Servants of the Empire Page 4

A branch snapped ahead of Zare and he froze.

  “Pandak, down—he’s got your position,” he said over the comlink. “Oleg, Jai, come in from the right. Stay low, but make noise.”

  He heard the movement on his right and crept forward on his hands and knees. He could see a faint red haze ahead of him. Something rustled in the grass and Zare sprang forward, blaster raised. The trainer turned, but Zare’s blaster bolt caught him in the chest before he could raise his rifle.

  “Ow,” he said, getting to his feet. “I forgot how much that stings. Nice job, kid.”

  “Thank you, sir,” Zare said. “Aurek, reorient on the objective.”

  Other cadets were walking back through the grass now, heads down, out of the competition. Unit Aurek moved forward in pairs until the goal was twenty meters ahead. Zare peeked above a mossy hillock and saw the ground rose gradually ahead of them.

  “They’ll have the high ground,” he said. “And they have a better vantage point. Switch to file formation—we’ve got to cross that open space, then we’ll look to flank them. Got it?”

  “It’s a dumb plan,” Oleg muttered.

  “Your objection is noted, cadet,” Zare said. “Now let’s go. I’ll take lead. Then Jai, Pandak, and Oleg.”

  They crept forward without meeting opposition. Zare held his hand up, signaling for the others to wait. His eyes scanned the open field ahead of them, then jumped to the boulders and low hills that dotted it. How many places were there where an attacker could hide? Five? Six?

  There was no way around it, he thought.

  “Low and fast to that little clump of shrubs,” Zare said. “When we get there, fire team wedge, overlapping coverage. Let’s go!”

  He was halfway across the open space when the first trainer popped up to his right, sending a blaster bolt zinging past his ear. Zare squeezed off a few hasty shots, stumbled, and just missed catching a bolt from the trainer concealed to his left. He dropped his E-11, scooped it up, and fell into the bushes, branches scraping across his helmet.

  The rest of Unit Aurek crashed down around him.

  “Pandak, cover the rear flank,” Zare said. “Anybody hit?”

  “We’re here, aren’t we?” grumbled Oleg.

  “Good,” Zare said. “I saw two on the left, but only one on the right. Make for that reddish rock over there. Wedge formation—Oleg, Jai, you make sure the guy on the right keeps his head down. Pandak, left side is your responsibility.”

  “This isn’t going to work,” Oleg said.

  “Sure it will,” Zare said. “In grav-ball we call it a weak-side carry—I won a league championship with this play.”

  “We’ve got three minutes left, Zare,” Jai said.

  “Plenty of time,” Zare said, though of course in this game you couldn’t call a time-out. “Let’s go.”

  He started forward, with Oleg on his right. They’d gone three meters when Jai yelled his name.

  “Down!” Zare said. “What is it?”

  “It’s Pandak,” Jai said. “He’s not moving.”

  “What? Is he hurt?”

  Zare scrambled back and found Pandak crouched behind the clump of bushes. He had taken his helmet off and his eyes were wide and staring.

  “Hey, Pandak,” Zare said. “We’ve got to go, cadet.”

  “They’re going to get us,” Pandak said.

  “They’re going to get us. Going to get us going to get us going to get us.”

  “No, they’re not,” Zare said. “Put your bucket on and stick with me.”

  “Zare, two minutes,” Jai said.

  “Come on, Pandak,” Zare pleaded.

  “Forget this—we’re going,” Oleg said.

  “Hold your position,” Zare said.

  “Going to get us,” Pandak said, hugging his helmet to his chest.

  “Pandak, stay here,” Zare said. “Jai, I’m coming.”

  He rushed forward as blaster bolts erupted around him from the left and right. He wound up sprawled next to Oleg and Jai.

  “We’re not gonna make it,” Jai moaned.

  “Yes, we are,” Zare said. “Were you watching when I ran? Where did the shots come from?”

  “Five meters to the right,” Oleg said. “And two firing positions to the left. Six meters and maybe seven.”

  “All right,” Zare said. “File position to the right, at the enemy, fast as you can. I’ll break left, you flank to the right. GO!”

  He’d gone three meters, firing wildly, before something struck him in the back and he stumbled, his skin on fire.

