Impact Velocity (The Physics of Falling) Read online

  “Pete?”

  “The emperor.”

  “Oh.” He blushed again, fighting a smile. “That’s good to know.”

  When are you leaving?

  In an hour. If Molly’s ready by then.

  I wouldn’t hold my breath. She worked up quite a temper this morning.

  I’ve seen worse.

  I think you’ve done worse yourself.

  iv42

  We worked together for some hours until the tiny pieces began to blur together. “How long since you slept, Your Highness?” Jesus asked.

  I stood up, stretching my shoulders and rubbing the back of my neck. “What day is it?”

  “Wednesday. Afternoon.”

  “Then it was the day before yesterday, I think.”

  He shook his head. “You should get some sleep. I’ve got a couple of friends here who could help me with the assembly. Now that we’ve figured out how to work them, it’s just a matter of putting the pieces together. They can do that.”

  I nodded, too tired to argue. “You should get some sleep, too.”

  He smiled. “I will. I’ll get them started and find my bunk. We’ve got a lot to do in the next few days. Might as well sleep while we can.”

  ***

  Lady Chou led me to a standard-issue barracks room, complete with bunk beds lining the walls. For some reason that made me smile.

  “I’m sorry we don’t have anything better to offer you,” she said, but I waved away her objection.

  “This is plenty. Thank you.”

  She bowed to me before she left and my brain was so sluggish that I didn’t think to ask her not to until she was already gone. The room was mostly in darkness, dim safety lighting at the doors provided the only illumination. I found an empty bunk and fell into it, so tired I felt drunk.

  Yet I lay there, staring up in at the bunk above me, unable to sleep. How long had it been since my children had been taken? I fought a wave of anger and panic. It would do no good now. A whole team was working to get them back. And I needed sleep.

  The door across from me opened and a figure was outlined briefly in the doorway before it closed and the room went dark again. But I needed no more than that to recognize Jonathan.

  “Over here,” I whispered. He followed the sound of my voice, stopping in front of me.

  “I’m glad you found your way to a bed, finally. I was hoping I wouldn’t have to drag you.”

  I chuckled. “You should sleep, too.”

  “That’s why I’m here.” He put a hand on the bunk above mine but paused. “Is there anything you need before I do?”

  That hurt, the way he was distancing himself again.

  “Why do you have to do that?” I snapped.

  He paused, but didn’t ask for an explanation. “Because I’m the servant.”

  I scoffed. “And I’m the nothing whatsoever.” My throat tightened. It was true. What was I? A married man with no husband. A father whose children were lost. The consort to an emperor who had been killed.

  Jonathan climbed into the bunk above me silently. But when he was up there he leaned over and looked down at me. It was such a boyish thing to do that I almost laughed.

  “You’re my friend,” he said. “That’s something.”

  I blinked back stupid tears. “Yeah. That’s something.”

  ***

  I woke several hours later to find that Jesus’ friends had fifteen finished devices. My eyebrows shot up. “That’s amazing.” They both blushed, the boy staring at his feet, fighting a grin.

  “It’s nothing,” the girl said. She looked incredibly young to be part of something like this. If she was eighteen years old then I was a grandfather. “We could have made more but we’ve cannibalized all the non-essential equipment they let us have. Lady Chou is trying to find more components for us.” She had gone completely red. “They’re not that hard to put together. Once you know how.”

  “You’ve done better than I expected,” I said. “Thank you.”

  An older woman nearby rescued me from their embarrassment, asking if she could borrow them and then redirecting their efforts elsewhere. Jonathan came to find me, handing me a ration pack. “Breakfast,” he said. I cocked a brow, smiling.

  “Do you know if we have any volunteers yet?” I asked. He raised his eyebrows.

  “No one told you?”

  “Told me what?”

  “We have more than ‘any’ volunteers,” he said. “Everyone has volunteered. Lady Chou is drawing up a plan to keep all the essential functions here manned while allowing as many to go as possible.”

  “Oh.” I shook my head. “They do understand it’s dangerous, right?”

  He gave me a steady look. “Life’s dangerous, Jake.”

  I snorted amusement. “All right. If that’s what they want I’m not going to argue.”

  Lady Chou came to collect some of the devices, apportioning them out to people who would be traveling to the imperial worlds within the perimeter we felt we could reach. “We’ll have to send them more specific instructions once we work out all the details,” she said. “But we can’t lose travel time.”

  “Jake.” I turned to find Jonathan pointing at a vid. “You need to watch this.”

  Citizens of the Empire. Naganika’s familiar face and voice in front of the imperial seal was startling now. Only hours ago I’d talked treason with him at a headquarters for the Resistance.

  In this time of turmoil, good news is always welcome, and today we have for you the best news of all. Princess Marquilla Killearn, heir to the throne, and Prince Owen Blaine have returned safely to the palace. Naganika beamed as if personally responsible for the rescue. I wondered whose idea it was to chop ‘Dawes’ out of Molly’s name. Both children are well and have not suffered from their unfortunate abduction.

