dead bodies with burn injuries. Two of them were missing their arms, the third was missing his head. Only the door of the storage building remained intact. The explosive must’ve gone off before they attached it.
Arrius kicked the head and Lucius watched it roll away. He then noticed how tense Arrius became. He was looking at the buildings, at their windows, behind the group even.
“They will be back,” Arrius finally said. A lightning above seemed to confirm his worries. “I doubt they will leave this building without emptying it first. We must make haste before they arrive.”
Lucius clenched his fist. He wanted to wait for the thieves and kill them for what they have done. But he didn’t want to lose his crates. Reluctantly he acknowledged that Arrius was right. It was better to avoid fighting for the time being.
“Spread out,” Lucius said. “Heavy weapons on the point. Sniper, get to a higher ground until we pass the street. We will wait for you at the white building at the end.” He pointed there, but he was certain that their eyes saw it better than he ever could.
Two soldiers detached beam cannons from their backs and moved forward while the sniper started running on the walls of the House Pinarius’ storage building. Two soldiers that carried the crates with the emperor’s new body came closer to Lucius. Two more soldiers positioned themselves facing the group’s rear. Helvius was the only man who went few paces in front to scout. Once the sniper was in position, the group went onward.
Everyone was silent and vigilant. Their eyes moved from one building to another, from the alleys between buildings to the street in front, from the empty doorways to the dark windows. The group came across remains of few security robots that lay dead next to a building they were trying to protect.
Further down the street Lucius heard screams coming from the west. He turned, thinking it might be some crippled citizen attacked by scavengers. Somehow it angered him that he couldn’t protect his people from these wretched thieves. He had this urge to stop the group and order them to kill everyone they would caught stealing. But he knew that was impossible. Once I get my body, though...
It seems clear, Your Highness – Helvius sent. He was way ahead of the group, almost at the white building – We can move–
An explosion cut off his transmission. The blast wave was powerful enough to throw Captain Arrius back and slam Lucius on the ground adding Arrius’s extra weight on him. Lucius gritted his teeth and then opened his eyes. Dust and smoke and raining debris surrounded him. Then he heard weapon fire.
Lucius tried to push the captain away from him, momentarily forgetting that he was tied to his back. Arrius pushed himself to the side, then up on one knee, but it seemed he was dazzled by the explosion and fell back down, crushing Lucius under his weight again. Lucius clenched his eyes shut and held back a scream. When he opened his eyes again, a soldier fell next to him, dark smoke rising from the thigh and the missing knee below.
With one hand Lucius detached himself from the straps, and with the same hand he crawled to get closer to the fallen soldier, to get his pistol and fire at the enemies whoever they were.
The pistol was there, almost in his reach, when the ground erupted in front of him, pebbles and dirt spraying over his face. Lucius covered his eyes, and then he felt someone grab him by his head and lift him up, dragging Lucius’s wires of his lower body on the ground. A claw grabbed his arm and raised it up. The man who held the emperor suspended above the ground had a grin of someone in control, of someone who decided whether to snap Lucius’s body in half. It was a grin of man who had already decided what to do.
“Atilius, watch out!” someone called. The man turned and his head jerked back – a metal slug smacked his temple. Another one hit his head, and he lost his grip over the emperor. Lucius fell down and rolled away as more beams sizzled above him and burned his attacker, jerking his weird body backward. His spidery legs wobbled and eventually gave out. The man was dead before he even touched the ground.
Emperor Lucius quickly grabbed a hole in the street and pulled himself closer to the pistol, avoiding beams and pulse slugs that strafed around him. For once he thought it was good to have half a body as it gave a smaller target to his enemies. As soon as he took a hold of the pistol he turned to shoot back, but all he did was aim and watch how one of the attackers’ head exploded. He turned to fire on his next target: a gigantic man with rusty body and heavy legs, undoubtedly taken from a worker robot. The giant had a rifle in each hand and opened fire at the group.
Lucius fired back and got him few times, but it didn’t seem the man felt it. The thick metal shook off the beams and he smiled. He kneeled beside a dead soldier and took a heavy cannon from his hands. He grinned as he squeezed it in his hands.
