THE GUARDSMAN: Book 1: Honor of the Fallen – Chapters 29-32

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The Guardsman, Book 1: Honor of the Fallen:

Chapter 29)

She needled, “Mosquito, stop hovering. Find a place to land. I’m not going anywhere; you don’t have to patrol the foot of my bed.”

He chastised, “Miss, I need to keep an eye on you.”

She snapped, “Look at me! I’m sitting on my bed, still in my pajamas and it is nearly noon. I’m grounded. I’m not going anywhere, trust me!”

He demanded, “What are you doing?”

She challenged, “If I tell you, will you stop hovering and sit down, please?!”

“Fine,” as the tall guard stopped pacing at the foot of her bed, she flipped the notebook around so he could see, “What is that, a picture of the city?”

She answered, “Yes. Why? What did you think it was?”

As Mosquito settled in the chair he replied dryly, “Your next escape plan.”

Persephone cocked her head to the side and considered the event that had just unfolded. “Was that a joke? I thought your humor node was surgically removed before you were assigned to me.”

He admitted, “I tried. I am just not used to it, humor that is. I’m trying to be nice, and it doesn’t work for me.”

Glad she finally got to have a conversation with an adult for the first time in weeks; she tossed her pad and paper at her feet and flopped back into her pillows. “Why is that?”

He asked, “Why is that? That being nice doesn’t work for me?”

She offered, “Yes, and the humor thing. Samson taught me lots of things…”

He spat back, “You mean John Smith.”

Persephone’s anger flared stellar nova and she snapped, “No! I mean Samson Rockpoint! Don’t ruin our first good conversation please.”

Cowed by her vehemence, he mumbled, “Sorry.”

She mumbled, “Samson taught me about everything. He taught me everything from how to catch a flying bug, so you don’t squish it in your hand, to assembling an anti-grav harness from commercially available parts. Why don’t you two ever talk to me or teach me anything?”

He started slowly, “Well, my Lady, that’s a hard question.” At her arched brow, he sighed, “It is easy to answer, hard for me not to upset you. Typically, your Uncle selects Guardsmen for duty with the family, other houses, or on private contracts. Mostly selection is based on the needs of the client, the compatibility, and the price paid in the case of outside clients. You two were close, and no one expected that. You two were close enough that he took a second tour with you. After his last field tour, he was not the same but wanted to get back out into the field. We all knew he was upset about how that tour ended, survivor’s guilt, or some such but your uncle picked him for you. His reasons are always his own but he generally hand-picks Guardsman himself.

“In our case, ‘Fly’ and ‘Mosquito’ that is,” which drew a smile from Persephone, “We were picked, ordered in fact, by your father, because we were both the most distant and unattached that he knew in the ranks. We were both pulled off our assignments to replace… ‘him’.” His effort at a compromise between the punishment naming rules that stated any disgraced person will only be known by the name of their disgrace, and the insistent daughter of the man whose law it was, didn’t please, but placated Persephone, “Your father knew you two were close. He wanted to make sure you had Guardsmen who were not clouded by emotions for you.”

Grumpy, she asked, “So, I have my father to blame for my own personal ‘Fly’ and ‘Mosquito’? Not my Uncle?”

He calmed, “Don’t blame your father. He wants you alive and safe. And after… ‘he’ fell from grace, your father was furious and embarrassed. We all were! One of our own, neglecting his duty, running around naked in stores, breaking security systems, lying to the Emperor, obstinance, and just… the dishonor of the whole thing! In two hundred years of our tradition, no Guardsmen has ever fallen until ‘him’. It hit us all in the gut, us Guardsmen I mean, my Lady.”

She sighed and told him, in confidence, “It wasn’t like that, or how they say.” Then she admitted, “I can see that you would believe that scenario though. Please try not to think too terribly of Samson.”

Inflexible, he laid it out, “I don’t have a choice, my Lady. The law is the law. A disgraced man is a disgrace to himself and his family and stains all those around him. I cannot for the sake of my own honor allow a compromise of that principle, even for a second. The man who was before the dishonor is dead and gone. There is nothing left of him for any of us, no matter what we want to or did think about the man who was.”

