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Judicator #1
Judicator, Leviathan
Episode 1 in the Judicator Series.
Hera is sent by the Inquisition to a feral planet on the fringes of the galactic East, there to investigate a Warp anomaly. She takes a Sergeant, a Super-mutant, and a Technomancer for the mission. They discover a tribe of primitive humans, pure of gene-stock, who worship a giant, alien craft made of beautiful, horned ivory. Her team begins to explore the xeno construct, for within its caverns lies the source of the mysterious Warp signature... Hera must face hideous slime crawlers, betrayal from the higher ups, uninvited looters, a Raxxar invasion fleet, and planet-wide chemical bombardment.
Read this short story because:
Across the Principalities, few individuals shoulder so heavy a burden as rooting out diabolism, alien infiltrators, and sedition. All labor and sacrifice to protect Humanity - flesh, intellect, and soul. Hera is one such person, a Judicator with a spike of ice for a heart, steely mind, mismatched eyes of pale grey and brown, and laser-shaven skull. Though uncompromising, judicious, and loyal unto death, she carries a grave secret of the Dark Divine. Hera is marked with the crooked biskelion of Suthanat, the Elder Lord of Decay and Master of Unlife.
Hera is sent by the Inquisition to a feral planet on the fringes of the galactic East, there to investigate a Warp anomaly. She takes a Sergeant, a Super-mutant, and a Technomancer for the mission. They discover a tribe of primitive humans, pure of gene-stock, who worship a giant, alien craft made of beautiful, horned ivory. Her team begins to explore the xeno construct, for within its caverns lies the source of the mysterious Warp signature... Hera must face hideous slime crawlers, betrayal from the higher ups, uninvited looters, a Raxxar invasion fleet, and planet-wide chemical bombardment.
Read this short story because:
Across the Principalities, few individuals shoulder so heavy a burden as rooting out diabolism, alien infiltrators, and sedition. All labor and sacrifice to protect Humanity - flesh, intellect, and soul. Hera is one such person, a Judicator with a spike of ice for a heart, steely mind, mismatched eyes of pale grey and brown, and laser-shaven skull. Though uncompromising, judicious, and loyal unto death, she carries a grave secret of the Dark Divine. Hera is marked with the crooked biskelion of Suthanat, the Elder Lord of Decay and Master of Unlife.
37 pages, Kindle Edition
Published October 25, 2019
About the author
Serban Valentin Constantin Enache
10 books6 followersA wandering soul, sadly incarnated in '89.
Ex-journalist.
Retired from social media and anything political.
Author of medieval, epic fantasy and science fiction...
Follow me on Amazon and stay up to date with my latest works.
Ex-journalist.
Retired from social media and anything political.
Author of medieval, epic fantasy and science fiction...
Follow me on Amazon and stay up to date with my latest works.
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Displaying 1 - 5 of 5 reviews
December 17, 2019
COSMIC FUTURE IS ABSOLUTE XENOPHOBIA
Servan Enache is entering with these two autonomous, maybe not completely, chapters of a new series, a field that crosses cosmic science-fiction, and action science-fiction video games. He deals with his literature as if it were such a game, or as if, on his computer keyboard, he were at the console commanding the game. You will find it difficult at times to follow the logic of the story because you have not read the small print, no one has actually read it, and so you are not informed about what is essential in that genre: situations and characters are absolutely and constantly changeable, interchangeable, transformable too because the small print says that the console controller has a chest of special and unrevealed tools to change everything if so he fancies. This is a secret, of course, and remember if you can keep a secret I can too, so I have not told you anything about it and what I have just said is the purest and most honest lie. That’s what is good about video games, you can give the lie to any logic or reasonable architecture. You know the famous “(1) All humans are mortal; (2) Socrates is human; (3) Socrates is mortal.” And it can become “All humans are mortal, Socrates is mortal, hence Socrates is human.” Or “All humans are mortal, all cows are mortal, hence all cows are human.” Or the one about “Everything rare is expensive. A cheap horse is rare. Hence a cheap horse is expensive.”
