The Fallen Empire Collection by Lindsay Buroker

by Discover Sci-Fi Special Edition

  One of the armored men pulled himself up to the cockpit and climbed over Sadangi to look in the back. He was blithely unconcerned that Sadangi might produce a weapon that could hurt him.

  “Ouch, you metal buffoon,” Sadangi growled. “My balls are not the proper resting place for your foot.”

  “It’s not the emperor,” the soldier called out, turning toward the windows. “It’s a boy.”

  Leonidas had wondered if they’d thought the emperor was their passenger. That would explain why they had wanted the ship captured. The emperor could be compelled to order all of his forces across the system to stand down, to end this war earlier, with fewer losses of men and equipment from the Alliance. The soldiers might also find Thorian valuable, but he wouldn’t be able to do the same thing. They might think to use him to force his father to comply with their demands. Leonidas supposed it was vain to hope that they wouldn’t recognize him or his significance.

  “A boy?” the captain asked. His head bent toward a console, and a holodisplay appeared in the air over the flight deck. Thorian’s face was centered in it. In the display, he was a year or two younger and wearing a quasi-military uniform as he gazed at the camera, but he was still easy to identify. “This boy?”

  So much for the Alliance men not recognizing him.

  “Yes, sir,” the soldier said, after a couple more glances. “That’s him.”

  The captain murmured something to the other officers in the control room with him. Even with his enhanced ears, Leonidas could not hear the words through the Glastica. Thus, he was caught by surprise when the captain spoke his next words.

  “Kill him. Kill them all.”

  The soldier must have been surprised, too, because he hesitated. Leonidas had time to spring into the cockpit and grab him.

  Dozens of rifles started firing as he did so, and the soldier tried to jerk up his own weapon to shoot Leonidas. He was too slow. Leonidas hurled the man to the flight deck.

  “Canopy and shields,” he barked to Sadangi, who was shrinking even lower than before as blazer bolts bounced off the nose of the bomber. “Keep him safe.”

  As Sadangi hit the button to lower the canopy, Leonidas leaped down, landing next to the soldier he’d just thrown out. The man had found his feet and once again tried to bring his rifle to bear, but Leonidas was too fast. He grabbed the soldier and threw him into the closest squadron of soldiers.

  Fire from all over the bay pelted Leonidas’s armor, and the internal display lit up like fireworks, flashing warnings. He ignored them and charged for the squadron of men closest to the control room. He did not know if he could break through the Glastica windows, but if he could, it would be easier than making it to the door and running through two levels of corridors.

  A boom sounded, Sadangi firing from the cockpit. He’d gotten the canopy down and, Leonidas hoped, the shields up. The e-cannon blast coursed through the air and slammed into one of the mobile artillery weapons. The second artillery weapon returned fire, blasting its ammunition between the rows of soldiers to hammer into the bomber’s forward shields.

  With dozens of problems of his own to deal with, Leonidas had to leave the bomber to Sadangi. He plowed into soldiers, pummeling them but also getting in their way, hoping they would shoot each other as often as they struck him. Like an asteroid, he created chaos wherever he landed, but two warnings flashed, telling him his suit had been breached. His rear helmet camera showed two-dozen men firing at his back, finding spots between their comrades.

  He ducked as one of the cannons took aim, the artilleryman pulling the trigger. The blast scorched the air inches above his helmet before slamming into one of the walls.

  Leonidas lunged to his left, again trying to push his way toward that bank of windows. Smoke wafted from a charred dent in his back piece, and he could feel the heat on his flesh, the promise of armor failure, of pain.

  An armored soldier in front of him pitched over, one Leonidas had not touched.

  He threw an elbow strike into a man’s chest to his right and kicked out at someone who was closing from the left, but he puzzled over that fallen man as he fought. The figure’s legs and arms twitched, as if he were having a seizure. Leonidas had not seen any of Sadangi’s rounds blasting into troops on this side of the bay. For all his talk of leaving cyborgs behind, he was being careful not to fire into anyone too close to Leonidas.

  Another soldier toppled, legs and arms again twitching. It cleared the path in front of Leonidas.

