THE GUARDSMAN: Book 1: Honor of the Fallen – Chapters 26-28
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The Guardsman, Book 1: Honor of the Fallen:
Chapter 26)
Samson’s eyes bored into the backs of his new boss, and his son. Alexios periodically turned to look over his shoulder and stare venomously at him, as they retreated into the crowded ballroom.
Samson had learned that his rebuilt and improved hearing made sorting multiple conversations out of the din of competing pleasantries difficult until he isolated a single voice and focused on it. He could pick out the important parts and threads of the conversation. As he had become familiar with the individual voices around him, he was able to track multiple conversations like he would on a combat command net. Command nets received reports from multiple subordinate units at the same time. They all poured in at the same time, over the same speaker. His new skill was becoming increasingly easy to use as he sorted and classified the speakers around him. Doing so allowed him to follow all the different conversations at once. Once he had the individual voices memorized and categorized in his head, it was easy. It was like recognizing an individual’s distinctive walk at night, instead of looking for facial features. It became just another way to identify people. It all fit smoothly into his learning processes.
He would have much preferred to have his back to a wall or been securely lodged in a comfortable corner, rifle cradled in his arms. But his orders were specifically to ‘mingle’, and there were no weapons allowed for the evening anyway. Since he did not know the precise art of how to ‘mingle’ he had to do the closest thing he could think of, which was standing in the middle of the room with people all around him. The way he saw it, there was no point in wasting time, so he listened to everything around him and talked to everyone who approached.
The snide comments during Thanatyos and Kazimir’s retreat bit deep into his core and set his pulse pounding. His father had died in a campaign as an Armor Crewman on some nameless Genesis War world before Samson was five and his mother had been killed in a tram accident shortly after. He remembered neither parent as a living breathing influence on his life. All he had left of the two of them were a few still images he was told represented his parents before their deaths.
The creche for orphans was unpleasant.
When he was of school age and by some miracle was accepted to the Guardsmen Academy, he threw himself into schooling knowing that if he failed the Hegemony’s free merit-based Imperial Guardsman school system he would probably be returned to the creche and public education. His chances of being able to afford the peripheral expenses on a scholarship to any other education system as an orphan were slim.
Samson knew only duty. Questioning his manhood had never been something anyone had ever done before, at least never to his face or within hearing distance. As Thanatyos and Kazimir left, the tittering father and son combination struck a chord within Samson he did not know he had.
And it pissed him off.
His knuckles cracked in his new right hand, as his fist closed tightly. The imagined void between the new arm and old throbbed with phantom pain and the left leg felt pinned to the floor, like the block and rebar were still ripping his flesh and dislodging his bones as they rent skin and flesh.
The soft touch on his hand snapped his head down, to a tiny hand running over his.
Samson realized someone was speaking to him.
The little brown head of feminine hair still hid her face. The young woman in a rich forest green silk and silver/white center-lined dress held his fist but still said nothing.
She spoke again, “What is this one?”
Samson realized the blond girl in front of him had asked her question, a second time. “Sorry my lady, I was distracted.” Leaning forward over his rows of citations he identified the one the blond girl’s finger was on.
She spoke clearly before he could answer, with a concise and well-articulated accent that made her origins and latent power in society clear, “That is perfectly all right Guardsman; I think this one is pretty. I like the red triangle and purple outside. What does it mean? And why does it have two gold stars? Are gold stars a good thing, like in class? You get a gold star when you do something good?”
He spoke flatly, answering the young mistress as directly as he could, “Generally, the stars and numbers on awards are a good thing, young lady. That one however is actually an ugly one. You do not want one of those. It means you have been wounded severely enough for a rebuild.”
Slightly shocked by the revelation, the young blond woman stammered, “Oh, I’m sorry. I just picked it because it was pretty. What do the stars mean?” The girl, who was fifteen or sixteen standard years old, looked like she regretted asking.
