GblaRCS Chpt 49

==Guided by the light of a (Red) Cameron Star - Chapter 49 -==
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"Contrary to what you may have heard, the last Battle of the Amaris War was fought on Algenib in 2829, not on Terra in 2779, but the history books are right that the SLDF won it."Colonel Robert MacArthur - 2841CE
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===Prisoner Exchange===
Guadraro Military Spaceport – Italy (Terra) – 2841
When the Star League Defense Force had retaken Italy as part of Operation Liberation in 2777, the SLDF had been forced to fight its way into Rome, their advance following the route of the old medieval road known as the Via Tuscolana and establishing a temporary headquarters at the Guadraro Military Spaceport before going on to smash what was left of the forces loyal to Amaris in the city.
Getting to Guadraro was a lot easier for the SLDF sixty-four years later as Italian air traffic control simply gave them permission to enter their airspace after the inbound spacecraft dropped from orbit and directed it to set down on the assigned landing pad.
Following instructions the Intruder class dropship made a slow, smooth descent and gently lowered itself onto the pad whereupon it such down its engines and waited for a mass of ground vehicles to approach, many of them bearing police or paramilitary markings, before lowering its ramp.
They weren't the first spacecraft bearing Niops insignia to land at Guadaro, that being the shuttle which had arrived an hour earlier and which could be seen resting on a nearby pad. While still in orbit the Intruder had deployed a shuttle to land ahead of the dropship, the ST-46 carrying diplomat Gareth Jeffries so he could be whisked to the Vatican by VTOL and formally present his credentials.
The Holy See tended to be very formal and correct when it came to paperwork. The Niops Association couldn't hand over Bernard Critchly to the Vatican City State if the two sovereign entities didn't officially recognize each other, so that needed to be sorted out first with Jeffries officially accredited as ambassador from the Niops Association to the Holy See and an extradition treaty signed.
With the bureaucracy satisfied the Intruder had eventually followed its shuttlecraft down from orbit, the airspace around it cleared from all other traffic for security reasons and it wasn't until it set down that even VTOL craft had been allowed to take the air again within a hundred and fifty kilometers of Rome.
Colonel Robert MacArthur wearing his full dress uniform, regulation pistol and short-sword at his hip, strode purposely down the ramp where he was met by a man wearing an even more ornate uniform with a thick red strip down the trousers and feathers on his cap. "Colonel Robert MacArthur, 295th Battlemech Division" the SLDF officer formally introduced himself, saluting because he had been told he was going to be met by a general.
"Vicecomandante generale dell'Arma dei Carabinieri Antonio Mannerini" the other man replied, returning the salute. "I am to escort you and your prisoner to the Vatican City" he added, his English good but heavily accented. "If the Pope was not so adamant that the bastardo belongs to him we would want him for his crimes against the people of Italy" he stated flatly.
"Perhaps after the Catholic Church has taken their pound of flesh the Vatican will hand him over?" MacArthur suggested.
The Italian Carabinieri officer laughed. "If you think that the Inquisition will let him off lightly enough for what's left to stand trial in an Italian court you underestimate just how long and how deeply the church can hold a grudge" he said wryly. "It took them four hundred years to publicly admit Galileo was right after all, and all he did was say the Earth went around the sun."
MacArthur chuckled. "We named a star system after him, Galileo I mean, not Bernard Critchly" he replied. "The only star-system we know of actually named after one of Stefan Amaris's posse of war-criminals is Von Strang's World, although the fact that there are still people out there who think Amaris wasn't the villain is the reason we're being quite so cautious with transporting our prisoner" he explained.
Using a Congress Class Frigate carrying two armed dropships as a prisoner transport was probably a little excessive to be honest, but the Niops Association was deliberately trying to make waves in this mission. The James Sever had jumped into the Terran system at the Nadir point where it and its Titan class dropship escort currently waited for the Intruder to return. Just the arrival of a commissioned Star League Navy warship would itself have been major news on Terra but given who it was transporting, and to where, had guaranteed press and public interest that ComStar did not even bother trying to downplay.
In any other circumstances getting permission from the Free Worlds League to fly an armed warship from one end of their territory to the other and back would have been quite the ask, but when Niops explained that they had caught Bernard Critchly and were hauling his sorry ass to Terra to hand him over to the Pope the usual objections had vanished almost overnight.
Mannerini nodded. "As per our agreement you will be permitted to drive your convoy under-arms through Rome to the Vatican, with both my Carabinieri and the city police acting as escorts" he said. "I suspect Critchly is more at risk of being assassinated by those that justifiably hate him than he is being set free by deranged radicals though."