Persephone curled up and buried herself in her pillows. She suddenly missed her Samson very much.

Chapter 30)

“Fly, can I please go apologize to Angela today?”

He snapped, “Stop calling me that. It’s not my name.”

Persephone continued coloring the lines of her notebook page, with her fine point pen, making sure everything was totally blacked on the lines she was working on, never to touch a ‘blank’ line, or she would start over again, “You answer to it well enough. It must be your name.” She pushed some hair back from her eyes as she continued to lounge on her bed, in comfortable clothes, only a short step up from her pajamas.

He corrected, “My name is ‘Guardsman’ that is what you should call me.”

She shouted, “Augh! Now look what you made me do!” She ripped out another ruined piece of paper, balled it, and threw it at him. She started over on the next page “Then tell me your real name and I will use that one. Until then, you are ‘Fly’ and he is ‘Mosquito’! You two even insisted on sitting here and staring at me while I did my stretches and strength work. You two old lechers have seen more of me than professional trainers see of me in the health area. I want to go to the kitchens to apologize and I want to know what your name is.”

Still stubborn he snapped, “My name is ‘Guardsman’.”

She mocked, “You are so boring… no… fun… at… all…”

The ‘Fly’ growled while pointing at her bathroom, “Lady Persephone, the last time you had ‘fun’ you almost killed yourself falling out that window!”

She scoffed dismissively, “I had an anti-gravity harness.”

Infuriated, the powerfully built ‘Fly’ almost roared, “They can fail! Yours was homemade! How are we supposed to keep you safe if you insist on reckless insanity, like that stunt?!”

She scoffed dismissively, “Oh please! And I might slip and die in the shower. It is the kitchens. I’ll even let you come.” Persephone finished her outline of the upper block she planned on coloring in, making sure it was perfect, she moved down two lines and started the process again.

She had nothing but time. And she was bored. And she knew that persistence carved cliffs and waterfalls into mountains and built continents with fire and collision. And she had a lot of paper left, along with a few spare pens.

‘Fly’ sighed as he paced.

‘Mosquito’ had stopped pacing hours ago and had taken her advice after their conversation the evening before and sat.

Persephone flopped to her side. Grabbed a pillow and fluffed it under herself as she dug in for the long haul. She curled comfortably and finished her outline of the second black rectangle.

She asked smoothly, “We have been here all morning… Can we go now?”

“No.”

She finished with a short edge. “Now?”

“No.”

She outlined the upper edge. “Now?”

“No.”

She finished with a short edge. “Now?”

“No!”

She worked on the bottom edge. “Now?”

“No!”

Hearing him fraying, she needled, “I have three more pens after this one, you know…”

Through grinding teeth, he rasped, “No, we are not going.”

She started coloring in, “The door is open, and I’ll scream ‘rape’.”

‘Mosquito’ barked a laugh and ‘Fly’ shot him an evil look. “No! Our instructions are to watch you and not to let you leave.”

Wicked curiosity spiked, as she asked, “Really? Those are your instructions?”

Fly snapped, “Yes! Those are our instructions exactly as spoken to us by Lord Chroynos. Now stop pestering.”

Ignoring his admonition to stop pestering, “If those are your orders, I can go anywhere I want as long as I don’t leave the planet. You just have to watch me.”

The heavily muscled block of a man’s hands balled into fists, “You are not going to leave the planet!”

Smoothly, Persephone lawyered, “Exactly! I won’t be leaving, but your instructions don’t say anything about the room. Only that I’m not supposed to leave, that could mean the whole Palace for all you know…” Persephone turned her notebook to use longer strokes for a time.

The ‘Fly’ snapped back, “It is called ‘The Citadel’. And you don’t know that!”

Summoning all of her spoiled heiress she corrected, “I want to call it ‘The Palace’ no matter what my Granddad called the place; it is very pretty like a palace. It is up in the clouds like a palace, so I want to call it a palace. And you don’t know either, why don’t you call and find out…”

She broke him and he snapped, “Fine! Stop pestering! I’ll be right back,” he stepped out, pointing at her the whole time reminding his teammate to watch her while he was gone. After a short presumably irritated conversation he returned, “Get dressed. You have permission.”

