The Guardsman: Book1-HotF: Chapter 11-13

THE GUARDSMAN: Book 1: Honor of the Fallen – Chapters 11-13

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The Guardsman, Book 1: Honor of the Fallen:

Chapter 11)

John retrieved his comm, the remainder of his personal equipment, and mission funds from his hidden stash site many levels above Qudir’s warehouse, in the supposedly abandoned tower.

Dead tired, hungry, and even thirstier, John worked through the fatigue to find water and food. John sprang for the first for-hire air car he saw, which was headed away from the run-down industrial and warehouse district.

The driver had almost passed him, probably assuming he was just some vagrant at a tram stop until he saw the flap of currency, in both John’s hands. After he stopped, the driver asked suspiciously, “Where are you headed, buddy?”

John flopped bonelessly into the seat, “A hundred credits for stopping, thanks.” When the half week’s wages disappeared and the vehicle lifted from the tram stop, John still had not figured out where he needed to go.

The driver asked again, “Where too?”

John admitted, “I have no idea. This is not my neighborhood. I’ve finished my business that took me here. I need something to eat and drink and a one-use-for-hire terminal shop.”

The hired driver casually intoned, “You got it, buddy. Mind if we travel for a little while? There is not much around here. I was just taking a shortcut. I hadn’t planned to stop.”

Exhausted, John answered honestly, “Not at all, you were pointing in the direction I needed to go, so I flagged you down.”

The private cabby said, “Fair enough, I’ll take your money for the fare.”

John did not bother turning on his comm, he did not want to listen to the fat man or his pointless messages telling him how many times he was fired.

John looked around, the sun had settled on the horizon, and they were out of the blight section and near his neighborhood. “Driver, how long have we been here? We were nowhere near here.”

The driver offered, “I asked you where you wanted to go and you gave me the building number. I just punched you into the navigation and followed the blips.”

John admitted, “I told you where I needed to go? I do not remember doing that.”

The driver suggested, “Well then, I guess you talk in your sleep because you answered me clear as day. I thought you were just resting your eyes, as clear as you answered.”

John frowned and looked around, a few hundred kilometers in a skimmer was not going to be cheap. They set down on a public dock and exchanged payment, which as he suspected, was not cheap. His initial payment was almost three weeks’ pay.

As the vehicle lifted leaving him, John realized he was heavily armed, and above multiple security cordons, in his building. He groaned at the momentarily forgotten, but now pending security hassles.

His scabbed and ripped palms had started to close, but the shaking in his hands from fatigue, moderate exposure, and lack of nutrients was becoming annoying. Out of habit he pulled out his Identification Card and did not bother putting away the private inspector badge when that came out in front of his Identity Card too. On entering the doors, all the alarms sounded, and as security approached. They only spent a momentary glance at his inspector’s badge and waved John through.

He was too tired to protest his good luck as he wandered into the halls.

Strolling down the concourse like it was his own living room, John muttered, “What the hell.” The ripped, torn, dirty, tired, heavily armed, and irritable man, who was now John Smith, turned to a nice eatery, pulled a coin from the hidden slip in his belt, and pushed the doors open.

He ignored the startled security officers and made a straight line for the maître’d. He began without preamble, “I need some food and drink, for one, to go.” As he stopped at the podium, the security man to his right stepped forward aggressively but stopped in his tracks as he saw the shoulder-holstered Gauss pistol, when the overcoat flapped open. John was so tired he was forgetting his new place in the world, where he was no longer authorized to act with impunity. John met the man’s eyes levelly, his fingertips tingled in eager anticipation until the other man took a step back.

Raising his right hand, a silver coin cascaded down and up and back down the outside of John’s fingers, clearly it was an Imperial Thousand Credit coin. The startled restaurateur questioned, “What will you have sir?”

Looking left and right, ignoring both guards, he spotted a thick rich paper menu posted to the left, reading at a glance, and tapping three items as a reply, the coin stopped rolling, and waited, pinched between his thumb and index finger, to change hands.

The server’s reversed attitude allowed him to offer, “Thank you, excellent choices sir.” The coin disappeared into the maître’d’s hand, in one smooth motion, “Please have a seat. I will place your order and return with your change.”