  “Blast it,” he muttered, raising his hands. But then he heard firing ahead of him, and a glum-faced trainer rose up from behind a bush. Jai and Oleg whooped in triumph, their yells dissolving into static in his ears, as the chime sounded the end of the exercise.

  Zare sank into the seat in Chiron’s office, wanting nothing more than to get to his bunk and sleep.

  “We monitor all the unit feeds during exercises,” Chiron said. “You showed initiative, kept your unit together, and improvised when things went wrong. That was real leadership out there.”

  “I got killed,” Zare said.

  “You secured the objective. And if Symes hadn’t frozen up, you would have had covering fire to your rear during that flanking maneuver.”

  “Pandak will do better next time,” Zare said. “I can help him.”

  Chiron looked at the ceiling, the corners of his mouth turned down.

  “An Imperial soldier can’t quit under fire,” he said. “It endangers more than one life. You saw that for yourself today.”

  “But, sir—”

  “You were center striker for AppSci, Zare,” Chiron said. “How many victories would you have had if one of your fullbacks froze when you told him to block?”

  Zare started to object, then just nodded glumly.

  “All right then,” Chiron said. “Now go get some sleep.”

  He trudged back to the barracks and found Oleg lying on Pandak’s bunk, grinning. Jai was sitting numbly on his own bunk, feet dangling over the edge. Pandak’s footlocker was gone.

  A couple of days of digging and carefully constructed questions at the dinner table gave Merei her target: the Transportation Ministry. It was connected to the entire Imperial network, heavily reliant on outside contractors instead of bureaucratic lifers, and way down on her parents’ security to-do list.

  The problem, she thought as she got on her jumpspeeder, was that she still hadn’t worked out how to get into the ministry.

  I’m only fifteen, she thought as she fitted her goggles over her eyes. No one would believe I’m a contractor, or maintenance crew, or anything else.

  She shivered at the chill—this was the first morning it felt like autumn, which meant the grasslands would soon be turning pale green and brown. And in the hills the jogan blossoms would be at their most fragrant—if Beck Ollet were there, he’d be urging her to ride out to the orchardlands.

  Then her smile faded away. Because Beck wasn’t there—he was a prisoner of the Empire. And for all she knew there were no more jogan trees in the stripped and ruined hills.

  At least I’ll get to talk to Zare tonight, she thought as she maneuvered the jumpspeeder away from her parents’ apartment house and into the sparse traffic. It was the last day of orientation, and after dinner the cadets would be allowed to comm their families and friends again.

  And I’ll have to tell him I’m no closer to finding Dhara, she thought, then shook her head. Maybe the guy I’m going to meet can change that. Well, unless he’s Imperial intelligence. What are the rules for cadets with girlfriends in jail?

  Merei zipped around a slow-moving droid truck, passing through the low-slung buildings of Old City, with their whitewashed stone walls and bright awnings. She reached the outskirts of the marketplace and parked her jumpspeeder, locking down the controls. The shops and stalls were crowded with humans, aliens, and droids making deliveries—green-skinned Rodians brushed shoulders with mournful-looking,
whiskered Lutrillians, blocking the path of automated cargo loaders that beeped and hooted angrily.

  She shouldered her way through the crowd, escaping a close encounter with a crate of juicemelons that two bald, quarreling Sakiyans swung into her path. There it was—the stall Jix’s friend had told her about. The shutters were down almost all the way to the ground, but she saw a bit of dim light beneath them.

  Merei knocked on the metal, producing a lot more noise than she’d expected. She stepped back, blushing, as heads turned around her.

  A gnarled hand appeared and cranked the shutter up, revealing a short, wizened human with a gray topknot. He looked her up and down quizzically, then spat on the floor.

  “Um…Bandis Yong sent me,” Merei said.

  “Who in the name of the Great Prairie Winds is Bandis Yong and why should I care?”

  “He graduated from the Vocational School for Institutional Security a couple of years ago. He said you could help me.”

  “He told you wrong—now get lost,” the old man said, then leaned closer. “Duck under the shutter in five minutes. And this time, try to make less noise than a walker falling off a cliff.”

