Between fleeing pursuit and hunting for the twins, William was trying to get some manner of organization into place for the resistance. It was rough going, for few people really understood just what had happened. If things continued as they were, then Corian would soon have full command of the empire and all the power held within.
Honestly, William wasn’t certain that Corian wouldn’t secure command no matter what happened. He’d managed to gain too much of an advantage in his opening move. Too many people flew to his banner. The Scourwind emperor and his true allies hadn’t realized just how much people had chafed under Edvard’s rule.
William expected that it had been the corporatist lobby that had thrown the final edge of weight to Corian’s side. Edvard hadn’t liked the way they did business, and he suspected that reopening the Imperial manufacturing group to handle military orders had been a step too far.
Edvard was possibly too much of an idealist for the position he’d held, though William found the idea of anyone considering the emperor an idealist to be almost hilarious. When he had a conviction, however, all the fires in the skies couldn’t turn him from it. William had himself argued with Edvard many times. They rarely saw perfectly eye to eye, but he’d served the family loyally because he knew that Edvard did what he believed best, damn the cost.
This time, perhaps, the cost had been his life.
And now William was left to pick up the pieces and perform at least one last service to the family.
First he had to figure out where the resistance was getting their supplies from. Someone was feeding them enough foodstuffs, water, and munitions to keep legions on the march, and they were doing it on extremely short notice.
Where are they getting all the legion specification ordinance? Corian must have locked down all the major supply depots. I would have.
CHAPTER 10
“The Four Nineteen is inbound, tracking hot and normal on skyway nine.”
The station commander nodded as he lifted his drink to his lips and took a quiet draw on the hot liquid. The Four Nineteen was a regular commuter and transport train coming in from the capital—three hundred freight canisters, fifty-odd passenger capsules, and half a handful of mail and live cargo capsules all pulled by a single quantum-tractor rig.
The system wasn’t the fastest ever devised, but a q tractor would pull almost anything without flinching. The vehicle was locked into the skyway through subparticle entangling, and it would take a major act of the universe to shift it from its path.
Perched on a narrow spire that reached down to the ground, the tower was the local control hub for all traffic for three days’ travel in all directions. Situated just above the atmosphere from his station, the commander could see the world’s curve as it wrapped around him until finally vanishing into the haze.
The commander glanced over the numbers and nodded absently, starting to turn away to focus on other things, when a warning sound caught his attention.
“What’s that?”
“Proximity warning. We have a ship on a converging track, commander.”
His eyes flicked up, looking out the thickly armored translim shields that surrounded the control tower, searching for the intruder. “Warn them off.”
“Sent. No response.”
“Lens,” the commander ordered, hand out expectantly.
A slim chromatic glass device was dropped into his palm without hesitation, and he lifted it to his eyes, letting it seal itself to his face as designed. The internal optics went into action, picking up and highlighting traffic around the tower, but he was only interested in one craft.
There it is, he thought as the lens locked in and magnified the desired signal. It was a skimmer, a high atmo vessel that rode the extreme wind currents that existed about thirty miles above the surface of the world.
He swore, annoyed. “Get those fools on the box, damn it. They’ve deployed for full sail. One gust will send them right into someone else up here.”
“There’s still no response, commander.”
“Best call up emergency stations,” he ordered, “and contact the Guard. I want that damn fool’s head on a platter when this is over.”
“Yes, sir.”
He turned his focus back outward, wondering what the fool was playing at. Flying with full rigging into controlled aerospace was the height of stupidity. Even Guard flyers weren’t insane enough to try something like that.
Hathe below. It would take a Cadre pilot to even …
His thoughts trailed off as he looked up sharply, a sudden stab of genuine fear running through him as he strode forward and slammed a hand down on the station alert.
“Commander! What?”
“I want every guardsman converging on us, now!” he ordered. “Only two types of people fly like that. Cadre … and former Cadre.”
“The station just lit off their alarms.”
“Too late by far.” The captain smiled as she nodded. “Signal boarders, they’re clear to go.”
“Yes, ma’am.”
On the command deck of the high-atmo craft, she rose from her station and stepped back and out of the shelter of the partially enclosed cockpit. They were high enough over the world to require breathers, their ship skimming near the edge of the empty beyond where only ships with reactor or q-traction drives could go.
Her skimmer, the lovely Andros Pak, was a medium-size high-atmo bird. With her rigging deployed below to catch the eternal winds, the ship was damn near as fast as any reactor vessel and had the wings to leave them sucking vacuum when their fuel rods failed.
On the open deck, men were readying themselves for the deployment as ordered. The captain would have had their heads if they’d done anything else, but it was still a good feeling to see everything going to plan.
The traction drive they were converging on was entering the upper atmo. She could see the long train extending air brakes to help bleed the velocity off. It took so long to accelerate using a traction drive that they generally preferred to use friction brakes to slow down.
It also served to keep the long train of capsules and canisters from bunching up and snarling if the tractor itself attempted to slow.
“Intercept in ten mikes!” she called as the warning tone sounded in her ear. “By the numbers, people, you know what we need.”
The suited men waved. The low pressure wasn’t suited to speaking, and no one wanted to transmit, not with the empire listening.
The tractor train was in full view now, heat bleed making the leading edges of the formation glow red hot. The men prepped their gear in the last few moments before the range closed, then the order went out and the time for preparation was done.
Lines lanced out from the Andros, arcing only slightly in the low air pressure and low gravity of the upper atmo, impacting the closing train with precision. Using filament lines was a little old school, the captain supposed, but she was doing what she could with what she had.
“Tension the lines!” she called, gesturing with her hand.
The Andros leaned slightly away from the oncoming train, bringing the lines taut with a twang that could be heard even in the high atmo. She nodded curtly to the men, and they threw themselves over the side.