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A fan rotated slowly overhead, blowing curls of smoke into spiralling patterns. A solitary figure reclined on a throne of wood, watching the door. A momentary amber coal lit his face, before the deep sigh of exhalation welcomed back the darkness. Ernest Narvaez was the patriarch of Narvas comune, and a number of the comunes surrounding it. His elder brother David Narvaez was Don of his cartel, hereditary Sindaco of Firenze and administrator of the Narvaez provincia - one of the richest plantation areas on Malta. Upon the surrender or acquisition of the Surel and Medichi famiglias, he would own most of Tuscany. This was fortunate for Ernest. Don David's sole heir and bastard son had recently perished at the hands of a Bounty Hunter in California.

Many whispered that the 'Hunter had known exactly where to find young Michael Alvarez, and had been waiting in advance. Don David sent raiders to extract revenge and assuage his grief, but of the assassin, no trace was ever found. Ernest purposefully paid no heed to such stories - all he knew was that he was now the primary inheritor of the Narvaez cartel and set to ascend to the state of Patriarch the moment Don David departed this mortal plain. With any luck, that would not be long. In the mean time, Ernest had contrived to protect himself and his immediate family from any would-be social climbers. This had been done by means both nefarious and cunning. He had also destroyed his expenditure logs. Thoroughly.

His thoughts invariably strayed to his son, Marcus. At the age of 21, Marcus presented Ernest with a painful paradox. As his first born son, there was nothing more beloved to him in the sector. Conversely, he was also the most likely to have motive and success in sliding a knife between his father's ribs, due to his place as Ernest's own prime inheritor. Ernest highly doubted Marcus would entertain such thoughts under his own initiative, but a sufficiently wily woman could probably persuade him to take action. Women had always been Marcus' Achilles heel. Fortunately, Don David also knew this, among a great number of Marcus' other vices. Deeply troubled by the softness of his nephew and unwilling to entrust the cartel's distant future to him, he had vowed to take immediate action.

Somewhat against his will, Marcus had been drafted into a raider wing, the then obscure and little-heard of 75th Mosquitos. Politically, it had been a shrewd choice. Close enough to the military to be seemly, but far enough away from the 101st to tweak the pride of his rivals. Isolated enough from the hierarchy of the famiglia to avoid in-fighting and assassination, but small enough to be easily manipulated by the Don if required. A good fit, if a risky one. The Mosquitos were deployed to flashpoints throughout Sirius on two week rotations, after which they returned home. Marcus had just finished his first tour, raiding the turbulent markets of Liberty. Interested in his son's progress, he had ordered a meeting; an evaluation. His brother would want news.

There was a knock at the door.

"Enter". He pulled the door open a fragment and slipped inside - the room was dark, and heavy with the scent of laced tobacco. Marcus was no stranger to the stuff, having taken up the habit young. A foreigner would have been entering a dream-coma at that point, preparing to visit alien worlds and see sights of unparalleled wonder. For a child of Malta, such a dose was par the norm - the hint of the shadow of a buzz, rapidly absorbed by acclimatisation and biological tolerance. He made a mental note to buy a satchel of the stuff when he departed. He'd run out during his time in Liberty, which had ground on his nerves. Moving to his father's seat, he bent down on one knee and kissed the outstretched Narvaez signet ring.

"Il signore benedica voi e la vostra famiglia." Tradition fulfilled, he stood, and seated himself on an audience chair to the left.

Ernest stubbed out his cigar and leaned forward. "It is good to see you again, my figlio. How have you been keeping? What news do you bring of Liberty?"

Marcus gave a derisive snort. "I was fine. The Rogue that tried to sell me Cardamine cut with pad-gasses was not. They'll be picking pieces of him out of the deck plating for weeks." Ernest laughed - he'd had similar experiences in his younger days. A Rogue in a bar on Beaumont, was it?

