Embers of Esper: A Sci Fi Adventure (Warden's Legacy Book 1)

by Tony James Slater

  The elevator had taken a just few seconds to reach the roof, but she’d decided to leave Aldur and Lukas in the throne room. A bored mob was an ugly mob, and she could sense a tipping point fast approaching. She needed Jen down there quick — and having the most powerful man on Esper by her side wouldn’t hurt, either.

  She still couldn’t believe that man was Alek.

  As soon as she caught sight of the shuttle, she could tell that something was wrong. Borderline derelict to begin with, it looked ready to disintegrate at any moment. The hull was blackened and pock-marked, with plumes of gas leaking from several places. The external weapons ports drooped like they’d been melted, and small chunks of debris were falling from the underside. It wobbled as it approached, listing left and then right as the pilot struggled to correct the motion. Landing jets flared briefly, then one exploded with a bang that wrenched the shuttle sideways. The pilot reacted with impressive speed, pulsing one engine to spin them around for a rear-facing touch down. Jen’s still got it! Thank Sydon. That would have been a crappy way to die.

  They came down fast, obviously not trusting their systems a second more than they had to, and from a few metres up the power simply cut, dropping them like a stone.

  The shuttle slammed into the rooftop so hard that it bounced back up, crashing down again with a crunch of finality. Jen hadn’t bothered with landing gear, and now Kyra could see why; the bottom of the hull was cracked and warped, not even sitting flush on the landing pad.

  What the hell happened?

  The hatch opened a little way, then jammed; the sound of something pounding it from inside reached her ears, before the tip of Tris’ knife emerged, slicing through its hinges and sending it clattering to the rooftop.

  Tris was first out, springing from the hatch as a great cloud of smoke billowed out. He gulped down fresh air, waved to Kyra, then turned to help a young woman climb shakily out.

  Who the hell is that?

  As Kyra watched, another young woman emerged — this one wearing an oxygen mask, which she tore off and thrust back into the ship for someone else to take. A pair of children were handed out next, with scraps of dirty fabric tied around their mouths and noses.

  Where the hell did they find kids?

  Two young men followed, wafting smoke from their faces. The pallor of their skin, and the lumpy mechanical bits inserted beneath it, immediately identified them as Ring-dwellers.

  Why the hell has he brought them here?

  Still more of the pale, toga-wrapped figures were helped from the shuttle, rushing away from it as though they expected it to explode. They huddled in a group on one side of the landing pad, staring around themselves wide-eyed and clutching their robes tightly against the wind.

  Where the hell is Jen?

  Tris had disappeared back inside, and Kyra sensed his urgency and concern. She jogged over to see if there was anything she could do, but as she reached the hatch Alek jumped out, coughing and spluttering and damn near landing on her. By the time she’d hauled him out of the way, Tris had reappeared. Jen was leaning heavily on him, though clearly resisting his attempts at carrying her. Kyra felt more amusement from the old woman that anything else — perhaps because, after decades of living underground, this was quite an adventure.

  Tris lowered her to the ground, and Kyra put a supportive arm around her. The old woman also had a mask on — pilot’s prerogative meant the first one always went to the driver. Kyra waited until they’d hobbled a good distance away from the shuttle before helping her to remove it.

  Jen gulped in a huge breath, then wheezed and panted as Kyra rubbed her back. She was just recovering the power of speech when Tris showed up, soot streaking him from head to foot.

  “I’m not sure I want to ask,” Kyra said.

  A white-toothed grin split his blackened face. “We did it.”

  “You… went to a fancy dress party as charcoal?”

  “We took out the robot factories. All of them.”

  “All of them?” Kyra raised her eyebrows. His surge of enthusiasm was contagious. “You’re sure?”

  “Well, it was a pretty big explosion. We nearly fried the ship.”

  As if to emphasise his point, a piece of the fuselage lost its struggle and hit the deck with a clang. Kyra cast a wary eye over the shuttle, noting that at least one fire was still burning inside it.

