THE GUARDSMAN: Book 1: Honor of the Fallen – Chapters 20-22

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The Guardsman, Book 1: Honor of the Fallen:

Chapter 20)

John Smith stepped back into the shadows of the transit station several blocks away and slightly above the corporate Citadel’s public landing square. The shunned man waited patiently looking at the slight diagonal across the massive open-air plaza and airway to the ceremonial gate and was extremely careful to remain just outside of scan range. The day began drifting to evening; the massive towers began throwing their shadows over each other. John Smith disappeared from Persephone’s view far too soon after he paid for the air car to take her to the public landing at the Palace.

She never realized how much people feared the legendary place. They went through three cars before finding the fourth driver, who was desperate, crazy, or hungry enough for the three-block fare to the forbidden Citadel. She was less than two kilometers away and could be seen clearly from the upper level of the transit point.

As she approached home, she rolled her eyes at the ever-present media hawks that circled slowly just outside the kill zone and jockeyed for views of the patiently waiting guards. There was probably some channel that aired all the wasted footage of nothing happening all day and night, but she had never bothered finding it. She lived in the Palace after all, that would be like watching your own apartment on video while you sat in your apartment watching yourself on video. The absurdity of it made her smile.

Samson had admonished her to keep her hood up, but she was feeling daring. He should have guessed she was up to something when she wanted to fly to the main public open-air platform. As they neared the gates, she let her hood slip and shook out her hair. Persephone checked her small carry bag, to make sure it was closed and presentable. As she neared the gate, she reached into her shoe and under the insole pulled one of her two hold-out coins. She rolled the gold ten thousand credit coin back and forth over her knuckles. She smiled at the inane gesture she had picked up from Samson. She rolled her eyes while she smiled to herself and closed her hand over the coin.

The vehicle slid the last few meters to the public landing square.

The last meters were covered extremely cautiously. No driver in their right mind got close to the Citadel gates at speed. It only had to happen a few times a year, but with all the cameras around the spectacular events were broadcast on every news circuit. The Citadel’s automated defenses had routinely incinerated some idiot, or pack of idiots, once or twice a year since she was eight.

The air car touched ever so gently on the massive parking and receiving area. Persephone smiled to herself as she wondered if the driver was scared of breaking something if he did not use overwhelming caution with every move. Persephone reached over the divider and gently tapped the nervous driver’s shoulder, “Thank you for the smooth ride.” When he saw the face and gold coin, he almost panicked and accelerated away, but she gently reminded him she should get out before he lifted from his landing site, while she firmly pressed the coin into his hand.

Persephone made no effort to hide her face. She was in a devilish mood and wanted to see how close she could get before the crowd of newsies saw and mobbed her. No one person actually noticed her; they were all facing the wrong way. It was actually facial recognition software in a floating camera that alerted a news director, followed by a manager, who called the on-site reporter, who turned to look. His attention drew the rest of the reporters like a school of piranhas to a wounded swimmer.

It took the black and gold Home Guard troops only slightly longer to separate the eager crowd from Persephone, as she continued answering questions and delighting the crowd with her wit, charm, and mysterious appearance outside the security perimeter. The Home Guard troops were notified and moving before the reporters were but had a longer distance to travel before they could reach her.

The cordon of elite Home Guard troops, in pristine armor, with live rounds, whisked her through the gates which immediately closed and locked. The instant the gate closed it generated a lethal field that glowed angry red, while it combusted oxygen into the stink of ozone. That was followed immediately by a new black polarized field over the slats in the gate. It was a type of field that no one had seen before. That single act would generate more gossip than it could possibly prevent but someone inside was not thinking of that, at the moment.

Persephone thought it was insanely funny because she could hear the confused mutters and cries, which in turn caused her to look back. She realized the extent of the public relations flop that had just happened with her return. Persephone considered turning on the news when she was finally done receiving whatever torture waited for her, just to see what people would say about that new surprise ‘visual barrier field’, was the only way she could describe the new security device.

Persephone chuckled to herself, all the way across the expansive manicured real grass lawn, then the whole way to the study, where her furious father and her two personal Guardsmen waited for her. Phyllip Chroynos maintained a squad of eight guardsmen, with or adjacent to him at all times. Ten Guardsmen and the Chroynos Corporate Hegemony’s Emperor occupied the sprawling sunlit room. They all studiously ignored her while the Emperor finished the hard copy report he was scanning on the corner of his desk while he stood waiting for her.

This room was the seat of all power in their corner of the corporate Galaxy and an impatient daughter waited for her scolding. Persephone found that almost as funny as the scandal the visual barrier was undoubtedly causing.

Phyllip Chroynos pointed at a spot on the floor only a few feet away from him, and snapped, “Daughter. Come here.” Ordering her to the corner of the desk where he read his antiquated paper report. The Home Guard squad melted away as she stepped forward and they evaporated from the room entirely before she stopped. Her father was deep into an ‘Intelligence and Troop Movements’ report from the looks of it as she approached. She was too amused to resist or start a fight from across the room.

