THE GUARDSMAN: Book 2: Blood Debts – Chapters 41-44

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The Guardsman, Book 1: Honor of the Fallen:

Chapter 41)

Called ‘Captain’ because he was commanding a warship, Captain Phyllip Chroynos fumed impatiently, while waiting even more impatiently, for the results of the scans to tell him what he already, ‘knew’ was too strong a word, ‘suspected’ fit though, and reality lay somewhere between the two.

Young Lieutenant Phyllip Chroynos II stood quietly behind his father, the High Commander of the Guardsmen. Lieutenant Chroynos was a new lieutenant, on his first tour after his commissioning a few months before. He was on the fast track to become a Home Guard officer though and was currently attached to the Home Guard to backfill for an officer on long-term disability leave for this deployment. Though not a Guardsman himself, he was a member of the ‘regular infantry’; from there he would be qualified to transfer directly into the Home Guard dedicated to supporting the Elite Guardsmen formations. The Home Guard was still a top-tier unit but nowhere near as religiously trained and honed as the Guardsmen.

Though currently only ‘attached’ everyone knew he would end up permanently assigned to the Home Guard in the near future. The Lieutenant’s formation was as elite, relative to other line units, as a university team playing a high school in some sporting event. The Guardsmen however were as elite as a professional team in that same sporting event.

The father looked back at his eldest son, while his fingers impatiently drummed back and forth over the chair of his command couch console.

The rhythmic tapping was fraying the nerves of the Signals Officer seated before the High Commander at the console, who knew he had nothing but bad news to report.

As the brevet High-Commander because he was the highest ranking Guardsman in contact with the family and with the official High-Commander out of contact on the planet below, allowed his mind to wander to Persephone, the little crawler, who was rattling around in his rooms in the Citadel. Celine was thrilled that she had another little person to play with all day. Persephone had just turned one year old the week before this ‘unsatisfying’ expedition launched.

In the weeks that it had taken to reach this distant, ‘once upon a time’ gem of a world, the High-Commander had had nothing pleasant to think about but that chunky little garden weed drooling on, smiling at, and crawling on everything, to take his mind off his worst fears.

Losing his sister, Alala, and her fiance, to a vehicle bomb not two months after Persephone was born, and less than a month before Alala’s own wedding, was bad enough. But now the greasy, dirty-gray-looking ball below did nothing to soothe his spirits over the fate of Katharina Chroynos, his youngest sister, and her family.

His two baby sisters were dead within ten months of each other. Phyllip didn’t believe in ‘coincidence’ and this pair of coincidences that left one sister dead and the other’s fate hidden somewhere below, missing and presumed dead, set his teeth to grinding.

The frustrated sigh from the Signal Officer, cued Phyllip to look over his shoulder at his eldest son. The grim set to his oldest son’s jawline was enough to tell him what Lieutenant Phyllip Chroynos II thought. The tiny horizontal shake of his head was unnecessary but provided the death blow to the High-Commander’s irrational hopes. The boy-turned-young Officer knew as well as his father did that his aunt and her family were not going to reply.

High Commander Chroynos pinched the bridge of his nose and demanded, “Speak up signals, what’s out there?”

Warsong’s Signals Officer sighed in his seat. The Guardsman was a marvel with technology, his aptitude had landed him the prestigious post on the Guard’s Flagship. His experience and training on the ship over the last two years, of his three-year tour, made him an expert. He stood and faced the High Commander before answering flatly, “Nothing Sir. There are no power sources. No technological emanations from anything larger than a handheld, and those are few and far between. May I display it on the main monitor Captain?”

The clinical side of Phyllip’s brain knew the Signals Officer needed everyone to hear it so that he was not roasted over the engine housing for giving bad news. Phyllip made a note to himself to control his temper in the future. “Yes, please do. I need you to walk through what your sensors tell you happened. I want a step-by-step and as much information as we can get.” The Signals Officer hesitated and looked at the younger Chroynos. “I clear him effective immediately,” said Phyllip. Turning to his son, he said, “This is ‘Guardsmen Warship Command Group Only’ level classified. Absolutely no one knows about this, you are not to repeat this or so help me I will blow your ass out of an airlock myself. Your mother and uncle don’t even know about this, and they never will. Is that clear Lieutenant?”

The young officer snapped, “Yes Sir! Absolutely.”

