Chapter 46: Smoke Gets in Your Eyes
A/N: Happy New Year to everyone, thank you for getting me to 11,000 views, and thank you for bearing with me as my personal life has been rather messy and I've had less time for writing than I want.
"
The landscape below flashing by rapidly underneath The Bastion as it zipped through the air just underneath the clouds, the five young men were deathly silent within the cabin of the luxury ship. In truth, there were probably about a thousand things they should have been discussing, with so many things to balance out over the next day, but it was hard to know where to even begin.
For the moment, the task was simple. Switch ships. That part would be easy. Everything after that? It seemed such a monumental task that even talking about it was intimidating.
Endymion's right hip vibrated, drawing his attention away from piloting the ship. Absentmindedly flipping on the auto-pilot, he stood up and withdrew his communicator disc from his pocket.
"It has to be them," Endymion said quickly. "I'll handle this." He spun away from the center console and took a few steps back towards the center of the cabin. Kunzite quickly swung up from his co-pilot chair and went to the primary console. Endymion, mouth clenching, tapped the center button on the communicator.
"Hello? Prince Endymion speaking," he began, trying his very best to sound casual.
"Your Highness, we have a threat level nine in effect, you're outside the palace right now?"
Kunzite felt his own communicator start to vibrate on his hip as he pushed the ship forward through the air, but ignored it. Doubtlessly, the palace guard was contacting him about getting the Prince back to safety.
"Y-yes, I'm with my generals, we're out conducting some important business," Endymion answered, trying to remember how people sounded when they were at ease and comfortable, and then emulate it the best he could. "Threat level nine, w-what's going on?"
"We have reason to believe that an assassination attempt is going to be made on High King Kasios," the voice replied.
"W-what?!" Endymion gasped. "What makes you think that?!"
"We've received several anonymous tips. Too many to ignore. Your Majesty, please, return to the palace immediately. You're not safe out there."
"Oh, wow," Endymion said. "A-anonymous tips?"
"Yes, Your Highness. How soon can you be back?"
"Uhhh…" Endymion looked over his shoulder, glancing up at his four generals gathered up close to the control console, Kunzite at the helm. "Y-y'know, I'm actually pretty busy right now, I'm doing some fairly important things, time sensitive."
"Whatever it is, Your Majesty, I'm sure it can wait. Please, return to the palace."
"Um, these...these tips, just...just out of curiosity, what can you tell me about them? Where does this information come from? Who would want to kill my father?" Endymion asked, trying to sound genuinely curious.
"The, uh, Atlantic Independent Federation," he answered, starting to sound a little frantic. "They're going to make an attempt on High King Kasios's life, and we can only assume they'll consider people like you secondary or consolation targets, possibly bait for the High King."
"Oh, uh, the A-I-F?" Endymion said. "That...that, no chance. Come on, uh...those guys didn't even do assassinations when they were at their peak! N-not even five years ago, they wouldn't have even considered taking a shot at the High King, now they're...no, um, you know what?" Endymion cleared his throat. "I-I think I'll pass."
"Your Highness, please! Even if there's just a tiny chance, it's too big of a risk to take! You never know what people and organizations are capable of, just come in!"
"Um, hey, I...I appreciate you trying to do your job, I know that you've got your orders, but I'm currently in the middle of some very important things that I can't just postpone. The Atlantic Independent Federation doesn't have enough power right now to assassinate a three-star academy education director, much less the High King, I know enough to know that much. I have my generals with me, they'll be more than adequate to protect me if anything happens."
"Your Majesty, I have strict orders to bring you into the palace, please, this needs to be your highest priority!"
"And I respect that you feel that way, but...look, think about it like this. If I allow something as obviously fradulent as this assassination threat to put a stop to my duties as Crown Prince of Earth, that's...it's like, it's letting the terrorists win. We need to...I think we need to be showing that we're not going to be intimidated by these pranks." Endymion leaned his body up against the side wall of the ship. "I'm not coming, I'm not coming back to the palace, sorry, I've made up my mind. If, if I know my father, he wouldn't be willing to put something important on hold for a vague threat like this either, so...I'm not doing it."
"Um...well, w-what should I tell your father, Your Highness?"
"Uh, the truth," Endymion said, as casually as he could. "I'm sure he'll understand. T-tell him that I'm putting the finishing touches on my project and it's time-sensitive." Not wanting to reopen the conversation, he quickly killed the connection, lowering the disc to his side.
"How confident are you that your father is going to accept this from you?" Jadeite asked, glancing over his shoulder.