With a deliberate sigh, Persephone capped her pen, and tossed it to the ‘Fly’, as he reentered the room. When he caught it, she needled, “See, that wasn’t so hard now was it?” She stood on her bed, dropped the notebook, turned to the headboard wall, did a handstand, and rolled over backward into a twisting falling back flip, to land facing her closet, before either Guardsman was close enough to do a thing about it, but stare and curse, her reckless insanity.

By the time she had dressed in her windowless closet, the woman she wanted to visit had been located but not alerted. Persephone wanted it to be a surprise.

Up until that point, kitchens to Persephone had always been an exercise in ‘they are over that way somewhere’. They had decorative kitchens with fancy stoves and skilled culinary experts preparing treats for the palate, which were the subject of vid documentaries. Those were the ones Persephone had seen on vid shows. Then there were the ‘guts’ of the kitchen. The guts were where the rest of the kitchen organism lived. The part that literally chewed the raw food components into smaller pieces, turning onions, peppers, lettuce, beans, rice, and any number of other raw fruits, vegetables, and ingredients into what the chefs actually needed to cook. For example, the lower kitchens produced diced onion to perfect proportions and without skin or heart to disturb the cooked texture of the meal. A vital task, but one that the chefs didn’t have time to perform when preparing meals. There was also the ‘other end’ of the kitchen organism, the part that received the dirty dishes and food discards from both the tables and the kitchen above. That part of the kitchen digested the waste and recycled the clean dishes back into the system for the next meal.

After twisting and turning, Persephone discovered that the kitchen was on several levels, serviced by some automation and elevators. Machines did the brute work, but humans still did the fine preparation. Culinary gimmicks came and went, but the venerable royal food preparation industry changed little since the days when humanity was confined to one planet and the cream of the culinary industry lived in stone fortresses with kings and queens.

Persephone was surprised to hear that Angela had never quit her post in the employ of the Citadel. When Persephone thought back on how badly she had treated Angela after Samson’s fall, Persephone could never have blamed Angela for leaving.

The kitchens were a busy place in the middle of the afternoon. Persephone was shocked by the intense level of hustle back and forth between stations in the massive complex of rooms. As ‘Fly’ led the way deeper into the maelstrom, ‘Mosquito’ followed her down the stairs and hall. The level of work was mind-boggling. Persephone struggled to pull the social calendar she had glanced at that morning into her memory and recalled nothing special at all. Her mother had been paring back activities since the blow-up and following fireworks because of her ‘unannounced departure’. Celine had politely been waving things off ‘until next week’.

Persephone wanted to thump her own head when she realized she wasted a full fifteen minutes of her time, traveling the kitchen itself, but thinking about why all the food. It was not just for the guests, it served everyone who lived, worked, and passed through. The kitchens were busy churning out all the complementary foods and small snacks for delivery drivers and visiting guests attending meetings. The kitchens were also working for all the people on the hundreds of floors of administration below the Citadel itself. The kitchens were only placed closest to the Citadel because that was where they had to show the greatest level of presentation. Persephone wanted to kick herself.

The ‘Fly’ pushed open a set of doors into a large, cavernous food preparation… ‘factory’, was the only way Persephone could have described it. Giant machines cleaning and polishing dishes at one end and raw fruits and vegetables at the other, meeting in the middle around a knot of elevators.

Angela was in the middle of the back wall with a table of onions in front of her and a shaving bin to the right side. Her station was next to a large industrial stove with hundreds of square feet of burners and dozens of hustling grillmen. Some of the burners appeared to be boiling water for cooking vegetables; other areas were devoted to sautéing onions. On a separate grill with a smooth surface, instead of open with flame coming out, they appeared to be grilling some form of flat cylindrical meat, and toasting little round rolls, before shuffling them into baskets and sending them down the processing line. It smelled good but looked like nothing Persephone had ever consumed. She wondered if her mother had anything to do with that. To Angela’s right side, was a man removing a cone from the stem base of tomatoes then slicing them into precise rings, and further on another man cleaning and breaking lettuce into leaves, then chopping fine even slices.

