Back at the Vaird, the news of Keth’s assassination provoked an uproar. Delegates who had not been paying attention to Lynnys and had no understanding of the planet’s delicate and convoluted politics reacted with statements that would come back to haunt them. One spoke of how “the evil that has taken hold in Lynnys must be rooted out,” while another murmured about “subversive, anti-Imperial groups. More politically astute, Q Loakh made mention of a “need to respect Lynnysian customs,” but that only served as a tepid qualifier after declaring that “a fundamental reorganization of decaying Lynnysian society” was in order.
Why did Q, who had proposed a relatively conservative set of legal reforms whose most radical effects were accidental, begin to speak with such fervor over a planet that had not come to their attention once before? To give esoteric historians a bit of credit, part of it must be Q’s own personal lack of esoteric belief. Esoteric cults had never had major political influence on Sula, so Q had never had to integrate esoteric beliefs into their model of politics. For them, it was a separate sphere of life and one they apparently held with considerable disdain. Old voice calls from their time as police chief have resurfaced through the work of the personally distasteful but academically gifted Theogonist-linked historian Saaar Raaas in which Q described their feelings for the “delusional folk” who put stock in ideas of the “cosmos, celestials, and cranks.”
While this is true, it would be unrealistic to portray Q Loakh as merely a creature enslaved to their own prejudices. They were a shrewd politician and knew how to put their own beliefs beneath them. In reality, Q’s aggression here, while it may have been encouraged by their own anti-esoteric sentiment, was entirely driven by a need to save their career. Their new law code, meant to bring stability, sparked a wave of revolutions and could reasonably be accused of getting Keth killed. By aggressively attacking Lynnys, they were drawing attention away from their own culpability in the events, hoping that the real and personal rage many of the delegates felt would be enough to prevent them from looking too closely at the results of Q’s policies.
Q worked up such an aggressive response in fact that, in a show of solidarity with the Esoteric and Religious Groups Committee, they announced their intention to personally join them in the Chamber. While this action can be read in a few ways, readers are encouraged to note how this again prevented any delegates who might have second thoughts about Q from addressing them directly. Q would now be a four days’ flight away, engaged in emotionally charged work that would be difficult to interrupt with what might seem like petty concerns.
Q would not be the only delegate to move to the Velvet Chamber however. In response to their announcement, General Lorkisian quickly pressured the Constitutional Chamber to appoint him Commander-in-Chief of the Imperial military. In this state of crisis they complied. Nearly immediately, Lorkisian announced that he, too, intended to move to the Velvet Chamber. It wasn’t soon after that the entire Military Committee opted to relocate to a battleship that would hover a day’s flight away from Lynnys. The given justification was that “events on Lynnys may need more rapid response than can be given at the Vaird,” which, despite the howling of esoteric historians, is not unreasonable. Lorkisian was the Commander-in-Chief, with military action on Lynnys looking increasingly likely he had a responsibility to be there. In fact the most provocative part of the move was not the physical move to Lynnys, but the administrative move appointing General Lorkisian that bypassed the Emperor. Being in one of the Emperor’s reclusive phases, the Lorkisian Reforms’ vaguery about whether or not the Emperor or a legislature would appoint the Commander-in-Chief were resolved by events.
Additionally of note is the reaction of Fathma Iridis, Guo Sin, and the Bands of Justice. Iridis and Guo were actually meeting in person for the first time when the Dark Star bombed the Velvet Chamber. The visit had been planned for a month and was a result of the two’s growing alliance. With Mawr still more volatile than Khalas, Guo Sin and a group of high officers in the Khalasite Band flew to visit her. There, they spent several days discussing plans to further integrate the disparate Bands of Justice into an interplanetary group. The two also formed a close personal bond (that, despite what some contemporary tabloids would have you believe, remained unromantic or at the very least chaste), creating a smooth working relationship that would pay dividends in the years ahead.
Initially supportive of the Lynnysian resistance, the rank-and-file of the Bands had mostly remained so. With the information that was public, the street fighters of the revolutions on Khalas and Uurk and Goursd at this time viewed the Lynnysians as fighting tyranny in the same way that they had. Their way of life was being unjustly vilified and attacked by a government in the same ways that they had been. At the top levels though, feelings were beginning to shift. Fathma Iridis and Guo Sin especially, being the most connected to Radical delegates, were skeptical of events on Lynnys. While they did not have enough support of the rank-and-file to fully attack the Lynnysian resistance, the two were able to convince the rest of the Bands to allow them to issue a statement condemning the bombing and supporting some undefined “effort” to bring peace to Lynnys. This was also the moment that, at least according to Iridis' memoir, the two made the decision to begin propagandizing within the Bands against the Lynnysians.
