The Guardsman: Book 2: Blood Debts

By R.G. Taark

A lone man who carries the name of the Empire's ultimate shame and anonymity, 'John Smith'. Stripped of everything from his past, cast out and stumbling through the world he sees everything he grew up believing with new eyes. The harsh realities of his world nip at his flanks and heels every day of his new life, while memories and painful traumas of his old life plague his days and even nights.
The true price and cause of his silent suffering and banishment are a secret he refuses to speak. The intrigue that precipitated his fall still lurks in the shadows of the Empire waiting for its prey. The plot he deflected, thinking he defeated, is only delayed and is slowly closing again.
Suddenly he is thrust back into the shadowed and deadly game he thought he was insulated from and had left behind forever.
(The complete second book)
(The Guardsman: Book 2: Blood Debts: +105,000 words)

• Language: English
• Publisher: R.G. Taark
• Release date: Dec 11, 2011
• ISBN: 9780984999613

R.G. Taark

I write for fun between family and other business obligations. I enjoy sharing my stories and am glad for the opportunity to share them.

Book preview

Preface

This is book 2 of a complete Guardsman story. It is entirely too long and plot too complex to tell all at once so it is broken into three books. The intent of the first book is a first person perspective following two characters to introduce the world, their relationship, and parts of the past that placed them in the situation they find themselves in 'now'.

The two main characters are introduced in the first book, Guardsman 1: Honor of the Fallen. They are Persephone and Samson. Persephone is heiress to the massive, respected and successful Chroynos Stellar Hegemony. Samson has fallen from his lofty position as Persephone's personal Guardsman. In an effort to protect her, he bears the brunt of a character assassination campaign that would destroy the heiress, because he loves her more than his own life.

In the first book someone is trying to destroy Persephone's family and destroy or kill her specifically. Two clues are presented in the first book. The first is an overt discrepancy between what two characters are saying. The second is thinly veiled. Samson misses both clues at the time and begins to unravel the enigma in this second book.

To start the first book Samson is disgraced and stripped of title, even stripped of his name and forced to carry the name of the empire's most condemned: 'John Smith'. He works for a private detective hunting criminals on the run and investigating frauds. Mario Tomposo is the licensed detective and small entrepreneur in the agency that employs the banished 'John Smith' to save credits. He is actually breaking the law by not shunning the outcast and by not allowing him to starve to death. To Mario, 'Smith' is a warm body and a capable investigator who is making Mario's agency money, in the form of difficult but completed assignments, untraceable gold coin and illegally cheap labor. While Samson, then 'John Smith', is investigating one of Mario's cases, Samson meets a retired Hegemony soldier turned entrepreneur, and sometimes pirate, hidden at the bottom of the mist shrouded lower and ground levels of the planet's megacity, named Vladimir Lee.

Persephone's mother and father, Celine and Phyllip Chroynos, have suffered the deaths of Persephone's four older siblings and are painfully aware, in their hearts that someone is trying to kill their last baby. Persephone's one time friend, personal confidant, and maid Angela turns on her, unleashing an extremely powerful, nanobot enhanced, horrifically armored and completely invisible sleeper agent. The threat within their protective citadel's supposedly unassailable walls causes her father to send her out into the world to make her a constantly moving young woman with a chance to survive, instead of a stationary target waiting to die, at the hands of an unknown number of invisible sleepers who have already slipped through security.

Phyllip Chroynos relies on his best friend and Vice President, Thomys Prometheon, to help run the family's fusion power monopoly and fifteen hundred solar system spanning Empire, while Phyllip trusts Thomys with his most terrible secrets. Thanatyos Chroynos, Phyllip's brother and Persephone's only surviving uncle runs the family's internal operations, coordinates the businesses, and manages their internal security, including Guardsmen assignments. Persephone's cousin Kazimir runs the family's defensive and foreign intelligence arms. Celine manages the 'Royal Family' public relations, manages the family's public affairs and the corporate finances, without the formal title of CFO, she directs the family's tremendous wealth.

The Chroynos family while successful in business, has been decimated by war with neighboring empires and treachery. Free standing numbers are the age of the family member relative Persephone. The number in ( - ) is Persephone's age when those family member's were killed. For clarity, non-blood relatives, and those not still living are excluded from the wireframe diagram of the family.

