Heaven’s Gate

by Michael Kingswood

The central marketplace in Theomor, the capital city of Heaven’s Gate, extended for a kilometer in every direction, and housed merchants of all kinds, and without much in the way of rhyme or reason that Manolo could figure out.  A sparkling clean, brightly lit, three-story store decorated in the latest modern flash and style and selling the latest network equipment to come off automated manufacturing plants three systems away could have, sitting right out front, a butcher stand from a local ranch, complete with recently-slaughter pig’s haunches hanging from its display rack.

A hot—because it was always hot on Heaven’s Gate, even in what passed for winter—and disorganized mess of every type of product, every type of person, and every possible scent from all over the Qorathi Empire.  And no one seemed to mind or think it odd at all.

Manolo loved it.

And not just because of its vibrant energy, order seemingly on the very brink of chaos, ready to fall over at a feather’s touch but somehow always remaining upright.

More important by far, for this day’s business at least, it was just about custom-made for covert meetings, even wide out in the open.

Impossible for wide-area surveillance to zero in on one particular meeting, one particular conversation.  There was too much constant hustle and bustle, too many moving bodies.  And too many conversations all tumbling overtop one another in any particular space.

That wouldn’t save him if his cover had been blown and surveillance had been focused on him alone.  If that happened, Manolo knew well how difficult—nigh on impossible—it would be to not have his every act recorded and sent to data jockeys for scrubbing and analysis.

He’d done that to enough targets himself to know how that worked.

But he had no reason to think his contacts and their group had made him.  None of the network spiders he’d set up had queued on any activity that might indicate someone was hunting the real him digitally.  And his counter-surveillance drones, barely above nano-size and strategically placed at varying distances around his base of operations and his person, showed nothing that even resembled a targeted surveillance effort pointed his way.

So he was in the clear, at least for now.  But that was to be expected; up to this point had been the easy part of his mission.  The seeking and laying of groundwork, the sewing of trust from afar before the first face-to-face.

Even a nub just out of training could manage that.  And Manolo had been doing this a long, long time.

As an operative for the Empire’s Interior Security Service, he’d run missions and infiltrated threats from one side of the Empire’s thirty-six systems to the other.  He’d taken down threats that the civilian populace never even heard of, threats by the dozen.

Now it was time to take down another one.

Several month’s back, confidential sources had reported rumblings of a plot against the wife of Count Poterick, the liege lord of Heaven’s Gate.  Since she was also sister to Emperor Lucien, this of course received high level attention, and demands for action.

Hence the reason Manolo had been assigned to root it out.  As Magden, the head of covert ops, had said, it required the best, and Manolo was it.

Which was nice to hear.  Though perhaps a bit overstated.

Regardless, he’d spent a lot of time and effort getting a false identity set up to run a real business here on Heaven’s Gate, and then more effort using legitimate contacts to slowly worm his way toward illegitimate ones until now, after weeks of effort, he believed he was getting close to the group behind the plot.

This meet would tell the tale, one way or another.

Up ahead and on the left.  A narrow alleyway between a haberdashery and a visual art gallery, mostly oil paintings from the look of it, that bore closer looking at after his business was done.  Down there was The Millhouse, the tavern where his contact was waiting with the next link in the chain.

Manolo took a moment to adjust the olive green business jacket he wore overtop a plain white, stiff-collared shirt, and looked at his reflection in the glass windows fronting the gallery.  Even to his trained eye, the pistol he kept on his hip was barely visible as the slightest of lumps under his jacket.  And of course no one would be able to detect that the jacket itself had a very special inner lining made of high-tensile nanoweave that could halt most pistol caliber projectiles, or that the thin-rimmed spectacles he wore had not one but two microminiature recording devices built into them.

Tip top.  He was good to go.

He strode into the alleyway.

*  *  *  *  *

The interior of The Millhouse was bright and cheerful.  The wall above the bar was one big bas relief of an old-school waterwheel-turned mill, situated alongside a swiftly-flowing river with tall evergreens growing beside and behind the mill.

It was a very well-done piece.  Manolo could almost see the water splashing as it flowing over rocks in the foreground, and it seemed as though the waterwheel actually was on the cusp of turning.

Extremely well done.

The rest of the room was dominated by red leather-backed chairs around tables set for four, and a trio of booths at the rear.  Swinging doors with transparent windows in their upper half off to the right side led to a kitchen, presumably, and restrooms, segregated by the two genders with subtle engravings that still were easy to make out even across the room, were to the rear, on the left.