Persephone was so fascinated by the process, sights, sounds, and smells she hadn’t realized that she was within a mere ten meters of Angela’s station.

A Guardsman’s black and trim gold uniform stands out like a shadow in the middle of a summer day, in a professional kitchen. Everyone in the kitchens was required to wear pristine white, to ensure they had sanitary uniforms while handling food. At the same time, Persephone looked away from all the fascinating things cooking and moving in the kitchen to her once personal assistant and maid, Angela looked up from her work, and their eyes locked.

Angela had just finished slicing the ends off and peeling an onion. With a deep sigh, she stood the onion on one of the flat sides she had just made, so it would not roll off the table. When she looked up again, she took a step left. Persephone saw her ‘Fly’s’ shoulders tense but could not see why.

Angela’s left hand closed around a panhandle and threw the pan at the lead Guardsmen. It exploded in searing steam and splashed the boiling water.

Persephone’s world became a slideshow of chaos.

The boiling water and vegetables carried by the pan struck him in the center of the chest. Angela growled with her knife still in hand. Skin boiled and burst all over the thick Guardsman’s front. Angela shouldered violently past a cook slamming him into the stove with her left fist. Angela’s knife was raised only not getting any closer as she charged.

Persephone noticed that massively strong arms had locked her in place as they pulled her back the way she had come. Her feet were off the floor, and the scene got smaller, as Mosquito carried her from the room.

Her ‘Fly’ was burned red and pink from the boiling water and had huge broken blisters peeling from his face, neck, and chest. He screamed with rage and pain. He lashed out with his left hand. By luck alone, he found Angela’s knife hand wrist, and forearm and locked his grip in place. He swung his meaty right fist in a wild blind swing. More blisters had broken and deformed over his eyes and face. The broken skin blanketed what was left of his horrifically burned eyes and the blisters under the broken blisters continued to swell and horribly distort his face.

He struck Angela’s jaw violently. His wild punch drove her jaw crooked and out of socket, while crushing her teeth together. Her head spun to an almost impossible angle.

The powerful Guardsman’s feet went out from under him as he slipped on the water and his head crashed into the stove. The blow dented the stove’s metal frame. He had lost his balance in the excruciating pain and on the slippery floor.

Angela went to the floor in a tangle with the Guardsman who still held her arm. She landed extremely hard. Her back arched impossibly and her legs and arms thrashed in every direction in hyperactive bone-cracking seizures.

The crowd of cooks flocked to the three hurt and rendered what limited first aid they knew.

Her crippled Guardsman and Angela were lost in the crowd and the thunder of the approaching armored Home Guard security platoon. The platoon peeled off a squad to escort Persephone out to safety.

The rest of the platoon kept their weapons at the ready as they established a perimeter and moved in to secure the area where the impromptu assassination attempt had nearly succeeded in assassinating the Empire’s heiress.

Chapter 31)

Persephone had finally stopped shaking. She had moved a little beyond terrified wracking sobs, of fear and guilt.

Celine clung to her terrified daughter. She tucked and pulled pillows and blankets closer to her last living baby, her baby girl.

Persephone had demanded to know what happened, and Celine had reluctantly asked a terrified and furious Phyllip to join them in Persephone’s room. Phyllip took all communications in front of Persephone while the mess was being sorted by investigators at every level.

Warsong, the Guardsman battle cruiser, had immediately deployed fighters and established a ‘no-fly-kill-zone’ around the Citadel for a two-kilometer radius and all the way down past the fog, to ground level. The fighters bolstered the already advanced and lethal security systems employed by the Citadel. Warsong had dropped into low orbit over two hours ago and was set to support its fighters with its massive cannons. Warsong’s targeting systems were easily capable of identifying, engaging, hitting, and destroying enemy ship and missile targets approaching at cosmic speeds. The warship had no trouble tracking every potential target from kilometers around the perimeter, from a stationary orbit, just a few kilometers above the Citadel.