  Alek had drifted over, though the Ring-dwellers remained on the far side of the landing pad. There were five women in total, all of whom looked terrified, and four kids — but the men were glaring daggers at Kyra. Hostility radiated off them, to the point where she could feel their eyes boring into her.

  How is this my fault? I wasn’t even up there!

  Jen was now breathing normally, and Kyra suddenly remembered how fragile she was, and how vital to the cause. “Do you want to sit down?”

  The old woman waved her off. “I’ve been sitting all the way down here. I want to go and see what the commander’s tower is like. How on earth did you capture it?”

  Kyra gave a half-shrug. “Killed a few people. Wasn’t too hard. How did you do… whatever you did up there?”

  Jen’s eyes glinted. “Smashed a few robots. Wasn’t too hard.”

  An argument on the far side of the pad caught Kyra’s attention, and she jerked her head towards the Ring-dwellers. “What happened to them?”

  Tris’ grin faltered, taken over by that guilty look he did so well. “Oh, they’re refugees. We kind of destroyed their home.”

  “Destroyed their home? Tris… how much of the Ring did you destroy?”

  He glanced at Alek. “Um… hard to say. There was a bit of a chain-reaction. But not all of it! Not even a quarter, I don’t think.”

  “Not even a quarter,” Alek confirmed, tapping away on his filthy tablet. “Oh. Okay. Maybe just over a quarter.”

  It took some convincing to get the Ring-dwellers into the building. In the end, Tris stayed up on the roof to bring them down in a separate trip — apparently they trusted him, though they refused to share a lift car with Kyra.

  Frikkin’ weirdoes.

  Her mind was still reeling from the news of the devastation they’d wrought; even in her youth, when she’d conducted a similar mission, she’d only taken out a very small segment. If Alek’s estimation was right, the damage caused by their explosion would take decades to repair, if not centuries. Thank every god that I didn’t shred the Master Key! Not only was that the only way to initiate major reconstruction, it was also the only way they could spin up a different section to replace the one that had been destroyed. And I think the Laugarrens would be pretty pissed off, seeing as how it was their section he torched. Hm… perhaps I’ll avoid mentioning that to the delegation downstairs.

  When they reached the throne room, Aldur was making another impassioned speech. Bless him, he seemed to be getting a taste for it. Kyra waited until he paused for breath before giving him a polite round of applause.

  His relief, when he turned to see her standing there with his mother, was evident. Luckily, he restrained himself from running over and hugging her.

  Jen swept into the centre of the throne room, rubbing her hands in glee. “We’ve done it!” she yelled, “Laugarren is free!”

  Some of the crowd must have recognised her, as a cheer went up in response.

  Kyra stood beside her and pointed at the cluster of courtiers. “Don’t suppose you know if any of them are the good guys?”

  Jen marched over to the group and pulled two older women and a young man free. “My eyes and ears,” she praised them, embracing them one after another. “Without you, our little Resistance would have been doomed long ago.”

  The crowd cheered this revelation too, and Kyra started to think they might have a chance of making this work. “What about the rest?” she asked. “You want me to sentence them? I can sit on the chair.”

  Jen reproached her with a glance. “No, I think they’ll be fine in prison, for now.” She raised her voice. “
If we could have a squad of volunteers to escort them?”

  “I’ll take ‘em,” a tall, wiry man spoke up. “I know the way.” Sarcasm lay heavy on his tongue, and Kyra recognised him as the self-confessed comedian.

  She shot him a grin to show that she appreciated his contribution. “You’ll have to watch them though,” she warned him. “That prison is awfully easy to escape from.”

  A group of armed men led the sullen courtiers away. Kyra didn’t really care what happened to them — a bunch of disgruntled flunkies were the least of her worries. The three that remained stood conferring with Jen in the centre of the room, and their little confab was starting to look a lot like the beginnings of a government. Kyra beckoned Aldur over to join them, noting that Tris was hovering in the doorway. Presumably he was keeping his new buddies company, whilst also keen to find out what was going on.

  We’re about to decide who’s running this show, she thought to him.

  Cool. And that’s your job, is it?

