And so Guzokh looked at the surrounding space and saw that people were starting to do what they wanted. Blowing things up themselves, fixing things themselves, deciding for themselves when someone would or would not pass by. After all, he had gotten to the Deese sector so quickly because the prefect had let him through from the Korsa sector via his underground route. So that's it, the Metropolitan is let through by the man who runs the entire faction. Running it, mining it, developing it. All by himself and his own resources. Only paying the proper fee to the Empire.
Apparently, those who were involved in calculating resource extraction, production management and transportation also paid attention only to numbers. Which, obviously, suited them. And what it could threaten in the future, apparently, they did not care about, since it would not happen in their time.
No one but the Church seems to care what happens to the balance of plagues and people in the Empire itself. After all, the Church is the only one who cares how many of the living believe in the Black Stone and how many don't. Humans are not capable of believing in it. Plagues do. And that's where the Church sees the difference — the rest of us don't. The rest of us only see the difference in production, speed of delivery, shipping and sabotage losses and who gets rewarded or punished for it. This is the sense that the patriarch should have noticed. The sense of the main linchpin of the plague state. And if he had done so, like all the past ones before him, he certainly would not have allowed such decay in the Imperial Army, or in the SCK, or anywhere else. And he just counted his influence figures like everyone else…..
The Empire deserves a far better patriarch than Nevroh. And than most of those who came before him. The Empire only deserves to live if it is healthy. And the only health it has is faith in the Black Stone. Which humans may well believe in as well. And the Prefect has shown that this is not only possible, but necessary to preserve the Empire.
Prefect
Gora was pleased with himself. It had been a long time since he had felt that he had calculated all the moves so correctly. And there were many. And an even greater number of variations of them. To persuade Cobra to leave a passage for Samoh and his punishing drill, which they would not fail to take advantage of. Let Guzokh pass through the underground pathways to allow him to subdue that storm. And, of course, to convince the Metropolitan of his total allegiance to the only true faith on Earth, the faith in the Black Stone.
And surprisingly, as time went on, he began to realize that he understood the language of the plagues. And of different plagues. Gora was more than sure that plagues are different like people, from different races, nations, and that he should not have understood them all at the same time. But no, that was exactly what was happening. And now it was not even a secret to him why the plagues themselves had no problem with it — they too spoke one, apparently, some unified plague language.
How far this would go was yet to be seen, but Guzoh was not opposed to extending the autonomy of the Mountain to neighboring factions if the people who would fall under his command also believed in the Black Stone.
For her part, Ananhr was not against it either, as long as the nominal subordination of the other factions' sectors was left to the JFC, and the Hivi would provide ground cover for those facilities.
This was a very successful mechanism for expanding the prefect's influence. It had been practiced first in the Diza sector, and then in the entire Donetsk-Makeevka grouping. From the point of view of the Empire's development, it should not have hindered anything, but it was obvious that such a situation would not suit either the High Priest Nevrokh or the Imperial administration represented by Bluh. But both problems were more than solvable.
Lately Gora had changed his attitude to the word "problem" in general. Now the word did not exist for him at all in its usual sense. Now he had only the words "issue" or "situation", which could be important, urgent, inconvenient, dangerous, paramount, critical, extraordinary. None of these are problems. They were tasks that needed and absolutely could be solved.
And scrolling back over some of these issues, such as Samokh's attempt to get into the mine of the Korsa sector, when the man of the Mountain blew up the elevator with him, and the stairwells became inaccessible through smoke and periodic gunfire — all of these were just deliberately calculated moves according to a certain already calculated combination. And before, he would have considered all this a suicide….
Power. That's what gives you a completely different awareness of reality. And adjusts this reality to himself, not the other way around. But Gora himself understood perfectly well that it was not worth mentioning that he was first and foremost a human being. Capable of being wrong, deluded, and self-righteous. Those three traits in general were his most dangerous enemies now, and not at all plagues, chivi, or maquis. Now that his resources and capabilities were counted in units of a completely different order than before, it was these three enemies that were now prioritized. By virtue of their stealth… They were impossible for him to calculate. Whether he wanted to or not. But the same mind that was supposed to calculate them was itself the object of their use.
You can't see yourself. All this groundless talk about a mirror is just talk. No mirror can reflect you as others see you. Because you are the one looking in the mirror. And Gora knew this very well… That his time would come to overestimate his powers, to make mistakes, and even to go completely crazy. And no one will tell him about it. Everyone will also wait for his orders and report back to him. Because he has already built a system where his decree is equal to the law. And breaking the law is punishable by death. He has already built a system where everyone around him,
seeing him without a mirror, will be silent if something goes wrong with him. After all, when he is the law, it means that without him there is no law.
Minister
Donghr was a very old minister and very experienced. He had once had victories that not everyone can dream of. Military victories, career victories and the victories of his personal life. His wife wanted more — a life that could be called beautiful, and she got it. And for that, Donhru had to steal from the coffers of his own ministry. Systematically and mercilessly, because his wife's appetite was growing, but the treasury was not getting bigger. And it all came to the point where there was more on paper than there actually was in reality.
Of course, at some point this became known to Zakinkhru, the then head of the SCK, who was in charge of anti-corruption measures. He was also systematic and ruthless, but not to his wife's appetites, but to his own career appetites, which were much more important to him than corruption itself. Therefore, when he thought that Donghr, who was afloat but in his power, was much more profitable for him than the next prizes for uncovering financial frauds, he chose the first option without delay… And he was promoted thanks to the assistance of Donghr, who began to periodically surrender his former associates to him.
Zakinhr eventually became the head of the Slavic Column's JFC, while Donhr continued to be its minister. For a while this suited both of them, but as of late, Donghr began to realize that he couldn't bury himself forever. And this was especially true after that conversation with Bluh, when the latter had spoken so harshly about his current position and the fact that pieces of his influence were so easily slipping out from under his nose. Yes, of course it was said under a hop, but you can't argue that it was wrong. You can't argue that it's some kind of arrogance of an arrogant official