Fallen Empire 2: Honor's Flight

by Lindsay Buroker

  Alisa probably wouldn’t have heard or seen it if he hadn’t been pointing his gun across the rooftop, but she followed his gaze and spotted it.

  “You don’t want to just break its neck?” She waved at his big handgun.

  “If it had a neck, I’d be glad to do so,” he murmured, keeping his voice low. The devices recorded audio as well as video. That had never bothered him when the imperial police had been monitoring the feeds, but it was different now.

  After bobbing along the edge in the back, the spy box floated onto the rooftop, spinning slowly as it headed in their direction.

  “They only deviate from their usual routes if they see something suspicious, right?” Alisa asked.

  “That’s my understanding. Apparently, we’re being suspicious.”

  “We’re just a couple looking for some privacy.”

  “On top of a warehouse?” Leonidas asked.

  The cube floated closer, one of its lenses focusing on them.

  “Don’t get twitchy with those neck-breaking hands.” Alisa scooted closer to him before he could ask her what that meant. She slung her arm across his shoulders and tossed a leg over his.

  “What are you doing?” Leonidas whispered.

  “We’re canoodling,” she murmured back. “And keeping it from getting a good look at our faces.”

  Leonidas decided that might, indeed, fool the spy box. It wasn’t as if a sophisticated AI ran the devices. It had probably only come in this direction to investigate the missing unit in the fleet of spy boxes that patrolled the streets collecting footage.

  He shifted onto his side, facing Alisa and resting a hand on her waist. It had been so long since he’d had sex—or even canoodled—that he found the intimacy awkward. Alisa ducked her chin to hide her face under her arm, and he did the same. Their foreheads brushed as she peeked under her sleeve to eye the spy box. He resisted the urge to pull back and put space between them. If he had met her eight months ago, he would have treated her as an enemy—and she surely would have done the same to him—but they were just people now, neither employed by their governments. Neither soldiers, not anymore. After all his years of service, that was hard to accept, but he forced himself to think of her as nothing more than the captain of the freighter he was riding on, a captain who had stuck up for him when the Alliance came looking for him, risking her own reputation—and her life—to help him escape. She deserved to be treated well, like a friend, or at least a fellow officer. Not that he’d made a practice of canoodling with the officers in his all-male cyborg unit. Fortunately, she smelled better than they did, that lavender scent teasing his nostrils.

  The spy box floated to their side of the roof, pausing to hover just beyond Leonidas’s feet.

  “What’s it doing?” Alisa muttered. “Watching to see if we take off our clothes?”

  “Perhaps our ruse isn’t fooling it.”

  “Perhaps it’s a perv.”

  Alisa lifted her gaze to meet his and quirked her eyebrows. He wasn’t sure if she wanted his opinion on the likelihood of robotic fetishes, or if she was checking to see if he appreciated her humor. Her suggestion that he didn’t know how to laugh anymore trickled into his mind. If it was true, he knew it had nothing to do with his cyborg implants—he refused to believe those had altered his humanity in any way—and everything to do with the war. He’d once laughed with his comrades, not as often as some, perhaps, but he had laughed. Unfortunately, years of being on the losing side of a war, of having his people survive only to lose the frailer humans they had been protecting, had left him with guilt, regret, and the knowledge that he had failed. Humor did not tickle his inner spirit very often anymore, and he did not know how to fix that.

  With a faint whirring sound, the box floated toward the rear of the rooftop. Leonidas lifted his head to watch it go while wondering if it had sent its footage to police headquarters and if the patroller investigating the smithy was even now being alerted to nearby spies. He still found it odd that only one person was poking around down there.

  As the spy box drifted over the edge, Leonidas heard a click from the street, from the direction of the smithy. He whirled back to his stomach, shedding Alisa’s arm. He was in time to see the top of a man’s headful of short blond hair before the person disappeared inside, the rolling door dropping down behind him with a thud.

