Evan Currie - Heirs of Empire

It frightened her, just a little, to realize that particular thought made sense to her.

Ugh. I’m starting to think like my brother.

“Do you really think it’s smart to hang around … them?” she asked, looking askance at the crew as they went about their business.

“Sure, why not?” Mik asked with a shrug. “They’re good sorts.”

Dusk sighed but knew her brother well enough to know that he wasn’t going to be turned from his path.

“Did you come for something, Dusk?”

“Just looking for you, Mik,” she told him. “I felt the ship turn and it woke me up.”

“Ah …” Mik nodded. “The guys were talking about that. Captain has a lead on a buyer for the stuff they raided from the depot.”

“The ‘guys’?” Dusk asked, amused at how quickly the crew of a pirate vessel—albeit a relatively friendly one—had become “the guys.”

“You have a better name for them?”

That, she had to admit, she did not.

When Lydia shivered as she stepped out on the open deck, it was only partially from the cold.

The image of the height they were at was so unreal that she didn’t have quite the same problems with it as she did when flying with Brennan, but she knew just how high they were and that was enough. Even so, she needed the air. It had grown stale within the ship, though she was aware that was mostly in her head.

The winds cut low over the curve of the deck, racing across as the Andros tucked in behind the gleaming light sails. The Andros was a midsize skimmer, big for a private yacht but small by military standards. But it was large enough that instead of using wings, the ship was designed as a lifting body in total. It wasn’t much, but combined with the control surfaces embedded across the gleaming hull, it allowed the nimble vessel to maneuver tightly in conjunction with, or independent of, its sails.

That meant that there was little shelter on deck, as the lines of the ship were designed to facilitate airflow more than comfort. But the air was crisp and clean, and she’d felt too cooped up inside. It reminded her of the palace at times, only in the worst ways possible.

Lydia was only mildly surprised to find that Brennan was already on deck instead of below with his Naga, but she was more taken aback to find him standing behind the wheel of the skimmer. The goofy grin on his face … now that didn’t surprise her in the least.

“Please tell me someone is watching him,” she begged, not really talking to anyone in particular.

A low chuckle caused her to turn and spot the skipper leaning on a rail. Lydia flushed a little in the cold wind.

“You may relax, Miss Scourwind,” Mira told her. “I have Gas watching over him.”

Lydia followed the woman’s nod and noted that the large man was indeed standing fairly close and shooting the occasional glance over to where Brennan was handling the ship. She couldn’t help but let out a little breath of relief.

She loved her brother, she really did. She just didn’t trust him to know his limits in a skimmer of any sort.

“We’ve a sale lined up for the kit we raided,” Mira said conversationally.

“Oh?” Lydia asked neutrally, uncertain why she was being told. For all her name was worth at the moment, she might as well be cargo on this run.

“I’m going to have Brennan fly me in for the initial meet.”

That caused Lydia to stiffen and pay attention.

“Pardon me?” Lydia’s tone was as cold as the biting wind that blew between them, and her gaze had narrowed on the skipper like the focus of a lase blast.

Mira had the nerve to smile blandly at her, igniting a sharp, cold fury in Lydia.

“I need a pilot,” she shrugged casually. “And he’s willing.”

“You need a pilot like my family needs another former Cadre member getting us killed, one by one,” Lydia hissed coldly.

That got Mira’s attention, and the casual smirk was now gone as she pushed off the rail and lifted herself to her full height. Barely into her twenties, Delsol was one of the youngest Cadrewomen ever, but she was still full grown and towered over Lydia as she stepped closer.

“Watch your mouth, princess,” she returned flatly. “I’ll take a lot from you, but no one compares me to him .”

Lydia wasn’t in a mood to back down, regardless of how much she was outclassed by size or other factors. She stepped right into Delsol’s personal space and tilted her head back to glower at the taller woman.

“I am Lydia Scourwind, Cadrewoman Delsol. Whatever the situation we find ourselves in, remember that. I’ll not have you getting my brother killed on some whim.”

The two glared at each other for a long moment before Mira suddenly grinned and barked an amused laugh.

“Some of the Scourwind steel in you after all, then? Good. You’ll need it,” Mira said as she stepped back to clear some space between them. “Since you asked so nicely , I’ll tell you why Brennan’s flying me. The sale is to a loyalist group, and the contact man is William Everett.”

Lydia settled but looked puzzled for a moment. “Why not take in the Andros , then?”

“Multiple reasons”—Delsol shrugged—“including the possibility that maybe it’s someone faking Everett’s recognition ciphers. I’m not going to risk both of you at the meet without confirmation.”

“Then I will go,” Lydia insisted.

“You can’t fly like it’s your second nature, and you’re not much for gunning either,” Delsol reminded her blithely. “Also, you’re the next in line for the throne, not your brother. No, Brennan will fly me in his little Naga. You’ll join later at the transshipment point.”

Lydia scowled openly again, but she didn’t get as angry as she had before. There was, truthfully, a lot of sense to what the Cadrewoman was saying this time.

“Fine, but I do not like this.”

Mira snorted, clearly amused. “Miss Scourwind … what, in all of this, is there to possibly like ?”

Lydia had no answer for that.

William Everett stood alone in the clearing where they’d agreed to meet, the God Wall looming at his back, all the empire laid out before him—all that could be seen, at least, until the endless mist swallowed it up in the distance.

In most places in the empire, on a particularly clear day you could see over a hundred miles in any given direction before the atmospheric haze swallowed the light. Here, with the wall to his back, it was hard to imagine that the whole of the empire lay in front of him, whether he could see it or not. Few places existed where the sum total of the empire could be laid out at your feet.

His reverie was broken when a section of the sky seemed to move, and he shifted his focus to spot the aquamarine sails of an oncoming skimmer as it closed in on his position.

This must be the Fire Naga the reports mentioned, William thought as he watched the sails grow.

Unlike civilian projector sails, military models had always been shades of blue, gray, or even black in certain specific cases. It was costly to retune the frequencies of the sails, due to the need to maintain a consistent vibrational link between photons, so most military skimmers tended to use variations on blue to match the skies.

Some used browns or greens, but only those that expected to fly low and slow. Darker colors were only used for special operations when a skimmer would pace one of the Great Islands into an area, literally hiding in the shadows they cast across the land.

The Fire Naga’s handler approached cautiously, coming in slower than normal and practically standing the old Naga on its sails in an impressive maneuver that held the fighter in one place for several minutes as the occupants scanned the area.