The abolitionist is tall, black, extensively scarred and missing an eye. The left side of her face is nothing more than scar tissue. The fingers of her right hand have all been amputated. But she stands tall and proud even though other parts of body, covered as they are, are slightly out of kilter, hinting at numerous poorly healed injuries.

Irena displays no surprise at suddenly being teleported. Instead, she looks at me, looks around the room, taking in each corpse and the surviving mortals before looking back at me straight in the eye. She is the first mortal who faces me without any unease. Hatred and an iron will emanate from her.

The men all shrink away from her.

“Monster,” she says in greeting, “all that footage was not an elaborate hoax then.”

“No, why does everyone keep thinking that?” I reply, “I have taken over the Republic.”

“Obviously,” Irena snorts, “And you have decided to execute the number one enemy?”

“No. I will soon be making a proclamation emancipating every slave within the Republic. How long do you need to prepare? What do you need to keep your freedom?”

“Do not do this!” Vilte interrupts desperately, “Do not help this terrorist. She has slain countless innocents. She lives only to murder and destroy. She is vindictiveness personified.”

Vilte’s plea opens the floodgates. Olli and Gerbold chip in. They all say the same thing with different words. I place a telekinetic hold on them.

“Please continue,” I say to Irena.

Irena looks at the men frozen into undignified positions, eyes darting hither and thither. She is a little impressed in spite of herself.

“What happens if you don’t like my answer?” She asks.

“You join those who have disappointed me.” The bodies line themselves into a row and their heads neatly float into place on their chests.

“Damn, you killed Assholio, I was hoping to do that myself. What happens if you do like my answer?”

“You have the choice to join those who have not yet disappointed me.” I nod at the frozen Vilte, Olli and Gerbold. Salvador and Vicent, who had wisely kept quiet, are as still as if they were also frozen.

Irena grunts in amusement.

“No good options then. I take it you will be disappointed if I don’t join you?”

“I’m sensitive that way,” I reply.

“I like you, monster. I run my organisation in exactly the same.”

“Including decapitations?”

“Especially decapitations. Can’t freeze like that though, not so that they live after - nice trick by the way.”

“What’s your plan.”

“In front of the fish?”

I turn to the men, releasing Vilte, Olli and Gerbold as i do so.

“I will be back in a few minutes. In the meantime, you may want to workshop how you are going to tell our people about their new boss.”

I teleport Irena and myself to the location I’d taken her from. We appear in a large apartment. The room is spacious, well lit and surprisingly pleasant smelling. A scented candle burns from a corner of the room.

It takes barely a second for the five people in the room to point their guns at us. Their aim is steady.

Irena makes a quick motion. The guns come down. Three return to their positions monitoring different windows. The other two stand behind me, one to the left, the other to the right ensuring the Irena would not be in their range of fire.

That done, Irena ignores her team.

“You trust the fish?”

“I’ve sealed them in.”

“You can do that from four hundred kilometres away?”

I do not bother replying.

“Right,” Irena says, “Getting to the point.”

The mortal walks to a cabinet at some of the room and pulls out a map which she rolls out on the floor between us. Large portions of it has been marked with flags and lines have been drawn around different sectors.

“This map shows all of the areas where we outnumber the fishes by 10 to 1. They are all regional primary production areas - farming, ranching, mining, that kind of thing. The majority are owned by fifty noble houses either directly or through various companies. We have run scenarios as I am sure they have where a coordinated slave uprising occurs at every one of these areas. The fish win every time.

They have the guns and they have the aerial support.

A hundred year and forty years ago before they had planes, even without guns we freed ourselves and managed to hold these three regions for a glorious year. Inevitably, we failed, the fish came in and slaughtered everyone. To give you an idea as to how many slaves they killed, it took them the rest of the century to replenish their stock as they like to put it.

Sixty years ago, in these two regions we managed to get guns and the fish showed they were willing to carpet bomb their own farmlands and forests. Afterwards, history repeated itself - mass purges and terrible conditions for the survivors.

We need guns, monster. And the airforce must stay on the ground. That is what we need to take these territories. To keep them, we need to retain these mines and these factories. They will keep us supplied with enough guns and ammo to keep hanging on. But again, only if they don’t bombard us.