Her silent and persistent companion gently pried open his right fist, while examining his hand.
Samson found a smile for the young blond woman, “The citation is the first award; each star is an additional citation above the initial award.”
Mortified, the girl paled. She sounded nearly ready to vomit and then cry when she spoke, “Oh my God! You mean you have been wounded badly enough to go to the rebuild hospital three times already?! How old are you, Guardsman?”
Samson spoke directly, addressing his superior, in this new social hierarchy, “I was twenty-eight last week, young lady.”
The small one, who was attached to his hand, rolled his hand palm up, and spoke for the first time, “Happy birthday, Guardsman.”
Confused at the change, Samson spoke a little unsure, “Um, thank you, I guess.”
The smaller brunette girl in green rolled his hand palm down again and inspected the fading crosshatched pattern from the rebuild shop, “Why is it doing that, Guardsman?”
Confused, Samson asked, “Doing what, young lady?”
She spoke with her voice calmly avoiding excitement while she inspected him, “It looked like you had fabric woven into your hand, but as time passes it is fading to normal skin color.”
Samson informed her, “It is fabric. It is artificial skin that my own is growing over and through. The rebuild layers organic materials over the wound rebuilding from the core out; it is spiked with your own DNA so it is like a giant scab over what normally would be too large for skin and flesh to repair. It is repeatedly rebuilt and added to until the original mass is recreated.”
The little brunette in green softly cradled his right hand in her left. She moved it closer to her eyes, and stroked the fading crosshatch with her right thumb before she stated, “And that was the last of the material being absorbed into your new skin. Why did it show like that? The pattern I mean, it is normal skin color now. I can hardly see it.”
Samson decided that a little bit of evasive honesty was required, “I’m sorry my Lady, someone said something not very nice, and I was angry. When my blood flows too hard the pattern shows. When it finishes healing in a few months, it will show as normal skin for the rest of my life, but the pattern may remain as a visible scar when I am angry or fighting.”
The little one asked, “What happened to your hand?”
The change of direction in the conversation was a little jarring, but Samson answered, “My hand and arm, right leg, left ankle, and neck and shoulders are all new. I lost them during an artillery barrage.” He paused considering and finished, “A lot of good men didn’t make it, I was lucky.”
She rolled his hand over to inspect his wrist, her blond friend forgotten during her inspection, “How long did it take? The repair I mean.”
Samson answered directly, “I spent the last four months in the rebuild shop regrowing my arm and leg.”
The girl spoke preoccupied, with her inspection, “I’m sorry you went through that much pain in the service of the Empire,” she said absently as she pulled at a finger, and then asked, “Are the bones new too?”
He snapped, “Yes, young lady.”
Moving on to his thumb and fingernail, she asked, “What is your name, Guardsman?”
He snapped, “Guardsman Rockpoint, my lady.”
Sounding a little put-out, she droned, “That is a good strong family name, but I already know both of them. I asked what your name was.” She absently flipped his hand over again and gently bent the wrist, while holding it close, looking for the crosshatch pattern, to reappear.
Confused, he wondered, “How do you know that, young Lady?”
Without looking up, absently she replied, “It’s my job to know everything I can, and that one was easy,” she tapped his name embossed in gold across the chest plate of his armor, and she returned to her momentarily interrupted inspection.
This won her a genuine smile, as he realized he was just being cantankerous for no reason, and the girl was just being nice. She returned his bad attitude in polite gift wrapping; she did return his inadvertent insult ‘gently’, he had to admit. “My name is Sub-Colonel Samson Rockpoint, Guardian First Class, currently inbound rotation, House Chroynos Imperial Guard Detachment.”
She answered smoothly, “Thank you, Samson,” she rolled his hand out and away to look at the new tendons and ligaments that ran from his lower forearm to hand. “These look strong,” as she poked at the cords under the skin.