The Hegemony Military has a Ground Combat, Ground Support, and Naval component corporations that fight the wars and are controlled by the Chroynos family as majority shareholders ensuring the loyalty of the military corporations. They also use elite formations of 'Guardsmen' as quick reaction troops to support other units, but Guardsmen are all officers because of the decade and a half of training and schooling before their commission dates. General Officer ranks also carry leadership positions in the corporations. The Hegemony's 'Home Guard' troops are experienced soldiers who are on 'loan' from the ground forces to provide house security. The Guardsman maintain a small Naval battle group of their o

wn and use Naval ranks when assigned to the Guardsman Naval component.

The ranks in the four rank organizations follow:

THE GUARDSMAN

Book 2: Blood Debts

By: R. G. Taark

41)

Called 'Captain' because he was commanding a warship, Captain Phyllip Chroynos fumed impatiently, while waiting even more impatiently, for the results of the scans to tell him what he already, 'knew' was too strong a word, 'suspected' fit though, and reality lay somewhere between the two.

Young Lieutenant Phyllip Chroynos II stood quietly behind his father, the High Commander of the Guardsmen. Lieutenant Chroynos was a new lieutenant, on his first tour after his commissioning a few months before. He was on the fast track to become a Home Guard officer though and was currently attached to the Home Guard to backfill for an officer on long term disability leave for this deployment. Though not a Guardsman himself, he was a member of the 'regular infantry'; from there he would be qualified to transfer directly into the Home Guard dedicated to supporting the Elite Guardsmen formations. The Home Guard was still a top tier unit but nowhere near as religiously trained and honed as the Guardsmen.

Though currently only 'attached' everyone knew he would end up permanently assigned to the Home Guard in the near future. The Lieutenant's formation was as elite, relative to other line units, as a university team playing a high school in some sporting event. The Guardsmen however were as elite as a professional team in that same sporting event.

The father looked back at his eldest son, while his fingers impatiently drummed back and forth over the chair of his command couch consol.

The rhythmic tapping was fraying the nerves of the Signals Officer seated before the High Commander at the console, who knew he had nothing but bad news to report.

As the brevet High-Commander because he was the highest ranking Guardsman in contact with the family and with the official High-Commander out of contact on the planet below, allowed his mind to wander to Persephone, the little crawler, who was rattling around in his rooms in the Citadel. Celine was thrilled that she had another little person to play with all day. Persephone had just turned one year old the week before this 'unsatisfying' expedition launched.

In the weeks that it had taken to reach this distant, 'once upon a time' gem of a world, the High-Commander had had nothing pleasant to think about but that chunky little garden weed drooling on, smiling at, and crawling on everything, to take his mind off his worst fears.

Losing his sister, Alala and her fiancé, to a vehicle bomb not two months after Persephone was born, and less then a month before Alala's own wedding, was bad enough. But now the greasy, dirty-gray looking ball below did nothing to sooth his spirits over the fate of Katharina Chroynos, his youngest sister and her family.

His two baby sisters, dead within ten months of each other. Phyllip didn't believe in 'coincidence' and this pair of coincidence that left one sister dead and the other's fate hidden somewhere below, missing and presumed dead, set his teeth to grinding.

The frustrated sigh from the Signal Officer, cued Phyllip to look over his shoulder at his eldest son. The grim set to his oldest son's jaw line was enough to tell him what Lieutenant Phyllip Chroynos II thought. The tiny horizontal shake of his head was unnecessary but provided the death blow to the High-Commander's irrational hopes. The boy, turned young Officer knew, as well as his father did, that his aunt and her family were not going to reply.

High Commander Chroynos pinched the bridge of his nose and demanded, Speak up signals, what's out there?

Warsong's Signals Officer sighed in his seat. The Guardsman was a marvel with technology, his aptitude had landed him the prestigious post on the Guard's Flagship. His experience and training on the ship over the last two years, of his three year tour, made him an expert. He stood and faced the High Commander before answering flatly, Nothing Sir. There are no power sources. No technological emanations from anything larger than a hand held, and those are few and far between. May I display on the main monitor Captain?