  I killed the Lord High Commander, she pointed out. So I at least get a say.

  Really? Damn, I wish I hadn’t missed that.

  She chuckled. Tris didn’t have much of a bloodthirsty streak, so she liked to cultivate it when she could. I’ve got a neat trick to show you later.

  The discussion around Jen had drawn in a few prominent members of the mob, and everyone else in the room was straining to hear what they were saying. People at the back were asking for reports, and others were hushing them — raised voices here and there suggested the situation was about to degenerate.

  Kyra put her fingers in her mouth and cut through the noise with a whistle. “Kind citizens,” she spoke into the silence that followed, “please exercise your constitutional right to shut the hell up! That way, you’ll all be able to hear what this fine lady has to say.” She made an elaborate sweeping gesture in Jen’s direction, ceding her the floor.

  The old woman gave her another reproving look — it was becoming a habit — and stepped forward to address her people.

  “We just want to know what happens next,” some one called out, before she could begin.

  Jen acknowledged that with a curt nod. “As far as I’m aware, I am the oldest living person in this city. I’m one of the few who remembers how it was before our history was re-written. My son Aldur is my preferred candidate for our new commander, but right now we don’t have time for elections. I am hereby assuming temporary control of Laugarren, for the purposes of stabilising this situation, and providing aid to any citizens that need it. Once those goals are met, you have my oath that I will renounce this position, and allow a permanent successor to be elected.”

  “Yeah, that’s all good,” a women in the crowd said, “but what’s next for us? What do we do now?”

  Kyra decided that she was best qualified to field this one. “What now?” she echoed. “I’ll tell you what now. We’re going to do what you’ve always wanted to do. The one thing you’ve all spent your entire lives training for.” She let her gaze roam around the crowd, gauging their mood. It was just right, she realised — a potent mix of frustration and fear that was eagerly seeking an outlet. “I’m going to send an all-frequencies broadcast to the mercenary forces occupying the royal city, demanding their complete and unconditional surrender. Which of course they won’t give us. But we can’t let that stand. We can’t let off-worlders invade our planet and torture our citizens. We need to kick those bastards off Esper once and for all. So I’m going to need each and every one of you to report to your duty stations and gather your weapons. We’re going to fire up the entire Laugarren war machine… and we’re going to invade the city of Lehen!”

  The cheer she got for that shook the walls of the throne room.

  As the crowd slowly filed out, chivvied along by the handful of officers amongst them, Kyra strolled over to where the late Captain Iker lay in a slowly coagulating puddle of blood. The Lord High Commander’s severed head sat in the gore, so she picked it up by the hair and gave it a shake. She carried it over to where Tris and Lukas were standing, and held it up next to her own head.

  “Kyra killed me,” she croaked, working the dead man’s jaw. “She’s a very powerful warrior, and you should do exactly what she says. When this is all over, you need to take her back to Earth for a shopping spree.”

  Tris just stared at her, apparently not impressed. “So… this is your neat trick?”

  She lowered her puppet and let it drop to the floor with a thud. “Just thought I’d give you a heads-up.”

  Lukas leaned in. “She keeps doing that,” he stage-whispered. “Don’t you think it’s weird?”

  Tris eyeballed him. “Mate, after what I saw up on the Ring… trust me, you have no idea.”

  FORTY-TWO

  The Laugarren military machine was a truly impressive spectacle.

  Tris could only be glad that he’d never had to fight it. Thousands of troops in their matching grey uniforms filled the plaza, arranged in symmetrical formations. Smaller squads of shock troops punctuated the mass, their mirrored helmets shining. There was a little balcony jutting out halfway up the main tower, presumably designed so that the commander could inspect and inspire his troops from on high. That wasn’t really Kyra’s style though, and Jen had given her carte blanche to handle the Lehen assault however she wanted. Thus, she was standing on a crate outside the tower’s main entrance, with Tris and Lukas either side of her.

