“They are honorless. One side fights for money. The other side fights for ideas. Many choose to cower in their clutches rather than pick a side. None fight for honor and prestige. I hope they wipe themselves out.”

N’tok’a Th’a, Sauran Ambassador to the Great Host

Lady Elinor North, House Montclair

Rings of Nulma, Dotalian Sovereignty

Free at last, thought Elinor to herself. She’d escaped the interminably long memorial, reasonably confident that she’d staked out a strong enough position to head off the backstabbing money grubbing ‘cousins’ of the House Montclair. What was hardest about having to protect her family’s inheritance was that not one of those cousins had ever worked at anything in their lives. None of her ‘aunts’ and ‘uncles’ had worked, either. They were professional dilettantes, grasping for whatever source of funds they could find that didn’t rely on the goodwill of Lady Ursula.

She knew she wasn’t being charitable. A lot of the older Montclair family members served as diplomats, courtiers, and agents on behalf of the family. But none of them were scrambling like the North family, or any of the other cadet branches, for that matter.

Elinor shoved those thoughts aside as she stripped out of the ridiculously expensive outfit she’d worn, and into a proper North uniform. Her parents had scoffed at the pseudo-military style uniform, but had not stopped her from requiring the Dragoons wear it, along with proper rank insignia. When Walter Mason came onboard to help reorganize the North trading fleets, he too adopted the uniform. Before long, all servitors to the Norths wore a variation of it. With white trousers and maroon coat with gold buttons up both sides of the chest, the uniform was both regal and functional. The trousers were actually part of a full-body space suit, while the coat was armored against slug throwers and low-powered laser weapons. This was especially important considering the preparations she’d made to leave the station.

Elinor’s version had no rank except for a single gold ringed planet on the collar, from the Montclair coat of arms. Once she slipped on her white ship’s boots and checked all her seals, she left her room to be packed by a servant and headed straight towards the station docks. The docks were the busiest part of the whole station, and were a hub of activity as ships entered and left regularly. This part of the station was not limited to House Montclair, but was one of the major ports of entry for goods entering Dotalian markets. The King’s Custom had an office, where tariffs and duties were collected, and the King’s Exchequer maintained a space for its tax agents as well. The few service shops and food vendors were owned by the House Montclair, of course.

Excited to finally get off the station, Elinor walked at such a brisk pace that she occasionally skipped a step to avoid falling flat on her face. She ducked through narrow corridors and maintenance hallways, trying to avoid the slower traffic of the main roads. She had done this countless times before, preferring the faster pace she could set, even if the route was technically longer.

When she reached the end of the last hallway, Elinor was surprised to find a woman leaning against the wall. She was right before the last bend that would lead out onto the dock where Elinor’s cutter was docked. The woman was casually flipping a dagger in one hand. She looked up at Elinor and gave a rakish grin.

“You really shouldn’t make yourself so predictable,” said the woman. “This is almost too easy.”

“You really should have taken my brother’s offer,” said a man right behind her. Elinor nearly jumped out of her skin, turning to see someone who looked remarkably similar to Leonard Vinter stepping out of a door, closing it tightly behind him. “It would have been a lot less painful.”

Elinor nodded, wasting no time on words. She pressed a button inside her jacket sleeve. Instantly, an armored helmet snapped over her head. A slim laser pistol slid into her right hand, out of sight of the Vinter brother. She spun swiftly, just as the woman yelled a warning.

“She’s got a pistol!”

“Shit!” cursed the Vinter brother, but he had no cover to hide behind. Three blasts took him in the middle of the chest. Unfortunately for Elinor, his suit was armored like hers was. Elinor wasted no time, charging straight towards the woman.

The woman had dropped the smile, her face a look of a predator. She held her knife in a way that told Elinor that she had the skills to take down an armored opponent. Elinor wasn’t ready to test it, she only had to buy a little more time.

Elinor jumped suddenly, a few meters away from the woman. A low-hanging pipe was above her head, which she grasped one-handed. The momentum of her run set her swinging, and she activated the emergency magnetic grips on her boots, which caught on another pipe. Swiftly, she climbed up and started firing the laser down at the woman.

Cursing, the woman dove around the bend in the corridor, so Elinor shifted her fire to the charging Vinter brother. She didn’t aim for his torso this time, but for his legs and head. This, however, was a much harder shot.

“Universe damn you, woman!” shouted the man. He held an armored arm over his head to protect it, and was fumbling at his waist for a slug thrower. “I was going to catch you alive, but I’ll kill you if I have to!”

“Hah, you’re far too stupid to catch me, alive or dead,” taunted Elinor. Her laser pistol gave a warning beep. Elinor frowned and stopped firing. She only had a few shots left.

“Is that right? Who is cornered in the ceiling of a corridor all alone?” he called back.

A welcome ding came over her helmet comm, and Elinor breathed a sigh of relief. “Who says I’m alone?”

Right on time, a half-dozen North Dragoons came out of a door a little further down from where the Vinter brother had entered the hallway. Another half-dozen came around the corner from where the woman had sought cover. Elinor frowned when she saw that the second group of Dragoons did not have the woman with them. The slippery assassin must have slipped the net.

It took less than a minute for the dozen Dragoons to surround and disarm the Vinter brother, and manacle his wrists. Elinor dropped gracefully to the ground as her younger brother walked into the hallway with yet another half-dozen Dragoons at his back. He nodded to Elinor, then looked at the Vinter brother.

“Nathanial Vinter, the thug,” he said distastefully. “You’re reputation for brutality precedes you.”

“You’re dead! All you Norths are dead! Once I get free, I’m going to tear you limb from limb!” raved Nathanial. “You will give us what is ours -”

One of the Dragoons clubbed him in the back of the head with the butt of her laser rifle. She looked up at Rafe and said, “Oops, my apologies, sir. My weapon appears to have slipped my grasp. I do hope he recovers swiftly.”

“No apologies necessary, soldier,” said Elinor as Rafe frowned. She turned to Rafe. “Get whatever information you can from him. Find out if they actually killed our parents. If they did, you know what to do.”

“And the other brother? Leonard?” asked Rafe.

“Him, too.”

Rafe nodded in approval. He had become the North family’s spymaster because he did not have any issues with morally questionable actions. Elinor had worked hard to make sure those actions stayed hidden from their kind-hearted parents and from their younger brother, Miles. It took a certain kind of ruthlessness to thrive in House politics, and they would need every ounce of it in order to survive. It would get even more dangerous if they succeeded in Emanyo.

“You know the Vinters have a lot more brothers, and the father, Uric Vinter, is especially dangerous,” warned Rafe as the Dragoons dragged Nathaniel through the doorway into the warehouse they’d used for the reverse ambush.

“I know,” said Elinor, with a brisk nod of the head. “But they are the ones who are trying to get into the Great Game. We may be a minor cadet branch, but we are still nobility. Mr. Vinter and his sons will soon learn that he is a jackal amongst lions.”

“This is the last time you will ever go without a squad of Dragoons,” said Rafe. “You are no dramatist hero who can charge recklessly into danger time and again. The next ambush will be better.”

“What happened to the woman?” asked Elinor.

“She spotted us coming in, and ran before we could corner her. She’s not a Vinter, so I’m guessing she’s a freelancer. I’ll get her picture from House Security, see if we can learn more.”

“No doubt she’ll report to the Vinters then,” said Elinor, dissatisfied with the loose end. “Alright, if the Vinters played a role in our parents’ death, don’t dump his body in space. I want you to send a clear message to the father.”