Answering the inquisitive statement, Samson told her, “Yes, my Lady, they are good as new. Muscle mass is recreated using relevant tissue densities from around the body, that way there is less rehabilitation required to even the muscular strength. They are as good as or better in some cases than my old ones.”
Still holding his hand in her left, she looked up and brushed the hair back from her eyes with her right hand, showing him for the first time the most beautiful gray-blue eyes he had ever seen. She demanded, “How can they be better than the old ones?”
Taken aback he apologized, “I’m sorry. I know it sounds silly. I hurt my right knee years ago in school and it was never quite right, but not enough to warrant work or therapy. When my leg was blown off, they rebuilt my knee too because the bones were shattered and out of place, and that nagging pain went away. The leg is better than it was.”
She immediately caught the evasion, “You qualified that statement, Samson. What are you leaving out?”
Playing dumb he asked, “What do you mean my Lady?”
She boxed him in, “You said, ‘the leg is better than it was’ and ‘that nagging pain went away’. You said your arm, neck, and left ankle were hurt too. Is something wrong?”
Reluctant, he finally spoke, sounding like he was whining to his own ears, “Well, I have phantom pain where my arm was replaced, but it is fading. It feels like I have a pain-filled gap between the new muscle and the old. I’m just complaining though and you do not want to hear that on such a nice night.”
The little brunette in the green held his eyes with an authoritative gravity Samson could not believe he was seeing in one so young. When she finally spoke, she never looked away from his eyes and replied quietly, “That sounds… unpleasant.”
The pretty blond took the offered opportunity to interrupt, “Oh, speaking of tonight! Excuse me, Guardsman. I need to take her to meet my father’s friend, I almost forgot!” She took the gangly, slightly awkward brunette’s hand in her own, as the blonde waved and said, “Goodbye, we will be back later, if we have time.”
Figuring that meant he would never see them again, Samson decided to be polite and told her, “Yes, my lady.”
Samson went back to tracking conversations and juggled the three in his immediate perimeter and tracked the girls as they left, to refine that skill. The conversation to his right had been developing into a nicely brooding tale of graft and personal gain, by a hapless underling, who was apparently rapidly approaching his ultimate end in the story. Samson was quietly enjoying the tale.
Samson tracked what the blonde said as she pulled her friend away, “He was scary! I do not want to talk to him ever again! And did you see that horrible mess on his shoulder, and that silly haircut! He cannot even make his hair even!”
The short brunette added some common sense to the bubbly medley, “He was not scary, Colleen. That was because his skin was burnt off and the hair is just now growing back in. Besides, he is just new and trying to figure out who everyone is. I think he is gorgeous: tall, strong, handsome, and powerful.”
Instantly offended, the blond nearly squealed, “Eew! Gross! You are fourteen! He is like, like even, twice your age! You need to find a proper independent industrial baron or large corporate CEO!”
Green snapped, “No way! They are all old, much older, and fat, and ugly. Like squishy little frogs, with loose squishy skin, that just float around in a dirty little puddle all day. Samson is dreamy!”
The blond groaned, “Eew! And poor!” The blond shook her head violently, tossing her perfect hair everywhere in aggravation at her know-nothing friend. “You are the most powerful fourteen-year-old in the Empire, Persephone! You cannot be thinking about brutish and poor and disgusting Guardsmen as ‘dreamy’!”
Samson groaned loud enough for the conversations around him to slow, precipitously. ‘Persephone’ was the name of his future charge. Persephone Apollonia Chroynos, the sole remaining Heiress to the Emperor of the Chroynos Corporate Hegemony, the ‘fourteen-year-old’ sole remaining Heiress.
And she had a teenage crush on her ‘dreamy’ new guard. His life kept getting more and more complicated.
Chapter 27)
Persephone was bored.
Persephone was so bored she was upside down, on her bed, hair sprawled everywhere in an unkept mess, with her feet up on the wall and her headboard. She was unconsciously rocking back and forth at the knees and ankles. This had been going on for weeks.