At the acting High-Commander’s nod, Signals continued, “The stealth deep space observation satellite will not receive our laser query,” leaning back to his console, checking the display, before standing straight and continuing, “For another eight hours and thirty-seven minutes, followed by a full twelve hours minimum to process the request for data and that data to begin streaming to us. Since we have no firm timetable for this”, gesturing behind himself to the display, “We will need to download everything since the last data dump and that will take several hours to receive and decode. Since I have no idea when the last data dump was, I have no idea how much we will receive from the satellite once it starts transmitting.

“To your pressing question, Captain, ‘no’ I cannot tell you as yet who did this. The destruction is complete. We can’t find a single living thing on the planet.”

Signals tapped his console and a haze of topography covered the dead mass of the planet. Once the topography was attached to the dead planet Phyllip could see the world as it had once been in his mind’s eye. Shining, verdant green, pristine crystal seas, a planet devoid of tectonic activity, or terraforming instabilities or defects, the world had been perfect. The days were slightly shorter, the gravity modestly lighter than ‘Earth normal’ and the temperatures a pleasant range that maintained a very nice climate year-round. It was the perfect vacation world, even the aging and elderly could enjoy the feeling of ‘youth’ in their steps again.

His sister, Katharina, and her husband maintained a hillside vacation villa, a short hop from the equatorial sea. Having approached often enough on his own visits, Phyllip could not recognize a single feature, without Warsong projecting an outline of ‘what was’ over the mess it became.

Phyllip objected, “No … No,” waving his finger in the direction of the display, while looking directly into the Signal Officer’s soul. “The High-Commander was with them. He would see to it that they all survived and made it to the bunker together. I know we installed early warning systems on the villa and Katharina would be in the bunker within minutes of an attack warning. I know the planetary satellites are blasted but they would have had several hours warning to get to shelter. I know at least she is alive.”

Signals visibly sagged, as his breath collapsed, and his eyes closed. He turned to his console, flicked a premade and readily displayed icon once, and dragged it with his finger across the display where it overlaid the planet as the magnification dropped precipitously, towards the surface. “I know Sir. That is why I spent so long without reporting. The bunker was hit.”

Phyllip’s rejection was instantaneous and visceral, “No … Bullshit! The bunker was over a straight-line kilometer away from the house, along a twisting tunnel full of switchbacks, behind hermetically sealing doors every two hundred meters along the route. It was a secret. Only the family and the Guard knew about it. Contractors were highly paid, brought in from off planet, and their minds were wiped of the job details on the way back to their home world, as part of their contract. The bunker’s transmitter antenna was over three kilometers away, in a different direction from the start of the tunnel so there is no way someone could have hit the bunker while shooting at the signal tower, even if the bunker’s occupants were fool enough to broadcast during a strike. And there was nothing of interest or importance in or around the area where the bunker was buried.”

As the overlay focused and settled it was clearly a wire-frame schematic of the villa and the surrounding support structures. The Signals Officer approached the main view screen and walked through the obvious orienting points from the villa to transmitter positions and finally to the bunker location, as displayed on the wire-frame schematic.

He walked back to his console and circled a portion of the displayed map, which drew a circle over an area of the main display. “Sir, do you see the discolored circle in the middle of the one I drew?”

The drawn circle was centered over the wireframe of the bunker, dreading the next news, “Yes,” droned Phyllip.

Calmly, cautiously the Signals officer offered, “Sir, that is magma. Someone put a capital ship round directly through the bunker. Then they did it again and again, until they cracked the crust of the planet, releasing magma from the deep core of the world. Sir, they put so many rounds into it that the hill the bunker was in, is now under a lake of magma. The bunker itself was targeted specifically, and repeatedly.”

The Signals Officer continued, “By the time they were done, they had opened every old tectonic plate on the planet and sent so many shock waves through the soft core of the world that the world suffered earthquakes and volcanic eruptions in so many places at once that the world died in a matter of minutes.

“When they were done they took the time to circle the planet and destroy every piece of orbiting tech they could find to cover up their tracks, probably while sending high caliber rounds into every major population center that could contain a computer capable of telling investigators who did this.

“I’m sorry Sir. This was a very thorough job. Once they started and realized what they had done they went ahead and covered their tracks as best as possible, so no one could catch them.”

Phyllip asked, “You are positive, Signals?”