The massive warship floated like some terrifying beast of legend that just hung in the sky above the capital city, waiting for prey. Its darkened mass shadowed the city, while it tracked the tens of thousands of targets that circled and detoured around the security perimeter.

A nervous junior officer entered Persephone’s room cautiously.

Nine angry Guardsmen tracked him as he entered the room. Phyllip’s eight all wore full armor and carried their weapon kits. He drew every eye and more attention than he would have had he just reported normally, “The initial medical reports just arrived Lord.”

The giant CEO demanded, “Spit it out, young man! What does it say?”

Caution to the wind, the intelligence officer reported, “It’s not good Sir. The assassin should have succeeded.”

Phyllip snapped, “What?!”

The young man took a breath to calm his frayed nerves. “Yes Sir. It is not good; apparently, she was augmented by military-grade nanos and upgrades. She also had some ‘strange additions’ too. For example, she was surgically altered.”

Persephone’s mouth was hanging open. Her father clasped his hands behind his back in one angry fist. He asked so calmly he was more terrifying than if he had shouted, “Excuse me? How is that?”

Words came to buy him time, “Well, she had ‘modifications’, several different ones in fact.” The junior officer took a deep breath and wiped his brow while collecting his thoughts as fast as he could, “First she was armored with a synthetic, non-metallic mesh augment we’ve never seen that would stop blades from penetrating her vital organs. That mesh formed a sort of invisible and flexible armor under her skin. She also had augmented strength and… some kind of new ‘aggression’ nanos added to her blood.”

Disbelieving, Phyllip demanded, “You mean someone put all of that into a cook’s assistant?”

Sounding shocked he was hearing himself say it the officer reported, “Yes Sir. There is more. We took three casualties, not the two we initially reported. The cook that the assassin pushed out of her way has broken ribs and a collapsed lung. Initially, he was overlooked because he was on his feet, but he deteriorated when his own excitement wore off. The medics evacuated him too. It was from where she pushed him, and he hit the stove.”

Phyllip asked suspiciously, “How do you know?”

The junior officer was obviously a talented investigator but nervous and unsure of himself in front of such ranking members of society. He probably had no family ties and was instead a junior career officer through his merit alone. His eyes closed briefly as he scratched his brow with his right hand. Persephone could see that he thought he knew the answer, but it looked like he was conflicted over sharing his opinion. Perhaps because someone higher did not agree, or he was only speculating himself. He exhaled after his short pause, and acted on his instincts, “Because he has two distinct bruises. He has one bruise where he struck the grill and the other is on his back where she punched him. The bruise on his back is where the broken ribs are, her fist print is clearly bruised into his back above the broken ribs.”

Phyllip asked, anger spilling out, “And William?”

The officer answered, “Yes Sir. The only reason Guardsman Rasmussen was able to stop her was that he accidentally struck her jaw at exactly the right spot to activate her ‘suicide tooth’.”

Rage slipping into a dumbfounded question, Phyllip Chroynos asked, “A what!?”

The young investigator pushed his hand through his hair to the back of his neck. He sighed as if he did not believe what he was about to say. “Yes Sir, a ‘suicide tooth’. I had to… I mean, we had to dig pretty far back to find a reference to it. But it is an ancient trick used by old Earth pre-space flight intelligence services. It fell out of favor for so long it is nearly forgotten. It was a method for agents to hide lethal compounds so they could avoid capture, as a last resort. That tooth released or triggered a self-destruct mechanism in the woman’s embedded nanos. This tooth-mounted ‘self-destruct’ was activated by either stopping her heart, or it had to be ‘self-activated’ by an aware individual. All she had to do was bite down at just the right angle and pressure, and the tooth would trigger the self-destruct. Sir… they, the nanos I mean, turned on and consumed the host. They swarmed the brain first but went after everything. The body is… the body was coming apart before we could get it to the medical center. The nanos were set on a timed run, so they shut down after the body started eating itself. They only affected the host and didn’t spread, so there was no cross-contamination. We will get nothing out of the body. We can’t trace the brain or use any of our other forensic mental mapping techniques. I am afraid we will need to do time-consuming and old-fashioned detective work.

