A Family Affair - part 4
30 Oct 2017Mack Winston
PREVIOUSLY...A family affair - Part 1
A family affair - Part 2
A family affair - Part 3
Capitol, Achenar
I awoke, groggy and with the mother of all headaches.
I was lying on my back, still in the clothes I had been wearing - when? yesterday? Perhaps last week? - on a bed that was comfortable enough. My jacket was hanging on a hook on the wall. Light was streaming through a large window on the other end of the room, and the air smelled odd.
As I slowly regained full consciousness, I realised the air smelled odd because it was the first time in about three years that I had breathed a natural living atmosphere, not the processed air of a station or ship's life support system.
I sat up. I immediately wished I hadn't, as the light shining in my eyes made the headache double in intensity.
I flopped back on the bed, and waited, hoping to all the gods that my head would stop hurting. After fifteen minutes of staring at the room's ceiling, high above me, I decided I ought to try standing up.
Well, that went well, I thought to myself as I maintained my balance. My glasses had been set aside on a small table by the bed, I put them on and looked out the window towards the rising sun. After a few moments, they projected onto my vision what exactly that sun was.
Achenar.
The heart of the Empire. This meant I had to be on Capitol. Who would kidnap me and take me to Capitol? I could think of only two possibilities: the Vazquez family, who were probably still sore about Cal conning them out of million credits - but worse - the ignominy of falling for the con. Or it could be my maternal uncle, who I had never met and had no intention of meeting. Lord Michael Alan Peshiviel Hesketh-Duval would probably be distressed to know I existed, and the thought that I may be in his mansion, awaiting my fate, was a thought I quickly shoved aside.
I pushed open the door and risked moving into the next room. It was large, and had several windows along the side towards the rising sun. A large oak table was in the centre of the room, with an imposing seat on each of its broad sides. The wooden floors squeaked slightly under my footfalls. Along the side walls were old-fashioned bookshelves and cabinets, no doubt the owner never actually read any of these things, they were just decorations to give the impression of an era long gone. The view out of the windows was to a highly manicured garden, framed by distant white capped mountains which gleamed in Achenar's pale light.
I might have enjoyed the view if the pounding headache would go away. I stood and contemplated it for a while, wondering what I should do next, and what had happened to Cal.
"It's beautiful, isn't it?" said a cultured voice right behind me, so close I could almost feel the breath on my neck...
"Yaaargghh!" I answered, spinning around and almost falling to the floor in shock.
Before me was an old man, tall and lean, wearing an obviously expensive hand-tailored suit. He smiled wryly. Like my father, he was old, but somehow not elderly. His bald head was shiny, and it caught the light of Achenar.
"Your father was rather better at taking surprises," remarked the old man, still smiling.
"What? Who - " several thoughts were battling for contention for my vocal chords. "Why did you kidnap me?" I finally stammered as a thought finally broke free from the mental melee.
"You were about to be murdered," the man said, without hesitation. "I'm afraid Jebediah Gold sold you out"
"Wait, what?"
"He sold you out to a reaper hired by your uncle to murder you"
I was momentarily speechless. Who was this guy? Finally I calmed down a little, and remembered -
"Where's Cal?"
"Don't worry, he's safe. Well, so long as he doesn't get your ship stuck in the toastrack again"
How the hell did this old man know about that? Why was this guy stalking me?
"Who are you?" I stammered, finally.
"I think you know that," he said. That damned wry smile again. He paced around the room, taking a volume off the bookshelf. The author's name was picked out in gold leaf, and it caught Achenar's light briefly, but long enough for me to read "Phyllis Bron". The old man turned it over in his hands then replaced it.
I thought back. The author's name was familiar. A journalist from a few decades back. The Greatest Crime of Norman Mosser. The photograph...of my father, Norman Mosser, and one other man - captured back in the sixties. I tried to recall the photograph.
The old man looked at me and raised his eyebrows.
"Well?"
"Norman Mosser!" I hissed, not really believing the truth.
"I feel I have a duty to your old man to make sure you don't come to undue harm," he explained. "Unfortunately, your uncle has discovered your existence, and he ordered your murder. He also told his servant to ensure your father was given all of the gruesome details when the deed was done."
"Well, err, thank you - " I said "- but"
"What next? Well, your unwilling uncle, Lord Michael Alan Peshiviel Hesketh-Duval, lives less than a hundred kilometers from here. It would of course be an act of self defence if you were to be let into his mansion..."
Norman reached into his suit and pulled out the assassin's dagger, in its sheath, and held it out to me. Not really knowing what else to do, I took it and slipped it into my boot as my father had shown me.
"No, I won't do that", I said quietly.
"Why not? It's self defence. Your uncle Michael didn't even have the courage to face you, he sent someone to send someone else to gib you"
"Why not? I'll get caught and murdered, either that or I'll have this thing hanging over me like the Sword of Damocles, and you'll have me do your murderous bidding just as you did with my father!"
"Your father enjoyed it"
"I'm not my damned father!" I said, a confused feeling of terror and anger rising in me. "And I'm not murdering a member of my own family!"
"Even though he tried to murder you? Come on - "
"No! I will deal with him, if I can indeed see him, but not with murder. I am not an assassin, I don't murder", I hissed.