"I'm extremely confident that we don't have a choice but to hope he does," Endymion said, sinking down towards the floor until he was sitting on it, pulling his knees up close to his chest. "I'm far more concerned about...everything else, right now."
"My network is listening, they've all got their ears to the ground," Nephrite said. "Cronus isn't a ghost, he's a man. He's got to be somewhere."
Zoisite barely managed to fight off a scoff. "Your network is based entirely on Earth. They have no reach beyond the planet, and Cronus isn't nearly stupid enough to come anywhere near here. If he's smart, he won't go inside the belt. And even given that he is...somewhere, it would take us ten thousand years to find him even if he decided to stop moving."
"Well, there's that," Nephrite grunted, not happy to hear his network of spies be belittled.
"We're all owed favors and we all have friends," Kunzite reasoned. "Someone, somewhere will be able to give us something to work with."
Endymion pressed his forehead up against his knees, sighing.
"
"Hey, I guess we're finally using the bunker for something," Kasios said loudly, scowling as he stepped through the massive steel double doors, flanked on both sides by palace guards in their traditional red and purple uniforms. "So we've got that going for us."
The bunker was a sizable chamber with several connecting rooms, two stories below ground level. While still decorated with a light purple color scheme and assorted paintings, the bunker's primary feature was security. Equipped with a closed-off ventilation system that could not be interfered with from the outside and enough food to last ten people a year, there was hardly a safer place in all the galaxy. Surrounded on all sides by steel and concrete, all ways in and out locked down beyond all reasonable hope of getting inside without permission, any assassination attempt on a resident of the palace went from improbable to impossible once they were moved inside.
All three generations of living Serenitys were waiting in the main room already, the eldest standing just a few steps away from the main entrance that Kasios had just entered through. She immediately approached the High King.
"Are you alright?!" she asked, looking a little panicked.
"Yes, yes, of course I'm fine," he said, clearly agitated.
The middle Serenity was seated on one of the couches in the central area of the main room of the bunker, turned away from the King and Queen, absentmindedly holding Chibiusa in her lap. She didn't even want to risk looking at anyone else right now, as if she was afraid the look on her face or something in her eyes might give away the fact that she knew far more than she was supposed to know.
"I...we're not used to things like this," Queen Serenity said. "I've never had something like this happen on the Moon. Being targeted by assassins."
"Well, there's not much to it," he said dismissively, looking around the room. Behind him, a half dozen more palace guards flooded into the room, the massive steel doors behind them closing heavily.
"Wait, wait!" Queen Serenity interjected, waving her arms towards the slowly closing doors. "Where's Endymion?! Don't close up! He's not here yet!" The giant doors creaked to a halt halfway through the closing process.
"Oh yeah?" Kasios asked, looking around the room. "You're sure?"
"He's not here, I checked every room when we got down here!" Queen Serenity said, sounding almost as if she was able to break down into a panic. The contrast with the benignly-annoyed High King was almost comical. "U-unless he's hiding—"
"Ah." One of the recently-entered palace guards, a shorter blond one, stepped forward. "Your Highness, Prince Endymion will not be coming."
"What?!" Queen Serenity snapped. The Princess continued to purposefully keep her back to the conversation, making as if she was preoccupied with entertaining Chibiusa.
For the first time, Kasios sounded concerned about something. "What, you were just saving that for a dramatic moment? What do you mean?!"
The blond guard winced. "We...we contacted him, Your Highness, and he...he didn't seem to take the threat seriously. He said he was busy and wouldn't be coming in."
Princess Serenity squeezed a small wad of fabric on Chibiusa's outfit into a tiny ball between her fingers, nervously gritting her teeth together.
"Oh." Kasios immediately relaxed his tone and his stance. "Okay." He waved his right arm up towards the doors. "Close it up!" Just as quickly as they had come to a halt, the two massive slabs of steel began to come together again, closing in on meeting in the middle of the threshold.
"Okay?!" Queen Serenity gasped. "What do you mean, okay?! Not okay, don't close up!" She turned towards the doors, waving her arms back and forth in front of him. "Hold on, not yet!"
They did indeed stop moving, just a few finger lengths shy of actually touching each other, allowing Queen Serenity to voice her protests without the high-decibel rumble of them pushing together.
"Kasios, there's an assassin out there! Maybe multiple assassins! You don't think they'll use him to get to you if he's out there and you're holed up in here?!" Queen Serenity shrieked. "The bunker only works if everyone is inside it!"
Kasios grunted. "Serenity, sweetie, let me help you out here. This...this concern you have, it's a waste. There's no assassin. Much less assassins."