The place smelled slightly of polished hardwood and disinfectant, like the proprietor had just finished cleaning.  And an acoustic guitar was playing solo over speakers in the ceiling, melodic arpeggios at a slow tempo that made Manolo just want to relax and take his ease from the moment he stepped inside.

He liked the place immediately, but he wasn’t here for pleasure.  He swept his gaze over the half dozen patrons in the place until he spied his contact.

Damian was fifteen or twenty kilos overweight, though he carried it well with broad shoulders and a burly chest that spoke of lots of exercise in his youth.  His close-cropped hair was more grey than brown, though his mustache retained its youthful coloration, and he was dressed in casual but quality slacks and a blue open collared shirt that was the style here on Heaven’s Gate.  He was seated at the center of the three booths in the rear, across from a woman Manolo didn’t know.

Presumably she was the next link in the chain of conspiracy.  As Manolo approached, he took her measure. Relatively young: early thirties.  With coal-black hair and deeply tanned skin that spoke of ancestry from a more tropical environment.  She wore a loose-fitting red blouse with the first two buttons undone for ventilation, and distraction and manipulation as well, no doubt.  He pants were white, and appeared tight-fitting, and she had her hair back in a ponytail.

Damian noticed Manolo’s approach and nodded in his direction, and the woman turned her head toward him.  He dark eyes flicked up and down, taking his measure, and Manolo thought he saw a wisp of an approving smile on her lips for a second.  But it was gone as soon as it came, and when he stopped at their table all that remained was an assessing stare.

 “You must be Victor,” the woman said, her tone as flat as her stare.  Though there was a lilting melodious quality to her voice; Manolo would bet good money she was a hell of a singer.

Damian cut in.  “Vic, this is Sefi,” he said, and slid further into the booth to make room for him.

Manolo nodded in greeting to Sefi as he positioned into the, wall-warmed, position Damian had just occupied.  “Nice to meet you.”

She sniffed slightly, and glanced from him to Damian and back.  Then she reached inside the open front of her blouse and pulled out a small silver disk.  She must have been hiding it in her bra, and Manolo found he envied it that hiding place.  She really was well-proportioned, in that way.

Sefi plopped the disk down on the table between them and pressed her fingers onto three places around its edge.  It made a soft click, then the briefest of low-pitched beeps.

Manolo kept his face calm, but inwardly he scowled.  It was a bug-sniffer.  If he had brought any of his surveillance drones with him, it would scramble any signal they tried to send out.  As it was, it would play havoc with the recording elements in his spectacles.  Though, the ISS was pretty good.  There was an excellent chance his tech jockeys would be able to retrieve the recording.  But still, that would take time.

Time that he might not have.

Sefi flashed another almost smile at him.  “So we can talk privately,” she said, by way of explanation for the sniffer.

“Ok…”  Manolo let the word draw out, as though unsure about her meaning.  His cover was not a guy who would know much about such things.  After a second, he cleared his throat, then looked between her and Damian, putting on his best curious but also slightly confused look.  “Damian said you needed help.”

Sefi nodded.  “I need an item transported off-world, without attracting attention from…certain authorities.”  She raised an eyebrow, then her eyes flicked toward Damian.  “I’m told you have a knack for that.”

And it was true.  Manolo’s cover was as the owner of an import/export company.  And after he had met Damian he had proved his bona fides by helping him smuggle a trio of small shipments of illicit goods off-world, and eventually to the Tsago Dominance.

He had, of course, verified that none of the goods would actually pose any sort of threat to Imperial Security.  And they had been relatively harmless; the sorts of things that he personally could not understand being on the prohibited list.

But he didn’t make the laws; he just enforced them.  And he had made careful notes of exactly what was shipped and when and sent them to Magden, the better to wrap everyone involved up when the time came.

“Shipping is my business, this is true,” he said, leaning back against the cushions of the booth’s seat.  “What sort of item are we talking about?”

“None of your business, that’s what kind.  But it’s about two meters by one by half a meter tall, and about eighty kilos mass.”  Her second eyebrow rose to join the first, as if to say, “Can you handle that?”

Manolo did some quick math, and that sounded awful coffin-sized to him.  Which in a way confirmed the rumors that HQ had sniffed out.  But if they were going to kill the Countess, why bother shipping her off-world?

That just left kidnapping for ransom.  A very distasteful sort of caper, that.

Manolo found he relished the thought of taking these people down.  And soon.