"You've cleared the route I take it?" MacArthur checked.
"We have and lined it with more armed men and women than have been seen in Rome since the SLDF drove out Antilos Legos and his so-called Greenhaven Gestapo" Mannerini replied, his obvious expression of distaste from even saying the man's name aloud hard to miss. Legos had looted his way up and down Italy having been given free rein to do so by Amaris himself, and he had turned much of the country into a charnel house doing so.
During their headlong retreat northwards from Rome the self-styled Greenhaven Gestapo had even resorted to deploying nerve gas against the advancing SLDF, a move which ended up killing even more civilians than it did the soldiers of the Star League. Between that and the years of wanton brutality they suffered under the occupation the people of Italy were not likely to forget the names of Legos and his murderous lieutenants anytime soon.
"Very well, Sir." MacArthur said. "I'll unload my three wheeled APC's and a Chevalier tank that will lead my column" he said.
The Carabinieri officer nodded. "Which of the three APC's is Critchly in?" Mannerini asked.
"I'm not prepared to tell you that, Sir" MacArthur replied flatly before saluting again.
Mannerini smiled. "Good, it's nice to know I'm dealing with a professional that actually understands security" he replied, returning the salute.
Ten minutes later a long column of police, paramilitary and military vehicles rolled out of the spaceport onto the Via Tuscolana and headed off towards the center of Rome. As they rolled down the highway tens, perhaps hundreds of thousands of people lining the route watched them pass from behind barriers guarded by armed and armoured police officers.
The Eternal City had a long memory and Bernard Critchly was nothing if not memorable. The man was almost cartoonishly evil, infamous not only for personally slaughtering some six hundred unarmed monks from the seat of his assault mech, but also for his nickname of 'The Ogre', his notoriously bad temper and predilection for random violence and for actually having his own portrait painted over part of Michaelangelo's fresco in the Sistine Chapel.
There was an old legend in Rome that while visiting the city if you threw a coin into the Trevi fountain backwards over your left shoulder with your right hand that you would return there one day.
Sat handcuffed to a wheelchair in the back of an APC, a handgun practically stuck in his face by someone that very much looked like they were fervently praying for an excuse to pull the trigger, Critchly could only wish that he hadn't thrown that damn coin over his shoulder seventy years ago because this was seriously the last place he had ever wanted to come back to.
It had been a long time since the Inquisition had stretched someone on the rack, but if he arrived at the Vatican and found then dusting off one brought up from the museum achieves in preparation for his arrival Bernard Critchly would have been less than surprised.
They hadn't of course, but to say the Holy See had been rather shocked to receive an HPG one day from a tiny interstellar power in the periphery, the message informing them that this obscure 'Niops Association' had captured one of the most wanted war criminals in human history, one that they had been after for decades, and would they like him, was a teeny bit of an understatement.
Once they had established it wasn't just an elaborate practical joke the Roman Catholic Church had responded very much in the affirmative. Niops had told them to expect a naval warship, a frigate no less, to deliver the prisoner into their hands and could they please clear that with ComStar and maybe smooth things over with Atreus if House Marik complained about the warship crossing their territory.
Word had spread like wildfire and the Niops Association was inundated by HPGs from governments and media outlets from one side of the Inner Sphere to the other seeking confirmation and asking a lot of questions.
Niops replied that its representatives would be happy to hold a press conference at the Vatican City on Terra to answer any and all questions once Critchly was handed over, assuming of course that the Pope was agreeable to that.
Robert MacArthur himself suspected that the Holy See would have happily offered to gift Niops a piece of the True Cross and appoint High Associator James Murray a Cardinal in order to get their hands on Bernard Critchly and was entirely unsurprised when the Vatican immediately acquiesced to the request to host the press conference.
About the only diplomatic hiccup, albeit a minor one, was when the New Avalon Catholic Church announced that they should have been offered Critchly too since their Pope was just as legitimate a successor to Pope Clement XXVII, who had been murdered by the Greenhaven Gestapo, as the Pope of the Roman Catholic Church was.
Having anticipated such a reaction the Niops Association had replied that they were handing over Critchly to the Vatican State for entirely secular reasons, the particular crime in question being the slaughter of hundreds of unarmed civilians on their territory. That those civilians were catholic monks who had been protesting on Pope John-Paul II Square was irrelevant as far as Niops was concerned, the Vatican had legal jurisdiction because they were the sovereign state where the crime took place.
