Wrath and Retribution

Preface-3

Whistling a bright tune on the way out of the closet, he tucked his comms back into his pockets. He checked to make sure both bags were where he left them without blood marring their surfaces. Kazimir casually pulled the larger clothing bag over his shoulder and carried the smaller travel bag that he had packed in his office in his right hand and he headed for the door, still whistling.

His left foot caught on Diantha's.

Enraged at the insult, Kazimir tossed the bags in the direction of the door, turned and viciously kicked her legs and side so hard and so many times that she flopped bonelessly onto her right side, still unconscious. Under the towel which had rolled off her face and bunched in front of her mouth, the pooling fluids spilled out of her mouth and onto the carpet. A tiny unconscious breath eked its way into her lungs.

Still furious he kicked his way up her back over her kidneys and into the ribs until he heard several crunch under his kicks.

He didn't stop because the crunches of cracked and broken ribs.

He stopped because he was tired.

He chuckled to himself as he went back into the closet to change his clothing again while he panted for air from the invigorating but unexpected exercise. He finished changing for the third time that day, leaving the b****y rags in a pile in the closet and walked back into the room. He was again careful to avoid the lake of blood that was spilling from her broken facial bones, ravaged mouth and lungs.

It always amused him just how much blood could spill from a human body.

Standing back again to catch his breath, Kazimir admired the curve of the w***e's legs and hips. Her lacy and silken pink night shirt had ridden up, exposing tender flesh with fresh bruises forming. She really was a pretty woman. "I should have used her more often. A new w***e every week for all those years and this w***e was at home waiting for me every night ... Shame. What a waste. I wish I had time to use this one properly too."

Kazimir avoided the spreading stain by stepping deftly around the easily seen pooling blood. He scooped his bags back into their place, and hummed his happy tune out the door to the waiting elevator before dropping the many levels to his eventual departure point.

Kazimir whistled all the way down the length of his private elevator ride. He even smiled while he hummed. Once he stepped clear of the elevator car and began his long circuitous effort of disappearing into the pedestrian traffic and eventually to the bowels of the building all those floors below where his first elevator had reached its bottom floor.

He was in a surprisingly good mood given how miserably the day had started. The old adage about 'exercise improving a man's mood' must have been true. That and the freeing liberation of no longer needing to act like the pathetic distant supplicant to his inferiors was pleasant.

69)

Celine was extremely unhappy with her method of travel.

Over an hour had passed since Phyllip found Persephone in bed, literally in bed! Sleeping late and lounging after her little escapades last night. Persephone's little adventure apparently ending in a very risqué display of unladylike behavior when Phyllip had arrived. Celine huffed to herself, 'And that brutish Phyllip, after all these years, he still has the manners of a barn yard dog, barging in on a closed room, and without knocking probably. I don't know who to be more furious at, her for her display or him for not knowing better. Or both of them for not knowing and behaving better!'

Celine knew she would hear about the rumors that little stunt would generate for years to come.

Once her 'wayward daughter' had been recovered, the whole palace went into even more of an uproar. As if Thanatyos' betrayal wasn't bad enough, his near-do-well son disappeared only seconds after turning on his terminal in the palace Intelligence Offices. So while the head of the Empire's Security apparatus was dead by his own hand; his son and head of the Empire's Intelligence apparatus, who's comm was off all night, in his personal huff since his banishment from formal functions during his last unsightly outburst, had no news of his father's untimely death until he reached his office that morning.

It didn't take a starship drive engineer to connect those dots and draw more than a few dreadfully awful conclusions. None of which Celine wanted to voice out loud for fear of some superstitious jinx she could only pray to the eternal stars, never mind prayers to the family's pantheon, wishing her voiced fears wouldn't come true. It was a damnable situation.

That no one even thought to go over there to his place and pound on his door was infuriating to say the least!

The existence of such inefficiency and incompetence in such important roles in her organization was frightening. And worst of all ... the whole thing functioned perfectly without Kazimir present! They had a major crisis transpiring and things were working better without him there. Kazimir really was the most useless piece of offal in the Hegemony.

Since Kazimir had taken just enough time to review the security feeds from the night before, along with all the other duly flagged information concerning the event, he had just decided it was better to run away than assist in the investigation that morning. She knew that barbarous man was not to be trusted but to think that his actions required flight as opposed to meeting his duty to Family and Hegemony cast all manner of suspicions on him, his character and his dealings.

Celine feared the worst.

While everyone was scrambling around trying to figure out why he left, Celine had finally thrown up her hands in frustration, removed herself from the mire of speculation and accosted the Citadel's Home Guard Quick Reaction Platoon instead.

