Then something slammed into them so hard that the bomber flipped end over end. An alarm shrieked in the cockpit, battering Leonidas’s eardrums as he was hurled left and right in his harness. His helmet clunked the side of the canopy.
“Shields are down,” Sadangi yelled.
“Get us on the ground,” Leonidas said, even though he knew Sadangi was trying to do just that.
Lightning flashed, the branches so close that he could see the fuzzy blur of their energy. The light disappeared, then reappeared as they spun out of control. Something else hit them—or maybe that was turbulence. A distinctive snap sounded from the control panel.
“I can’t pull us up,” Sadangi cried.
Smoke filled the cockpit. Leonidas could not smell it with his helmet on, but Thorian coughed and pressed his face against his chest plate.
He let go of the weapons stick and simply held Thorian, his gauntleted palm against the boy’s back. What else could he do?
Not a damned thing.
The clouds cleared, and Leonidas briefly felt hope, but Sadangi was frantically batting at the controls. Smoke flowed out of the panel, nearly obscuring him. The bomber plummeted straight downward. Lightning flashed again, and sand, rocks, and mountains came into view below, the stark outline of the desert landscape coming up rapidly.
“Trying to get the nose up,” Sadangi whispered. “Trying…”
Leonidas cupped the back of Thorian’s head and did his best to cradle him, to protect him from the inevitable.
They crashed so hard the wings tore off with an ear-splitting crack-crunch. Leonidas glimpsed them bouncing off to the sides, then disappearing into the night as the fuselage skidded and bumped along the hard earth.
The safety foam deployed, and white fluff filled the cockpit, pressing against Leonidas from all sides. It did not keep him from feeling every bounce and bump, and he heard every snap and crack as pieces flew off the bomber. They must have skidded a mile or more before finally crunching into a mountain or some other unmoving obstacle. If not for the foam, the jolt might have broken Leonidas’s harness. As it was, he worried about the injuries his companions would take, neither of whom had armor or synthetic bones.
Silence and stillness finally fell.
“Thorian?” Leonidas pushed through the gelatin-like foam that now filled the cockpit, groping for the canopy release. He could hear rain striking the remains of the bomber, but he could not see a thing. “Sadangi?”
Neither person answered him. Leonidas could feel the weight of Thorian still against his chest, but he could not tell if the boy breathed, not with the armor blocking the contact. If he hadn’t made it… all of this would have been for nothing. Leonidas could have died with his men in the battle defending the emperor, as it had been meant to be.
Emotion thickened his throat, and he growled it away. This wasn’t the time. He was alive, and the others might be too. Assessment and survival. That was what was important. And finding the button to open the damned canopy.
There.
He pushed it, and the canopy finally rose upward. The foam expanded to take up more space, but that meant he was able to shove it away. He found enough freedom to unclasp his harness, and his heart grew lighter when Thorian stirred against his chest.
Leonidas shoved aside the straps, wrapped one arm around the boy, pushed himself to his feet, and climbed out of the cockpit. He slid to the ground, rain pelting his helmet and dark clouds roiling overhead. He did not see any of the Alliance ships anywhere, but visibility was horrible, even with his faceplate doing its best to adapt to the lighting.
Jammed into the base of a cliff, the bomber looked like a tin can that had been crushed against a wall, completely collapsed in upon itself, the wings nothing but a memory. The tail was also missing.
Shaking his head, Leonidas wiped foam off himself and off Thorian, then jogged a couple dozen meters before laying him down in the shelter of the cliff. He did not know if the bomber was in danger of exploding, but he would not take any chances.
The boy lifted a shaky hand to wipe his face. Blood dribbled from his nose, but his eyes blinked open. He grimaced in pain, but he appeared conscious and alert. Good.
“I’ll be right back,” Leonidas said, lifting a finger. “Stay there.”
He ran back around the wreckage so he could approach the cockpit from the pilot’s side. He thrust aside foam in irritation, finally finding Sadangi’s hair as he dug down. He cleared the foam away from the man’s face and started to dig down for the harness, but paused, a sinking feeling entering his stomach.