Of course the fact that the New Avalon Catholic Church only really had a following in the Federated Suns, while the Roman Catholic Church had influence everywhere, certainly entered into the calculation. The Pope might not have had any divisions, at least not since the Papal States were dissolved anyway, but the Papacy still wielded a massive amount of soft power, so much in fact that they had swept aside ComStar's reluctance to allow outsiders to jump an actual warship into the Terran system.
Despite being technically only an observer to the still extant Terran Congress it was surprising just how many votes there the Holy See apparently had in its pocket and ComStar still had to play lip-service to the notion that the Congress was the legitimate government of Terra.
The Vatican was of course likely aware that the Niops Association was looking to leach off a little of its soft power through means such as requesting to host the press conference there, even if only to help it raise its profile, but they were willing to go a long way to get their hands on the Ogre.
Raising the interstellar profile of Niops was most certainly a central part of the objective for this mission, something that was made obvious by the fact that not only were the armored vehicles the SLDF had deployed to ferry Critchly from the starport to the Vatican emblazoned with the Blue Star insignia of the 295th Division, the Mailed Fist and Sword logo of the Eleventh Army and of course the Red Cameron Star, they were also all flying the Niops Hegemony flag.
Watching the flag flying from the APC ahead of his in the convoy via an armoured porthole, MacArthur could not help but sigh as he recalled just how much time had been spent back home deciding just how large the flags should be, one of the perils of government by committee. They wanted them large and eye-catching, but not so large that they looked like they were deliberately trying to be eye catching.
Calling themselves the Hegemony, if not the Terran Hegemony, so publicly on Terra itself was certain to rouse comment, or at least Jeffries hoped it would because he would hate not to reap all the potential diplomatic and political rewards given that it had taken nineteen jumps to get here and would take another nineteen to get home again afterwards.
It was a pity the porthole didn't offer a better view as the column of vehicles rolled through Rome at a decent pace, this was certainly a city that was worth seeing MacArthur knew, one dotted with ancient architecture and with a breathtaking history.
Fortunately for the city, the Sixth Army of the SLDF which had liberated it from Amaris had baulked at the idea of using artillery or air strikes to soften up those occupying it because of the incalculable collateral damage that could have caused to irreplaceable buildings, and had instead used infiltration tactics whenever possible rather than just blast their way in. They had paid a price for this decision in blood, the Sixth taking heavier casualties than they would have otherwise, but who would want to be the men and women that flattened Rome?
General Romanov had dispatched a wreath on behalf of the 295th to be laid at the monument to the so-called 'Tomb of Kerensky's Unknowns' to be found in the Pantheon itself. The Sixth Army had done its duty and failing to pay due respect to the dead would be unforgivable so before they headed back to Niops, MacArthur would make sure to lay the wreath there.
In an attempt to hold off the advance of the SLDF six decades earlier Antilos Legos had ordered the bridges across the Tiber that bisected the city to be blown, thus when the convoy of vehicles heading to the Vatican that day reached the river it crossed it via a modern bridge that had little trouble supporting the weight of all the armoured vehicles as they neared the home stretch of the journey.
Rolling right into Saint Peter's Square and unloading Critchly there would have been showier perhaps but not wise in terms of security considerations, so with the Police and Carabinieri vehicles peeling off beforehand and with what MaCarthur assumed was the Pontifical Swiss Guard, judging by their distinctive uniforms, directing traffic once the Chevalier and the APCs reached the dotted line on the road that indicated the border, the column left Italy and arrived in the Vatican City State.
Flagged to come to a halt in a piazza next to St. Peter's Basilica the wheeled tank and the armored personnel carriers it was leading pulled up and they were immediately surrounded by several dozen more Swiss Guards, MacArthur noting that most of them were carrying modern rifles not their usual ceremonial halberds. Seeing the Mauser 960 laser rifles, the same model as used by the SLDF, in the hands of men wearing bright renaissance-era dress was at least somewhat jarring as far as visual images went, but it helped demonstrate that despite the late medieval garb they weren't just soldiers.
The three APC's lowered their ramps and half a dozen SLDF infantry in full combat gear disembarked from each followed by Colonel MacArthur and the two officers accompanying him as his temporary staff.
One of the Swiss Guard that seemed to be an officer himself, at least judging from the fact his uniform was even more ornate than that of the others and that he was wearing a very fancy rapier at his hip, spotted MacArthur and approached him. "Colonel MacArthur?" he checked, the man's accent sounding Lyran to the SLDF officer's ears though presumably he was from the German speaking part of Switzerland.
"Yes" MacArthur confirmed.