The clinical side of Phyllip's brain knew the Signals Officer needed everyone to hear it so that he was not roasted over the engine housing for giving bad news. Phyllip made a note to himself to control his temper in the future. Yes, please do. I need you to walk through what your sensors tell you happened. I want a step by step and as much information as we can get. The Signals Officer hesitated and looked at the younger Chroynos. I clear him effective immediately, said Phyllip. Turning to his son, he said, This is 'Guardsmen Warship Command Group Only' level classified. Absolutely no one knows about this, you are not to repeat this or so help me I will blow your ass out an airlock myself. Your mother and uncle don't even know about this, and they never will. Is that clear Lieutenant?

Yes Sir! Absolutely.

At the High-Commander's nod, Signals continued, The stealth deep space observation satellite will not receive our laser query, leaning back to his consol, checking the display, before standing straight and continuing for another eight hours and thirty-seven minutes, followed by a full twelve hours minimum to process the request for data and that data to begin streaming to us. Since we have no firm timetable for this, gesturing behind himself to the display, "we will need to download everything since the last data dump and that will take several hours to receive and decode. Since I have no idea when the last data dump was I have no idea how much take we will receive from the satellite once it starts transmitting.

To your pressing question, Captain, 'no' I cannot tell you as yet who did this. The destruction is complete. We can't find a single living thing on the planet.

Signals tapped his consol and a haze of topography covered the dead mass of the planet. Once the topography was attached to the dead planet Phyllip could see the world as it had once been in his mind's eye. Shining, verdant green, pristine crystal seas, a planet devoid of tectonic activity, or terraforming instabilities or defects, the world had been perfect. The days were slightly shorter, the gravity modestly lighter than 'Earth normal' and the temperatures a pleasant range that maintained a very nice climate year round. The perfect vacation world, even the aging and elderly could enjoy the feeling of 'youth' in their steps again.

His sister, Katharina and her husband maintained a hillside vacation villa, a short hop from the equatorial sea. Having approached often enough on his own visits, Phyllip could not recognize a single feature, without Warsong projecting an outline of 'what was' over the mess it became.

No. . . No, waving his finger in the direction of the display, while looking directly into the Signal Officer's soul. The High-Commander was with them. He would see to it that they all survived and made it to the bunker together. I know we installed early warning systems on the villa and Katharina would be in the bunker within minutes of an attack warning. I know the planetary satellites are blasted but they would have had several hours warning to get to shelter. I know at least she is alive.

Signals visibly sagged, as his breath collapsed and his eyes closed. He turned to his consol, flicked a premade and readily displayed icon once and dragged it with his finger across the display where it overlaid the planet as the magnification dropped precipitously, towards the surface. I know Sir. That is why I spent so long without reporting. The bunker was hit.

No. . . Bullshit! The bunker was over a straight line kilometer away from the house, along a twisting tunnel full of switchbacks, behind hermetically sealing doors ever two hundred meters along the route. It was secret. Only family and the Guard knew about it. Contractors were highly paid, brought in from off planet, and their minds were wiped of the job details on the way back to their home world, as part of their contract. The bunker's transmitter antenna were over three kilometers away, in a different direction from the start of the tunnel so there is no way someone could have hit the bunker while shooting at the signal tower, even if the bunker's occupants were fool enough to broadcast during a strike. And there was nothing of interest or importance in or around the area where the bunker was buried.

As the overlay focused and settled it was clearly a wireframe schematic of the villa and the surrounding support structures. The Signals Officer approached the main view screen and walked through the obvious orienting points from the villa, to transmitter positions and finally to the bunker location, as displayed on the wireframe schematic.

He walked back to his consol, and circled a portion of the displayed map, which drew a circle over an area of the main display. Sir, do you see the discolored circle in the middle of the one I drew?

The drawn circle was centered over the wireframe of the bunker, dreading the next news, Yes, droned Phyllip.

Sir, that is magma. Someone put a capital ship round directly through the bunker. Then they did it again and again, until they cracked the crust of the planet, releasing magma from the deep core of the world. Sir, they put so many rounds into it that the hill the bunker was in, is now under a lake of magma. The bunker itself was targeted specifically, and repeatedly.

The Signals Officer continued, "By the time they were done, they had opened every old tectonic plate on the planet and sent so many shock waves through the soft core of the world that the world suffered earthquakes and volcanic eruptions in so many places at once that the world died in a matter of minutes.

"When they were done they took the time to circle the planet and destroy ever piece of orbiting tech they could find to cover up their tracks, probably while sending high caliber rounds into ever major population center that could contain a computer capable of telling investigators who did this.

