Chapter 3: Accusations

“Happy birthday, big guy” Chloe crowed as she came bouncing into Jason’s room. He had just come back from his run and was stepping out of the shower when Chloe barged into his room. The fact that Jason was completely nude didn’t seem to bother Chloe at all. Luckily Jason still had the towel he was busy drying his hair with so he tried to save his male dignity by holding the towel in front of him.

“I wish you would at least knock before you come storming in here” Jason complained. Chloe just blew him a raspberry. She regularly made herself at home on his lap, or on top of him when he was already in bed. He complained to her in the past as well and got the same reaction, so other than his complaint he didn’t do anything else. The last time she came storming into his room she made herself at home on his bed and watched as he tried to get dressed without exposing himself to her. It was obvious that Chloe found the whole matter highly amusing. When she again scooted onto his bed and sat watching him expectantly, he realized there was no way around it. He dropped the towel and started getting dressed. Chloe never took her eyes off him while he got into his clothes. He was surprised to note she was slightly out of breath as she took his hand to lead him to the breakfast lounge.

While Chloe made a big deal out of his birthday, Lady Sylvia and the viscount congratulated him relatively warmly. The duke was off-planet so nothing happened from that angle. Clarissa just gave him a casual but friendly congratulation wish while Rick ignored him.

A week after his birthday Jason’s awkward world came tumbling down.

“The duke wants to see you in his office” Sir Jonah said as Jason and the first of the troop of marines came running back into the courtyard after a five-kilometer run. “Go shower and meet me outside his office” Sir Jonah was a knight and the duke’s personal secretary.

“Ah, how do I get to the duke’s office?” Jason asked as Sir Jonah turned and started walking away.

“You don’t know?” he asked as he turned and stared at Jason in disbelieve.

“I have never been near his office” Jason said. “Are you referring to his office in the city or here? I have no idea where either are located.”

“Just go shower and meet me outside the ballroom” Sir Jonah said as he gave Jason a funny look.

When Jason came to his room he found the place a mess. His bed was upended and his closet was empty, all his clothing, which was not that much, was in a pile in the middle of the floor. The first thought through Jason’s head was that Rick was playing a nasty trick on him. The next thought was to wonder what Chloe would say about the condition of his room. He left everything as he found it except to get some pants and a neat shirt from the pile and put them on the bed.

After showering and getting dressed, he made his way to the ballroom where Sir Jonah was impatiently waiting for him. Without a word the duke’s personal secretary took off walking at a brisk pace down the passageway. Jason had no problem keeping up, he had a couple of big growth spurts over the past year and was already a bit over 180 cm tall.

The secretary led the way up a flight of stairs and down a wing that Jason have never been to. They were following a bit of a random route, based on Jason’s natural sense of direction, before the secretary suddenly came to a stop and gave Jason a funny look. Jason just looked back. They were standing in a narrow and badly lit passageway with a heavy wooden doorway in front of them. When Sir Jonah didn’t move, Jason assumed they have reached the duke’s office so he stepped up and pushed the door, which didn’t budge.

“The door is locked” he said in confusion.

“Do you have any idea where you are now?” Sir Jonah asked in a stern voice.

“I have never been here” Jason said. “This is starting to look like a huge hoax to me. You led me down a number of passageways, and we doubled back a number of times and now you bring me to a locked doorway. What are you trying to do?”

“Follow me” Sir Jonah said as he turned and marched off. This time Jason knew they have reached his grandfather’s office, because of the two marines standing just outside the double doors inside a spacious and grand vestibule. “Wait here!” Sir Jonah barked before he disappeared through the double doors. Jason knew the marines but since they were on duty and since they were ignoring him he ignored them as well as he started pacing up and down near the closed door.

After about 10 minutes the secretary came out and beckoned for Jason to enter. Jason had so little interaction with his grandfather that for a moment he was unsure how to react. His only reference point was what he has been taught about how to react towards the duke in a formal capacity.

There were three other men besides the duke in the huge well-lit office. Jason recognized Major Thibault, the commander of the marine garrison guarding the duke and the castle but had no idea who the others were. Jason walked up to the large empty desk in front of the duke and bowed properly before standing straight at attention, not saying a word.

“Do you have any idea why I called for you?” his grandfather asked as he gave Jason a stern look.

“No, Your Grace” Jason said. The duke’s head jerked slightly when Jason addressed him in his formal capacity. When Jason was younger, before Baron Oscar denounced him, Jason was too much in awe to even talk to the tall important man who also was his grandfather. Since then he never had the opportunity to chat to the duke on a one-to-one basis as grandfather and grandson. Jason knew that all three his cousins always called the duke ‘grandpa’. It was obvious that the duke was surprised at Jason’s formal tone.

