THE GUARDSMAN: Book 2: Blood Debts – Chapters 45-48
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The Guardsman, Book 2: Blood Debts:
Chapter 45)
The boy sat in his booster seat at the kitchen table coloring in his schoolbook. He liked the book. He could use colors on his numbers. As long as his colors matched the number of colored shapes above, his answer was right.
Every page had a new game. Today he even got to turn to the correct pages himself.
The busy adults were talking about adult stuff moving around quickly and putting things into boxes.
As long as he stayed put working on his homework book none of them would raise their voices to him. He could happily sit at the table and play today’s game while swinging his feet free in the air.
Mommy normally made him take his shoes off at the door. But these adults didn’t seem to mind. These shoes had lights and characters on them.
Mommy said she could always find him because every step he took she could follow the light, and always know where he was. They flashed every time he kicked the legs of the chair.
The busy adults didn’t seem to mind. So, he got to wear his favorite shoes inside for the first time … ever!
He wished Mommy had the same shoes so he could find her.
These adults were mostly nice, but Mommy was better. She was prettier and didn’t talk too loudly, and kissed his cheek and gave him a hug when he came home from school every day.
These adults just picked him up out of class and told him he had to go. They didn’t say where just that he had to go.
Mommy was sad the last few weeks. She always said she wasn’t, but she was just trying to be nice, Mommy was crying the last few weeks. He didn’t like seeing Mommy crying.
He put down the yellow. The next color was blue, and he found his blue. Three blue circles. He found the number ‘3’ and started to color it blue. When he finished with his numbers, he could color the page any color he wanted. As he finished the top round part of the ‘3’ he stopped a minute and wondered what he wanted to make the rest of the page look like when he was done.
One of the adults dropped a bag next to him and walked away. He didn’t like that man. He wasn’t nice when he talked, and Mommy would call him rude. He didn’t answer questions right. Mommy was better, she could explain things.
One of the other adults put a box on the counter and started opening Mommy’s drawers. She started pulling out all of Mommy’s cooking tools and dropping them in the box. Mommy will be very upset when she sees what that mean woman was doing to her kitchen.
Mommy will be very angry when she comes home and finds that man pouring all of Samson’s milk down the drain. Mommy didn’t like wasting food. Now that stupid man was throwing all of Mommy’s food in the garbage and pouring perfectly good milk down the drain. Mommy was going to be very angry.
The adults had already yelled at him the first time he tried to get up and help. They weren’t even doing it right. They were dumping Mommy’s clothes into plastic boxes. They weren’t even folding them, just dropping them in the boxes and squishing them down.
Mommy let him help fold clothes. These adults were doing it all wrong. They were making a mess out of what was already folded.
He wished Daddy was home. He could have scared all these people away. He could have taken care of Mommy better too. These people were not helping. They were making a mess and stacking a big pile of plastic containers in the middle of the apartment floor.
He finished making the ‘3’ blue and even colored the sides by the lines. The next shape was a square, counting, there were four squares, and they were red. That meant he needed to find the number ‘4’ and color it red. He liked this game.
Mommy said that Daddy was on a business trip. She said he wasn’t going to come home for a very very long time. They went to a big room with lots of people he didn’t know. Most of them were people Mommy worked with. She introduced them as they walked by but he didn’t remember them. He should but didn’t remember them. All he could remember was that Mommy was very unhappy. He felt very bad for Mommy and wanted to be extra good for her.
It was very nice of them to all look at the big picture of Daddy, with all the flowers around it. He was smiling and handsome in his uniform. He knew the colors. It was black, with not gray, but ‘silver’ as Daddy called it. With big pretty yellow piping, Daddy called it, at the collar and sleeves. That was three weekends ago. He was taken out of school for that. He wanted to be in school, but Mommy wanted him there, so he went.
Why Daddy called it piping was silly. There was no water in it. But Daddy was smart, so he didn’t correct Daddy. Daddy said that the yellow piping made him extra special. He said it made him an Armored Ground Forces Crew Man. Daddy made him practice saying it all with him every time he was home from business.
Now Mommy was not home, and only these strangers, their plastic boxes, and mess.