Princess Serenity was happy that she was turned away from the elders and their conversation, because she very visibly blanched at that statement. She fought to not audibly react to it. As much as she hated holding this secret inside while everyone around her was being so affected by a lie, she knew things would be far worse if the truth were uncovered.
"W-what do you mean? You heard the palace guard, there's...anonymous tips!" Queen Serenity continued to argue, not at all comforted by Kasios's bold claim.
"Anonymous tips," Kasios repeated. "There's a reason why they're anonymous, Serenity. A reason why they make sure the calls can't be traced. They don't want it to get back to them when it all ends up being a big practical joke. Which is exactly what this is."
Princess Serenity twisted her body around to look, unable to resist anymore.
"H-how can you know that?! Kasios, please, I think we should take this seriously! It's not as if this happens every cycle, I...has this ever happened to you before?! Because this is all new to me!"
"That's not the issue here," Kasios replied, casually waving his arm towards the doors. "Close it up!" As the steel slabs shuddered closed, he quickly stalked towards the center of the room where the seating was arranged. "The Atlantic Independent Federation, give me a break. Never, never! Not even when they had clout would they have considered coming after me, certainly not now! If law enforcement had any common sense, they'd just hang up the moment they mentioned the A-I-F. They probably have their meetings in treehouses now. Probably don't have the courage to steal the coins out of a public communicator station anymore." Kasios practically fell backwards into a chaise, as if he was taking his annoyance out on the furniture by throwing his weight onto it.
"Maybe they're desperate!" the Moon Queen suggested. "Feel like they're losing their grip on whatever little influence they had and...they've deluded themselves into thinking something like this is what they HAVE to do! It doesn't seem impossible!"
"Mm," Kasios rumbled. "No, they're...I'm sure they're just laughing their asses off that they actually managed to do enough to get everyone panicking and me down here. Frankly, Endymion's the lucky one here, being out on business while all this nonsense happens. I'm jealous, really." He shook his head. "I would have refused to come down here as well, but it's either this or have the palace guard in my ear all day insisting it. And it's not like I'm doing anything so important that I can't kill some time down here, so I'll humor it." The High King gave a general gesture over towards one of the palace guards, as the purple-uniformed men began to spread out across the room. "Not the worst thing in the world for these guys to feel useful every now and then. But Endymion's busy with important work, I don't blame him at all for making it his priority."
Queen Serenity gaped, then twisted her head over towards her daughter, who had quickly gone back to pretending as if she wasn't all that interested in the current argument. "D-don't you want him here?! Aren't you concerned?!"
The Princess swallowed hard, trying to figure out how to answer in a way that was both disarming and unsuspicious. Under the weight of all the sudden revelations that Endymion had just heaped into her lap, she had basically no time to even consider the role she was now being forced to play in all this. She was entirely unprepared for this balancing act.
"He's...he's got his generals with him," she said quietly, stroking Chibiusa's back as the small girl sat in her lap. "I think it'll be alright."
"Wh...Serenity!" the Queen put her hands on her hips. "If there's even a tiny chance that these tips are based in reality, then...it's not worth the risk! Whatever Endymion's busy with, it can't possibly be so important that he needs to put himself in danger!"
"He's not in danger, Serenity," Kasios said, leaning back on the chaise. "None of us are. And Endymion is in the middle of some very important business, he shouldn't be forced to postpone it on account of some prank call." He pointed over towards the younger Serenity. "He's about to become High King of Earth, you know that, don't you?"
"Y-yes, I remember the conversation we had," Princess Serenity muttered, standing up with Chibiusa in tow.
"And I mean in a matter of days." Kasios propped his right elbow against the pillow and rested his head on his right hand. "He's been working unbelievably hard on getting us out of this bad situation the last several cycles, the stuff he's done, I didn't give him much of a chance of being able to pull it off. Now he's here, on the verge of that final tug to get that bunny all the way out of that hat and show it to the audience—" he mimed reaching down into an invisible hat with his left hand and pulling it back up as if he was gripping the ears of a bunny "—and I'm not going to take this moment away from him on account of some anarchist schoolboys who have deluded themselves into thinking that they're an actual opposition party."
Princess Serenity quickly shuffled over towards the left side of the room, heading towards one of the attached side rooms, eager to remove herself from the company of these two.
"Kasios, you have one son!" Queen Serenity continued to fight. "If, and if there's even a tiny chance of something happening, then yes, it's an 'if', something happens, you don't get a second chance to undo it!"
