A New Star Chapter 76 (Patreon)

Emily Sheffield

An emergency order had come in, not just from anyone, as the dispatch room sometimes got antsy and sent one out, but directly from the commander of the guard himself. It was a mad scramble as the first three squads of the Guard gathered, armed themselves, and dashed through the building to his office, more than one affinity being used to boost the score of people along and keep us from flattening any of the regular day workers. Thankfully, the call had come in a little after dawn and many of us were already in the building or barracks, which would not have been the case early in the night or on our one free day of the week, but luck’s little mercies were with us today.

Another lucky thing was that the commander’s office was rather sparse, the man not one for a lot of ostentatious displays or even much furniture. It allowed all three of our squads to mostly fit inside with only a few out in the reception room leaning in through the open doorway. I was rather shocked to find it wasn’t just the commander in the room, my jaw nearly hitting the floor when I saw just who the second person was. Of course, some critical emergency happened and she either caused it or was responsible for solving it. I had little more time to think of anything before the commander started.

“All here? Good. Let’s get started,” he said. “We’ve have a critical situation that is currently developing, one which I hope your squads rushing through the grounds hasn’t disturbed, but we’ll have to move fast and break some heads to get to the bottom of this.”

“What’s the situation, Commander?” asked Leorahn, the captain of the First and the most senior member of the Guard.

“Our troublemaker here-“ he started before the youngest of the duke and duchess interrupted.

“I am not the one running a slipshod organization, Commander. Don’t get upset you need someone else to come in and wipe your ass for you,” she said coldly. I could tell the reaction in the room was decided hostile to that, but the commander seemed little bothered by her words.

“And who are you?” asked Leorahn coldly, clearly having taken a dislike to the young woman already.

“Somebody better at your job than you are before my official Age Ceremony,” she scoffed in response. Most would think an answer like that would be terrible, but the Guard were tough sons of bitches, every last one of us, and her not giving an inch at her young age was likely to earn her just as much respect as it was ire.

“Tell ‘em,” I could faintly hear from the entryway.

“Harrison!”

“Sorry, sir!”

“Take a look at this,” the commander then continued, overriding the argument. He passed Leo, Thomas ‘Old Iron’ Andersson, and I some papers. Old Iron took a quick look at two of the pages before frowning and passing them to me. I scanned the folder I had been handed before handing it to Old Iron, scanning the two pages he had passed me. We finished by exchanging for the papers Leo had, Old Iron reading them first before I glanced over them.

What the Commander had handed us didn’t paint a pretty picture, and we passed the papers to our seconds before doing anything else. Alex, I believe that was her name, just stood to the side of the commander’s desk, watching us with her arms crossed, which was rather intimidating. Even as a teenager, she was not a small or weak person, and I also still very distinctly remembered the day she had had the dwarven healer and that thug rip the knife from her back before tearing through an entire criminal organization single-handedly like they were made of tissue paper. And that was when she was eight. If she were even just as tough now, I was going to make sure nobody in the guard, even Leo, got on her bad side; I was of a fear that even the commander would find her difficult to handle, and we didn’t even know his current rank.

“This is disturbing,” said Jess Tamerlane, Old Iron’s second. A middle-aged woman with a wide, shallow scar on the left side of her face, she often wore a mask or half-mask to hide the damage, but whether from the impromptu call or just from being comfortable with the other primary squads, she wasn’t wearing it today.

“You’re telling me!” the commander huffed. “We’ve had an agent in our ranks for more than two years now and nobody figured it out. You can bet your asses I’m going to be grilling Internal Affairs until their asses are fucking char-broiled after this! Not only did we not catch this man ourselves, already a great embarrassment for such an ‘elite’ organization like ours, but I haven’t read a single report that outlines suspect insider activity. Where was IA when this guy was stealing state secrets, suborning our orders, and getting some of us killed!”

“Glad I took the command track,” Old Iron muttered in response, getting a couple chuckles. Everyone knew the man, despite his recognition as a warrior and someone tougher than thousand-year-old iron, had a sharp mind and had been positioned for an investigative career many years ago. He had loved the battlefield and leadership too much to leave the command track; not only were we squad commanders, but we had a high level of military authority. We often had anywhere from a few squads to an entire battalion of ‘regulars,’ as we thought of them, at our command during operations.

“You’re going to be less glad over the next week. Your three squads are assigned to this, so you’re on clean-up duty,” the commander spat out, getting a lot of groans. Missing something this big and then having to go back in later and clean the field, so to speak, was always a horrific pain in the ass and usually took just as long as if it had been caught and properly investigated early.

“And you,” the commander said, turning to Alex.

“If you’re about to start issuing me orders, I would walk back from that ledge right now, Commander,” she said.

“I don’t want that kind of insubordination,” the commander replied, starting to get another head of steam going before we were interrupted.

“What’s all this about? Why is the whole building swarming like a kicked beehive?” a warm, rich voice demanded, along with the tap of a cane. There was only one man who would stroll into the commander’s office during an emergency with questions like that, and it was almost a relief to hear his calm voice.

“Viscount! Come in,” the commander called, the squads having to shuffle a little to let the old man through. He was both an instructor for us, a sounding board, a liaison with the nobility, and a respected and skilled warrior and investigator in his own right.

“Hope you’re ready for this one, Viscount,” Old Iron said.

“Oh, dear,” the Viscount said, seeing our expressions before his eyes locked on Alex. “And I see my old friend’s protege is here. Well, well, it must just be one of those fated days, is it not?”

“I’m simply here to deliver some bad news, Viscount,” the girl stated. “I already have plans arranged and can’t be waylaid with this matter any further.”