“We have received a hint, along with some weird evidence, that you have managed to break into the castle’s treasury room and steal some items of value.” The duke said as he leaned forward while studying Jason. Jason was at a loss of words. He knew he should defend himself but at that moment his mind was blank. Here he was standing in front of the ruler of a whole system, who also happened to be his grandfather, and he had no idea what to say. “Do you have anything to say about this matter?” the duke asked.

“No, Your Grace” Jason said as he looked the duke level in the eyes with no expression on his face. “I have no idea where this treasury room is and I know nothing about any items of value, thus I have nothing to say.”

“What have you found out?” The duke asked one of the men standing off to one side.

“Nothing, Your Grace” the man said as he glanced at Jason. “There is no evidence of him ever receiving any allowance. I assigned sufficient funds to Lady Olivia but I found no evidence that she assigned any of that to Master Jason.”

“So, where do you get your money from?” the duke asked.

“As you have just been told, I have never received any allowance in my life, Your Grace” Jason said. “Not from the Baron of Sand Harbor nor from anywhere else. I also have never bought anything, since I never had any money.” The duke looked half shocked about that comment.

“That is hard to believe, that you have never needed to buy anything” the duke said.

“Your Grace, if I can have a private word, he doubt if they would want anything to do with him.

Jason must have dozed off because he suddenly woke up, in pitch darkness. He felt calmer even as the near hopelessness of his situation came back to him. His eyes were open but there was no light. His senses told him he was staring down at the floor between his legs. He slowly lifted his head to rest it against the wall behind him.

He suddenly realized there was some light, right in front of him but not close. It seemed like a dull greenish glow. He blinked his eyes a couple of times to make sure it was not in his mind, so dim was the light. It was not a single spot either. When the pale green glow stayed in place, Jason slowly started moving towards it. He could not determine how far in front of him the light was. He had no light source of his own so he was concerned about falling over something that was not there before.

The light got slightly brighter as he crawled closer. Then he encountered the gritty sloping edge of the pile of dirt in the middle of the chamber. That was when he got to his feet. The light source was on top of the flat surface of the pile of dirt, about three feet above the floor of the chamber. It had a definite shape, a green glow with what looked like moving, twirling, shapes or shadows moving at random over the surface of the 45-centimeter long shaft. The shaft seemed to be about 5 centimeters in diameter.

Without even thinking about it Jason reached out and wrapped his hand around the shaft. It felt comfortable in his hand, with neutral temperature. The surface had a slight soapy feel without being slippery. The moment he touched it the twirling patterns stopped moving, as if they were stuck in place.

Jason’s mind suddenly snapped back into normal mode. He suddenly realized touching an unknown glowing object could have been very dangerous, except he seemed to have this weird sense of trust in the wand. It fitted comfortably in his hand, as if it belonged there. Jason wanted to see what it looked like in daylight so he turned and, using the dim light from the wand, made his way to the exit of the cave.

In bright sunlight the wand was a pale greenish color, more white than green. He had seen images of jade sculptures and the wand seemed to be similar but paler than regular jade. The twirling patterns that seemed to have gotten frozen as he touched it was still visible, faint but obvious and looking as they have been carved into the wand. The ends were not flat either; both ends had indentations of about two centimeters in diameter and two centimeters deep, as if something should fit in there.

Without really thinking about it Jason has decided that the wand was his, not in the sense of founders-keepers, but in the sense that it always belonged to him. He still thought about his predicament but now he was also more upbeat about finding a new path in live. He would not have been living under the care of the duke of Grendel forever anyway. He knew he was going to have to grow up and move away. He might as well do it now, since he seemed to be unwelcome in the castle. The only one who seem to care about him was Chloe.

Jason had missed lunch but was not really hungry. He needed to plan his future, and for that he needed to explore the infrastructure of the planet, to determine what was there and where he could go. He sneaked back into the castle and made his way to the library.

The library was a proper library, not a lounge full of books. The library was huge with real books as well as data terminals. The terminals had interplanetary net access as well. When Jason was attending public school they were taught all about the interplanetary data net.

It was a network of data storage devices spanning the entire empire. While each inhabited and developed planet had its own internet, each internet was also linked to other data networks to form the interplanetary data net. Getting information from a different solar system took a long time. A data burst would be sent from an orbital satellite to the nearest jump gate. Since the jump gates were located in open space in gravitational neutral fields like Lagrange points, it meant that the data burst would take anything from an hour to six hours, depending on how far the jump gate was from the planet. At the jump gate the data packet would be received by a net node. The net nodes were small drones. They would collect data requests and then jump through the gate to another system where they would transmit the packets, receive any waiting packet and jump back through the gate. Getting a simple response from across the empire could take days, and cost a small fortune. Generally, the interplanetary net tried to duplicate each internet between systems but none of the local internet nodes stayed synchronized for long.