Her shirked Guardsmen followed her grimly and watched her like hawks.

He flipped a page, and then back as he compared some discrepancy or issue that had caught his attention, for later review, “Persephone Apollonia Chroynos how did you get out?”

Persephone did not bother hiding the fact and told him, “I jumped out the window.” As calmly as her father asked, he was probably furious and had spent most of her absence ripping his Citadel apart followed by a detailed vivisection of her Guardsmen. He probably had security data from every video within a viewing radius on the Citadel. If that did not give him what he wanted, he would have re-tasked the weather and security coordination satellites to capture their information.

Her mountain man of a father asked, “Why?”

Her matter-of-fact delivery irritated her father out of his half-listening, “I wanted to go out.” His eyes snapped up to hers and locked her in place.

He demanded, “And where did you go once you were out?” Persephone was so close could see the vein in his temple throb as his face flushed slightly. She also noticed for the first time in her life that his right hand, the fingers no longer drumming the report, but pressed firmly into the paper and desk, showed the same distinctive crosshatched pattern that Samson and Vlad earned during their times in medical rebuild after severe combat injuries. He never talked about his service with his youngest and only living child.

Persephone almost cracked and broke down when she realized just what she must have done to her father during the last forty-eight hours. She exhaled and resigned herself to the full truth, “I met friends.”

Phyllip bit his lip painfully as he ground his teeth and drummed his fingers on the forgotten report, “And the maid, whose uniform you wore? What was her role in your departure?”

Persephone thought coldly calculating, ‘So, you did track me down and watch me leave on video.’ Persephone sighed and rolled her eyes, “None. I stole the uniform a few weeks ago, and brought it back with me today, to return to her.”

He demanded, “You have been planning this a while then Persephone. How long?”

Persephone felt a flash of anger and the irrational desire to protect her secret. She spoke before she thought, “If I tell you that you will be able to catch me next time.”

He roared, “Girl! You wasted the Empire’s intelligence resources with this little escapade! I had to re-task dozens of counterintelligence and imaging sections to search for you! Never mind what you did to your mother when you turned up missing from your own rooms, where you should have been sleeping the night you left!”

She admitted, “I’m sorry. I didn’t think about it like that… Five months.” Phyllip’s eyes narrowed in suspicion. “I have been gathering parts and components for five months, to make the anti-grav harness. The uniform was easy, I passed through the women’s locker room, with my own workout bag every day, and I just took it. I tucked it under the loose-fitting shirt I wore that day when I passed the locker; I stuffed it into my workout bag as I was getting ready to leave. When I got to my rooms, I hid everything in my bathroom until I was alone. I transferred it into the travel bag and hid the travel bag until I was ready to go.”

He asked, “And who did you go with?”

She admitted, “Just some of the party crowd, they tagged along once I told them I was out. I told them where to meet us and then we picked them up and took them out.”

Phyllip froze, she instantly realized her slip, before he demanded, “‘Us’?”

Persephone hesitated. She did not know if she was caught or not. “Yes, the party crowd.”

He scolded, “Do not lie to me, daughter! You said, ‘to meet us’ and ‘we picked them up’. You do not make mistakes of grammar; you make mistakes of omission! Who comprised the ‘us’ that met the separate and distinct ‘party crowd’ when they arrived!”

Quietly knowing she was about to walk into the storm she answered, “Samson.”

Her father’s long exhale, closed eyes, and drooping head and shoulders, said more of his disappointment and frustration than any number of words. “Oh… That piece of shit. Why couldn’t he just have cut his own heart out like an honorable warrior in disgrace?”

She had not felt her knees bending, or her hand starting to rise. She did feel the white-hot fury.

Her right hand connected just below her father’s jaw, rattling his teeth, stinging his cheek, and cutting his ear to bleed, with her whipping fingernails.

Before the stars cleared from his eyes, her Guardsman had her screaming kicking fury, lifted off the floor and held by either arm. Phyllip’s offended Guardsmen closed the distance in an angry black and gold swarm.

Her shouted fury surprised them all including Persephone, “Go to Hell! Everything he has done; he has done to protect me! He is where he is because of me! Because he served and protected me!”

Her stunned father’s jaw worked noiselessly until the shock eroded, the adrenaline melted away from his augmented core, and her words finally sunk into his brain. He still had to replay them in his head several times to make sure he understood what she had said. He pushed his chair back, from the desk, with the underside of his left foot, and fell bonelessly, into its arms. Phyllip’s left hand draped over his eyes, his right flipped a halfhearted gesture to the door, “Let her go. Everyone out…” Phyllip barked a deafening, “Stop looking and move!”

Ten confused Guardsmen jumped to comply.

The much calmer repetition of his often-repeated phrase, “Stop transcription; stop all recording, report when complete,” carried almost no emotion at all.

Several seconds passed before there was a click over concealed speakers, “Done Sir. All inbound lines are deactivated, to your current room. You will hear the click when we close here. Step outside the room to reactivate the system.”