  Merei stopped herself from nodding and stalked off in what she hoped looked like a huff. She made a circuit of the market, glancing idly at rainbows of fruit, slabs of meat, and repaired machinery that supposedly worked even better than it had before. She stopped in front of the stall again, looked around, and then got down on her knees, worming under the metal shutter.

  The old man turned from a cluttered desk in the corner of the stall topped with an ancient network terminal.

  “Bandis Yong,” he said. “Young punk with delusions of being a master slicer. A rude and talentless cretin. That him?”

  “Pretty much,” Merei said, wiping grit on her trousers. Bandis Yong’s inflated self-regard had been matched only by his hygiene problems, and he’d asked her out no fewer than three times, ignoring Merei’s insistence that she wasn’t interested and only giving up the sixth time she said she had a boyfriend.

  “So what do you need from me, girlie? Besides better taste in friends?”

  “An introduction,” Merei said. She took a deep breath. “To someone who can program a snooper for me.”

  The old man laughed, the sound a harsh bark.

  “Sun’s barely up and a skinny girl with expensive bike goggles and a Core accent wants me to introduce her to someone who’ll make a snooper for her,” the old man said, putting his skinny wrists together and holding them out in front of him. “Here—just put the binders on and comm Governor Pryce to send over some stormtroopers. It would save us all time.”

  He laughed again, waving a hand at her in dismissal.

  “Get lost, girlie. And don’t come back.”

  Merei turned to go, then shook her head and leaned against the shutters, the metal groaning in protest.

  “I’m not leaving until you help me,” she said.

  “Feel free to wait,” the old man said, sitting down at his terminal. “Lothal’s sun won’t go nova for a few billion years.”

  “Please,” Merei said. “I’ve got nowhere else to go.”

  The old man looked over his shoulder.

  “What part of ‘get lost’ didn’t you understand?” he asked. But he couldn’t meet her eyes.

  Merei waited.

  “I’m going to regret this,” he muttered. “Be at the East Interchange where it intersects Founders’ Avenue tomorrow at dawn. An unmarked speeder van will pull up. You’ll get in. After that it’s up to you.”

  “That sounds like an excellent way to disappear,” Merei said, but the old man just shrugged.

  “Not my problem, girlie,” he said. “You want to do business, you’ll be there.”

  Merei nodded and scuttled back under the door into the marketplace, now bustling with morning shoppers. She dodged household droids, passed a line of fidgety bureaucrats waiting to spend too many credits for artisanal caf, and was almost back to her jumpspeeder when two girls a couple of years younger than she stepped in front of her.

  “Hi,” one of them said breathlessly. “We’re selling raffle tickets to raise funds for our Junior Academy camping trip in the Westhills. Would you like to buy one? It’s for a good cause and a ticket is only one credit.”

  “No thanks,” Merei said, stepping around the girls. Then she stopped. “Wait. What did you say?”

  The moment he saw his mother’s face on the screen, Zare felt his composure slip, then crumble. To his embarrassment, his eyes welled up and tears began to roll down his cheeks.

  “We’re glad to see you, too, son,” Leo Leonis said gruffly from where he stood behind Tepha. “So how are you getting along at the Academy?”

  Zare wiped his eyes on his sleeve and took a deep breath, reminding himself not to be upset with his father. Leo had been devastated by Dhara’s disappearance, but Zare and Tepha hadn’t told him that they knew the Empire was lying, and that its attempts to find her were a sham. He didn’t know that his son was risking the same fate.

  Tepha did know all that, of course, and it was the relief on his mother’s face that got to Zare—the way her eyes widened when she saw him on the other side of the video link, and the shuddering breath she took before saying his name.

  “I’m fine,” he said hastily. “Glad orientation’s over, of course, but fine. I’m looking forward to seeing you guys at Visiting Day.”

  “Have they given you any sense of which track you’ll be on?” Leo asked.

  “It’s too early, Dad,” Zare said. “They haven’t said anything, but based on what Dhara told me last year, we should start assessments next week.”

  His sister’s name stopped conversation cold. Leo blinked furiously, then forced himself to nod, while Tepha buried her face in her hands. Leo put his hand on his wife’s shoulder.