"It is understandable that they dilute our gift - but to attempt to sell impure product to the Maltese themselves... That is suicide. You must show them that, si? The lesser races need to know their place. You've done a good thing, Marcus. What of your attachment to the 75th?"

He shrugged in a so-so manner. "I lost the hit of the century. I probably could have won Don David over with that one alone if it'd worked." His father gave a terse nod as a command to continue. Marcus sighed. "There was an arms dealer in New York, touting some new prototype guns. The very expensive ones, you know? I managed to lure the idiota out into the Badlands. He brought escorts, but they couldn't stop the sting of the Scimitar. Myself, Commandante Claes and signora Petrucci launched the ambush and managed to destroy it mere meters from its safe harbour at West Point. Only the escorts got to the cargo before we could. We all got out in one piece."

Ernest sucked in a breath through gritted teeth. "What was the value of the cache?"

Marcus shoot his head. "I don't know, a lot. Probably somewhere between 500 million to a billion credits. We were going to sell the spoils to an IND agent that had been attempting to undercut the sciocco."

"The Don does not appreciate failure. You know this?" Ernest kneaded his forehead for a moment before continuing. "While you showed initiative and skill in successfully laying such a trap, any merit was obliterated by your incompetence in its conclusion. I will not mention it to my brother. Neither will you." Marcus glowered darkly for a moment, before composing himself and leaning back in his chair.

"Si signore. I bow to you... wisdom." There was a distinct tone of insubordination.

There was a click and a spark, followed by a flame as the end of a cigar took. A moment followed while the end flared, then a lazy stream of smoke drifted for the ceiling. "You will watch your tongue, or you may live to miss it. Capisce?" Marcus rose to his feet.

"Are we done?"

His father lounged back in his throne and watched him languidly. "Si. Be gone."

There was commotion all over the estate. Marcus' Scimitar had re-entered Malta's atmosphere, and was now drifting home on autopilot. It was blaring a generic distress signal. Ernest had pinged the ship as soon as it had come within range, using patriarch level access codes to force-broadcast the flight manifest; point of origin, Kirkwall base in Orkney. The autopilot had taken control shortly after the jump into Alpha. Marcus himself had not spoken since the initiation of autopilot and was not responding to hails. A medical team was scrambled from the nearby town of Certaldo, with a call for help going out to Don David's personal household in Firenze.

12 minutes later, the Scimitar touched down. Teams ran to it as the dust cleared, hauling back the canopy and calling Marcus' name. A wave of hot, rancid air rolled out, bringing with it the acrid stench of vomit. Inside, the pilot was lolling forward in his seat, helmet-encased head limp. The rebreather had been hastily torn off, probably before he had lost consciousness. A cry of alarm went up as the medical teams surged back to pull on rebreathers of their own. Frantic cries of "piaga!" went up - plague, the death from the stars. Calls to Don David's physicians were redoubled.

Tentatively, the newly masked team moved back to the cockpit, reaching in to uncouple the flight harness, disconnect the datafeed cables and sever pilot monitor links. They pulled him out and hastily moved him down to a nearby stretcher. His flight suit was stained by vomit. Even now, he would occasionally convulse between feverish shivers. One removed his helmet. His hair was matted with sweat, and his face was pale and swollen. He shuddered and shook as an evil fever burned inside him, radiating an unbelievable heat. The paramedics went down their checklist as they rushed the stretcher to an awaiting Dromedary - listing symptoms, looking for lesions - not finding any.

Ernest stood by and watched them take his son, vowing reward to those who could cure him and terrible wrath to those who failed. His message noted, the Dromedary lifted off and turned to speed to the east to take Marcus to the secure wing of Firenze's Porte Sante Hospital. Anger and confusion abounded afterwards, with arguments between Ernest, Maria and their two remaining daughters continuing long into the night. How had Marcus had come by his ailment? How long would it take for him to heal? Would he heal at all? Most ominously... who was to blame?

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