23 November 2263
Perie, Caldin – Borderworlds
The park was darker than usual as Sotheby and I jogged down one of its walkways, as if someone had flipped a switch and turned out half or more of the lights. Sotheby slowed in his jog, glanced up toward the dark, bare branches above us, devoid of all but the barest few stubborn brown leaves still clinging to the branches.
“I wonder,” he said in a quiet voice, stopping for a moment to look up and down the pathway. “Did one of ours pull the plug, or one of theirs?”
“Equal odds,” I said. “Though I think the Imperium would have knocked them all out. Fear and intimidation tactic.”
“I think you’re right on that,” Sotheby murmured, then shook his head. “None of this had to happen.”
“No, but it was still inevitable.” I looked around, getting my bearings, then started moving again. “Come on. This way.”
Sotheby was quick to follow me as I stepped off the path and into the grass, green gone to black in the dim light. “You mean because of you.”
“Because of me, because of Sam and Wil and Mac and everyone else who’s been fighting them every inch of the way for the past three years. They’ve known I’m here for a while now. It was only a matter of time.”
“You think he protected you?”
The question brought me up short, though in hindsight it probably shouldn’t have. Maybe Daniel Taylor had tried to protect me, either consciously or unconsciously—maybe both. Our history was complicated, made moreso by my friendship with Wil, his only son, and the secrets I kept on his behalf. But even an Imperium general wasn’t going to be able to protect me, not after everything I’d done—not after everything the Resistance in this sector had done.
I just shrugged. “If he did, it doesn’t matter. Luck’s run out. Now we’ve got to fight like hell.” The damp chill was settling in and my breath steamed in the air—the temperature was still dropping. There probably would be ice all over everything sooner rather than later.
We might be able to use that to our advantage—maybe. I wish I’d gotten a better look at the gear their soldiers are loaded with. If it’s not the right kit, that could help. I couldn’t rely on them to be stupid, though. They’d dropped seven landers, probably had at least one, if not two cruisers in orbit. For a planet like Caldin, that should have been more than enough to pacify the world, even with a Resistance presence. It had been in other places.
Of course, in other places they’d been able to deploy aerosolized biochemical compounds that had helped suppress the ability to resist. But in my sector—and in the neighboring sector—we’d been too successful at thwarting them. Tonight, though, the weather was working in our favor. The damp and cold made it hard for them to deploy the compounds, and even if they’d managed it, most of the Resistance here was inoculated against it. So was about a quarter of the staff at St. Mikhail’s, the only hospital in Perie, where up until that afternoon, I’d been the chief resident in the emergency department.
I’d been on my way to meet Ren and Wil at Gamgee’s to tell them the news of my resignation at the hospital when the landings had started.
“You’re distracted,” Sotheby said, keeping an eye on our surroundings as I led the way toward the cache, trying to look casual but wound tighter than I’d been since we’d gone to rescue Jason Parker from the Imperium months ago.
“Yeah,” I said, glancing around before I headed toward a stand of trees and brush that hid a storage shed that the city park service had long ago abandoned, one that had been a supply cache for the Resistance since even before I’d come to Caldin from Carmiline six years ago. Thomas King had set it up back when he led the Resistance here, before I’d taken over from him and he’d stepped back to concern himself with spending more time with his sons. “Too much on my mind.”
“I’m sure you don’t need me to tell you that’s a dangerous thing to be dealing with when you could be heading into a firefight.”
A branch moved in a way I didn’t expect. I held up a hand and Sotheby fell silent, staring past me into the bushes. There was a faint flash, almost like someone fumbling with a flashlight, and I squinted into the dim and misting rain.
“Father Alex?”
Conrad. I exhaled, pressing into the brush. “And me.”
He’d uncovered his flashlight by the time Sotheby and I cleared the brush surrounding the shed. Conrad King’s face was washed out in its light, his eyes wide, but his relief at seeing me was abundantly clear. With him were three others—two Resistance members, Qamra Thael and Royal Willard, and a dark-skinned man that looked enough like Royal that I was willing to bet they were related. He looked a little familiar, but I chalked that up to the resemblance. A ball of dread settled in my belly, unrelated to the stranger in our midst.
