Imperial Twilight

by Eric Thomson

  “Yes, sir.” The staff sergeant was visibly relieved. “Nothing happened here. We were never here. We never saw you or her highness.”

  “Dismissed.”

  Both noncoms stomped to attention and snapped off a salute that would do their regimental sergeant major proud before turning on their heels in a synchronized movement. Once their footsteps faded away, Bram nudged Zahar’s corpse with her booted foot.

  “We need to leave now, Madame, whether or not your ship is in orbit. Zahar will be missed within the next few hours, and even if he made sure no one could track his movements tonight, someone will eventually look here. While I change, grab any last-minute items you can’t part with, and we’ll head for Lena’s riverside slums. Leave all electronics here, especially your communicator.”

  “Won’t they track our car?”

  “Sure, that’s why we’ll ditch it somewhere near Central Square and walk the rest of the way. I’m sure I can scrounge up transport for the run to the park when you receive that final signal.”

  Five minutes later, Bram drove them through the palace’s main gate and down the steep hill on surface roadways, aimed at Lena’s heart. Ten minutes after that, they left the car on a side street with orders for its AI to return home after a thirty-minute interval.

  “Hopefully my motor pool contact will be smart enough to fiddle with the AI’s log and wipe every trace of this trip,” Bram said once they turned the corner and merged with regular foot traffic, still dense this early in the evening.

  “Why would he do that without someone asking him?”

  “I didn’t exactly sign the car out, Madame. I gave him half of my remaining money to look the other way. He wipes the log, and no one will be able to tell we took it by the time they find the old bastard in your former lodgings.”

  “Understood. And from now on, it’s Marta. I don’t want to hear the word Madame or any other title, okay, Jacelyn?”

  “Understood. And my friends call me Jace.” Bram hesitated for a fraction of a second. “Marta.”

  She smiled at the Marine.

  “That wasn’t so difficult, was it?”

  “No.” Another moment of indecision. Then, “Why did he want you dead so badly he was about to do it himself?”

  “You’re aware he bore a deep hatred for the Order of the Void.”

  “I doubt there’s anyone around here who doesn’t. The bloodbath when he proscribed them was beyond anything I’ve ever seen. He justified it by calling them dangerous traitors and irredeemable Dendera supports, but I never believed it.”

  “Your predecessor, Heloise, was a Sister of the Void. She and a small band of Brethren saved my life and those of my children.”

  “Children?”

  “They’re alive, somewhere. A ship from the Order picked them off Mykonos after Jorge Danton captured me but before the Retribution Fleet’s second, catastrophic attack.”

  Bram’s pace faltered as she turned to stare at Marta.

  “Oh. I was informed they’d been killed during the rebellion against your late husband.”

  “That’s what I told everyone so they wouldn’t be tracked. As I said, Heloise was a sister. It’s why she died at Zahar’s hands, and from the first day of our captivity, she trained me in the Order’s disciplines. Zahar found out moments after he murdered her and has ever since considered me no different from any other witch of the Void, as he calls them. Once Custis decided I was superfluous, it’s not a stretch to figure Zahar wanted the pleasure of killing me himself as revenge for any humiliations real and imagined I heaped on his head.”

  “I see.” Bram fell into a thoughtful silence.

  “Do you regret killing him to protect me?” Marta asked after they crossed another intersection and left the city center behind them.

  Bram shook her head.

  “No. I figure Zahar was a nasty piece of work who tricked many good Marines into committing atrocities. The friars and sisters educated me and opened my mind so it could encompass a whole universe. If not for them, I wouldn’t have left home to become a Marine. When Zahar desecrated the Yotai Abbey, I promised myself I’d find a way of avenging them. And I did.”

  After almost an hour, they reached the anonymous storage depot where they’d stowed their bags and retrieved them. Forty-five minutes after that, they stood in front of a rundown inn close to one of the bridges leading across the river where Founder’s Park loomed in the darkness.

  “It won’t be up to anyone’s standards,” Bram said, “but no one will ask for names, let alone IDs. And they won’t remember we were there.”

  “How does a former Imperial Marine Corps lieutenant colonel know so much about vanishing?”

