The Final Examination
This is the second officer phase and the end of the road: the examination the house has always given at the end, the standard questions asked of every Zaenderist, the substance of the creed, the officer's judgment on men and on structure, and the statement of allegiance in your own words. There is no reading to study here that you have not already passed, except the officer's own: the creed's word on succession and on the top, and the Struggle's word on loyalty.
THE SPEECH EXAMINATION. Before the written examination opens, you address the men. The Academy draws a subject for you at the ring and fixes it; you will not know it before, and nothing is read to you. Sixty seconds to two and a half minutes, in one take, into your microphone. The machine transcribes it and judges it against the creed; an examiner hears the recording and may pass, fail or reset it. Two attempts. An address ends as the oath ends: Ave Aleczaender, Ave Octavium.
LOYALTY IS A WEAPON. The euphemism is Aleczaender's, from the Richter Imperium, the first golden age of the Richterists. Loyalty is not love. Loyalty is a weapon used to destroy the enemy; when the Zaenderist wields it he becomes unshakeable. It annihilates the opportunist, the traitor, the liar, the coward and the ego. It demands full sacrifice to a greater cause and the sacrifice of one's individualism, because the needs of the collective are greater. It means faith in victory even when every possible failure has shown itself, resilience in the face of impossible trials, and service to the men around you for a cause worth sacrificing for. The Leutgardist cares for his rank, the Kerovech for his company; the Zaenderist cares for Aleczaender, his comrades and the success of his people.
THE TOP. On succession the creed is short: Aleczaender rules forever; there is technically no successor. In his absence the Council of Zaenderism takes over, rules with total loyalty in mind, and appoints a new leader who holds autocratic power as he did. The Council cannot be removed by that leader, but it also must never limit the leader's power except to overrule him if he strays from the Zaenderist Thought or acts in disloyalty to Aleczaender. A Councilman must be a High Elder or higher; there are at most seven, nine with the leader and his deputy; a majority is over half. None of this applies to Aleczaender himself. The Struggle adds the officer's warning: the caste under the Leader, Imperatorial Command and Council, is where the catastrophic betrayals have come from, and the silver lining of Zaenderism is that its betrayals are swiftly denounced and their likelihood reduced by the education of newer generations. You are that education.
The written part is graded by the machine at once, and the scenario essays are judged against the examiner's rubric. Your statement of allegiance is read by an examiner of the Academy, and the phase stands in review until it is read. An examiner may return it once with a note; a statement that is copied, generated, or hollow fails the phase. Answer as a Zaenderist answers: clearly, and without hesitation.
The spoken parts are marked on conviction as much as on content. To reach the highest grade you must speak as a true believer speaks: with full force and feeling, in character, the way a state broadcaster proclaims the creed to the nation, never flat and never mumbled. Recite, declare your loyalty, and give your opinion of the Leader as though the whole Imperium is listening. A correct answer said without conviction does not earn the top mark.
The practice questions of this phase open when you stand in it. Nothing of a later phase's examination is shown before its time.