If they’re the only ones who made it here, then where is everyone else?
“Those landers were packed to capacity,” Conrad said, his voice low, as if he was worried someone might trip over us here—not necessarily a worry that was misplaced. “There’s a lot of Imperium troops on the ground.”
“But still only seven landers,” I said, moving to start unlocking the shed. “That’s not insurmountable. Do we know what kind of ship’s in orbit? How many?”
“There’s a lot of confusion on that. Haven’t you been listening for the past two hours?”
“I’ve been a little busy,” I said, holding my hand out for his flashlight. “Is it just the four of you?”
“Yeah,” Conrad said as he handed over the light. “Got cut off from everyone else. Some of them are pinned. You weren’t answering your comm.”
“It’s toast,” I said, starting to rummage with one hand. “EMP burst fried a little bit before the Alliance post went up.”
“That explains the explosion three hours ago,” Qamra said, glancing at Royal and the man that was with them. “The fire near city center.”
“Told you we should have risked getting some footage,” the man said quietly, glancing at both of the women with a faint frown. Royal snorted.
“The area was crawling with soldiers. I don’t think that you wanted to eat the camera, because they would have shoved it down your throat and then probably shot all three of us.” She glanced at me, swallowing as she inclined her head toward the man. “This is my brother Tylor. He’s a freelance cinematographer.”
I paused in rooting through the supplies long enough to study the tall, dark-skinned man. “Really,” I murmured. “Well, if you’re half as good with film equipment as your sister, this could work to our advantage.”
“Oh, I don’t think I like where this is going,” Qamra said as she slipped in beside me, taking the light from my hand to hold it steady, letting me start pulling out supplies we’d need for the night ahead. “What’re you thinking, Redeemer?”
“I’m thinking that there should be equipment buried in here that’ll let us broadcast live to the newsnets, since I’m assuming you and Ro don’t have all of your gear.”
“Only some of it,” Qamra said, glancing back toward Royal, who drew a deep breath and exhaled it in a sight.
“We were getting set up to cover a story,” Royal muttered. “Had to ditch the van and a lot of the gear when shit started to hit the fan. We have some shots of the landers coming down, though.”
I nodded. “What happened to Dane?” Keller Dane was the journalist that Royal and Qamra usually worked with at one of the local news studios. He hadn’t fully thrown in with the Resistance, but based on a few conversations we’d had in the past, I knew that he at least supported our cause even if he wasn’t willing to take up arms.
“He stayed behind,” Qamra said. “We were covering a grand opening—the new theatre down on Center. He was going to try to help get everyone who was there evacuated before shit got bad. He told us to get going. I think he knew what was going to start happening. We haven’t heard from him since.”
“I’m sure he’s fine,” I said with conviction I didn’t feel. Comm for me, one for Father Alex. Broadcast gear. Two medical field kits. Weapons, ammunition. I blew out a quiet breath. “How many of our people are pinned?”
“Don’t know,” Conrad said quietly, his back to me as he kept an eye on the area beyond the brush. “Not even quite sure who’s managing to make much of a stand. Kal, my dad. Haven’t heard anything from Ren or Wil. Have you?”
“They’re at the Cathedral,” Sotheby said quietly. He was watching the opposite direction from Conrad. “They’re safe, don’t worry.”
“Why would they be there?” Royal asked, her brow furrowing as she looked between us. “I thought they’d be out here with us. It’s what they do. You send them all over the sector helping other people, other planets, but this is their home. Why wouldn’t they be out here?”
Conrad looked at me. I could feel the weight of his gaze and I closed my eyes, waiting for the question I knew was coming.
“What happened to them?” Conrad asked. I couldn’t look at him.
“It’s a long story. I’ll give you detail later, but Wil’s hurt. Ren stayed behind with him at the Cathedral.”
“I told her to stay with him,” Sotheby said. “I said I’d come with Dr. Ross.”
