Chapter 394: Father of all conspiracies

A transport ship touched down with a soft thud, engines cycling down in metallic sighs. Lucas climbed out first, looking like he’d been wrestling with paperwork for hours—which, honestly, he had. His ceremonial robes were wrinkled beyond salvation, and there were dark circles under his eyes that spoke of too much information crammed into too little time.

Lyra followed, clutching her data pad like it contained the secrets of the universe. Which, considering what they’d discovered, it might actually.

Lucy emerged last, and Lucas couldn’t help but notice the faint scorch marks on her sleeves and the satisfied smirk playing at the corners of her mouth. Whatever she’d been up to while he was buried in archives, it had involved significant amounts of electricity and probably some very expensive equipment.

"You owe me one, little brother," she said as they walked toward the palace.

Lucas nodded. He’d figured as much when she’d shown up with a Sterling transport and a way back to one of Raiju Prime’s most secure facilities. "I know."

"Good." Lucy’s smirk widened. "I’ll think of something appropriately embarrassing to collect on."

She peeled off toward the main palace while Lucas flagged down a guard. "Find my friends—Kelvin, Diana, and tell them to meet me in the east wing library. One hour."

"All of them, Your Highness?"

"No." Lucas paused, thinking of Noah and Sophie probably enjoying their first real break in months. "Just those two. The others are... occupied."

---

The east wing library was Lucas’s favorite room in the palace, probably because it was the one place his parents never bothered to look for him when he was avoiding royal duties. Ancient books lined the shelves, creating the kind of scholarly atmosphere that made serious conversations feel appropriately weighty.

Kelvin arrived first, and Lucas immediately knew something was wrong. Not wrong in a dangerous way, but wrong in a personal way. Kelvin’s usual animated energy was dialed down to about half power, and his cybernetic arms were moving with uncharacteristic restraint. He looked like someone trying very hard to act normal while his brain was occupied with something else entirely.

"Hey," Kelvin said, settling into one of the leather chairs. "So, uh, how’d the detective duo dynamic go? Find anything interesting about our mysterious eighth ancestor?"

Before Lucas could answer, Diana walked in, and the contrast was immediately obvious. Where Kelvin seemed wound up with nervous energy, Diana looked... calm. Not her usual composed-but-tense calm, but genuinely relaxed. There was something different about the way she moved, like she’d settled some internal debate and was comfortable with the outcome.

"Diana," Lucas said, nodding as she took a seat.

"Lucas." She glanced at Kelvin, who immediately found something fascinating about the ceiling to stare at. "I hope your research was productive."

Lyra had been quietly arranging her notes on the central table, but she looked up now with the kind of expression that meant she’d been thinking hard about something. "Before we get into what we found, where are Noah and Sophie?"

"Beach...that’s what their assigned guards told me about fifteen minutes ago. It’s either that or they are somewhere else now in Raijun Prime," Lucas said. "I’d have called them back but they need some downtime, and honestly, what we discovered... they deserve a few more hours of peace before I ruin their vacation."

Kelvin’s head snapped down from his ceiling inspection. "That bad?"

"Worse." Lucas activated the room’s holographic display, and suddenly the air above the table was filled with floating documents, images, and data streams. "Everything we thought we knew about this situation? We were working with maybe thirty percent of the actual story."

"Thirty percent seems optimistic," Lyra muttered, pulling up specific files. "Lucas, show them the succession records first."

"Right." Lucas highlighted a series of documents that hung in the air like accusatory evidence. "The family heads don’t die of natural causes. They disappear."

Diana leaned forward, her tactical mind engaging. "Disappear how?"

"Official cause of death is always listed as natural causes or accidents. But when you dig into the supporting documentation—medical records, witness statements, burial permits—it all falls apart. There are no bodies. No actual medical examinations. No witnesses who saw anything beyond ’he went to sleep and didn’t wake up.’"

Kelvin was studying the floating data with growing alarm. "That’s... every family head? For how long?"

"Generations," Lyra said grimly. "The pattern goes back centuries. Male family heads reach their early fifties, then they ’die’ under circumstances that don’t hold up to scrutiny."

"But here’s the really disturbing part," Lucas continued, pulling up another set of files. "My uncle Dominic—my father’s older brother, who I’d never heard of until today—has been filing reports about this for decades. Claims the family heads are being kidnapped. Guess what happened to him?"

"Let me guess," Diana said dryly. "Declared mentally unstable?"

"Repeatedly. He’s been in and out of psychiatric facilities for years, always after filing reports that get too close to the truth."

Kelvin was quiet for a moment, his mechanical fingers drumming against the chair arm. "So this Eight family guy—he’s not just some angry ancestor. He’s been systematically taking family heads for centuries."

"That’s our working theory," Lucas said. "And if we’re right, then he’s not working alone anymore. He could have an entire organization of people who were supposed to be dead."

The room fell silent except for the soft hum of the holographic display. Diana was the first to speak.

"The families don’t know."

Lucas watched Kelvin’s expression shift slightly, a flicker of skepticism crossing his features before he smoothed it away. ’Or do they?’ Lucas found himself thinking. ’Some of them, anyway. It’s hard to believe every single family has been completely oblivious for centuries.’

"How could they?" Lyra asked. "Each heir takes over thinking their predecessor died naturally. The pattern’s been going on so long it’s become normal."

Diana nodded slowly, but Lucas caught the way her eyes narrowed slightly. ’She’s thinking the same thing I am,’ he realized. ’That level of ignorance across seven families for generations? It’s possible, but...’