But the more erratic the story is, the more significant and signifying it is too. But then you may wonder what Serban Enache’s story may mean, imply or simply suggest. You may, but you shouldn’t doubt it: it is full of meaning. But what meaning?
First of all and above all these stories clearly state that humanity is the supreme Empire in the cosmos, that the earth is something like a vague recollection in one little corner of a tiny drawer of the minuscule chest of drawer in the vestry of the Church of I do not know what God the stories refer too. They are working against invading lizards or whatever other aliens that try to invade the Empire and eat the dainty delicatessen human beings are, and I must say I have tried it many times and the aliens are right. But why should humanity ban cannibalism and enjoying human flesh, blood, and marrow? That would certainly cure or heal our overpopulation and it would also solve the problem of starvation, famines, even malnutrition. We should decide that one type of humans should be eventually served as food as soon as their ancillary function is accomplished. And I am not inventing anything here. Since the author imagines servants are lobotomized humans, I guess lobotomized at a very early age, we can really accept that these are supposed to work up to a certain age, either early teenage so that the flesh is tender and soft. Or till early adulthood so that the flesh is mature enough to have the taste of puberty, satisfied puberty, that is to say after they have been used for some procreation two or three times.
The second idea is that the author creates characters who have absolutely no humane dimension. First of all, the main character, Hera, short for Heranar, is surrounded by all sorts of subservient beings like entirely artificial human-looking machines who only know how to obey orders. Then there are some Technomancers who are partly human and partly mechanical, in fact, they have a human body onto which a mechanical organism has been grafted. These are extremely evolved as for technical knowledge and they have the right to suggest solutions to problems provided they remain mechanical. And the mind of this Heranar, maybe short for Her-anarchical because she is egocentric selfishness, hence anarchism by definition, there is no respect for human beings, or any living beings, and absolute hatred for aliens. In the first episode she accepts the destruction of an “archaic” Grecian tribe of human beings along with the sterilization of the planet they are living on, without any explanation how these ancient Grecian people have arrived here, just for one single reason: to prevent the taking over of it by some aliens lizard-like invaders. She hardly feels any emotion at such a sacrifice, and we must speak of sacrifice, the sacrifice of a whole human tribe just to sterilize what could become one entry point for these aliens.
In the second episode, she herself decides the destruction of a whole planet inhabited by human beings but infested by the heretical belief in some dark gods from an underground inferno or chasm. To destroy this heresy in this population and on this planet, she orders the destruction of the planet, after killing herself the main witchdoctor or prophet of this heretical sect. No pangs of conscience because I am afraid this Heranar has no conscience. After all, she is an Inquisitor, an agent of the Inquisition that is supposed to keep humanity and the Empire absolutely clean and safe, meaning with no heresy and no alien parasitic intruders. And the rule is definitely “Kill them all, and all by-stander at the same time.” Bystanders are always designated collateral victims: good riddance because they should have reported the invaders or intruders if not acted on their own to neutralize them.
But this Empire is the worst possible hierarchical society you can imagine, or rather you can have nightmares about. It is explicitly expressed at the end of the first episode: “Knowledge meant power. Power meant liberty to operate, influence and change. The price of freedom was destruction, chaos. The Empire … had endured a hundred decades in ignorance, without liberty – through the power of allegiance, not doubt or consensus. Knowledge has to be rationed with great care among the capable few.” This is the worst possible feudal or even slave society built on power being kept within as few hands as possible. All others have to be mechanical, lobotomized, enslaved servants, soldiers or simple humanoid tools, technical and scientific ones particularly. This vision of society requires a deep regression to a very distant reference.
“Using the ancient Westphalian approach to foreign affairs, relying on State-dirigism and Georgist tax-principles… had fostered unity and peace, had ensured maximum output at minimum overhead… Labor, enterprise, sales, and buildings were exempt from taxation… Land values were annually assessed and taxed in full. Other wealth-extractive avenues like usury and patents were outlawed… There was no room for idle property, for waste, or rent-seeking.”