The most exciting thing she had done that day was her final punishment, a load of laundry for the woman she stole the uniform from to make her last escape. When she loaded the basket with the last folded garment, she was proud that she was getting better at it. She did not fold as crisply as Samson. For the life of her, she still could not figure out how he made round socks square when he folded his clothes. She definitely could not do things as nicely as when her items came back to her cleaned and folded, but she was definitely better at folding than she was when she started. Since she had nothing but time on her hands, she took her time to do it right.
A hard male voice barked from one of her closets, “What is this?!”
The ‘Fly’ and ‘Mosquito’ both snapped to alert for the thousandth time, like dogs at the word treat, as Persephone sighed and replied in boredom, “I do not know, Daddy, you are in the closet. I cannot see through walls.” The massed black and gold gathering of Phyllip’s squad of Guardsmen milled and jostled slightly, as they tried to hide their interest while milling about in the open door and hall.
Daddy snapped, “Well, get off your bottom and come look!”
She snapped argumentatively, “No. You are the one making the mess, you bring it here!”
The response was immediate, “Girl! Do not talk back to me! You come here and tell me what all this stuff is in this big plastic bin!”
Another sigh, and she demanded, “Is it the one with the gray top, in the back corner against the wall?”
He barked, “Yes! Now come over here and tell me what all this stuff is!”
Loosing a bored sigh, she droned, “That is my ‘donation box’, Daddy, leave it alone. It is where I put all the crap people give me. I give it to the ‘help the poor’ groups.” She needled, “Remember?”
He bristled, “What the hell are you doing throwing away all this brand-new stuff!” He stormed as he exited the closet, in a rage.
While examining her perfectly manicured fingernails for imagined imperfections she droned, “I’m not throwing it away, it will go to people who need it but cannot afford it. All that stuff is things I already have. Every time some new gizmo or gadget comes out with a new bell or whistle, every suitor, courtier, fop, and corporate lordling all give me the same brandy new gadget by the gross, with the same brandy new bell or whistle, in maybe a different color. They go in that box. So, leave it alone!”
He countered immediately, “I’ll do whatever the hell I want with it, young lady!”
Snark oozed, “Fine, ‘your Majesty’! Do whatever the hell you want with it, just bring back my box and please take it to the poor contribution thing. I’m sure you will look darling on the news vids toting donations tonight!”
Covering the ground to her bed, from her closet, in a few purposeful strides, Phyllip growled, “Do not sass me, girl!”
That got her attention.
She defied the laws of physics while spinning to her knees from her back and before she knew it was marching across her bedspread on her knees yelling back, “Really! What are you going to do! Ground me! Place guards outside my room all day and all night! Lock me in a tower! Surround the tower with a thousand-meter-deep cloud-filled moat! Oh, wait! Check, check, check, and check! You have already done that. What now! Send me to bed without any dinner!” She finished by shouting her checklist and beyond into the face of the Corporate Emperor of the Chroynos Corporate Hegemony.
“That is enough out of both of you.” The regal female voice from the door startled the father and daughter pair, and the guardsmen present. Persephone’s mother had snuck up on them all, while they watched the now nightly fireworks, between the wild and willful young woman, and the most powerful man in that arm of the galaxy. She stood alone; she had apparently halted her guard detail somewhere in the hall. “I do not know who I am angrier with.” The diminutive but visibly aging woman, wracked by stress and heartache over years of watching her children die, full of worry over her last remaining baby but still clinging to the stunning beauty Persephone now carried, was fast approaching sixty but looked older. Pointing to her husband, Celine decreed, “You leave her alone. I will not discuss this here, but you are behaving like a brutish animal.” Tracking onto her daughter like the guns from a planet-killing capital ship, “And you! That is quite enough of your racket. I could hear your shrieking about news vids. And that bothersome checklist you just declared while I was in the entrance hall. Not the one to our residence, the public hall. You two should be ashamed of yourselves, the talk is reaching unbearable levels and you two are feeding the fires. You do not even have the decency to shut the door to yell at each other.
