on the principle of "if you win, we'll join you, and if you lose, it's nothing to do with us". A possible reaction from the higher-ups, but it was particularly frightening. They clearly had their own agenda against the Inquisitors, and to expect him to straight-up hit the mark would be irrational. It was entirely possible that they'd just trade him in a couple moves, win influence a bit, and then designate more or less similar to what the status quo had been before.

But he hadn't clung to this place so tightly that he'd just become someone's pawn. And now he knew that if it came to a direct threat to him, he'd raise the stakes again. And make himself a force to be reckoned with. He was even willing to pretend to be a somewhat disconnected psycho, just to make it work… And he would certainly do that if he had to. Fabricate cases against whoever he can, accuse them of colluding with the Maquis or whoever. He'll take out his most ardent opponents quietly, and make it clear that he'll stop at nothing… That's what he'll do. After all, he's the head of the entire column, and he still has enough power….

Zakinhr looked up at the new tunnel vaults. Powerful supports holding the walls together and holding tons of concrete and earth above his head. Not long ago there had been rubble and a mass of water, brownish water mixed with chunks of cement with rebar sticking out of it. That was behind him… But for a moment, he thought he saw something dangling somewhere at the top.

It was only 7 or 8 meters there, and it seemed that some object was moving there from side to side. Shadows to the right, to the left. Is it a play of light or is something really moving? Scekist looked in the distance, then around, then turned back — everywhere was either empty or his guards were there. Nothing and no one else. And no dangling light sources… Then something rumbled behind his back.

He turned around and saw a piece of concrete rebar just a meter away from him. He looked up, and where something had just flashed, there was a small notch in the ceiling where the piece of rebar had come from.

— Fucking employees! — Zakinhr yelled. He was nearly killed by the negligence that was rampant throughout the empire, especially when someone rode horses in achieving their plans in the shortest possible time. He remembered an incident from his past and laughed in surprise.

When he first started his service in the SCS, he was entrusted with keeping an eye on one of the chiefs of the Ministry of Material Support. They had enough reason to believe that this clerk was stealing, even if only a little, but quite regularly.

He followed him very roughly — he noted all the points of his appearance, all the persons with whom he had contacts. It's all timed, coherent. Even in the framework of the table on a separate sheet. In short, the material was exhaustive.

Taking into account that the task was quite typical and did not go beyond the standards of operational work, a few freshly graduated from the academy of SSchekists were involved in it.

They said, you follow him, and you follow him. You'll see how such things are done.

Then they gave the command to detain him. There was no solid evidence against him, and the younger generation was to be taught that such things, if there was sufficient confidence, could be extracted on their own, so to speak, in the middle of the hunt.

The object was entrusted to the youngsters to take over and they were to start working with bias. Which they did. Of course, they spared no effort or expense. By the time Zakinhra and his chief arrived to take over the "work", the subject had already confessed. Looking at them, the chief nodded affirmatively, and then decided to look at the subject himself. That was where his surprise came when, instead of the original target, he saw one of the academy trainees who had been sent to observe the work of their future colleagues. They had simply mistaken the ultimate target for this failed spy.

— Fucking employees! — their boss yelled at the time. — You got the wrong guy!

Zakinhru thought it was very funny now, especially since he had given out exactly the same phrase.

— It's the same everywhere. — thought the head of the Slavic Column. — Everywhere we have the same employees…..