The response was calm and clinically professional, “Yes Sir. Everything that should have been able to stay above the level of the magma has distinct bombardment impact patterns around where it should be standing. Sir, my guess is they hit the bunker until they were sure they got it, and did it again and set off the reaction in the planet by accident. Once they realized they were screwed for genocide they decided to leave no witnesses, living or electronic. They were already under the gun, so someone decided they should make it total and they would try and get away with it. This is a remote world and there are never many ships here, and more than enough debris in orbit to account for every single ship that would normally be here.”

Standing slowly, ship’s Captain Phyllip Chroynos, newly permanent High-Commander of Guardsmen, looked from his Signals Officer to his son, and back again, the rest of the bridge crew doing their best to be invisible. “Notify me when we receive the feed from the observation platform. I want to know who did this.” His hands closed to fists, “I want to know who did this, and I want to track them down. I will eradicate the ships involved and we will crush whatever Corporate or Imperial Dynasty that ordered this to the last man. I don’t want any interruptions until that has arrived.”

Turning to his son, “Lieutenant, tell your platoon to stand down. They will not be dropping to the surface. There are no survivors in that man-made hell.” Raising his hand to cut off protests, “The atmosphere is poisoned and superheated, the storms and cloud cover are from the seas as they boiled away further polluting the atmosphere with superheated steam. The sulfuric acid rain, mixed with the change in atmospheric pressures, and the superheated wastes, not to mention the lava and earthquakes, if that wasn’t enough the dirt-filled clouds blotting out the sun dropped the surface temperatures to subzero, the only warmth down there now is from the magma boiling up from the core of the planet. They killed everyone and everything weeks ago.”

Shaking his head at the display, “No son … that is a dead world and I won’t risk your men to confirm something we all already know.”

Chapter 42)

Persephone was a marvel.

Samson watched as she gracefully slipped from one newly created adoring ‘fan’ to the next person present who in no time at all was turned into an adoring fan too. These people, complete strangers to start with, after a few short minutes with her, were willing to sign their children over to her.

The management of this Chroynos Power Generation reactor still had not caught on yet to the random visit. The plant and the hundreds like it around the planet were more or less automated. People were present merely to make sure the blinking green lights stayed blinking green. If they faltered, or an alarm sounded, that was a bad thing and it required someone’s attention.

The job was pretty simple. But computers were not allowed to make those decisions so living, breathing, thinking humans were still involved in the process. Machines were fine for the hundreds of millions of microsecond computations and readings during any given twenty-four-hour period, but the one in a multi-hundred billion-microsecond ‘anomaly’ that the computers couldn’t compensate for required the attention of those who could dictate actions outside of fixed programming. The computers needed human minders, or the reactor would automatically go offline for safety reasons.

Humanity’s collective shudder at the thought of what thinking machines could and had wrought in the past sent that option and the person who suggested it flying for whatever was closer, a door or an open window.

Machine rebellions aside, it was always a good idea to have humanity tied into the ‘decision loop’ where fusion reactors were concerned.

The very principle of turning tiny atoms into progressively much larger atoms and plucking the loosed electrons from the maelstrom just made sense. Early in Humanity’s arrogance, many had taken fusion as a simple silver bullet solution to everything. ‘Safe efficient power’ was the motto of the day. Until the day several million unlucky bastards, on a world light-centuries away, outside the Chroynos borders were on the receiving end of a runaway reaction that expanded to the point where it broke its containment and bathed them all in superheated molecules and freed electrons. Needless to say, the gaping hole in the side of the planet and millions of dead, dying, and missing, set people to rethinking the proper application of computer-driven reactor safety measures, tied to profit algorithms. The computer figured ‘more power equals more money because I am operating at higher efficiency, which is a good thing’, right up until a microsecond before the feedback from the rest of the grid sent an electronic shock wave back into the overloaded reactor. The feedback created so much resistance in the massive superconducting lines that the feedback’s heat choked the only exit for the building output. This caused a catastrophic escalating cascade of electrons, inside the magnetic containment, which overrode that containment.

The computer had just enough time to send its truncated equivalent of ‘uh-oh’ to its central operators before its catastrophic failure dug a fifty-meter-deep and four-hundred-kilometer diameter hole in the side of its planet, in the center of their largest city.