“Hey buddy,” the security sitting next to him questioned, “Why the kit?”

John looked down at his open coat and exposed gear and weapons, before replying curtly, “Rough assignment,” which ended the conversation with its finality. Neither guard pursued the matter further. Both were jaded enough to know that they did not live in a paradise world. Both men knew that when a man entered and casually paid with a coin that was more than they earned in a month they should not pry, even if they were in similar trades. They assumed he was out of their league and did not bother trying to talk shop.

When the change and food returned, the bill left only a narrow wad of cash but provided a pleasantly heavy bag of food and drink. A month’s wages for one meal would normally have sent John into budgeting fits, but he was too tired and hungry to notice.

Besides, the real steak was worth it. And not a single bean in the whole order!

Finding a disposable, secure terminal was easy. Finding a disposable, secure terminal that they would allow a customer to eat at was another matter entirely. Apparently, the ‘disposable terminal’ part of that request did not register with whoever wrote the ‘Uniform Code of Disposable Secure Terminal Shops Operations and Customer Irritation’ manual. If the desk got dirty, they could wipe it off. They were going to burn the drive card and recycle the case anyway. It was pointless to fret over his eating, but the employee did anyway.

John almost lost his patience before remembering that at this level money opened all doors; John flipped the wad of cash change from the meal again. In retrospect, he did not know if it was the cash or the hip holster pistol it exposed that opened that particular door. He didn’t care because he was allowed into a terminal, locked and soundproofed the door, and proceeded to type his report while eating voraciously.

John recounted the entire adventure, leaving out the parts that would get him in trouble like the purchase of illegal weapons, which were innocuously reported with innocent titles like ‘equipment preparation’. The death of the Qudir’s lieutenant Benjamin became ‘located a murdered criminal on entry, behind boxes in the warehouse, bypassed and preceded with the mission’. That neatly explained the reason he was trapped for so long and could not leave. It also avoided a detailed explanation of how the murder happened. It also skipped over any indications that would point to his possession of five highly illegal weapons, at the scene of the crime. He carried the sword and two pistols into the mission and picked up the knife and third pistol while operating in the warehouse.

The report grew in mass and detail as links and photos added to the colorful collage of events that formed the arc of the search and final report. The range of the report went from the basic library’s public files and record searches to the underbelly of the raging dirt side club scene that John had discovered Qudir was known to visit. It went from the light, down into the blighted areas of the world, into illegal gambling parlors, to the bedrooms of brothels and prostitution. Qudir was not just some ‘random guy’, he turned out to be a regional boss for a major crime syndicate, and his scope and range of activities were significant.

Qudir’s debauchery was on par with his peers. That was how John had tracked him.

Qudir talked too loudly… all the time. Even to the hookers he was using.

Qudir’s blurted statements about ‘the big deal tomorrow’, which he had made to a whole gambling den, had allowed John to follow him to the warehouse address. It was just about as stupid a thing John had ever heard as the woman recounted everything he said in detail. However, that mistake provided John with the perfect location to acquire more intel on his operations and finally plant the tracking beacon on one of Qudir’s vehicles. No one ever said criminals were smart people.

Once the massive report was finished and John sent the record to the boss, he realized that it was now no longer late at night, but ‘morning’.

Chapter 12)

John felt like the walking dead as he stumbled and bumped down the corridor to his apartment.

His overly complex system screamed at him to take a break. The nearly three weeks of constant tracking, hunting, sneaking, observing, retreating, reacquiring, and finally the dodgy escape from the hostile warehouse, left him totally drained. Then there were the thousands of stairs he must have climbed moving in the unmaintained nether regions of the empire.

His nanobots were throwing fits over all the lactic acid they were forced to help his body collect and process. His little helpers were complaining in the form of modest cramps and a bone-deep hunger for food and water, so they could finish processing the overwhelming piles of waste collected in his liver and blood.

