Evan Currie - Heirs of Empire

Shock turned to panic then, and few people remembered much else from that point on.

“Squads deploying, captain. We’ve heard from our allies in the Senate. They’ve ordered their own forces forward.”

Corian nodded. “Good. That will keep any units outside the city from responding. They’ll be too busy with them. Have our men secure the air defenses first. I want to call in our backup.”

“Aye, captain.”

Corian was standing on the foredeck again, looking over the smoking city below as the wind plucked at his coat and hair. He was keeping his weight on his good leg, the prosthetic now a deep irritation that he would be glad to be done with once he had time for proper care.

Until then, however, he would endure.

“You should be belowdecks, captain,” Jessup said softly at his side. “You can command the action from there.”

“No, I’ll stand where I can be seen,” he said simply. “If there’s a sharpshooter on the other side capable of making a kill shot on me here, they’ve earned it.”

She shook her head, clearly disapproving, but said nothing more.

He turned from the scene, stalking toward where the defense guns were firing. “Let me know when we’ve taken the city. I will lead the assault on the palace personally.”

Kayle held his issued blaster in his off-hand as he waved to a squad moving into position to reinforce the primary access to the Cadre facilities.

“Set up the squad heavies to catch the door in a cross,” he ordered. “Bastards have to come through here if they want to secure our command center. We’ve got a call out for reinforcements. Stop them here. Make them pay for every inch!”

The Cadre nodded, backed up by dozens of men-at-arms for each one of them. They were putting heavy weapons into place so as to hammer to atoms anything that dared stick its head through that passage.

While the heavy weapons were being set up, Kayle turned to where William was following his example and coordinating another group.

“Does anyone have any idea what the hell happened?” Kayle demanded, hoping that William had heard something.

Anything would do.

William just shook his head. “Nothing. Looks like a precision kinesis strike, but I didn’t think anything existed that could do this.”

Kayle nodded grimly, understanding what William was talking about.

Until only minutes earlier, he’d have personally sworn that there wasn’t a weapon in existence capable of the damage whatever had hit the hangar had done. The palace was next to invulnerable, the same as all the ancient Redoubts that dotted the Imperial Sector.

Someone just shifted the balance of power in a big way.

“General!”

Kayle half turned, noting an armsman running up to the general as the man was trying to coordinate responses as best he could.

“What is it, son?”

“We’ve reports of fighting all through the palace, but it’s not coming our way!”

The general scowled. “That makes no sense. If they want to take the command and control, now that they hit the primary, they have to come through us.”

“Sir, the Imperial Family isn’t within our lines.”

Kayle felt like a hammer had just struck him between the eyes when he heard the exchange, his throat running dry as he looked around.

“William,” he croaked out, a plea evident in his pained tone.

“Go. We have this,” William said. “I’ll have a squad on your heels within five minutes.”

Kayle nodded gratefully and broke into a run as he sprinted out of the Cadre facilities and headed for the Imperial residency as fast as his feet would carry him.

Brennan picked himself up off the floor of his room, shaken almost as badly as the room itself had been a few moments earlier.

What in the burning sky was that?

He didn’t think anything could shake the palace like that. In fact he was pretty certain that nothing should be able to. He walked to his window, looking out, and his jaw dropped when he saw the smoke and fires burning.

Is that shooting? What’s going on?

Brennan checked the information broadcasts, but they seemed to be just as confused as he was. He shut off the projector and took a few breaths, trying to treat this like a situation in his skimmer.

Fear is good; panic is not. Be afraid, but address the fear.

He thought back to his perfect older brother’s request.

What the burning sky did Kayle know about this?

For the moment that didn’t matter.

Lydia.

Brennan burst out of his rooms and skidded as he turned down the corridor, heading for his sister’s suite at a dead run. Kayle was a pain in the ass, but one thing Brennan knew was that his older brother didn’t joke around when it came to family safety.

The halls were chaotic, but he recognized most of the faces. People with clearance to be in the residency wing were relatively few, so Brennan and Lydia got to know the new staff as they showed up.

Brennan ignored them. He was almost to his sister’s suites when another explosion rocked the floor, sending him crashing to the ground for a second time.

Smoke poured into the hall, rolling over him as he struggled back to his feet. Coughing, Brennan covered his mouth and nose as he staggered the rest of the way, half-blind in the smoke, until he shouldered open the door to Lydia’s suite and stumbled inside.

“Lyd!”

He looked around for his sister as he kicked the door shut and rubbed the smoke out of his eyes. “Lyd!”

“Bren?” Lydia peered around the door from her private rooms. “What’s going on?”

“I don’t know, but we have to get out of here. There’s a fire or something,” Brennan said. “The halls are filled with smoke.”

“Bren, you know a fire’s impossible,” Lydia told him, confused. “Nothing in here burns!”

That wasn’t strictly true, of course, as there were tapestries and furniture that might burn. In general, however, Brennan knew that his sister was right. The walls were metal, as were the floors, ceilings, and hell, damn near everything. There were no systems in the palace that could cause a fire, except possibly the armory or the hangar where they kept reaction craft and fuel, but those were on the other side of the structure.

But there was damn sure a fire around the corner that he’d seen with his own eyes and choked on with his own lungs.

“Just trust me, Lyd,” Bren growled. “We’ve got to find a safe place. Kayle will know what to do.”

“We’re going to Kayle? He’ll be in the Cadre wing.” Lydia perked up. “I’ll just grab a cloak.”

Brennan rolled his eyes but didn’t object as his sister ducked back into her rooms for a moment. She reappeared seconds later, wrapping a dark cloak around her shoulders.

“Ready? Good. Come on,” he said, taking her hand.

The smoke in the halls was subsiding, much to his relief, but the air was still acrid and smelled of chemicals he didn’t recognize. Brennan led his sister down the direct path to the central part of the castle, where they’d be able to head for the Cadre wing. They hadn’t gotten far before odd sounds started to echo back through the halls to them.

“What are those sounds?” Lydia asked, puzzled.

“Blaster cartridges, lasing,” Brennan answered, having heard the sound more times than he’d cared to in the past.

Like his brother, Brennan had been trained by some of the best martial trainers in the empire. Blaster courses had been fun, at first, but they eventually just boiled down to mind-numbing boredom. He was a decent hand with a blaster, on the training field at least, but Brennan never had much interest in or use for them.