Heirs of Empire

It hissed, spitting explosive darts across the valley at fifty-two hundred meters per second, and savage flashes lit the dark as they ripped into the ruins. Each armor-piercing dart had the power of a half-kilo of TNT, and the crackle of their explosions was a single, ripping bellow as ancient walls blew outward in a tornado of splinters.

He held the trigger back, firing desperately and cursing himself for not having brought any heavy weapons. Even his implants couldn’t “see” well enough to target the energy guns; he could only pour in fire and pray he hit something vital before their control systems killed Harriet and Tamman.

A fist of pulverized soil slammed the side of his head, and a corner of his mind noted that the defenses had finally noticed him, but it was a distant thought as his three-hundred round magazine emptied. He ripped a fresh one from his belt, then grunted in anguish as the energy bloom of a bolt of disruption clawed at him. He rolled desperately to his left and managed—somehow—not to plunge downward after the others. Sandy had gotten her grav gun into action as well, and the thunder of her fire filled the valley as he finished reloading and opened up again. He cursed viciously as Harriet and Tamman slithered to a halt, but Tamman had figured out what was happening. He wrapped a powerful arm around Harriet and hurled both of them back into motion a split second before the automated guns could lock on.

Flames licked at the brush atop the ruined structures as Sean and Sandy pounded them, and Sean cried out as an energy bolt blew his backpack apart. His nervous system whiplashed in agony, the stu

“Sean?” The soft, anxious voice penetrated his darkness, and his eyes slid open. He was still on the slope, but his head was in Sandy’s lap. He blinked groggily, and she smiled and brushed dirt from his face.

“Are you all right? Are you hurt?”

“I—” He coughed and broke off, wincing as a fresh wave of pain spun through him. His implant sensors had been wide open as he tried to find a target, and the corona of the energy bolt had bled through them. His nerves were on fire, and he moaned around a surge of nausea, but he was alive, and he wouldn’t have been without his enhancement. Not after taking a shot that close to his heart and lungs.

“I’m okay,” he rasped as his implants recovered and began damping the pain. He swallowed bile, then stiffened. “Harry! Harry and Tam! Are they—?”

“They’re all right,” Sandy soothed, pressing him back as he tried to sit up. “The guns never managed to line up on them, and—” a ghost of humor lit her face “—at least they got to the bottom faster than they’d expected. See?”

He turned his head, and Harriet waved up at him from the valley floor. Tamman wasn’t looking in their direction; he was down on one knee, grav gun ready as he sca

“Thanks. If you hadn’t gotten to it in time—”

“Hush.” Sandy’s hand covered his mouth, and his eyes smiled up at her as she kissed his forehead. “We got to it, and we’re all lucky you left me behind. Now kindly shut your mouth and let your implants finish unscrambling themselves before we hike down after Tam and Harry. Hopefully—” her free hand caressed his hair and her lips quirked primly “—a bit more sedately than they did.”

Chapter Twenty

Harriet watched Sandy and Sean work their way down the valley wall, and her anxious eyes noted the way her twin favored his left side and leaned on Sandy. She’d almost started back up when she realized he couldn’t get up at once, but Sandy’s wave had reassured her … some.

She ran to meet them as they slithered down the last few meters, and Sean gasped as she enveloped him in a fierce hug.

“Hey, now!” He raised a hand to her dust-smutted black hair. “I’m in one piece, and everything’s still working, more or less.”

“Sure it is,” she said tartly, accessing his implants with her own, but then he felt her relax as they confirmed what he’d told her. What that near miss had done to his enhanced musculature was going to leave him stiff for a week, yet the damage was incredibly minor.

“Sure it is,” she repeated at last, softly, and raised her head to peer up into his eyes, then kissed his cheek. He smiled and touched her face, then tucked one arm around each young woman and limped over to Tamman.

“See the conquering hero comes,” he said smugly. Tamman chuckled, yet he, too, reached out and cupped the back of Sean’s head, and the four of them clung together.

“Well!” Sean said at last. “The last step was a lulu, but at least we’re here. Let’s see what we’ve found. You still reading anything, Sandy?”

Sandy gave him a last little hug and returned her attention to her scanpack—the only one they had after Harriet’s tumbling descent. She turned in a complete circle, then sighed.

“I think you were right about the power receptor, Tam. Most of the power sources’re gone, and the ones that’re left are fading fast. Looks like we finally killed the Valley of the Damned.”

“Pardon me if I don’t cry,” Tamman replied dryly.

“True, true.” She pivoted back to the ruins at mid-valley and nodded. “Looks like at least one of them had some reserve, but the others are gone.”

“Let’s go see the one that’s still up,” Sean decided, “but cautiously. Very cautiously.”

“You got it,” Tamman agreed, and swung out to take the lead towards the ancient, half-buried buildings.

Sean studied their surroundings as they moved up the valley. Waist-high waves of grass rippled between clumps of dense thicket and tangled trees, slashed with moonlight and hard-edged shadow under the cold night wind. It was a wild and desolate place, still more haunted somehow after the thunder and lightning of their battle. Yet that very desolation, coupled with the effectiveness the automated weapons had displayed even in their senescence, brightened his eyes, for it was clear no one had gotten through to disturb whatever of pre-bio-weapon Pardal might have survived.

They reached the ruined buildings at last. Centuries of windblown dirt had buried their lower stories, but the worn walls were intact, and tough, transparent Imperial plastic, cloudy with age, still filled most of the window frames. Others gaped like open wounds in the dark, and he felt himself shiver as they stopped outside the ancient tower which contained the single remaining power source, for those age-sick walls had brooded over this lonely valley for nine times the life of Egypt’s Sphinx.

The tower stood in the center of the long-dead settlement. Faint swirls of decoration still clung to its ceramacrete facade, and the roots of a tree in its lee—a stubby, thick-trunked thing with peeling, hairy bark—had invaded a window frame. Their inexorable intrusion had pried and twisted at the plastic, and the entire pane fell inward with a clatter when Tamman tapped it.

Sean swallowed. That tree grew on almost level earth heaped twenty meters high against the tower, and he expected to feel the centuries when he touched the hard solidity of the frame.