"Which means," Kelvin said, his voice taking on that particular tone he got when he was working through a complex problem, "every family is making strategic decisions based on incomplete information."

"Gets worse," Lucas said, manipulating the display to show the gaps in the Sterling archives. "The information we found today? It’s incomplete. Cross-referenced documents kept pointing to files that should have been there but weren’t."

Diana raised an eyebrow. "Meaning what?"

"Meaning the complete story—what really happened to the Eight Ancestor, what he’s been doing for the past thousand years, what he’s planning now—that information is scattered across all seven family territories. Each family has pieces, but none of them have the whole picture."

The implications hit everyone simultaneously. Lyra started taking rapid notes, her analytical mind cataloging possibilities. Diana’s expression shifted into what Lucas privately called her ’tactical assessment’ face. Kelvin just stared at the holographic data like it had personally offended him.

"Oh, come on," Kelvin said finally. "You’re telling me we’ve got a potentially immortal ancestor with a legitimate grudge, who’s been building a shadow organization for centuries by kidnapping family heads, and the only way to figure out what he’s actually planning requires us to somehow access classified archives from seven different star systems?"

"That’s... actually a pretty accurate summary," Lucas admitted.

"And somehow this became our problem to solve?"

"It became our problem the moment Lucas was called back here," Diana pointed out. "We’re already involved whether we like it or not."

Kelvin slumped back in his chair. "Right. Of course it did." He was quiet for a moment, then sat up straighter. "Okay, so we need to visit the other families. Gather the missing pieces. Try to figure out what we’re actually dealing with before this whole situation explodes."

"That’s not exactly a simple field trip," Lucas said. "Each family controls their own territory, has their own politics, their own security concerns. We can’t just show up and politely ask to rifle through their most classified historical records."

"Actually," Kelvin said, and Lucas could practically see the gears turning in his head, "we might have better access than you think. You’re Grey royalty, which gives us diplomatic status. I’m Webb Pithon’s son, which means I’ve got connections in the arms trade that span multiple systems, "

"And I’m really good at making sense of complicated information," Lyra added with a slight smile.

Diana was quiet for a moment, then nodded slowly. "It’s not impossible. Dangerous, definitely. If the Eight Ancestor really has been monitoring the families for centuries, a group moving between territories gathering information would definitely get his attention."

"So we’d be painting targets on our backs," Lyra said.

"Probably," Lucas admitted. "But what’s the alternative? Stay here and wait for whatever he has planned? Let the families stumble around in the dark until he’s ready to make his move?"

"There’s another problem," Diana said, and Lucas could tell from her tone that she was voicing what they were all thinking. "If family heads have been disappearing for generations, some of the people we’d be trying to get information from might already be compromised. We could be walking into traps."

Kelvin’s cybernetic fingers stopped their drumming. "Or worse," he said quietly. "What if some of the families know? What if they’ve been complicit this whole time?"

The suggestion hung in the air like a toxic cloud. Lucas felt his stomach clench. ’God, what if Dad knows? What if he’s been lying to us from the beginning?’

"That’s..." Lyra started, then stopped. "That’s actually terrifying to consider."

"But we have to consider it," Diana said grimly. "If even one family has been working with this Eighth Ancestor, then we’re not just dealing with incomplete information. We’re dealing with active deception."

"Or," Lyra countered, "we could be the only ones positioned to identify those traps. If family heads have been replaced or are being controlled, outsiders might be the only ones who could spot the inconsistencies."

Lucas looked around the table at his friends. They’d already risked court martial just to make sure he was safe. "I can’t ask you to do this. The danger level is completely unknown, and if we’re caught accessing classified family archives without authorization..."

"Oh, shut up," Kelvin interrupted, and for the first time since he’d arrived, his grin looked completely genuine. "You think we came all this way just to let you handle galactic conspiracies by yourself?"

His expression grew more serious. "Besides, if this Eight Granddad really has been building an organization for centuries, this isn’t just about family politics anymore. This could affect everyone—EDF, civilian populations, the entire balance of power in human space."

"Kelvin’s right," Diana said. "We have a responsibility to investigate."

"And from a practical standpoint," Lyra added, "we’re probably the only group positioned to do it. We have the access, the skills, and we’re already involved. Backing out now wouldn’t make us safer—it would just leave us ignorant of threats that could still affect us."

Lucas felt that familiar warmth in his chest—the same feeling he got every time his team proved they were more than just soldiers. They were family.

"Alright," he said. "If we’re really going to do this, we need to be smart about it. Which family do we approach first?"

"House Ares," Lyra said immediately. "They’ve got the longest continuous historical records, and their territory is close to neutral space. If we’re going to test our approach, they’re the safest option."

"Plus," Kelvin added, "the Ares family is more straightforward than some of the others. Less likely to try manipulating us with political games," Everyone turned to look at him wondering how he knew this.

"What? I’m practically a living super computer. I did some digging of my own without flagging any system security. But I couldn’t go too deep so yeah, I do know how the families work...to some extent," Kelvin finished explaining like an accused at hearing.

"When do we leave?" Diana asked.

The question hung in the air. They all knew that once they committed to this course of action, there would be no going back. They’d be stepping outside normal military protocol, potentially endangering themselves and their careers.

"Soon," Lucas said finally. "But first, we need to figure out how to get Noah and Sophie back from their beach vacation without ruining what might be their last peaceful day for a very long time."