"Oberst Johann Helbing" the officer introduced himself standing to attention, saluting and snapping his heels together making him seem even more Lyran.
MacArthur returned the salute. "May I present Major Claire Donovan, also of my 295th Division, and Captain Jason Carmichael of the Niops Association Militia" he introduced his companions who also exchanged salutes with the commander of the Swiss Guard. "Thank you for allowing my troops to remain under arms after crossing the border" he added after the formalities.
Oberst Helbing smiled wryly. "We don't want to risk the son-of-a-bitch getting assassinated, or worse getting away, any more than you do, Colonel. Probably even less" he replied. "We have laid on refreshments for your men in our barracks and one of my junior officers will give them a quick tour of the Vatican unless you plan on ordering them to stay with their vehicles. Those vehicles will, of course, be perfectly secure here with a detachment of my Halberdiers guarding them until you depart, I assure you."
Given the reputation of the Pontifical Swiss Guard MacArthur believed him. They were very much the epitome of 'I'll die before I give up my post and as God is my witness I'll take ten of you with me' soldiering. Religious faith and martial skill in equal measure. "I'll take you up on that offer, Oberst Helbing" he replied, his other ranks would no doubt enjoy the chance to see more of the Vatican and his orders from General Romanov being to play nice with his hosts as much as possible anyway. "Be warned that none of them have ever set foot on Terra before, let alone visited Rome or the Vatican, so they might bombard your guides with questions."
Helbing laughed. "On a normal day we deal with tens of thousands of wide-eyed tourists, I think my people can cope" he replied. "We've prepared a holding cell for the prisoner if you want to hand him over now."
MacArthur nodded. "Bring him out" he ordered, a wheelchair emerging from the back of one of the APC's and rolling down the ramp, the chair being pushed by an SLDF sergeant.
"He got old" Helbing noted, directing a look of utter disdain at the man sat in the wheelchair, his face being partially obscured by an oxygen mask connected to a tank affixed to the back of the chair.
"Frail too." MacArthur replied. "We had to clone him a new liver and stick an artificial heart in him at one point to keep him alive. His lungs are a wreck too, we think he caught a whiff of poison gas at some point, possibly something they used themselves which drifted back on them when the wind changed direction, and it caught up with him eventually with age" he said, Amaris's forces had deployed chemical and biological weapons a lot more during the war than the SLDF ever had. "We could have just let him die, but we figured you'd want him alive and besides which he deserved as many years in solitary confinement as medical science could allow" he added. Imprisonment had aged Critchly fast and he hadn't been a young man to start with.
Helbing sighed. "Alive yes, to stand trial. Time was the church would have simply burned him at the stake" he observed wistfully, thinking back to an age of purer justice. "An artificial heart you say?" he queried.
MacArthur nodded. "Powered by a fission battery, should be good for another ten years at least but if you do decide to bring back the old methods watch out for it exploding when you set him alight" he warned drily.
"Oh, if only bringing back the auto-da-fé was an option" another voice interjected from nearby, their accent French. "Please remove the mask so we can properly verify his identity" the man continued, walking towards Critchly. As they approached it could be seen they were not wearing the uniform of the Swiss Guard but rather priestly robes instead, rather ornate and colourful ones topped by a bright red cap, and that they were carrying what looked like a facial scanner.
"May I present His Eminence Cardinal François Cointerel, Prefect of the Congregation of the Doctrine of the Faith" Oberst Helbing introduced the newcomer.
Until now Bernard Critchly had been sat docile in his wheelchair, seemingly resigned to his fate, but he now visibly flinched and sat up straight.
"Ah, I see what has likely haunted your nightmares for over sixty years." Cardinal Cointerel addressed Critchly with some satisfaction. "How gratifying to know you were expecting this encounter to happen one day" the head of what had once been known as the Roman Inquisition added, smiling coldly.
MacArthur had read up enough on how the Church hierarchy worked to know that a cardinal was considered one step down from the Pope himself, a 'Prince of the Church' in the formal parlance, and if this man was also Head of the Inquisition that he was very senior indeed. "Sergeant, remove the prisoner's oxygen mask please." MacArthur ordered. The SLDF non-com reaching down to do so as Cointerel held the scanner up to his face.
"It's him, bone structure and retinal scan confirms it" Cointerel confirmed, looking at the display intently. "Replace the mask please, I wouldn't want him to expire before his time." he said, the sergeant doing so after MacArthur nodded his affirmation. "You know the last time the SLDF handed over one of these creatures to me it all went rather differently" he remarked, transferring the scanner to his left hand while making the sign of the cross with his right.