  Abduction? Was that what they called a father rescuing his children from murderers? In Laudley’s empire, no doubt it was. They are home and resting. As soon as possible they will make an official appearance, but for now they are recovering from their ordeal and the palace will not allow them to be disturbed.

  His face and voice sobered. We will need the joy of that news to carry us through another unfortunate loss for the empire. Our newly crowned Emperor Regent Enryn was murdered by the former imperial consort. How Prince Jacob managed to abduct him from the palace is still under investigation, but only yesterday as the children were being rescued, the former prince tried to use the emperor regent as a hostage in exchange for his life. As a father and as an emperor, Enryn would not stand for it and he forced Prince Jacob’s hand so that the children could get away safely. Naganika bowed his head. We will now observe ten minutes of silence for our late emperor regent.

  All around us people were frozen in shock, some staring openly at us, some trying not to be seen doing it, some simply staring at the screen, lines of confusion in their faces. I’d always been terrible at this game of politics but when I realized that I understood what was going on and others didn’t, I laughed.

  Those who hadn’t already been staring at me did so now. I turned to Blaine, grinning.

  “Well, Blaine, I heard my execution order. Did you hear yours?”

  His tone was dry. “Yours is old news.” But then he gave me a conspiratorial smile. “Mine was masterfully done, though. Don’t you think?”

  “Well, sure, if you want to admire the way we just handed him everything he wanted on a silver platter.” I waved in the direction of the vid, where the imperial seal still filled the display as the backdrop to the moment of silence we weren’t observing for the man we were having a conversation with instead. “Because of that, he’s rid of you exactly the way he wanted to be and with no effort on his part. All he has to do now is quietly kill you and he wins. He’s already won.”

  “Which is exactly why he
’s going to get quite a shock when we make it all blow up in his face, firmly and publicly.” Before I could answer, Blaine turned to Lady Chou. “Do we have everything ready for our own broadcast?”

  Understanding began to dawn slowly, and with it, a grin spread across my face. “Oh, I think this is going to be the most fun I’ve had in a long time.”

  My rule, such as it was, was no more than an ink stain in the book of history.

  iv43

  Naganika sent a series of coded messages to Lady Chou that helped us set up for a broadcast of our own. Dawes and I worked separately and together, crafting a message that would expose Laudley and bring him down.

  Less than twenty-four hours after the palace’s broadcast, everything was in place for us to break into the official broadcast channels, as Laudley had done in the years he hid behind his assumed title, The Patriot.

  “Naganika has hidden the hacks well,” Lady Chou said, “and you might have as much as an hour before the palace teams shut you down. But you can count on fifteen minutes, and be reasonably confident of a few more past that. Shorter is best, but say what needs to be said. You should have time.”

  I nodded my thanks, folding my hands together to disguise my unease. Now that it had come to it, what I was about to do struck me as absurd and impossible.

  We took our places and a pimple-faced kid signaled for us to begin. The official news outlet suddenly blanked. The imperial seal and the alert that important and mandatory information was coming from the palace replaced it. It faded and my own image appeared.

  “Citizens of the empire,” I said, my voice calm and controlled as I had feared it would not be. “As you can see, the recent reports of my death were a lie. Not only am I alive, I am in no danger from any except the palace itself. A powerful duke there, the Grand Duke Laudley, has been behind the workings of a network of traitors for some time. You once knew him as The Patriot, and now he has finally seized power. Power he means to keep at any cost.”

  I paused to let that sink in, and met the camera squarely. “He arranged and carried out the assassination of our rightful emperor, Rikhart IV. His goal is to see that his grandson, his blood, holds the throne after him. In the meantime, he means to hold that power himself, ruling through innocent children he can manipulate and warp to his own ends.”

  I paused for the effect. “Take note, his goal is to see Prince Owen on the throne. To do that, he would have to eliminate the one who still stands between Owen and the throne: Crown Princess Marquilla. A child, and the last surviving member of the true imperial line.”

  I almost didn’t recognize my voice, gone low and dangerous. “Shall we stand for this? Will we stand by and pretend we are powerless to stop him, turning a blind eye as he murders again, this time a child? I for one, will not. And it is to that end I have joined my efforts to another who fights for our rightful ruler with at least as much passion as I do.”

  I gestured for Dawes to join me. “Prince Jacob did not murder me, as you were so recently told. Nor did he ever intend to. It is to his protection that I owe my life, for he helped me escape when Laudley would have killed me as well.” I turned to him. “Prince Jacob?”

  He bowed to me, the formal acknowledgment between equals. We hadn’t agreed on that and it surprised me. Yet, with everything so out of control, so confused as it all was, it was the perfect gesture, a gesture of respect that diminished neither of us. I wasn’t sure what to make of the political savvy as well as the generosity in the act. So many things I had never expected from him.

  “Thank you, Duke Blaine.”

  He turned to face the camera, regal and confident, yet another thing I found astonishing. Then he completely ruined the impression with a very un-regal greeting.

  “Hello.” I started to shake my head at the commonness of it. Hadn’t he had enough experience by now to know how to talk like a noble?