“You ten gawking apes are the worst of the group,” encircling the assembled guardsmen with her accusing finger and withering gaze. “Do not think for a second that I do not hear what you say about this charade. You fools are the ones supplying and feeding the rumor mills. I know when Thomys has been here, like clockwork, because there are no rumors of a stellar catastrophe the next morning, only boring talk of a once over and quiet conversation.
“Five weeks this has been going on. You,” pointing to her husband, “We need to talk. You,” pointing to her daughter, “Will behave like a young lady, prepare for bed and sleep…” Celine cut her daughter’s response off before she could utter it with a raised finger and harsh, “Not a word! I do not care how old you think you are, not a word from you, young lady!”
The complete lack of ceremony during her departure did more to chill the room than anything that had come before, as everyone turned to the business of obeying Lady Celine.
Chapter 28)
Persephone sat cross-legged and frustrated on her bed. The day had been long and tedious. The dress and political dances had been stiff and formal. The interminable dross rolling out of sycophantic fawners set her to gagging behind her perfect and schooled smile.
If it were not for her soft comfortable shorts, thick warm socks, and thin sleeping shirt she would have been thoroughly irritable.
He urged, “Come on Persephone. Focus on the task at hand.”
She barked, “Quiet you!”
Mocking her like no one else dared he snapped, “Yeah, like that has ever worked on me before. Come on little princess, what do you need next. Think about it.”
The nylon strap lay flayed and open lengthwise with bits of tech laid across its far half. Without looking up from her puzzle, Persephone reached her left hand over to poke Samson’s shoulder with her index finger. While she pushed, “I said quiet, Mister Samson. Can’t you see I’m working here?”
He teased, “It looks like you are sleeping while sitting up.”
Chewing her lip, she said, “I am not. I just think I’m stuck.”
He eased, “No, you’re not. Just walk through what you have so far.”
She restarted, “Alright. First, I have the exterior case and mounting in the form of the nylon strap. I have the miniature fuel cells from those stupid toys people gave me at either end of the strap…”
He demanded, “And why do you have them there?”
She answered calmly, “So, I only have to remove the buckle at the end of the strap to replace them, now do not interrupt again you big cretin.” She liked calling him names, “After that, I have the converters, accelerators then capacitors… And now I’m stuck.”
He asked, “Why?”
Frustrated, she snapped, “Samson!” She was tired; it had been a very long day. She never snapped at Samson.
She had been pulled from sleep four hours early to begin the dressing, primping, preening, and artistic additions required to make her look the proper lady. The full-dress rehearsal for the dinner started at 0600 that morning, they had pulled mechanical technicians and clerks from postings that were not actively preparing for the day and assigned them ‘roles’ to play. Even off-duty security personnel got to participate in the dinner of their lives when they should have been eating breakfast. The kitchen’s formal rehearsal lasted until just before noon when the formal close-family-only lunch began.
After the several hundred guests had been shuttled out after lunch, Persephone had been herded back to her rooms to prepare for the rest of the evening. Samson’s quip about ‘the paint and spackle crew’s time defacing the masterpiece statue of Athena’ earned her smile and laughter. It also resulted in his banishment from female activities for the duration of preparations.
He needled her on, “Do not get mad at me, Persephone. Reason it through, birthday girl, what are we building? And what components do we need to make that work?”
She responded, “We are building an ‘Anti-Gravity Harness’ from commercially available components. It works on power, capacitors, and gravity repulsors.”
He encouraged, “Correct, you have power storage. You have the amplifiers, connections, and capacitors, so what other components do you need?”
She wanted to cheat and demanded, “Just show me yours again.”
He told her flatly, “No. You know that your lessons are done, and this is your final exam, so back to work. What are the next components?”