  Not questioning his luck, he sprinted for the metal wall below the bank of windows. He leaped into the air, jumping twenty feet to smash his fist against the translucent barrier. Glastica could withstand bullets and blazer fire, and as hard as a cyborg could punch, his first try only caused a slight crack deep within the material.

  When he landed, he whirled, expecting more attackers. But several more armored men were down, all of them thrashing about as if in their death throes.

  No, Leonidas realized. That wasn’t it. They were fighting with their armor. The computerized equipment must not be obeying their commands.

  Sadangi had lifted the bomber into the air, and he was spinning and firing, the powerful weapons of the spacecraft sending men for cover. But he wasn’t the one affecting their armor. Thorian was just visible as he peered out from the back of the cockpit, his face crinkled with concentration. He’d said he was good with mechanical items. If he was responsible for so many armored men thrashing about, Leonidas would not disagree.

  A few people were shooting at Leonidas from behind the cover of other ships, and he returned fire briefly, sending them diving for safety. A lull surrounded him, so he faced the windows again. This was his chance. His enemies were more distracted than they would ever be, especially with the bomber swooping around, wreaking havoc.

  Leonidas leaped again, twisting his hips in the air to add power to his punch. This time, his gauntleted knuckles smashed into and through the Glastica. The armor protected his hands from the blow. Before he could fall back to the deck, he wrapped his fingers around the bottom of the hole he had made.

  Alarmed shouts came from within the control room, and as he hung there, men and women lunged for rifles. Few of the officers inside wore combat armor. They hadn’t expected to face him.

  Leonidas threw his other fist, smashing the window further, making a hole large enough that he could pull himself through. The memory of that officer saying, “Kill him,” about Thorian gave him extra fury and strength. He made short work of the window and hauled himself inside.

  A barrage of blazer fire met him, crimson blasts slamming into his helmet and chest plate. For the most part, they bounced off, but one caught a seam and fire seemed to explode in his armpit.

  Roaring, he threw himself at the officers. The pain stole some of his sanity, leaving enraged battle fury behind, and he barely knew what he did over the next thirty seconds. He tore men’s weapons out of their hands, sent soldiers flying into walls, and beat down all of those who fired at him. Several people dove for the door. He let them escape, but only because the grab beam was his priority.

  Somewhere in the chaos, he had dropped his rifle, and he chastised himself for that, but there was no time to worry about it. He flicked his wrist to extend one of the guns embedded in his arm piece. Two men hurled themselves under consoles. Leonidas spun, not toward them but toward the door leading into the room. It was closed now, having slid shut after the fleeing soldiers escaped. He fired at the panel that controlled it, blasting it to pieces and leaving a melted, smoking mess.

  Hoping that would keep it from opening again, he spun toward the console overlooking the flight deck. It had already taken fire, with components smoking and alarms flashing. He found the grab beam generator and blasted at it, melting through the protective outside and into the circuitry inside.

  He eyed the controls for the forcefield and almost hit the button to open it, but the bomber and everything else that wasn’t magnetically locked down would be blow
n out into space if he did that now. Instead, he studied it carefully for several long seconds before springing back through the window and to the flight deck.

  Several more soldiers were down, their armor malfunctioning so that they could no longer control it. Leonidas ran past them and waved toward the bomber, trying to catch Sadangi’s eye. The pilot was laying waste to some of the neat queues of Strikers parked near the wall. If there were soldiers taking cover there, Leonidas did not see them. Maybe Sadangi simply wanted to do as much damage as he could.

  One of the doors slid open, and a new squad of armored men stormed into the bay. Sadangi hadn’t noticed Leonidas yet, so he sprinted for the bomber. He leaped into the air and landed atop it. He expected to bounce off the shields and succeed only in gaining Sadangi’s attention, but he thumped down onto the hull behind the canopy. The shields had been depleted.

  Sadangi flinched, staring up with wide eyes. Leonidas knocked on the canopy, flattening himself to the hull as those new soldiers fired in his direction. His armor could not withstand many more blows.