The dead were the lucky ones. They didn’t have to worry about the bath in half-consumed radioactive fusion material. The base for the operation is common H2O, water, but when it is superheated and released if it strikes living tissue the Hydrogen, Helium, Oxygen, and freed electrons make a mess. The burns from the superheated molecules were nasty but the long-term damage was caused by the complicated rays of mixed non-visible light that the blast put out, specifically X-ray and Gamma-ray radiation. They had a tendency to strip any DNA that they struck, into its constituent molecules, and prevent cellular regeneration, or simply what thousands of years before had been called, radiation poisoning.

So human operators sat at consoles in every reactor around the Human populated worlds of the Galaxy, reading magazines, chatting over hot drinks, and watching lights blink happy green. All the while avoiding and dreading the steady shine of little red buttons that would initiate a controlled collapse of the electromagnetic containment field. Since no sane human wanted to be blown apart into constituent atoms, and all the overlapping, hopefully sane, humans would provide at least one to kill a runaway reaction, the overly redundant process was as safe as Chroynos Engineers could make it, and they were very good at what they did.

So, as Persephone made new best friends with every human controller in one of the family’s hundreds of fusion reaction plants on this planet alone, one of them was always close enough to a kill switch to keep them all in their present atomically assembled state.

Her shadow, dressed in black trimmed with gold, out of any discernible uniform, and tucked under a thick overcoat followed patiently with his hands clasped behind his back. The unassuming but ever-watchful soldier stayed out of the way of all the important people, while they met the Heiress to the Empire.

None of them could see his right hand grasping the hilt of the blade or the drawn pistol in his left hand. Behind his back and hidden under the folds of the overcoat, they were invisible. Since the shadow was invisible, no one noticed either weapon.

Samson was becoming more and more irritated, not with the employees who were flocking Persephone but with the managers who failed to notice over the last two hours that thanks to her magnetic personality, no one was at their consoles maintaining the stations in this reactor. In addition to the rattling of his nerves, the sheer fact that the managers were so far removed from reality made him wonder what good they were, they simply weren’t managing or supervising.

When Persephone had made an offhand comment about lunch, she was swamped by table invitations. The whole multitude apparently assumed that they could all fit at her table at once for the upcoming meal. As the control room was stripped of technicians Samson felt the overwhelming urge to do something about the potentially run-away reactor. It would not be a problem, but Samson was developing an irrational fear of Persephone being blown apart.

The fellow he finally kicked in the shoe looked at him indignantly. It was as though some wall or lighting fixture had stood up to talk to him. “Set shifts, to maintain your duty stations, and you will rotate through to visit with my lady,” ordered Samson. “Take half of these people to work then we will send people back and you all can rotate in to spend time.”

The dumb look did nothing to improve Samson’s mood. He draped his left arm over the fellow’s shoulders and pointed to the assembled mob, “You will get half of these people, and you will head back to work. The rest will come with us for food. Then you will all be relieved, and you will join us at the table. Is that understood?”

It took Samson a few seconds to realize the technician was paying more attention to the pistol, he forgot he had it in his hand and was using it as a pointer, rather than his words. He slapped the pistol against the man’s chest, “I want you to take everyone from this line,” indicating with the pistol along the man’s sight line, into the crowd, “back to work and then we will send people back to you all so you can join us and all get face time. Is that clear?”

The civilian replied, “Yes Sir.” The man had the same irrational fear of the pistol as Samson had of the station.

Samson released the man to his assigned task and allowed the pistol to slip back into the shadows of the overcoat.

He was actually fairly surprised at how smoothly things had been progressing, as they made their way to the dining facility.

Very few things are more distracting and irritating to a bodyguard than a milling crowd of adoring fans. There are too many angles and no matter where you stand there are a dozen other ways to deliver a fatal blow to your charge. Samson was stressed and irritable after the first few hours. The dining facility was a nightmare come to life and it had poison spines glued to its festering slime-covered caprice.

The cavernous dining room was shared by multiple shifts from the plant, reactor, management, and its administrative staff, as well as other tenants of the building’s several floors above and below.

Why you would put a reactor on the middle floors of an industrial structure, then send the massive conduits all those hundreds of meters ‘down’ to ground level, adding all that additional expense for the massive high gauge wiring that whole plunge before it split into its various main lines was a design enigma that annoyed Samson.

Positioning of wiring was nothing compared to the annoyance of swamping fans, mobbing employees, adoring true-love suitors, and upwardly mobile individuals being overlooked by management. Samson was at wit’s end and was seconds from carrying the blade and pistol openly.

