LotS/The Story/Days of Wu
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Intro= My name is Wu Tenchu, and when this game of weiqi is over I will die.
This doesn't trouble me. An assassin knows death dogs his steps, as surely as it gleams along the edge of his blade or glimmers upon his pistol's barrel. He lives beneath its shadow, in the very same darkness that claims each of his enemies, waiting for the day fortune turns against him and the slayer is slain. And what is a politician but an assassin on a grander and less honorable scale? His deeds must often be buried in blackness too, for they might make even his friends and allies despise him. Retribution is never far from him either. Only a deluded fool would believe he acts with impunity. Every stone on the board is both killer and victim, and the myriad moments that shaped my life have marked my fate.
No, my impending death doesn't perturb me. What irks me is that I know so little about the man whose presence here will force me to purchase his doom with my own. But perhaps there's still time to address this before our game ends, and elucidate the mystery for those who'll walk in my footsteps.
A black stone touches the board. My white stone follows. Noir's eyes gaze down at them, two blazing azure flames. His mind is focused and fastened on the battle of wits and strategy. Mine is not. This game takes only a modicum of my concentration, the barest sliver of my intellect. It occupies my enemy and satisfies a portion of my curiosity while I do what must be done. Because my duty to the empire isn't over, and I cannot shirk it in these final minutes.
My lips are still, leaving the silence broken only by the clicking of weiqi stones on wood. But words flow faster than a human tongue could ever utter them -- spinning from my brain, cast into the ether, captured by the devices stationed around the room. Recorded and relayed, along with all the hidden data that was mine alone while I lived but must now pass into the safekeeping of those I trust most.
My last will and testament.
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Wu Tenchu's Schooldays= Wu!"
"Yes?"
The teacher loomed over the boy's desk, clasping its edges with big, thick hands. His forearms -- each a meaty club, like a leg of lamb -- twitched as his fingers whitened. Some of Wu's classmates claimed Mr. Anderson was a former thugby player. According to playground rumor, that sport banished him because he tore a fan's spine out. The boy liked that story. It showed a laudable cynicism for the education system.
"This is not the assigned reading!"
He tapped the upper edge of Wu's datapad. The screen displayed long paragraphs of text, in lieu of the short stanzas which adorned those of his classmates.
"The rhyme was ill-conceived." The boy glanced up into the man's eyes. His face was impassive. "The poet wields dactyls as weapons of blunt force trauma, and I reject her contention that all people are born equal. As a child who's derived superior intellectual capabilities from his genetic makeup, I find the notion trite and offensive."
Mr. Anderson blinked at the small child. Perhaps his colleagues had prepared him for this most unusual pupil, but it was quite different to actually hear such discourse coming from a five-year-old's mouth. He turned the datapad round and tapped the screen. A heading appeared in bold text.
"Assassination reports?"
"They were declassified yesterday. I'm not violating any imperial laws."
The other children were watching. Mr. Anderson swept the room with a glare, and their heads dropped back over their work. He grunted and turned to Wu Tenchu again.
"What's this?" The teacher's fingertip pressed down on a small thumbnail image in the corner of the page.
A diagram expanded until it filled the screen. It was a strange combination of poorly drawn stick-figures and precise lines and trajectories, marked with mathematical symbols.
"The assassin's method was inefficient," Wu said, "so I constructed a better one."
"Go see the headmaster."
"Very well."
A dozen scans sweep the room, scouring both of us. Their displays are subtle. No holographic screens blare their findings. But the artworks behind Noir shift in accordance with their discoveries. There's a vase that would have defied any collector to say it wasn't conceived on Earth during China's Ming Dynasty. Now its painted figures move, revealing the artful pretense. My own invention, created for practicality and ego. A little test of genius. The colors and patterns of a courtier's robes confirm my identity and humanity. This comes as little surprise, though I welcome the news that I haven't been replaced by an android without my knowledge. The man's hat changes hue when the psionic examination is complete. My mind is unclouded, beyond the grasp of any psychic intrusion or conditioning. A later addition to the technology -- this one an admission of past failure.