I'm sorry Sir. This was a very thorough job. Once they started and realized what they had done they went ahead and covered their tracks as best as possible, so no one could catch them.

You are positive, Signals?

Yes Sir. Everything that should have been able to stay above the level of the magma has distinct bombardment impact patterns around where it should be standing. Sir . . . my guess is they hit the bunker until they were sure they got it, and did it again and set off the reaction in the planet by accident. Once they realized they were screwed for genocide they decided to leave no witnesses, living or electronic. They were already under the gun, so someone decided they should make it total and they would try and get away with it. This is a remote world and there are never many ships here, and more than enough debris in orbit to account for every single ship that would normally be here.

Standing slowly, ship's Captain Phyllip Chroynos, newly permanent High-Commander of Guardsmen, looked from his Signals Officer, to his son, and back again, the rest of the bridge crew doing their best to be invisible. Notify me when we receive the feed from the observation platform. I want to know who did this. His hands closed to fists, I want to know who did this, and I want to track them down. I will eradicate the ships involved and we will crush whatever Corporate or Imperial Dynasty that ordered this to the last man. I don't want any interruptions until that has arrived.

Turning to his son, Lieutenant, tell your platoon to stand down. They will not be dropping to the surface. There are no survivors in that manmade hell. Raising his hand to cut off protests, The atmosphere is poisoned and superheated, the storms and cloud cover are from the seas as they boiled away further polluting the atmosphere with superheated steam. The sulfuric acid rain, mixed with the change in atmospheric pressures, and the superheated wastes, not to mention the lava and earthquakes, if that wasn't enough the dirt filled clouds blotting out the sun dropped the surface temperatures to subzero, the only warmth down there now is from the magma boiling up from the core of the planet. They killed everyone and everything weeks ago.

Shaking his head at the display, No son . . . that is a dead world and I won't risk your men to confirm something I already know.

42)

Persephone was a marvel.

Samson watched as she gracefully slipped from one newly created adoring 'fan' to the next person present who in no time at all was turned into an adoring fan too. These people, complete strangers to start with, after a few short minutes with her were willing to sign their children over to her.

The management of this Chroynos Power Generation reactor still hadn't caught on yet to the random visit. The plant and the hundreds like it around the planet were more or less automated. People were present merely to make sure the blinking green lights stayed blinking green. If they faltered, or an alarm sounded, that was a bad thing and it required someone's attention.

The job was pretty simple. But computers were not allowed to make those decisions so living, breathing, thinking humans were still involved in the process. Machines were fine for the hundreds of millions of microsecond computations and readings during any given twenty-four hour period, but the one in a multi-hundred billion microsecond 'anomaly' that the computers couldn't compensate for required the attention of those who could dictate actions outside of fixed programming. The computers needed human minders or the reactor would automatically go offline for safety reasons.

Humanity's collective shudder at the thought of what thinking machines could and had wrought in the past, sent that option and the person who suggested it flying for whatever was closer, a door or an open window.

Machine rebellions aside, it was always a good idea to have humanity tied into the 'decision loop' where fusion reactors were concerned.

The very principle of turning tiny atoms into progressively much larger atoms and plucking the loosed electrons from the maelstrom just made sense. Early in Humanity's arrogance many had taken fusion as a simple silver bullet solution to everything. 'Safe efficient power' was the motto of the day. Until the day several million unlucky bastards, on a world light-centuries away, outside the Chroynos boarders were on the receiving end of a runaway reaction that expanded to the point where it broke its containment and bathed them all in superheated molecules and freed electrons. Needless to say, the gaping hole in the side of the planet and millions of dead, dying, and missing, set people to rethinking the proper application of computer driven reactor safety measures, tied to profit algorithms. The computer figured 'more power equals more money because I am operating at higher efficiency, which is a good thing', right up until the micro second before the feedback from the rest of the grid sent an electronic shock wave back into the overloaded reactor. The feedback created so much resistance in the massive super conducting lines that the feedback's heat choked the only exit for the building output. This caused a catastrophic escalating cascade of electrons, inside the magnetic containment, which over rode that containment.

The computer had just enough time to send its truncated equivalent of 'uh-oh' to its central operators before its catastrophic failure dug a fifty meter deep and four hundred kilometer diameter hole in the side of its planet, in the center of their largest city.

