Empire City (eBook)

1.

Wobbling from the heat, Jason shields his eyes from the sun, trying to scan the sand for the telltale signs of hover-jets approaching from the west. Their cargo is more precious than any trade convoy’s, and they are due any moment. Not long ago, such an event would have been unthinkable. He had stood atop the wall, just like this, as a child, and looked out to the wild and its invisible inhabitants, not with anticipation, but with scorn and fear. Jason looks at the timepiece on his wrist; it is almost a year to the day since he won the Bassanium and changed the city forever.

A gentle northerly breeze disturbs the desert sand and offers welcome relief. Jason is wearing his official black uniform; nothing else would have been suitable for an occasion of this importance, but he is hot and agitated. He wills them to arrive on time, to not have any delays or, God forbid, encounters. He shudders to think of the beasts that patrol beyond the horizon, but the sheer size of the convoy would protect them—or so he assures himself, repeatedly.

It is not the cost of this expedition that worries him either; he could pay for the convoy’s overtime and hardly notice the dent in his bank balance. The Bassanium prize money had made him a wealthy man, not yet as rich as his father, but certainly wealthy enough to finance the transport and accommodation of his guests. No, he wants them to arrive on time for her.

Jason smiles to the wind. Benedetta had adapted to city life with characteristic ease, but he’d woken a few times in the middle of the night to see her watching a distant point on the ceiling. She’d only shrugged and kissed him when he’d asked what was wrong, but sometimes the way she tutted at bike traffic and rolled her eyes at the obscenely gigantic, hovering billboards made him wonder if she missed home. Not that she’d ever admit it, of course. Still, she was going to be thrilled to see three-quarters of Oak Village arriving in her adopted city this afternoon—of this, Jason is certain. And he couldn’t wait to be reunited with his old friends and saviours either.

What a wedding it will be.

Not only does it promise to be the most illustrious city celebration in over three generations, but the event has political resonance—this isn’t lost on Jason, even as his excitement begins to mount as the big day nears. On the whole, Empyreans had got used to the sight and idea of Benedetta. Only yesterday, she had come home delighted from a trip downtown because everyone who’d spotted her had saluted. As well they should, Jason had thought, secretly subdued that this constituted a victory. The wedding, however, offered a radical intervention: a large-scale opportunity for Empyreans and a mixed society of outsiders to interact. Jason doubts the wedding will sway the small faction of judges and their Luddite followers, who continue to follow the old, false ways, but if they could feel themselves a threatened minority, that would be a start. Anger clouds Jason’s observation of the horizon. His father was more optimistic, convinced that the opposition would eventually see reason, but Jason is unsure how reason could ever work its magic on the wholly unreasonable.

At least the wedding would stir things up. There were bound to be a few uncomfortable first encounters—which is why he’d issued the pamphlets on the Brown family’s high expectations for exemplary civilian behaviour—but this was surely going to be on both sides. After all, Old Smoke isn’t likely to let a Senior Aid Synthetic help him to his room without some resistance. Although, of course, the villagers know how to behave at weddings—Jason having been inspired to propose by the one he’d seen during his time there. Hopefully, Empyreans would be struck, as Jason had, by the thought that they had something to learn from the societies of the great wild.

Jason thinks back to that untethered young man: he’d thought it was righteousness that had made him dismiss the villagers to begin with, but he sees now that it was a sense, already growing even then that he’d always been wrong—duped by an upbringing that didn’t quite make sense. That sense of incompletion had manifested itself as aloofness—still ‘a problem’, according to Benedetta—and had seen him divert all his energy into the distraction of racing. Actually, perhaps he hadn’t really changed at all.

A flicker of light against the black line of the distant forest catches his eye. The light begins to throw up clouds of sand and he is suddenly aware of a low humming sound, which in no time at all becomes an unignorable rumble. The first vehicles are heading at full speed towards the Great Gate beneath Jason, who signals to the approaching commander to concentrate all defensive weapons on the convoy, which is comprised of two transporters, four escort vehicles and seven military grade hover-bikes fitted with frontal pulse rifles.