  Cursing inwardly, Leonidas leaped over the edge of the roof. It might be too late to keep Sergeant Lancer from meeting the policewoman, but perhaps there was still time to help. The last thing he wanted was for one of his people to run afoul of the authorities here for no reason.

  After sprinting to the smithy, Leonidas crouched to grab the latch on the bottom of the roll-up door, but he halted in shocked surprise as the faint odor of charred almonds reached his nose. He leaped back, crossing to the far side of the street, his instincts driving his reaction. He forced himself to stop, analyzing the ramifications and his options instead of sprinting several blocks to make sure he wouldn’t inhale too much of that gas.

  Tyranoadhuc gas.

  At least two years had passed since anyone had used it against him, but he recognized the smell immediately. And he remembered being flat on his back in the middle of combat in a corridor on his ship, his mechanical implants frozen, even his eyes locked open, unable to blink as the gas affected every enhanced body part he owned. That day, his people had been caught unprepared, a secret betrayal turned into a surprise attack, and neither Leonidas nor his cyborg men had been able to take the time to don their combat armor, armor that would have filtered out the gas and protected them. He remembered the smug look of the female commander leading the Alliance troops as she had walked up to his side, looking down at him through the faceplate of her helmet, her left cheek and jaw shiny with an old burn she’d never had grafted. She’d pointed her rifle at his chest, and his instincts had screamed for him to move, but his body had refused to comply.

  “Colonel Adler,” she murmured. “We meet again.” Instead of shooting, she had lifted her rifle to her shoulder, barely noticing the energy bolts flying past her, one even glancing off the shoulder of her dented green armor. “I think it will hurt you more to survive when your ship falls, when all of your people are killed. And I believe I shall tell you that one of your own officers was responsible for this betrayal. A Captain Morin. You know him, I’m certain. Cyborgs, it seems, are as amenable to bribes as human men.”

  She’d stalked past him without waiting for a response—not that he could have given one. It had taken nearly twenty minutes for that gas to wear off, an eternity in battle. Most of his people had been killed, including the senior command staff on the Excelsior, and he’d barely roused in time to grab his combat armor and make it to an escape pod.

  “Leonidas?” Alisa asked softly from the corner of the building—she must have left the warehouse rooftop via that ladder and come around through the alley.

  He shook the memories from his head and looked up and down the street, aware that they had consumed him so fully that he hadn’t been paying attention to his surroundings. He could have been an easy target for someone with a grudge against cyborgs. Or for the person who had loosed that gas. The policewoman? She was probably a victim. Maybe someone else had slipped in while Leonidas had been distracted by the spy box? Or maybe he’d been mistaken about who had been entering the smithy? When he had spotted that blond hair, he had assumed it was Sergeant Lancer, but he hadn’t seen the man’s face.

  “What’s wrong?” Alisa whispered, jogging across the street.

  Leonidas took a step toward the smithy, but halted and thrust his fingers through his hair in frustration. “I can’t go in.” He couldn’t smell the gas from the middle of the street, but he knew his nose hadn’t been mistaken. It wouldn’t take much of a dose for him to be affected, and holding his breath wouldn’t work. The potent stuff had such small molecules that it could enter the bloodstream through the skin. “Tyranoadhuc gas,” he said, catching Alisa’s puzzled expre
ssion.

  “Ah.” The puzzlement faded.

  She recognized the name. He kept himself from asking if she had ever used the stuff, or piloted a team of soldiers who had used it, against his people. What was going on in that building now was more important than the past. If that had been Sergeant Lancer, he could be sprawled on the ground in there, helpless.

  “It doesn’t bother humans, right?” Alisa pulled out her Etcher. “I’ll go in.”

  “No. This isn’t your battle.”

  Her eyebrows rose. “I don’t think it’s your battle, either.”

  Not true. His unit might have been dissolved, but he would always consider the cyborgs who had served under his command as his people.

  Explaining that would take too long. Instead, he lightly gripped her arm to keep her from crossing the street and said, “Stay here. I’ll put my armor on.”

