Evan Currie - Heirs of Empire

Of course, Brennan couldn’t bring himself to be really regretful of the new way of doing things. Some of the fastest technological changes in the empire’s history had been in the last hundred cycles or so, since production had opened up in various duchies and they’d begun competing against one another.

For the moment, however, he had other things to concern himself with.

“It’ll do,” he finally said. “Let’s get a condenser on board, then figure out what we’re doing with the damn thing.”

Lydia nodded.

They had real work to do.

The other two siblings, standing forgotten behind them, looked at one another and then at the twins and spoke in near unison.

“Who are you?”

William grimaced as he looked over the sheer devastation in front of him. He didn’t know what had gone down here, and it was clear that the empire didn’t know much either.

Corian’s forces were swarming the area. The huge blast cloud had drawn every free squad within a hundred miles, but they were clearly confused and looking for evidence. Since he’d been directed here by information he’d lifted about the location of a major supply transfer to a loyalist brigade, he supposed that the destruction wasn’t good news for him.

Still, if Corian’s forces don’t know what happened, then something very strange is going on here.

He settled in to wait for shadow fall. When the next Great Island passed over the region, he would sneak into the area and gather more information.

Mira glanced up as the shadow of the Great Island crossed over her face, noting the time and the position of the Andros . They were all belowdecks now, with the ship sealed tight against the cold and air loss of the higher altitude they were cruising at.

The third-level wind streams were blowing nearly a thousand miles an hour; the drag of the lithe vessel they were flying dropped their cruise to a little under seven hundred. They were headed upturn, into the flow of the Great Islands and away from the capital and Corian’s strongest force. After the betrayal, she knew that her crew needed a respite, but that wouldn’t last too long.

They needed to eat as well, and the payment they’d received for the last clean delivery would run thin soon enough. She needed another score to keep the Andros flying and all of their necks out of Corian’s nooses.

It was time to take a gamble.

“Gas,” she called, gesturing the engineer over.

“Yes, my lady?”

“Set our course for here.” She tapped the map.

He glanced at it, puzzled. “Of course, my lady, but why?”

“We need a score, and frankly I don’t want to take the Andros in against another train this soon,” she said. “Corian will be using them for bait after the last one.”

The engineer permitted himself a proud smile. “We took a full supply train in sight of a tower, my lady, and we didn’t have to fire a shot to do it. He’ll have to put on a show of strength. He’s lost too much face already.”

“I know it. That’s why we’re going here.” She tapped the map again.

“An old supply depot, my lady? There won’t be much there worth taking. However, if you want …”

She smiled, teeth glittering in the half light of the shadow, and corrected him. “A Cadre stash is under the depot.”

Gaston froze. “Really?”

“Yes, and Corian probably doesn’t know about it.” She was rather proud that she hadn’t flinched at the word “probably.” “No one knew them all, and it was opened just after he … well …”

Gaston nodded, knowing she was referring to Corian’s first attempt at an uprising, which had resulted in several thousand people dying horrible deaths.

“At any rate, he won’t have known about this one,” she said. “So we’re going to see if we can’t liberate it.”

“Won’t he know of it by now, from the servers, my lady?”

She shook her head. “I’ve been watching his movements. There are … other targets he would have struck, had he taken those servers intact. No, Corian failed to take the Cadre’s database.”

“That’s good news for us, then, I suppose.”

She snorted. “That’s good news for the empire. Not everything in those servers was as benign as the location of weapon and supply caches. Some of the things I personally added in my first cycle as Cadre …”

She trailed off, shaking her head.

“No, it doesn’t bear thinking on Corian having access.”

Gaston looked at her, clearly curious. “What do you mean?”

She glanced at him, a haunted look crossing her face. “Don’t ask me for answers you truly do not want to learn, Gaston. Let me just say that this world within which we live is … more than it appears.”

Mira shook away the old memories and nodded to her engineer and the ship’s primus. “Have our course changed. Let’s see if that cache is still intact.”

He nodded. “But you said Corian doesn’t have the location?”

“Corian is hardly the only former Cadre running around, Gas,” she said with a laugh, “and I know of half a handful of others who know the location as well. Most likely it’ll be intact, however. The closest caches to the palace would have been raided that same night, but none of our number would risk trying after Corian secured the palace, for fear that he captured the servers.”

Gaston nodded, understanding.

“Very well, my lady. I’ll change course immediately and tighten to the wind. We’ll be there before light fall.”

Imperial patrols were moving all around him as William knelt in the center of the carnage, wreckage strewn all about him. He picked up a small device and turned it over, considering what it meant.

Someone had wired the stolen weapons to blow, that much was clear. It hadn’t been a single explosive that sent up that unmistakable rolling cloud, but rather the cumulative detonation of an entire cargo train’s munitions shipment. He was relieved at that, as it meant that the explosion hadn’t been a warning that tactical weapons were now in play and might be used against the capital or other cities.

The device in his hand, however, told him a great deal more than just that.

The explosion had been set off using a Cadre trick, something not many people knew outside the ranks and even fewer would be able to actually pull off.

Apparently not all of my comrades took the orders to keep their heads down seriously.

That certainly put an interesting wrinkle in the situation.

A rogue Cadreman could certainly tear the living hell out of things, but William doubted that he’d do more than merely tighten the support Corian had with the Senate. He pocketed the device and stood up, looking around.

The destruction of this much material would slow Corian slightly, of course, but it would make the Senate and the corporations deliriously happy as well. Corian would need to replace it, and that meant the corporations got a big order and the senators got their kickbacks.

In the end, the only people who’d suffer would be the citizens of the empire, who’d wind up paying for it … in one way or another.

William gritted his teeth.

Now he had to track down the rogue and set him straight. The timing was delicate, and you couldn’t just wage a war of attrition with the entire empire , damn it. Sure, if you weren’t caught and executed you might eventually bring the empire down, but you’d crash the whole system. That would destroy everything they needed to preserve. This war had to end with a clean decapitation, a surgical strike against the traitors. Anything else would just be too damned costly.