When Jason sneaked into the library it was empty. That library didn’t have a librarian, at least not a full-time one. Since Jason’s arrival, the two tutors have been tasked to manage the library as well. Jason suspected that they were busy teaching the others so he grabbed a terminal in a semi-secluded corner and started exploring the local internet for anything to do with jobs and training on Grendel.

Jason’s primary choice was any training institute that also provided accommodation and didn’t expect the students to pay out of pocket for training. With such a narrow search field only two options popped up; the marine training bases and a private college that offered apprenticeship training for anybody wanting to be trained to repair space ships and ground vehicles. The technical training institute seemed interesting so Jason started reading up more about what they had to offer, until he realized the highest paid technicians were space craft technicians, and they had a body size limitation due to the constricting crawl spaces they had to access on space craft.

“So he just disappeared?” A voice said from the entrance of the library.

“I have not seen him since yesterday. He has never been late for his lessons before.” another male voice said. Jason recognized his primary tutor but not the other voice. He shrank down behind the terminal trying to stay inconspicuous as the two men came closer and sat down at a reading corner a dozen feet from where Jason was hiding.

“What do you make of the accusations against him?” the stranger asked.

“I think it is all bullshit. He has never shown any anti-social tendencies. He is quiet and mostly withdrawn and shy, but to steal? I doubt it strongly.” The tutor replied. “By comparison, I don’t trust the other kid at all.”

“Never had much to do with him until the duke ordered him to join the marine exercise program.” The stranger said. Suddenly Jason recognized the major’s voice as the other person. “First class slacker that one. Totally unlike Jason who seemed much more driven. The sergeants like to use Jason to motivate the marines who are getting lazy. He is also very good in hand to hand combat as well as with both the swords. How is he academically?”

“That is another problem. He was good, and studied hard, until about a year and a half ago. Then suddenly he started working even harder, as if he was trying to prove something to himself. Would you believe it if I tell you he already finished the regular high school syllabus?”

“What is his age?” the major asked.

“He turned fifteen a week ago” the tutor said. “I have no idea what more to teach him. I was considering starting him on the first semester post high school studies but officially I cannot do it. He will do well but will not get recognition for his work under my tutorship.”

“It’s a pity he is not sixteen” the major said. “If he was older the marine corps would have grabbed him. He would make a great marine.”

“I thought the minimum age was eighteen” the tutor said.

“For regular trainees, yes, but we make exceptions for certain candidates.” The major said. “If they show exceptional skills or are orphans, or both, we will accept them at sixteen.”

“So he has to cool his heels here for another year” the tutor said.

“Except he is not an orphan” the major replied.

Shortly afterwards the major’s communicator beeped and he left. The tutor decided to leave as well. Jason relaxed again and changed his search options. He needed two things, he needed a name and he needed to figure out how to age a year. The first part was relatively easy. His mom had mentioned that his mystery father’s name was Jason Cosgrove. He did a search for that name and came up empty, no Jason Cosgrove and no Cosgrove family on Grendel either.

Aging was a problem. Jason could access the public records and find his own name, Jason deWitt, aged fifteen and with full high school credit. He was surprised about that. There was no way he could change that record either. Jason decided to start at the bottom as far as a career in the marines was concerned. He was not going to use his own record.

Grendel, the planet, was a water world with two large continents and a double handful of smaller islands. The other continent was covered in ice and the one they lived on was lush and green with a mountainous center. The islands were either unpopulated or scarcely populated by fishermen. The islanders didn’t usually bother with registering their newborn babies and often didn’t bother with formal education either. Jason decided to become a renegade fisherman, one who disliked fishing, liked to read, and wanted away from the islands where he already lost both his parents to a storm.

Jason purposefully avoided the dining room that evening, opting to sneak into the kitchen and eat with the cooks. The chief cook liked Jason, especially since he always complemented her on her cooking while the duke and viscount both mostly ignored her. Rick, on the other hand, regularly send food back to the kitchen along with some unwarranted complaints. What made Jason even more welcome in the kitchen was the two much younger kitchen assistants. They were not really pretty but they were cute and not overweight either. Jason didn’t really flirt with them but they thought he was flirting, because he smiled and talked to them.

Jason was surprised, and hurt when Chloe didn’t come looking for him, even when he went to his room after supper and started cleaning up the mess the searchers did to his meager possessions. Then he sorted out his clothes. He had outgrown the clothes he had only half a year earlier. With no money of his own he obviously had no way of getting new clothes but every time Chloe or Lady Sylvia commented that Jason’s pants were getting too short he suddenly found new pants in his closet. He suspected the castle’s chief clothier, a severe-looking woman in her sixties, who usually took care of all the female clothing of the noble ladies had something to do with it.