“Getting such a small bit of cargo up out of the well is child’s play,” he said.  “But I need to know if it’s volatile, or dangerous in some way.  There’s safety of the ship to consider.  Not to mention,” he leaned forward, clasping his hands together on the tabletop.  “I’d be the one taking the risk of actually shipping it.  That means I need to know what the hell it is.”

Sefi kept her eyes locked on his, and after a moment that wisp of an approving smile returned.  But this time it remained.  She sniffed again and made a little gesture with her jaw toward Damian.  “He said you were no fool.  Glad to see he wasn’t wrong.  But…”  She paused for a moment then gave a shrug that Manolo thought was supposed to be apologetic.  “In this case, believe me when I say you’re better off not knowing.”

Manolo put on a genuine frown, then shook his head.  “It’ll cost extra.”

“I can pay it.”

“I haven’t said how much extra.  I ain’t cheap.”

Her lips turned fully upward into a genuine grin then, and Manolo knew two things.  One, she was very well financed.

And two, he was in.

*  *  *  *  *

Manolo’s ship wasn’t his own, of course.  It was owned by the ISS under the front company that he used as his cover for this mission.  But it was a fully-capable bulk cargo carrier, able to haul several tens of thousands of metric tons of cargo—he didn’t really know exactly how much, and now that he thought on it that was a tremendous oversight in his preparation—out of a standard gravity well, and then transport it through half a dozen interstellar jumps before needing to refuel.

But damn, was it ugly.

Blocky and squat, with large engine nacelles and a big ass that opened up so standardized rectagonal cargo containers could be rolled inside and secured in the hold, the easier to transfer them later for rail or shipborne transport on their destination planets.  The crewed section up forward was tiny, compared with the cargo space, the bunk rooms positively cramped.

Manolo was thankful he didn’t actually have to go up in the bloody thing.

He had arranged with Sefi to meet at his landing pad at the Sunset Docks, imaginatively named such because they lay on Theomor’s western outskirts, at 0200, a week after their meeting in The Millhouse.

And so he stood there, cargo ramp lowered with the ship’s crew chief at the top of the ramp ready to help secure the Countess’ prison and the ship’s Captain at his side.  Waiting.

Of course the Crew Chief and the Captain were both also ISS operatives.  And there was a short platoon of other operatives waiting in the darkness surrounding the pad for his signal to come in and secure the miscreants.  Manolo had overseen their briefing personally, and they were kitted out with both lethal and non-lethal weapons, along with the latest in protective gear.

The objective was, of course, to take the criminals alive for trial, and everyone knew that.

But if Sefi and her crew decided they didn’t want that…

Manolo’s lips compressed as he considered how that might go down, and he felt the telltale tingling in his belly that told him he would have a full-on heartburn attack in the next hour or so.  And he wished he’d thought to bring his antacid tablets.

Oh well, nothing to be done about that.  He went back to watching and waiting, and did his best to ignore the oncoming discomfort.

The pad was circular in shape, and raised a meter or so above the surrounding tarmac.  Loading ramps led from warehouses on either side toward the rear of the pad, to facilitate cargo loading, and there was a personnel ramp at the forward section where crew or other people could come and go with more ease.  A computer terminal and keypad stood at the bottom of the ramp, where customs agents or the Dockmaster could log their inspections and clearances.  Past that was a chain-link fence topped with razor wire, which had a gate large enough to admit a small vehicle and which currently stood wide open to admit Sefi’s people.

When they arrived.

It never really got cold on Heaven’s Gate, but at night the temperatures did become more temperate, and natives to the planet tended to wear jackets even though it was still t-shirt weather just about anywhere else.  The Captain and Crew Chief were natives, and they had theirs on.

Manolo just stuck with his specially-lined suit coat.

A light breeze had been blowing from the north, bringing the scent of exhaust from the fuel processing facility that lay in that direction, but thankfully it seemed to be shifting around to the east, and instead of a cough-inducing stench it had become more of a minor annoyance when headlights shown through the gap in the gate and a small truck pulled up to the pad.

It was painted white, and was the kind of truck that a workman would own as his personal transportation.  Nothing super heavy duty or fancy, just functional and non-flashy.  It was a good choice for the night’s excursion, with a covered cargo bed in the rear so onlookers couldn’t get a notion of what was there.

Manolo found himself nodding in approval as it slowed to a crawl and then ascended the ramp, then followed the Captain’s waved directions to come around the ship’s forward landing struts toward the cargo ramp at its rear.

There the truck stopped and a quartet of men, and Sefi, got out.  Sefi walked over to Manolo as the men got about opening the cargo bed.

