Blood Debts

Chapter 2

Preface

This is book 2 of a complete Guardsman story. It is entirely too long and plot too complex to tell all at once so it is broken into three books. The intent of the first book is a first person perspective following two characters to introduce the world, their relationship, and parts of the past that placed them in the situation they find themselves in 'now'.

The two main characters are introduced in the first book, Guardsman 1: Honor of the Fallen. They are Persephone and Samson. Persephone is heiress to the massive, respected and successful Chroynos Stellar Hegemony. Samson has fallen from his lofty position as Persephone's personal Guardsman. In an effort to protect her, he bears the brunt of a character assassination campaign that would destroy the heiress, because he loves her more than his own life.

In the first book someone is trying to destroy Persephone's family and destroy or kill her specifically. Two clues are presented in the first book. The first is an overt discrepancy between what two characters are saying. The second is thinly veiled. Samson misses both clues at the time and begins to unravel the enigma in this second book.

To start the first book Samson is disgraced and stripped of title, even stripped of his name and forced to carry the name of the empire's most condemned: 'John Smith'. He works for a private detective hunting criminals on the run and investigating frauds. Mario Tomposo is the licensed detective and small entrepreneur in the agency that employs the banished 'John Smith' to save credits. He is actually breaking the law by not shunning the outcast and by not allowing him to starve to death. To Mario, 'Smith' is a warm body and a capable investigator who is making Mario's agency money, in the form of difficult but completed assignments, untraceable gold coin and illegally cheap labor. While Samson, then 'John Smith', is investigating one of Mario's cases, Samson meets a retired Hegemony soldier turned entrepreneur, and sometimes pirate, hidden at the bottom of the mist shrouded lower and ground levels of the planet's megacity, named Vladimir Lee.

Persephone's mother and father, Celine and Phyllip Chroynos, have suffered the deaths of Persephone's four older siblings and are painfully aware, in their hearts that someone is trying to kill their last baby. Persephone's one time friend, personal confidant, and maid Angela turns on her, unleashing an extremely powerful, nanobot enhanced, horrifically armored and completely invisible sleeper agent. The threat within their protective citadel's supposedly unassailable walls causes her father to send her out into the world to make her a constantly moving young woman with a chance to survive, instead of a stationary target waiting to die, at the hands of an unknown number of invisible sleepers who have already slipped through security.

Phyllip Chroynos relies on his best friend and Vice President, Thomys Prometheon, to help run the family's fusion power monopoly and fifteen hundred solar system spanning Empire, while Phyllip trusts Thomys with his most terrible secrets. Thanatyos Chroynos, Phyllip's brother and Persephone's only surviving uncle runs the family's internal operations, coordinates the businesses, and manages their internal security, including Guardsmen assignments. Persephone's cousin Kazimir runs the family's defensive and foreign intelligence arms. Celine manages the 'Royal Family' public relations, manages the family's public affairs and the corporate finances, without the formal title of CFO, she directs the family's tremendous wealth.

The Chroynos family while successful in business, has been decimated by war with neighboring empires and treachery. Free standing numbers are the age of the family member relative Persephone. The number in ( - ) is Persephone's age when those family member's were killed. For clarity, non-blood relatives, and those not still living are excluded from the wireframe diagram of the family.