Since he started practice-fighting with the marines he has found some heavy-duty cargo pants and cotton shirts in his closet, similar in cut and with the same type of heavy material as the marine combat uniforms but not in the same green color. He had three sets of the heavy clothing as well as a typical combat jacket but all in a range of muted civilian colors. Those, as well as all his underwear went into the duffel bag he got from the marine quartermaster. The same quartermaster decided to let Jason keep the sleeping bag he used a year and a half ago.

“I’m thinking about going for a week-long camping trip again” Jason commented the next morning as he had breakfast in the kitchen again.

“How many canned food tins do you want?” the plumper and more aggressive of the two kitchen helpers asked him in a low voice.

“I usually don’t eat more than two tins per day” Jason said. She winked at him as she pointed to the clock and made a sign indicating he should come back in an hour’s time. His next stop was the quartermaster’s office where he begged for the use of a lamp and a camping stove, both using black crystal as power source. He had no problem getting what he wanted, along with a metal water bottle and a ground sheet that could be used as a personal shelter.

When Jason got back to his room with his loot, he found the kitchen assistant had given him enough food for ten days, and all nice stuff as well, no boring plain vegetables in a can either. For the whole day Jason avoided the rest of the family, and ended up being ignored as well. That night when he went to bed he was packed and ready. His duffel bag contained only his heavy-duty clothing as well as canned food, and camping gear. He slept with the jade wand under his pillow.

Jason got up early, an hour before his regular time, since he didn’t sleep well that night. He had left most of his clothes in his closet and tidied the room the night before. He knew he could not slip out of the castle unnoticed at that time of the predawn so he got dressed and went down to the rear gate where he waited for the marines to start moving out for their early morning exercises. Once they started moving through the gate, he casually joined them. Nobody said anything about the bag he was carrying. Once outside and away from the marines he made his way to the monorail terminal on the opposite side of the castle.

The anti-gravity shuttle ran on a single metal rail using antigravity crystals to reduce friction and magnetic induction to move along the rail line. It was the main connection between the castle and the city and ran on a regular schedule to transport workers and supplies between the city and the castle. Jason waited out of sight until the arriving shuttle had emptied from all the day-workers who arrived before he slipped into the shuttle. He was the only one going the other way and sat on the floor to stay out of sight.

Grendel City was a coastal city. The city was located at the deep end of a long narrow peninsula arching into the sea. The tip of the peninsula was a flat smallish piece of land that housed the shuttle landing and takeoff port. On previous visits to the city Jason loved to stand on the shore front and watch as shuttles took off across the bay using booster rockets. He also knew from those visits that most of the arriving cargo were moved away from the landing site via the connecting land bridge while any departing cargo are taken to the landing site via a fleet of independently operated cargo barges. The reason for the difference in transporting cargo was due to the nature of the cargo. Grendel imported either bulk raw materials from the asteroid belt or heavy machinery from other systems while they exported large quantities of foodstuff. Packaged foodstuff was easier to move around by boat or barge and human handlers than ore and heavy machinery.

Jason’s objective was to join the marines as an orphan. For that to happen he had to make sure nobody recognizes him, a reasonable possibility after the number of times he danced in the company of a bunch of marine officers. He decided to enlist at the other marine base, located among the foothills above the city of Porterville, the third largest city on Grendel which was located about a 1000 kilometer along the coast to the west. While there was a monorail shuttle service between the two cities, one had to pay to use the shuttle and he had no money. Jason spent his first morning in Grendel city near the harbor watching as a number of small cargo boats got loaded with fresh produce to be taken to the shuttle port.

It was shortly after lunch when a commotion on the wharf got Jason’s attention, as well as the attention of a number of other people. As far as commotions went it was a minor case of a sailor breaking his leg when he miss-stepped the end of the gangway and fell, while carrying a 20-kilogram sack of corn.

To Jason’s surprise he ended up in the right place at the right time to take advantage of the event. After the injured seaman was taken away, the grouching skipper noticed Jason, dressed in durable work clothes, watching the proceedings from the wharf.

“Hey, you, looking for part-time work?” the skipper asked. Jason didn’t hesitate.

After dumping his bag in a small closet behind the boat’s bridge he started carrying sacks onto the boat, along with five other sailors. When he was asked for his name, he gave his new name, Jason Cosgrove of Marion Island, a name he picked from a map earlier. It was the largest of the fishing islands with a substantial population. To Jason’s relieve the skipper didn’t question him about his home.

“So what are you doing in Grendel City?” The skipper asked that evening. Jason and the rest of the crew were all relaxing on the deck of the boat after making four return trips between the shuttle port and the city harbor. Jason was dead tired but to his surprise he was not as tired as the other deck hands. He had learned that making so many trips were rare but needed since there was a cargo ship in orbit loading up on bulk grain.

“Trying to get away from a life of misery onboard a fishing boat” Jason said. “I never knew my father and my mother went off and didn’t come back.” He gave the impression that they were fisher folk but he didn’t specifically say so.