"Could have fooled me," Mosser replied. "What about the Dragons of Kappa Fornacis? Or that guy you exploded in 34 Pegasi?"
"That's different, that was all in defence of the East India Company against those who would either be attacking our trade vessels or taking our people hostage, it wasn't walking up to an unarmed member of my own family and thrusting an Imperial Assassin's dagger into his chest!"
Norman raised his eyebrows, and paced around.
"I'm not murdering my uncle," I re-iterated more quietly this time.
"He will murder you, you know. Just because he failed this time and he lost a reaper in the process doesn't mean he won't have more. And should that one fail, he will try again, and again, and again. He won't give up until you are dead," Norman explained evenly, without raising his voice.
He stopped, and turned to face me again. "You have no option. You must do it."
"I believe I can persuade him"
"How?"
"I don't...know..." I paused, looking at the ground briefly, "I'll figure something out"
"You better be quick, his daughter and her entourage leave on a business trip in a few hours, and you'll have a window to be alone with the man"
Something had been bothering me during this whole conversation. How the hell could Norman Mosser, master criminal, who had books written about him and even the damned Federation promulgating a law making his existence illegal be right here, right now, in his own mansion on Capitol?
"And something doesn't compute about all of this, how come you're here, sitting pretty in the middle of the Empire?"
Norman sighed, and took a seat at the oak table.
"The Empire decided to tolerate me after I stopped travelling. I harbour too many of their embarrassing secrets. The Azure Sunset was my last great adventure, I have remained on Capitol ever since."
Another mystery solved. The Deathwreaker that I unexpectedly received during the Pistorious affair had an Azure Sunset sigil on the grip.
"You sent me the Deathwreaker," I said, as a statement rather than a question.
Norman smiled. "I have a warehouse full of the damned things. Thousands of them"
"Galpedia says there are only fifty known examples left. They go for over ten million. No doubt you know about the woman who tried to steal the one you sent to me..."
"I could make that market implode," Norman said, with an evil grin. "The salty tears of all those rare firearms collectors would be something I would savour"
"What was the Azure Sunset? A mission?"
"A ship. I stole an experimental naval weapon from the Federation - with your father's help no less. It needed a ship big enough to carry it. Have you seen The Midas?"
"Yes, our company owns it", I replied. The Midas - a megaship - was impressive in its scale.
"The Azure Sunset was about that size, I bought it for pennies on the credit from the Alliance. She was in poor shape, and it was ultimately our undoing"
I had a lot that I could ask Norman Mosser, but not enough time. I had to get back to the matter at hand.
"So, how are you going to get me into my uncle's mansion?"
"It's easy when you own the company that set up his security system" - that evil grin again. "Your dagger will pass right through, should you have the good sense to plunge it into that cowardly man's chest, and so will you. Unrecorded. No one will know you've been or left. If you let him live, he will of course change his security provider, but through a web of shell companies, I also own two other security firms, and - " he coughed - " those I don't own would be subject to my persuasion"
Norman stood up and walked to the windows, surveying his domain.
"My trusted agent, Joe Kemper, will get you in. And he'll get you out again. He knows your uncle's property rather well"
"Tell me, " I asked, curiosity overcoming my subsiding sense of shock, "what happened to the reaper?"
Norman chucked. It seemed to be an ironic sort of chuckle.
"Funny you should ask. Furious at my agents having taken you, he gave chase in his Imperial Courier. His highly engineered Imperial Courier. Apparently it'll get up to over 700 within the confines of Artyukhin Ring. Shame he didn't spot the Beluga Liner that was about to fill the mail slot"
"Dead?"
"There are some things that not even a RemLock suit can save you from. He ended up smeared all over the inside wall of the station, only metres from the slot. I have to imagine the repair crews are still picking bits of him out of the hole his ship made..."
"An accident, really - " I said, sarcastically, not believing that the reaper's ship hadn't been somehow rigged.
"Honestly, it was an actual accident. I wish I'd thought of it, but getting the Beluga to be entering at just the right time would have been challenging. That's not to say his self-destruct mechanism hadn't been tampered with, of course..."
Well, I thought - Lord Michael didn't need to know it was an accident.
"And you can't go dressed like that," Norman said, suddenly. "I took the liberty of getting your measurements from the tailor you saw a while back in Harvestport. I have something more suitable for meeting an Imperial Lord."
He had this all planned I thought, planned for months. Mosser had to want this guy dead, surely, although perhaps that was just my paranoia talking. Norman certainly had the power to have the guy "retired" by other means, so why me?
Norman broke my thoughts.
"I'm sure a hearty breakfast will clear your headache. The QuickLok drugs always leave a bit of a hangover, apparently. Then you can meet Joe Kemper, and he will take you to pay a family visit"
Related
Review: The Greatest Crime of Norman Mosser
The HPA Saga - synopsis - Azure Sunset
The entire HPA saga - please note when this was written, it was thought that "Elite 4" (i.e. Elite Dangerous) was never going to be written. Also note that the Mack Winston mentioned in these articles is Tyler Mack Winston, the father of the Elite: Dangerous Mack Winston. Some dates have had to be changed in relation to this story to make this journal congruent with Elite: Dangerous. To be clear, events in the "HPA Saga" would happen in the 3260s, to fit the Elite Dangerous timeline.