I started pulling things out of the shed, handing them to Qamra. I knew Conrad was still watching me, his thoughts a maelstrom—a loud one, one that I struggled to block out in the face of a thumping headache and the first aftereffects of unblocking Ren’s memories. I was surprised it had taken this long for those to crop up—the headache would come first, then some disorientation, maybe a fever. It was hard to know what the actual constellation of symptoms might end up being, since the last time I’d done this, I’d immediately gone on the run, been wounded, and picked up an infection along the way.
“Just tell me one thing,” Conrad said.
He waited until I looked at him before he said any more. I could see pain and worry in his gaze. I could understand both—he considered them friends; he and Ren had escaped the Noah Walker together.
He took a breath. “How bad is it?”
“Ren made me take a shower before she’d let me come out here.”
Conrad’s lips thinned. He nodded. “Okay. That…gives me an idea.”
I have to find a chance to tell him exactly what we’re looking at—without the others overhearing. I blew out a breath, glancing over my other shoulder toward Tylor. “Sorry you landed in the deep end.”
“It’s cool,” he murmured. “Rather be doing something that’ll make some kind of difference instead of hiding in a hole someplace waiting to see if the Imperium bombs the shit out of us.”
That brought me up short. I straightened, turning fully to face him. My stomach folded in on itself as I watched his face—grim, determined, brow furrowed, jaw tight. “What did you say?”
Tylor shrugged slightly. “It feels like that’s what anyone trying to hide in their homes or whatever is going to be doing. It’s not like the Imperium hasn’t done it before.”
“Not in a long time,” I said, my mouth dry.
“More recently than anyone thinks,” he said. “A few folks remember Castion and the aftermath. There have been others.”
My stomach dropped. “Why haven’t we heard?”
He shrugged. “That’s what I want to know.”
It had never slammed home so hard that I had few friends in the hierarchy of the Resistance—such as it was—beyond Jason Parker and Kara Burkewicz, known in the Resistance as Quintilian and Thracian. If other worlds were getting bombarded by the Imperium, and word had been suppressed, at the very least we should have heard through Resistance back-channels that it was happening. There was no way it would have been a secret to the Resistance operating in those areas—was there?
Shit. Here I was thinking I was earning some kind of goodwill with the work we were doing on the countermeasures and funneling everyone supplies, but I guess I was wrong. Dead wrong.
Sotheby’s hand fell on my shoulder and I looked at him, my brow creasing. He shook his head. “That’s a problem to solve once Caldin’s secure again. We have work to do.”
I nodded slightly. “Right.” I bent down and hefted one of the small duffle bags that contained a well-stocked field kit, holding it out toward Conrad. “We’ll need to figure out where the Imperium forces are in relation to our people. That’s first order of business once we’ve got our gear set here.” I looked at Royal, Qamra, and Tylor. “I want you guys recording everything, video and stills. Audio, too, though watch it there—trust your gut. We’re going to broadcast direct as much as we can for as long as we can. None of what happens next happens in the dark.”
I saw a flicker of a smile tug at the corner of Tylor’s mouth. Royal and Qamra glanced at each other, their apprehension palpable, though neither seemed entirely surprised by the directive.
Sotheby stepped closer to the shed, starting to pull weapons from its depths. “There will be fighting in the streets,” the priest said as he handed out rifles. “We’ll need to be prepared for that.”
“This is really happening,” Royal said quietly. “They’re really here.”
“Yeah,” I said, pulling a duffle with basic supplies—food, flashlights, that sort of thing—out of the shed and tossing it at her feet. “And they’ll kill every single one of us if we dare to stand in the way of what they want. They want Caldin. Our job is to make sure they don’t get what they want.”
“What if it’s not possible?” she asked, bending down to retrieve the duffle and slinging it across her back. “Then what?”
“We fight them until we can’t,” I said. “And we go from there.”
“Right,” she said, then stepped in to start digging through some of the supplies. “Guess we’d better get going. Every second we’re here, they’re on the move and there’s a lot more of them right now than there are of us.”
“For now,” Sotheby said. I glanced at him, brows knitting again.
He just smiled.