The figure on the next vase is far more curious. A noblewoman stands in a lavish garden, her beautiful face and gorgeous gown wrought from simple strokes of blue coloring on the crisp white background. Tiny birds flicker around her. Perspective turns their flock into a swarm of insects, an azure cloud which seeps into her sumptuous garments until bird and fabric are indistinguishable. It takes me a split-second to identify this permutation from countless others. The scans have disclosed nanobots woven into Noir's clothing, miniscule machines that mend and bolster his garb. The technology is advanced but not beyond the reach of Sian science. What intrigues me is that the woman's skin is unblemished. Noir's technology is worn, not embedded. No cybernetic systems pulse inside his flesh and grant him his strength, speed, or toughness.
The woman wears five bracelets on her left arm. My opponent is, at least in part, human. But her right arm is angled downwards, thwarted. The alien tissues defy examination. Interesting... Most interesting... Very few known species can mate with humans and produce offspring. Of these, none resemble the being I saw on my screens when gunfire stripped away his clothes.
A black stone clicks on the board. I watch Noir with redoubled scrutiny. His eyes meet mine, perhaps in challenge, or else curiosity of his own.
"I want your lunch!"
Kwai's friends encircled Wu Tenchu, cutting off all avenues of escape. Wu assessed them in his peripheral vision. Three were flabby, two tall but lanky. None were strong in his estimation. As an intellectual exercise he calculated the force he would need to break their knees or ribs, and decided that he had nothing to fear from them as long as he struck fast and hard. But Kwai himself was another matter. The boy towered above Wu. His bulging muscles and acne-slathered face told of botched hormone therapies.
"Your lunch!" he repeated.
Wu glanced down at his lunchbox as though becoming aware of it for the first time.
"My mother isn't a good cook," he said. "You would find this meal unpalatable."
Kwai snorted. A yellow-green blob shot from his left nostril, trailing a rope of snot. It dangled in front of his chin, swaying back and forth, a disgusting but almost hypnotic pendulum.
"Give me it!"
Other children were gathering from across the playground, massing a safe distance beyond the ring of bullies. Their faces bobbed beside the flabby and gangly bodies like an audience glimpsed between the curtains in the school theatre. Some of them grinned, filled with the glee of former victims now made spectators at another's suffering. Others looked around for a teacher. Those who knew Wu best wore quizzical expressions, and wondered what would come of this. Kwai had been stealing lunches ever since he returned from his dubious medical treatments. During the lunch hour he crammed his mouth full of every comestible he could buy from the canteen or snatch from smaller children, consuming a significant portion of his own bodyweight. But he hadn't stolen from Wu Tenchu before -- and many looked on with bated breath to see what would happen.
"Here." Wu handed him the little blue lunchbox.
Children gasped at his surrender. Some sneered. A few seemed disappointed. Kwai looked around, brow furrowed as his hormone-addled brain tried to comprehend their emotions. In the end he shrugged and brandished his prize above his head. Then he brought it back down and opened it.
His eyes widened. His mouth fell open.
"It's... It's..."
One of his burly comrades came over to his side and stared into the container. He yelped.
"It's a bomb!"
There were screams. Some of the onlookers ran across the playground, shrieking, wailing, or even laughing. Others surged forward -- disbelief suppressing caution.
"Throw it away!" Kwai's friend said. "Throw it away!"
Wu Tenchu whistled. Steel bands shot out of the lunchbox with a series of neat metallic clinks. They wrapped around Kwai's fingers, holding them fast against either side of the box, and slid into newly revealed recesses. Kwai shook his arms. But the bonds held firm. He stared at his friend, mouth agape, eyes beseeching. The other child fled -- barging his way through a pack of smaller children, scattering them like skittles.
"Wu!" The snot pendulum swung this way and that. "Wu!"
"I recommend that everyone withdraw to a safe distance," Wu Tenchu said. "Now."
The children looked at him, looked at Kwai, and dispersed. Their exodus swept through the playground.
"Wu!" Kwai stared into the lunchbox, where the digital clock's red numerals continued to count down. "Turn it off! Turn it off!"