The last one before he could color the rest of the page, he counted five triangles, this time. And they were green. He couldn’t decide which color was his favorite. He liked them all. But if he had to pick it would probably be green. He found the number ‘5’ and started to make it green.
The adults stopped making the mess, and a plastic crate thumped into the pile. He looked at his triangles and counted again. Then at the adults and counted and he counted again. There were five adults too. He liked this game. He went back to making the number five green.
The adults finished their conversation. Two of the stupid adults sat on Mommy’s couch and put their dirty shoes up on Mommy’s table. Mommy was going to be very angry with them.
The rude man took his colors and closed his book. Samson shouted angrily at him, “I wasn’t finished!” The rude man shoved the book and colors into the bag next to his chair.
The rude man snapped, “You are now. Pick up your bag and follow me, kid.”
Indignant at the insult, the child snapped, “That’s not my bag! That’s Daddy’s bag!”
The rude man huffed irritably and corrected, “It’s yours now. Pick it up and carry it, it has all your stuff in it.”
He picked up the bag and snapped, “Fine! Where are we going?”
Two of the adults went out the door. The two on Mommy’s couch started playing with the vid screen. It wasn’t time to watch the vid. Homework wasn’t done, and his shows didn’t start for another hour.
The stranger mumbled dismissively, “You’re going to your new home.”
He growled, “I don’t want a new home! I want this home! Daddy is going to be very angry when he hears about this! I want Mommy!”
The stranger huffed, and spoke with that bad tone, that ugly mean adults used with kids, “Your dad is dead kid.” The mean adult grabbed his hand and pulled him out of the chair, “Your mom died this morning, with seventeen other people when that freighter crashed and struck her tram, on the way down. Both your parents are dead, kid. They ain’t comin’ home.”
The bag was heavy, but the man kept pulling his hand. He didn’t understand what dead meant. “No! Mommy will be home soon! And Daddy is on a business trip!”
The rude man shoved him out the door. “Shut up kid. Ain’t nobody is coming for ya’. You don’t have any other family, and no one cares enough about you to take you in.”
Samson was angry now. “You are a big … stupid-head!” Pulling hard against the man’s hand, but the adult was too strong and kept dragging him down the corridor. “Mommy will find me!” He didn’t tell the mean man about his secret shoes. “Then she’ll tell Daddy and you’re gonna be in trouble. Big trouble!” He struggled more and the bag almost slipped but caught on his arm, the one the man was pulling. “And my name’s not ‘kid’! My name is Samson!”
The stranger mocked, “Whatever kid. Just shut up, so I can get you where you’re going. Once you’re signed into the orphan creche, you’re not my problem anymore. I have plans tonight, and a worthless little shit like you, ain’t gonna make me late for them.”
Samson hated this mean man. But he was too strong for Samson to pull his hand away, even as hard as he tried.
Chapter 46)
Visibly infuriated to the point of incoherence, Phyllip ground out, “How! How in Hades … vast and overpopulated domain is this … reporter able to find my daughter and all our considerable intelligence assets are impotent to find that same one girl!?”
Celine’s shaking hands clattered her fork against her plate as she set the utensil aside and clasped her hands in her lap, as she fought desperately for her composure.
Phyllip Chroynos’ livid face turned from his brother Thanatyos to his wife. Then back to the junior Home Guard officer who had brought the news, which resulted in the unusual step of displaying a news feed during an evening meal. “Thank you, Captain. Find somewhere else to be.”
The Home Guard Captain crisply snapped, “Yes Sir,” and he disappeared.
Phyllip sighed and then snapped, “Seriously Thanatyos! What the hell are you and Kazimir doing with our intelligence and security assets?”
Thomys Prometheon covered Celine’s hands with his own as his wife stepped behind the grieving mother, to gently stroke her shoulders. They had been through something similar to this four times already, but dead was dead, and missing now left so many nerve-wracking questions. They had practice with death. This was something wholly new, even if only Phyllip, Celine, and Thomys secretly knew why; it didn’t make it any easier. Celine wasn’t acting, she was genuinely terrified.
