Evan Currie - Heirs of Empire

The legion should be here already, but if these people are running from battles, then they could die before things get under control and anyone has time to wonder what happened to them, thought Lydia.

“Thank you,” the boy croaked out, collapsing to the ground and just sitting there as he panted for breath.

Lydia nodded simply. “Are you OK?”

“I’ll live,” he said tiredly, “for a while anyway.”

His eyes darted to one side, to the girl, and he moved to her in a flash.

“I’m fine,” the girl mumbled, pushing him back.

Lydia could hear the dry rasp in her voice. She pulled a waterskin from under her cloak and tossed it to the duo. “Here.”

They held it between them, stunned and disbelieving, transfixed by the flexible synthetic pouch holding the liquid. Lydia let them take turns drinking, turning back to Brennan, who was just now getting up and dusting himself off.

“That took you long enough,” she said dryly.

He tried to look nonchalant. “I wasn’t kidding about it being harder to leave them alive than otherwise,” he said as he watched the attackers straggle off.

He looked around, noting the stares they were now getting, and grimaced slightly.

“We’d best be moving, Lyd,” he said. “Too many folks eyeing us up.”

Lydia looked around and saw that some of the refugees were also eyeing up the young duo they’d just saved. She knew instantly that if they left them here, the pair would be considered easy pickings.

“You two shouldn’t stay here,” she finally said. “Join us, if you like.”

Brennan shot her an incredulous look, hissing softly, “Lyd …”

She didn’t look at him. Lydia had seen what she needed to see in this mess. The good, the bad, and the apathetic. The bad she would see on their knees, the good at her back, and the apathetic would awake or they would end here. She didn’t much care which.

She turned to Brennan and nodded, and the two of them started to walk away as the pair on the ground glanced at each other and then scrambled to their feet to follow.

William was a tired soul as he made his way back toward the capital. Since the coup he’d been running doggedly around the empire, both searching for the twins and fleeing pursuit. The new emperor—for that was certainly what Corian was—was no fool. He knew just how dangerous the Cadre would be to his rule, and he put every loyal man he had to task hunting down people just like William.

Between fleeing pursuit and hunting for the twins, William was trying to get some manner of organization into place for the resistance. It was rough going, for few people really understood just what had happened. If things continued as they were, then Corian would soon have full command of the empire and all the power held within.

Honestly, William wasn’t certain that Corian wouldn’t secure command no matter what happened. He’d managed to gain too much of an advantage in his opening move. Too many people flew to his banner. The Scourwind emperor and his true allies hadn’t realized just how much people had chafed under Edvard’s rule.

William expected that it had been the corporatist lobby that had thrown the final edge of weight to Corian’s side. Edvard hadn’t liked the way they did business, and he suspected that reopening the Imperial manufacturing group to handle military orders had been a step too far.

Edvard was possibly too much of an idealist for the position he’d held, though William found the idea of anyone considering the emperor an idealist to be almost hilarious. When he had a conviction, however, all the fires in the skies couldn’t turn him from it. William had himself argued with Edvard many times. They rarely saw perfectly eye to eye, but he’d served the family loyally because he knew that Edvard did what he believed best, damn the cost.

This time, perhaps, the cost had been his life.

And now William was left to pick up the pieces and perform at least one last service to the family.

First he had to figure out where the resistance was getting their supplies from. Someone was feeding them enough foodstuffs, water, and munitions to keep legions on the march, and they were doing it on extremely short notice.

Where are they getting all the legion specification ordinance? Corian must have locked down all the major supply depots. I would have.

“The Four Nineteen is inbound, tracking hot and normal on skyway nine.”

The station commander nodded as he lifted his drink to his lips and took a quiet draw on the hot liquid. The Four Nineteen was a regular commuter and transport train coming in from the capital—three hundred freight canisters, fifty-odd passenger capsules, and half a handful of mail and live cargo capsules all pulled by a single quantum-tractor rig.

The system wasn’t the fastest ever devised, but a q tractor would pull almost anything without flinching. The vehicle was locked into the skyway through subparticle entangling, and it would take a major act of the universe to shift it from its path.

Perched on a narrow spire that reached down to the ground, the tower was the local control hub for all traffic for three days’ travel in all directions. Situated just above the atmosphere from his station, the commander could see the world’s curve as it wrapped around him until finally vanishing into the haze.

The commander glanced over the numbers and nodded absently, starting to turn away to focus on other things, when a warning sound caught his attention.

“What’s that?”

“Proximity warning. We have a ship on a converging track, commander.”

His eyes flicked up, looking out the thickly armored translim shields that surrounded the control tower, searching for the intruder. “Warn them off.”

“Sent. No response.”

“Lens,” the commander ordered, hand out expectantly.

A slim chromatic glass device was dropped into his palm without hesitation, and he lifted it to his eyes, letting it seal itself to his face as designed. The internal optics went into action, picking up and highlighting traffic around the tower, but he was only interested in one craft.

There it is, he thought as the lens locked in and magnified the desired signal. It was a skimmer, a high atmo vessel that rode the extreme wind currents that existed about thirty miles above the surface of the world.

He swore, annoyed. “Get those fools on the box, damn it. They’ve deployed for full sail. One gust will send them right into someone else up here.”

“There’s still no response, commander.”

“Best call up emergency stations,” he ordered, “and contact the Guard. I want that damn fool’s head on a platter when this is over.”

“Yes, sir.”

He turned his focus back outward, wondering what the fool was playing at. Flying with full rigging into controlled aerospace was the height of stupidity. Even Guard flyers weren’t insane enough to try something like that.

Hathe below. It would take a Cadre pilot to even …

His thoughts trailed off as he looked up sharply, a sudden stab of genuine fear running through him as he strode forward and slammed a hand down on the station alert.

“Commander! What?”

“I want every guardsman converging on us, now !” he ordered. “Only two types of people fly like that. Cadre … and former Cadre.”

“The station just lit off their alarms.”

“Too late by far.” The captain smiled as she nodded. “Signal boarders, they’re clear to go.”

“Yes, ma’am.”

On the command deck of the high-atmo craft, she rose from her station and stepped back and out of the shelter of the partially enclosed cockpit. They were high enough over the world to require breathers, their ship skimming near the edge of the empty beyond where only ships with reactor or q-traction drives could go.