Scavenged Restoration 48 (Patreon)

Commissioned by RoyalTwinFangs

Scavenged Restoration

Chapter 48

-VB-

Primus Myndo Waterly walked into a seemingly normal but physically present First Circuit meeting. It was as she planned. 

She looked around the First Circuits’ members, taking a note on each of them and the sins they’ve committed. Traitors who didn’t actively help in the downfall of the Successor Lords. Idiots who didn’t even know what was going on. Heretics who blasphemed against the Will of Blake. 

She wanted them all here to see their end before she remade the First Circuit as it should be. And from there, she would purge the rest of ComStar of the lazy, the traitors, and heretics who could not understand what she envisioned for them. 

The dullards and weaklings who needed to be culled before their weakness and unorthodox mindset infected their stations. 

“Are we all here?” she demanded as she sat down at her seat. 

“Seems like it,” Precenter Atreus, Pedrigor Aliz the Lazy, drawled out. The man was ever so comfortable where he was. Personally, she hated him because he was a wishy-washy dullard who didn’t care about bringing either a secular ComStar or the ComStar that it should be. He was neither hot nor cold. If the devout Christians got one thing right, then it was the fact that no one appreciated a lukewarm believer. They probably stole the quote from Blake and added it to their bible when no one was looking. 

Bastards. 

“What did you call this meeting for, Primus?” Precenter Tharkad, Timothy Monroe the Apostate, asked. He was her rival even when she was the Blake’s own primus! His politicking kept her followers in check just as her divinely ordained actions kept his people from rising in power. He was the heretic who pushed for ComStar to become more secular, to destroy Blake’s own will and his vision for the Inner Sphere! He… He would die by her hands. She wanted him to know the heights she would take ComStar to before she put a bullet in his head. 

She smiled serenely. 

“I called this meeting because of several key issues that have cropped up. The biggest of which is the current ceasefire declared between the Capellan Confederation and the Magistracy of Canopus. It has come to my attention that the Capellan chancellor may be seeking to completely absorb the technological prowess of the Canopians.” 

“That’s not going to be good,” Precenter Sian Villius Tejh hummed. He was an ally of Precenter Tharkad, and another “reformist” who worked with Monroe to prevent ComStar’s destined rise. Tejh and Monroe blocked her motion to use the Terran Trade Corridor to build up arms and a new ComGuard army out in the open. They feared reprisals from the Federated Suns and Lyran Commonwealth! As if those two states were in any shape or form to be striking down a “defense” force that they themselves approved of when they handed over the defense of the Terran Corridor to ComStar! “But what do you suggest we do?”

Idiots! Incompetent heretics! 

“It is my opinion that we burn our assets on Canopus to destroy the universities and libraries, both public and hidden ones that we know Canopus has,” she replied. “With their technological prowess already ahead as it is, Capellan Confederation may become a dominant power in the rimward half of the Inner Sphere if we allow them to gain biomedical technology as well. While the Canopians are content to create debaucherous facsimile of life, the Capellans may put those prowess to use in creating supersoldiers or advanced mechwarriors. They certainly have the mindset for it that most of their neighbors lack.”

There were hums of agreement around the table. 

“Then it is agreed that we will have Canopus undergo some … chaos?” 

One by one, the First Circuit’s members agreed.

“Good, now for the second issue at hand. It seems that ComStar has found some traitors among our ranks.”

That got a few of the First Circuit members riled up. 

“What?! Traitors?!” Precenter Dieron Sharilar Mori demanded. She was Waterly’s most ardent supporter. 

“That is troubling. Where are these traitors right now?” Precenter Atreus Demona Aziz asked demurely. 

Good, good. Both of them were acting perfectly to pull this ambush off on the heretics. 

Waterly looked around the room, drinking in the sights of her soon to be “colleagues.”

Then she spoke. 

“Right here in this room.” 

The three doors to the First Circuit meeting room slid open… and dead bodies tumbled down along with the cacophony of gunfire. 

