Empire

  Syl grunted her assent, not trusting herself to speak without sobbing like a child. Ani looked steadily into her eyes, and Syl saw that her friend was crying too.

  “Like I said, I may not like you very much at the moment, Syl, but I love you with all my heart. I always have, I always will. You’re my true sister, for always. Right?”

  Syl nodded.

  “Of course,” she said. “And I love you. For always.”

  CHAPTER 17

  The small research shuttle commandeered by Paul and the others was built for surface exploration. While it had the capacity to travel beyond the atmosphere, it was a function really only to be used in the event of an emergency, when no other option was available and a larger craft stood ready and waiting to scoop it up. Its fuel supply was limited, and its offworld navigation systems were little better than peering through the cockpit window and judging direction by the stars. Steven piloted the shuttle toward the Envion largely by circumnavigating the small planet, relying on his memory of the destroyer’s original coordinates to bring the shuttle home.

  “There’s still no reply from the Envion,” said Paul.

  “Keep trying,” said Peris. “It’s out there somewhere.”

  He was worried, but trying not to show it.

  “We should be in sight within minutes,” said Steven.

  The shuttle’s scanners were strictly short range, and the Envion had not yet shown up on them. What Steven was seeing on the screen was debris, which was odd. No such debris had been apparent on the trip down to Torma.

  “What’s that?” asked Paul, noticing the blips on the screen.

  “Could be anything,” said Steven. “Meteor fragments, maybe.”

  They were drawing closer to the objects now. Paul thought he could even see some of them floating toward the shuttle.

  “They don’t look like meteors,” he said.

  “No,” Steven replied, “they don’t.”

  Peris was standing between them. His Illyri eyesight was keener than theirs, and they heard him draw a breath of shock, even pain.

  And then they saw it too.

  A body, spinning in space.

  A second corpse struck the shuttle while they were still trying to avoid the first. It came from the port side, and slammed against the cockpit window. Paul caught a brief glimpse of a face frozen in its last scream. It wore the uniform of the Brigades, a pair of red parallel stripes at the collar of its fatigues. Even in death, Paul recognized the soldier. It was Lambert, the corporal of the second unit. He and Paul had never really gotten along. Lambert was a fanatic, a devotee of the Illyri cause. There were some humans like him, men and women who felt that their own race had let them down, and were happy to throw in their lot with a new one. Lambert had not been bright enough to progress higher than corporal, though, and because of his fondness for the Illyri, most of his own unit barely tolerated him at best. This had served only to increase Lambert’s rage at humanity. He was always bitter, always angry. Now his fury was at an end.

  Rizzo and Thula stood alongside Peris, and all five of them took in the aftermath of whatever disaster had befallen the Envion. The other body, the first one they had glimpsed, was female, but when it spun toward them Paul saw that most of its face was missing. The hair looked dark, though, which meant that it was either Stanton or Kotto. Stanton, probably. Kotto was bigger, broader. Paul had liked them both.

  But suddenly there was no time left to worry about the identities of corpses. Bigger chunks of debris appeared, some larger than the shuttle itself. The shuttle’s screens revealed the position of the Envion moments before she came in sight, but did not yet show the two ships standing off the Envion’s port bow. Those on the shuttle saw them before the scanners confirmed their presence.

  The Envion’s command deck had been completely destroyed, disabling the ship entirely. There were also breaches to the fore and aft crew quarters, but otherwise the Envion remained more or less intact; it had not been completely finished off by its attackers.

  Instantly Steven killed the shuttle’s engines. They might not have produced much of a heat signature, but it would still be enough to draw attention to them if the area was being monitored. Instead Steven guided the shuttle toward the Envion by releasing small bursts of air from the cabin, minutely adjusting course each time, trying to hide among the bodies and wreckage ripped from the larger ship.

  “Who are they?” asked Paul.

  “Nomads,” said Peris.