This vision is the society that emerged after the Ice Age when agriculture was developed because then the survival of the community was no longer dependent on the resources in the territory of this community they could pick and hunt, but on the crops that they could produce by their work of the land. This determined another change: the women who were the providers of communal survival with their pregnancies and child-deliveries where pushed aside from all spiritual functions to be replaced by the few men who controlled the land and the tilling of this land, knowing that herding was mostly in the hands of male teenagers, like the young David, the future King of Israel, and probably domesticated dogs.
You must ask the simple question: What can such a land-based world become if you add modern science, modern technology, and what is essentially missing in this science fiction, modern universal (all places and everyone) virtual communication?
What it becomes is clear in the second episode of the series. On top, an elite who is supposed to be the only people controlling knowledge, science, technology, and also the only people who control political and religious power, and at the bottom heretical clandestine magical sects that only target controlling people and the Empire by taking over the minds of everyone with a mixture of self and reciprocally nurturing concepts: fear, faith, fealty.
To be afraid is basic from the top, from the bottom, and from the demoniac chasm. The top must inspire fear if people do not obey their commands. At the bottom, the mass of people who must obey must do so out of the fear of being sacrificed by the top elite, and for the top elite to keep their power. The demoniac chasm has to be the supreme source of fear, not fear for right now, except if the elite decides to sacrifice you by throwing you into the chasm, but the supreme source pf fear of what may happen to you after death.
To have faith in the power of the gods from the chasm, of the priests that talk in the name of these gods, and in the rituals imposed by them.
Fealty is essential to bring all the believers to some type of dependence, subservience, and submission to the inevitable death that may mean some kind of regeneration or rejuvenation in some virtual world beyond the chasm through which everyone is supposed to go one day. But it may also mean rejuvenation for the society for which you may be sacrificed in a way or another, on a cross or an altar, in a circus or in a dungeon, on a wheel or an impaling stake
This vision is an absolute reproduction of the Maya society based in the same way on the three values I have just described. But we could find the same situation in all agricultural societies after the Ice Age and on all continents. There was no exception, just at times here and there special cases. All these societies were built on absolute dependence and absolute submission to the absolute power of the top elite in the absolute fear of the Death Lords that live deep in the chasm of Xibalba. Enjoy your next meal, it might be the last one.
And that is exactly what the second episode shows us: the almightiness of the educated elite that does not share their knowledge but imposes it to everyone as the rules coming from the Divine world, the cosmic world, the universal powers of stars, suns, and planets, or of desires, impulses and instincts. The moon might be the real Goddess behind it all, as a recollection, a remembrance, an evanescent imprint from a previous social state, but it can be either feminine and associated to death (Selene, Hecate and Athena/Diana), or masculine and associated to self-sacrifice or blood-shedding, your blood or the blood of others, who cares since blood is blood, though it is less vital if it is the blood of others (then the Maize God of the Mayas can be this Moon). But this Moon might be the real ritualistic Goddess or sacrificial God, but only might be and She/He might pull the strings of all these male or male-looking subservient tools in the hands of these elite people.
Heranar is thus an exception in her femininity if she is in any way feminine beyond her official name and gender specification. It requires a little bit more than a grammatical gender to be a male or a female, and so far Heranar has nothing else, has only a grammatical gender. And we will have to wait for later and further chapters to know what she really is in this male-dominated and male-controlled world.
Dr. Jacques COULARDEAU
Servan Enache is entering with these two autonomous, maybe not completely, chapters of a new series, a field that crosses cosmic science-fiction, and action science-fiction video games. He deals with his literature as if it were such a game, or as if, on his computer keyboard, he were at the console commanding the game. You will find it difficult at times to follow the logic of the story because you have not read the small print, no one has actually read it, and so you are not informed about what is essential in that genre: situations and characters are absolutely and constantly changeable, interchangeable, transformable too because the small print says that the console controller has a chest of special and unrevealed tools to change everything if so he fancies. This is a secret, of course, and remember if you can keep a secret I can too, so I have not told you anything about it and what I have just said is the purest and most honest lie. That’s what is good about video games, you can give the lie to any logic or reasonable architecture. You know the famous “(1) All humans are mortal; (2) Socrates is human; (3) Socrates is mortal.” And it can become “All humans are mortal, Socrates is mortal, hence Socrates is human.” Or “All humans are mortal, all cows are mortal, hence all cows are human.” Or the one about “Everything rare is expensive. A cheap horse is rare. Hence a cheap horse is expensive.”
