Evan Currie - Heirs of Empire

The sails caught the winds a thousand yards up, pulling the Andros along and leaving a deep furrow in the ground behind her as the big blasters roared from her gunports. A luxury yacht suddenly turning out to be a heavily armed gunship tended to attract an inordinate amount of attention.

The Andros was picking up speed, heading in her direction, when it took off. Barely three yards off the ground, it flashed over her head and she casually jumped up and caught a grip on one of the lower ports. The shock was nearly enough to dislocate her arm, but Mira ignored it as she pulled herself up hand over hand. She tipped her head to the surprised face of one of the gunners, and then heaved herself over the foredeck and landed in a sprawl.

Footsteps approached, but she ignored them for a moment as she came down from enhancement.

“That was shaving things a tad closer than I’d like to see in the future, my lady,” Gaston told her as he helped her to her feet.

“Wasn’t the plan.”

“Aye, and that’s the problem,” he countered dryly. “We should have known one of those types was going to turn on us once the tide was clearly in Corian’s favor.”

She sighed, nodding.

It was a glaring oversight on her part to believe that the loyalists would be … loyal.

“Well, we know better now,” she said tiredly. “We’ll do better.”

“True enough, but it’s a pity they got the shipment.”

A white flash erupted behind them, and a moment later a thunderclap rocked the Andros . Gaston was thrown about, but Mira stood firmly planted on the deck. She straightened her back and lifted her jaw.

“I may not have seen the betrayal coming, Gaston,” she told him, “but I was prepared in the event of Corian’s forces overtaking us. Those traitorous bastards will not profit off our blood and sweat.”

Gaston and the crewmembers who were in earshot looked back at the cloud rolling across the sky and then at the skipper as she began her march back to the Andros ’s bridge.

“What now, my lady?”

Mira didn’t look back to see who’d asked the question. In this case it didn’t matter. It was what everyone wanted to know.

“Now we sail,” she said, “and we do what we do. Our empire may have fallen, but we haven’t. If we’re to be outlaws in this new world … then we will be legendary outlaws.”

She climbed up the steps to the flying bridge and stepped behind the wheel.

They were at a thousand yards and climbing. The wind was whipping across the deck as the gleaming light sails rode higher up into the stronger winds and the rippling black flag rolled out behind them.

She spun the wheel, and the Andros keeled over in instant response. “Let them all go to the burning skies. We’ll see to our own.”

“We really shouldn’t be here,” said Mikael.

“Shouldn’t?” Dusk whispered to her brother. “Forget that. How are we here?”

The twins just smiled and didn’t respond as they led the way into the quiet facility.

The garrison warehouse was about as empty as Brennan had ever imagined one could be. The large facility only had a token guard at the front doors, but that was wholly inadequate to keep out ruffians, to say nothing of an experienced system slicer like his sister and a dedicated troublemaker like himself. It didn’t hurt that they had the advantage of growing up among the military; knowing their routines made slipping past almost too easy.

Half their tutors had spent goodly portions of their lives in buildings just like this.

“We’re going to need transport,” Brennan said as he glanced down one wide aisle inside the large storehouse. “We couldn’t carry a condenser between us, not far anyway.”

“I know. Vehicle storage is that way.” Lydia gestured, leading the way.

The other two glanced at each other helplessly, then followed their new … compatriots? The word didn’t seem fitting, but nothing else worked either. They walked deeper into the warehouse.

The four stepped through a small door and into a massive room with vehicles parked in lines. Brennan whistled softly, grinning as he recognized some of the models he was seeing.

“These aren’t current issue, are they?”

“No, this isn’t an important township,” Lydia said. “They only stock reserve equipment here. Why?”

He pointed to a mottled green skimmer with stubby wings and a garishly snarling open mouth with long jagged teeth painted along the line where the canopy fitted to the front.

“That’s a Fire Naga. They haven’t flown those in twenty-odd cycles,” he said. “A stripped-down Naga holds the skimmer speed record, just under the thousand-mile-per-hour mark.”

That wasn’t the fastest speed anything had ever reached, obviously. Reactor craft could triple that easily, and some vessels could manage much faster above the atmosphere. Quantum tractors could also hit incredible speeds, but for a light-sail skimmer, that was an amazing speed, especially since skimmers didn’t run out of fuel in a couple hours. Nor did they take several days to reach their maximum speed.

The empire currently fielded the heavier Kosa Warrior in the place of the old Naga, but there weren’t too many skimmer flyers alive who didn’t want a Naga certification, in his book.

Lydia rolled her eyes. “Put your eyes back in your head, Bren. That’s more than a little too flashy for our needs, not to mention light on cargo room.”

Brennan sighed, knowing it was the truth.

“This is just about perfect,” Lydia said as she walked up to a squat, ugly ground car that made Brennan groan.

“A Mule, Lyd? Really? I can run faster!”

It was a slight exaggeration but not by nearly as much as Brennan wished. The legion Mule was a workhorse of the service, but hadn’t been seen in the field for far longer than even the Naga. Brennan racked his mind for what he could remember about them, but really only came up with the fact that they used some of the very first power capacitors to push the rig.

It was all power, no speed, and built to haul mountains, if that was what you wanted to do.

“I bet it’s been sitting here more than fifty cycles.” Brennan sighed, sliding the engine access panel back so he could have a look in.

“Can you get it running?”

“First generation power capacitors … nothing leaking.” He shrugged. “Hit the power switch.”

Lydia hopped behind the controls of the old Mule and did as he’d told her. Lights in the panel in front of her snapped to life immediately. “I have power here.”

“Still holds a charge,” Brennan muttered. “Either they’ve kept up the maintenance or, more likely, those old caps were built to last.”

In the early days of the empire, there hadn’t been much of a defense industry. The emperor owned the factories and employed the workers. Since then things had changed, and one of the benefits of more competition was that modern gear was usually topped within a few years by someone else with a better product. Unfortunately, a side effect Brennan was well acquainted with was that more modern gear had a built-in obsolescence factor.

You rarely got even ten years out of the new capacitors, though they held far more power than what the Mule was working with. He shook his head, more than a little impressed despite his distaste for the old ground car.

Fifty cycles if it’s been here a day, and it still holds a charge. Amazing.

He supposed that was what happened when the production team had no reason to design obsolescence into the device. They were paid much the same either way, and the emperor certainly wasn’t interested in charging himself for the same thing twice, unlike the companies currently supplying materials to the services.