“What?!” Waterly shouted as she saw the faces of the dead ComGuards. And entering the room from behind them were other ComGuards. But from one of the three entrances, her own ComGuard rushed in, only to be gunned down by the traitor ComGuards who’d already entered the room first. 

Precenter Atreus, Aziz, pulled out a pistol, but one of the traitors pulled his rifle up and shot her. 

Precenter New Avalon jumped to the side, but not before the silent fat fucker took a hit somewhere. 

The room descended into chaos as gunfire rang out nonstop, and Waterly dropped down to the ground beneath the table. 

Where Precenter Tharkad crouched waiting for her. 

“You-!” 

Bang! 

She screamed as her hand shattered under the high powered pistol’s bark and crashed to the ground in pain.

She tried to crawl away as the gunfire died down. 

Precenter Tharkad Monroe stood up and looked around before looking back at her. 

“We knew of your assassination attempt, Waterly,” he drawled out. “Too bad you and Cassnew were better at daydreaming than actually planning. You tried to bring in too many people at once. Stupid bitch.”

Then he lifted his pistol. Her eyes widened. The gun was plastic! That’s why he was able to sneak it in without the room’s security computer's alarm going off! 

“No, you son of -!”

-VB-

Bang! 

“Crazy bitch,” Precenter Tharkad Timothy Monroe hissed out as he lowered his bloodied arm. Apparently, he hadn’t ducked quite low enough if the. Luckily, he didn’t feel too much pain, relatively speaking. “Fuck,” he muttered as one of the medics quickly came up to him and began to inject him with a cocktail of drugs to keep him stable. Even as he got woozy, he turned and looked at the survivors. “Who’s alive?”

“Sian,” Precentor Sian Tejh grunted as he stood up.

“New Avalon,” Precentor New Avalon de Salome-Turn gasped out from where a pair of medics tried to keep him stable. 

No one else responded. “Fuck, where’s that weasel, Precentor ROM?!” 

“I think he’s dead,” someone else mumbled, and he turned to see one of the loyal ComGuards grunt out from where he sat leaning against the wall of the First Circuit’s meeting room. 

Had the Primus’s attempt at assassinating the entire First Circuit been even a bit more coherent and well thought out, they would all be dead. But it hadn’t been, and they had turned the ambush back onto the precenter instead. They just got the time wrong and nearly died for it. 

“Why?” he asked the ComGuard. 

“Cuz I think I saw his office door blown wide open.”

Monroe grunted out as he staggered over to the nearest chair and sat down. He winced as all of his wounds acted up, both old and new, and had to sigh in relief when the pain killers started kicking in. 

“So it’s just us three on the First Circuit now?” he asked. 

“Seeing as you just a bullet into the Primus’s head, yeah,” Sian hummed. 

Finally, another pair of medics came rushing into the room with a stretcher and helped the first two medics helping Precentor New Avalon onto it. 

As he passed by him, New Avalon reached out and grabbed Tharkad. Their eyes met, and there was a plea in there somewhere. 

“I’m not the weasel or Waterly,” Monroe grunted out. “I work for ComStar, not for my own benefit.”

Precentor New Avalon looked at his eyes, searching for the veracity of his words, and then finally nodded and let go, his eyes closing as his willpower finally succumbed to the cocktail of drugs he’d been put under.

“Now what?” Precentor Sian asked, the only other precentor alive in the room. 

Dieron and Atreus had died, falling to the counter-attack.

Had it not been for their loyal ComGuard barging into the room, he and Sian would be dead, too. 

Monroe glanced down at the rictus of terror and incomprehension forever burned into Waterly’s face. 

He stared at it before he pulled his arm up again and shot the dead bitch in the face, this time aiming for the eye. The medics flinched as the gun barked loudly and the sound echoed in the chamber as he missed and got the bitch’s nose instead. 

Eh, good enough.