But the more erratic the story is, the more significant and signifying it is too. But then you may wonder what Serban Enache’s story may mean, imply or simply suggest. You may, but you shouldn’t doubt it: it is full of meaning. But what meaning?
First of all and above all these stories clearly state that humanity is the supreme Empire in the cosmos, that the earth is something like a vague recollection in one little corner of a tiny drawer of the minuscule chest of drawer in the vestry of the Church of I do not know what God the stories refer too. They are working against invading lizards or whatever other aliens that try to invade the Empire and eat the dainty delicatessen human beings are, and I must say I have tried it many times and the aliens are right. But why should humanity ban cannibalism and enjoying human flesh, blood, and marrow? That would certainly cure or heal our overpopulation and it would also solve the problem of starvation, famines, even malnutrition. We should decide that one type of humans should be eventually served as food as soon as their ancillary function is accomplished. And I am not inventing anything here. Since the author imagines servants are lobotomized humans, I guess lobotomized at a very early age, we can really accept that these are supposed to work up to a certain age, either early teenage so that the flesh is tender and soft. Or till early adulthood so that the flesh is mature enough to have the taste of puberty, satisfied puberty, that is to say after they have been used for some procreation two or three times.
The second idea is that the author creates characters who have absolutely no humane dimension. First of all, the main character, Hera, short for Heranar, is surrounded by all sorts of subservient beings like entirely artificial human-looking machines who only know how to obey orders. Then there are some Technomancers who are partly human and partly mechanical, in fact, they have a human body onto which a mechanical organism has been grafted. These are extremely evolved as for technical knowledge and they have the right to suggest solutions to problems provided they remain mechanical. And the mind of this Heranar, maybe short for Her-anarchical because she is egocentric selfishness, hence anarchism by definition, there is no respect for human beings, or any living beings, and absolute hatred for aliens. In the first episode she accepts the destruction of an “archaic” Grecian tribe of human beings along with the sterilization of the planet they are living on, without any explanation how these ancient Grecian people have arrived here, just for one single reason: to prevent the taking over of it by some aliens lizard-like invaders. She hardly feels any emotion at such a sacrifice, and we must speak of sacrifice, the sacrifice of a whole human tribe just to sterilize what could become one entry point for these aliens.
In the second episode, she herself decides the destruction of a whole planet inhabited by human beings but infested by the heretical belief in some dark gods from an underground inferno or chasm. To destroy this heresy in this population and on this planet, she orders the destruction of the planet, after killing herself the main witchdoctor or prophet of this heretical sect. No pangs of conscience because I am afraid this Heranar has no conscience. After all, she is an Inquisitor, an agent of the Inquisition that is supposed to keep humanity and the Empire absolutely clean and safe, meaning with no heresy and no alien parasitic intruders. And the rule is definitely “Kill them all, and all by-stander at the same time.” Bystanders are always designated collateral victims: good riddance because they should have reported the invaders or intruders if not acted on their own to neutralize them.
But this Empire is the worst possible hierarchical society you can imagine, or rather you can have nightmares about. It is explicitly expressed at the end of the first episode: “Knowledge meant power. Power meant liberty to operate, influence and change. The price of freedom was destruction, chaos. The Empire … had endured a hundred decades in ignorance, without liberty – through the power of allegiance, not doubt or consensus. Knowledge has to be rationed with great care among the capable few.” This is the worst possible feudal or even slave society built on power being kept within as few hands as possible. All others have to be mechanical, lobotomized, enslaved servants, soldiers or simple humanoid tools, technical and scientific ones particularly. This vision of society requires a deep regression to a very distant reference.