There had been entertaining moments. Looking back, the quest for Gauss pistols was enjoyable. It was a fun learning experience that now allowed him to smile softly through his fatigue. There were a few scary places in the mist that turned out to be enjoyable if you were into loud noise claiming ‘musical’ status. The bar was nice and the sights at the gambling den with the near-naked cocktail waitresses was fun. John had not seen a woman up close in months. Let alone a half-naked one.

The smells of those wonderful creatures were so amazing thinking back on it made his eyes want to roll into his skull and his tongue fell out to drag on the floor. Other things got reactions too but given his situation, those reactions were ‘unrealizable’.

John pulled his muted comm to check the time. The barrage of advertisements and irritating messages that interrupted the simple task, for the first time in a day, assaulted his senses, yet again. “I need to pay for a comm. This is just stupid to keep doing this to myself.” John was so tired he really did not care; his reply was almost rote as he trudged down the corridor. The hassle of deleting or moving the messages just fell into the hazy abyss of fatigue. The minor fact that it was almost time to go to work was totally unimportant. He would normally be waking up in about seventy minutes. Fortunately, the fat man slept, so there were no new nagging messages from his boss.

Some absent part of his brain realized that he had spent the better part of eight hours on that disposable terminal inputting data into the final tracking report on Qudir.

The date did not match his recollection. He had lost more than a day, almost two days. Lost in the focus-less haze of fatigue with a body desperately trying to consume its first real meal in almost a month, John had to call up the calendar log of events very deliberately.

With disobedient fatigue fatigue-hazed eyes, John thumbed through the comm’s calendar, absently noting the lack of meals and sleep.

By the time the end of the mission log arrived, John realized he had not spent seventy-two hours in the warehouse but over ninety, almost a hundred hours. He had been using the counting method to stay awake, and track time, without the comm or other electronic timepiece that could give him away, with noise. The rough count to stay awake had obviously failed. “Damn it,” as John realized he must have slept for eighteen hours, plus, on that catwalk of utility conduits. One roll or abrupt toss in his sleep and he would wake while falling to the concrete floor twenty meters below. He had just kept counting; he counted, fell asleep, woke, and kept on counting from where he had left off.

Some workers passed him while he was paging back through his schedule, they were on their way to work, while he was just leaning against the wall, looking lost.

During the twenty-three days of the mission, he counted and logged a total of thirty-eight hours of sleep. That included the eighteen hours that he had slept one roll from his trip to the morgue. Or most likely a trip out the bay door into the fog below, followed by the ground courtesy of Qudir’s thugs.

“No wonder I’m loopy.” John dropped the comm into his pocket and followed immediately by running his fingers back through his hair. The dust and grime that flicked from the matted mass of overly long fur, he called hair, must have raised more than one look during his descent home from the ‘high-life’ at the top of the tower where he had ordered food and prepared his report. John did not recall a single dirty look but seeing the pieces of unknown filth falling from his hair he could understand why people would look at him.

Digging deep to find his motivation, John started walking down the hall again after his short break.

Everything was wrong with the world. John felt bad, smelled bad, and probably looked worse. The break-in at his apartment door was just another notch on the day’s tally of ‘screwed up’.

Adrenaline kicked his battered system into overdrive and associated high alert. His nanobots abandoned whatever low-level maintenance task they were performing when the adrenaline arrived and prepared his body for combat. Both holstered pistols found a hand as his foot struck the bottom of the door. A single set of quick steps followed by a combat crouch, sent him breaching the threshold of his own door.

The target spun. Long brown hair whipped to the sides.

The door smacked his right foot, after rebounding against his counter, as the door stopped.

Wondrous gray-blue eyes met his. “Gods below Samson! You scared the life out of me!”

He snapped, “What are you doing here?” The question came out harsher than he had intended.

She sounded hurt, “I’m sorry! I wanted to see you.”

She was on the verge of tears when Samson kicked the door closed behind him. His pistols smoothly found their way back to their holsters. He removed a simple empty plastic bottle from the counter behind the door, placed it over the ‘L’ handle of the door, and propped the bottle back against the door jam. The bottle would fall, clattering and bouncing on the floor, if anyone jostled his door when he was not looking.