"The last time?" MacArthur queried, raising his eyebrows.
"Yes, October '77, I still remember it like it was yesterday." the Cardinal recalled. "Hans Mikkelsen," he said, bending down and looking Critchly right in the eye, watching as the war criminal own eyes widened. "Did you hear what happened to Mikkelson, Colonel MacArthur?" Cointerel asked, still looking into Critchly's eyes.
"I heard a rumor that when the Sixth Army caught him they handed him over to the Swiss Guard who put him up against a wall" MacArthur recalled hearing that story not long after Amaris died.
"Not quite" Cointerel replied evenly. "They handed him over to me and after I excommunicated him on the authority of the Curia and the Pope, thus damning his soul for all eternity, I personally shot him in the head" he announced, watching Critchly's dismayed expression with a sense of satisfaction that made the Cardinal feel ever so slightly ashamed of himself as he straightened back up. "The Holy Father himself personally heard my confession afterwards. He didn't want my soul following Mikkelsen's to hell for breaking the Fifth Commandment since I was only acting under his orders."
MacArthur blinked. "You're not going to do the same to Critchly are you?" he asked nervously. "Because we put a great deal of time and effort into getting him here and we could have just shot him back home" he pointed out, not being particularly shocked at being told that the man had personally executed another famous, or rather infamous war criminal. Summary justice had been all the rage back then in the aftermath of the Amaris Civil War, just ask anybody named Amaris in the unlikely event you could still find one. Aleksandr Kerensky had ordered his entire family shot with only maternal relatives with a different surname spared.
"Oh no, tempers are far less wrought than they were back in my youth when emotions were still running high over the then recent murder of poor Pope Clement." Cointerel replied, shaking his head. "The current Pope and the Curia agree that a public trial is called for, and we have even obtained the most competent and professional legal counsel available to conduct the Ogre's defence" he told MacArthur. "My days as God's Own Hit Man are long past me" he said, smiling. "Although I suspect it did do wonders for my career" he admitted, doubting he would have ended up as not only Prefect of the Congregation of the Doctrine of the Faith but also a Prince of the Church otherwise. After what had befallen Pope Clement XXVII and the Vatican itself, the Roman Catholic Church under Clement's immediate successor, John Paul V, had become rather hard-line and being the man that 'dealt with' Hans Mikkelsen, another notorious war-criminal lieutenant of Antilos Legos, had looked good on a résumé.
Pope John Paul V had died a few years ago, his own successor, the current Pope, being more moderate and liberal in outlook, which was not to say that the Roman Catholic Church was not still monumentally pissed off at Bernard Critchly. Christ may have preached forgiveness, but some people made following in the footsteps of the fisherman very, very hard.
The average life expectancy on Terra being so long meant that there were still plenty of people around that had personally witnessed the atrocities perpetrated by the Greenhaven Gestapo and some memories don't tend to fade much over time.
For that matter there wee still quite a few people around that remembered just how bad Critchly used to smell, largely thanks to poor personal hygiene habits. During his time in custody on Niops he had been cured of this however, mostly by the expedient of his guards telling him, 'It uses the shower or it gets the hose again' if he didn't keep himself clean.
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===Meeting with the Pontiff===
"Oberst, if you could take that down to the holding cell." Cardinal Cointerel requested, indicating Critchly, "I will personally escort Colonel MacArthur and his officers to where Ambassador Jeffries is waiting for them to join him" he said. "I believe that the Holy Father intends on having the prisoner taken to the Sistine Chapel later to witness that his desecration of the fresco has been stripped away, and Michaelangelo's vision fully restored to the Glory of God, so you may wish to make security preparations for that" he advised.
Helbing nodded.
"While I doubt the prisoner is in a fit state to make a run for it, if he does may I suggest you instruct your men that while the word of Our Lord as passed down to us in the Bible frowns upon killing, and that they should therefore refrain from shooting him in the back if possible, the book is somewhat fuzzier when it comes to the subject of kneecaps" the cardinal advised sagely.
"I'll let them know, Your Eminence." Helbing replied, trying not to laugh because it would bad in front of the men.
"Excellent." Cardinal Cointerel responded brightly, clapping his hands together. "Shall we be off Colonel?" he asked MacArthur rhetorically, gently tossing the facial scanner to one of the Swiss Guard who caught it before marching away, a distinct spring in the man's step.
MacArthur leaned over towards Helbing. "You really wanted this ****** didn't you?" he asked.