Phyllip replied automatically, “Thank you”. It was followed immediately by the clicking pop that signified every circuit in the room, including the speakers, closing. Inaudible to human hearing were the white noise generators. Phyllip glanced down at the pitcher of water he kept on his desk for just these moments to see that the anti-bugging field was indeed working and vibrating the remains of the water in his pitcher. The ultrasonic and subsonic sound waves would bludgeon any potential listening devices into a totally overloaded state and would most likely destroy them in the process.

It was one of the major reasons he did not keep a comm unit on his desk. He liked his managers thinking for themselves and the damn thing would need replacing every other week because of his constant use of the security field.

The door closed behind the last of the Guardsmen, and Persephone moaned her apologetic, “I’m sorry Daddy. I should not have done that.”

Phyllip stated directly, “He is your lover, isn’t he.” It was not a question, he was stating known facts and wanted to know if she was going to lie to him again.

She admitted, “Yes, Samson is my lover.”

He demanded, “How long?”

Persephone informed, “Two- and three-quarter years.”

That answer got Phyllip’s undivided attention. He forced his head up from behind his hand, to look at her for the first time since he fell into the chair. It was an absurd amount of time for her to have continued a secret affair, but her confident delivery, the rapid, and exact answer, could only have been the truth. In shock, Phyllip grumbled, “How did you manage that?”

She shuffled her feet and twisted her finger on the corner of her father’s desk as she caught herself confessing, “I have always loved him. I have loved him since the first day I saw him. I was eighteen and a half before we…” Before she made that particular confession, “But I kissed him on my eighteenth birthday. I thought he hated me for weeks after! He kept acting so strange around me, that I thought he would run and jump off the tower, just so he could squish on the ground. It made me crazy. I just scared him. Then when I got the courage to kiss him again… When I finally kissed him again, that second time he kissed me back. He was stuck between duty and me. And he did not know what to do because of it. He was so funny, Daddy; he was like a skittish puppy. After that, it was easy and fun…”

Phyllip shook his head disbelieving that a torrid love affair could go on under his very nose, “How did you ever manage to avoid security and find time to… well do anything? Cameras? Sensors? Patrols? Nannies and maids? Your mother?! You have no idea what a bloodhound she is for court romances! She can find one in the next room.”

Twisting and pulling her fingernails, twisting, and stepping her feet nervously, biting her tongue, and sucking her cheek, she looked even younger than her twenty-one years. “We made it a game.”

Phyllip’s shock caused him to blurt, “A game?”

She shrugged and shared, “Every security system has blind spots. Samson always taught me things. He taught me about security systems when I was fifteen, he wanted me to be watchful for places where someone would attack me at all times, those were the best places.”

Baffled, the father asked, “I do not understand Persephone! How did you make that into a game?”

She sighed and confessed more, “We would kiss and play when we were in blind spots and made sure we maintained our pace so we didn’t disappear from one camera to the next, for too long,” it was a statement but sounded like a question from an unsure child struggling with an answer she does not know was correct.

He asked, “What about people in the halls?”

She answered, “They were always a fun challenge. We had to sneak and snoop and make sure we were not being followed and no one walked out in front of us.”

He acknowledged, “You had a lot of fun playing these games, didn’t you?”

She mumbled, “How can you tell Daddy?”

He told her, “You are blushing, smiling and fidgeting.”

Persephone pressed her fingertips, felt her cheeks, and realized her father was right, “My manners and etiquette teacher would be mortified.”

The father demanded, “Mortified by which part Persephone? You’re blushing and fidgeting, or sneaking around in my house for two and a half years having a torrid love affair?” His smile removed the sting and showed no irritation or disappointment. “What did you mean when you said he was still protecting you?”

Her guilt washed over her, as her shoulders fell, and her knees got weak. Persephone very much needed someone to hold her, as she crashed emotionally from the heights of euphoric bliss into near tears. She dropped and curled into a ball in her daddy’s lap, and tried to hide from the world, while she cried on his shoulder and neck. “I wanted to go out and do exciting things,” her guilt and sobs returned, “he didn’t want to, and he told me it was a bad idea. But I wanted to do. . . exciting things. I insisted on it. I was so dead set on doing ‘exciting’ things. We took my stupid assistant with us.”

His memory jogged he asked, “The one you sent to the kitchens?”

Angry again, she snapped, “Yes, that idiot. Angela, I thought she was my friend, stupid me. We were out playing one of my silly games, and I wanted to… to make love in a closed furniture store, on the beds they were selling.” Phyllip was mortified by what the Crown Princess of the star-spanning Chroynos Empire, was telling him. He was too shocked to say anything as she kept crying and babbling. He did not have the heart to stop her confession. “I was ready, but he was slow… getting undressed, and that stupid girl was supposed to keep watch. She was supposed to tell us if anyone was coming. We defused the security system and hacked the cameras so there were no recordings. That stupid girl was not paying attention and when the swarm of news crews came around the corner she ran back to where we were. She was the one they saw! Of course, she didn’t want to get in trouble… She scooped up all our clothes and ran! Instead of giving them to us, she just ran! Samson sent me after her. I tried to argue but he sent me, and I didn’t stay. The cameras were there before the police! Someone told them where we were, and then called the police for the break-in after the news cameras arrived. All he said to me was ‘They are here to destroy you, run now while you can, I will be fine’.