Celine of course knew why Persephone was on the move. But knowing and accepting were not the same things. This was her baby girl out where she couldn’t protect her. All the while waiting for the hammer to drop and end her life. It was like watching an imminent vehicle crash in slow motion and being unable to do anything about those you loved on the ground or the falling vehicle before it struck the surface. All she could do was watch in terror.
The overly smooth, overly handsome, overly manicured, overly perfect youngster corrected, “Uncle Phyllip, our resources are designed to track fleets, armies, and major political mechanization.”
Infuriated, Phyllip tracked to his right side to his nephew Kazimir, “Really!” His anger and sarcasm dripped, “And just how is it you explain away the fact that we are supposed to have a counterintelligence arm, that just happens to be ‘your’ responsibility directly, that is designed to track down individual infiltrators, and bring them to our attention?”
Kazimir droned, “Those resources are not necessarily fungible…”
Phyllip interrupted, quoting, “‘Not necessarily fungible’,” and nearly shouted over the dinner table to interrupt. The now muted monitors inlaid on all four walls of the private dining room, allowed everyone to see the second part of the interview while Persephone happily climbed over the skeletal form of some kind of ship. “This incompetence has been going on for weeks now! If that isn’t bureaucratic speak for ‘I’m a screw-up and can’t think outside the box’, I don’t know what is! What the hell are you actually doing with our entire counterintelligence arm!”
Kazimir tried to soothe, “Uncle Phyllip, you know, as well as I do, that our intelligence resources operate by tracking footprints, points of origin, and pattern analysis, to track our targets! The tools we have just aren’t set up to handle this type of work!”
Phyllip made up the first contradiction that popped into his head and barked, “Concrete-slug feathers! You are either not trying or not thinking hard enough and now you are trying to pull your ass out of the crack by blaming tools and funding and everywhere but yourself!”
Kazimir protested as Celine cringed at Phyllip’s language, “Uncle Phyllip! She has no footprint, no funding, no communications to track; she has no organization or structure. She is practically invisible to us!”
The little weasel had Phyllip’s blood up, “Nonsense, you incompetent dunderhead! She is a twenty-year-old woman! Even your think tanks and committees should be able to figure out that she is sleeping somewhere! She has been gone for over a month!”
Thanatyos injected, “Phyllip, that’s not fair to Kazimir. You know we are doing everything we can to locate her.”
Phyllip snapped at his brother who was fast becoming part of the problem, “Bullshit Thanatyos! It is more than fair to address a failure of this magnitude! If your son can’t take the heat he should resign and go live on a quiet resort planet on his residuals somewhere! Persephone hasn’t even left the planet yet! How is it that we are supposed to hunt down and destroy coordinated and professionally trained enemy infiltrators to secure our own home-world, and positions in it when he can’t even find my baby! She is operating with no external support! Just her own initiative and whatever resources she plucks out of the air!”
Celine’s sudden barked laugh drew seven other sets of eyes to her and away from the brutal volley of recriminations across the table, as she blushed in embarrassment behind her hand.
The horrifically scarred Captain of Phyllip’s Guardsmen squad, who was the only Guardsman present, didn’t stir from picking his nails while leaning casually against the back wall with his assault gauss draped over his thigh. He was working very hard to be invisible.
When Celine’s hand dropped, she was smiling, “What is that girl doing now?” The amused mother marveled at her daughter playing with something that sent sparks flying from a piece of metal while a worker behind her and to her right rear, helped her guide and handle the machine. While a second worker stood to her front as she mimicked his hands pulling her action over something on the metal support, with his two hands.
She looked like a bug-eyed child with the over-large eye protection goggles squishing her tiny face and sending her hair into horrific mashed disarray.
Persephone was obviously enjoying herself, the late morning sun in the open-air shipyard. The device slowed to a halt and the workers showed her how to feel the edge. What had been a splinter of steel was now a curved nub, as they coached her on the final steps of filing and fusing the damaged steel’s defect into place in the metal skeleton of the hull.
The reporter, April Nightingale was muted as she chattered some narration from one corner of the screen imposed on the same recorded image, but off to the side so she could be in the shot with Persephone and the two workers as they ‘played’ with that large and horrific power tool Celine still couldn’t identify.
Thanatyos mumbled over his wine, “Why don’t we just put a bounty on information leading to her return.”
