The Scarlet Empress (8 page)

She was wiping her hands clean of crumbs when she heard a strange noise from outside. The sound wavered, as if it were traveling from a great distance. In a city she wouldn’t have noticed the sound, and it wouldn’t have woken her if she were sleeping, but in the utter quiet of the countryside the rumble stood out.

Cam ran to the window. Her heart hammered, threatening to drown out the distant roar, and the aches in her muscles were no longer noticeable. She knew that sound!

She shambled to the front door, throwing it open. Cold, dry air slapped her in the face. The sky looked like steel wool. And yet she knew what was behind the clouds.

It was an airplane, too high to see any detail, only a sliver of metal at the tip of a contrail. It was high and moving fast.

She jumped up, thrusting her fist in the air. “Oh, baby, oh, yeah!” Somewhere, someone still had the technological knowledge to maintain and fly a plane!

Before Cam realized what she was doing, she was running, lurching along in an unsteady gait out past the pens of animals and piles of manure, past a few early-riser
locals heading out into the fields. Ahead, there was an opening where the strands of clouds had separated. Cam limped to a halt on the rutted dirt road, her face turned to the sky. Where was the aircraft? Then she saw it: a minuscule sliver, glinting high up in the rarified, raw sunshine that only pilots and eagles knew.

Every cell in her body seemed to soar skyward, taking her trampled spirit with them. “Y’all, I’m here. Don’t go. . . .”

Even without knowing who sat behind the controls, friend or foe, she knew she was calling out to one of her own kind—another pilot.

Just then, a ray of sunlight hit her square in the face, and she laughed, truly laughed, for the first time since crash-landing in the year 2176.

Something slammed into her from behind. A wool blanket fell over her as the ground rushed up to meet her. All she had to break her fall was a long, thin arm she’d sprained once already during her endless, ongoing recovery. Her ankle twisted, sending a spear of pain up her calf, but she rolled her weight to the side, landing on her back in a cold puddle of mud, but saving her leg from another injury. The question wasn’t what hurt, but what didn’t hurt; her body had turned into a war zone with the enemy winning. Blindly she threw a fist, bringing up a knee. It impacted something solid, and she heard a muffled, “Oomph.”

“Ow! Cam! Be still!”

Cam stopped fighting. “Zhurihe?” She tried to throw off the blanket, but the girl kept it in place over her head. “God almighty,” Cam mumbled, tasting sour wool. “Will you tell me what’s going on? I’m fixing to suffocate in here!”

The blanket moved back slightly. Zhurihe sat on top of her, straddling her hips. “This,” Cam told her in a tight voice, “does not feel good.”

But the girl was not listening to her. Her head was tipped and she was peering at the sky. Cam listened, too, but she no longer heard the distant, droning noise of the aircraft. It took everything she had not to let disappointment overwhelm her. “Did you hear it, Zhurihe? It was an aircraft. An aircraft!”

Zhurihe’s dark eyes were wild with alarm. “You ran outside to see it.”

“Of course I did.” Cam hesitated at the girl’s obvious alarm. “Why wouldn’t I?”

“Because you do not know about anything!” Zhurihe’s small fists grabbed the blanket draped around Cam’s shoulder and tugged, half raising Cam’s head off the dirt. For such a petite person, Zhurihe had amazing strength. “If you see it, it may have seen you. Never let them see you. Never! It’s why I have told you always to wear a veil when outside.” She took Cam by the shoulders and shook her.

Teeth chattering, Cam grabbed her hands and stopped her. “I thought it was local custom, the veil.”

“It was for your protection! To keep you safe here.” Her expression grew even more intense. Her apprehension was contagious. Although Cam didn’t understand the threat, the very real fear Zhurihe felt launched straight into her gut and turned it cold. “Zhurihe, how did you find me? Did you by chance steal me from someone?”

For the first time, the girl broke eye contact. “I told you.”

“Tell me again.”