She snapped, “Well, he was not! Poor, wonderful, Samson was arrested and dragged in front of you. He could not tell you what he did or why! If he did in your open court hearing, he would have given me up, for the whore I am! I would have been destroyed anyway, he would have been disgraced for nothing and you would have gone down with us, all because stupid me!” She wiped her eyes and calmed slightly, “I took it out on Angela. She probably didn’t deserve it either, I dragged her in way over her head.”

Phyllip spent many long moments recalling the documents he remembered from the proceedings before stripping Samson of rank, title, and honor. “You are right… I don’t remember a single mention of alarm, or police alerts, before the anonymous law enforcement tip that ‘happened’ to be ten minutes after the news media was alerted and on the way to the scene. Samson was right. You were set up for disgrace. That means someone knew about your activities long enough to set that trap for you, and then was patient enough to wait to spring the trap from an anonymous comm. You would be so dishonored that you would need to be removed from the line of succession. You could not even hold a back-water military garrison command after something like that. If law enforcement made it to the scene first, we could have ‘dealt’ with it. But if it was splashed all over the video before they arrived, even I couldn’t do anything to repair that damage.”

Persephone sat back from her father in horror, “You mean someone actually did try to set me up, to destroy our house? I thought Samson just said that to make me feel better about being caught!”

He shared cautiously, “It is not a certainty, but it is a frightful possibility. And it has to be someone close to the family to engineer something like that.”

Chapter 21)

Samson shook with rage on his bench at the upper-level tram stop, as Persephone did the exact opposite of what he asked. She had stopped the cab at the end of the field, dropped her hood, and taunted the media, only to be surrounded by the unmistakable black armored Home Guards.

She had steadfastly refused to sneak back into the Citadel. She had consumed a ridiculous amount of time blocking his requests for her to go home quietly. He had grudgingly begged her to fly straight to the gate and she agreed. But she got him again because she did not specify ‘how far’ from the gate.

“Stupid girl and her risks… if I ever see her again, I will choke her for this,” Samson shook his head as his brain struggled to raise his ire, but his heart would not allow it, and betrayed him by forcing all vitriol out of the statement and turning it into a half-smiled whisper.

Samson remained wrapped in the shadowed corner of the building’s upper transit landing, as the Citadel gate closed and polarized black. That was something he had never seen before on any energy barrier. He wondered how many other security tricks had been emplaced since his ‘early retirement’.

He pondered that irritating truth while signaling a tram. He pondered how long his presence had been monitored by security at the Citadel, now that they had obviously upgraded the system and expanded its capabilities beyond his last knowledge.

Samson entered a random location as his destination on the tram console. He needed to divert his route and make several incognito switches to break contact with Citadel security. He needed to drop to ground level close to Vlad’s. He had a bottle of good brandy to pick up from Vlad and some time to kill before ‘work’ tomorrow morning.

The longer evasion route, additional travel time, and visit would keep him out long enough that it would be very late before he returned to his apartment anyway.

Chapter 22)

Persephone played the sympathy card, “Daddy!? What do you mean it has to be someone close to the family?! How can that be! We screen and monitor everyone.”

He asked, “How did you sneak out? You found holes in the security and were patient enough to exploit them. Baby, you have lost four siblings and two cousins. Of those six they all died in blatant assassinations or military catastrophes, plus an aunt to assassination when she was your age, and another aunt and her whole family to an anonymous but massive world killing attack. I do not need to remind you that only you, your uncle, and your married but fruitless cousin, are all that remains of the lineage after your mother and myself.”

The brutal truth of his words began to sink in with the same effect as the brutally efficient smelting plant ‘safety regulations’ conversation she had only hours before with Samson, “What are you saying, Daddy?” She knew on an intellectual level but could not find it in herself to reconcile the truth with her emotions.

He told her the painful truth, “I am saying that someone in this family, or household, or one of the other major houses closely allied with us, may have been systematically decimating our line over almost forty years. In the same way, you waited to put together your window stunt, this person, or people, could have been planning and acting for decades. Everyone they kill, discredit, or otherwise remove places them one step closer to this chair.”

Persephone’s lips and brow pinched as she thought hard. “So, we are looking for someone or a group that stands to gain substantially from your removal. They needed the power and longevity to act over those years, and during all that time they needed the capability of organizing a multi-decade campaign.”