"By that logic, Serenity, I should just cover him in a big roll of packing foam every morning and never let him leave. There's always a chance something bad can—"
Serenity was relieved to slide the door closed behind her, muting the semi-heated conversation. Quickly, she squatted down and set Chibiusa down on the carpeted floor of the makeshift bedroom, allowing her to begin exploring. She put her right hand beneath her chin in a tight fist, fighting to dispel any notions in her head of futilely attempting to help her husband survive this.
It only took a few beats for her fist to go limp and weak as her fingers started trembling, and her notice of this peculiar little physical tick took her attention. She put both of her hands out flat in front of her, watching them shake uncontrollably, betraying the tension that she felt. Quickly, she shoved both appendages to her sides, frantically looking around the room.
"
"Alright," Kunzite mumbled, tapping his right index finger up and down on top of a loose leaf of paper with some numbers scribbled on it. "It's a start. We can get there if we leave now with half a minuta to spare, maybe...scan the area, set up something."
"Where did this tip come from, exactly?" Zoisite asked from over Kunzite's shoulder.
"I already said," Kunzite mumbled ruefully. "And I know you heard me, why are you...making me repeat myself?"
"I'm sort of hoping that, eventually, you'll hear yourself say it and realize how ridiculous it sounds," Zoisite chided. "A tip from a man who runs an underground rum smuggling ring in a small town on Mars?"
"That's actually a fantastic idea for a business."
Both Kunzite and Zoisite spun their chairs around as Jadeite entered the cockpit of the ship. The secondary ship that they had moved to was a touch larger than The Bastion, with a little bit of spacing between the cockpit and the main hub that even included a door separating the two, but was far less luxurious and not at all equipped with the Crown Prince in mind.
"Trust me, that planet is dry as a bone, anyone with so much as two bottles of sewer water with a couple drops of liquor in it would immediately become the most popular person around," Jadeite continued.
"Do you have something useful to say?" Zoisite asked flatly as Jadeite gently slid the door shut behind him.
"I'm just saying, someone like that, they could have some...pretty serious pull. Definitely would know some things, it's not the most...ridiculous thing I've ever heard." Jadeite shrugged.
"Know some things," Zoisite repeated in agreement. "But know where Cronus is about to be when he's travelling privately and secretly? You'll excuse me if I suspect we'd have the same chances just picking places at random."
"It's something, and we don't have time to be picky with our sources right now, I'm plotting a course for Mars," Kunzite insisted. "Jadeite, how's His Majesty holding up?"
"He's alive. Scribbling notes back there, bouncing ideas off Nephrite and me. He just can't seem to decide if he's writing a...writing up a plan or a farewell note to Serenity."
"How about both?" Zoisite remarked. "Why put all your eggs in one basket?"
"Can I advocate for some positivity right now?" Kunzite protested. "The Prince—"
The door that Jadeite had just closed whipped open suddenly, the final of Endymion's loyal generals poking his head inside. "The High King is calling the Prince right now. Everyone keep quiet unless you're prompted." He turned towards Zoisite. "Is The Bastion in position?"
The smallest of the four guardians glanced to his left at a large, complex silver remote with a small viewscreen on it. "Yes. Are your men ready to provide alibis?"
Nephrite nodded, then turned back towards the main hub room and pointed across it to the Prince. Immediately, Endymion, hunched up in a seat against the back wall, engaged his communicator disc.
"H-hello? Dad?" Endymion said, tugging at his collar.
"Hey son, how's it going?"
Endymion's shoulders curved down in relief as the tension left his body. The High King, despite the stressful circumstances, sounded calm and casual.
"Well, tell him!"
"C-calm down, I'm getting to that!"
Endymion winced. Queen Serenity, his mother-in-law, sounded anything but calm and casual. He shot an uneasy look up at Nephrite, but continued on.
"Uh, g-great, actually, everything's going according to plan!" Endymion said, voice cracking just a bit. "Time consuming, meeting a lot of people, you know."
"Great, great," Kasios replied through the communicator. "So, son, I have to ask, these business meetings you're going through, do they absolutely require your personal presence? Is it something your generals could possibly handle?"
"U-uh, why do you ask?" Endymion asked.
"Endymion, we want you to come back to the palace, now!" Queen Serenity's shrill voice stepped into the conversation yet again.
"Yes, yes," Kasios said reluctantly. "Um, the assassination threat, it's just a little...some people are a little concerned about you putting yourself in the open right now. So, if there's any way we can make it work...could you maybe come back here? Just hang out with us in the bunker for awhile?"