  “Sorry,” Zare said.

  “You have nothing to be sorry about, son,” Leo said. “The Empire is working every day to find Dhara and see that she returns home. You just focus on being the best cadet you can be, and leave worrying about your sister to others.”

  “I will, Dad,” Zare said. “Um, I have to go.”

  His mother put her hand on the camera and Zare reached for his own datapad, pressing his palm against the glass.

  He needed a moment to get himself together before comming Merei. They talked about anything and everything—V-SIS, the Academy, the cold snap that had settled over Capital City—interrupting each other and stopping and insisting the other say what they were going to say, then laughing helplessly and starting again, until finally they just looked at each other, smiling.

  Zare sighed, and then leaned close to his datapad.

  “I haven’t heard anything from our friend about her trip,” he said. “Nothing about where she is or who she might be with. Have you heard anything?”

  Merei shook her head. “No. But keep your chin up, Zare. I’ve got some ideas about how I might find something out.”

  Zare nodded. “Good. Thank you. But…don’t get in trouble, okay, Merei?”

  His girlfriend smiled. “I was about to tell you the same thing.”

  “CADETS! INSPECTION IS IN TEN MINUTES!”

  Zare barely even grumbled as he dropped out of his bunk to stand next to Jai, with Oleg getting to his feet opposite them a moment later. He pulled his footlocker out from under Jai’s bunk and retrieved his uniform, stripping off the T-shirt he’d slept in.

  Eight minutes later he was dressed and next to Jai, waiting for Currahee to return. He saw Oleg throw his shoulders back and raise his chin and did the same as the sergeant entered the barracks, staring malevolently at the cadets. She stopped in front of Zare and eyed his uniform, then his boots. Then she inspected his helmet minutely, followed by his E-11. She grunted and peered at his bunk, having to stand on her tiptoes to do so. Behind her back, Oleg smirked. Zare didn’t move; he remained at attention, staring at Oleg as Currahee repeated the process with Jai and then Oleg.
Zare knew his bunk was perfectly made, his uniform was crisp and clean, his boots were shined as specified by regulations, and his helmet and E-11 were in working order.

  “Well done, Unit Aurek,” Currahee said. “You might have a future as cadets after all. Now fall out—we’re going on a morning run.”

  Once the cadets would have groaned in dismay, but now the prospect of toiling up and down the Easthills was barely worthy of notice.

  “We did it!” Jai said in a low voice, beaming as Currahee moved on to yell at Unit Besh. “Not one demerit!”

  Zare smiled back, then turned away, a shiver running through him. What am I doing? Who cares about that old hawk-bat’s approval? Curry’s a servant of the Empire—the same Empire that stole my sister, that’s killed peaceful protestors, and is ruining Lothal.

  He couldn’t allow himself to be fooled by praise from Currahee, or Chiron’s efforts to help him, or by becoming friends with cadets such as Jai. He had to remember what happened to Dhara, and stay alert to avoid the same fate.

  The upper-crust Phelarion School was reserved for the sons and daughters of Capital City’s top Imperial officials, wealthy merchants, farming tycoons, and minerals magnates. Its home data node showed an attractive teenage boy and girl in black uniforms. To one side were lush green fields and conical hills like those of Lothal; to the other, gleaming urban towers.

  The students were facing the towers—turning their backs on Lothal, Merei thought with a smile.

  She didn’t even have to break into the school’s network to find a roster of students—she was able to guess the address of the correct data node on the third try.

  Merei scanned the roster quickly, searching for a girl about her age with Imperial connections—high, but not too high.

  A network search revealed her first target was the daughter of a local swoop jockey from beyond the Westhills who’d taken his winnings and invested them in a fertilizer company.

  Too low.

  Her second target had a last name that seemed familiar—and turned out to be the youngest daughter of a lieutenant colonel in the Imperial Army.

  Too high.

  Plexo-33 began warbling on her datapad. She killed the music feed irritably. She had to get moving if she was going to keep her rendezvous. Her parents thought she was headed for a club meeting with some V-SIS students interested in anti-intrusion techniques, but she actually planned to meet the unmarked speeder van on the outskirts of Capital City.