The dead were the lucky ones. They didn't have to worry about the bath in half consumed radioactive fusion material. The base for the operation is common H2O, water, but when it is superheated and released if it strikes living tissue the Hydrogen, Helium, Oxygen and freed electrons make a mess. The burns from the superheated molecules were nasty but the long term damage was caused by the complicated rays of mixed non-visible light that the blast put out, specifically X-ray and Gamma-ray radiation. They had a tendency to strip any DNA that they struck, into its constituent molecules, and prevent cellular regeneration, or simply what thousands of years before had been called, radiation poisoning.

So human operators sat at consoles in every reactor around the Human populated worlds of the Galaxy, reading magazines, chatting over hot drinks, and watching lights blink happy green. All the while avoiding and dreading the steady shine of little red buttons that would initiate a controlled collapse of the electromagnetic containment field. Since no sane human wanted to be blown apart into constituent atoms, and all the overlapping, hopefully sane, humans would provide at least one to kill a runaway reaction, the overly redundant process was as safe as Chroynos Engineers could make it, and they were very good at what they did.

So as Persephone made new best friends with every human controller in one of the family's hundreds of fusion reaction plants on this planet alone, one of them was always close enough to a kill switch to keep them all in their present atomically assembled state.

Her shadow, dressed in black trimmed with gold, out of any discernable uniform, and tucked under a thick overcoat followed patiently with his hands clasped behind his back. The unassuming but ever-watchful soldier stayed out of the way of all the important people, while they met the Heiress to the Empire.

None of them could see his right hand grasping the hilt of the blade or the drawn pistol in his left hand. Behind his back and hidden under the folds of the overcoat, they were invisible. Since the shadow was invisible, no one noticed either weapon.

Samson was becoming more and more irritated, not with the employees who were flocking Persephone but with the managers who failed to notice over the last two hours that thanks to her magnetic personality, no one was at their consoles maintaining the stations in this reactor. In addition to the rattling of his nerves, the sheer fact that the managers were so far removed from reality made him wonder what good they were, they simply weren't managing or supervising.

When Persephone had made an offhand comment about lunch, she was swamped by table invitations. The whole multitude apparently assumed that they could all fit at her table at once for the upcoming meal. As the control room was stripped of technicians Samson felt the overwhelming urge to do something about the potentially run away reactor. It would not be a problem but Samson was developing an irrational fear of Persephone being blown apart.

The fellow he finally kicked in the shoe looked at him indignantly. It was as though some wall or lighting fixture had stood up to talk to him. Set shifts, to maintain your duty stations, and you will rotate through to visit with my lady, ordered Samson. Take half of these people to work than we will send people back and you all can rotate in to spend time.

The dumb look did nothing to improve Samson's mood. He draped his left arm over the fellow's shoulders and pointed to the assembled mob, You will get half of these people, and you will head back to work. The rest will come with us for food. Then you will all be relieved and you will join us at the table is that understood?

It took Samson a few seconds, to realize the technician was paying more attention to the pistol, he forgot he had in his hand and was using as a pointer, than his words. He slapped the pistol against the man's chest, I want you to take everyone from this line, indicating with the pistol along the man's sight line, into the crowd, back to work and then we will send people back to you all so you can join us and all get face time. Is that clear?

Yes Sir, the civilian replied. The man had the same irrational fear of the pistol as Samson had of the station.

Samson released the man to his assigned task and allowed the pistol to slip back into the shadows of the overcoat.

He was actually fairly surprised at how smoothly things had been progressing, as they made their way to the dining facility.

Very few things are more distracting and irritating to a body guard than a milling crowd of adoring fans. There are too many angles and no matter where you stand there are a dozen other ways to deliver a fatal blow to your charge. Samson was stressed and irritable after the first few hours. The dining facility was a nightmare come to life and it had poison spines glued to its festering slime covered caprice.

The cavernous dining room was shared by multiple shifts from the plant, reactor, management, and its administrative staff, as well as other tenants of the building's several floors above and below.

Why you would put a reactor on the middle floors of an industrial structure, then send the massive conduits all those hundreds of meters 'down' to ground level, adding all that additional expense for the massive high gauge wiring that whole plunge before it split into its various main lines was a design enigma that annoyed Samson.