While frustratedly overseeing the crowd of admirers, Samson saw Persephone turn towards him. As his eyes met hers, her special smile graced her lips and eyes, when she flicked her eyes at the food on her plate, he allowed himself the brief respite of closing his eyes to shake his head back and forth, indicating he wasn’t interested in food. Her slightly pinched eye and quirked smile expressed her mild displeasure at his refusal of sustenance, which is all it was to him while he worked. Hers was the same look a mother gives her adult child who refuses to eat a particular vegetable after so many years, loving but still critiquing. Not that Samson, as an orphan, knew what a mother really was, but it was a hardwired response to know her displeasure he had developed with Persephone.

She returned to the conversations to left, right, and center without missing a word as the surprisingly orderly changeover of sycophants took place.

Samson rolled his stiff shoulders and cracked the wrist holding the pistol. It was turning into a long day. On one of his periodic glances behind himself and Persephone, he noticed a gaggle of approaching management suits. Leaning to her ear, he whispered, “Heads up, Love, here they come.”

She looked over her shoulder at him, questions unspoken on her lips, but dwelling in her eyes. As Samson sidestepped, she followed his eyes to the approaching group of executives. They looked both revolted to be in the room with the ‘commoners’, and desperate to be present with such a high-ranking shareholder.

Her sigh and rolling eyes were visible to all at the table. Her actions were not obvious enough to elicit panic or laughter, but enough to be noticed. Her pleading look to Samson turned to resigned love as she blew a soft kiss only for Samson, and she prepared to do battle with the highest-level suck-ups in the building.

Chapter 43)

When Phyllip opened the door, even before he could take his first step into the room, the exasperated sigh, followed immediately by a demanding “What”, that was somewhere between bored and angry, slapped Phyllip in the face.

Phyllip replied sarcastically, “Well good to see you too Thanatyos.”

Thanatyos snapped, “Stop patronizing Phyllip. What do you want?”

Phyllip tried to lighten things, “Since you put it that way, I’ll skip the ‘hi-hello-how-are-yous’, and get to the point…”

Thanatyos Chroynos interrupted, “Please do!”

Phyllip clenched his teeth and beat a blast of anger back down into his core. He wasn’t there to fight with his younger brother Thanatyos, but Thanatyos seemed insistent on a fight. He reminded, “Mid-term grades are posted…”

Thanatyos growled, “Yes I know! Is there any other good news you plan on sharing?!”

Phyllip offered, “I’m here to help you study. We need to get your grades up.”

Whenever he mentioned cooperation, Thanatyos exploded. This time was no different. “Go study your own classes! You know you have to maintain your ninetieth percentile in everything! Gods below take me if you, the perfect Phyllip, ever drop below the eighty-fifth percentile in any one class…”

Phyllip sighed in frustration, “Please let me help you Thanatyos.”

Thanatyos condescended, “Are you serious Phyllip!?” Phyllip had heard this before too, it always began the same way. “My older brother comes to save the weak little failing me! Why do you need to be such a patronizing jerk all the time!”

Phyllip went for a different tack this time. Typically, he denied that he was patronizing but Thanatyos was in a tight spot now and really needed the help. “Yes! I’m here to patronize you! I’m going to patronize you directly into passing your classes! Seriously Thanatyos! You are thirteen! And in fourth-year classes! Do you have any idea how many strings Dad had to pull to get things arranged so you could be tutored for two years before entering the Academy? Do you have any idea how much it cost!? This is the most important and prestigious school in our incorporated empire!”

Thanatyos snapped, anger at having heard all this before, “Oh, to Hades with the costs! You know that! We own the whole planet and hundreds of others just like it. “

Phyllip corrected, “We don’t own the planet! The corporation controls the infrastructure and power utilities! You know that as well as anyone.”

Frustration crackled in Thanatyos’ voice he snapped, “Oh, shut your mouth Phyllip! You don’t know what the hell you are talking about,” Thanatyos added sarcastically, “Yet again. If they don’t pay, we turn them off and they are begging for our power and more than willing to pay the surcharges. We own this shit heap of a world because if they don’t pay, they go out of business and die of starvation. We can do whatever we want, so stop quibbling about a few tutors!”

Phyllip wanted to punch his brother in the nose for that last but knew better. That would land them both on the expelled roles. “Sometimes you really are a selfish turd peanut! Dad had to sequester you. He had to fake a coma. He had to mind wipe the two years that the tutors spent with you which cost lots by itself without the tutor’s extra compensation for losing the year on an ‘anonymous’ contract. Then he had to beg … our father begged the Academy, to get you a slot starting from the first year so you could have the advantage and possibly make it through the Academy.”