  Bram winked at her.

  “Friends in low places. Shall we?”

  Marta took one step, then froze. The gentle warm pulse emanating from Heloise’s beacon unexpectedly took on a more urgent rhythm.

  “Um, I think we need to be in the park now.”

  Marta quickly explained about the beacon disguised as a talisman she wore around her neck, and that the ship she was expecting belonged to the Order of the Void.

  “So they’re inbound already? That was fast.”

  “I don’t know if it’s the case. Heloise didn’t have much time to explain beyond trusting my instincts. But they’re telling me our rescuers are in orbit.”

  “In that case, a shuttle might already be on the way, leaving us with perhaps forty-five minutes to reach the park. I hope you’re not too tired.”

  “On the contrary. Set whatever pace you think best. I’ll manage.”

  — 48 —

  A soft tap on the briefing room’s open door broke Custis from his contemplation of the sector’s increasingly perilous strategic position. The only star systems in the holotank not pulsing in one of various baleful colors were Yotai and the two minor junctions between Parth and Micarat. Every other part of his shrinking realm had either seen off a reconnaissance in force by the Retribution Fleet or been attacked.

  “Your Grace?” The voice belonged to one of Custis’ military aides.

  “Yes,” he snapped, not bothering to hide his irritation at the interruption.

  “We found Admiral Zahar. He’s dead, shot by parties unknown in Lady Marta’s apartments.”

  “What?”

  Custis whirled around to stare at the aide.

  “Admiral Zahar was killed by a small bore plasma shot to the head. Her Highness and Lieutenant Colonel Bram have vanished, leaving their personal effects, including communicators behind. The headquarters battalion commander has people trying to trace their movements as we speak. We know the vehicles in the motor pool are accounted for, including the one Bram usually signs out.”

  Custis swung back toward the holotank so he could hide his growing rage from the hapless colonel standing in the doorway. Damn Zahar. Instead of letting Marta’s demotion from empress-designate to traitor unfold convincingly, he couldn’t even wait a day before trying to kill her. Yet she, or perhaps that hatchet-faced aide, had turned the tables on him.

  Maybe it was for the best. With Zahar dead, Custis was no longer forced to look over his shoulder and wonder whether his soul would join that of the late Viceroy Joback in the Great Void. But where would Marta go? And did it matter? She was gone and could no longer cause mischief.

  “Keep me apprised of developments as they occur.”

  “Yes, Your Grace.”

  “And send for Admiral Scerrix. He now commands 16th Fleet.”

  Though unimaginative and an indifferent strategist, at least Scerrix didn’t nurture Zahar’s murderous ambitions. And he would be more amenable to Custis’ orders.

  **

  “How are you doing?” Bram asked once they were across the river.

  “I’m fine, but the beacon’s pulse is getting faster. Something tells me we need to choose a landing site within the next few minutes.”

  Marta called up her
mind’s map of the park, built through successive visits. She realized that though its main entrance was a mere hundred meters up the road, the next isolated meadow big enough for a standard personnel shuttle was at least twenty minutes away. At this hour of the night, few if any of Lena’s citizens would wander the park’s winding paths, and chances were good the main parking lot by the information kiosk was empty. It would have to do.

  “Then there’s only one choice,” Bram replied, coming to the same conclusion. “If late evening walkers are in the area, they’ll witness our departure, but by the time someone in authority listens to the story of a mysterious shuttle pickup, we should be well away.”

  However, the lot was mercifully empty.

  “It’s near,” Marta whispered. “The beacon is on a constant buzz now.”

  The moment she finished speaking, they heard a faint whine of shuttle thrusters slightly off the spaceport’s main flight path. Then, a dark shape partially occluded the star-studded sky dozens of meters above them. The sound changed in tone while the shape grew in size as it descended vertically.

  “Civilian model,” Bram said when the craft finally settled on its landing gear. “The markings say Galactic Dawn Corporation. Never heard of them.”

  Marta stepped toward the craft and waited. After almost a minute, the aft ramp opened to the soft squeal of metal on metal, revealing a rectangle of dim red light. A man in a dark, unadorned spacer’s uniform stepped out.