"Turn what off?"
"The bomb! Turn the bomb off!"
"There's no bomb."
Kwai looked up at him. The snot dangled motionless, as though it too were stunned. He stared back down at the clock, left eyelid twitching, acne-covered face caught between horror and relief.
The countdown reached zero.
The 'bomb' flew from the box, a slab of metal launched by a powerful spring. There was a crunch and a splat. Wu Tenchu winced. It appeared that he'd miscalculated its strength.
Kwai fell onto his knees and bawled. Crimson gushed from his nose. A haphazard assortment of smashed and disarrayed teeth hung loose in his bloody maw. The strand of snot still dangled there, slathered in red.
A man with two natures. Two origins? Two voices. Yes... The human and the bestial. An enigma in black, one who defies the keenest scanners and databases the Sian Empire has to offer. What are you, Noir?
I could give a signal and alert troops stationed nearby. Dozens. Hundreds. They'd storm my home and engage him. But that would be foolish. I've seen what he's capable of, and I'd only be calling them here to share my tomb. Even <Player's name> couldn't stop him. Nor could the weapons that lined my trap. It will take greater countermeasures, and the sacrificing of one stone for another.
"Sit down," the headmaster said.
The boy closed the office door and walked to the chair in front of the desk. The headmaster's glare followed him as he went. Wu sat down and reached towards the bowl of candy.
"No!" Doctor Shinju's fingers clamped around his wrist. "Those aren't for you."
Wu shrugged his shoulders and rotated his hand against the headmaster's thumb, freeing it from the man's grasp.
"Wu, we've been more than patient with you."
"Have you, sir?"
"We've tolerated your constant insolence, disobedience, and disruptions-"
"A competent headmaster wouldn't have allowed a student to flout his authority like that."
"Wu!" Shinju's face reddened, till his vulture-like proboscis resembled a strawberry flavored lollipop. "The superintendent said we had to make allowances for a child of your intelligence... But this is too much! Maiming another pupil!"
"He tried to steal from me. Me. It was... unwise."
"This afternoon you'll be flogged in front of the entire school, then expelled."
"Oh? It's a shame you won't be there to witness my chastisement."
"What?"
"Because by then you'll have been arrested-"
"Wu! How dare you!"
"...for embezzlement."
Doctor Shinju's face froze.
"I... I don't know what you're..."
"Your quickening heartbeat says otherwise. As does the blood draining from your cheeks."
"I..." The headmaster collapsed back into his chair, deflated. "But..."
"If you wish to steal school funds to pay your gambling debts, that's no concern of mine. I've examined the programs you've annexed resources from, and found them to be lacking in intellectual value. But I will not allow you to discipline me like a common miscreant."
"Kwai's parents..."
"Should remove their son from school until his medical issues have been properly addressed."
"I... I..."
"I shall take your repetition of the first-person singular pronoun as acquiescence."
Wu Tenchu picked up the candy bowl, rose from his chair, and left the room. Three weeks later, the man in ornate robes came to offer him a place at the academy.
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Reading The Stones= Ah, such self-indulgence. Autobiography is the greatest vanity of all. Those operatives and friends who hear my words will believe I was overtaken with sentiment in my final moments, lost in childhood memories. Some of them may be surprised that I was ever a boy -- that I didn't emerge from a tank of chemicals, already clad in a mandarin's robes and arrogance.
Friends... Perhaps I flatter myself. Assassins have few friends, and politicians fewer. Do I seem as dangerous and inscrutable to others as Noir seems to me? You will have to be the judge of that.
Wu Tenchu had never been in space before, so he took a moment to glance out of the window as the ship left the planet's atmosphere. The sight held his interest for a moment or two. But he'd walked among the stars countless times in his computerized simulations, just as he'd trodden ancient Chinese battlefields and a myriad distant worlds. Reality was a poor simulacrum. Hence he turned his attention to the lounge's other occupants instead.
