Evan Currie - Heirs of Empire

Lydia sighed, but frankly she’d also been wondering how the hell he’d done that.

“He’s been overprotective in his own way … well, for a while,” she said finally. “Now that we’re the last two of our family left, I guess it’s gotten even worse.”

“Yeah,” Dusk whispered, “I guess I get that.”

Lydia saw Dusk sneak a peek across the hold to where Mikael was also watching the fight.

Lydia nodded. “I imagine you do.”

Metal clashed on metal as blade met staff with ringing reports that echoed off the hold of the Andros . Mira had stepped up her attacks as she hammered Brennan with a flurry of blows he just barely managed to knock back. She was grinning the whole time, the entire affair really nothing more than a light workout for her, as the boy wasn’t capable of really pushing her capacity. She hadn’t even gone enhanced during the whole event, even though she admitted privately that he wasn’t a total loss.

Abruptly, Mira broke contact and leapt back. Her blade whipped around her wrist as she flipped it casually, letting it retract into the sheath form before sliding it smoothly into her gun belt.

“Not bad,” she said, then added, “for a brat.”

Brennan panted as he leaned on his staff, glowering at her.

“You were trying to kill me!”

“Not hardly, kid, though if I’d thought you were slacking, I’d have given you a nice scar to impress the ladies and remind you that a fight is no place to laze about.”

Brennan straightened up and lifted the staff off the ground, letting it hang loose in his hand. He was startled as it suddenly retracted into its own sheath, as hers had, and after a moment of looking at it he slowly slipped the Armati into his belt.

“I could hear it,” he said finally, “the whispers.”

“Good. Then we can really get started,” Mira told him with a smile that sent chills up his spine.

Partly out of genuine interest, but mostly in the vain hope that he’d be able to distract her, Brennan blurted out a question that had been at the back of his mind for a long time.

“Is that how you can track and deflect blast bolts?”

Mira paused, her head cocked slightly to one side. “Your brother, I presume?”

Brennan nodded. “I saw him in training.”

Mira nodded, understanding. “The short answer is no. We can’t track bolts from a lase blaster. That’s physically impossible.”

“But I’ve seen it!”

“No, you saw something else,” Mira said, considering her words. “While a lase blast doesn’t quite travel at the speed of light, it’s close enough so that by the time you saw the bolt flash and your brain recognized the energy, it would be too late.”

Brennan scowled. “Then how?”

“We watch the blaster itself, the eyes of our opponent,” she said. “Just before someone decides to kill another person, you can read their intent in how they stand, how their eyes narrow. From there it’s just math to determine shot vectors. That’s an oversimplified explanation, of course, but that’s the way we do it. If you aren’t already moving to intercept the blast before it’s fired, then you don’t have a chance.”

Brennan blinked, not having expected that. “Oh.”

He looked down at the Armati in his hand. “I thought it was the weapon.”

Mira nodded, face serious now. “I know. There’s so much we don’t know about the Armati. Even among the Cadre, they’re legendary. They were created long before we were born … some say before we came”—she looked around the hold of the ship, but her eyes weren’t focused on anything in particular—“before we came here,” she finished after a moment.

“Here? The Andros ?”

“No, the empire. This place,” she said. “We’re not from here. It’s not taught much today, as it’s ancient history. The legends say that we came from someplace very different. There were no burning skies there, and they say that the sun went away for twelve hours of every twenty-four.”

Brennan snorted, then burst out laughing. “That’s insane. Where would it go?”

“I don’t know. The legends aren’t clear on that,” Mira said, chuckling with him. “A lot of the old texts were destroyed long ago; most of what we have in the archives are fragmentary … unclear. They said that there was a time each day called ‘night,’ when the sun would vanish and lights called stars would appear. It was a very different place.”

“Apparently,” Brennan said dryly, not believing it for a moment.

“At any rate,” Mira continued, not interested in trying to convince him, as it wasn’t relevant to the discussion, “the Armati are a leftover from those days, and a great war. One we lost, and were then forced to flee.”

Brennan sobered. He couldn’t remember any tales of the empire losing a war. They’d been the major power in the region—hell, the only real power—for as long as the history books existed, it seemed. There were wars they declined to fight, such as the small kingdoms his father had left to squabble among themselves, but no war that, once engaged, had not ended in the empire’s favor.

“The Armatis are, possibly, the finest masterworks in the empire,” she said, “and they’re priceless relics of our forgotten heritage. Your brother entrusted you with his Bene, and in the absence of any empire I recognize, I don’t see fit to question his judgment. Corian, on the other hand, would kill hundreds for less than that weapon on your belt. Guard it well, and it will guard you and yours in turn.”

Brennan nodded. “Thanks.”

“Don’t thank me yet. We’ve got a lot more work to do.” Mira grinned evilly at him. “Now that I’ve seen what you need to work on, we can get started.”

“Oh joy.” Brennan rolled his eyes. “And what do I need to work on?”

“Everything.”

Three days after the repairs had been completed on the Andros and two days after Brennan’s training had begun, he found himself standing on deck as they sailed the second wind layer, heading up spin along the path tracked by the Great Islands.

Brennan loved the open skies, and though he preferred to be at the controls of a smaller skimmer, there was a lot to say about walking the deck of a large ship under sail. You could see all the way to the edge of the mist in every direction, and even farther if you looked up over the endless shroud that obscured the world.

He was trying to imagine the world Mira had told him about, looking up into the sky and seeing blackness dotted by small lights. It was so absurd.

Above him the sun shone steadily, without the flicker induced by atmosphere in the lower skies, a halo around it obscuring that section of the sky. Beyond the halo, however, he could see the rich blues and greens that made up the real sky. At this altitude, he could even just make out the dark squared-off grid that seemed to measure everything with regularity.

Brennan laughed.

Legends. What nonsense.

The world and the universe were what you could see. Maybe there was something beyond it, but what did it matter? The empire mattered. Family mattered. The endless sky mattered.

Everything else?

None of it was worth the time spent wondering about it.

“You look like someone hung you off the back of a hyper train and left you there for the whole trip.”

Brennan turned, relaxing marginally when he recognized Kennick approaching.

“I don’t feel much off from that,” he admitted. “Haven’t seen you around much.”

“Been working third shift. You usually sleep then,” the former legion man said. “Heard you’ve been training with the captain.”