He followed with, “Unfortunately, it is not that simple. Over that long, one, several, or all of those could have been singular events, so each must be reexamined and reinvestigated as a separate incident. The problem is that if the person is as close as I have to fear, assuming the worst, that they are within the family, in our house, with a great house or coalition of subordinate houses. After so many years they would have fingers in our security apparatus. That would let them know of any reopened investigations. That could cause them to either act out violently or cut ties in such a way that we would never be able to connect the dots, to a single point of origin or all the individuals responsible.”

She suggested, “It could be another empire, trying to undercut us.”

The CEO ordered, “Bring that chair over. This is an adult conversation. You need to get out of my lap, you are not three anymore,” Persephone hugged her father, and while she was dragging the chair over from the wall, he continued talking. “I do not want a word of this to anyone, but Thomys and I have been watching these things for a while and had this same discussion not more than a month ago. While we agreed it could be masterminded and funded by an external power, it still needs local operators of power. They would still need local people who are willing to place themselves in the line of fire for personal gain of great magnitude. Anyone smart enough to know or do any of that would also know that they would be a puppet at best, exterminated for expedience by a foreign intelligence service sleeper agent in their own households at worst. There is a reason that there is not much inter-corporate dynastic assassination. The takeover requires substantial ownership in the target corporation. It also requires consent from shareholders, managers, and employees. That is why the loyalty of all those stakeholders is so important to a dynasty. It helps keep our heads on our shoulders, literally.”

Persephone spoke with overly formal and unnecessarily specific titles, “I need to talk to you about that Owner Chroynos when we are done worrying about keeping our heads attached.”

Phyllip played her game, “Understood, heiress, but in a minute. I need to know some things first.” Phyllip Chroynos leaned back in his chair as he looked at his daughter in her chair next to his desk and thought things over several times. “So, where did you actually go? Were you secure the whole time?”

Frustrated and insecure, Persephone lashed out like she was five, “Daddy! Is that really important?!”

Infuriated at his daughter’s immaturity, Phyllip snapped, “Yes, it is, heiress! This is a business of the most critically important nature.”

Persephone admitted, “I met Samson at his apartment. I surprised him after he finished work. I told him I wanted to go out to the most insane party club he knew. He was furious and argued for almost an hour before he gave in.” She continued her tale unabashed, “Well we ate first and then took a nap. But I tricked him into agreeing to go wherever I wanted first. He is so easy! He argued more when I told him I wanted to bring a bunch of friends. He is so much fun. He fights and fights, but he knows he’s going to do it because he already agreed to it. He told me about this really cool place while we were eating breakfast. I think he forgot about it while we were napping. Then I tricked him into agreeing to go there.” She digressed, following her distraction, “By the way, did you know that they make hard noodles in a bag? All you do is add hot water and they get soft, and you eat them like soup?”

Frustrated, Phyllip prompted her, “Persephone… Focus please…”

She apologized, “Sorry. He made dinner, well breakfast actually, I thought it would be disgusting watching that hard stuff turning all soft and squishy, but it was not that bad. We still argued about me bringing my friends. He finally said he would watch us all if everyone agreed to do exactly as he said and turn off their comms once we met.”

Phyllip sighed, “Persephone, you are rambling and jumbling everything into a tangled mess.”

She apologized, “Sorry Daddy.”

Momentarily distant, he reminisced, “Don’t worry about it, Persephone. Once or twice upon a time, your sister Rhea rambled uncontrollably about some boy or another. Of course, that all ended when she met the one she was going to marry. Then we could hardly ever get her to change the subject until it was about the formal preparations. She hated that part. She drove your mother to distraction over that. Most little girls dream of a princess wedding, but that one ran for the hills every time the subject was broached.”

The mention of her murdered older sister caused Persephone to slump against Phyllip’s desk. “I’ve missed her for all these years. She was so perfect, and beautiful, and smart, and wonderful, and…”

Phyllip gently brushed the infant tear from her left eye with the back of the fingers on his right hand, “I know baby. That’s why I mention her. I know you miss her; we all do. You are so much like her in so many ways, Rhea and her trouble-making little shadow. The two of you were so much alike in so many ways, but different in so many important ways too. I dare say that the two of you would have been best friends today… had things worked out differently. But you definitely both gush like lovesick schoolgirls.” He playfully flicked his daughter’s nose, which returned a sad smile to her face.

She accepted, “Thank you, Daddy.”

He offered, “You’re welcome baby. I’m sorry I interrupted, but please try and stay on track, so this old man can follow what you’re talking about. I’m sure your mother could follow you, but I cannot keep up with you.”

Persephone smiled with a sigh before she began again. “We walked forever; met my guests at a building several blocks away, on a lower terminal. We went down and walked a bunch of different corridors and used lots of glide paths. I do not think any of us knew where we were, by the time Samson even started working us down. I do not even think we went very far, just a twisting course around where he was taking us, trying to confuse the guests, I suppose. We finally took a ladder into the fog. We walked a while in the mists and had a really good dinner, and then we went to a club at the bottom of the world.