The Lieutenant had balked at lifting the assault shuttle and the Reaction Platoon from the Palace grounds. But once she calmly explained that while his, the Lieutenant's, boss was a Home Guard Company Commander and Celine had politely asked the young man to name her boss he had to think about that. Her smile and c****d head had cut the young man off before he managed to finish enunciating the 'Lord' in the name 'Lord Phyllip Chroynos'.

Over the engine hum and the horrifically uncomfortable woven nylon strap seat, Celine unfolded her arms and grasped some manner of rope 'loop' above the door and her right shoulder, which was hanging from a thick metal beam over her head. Leaning left and over the center console and looking down at the young officer standing behind her, Celine asked, "Lieutenant, I have a personal question to ask you. It's nagging curiosity mostly. Would you mind answering for me?"

"I don't know Lady Chroynos that depends on the question."

She laughed for the first time that day and definitely improved her spirits in this rattling contraption called a 'vehicle'. "Fair enough. I will take that as 'cautious humor', and not 'youthful obstinacy'. You're not married are you?"

"No Lady Chroynos. How could you tell?"

Smiling back to him and replied, "I thought I was right. Think back to our exchange earlier this morning before we departed. You will understand when you get married." Her smile slipped away after she finished prefacing her more serious 'reminder' instructions to the Lieutenant, "I hope we find nothing here but we are going to, using an archaic term, 'ring the bell' regardless and see if anyone is home. My nephew seems to be in some distress and we will check on him to see if he is alright."

"Yes Ma'am! Gain entry, secure the interior, and locate friendly personnel. The platoon is already briefed; we only have a few seconds before arrival. Once we dock I will help you out, and we can move forward to breach."

Celine smiled sweetly, "I have no idea what you said Lieutenant, but you sounded very convincing. I'm sure my husband can translate for me later at his leisure. For now I want to check on my family, not conquer a planet." The assault shuttle thumped to a jarring landing, surprising Lady Celine in her seat. Had she not been strapped in, at the Lieutenant's insistence, before takeoff she would have whacked her head on something and she knew it. Soldiers were already snapping to and moving with a violently precise form of absolute chaos she didn't understand at all. She asked and immediately felt stupid after, "What now?"

The Lieutenant paused briefly and explained, "Now we deploy and I get you unstrapped, and then down to follow the platoon."

He leaned forward and his quick sure fingers flew over the levers, and buttons, and switches, and cords, and pull things, followed by his quick disappearance and then his face reappeared by the door to her side. He was only slightly shorter than her at the stepped down level he was at while standing behind her, in the aircraft. The swept up nose of the thing she had just flown in gave a dizzying view of the ground from its elevated, swept forward nose design and clear bottom plating. It was like being strapped to a chair and dangled over the edge of a very tall building with only a band of solid, incomprehensible, but utilitarian controls around your midsection, and the infernally uncomfortable straps everywhere over her body.

Celine had studiously not looked down at the whipping, buzzing, manic movements of the traffic and buildings below; it was hard enough to keep her limited breakfast down just looking straight ahead.

The view wasn't quite as daunting once she was only a few feet above the penthouse landing pad but she still needed the taller Lieutenant's assistance to get her down from the airship.

Approaching the door with the young Lieutenant she puzzled at the rectangle of dark triangular metal they had affixed to the door. Well within earshot of the soldiers at the door Celine asked loud and clearly, with a large chunk of her most patient and maternal clarity, "Lieutenant, what is that?"

He said proudly, "It's a breaching charge Ma'am," the matter of fact delivery could have been about chocolate-chip or oatmeal cookies with tea.

Celine felt a mortified surge rising in her breast, "'Breaching?' Why would you need to breach? This isn't some common burglary; this is home to a close family member." Celine shaking her head just strolled past the soldiers as they looked confused behind their ballistic shielded face masks. Celine turned back to the Lieutenant, shaking her head, as her palmed security card slipped into the door lock, and the locking light winked green. Her Hegemony level access would have automatically opened all of the doors in the building. Never mind that her mother's family owned this particular building complex and some large number of others just like it. Of course that was all through multiple shell corporations and holding groups that made it all disappear and completely disassociated ownership from her name. Using either side of that family access she could have managed the same entry. Celine didn't like to advertise that fact though. Even Kazimir didn't know she owned the building he lived in, and she took a degree of satisfaction from that needling fact as she glanced at her rental income statements every month. Celine owned a large number of buildings as her own investment hobby but this one was already in her family's grasp so she never bothered transferring ownership, and there was no need to fuel the conspiracy nuts who harped about a handful of families controlling everything.

Her family was smarter than that after so many generations. There was no need to control the uncontrollable masses. They decided generations ago to follow the Earth play book and let people do as they pleased so long as they paid rent every month, didn't destroy her property. So long as that happened she had no problems with them or anything else they did to each other. Just taking their money every month was much lower stress than herding billions upon billions of uncooperative sentiments.