“You’re going to drop a shit on my desk-“ the commander started before the Viscount cleared his throat. “Right, uh, you’re going to bring up such a problem, one you’re intimately involved in, and then just run away?”

“I am not running away, Commander,” the young woman said crisply. In the meantime, the Seconds had passed the Viscount the paperwork we had so far and he had started to quickly read through it. A fast reading speed and good comprehension were requirements for the job and, though the Viscount wasn’t technically in our chain-of-command, he was quite quick with his letters and very astute. “I have already made several plans which I cannot renege on at this point. In point of fact, one of those plans is my picking up a new set of armor this morning, right now, and I intend to get my armor, regardless of the bumbling situation in this building.”

“Iron! Take your squad, and the Viscount, and get our troublemaker! Leo, start tracing the money! We need to know where this man was spending or sending his coin, and where he was getting extra funds from. There’s always a paper trail,” the commander started issuing orders while still glowering at Alex. “Emily! Take your squad with our young troublemaker here and pick up our little assassin! I want her in our cells and under our guard ASAP! I also want details from Count Emmanuel! See that it’s done!”

“Sir,” came a chorus of replies, the Viscount muttering about not even getting a cup of tea and his old bones. Despite his complaints, he was somehow the first person out the door and led squad two to go try to apprehend the suspect in the case. Well, one of the two primary suspects.

Leo and his squad looked like they had just swallowed a few lemons, but that was to be expected. They would likely be spending the entire day poring over books and ledgers, trying to trace payments and money movements. Even after today, and tonight burning the midnight oil, they would then spend days sprinting all over the capital, and even to other cities, as needed, tracing payments and the movement of coin and goods. It was extremely tedious and exhausting work, especially considering that most people didn’t use any kind of formal banking system or keep track of payments and exchanges outside a few coins passing back and forth and a verbal agreement. The biggest break they could get, and something that would further complicate everything, was if this went under some noble doors. Noble privilege was a real pain in the ass to deal with, but nobles had the wealth and assets that they used the formal banking system, which meant paper trails and ledgers full of payments. Still a pain in the ass to look through, but it also provided solid evidence.

“Let’s go, Captain,” Alex said to me before giving the commander a nod and striding out.

“Have a good day,” the secretary said on our way out.

“Harrison!”

“Sorry, sir!”

“No, you nit, come in here! I have orders!”

“Sorry, sir! Right away, sir!”

“And those two are in charge around here?” the young noble muttered after we were out in the hallway.

“They’re more competent than they appear,” I rebutted, feeling like I needed to defend our organization in the face of this exceptional talent.

“If you say so,” said Alex. “Get ready to move, Captain. We are already late as it is.”

“We’ll keep up,” I said.

I regretted that about one minute later, the young noble having taken off at a genuinely frightening speed, not in the least because she made it look so easy. We have to practically sprint to keep up with the brat, and when we finally arrived at our destination, a smithy in the merchant district, she didn’t even have the good grace to look out of breath. Meanwhile, even I was feeling the strain of the run, and even her sergeant, the most physically fit and hard line of them about their bodies, was sweating and huffing and straining. Alex just glanced at us with a skeptical look, one eyebrow raised and her hands on her hips, but she did have just enough tact to not actually say anything.

“You shouldn’t neglect your body affinities,” she stated.

Or maybe not, on the tact part.

“You move too fast,” complained one of her men.

“Keep it together!” the sergeant snapped before I could even reprimand them.

“Sorry, Sarge,” Jones muttered, not sounding very sorry.

“You can either wait here or come in, but I would prefer not to have a full squad of the Royal Guard stomping all over my business,” she said acerbically.

“I’ll come in. Sergeant, have the men spread out and keep their eyes open. We’re dealing with an organization that loves to employ assassins, and not the proper, licensed kind,” I commanded.

“Not the very skilled kind, either,” Alex muttered under her breath as she led the way into the shop. Regardless of her opinion on the person that had attempted to take her life, we had to take things seriously, and that included treating it like we were dealing with high-ranking members of the Assassin’s Guild coming after us.

“You’re here for armor?” I asked as we were greeted by the shop worker.

“A basic set. I have a scheduled dungeon run coming up in a couple days,” she said offhandedly.

“I know hardened veterans who sound more concerned about delving a dungeon than you do,” I said as we walked through the yard towards the smithy.

“It’s hardly a concern,” she commented, the shop clerk glancing between us with wide eyes.

“That kind of overconfidence can lead to trouble,” I warned.

Alex stopped and slowly turned to me and for one moment, I felt the full weight of her attention on me. Not just her gaze or her interest, but the full power she had that she could bring to bear, my palms instantly starting to sweat and the hairs rising on the back of my neck. I could feel other automatic, autonomic reactions happening, including several of my muscles tensing as I prepared to fight, though the wisest course might have been flight. If this young had kept on the trajectory she had been on years ago at only ten, she would already be a monster that I might not be able to handle, let alone what other powers and secrets she held.

The moment passed, however, and Alex simply snorted and shook her head, not even deigning to dignify my statement with a response, which stung a little coming from a fourteen-year-old, but she was far from ordinary. I was saved from further musing as we entered the smithy and found not just the smiths inside, already working since dawn, but Count Emmanuel and the Silver Lady, both of whom I immediately paid respect to. Technically the Count was a foreign dignitary and the Silver Lady was outside both the chain of command and normal noble considerations, but I wasn’t going to be on anything but my best behavior around a Y- and Z-ranker, ones who were also known to be Weapon Masters of the highest caliber. I knew for a fact that the Count had trained at least one emperor, the last of his pupils having united the entire East and been a monster so feared on the battlefield, the last army he had campaigned against had surrendered rather than face he and his on the field.

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