“All set?” she asked, all about business.

Manolo nodded to her.  “The ship can be off as soon as you’re loaded.”

Which was true.  The bay was filled almost to capacity with legitimate cargo containers; in fact they had held off launching for two days to make this meeting.  But she didn’t need to know that.

Sefi nodded, then reached into her back pocket and pulled out a small rectangular tab with a universal plug adapter on own end.  Handing it to Manolo, she said, “Money’s all there.”

He accepted the credit chip and pulled his own device out: a black chip reader and wallet the size of his palm with a universal port on its side and a display that took up most of its face.  Inserting the credit chip, he tapped the display and saw the number he expected.

Impressed that she actually had been able to come up with such a sum, he looked up from the screen to the Captain and nodded.

He whistled and made a “saddle up” wave of his index finger to the Crew Chief, who hurried down the loading ramp to assist Sefi’s men, who now were busy hauling a grey metallic box that did indeed look like a coffin out of the rear of the truck and up the ramp.

Manolo waited until the cargo was down inside the ship, then he gave the pre-determined signal.  He coughed. Loudly.

Floodlights illuminated on all sides of the ship and the platoon advanced as one.

Almost instantly, the pad was flooded with armed and armored men, and almost before Sefi or her men could even register what was happening, they were down and covered by rifles and Manolo’s men placed handcuffs on them.

Sefi looked up at him, her eyes wide with fury.  “Victor, what the hell are you doing?”

“What’s it look like?” he said.  “I’m ISS.  And you’re under arrest for kidnapping and attempted murder of a member of the royal family.”

Sefi’s eyes went even wider as the import of his words struck her.  The penalty for the crimes he had laid out were…large.

“Wait.  Victor, you don’t understand, I – “

He gave a jerk of his thumb to the officer who had charge of her and turned away.  As he ascended the cargo ramp, he heard the officer drag her to her feet.

“Victor!” she called out as he dragged her away, but Manolo shut the rest of her words out of his mind as he came up next to the Crew Chief, who now was crouched next to the cargo they had just hauled aboard and working at a control pad on the side of it.

“How’s it look?” Manolo asked.

The Crew Chief shrugged.  “Not too difficult.  I – “

The cargo container made a clicking noise, and the lid popped slightly ajar.  The Crew Chief shot Manolo a quick grin, then he raised it the rest of the way open.

Manolo had never met Countess Poterick, of course.  But he had seen her on the vids plenty of times.  There was no mistaking the long, thick, curly black hair, the high cheekbones and sharp nose that so resembled her father, the later Emperor Archibald.  That was definitely Emilia Bandemyr lying inside the cargo container, dressed in a grey jumpsuit without emblem and fast asleep, with a number of IVs and monitoring devices hooked up to her.

The Crew Chief leaned over her and whistled, looking at the equipment that she was hooked up to.

“They’ve got enough sedative and IV nutrients here to keep her asleep and well for over a month, looks like,” he said.

Manolo grunted.  That figured.  It would be enough time to get her just about anywhere in the Empire, and several places outside of the Empire, if that were the abductors’ goal.

“Can you revive her?”

The Crew Chief considered for a moment, then nodded.  “Looks pretty simple, actually.  Let me just…”  He trailed off as he got to work, and a few moments later, the Countess began to stir.

A minute or two after that, she opened her eyes, and blinked at the overhead illumination in the cargo bay.

“Wh – ” she said.  “Where am – ?”

Manolo leaned over the container so she could see him more clearly.  “I’m Officer Manolo Garces with ISS, Countess.  You’re here on Heaven’s Gate, and perfectly safe.”

“Heaven’s Gate?”  The Countess’ eyes widened, and she moved to sit up, but the various tubes and monitoring cables stopped her more or less in place.  “What about Sefi and – “

“We have them in custody,” Manolo said, as gently as he could.  “Like I said, you’re safe.”

“No.”  She shook her head, as though to clear it.  Then blinked three times.  Then she looked back at him with firm, focused eyes.  “You must release them, Officer Garces.”

Manolo blinked, then shook his head.  “You don’t understand, Countess.  We – “

“No, you don’t understand.  Sefi works for me, and you will release her.  Immediately.”

What in the – ?

Manolo saw the Crew Chief look up at him with an expression of utter confusion, and knew that was nothing compared to how he must look, right that moment.

*  *  *  *  *

Manolo always preferred clean, well-lit, and comfortable interrogation rooms.  It was easier to set the subject’s mind at ease in that kind of setting, which in turn made it easy to convince him—or in this case, her—to start talking, like they were friends.

