Heirs of Empire

looks like the only two they saw clearly were Sandy and me.”

“That’s what I gather from what this Father Stomald is saying.” Sandy switched to an image of the priest and smiled wryly as she recalled the last time she’d seen the broad-shouldered, curly-haired young man with the neatly trimmed beard. He looked far more composed now as he stood talking to the hard-faced soldier at his side.

“He’s kind of cute, isn’t he?” Harriet murmured, then blushed as Sean gave her a very speaking look and she remembered what that cute young man had almost done to her. She rubbed her eye patch and gave herself another shake.

“Anyway, if we’re the only ones he saw, it all makes sense. Their church is patriarchal—well, for that matter, most of Pardal is. Malagor’s sort of radical in that respect; they actually let women own property. The thought of a woman in the priesthood is anathema, but there Sandy and I were in Battle Fleet uniform … which just happens to be what their bishops wear for their holiest church feasts. Add the fact that this patriarchal outfit has decided, for reasons best known to themselves, that angels are female—”

“And beautiful,” Tamman inserted.

“As I say, angels are female,” Harriet went on repressively. “They’re also immortal, but not invulnerable, which explains how I could have been injured, and this Stomald seems to realize you three deliberately didn’t kill anyone when you came in like gangbusters. Given all that, there’s actually a weird sort of logic to the whole thing.”

“Yeah,” Sean said more soberly, and changed the display himself. The marching columns of armed men sent a visible chill through Israel’s crew, and he sighed. “We may not have killed anyone, but it looks like maybe we should have. At least then we would have been ‘demons’ instead of some kind of divine messengers that’re going to get all of them massacred.”

“Maybe … and maybe not…” Sandy was gazing at the advancing Temple Guard, and the light in her eyes worried Sean.

“What d’you mean?” he demanded, and she gave him a beatific smile.

“I mean we just found the key to the Temple’s front door.”

“Huh?” her lover said sapiently, and her smile became a grin.

“We don’t want all those people slaughtered for something we started, however unintentionally, do we?” Four heads shook, and she shrugged. “In that case, we’ve got to rescue them.”

“And how do you propose to do that?”

“Oh, that’s the easy part. Those guys are a heck of a lot more than a hundred kilometers from the Temple.”

“Hold on there!” Sean protested. “I don’t want to see Stomald and his fellow nuts massacred, but I don’t want to massacre anyone else, either!”

“No need,” she assured him. “We can probably scare the poo out of them with a few holo projections without even a demonstration of firepower.”

“Hum.” Sean looked at the others, and his eyes began to dance. “Yeah, I suppose we could. Might even be fun.”

“Don’t get too carried away,” Sandy said, “because what happens after we scare ’em is what really matters.”

“What are you talking about?” Tamman sounded puzzled.

“I mean that whether we like it or not, the fat’s in the fire. Either we let the Church massacre these people, or we rescue them. If we rescue them, do you think the Temple’s just going to say, ‘Gosh! Looks like we better leave those nasty demon-worshiping heretics alone’? And they’re not going to go home like nothing happened, either, because if we save them, we reconfirm their belief in divine intervention.”

“Great,” Sean sighed.

“Maybe it is.” He looked up in surprise, and she shrugged. “We didn’t do it on purpose, but we can’t undo it. So if the Temple wants a crusade, why not give it one?”

“Are you saying we should instigate a religious war?!” Harriet stared at her in horror, and Sandy shrugged again.

“I’m saying we already have,” she said more soberly. “That gives us a responsibility to end it, one way or another, and we’re not going to be able to do that without getting our hands bloody. I don’t like that any more than you do, Harry, but we don’t have a choice—unless we want to sit back and watch Stomald and his people go down.

“So if we have to get involved, let’s go whole hog. The Church is too big, too static. Even the secular lords are lap dogs for it. But the only way Stomald’s going to survive is to take out the Inner Circle … and that just happens to be what we need to do to get into the Sanctum.”

“I don’t know…” Harriet said slowly, but Sean was staring at Sandy in admiration.

“My God, Sandy—that’s brilliant!”

“Well, pretty darn smart, anyway,” she agreed. Then she laughed. “Anyway, we’re certainly the right people for the job!” Sean looked blank, and her grin seemed to split her face. “Of course we are, Sean! After all, we are the Lost Children of Israel, aren’t we?”

Chapter Twenty-Four

Sean grimaced as his stealthed fighter, one of only three Israel carried, hovered above the twisting gorge. It was sheer, deep, and dizzy, with vertical walls that narrowed to less than two hundred meters where they’d been closed with earthworks, and he saw why the “heretics” had retreated into it, but such tight quarters made maneuvering for the shot a bitch.

He checked his scanners. The cutter Sandy, Harriet, and Brashan rode was as invisible as the fighter, but their synchronized stealth fields made it clear to his own instruments while they ran their final checks.

He wished there’d been time to test their jury-rigged holo projector properly. It would have been nice to have had more planning time, too. Building a strategy in less than ten hours offered little scope for careful consideration, though he had to admit Sandy seemed to have answered his major objections.

The hardest part, in many ways, was the limits on what they could offer these people. It would take a “miracle” to save them this time, but it was the only miracle Israel’s crew could work. They dared not use Imperial technology within a hundred klicks of the Temple, yet if they used it up to that point and then stopped, the result would be disastrous. Not only would it offer the Temple fresh hope, but the sudden cessation would fill the “heretics” with dismay. It might well convince them they were heretics, that the “false angels” dared not confront the Temple on its own ground, and that limitation was going to make even more problems than Harriet’s monkey wrench.

He puffed his lips and wished his twin were just a little less principled. Her insistence that they never claim divine status was going to make things difficult—and probably wouldn’t be believed anyway. Yet she was right. They’d done enough damage, and, assuming they won the war they’d provoked, they’d eventually have to convince their “allies” they weren’t really angels. Besides, demanding their worship would have made him feel unclean.

He turned his attention to the army of the Church. Those earthworks looked almost impregnable, but the valley formed a funnel to them, and the Temple Guard was busy deploying field guns under cover of darkness. With the dawn, dozens of them would be able to open fire across a wide arc. They didn’t look very heavy—they might throw five or six-kilo shot—but there were a lot of them, and he didn’t see any in the heretics’ camp.

“Wish Sandy’s dad was here,” he muttered.

“Or my dad,” Tamman grunted. “Better yet, Mom!”

“I’d settle for any of ’em, but Uncle Hector’s the history nut. I don’t know crap about black powder and pikes.”

“We’ll just have to pick up on-the-job training. And at least we’ve got the right accouterments.” Tamman grinned and rapped his soot-black breastplate. Sean wore a matching breast and backplate with mail sleeves. The armor, like the swords racked behind their flight couches, came from Israel’s machine