The Thousand Emperors

Luc turned away from her then, making his way back through the station to the flier that had brought him there.

TWENTY

Any nagging doubts Luc had about the Coalition Ambassador’s location slipped away once he arrived in the vicinity of the Sequoia, and found it under attack from Sandoz forces.

An image of the Sequoia floated before him in the cockpit of his flier, rendered in real-time. One of its several domed arboretums dotted around its exterior had been torn open and exposed to vacuum, and as a result a glittering halo of debris and frozen atmosphere now surrounded the station, while here and there attack-pods of Sandoz design had locked onto the hull like so many fat metal leeches.

Something shot out of the darkness as Luc watched, striking the station’s primary hub and sending more glittering fragments spinning outwards. A dark shape silhouetted against the planet below proved, upon magnification, to be a Sandoz orbital platform, emitting a steady stream of heavily armed mechants making their way across the intervening gap.

Luc watched all of this with a terrible sinking feeling, debating whether it might be wiser to turn back. But if he could see the Sandoz forces attacking the Sequoia, then they undoubtedly could see his flier decelerating towards the station on an approach vector. Even if he chose to turn back, by the time he managed to accelerate away they would already be on his tail, and the chase would be as good as over.

That left him with only one choice: to go forward. He maintained his course, despite the awful tightness in his throat, and the growing conviction that at any moment kinetic slugs would rip his little craft to shreds.

In the last moments before the flier finally docked with the Sequoia, Luc allowed himself to believe he might actually escape the assault unharmed. He was rewarded with a stream of fire that scored the flier’s hull, shattering most of its external sensors.

For several seconds more than was good for his mental health, Luc found himself cut off from the outside world, unable to verify if the craft had even made it to the relative safety of the station’s dock. Then the emergency systems activated, and the flier informed him in cool machine tones that the external air pressure had equalized, and he could now disembark.

On exiting the flier, he briefly surveyed its cracked and burned hull with dismay. He didn’t need an expert to tell him it would very likely disintegrate if he tried using it to escape back down to Vanaheim’s surface. If he was ever going to get back off the Sequoia again, he’d have to find some other mode of transport.

On the other hand, if the Ambassador was hiding somewhere on the Sequoia, there must be a second flier somewhere. He made haste, exiting the dock and moving down the station’s long, central hub as fast as he was able.

Luc didn’t get far before a low, rattling boom travelled the length of the hub. After a moment, he found himself drifting slowly to one wall. Whatever had just hit the Sequoia had pushed it into a slow spin that he suspected was outside of its design limitations.

His bowels turned to water when the walls and bulkheads around him screamed in protest, and he felt the irrational yet nearly overwhelming urge to turn back. But after another minute the station’s gyroscopic systems appeared to reassert themselves, halting the spin. He pushed on, travelling along the length of the hub with the help of rungs embedded into its cylindrical walls.

A thin wail echoed down the hub, and a breeze tugged at him. Grabbing onto a rung, he realized it was getting harder to breathe. Up ahead, he saw an emergency pressure-field pop into existence.

And flicker out again.

And back again.

Clearly, the station was in bad need of maintenance.

In that same moment, several mechants, all with Sandoz livery, came rocketing out of a side passageway. Luc froze for a moment, then looked around for some kind of hiding place.

More mechants came hurtling after the first group, these ones lacking markings of any kind. They engaged the Sandoz mechants in a blur of clashing steel and directed-energy fire.

Luc scrambled for the meagre shelter of a flange that joined two sections of the hub, then cautiously peered over the top of the flange, watching through splayed fingers as the carapace of a Sandoz mechant turned first orange, then white, before exploding messily and sending molten steel and plastic spraying in all directions. He ducked back down, squeezing his eyes shut.

The next time he looked, Ambassador Sachs had appeared from the side passageway. Most of the Sandoz mechants had been destroyed, but the remainder appeared to sight Luc when he popped his head up, accelerating towards him.

Then something very remarkable happened.

One of the Sandoz mechants aiming straight towards Luc halted abruptly, its limbs weaving spastically for a moment before it began to drift, out of control, striking the flange behind which Luc hid before rebounding and drifting back towards the centre of the hub.

The same thing happened within moments to each of the two other surviving Sandoz mechants. They span out of control, apparently lifeless.

Luc stared over at the Ambassador, who gestured to him to come out of hiding. His unmarked mechants set about finishing off the enemy machines with their energy weapons.

Somehow, Luc knew Sachs had stopped the mechants with his lattice. He wondered if anyone in the Tian Di