Sadangi’s eyes were open, staring upward. Blood dribbled out of the corner of his mouth, mingling with rainwater.
“Major?” Leonidas whispered, then spoke again more loudly, to be heard over the thunder and rain.
The man blinked slowly. Alive, but he barely breathed. Leonidas pushed away more foam, reaching down for his harness, but his fingers clunked against something hard. The console. The seat had been thrust forward even as the framework of the cockpit crumpled and pushed back against him. Leonidas could shove it away, but he paused, frowning as he saw that Sadangi’s entire ribcage had been crushed inward. Every bone had to be broken, every organ damaged. Perhaps an emergency room surgeon could have saved him, but they were in the middle of nowhere.
“Bad, huh?” Sadangi rasped, wheezing.
“Bad,” Leonidas agreed. He had never been able to lie to men, even when they were dying. He’d always said he would have preferred that only the truth be spoken to him in that situation. Better to know and have time to say one’s last prayers, make a final plea to Rebus-de for a place of honor in the afterlife.
“Boy… get away?” Sadangi tried to move his head to look toward the passenger seat, but he could barely flicker his eyes in that direction. Tears filmed them, and Leonidas doubted he could see.
“He did.” At least Leonidas did not have to contemplate lying about that. He rested his hand gently on Sadangi’s shoulder. “We saved him.”
Sadangi managed the slightest nod, though his face contorted with pain from the effort. He wheezed several ineffective breaths and looked at Leonidas.
Leonidas unfastened his helmet and tugged it off. A man should look into another man’s eyes as he lay dying, not some damned faceplate.
“It was…” Sadangi wheezed. “An honor… to serve with you… sir.”
Leonidas blinked away tears in his own eyes. Why didn’t this ever get any easier? “You are an excellent pilot, Sadangi.” He regretted that he did not know the man’s first name.
But the words seemed to bring Sadangi peace. He smiled slightly before he gasped his final breath, and his eyes grew dim.
Part 5
Leonidas’s armor could withstand bullets and blazer fire and the freezing vacuum of space, keeping him alive and comfortable inside, but somehow, it couldn’t keep the sand out. He blamed himself. He’d taken his helmet off a couple of times, both to be sociable and because it seemed unfair that he be protected when the prince was not.
He let out a relieved breath when the sand stopped skidding sideways, and two of the system’s three suns came out, bright orange spots burning in the red-tinted sky. Everything on this planet was some shade of red. He wouldn’t want to grow up here.
He eyed his stoic young companion. Thorian trudged along, refusing to let Leonidas carry his bag, as usual. They had been trekking for two days, Leonidas’s helmet tied into the sys-net satellites and leading them toward the coordinates the emperor had given Sadangi. Since that first storm that had sent them scurrying for cover under an overhang in the cliff, they had scarcely been able to walk two hours at a time without a sandstorm coming up to make travel miserable. He had done his best to find shelter, to protect his young charge, even if it only meant using his own armored body to do so.
“We’re almost there,” Thorian said, glancing over at him.
“You’re sure?” Leonidas wondered if he looked like someone who needed reassuring.
Shouldn’t it be the other way around?
“I’m sure.”
Thorian adjusted his bag. His cheeks were red from sunburn and his lips cracked from the dry air. They had water and some meal bars, but they were being careful to ration them out. The storms could make what should have been a journey of a couple of days last for a week.
“I miss Major Sadangi,” Thorian said.
“So do I.”
“He was funny.” He did not offer the same accolade for Leonidas, though he considered him, as if trying to find some other appropriate one.
Leonidas shrugged in his armor. It wasn’t necessary. He knew he wasn’t a comedian. He’d been more easily amused and more likely to crack jokes in his youth, before the fleet, before learning how to kill and watching so many comrades fall around him. Somewhere along the way, he had lost the knack for jokes.
“You’re brave,” Thorian decided on.