The Formal Dinner and Ball had been even more boring than the rehearsals. At least during the rehearsals, she got to chuckle at the nervous mistakes of the wait staff, and layman’s attempts at propriety while in the company of the Chroynos family heads and their confusion at utensils and serving pieces. She had made it a game to secretly point out the correct uses of various pieces while her mother was occupied terrorizing people elsewhere. Junior enlisted Home Guard soldiers were turned out in a formation after their shift and were marched out of barracks at first light. When their night shifts ended, they were confused by the break-in routine. They were terrified when they arrived at the arena-sized dining room and were told to decipher the array of silverware.
Rifles and explosives, they could handle, but place settings and napkins were something else and were terrifying. They were repeatedly accosted by Celine Udell Chroynos’s personal concierge and placed facing crystal and silver place settings. Each setting was worth many times more than their year’s pay and allowances and included more forks, spoons, grabbers, knives, and ‘something-er-others’ than any of them knew existed. Let alone know how to use it.
She listed, “Well, I need something to monitor the power cells. I need to be able to check their charge. I need something to act as a connection to all the components in series. And I need the repulsors.”
These ‘tests’ always had the required components available and generally close at hand.
The piles of electronics, nick-knacks, offerings, garments, and mementos were generally useless and equally frustrating to dispose of after they were open. Instead of sorting the two hand trucks worth of gifts, she had taken as her hobby ripping them to pieces and parts to play the ‘build something’ game with Samson.
Samson waited patiently as ever while her lips pursed, and she sucked her bottom lip in thought.
In three and a half years they had played this game with everything from comm units to codes, to electronic keys, to small EMP pulse generators. The pulse generators turned out to be one of her favorite pranks. The last few weeks they had progressed to an anti-gravity harness.
The two mountains of gifts for her Eighteenth Birthday had become nothing more than fodder, for her parts requirement.
Then she saw it, “Samson, you sneaky man!”
Innocently, “What? Why am I sneaky, Persephone?”
She accused, “You knew this was coming, didn’t you? You timed this lesson to end today.”
He lied his ass off to her again, “I don’t know what you are talking about Persephone.”
Her finger and thumb playfully tugged his ear twice, eliciting smiles from both, “You knew I would get piles of crap today. You knew that it would be cataloged and tracked by Mother Dearest. You knew that she would have records for all the thank you cards I need to write tomorrow. You also knew that they would push it all up here for me to sort. And how did it all arrive? It all arrived on repulsor carts. You timed this test to have all the components in the room, didn’t you?”
He admitted, “You win. I timed it.” Persephone smiled and leaned the inches to her left to lean on Samson’s shoulder while she reviewed the components already in place and checked their connections.
Not losing touch, she spoke, “I have the power cells, the accelerators are in place, the capacitors are in series…”
He interrupted, “And is that a good idea?”
She considered and slowly responded, “No.” Then quoting the prior lessons, “‘I never want to have commercial capacitors in series because if there is a system failure in one, the exponential power increase between capacitor feeding capacitor, feeding combined capacitor power to the final can catastrophically overload the last in the series.’”
He admitted, “Close enough to call it correct. And what have you done to mitigate that?”
Still comfortable leaning on his shoulder she answered, “I have broken the capacitor series into two banks of three instead of one bank of four to arrive at approximately the same power output with six, without the increased risk of catastrophic failure of a fourth capacitor in a series. This design also provides the added safety of redundant capacitor generation. All that so if one series of three fails the other series will catch so I do not slam into the ground at full speed. I am instead slowed but still hit the ground, hopefully not hard enough to kill myself.”
He acknowledged, “Good and we already did the math a few weeks ago so you know it will work and that the safety margin is in place. What next?”
To answer Persephone used her left hand on his leg and pushed herself up from Samson to walk across the bed. She stepped off, dropping silently to the floor, and walked to the carts. As she tossed, kicked, pushed, and pulled the piles off the closest cart Samson joined her, and started sorting the boxes into a semblance of order around the carts, as she discarded them.
