Evan Currie - Heirs of Empire

Corian would remember her name until the day he died; he had no doubt.

At every turn, it seemed, she was there to throw a stumbling block in his way. It was a perverse commentary on reality that one woman, no matter how competent, continually stood between him and his goals when armies had failed. He didn’t know if it were entirely intentional, couldn’t see how it could possibly be intentional, but Corian somehow knew that, intentional or not, he and Delsol had unfinished business to attend to.

Unfortunately, while his spies and informants had been unable to locate Delsol and her blasted corsair, they had found out that there was a new gathering of loyalist forces being marshaled.

He wasn’t particularly concerned. Thus far the loyalists had started off weak and grown only weaker and more disorganized, but it was yet another distraction.

He had to find her, then destroy this latest gathering, and once and for all locate the center of their organization, such as it was, and end it.

The Andros was cruising a little over four hundred miles per hour just below the second wind layer as Mira stepped on deck and nodded to the officer of the watch. He nodded back and stepped aside from the wheel as she took his place.

Strictly speaking, the Andros hardly needed a hand on the wheel. The ship was quite capable of cruising the winds autonomously, so long as they were settled into one of the three main jet streams that roared over the empire. In between those zones, however, you could find more efficient winds for the job, but they could also be less predictable and, for those times, a hand on the wheel was not merely a good idea but a necessary one.

More than that, though, it was custom to have someone at the helm and both a duty and a pleasure to stand watch on a ship in flight.

Mira herself preferred to command from the open bridge, looking forward over the decks and to the sails as they filled the sky above or below the lifting body of the ship. At their current altitude the temperature was chilled, but few people needed more than a light breather and some warm clothes to walk the decks, and she needed even less. Only in the very high atmo did Mira need a breather; part of her training with the Cadre and in mastering her Armati allowed her to more efficiently process oxygen than most.

It was a useful skill, but one a Cadre member and most knights could pull off. Her personal best for functioning entirely without oxygen was almost sixteen minutes, and it was far from the absolute record.

A record held by a civilian, no less.

“Skipper,” Gaston said as he walked over.

The engineer was wearing a light breather and heavy clothes and still looked rather uncomfortable in the lighter atmo they were flying through.

“What is it, Gas?” Mira asked, half smiling as she brought her mind back to the present.

“We’ve an offer on some of the items we pulled from the cache and depot,” Gaston said. “Came through loyalist channels.”

Mira snorted.

After the last encounter with the so-called loyalists, she wasn’t terribly eager to put her crew’s head in that particular noose again. Unfortunately, they were going to need hard currency soon, or they’d be forced to eat the supplies they’d raided.

Since they’d dumped all the actual food off with the refugees, that would be problematic.

“All right.” She nodded. “What’s on the list?”

“The expected items mostly,” Gaston said. “Lase cartridges in any available caliber; combat tech of basically any stripe. I think they heard about the fight with the cruisers, though.”

“Oh?”

“They requested MACs, rounds, the works.”

Mira snorted. “Not a chance. We’re keeping what we have. The kid probably saved our rears with that Naga and those guns. Besides, we don’t have enough to make it worth selling anyway.”

Gaston nodded. They’d grabbed cases of the munitions, certainly, but it wouldn’t last a unit of any size longer than the opening rounds of a real fight. It would probably keep a single Naga topped off for a while, though.

“The normal stuff we can sell, aside from keeping our own stores in good shape,” she said. “Send them a confirmation and get a location for a meet.”

“You got it, skipper.”

Dusk found herself wandering through the cargo hold of the Andros , amazed by the near constant commotion.

The Andros didn’t have a huge crew, but there always seemed to be someone working or training in the relatively large hold of the converted luxury yacht. She wasn’t certain what the space had originally been, though the mottled green-and-brown military skimmer Brennan had brought on board looked oddly natural where it was locked down, so she suspected that part of the area had been used for a personal skimmer before.

Now, much of the space had been gutted. While it had clearly been richly appointed at one time, the bulkheads were now bared to the wires, the only hint of the old finish seen around the corners where small bits still remained. The crew now had instant access to the control systems hardwired through the bulkheads, with far less mass weighing them down.

Dusk was looking for Mik. He’d taken to hanging around belowdecks with some of the rougher members of the Andros ’s crew. He worried her. She’d grown up with him watching over her almost as much as their parents had, but since the … well, camp and what had happened before, Mik had been even more obsessive.

She was therefore unsurprised when she found him at the makeshift sparring section drawn off on the composite deck plates, getting fighting tips from one of the less reputable men who crewed the cargo deck.

“Lead with the point,” the man said, holding up a wicked-looking knife so that the flat of the blade was parallel to the deck. “But remember to keep the angle so you’ll go between the ribs. You’ll glance off as easy as not if you grip the blade overhand, not to mention it’s easier to spot tells on someone holding a blade that way.”

Mik was nodding seriously as he twisted the blade in his own hand and jabbed the air a couple times while holding up his free hand to protect his own face and chest.

“Good, just like that. Practice what I told you, kid, and come talk to me later for more.” The man grinned toothily. “But for now I think your sister is looking for you.”

Mik looked around and spotted Dusk, waving to her before saying, “Thanks, man.”

“No problem. You kids are OK.”

Dusk waited for her brother to make his way over to her, eyebrow arched as she watched the friendly camaraderie he seemed to have established with the rough-looking crewman.

Mik had always been like that, though. She was more introverted, but he could make friends with almost anyone. Sometimes it pissed her off, honestly, but most of the time she couldn’t help but shudder a little at the idea of having people flock around her the way they seemed to flock around him.

She liked her peace and quiet.

Still, she had to worry about how easily he seemed to trust people. Especially in their current circumstances, it seemed like a bad idea.

“Who was that?” she asked, modulating her tone so as not to sound too accusing.

“Hmm?” Mik asked before glancing over his shoulder in slight surprise. “Oh him? That’s Burke.”

“First or last name?”

Mik frowned. “You know … I’m not sure. I saw him with that huge knife on his belt, so I asked him about it, and he showed me some tricks.”

Dusk shook her head. It seemed more than a little strange to get knife-fighting lessons from some guy you barely knew, on a known pirate ship no less. Of course, she might be the one who was a little strange in the current version of reality they were occupying. Perhaps, being that they were on a pirate ship after all, getting lessons in fighting was the normal thing to do.