Empyrean Iris Story Collection Vol. 3

Generous Donation

He leaned in close to whisper in her ear as they excused their way past a group of men laughing loudly at some profane joke at the expense of one of the other young men who looked rather uncomfortable. In all of their hands they carried yellow classes of champaign gently bubbling towards the top.

"Nothing on the scans. I did a full top to bottom sweep of the mansion and it's grounds. The scans indicated no evidence of military grade weapons, biological agents, and no life signs outside that of what the patron said there would be. The mansion has a few sub basements, but there is a pool of water in one of them and some other odds and ends that didn't seem all that threatening."

Admiral Kelly nodded her head as two servers rushed up and offered them drinks.

The trey only had two drinks on it, and Ramirez and Kelly were offered theirs first as another servant scurried away to find more drinks.

A few seconds later they produced a similar drink.

When he took a sip it seemed, strange?

He sniffed at it.

"Does this champaign seem weird to you?"

Admiral Kelly shook her head, "No, its pretty good actually, not that I tend to drink champaign."

He paused nervously, and surreptitiously pulling a multi tool from the inside pocket of his coat and placing the biological testing strip into the drink. It beeped once but indicated that there were no toxins that he should be aware of, so he put it back in his pocket with some relief as they continued on.

"odd maybe its just my tastebuds.

Ramirez nudged him, "I'm going to head over to the desert table."

He snorted and shook his head, "Go on, and try not to hook up with too many people tonight. We are trying to act civilized."

Ramirez waved a hand at him but continued on towards the desert table where a large spread of fruit and cream treats had been laid out. All of them were human made though plenty of the ingredients were of alien origin including the, ever popular, Adin Bulb fruit. Some of it had been imported to earth, and was being grown there in controlled environments since its growth on actual farms was prohibited. But it was becoming a popular commodity on earth, and a staple of rich households. It would go for around five hundred credits a bulb which was insane for a fruit.

Adam felt pleased that he could just go to Anin and pick it himself.

The patron was clearly wealthy and more than willing to show it off.

Adam glanced over at Admiral Kelly and offered his hand, "May I have this dance."

She snorted at him but took his hand and allowed him to walk her out onto the floor where the other guests were swishing and whirling in time with a waltz. Adam was a surprisingly comfortable and competent dancer, and Kelly was pleased. She had learned how to dance due to her attendance at multiple military balls in her youth, but she was a poor dancer, and having him lead the way as cleanly as he did helped to ease some of her tension.

"So what do we know about the patron." He asked cutting them quickly left past another dancing couple.

"Not much, all we know is we received an anonymous donation of about 500 billion credits to the UNSC protection fund , and an invitation to this party. Of course based on their patronage it made sense though we were obviously worried that it was going to be some sort of trap to get all the major human leaders in place at once and eliminate them before anything could be done."

Adam swung her around with a swishing of cloth, "That it?"

"As far as we can tell."

"And how do we know for sure that this isn't a trap?"