His anger rolling fiercely, Thanatyos growled, “Thanks, Phyllip! Your chicken-shit guilt trip won’t work on me. I’m still thirteen and in fourth grade!”

Phyllip snapped, “That’s right, you arrogant jerk! I’m two years older than you and can sign my name at the top of my final exams this year, hand them in blank, and move forward to my ninth year! I am offering you help to pass.”

In a dismissive huff, Thanatyos growled, “I’m not interested.” Thanatyos looked down at his studies. “I can do it on my own.”

Phyllip replied flatly, “No you can’t.” Thanatyos looked up angrily. “Your earth sciences and astronomy grades are horrible! The only thing that kept you from the chopping block last term was your writing, history, and math. You’re in the middle of the pack for your physical stuff so you were not kicked last term. But you are on probation. You don’t have the physical scores or the standout grades in a few classes to pad your average” Phyllip tried another angle, “You know how much this school means to the family and our father in particular.”

Thanatyos retorted, “Don’t give me that line again!”

Phyllip fired back, “Like or not, it is no less true! Our grandfather founded this school! It produces our Hegemony’s elite. It means a lot to the family that we graduate.”

Thanatyos said, “Stop pimping that raft of nonsense to me! Do you know what happens if I graduate with honors?”

Phyllip replied, “You graduate, become a Guardsman, serve the family and we govern the empire until our children supersede us.”

Thanatyos corrected irritably, “No Phyllip. Your children supersede us, and I help you govern the empire. Do you know what happens if I fail to graduate?”

Phyllip snapped sarcastically, “Enlighten me.”

Thanatyos quoted, “If I fail, I have still attended the ‘finest and most selective school’ in the empire, for four years. I can get into any private academy I look at. Regardless, I will still be a ‘peer of the empire’ as Harold calls us.”

Phyllip corrected, “Thanatyos! You know Dad hates it when you call him ‘Harold’!”

Snapping his teeth, Thanatyos acidly mumbled, “Whatever! I’m still going to be a peer of the empire. I still maintain the same minority interest. I still help you govern the empire. And the best part is, I don’t have to get shot full of holes, on some rock, fighting over mineral rights, in the process.”

Phyllip consoled, “You’re not going to get shot full of holes.”

Thanatyos rolled his eyes and sighed. He chuckled at his older brother. “How is it that I’m younger but you are the naive one? Didn’t you ever look at Guardsman casualty rates?”

Phyllip drew up short and hesitated, before speaking, “Well … yeah … but most survive the wounds or are reconstituted in the corporal regeneration facilities.”

Thanatyos oozed his disgust, “Phyllip, you’re so dumb!” Thanatyos finally smiled, “Those poor bastards spend months in there regrowing their arms and legs. I have better things to do with my time than sit in a nutrient-rich, antibiotic tank while the replacement flesh grows layer by layer over whatever precious body part is ripped off me by some explosive device … No thank you!”

Phyllip countered, “Chicken.”

Thanatyos snapped, “No! Not chicken. Smart. Seriously, we have soldiers for a reason. I have no interest in wading across plains of vacuum-sealed rock just to get shot and blown up.”

Phyllip corrected, “That’s not all Guardsmen do, and you know it.”

Thanatyos used dismissive sarcasm, “Yeah right! Like Harold is going to let one of his sons guard some fat CEO’s trophy wife on contract deployment.”

Frustrated, Phyllip corrected that fallacy, “Thanatyos, you know Guardsmen assignments are not influenced by the Guardsman’s family…”

It was more of a statement than a question from Thanatyos. “How can you be so naive? You actually think that our father isn’t going to put his finger on the scales at some point to direct our careers somewhere he wants. He would never set either of us to guard some society wife or brat. I’m going to study. I’m going to study on my own. I’m going to do the best I can. If I fail, I fail and go to a different academy next year, one not so good, but still one that is top in the Hegemony. If I pass, I pass this year and will probably fail out next year. Class rankings don’t move around that much and the bottom half of every year’s consolidated class disappears. I’m the next ‘half’ on the chopping block. If I can climb over the other guys to make it next year, I start at the very bottom again next year.” Thanatyos sighed and shrugged in disappointment. “It’s going to catch up with me in this year or next year’s attendance halving. I won’t see the sixth year of the Guardsmen Academy.”