"Oh, yes, uh...the assassination thing, yes," Endymion said, giving a dismissive chuckle. "Almost forgot about that. You know, I just had such a hard time taking it seriously, I...it's like a joke. The A-I-F?"
"
Kasios squinted, the communicator disc held up close to his mouth. He could feel Queen Serenity's breath on the back of his neck as she closely monitored the conversation. "Yeah, tell me about it. I feel like a schmuck just being down here in the bunker."
Queen Serenity opened her mouth to say something, but after a beat, reached up and smacked Kasios on the back of the head. It wasn't a particularly hard strike, but was enough to get the High King to jerk his head forward in shock, then spin around to give the Queen a withering look.
The Queen blinked rapidly a few times, then tilted her head to stare down at her right hand as if it had acted on its own, independent of her intentions.
Kasios quickly shook it off and turned back to the communicator disc. "B-but, that being said, son, it'd be nice to have you here, just in case. Stranger things have happened, so any chance you can make your way over here?"
"D-dad, come on, I...d-d-don't get me wrong, I think it's good for you to take every precaution, the threat was against you, but...look, if the A-I-F actually does have the ability and courage to try something like this, their gripe is with you, not me! And I have my generals, all four of them! N-no, you—"
Queen Serenity lunged forward and ripped the disc out of Kasios's hand, again shocking him. "Endymion, come to the palace, now!"
"Oh, oh, uh...Serenity, uh, mom. Gods, sorry, it just feels awkward, calling you mom—"
"Endymion! Enough, just...I want you here! I don't like...just, please, whatever it is you're doing it can wait! You're the Crown Prince of Earth, it's ridiculous that you can't...postpone things to keep yourself safe! If something happens, think about what happens to this whole Kingdom!" Serenity pressed her left palm up to her forehead. "Please?!"
"Serenity, it's fine. Don't worry about me. Really, I might be safer here with my generals than down in that bunker, with or without an assassin running around."
"I...I think your wife would like you here," the Queen said, taking her voice down a little bit. "In fact, you know, maybe you won't listen to me, but, you just, I'm putting you on hold. Do not end the call, I'm putting your wife on!"
"No, no—"
Serenity pressed her thumb down on one of the buttons around the disc, then quickly swept across the room, towards the side chamber that her daughter and granddaughter had retreated into several minutas ago. "Sweetie! Are you there?!"
No immediate reply, but the Queen was not to be deterred.
"Um, okay, just for the record," Kasios began, scowling over at the Queen, then reaching up to point at the back of his head. "Not okay, and not okay." He used his other hand to point at the communicator that Serenity had just snatched out of his hand.
The Queen caught herself a little bit, stopping right next to the closed wooden door and leaning up against the wall to the immediate right of it. She turned back towards Kasios. "I-I'm sorry. Just...I want him to think that this matters. It's not...it doesn't help when he hears you say that this threat isn't worth taking seriously!"
"What do you want me to do, lie?" Kasios asked. "He's right. He sees the exact same thing I do. And he's an adult."
Serenity groaned, then spun around and pounded her fist lightly into the wall. "Sweetie! I want you to talk to your husband!"
"
Grimacing, Princess Serenity pressed her head back into the wall right next to the door, right on the other side of where she thought her mother was knocking. She sighed, keeping an eye on Chibiusa as she shook a large toy doll around on her spot on the floor right at the foot of the bed.
"Sweetie! I have your husband on the communicator, he's refusing to come, maybe you can talk some sense into him!"
Her nostrils twitched. "It's fine!" she finally answered. "I don't need to talk to him."
"What?! Serenity, he's your husband, and he's recklessly putting himself in danger for no reason! If you tell him he has to come home, I'm sure he'll listen! He has to listen to you, you're his wife!"
"He's...he'll be fine," Serenity managed, looking down guiltily at her right hand, resting on the armrest of the chair she had moved to be right by the door. Inbetween her second and third finger was a cigarette, tip lit and slowly burning down the paper-wrapped tobacco. "I don't need to talk to him. No thank you. He can do what he feels is right."
She heard her mother groan, but seemingly give up as her next few words were clearly not coming from up against the wall behind her. "He...he ended the call! I told him not to end the call, he hung up!"
"Serenity, just…"
The young Princess stopped trying to listen, instead lifting the cigarette to her lips. She had found a collection of them alongside a small bar in the corner of the room, right next to the gin.
She had never smoked before. The thought of doing it had never even occurred to her, truthfully. She had always been brought up to believe that smoking was for the working class and people old enough to not particularly care anymore if it did shorten their lifespan. She wasn't even entirely sure she was doing it right. But somehow, it just spoke to her right now, more than a simple stiff drink.