“Sir, the only reason we know anything about the assassin’s nano augments was because Guardsman Rasmussen hit her so hard, that she bit more than an inch off the end of her tongue. She spit it out when she went into convulsions and spilled blood everywhere. If it wasn’t for those tissue and blood samples from the piece of tongue that wasn’t exposed to the self-destruct protocol, we would have nothing. Everything else connected to her bloodstream was consumed in the self-destruct.” The investigator looked down for a moment and exhaled in disappointment and frustration, “And as thorough as her handlers were, I don’t have much hope of finding anything that will trace back to her handlers.”

Phyllip asked calmly, “Friendly casualties?”

He reported, “Guardsman Rasmussen is in rough shape.”

Persephone cracked into wracking tears and sobs again which rattled the junior officer more than the razor-sharp eyes of her father.

The interruption derailed him, “Um, ah, his most serious injuries are the burns over so much of his body and the risk of infection they represent. He also has a concussion and probably massive vision damage. He is a Guardsman so his prognosis for recovery is extremely high. He will however be offline for a fairly long time. As you know Sir, eyes take forever to rebuild, all those nerve endings and…”

Phyllip snapped at what he already knew. “Yes… Yes! Get on with it.”

Nonplussed, the intelligence officer continued, “The cook is responding well to standard treatment. He will be offline for a few days as his ribs mend normally, but he is not at risk of any long-term disability.”

Phyllip admitted, “Well, that is good news at least. I want to see both men tonight. And make sure the Assistant Cook receives all pay and allowances while on disability. I need time to think and be alone with my family. I want everyone out. Bryce, I want you to search the room, no stragglers, and close the door on your way out.”

Her taller Guardsman snapped, “Yes Sir.”

After the Guardsmen’s reluctant exodus and the door closed, Persephone sobbed, “‘William’, I always called him ‘Fly’.”

Completely confused her mother asked, “Persephone, why would you ever call him that?” Her father and mother listened with perverse interest waiting for the punchline to that particular joke.

Distraught, she answered, “Because they wouldn’t tell me their names and because ‘Bryce’ and ‘William’ are always buzzing around and bothering me… I called them ‘Mosquito’ and ‘Fly’.”

Phyllip snorted a laugh, Celine shot him a look, but her correction died on the ground, as Persephone laughed and cried at her shared joke.

Chapter 32)

Persephone was back to scribbling in her notebook, quietly coloring in alternating lines in perfect black. Celine fretted over her young daughter and lay beside her on the bed to smooth her hair, while Persephone propped her head up on the pillow, continuing to make her perfectly black bars.

Phyllip paced silently and slowly, while he considered the whole situation in his head. Warsong was still hanging in low geosynchronous orbit, the traffic quarantine, the news blackout, the closed gates, and reporters evicted from their comfortable perches outside those gates. The imminent shift change meant that everyone on the planet would know something bad had happened today and details of rumor and half-truths would pour out once the newsies got a hold of distraught Citadel employees.

An unknown number of assassins and handlers were still in play. If they didn’t already know, they would soon know the results of their failed effort soon enough. Accidentally tripping one sleeper agent early might only trigger more attacks which could come from unknown angles. There was no telling how many more enemy agents were hiding in place already or actively looking for their targets.

Persephone and he had already discussed this. The enemy’s target needed to become harder to hit. The Guardsman in him knew it was time to attack. The father in him feared terribly what he was about to ask his daughter to risk. The husband in him wept at the emotional pain he was about to inflict on his poor battered and bereaved wife.

The CEO of an Interstellar Empire made his decision as he kissed the top of poor Celine’s head. While still holding his wife and last living child, he slipped the pen out of Persephone’s hand. Under the cover of her long brown hair, he wrote a simple message in the numeric code she had taught him, in his office, when she had returned, from her last adventure.

The message he scrolled on the paper was simple, in numbers, and written upside down but was legible. “Run now. Silence. Bag packed. Finish line. I will pull guards.”