“Take him out!” Lucius shouted. “Do not let him fire!”
In an instant, every blue light and every metal slug from the soldier’s pulse rifles were focused on the giant. Beams zapped his body one after another until they ignited him. But the man didn’t fall. His grin turned wider. He moved his aim to the soldiers he probably considered a threat and fired a massive bolt that melted one of the crate-carrying soldiers.
My body. Lucius’s head spun on the thought of losing it again. “Protect the crates!” he shouted. “Kill him!”
More beams hit the giant, but his thick metal shell kept him alive. Lucius decided to join his soldiers before the giant could have a chance to fire again. Lucius aimed his pistol and focused.
Zap!
And the giant was missing an eye. Another barrage of blue lights burned him and pushed him down, his metal plates melting down like a yellow liquid. Then a bomb rolled next to his crumpled body, an explosion so loud that shattered the surrounding windows. The giant collapsed on his stomach. The rest of the mob scattered and the shooting died away.
Lucius crawled back to Arrius. The captain was alive. Only his right eye was damaged. Arrius said it was nothing, he could still see. He kneeled and took the emperor in his hands. One of the soldiers strapped him on the captain’s back while Lucius counted the men he lost.
Two soldiers were dead and one was missing a leg. His chances of taking his throne back were melting down like the giant’s skin.
Lucius ordered his men to take the weapons from their dead comrades, and on they went. No one was foolish enough to ambush them again.
The white building was closer then he thought. After they reached it, they waited for the sniper to catch up.
The wall that separated the slums from the rest of the city was further south. The group reached it without any delays. There they sat down for a moment to cool their bodies.
Behind the wall it was the Subura district, the fancy name for the slums. Lucius’s father had warned him that the people there would tear him apart for the gold on his body if he ever did come even close to this place. Lucius usually took such warnings as challenges, but not with the slums. He wasn’t afraid by it – he was disgusted. Yet here he was, rust and decay of life-sustaining chemicals creeping into his nose. It made him want to go back to the Power Comet and fly to his fleet on Burnum. Almost.
“Have you been here before?” Lucius asked the captain.
“No.”
“So you have no idea where to search for the doctor.”
“No.”
Lucius slowly nodded, acknowledging the difficulty of his situation. “Do you trust him?” he asked.
Arrius looked up as a thunder ripped the sky. “I used to trust him with my life.”
“Used to?” Lucius repeated.
Arrius didn’t answer right away. He seemed to be engulfed in his memories. “We served on Battleship Hercules together. He was our doctor. But after the Battle for Luna he decided to retire. He moved here then.”
“Do you trust him now?”
Arrius went silent once again. After a moment he said, “I am afraid we do not have any choice. If he is here, he is our only hope.”
He was right. The only other doctor Lucius knew of was millions of kilomete
rs away from here.
Lucius said to his men, “Once we pass the wall, I want to remain anonymous. Is that understood?” Chorus of acknowledgments followed. “Okay, then. Let’s find the doctor.”
VALERIA
Commander Valeria managed to keep two fighters and eleven merchant ships in the emperor’s fleet. She managed to destroy the strange vessel that came from beyond the system and threatened their very survival. For a moment she doubted that the emperor chose the right officer for the job. But in the end she proved him right. She proved her worth. Until now.
She stared mute at the screen as the battleship and the rest of the emperor’s fleet silently surrounded the debris. Many men were sent to look for survivors among the scattered remains of the Aquila’s hull. The blue exhaust of their mover packs were like tiny stars, jumping from one piece of metal to another; Stars that were supposed to bring good news. But their reports were anything but good. There were no signs of her captain, or her emperor.
Valeria rubbed her arms. They are here, she tried to console herself. She couldn’t bear the thought of losing her beloved captain, and the man she swore to protect and return to his throne. If she couldn’t find them alive, then everything she had accomplished in the past few days would be for nothing.
“Commander,” said Captain Galerius. He was standing somewhere behind her. But she didn’t turn, nor did she care what he had