Empire from the Ashes

"Thanks, Sean," he said softly, leaning back into the car to squeeze his brother's shoulder with carefully restrained strength. "Wait here. If that thing—" he gestured at the small device sitting on the console between the front seats "—lights up, then shag ass out of here. Got it?"

"Yes," Sean sighed.

"Good. See you later." Colin gave another gentle squeeze, wishing his brother's unenhanced eyes could see the affection on his face, then turned away into the windy blackness. Sean watched him go, vanishing into the night, before he opened the glove compartment.

The heavy magnum automatic gleamed in the starlight as he checked the magazine and shoved the pistol into his belt, and he drummed on the wheel for a few more moments. He didn't know how good Colin's new hearing really was, and he wanted to give him plenty of time to get out of range before he followed.

Colin climbed straight up the mountainside, ignoring the heavy weight on his back. He could have left the suppresser behind, but he might need a little extra evidence to convince Cal he knew what he was talking about. Besides, he felt uneasy about letting it out of reach.

He let his enhanced sight and hearing coast up to maximum sensitivity as he neared the top, and his eyes lit as they touched the house. His electronic and gravitonic sensors were in passive mode lest he trip any waiting detectors, but there was a background haze of additional Imperial power sources in there, confirmation, if any had been needed, that Cal was his man.

He climbed over the split-rail fence he'd helped Cal build last spring and eased into the gap between the house and the sheer south wall of the deep, terrace-like notch blasted out of the mountain to hold it, circling to approach through the tiny backyard and wondering how Cal would react when he saw him. He hoped he was right about his friend. God, how he hoped he was!

He slipped through Frances Tudor's neat vegetable garden towards the back door like a ghost, checking for any security devices, Terran or Imperial, as he went. He found none, but his nerves tightened as he felt the soft prickle of an active fold-space link. He couldn't separate sources without going active with his own sensors, but it felt like another security com. No traffic was going out, but the unit was up, as if waiting to receive... or transmit. The last thing he needed was to find Cal sitting in front of a live mike and have him blurt out an alarm before his guest had a chance to open his mouth!

He sighed. He'd just have to hope for the best, but even at the worst, he should be able to vanish before anyone could respond to any alarm Cal raised.

He eased into the silent kitchen. It was dark, but that hardly mattered to him. He started toward the swinging dining room door, then stopped as he touched the bevel-edged glass hand plate.

There was a strange, time-frozen quality about the darkened kitchen. A wooden salad bowl on the counter was half-filled with shredded lettuce, but the other salad ingredients still lay neatly to one side, as if awaiting the chef's hand, and a chill wind seemed to gust down his spine. It wasn't like Cal or Frances to leave food sitting out like that, and he opened his sensors wide, going active despite the risk of detection.

What the—? A portable stealth field behind him?! His muscles bunched and he prepared to whirl, but—

"Right there," a voice said very softly, and he froze, one hand still on the dining room door, for the voice was not Cal's and it did not speak in English. "Hands behind your head, scum," it continued in Imperial Universal. "No little implant signals, either. Don't even think about doing anything but what I tell you to, or I'll burn your spine in two."

Colin obeyed, moving very slowly and cursing himself for a fool. He'd been wrong about Cal—dead wrong—and his own caution had kept him from looking hard enough to spot somebody with a stealth field. But who would have expected one? No one but another Imperial could possibly have picked up their implants, anyway. Which meant...

His blood went icy. Jesus, they'd been expecting him! And that meant they'd picked up the sca

"Very nice," the voice said. "Now just push the door open with your shoulder and move on through it. Carefully."

Colin obeyed, and the ashes of defeat were bitter in his mouth.

Sean longed for some of Colin's enhanced strength as he picked his way up the steep, dew-slick mountainside, but he made it to the fence and climbed over it at last. Then he stopped with a frown.

Unlike Colin, Sean MacIntyre had spent his nights under the stars rather than out among them. He'd joined the Forestry Service out of love, almost unable to believe that anyone would actually pay him to work in the protected wilderness of parks and nature reservations. Along the way, he'd refined a natural empathy for the world about him, one which relied on more than the sheer strength of his senses, and so it was that he noted what Colin had not.

The Tudor house was still and black, with no lights, no feel of life, and every nerve in Sean's body screamed "Trap!"

He took the automatic off "safe" and worked the slide. From what Colin had said, the "biotechnic" enhanced mutineers would take a lot of killing, but Sean had lots of faith in the hollow-nosed .45 super-mags in his clip.

"Nice of you to be so prompt," the voice behind Colin gloated. "We didn't expect you for another half-hour."

The sudden close-range pulse of the fold-space link behind Colin was almost painful, and he clamped his teeth in angry, frightened understanding. It had been a short-range pulse, which meant its recipients were close at hand.

"They'll be along in a few minutes," the voice said. "Through the door to your left," it added, and Colin pushed at it with his toe.

It opened, and he gagged as an indescribably evil smell suddenly assailed him. He retched in anguish before he could scale his senses back down, and the voice behind him laughed.

"Your host," it said cruelly, and flipped on the lights.

Cal drooped forward out of his chair, flung over his desk by the same energy blast which had sprayed his entire head over the blotter, but that was only the start of the horror. Fourteen-year-old Harriet sagged brokenly in an armchair before the desk, her head twisted around to stare accusingly at Colin with dead, glazed eyes. Her mother lay to one side, and the blast that had killed her had torn her literally in half. Twelve-year-old A

"He didn't want to call you in," the voice's gloating, predatory cruelty seemed to come from far, far away, "but we convinced him."

The universe roared about Colin MacIntyre, battering him like a hurricane, and the fury of the storm was his own rage. He started to turn, heedless of the weapon behind him, but the energy gun was waiting. It clubbed the back of his neck, battering him to his knees, and his captor laughed.

"Not so fast," he jeered. "The Chief wants to ask you a few questions, first." Then he raised his voice. "Anshar! Get your ass in here."

"I already have," another voice answered. Colin looked up as a second man stepped in through the far study door, and his normally mild eyes were emerald fire as he took in the blond-haired newcomer's midnight blue uniform, the Fleet issue boots, the heavy energy gun slung from one shoulder.

"About damn time," the first voice grunted. "All right, you bastard—" the energy gun prodded "—on your feet. Over there against the wall."