Persephone tensed in understanding after a lengthy translation process, in her head, for such a long message. She did not dare translate the coded message on her paper.

Celine felt her world sinking. She knew something was wrong, she had seen this fright in her husband’s eyes every time someone had tried to kill their children. She saw the circumspect method of delivery for the coded message. She was no fool, she knew the dangers all too well herself. She saw her husband’s deliberate care and deception, hiding the message in a loving embrace, under hair, and out of sight of anyone who may be probing on security cameras. She feared the worst. She did not know anything, but she knew everything was wrong and something was happening. Celine remained silent and still as a grave.

With a shuddering shaky exhale, Persephone returned to her game of filling in blocks on her paper. She used more haste, and less care for the outlines. Most of her attention was focused on keeping her hair around the notebook and the line with his message.

Her father stood to pace. His slow deliberate strides and chin-stroking hand masked his steady glances at her progress on the bar. His message disappeared, under thick black ink, and pressure from the point of the pen. She repeatedly covered the numbers with more pressure and more ink.

Phyllip finished his last pace and looked at his young daughter, one last time, before continuing to the door. As it opened silently, “Bryce, please come with me. We have some work to do. We need to make some adjustments to my daughter’s security…” Anything that followed during that conversation was muffled by the silent seal of the door.

Persephone slapped the pages of the notebook together and closed it. She noticed absently how many pages she had actually colored in using her alternating monochrome. She sent the notebook on a spinning, flapping, and page-flattering flight toward her desk. It crashed into the wall and various secretarial objects were kept there. The flipping pen rolled through the air and followed the notebook as she flicked her thumb over her index finger, flipping the pen out of her hand.

Her ever-polite and proper mother groused, “Persephone. Don’t throw things like that.”

Persephone just watched her and smiled as she stretched luxuriously on her comfortable bed. She followed her stretch immediately with a kiss on her mother’s cheek and a tight hug.

Upon releasing her mother, both hands fell to the mattress beside her. She stretched her face down her legs and began to curl her feet back to her head. Her curious mother remained still and confused, until Persephone’s flexible legs and feet were over her head and began to rise vertically. Her head and chest rocked forward, over the shared pillow.

The startled mother could only manage, “Persephone!” The daughter smiled as her hair fell from her face and she pushed up from a backward curve to a candlestick, then to a handstand. She fell backward, landing on both feet, at a walk, facing her closet. “Young lady! Don’t you ever let me see you do that ever again! … Do you hear me?!”

Persephone acknowledged, “Alright Mom, next time I will ask you to close your eyes.”

Her mother snapped, “Persephone Apollonia Chroynos! You know damn well what I mean! I will not close my eyes to that insanity. You will break your neck doing that sort of craziness!”

Persephone countered, “No, I won’t,” as she disappeared into the closet, “I’ve been doing it for years; I haven’t broken my neck yet…”

Celine stormed after her impertinent daughter. Finally gathering her considerable, but unnerved wits and running her down, she entered the closet at full steam, “Young lady! I don’t care how many years you have been doing that! There is always a first time for everything, and that first time will be you breaking your neck!”

The travel pack was in place. Thomys and Phyllip had spent weeks smuggling items into her closet, during ‘inspections’. Every day a new item was added to the pack in the back corner. They had held off sending her in hopes that they could locate some clue to expose and destroy the assassins. Unfortunately, today’s attempt on her life had precipitated Phyllip’s desperate action.

Persephone pulled a Family House’s Secretarial Service uniform from the top of the bag. Her irritated mother demanded, “What are you playing at now young lady?!”

Turning to face her mother, Persephone placed her left index finger over her mouth and beckoned her mother closer with her right hand. She then pointed up at where the ever-present security cameras were now hung in the main room. The closets and bathrooms were the only ‘dead spaces’ to video, but the audio worked fine.

Persephone was pleased to find her small pad and pen, still where she had placed them, weeks before. Apparently, neither man had removed them from the bag, while adding items they thought more important. Oddly, there was a letter tucked into the folds of the notepad. This time, it was Persephone’s turn to be shocked. The letter was written in her father’s hand, which avoided digital fingerprints and detection. It was addressed to Samson Rockpoint, not ‘John Smith’. She tucked that strange little article away for later inquiry when she had fewer pressing matters.

