Boers, but in reality it was much worse. Almost ten times worse. He had to use all his powers to shut up both Minister Donhra, who had to "redeploy" 38 of his Boers on paper. And the chums from the Ministry of

Transportation and Material Supply, who in reports had to depict completely the wrong things to be repaired, and take materials about the servants to be repaired from completely different places. And supervision from the central apparatus, which came to check and assess the losses. It was good that there were those who were not likely to make a peep without being asked, given what had been dug up on them.

Zakinhr looked at the tunnels, where repairs had just been completed a couple of days ago, and remembered what he had been through. He had been walking on the edge of the abyss, for the loss of two legions of 18 Boer SCK and seven legions of 46 Boer of the Imperial Army would not have been forgiven even conditionally. He would have been shot and tortured, because no one would have believed that it was possible to lose so much on purpose. Even though it wasn't on purpose. He was just beaten by the Maquis then… Yeah, it happens. There are times when the Maquis win, and they win big. Then the Slavyansk column was left without its assault forces, and all that was left were security drills in each of the sectors and a few special purpose drills in Gorlovka. We had to revise the entire security structure in the region…..

And the bet was on the Kiwis. Expand their presence, allocate additional resources to them, and organize the whole thing with self-governance of one sector and then the whole faction. To free the security drills from there… At the same time, of course, to remove any possible influence of the Inquisition there. But that wasn't the first priority. It was at the same time, though it should have seemed to everyone who was even a little bit aware that it was about the confrontation between the Church and the SCK… And who knew that this very step would aggravate all the relations between them…

Zakinhir wondered now if he would have done the same thing if he'd known how it would turn out, and he wasn't so sure anymore. Back then, he had thought that only coolness and subtle calculation had helped him survive. Now the other side of the coin was demonstrating that he had simply dug himself another hole, much deeper than the first. Allies in a war against the Church are not easy to find, unlike allies against the Maquis. And it's too late to backpedal now. And what are the options?

It is unrealistic to return chums to the mines of the Donetsk-Makeyevka group. There are not so many plagues in the subordination, and the miners there have become very strong. They now produce twice as much as before. There's no need to guard them. Know your stuff, get your resources. The Center and all the ministries liked it very much. Except for the Church, of course… You can't go back to the way it was… And you can't explain everything to the Church either. Now their goal is Anankhr, and they are eager to achieve it. And obviously to achieve something more than just to tickle the nerves of a member of the Central Committee of the Empire….

The only thing left is to go to the end and fight back against the Church more and more harshly. So that they would be afraid to go any further. Let them really think that self-government in the Donetsk-Makeyevka group is a pre-planned action. And Zakinhr organized a provocation against Dolonokh, the priest of the main temple of the Empire, located in the capital — Chum-Batu, at the mouth of the Volga River.

Dolonoch was neither a metropolitan nor a priest of the central administration of the Church, but the temple of which he was abbot was the largest, most famous and important temple of the entire Jah faith, the Temple of the Black Stone named after the Grand Inquisitor Torquedoch. In this temple were held the ordinations of metropolitans and patriarchs, as well as services for the benefit of the most important persons of the Empire.

I had to bring in my old informant, Juninhr, who had served as a notary and had been present at many church trials, including the torture of the Inquisition, certifying the "legitimacy" of the secular authorities. He didn't know much, but as a witness he was pretty good. As in this case.

Zakinhru managed to dig up an old case of an interrogation during the "week of repentance" in which Dolonoch was present. The procedure had been certified by Uninhr as a notary.

Everything seemed to be conducted according to the regulations, but some circumstances could say that the process was biased, such as the fact that some items were used several times during the torture, which was forbidden by the instructions, and the justification was that the items had been used "incorrectly" before. In addition, the start time and end time did not match the time of the service — it turned out that Dolonoh had to leave at least twice during the process, which meant that either he was not the one conducting the service or the interrogation was not taking place in his presence. Either option was unacceptable. But at the end of it all, the chum tortured and then executed by the Inquisition was an employee of the Ministry of Transportation and was being held as a witness in a treason case. His burning thus interfered with the process of investigation of an important case, and in turn could well be blamed on the intentionality of this step to cover up the traces of the crime.

Everything "from" and "to" in this case, of course, was turned upside down by Zakinhr.