Death of a Pope As he lay there bleeding his last, his thoughts strayed to the sequence of events that led to this final encounter. He remembered his mother taking him to his first service and being stirred by the rhetoric of the priest as he berated the parishioners. While he couldn't understand the words for he was so young, even now in his last moments he recalled the passion and fire in the voice. At that moment and forever after his soul belonged to the True One. Snatches of events, hazy and unformed over the years that followed, tumbled through his head. His ascension ceremony and the following flagellation in which he almost died were bittersweet. His first inquisition and the burning of the heretics while he quoted righteous passages from the gospels were distorted, though still distinct compared with the countless interrogations since. What seemed like hours later, though in fact was only seconds, the ceremony in which the lords of the Confederate Houses knelt at his knees and swore fealty to him filled his mind. Mark Eaton, the newly elected Pope and the first in centuries. The candles, the angelic voices in song and prayer and Samuel, broken and in chains, prostrate on the ground. The Inner Empire was his to command in the name of the True One. Back then it never occurred to him that beyond the borders of the Inner Confederacy lay a land of heathens and alien fornicators.

His thoughts drifted to this meeting with the treacherous Roswell. Lured here after a tour of the Confederacy to accept his ascension to Pope and Emperor only to be gunned down in cold blood. A spasm choked him and a face pierced the encroaching darkness, stirring him to semi-lucidity.

'Still with us Mark, I can call you Mark can't I? Surely you can't prefer Your Holiness or what was it your cardinals called you? Pius XVI?. I don't accept for one minute you believe any of that religious crap you peddle to the masses.'

He tried to say something, shout even but all he could hear and feel was liquid bubbling in his throat.

'Well, I'll be damned, you do, don't you.' Roswell smiled benevolently though insincerely down at the body, now centred in a spreading pool of blood.

Roswell crouched down just beyond the red edge and strained forward, as though hearing the Pope whispering.

'What's that your holiness, me, accept the role of Pope after you? No, I couldn't, your shoes are far too large for a humble man such as myself.' He leaned back on his heels as though deep in thought. 'Though if the cardinals insist and it is the True One's wishes, who am I to fight the will of the church? Or was that 'you'll never get away with it', though of course word has not reached you that during that little jaunt around the Peripheries we arranged that zealots be ushered to Bethlehem. Even now our fleet is en route to give them a warm welcome.'

Reaching for the hand of the Pope, Jordan gently kissed the ornate ring, an heirloom dating back hundreds of years to Earth and the ancient religions of old. Then he removed it and slipped it onto his own finger. 'Don't worry, your holiness, I will take good care of it.' He admired the ring, holding it up to the light, 'I think it suits me. Pope Roswell has a certain ring to it.' As the Pope's hand slid to the ground he rolled slightly forward and blood drained from his mouth. With his last breath he uttered, 'A curse upon the house of Roswell and all that follow you.' Footnote Jordan Roswell's stint at Pope lasted less than a year before his untimely retirement from the office. While official documents are sealed by the Brotherhood and will probably remain so indefinitely, there was significant speculation as to why his resignation was delivered in writing and without a farewell mass. Rumours of his appetites, started soon after ascension to the Papacy have only grown more extreme in his absence. That he apparently gave everything up for seclusion and contemplation in a secret monastery deep in the Inner Confederacy is held be few to be credible. His legacy however still holds - one Confederacy uniting church and state throughout the Peripheries.