  Though Marta couldn’t see his eyes in the gloom, she knew he was staring at her. Or rather through her.

  “Who are you, Sister?”

  “My name is Marta. I am not a consecrated sister, but I was trained by one, the late Heloise of the Mykonos Abbey. She gave me her beacon moments before Admiral Zahar murdered her.”

  “Which explains why a Mykonos beacon drew us to Yotai. Your mind is strong, Marta. The beacon’s signal was extraordinarily clear. Otherwise, we would not have come with such alacrity.” He gestured at Bram, standing a pace behind and to one side of Marta. “She is not one of the Brethren. Who is she?”

  “My friend and savior, Jacelyn Bram. She killed Admiral Zahar just as he was about to murder me a few hours ago. Where I go, she goes.”

  “Your friend is a woman of war, Marta. Her sort killed most of the Brethren in this sector.”

  “Jacelyn took no part in the massacres. Your brothers and sisters educated her as a child, and she holds the Order in great respect.”

  “What if I said I’m to retrieve Brethren only?”

  “Then you may leave us to our fate. I am not a sister and I will not leave without Jacelyn.”

  When the man didn’t immediately reply, Marta understood they were under scrutiny by a skilled female mind inside the shuttle, one capable of probing without leaving mental fingerprints. She opened her thoughts and waited.

  Marta was proved right shortly after that. A low-pitched woman’s voice said, “They come with us.”

  “You heard her.” The man swept his arm toward the ramp.

  Once inside, another crewmember, perhaps the sister who’d probed them, took their bags, then indicated side by side seats, and helped them with the restraints while the aft ramp closed. Moments later, the shuttle’s thrusters spooled up, and it lifted vertically under full power. Marta’s instincts told her she’d never set foot on Yotai again, that she and Jacelyn Bram were headed away from the Coalsack Sector for good.

  No one spoke during the flight, and within an hour, the shuttle’s apparent motion changed as it aligned its nose with a starship’s open hangar doors. Marta sensed a slight change in ambient gravity, then a faint drop and the shuttle’s drives died away.

  “Welcome aboard Dawn Seeker.” The sister stood and gestured at their seat restraints. “My name is Aello. You may free yourselves. I will bring you to our captain first, then find a pair of adjoining bunks. As you’ll see, we are somewhat overburdened with Brethren and others whom we rescued, so don’t expect comfort and our food, though still plentiful, is plain. But once away from Yotai, we head for sanctuary.”

  “Where would that be?” Marta tried to stretch muscles cramped by hours of tension as best she could in the confined space after climbing to her feet.

  “Lyonesse. Dawn Seeker has not visited it yet, but we received word to head there once we finish our search for survivors. It is the Order’s new and only home in this part of the galaxy.”

  **

  Friar Bassus, Dawn Seeker’s white-haired, leathery-skinned master, sat back in his chair once Marta finished telling her story from the day of her husband’s death until the shuttle landed. He studied her with eerily intense eyes.

  “The late Sister Heloise must have been an exceptional teacher to instill such strength of mind and discipline in so little time.”

  “She was. I owe her my life, and that of my children, who I know are still alive somewhere.”

  “If a Galactic Dawn ship rescued them from Mykonos before the second great scouring, as your evidence seems to prove, then they will eventually land on Lyonesse. And that is our ultimate destination too, as Sister Aello probably told you.”

  “She did.”

  “We hold regular services and training sessions, should you wish to continue what Heloise started, though you’ll find them a bit crowded.” Bassus turned his searching gaze on Bram. “You are also welcome to attend. Even those without the talent benefit greatly from our training and spiritual practices.”

  “Thank you, Captain.”

  “Sister Aello will now show you to your bunks.”

  When Bassus climbed to his feet, Marta and Bram imitated him. Before they could reply, the intercom in Bassus’ day cabin sprang to life.

  “Captain, the Yotai Wormhole Three traffic control buoy just transmitted on the emergency subspace channel. Twelve ships identifying themselves as part of the Imperial Retribution Fleet came through the Mykonos branch.”