He started popping straps on his gear and dropped his overcoat, unceremoniously in the middle of the kitchenette floor, the same floor space that doubled as an entry and foyer. His hands twisted while the thick grubby coat fell, it thumped to the floor, and with the weight finally gone he realized how filthy it must be. He went immediately back to the snaps and clips on his weapons.

Frustrated, he corrected, “That’s not what I meant, and you know it. It is dangerous for you here. Persephone you need to go home.” The sword thumped to the folding table followed closely by the first then second holstered Gauss pistols, and then the loose weapons and minor equipment. The new pistol and knife joined the collection unceremoniously on top of the tangled harnesses and holsters. All of his weapons and equipment poured out of him like technological sweat, into a puddle, on the table.

Samson pulled the tail of his shirt out and absently pulled his hooded-over shirt off. It flopped on top of the rumpled pile of his overcoat. Next, he pulled the conceal pouches for his twenty gauss pistol magazines, from his midsection.

Persephone frowned and her brow pinched together as she watched the armory pour onto the table, and dirty clothes collect on the floor. She said absently, while more equipment was pushed together in a consolidated pile against the wall, “I can’t go home.”

Irritated, he responded, “Persephone,” Samson paused with a sigh, “What do you mean you ‘can’t go home’?”

She stated the obvious, “Well, I snuck out. I spent all night looking for this place. I just got here a few minutes ago. Besides, if I go home, I will be in trouble and I still won’t have seen you.”

With a sigh of acceptance, the words escaped, “Persephone, you are going to be the death of me.”

Her unnaturally pretty face scrunched, and she snapped, “I don’t think so Samson. I think you are already dead because you sure do stink like you are dead. I thought you would smell better out of those ratty clothes, but it is like you are letting more stink out now than you were before.” The stunning eyes reflected and improved upon the radiant smile as she stepped forward, “Boy! You stink!”

His withering stare showed cracks of mirth around the edges. “I’ve been on a mission for almost a month. I have not bathed or changed, I rarely shaved more than once every three days. I’ve been everywhere from the mists to the top of the world, to the high class, to the blighted, toxic, abandoned industrial mess, southwest of here.”

She agreed, “Yes. I can see that it looks and smells like you have been dragged through every bathroom and garbage shoot from here to there,” she said, stepping around him, over-dramatizing her avoidance of his person, and his discarded clothing. She found a clean washcloth at the sink and wet it with some water and then soap. “Stop scowling you,” the little woman stepped forward, and slapped the warm cloth to Samson’s face as she happily rubbed back and forth like she was trying to scrape off paint.

She bit back her giggles as she manhandled the stoic man.

When she pulled back the cloth and looked at it all she could say was a stunned, “Eww!”

She turned the washcloth to Samson, for his inspection, and the white cloth was brown with the dirt and grime she had rubbed off his face and out of his stubble. “I’ll go take a shower.”

She was turning playful, and quipped, “You better, dirty boy!” Before he could move or escape, her tiny thumb wiped the small collection of soap bubbles off his lips as she softly kissed him ‘hello’.

Samson finished stripping to nothing, leaving the stinking filthy clothes in a pile that almost tried to crawl after him on its own, as he walked away.

Before he reached the door, she asked angelically, “So, I’ll burn all this while you are in there then?”

Rebuffing her nonsense, Samson said sweetly, “No, you won’t,” as he pulled the door closed behind himself.

As soon as he started the hair trimmers the door opened. He was turning to look at the disturbance, when her hand slapped his bottom, hard. “So, since when do we close doors?”

He offered, “Since I’m trying to be polite and contain my stink,” Samson made the first swipe with the trimmers reducing the mass of fur by half.

She unplugged the trimmers on the way out of the bathroom door. Then warned, “Stop! Let me do it, silly boy!”

Frustrated, he snapped, “Persephone!”

She grumbled, correcting, “Stay there, Mister Impatient.” She returned to the bathroom door from the two steps it took her to cover the distance to the table where she had grabbed a chair. She shoved it into the tiny bathroom, “Sit. You never could do this right. I do not know how you survived before we met.”

He reminded the little pest, “I survived very well thank you.”