Jason has hired the whale-shaped, windowless transporters, currently hovering forward at four hundred mph, from the city. They are metallic juggernauts, painted charcoal black, capable of transporting one hundred and fifty synthetics at a time to the other cities with which Empire traded. Usually the heavily plated, talmantium transporters would be returning from the wild with all sorts of foreign goods in their huge hull. Today, they have been retrofitted with seats, about a hundred each, to carry Jason’s guests. For ventilation, the top hatch has been left open and two guards can be seen manning the rail gun at the top.

All the escort vehicles are fitted with revolving pulse turrets, giving them a three hundred and sixty degree angle of attack, but with marauder ambushes on the decline, it seems next to impossible that such a heavily defended convoy would ever be targeted. Still, Jason remains uneasy, constantly looking through his spyglass for signs of the enemy. Before long, though, the vehicles pass beneath Jason with a deafening whir, safely arriving in the city. Jason races down the city stairs to the open arena where, once upon a time, he’d started his Crii.

The vehicles are still in holding within the walls, but Benedetta is already waiting. Jason runs to her side. He has time to kiss her tenderly before the final gate groans open and the convoy blasts forward, casting the couple in shadow.

The escort vehicles zoom away to the Military District, and the transporters land—their cargo bay doors slowly opening. Benedetta squeezes Jason’s hand tightly. A colourfully dressed man is revealed: Mayor Quilbie, cloaked in a ceremonial orange robe, clutches his large stomach and manages a weak wave. He shuffles down the ramp, apparently glad to be on terra firma, followed by a riotous crowd of villagers.

The noise of the guests is met by a growing welcome party; Empyreans are beginning to fill the arena, too, looking strangely mournful in their sombre outfits. Empire sons, however, break away from the groups of adults and start to weave in amongst the villagers, seeking out children of their own age, who look at their towering new surroundings with huge uncomprehending eyes.

The city’s borders have been open to citizens from Star and Mineral for the past seven months, an initiative born out of Benedetta’s influence on Jason’s father, but few had dared to make the crossing out of fear for marauders. The Empyreans, who now watch with visible nervousness as their sons join the colourful throng of foreigners, had only seen the handful of salesmen who had come in dribs and drabs over the last few weeks; the two hundred motley-dressed men and women bore no resemblance to the mercantile figures of Star and Mineral’s sole traders.

The least reticent of the Empire citizens are the growing number of reporters, who shout their ill-researched questions (‘Do your wife and your synth get on, sir?’) at puzzled Oakers. Batting a drone camera away with a mixture of impatience and intrigue, Mayor Quilbie raises his wooden staff for silence.

“Greetings everyone!” shouts the Mayor. “I have no intention of doing that journey again in a hurry, so I hope you will welcome me here for a while.” The crowd laughs as the Mayor massages his belly. ‘It goes without saying, I hope, that we feel beyond honored to be invited within your esteemed walls, and I’m sure you will all join me in a round of three cheers for the happy couple.”

As the arena erupts into hip hip hoorays, Benedetta lets go of Jason’s hand and runs toward the second transporter; her parents emerge from the depths of the loading bay and collide with their daughter halfway down the ramp. Jason watches with a strange knot of an indecipherable emotion as the Disteffanos form a tight ball. He looks around him; no disturbances, none of Ferson’s crew had arrived, everyone was behaving. It was a shame, though, that his father had been too busy with work to join the welcome party.

“Jason!” Mrs Disteffano is jogging toward him, her open satchel disgorging sundry objects, which Emilio dutifully picks up along the way, as it slaps against her thigh. Jason sees groups of Empyreans back away in alarm, before he is enveloped in her arms. “Oh, Jason, the day I heard that the Mayor’s holocaster was receiving signal from you was the happiest of my life!”

Jason tries to mumble an answer into her knitted bosom.

“Let the poor man go, Stella.” Emilio has caught up, his large hand resting affectionately around Benedetta’s neck. They are joined by the Mayor.

“We had a grand feast that day, you know,” says Quilbie. “Everyone thought you were dead, or in prison at best.”

“Bena, you should have seen your...