Warin
The fleet arrived back in the Holderness System after traveling all the Fabian Gateway network. Warin made several stops along the route to trade but more important gather intel from the systems and worlds along the northern route.
Warin couldn’t get the short visit with the Crown Prince out of his mind, along with his warning about the Fabian Order of Drala. The fear of his own father had been clear to him for much of his life but he did not think he ever allowed himself to consider that the secret cult controlled his father.
It made sense to Warin though. The System-lord was one of the most powerful lords in the Commonwealth. For two years he fought and struggled against the Order until he defeated what he thought was their leader Kratos System with the limited support from the Newholm System and the often ravished Barrows System.
No, Warin had been a fool he realized in the weeks since that meeting with the Crown Prince. Of course he hadn’t defeated them. He had merely given them a bloody nose and sent them into hiding. Not once had he considered that their roots were deep into the Holderness System and the court of his father, but it all made sense now.
Warin had no reason to doubt the intel that the Crown Prince had provided him about clan Keyes. Highlord Keyes and Bishop Keyes were only some of the noble born members of the cult that the intel held files on. There were dozens of lords ranging from minor lords with small land holdings to System-lords spread throughout the Commonwealth.
Ozma was reluctant at first to established contacts on the many worlds they past. Bethany had pleaded with him to abandon the idea and return home to live a quiet life. Ozma had finally agreed and used old contacts of hers while new ones were made. One day the order would come for them, and they would be fools not to prepare for it. Even Bethany had eased but she still feared not just for them, but her own father.
They shouldn’t have been surprised at the amount of members of the Fabian Faith in the Order. Her own father was the Bishop of Newholm, and while they both knew he wasn’t part of their madness, he was a key target to be replaced to fill that powerful position with their own supporter. He understood her fear, but also knew they could not bury their heads in the sand.
The timing was perfect to setup new contacts, although Warin had agreed that it best he did not aid or have contact with them. The small fleet was no threat to the defense fleets and orbital defenses of the Systems they placed through and the route would raise no eyebrows as they returned from the royal wedding. They had made the same stopped on their way south to Bastion trading wares from their cargo bays from the Holderness System, and had done the same with new cargo gathered on Bastion or the worlds they stopped at which they could make a profit on other worlds.
Warin disliked the thought of being a trader but a ship was a costly thing to run, and it was common practice for ships of all makes and models to fill their cargo bays with what they could sell to off set the cost and pay their crews with bonuses. It also allowed Warin’s people to setup contacts with little to no suspicion although he knew there was always someone watching.
They spend the longest on the world of Bloom, once the shining world of the Dragon’s Head Nebula under the Fabian Dominion before it was largely abandoned after the Fabian Withdrawal. It had once again grown in power under Warin’s own Ancestors as they expanded the reforged Kingdom of Umbria where they ruled as kings.
Warin liked the old structures which dotted the world. Many were in a have ruined state and repaired with much more simple tech from the Old Blood Furse who had arrived in the Dragon’s Head Nebula after the Fabian Withdrawal, but they still held some of their functions while some secrets still remained to be discovered.
Bloom was a larger planet than that of Bastion, and with a smaller population it didn’t feel as crowded. The Fabian ruins were to a much greater extent than on Bastion but it had suffered the most after the Fabian withdrawal as the world was fought over by many. When the great Savage Host arrived in Drala almost three hundred years ago the world of Bloom had regained it’s status as the leading world in Drala and been sacked and occupied by the Host while Bastion began it’s quick rise as the leading world.
Warin often wondered how things would have changed without the great Savage Host invasion. Would the Commonwealth even have formed. Would his ancestors and father still be king of the the Kingdom of Umbria which the Furse from the Savage Host had replaced. The kingdom of Umbria had been cut into two by the Furse, and the Bloom sector lost while his ancestors had retained control of the Holderness System and support from most the worlds of the sector.
Would Warin had stood to inheit a kingdom, one of the most powerful in the Dragon’s Head Nebula if their kin had not come from across the Nord Void to raid and conquer them instead of a sector forver under threat from the Kaledon Tutha to the north and the Eriu Tutha from the east across the Void of Eriu as well as raids from yet more Furse from the west.
Warin shook his head. It did no good to play those games. Reality was what mattered. In time he would rise up to lead the Holderness Sector, and though he might not be king, the people of that sector would look to him for protection and he would provide to them or die in that struggle, but he would much rather make the other bastards die.