  And yet, as I cast about in my memory, I couldn’t remember many instances of him playing any important official roles, of much public speaking at all. How had I not realized that he truly stayed out of the spotlight, as if he’d really never wanted any of it, the way he always said?

  Just as I was hoping his slip wouldn’t ruin the impression we made, I caught a glimpse of the nearby faces and froze. They looked almost worshipful. I felt a wash of shame at my blindness. This was why he appealed to the lower classes, and why they would listen to him. It was because he wasn’t regal or proper. He was one of them and they liked that. So many things I’d never understood began to make sense.

  “Duke Blaine is right,” he said, “the same man who murdered our rightful emperor now has my children, our crown princess and Prince Owen. They’re precious not just to me but to the Empire. That man has stolen our emperor, our empire, and now he has stolen the royal children as well.” There was a long moment in which he seemed to struggle with emotion. It was a good idea, the appeal to the people as a bereft father. I didn’t think he was acting, though.

  “Duke Blaine and I are working together to make sure he doesn’t succeed, that our princess is safe, and that the empire is restored to the true heir.” He looked down. “At home, we call her Molly.” He looked as if he were fighting tears. I heard a sniffle and realized that some among our group of spectators actually were crying.

  “Duke Blaine asked you if we were going to stand for it. Well I’m going to tell you that we aren’t. Not me, nor him, and I don’t believe you will either.”

  He cast an almost embarrassed glance at me. “Duke Blaine and I have been at odds, often bitterly, sometimes mortally. There are times in the past when either or both of us would have killed the other and considered ourselves in the right.” He faced the camera again.

  “But the time for such petty squabbles is past. We cannot allow our differences to divide us now. All of us—the nobility, the high, middle, and low classes, the unclass—we face a common enemy. We can defeat him together and take back our empire.

  “The Grand Duke Laudley would destroy the hard work and legacy of an emperor who did more for every one of his subjects than any who came before him. Rikhart IV looked at each individual and he saw the man, not the class. He fought to make things better for all of us and each of us. And I for one won’t stand by while a greedy, grasping traitor takes that away from us.”

  His expression grew intense. “So I’m asking you to stand with us. Five days from now,” his voice quieted, “on what would have been Emperor Rikhart’s thirty-first birthday, I’m asking you to join us. In every town center, in every city square, on the palace lawn of every Imperial world, even the Imperial Palace itself, we will stand up together and show this traitor that he won’t take our empire from us. We will reclaim our own, the royal children he now holds hostage. We will reclaim our empire. I’m asking everyone, from the highest noble to the smallest unclass.”

  His voice grew soft with sympathy. “I’m asking those of you who serve the empire in all the branches of the ISS to turn your weapons away from your fellow citizens, and ignore the orders of any but those who have the right to issue them. I’m asking the men and women in the palace to stand with us, to stand up on that day and take Laudley into custody so that he can answer to the entire empire for his treasons.”

  He bowed his head before looking up. “We are brave and strong enough to do this. We will do this, whether it’s easy or whether it’s hard. And I’m not asking you to do it alone. I will be there as well. I will gather with you and I will not hide my face. We can do this together. We must do this together, or together we will all lose, and our children and grandchildren will look back on these days and wonder what it must have been like when the empire was still grand and glorious, and why we didn’t fight for it.”

  I watched him, astonished at how powerfully his words affected even me, wondering how I could have underestimated the power of what he was doing, this appeal to the populace. I couldn’t deny
I’d always seen them as little more than children needing our guidance and sometimes a firm hand. Yet now the sheer scope of how greatly they outnumbered us, how decisively they were the empire, overwhelmed and shamed me.

  “We will do this. Five days from now, on what would have been an imperial holiday to celebrate the birthday of the emperor, we will stand together.” He stared down the camera. “Laudley, this message is to you. If you’re smart you’ll give up now, or else run and hide. You’ve lost already. And we’re coming for you.”

  I shivered as the display switched to the imperial seal with the imperial anthem playing strong and clear. It played through from beginning to end before the official programming popped back into place like a soap bubble had burst.

  Dawes turned to me. “Now we’ll see what happens.”

  I’m sorry about what I said last night.

  I knew you didn’t mean it.

  I’m still sorry.

  iv44

  With that done, I returned to helping them assemble blinders. A shipment of parts had found its way to us. I suspected Governor Kagawa had rerouted it and I hoped he’d taken it away from some project that would benefit the imperial government right now. He probably had.

  He’d been the governor of my duchy for almost a decade, and I had learned to spot and enjoy his sense of irony. Of course, he’d needed one just to have taken the position from me in the first place. It made it all the more fun a few years back when I made him a minor noble. He nearly choked. Pete had shaken his head at me for telling him at a formal dinner and waiting until he had food in his mouth. But he’d been grinning, too.

  I sighed.

  “Are you all right?” Jonathan’s voice was still as familiar as it had been to me years ago, when he’d seemed like an extension of myself and there was nothing hurtful between us. “I was just thinking, I sort of wish we hadn’t scheduled all this for our birthday.”