“Thank you.” Leonidas decided that was an acceptable impression to have made on a boy. Were he a father, he would be honored to have his son think him brave.
“You don’t have any children of your own?” Thorian asked, almost as if he had been reading Leonidas’s thoughts. Maybe he had.
“No.”
“You’d be a good dad.”
“Oh? What makes you say that?” Leonidas asked, genuinely curious. He mostly felt awkward around Thorian, like he should be entertaining him or teaching him or doing something more than handing him water and walking slowly enough for him to keep up. He ought to be doing something parental. Whatever that was.
Thorian scratched his nose as he considered how to articulate his answer. Or perhaps his nose simply itched.
“You can build a good tower,” he finally said.
Leonidas snorted softly. It wasn’t one of the usual reasons people found him valuable, but he supposed it wasn’t a bad one.
“Maybe I’ll find a way to have children someday,” he said, cheered by the fact that this one representative of the category found him promising. He did not go into the difficulties that he would have in fathering children or in finding someone who wished to procreate with him. It seemed too strange a conversation to have with a ten-year-old.
“Good,” Thorian said, then turned his attention to the red dunes ahead of them. “They’re coming.”
“Who?” Leonidas flicked the blazers out of his armor sleeve.
Thorian patted the air in a stand-down motion. “The Starseers.”
“Are you sure?” Leonidas listened hard and peered into the distance, not used to anyone detecting other people before he did. “We’re still ten miles from the coordinates.”
“I’m sure.”
Several more minutes passed before the first person came into view, a black-robed figure walking over one of the dunes, his hood up against the desert sun. Three more men followed him, each carrying staffs that might have been made from metal or some dark wood. Leonidas only guessed at their sex based on their size. Their hoods shadowed their features, hiding them even from his keen eyes.
He kept walking toward them—the Starseers’ path would take them straight toward Leonidas and Thorian, regardless—but his stomach knotted in the way it did before he went into battle. He had fought Starseers before and well remembered the way they could use telekinesis to hurl him against walls and try to crush his internal organs with their minds. The powers had not bothered him when they had been wielded by a ten-year-old boy and the heir to the throne he’d sworn his life to protect. But these people had their own agenda. He had no idea what deal Markus had worked with them or whether they would appreciate a cyborg in red combat armor striding up to them in the desert.
Thorian walked steadily at his side, not a hint of hesitation in his step or on his face, though there was a sadness in his eyes. Leonidas did not know if it was for all that he had lost in the last week or if it represented resignation for his fate. Would these Starseers let him build space stations with blocks? Or would they train him to be one of them and perhaps to become some future general who might retake the empire?
Even though Leonidas knew that leading troops and wrangling politicians and corporate sponsors had been in the stars for Thorian since his older brother’s death, he couldn’t help but feel sad that his fate would be chosen for him. Leonidas knew what it was to make choices about one’s future for the sake of others. He knew what it was to cast one’s dreams aside and to accept what must be.
Thorian gazed over at him, those sad eyes tugging at Leonidas’s heart. He groped for something to say, something wise or something comforting, but the Starseers arrived before the words found his tongue.
The men stood silently, without speaking. Or maybe they were speaking to each other telepathically. One stepped to the front and looked at Leonidas. He could just make out pale skin and a hawkish nose beneath the drooping hood.
“You have done your job adequately, cyborg,” the man said, his voice raspy, as if he hadn’t used it for a long time. “We will take the prince now.”
Adequately. Sadangi had given his life, they had lost their ship, and Thorian was lucky to be alive. To explain away the last week as adequate seemed a snub. Maybe it was intended to be.
“I would like your names,” Leonidas said, not that the names would mean anything to him, but it seemed he should know who had the prince. Surely, his people would ask when he reported back to…
His thoughts trailed off. To what? To whom? The emperor was gone. The war was lost. Headquarters had likely been demolished. How many of his superiors were even left alive? Did the fleet exist in any capacity anymore?