Her insistent hands on his shoulders parked his naked bottom on the cold chair. “Well fine. Be that way then, I’ll make this haircut all crooked to match your bad attitude.”

He reminded her, “Do not tempt me, little woman.”

She responded without heat, “You know you are happy to see me. You cannot lie to me and you know it.” Large chunks of thick matted hair fell to the floor around him under her expert hand.

Frustrated, but returning to their old banter, he snapped, “Yes, I can, and there is nothing you can do about it.”

The trimmers shut off abruptly and appeared threateningly waving under his nose. The crystal blue colored eyes bored into his soul. Her smile told him he was lost, as badly as he had lost the last verbal exchange. “Samson Rockpoint, you never could, nor will you ever be able to lie to me. I can sniff it out on you faster than I can smell that horrible stink coming from the rest of your stinky, rotting, dirty, nasty, filthy body of yours.” Leaning in close for another kiss, she aborted her tease and pulled up abruptly to whisper, “Besides, you are happy to see me. I know that for a fact.” Her eyes locked his and held him, suspending his heartbeat. Then she reminded, “Your little friend betrayed you,” she flicked her eyes down.

Samson knew instantly and exactly what part of his anatomy had betrayed him. His sputtering half-curses and invectives never did more than amuse her and add to her giggles and fits of laughter, while she hacked away at his excess hair.

After a very short time, her gentle hand was running over and softly turning his head while she touched up and faded his haircut, while she smoothed its detailing, in her typical artful and expert fashion. Samson wanted to fall asleep in the chair under her softly caressing hands on his head and neck.

When the click of the trimmer’s power cut the noise he still did not move. Her soft finger gently shook his head from side to side, “Come on you, into the shower and scrape off that city stink. I’ll clean this mess up.”

Samson looked down and saw more hair piled than he had shed in his last several cuts combined. He stood and obeyed the little woman without question.

As he washed, Samson could see her moving back and forth in the bathroom scooping up the hair and disposing of it. When she finished, she closed the door to keep the warm air in. When he turned to rinse his back, she was still standing in the bathroom, quietly watching.

When he was done, she was waiting with a clean towel. She leaned in for her first real kiss. She unleashed the irresistible ‘girl purr’ of hers. When they finished, she relaxed with her head against his chest and inhaled deeply. “Umm, that is what I remember. Good, clean, strong man smell. I knew I could find it somewhere under all that stink.”

Calm, he asked, “Can I ask you a favor, love?”

She asked, “What’s that, Samson?” She opened her eyes and looked up into his eyes.

Still calm, he requested, “Please, go turn the water on in the kitchen to hot.”

She snapped, “That’s it! Just turn the water on!? I thought you wanted something romantic or loving or kind, but you just want your water turned on hot!?”

He innocently protested, “It is something romantic. I’m going to make you breakfast. Then we are both going to take a nap because neither of us has eaten this morning. We both need food and to catch up on our sleep or we will be useless.”

Her furious expression and accusing finger were betrayed by the giggles that threatened to erupt, “Only because it’s you!”

Samson waited for her to turn, before cracking her bottom with his much larger stronger hand.

Her decidedly undignified squawk only offset her comment, “You can’t hit a princess! What are you thinking! You are a crass barbarian man!”

Playing along with her corporate royalty fiction, he teased, “I would never hit a princess. All I did was give you a little gentle motivation because you were taking too long, and you were blocking the door.”

All Persephone could sputter was, “What?”

Samson dismissed the woman with a wave of his finger, across her nose in the direction of the kitchenette. He slowly spelled out, “You… Go… Now… Water… On hot,” Persephone was about to go apoplectic and explode when Samson cupped her chin in his left hand between thumb and index finger and delivered a light kiss, “And love, try not to burn the water.”

Persephone was so irritated she could hardly remember how to blink. All at once she spilled out, “Samson Rockpoint! You infuriating… Man! I do not know why I put up with you and keep coming back for your abuse! I should have you quartered and fed to the hounds for your insolence!”

Samson used both hands to cup her angelic face and draw her close as she twitched furiously, “But love, you have not got any hounds.” He turned her gently, setting her in motion, while she continued to sputter.