The chamber was spacious, like a mansion's living room. The handful of children dispersed through it only served to emphasize its vastness. A girl sat cross-legged on a sofa big enough to hold a sports steam. Three datapads hovered around her head, each pulsing with the soft purple glow of their anti-gravity systems. She read from two whilst making notes on the third. A Snuuth boy -- the sole non-human Wu had seen aboard the ship -- lay on the opposite side of the room, sprawled on his back. His snores made his prodigious belly rumble. Empty dishes rested around him like conquered nations. A boy and girl were at the videogame terminals. The former sat in a cockpit, exchanging fire with rival ships that flashed across a holographic screen. The latter waved her arms in the air, while her jian-wielding doppelganger decapitated enemy warriors.
The last child sat at a low table. His datapad rested on its surface, projecting a weiqi game into the air above. The boy's brow was creased, eyes narrowed in deep concentration. Wu followed the game for a few moments and decided that the artificial adversary would score a narrow victory. As he was about to look away, the boy shot him a quick glance. Their eyes only met for the briefest instant before the weiqi player looked away again -- as though startled that he'd been observed. There was something in his eyes that intrigued Wu Tenchu, but he couldn't decide what.
No more passengers had boarded the vessel before it took off. Wu assumed other children had been sent on different ships -- that dividing the academy's intake between multiple spacecraft was a security precaution. Why risk the planet's best and brightest students aboard a single craft, where a mechanical failure or attack could eliminate them all at once? Had he been an enemy of the empire, he would have relished such an opportunity.
Wu leaned back in his chair, gazed out of the window, and mentally sketched out a dozen stratagems to destroy the ship, as well as two dozen ways to counteract them.
The galaxy holds more secrets than stars. Millions of spies and agents seek them out, because knowledge is the most valuable thing in the universe. All advancements and victories begin with knowledge in the minds of those men and women responsible for bringing them to pass. Experimental technologies, battle plans, diplomatic meetings, the forging of alliances in the void... To know these things before others is to have an advantage in matters of both war and peace.
Even my magnificent mind can't number all the fragments of information which have passed before my eyes in my time as an assassin, an advisor, a prime minister. The vast bulk of them reside in repositories which may startle my successors with their scope and magnitude. But others, the latest acquisitions, lurk within my brain and the encrypted terminals Noir couldn't access. It's time to share them.
A little twitch of the fingers. The stroking of my moustache. The way I hold the weiqi stone as I pretend to scrutinize the board (in truth, I had this move planned several minutes ago). All these things are messages that bring my will to fruition and send knowledge into the hands I desire to possess them. Some will be of little immediate consequence: an ambassador's drug of choice; the name of a president's secret lover; the identities of a womanizing hero's illegitimate children. But all things can become tools or weapons when the moment arises.
Zhao Chen, She, Bao, Shayu, and my other agents will each find certain things meant for their eyes and action. Missions assigned to them by a man who'll be dead before they read the first word. All will be carried out, regardless of who replaces me. Not because of personal loyalties -- I've taught them better than that. But because they trust my judgment, and know these deeds will serve the empire even if they cannot yet understand how.
A few veins of information cause me a pang. These are the mysteries death will prevent me from unraveling, and must be bequeathed to others unsolved. I'll never know what Kulnar-Xex ships were doing at the edge of Besalaad space, nor how an ancient sword came to be lodged in the rock of a Centurian base. I shan't learn why a bizarre religious group is pursuing <Player's name>, or the truth behind the weapon hidden beneath the Grand Temple on Jerusalem Maior (though I have my suspicions, fanciful as they may seem). <Player's name>... If he has enemies such as Noir, he may have need of unfathomable weapons...
"Wu Tenchu and Jason Yun."
A door slid aside, interrupting a wall painting of a long jade dragon and revealing a modest dorm room with a bed in each of the far corners. Wu bowed to the instructor. Jason Yun, the boy who'd been playing weiqi aboard the ship, hesitated for a fraction of a second before doing the same. The two of them entered the chamber. Wheeled automatons trundled in after them, bearing their luggage.
