The Exodus Gambit (House Adamant Book 1) by Glynn Stewart

Author:Glynn Stewart [Stewart, Glynn]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Faolan's Pen Publishing Inc.
Published: 2024-03-19T00:00:00+00:00

TWENTY-EIGHT

The Adamant Guard had almost all of its personnel and the vast majority of its resources in the Adamantine System, circling forever around the King and Pentarchs to secure the monarchy and the succession.

But their charges were the King and Pentarchy of the Kingdom. Traveling resources and personal details could only do so much, so the Adamant Guard had facilities and people in every star system of the Kingdom of Adamant.

And, most importantly, secure digital dropboxes no one else could even find. Vigo hadn’t been sure there was one in Agbaye Lewa’s datanet, but he’d had all of the codes to find it.

Of course, since that datanet was spread across two dozen stations and moons arrayed over several light-seconds, accessing the dropbox hadn’t been a swift or easy process. He couldn’t, after all, allow even the Guard to know he was in Ominira.

As the shuttles left for their third load of cargo, however, he had finally managed to backdoor the system and download the entire dropbox contents. He couldn’t access all of it—not immediately, anyway, though he believed Klement’s people could decrypt it all, given time—but once it was isolated, he could feed it his personal codes.

He was unsurprised to see two messages pop up for him. Both had arrived on the most recent courier from Adamantine—and he would have bet a rather large sum of money one of the senders hadn’t known the other had access to the courier.

Vigo opened the first message, a mix of contradictory feelings swirling through him. Major Fenella Hayes’ name had come up since they’d left Adamantine, and he wasn’t surprised to see her. But for most of his career as Lorraine’s bodyguard, the head of administration and human resources for the Guard had been a solid and reassuring presence, a source of sage advice and moral backup.

Now she wore the four gold pips of a Colonel, marking her as the new commanding officer of the Adamant Guard. A reward, he had to assume, for work well done enabling Pentarch Benjamin’s coup.

“Major Jarret,” she greeted him. “As you can imagine, this message is being sent to every Guard dropbox in the Kingdom in the hope we can catch you in time. I don’t know what you believe is going on, Major, but from here it looks like your Pentarch has stolen a Navy warship and is on the run.

“I’ve attached a briefing on the situation in Adamantine. It is… fluid. I presume you’ve caught the news and know about the assassination of King Valeriya and two of the Pentarchs. Attempts were made on both Pentarch Nikola and Pentarch Benjamin. I am guessing that one was made on Pentarch Lorraine, but we have no evidence of that beyond her sudden disappearance.

“The blow to Pentarch Nikola’s mental health has been… extreme. He appears to have lapsed into paranoia at best and delusions at worst. He has sealed himself inside Planetary Defense Command at PDC Mithral and has threatened violence against anyone who has attempted to reach him.

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