  “A reconnaissance in force,” Marta said. “I think the end game for the Coalsack Sector’s future is about to begin. And though I suspect the actual attack, when it comes, will break the Retribution Fleet’s back for good, Custis’ proto-empire won’t survive.”

  Bassus’ eyes searched hers while a frown creased his forehead.

  “Is that an estimate born of strategic acumen, or did you sense something?”

  “Perhaps a combination of both. I’ve seen images of fire and blood for months.”

  “Interesting. We should find time to talk once Seeker is FTL. There’s long been a debate within the Order about whether such a thing as prescience exists, with strong supporters for both points of view and precious little evidence. But since things are about to become a little heated in this system, please excuse me while I get us away.”

  Bassus ushered them out of his day cabin and, after giving Aello tersely worded instructions, he headed for the bridge.

  “I guess we escaped just in time,” Bram said. “But I pity those who can’t flee Yotai before the imperials come back to finish the job. They’ll die for no other reason than a bunch of noble assholes and ego-maniacal flag officers playing their game of empires to the bitter end.”

  Marta laid a hand on her arm.

  “Pray for them if you wish, but please do not indulge in survivor’s guilt. We’re on this ship for a reason.”

  “If you say so.”

  “I do.”

  — 49 —

  Lyonesse

  A recently promoted Major Haller approached Morane as he shared a glass of wine with Governor Yakin and Chancellor Reyes. Tonight was the Constitutional Convention’s opening gala reception and everyone save Haller, who was on duty, wore their finery, officers in mess uniforms, scholars, and monastics in robes and civilians in formal suits. Soft music filled Warehouse A, turned into a ballroom for the occasion, courtesy of the Rifle Regiment’s band.

  “Could I speak with you, Admiral?”

  “Certainly.”

 
Morane knew she wouldn’t pull him away from the reception without a good reason, so he excused himself, found a convenient horizontal surface for his glass, and followed Haller out of the cavernous warehouse.

  “What’s up?” He asked once the door closed behind them, cutting off both the strains of a classical composition and several hundred voices.

  “The wormhole traffic control buoy fired off an alert on the subspace emergency channel a few minutes ago. Five ships, four of them tentatively identified as Kalinka class frigates and one as a Coromandel class light cruiser entered our system. They’re not broadcasting on subspace bands, so we can’t yet identify them. Condor has the picket duty and is observing, but remains under silent running.”

  Five warships, though older models, could only mean Admiral Zahar’s spies reported back with enough information to convince Custis that Lyonesse had been Tanith’s final destination.

  Vanquish could eat a Coromandel cruiser for breakfast and still chew up one or two frigates, but the strain Myrtale suffered during her wild chase through the Lyonesse wormhole branch made her more vulnerable.

  And Narwhal was in transit to relieve Condor as picket ship. Which left two against five, if he didn’t count Dawn Runner. Not great odds, even with the new orbital platforms they’d deployed over the last few months, but perhaps enough to convince the task force commander talking was better than fighting.

  When they entered the operations center, Petty Officer First Class Leo Atreus, the duty noncom, swiveled his chair around to face them.

  “The traffic control buoy went dormant after sending the alert, as per its programming. Condor is still making a small hole in space. I warned Vanquish, Myrtale, and Dawn Runner. They’re watching the hyperlimit while waiting for orders. Narwhal is FTL and won’t get the message until she drops out of hyperspace at the terminus.”

  “Thank you, PO.”

  Morane studied the main status display.

  “My orders for Captain Mikkel are as follows. Vanquish and Myrtale are to shift their orbits beyond that of Gwaelod,” he said, naming the outermost of Lyonesse’s three moons, “once Condor reports the intruders going FTL. They’re to enter silent running in eight hours and wait for orders. If that task force makes a hostile move, I intend to ambush it. Dawn Runner is to stay at her current altitude and present a warship’s aspect.” He turned to Haller. “Please discreetly ask the governor, Chief Administrator Logran, Speaker Hecht, Colonel DeCarde, Sister Gwenneth and Captain Ryzkov to join me in the conference room. PO Atreus, patch Captain Mikkel in.”