Inhaling the output of the cigarette and letting it roll around in her lungs, she did actually find both a physical and mental relief in it. After a moment, she bent over and blew the smoke directly into a vent next to her legs.
She hadn't even fully formulated how she was going to get away with this. The ventilation system down in the bunker might have been closely monitored and she might be an exhalation away from tripping some sort of alarm with the toxins. There could have been a tightly-kept inventory on everything kept in the bar. None of this had deterred her. If anything, the prospect of doing something that she shouldn't do almost seemed to motivate her. Surely, if her husband could somehow get away with everything he was currently doing, she could sneak a smoke or two through.
She held her left hand up in front of her face, noting that her fingers had at least stopped shaking. Evasively glancing at the door, she lifted the cigarette back to her lips.
"
"Maybe a video message," Endymion mused, holding up a holo-recorder between his long fingers. "Better than a note." He shrugged, twisting the puck-shaped device around in his hand. "Either way, what could I do to make sure she found it?" He rolled his eyes, suddenly slapping the puck down on the counter in front of where he was seated. Jadeite startled up, nearly falling out of his seat across from the Crown Prince.
The two young adults were gathered near the back of the cabin of Kunzite's temporary ship, Jadeite taking his turn of trying to keep Endymion's spirits and optimism up. The vessel was parked a half a dolicho away from a small docking station close to the southern pole of Mars, waiting for what they were hoping would be Cronus's ship. Everyone knew it was a longshot at best, but it was as good a place to start as any.
"Waste of time," Endymion reasoned. "Gods, what am I doing? Obviously, any message I try to get to Serenity will be seen by the entire universe before it gets to her."
"Then deliver the message to her in person, when you see her tomorrow, after you resolve this situation," Jadeite said stiffly, trying to keep up a good front despite his own doubts.
"That was good," Endymion said with a thin smile. "Your bedside manner is much better than Nephrite's. I'll give you that much."
"I'm serious," he continued. "Your Highness, this is why we're here. To handle situations like this."
Endymion didn't bother replying, leaning back in his chair instead, a bemused smile on his face.
"And hey, we got what we wanted with your father, right?" Jadeite pointed out. "It worked out exactly the way we were hoping. Threat significant enough to get him down in the bunker, but not significant enough for him to actually feel like he's in real danger. We always kind of figured the Queen would overreact to it, that was the best case scenario."
"Sure," Endymion acknowledged. "Little victories. One that'll get erased very quickly if I'm away from the palace for so long that even he can't understand it. And speaking of time, I feel like we've been parked here a lot longer than a minuta."
"Think about how appreciative Serenity's going to be when we get back," Jadeite suggested. "She'll probably forget all about the lying and sneaking around behind her back and—"
"Okay, now you're trying too hard," Endymion said. "That's not happening. Stop it."
The entire room shuddered a tiny bit and Endymion could just barely make out the sound of the engine. Expectantly, he turned to look at the door that led up to the cockpit. Sure enough, beats later, it opened just as the back entry hatch of the ship gave a pneumatic hiss and fell open.
Zoisite came in from the cockpit just as Kunzite and Nephrite came up the entry ramp, both of the larger of the generals toting long rifles.
"Anything? Did he show?" Endymion asked.
"No," Kunzite grunted. "And we've been in one place for too long." He pointed across the cabin at Zoisite. "Get us out of here, take us off the planet."
Zoisite dutifully spun back around to follow his orders as the entry ramp quickly slammed shut behind Nephrite. Jadeite got to his feet, hands up by the sides of his head.
"So what, did he see us and run off?" Jadeite asked.
"How should we know?" Nephrite hissed, tossing his rifle to the ground with a loud clang as it bounced against the metallic floor.
Jadeite shook his head. "You know, this approach we're taking it's...it's all wrong. The more I think about it. Even if we somehow do manage to find him, we're meeting him on his terms. Meeting him where he wants to be."
"If you have a better idea, and I'm actually not being sarcastic, I'd love to hear it, Jadeite," Kunzite said, ripping a couple strips of velcro on his sides apart so he could remove a heavy white vest from his torso.
"We want to kill him. But he wants to kill us just as much. That's how this works, right? We should be forcing him to be the aggressor, come to us, where we're ready for him. Right now we're running around, chasing shadows, if we catch him we'll just get in a fight with a big disadvantage."
"Cronus has no reason to ever get close to us," Kunzite quickly dismissed. "If we tried to lure him to where we are, all we'd get is a swarm of his men or bounty hunters while he's halfway across the galaxy."