  But Nomads had never targeted a Military or Diplomatic mission before. To do so would be to risk utter destruction, even if they somehow succeeded in escaping with their lives at first. The Illyri would have hunted them to the ends of the universe in reprisal. And neither did Nomads tend to use the wormholes: their scavenged ships would have been torn apart. Yet here, it seemed, were two Nomad vessels—presumably newly arrived through the wormhole, for there was no other way to get to Torma from even the outlying Illyri systems without traveling for centuries—standing watch over a crippled Military destroyer.

  “The deck doors are sealed,” said Paul.

  “I can see that,” said Steven. “I’m going to bring us in under the UDC.”

  Every Illyri vessel was equipped with at least one Universal Docking Connector, essentially a sealed hole in the hull to which another ship could attach itself when a hangar-deck landing was not possible.

  Nobody needed to ask why Steven was docking with the Envion. Basically, he had no choice. The shuttle’s fuel and air would not last for much longer, especially with Steven using the reserve air to steer. For now, the Envion was their best bet because it was clear that the Nomad attackers had not set out to destroy it. If they had, they would have done so already. They had targeted certain sections of it in an effort to dispose of the crew and any Brigade units. The next step would be to board, wipe out any remaining opposition, and—

  What? Paul wondered. What did the Nomads hope to do with a Military destroyer? There were easier targets. And what were they doing out here, so far from Illyr?

  The Envion filled the cockpit window, the angle of the smaller ship’s approach constantly altering as Steven steered both to avoid debris and to make their trajectory appear less direct, less artificial. They were close now, so close that Paul could see the UDC on the Envion’s underside. There was a second on top of the hull, but to use that would have been to leave them exposed to the Nomads. Also, the lower UDC was close to the damaged crew quarters, which made it easier for them to hide amid the debris.

  Thula removed a ceiling panel from the shuttle, exposing the lock of their own UDC link, then pulled down the telescopic ladder that would enable them to climb through. With luck, they’d make it on board the Envion without the shuttle’s presence being noted. Otherwise, one of the Nomad vessels could probably blow the shuttle apart without doing any further damage to the Envion, like someone swatting a fly from a table.

  Steven carefully positioned the shuttle beneath the dock, watching their progress on the shuttle’s screens, shifting the smaller craft left, right, down, until the two circles on the screen overlapped, then adjusted the thrusters and briefly hit the engines, giving them just enough of a kick to bring them straight up. With luck, to anyone watching from the Nomad ships, the quick heat signature would appear to be nothing more than fire damage.

  As soon as docking was completed, Paul used the neural network in his helmet to communicate with the Envion’s systems, and watched as a situation report was downloaded to his lens.

  “We have air,” he said. “Crew quarters, command center, and the mess have all been sealed off from the rest of the ship.”

  In the event of a hull breach, the Envion’s systems would automatically have isolated the damaged sections to prevent further loss of life.

  “Life signs?”

  “Just one. He’s activated his distress beacon. I
t’s Galton. He’s holed up in the officers’ quarters.”

  The Envion had arrived at Torma with twenty human Brigade soldiers, two Illyri officers, and its own crew of thirty. Now only seven were left alive.

  “Anything else we should know?” said Peris.

  “There are two ships in the hangar,” said Paul.

  “Two?”

  “One of ours, and a Civilian vessel, the Dendra. I’m getting two life signs.”

  Paul looked at Peris.

  “Maybe the Nomads didn’t come for the Envion,” said Paul. “Maybe it’s the Dendra they’re after.”

  “Well,” said Peris, “they’re not going to get either, not without a fight.” He gestured at Thula. “Open her up.”

  While Thula unlocked the connector, Peris addressed Paul.

  “Well?” he said.

  “Well what?” replied Paul, genuinely puzzled.

  “With De Souza out cold, you’re the senior human officer on board,” said Peris.

  “Sir, I’m just a sergeant.”