Samson and Persephone flipped the cart to its side and shut it down while it was there. He asked her to check the cart’s capacity and count the coils on the bottom while dividing the capacity and the number of coils. She had to account for the output of the harness’s capacitors to arrive at the number of coils the harness required to function with her weight.
Surprised, she asked, “So, I only need two coils? I thought I would need more.”
Shaking his head, he reminded, “No, you are little. The coils respond to the approaching mass’s gravity and trigger the power capacitor’s output. The more power they demand, the harder they repulse from the approaching mass. They balance then repulse up to their manufactured limit.”
As Persephone sat on the floor and used his multi-tool to take the first two repulsors within her reach, Samson stopped and corrected her, “You do not want to create an uneven list in the hand cart. Take from the middle, and make it look like they just fell out. You do not want people asking questions about this type of thing. These repulsors are solid state and last forever so everyone takes maintenance on them for granted. It could be years before someone finds these two missing, but no need to be careless or draw attention to yourself.”
Persephone smiled at her favorite teacher and scooted herself across the floor to the middle of the upturned cart and removed two leaving a few in place between, and the cart still balanced.
He encouraged, “Good job, Persephone. Now, they are solid state, but you will need to bend them to the shape you will want them to master and maintain for your harness.”
Persephone set to work shaping the two-and-a-half by twenty-centimeter rectangles of soft metal. She seated their power connections in opposite directions but still parallel to each other, in the middle of the belt. Her reclaimed power cable connections from other devices snaked in sequence from both capacitors to both repulsors, so both capacitors split their generated power into both coils. Resulting in a half, plus a half equaling the whole of the power she needed to power each repulsor. That way if one capacitor series failed the other could still apply power to the repulsors. It built in some redundant safety to the harness.
Samson reclaimed his place at her side. He crossed his legs, next to the components on her bed, and propped his jaw in his left hand, pinching his jaw in his thumb and index finger under his nose. While he watched components snap together, he remained silent.
She connected the components and he watched patiently while she checked and rechecked the connections, components, and metal clips she had used as fasteners through the back of the nylon strap, on what would become the ‘exterior’.
From behind his hand, Samson muttered, “Are you sure that is where you want everything?”
She retorted, “Of course! Mine is much simpler than yours. I do not have as much wiring or crisscrossing components, everything is sequential, orderly, and pretty.”
He shrugged, “Fair enough.”
Persephone folded the strap over on itself widthwise and checked the position of the fasteners, making sure the clips were all tight. She checked the belt clip at the end, verified access to the power cells for later replacement, and checked the power and connection display on the small screen she attached.
Persephone was proud of her work, she sealed the strap over itself using Samson’s multi-tool, and a small piece of paper to spread the epoxy she had acquired the week prior, on the plastic strap material she folded into its opposite side.
While the epoxy dried, they talked about some of the more entertaining aspects of the day.
When she was satisfied it was dry and would not glue itself to her favorite shirt, in any way, she tried the belt around her waist. It fit snugly as it was supposed to. The pile of sacrificed gifts had given their component parts to complete her newest project. And she was proud of it.
She blurted, “I want to test it!”
He demanded, “Are you sure you are ready?”
She snapped sarcastically, “Yes!”
She was practically bouncing with excitement, standing at the head of her bed while Samson slowly stood and walked to the foot of the bed. “Alright, please walk to the end by me. Make sure your power is on, and you are belted securely.”
She mimed him and mocked his over-caution, with a rocking head, moving lips, and a smile but she complied. When both Samson and Persephone were satisfied, she stood straight.
Samson looked at her, full length, head to toe, and took two steps backward. “When you jump, jump for here,” tapping a point on the soft carpet with his toe. He took one more step backward and sat down on the floor facing her. “I’m ready when you are, Persephone.”
Her frustrated exhale and shaking head did nothing to perturb her eccentric Guardsman. He had seen it before, and it only amused him, which was more frustrating for her.