  He let go and sprinted for the case, tugging it into the alley so that he could dress with his back to the wall. Whatever was going on, it wasn’t anything innocuous. They didn’t sell that gas at the corner market. It could damage all computers and machinery, not just cyborg implants, and it was illegal for civilians to have it. Military supplies were tightly controlled, or at least they had been when the empire had been in charge.

  Growling to himself, he stuffed his legs into the greaves as quickly as possible. Usually, they flexed and conformed around him automatically, fitting precisely and comfortably about his limbs, but every piece of his armor had taken damage during his escape from the Alliance, and some of the servos whined and grumbled as he manipulated them. Under the best circumstances, it took more than five minutes to suit up. Unfortunately, he dared not take any shortcuts. He needed the suit to be airtight before venturing in to deal with that gas. As airtight as it could be. Normally, it was spaceworthy, but he well remembered the leak he had sprung during his brief space walk on the way back to the freighter. That small hole shouldn’t let in enough gas to affect him. He hoped.

  Someone shouted, and a clatter arose inside the building. Cursing, Leonidas tried to dress faster. That had been a woman’s voice. The police officer? Something crashed to the floor inside. He wished there were windows, but neither the side nor the back of the building had any, and getting his armor on was more important than running over half-dressed and peering through the front window. Or so he thought, until he heard the front door roll up quietly.

  Alisa?

  He lunged out of the alley, still fastening his torso armor around his body. “Don’t go in,” he barked.

  It was too late. The street was empty.

  • • • • •

  It took another minute for Leonidas to get his helmet on and the rest of his charred and dented armor into place. An eternity. As soon as he could, he pulled up the roll-up door. He hadn’t heard any more ominous noises from within—he’d heard nothing at all since Alisa disappeared inside. And that worried him.

  He made himself open the door slowly, using all of his senses, as well as the ones augmented by the armor, to get a feel for what danger lay within. Whoever had set off that gas had come expecting to deal with cyborgs and would likely have more weapons that could affect him. Somehow, the person inside had anticipated that Leonidas would come. It must be some bounty hunter after him for the reward money—the gas would be perfect for someone who wanted to bring him in alive.

  The faintest of footfalls came from the back of the smithy. Leonidas eased inside, putting his back to the wall. Data scrolled down the side of the glastica display of his faceplate, not interrupting his line of sight as it informed him that gas had been detected in the space. No kidding.

  The same Open sign that had allowed Leonidas to see before was enough to glimpse the smith’s body still on the floor near the counter, but there were too many crates and too much equipment in the way to see Alisa or whoever was making noise in the back. It might be she. But he was certain they weren’t alone. He imagined the policewoman’s body in an aisle somewhere while a powerful bounty hunter stalked Alisa, prepared to kill her for daring to intrude.

  As he strode silently along the wall, Leonidas listened for sounds of distress—sounds of any kind at all. But the footfalls had halted.

  The armor made his shoulders even broader than usual, so he had to pick his route carefully past machinery and tools. He did not want to bump or scrape against anything, nor knock anything over. Combat armor wasn’t made for stealth, but he could step carefully, keeping his footfalls silent.

  A gun cracked, black powder igniting. Alisa’s Etcher. An instant later, a second weapon loosed a sizzling bolt of energy, the orange beam blasting out of the darkness at the rear of the building. It slammed into and through the wall it struck. Hand cannon.

  Knowing Alisa didn’t have such a weapon, Leonidas gave up stealth and sprang in the direction where the bolt had originated. He leaped over a fifteen-foot-high vat, hardly worrying if he landed on the ground or on something else.

  As he dropped onto a stack of crates, he spotted Alisa and another woman. Alisa was charging, trying to bowl her opponent over before the hand cannon could fire again. Her foe leaped to the side while launching a kick. With surprising reflexes, Alisa reacted, dodging while grabbing the leg from the air. The other woman did something Leonidas couldn’t see from his position, and they both tumbled to the ground, grappling with each other.