The interrogation room on the fifth floor of the ISS Branch Office in Theomor was everything he could have wanted and more.  Clean off-white walls.  Stuffed chairs for interrogator and subject both.  A nice black-framed coffee table between them.  Even a coffee machine in the corner.

But he never thought he’d be interrogating a member of the royal family in a room like this.  Never in a million years.

Emilia Bandemyr was still dressed in her jumpsuit, but she had the regal bearing of a woman dressed to the nines in the finest ball gown, and she sat upon her chair as though it was a throne as she sipped at the coffee he had made for her.

Not sure even where to begin, he just sat back in his own chair, his own mug of coffee still sitting on the table in front of him where he had placed it five minutes ago, and said nothing, waiting for her to start.

Finally, she lowered her mug and looked at him with frank eyes.

“You are aware of the circumstances of my marriage to Count Poterick.”

Manolo shrugged.  “As much as any member of the public, I suppose, my lady.”

“It was my father’s arranging.  The lynchpin that ensured Heaven’s Gate and her associated systems would enter the Empire without bloodshed.”  She sipped from her mug again.  “A political alliance, to the benefit of both.”

Manolo nodded.  Not exactly a new story.  Political marriages had been going on since marriage first became a thing, way back in the mists of antiquity.

“I agreed to it, of course.  Count Poterick is not a bad looking man, and he seemed reasonably charming.  And, I was eager to do my duty for the Empire.”  Was that a faint hint of irony there in her voice at the end?  “I like to think my father would not have forced me, had I refused it.”  She looked away from Manolo, toward the closed door to her left, the room’s only exit.  “I’m certain he would never have consented himself if he truly knew what kind of man Count Poterick is.”

A pause, where she drank another gulp.  Then she shook her head again.  “Or maybe he would have went ahead with it anyway.”  She half-smiled, half-smirked and looked back at Manolo.  “You know how ruthless he could be.”

In point of fact, Manolo didn’t.  Not personally.  But he had heard the stories, and some of them were ugly.

But then again, you couldn’t argue with results, and utterly ruthless or no, Archibald Bandemyr had grown the Empire from a collection of a few allied star systems to the three dozen system behemoth it now was.  There was a lot to say for that accomplishment.

But something told Manolo that Emilia wouldn’t want to hear that right this moment, so instead he kept quiet and just nodded.

“Anyway, I agreed.  And at first it was alright.  Good, even.  But after the first year…”  She shook her head.  “He drinks, you know.”

That Manolo did know.  Poterick was well known as a lush with a fondness for brandy.

“The last couple years, when he drinks, he…”  She trailed off, but her left hand moved from her coffee mug to her side, where she rubbed at herself, and just barely didn’t hold back a wince.  She inhaled quickly, probably to cover the lapse, for all the good it would do.  “Anyway, I tried to make it work, but it got to the point where I grew certain he was going to – ”  She lowered her eyes, looking at the coffee table instead of Manolo now.  “Well, I became afraid something bad was going to happen.”

Which meant she had grown to be in fear of her life.  Manolo had seen it many times before over the years, from both sexes.  But the women were more willing to admit the problem than the men who suffered similarly.  For obvious reasons.

“Did you tell the Emperor?  He surely would have granted you a divorce, under the circumstances.”

Emilia shook her head.  “Before father died, it hadn’t become that bad.  But since then…”  She shook her head again, more vigorously as she straightened back up to her previous regal demeanor.  “You know of the reforms my brother has sought to implement since he took the throne.”

“I don’t follow politics, my lady,” Manolo said, truthfully.  It wasn’t his place to look into or comment on the machinations of the nobility.  Though of course he had seen some word of Emperor’s Lucien’s policy changes on the vids.  He just didn’t obsess over them, like some did.

Emilia raised an eyebrow at that, as though she didn’t really believe him.  “Many of the great houses oppose his policies.  He is literally fighting for his life, and Poterick is one of his few vocal allies.  If I – ”  She looked away again, and spoke more quietly.  “He would probably kill Poterick if I told him.  Challenge him to a duel and kill him.  Veritas Morte, just like with Minister Ymmersen.”

Manolo had heard of that.  Of the former Minister of Diplomacy’s treachery, and the plot to poison both Emperor Archibald and then Crown Prince Lucien, and how the Minister had challenged the Prince to a duel to the death to avoid facing the legal repercussions of his deeds.

Ymmersen had killed a dozen men in duels before, and was confident in his ability to win through again.