“It is safer for the prince if you do not know our names and aren’t able to describe us,” the Starseer said.
Leonidas bristled at the idea that he could be captured and interrogated for information on Thorian’s whereabouts, but he reluctantly admitted that it was a possibility and that the Starseer could be right. But the idea of turning his back and letting them take Thorian without any reassurances rubbed him the wrong way.
“It would be safer still if he had a good bodyguard,” Leonidas said, inspiration striking him. “Let me go with you.” Where else would he go? He had nothing left. And Thorian needed a protector, someone he could trust.
Thorian looked over at him. Was it Leonidas’s imagination that his eyes brightened, that he seemed less glum? Perhaps he wouldn’t mind having a cyborg bodyguard.
“We have no need of a cyborg,” the Starseer said, saying cyborg in the same tone that one described the taste of the mushy takka meal that miners ate. “Our people can protect him.” The man lifted his hand. “Come, Thorian.”
Thorian hesitated, looking back and forth from Leonidas to the Starseers.
“Couldn’t he come?” he asked.
“He is mawqua. Not human. A tool, nothing more. Forget him.”
Leonidas gritted his teeth. He had heard the term and variations of it many times before. “I’m just as human as you, Starseer.”
“We are more than human. You are less.”
Leonidas went from gritting his teeth to grinding them back and forth and was tempted to leap into the knot of men and tear them all into pieces for the scavengers to eat. He had learned from his previous encounters with Starseers that he could defeat them if he could get in close and keep them too distracted to use their mind powers.
You make my point for me, the Starseer said, speaking into his mind this time.
Leonidas growled.
Animal.
He hated the idea of these people teaching Thorian to be arrogant asses like them. He didn’t even know if he would be safe with them.
“Time to go, Thorian,” the Starseer repeated, his voice sterner. He waved again, the gesture impatient.
Thorian walked to Leonidas instead of going immediately to the man. He stuck out his hand.
“Thank you for your help, Colonel,” he said solemnly.
After what they had been through the last few days, Leonidas had the urge to hug
the boy. Instead, he accepted the handclasp while wondering if he would ever see Thorian again. Would the Starseers succeed in keeping him hidden away and training him to be a leader one day? Or would some Alliance assassin catch up to him before he was old enough to take care of himself? The Starseers’ refusal to accept Leonidas’s help was shortsighted; he was certain of it.
Thorian released his hand, shouldered his bag, and walked over to join the robed men. Without a word for Leonidas, they led him back the way they had come.
He stood and watched, pretending he meant to let them go, but he was considering whether he could follow them from a distance and see where they took Thorian.
As soon as they crested the first dune and disappeared from sight, Leonidas started after them.
Do not follow, the same Starseer who had spoken to him before said into his mind. Your kind is not welcome among us, and as I said, it is better if you do not know where we take the prince. He is our kin. He will be safe with us.
Leonidas halted mid-step, not because he wanted to, but because his leg suddenly stopped working. He stood there, his foot dangling in the air, unable to press it down. He glowered in the direction the Starseers had gone.
Long minutes passed before the invisible power holding him released him. Ignoring the warning, Leonidas ran to the top of the dune. Tracks remained in the sand, so he could follow from a distance as long as a storm did not come up.
But when he reached the crest, he found himself staring after five hover bikes zipping away toward the horizon. Even Leonidas could not keep up with such craft, and they would not stir the sand with their passing or leave any tracks.
He slumped in his armor, somehow feeling this defeat more than the others of the week. The smallest figure raised a hand before his hover bike raced over a dune, and he once again disappeared from sight.
Leonidas took some solace from the fact that Thorian had gone with them willingly, but the sense of defeat lingered. He had lost his emperor, lost the prince, and for all he knew, his entire battalion may have been destroyed in the last days of the fighting. Those defending the asteroid palace certainly had been killed. It slowly dawned on him that with his last mission complete, he had nowhere to go, no one left to report to.
The Fallen Empire Collection by Lindsay Buroker Page 82