  “You’re a lieutenant now. I’m promoting you in the field.” Peris leaned in closer. “You’re an officer. Start acting like one. I can issue orders to members of a human Brigade, and they’ll obey them, but they won’t follow me. Very shortly, we may all be fighting for our lives. They need a leader. Right now, that’s you.”

  Paul noticed that the others had gone quiet. They were watching him, curious to see how he responded, waiting to see if he was worthy of being followed.

  “What are your orders, Lieutenant?” asked Peris.

  Just as he had back on Torma, Paul felt himself reacting instinctively to a situation, his words seemingly ahead of his thoughts.

  “Thula, get everyone safely on board, then seal the UDC. I want it inoperable. When they dock, they’ll have to do it through the forward link. Rizzo, put De Souza somewhere safe and comfortable, then go and find Galton. I want to see if we can get any of the Envion’s systems back online.”

  “And what about me?” asked Peris. He gave no indication of whether or not he approved of Paul’s decisions. Peris had ordered the young man to take command, and he had done so. He would not undermine Paul now.

  “We need terrestrial weapons,” said Paul. “Pistols, shotguns, whatever’s in the armory. We can’t use Illyri weapons against Illyri, not even Nomads. If they board, we’ll have to fight them the old-fashioned way.”

  Peris nodded and went to help Rizzo with De Souza. Paul turned to Steven.

  “As soon as everyone’s safely out of the dock, let the shuttle drift, okay? We don’t want them to catch sight of it.”

  “Yes,” said Steven. “One question?”

  “Go on.”

  “Why are we letting the Nomads dock at all? Why not seal off both connectors?”

  “Because,” said Paul, “if they can’t get on board, then they may just destroy us, and that wouldn’t be good. If we let them board, but dictate where they enter, and how, then we have the advantage. That’s the first reason.”

  “And the second?”

  “Because I want one of their ships.”

  CHAPTER 18

  Things immediately felt a bit better between Syl and Ani following their confrontation in the classroom. The old friends were perhaps a little stiffer and more formal with each other than they once were, as if something had shifted and then realigned, slightly off-kilter, since their arrival at the Marque. Still, they once again bumped along pleasantly in their shared rooms, and they were gentle with each other, careful to leave the bathroom as they’d like to find it, and considerate about offering tea, or sharing the little vials of cremos liqueur that some of the other girls received in care packages from their families and then resold at vastly inflated prices. On that score, at least, Syrene had been proved correct: the wine of Illyr was truly otherworldly.

  Illyr . . . Sometimes Syl would see the homeworld rising through a window, bright as a jewel, while at other times it was bisected like an exotic fruit by the eclipsing shadow of Avila Minor. Illyr was golden, but pooled with green and swirled with blue, and through the telescope in the astronomy laboratory she could occasionally make out the bright flashes of wild lightning that occurred high in the planet’s atmosphere, but still it might as well have been a million miles away. She gazed at Illyr in pictures, and called it up on screens, and read all she could about the stars and planets in this galaxy, yet still the shining orb remained a mystery, like a waking dream that she could not touch.

  “I wonder,” she said to Ani, “if we will ever get off this rock and get to see the place we came from.”

  They were sharing the last of the cremos, as though toasting their new truce.

  “Earth?” said Ani, teasing her friend.

  “No, stupid. Illyr.”

  Ani wandered over and stared out of the window too. She gave Syl a sly, sidelong glance.

  “You never know,” she said. “Play our cards right and it could happen sooner than you think. Tanit says there’s a great ball on Illyr every annum, and the best of the Novices get to attend. It wasn’t always that way, but Tanit told me that everything has changed since the Sisterhood starting permitting Sisters to marry.”

  Syl said nothing, but inwardly she squirmed at the very mention of Tanit’s name. Tanit hated Syl, and the feeling was completely and obviously mutual, although Ani acted determinedly oblivious. On the subject of the beautiful, regal, vicious Tanit, it seemed destined that the Earthborn friends were doomed to disagree. Ani appeared mesmerized by the girl, blushing when Tanit smiled at her, or going still as a statue when Tanit absently stroked her hair on the precious occasions when she shared a task with her in class. Yes, the young Illyri was an unwitting moth to Tanit’s dangerous flame.