"It would be difficult to express in words just how much" Helbing replied earnestly, nodding as MacArthur quickly made to catch up with the Cardinal, Major Donovan and Captain Carmichael in pursuit.
Oberst Johann Helbing, Commander of the Swiss Guard, looked down at the man sat in the wheelchair. "Consider this as confirmation of the truth that God will not be mocked and don't go thinking that repentance will save you from hell because God's mercy may be limitless but that doesn't hold true for his Representative on Earth" he warned, having heard that the Pope intended on excommunicating the man personally.
Critchly took a deep breath. "****** you, candystriper" he replied. "And ****** your Pope" he just about managed to gasp out afterwards.
"Candystriper?" Helbing repeated, looking down at his uniform. "Good one, and four whole syllables too, you're not as dumb as I thought" he said. "Let's get you down to the cell. Feldweibel Schallberger should be ready with the Iron Maiden by now, he spent half the night sharpening all the spikes inside."
Bernard Critchly blanched and Helbing was gratified that all of his men had remained stony faced when he mentioned the Iron Maiden, that particular device of medieval torture supposedly favoured by the Inquisition being very much a later fabrication.
They did have some old thumbscrews in an archive somewhere apparently, but while John-Paul V might have sanctioned their use his successor was less 'Wrath of God' and more 'Love of God' as the Church got over the trauma of the Amaris era.
"Hauptman Wettstein, please escort our SLDF guests to the barracks, Make sure they feel welcome" Helbing instructed one of his officers, sticking to English rather than Italian or German so the soldiers of the SLDF could understand as well. "Leutnant Ochs, you and your men will remain here to guard the vehicles. Do so with the same zeal you would the Papal apartments" he ordered, both officers recognising their instructions with a nod. "We are indebted to the Niops Association and the 295th Battlemech Division for bringing us the Ogre" he reminded them.
None of the SLDF infantry or the tank crew were actually from the 295th, despite what the insignia on their uniforms said. They were all from the 331st and had been born on Circe or Strana Mechty being assigned to this mission because they knew to keep their mouths shut about that. If asked they were the children and grandchildren of the original soldiers of the 295th which had officially arrived at Niops not long after failing to catch up with Kerensky's Exodus.
Most of the soldiers were also young enough to have been raised on Niops, and thought of it as their home by now, so when asked about where they came from by curious member of the Swiss Guard they truthfully spoke of what it was like to live on Niops VII way out in the periphery.
After lunch one the SLDF infantrymen even performed the old rap about Galileo and his own encounter with the Vatican, which was about as convincingly Niopsian as you could get, even if the cultural anchor point was entirely lost on the rather perplexed soldiers of the Pontifical Swiss Guard.
Apparently you could move faster in those robes than Robert MacArthur would have expected because Cardinal Cointerel had set a brisk pace as he led the Colonel and his two officers through the rooms and passageways of the Vatican towards where Gareth Jeffries was waiting. On a normal day there would have been a lot more people around, not just clergy but also other guests and visitors, but for security reasons the number of people allowed inside the walls had been severely restricted.
As they proceeded Cointeral had bombarded Macarthur, Donovan and Carmichael with questions, which they all supposed was part of his job description, and they were glad they had all rehearsed a consistent script that was mostly true but left out or obscured details that Niops did not want anybody from outside the Association knowing. Fortunately he was more interested in talking about the capture of Critchly than he was about Niops which made things easier but the man was definitely fishing for information nonetheless.
As they eventually reached a large set of doors, a pair of Swiss Guards stood outside them, Cointeral knocked and entered, leading MacArthur and his companions inside.
Gareth Jeffries was waiting inside as expected, what MacArthur had not expected was that he would be sat at a table drinking coffee and eating pastries with the Supreme Pontiff of the Universal Church and the Vicar of Christ himself.
You could have warned me, MacArthur thought to himself directing a brief glare at Cardinal Cointerel who noticed the Colonel's expression and seemed amused. "Your Holiness, may I present Colonel Robert MacArthur and Major Claire Donovan of the 295th Battlemech Division of the Star League Defence Force and Captain Jason Carmichael of the Niops Association Militia" he announced them grandly.
The Pope put down his coffee cup and stood up off his chair, Jeffries instantly following suit as befits protocol.
"Your Holiness" MacArthur spoke up, saluting then offering a shallow bow. He wasn't Catholic himself but the Pope was a Head of State holding a position deemed equivalent in the ranks of nobility to an emperor. Even the First Lords of the Star League had bowed to the Pope when they met, it would be uncouth not to and besides which potentially disrespecting the untold billions of Roman Catholics in the galaxy was such poor politics that only Richard Cameron would have been stupid enough to do it.