“The place was huge! It was full of people from up here, and workers of every level and security were better than most commercial places up here, and almost as good as any of the smaller corporation owner and upper management housing sections, nothing like our holding company though. They had scanners, arms lockers, and guards, and the whole thing was monitored. I had no idea how they put all that together until we met the owner later that night. We talked with him again in the morning.

“Samson insisted we have a fallback meeting point if something went wrong and it did. Some newsies found us and chased people out of the club. They barged through security and overwhelmed the guards. They just ran in looking for pictures.”

He asked, “How did you avoid being seen?”

Persephone smiled her nervous, impish grin and bit her lip while she blushed, “I pushed Samson down into the first table I saw. It was one in the corner without much light. When they started the commotion at the door, I just ducked us along with the crowd. I jumped in Samson’s lap at someone else’s table, covered us with my hair, and started kissing him. They walked right past us and didn’t even slow down. They just chased the crowd right past us.” Persephone carefully avoided mention of the stranger who had assaulted her and what Samson had done to him.

Phyllip surprised his daughter by barking a laugh, “The old tricks are the best trick sometimes. Go on please.”

She did, “We all scattered and worked our way back to the hotel behind the club and met in the manager’s office as we planned. We got rooms. I met Vlad the owner, and he’s a really interesting character.

“Daddy, did you know that there are probably millions of smart, resourceful, creative, people living right under us, out of sight, building a whole society on our planet that we never see or hear about, or even acknowledge?”

Curious, he asked, “What do you mean?”

She snitched, “Well, Vlad for example, is tapped directly into the mega-grid.”

Phyllip sneered dismissively, “That’s impossible. You mean a building power grid. Not our problem. That’s their problem…”

She interrupted in turn, “No Daddy! You are not listening! I said the mega-grid! He is connected to our mega-grid, the Chroynos Hegemony Power and Generation Mega-Grid, the main lines from our plants to the customers. He built his ‘own’ power grid. He was a discharged fuel cell technician for the Ground Forces Support Corporation who was wounded and discharged permanently disabled. He used his training to tap directly into our superconducting mega-grid, between the towers and the generation plants. He used his fuel cell training to build a small conversion line to connect his personal grid, where it split into a conventional power grid.

“Under almost every tower there are dozens of buildings, from small restaurants to clubs and hotel complexes like Vlad’s. There are even whole apartment blocks and tenements plugged directly into our grid. They have all the water, power, fuel, and data they want. And it is cleaner than Samson’s apartment water!”

Dumbfounded and extremely curious, Phyllip asked directly, “Really?”

She shared, “Samson told me I should compare our employment and schooling statistics to tower residence statistics, and then look at power output versus what arrives at the towers, and from that, I could estimate the size of the mist population. I have not had a chance to do it just yet, but he says we lose almost ten percent of everything we produce from origin to receiving station.”

Phyllip agreed blithely, “That is true, it is actually about nine-point four percent. It’s just arcing and loss in the towers. We just push up output and write off the losses, it is just deuterium, and the cost of shipping that much is next to nothing, in those quantities, compared to what our corporation charges the resident corporations for the power it produces, that is. We just pass it on to the end users, no skin off our teeth.”

She protested, “Daddy, you’re hearing me, but not listening to me. Think about it. Those superconducting lines lose almost nothing, maybe a fraction of a percent, by the math. Vlad is fantastically wealthy down there and lives a wonderful life because of his skills. We have tens of billions of people we account for, house, employ, and use in industry. And we lose ten percent of everything we produce from a system that mathematically transmits over ninety-nine percent of all power. It works on our starships. How not on the ground? How is that?”

Catching her emphasis, Phyllip asked, “Are you saying we could have billions of people living under us and we, up here I mean, do not even know about it?”

She shared, “Yes Daddy. They are driven out of the system because things up here are too expensive. That and they do not like the laws, regulations, or corporate taxes that make everything too expensive for the individual workers. They don’t like the barriers and restrictions. They have their own law. They have a parallel society. Their common expression is that your law ‘ends at the mists’.”

Chagrined, Phyllip mumbled, “Well that’s insulting. I do not quite know how to take that. What else did you learn on your adventure?”

She nearly shouted, “I learned our safety regulations are useless!”

Raising a hand placatingly he calmed, “Whoa, settle down young lady, you are bristling over that one…”

She snapped again, “And you should too! Have you ever been to our smelters! I checked the name on the way out, it was one of the ones where we both, Mom, and I think Thomys, each had a direct minority interest. They do a lot of work for our bulk materials and military purchases.”

Taken aback by the unanticipated information, “Well… no… I have not been… “

Hostile, she snapped, “You should! They are called ‘Hell’s Cauldrons’ because when there is an accident the workers all die instantly in the splashed steel, and they’re swept out the bottom of the plant!

“Did you know we all, up here, are laughingstocks!” Her insulted rage continued to boil, “The people down there do not even believe we really exist. They looked right at me and shook it off like I was a briefly remembered dream. They walk hundreds and thousands of meters to their workstations, across, back, and around rickety metal catwalks, before they can clock in. On the job, they are covered in rock dust and have no ventilation. And all that before they even clock into work! They laugh at the soft and fat managers like us, Daddy! They make fun of us because we are so stupid. One joke I heard is that we are so dumb that we ‘pay for gym memberships when all we had to do was get off our fat butts and do a real job’.”