  He crouched to spring over another stack of crates and to their aisle, but noticed something out of the corner of his eye and paused. A man lay on his back on the floor by the furnace. He wasn’t moving. The face and blond hair were familiar. It was Sergeant Lancer. And he’d been shot in the chest with that hand cannon. He lay there bleeding, unable to even lift a hand to staunch the flow of blood.

  The sound of a thump pulled Leonidas’s attention back to the women. He jumped twenty feet to land in the aisle beside them. The woman—it was the one they had dismissed as a police officer earlier—had gained the advantage, rolling atop Alisa, her hand cannon clenched and ready to use.

  She glanced toward Leonidas as he landed and shifted her aim. He reacted too quickly for her. He surged forward, grabbing her by the back of the uniform and hoisting her into the air. His knuckles brushed against something hard and skin-tight beneath her clothing—fitted body armor. It wasn’t as tough as his combat armor, but it would deflect bullets and energy bolts from most hand weapons.

  Furious about Sergeant Lancer, Leonidas hurled her across the room. Let the armor deflect that.

  The woman hurtled toward a wall and should have crashed shoulder-first, but she twisted in the air with impressive agility. The soles of her feet struck the wall as she crouched deep to absorb the impact, and she sprang off before gravity dropped her to the ground. She landed lightly on her feet like a cat. A cat with a thief’s set of impact boots.

  “You’re no police officer,” Leonidas said, only pausing long enough to make sure Alisa wasn’t gravely injured—she lifted her head and made a rude gesture toward their foe. Then he strode toward the woman.

  “And you’re the cyborg I’m after.” She flicked a dismissive hand in Lancer’s direction. “Why don’t you take off your helmet and breathe deeply for me, Colonel?”

  “Who are you?”

  She grinned, not showing any sign of fear as he strode closer. “Someone who would love an extra two hundred thousand tindarks.”

  Instead of lifting her big hand cannon again, she flung a black ball at him, a fluidwrap. Leonidas fired one of the miniature blazers built into his armor. A beam of energy struck the ball just as it started to unfurl. The net never reached him, instead bursting into a tangled mess in the air.

  Leonidas leaped toward the wall to avoid it and jumped off at an angle that took him straight toward her. She was already moving, dropping a pellet that exploded in smoke at her feet. As Leonidas landed, she dove to the side, rolling behind the furnace. He lost sight of her, the chemical-laced smoke interfering with his helmet’s cameras and sensors as well as h
is eyes. Static burst across his helmet display.

  It didn’t matter. He anticipated her path, his ears telling him what his eyes could not. She was quiet, but not quiet enough. Her sleeve caught against the edge of the furnace, and he leaped, powerful legs taking him through the air faster than she could run. He landed behind her as she came out of the smoke, and grabbed her with both hands. Furious with the woman—the damned bounty hunter—for mistaking Lancer for him, Leonidas wrapped his hand around her neck even as she kicked backward, trying to fight him. He squeezed once, and bone snapped. She thrashed a few more times, then fell limp in his grip.

  “The threat is gone,” Leonidas said for Alisa’s sake.

  A soft groan came from the aisle behind him.

  “Good.” Alisa came into view as she staggered to her feet, grasping her ribs. “I nearly had her defeated, but a little help never hurts. Besides, I was holding back because I thought she really was a police—” She caught sight of the woman hanging from Leonidas’s hand, and her humor evaporated, her face growing grim.

  Leonidas did not respond. He dropped the woman and ran around the building, turning on all of the vent fans and opening the doors. As soon as he finished, he raced to Sergeant Lancer’s side. His old comrade’s eyes were open, his face scrunched with pain. He didn’t seem to be able to turn his neck or move his hands yet, but his eyes were a window to his agony.

  When Leonidas knelt beside him, Lancer smoothed his features, trying to hide the pain. His fingers twitched, as if in a salute. Saluting was the last thing he should be worrying about now. The hole in his chest was like a crater—that damned woman hadn’t hesitated to fire, probably shooting him point blank as soon as the gas froze him in place. All he had been doing was coming to pick up his armor. He’d had no chance of defending himself.