The Princess Crisis

A hush

It was all over the Dispatches as Bennett and Joy arrived at Skyvien. Seshama was a few minutes behind them, explaining she was on a call with her Director. They watched on the main display in the conference room as the Capital Dispatch reported the overnight raids by special ops teams from the Directorate of Protection on the residences of the Governors of Tabotaar and Akotan. There was a video of both Governors being led off in restraints. The reports indicated the charges were for major corruption and abuse of power. One reporter hinted that this might be in connection to the assassination of the princess. That got the other reporters spinning as this was the first mention publicly that the princess's passing was an assassination.

Before heading to the conference room, Joy made her way to the quarters where Hashino had been staying. She'd been so busy the last couple of days, she hadn't been able to even send a message to the concubine. When Joy turned into the hall where Hashino's quarters were, she noticed there weren't any guards outside the door. She tried the door alarm and there was no answer. Next, she used the code Bhael had provided, but it declined entry, which meant the code had been changed. A guard was starting down the hall so Joy put her hand up to indicate the guard should stop.

"Where is the ..." she had to think of how Hashino would have been listed, "the guest that was occupying these quarters?"

The guard had a look of 'who are you to be asking' but Joy was a full Lieutenant now and that deemed an answer.

"The redhead?" Which got a nod from Joy. "She left a day ago."

"Did she leave any contact information or say where she was going?"

"No, sir."

"Thank you, private, carry on ..." Joy said as she headed to where she was supposed to be.

Sutons had already been in the room before the others had entered. It looked like he had spent the night there.

"I have it, sir," he said about thirty minutes later.

They all looked to him for an explanation. He directed his research to the main display, pushing the continual Dispatchs to a small window. It took him fifteen minutes to explain what he had found, but he could link a comm call on the night of Bennett's award ceremony from Sekul to someone in Skyvien. He had the number, he just couldn't trace who it belonged to. Right after that call, Sekul placed a call to Frazer, who had already confirmed that was the go-ahead order to meet with the concubines. Sekul had confirmed that the call came from Skyvien, but he swore he didn't know who it was, there was a voice adjustment whenever they spoke. He had confirmed that it was Governor Agolman who had given him the number, but neither Governor was talking.

"We just need to call the number, but it would be better if you were around when it rang,"

"Don't you think that whoever that number is linked to has erased it or destroyed the comphone?" Seshama asked.

"It's possible, but as I'm sure you know, criminals aren't always the smartest," Sutons replied.

Seshama had to agree with that.

"Where do we start?" Joy asked.

"The inner circle, and work out," Seshama advised. "If it's someone there, we'll get them, as we work further out of the circle, the chance we find the traitor diminishes, but we clear the closest to the Queen."

"Makes sense," Bennett chimed in, "I'll have Bhael get us an audience with the Queen."

Bennett's instructions to Bhael had been that all senior advisors to the Queen be present at the audience and that included Bhael and her commander. They were scheduled for an hour after he'd put in the request to prevent the possibility of someone slipping out. He also had Bhael lock down Skyvien till after the audience. Since there were going to be almost thirty people present, it was moved to the Grand Hall.