The Pope smiled and approached MacArthur. "No need to kiss the Papal Ring, Colonel, a handshake will do" he said reaching out his hand which MacArthur took. He then subsequently shook hands with Donovan and Carmichael before fixing his attention back to MacArthur. "I consider it a pity that General Romanov could not be here herself, I would have liked to present her personally with the Papal Commendation I plan to issue to the men and women of the 295th Division, but I trust you will convey it back to her Colonel" he said. "Your valour in finally bringing the war-criminals of the accursed Amaris to justice, after so many years of them avoiding their righteous punishment and continuing their vile ways, cannot be praised too highly" he continued. "The 141st Amaris Dragoons were barely less irredeemable than the mercenary scum that followed Antilos Legos, murderous butchers all, and to see them brought low while they were commanded by an actual cousin of Stefan Amaris himself is almost poetical."
"Isn't it unusual for the Catholic Church to do something like that?" MacArthur queried.
"We do not, as a rule, involve ourselves in international politics or temporal matters it's true, at least not since the Papal States were dissolved anyway" the Pope replied, smiling. "When it comes to opposing evil however we like to think our ourselves as very much in the fight" he said. "If Stefan Amaris, Antilos Legos and Bernard Critchly were not tools of Satan himself I'll eat my hat and if you've ever seen it you'd know that the Papal Tiara is rather indigestible" he joked.
"I remarked to His Holiness that your son asked you to get his autograph, Major Donovan." Jeffries spoke up, the woman having mentioned this during their long journey to Terra.
Donovan looked appalled at having this mentioned but the Pope smiled again. "I think I can manage that although I believe I'll send you back to Niops with something more consequential as well" he said. "Ambassador Jeffries informed me that you were the mechwarrior who defeated Bernard Critchly in battle?" he asked her.
"I was Sir, almost to be honest I had no idea at the time who was sat in the cockpit of the Rampage I was shooting at" Claire Donovan replied, trying not to sound too nervous given who it actually was she was talking to.
"Nonetheless Major you faced a mortal foe of the Roman Catholic Church in battle and defeated him, something that merits reward" the Pope told her. "As such I am naming you to the Order of the Golden Militia, what some call the Order of the Golden Spur, an honor that has been bestowed upon those who have contributed to the glory of the Church by feat of arms since the Fourteenth Century. A Papal Knighthood."
Donovan stared at him. "I'm not Catholic" she managed to reply.
"Strangely enough it's not actually a requirement that you are" the Pope replied. "It has even been awarded to non-Christians in the past, although I assume you are one?" he asked.
"Episcopalian" Donovan replied.
"Ah, one of our Anglican brethren" the Pope responded. "I will make sure to mention you to the Archbishop of Canterbury the next time we meet, lovely woman, and we agree on so many matters of religion as long as the subject of King Henry VIII of England and his daughter Elizabeth aren't raised" he added with a chuckle. "Forgive me for not saying so earlier, Captain Carmichael, but naturally the Niops Association Militia with also be receiving a Papal Commendation for their part in the Battle of Algenib, I'm told you fought there?"
"I did." Carmichael confirmed. A company of the militia had helped the SLDF against the Blood Rain, earning Carmichael himself the Combat Mechwarrior's Badge, something that not very in the NAM could boast of.
"I look forward to seeing the presentation on the battle, Colonel MacArthur intends to give to the press later, it sounds like the Amaris Dragoons put up quite the fight, although nobody ever accused them of being cowardly I suppose, just malevolent beyond measure" he said before turning to Cardinal Cointerel. "Ambassador Jeffries has informed me that the Niops Association intends to provide the entire Inner Sphere with the blueprints to both the Jamerson-Ulikov Water Purifier and the Eligus Medical Diagnoser, once restricted Terran Hegemony technologies, and to do so for free as an act of Christian charity" he told him. "I will converse with the Curia about the Church assisting in the distribution of these technologies if we can, they could save many lives and alleviate much suffering."
Cointerel raised his eyebrows. "It is very generous of them to do so without recompense, not something we see very often in these dark days" he replied. "I suppose that the rumors are true that Niops has maintained the ability to produce many devices that are lostech elsewhere and not just Hyperpulse Generators?"
"Ironically, the new Dark Age that has befallen the galaxy elsewhere never reached the worlds orbiting an unusually dim star far from the light of Terra." Jeffries said poetically.
The Pope nodded. "Yes, the new Dark Age, the one in which ComStar sees itself as being akin to taking the role our church did in late antiquity, keeping the wisdom of the ancients safe after the Roman Empire fell." he observed.
