Free Throne of Stars by David Weber, John Ringo Page A

also thought they could do things ‘right’ this time. The Inquisition, the Great Jihad of the early twenty-first century, the Fellowship Extinction, and all the rest of the Jihads, Crusades, and Likuds were beside the point. The worst of it was that those who founded the Tellers were good people. Misguided, but good. The road to Heaven is paved with good intentions, after all. Like most ardent believers, they thought God would make sure they got it right. That their cause was just, and that the other people who’d screwed up exactly the same idea before them had suffered—unlike them—from some fundamental flaw in their vision or approach.”
    “Rather than from just being human.” Roger shook his head. “It’s like the redistributionists that don’t see the Ardane Deconstruction as being ‘what will happen.’”
    “The one thing you learn from history, Your Highness, is that we’re doomed to repeat it. Anyway, where was I?”
    “They set up an Inquisition.”
    “Well, that wasn’t what they’d intended to set up, but, yes. That was what they got.” Kosutic shrugged grimly. “It was bad. That sort of thing attracts . . . bad sorts. Not so much sociopaths—although it does attract them—but also people who are so sure of their own rectitude that they can’t see that evil is evil.”
    “But you’re a Satanist. You keep referring to ‘His Wickedness,’ so why does the concept of evil bother you?” Roger asked, his tone honestly perplexed, and Kosutic shrugged again.
    “At first the organized opposition to the College was purely secular. The Resistance actually had a clause in its manifesto calling for an end to all religion, always. But the planet was too steeped in religious thought for that to work, and the Tellers, the Determiners of Truth, insisted on referring to anyone in the Resistance as ‘minions of Satan.’”
    “So instead of trying to fight the label, you embraced it for yourselves.”
    “And changed it,” Kosutic agreed. “We won eventually, and part of the peace settlement was a freedom of religion clause in the Constitution. But by that time, the Satanists were the majority religion, and Christianity—or, at least, Armagh’s version of it—had completely discredited itself. There’s a really ancient saw that says that if Satan ever replaced God, he’d have to act the same. And to be a religion for the good of all, which was what we’d intended from the outset, we had to be good. The difference between Armaghan Satanism and Catholicism is a rejection of the supremacy of the Pope, a few bells and whistles we stole from Wicca, and referring to Satan instead of the Trinity. It really is Episcopalianism, for Satanists, which makes your bishop comparison even more humorous.”
    She’d been watching the training entry team as she spoke, and now she grimaced as Bebi flinched. The exercise was simple, “baby steps” designed to get the Marines back into the close-combat mode of thinking. But despite that, the team hadn’t taken the simple security precaution of checking all corners of the room for threats, and the “enemy” hiding behind a pillar had just taken out the team leader.
    “It’s the little things in life,” she muttered.
    “Yep,” Roger agreed. “They don’t seem to be doing all that well.”
    He watched as Macek “responded” to the threat by uncovering his own area. At which point another hidden enemy took advantage of the lack of security to take out Berent. Kosutic’s nostrils flared, and Roger grinned mentally as he pictured the blistering critique of the exercise she was undoubtedly compiling. But the sergeant major was one of those people for whom multitasking came naturally, and she resumed her explanation even as she watched Berent become a casualty.
    “One of the big differences between the Church of Rome and Armaghan Satanism is our emphasis on the Final Conflict and the preparations for it,” she continued, her expression now deadly serious.