His second slap to her bottom scored a direct hit on the other half, eliciting another undignified squawk.

While Samson dressed, he directed Persephone around the kitchen and storage area to the items they would need for breakfast. By the time she had everything collected she had no idea what to do with it, but Samson was done with dressing.

He cradled her in his arms as she reclined against his chest, while he added fire to the water, crushed the contents of a bag once with his fist, opened it, and poured the hard-dusty-looking stuff into the water.

She watched with curiosity as the water boiled. They talked about how people were, and what they had each been doing lately.

Samson finally had enough of smelling the noxious clothes, next to them, and stuffed the pile into the dual-purpose dish and clothes washer with extra detergent.

He washed his hands and immediately went back to cradling her while she talked about this and that.

When he poked the water and hard stuff with the spoon, it was no longer hard. He turned off the stove and pulled two bowls and spoons from the dish cabinet. He detoured to the table to scoop his pile of equipment off the surface and dump it onto the counter. The soup was divided into bowls, and they bumped knees happily under the tiny table, while they ate together for the first time in too long.

With dangerously schooled calm, she asked, “Samson, I have to ask. How did you get three pistols? And a sword? And the little knife? I know… with your… ‘condition’ you are not supposed to have any of them. So how did you manage?”

Sidestepping her formal inquiry, he figured a straight answer was best. “The first two pistols I made from parts, I have a third from my initial purchase that is not so good, but I keep that as a spare and for spare parts. The sword I have had for years, I kept it in one of my storage lockers. The knife and loose pistol were… are… ‘recently acquired’.”

She stared ice and snapped, “Samson Rockpoint! I told you I know when you are lying, and you are hiding something. I could hear it in your voice just now. What are you hiding from me?” She figured there was a story for the loose pistol, but the knife had her attention.

Caught, he felt his speech waiver, “Well, I sort of picked it up. From someone who wouldn’t need it anymore.”

Her disappointment cut worse than the ceramic blade could have as she condemned him, “You killed someone for a knife?!”

Obscuring with pure truth, he answered, “Well not really.”

Her head instantly clicked to the side as she stopped everything expecting completion to the answer. She used the genetically encoded response all females have that makes a guilty male sweat under her glare. She did not need to ask for elaboration, it just arrived unbidden from him.

Samson spilled the beans, “He was a bad guy, a gangster, a criminal. I was doing surveillance on his boss when he went looking around and almost ran into me. I took him out, quickly and quietly. I searched him. And I took his key card for the warehouse, but I got rid of the key. I kept the pistol and the blade. I finished the mission and got out. I promise! He was the only one I killed, and the knife was just a bonus.”

Disappointment making her sound hollow, “You’re proud of it aren’t you?”

Sounding dumb to himself as soon as he asked, “The knife?”

Put out, she snapped, “Of course, silly!”

Shrugging, he admitted, “Well, yes. It’s a really rare and expensive blade. I always wanted one and never could get my hands on one. They are the coolest things…”

“Okay! … Okay, that’s enough…” She was holding up her hands defensively while she smiled, “I do not think I want to hear anymore. If it is that ‘cool’ and you ‘could never get it before’,” she dropped her hands and repeated sarcastically with a new smile, “Then it must be something so cool it is right off the ‘legal’ scale.”

He agreed, “Well… sort of.”

“Samson Rockpoint! I told you not to tell me!” She playfully kicked him under the table with the inside of her foot. “So, what makes this one so ‘cool’?”

He babbled something about how they technically did not have a legal system, it was more a system of publicly recorded redress and responses. Nothing like old Earth’s corrupt governmental systems.

She just scowled, arched a brow, and remained silent, demanding he stop equivocating and answer her question.

He spilled again, “Well first of all it is ceramic, not a bit of steel or ferrous metal in it…” By the time Samson finished babbling about the pros and cons, advantages, care, and maintenance, its use with possible applications, and spilled his general enthusiasm in his ‘coolest toy in the world’ speech, both had finished their soup.

She halted him with a sigh and his name, “Samson, I just have one question, before we take our nap.”

He patiently asked, “What is that love?”