Jason stepped towards one of the beds. Then he paused. Wu went to the other, and the automaton deposited his bags beside a footlocker. They unpacked their possessions in silence after the machines left. Wu Tenchu found himself glancing into his wardrobe's mirror more than once, staring at his roommate's reflection. Something incomprehensible niggled at the back of his mind.
"Where are you from?" he asked after some minutes.
"Zhen Bao."
Jason's answer was swift and sure. There was no hesitation in his voice or gaze. Wu nodded, and pondered.
The way a person plays weiqi reveals a great deal about them. Whether it's a trickle or a deluge, their mind flows onto the board and takes shape with the placement of each stone. Sun Xi's prescience, Telemachus' impetuousness, Illaria's gentle wisdom... All these things emerged with the patterns of the stones. I alter my own style to render myself inscrutable, but few others take the same precaution. Today, in this final game, I play as my father first taught me. More sentimentality? Perhaps. Yet it seems fitting.
Noir... Noir's style is intriguing. I see two players behind his eyes. Both are cunning, yet one is arrogant and aggressive, the other more thoughtful. The mental shift between the two is almost seamless, but not quite.
Yes, one may learn a lot from observing a weiqi game. It's how I discovered my greatest friend.
Jason's hand hovered over the board, the white stone held between thumb and forefinger -- awaiting its destiny and its place in the flow of the game. He took a breath and set it down. Wu Tenchu glanced at the board and smiled.
"Who taught you how to play?" he asked.
"My father."
"I thought so." Wu placed his stone. Jason stared at him. "Your position is unwinnable, Highness."
There was a sharp intake of breath. Wu looked up and savored the moment of victory.
"How?" Jason asked.
Wu nodded, pleased that his roommate hadn't insulted him with a useless attempt at subterfuge.
"The augmentations used to disguise your appearance are exceptional, but a keen eye can discern the changes. And I've read all of the Emperor's published weiqi games."
"Will you..."
"I came to this academy to serve the empire, not to disclose its secrets. No one will hear of this from me."
"Thank you. Another game?"
"First, I should teach you how to play. With the greatest of respect to your father, he isn't my equal."
Many years later, I played weiqi with a young princess. Pride filled my breast that day. For I saw hints of the same techniques I'd taught her father.
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Emperors and Assassins= My successes are legion, but they will never wash away my failures. Nor should they. Instead let them be a lesson to all who come after me. Even the great Wu Tenchu wasn't infallible.
When <Player's name> fired on the Centurian ship, claiming he/she was protecting the Child of Heaven, I understood the Collective's scheme. I prepared legal briefs and defenses which I believed would vanquish their case before the UHW. Each one was fashioned with the same meticulous care a jeweler might give to his most exquisite creations of gold and diamond. I smiled when I anticipated the inevitable result: victory for the Sian Empire, and the thwarting of the Centurian Collective. Such hubris... Their attack surprised us all. Our proud empire, conquered in the blink of an eye or the beat of a heart. To this day I've wondered what signs I missed. Was the alliance between the Centurians and the Besalaad nestled away in the intelligence reports, discernible to one who thought to gather the motes and understood their pattern?
I was beyond the Collective's reach when the invasion came. Perhaps if I'd been on Sian, able to join the resistance... Would things have been different? Could the Emperor have evaded capture with me at his side? A million questions torment me.
"They're coming!" the masked woman whispered.
She raised her blaster. Around her, five others did the same. The same featureless black fabric hid all their faces, glimmering with labyrinthine networks of circuitry which rendered them invisible to electronic detection methods.
The door opened.
"Death to the Emp-"
The woman's battle cry ended with a gunshot that penetrated her mask and scattered her brains across the wall. Four more shots added to the grim decor, leaving a single masked man standing above the corpses.
"The room is clear," he said. Wu Tenchu pulled off his mask.
"And the others?" the man in the doorway asked.
"Their bodies are in a disused room on the third floor."
The bodyguard bowed and stepped back into the passage. A man in ornate gold and emerald robes entered in his wake.
"Your Majesty." The assassin bowed.
"Wu?"