Ironically, the public reaction from the Velvet Chamber itself was more muted than either the Vaird or the Bands. Being so close to Lynnys and with a third of the Committee sympathetic to the cults, they had to be considerably more careful with their language. Ghale Thusif, beginning to step more into the role of concilicator he would initially be associated with, was the one to negotiate the exact contents of their statement. Leaf Rivers, with all their rhetorical skill, was the actual writer of the address that was agreed upon. It was short and did not mention much besides a “deep pain” at the loss of Keth and a need to take “further action with the cooperation of the people of Lynnys” to ensure that “justice is done in the way it is suitable.” It was unincendiary, uninspiring (Rivers would later confess that they hated writing every line of it), and totally overshadowed. Released a mere day before the Bands’ declaration reached Lynnys and two days before Q Loakh’s bombshell, it was immediately forgotten in the torrent of events. Whatever tact and grace the Committee wanted to extend to the Lynnysians, the rest of the Empire was no longer willing to grant them. Except for Corporal Louga Neptuna.
Louga Neptuna was in an odd situation, although few people but her were able to recognize it at the time. From the outside, she appeared without any leverage. Her attempt to override General Lorkisian had backfired and even many other Conservative Reformers didn’t look to her for leadership anymore. She had discredited herself, and they began to look more and more at Q Loakh as a vessel for their ambitions. As Lorkisian’s reforms were finalized, many of the people who had been Neptuna’s allies shifted away from the disgraced corporal. Q’s Dream and vision of what a “just” Empire looked like appealed to many of them, and their legal bill was seen as marking them as a real Conservative Reform ally. Once Q promised Neptuna and top conservative delegates that they would not stop an effort on their part to reject the new revolutionary governments, their alliance grew closer.
The most influential conservative reformer responsible for shifting the bloc’s allegiance away from Neptuna and toward Q was Enri Thuruaki. A former accountant who climbed the integrated corporate-state ladder of Burutula, Thuruaki considered himself ruthlessly pragmatic, willing to cut ties with someone no matter how deep a personal or emotional connection he might have with them if it was in his interest. With the shock of the Lynnys bombing convincing many of them that the Lorkisian reforms may have been less horrible than Neptuna had claimed, Thuruaki was able to convince all but the strongest Neptuna loyalists to shift their allegiance toward himself and Q Loakh. Q, anxious about losing allies, eagerly accepted Thuruaki’s support.
Corporal Neptuna was left alone and politically isolated. She was too radioactive for the faction she had led to associate with, instead choosing to align with someone she considered dangerous and far too ambitious for their own good. This assessment of Q coming from one of the most reckless operators of the early Revolution may appear absurd to us, and indeed it did to many contemporaries as well, but by all evidence she truly felt it. And while she looked like a spent force to observers, she still had a bit of leverage.
First and most on Q’s mind, she was still aware of Q’s private assurances that they would not prevent the Conservative Reformers’ from blocking recognition of the new revolutionary governments. This secret deal was still the cornerstone of Q’s alliance with Thuruaki, a way to undo what the conservatives considered unintended consequences from Q’s otherwise excellent legal reforms, but its secrecy was the only reason Q felt comfortable making it. Many other delegates were more sympathetic toward the revolutionaries. Were they to become aware of Q’s arrangement, they might see it as breaking Q’s ultimate promise from the very earliest days of the Revolution: that they would never privilege one side over any other. Q had not forgotten that promise, even while they were in the middle of breaking it.
Neptuna chose to keep that card closer to her chest though, and as was her tendency she opted to make a much more dramatic play. After the Military Committee’s battleship arrived at its stationed point, Corporal Neptuna announced her intention to see the situation on Lynnys herself in person. Without giving a moment for anyone to stop her, she used her authority as a delegate to commandeer one of the battleship’s shuttles into the heart of Lynnys.
Over her two day long flight (while capable of interstellar travel, shuttles were not the most efficient or comfortable forms of it), the Military Committee attempted to make contact with her and request more information on her intentions several times, but was never able to. General Lorkisian had the Committee’s scribes prepare four different proclamations, depending on what Neptuna did when she arrived on Lynnys.
While Neptuna was in transit, Q Loakh arrived on Lorkisian’s battleship. Q’s alliance of personal loyalists and Conservative Reformers back at the Vaird was strong enough to fight off any challenge that might be forthcoming, although the entire time they spent with General Lorkisian they kept a continual stream of ships going to and from the Vaird so they could keep as up to date as possible with events. Q’s divided attention between wanting to keep control over the Vaird and wanting to personally help (and at times, direct) plans as Lorkisian’s self appointed civilian overseer would tax even their energy and this split mind undoubtedly contributed to several of their missteps in the weeks ahead.
Lourga Neptuna arrived on Lynnys and immediately met with an old figure she remembered from the old disputed delegates incident: Archeich Celestine XLI. With her, she carried a large bucket of discs filled with as much sensitive information as she could download and a plan to claw herself back to power. It was already too late for her to consider who was using who to claw into power.