She jumped for the point on the floor.
The anti-gravity harness performed exactly to its design. All the components functioned perfectly. The passively charged repulsor strips, activated when they approached matter. The challenged repulsors activated the capacitors which drew charges from the accelerators and power cells. The parallel and powered repulsors repelled the gravity at exactly their center of gravity.
Persephone’s center of balance was in her core, not at her new center of gravity which was now where the repulsors pulled her from behind as they resisted the fall. Then her forward momentum, combined with the repulsor’s tug at the small of her back, it created a modest rotation. The rotation was caused by her newly separated centers of balance and gravity to flip her forward.
Persephone’s undignified squawk of panic was abrupt and sloppy as her legs flailed suddenly.
She fell forward faster than gravity would normally have pulled her. Her forward momentum combined with the repulsor’s tug away from the floor slammed her into Samson’s waiting arms. She screamed in panic as she smashed to a halt.
Her legs dangled helplessly backward in the air, as he held her shoulders, “Get me down!”
He calmly instructed, “Turn the power down.”
The simple instruction cut through the panic and she slapped the ‘off’ instead of dialing down the power. Deprived of power to her repulsors, she landed hard on Samson’s chest, with her wind knocked out of her. All she could manage was, “Ouch.”
To sooth her ruffled pride Samson remained prone under her, “Are you alright?”
She complained, “Yes, I think I whacked my knee, and elbow hard.” Her fear left and was replaced by nervous laughter in his chest. When she calmed, both her hands worked their way up his chest so she could prop her chin up and look at him while he lay on the floor under her. “You knew that was coming, didn’t you?”
Samson only smiled up at her and nodded in the affirmative twice.
She groaned in embarrassment and demanded, “You warned me twice before I jumped and then you sat down because you knew I would land on my head. But how did you know that would happen just like that?”
Samson smiled up at his young charge and tapped his nose twice. His own nose was slightly crooked. “It took me a few failures to make a harness that I liked and worked consistently. You have access to better parts. Mine were mostly discarded junk when I was learning, not quality new items. Yes, I did try to let you know but experience is the best teacher sometimes.”
Persephone ran one finger over the mild spur of bone on his nose, “I thought that was from the fights and sports you told me about.”
He admitted while her finger lingered, “It was that too, but I also kissed the floor a few times playing with my harnesses and other toys when I was learning.”
Persephone giggled at Samson’s joke, while she climbed to her hands and knees over him. Still smiling, her left hand brushed her hair back from her eyes as she looked at Samson on the floor under her.
Then Persephone did something she had never done before in her whole life. She leaned forward and kissed Samson full on the lips as her body fell back to his and her hands cupped his face.
For the first time in his life, his arms circled a woman. For the first time in his life, he held a woman, who was wearing very little, and something broke inside him and he kissed her back. At thirty-one, Samson had known only Duty for twenty-six years and had never had the time for a woman.
Panic set in when he realized who it was he was kissing.
He broke away by rolling his head to the side, “I’m sorry, my Lady.” Samson’s hands gently grasped her shoulders and lifted her as quickly as he could while he tried desperately to crawl away on his back. “I shouldn’t have done that… I didn’t mean to… I just wanted to keep you from hitting your head on the floor… I need to go… I need to leave now… I’m sorry! It will never happen again!”
Persephone had no idea what to say as she was seated firmly on the floor next to him. He was up to crawling; then he was up to walking and was to the door. When it closed behind his shaking moving hands and nervous uneven movements, Persephone realized his fluid and composed warrior’s grace was gone also. The automatic door slid silently shut, closing him off from her view.
Persephone’s chest hurt. She felt like she needed to vomit. She found herself seated in a ball, hugging her knees, at the foot of her bed.
And she realized she very much wanted that to happen again.
Thank You!
Thank you for reading this chapter!
Your next chapter is HERE.
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Enjoy!