Phyllip spent several minutes watching his younger brother. He finally decided his brother was resigned to his fate and there was nothing Phyllip could do to help him. Even if he did sacrifice all his classes for Thanatyos, his heart would not be in it and Thanatyos would have no payoff for all Phyllip’s efforts.

Phyllip received his first real-life lesson in Machiavellian politics, as he thought about the history report he had just written about the amazing ancient earth philosopher.

Resigned, Phyllip admitted, “Alright Thanatyos, good luck. I’m going to my room to study. Let me know if you need anything.” Thanatyos nodded in response and looked back to his studies.

Phyllip stood, walked to the hall, and closed the door to Thanatyos’ room along with Thanatyos’ last semester at the Guardsmen Academy.

Chapter 44)

Samson was not a happy camper. Samson was not a happy tourist. Samson was not happy with anything. In general, he was not much of a ‘people’ person. Conversation was a societal necessity and a task ably performed. Chitter-chatter and gossip failed to amuse him. And that was just what was going on. The ‘gossip generators’ were at full capacity and he was at the center of it, again.

He was also displeased by the press of civilians on all sides.

He was doubly displeased by the severely limiting presence of his hood. The last thing he wanted was his face broadcast to the galaxy, again. Samson sighed and thought to himself, ‘I hate the news’.

The coat hung open, but anyone could wear black-on-black clothing. The thin gold trim on a civilian was a touch ostentatious. Gold and black were typically, and traditionally, reserved for those in the military corporations who had earned it. But no one was paying Persephone’s shadow any mind as he paced back and forth with hands behind his back.

The empty shoulder holster was black too. So, it disappeared into the shadowed recesses of his overcoat.

While his impaired peripheral vision was irritating, Samson decided that the additional edge the pre-drawn weapon offered made him feel better about the absurd situation.

With the second firm warning with the right index and middle finger, paired and pressing the cameraman’s shoulder, Samson opened more space for himself. The man unknowingly was crowding Samson’s sword draw.

Reporters in general pissed him off. They recorded everything. They misquoted and took things out of context and then blasted the most absurd packages they could fabricate over the airwaves. Samson’s was the only opinion that counted at the moment, as he grumbled silently to himself about annoying reporters.

The all too skinny reporterette had accosted them while she was doing a standard human-interest piece on some other mishmash story in the building.

Bad luck was all it was. The chance meeting and the fantastically foul odds that a reporterette and her pet cameraman would be leaving at exactly the same moment that Persephone arrived was irritating.

How was it that the astronomically bad odds of Persephone dropping her hood as the reporter was walking out, having finished her assigned piece on the mating habits of concrete-dwelling-larval-slug-gliding-bat-whatevers she was there reporting on, conspired to attach the two annoying reporters to Persephone was fantastically bothersome?

Fortunately for the reporter, and much to Samson’s irritation, the camera had something on the order of twenty-two and a half hours more recording space available in its memory. So, there was no chance that Samson could run them out of recording time and force them to leave. There was also no way that he was going to let them broadcast Persephone’s location to the universe either. He was stuck with them now.

As an orphan, Samson had never been on anything resembling a family vacation, but nevertheless the phrase ‘Are we there yet’, echoed through his head repeatedly.

So, he was bumped and jostled, tossed and pressed, by the eager crowd, then hampered by his assumed necessity of the hood, all the while keeping Persephone in arm’s reach, himself out of the picture and the reporter and cameraman out of his draw path. Most importantly, he kept the accursed camera in sight to make sure it wasn’t broadcasting live, giving away their position.

Persephone had made it clear that the woman reporter had an exclusive story with her during their visit to the shipyards that day. Samson had made it clear that if her cameraman broadcast live, or if the reporter, or her editor, made themselves or Persephone look like an ass, they should never set foot within a capital ship’s armor-piercing gauss penetrator range of her ever again.

The bargain struck, costs and benefits weighed and measured and the final verdict being that the reporterette and cameraman could both tolerate the risk of a few dozen penetrator holes for the story of a career, an exclusive at that, they promised they would behave themselves. Samson hoped to scare them away but failed miserably and apparently only whet their appetite.

Samson didn’t understand reporters. He had tried to scare them off. But in the end, they were only more eager for the story. As a result, he found himself irritable and the invisible shadow off-camera.