But Prince Lucien surprised them all, and won.  And now he was Emperor and Ymmersen didn’t even get a traitor’s grave; they jettisoned his corpse, nude, from the airlock of the Imperial flagship.

“Lucien can’t afford to lose Poterick’s support.  So, to answer your question, no I haven’t told him.  And I will not.”

It wasn’t hard to figure out the rest of the story.  “So you decided to run away.”

She nodded.  “Whether from a duel or an Imperial Decree of Divorce, Lucien would lose a key ally.  But if I just disappeared…”

She didn’t say the rest, but she didn’t need to.  It wasn’t a bad plan, per say.  But –

“But where were you going?”

“Capestra.  Princess Ophelia made arrangements for me.  A new identity, a place to live, income.”

Manolo recoiled, shock making his mouth drop open and his eyes grow wide.  “The Capestrani Republic?  We came within a hair’s breadth of outright war with them over the Corellis incident, when your brother took the throne. And you were going to engineer a plot that made it look like they kidnapped the Emperor’s sister?!”

Emilia gave him a flat, disapproving stare that faltered after a second.  She looked down.  “I thought you said you don’t follow politics.”

He didn’t bother gracing that statement with a reply.

Emilia drew a breath, and continued.  “It’s not commonly known, but Ophelia and Lucien are close.”  She gave a little chuckle.  “I think he may ask for her hand some day, actually.  She was going to get in touch with him through back channels to let him know what happened.  Once I got there safely and there was nothing Poterick could do about it.  Lucien would know the truth, but to everyone else it would be like I just vanished without a trace.”

“With all due respect, my lady, that is a terrible plan, and we’re all lucky it didn’t work.”

She gave him a little scowl that didn’t quite reach her eyes.  “And how did it fail, exactly?”

Manolo looked at her for a long moment, mulling over how much to tell her of the full operation that her plotting had put into motion.  Finally, he just shrugged.  “Some of our informers sent word of some sort of plot against you.  Protection of the royal family is one of ISS’ primary duties, so they sent me to see to investigate.”

“You came to protect me.”

Manolo nodded.

“Then protect me.”  Her eyes flicked to the north, in the general direction of the Count’s palace.  “From him.”  She leaned forward.  “Send me on to Capestra, and away from here.”

Manolo shook his head.  “My lady, I cannot do that.  I cannot send the Emperor’s sister into the clutches of a foreign power, especially one that, when all the chips are down, may end up being our enemy.”

“Well I’m not going back to him, so where does that leave us?”

Where indeed?  Manolo had been pondering that since before the interview started, and was racking his brain all the more now.  He only saw one route that avoided complete disaster, both for her, for the Empire, and for his own career.

“You must go to Qora,” he said, finally.  “To tell your brother everything.”

“No, I told you.  If he loses Poterick – “

“And if Poterick had done something…permanent?  Wouldn’t His Majesty have lost him then, as well?”

Emilia’s mouth abruptly closed, her teeth making an audible clacking sound it closed quickly, and so hard.  Her regal calm wavered, and her lips compressed.  She looked away from him again, and Manolo saw her eyes begin to water up.

Then she inhaled forcefully through her nose, blinked, and gave her head a little toss.  When she looked back at him, the royal demeanor was back again, like it had never fled.

Manolo found he admired her, for that.

“What about my people?”

“Sefi and her lot?”

She nodded.

“They will remain in custody pending His Majesty’s decision on this matter.”

She was silent for a long time, then she looked down and nodded.

And that settled the matter.

*  *  *  *  *

The order to release Sefi, Damian, and their associates came through six weeks after the Countess left for Qora, as well as an Imperial Decree of Divorce ending her marriage to Count Poterick.

Manolo didn’t see it, but he heard through the rumor mill that the Count received a personal summons to the Emperor, to discuss the matter.  But, he knew the Count left on a ship that rumor said was packed full of brandy bottles.

He never heard what came of Poterick’s meeting with the Emperor, however, because by then Manolo had departed Heaven’s Gate.  New orders came for him to investigate the apparent taking of a cargo ship under the flag of the Tsago Dominance by pirates based out of the Cordant System.

That promised to be interesting.  He had investigated all manner of crimes in the past, but never an outright act of piracy.

So when he boarded his ship for Cordant, Manolo put all curiosity about the Count’s fate out of his mind and focused solely on the new mission before him.

It wasn’t his place to question the machinations of the nobility, anyway.

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A collection of Michael Kingswood’s published stories are available here: