The Fallen Empire Collection by Lindsay Buroker

by Discover Sci-Fi Special Edition

  “Unfortunately, they haven’t had any leads other than the name I gave them along with the video,” Sylvia said as the footage played. At first, the hallway stood empty, with nothing but four apartment doors and the front door visible, with the darkness of night pressing against a tall window next to it. “I heard some of them refer to the one who appeared to be the leader as Durant—I’m not sure if it was a first or last name. Durant. It’s not common, but it’s not uncommon, either. I checked the imperial and Alliance databases. There are tens of thousands of them out there. I’ve called the police every few days, but if the Starseers truly took Jelena, they have the power to disappear well and fully.”

  “That doesn’t make any sense at all,” Alisa said. “There are hardly any Starseers left in the galaxy, and there’s nothing about Jelena that would make them want her.”

  Sure, her daughter had scored well on intelligence tests, thanks more to her bright father than her mother, Alisa was sure, but she had not been an exceptional genius. It wasn’t as if she had been floating dishes around the kitchen or whatever it was Starseer children did before they formally started studying to control their powers.

  At least, that was what Alisa thought. The strangest look came over Sylvia’s face, and she opened her mouth and closed it twice without saying anything.

  Before Alisa could question her, movement in the video caught her eye, and she shifted her attention to it. The front door had opened and four figures in black robes filed in, one after the other. Large heavy hoods drooped low, creating shadows that hid their features, even in the well-lit hallway. Alisa leaned down, peering in close, hoping to glimpse a face. Even if one only appeared for an instant, it ought to be enough to run it through the police databases and hope for a match. But the men either knew about the cameras or just knew that they had to keep their hoods low to remain hidden. They walked slowly, their faces turned downward, their hands in their sleeves, not revealing so much as a wedding ring that might be used for identification. All four of them wore pendants that reminded Alisa of Alejandro’s, but his was the three-sun symbol of the Sun Trinity. These were the red moon and silver star symbol of The Order, the special Starseer religion about which she knew very little.

  The figures disappeared from the lobby camera’s field of view. Sylvia’s door was at the opposite end of the hall from the front entrance, and it wasn’t visible. Alisa shifted from foot to foot, waiting for them to come back into view. It only took a minute. The leader walked back toward the front door, a familiar girl with him. Her rowdy hair was tamed into two brown pigtails, there was a mole on the side of her face below her ear, and she had a cute, pert nose. Jelena.

  She was older and taller than the last time Alisa had seen her, but there was no mistaking her. And there was no mistaking that she was walking side by side with the man as he held her hand and led her to the door, almost as if she knew him. How could that be?

  Two more robed figures walked into view, heading for the entrance, but the last one stopped, turning back toward the apartment. Sylvia charged into view, pushed past him, and ran toward Jelena. The camera had not recorded sound, but from the contorted way Sylvia’s mouth opened, it was clear that she was yelling. Jelena paused and turned, wearing an oddly vacant expression. Her young face crinkled as Sylvia yelled, as if she was trying to remember something. The man tugged at her hand, but she turned in the other direction, almost tripping as she stepped back toward Sylvia, who had almost reached her.

  The figure behind the man leading Jelena away lifted a hand toward Sylvia. Alisa thought he would halt her physically, but Sylvia jerked to a stop before she reached him. She froze like a ship caught in a grab beam.

  The man leading Jelena touched her shoulder, and she turned around to follow him out the door, but not before Alisa saw that vacant expression reaffix itself on her face. It was chilling, all trace of her daughter’s playful spirit—all trace of her personality and who she was—gone.

  As the men filed through the exit, Sylvia remained frozen in place. The door closed, the hallway empty except for her.

  “Not my finest moment,” Sylvia murmured from the sofa, wincing as long seconds passed.

  Finally, the Sylvia in the video stirred. She looked behind her and forward, confusion stamping her face. Then she ran to the entrance, disappearing out the front door.

  On the sofa, Sylvia leaned forward and stopped the video, leaving the image hovering above the table. “I ran up and down the block after that, looking for sign of them,” she said. “They just disappeared. I asked the neighbors if anyone had seen them. There were people on the street coming home from work. Nobody remembered seeing them or Jelena.” She swallowed and met Alisa’s eyes. “Alisa, I’m so sorry.”

  “I don’t understand,” Alisa said, losing her earlier certainty that posers pretending to be Starseers had kidnapped her daughter. “You’d never seen them before? There was no previous contact?”

  “Not with me, no.”

  Alisa frowned. “What does that mean? I’m sure Jelena didn’t comm them to come get her.”

  “No, I doubt that.” Sylvia’s brow crinkled, as if she hadn’t considered the possibility but now was. That was ludicrous. How would an eight-year-old know who to comm even if she was unhappy and wanted to leave? Had she been unhappy? With her father dead and her mother billions of miles away?

  Alisa opened her mouth to ask, but Sylvia spoke again first.

  “I was thinking that Jonah might have had some contact with one of their temples before his death.”

  “Why?” Alisa rubbed her head. “She wasn’t…” It seemed a ridiculous thing to ask, but she made herself say, “She wasn’t showing any Starseer tendencies, was she?”

  She didn’t see how that could be when everyone knew those abilities were hereditary, something that the colonists who had originally settled Kir had developed during the centuries they had lived there in isolation. These days, with Kir long since rendered uninhabitable during the Order Wars, fewer and fewer Starseers were born each generation, and not everyone with the genes inherited the abilities. Alisa certainly couldn’t move objects around with her mind—or daze and kidnap defenseless children. Nor had Jonah ever done anything like that, at least not when she had been observing. Besides, children born on the core worlds in imperial hospitals were tested at birth for the gene mutations that signaled the potential to gain those abilities. Nothing unusual had come up on Jelena’s tests.

  “She is about the age when those things start to come out,” Sylvia said carefully. “I know Jonah was always careful to keep his talents a secret, but I’m surprised… He never told you?”

  Suddenly, the apartment seemed very still, very quiet. Alisa grew aware of a mechanical clock ticking in a distant corner of the loft.

  “No,” she whispered.

  “I never manifested the abilities. As you can clearly see.” Sylvia grimaced as she waved to the frozen video. “But Jonah used to play with his talents on the farm as a boy. We were lucky we were in such a rural area and that he wasn’t born in an imperial hospital.”

  “But Jelena was born here, tested here…” Alisa spoke slowly, trying to wrap her mind around the idea that Jonah had kept secrets from her. Big secrets. He had been so open, always laughing, always friendly. Surely, those were not the traits of a member of a sinister and secretive order.

  A teakettle whistled in the kitchen. Sylvia got up, held up a finger, and walked to attend to it. Alisa wanted to leap on her back and strangle the answers out of her. An interminable amount of time seemed to pass before she returned with two cups in her hand. She offered one to Alisa, who only shook her head. She wanted answers, not tea. Jelena had been tested. She remembered the doctors doing a cheek swab.

  Sylvia sat back down and sipped from her own cup. “A few days before you went to the hospital to deliver her, Jonah came to me. As a scholar, he didn’t have much money then. As I’m sure you remember.”

  Alisa nodded tersely, barely keeping from gro
wling a, Get to the point.

  “He asked to borrow some from me. He was nervous and wanted physical coins, nothing traceable by the banking system. I had an inkling as to what it was about, though he wouldn’t speak of it or say who it was meant for.”

  “You gave him the loan?”

  “Yes. I suspect he was paying someone off at the hospital, either arranging for those tests to disappear or perhaps for there to be a mix-up. Another baby would have been retested if she came up positive.” Sylvia lifted her shoulders. “Jonah wouldn’t have done anything to harm anyone, but you understand the dangers, the chance that he—both of you—would have lost your daughter if she had tested positive. Even though there were Starseers in the imperial line, the government has always been fearful of those with the powers.”

  “With good reason,” Alisa blurted out before realizing that she wasn’t just talking to her sister-in-law anymore, but with someone whose ancestors had apparently come from Kir. It was as if the woman she and Jonah had shared coffee with on a weekly basis was a stranger now. “I mean, I wouldn’t have wanted to risk our daughter being taken away, either. Is that what always happens? Happened?” She reminded herself that the empire wasn’t in charge anymore, and she had no idea what kind of policy her own people were establishing.

  “The children were often taken away to special orphanages, yes. If the parents weren’t aware of the risk beforehand and didn’t find a way to hide them. Sometimes the parents had no idea. In our case, several generations had passed since anyone in the family had shown any talents. From my limited understanding of the science, the genes are dominant, so they’re passed on easily, but the Starseer abilities themselves rely upon epigenetic triggers to manifest, and despite much speculation and a couple of studies involving those in the imperial bloodline, nobody’s quite sure what exactly those triggers are. Stress is believed to be a component, a major stressor undergone at the appropriate age.”

  “Such as the stress of having your home bombed and your father killed?” Alisa asked bleakly.

  “Perhaps. I remember Jonah first displayed talent after recovering from a bout with pneumonia. But there’s much that even modern science does not know. The Starseers themselves are very secretive, and few outside of the imperial bloodline have come forth over the centuries to volunteer themselves for studies.”

  “What did the empire do with those it took and sent to orphanages?”

  “From what I’ve heard, they wanted to use those with Starseer potential to their own advantage and raised them with the idea of indoctrinating them to be loyal subjects, but since so many children never developed abilities, the empire most likely ended up with a bunch of normal children who grew up bitter that they had been taken from their parents.” Sylvia lowered her voice. “Some speculate that they just got rid of the babies.” Her grip tightened on the teacup. “Jonah didn’t want to risk that.”

  “No. Hells, no. I understand that, but why didn’t he ever tell me?”

  Sylvia smiled slightly. “You used to tease him for being overly bookish when you two first met.”

  “I tease everybody. Myself included. It’s part of my charm.”

  Sylvia snorted. “Indeed. But Jonah was sensitive. We studious, artistic types often are.” She waved her hand toward an easel set up in the corner. Alisa had been too distracted to look at what she was working on and did not notice now, either.

  “So?”

  “You already thought him a tad odd, and he had a huge crush on you as soon as you sat together in Professor Lingenbottom’s class. He worried that if you found out about his heritage, you would think him tainted. Besides, our family has been here, growing wheat and corn out in the hinterlands for generations. It’s not as if anyone remembers that we originally came to Perun as refugees from Kir after the Order Wars. Also, Jonah had very little interest in learning about his heritage. I still remember when we were children and a Starseer came to visit after Jonah first started demonstrating his powers. I’m not sure what the gist of the private conversation they had was, but Jonah ran screaming out to the corncrib and wouldn’t climb down until the man left.”

  “The Starseers don’t have reputations for benevolence and kindness.” Alisa shuddered, horrified to know her daughter had been taken by them. They operated off the grid, hiding from the empire and everyone else most of the time. Even if a face had shown up on that video, it probably wouldn’t have been in the Perun police database. How could Alisa ever find the people who had taken Jelena if they didn’t want to be found? The name Durant wasn’t much to go on.

  “No, our first contact with them, after centuries of isolation, was when they regained spaceflight, left their planet, and tried to take over the rest of the system,” Sylvia said dryly.

  “What do you think they want with Jelena?”

  “I would guess to raise her as one of their own.”

  Alisa slapped her palms against her thighs, then stalked around the room, distress and horror giving way to fury. “Well, they don’t get to,” she said. “Presumptuous bastards. She’s my daughter, and I’m going to raise her. I already gave up too much for the Alliance, four years of my life and hers. They promised it would only be for a year, Sylvia. And it was four. Four. If I hadn’t been gone so long, this never would have happened. Jonah—”

  “Would probably still be dead,” Sylvia said with a sad sigh. “And if you had been in the apartment when the bomb went off, you would be dead too.”