He set the gun down, and the ComGuard Demi-Precentor Solomon, who Monroe managed to recruit for his defense before this assassination, rank designated by the blue-red-yellow badge, walked up and took the gun.

“Sir, please don’t discharge your weapon right after incidents like this,” she scolded. “Soldiers are extremely triggerhappy right now.”

Precentor Tharkad waved him off. “I know, I know. I just had to shoot the bitch one more time just in case I might regret not doing it in the future.”

The demi-precentor sighed before glancing at the dead primus. 

“So what happens now?” she asked quietly. 

Never had there been a primus who tried to wipe out the First Circuit. 

Never.

Purge a few members, yes. 

Wipe it out in near totality? Never.

Even during previous purges in ComStar’s history, things didn’t devolve this badly. 

Subverting a portion of ROM and ComGuard, assassinating First Circuit precentors, and then getting killed in the counter-attack… 

“News of this cannot leave anyone’s mouths,” Sian insisted as he stumbled over and sat down at his usual seat. “It’s one thing to interdict a successor state. It’s another to show that we nearly had a civil war in our own ranks. That will put our authority into question.”

“I know,” Monroe grunted out. 

The moment ComStar showed that they might not be able to control themselves, the Successor Lords might step in and declare that “for the good of humanity,” HPG stations would need to be handled by the successor states. 

That could not be allowed to happen.

“We must quickly bring in new blood,” he declared. “Even if their ideology does not align with ours, we must shore up ComStar’s current problems before our very foundation cracks open.”

“What about Waterly’s followers?”

“Obviously, they will need to be reeducated. Or removed. I think it will do us many favor if we simply inform each successor state of subversive adepts whose actions we did not issue or agree with.”

There was no other option for the followers of a leader who tried to end the First Circuit. No mercy could be given because no mercy had been offered. Because of that, he needed to do whatever he could to make sure that no further schism within ComStar would occur. 

Because if it did…

Would there be a ComStar left? Just as the Roman Empire had fractured. Just as the Christian Church split into the Catholic and Orthodox. 

“... Sideline all of the hardliners,” he instructed. “They are the only ones who aren’t allowed into the newly absent precentorships and any other high level positions.”

The Demi-Precentor and Precentor Sian nodded. 

“Oh, and Demi-Precenter Solomon?”

“Yes, precenter?”

“Congratulations on your promotion to Precentor ROM. If the former Precenter ROM has survived the assassination, then please inform him that he is now a Demi-Precenter.”

Solomon looked at him in shock.

The man was too honest for his good. Probably why he was in ComGuard. Unfortunately, that honesty was good for ComStar as a whole. Someone with a modicum of power and low ambition needed to be in one of the positions of power with actual standing force behind the aforementioned power. And Solomon was the grim and stoic woman ComStar might just need in this dark hour. 

Precenter Sian chuckled painfully. “Aye, I can agree to promoting the man who saved our bacon,” he said with a smirk. “I think you have a lot of work ahead of you.”

Solomon’s mouth moved up and down mutely.

“... Any of you mind if I become the Primus?” Monroe asked. 

Precenter Sian and Precenter ROM Solomon looked at each other, looked back at him, and shook his head. 

“Wonderful. I’m the Primus now,” Monroe chuckled weakly and then winced in pain. “Ow.”

-VB-

Old First Circuit

Primus Myndo Waterly - dead

Precenter Atreus Demona Aziz - dead

Precenter Sian Vilius Tejh - Alive

Precenter Tharkad Timothy Monroe - Promoted to Primus

Precenter New Avalon Marcus de Salome-Turn - alive, heavily wounded

Precenter Dieron Sharilar Mori - dead

Precenter ROM Nicholas Cassnew - dead

---

New First Circuit

Primus Timothy Monroe

Precenter Atreus ---

Precenter Sian Vilius Tejh

Precenter Tharkad ---

Precenter New Avalon Marcus de Salome-Turn

Precenter Dieon ---

Precenter ROM Maria Solomon