We’ve tried to come up with ways of taking over or destroying their airforce. Not possible. All their bases are deep within fish only areas, places where their belief in racial purity is so strong they are willing to wash their own clothes and sweep their own floors.”

I study the map and call up my interface.

: Scan the map and update it with all information so far collated from scanned channels. Continue to update from channels and also from any other information within your range including conversations. Feel free to extrapolate but identify those extrapolations. Alert me if you find anything of interest.

>System augment installed: [Auto map]

>[Auto map] is now enabled. Only limited mapping functions are available as Master System has not been installed at local node. Initialising system avatar mode would mitigate this to some extent.

>: Dominus, you are using the basic command-line text interface. Initialise avatar? [y/N]

:_

I flick the holopanel shut.

“That is some slick tech you got there, monster. Which hell are you from anyway?”

I ignore her question. I ask her to point out where she needs the guns and the amount. She hesitates and then does so, listing out addresses. I acquire those locations as targets. I do the same for the airbases and the armouries that she is aware of.

“You’ll get your guns. The planes will stay grounded,” I tell her when she is done.

Irena stands back and considers me, hope and doubt flick over her face like storm clouds.

“I take it you like my plan,” she says.

“Yes. I do. Will you join my council?”

“You understand that if you support my plan, there will be no more fish in the free lands.”

“You understand that wholesale slaughter will bring the hammer down on the freed slaves outside the safe zones.”

Irena grimaces.

“If I give them time to prepare, they will burn their houses and poison the fields. No, I will not take the risk. No warnings will be given. No amnesties provided.”

“This is rich coming from me, but I have to ask: is there a better way besides vengeance?”

“Monster, this is not vengeance, it is mercy! I promise they will all get a clean death. After centuries of what the fish has done to us, these paltry few are not enough. They will never be enough. I would wipe every fucking fish from the face of this planet if I could. Every one of them. You can do this! I know you can! Wipe them out!”

I consider her words. Deep in my being, I can feel that ability begin to coalesce. I push it back down.

“As tempting as that sounds, I’m trying to rule out genocide as the first option in my playbook. I won’t hold you to your promise about clean deaths by the way. I’ve made enough shit promises to hear one.”

Irena lips curl up to reveal her broken teeth. Some may call it a smile. But I know it for what it truly is: pure bloodlust.

“Consider me part of your government then, monster.”

I nod in satisfaction.

-ding-

A holo-frame pops up between us. Within it is the Buddhist monk, Chan.

“Amitabha, Amitabha, Amitabha, the Buddha says ‘It is easier to build strong children than to repair broken men.’”

“Amitabha, venerable one,” Irena, unperturbed as ever, nods politely, “I am pretty sure the Buddha didnt say that.”

“Amitabha, my sister, all Buddhas are the Buddha,” the monk replies.

“Wait what, you are a Buddhist?” I exclaim at Irena.

“Sure, many of us are. Surprised you are though.”

“Fuck! No!”

“Hey monster, no need for that. I’m not the one with his own personal monk in a magic box.”

I decide to change the subject back to her.

“How does being Buddhist gel with the wholesale slaughtering of kids that you are planning?”

“First, you are talking about fish. Second, totally worth the karmic debt. Unless, i am reborn as a fish,” she pauses, “nope, still worth it.”

At that last statement, the monk sighs very loudly, strikes his bowl three times and disappears.

“Wow,” I say impressed, “you managed to piss him off more than I have. So far anyway.”

Irena shrugs, unconcerned.

“There’s a price for this,” i say, “One that will cost you, maybe too much.”

She makes a gesture that somehow conveys that this is how life is meant to be, nothing is free.

“And what is that?” she asks, cautious for the first time.

“You will call me Dominus.”

“Is that all?” Irena scoffs.

“In my language, it means Master.”

Irena’s face clenches as the word triggers a storm of memories and emotions none of them pleasant. When she returns to the present, she is pale and shaking, weaker than I’d seen her so far.

“You ask a lot,” she finally spits out.

I wait.

“So that my people will never have to call any fish Master, I will do this, Dominus.”

She looks sickened at the end, but she does it.

“Also, only a suggestion, you may wish to stop using the term “fish”.”

She laughs in my face.