Positioning of wiring was nothing compared to the annoyance of swamping fans, mobbing employees, adoring true-love suitors, and upwardly mobile individuals being overlooked by management. Samson was at wits end, and was seconds from carrying the blade and pistol openly.

While frustratedly overseeing the crowd of admirers, Samson saw Persephone turn towards him. As his eyes met hers, her special smile for him graced her lips and eyes, when she flicked her eyes at the food on her plate, he allowed himself the brief respite of closing his eyes to shake his head back and forth, indicating he wasn't interested in food. Her slightly pinched eye and quirked smile expressed her mild displeasure at his refusal of sustenance, which is all it was to him while he worked. Hers was the same look a mother gives her adult child who refuses to eat a particular vegetable after so many years, loving but still critiquing. Not that Samson, as an orphan, knew what a mother really was, but it was a hardwired response to know her displeasure he had developed with Persephone.

She returned to the conversations to left, right and center without missing a word as the surprisingly orderly changeover of sycophants took place.

Samson rolled his stiff shoulders and cracked the wrist holding the pistol. It was turning into a long day. On one of his periodic glances behind himself and Persephone, he noticed a gaggle of approaching management suits. Leaning to her ear, he whispered, Heads up, Love, here they come.

She looked over her shoulder at him, questions unspoken on her lips, but dwelling in her eyes. As Samson sidestepped, she followed his eyes to the approaching group of executives. They looked both revolted to be in the room with the 'commoners', and desperate to be present with such a high ranking shareholder.

Her sigh and rolling eyes were visible to all at the table. Her actions were not obvious enough to elicit panic or laughter, but enough to be noticed. Her pleading look to Samson turned to resigned love as she blew a soft kiss only for Samson, and she prepared to do battle with the highest level suck-ups in the building.

43)

When Phyllip opened the door, even before he could take his first step into the room, the exasperated sigh, followed immediately by a demanding What, that was somewhere between bored and angry, slapped Phyllip in the face.

Well good to see you too Thanatyos, Phyllip replied sarcastically.

Stop patronizing Phyllip. What do you want?

Since you put it that way, I'll skip the 'hi-hello-how-are-yous', and get to the point. . .

Thanatyos Chroynos interrupted, Please do!

Phyllip clenched his teeth and beat a blast of anger back down into his core. He wasn't there to fight with his younger brother Thanatyos, but Thanatyos seemed insistent on a fight. Mid-term grades are posted. . .

Yes I know! Is there any other good news you plan on sharing?!

I'm here to help you study. We need to get your grades up.

Whenever he mentioned that cooperation, Thanatyos exploded. This time was no different. Go study your own classes! You know you have to maintain your ninetieth percentile in everything! Gods below take me if you, the perfect Phyllip, ever drop below the eighty-fifth percentile in any one class. . .

Phyllip sighed in frustration, Please let me help you Thanatyos.

Are you serious Phyllip!? Phyllip had heard this before too, it always began the same way. My older brother comes to save weak little failing me! Why do you need to be such a patronizing jerk all the time!

Phyllip went for a different tack this time. Typically he denied that he was patronizing but Thanatyos was in a tight spot now and really needed the help. Yes! I'm here to patronize you! I'm going to patronize you directly into passing your classes! Seriously Thanatyos! You are thirteen! And in fourth grade classes! Do you have any idea how many strings Dad had to pull to get things arranged so you could be tutored for two years before entering the Academy! Do you have any idea how much it cost!? This is the most important and prestigious school in our corporatized empire!

Oh, to Hades with the costs! You know that! We own the whole planet and hundreds of others just like it.

We don't own the planet! The corporation controls the infrastructure and power utilities! You know that as well as anyone.

Oh shut your mouth Phyllip! You don't know what the hell you are talking about, Thanatyos added sarcastically, yet again. If they don't pay we turn them off and they are begging for our power and more than willing to pay the surcharges. We own this shit heap of a world, because if they don't pay they go out of business and die of starvation. We can do whatever we want, so stop quibbling about a few tutors!

Phyllip wanted to punch his brother in the nose for that last, but knew better. That would land them both on the expelled roles. "Sometimes you really are a selfish turd peanut! Dad had to sequester you. He had to fake a coma. He had to mind wipe the two years that the tutors spent with you which cost lots by itself without the tutor's extra compensation for losing the year on an 'anonymous' contract.