A faint shimmer glistened across the Emperor's holographic face. Wu Tenchu suppressed a smile. He would have done the same thing in his superiors' place, but he was glad to have rendered their precautions unnecessary.
"I know you've followed my career, but I fear the reports you read were... inadequate. The term 'civil servant' excuses a multitude of sins."
The Emperor grinned.
"I knew you wouldn't end up behind a desk." He waved at the door. It slid closed. "Do you still play weiqi?"
"Of course."
The Emperor made another gesture. A holographic board appeared on a nearby table. Before the game was over, Wu Tenchu had accepted a position as an imperial advisor.
I spoke with him. Aboard Chief Assembler Wilex's cruiser, when <Player's name> and the others brought him back from Sian. I stared into my friend's eyes and felt his joy wash over me. His words still ring in my mind.
"This was greater than any strategy you've ever used on the weiqi board," he said.
We laughed, while the psionic trigger lay buried deep in his brain -- ready to destroy us both. My greatest defeat. The darkest day of the Sian Empire. I failed you, my friend. You and the daughter whose protection was my sworn duty.
But there was a reckoning.
|-|
Fade to Black= Entire worlds became their funeral pyre. Billions of lives extinguished in a single act of retribution, born of love as well as hate. The galaxy will never forget what became of the Centurian Collective. Their doom is etched into the bones and ashes of history.
Many of my advisors urged me to condemn <Player's name>. My allies asked me why I sided with him, when it would have been so very easy to denounce him and express horror alongside Francis Dupont and his ilk. Instead I sprang to his defense and did whatever I could to shift the galaxy's opinion in his favor. I sowed human space with propaganda that endorsed the Centurian genocide.
The reason is simple. Had I been in his position, cast in the role of warrior and commander instead of shackled by a politician's duties, I would have done far, far worse.
And my dear friend's daughter cared for him/her. Illaria's smile shone in my thoughts when I acted on <Player's name>'s behalf. I couldn't fail her a second time. It was my duty to her that made me lure Noir into the trap that should have destroyed him. My duty to her that brought him into my home, and sealed my fate. The Sian Empire will lose its prime minister and experience turmoil. But I had a debt to repay, and feel no regret.
|-|
The Weiqi Game= My work is done. The words are spoken and secrets shared. I shouldn't delay any longer, and wallow in remembrances of a life that must now come to a close. It's time to end the game.
Noir places his stone. I place mine.
- click* *click* *click* *click*
Before, I was content to stave off his attacks and take his measure. Was I relieved or disappointed to learn that he wasn't my equal? It's of no consequence.
White and black stones fall like cherry blossom petals. They paint pictures on the wood, blooming and battling.
I press the attack.
"Splendid," I say. "I was hoping it would prove so."
"A fine victory," Noir says, "but your meaning eludes me."
"Had your skill been as great in strategy as in battle, I would have been most perturbed. It's a relief that it isn't so."
Yes... This epiphany comes along with the pleasure and pride of victory. Noir, whatever enigmatic power he represents, isn't invincible. I have vanquished him. What more could a man ask for in his final moments?
"We have tested ourselves at your game. Now we shall do the same in mine. And I do not believe the results will be so pleasing to you. But I shall relish discovering the extent of your abilities."
We stand and move into the middle of the floor. Part of me, the deep hubris at the core of my being, urges me to try him in battle. My bones and muscles aren't so old. My reflexes are still sharp, as the Besalaad warrior discovered on Jerusalem Maior...
"I shall destroy <Player's name>. You have merely purchased him/her time."
"Perhaps... But only if you leave here alive."
"You are that confident in your assassin's tricks?"
I put folly aside, and abandon the delusions of a distant part of me that wishes to cling to life and imagines it could be so. <Player's name> is a superb fighter. And even he/she couldn't match Noir.
"No. In my politician's tricks."
I whistle. The decision is made. Outside the house, energy barriers will flicker into being. The most powerful shields Sian technology can muster. Strong enough to contain the nuclear explosion that will atomize my home and the two of us.
Metal seals slide into place. There will be no escape.
My name is Wu Tenchu, and tonight I'll play weiqi with the Emperor.
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