“Using the ancient Westphalian approach to foreign affairs, relying on State-dirigism and Georgist tax-principles… had fostered unity and peace, had ensured maximum output at minimum overhead… Labor, enterprise, sales, and buildings were exempt from taxation… Land values were annually assessed and taxed in full. Other wealth-extractive avenues like usury and patents were outlawed… There was no room for idle property, for waste, or rent-seeking.”
This vision is the society that emerged after the Ice Age when agriculture was developed because then the survival of the community was no longer dependent on the resources in the territory of this community they could pick and hunt, but on the crops that they could produce by their work of the land. This determined another change: the women who were the providers of communal survival with their pregnancies and child-deliveries where pushed aside from all spiritual functions to be replaced by the few men who controlled the land and the tilling of this land, knowing that herding was mostly in the hands of male teenagers, like the young David, the future King of Israel, and probably domesticated dogs.
You must ask the simple question: What can such a land-based world become if you add modern science, modern technology, and what is essentially missing in this science fiction, modern universal (all places and everyone) virtual communication?
What it becomes is clear in the second episode of the series. On top, an elite who is supposed to be the only people controlling knowledge, science, technology, and also the only people who control political and religious power, and at the bottom heretical clandestine magical sects that only target controlling people and the Empire by taking over the minds of everyone with a mixture of self and reciprocally nurturing concepts: fear, faith, fealty.
To be afraid is basic from the top, from the bottom, and from the demoniac chasm. The top must inspire fear if people do not obey their commands. At the bottom, the mass of people who must obey must do so out of the fear of being sacrificed by the top elite, and for the top elite to keep their power. The demoniac chasm has to be the supreme source of fear, not fear for right now, except if the elite decides to sacrifice you by throwing you into the chasm, but the supreme source pf fear of what may happen to you after death.
To have faith in the power of the gods from the chasm, of the priests that talk in the name of these gods, and in the rituals imposed by them.
Fealty is essential to bring all the believers to some type of dependence, subservience, and submission to the inevitable death that may mean some kind of regeneration or rejuvenation in some virtual world beyond the chasm through which everyone is supposed to go one day. But it may also mean rejuvenation for the society for which you may be sacrificed in a way or another, on a cross or an altar, in a circus or in a dungeon, on a wheel or an impaling stake
This vision is an absolute reproduction of the Maya society based in the same way on the three values I have just described. But we could find the same situation in all agricultural societies after the Ice Age and on all continents. There was no exception, just at times here and there special cases. All these societies were built on absolute dependence and absolute submission to the absolute power of the top elite in the absolute fear of the Death Lords that live deep in the chasm of Xibalba. Enjoy your next meal, it might be the last one.
And that is exactly what the second episode shows us: the almightiness of the educated elite that does not share their knowledge but imposes it to everyone as the rules coming from the Divine world, the cosmic world, the universal powers of stars, suns, and planets, or of desires, impulses and instincts. The moon might be the real Goddess behind it all, as a recollection, a remembrance, an evanescent imprint from a previous social state, but it can be either feminine and associated to death (Selene, Hecate and Athena/Diana), or masculine and associated to self-sacrifice or blood-shedding, your blood or the blood of others, who cares since blood is blood, though it is less vital if it is the blood of others (then the Maize God of the Mayas can be this Moon). But this Moon might be the real ritualistic Goddess or sacrificial God, but only might be and She/He might pull the strings of all these male or male-looking subservient tools in the hands of these elite people.
Heranar is thus an exception in her femininity if she is in any way feminine beyond her official name and gender specification. It requires a little bit more than a grammatical gender to be a male or a female, and so far Heranar has nothing else, has only a grammatical gender. And we will have to wait for later and further chapters to know what she really is in this male-dominated and male-controlled world.
Dr. Jacques COULARDEAU
August 29, 2021
A book which reads like a fancy write-up of a Warhammer 40K game.