Disgusted, Phyllip snapped at his brother, “Oh, great thinking Thanatyos. Put a cash reward on information leading to the capture of the fugitive princess. We would look like a laughing stock when the newsies got a hold of that. I can see the headlines now, ‘Palace Incompetents Can’t Find Corporate Heiress’.”
Kazimir droned, “It is called the ‘Citadel’, you should know that. Just make the reward so large no one can ignore it.”
Phyllip was incandescently angry that this profoundly lazy answer of ‘just throw money at the problem’ kept coming up and snapped, “Kazimir! How many times do I need to say it! You are not putting a bounty, or a reward of any kind, on my daughter, your cousin; she is not a common criminal. I am well aware of what the Citadel is called. If you had half the brains you needed for your job, you would know that what we call it has no bearing on the reality of what ‘they’ call it, when they want us to look like a bunch of snobby, know-nothing, incompetent, morons! The plebs will eat it up right out of the news vids. That is what it is all about, ratings! The more people who watch those newscasts, the more advertising revenue they get. So, don’t try to tap dance around that reality or you will quickly find that you are out on a limb with public opinion. Nothing gets their blood flowing,” referring to the viewers, “More than watching us aristocrats fight it out and look like idiots. The blood is real, and it is cheaper than the theater!”
Celine patiently reminded, “Phyllip, please mind your language at the table, please. I know we are all done eating but still…”
Phyllip apologized, “I’m sorry Celine; this is not exactly amusing.”
Celine reminded, “I know. That is also why we don’t discuss work at the table. But I think we are done, so maybe we should adjourn so you all can yell at each other in peace and quiet somewhere on a moon with no atmosphere to carry the sound to civilized ears.” Her smile let him know he was not in trouble but that she just wanted the noisy men to leave her alone so she could watch the entire broadcast in peace and quiet, with the sound turned on, in the company of the table’s two other women.
Phyllip acquiesced, “Yes dear.” As she stood beside him her hand brushed his left elbow. The rest of the table stood with her standing to signify the end of the meal.
In the quiet conversation that followed Kazimir’s grumbling was louder than he intended. “If she wants to be a peon, the stupid little bitch should just abdicate and save us all the trouble of hunting her down.”
Turning from her husband’s arm, Celine turned left and followed through to Kazimir’s face with her right hand. The crack of the slap cracked his teeth together and stilled the room. Even the veteran Guardsman Major assigned as Captain of Phyllip’s elite guard squad was surprised by the sudden violence of the assault.
Celine snapped, “I recant my protection and subsequent defense of your feeble intellect Kazimir Chroynos. You are the ‘dumb shit’ my husband pointed out a moment ago. Persephone is the Heiress to the Sovereign Corporate Empire. She will be your Empress one day in the near future. And most important of all, she is your cousin and family. If you can’t respect those simple concepts, maybe your intellect and morality should be called into question because there should never have been a first time, let alone the possibility of this subsequent next time.”
Chapter 47)
Samson was bored and uncomfortable. The slight nausea from his first round of ‘base’ nanobot injections was slipping away but the uncomfortable bandage on his left shoulder itched slightly.
He pressed the fabric of his Academy uniform with a sigh, squashing the bandage flat. His class was more than halfway through the sixth year at the Guardsman Academy and only worked on a few students a week in every class. The teachers and administrators never expressed the reason, so few students got nanobot augmentations per week. They could shuffle the whole class through that week.
Samson was guessing that they were starting at the top of the class and working down the merit list. Like so many other things at the Academy, the administration of the nanos were merit-based too. The medics had only started administering them the week before, and since Samson was in the top five of his class, he and another boy who was ranked sixth had been sent to the medical center to be augmented. Only two other pairs of students were ahead of Samson. They were augmented the week before.
The augmentation process itself wasn’t uncomfortable. The medics attached a device to the shoulder and the nanos traveled into his skin. The irritating medics had used small words that frustrated Samson when he asked specific technical questions. Despite talking down to him the medics did try to impress him by explaining the very large credit value of the nano injection.