  “Open it,” he ordered, just in case his ally was thinking of leaving him behind.

  But Sadangi was already reaching for the controls, and the canopy snapped up. Leonidas pulled himself in, feeling like an armored eel sliding over a rock. He nearly clobbered Sadangi in the tight space as he maneuvered into the passenger seat. That did not keep the pilot from lowering the canopy promptly. The bomber kept moving, swooping about the bay as Sadangi struggled to avoid the blows from the one remaining mobile cannon. If the bomber’s shields had been depleted, it could not withstand another hit from such a powerful weapon.

  “The forcefield is up,” Sadangi said, his voice impressively calm, considering the chaos all around them. “We can’t get out as long as it is.”

  “I’m hoping Thorian can do something about that,” Leonidas said, leaning toward the boy in case he wanted to touch his helmet again.

  “What?” Sadangi blurted, still not grasping what the boy could do.

  Thorian was gazing at Leonidas but did not reach for his helmet. It was as if he already knew exactly what he had in mind. Maybe he did.

  “Done,” Thorian said.

  “It’s down,” Sadangi shouted in wonder.

  He did not hesitate. He zipped for the exit as soon as the forcefield dropped.

  “What’s next?” he asked, glancing at Leonidas’s smoking armor as they escaped the hangar bay. “Unless you disabled their weapons, they’re going to fire at us as soon as we clear the ship.”

  Leonidas shook his head bleakly. “I believe I destroyed the grab beam, but the weapons generators aren’t in that room.”

  “Then they’re just going to blow us up. They thought we had the emperor and wanted him alive. They don’t seem to feel the same way toward his heir.”

  “No,” Leonidas said softly, meeting the boy’s eyes. “I noticed.”

  • • • • •

  Leonidas tried to get his bearings as Sadangi flew them away from the hangar and into space. The warship had moved while the bomber had been held prisoner within its bay. He caught sight of the asteroid where the not-so-hidden palace lay and realized the Alliance ship had been heading closer, probably intending to help finish it off. Leonidas almost groaned. They were back where they had started. Once again, he felt a failure for not succeeding in getting Thorian away. Worse, his body ached, and his charred and dented armor smoked. Neither he nor the bomber could withstand more battle.

  “They knocked out our shields, but our ship is still spaceworthy,” Sadangi said as he swiped a finger through the surround-flow display, getting a damage report. “I’m putting us on course to Dustor, just in case their helmsman is picking his nose and didn’t notice that we escaped. Which isn’t very damned likely.”

  Leonidas looked at Thorian. “I don’t suppose you can encourage nose-picking.”

  “Not with someone that far away who I’m not familiar with, no.”

  Leonidas felt like he had been trampled by a herd of Senekda buffalo, but he managed a smile for the boy. Though his experience with children was limited, he suspected Thorian was mature for his age. And surprisingly reasonable. Someone born into such privilege could have been a snot. Leonidas supposed that the last few years of the war might have bled any such tendencies out of him. He’d lost his brother, and he also might never see his parents again unless Solis-de, the god of hope, interfered with the Alliance’s plans.

  Leonidas shifted his gaze toward the rear camera, which was displaying the asteroid and all the ships surrounding it. Such a hope seemed doomed to be squashed.

  “The warship is locking weapons on us,” Sadangi said, slumping back in his seat.

  Leonidas met his eyes, but said nothing. What was left to say? The bomber still had some weapons, but what could they do to the massive warship? They were already at the edge of the small craft’s range. Unfortunately, the warship had a much larger range.

  “Guess you’re now wishing that you’d gotten stuck back in that duct after all, eh, cyborg?” Sadangi reached over and thumped him on the arm.

  Leonidas arched an eyebrow.

  Movement on the rear camera drew his eye, a lot of movement. Huge pieces of the asteroid were flying in all directions, tumbling out into space. Leonidas stared in stunned silence as the reality of what was happening registered.

  “Shit,” Sadangi said. “They blew it up.”

  Thorian gaped at the display as the asteroid broke up, pieces spraying in a thousand directions. Moisture gleamed in his eyes as reality also sank in for him. His chin, which had thus far been firm and brave, quivered. He blinked and looked away, hiding his face behind Sadangi’s seat.