Persephone on the other hand got to shine like a glorious new dawn’s sunrise.

That Persephone was actually … ‘having fun’ … set Samson’s teeth on edge. Protecting her in this environment was one of the most nerve-wracking experiences of his life.

The reporter, April ‘Something-or-Other’s’ habit of walking backward while talking was disconcerting to Samson. Samson kept expecting her to trip over her shoes. It was irritating because she could keep talking to the camera while Persephone’s back was turned or forcing her to look to her side, brushing her hair back behind her ear. It was puzzling because Samson couldn’t figure out how she knew when to turn, and he was looking for the signals from her cameraman while trying to watch the crowd. Whatever the signal system was that they were using it was escaping Samson.

The ground-based factory and star shipyard they were visiting was actually where the Guard Battle Cruiser ‘Warsong’ had been built. ‘Warsong’ and her sisters were as large as could be assembled on the ground. Anything larger and the force required to lift them from the planet’s gravity well would overwhelm the numerous tug’s ability to lift the hull into orbit without creating so much backwash from their thrust that they would damage local structures. The shipyards were massively liable for any damages they caused to civilians and the properties surrounding their structure, so they were very careful.

This structure was unlike most others on the planet in two distinct features. The assembly of major components was completed on the upper level. Final vessels or major components for capital ships were too large for doors so some clever designers had removed the necessity for doors since they would only limit the size and design functions of objects produced. Eight component factories consumed raw materials on their bottom floors, received from ground-based rail cars, and worked those materials until they arrived as large sub-component parts on the upper floors. The upper stories were all removed from those factories, making each different from every other building on the planet in that they had no crystalline office suites in the clouds at the top. The second feature that made this type of building different was a massive one-by-two-kilometer horizontal workspace and assembly area on the upper levels. Very few buildings bothered connecting at the top with anything other than the micro-thin, light but tenuous and well-marked tram guide cables.

It wasn’t a problem of engineering. Luxury suites just made too much money to sacrifice for something as onerous as practicality. Since the people who made the final decisions liked their luxury, it had to be extremely practical to goad them into surrendering it.

Samson had always wanted to see the shipyards but had never had the opportunity or motivation. When Persephone had asked that morning ‘Where do we want to tour today’, Samson had simply said without thinking, ‘Let’s go see the shipyards, I’ve never seen them’. When she had responded, ‘Neither have I, sounds like fun,’ they had immediately begun their circumnavigation of the multiple tram stops and roundabout routes that had ultimately deposited them in the lap of ‘April What’s-her-Name’.

He was bumped and jostled, tossed and pressed, by the eager crowd, until the returning workers from the first of three mid-day meal shift cycles, activated a peripheral bay door that opened to the work area, to admit them.

Samson said, “Now there’s a sight.” When Persephone, April, and the cameraman all turned towards him, Samson realized he had said that out loud. The gleaming silvery steel skeleton of a massive ship lay truncated into pieces and parts moving by gantry and ground lifts filled the sky through the open bay doors.

Pushing past Samson to his workstation somewhere in the chaos a stranger said, “Don’t pay no mind to that.”

A new voice joined, “‘e’s right. This ‘un ain’t nu’in,” said a second stranger as he slipped past too. “Jus’a ore ten’er.”

The shift that had trailed Samson, Persephone, the reporter, and the cameraman filtered back into work, from their meal break, they needed to relieve the second lunch crew for their break.

Persephone smiled before turning back to look out the small personnel access bay doors.

The late morning sun split and refracted from the gleaming new components. The freshly worked, milled, filed, smoothed, and fused steel broke the project into tens of thousands of shining gems in the sunshine. Since half the population jokingly believed the sun was only a myth, it was an amazing sight.

The double gantry delicately lowered the hundred-meter-long assembly into the rear of the frame. The pipes, tubes, twists, turns, too complex for the eye to follow, part cylinder part cube dropped laboriously down, and Samson realized it was a single-drive engine and housing being lowered into the skeleton of the waiting ship.

Finally turning from the camera, and no longer obscured by the passing workers, April’s interview microphone dropped, forgotten in her hand, as the camera shot over her shoulder, “Wow”, she wondered out loud too. Stunned but remembering to turn back to the cameraman and only using her mounted microphone, “Um, this is April Nightingale, concluding part one of our exclusive interview, with Persephone Chroynos, visiting the starship foundry.”

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 Blood Debts book page…

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

Enjoy!