LotS/The Story/Days of Wu/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 Ham 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.