  Alisa pushed her hands through her hair, almost tearing off a chunk. “Logically, I know that, but I can’t help but wonder if—fear—I did the wrong thing, made the wrong choice. The Alliance would have won without me. I shot down a few ships, flew some people around, but that’s it.”

  Sylvia spread her hand, palm up. She wasn’t going to deny Alisa’s self-recriminations. Maybe she agreed with them.

  Alisa’s comm beeped. She ignored it and stalked over to the window, scowling out at the building behind this one, the hint of blue sky visible above it. Earlier, she had been admiring that blue sky, but now, its cheery brightness seemed to mock her. Stormy gray clouds would have been better. She felt so lost. Where could she start looking for her daughter? Was Jelena even on the planet? Three months had passed, and Alisa had no leads. Nothing.

  The comm beeped again.

  Alisa snatched it off her belt clip and roared, “What?”

  “Uhh, got a problem, Captain,” Beck said.

  “If you have to take a piss, just come inside and do it.”

  “No… the combat armor takes care of that.”

  “Ew.” She scowled at her unit, still irritated. She forced herself to take a deep breath. “What’s the problem?”

  “Someone’s spying on us.”

  “Are you and Leonidas looking suspicious and intriguing?”

  “I’m definitely not. The mech… he always looks suspicious. He’s been chatting up old girlfriends since you left.”

  Alisa blinked, the image so startling that she forgot about her own problems momentarily. “Really?”

  “Nah, I don’t think so. I did hear a woman’s voice come from his earstar, but not much more than that. He’s been whispering and keeping his back to me. I caught him agreeing to meet someone at a certain time, but that’s it.”

  “Who’s doing the spying?” Alisa asked.

  “One of the kids from the field.”

  “I was imagining mafia thugs.”

  “Don’t underestimate kids, Captain. They make good lookouts since nobody pays attention to them. They work cheaply too.”

  “It’s probably just the one that was intrigued by your armor. Maybe he wanted to look more closely.”

  “I had that thought,” Beck said, “but I’m not the one the kid was staring at.”

  “Leonidas?”

  “Leonidas. I’m not sure if he ever saw his spy—or if he’s paying attention to me now. The kid was quick and stayed out of sight, but I glimpsed him looking at the mech and comming somebody.
I think he might have taken a picture too. If I hadn’t been wearing my helmet with the built-in cameras, I wouldn’t have spotted him behind me.”

  “It must not have been the boy who knew your specs so well.”

  “It wasn’t. It was one of the older ones. I turned around to look, and he darted out of sight. I ran back to the alley I think he went into, but he had disappeared. I’m sure he knows this neighborhood a lot better than I do.”

  Alisa grumbled under her breath. She didn’t particularly care if people were spying on Leonidas, not now. But she didn’t know what else could be gained by staying here, either. She had already learned far more than she expected. More than she wanted. The idea of her sweet Jelena having Starseer powers was creepy, but it probably made it more important than ever that she was raised by someone who loved her, someone who cared.

  “Me, damn it,” she muttered.

  “Pardon?” Beck asked.

  “Nothing. I’m coming out.” Alisa turned to Sylvia. “I need to go.”

  Sylvia rose to her feet. “Can I do anything to help?”

  “Not now.” Alisa didn’t even know what could be done yet. She closed the comm channel and lowered the device. “Before I go… I’ve wondered. Can you tell me, is there any possible way that everyone was mistaken and that Jonah wasn’t home when the apartment building was bombed?” The idea of searching for her daughter alone daunted her. By all the gods in all the galaxies, she wished Jonah were alive to help her. More than that, she wished he were alive, period. “Is there any way he might have made it?”

  Sylvia was shaking her head before Alisa finished. “No. I was called in when they scanned the remains.” She turned toward a window, blinking a few times as her eyes grew damp. “I saw them, watched them do the test, and verified that the genes matched up. He’s gone.”

  Alisa’s legs grew weak, and she groped for the back of the sofa for support. She had not expected anything else, and yet, a silly part of her had hoped that she would not only find Jelena when she arrived on Perun, but that somehow, Jonah would be there, too, that it all would have been a mistake.