  Assembling the army had taken almost no time. The whole process was so cleverly orchestrated, the individual troops so well-drilled, that Tris couldn’t help wondering how Kyra’s city was still standing. It would have come to this eventually, he realised, even if Viktor hadn’t stuck his oar in. Only then it would have been these people attacking Kyra’s people… soldiers against civilians. He shuddered at that thought. Maybe its better this way. At least we’ll be uniting them against a common enemy. They might even stay friends afterward… the ones who survive, anyway.

  An informal send-off had been arranged at incredibly short notice; bunches of non-combatants surrounded the active-duty troops, waving and cheering for them as they waited patiently for the order to embark.

  Spaced in between them sat dozens of the open-topped transports that had ferried Tris and his friends here from their downed shuttle. Arrayed behind the troops was a double row of the sealed tank-like vehicles that Lukas had destroyed two of; some of these had come directly from the hospital, where Tarri remained under the same guard as she had been before the coup.

  It was an odd situation, and not one that Tris could see an easy way out of. Regime change was a complex affair, and the wider ramifications of it were way beyond what their little crew could handle. For now, they had a relatively simple task; get this army moving towards Kyra’s city, and use it to scour Viktor’s mercenaries out of there. After that, all they had to do was find that pesky barge and lay their hands on the man himself…

  Lukas is right. When this is all done, I could really use a massage.

  He tuned back into the speech Kyra was making, just as she gave the order to mount up. In near-perfect synchronisation, legions of troops turned and filed into their allocated transports. It was so orderly that it put him in mind of a computer game; he just needed to find the button labelled ‘attack Viktor,’ and the rest would take care of itself.

  “Ready to go, mate?” Lukas asked him. They’d been offered a unique vehicle to ride in — an enclosed hover-tank fully twice the size of the garden-variety ones. Heavy weapons turrets adorned its angular carapace, which was pristine and unblemished. None of the vehicles had a scratch on them, and Tris couldn’t help wondering how well these guys would fare in combat. Every one of them had dedicated their lives to military training — but only a few detachments of the commander’s shock troopers had ever had to fight for their lives.

  Hopefully the mercs don’t know that. And even if they do, we must have them seriously outnumbered. Even air-support had been authorised, with Laugarren’s
full complement of twenty trained flight crews mobilised to prep their aircraft. Flying wasn’t a common skill here, and the number of strike ships they had dramatically outstripped the number of people who could fly them. That shouldn’t be too much of a problem, though; no-one had seen any evidence to suggest that Viktor had imported his own air force.

  Tris clomped up the ramp into the tank and took a seat in the crew compartment. Much of the space inside was taken up with weapon systems, so it wasn’t nearly as spacious as it looked from outside. Lukas settled himself into a gunnery station, while Kyra and Jen took the driving seats. Aldur was staying behind to run things, much to his chagrin — though Tris thought he could sense a hint of relief in the Resistance leader’s manner, as though he wasn’t quite as committed to violence as his job description might suggest.

  They moved off at a stately pace, following a column of other vehicles along the wide streets of Laugarren. Stark, utilitarian buildings rolled by on both sides, and Tris watched the feeds from the external camera with mounting distaste. I am so glad to be getting out of here! I hope Kyra’s city is a bit nicer. Hell, it can’t be much worse. No wonder she’s obsessed with rainbows, if she spent her childhood in a dump like this.

  They reached the huge wall that encircled the city, and passed out through the tunnel beneath it. The glistening green forest beyond provided such a welcome relief that Tris clapped his hands in anticipation. “Lehen, here we come,” he said, when Kyra frowned back at him. “Hey, does this mean I’m finally going to get to see where you grew up?”

  “Depends.” She turned back to the controls. “On whether or not Viktor’s turned it into a crater.”

  The hover-tank’s engines roared into high gear, and they rose a good ten metres into the air. A wide swathe of open ground surrounded the city, and a glittering reservoir lay off to one side. Fluffy white clouds filled the sky; it was a beautiful day to go to war. The procession swung away from the water, making for a gap in the trees opposite the main entrance. Rather than fly over the treetops as they’d done in Issi’s car, Kyra kept them low, following the other vehicles down a substantial track that had been cleared through the forest.