Phyllip immediately cracked a crooked smile and could not stop laughing, “I guess that is sort of funny in a dark humor, class warfare sort of way, but it does not answer the question about what to do about our pending security threats.”

Persephone felt her doom beginning to close in around her again. Its crushing grip all around her. Persephone’s attempt at dark humor perked her up as she smiled and suggested, “I could go hide with Samson, I could disappear, and no one will be the wiser.”

Considering he spoke slowly, “Persephone! This is…” he reclined in his chair and propped his jaw in the ‘L’ between the fingers on his left hand and thumb, while his eyes stripped and examined her to the atomic level, his mind racing down courses of action that were just now becoming evident and available to him, “… serious.”

Persephone became uncomfortable in short order and began to fidget under his glare, “Daddy, you are planning something. Am I in trouble?”

He admitted, “No. You are not in trouble with me at least.”

She grew cautious and demanded, “Daddy! What are you scheming?”

He offered another lopsided smile, “Your mother might have a heart attack over this.”

“Daddy!”

He patiently asked, “Persephone, list the line of succession, please.”

Caught as off balance by the question as her slap had caught him earlier, she complied without argument, “Me, uncle Thanatyos, my cousin Kazimir, Thomys as your Executive Vice President, Military Operations President, all with geometrically diminishing ownership or family interests.”

He asked, “And who are you supposed to marry in three years?”

She told him, “The Commander of Military Operations Daddy. You know that.”

He scoffed dismissing her last quip, he spoke flatly, “Of course, I do. I set it up.” He next demanded, “Walk through the scenarios as if you are discredited. Then do it again as if you were properly wed.”

After her discontented sigh, “When I marry Rheas, he will become second in line for succession behind you and Mom. Uncle Thanatyos, Kazimir, and your Executive Vice President, all move down a step and are further removed by any children produced in Rheas and my union. If I am discredited and Rheas rejects the offer, I am removed, and everyone takes a step up.”

He reminded, “You are forgetting at least one scenario, Persephone. If you are discredited, and Rheas accepts you anyway, he can negotiate down a massive portion of your traditional dowry or seek a larger ownership stake. Rheas is not the smartest rock in the box when it comes to the sciences. But he is a very capable military commander, a skilled politician, and a motivated one at that. I can think of half a dozen other houses off the top of my head that would stand to benefit enormously by discrediting you and attaching themselves, even tenuously to that succession. Your friend Colleen’s family, for instance, they are in position but have no one close enough to your age and available to wed. As I said, there are probably fifty houses powerful and close enough to make a move, but only half a dozen or so with the resources, in the form of money, power, and an eligible suitor, to exploit the gains from your fall for anything more than petty self-gratification. Of course, that’s another irritating aspect we cannot rule out either, all this may be irrational and personal at some level.”

She asked, “What are you saying, Daddy?! That Rheas systematically set up our relatives over the decades to have them suffer military losses and planned all those assassination attempts? That would have made him look like a horrible commander and he would have been replaced years ago.”

He speculated, “Not directly. You know how much we all trust Rheas, putting aside all our different feelings, we need to look at the facts surrounding him. He is currently in the position of power to do it though and maybe greedy enough to try, but I doubt it. Realistically all he has to do is wait a little while he does not even have to try so why would he incur the extra risks that are not operationally necessary, again picking up extra risks is not his style either. Time is on his side. He mitigates risks professionally; he hates taking new risks. Rheas also lacks the longevity in his position to have mounted a prolonged shadowy backstabbing attack. It is also not his style. He prefers putting the pistol into someone’s face and pulling the trigger himself. His philosophy is generally ‘If you have a problem you cannot solve, use more explosives’. Rheas only stands to gain from a union, he has little motive. My VP on the other hand hates the job. I keep him there because he is my lifelong friend and because he hates the job and knows mine is worse. I know I can trust him because of that, he also only has three daughters, so no way to marry someone to you and gain. If I offered Thomys this seat for free he would catch the next transport to the farthest destination that the port listed. Who does that leave?”

She recited, “Uncle Thanatyos, Kazimir, and minor houses who want to fuse themselves to the dynasty by picking over our remains if I fall.”

He accepted, “That is correct. And what is Thanatyos’s job?”

Suddenly seeing greater scope, Persephone started listing, “Security, Guardsmen, and Intelligence Forces… Oh, Gods above and below us! If it is him, anything we do or say is available for him to inspect at his leisure!”

He agreed, “Correct. And what about the minor houses, Persephone?”