I am not a player of Games Workshop’s Warhammer 40K myself, but I know enough about it to recognise the style of its complex and medievalist sci-fi setting. This book is dripping with the kind of ultimately meaningless, but very colourful, background and settings that have grown up around the Warhammer 40K universe to explain why the most important thing is always its characteristic tabletop battles. In that sense, this book does not disappoint. It is essentially a series of fights, each described in excruciating detail, padded out with bursts of history and philosophy from the main character.
The whole story is structured like a roleplaying adventure. The characters have received a call to investigate a “warp anomaly”. When they arrive at the planet in question, we meet the players: a philosophical “Judicator”, a dumb but strong “super mutant” and a cyber-enhanced “technomancer”. They fight the primitive inhabitants of the world (of course) but then inexplicably make friends with them and band together to seek out the mysterious energy. When they get there, it is inside a huge and skeletal living ship, half-buried in the forest. Undeterred, the heavily armed team treat the ship like any other “dungeon”, enter, and fight everything they find there. Just when they think they have discovered what they came for, the imaginary game master adds some time pressure, in the form of several battle fleets coming to sterilise the planet.
I would describe the writing style as “heavy”. The background feels rich, but that’s because it stands on ideas from a lot of other people. The core characters, with the exception of protagonist Hera, seem little more than collections of battle statistics and weapons. Hera, at least, has a viewpoint and some independence but is hardly a character to identify with or root for. If you like Warhammer-style battle-heavy fiction, then you will probably enjoy this. I won’t be bothering with any more in this series, though.
I am not a player of Games Workshop’s Warhammer 40K myself, but I know enough about it to recognise the style of its complex and medievalist sci-fi setting. This book is dripping with the kind of ultimately meaningless, but very colourful, background and settings that have grown up around the Warhammer 40K universe to explain why the most important thing is always its characteristic tabletop battles. In that sense, this book does not disappoint. It is essentially a series of fights, each described in excruciating detail, padded out with bursts of history and philosophy from the main character.
The whole story is structured like a roleplaying adventure. The characters have received a call to investigate a “warp anomaly”. When they arrive at the planet in question, we meet the players: a philosophical “Judicator”, a dumb but strong “super mutant” and a cyber-enhanced “technomancer”. They fight the primitive inhabitants of the world (of course) but then inexplicably make friends with them and band together to seek out the mysterious energy. When they get there, it is inside a huge and skeletal living ship, half-buried in the forest. Undeterred, the heavily armed team treat the ship like any other “dungeon”, enter, and fight everything they find there. Just when they think they have discovered what they came for, the imaginary game master adds some time pressure, in the form of several battle fleets coming to sterilise the planet.
I would describe the writing style as “heavy”. The background feels rich, but that’s because it stands on ideas from a lot of other people. The core characters, with the exception of protagonist Hera, seem little more than collections of battle statistics and weapons. Hera, at least, has a viewpoint and some independence but is hardly a character to identify with or root for. If you like Warhammer-style battle-heavy fiction, then you will probably enjoy this. I won’t be bothering with any more in this series, though.
January 18, 2025
Very intriguing
A bit of drudge at the beginning but the tale quickly became encompassing as it delved beyond introductions. Of course, the mandatory wrench was tossed in as the story became quite involved and it left this reader a bit sanguine at the prospect of follow=up explanations in perhaps a full series. A thinking person's tale leaving the desire for more!
A bit of drudge at the beginning but the tale quickly became encompassing as it delved beyond introductions. Of course, the mandatory wrench was tossed in as the story became quite involved and it left this reader a bit sanguine at the prospect of follow=up explanations in perhaps a full series. A thinking person's tale leaving the desire for more!
January 29, 2020
Pretty good. Good sense of dread in the Warhammer 30k vein. A little 2 dimensional at times and was more of a first chapter than a complete story.
November 16, 2021
Great read with good characters. It is fast paced and you want to read each page. I recommend it to all Space Opera fans.
Displaying 1 - 5 of 5 reviews