In the pad Persephone scrolled, while talking to her mother, “I want to go to the gym Mom. Please join me.” The pad was another message entirely, ‘must leave, assassins still in the palace, security contaminated, escape planned for weeks while we looked for them’. The abject look of horror in her mother’s eyes crushed Persephone’s heart.

While holding her mother tightly in her left arm, she pulled down an exercise suit with her right. She pushed it into her mother’s hands. “I have been sitting still for too long. I want to go to the sauna rather than our private gym. I hope you will join me.”

Taking the cue, her mother replied, “I suppose Persephone; I have been too long without going myself.” Persephone was already stripping off her comfortable clothing and replacing them quickly with the secretarial uniform top, skirt, and her black soft-soled shoes. Her mother began to quickly change, following her daughter’s lead.

The travel pack disappeared into a large gym tote bag. Persephone shoved pieces of her mother’s and her clothing into the bag and overstuffed the main compartment. The bag would not close properly, and articles of clothing hung free at the closure. Persephone wrapped herself in a large fuzzy sauna robe, covering the secretarial uniform, and slung the decoy bag with its precious travel pack cargo, hidden under the gym-related articles, over her shoulder.

Persephone smiled a sad smile at her mother. A tear dripped from her mother’s careworn, but still stunning, face, while she softly caressed her daughter’s own face. The pain of watching four of her babies die horribly, and her last coming so close this very day, had Celine’s hands and eyes trembling.

Much more confidently and brighter than she felt Persephone chirped, “Ready to go get our workout started, Mom?”

Her mother answered, “Yes dear. It will be much better than me watching you try and break your neck,” she smiled as she wiped away her last tear, stood tall, and recalled her finishing school posture and composure lessons.

Celine’s two Guardsmen split at the women’s gym locker room door, one remained at the locker room entry and the other went around to the gym side door to wait for the women.

Persephone’s sauna habit irked her mother who believed all that steam and heat was unnecessary for a proper and ladylike woman. Celine had forbidden the construction of a sauna in their private gym. It was a fortuitous condition for Persephone to make her escape.

She stowed the decoy bag in a locker, along with the sauna robe.

Persephone donned her uniform cap and pulled her hair up, tucking in most but leaving clumps to fall raggedly. Persephone became just another haggard shift worker after a long day of rumors and stress.

Celine watched in shock and horror as Persephone shrank two inches, hunched, rolled her shoulders in, and stooped her neck to shave off yet more height. Persephone pulled the official employment badge, listing her as a member of the house secretarial pool, complete with her picture on it, from her uniform’s skirt pocket. She clipped the identification badge to the left breast pocket, she looked at her mother. Persephone teased her mother in the unmonitored and quiet corner of the women’s locker room, “Why Lady Celine Udell, you look as if you have seen a ghost.”

Shocked, Celine mumbled, “Apparently I have…” Celine whispered back, “I would hardly recognize you and you are my own daughter! You turned into a stranger right in front of my eyes.”

Persephone teased back in a whisper, “You say that like it is the first time I have snuck out.”

Mother responded flat and serious, “Look how well it turned out when you snuck out; the whole place was in an uproar looking for you!”

Persephone teased, “Why mother,” Persephone replied coyly, “You say that like that was the only time I ever snuck out.”

Shocked and irritated Celine demanded, “You mean you have done this more than once!? But you got caught!”

Teasing, Persephone responded, “Correction, I walked in the front gate on purpose, just to be a nuisance. I’ve been sneaking in and out at will since I was sixteen; I’ve done it hundreds of times.”

Persephone kissed her mortified mother’s cheek before smiling, turning, and disappearing into the twisting turning warren of lockers.

Thank You!

Thank you for reading this chapter!

Your next chapter is HERE.

If you liked what you read and you are interested in the full book the links are HERE on the Honor of the Fallen book page…

However, if you are more interested in the narrated version, you can catch the start of your author-narrated series HERE:

Enjoy!