Free The Mandate of Heaven by Mike Smith Page B

back to his journal, which only incensed me further.
    “An ex-girlfriend?” I needled him, but while his pen slowed momentarily, he deliberately went back to ignoring me.
    “A spurned lover, perhaps?” I continued to goad him, failing to notice his body tensing, the grip on his pen increasing until his fingers were almost white from the strain.
    “Your mistress then,” I smirked.  “What did she do, toss you over for somebody else?” I paused for a moment, before adding nastily.  “Her husband, perhaps?”
    While I was hoping to get some sort of reaction out of him, it wasn’t the one I expected.  For before I could blink he was suddenly standing in front of me, his forearm pressing painfully into my throat, cutting off my airway.  I immediately started to choke, unable to draw oxygen into my lungs.  I tried pushing back against him, but I could find no purchase, as I found myself slammed against a bookshelf, my feet dangling some inches from the ground.
    It was the expression on his face that so took me aback; it was like nothing I’d ever seen before, devoid of any emotion, lifeless and empty.  His eyes, normally a warm brown had darkened until they appeared almost pitch black.  Suddenly all those stories from my childhood about this man, a killer, came rushing back.  This time I well believed them, for the man standing in front of me was a total stranger—and seemed more than capable of murder.
    “Don't ever mention her like that again,” he whispered chillingly.  “You don’t have the right.  You know nothing about her, or what she was like.  Of anybody, she is the least deserving of your scorn.  Call me whatever you like, I probably deserve it and far worse, but you never disrespect her like that again.”  With that my father dropped me to the floor turning his back on me.
    But I always had to have the last word, it was my greatest failing, and before I’d even consciously thought about it, the words were already tumbling from my lips.  “How can I mention her? I don’t even know the whore’s name—” I never even saw his fist, it seemingly came out of nowhere, but I certainly felt it.  My jaw exploded in pain and already unsteady on my feet, I stumbled back into the bookshelf and it was only this that stopped me collapsing to the floor.
    “If it was anybody else—” my father shook his head furiously.  “I would have killed them for that.”
    With those words still ringing in my head, he left, leaving me bruised, shaken and wondering what the hell had just happened.
    Who was this woman?
    *****
    The brief, and very one-sided argument with my father, simply left me even more determined to find out what I wanted to know.  When he had left his study he had purposefully taken the remote with him, perhaps guessing at what I might have attempted.  In his fury, however, he had forgotten the simple fact that it was a remote to something else, completely superfluous if you happened to have physical access to that device, which I did, my father having granted me full access to the ship, a few days earlier.
    So still nursing my wounded jaw, and pride, I stepped through the hidden door of his study, taking me only a few minutes to arrive at the Celeste .  This time my first action was to cancel any remote monitoring, so my father had no idea what I was doing.  Then I sat down in the cockpit, activating the main computer.  It only took me a few seconds to find her pictures again.  This time when I came to the end of the file, I was prompted to search for others, but dismissed the warning.  Instead I instructed the computer to use the pictures for a far-reaching search, far beyond just this System, to search out across the complete corporate extranet.  I naïvely dismissed any and all warnings about the cost; who cared?  My father could foot the bill.  It would be suitable recompense for my wounded pride.
    I also dismissed any and all warnings that the other corporations could