Endymion pushed his right hand's fingers through his thick black hair slowly, thinking about Jadeite's suggestion. Despite Kunzite quickly shooting the general concept down, he let the concept bounce around in his head. He turned to look out one of the side windows, watching as the atmosphere of Mars outside quickly gave way to the black vacuum of space, the vessel pushing through the orbital pull of the planet to break out into deep space.
"That's what I'm saying, we lure him. Not his men, not his paid assassins, him. What we're doing right now, it'll never work." Jadeite put his right arm against the wall right by the window Endymion was peering through, leaning up against it.
The cockpit door opened, Zoisite sticking his head into the cabin and looking around. "Alright, we're away and on autopilot. I need a location, where are we going?"
"We're still trying to figure that out," Endymion answered. "How do we get Cronus to come to us?"
"We don't," Kunzite insisted. "The thing about men like Cronus, is that they don't make mistakes. And exposing himself even in the slightest to us would be a massive mistake. He's certainly smart enough to know that he needs to remain hidden until we're neutralized as a threat."
"Then make him make a mistake," Jadeite replied. "That's what war is, isn't it? Come on, what does he care about? What could make him act irrationally? He must have something."
"He cares about his corporations," Nephrite thought aloud. "And his money. Not sure how we use that."
"Money's just a middleman," Zoisite pointed out, taking a couple steps out into the cabin, hands on his hips. "Nobody wants money just for the sake of having money, they want...they want security, goods, services, leverage, money's just how they get those things. And I'm positive that Cronus was making more than enough money to support himself just through his labs and his pharmaceuticals, but he chose to be the biggest imperium smuggler in the galaxy on top of it. For some reason, the trillions he had weren't enough, how could that be?"
Endymion's face wrinkled up as he searched his brain for the answer to this question that he had passively spent time considering for over a year now. Why would Cronus need more money than the massive fortune he already had off the back of his legitimate businesses?
"He's always been fairly private. Doesn't let me into his personal life very much," Endymion admitted. "Well, actually, there was that one thing." He turned to his eldest general. "Kunzite, don't you remember? You were there when he said it, he...he had a child."
Kunzite sighed. "If he does, he's done a spectacular job of keeping it a secret from the rest of the world. There's no record of him having any children, I checked myself. He's a very public figure, it would be hard for him to keep that hidden. I doubt he was telling the truth."
"If Cronus wants to keep some aspect of his life secret, then he'll find a way to make it happen, I don't doubt that for a second," Endymion countered, starting to slowly pace back and forth.
"Your Highness, don't take this the wrong way, but I think it's very likely he made that story about his daughter up to...manipulate you," Kunzite said cautiously.
"Of course he was manipulating me, I understand that, but that doesn't mean he was making it up," Endymion reasoned. "Yes, daughter, he said daughter, and she'd be about thirteen now. But he said...he said everything he did, he did for her. Let's assume he wasn't making it up."
The sparks of optimism were suddenly beginning to fire off in the five-way conversation, as if a lightbulb had suddenly started to flicker on.
"Why would a teenage daughter need that much money when the father is already one of the wealthiest men who ever lived?" Nephrite asked.
"No, no, that's not even the weirdest thing," Endymion continued, his face relaxing as he spun around to look at Kunzite. "He said that he hadn't seen his daughter since she was a baby! I didn't think about it very much at the time, but...that doesn't make any sense. He's Cronus, maybe the most powerful person in the galaxy outside of royals and the Grandmaster of the agency, why wouldn't he be able to see his daughter if he wanted to?"
"I'm afraid the answer is probably because she doesn't exist," Kunzite said wearily, not buying into this particular revelation just yet.
"I mean, the implication is...a divorce where the wife gets full custody, that's what it always is. But he didn't say that, and that wouldn't even make sense for him. He said...that she would be raised to hate him, too." Endymion steepled his fingers right underneath his chin. "My father once told me that Cronus may as well have not existed up until a little more than a decade ago."
"Most records on Saturn have been destroyed in the civil war, having no record of your past is actually a fairly common thing for people who grew up there recently," Kunzite said reasonably, trying to temper the Crown Prince's expectations.
"Well, put it all together, there has to be something we can at least try with all of this," Endymion said, starting to sound a little frantic. "The man seemingly appeared out of thin air eleven years ago as a scientific genius with no peer, he seems like he won't be satisfied until he has all the money in the solar system, he's doing it all for his daughter that he never sees, come on, that has to be worth more than chasing random tips from random people around the galaxy!"