"The current Primus most certainly seems to believe in that creed." Cointerel agreed. His spies within ComStar indicated that Raymond Karpov intended to push his organisation even closer towards cosplaying the medieval Roman Catholic Church what with the chanting, and the robes and the pseudo-monastic orders. Still, they did say that imitation was the sincerest form of flattery.
"Makes one wonder if he realises that in this scenario that the Niops Association and its growing Hegemony are the part of the Roman Empire that did not fall, which also retained the knowledge of the ancient Romans and Greeks and still boasted the legions to defend it" the Pope asked rhetorically. "I must say I never thought I'd meet the Byzantine Empire reborn but here we are" he said, waving his hand towards Jeffries.
"Byzantine?" Carmichael repeated the word quizzically.
"The Eastern Roman Empire, the part that didn't collapse when Rome did in the west and kept going for another thousand years" Jeffries explained. "They actually still called themselves Roman, or rather Rhōmaîoi in Greek the language they mostly used, rather than the Byzantines because as far as they were concerned they still were."
"Which would make us the 'Anti-spinwards Terran Hegemony.' I guess" MacArthur said.
Jeffries smiled. "I guess all we need now is to elect ourselves our own Justinian as High Associator and find ourselves a Belisarius." he said grinning, wondering how many reporters at the press conference later would get the references if he made them in jest.
Watching that press conference live from his quarters at Hilton Head on the other side of the Atlantic Raymond Karpov, Primus of ComStar, was already incensed enough when the diplomat from Niops gave the announcement about releasing the blueprints for lostech to the galaxy, but he practically had a stroke when Jeffries mentioned the Byzantines… and Belisarius!
Having the successes of Operation Holy Shroud possibly gutted by these upstarts had been bad enough, but now he faced a far greater problem.
The Eastern Roman Empire hadn't just survived the fall of Rome itself, at one point they had very nearly managed to reconquer the western part too, and had retaken large parts of it including Italy. General Belisarius, the greatest military commander of his age, in the service of the Emperor Justinian, had once again raised the standards of the Roman Army over Rome itself, earning himself the later sobriquet as 'The Last of the Romans'.
The worst part of it all from Karpov's personal perspective being that one of the first things Belarius had done after taking Rome was throwing the then Supreme Pontiff, Pope Silverius, out on his ass because the Eastern Roman Empire considered him a stooge of the barbarian tribes who had earlier destroyed the Western Empire, and they were still pretty sore about the whole thing.
Still watching as this 'Colonel MacArthur', apparently the son of the commanding officer of the 295th before the current one, told the press about the Battle of Algenib where the SLDF had taken on and defeated the Amaris Dragoons, thus winning the last battle of the Amaris War in his words, something else suddenly dawned on Karpov.
"Romanov, their general is called Romanov" he exclaimed. "Of course they're the damn Byzantines" he realised, dropping his face into his hands as he envisioned the 'Anti-Spinwards Terran Hegemony', as Jeffries had called it, thundering out of the Periphery one day to once again raise their standards over Terra.
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==Chapter Notes==
*;Notes from the Author : Okay, so the preceeding quarter-million words or so may have left the readership with the impression that because Johann Sebastian O'Reilly was not the man that discovered the tens of billions of C-Bills worth of Germanium on Alphard, that this story was not about the Roman Empire being recreated in space. I apologise for the confusion, this story is about the Roman Empire being recreated in space, it's just not the Roman Empire you were expecting.If ComStar is the Roman Catholic Church of the Dark Ages then the Niops Hegemony is the Eastern Roman Empire, the part that kept going long after Rome itself fell to the barbarians.Military sci-fi just isn't the same without a reference to Belisarius is it?Hans Mikkelsen of the Greenhaven Gestapo being caught by the SLDF and then handed over to a representative of the Congregation of the Doctrine of the Faith (the Roman Inquisition) who promptly excommunicated him on the order of the Pope and then shot him in the head comes from the sourcebook Historical: Liberation of Terra. Turns out if you murder the Pope and the Curia, slaughter hundreds of unarmed monks, loot the Vatican and paint over the fresco on the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel you will make the Catholic Church very, very mad at you, who would have thought?The Pontifical Swiss Guard may look like toy soldiers in their late medieval style dress uniforms and carrying halberds, but both in the Battletech Universe and in real life they are not.Finally the Order of the Golden Militia, AKA the Order of the Golden Spur, as awarded here to Major Claire Donovan is a real thing.
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Chapter 49