  Leonidas did not know if he should leave him alone or not. After hesitating, he removed his gauntlet and laid a hand on Thorian’s back, wishing he knew how to offer some comfort. The boy’s shoulders trembled as he wept.

  “Well,” Sadangi said, “they haven’t fired at us yet, and we’re almost out of their weapons’ range. Maybe they’ll forget about us.”

  “Maybe they’re staring at their view screen and realizing that the war is over,” Leonidas said, feeling numb.

  It was possible that some of his people had made it out, especially if they had managed to take over an Alliance ship, but it was more likely that all of them—Stein, Kearney, Tibilov, and the others—had still been on that asteroid. If so, there would be no more battles fought together, no more jokes for him to brush aside, no cyborg forceball team to captain.

  Leonidas swallowed and closed his eyes. After all the battles he had fought in, after all the skirmishes he had endured, it was hard to believe that it was over. Nor did it seem fair that his men were gone, and he was still alive.

  Early on in his career, when he’d been a reckless young corporal, always rushing into battle and not believing in his own mortality, a captain had given him the nickname Leonidas, after the Ancient Greek king who had led his troops to Thermopylae to fight back the Persian invaders. Those men had been heroic, history said, but they had all gotten themselves killed in the end, King Leonidas included. His captain had been certain that he would suffer the same fate someday, dying heroically, but dying all the same, on a battlefield full of death and carnage. Leonidas had believed it too. And to be here at the end of the war, alive when so many others had fallen, did not seem right. What would he do with himself if the fleet was no more? If the empire truly fell?

  “All I care about,” Sadangi said, “is that they’re not paying attention to us right now.” He glanced over his shoulder to where Thorian wept quietly. “Well, that may not be all I care about, but it’s prime in my mind at the moment.”

  Leonidas tore his gaze from the destroyed asteroid and looked to the space ahead of them. “You think the ship is in good enough condition to make it to Dustor, if they don’t chase after us and destroy us in the next ten minutes?”

  “I hope it is. We don’t have a lot of other options. The Alliance took
all of the space stations around here already. Nobody’s going to let us stop for repairs.”

  Leonidas sighed, suspecting the Alliance would have Dustor too. The last he had heard, the battle for the bases and shipyard in its orbit had not been going well.

  “We’re out of their weapons’ range,” Sadangi reported. “Another five minutes, and we’ll be out of their visual range. I’ll tinker with our course and make it hard for them to find us again.” He kept glancing at the displays, perhaps not believing that the warship would forget about them. “They shouldn’t be able to guess our destination. The emperor didn’t tell anyone except me right up until the end.”

  “Thorian,” Leonidas asked quietly. “How much do you know about the Starseers? Do you know if they’re expecting you?”

  He wondered if they could count on them for help getting down to the planet. Perhaps it was too early to start worrying about the next obstacle when their escape was not yet assured.

  “I don’t know,” Thorian whispered, his head buried against his knees. He sounded like he didn’t care, not now.

  Leonidas could not blame him.

  Part 4

  By the fifth day of flying in his combat armor, Leonidas was more than ready to escape it and also the compact bomber. Spending days in a vessel meant only for short-term flights was unpleasant—the less said about the lavatory accommodations, the better. And even though his armor was designed to be comfortable, it wasn’t meant to be worn for days. It took up a lot of room stowed, though, so the most efficient place for it in the cramped cockpit was on him. Besides, he could lock it down when he slept, which was useful since he always had nightmares, sometimes ones where he lashed out and damaged his surroundings. He would never forgive himself if he hurt Thorian, or even Sadangi.

  Still, it would have been nice to store the pieces in his armor case during waking hours, since it would have sanitized them and performed repairs on the more moderate damages. But it had been left in his barracks on Perun, back when this chaotic last defense of the imperial palace—first the official one and then the hidden one—had first begun. He would have to see if he could find a secondhand case on Dustor. He did not know if his barracks existed anymore, or if they had been annihilated like everything else in the empire.