The room fell silent for several long beats, as all four generals followed the implied order from their charge to come up with a sensible summation of all of these oddities. A few secundas ago, Endymion was so resigned to his fate that the mood in the ship practically felt lighthearted, but suddenly it was thick with tension again.
"I never thought that the correlation came with any causation, but there was one thing I couldn't help but notice when following the news over the last year."
Endymion, Jadeite, Nephrite, and Kunzite all looked over at the smallest of the young adults in the cabin, whose top-of-the-line mind seemed to be about to produce something of meaning.
"The civil war in Saturn has turned heavily over the last year, in favor of the ruling royal house. It had been a bloody stalemate for years before. The ruling house gaining the upper hand coincides with when you started working with Cronus." Zoisite shrugged. "Cronus has made statements publically in support of the ruling house before."
"So...Cronus worked with Endymion and smuggled imperium to raise funds to assist Saturn with the war?" Nephrite stated slowly. "Cronus couldn't use his own money that he uses to run his corporations, he's too accountable to shareholders to justify that."
"Maybe," Zoisite said. "The money he's made partnering with the Prince, if applied intelligently, could be enough to shift a planet wide war."
"The King of Saturn died...twelve years ago? Maybe a little less," Endymion recalled. "What was it, he...he realized he was going to be forcibly removed from the throne by the people and committed suicide, right?" He put his hand up to his forehead, closing his eyes, still pacing around the open cabin area.
"The former King Saturn has what to do with any of this?" Jadeite asked.
"Okay, okay, follow me here." He put the tips of his index fingers up in front of his eyes, just a finger length or two away from each other. "The King of Saturn, an scientific genius in his own right, commits suicide so he doesn't have to be held accountable for his crimes against humanity via human experimentation. Less than a year later, Cronus basically pops out of the ground and takes the galaxy by storm with his work in medical science." He put his index fingertips together in front of him. "And there's your thirteen year old daughter."
"Wait," Kunzite said, stepping up right behind his charge. "You're trying to suggest that Cronus is the former King Saturn, reborn?"
"Well, it's a lot easier to assume that the former King Saturn faked his death and came back with a new identity, but...basically, yes," Endymion said, spinning around, face suddenly re-invigorated.
"T-there was a corpse and everything!" Jadeite argued. "And they look nothing alike!"
"Both things that are no obstacle for a man with that kind of power," Zoisite pointed out.
"You're not actually buying into this, are you?" Jadeite asked.
"I'm as eager to strike gold on a far-fetched longshot idea as any of us," Kunzite said, putting his hands out towards Zoisite and Endymion. "But we're making an awful lot of assumptions and logical leaps to get to this."
"No, no we're not," Endymion argued. "It matches up, Kunzite. There's no record of Cronus existing up until eleven years ago because he didn't exist until eleven years ago. He can't see his daughter because, by official record, she's not his daughter. It's the only way these pieces fit together." Suddenly, Endymion broke off from the gathering, marching up towards the cockpit door. "We have a destination."
"W-wait!" Kunzite protested, giving pursuit, the remaining three generals quickly falling into line behind their most esteemed colleague. "Your Highness, there are some other leads I have that we could consider!"
"We don't need them," Endymion said, practically vaulting into the pilot seat and bringing up the main controls. "We're going to Saturn. And we're going to be extremely busy on the way, so everyone get ready."
"Okay, well, what's the plan?" Kunzite said, quickly coming to an understanding that his judgement was being overruled here and that the best he could do now is give this particular idea his full attention.
"It's obvious, isn't it?" Endymion said, fingers a blur as he plotted a course for the vessel to embark on. "Cronus ran away from the throne so he wouldn't be held accountable for his human experimentation, but he wants the throne to pass to his progeny, stay in his family. Of course he does. Everything he's done since Cronus came to exist, all he's worked on the last eleven years, it's been for her."
The ship spun around on its horizontal axis, then suddenly ripped forward through space with a lurch that was barely felt inside the cockpit.
"So that's why he's done all this. That's what he cares about. He cares about her. So that's what we use to get to him. That's what we use to make him make a mistake," Endymion finished.
"H...how?" Kunzite asked, mildly afraid of the answer.
Endymion sighed. "I'm still working that part of it out, we'll come up with the exact details on the way." He twisted his head to his right. "Zoisite, get ready to connect a call to the palace on Saturn. We need them to know that we're on the way."
Endymion flipped a couple levers up above his head, and then finally was able to bring his hands back into his lap, the ship on a direct course for the war-torn planet of Saturn.