Samson pushed the book he had been flipping through away and pulled the next to center. He pulled his sleeve to cover and pressure the bandage again before he flipped open the book and began rifling through the pages. It was heavily illustrated with old wooden ships and men in armor with swords. The pictures of their long blonde beards and fierce-looking attacks made them more interesting than many others in the books he had reviewed.
The snotty civilian library proctor bothered him again, “Candidate Rockpoint, you will clean up this mess when you are done, or I will issue a demerit to you.”
Samson strained to maintain his poise, “Yes Sir. I am aware of the library’s policy.”
The library proctor snapped, “Good then you are aware you need to put those books away exactly where they were when you are done.”
The proctor stood leering at him expectantly. Samson considered this crossroad carefully. He wanted to tell the fool, ‘I just told you I know the book policy. You should follow the no-talking policy’, but that might be a little over the top. Samson just smiled pleasantly and nodded to the simpleton who was probably going to be one of the civilian staff ‘released’ during year-end annual reviews. That release wouldn’t make the demerits issued now any less painful.
The fool eventually moved on to the next candidate to harass after standing dumbly once Samson had quietly returned to the book. The proctor wandered up and down the aisles in the central table area of the library ensuring that the precious books were not abused and taking every opportunity to harass those who were studying. The large wooden tables and solid wooden chairs were kept spotlessly clean by Academy candidates the proctor used as his personal ‘demerit cleaning squad’ every day, instead of cleaning the library on his own like he was paid to do.
That proctor apparently missed the part of his employment contract that stated that the candidates played a role in assessing auxiliary civilian faculty at the academy. A class of intelligent, creative, young fighters tended to relish the evaluations of the civilian staff. Samson’s class was particularly fond of their female civilian fine arts instructor. As a result, the woman received high marks from all the class, and the class compared their positive comments to ensure that she remained at the academy year after year. On the other hand, most civilian staff blended into average nothingness where they received unmemorable numerical grades along with no comments. This placed them on the Guardsmen faculty’s indifferent chopping block. As a result, they may or may not retain their employment for the next year. The jerks like the library proctor earned not only low numerical grades but also particularly cutting comments. Samson’s class was authoring a particularly damning set of comments for the man during their mealtimes. They were entertaining and surely an employment death sentence.
Samson sometimes wondered to himself how so many jerks kept arriving as civilian auxiliary staff year after year. He also wondered whether this wasn’t part of the ‘honesty and integrity’ assessments of the academy candidates. He wondered if it was a way to force them to evaluate others honestly and judiciously since they’d need that skill later in their lives as officers.
Samson dismissed the thought. He shifted back to the nanos that were busy reworking his system. This battery was the foundation for all those that could follow. The longer they took working on his system, the stronger he would become. This battery would, among other things, help him digest protein and calcium, so that when he started to grow in the next year or so his body would be able to create a much more solid muscular development and a denser skeletal system than any other human. He would be stronger than and heal faster than any normal person for the rest of his life, thanks to that day’s visit to the medics.
Samson turned back to the iron armor-clad warriors with their swords and shields.
His current project was to research ancient warrior codes. The online systems had the same information, but the hard copy books collated the information into one place and told a complete story about the topic. Books competed with the instant data from the net, so books tended to present their information in such a way that they were worthwhile to look at; the good ones did that anyway.
Samson found exactly what he was looking for in the book about the Norse warriors. He dropped a loose page of his paper notes into the book before closing it and pushing it away to his front center. He then pulled the next book into its place.
He was pleased to see that he found almost exactly the same information in this second book even though it was about ancient Earth’s Japanese Samurai. The presentation was a little different in both books, but they were both fundamentally exactly what the assignment called for.
The comparison of these two warrior cultures was rapidly catching his young attention as he delved into everything from their weapons, history, exploits, and of course their ethos. It was still a long way to graduation from his sixth year, but the Guardsman Academy was replete with training in the sword and various martial competitions that would become increasingly difficult and brutal over the next years before graduation. The ideals of these cultures were percolating in his young brain.
Samson wondered if this very report was a step on that martial road preparing the young students years in advance for these studies. Did his current four years of martial arts training lead to this point? Was this the purpose of the classroom report? From there where could it go? Did it arch across the remaining years at the academy only to culminate with the precise blade training displays that his class watched every year since he started the martial arts.
