Evan Currie - Heirs of Empire

Brennan sighed, grabbing a rag to clean his hands. “Not a lot more to do while repairs are being made. You’re the one who decided you wanted to hide out with this group.”

Lydia rolled her eyes. “That’s no excuse to become a recluse. Besides, she’s looking for you.”

“She who?” he asked.

“She, the captain of this ship.”

The new voice startled them all, and Brennan jumped the highest, as the voice had come from directly behind him. He turned to see the Cadrewoman leaning back against the airframe of the Naga, idly checking her fingernails for dirt.

“Stop doing that!” he growled.

“Start noticing me when I walk up, then,” she countered, only then raising her head to look lazily at him. “I have no idea what Bene sees in you.”

Brennan’s eyes narrowed. “Who?”

“Really, really don’t see it.” She shook her head, stepping away from the Naga. “Your brother’s Armati. Bene, that’s her name.”

Brennan’s hand went automatically to the small of his back, where he kept the last thing his brother had ever given him.

Bene.

He tasted the name in his mind and whispered it so softly that even he couldn’t hear it, but he could feel the name on his tongue, and it felt right.

“I told you if you came with me, I’d train you to use her,” Mira said, “and I keep my word. We start today.”

“What? Wait a second …”

“No, no more seconds. We start today,” she repeated. “The ship lifts off in three hours. Meet me here in four. Don’t be late.”

With that, the former Cadrewoman walked off, leaving the four teens gaping at her as she left.

“Sorry, Bren. I tried to warn you,” Lydia said, shrugging.

Brennan sighed, wiping the sweat from his face. “Yeah, well, maybe she’ll have something useful to show me.”

“The captain seems very … strong?” Dusk offered tentatively.

Brennan chuckled. “She’s Cadre. Strong is one of the requirements. I just don’t much like the Cadre.”

“How come, mate?” Mik asked casually, curious but only mildly interested as he leaned on the Naga.

“We grew up around Cadre personnel,” Lydia answered for him. “They took both our father and brother as members. We rarely saw either of them, but there were always Cadre around. They may be great warriors, but many of them were pretty bad people.”

Brennan sighed. “Like anywhere else, any other group, they had good and bad in them. But even our brother—I didn’t have a lot of respect for him.”

“Bren!” Lydia blurted, shocked. “Kayle was a good man!”

“Kayle was Cadre.” Brennan scowled. “He was part of that damned brotherhood. Maybe only a few of them were really bad, but the rest covered for them. It took a monster like Corian before anyone would even whisper that maybe the almighty Cadre were actually human. Even Kayle wouldn’t speak against his fellows, and you know as well as I do that he saw them do things no citizen would get away with.”

Lydia was silent, looking down.

“They’re all guilty, as far as I’m concerned,” Brennan said. “If you cover up a crime for someone, you committed the crime.”

“Aren’t you being a little harsh?” Mik asked, puzzled by the anger simmering in Brennan’s voice.

Brennan leveled a glare at him that could have killed in another world, another time.

“No.”

Brennan tossed the rag down and rubbed his face and hair, cooling down a little.

“Look, I’m sorry. I’m getting all fired up over something that doesn’t matter anymore,” he said finally, eyes glancing briefly toward Lydia. “I’m just really torn on the Cadre, OK? There’s history.”

“Apparently,” Mik said, holding up his hands. “Not my business. I don’t need to know.”

Brennan nodded. “Thanks.”

“The captain saved us. She didn’t have to,” Lydia reminded her brother.

“We didn’t need her. We could have gotten away clean without engaging a destroyer squadron.”

“Not if we wanted to help the refugees.”

Brennan sighed. Maybe she had a point. He didn’t know.

“Look, I’m not going to insult her or anything,” he said finally. “I loved Kayle. He was my brother. I just didn’t like what he did with his life. For all that, I want to understand him. I won’t put on that uniform, but he gave me this … Bene. I’ll listen to what she has to say.”

“It’s time.”

Kennissey looked up, surprised to see his old friend standing there, but only slightly.

“You’ve found them?” he asked, leaning forward eagerly.

“I know where they are, one of them at least,” William Everett said. “Start the gathering. I’ll track them down now that I have a lead.”

Kennissey frowned. “Are you certain? It’ll expose some of our operations. If you’re wrong …”

“Mira Delsol has them,” William said. “She’s Cadre. They’ll be easy to find now that I know what I’m looking for.”

“How do you know?”

“She flew the Scourwind colors beside her own preferred banner.” William smirked, considering how iconic the black banner with the crossed Armati and blaster had become, since the battle had been witnessed by thousands.

It was a black mark on Corian and his new administration. Copies of the flag were already appearing across the empire, fired by the victory over Imperial destroyers as much as by Mira’s relief supply delivery.

Dropping the supplies in the midst of a battle at the wrong side of two to one odds was a nice touch, William admitted to himself.

Crediting the act to the twins (or one of them, at least in his mind) had gone a long way to destroying the fragile illusion that Corian was still answering to the Scourwind legacy. People wanted to see the emperor, and the pressure was mounting. In one move, Delsol had accomplished more than he and the loyalists had in months. If William weren’t so impressed, frankly, he’d be beyond pissed and frustrated.

He still rather wished that she would check in with someone in the loyalist network and start damned well coordinating with the others. She was making all kinds of waves on her own, but if his allies had a little warning, they could turn those waves into an alluvion flood that would swamp everything in their path.

Particularly as she held the final key he needed to launch the counteroffensive.

“Delsol is a Cadrewoman of some reputation,” he added after a moment. “She wouldn’t fly the Scourwind colors lightly. She has one of them, at least, if not both.”

“Then you’re right; we need to find her,” Kennissey said, “and before Corian does. He’s put a significant reward on her head, if you hadn’t heard.”

“Last I checked it was ten thousand dinars.”

“You’re out of date.” Kennissey smirked. “He bumped it to a hundred thousand a few days ago, presumably after that stunt. Do you think he knows?”

“That she has the twins?” William considered that, wondering himself. “I think we have to assume that he does.”

“Then it’s a race.”

“One we cannot lose.”

“Sire, the unrest is growing stronger.”

Corian ignored the man. He wasn’t telling him anything that he couldn’t see for himself. The Scourwind colors had been flown in battle, against his forces. That was enough to open a wedge of doubt that he’d been struggling to close.

It’s too early for this!

He only had solid support from perhaps a third of the Senate. Another third was still cleanly in the loyalist camp, and their names were on his lists … oh yes. The rest were unknowns. Either they were far enough from the center of the empire that he had little intelligence on them, or they were sneakier and more cunning than the rest of their peers.