She continued, “All they have to do is follow me using some maid or janitor that they gift a few hundred credit cash bills to every once in a while. They know when and where I go, and can wait for me to gaff publicly, drop a tip to the newsies, and step back and watch. To them, the minimal risks are worth the potential substantial gains they would receive by fusing their house to ours even if I was in disgrace. The gain for them would be so great that even with me in disgrace they would improve their own family’s standing.” The cold grasp of panic closed completely around her as she realized how totally and completely, she was trapped. Her face sunk into her hands, and she shook from head to toe in panic.

He reminded her, “Persephone, I need you to focus for me.” After her deep calming breath followed by another her composure returned and she looked up from her hands to face her father. “Thank you, Heiress. So, you are playing this game with real knives, and someone, or some group of someones, are trying to kill and or discredit you to pick over the bones of house Chroynos. This is a dangerous game, and you are trapped on a very small playing field here. Your potential moves are greatly limited and you have many potential enemies, all of whom have overlapping influence and the ability to affect you directly, and eventually kill you outright. What do you do?”

She quipped sarcastically, “You mean other than locking myself in my room with body armor and a Gauss rifle?”

Taking her flippant nonsense in stride, Phyllip corrected and then offered, “That won’t work. You still need to eat, and armor won’t stop poison or a pocket nuke. Have you considered going on the offensive?”

Stunned, she asked, “What do you mean?”

Patient as a teaching father, he told her, “I mean that you are trapped, and they will eventually get you. What do you have to lose? You are eventually dead anyway if you sit around here. They will just patiently tighten your noose. This could be a plan custom-tailored for you that has been in action for over twenty years. Discrediting you as they have tried to do once, and could have tried a second time last night, could be a calculated risk they took to avert our suspicions about all the outright assassinations and murders. If that is the case, they have lots of patience and are prudently realistic enough to want to try a lower-cost attack first before they attempt the risks associated with a devastating and lethal attack.

He speculated, “However, what if we attack them instead and shake up their plans and minimize their ability to catch you?”

She asked, “How will that help us?”

He shrugged and told her, “It makes you unpredictable. It foils their careful plans, which are focusing on you as a stationary target. It breaks their siege, and you become a moving target.”

The recognition dawning, she asked, “You mean if I start acting crazy and frustrate their attempts to catch me, they might make a mistake that will draw them into the open so you can destroy them yourself?”

With only the hint of a smile, he asked, “So how do you contact Samson?”

She snapped, “Daddy! You changed the subject.”

He teased, “Really, I had not noticed…” His rueful smile caused her to roll her eyes and exhale hard like frustrated daughters had for millennia.

She sighed, rolled her eyes, and mumbled, “I have two identical comms. I keep one hidden and off while the other is in use. I have closets full of crap people give me. I used random cash cards I received as gifts to prepay the second secret comm.

“I keep the first comm on palace billing, as my ‘official line’, that you and everyone else know about. I reported the second, along with the cash cards, as ‘gifted to the poor’ with all the other stuff I give away. No one would miss it, given the volume of crap I dispose of all the time. When it went active it was already listed on anyone’s tracking as ‘not with me’. If anyone checks, the prepayments trace back to remotely entered cash cards deposited directly into the comm. The cards carry no identification and were opened with currency, so they are untraceable. I kept all of those cash cards, but I still listed them as donated, just in case. I opened the duplicate phone with the name ‘exsocxoorxto737737466356837968’.”

Not getting the joke he asked, “Why the hell did you pick that name?”

Frustrated, she snapped, “Daddy!”

He acceded, “Sorry, go ahead.”

She continued, “I set it up as a spam net service. The name corresponded with a code Samson, and I played with it years ago. It is from the old narrow keypad comms. It translates numbers into letters. I found Samson and started sending to him, and tens of thousands of others, bulk mailings. But only he knew the right code to reply to me, it was one of our games. I filtered out all the other communications automatically. He was the only one who replied correctly.”

Dumbfounded by her stupidity, Phyllip demanded, “Don’t you know all signals traffic is monitored by location in the Citadel?”

She huffed, “Silly Daddy, of course, I knew that. Don’t you know that you can queue messages for delivery? All I had to do was set the messages for a timed delay delivery and I timed it until I was in a public area where lots of people gathered on their comms. I never had to touch it, once it was set, just be in a crowd. I just needed the comm powered and it could remain in my pocket while I walked. The automatic delivery feature handled everything else. I just set it to dump the signal into the electronic noise of whatever room I was passing through. There were always too many signals in use to single out one. I rarely touched another device when my second comm was sent from its timed queue. Well, I did sometimes, to throw off your bloodhounds.”

From behind his shaking hands, Phyllip muttered, “You were sending porn spam as you walked through the corridors of our home.”

Just like all those daughters had for all those countless millennia. Her little girl ‘I do not want to get in trouble for telling the truth’ voice eked out, “Yes Daddy.”

Phyllip found himself leaning back in his chair with his palms and fingers pressing his head in a failing effort to contain his exploding, pounding stress headache. “At least he taught you well. I may need to fire your Uncle and put you over our Intelligence Services.” He finally laughed and shook his head from side to side, “Alright Heiress, this is what we are going to do…”

Thank You!

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