It didn’t really matter because the more he read about these two ancient cultures the more he liked them. These were hard men, harder than the steel that wrapped their bodies. Both cultures, the Norse and Samurai, bent the world to their will through training and determination. Both stood by their oaths of fidelity until death. Both cultures prized courage in the face of not only the enemy but in daily interactions with friends and peers, not allowing their members to shrink from doing the right thing, which sounded very similar to the Academy’s strict code of conduct. Both cultures believed in compassion and hospitality to others, while their treatment of the enemy was universally brutal and decisive. They both cared for their fallen comrades and lords until death separated them. Both mirrored a deep respect for their lords, peers, and those around them as part of the Bushido Code or the precepts of the Norse Asatru religion. Both held honesty at the core of their beliefs since all the other virtues rested on the ability of the warrior, to be honest with himself. Both also maintained the strictest sense of personal honor that forbade them from backing down from doing the right thing no matter the personal cost.
Samson fell back into his wooden seat now with both books open to the sections on the beliefs. So much of that appealed to him that they made so much sense and that they both represented something so much higher than a lonely orphan had ever experienced before. Samson reread the sections carefully and began to frantically write his notes for his report.
The stupid library proctor would never let him remove the valuable books from the library and there was no reason to antagonize the fool by asking. All his work was done by hand, his class wasn’t allowed to use electronic devices for studies, only for tests, until the seventh year which meant he hand-wrote his notes.
So many of the Academy’s lessons and code of conduct standards began to fall into place in that instant, as he frantically scribbled that Samson was nearly overwhelmed. Samson was a child without guidance since before he finished his fifth year of life. The only guidance he had ever received was what the rules of first the creche and second the Academy enforced. They were both external motivations. Internal motivation based on personal honor had never been discussed before it had always been about following the rules because they were the rules.
Samson had never felt like this before. He was without guidance in this area too. If he had one available at the moment, some sage teacher could tell him that what he was feeling was akin to a religious experience.
Samson began to find his purpose in the world. He wanted to matter. He wanted everything he did to have meaning and share the ‘hard road’, the ‘honorable’ road of these ancient warriors.
So much of what people told him, but he had never understood, began to fall into place and the lessons were internalized. To Samson this felt right like the feeling he got when he performed flawlessly in his martial arts training, or on the sports field, or even when he studied and prepared virulently for a test or final exam, and spent every second of the available time answering every question posed, knowing every answer he provided was correct, only to finish the last perfect answer and look up at the clock as the last second expired from the allotted time, looking down to see the terminal automatically lock out his final answers.
In that brilliant flash of lightning insight, Samson became committed to the Bushido Samurai and Asatru Norse warriors. Things inside clicked and Samson authored his own morality that was stronger and more indelible than anything some rule could enforce. Samson could now hold himself to a much higher standard, without the need for rules and supervision.
Samson felt alive for the first time in his life. He now had both direction and purpose.
Chapter 48)
Somewhere many kilometers away from where the starship foundry interview was recorded, and Persephone’s viewing family hours after the morning recording, in the belly of a rundown mega-structure, in a rundown part of town, far below the mists, and stationed on the interior of that building a large man with a detective’s license, named Mario Tomposo, and an equally large wife, were eating dinner, while watching evening entertainment videos. They were in an apartment that had the same ‘efficiency floor plan’ as Samson Rockpoint’s apartment. They both had exactly the same trouble with the shower as Samson had, only more acutely.
How she could watch the videos, narrate her own commentary in line with the video, and carry on a conversation with him, all while eating and keeping pace with him was a marvel of the universe, thought Mario.
She had collected the meal, so Mario was polite enough to maintain his silence, nod and reply at all the correct moments, while they both ate their two double bacon cheeseburgers with large potato fries and caffeinated soft drinks.
He wasn’t even paying attention to the vid screen. He never did. He got the play-by-play of the important stuff from his personal announcer sitting next to him. While searching for a strip of bacon that had fallen from his burger to his chin, down to his chest, and then bounced to somewhere out of sight, he leaned forward to search with his free hand and look around the couch/dining/entertainment area.