  Generally Syl tried to avoid Tanit and her gang as much as possible. Still, Tanit felt nothing of jostling Syl as she carried her tray across the canteen, slopping juice onto her food, or sneering quietly at her nakedness beside the showers after gym classes, so much so that Syl had taken to changing out of her sweaty gear in the privacy of her quarters instead of in the locker room. In lectures, Tanit whispered with Sarea and Nemein when Syl answered a question, mocking her earthly accent, for Syl’s language was peppered with inflections from the world on which she was born, and from the gently Scottish brogue that came so naturally to her. The fact that Ani’s speech was similarly affected seemed barely to register with Tanit and her acolytes. Syl was the one whom they despised, not Ani. Now Syl, for the sake of her friendship with Ani, had agreed to back down before a vicious pack of spoiled brats with very sharp teeth.

  Oblivious, Ani chatted on.

  “. . . and for the ball—it’s called the Genesis Ball—each debutante is given exquisite robes and precious jewels to wear, for the Genesis Ball is patronized by only the finest of Illyri society. The very finest,” she stressed.

  The words that came from Ani’s lips were clearly Tanit’s, repeated verbatim, for they sounded nothing like Ani at all. Still, Ani’s elfin face was shiny with excitement.

  “Syl, if we’re very lucky, we may be selected too.”

  Syl frowned. “Why? Who chooses?”

  “Syrene, of course. Duh.”

  “Duh, yourself. I mean—Syrene! Really, Ani? Please tell my why she would ever, ever choose us?”

  Ani paused as if to consider this, and she looked embarrassed as she replied.

  “Syl, I’m not trying to rub it in your face, but I am actually one of the Gifted, you know. Tanit says that of all the first-year Novices, Mila and I are most likely to be chosen, because we’re Blue Novices. Tanit and the other Gifted went last year, of course, but Xaron got to go too and she was only new then, and the others went the year before, when they were just fresh Novices like I am, so there’s a very real chance for me.”

  And her eyes spoke silently to Syl, implorin
g her: Don’t ruin it for me.

  “Nice for you, dear heart, but there’s still zero hope for me,” said Syl sourly, trying to swallow down her frustration. All her life she’d fantasized about walking on the homeworld, breathing the air for which her lungs had been created, feeling the legendary lightness of the gravity that allowed the plants and creatures of her planet to grow tall and graceful. She’d seen pictures and immersed herself in virtual re-creations, but that was different from touching it, feeling it, being enveloped in its balmy atmosphere with her feet on its sands and her eyes drinking in its exotic horizons.

  And of course, a high-profile function on Illyr would be such an opportunity to dig deeper. She would get to meet the cream of Illyri society, and perhaps work out who was who, and who knew what. She could speak to people who mattered, putting all her “Applied Diplomacy” skills to work in connecting with Illyri with real power, to those who might have an inkling of what was going on. Maybe she could find out about the battles on other worlds; maybe she would receive news of Earth, and her father; maybe someone could tell her where Peris was, and by extension she could then learn something of Paul—Steven too, of course, but the memories of Paul clawed at her heart. Sometimes she fretted that he was dead, slaughtered in a war not his own far away from his beloved home in Scotland, and at other times she imagined he’d forgotten her, or fallen for another, a human being like himself. And she was ashamed to acknowledge that in the darkest hours of night, as she slipped into her flustered, mortifying dreams of him, she didn’t know which would be worse.

  “You never know,” said Ani, unaware of Syl’s brooding as they sipped down the last drops of their tiny vials of cremos.

  There was a time when Ani had been better able to sense Syl’s feelings, but that was before they had both realized the extent of Ani’s psychic powers, and before Syl had discovered her own secret strength and learned how to close her mind to those who would know her thoughts. Funny how Ani hadn’t even noticed the disconnection.