She demanded, “Do you get this excited when you talk about me?”

Samson’s jaw worked uselessly as his pathetically small male brain struggled to keep up with the RPMs that Persephone was putting out while she ran circles around him. She giggled at her small victory and then captured his hands from across the table. Finally, she dragged the much larger but totally compliant and confused man to the tiny bed for their nap.

Chapter 13)

The dinner was going to be enormously expensive, perhaps ruinously so.

Persephone did not really eat much, but there was absolutely no ‘wilt’ on her salad. The soup looked to have fresh vegetables: carrots, tomatoes, potatoes, in some dark broth. Her meat, broccoli and cheese, and potato side order was making Samson’s hands shake as he mentally tallied the bill. Even with massive farms outside the city, with all the people living on the planet, perfectly fresh vegetables were outrageously expensive.

Never mind what the parasites were stuffing in their noise holes. How the girl had managed to talk him into taking eight parasites, not ‘a friend’, but E-I-G-H-T random people, he had never met before that evening, was baffling.

The foolishness of the idea rested squarely on his shoulders. There was no ducking the fact that she had weaseled an open-ended arrangement out of him while he was not suspecting it. She ‘informed him’ of her intended guests, started making arrangements, and then told him where she wanted to go.

She swindled him, again!

When he realized what she wanted Samson had sat up in bed so fast, that he almost knocked Persephone out and onto the floor, after their nap.

‘So here I am, escorting the princess and her court and all with little ‘me’ tagging along for the ride. And where does she take us? To the mists and the filthy underworld, she was so fascinated with. Of course, I could not keep my big mouth shut about that last assignment. Once I started prattling on about that silly knife, she just kept me rolling. Her ‘nap time’ story consisted of places as well as events. And she picked one of those places where she wanted to go as her open-ended hook. I’m so dumb I could kick myself.’

Persephone stole a drink of water from Samson’s glass and leaned over, using her ‘quietly polite I’m sorry’ voice, “You’re not still mad at me, are you?”

Seriously, Samson stated, “No, I’m mad at myself. I was not paying attention and you talked me into much more than I ever intended.”

Keeping her tone level and polite, so as not to draw attention from their fellows at the table, “Why Samson, I have behaved myself, and you have comported yourself as a perfect gentleman, we have not even begun getting in deeper than you intended.” His failed sneer only served to fuel her amused fires, “After all, this is only dinner with friends, just wait until the party starts. Then you will really be in trouble.”

Samson bristled with his complete lack of amusement, until Persephone’s right hand slid down his thigh under the table to the inside of his knee, while she leaned forward sipped some water from her own glass with her left hand, and redirected the conversation to one of her ‘friends’.

Since the little court were all busy with their own meals and conversations, they did not see him jump slightly, when her hand slipped back up and lightly pinched the upper inside of his leg, where he was ticklish.

Samson busied himself by looking around the room’s occupants and the amazing collection of native Terra’s saltwater fish. The place had no windows. However, the multitude of aquariums that housed the soft blue lighting added the wonderful nebulous, sub-oceanic feel to the restaurant that was absolutely stunning, and all while it was locked in the twilight mists.

The place was part of a substantial entertainment, lodging, and bar complex, nestled under the legs of one of the city’s multitude of towers.

This side of the establishment, Samson had encountered almost by accident. Samson’s mark from the tracking assignment had never made it to this establishment. The guards at the door were not there only for security and to keep out the ‘riff-raff’, like at the top of the world, they also served the dual additional purposes of verifying the ‘ability to pay’ before order, and keeping patrons ‘in’ so no one skipped on the substantial bill.

She spoke, “Stop poking at it and looking around uselessly,” Persephone’s voice drew Samson out of his ground scan and security-induced haze. “They have plenty of security at the door, we will know if there is a problem.”

Samson poked at his cooling meal.

She prompted conversationally, “It is actually quite good. It is not up to home cooking but everything seems fresh, and the meat is beef, not some substitute or vegetable product.”

Samson chaffed slightly at Persephone’s idea of ‘home cooking’ but began to consume the excellent meal.

