Heirs of Empire

was no sign of the cutter, and Sean bit his lip as cold wind ruffled his hair.

Tamman was right—Harriet should have been back thirty minutes ago. He should have noticed her absence sooner … and he should never have let her out on her own! He’d known better at the time, damn it, but he’d let himself worry more over the possibility of losing an hour or two than her safety. He pounded his fists together and stared up at the sky with bitter eyes, but the alien stars mocked him, and his jaw clenched as he powered his com implant and sent out a full-powered omnidirectional pulse, heedless of the quarantine system’s sensors.

There was no response, and the others looked at him with matching horror. Harriet should have heard that signal from forty light-minutes away!

“Oh, Jesus!” His whisper was a plea, and then he was running for the valley wall with no thought for such inconsequentials as his injuries, and his friends were on his heels.

* * *

They ran with implants fully active. It took them less than fifty minutes to reach the cutter, despite their feverish concentration on their search, and if Harriet had been within five hundred meters of the trail in any direction, they would have found her.

Sean leaned on a landing leg, sucking in air, enhanced lungs on fire, and tried to think. Even if she were dead—his mind shied from the thought like a terrified animal—they should have spotted her implants. It was as if she’d never come this way at all, but she must have! She had to have!

“All right,” he grated, and his panting companions turned to him anxiously. “We should have spotted her. If we didn’t, she’s not here, and I can’t think of any reason she shouldn’t be. We can use the cutter for an aerial search, but if she’s unconscious or … or something—” his voice quavered, and he wrenched it back under iron control “—we might miss something as small as implant emissions. We need better scanners.”

“Brashan.” Tamman’s voice was flat, and Sean nodded choppily.

“Exactly. If he puts up a full-powered array he can cover five times the ground twice as fast. And Israel’s med computers can access her readouts for a full diagnostic if she’s hurt.” He forced his hands down to his sides. “It’ll also be a flare-lit tip-off to the quarantine system when he goes active.” He bit the words off in pain, but they must be said, for if they threw away caution now, it might kill them all. “If it is watching the planet, there’s no way it’ll miss something like that.”

“So what?” Tamman snarled. “We have to find her, goddamn it!”

“Tam’s right,” Sandy agreed without a flicker of hesitation, and Sean’s hand caressed her face for just a moment. Then he opened the cutter hatch and went up the ramp at a run.

* * *

“I’ve found her.”

The people in the cutter jerked upright, staring at Brashan’s tiny hologram, and the centauroid’s crest was flat. Another endless hour had passed, and even the fact that the quarantine system hadn’t reacted in the slightest had meant nothing beside their growing fear as seconds dragged away.

Brashan straightened on his pad, his holographic eyes meeting Sean’s squarely, and his voice was very quiet. “She’s dying.”

“No,” Sean whispered. “No, goddamn it!”

“She is approximately seven kilometers from your current position on a heading of one-three-seven,” Brashan continued in that same flat, quiet voice. “She has a broken shoulder, a punctured lung, and severe head injuries. The medical computer reports a skull fracture, a major eye trauma, and two subdural hematomas. One of them is massive.”

“Skull fracture?” All three humans stared at him in shock, for Harriet’s bones— like their own—were reinforced with battle steel appliques. But under their shock was icy fear. Unlike muscle tissue and skin, the physical enhancement of the brain was limited; Harriet’s implants might control other blood loss, but not bleeding inside her skull.

“I cannot say positively, but I believe her wounds to be deliberately inflicted,” Brashan said, and Sean’s dark eyes burned with sudden, terrible fire. “I say this because she is presently in the center of a small village. I hypothesize that she must have been carried thence by whoever injured her.”

“Those fucking sons-of-bi—!”

“Wait, Sean!” Sandy cut him off in midcurse, and he turned his fury on her. He knew it was stupid, yet his rage needed a target—any target—and she was there. But if her brown eyes were just as deadly as his own, they were also far closer to rational.

“Think, damn it!” she snapped. “Somehow someone must have spotted her—and that means they probably know she came out of the Valley!”

Sean sank back, his madness stabbed through with panic as he recalled the fate the Church prescribed for any who dabbled with the Valley of the Damned. Sandy held his eyes a second longer, then turned to the Narhani.

“You said she’s dying, Brashan. Exactly how bad is it?”

“If we do not get her into Israel’s sickbay within the next ninety minutes—two hours at the outside—she will be dead.” Brashan’s crest went still flatter. “Even now, her chances are less than even.”

“We have to go get her,” Tamman grated, and Sean nodded convulsively.

“Agreed,” Sandy said, but her eyes were back on Sean. “Tam’s right,” she said quietly, “but we can’t just go in there and start killing people.”

“The hell we can’t! Those motherfuckers are dead, Sandy! Goddamn it, they’re trying to kill her!”

“I know. But you know why they are, and so do I.”

“I don’t fucking well care why!” he snarled.

“Well you fucking well ought to!” she snarled back, and the utterly uncharacteristic outburst rocked him even through his rage. “Damn it, Sean, they think they’re doing what God wants! They’re ignorant, superstitious, and scared to death of what she’s done—are you going to kill them all for that?”

He stared at her, eyes hating, and tension crackled between them. Then his gaze fell. He felt ashamed, which only made his need for violence perversely stronger, but he shook his head.

“I know.” Her voice was far more gentle. “I know. But using Imperial weapons against them would be pure, wanton slaughter.”

He nodded, knowing she was right. Perhaps even more importantly, he knew even through his madness why she’d stopped him. He looked back up, and his eyes were sane once more … but colder than interstellar space.

“All right. We’ll try to scare them out of our way without killing anyone, Sandy. But if they won’t scare—” He broke off, and she squeezed his arm thankfully. She knew what killing the villagers would do to him after the madness passed, and she tried not to think about his final words.

* * *

Father Stomald knelt before his altar, ashen-faced and sick, and raised revolted eyes to the outsized beaker of oil. To pour that on a human being—any human being, even a heretic! To light it and watch her burn…

Bile rose as he pictured that blood-streaked, hauntingly beautiful face and saw that slim, lovely body wreathed in flame, crisping, burning, blackening…

He forced his nausea down. God called His priests to their duty, and if the punishment of the ungodly was harsh, it must be so to save their souls. Stomald told himself that almost tearfully, and it did no good at all. He loved God and longed to serve Him, but he was a shepherd, not an executioner!

Sweat matted his forehead as he dragged himself up. The beaker was cold between his palms, and he