While he was looking down, she said “I know I have seen … this handsome young man somewhere…Mario” each of her punctuating pauses, allowed her another bite, “I can’t place him, but I know I have seen him … He’s famous for something but I have no idea where I have seen him … I never forget my vid trivia; I just know it will come to me … And that woman! … Look at her hair and those lovely eyes … She just radiates! … I can’t believe a beautiful creature like that would be visiting such an ugly place…”
Mario found his wayward bacon strip that had bounced away trying to escape by slipping under his right leg. As it found his mouth he looked over at his wife while she continued, “I can’t believe such a pretty little flower like that would be allowed by her father to visit the shipyards of all places … And that man with her … Don’t they look darling together! … He is sort of mysterious, all covered up like that … Doesn’t he know that the vid cameras can enhance his face? … I know I have seen him before … Oh, but would you look at that, the way she holds his hand … Or touches him … When the camera’s almost off them … But now him … He just looks … Dangerous … While he is taking care of watching her … She just looks like she is having so much fun! … You should work out again dear … Maybe lose a few and look like him … I wish I could remember his name … What do you think dear?”
Mario took another bite of his burger, looked at the screen for the first time, and promptly choked up everything he was in the process of swallowing in an enormous coughing fit.
Flora chirped, “Dear me!” Slapping his back to help relieve his choking, while he was doubled over forward hacking, “You’re choking! Smaller bites!”
Mario choked out, “Smith! … I … ah, what’s his name?! What did she call him … Samson! That’s his name! Samson!”
That was all she needed, the name triggered her recall, “Oh, that’s right! Samson Rockpoint! Isn’t he the one that they arrested for breaking into stores at night and, running around naked, and lying to old man Chroynos himself?”
Feeling ill, Mario barked, “Damn it, Flora! Yes! I remember now! They had him out before the whole justice court, stripped him of position, rank, title, property, and down even out of name. They did it in front of all the peers of the corporate hierarchy, public vid, and sentences. He was banished from society.”
She added, “Oh! That is the one! You are right! Good memory Mario.” As she chuckled at the oldest joke in human conversation, “He really is a man by what those vids showed. I didn’t even recognize that man with all his clothes on!”
Mario groaned, his guts sinking into a tight ball around his food, “Bloody hell woman! I never noticed it before either!” Indigestion spiked, and Mario felt ill, “He works for me! Lady Persephone was in my office not two weeks ago! That must have been her! She was all covered up and paid me a 10k coin for Smith’s work!”
Flora snapped, “What!? You had the Heiress to the Empire in that drab little office of yours! And you didn’t even tell me! I would have left work and made the trip all the way over there to meet her!”
Utterly defensive Mario back peddled, “I didn’t know who she was. She was all covered up! I told you that! Or him for that matter! Anonymous clients who pay in gold coins don’t like people asking after their identity! There was no way I was going to ask after she paid that much coin! He is a ruthless investigator. I toss him the most thankless dangerous assignments I have, and he waltzes out like he is on a shopping trip around the corner! The man is damn near unkillable to make it out of some of those! Oh, I think I’m going to be sick…”
She consoled, “What’s the matter with you now?!”
Things had defrosted substantially between them. Mario was seeing the man’s value, and the guy was a good earner. Mario felt a headache coming on as he nearly moaned, “I’ve had a Guardsman on probationary pay for the last, well, more than six months.”
Flora accused, “Mario, you big dolt, you know that’s illegal! You want to get us stripped of everything! Your detective’s guild? Old Earth laws even!”
Defensive, Mario groaned, “I didn’t know who he was, Flora! He was just some John Smith off the street! No history or anything, I had a chair and he could operate the terminal! How was I supposed to know!”
Flora warned, “You know you are not supposed to let a Smith have anything! They’re outcasts for a reason! Proper people should not associate with them! That Smith taint rubs off on us, you cheapskate! You should have had him pay you to work!”
Frustrated, he groaned, “Uha-gah, you’re not helping! That would be so much the better solution with an Imperial Guardsman! I’m sure he would have taken that as a kindness! I’ve got indigestion now.” Tossing his food down onto the wrapper, Mario burped a sour-tasting burning burp. “I’m done eating.”
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…
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Enjoy!