The restaurant’s menu was short, but that probably allowed the quality to reach a higher level than it could have dealing with dozens of different fancy dishes.

Satisfied that he would finish his meal, Persephone turned back to her garish collection of this week’s friends. They had automatically arrayed themselves by some arcane order of importance, or pecking order, known only to themselves. Samson really did not care about how that had all happened just that it had, and they were staying out of his way. They had been quite ‘perturbed’ when he had taken the end seat, next to Persephone. He had shunned complaints with a lazy left index finger dismissal sending the pack to the other end of the table. Complaints had ended when his right hand pulled the hip holstered, military-grade pistol, and set it on the table to the right of his place setting.

With his right wrist on the table, he leaned back pointing at the door. His hard glance at the gaggle told them both that he was intractable and was going to watch the door, even if it included using their holed and bloodied corpses as footrests.

They took the hint eventually and worked themselves counterclockwise back around the table being sure to keep Samson’s line of fire open.

With no corpses under the table and no one to their right, Persephone and Samson had plenty of legroom. The rest were a little ‘cramped’, but he did not care.

Persephone checked to her right and saw Samson starting to enjoy his meal. This was his second real meal and first real ‘dining experience’ in months. The last good food he had consumed was while assembling that horribly tedious report less than twenty-four hours before. His body was in better shape after eating twice and sleeping during the morning and afternoon, but he was still craving all manner of foods.

Worlds that closely matched Old Earth’s gravity, time, and temperature standards were generally reserved and jealously guarded by the most powerful Corporate Empires. Perfect twenty-four-hour clocks kept things convenient. Calendar seasons were not particularly important on a city world, they were however fatally important on agricultural worlds, but commercial and industrial city worlds only had to worry about the human biorhythms of their employees. House Chroynos was no different from other mega-corporations in their reservation and possession of this world. Samson was not complaining, he got to share in the luxury by calling this world home and he did not have to worry about planting season. His body was thanking him that he had been able to sleep a full fourteen hours before Persephone had tricked him into this errand.

Samson neared completion of this meal and looked at the other diners at the table. They were still eating but much more slowly. He had caught up to and passed many of them while they leisurely discussed current events, and politics, and sloshed expensive wine in finely turned glasses.

There was no need to rush through the meal; he was stuck there until the last of the fops finished their meals. Persephone was always too polite to rush a meal; it was one of her most endearing and sometimes annoying qualities.

The bar, to the right from where Samson was seat, appeared to be hardwood, but from the distance and in the soft blue lighting that fact was hard to tell. It was well stocked, not indicated by specific labels he could read, they were still too far away but from shapes of common but expensive spirits bottles Samson had often enjoyed in the past.

There were rums, whiskeys, vodkas, malts, hard wines, sweet fruity things he never willingly touched, exotic blends, some small local distillers, things he could not name or categorize. There was even a shelf of fantastically expensive ‘Old Earth’ spirits. The bar itself was not small, it was wide and deep, and it could probably seat thirty bar stool-mounted patrons, with plenty of room to comfortably enjoy their beverage without annoying neighbors by sitting in their laps or invading their personal space.

The tables were likewise pleasantly spaced, with an even distribution of dinners. As a result, the room was evenly filled but not cramped or hurried like some establishments that tried to fill tables in as confined an area as possible by stacking dinners on top of one another. The thirty-five or forty other diners at the bar and tables could enjoy their meals and converse normally without intrusive neighbors or shouting over the press of humanity.

Samson was fairly good at maintaining an internal sense of direction. Unless he was more turned about than his internal navigation instincts would allow him to admit, the door behind the bar connected to the back of the club. The two establishments possibly shared a storage room.

The pleasant aqua lighting in the darkened building provided enough light to see while imbuing a dreamy ‘swimming under the clear blue sea’ feeling to the whole place. Instead of windows onto the clear blue sky or star-lit night, this was a vacation under a tropical ocean paradise.

The whole place was strikingly comfortable.

Comfortable until Persephone poked him in the ribs, with her pointy little elbow, and made him jump, “Come on you, quit daydreaming and finish. I want the triple chocolate cake for dessert. Then we are going out.”

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!