“It was far to the north, a remote place few know.”

“You were picking mushrooms and tripped over my pod.” The story was becoming harder and harder to believe, especially now with the bolt from the blue of seeing the airplane. And if the story of her discovery was a lie, what else was, too? The nuclear war? The lack of technology? Bree’s whereabouts? “You asked your family for help, and they brought me here on an oxcart.”

“Yes.” Zhurihe’s wild eyes swung back to Cam. “Promise me that you will never go with them if they come for you. Promise me!”

The girl, it seemed, had but one thing on her mind. “If
who
comes for me?”

“Anyone!”

“Can we be a little more specific?”

“The emperor’s Rim Riders.”

Ah, so that was it. The vicious barbarian warlord whose stronghold was thousands of miles away. The monster who, according to Zhurihe, ate peasants alive and made overcoats from their dried flesh. He sounded a little like Genghis Khan crossed with Count Dracula, but since neither he nor his minions had ever been seen in this remote place, she hadn’t much worried about it. “He has jet aircraft, Zhurihe. Do you know what that means? He has computers. And if he has computers . . .” The possibilities were mind-boggling. Suddenly Cam was extremely interested in the emperor, despite his rather gross-sounding wardrobe and eating habits.

But Zhurihe didn’t share her enthusiasm at all. “Promise me. Please.”

“Okay, okay. I won’t go with him.”

“The Rim Riders!”

“I promise I won’t go with them. What are Rim Riders, anyway?”

“They’re the emperor’s bounty hunters. You’ll know them when you see them. They wear only black. Even their horses are black.”

The image that came to mind was something resembling Grim Reapers on coal-black steeds. Not pretty.

“If they come here, you must run to the springs. Do you understand? Hide there, under the water. Remain there until they go. Do you understand?”

“Run. Springs. Hide. Got it.”

The girl bounded to her feet, checking the sky once more. “I’ll be leaving for a while.”

“What? You just got here.” Cam sat up, slowly and painfully. Speech was impossible until the spasm in her back passed. “I thought you weren’t going off again right away.”

But Zhurihe was already running back down the road toward the farmhouse, her long braids spinning.

Promise me, Cam!

Sitting, legs sprawled on the dirt road, Cam watched Zhurihe go, an oddly terrifying mix of dread and fear and hope filling her. The world she’d thought she was beginning to understand had just taken a 180-degree turn.

General Armstrong’s black sedan skidded to a stop in front of the rear entrance to the White House. Neither its VIP passenger nor the driver said anything for a few moments.

Finally the sergeant shifted her gaze to the rearview mirror. “Hell of a ride, sir.”

It was that, thought the general. “Are you injured, Merrick?”

“No, sir.”

She answered a little too quickly. Pride, he decided. Too many females on the military staff wanted to be seen as invincible. Didn’t she know? No one was. Not even him.

“And you, sir?” Suddenly worried eyes gazed back at him. “Are you hurt?”

“It’ll take far more than that to put down this old warhorse, Sergeant.” General Armstrong shoved on his hat and pushed open the rear passenger door. Wet,
fluorescent orange paint splashed down onto the toe of his shiny black boot. Drawing his trenchcoat around him, he stalked around to the front of the vehicle. In the slanting light of late afternoon, the pieces of eggshell littering the windshield looked like golden confetti. More goo pooled in fist-sized dents on the hood. The rocks had done their damage. A shallower, wider indentation resembled a mold of a human torso where one of the protestors had rolled over the bumper. A smear of blood was almost indistinguishable from the stains left from the hurled rubbish.

Standing quietly at his side, the driver pondered the sight. Then, taking off her cap, she dragged the back of her arm across her forehead. “I’ll put a call in to dispatch for another vehicle, sir.”

“Consider yourself off duty, Merrick.”

“Sir?”

“I’ll take a heli-jet from now on.” He retrieved an attaché case from the backseat. The loaded weapon he’d stuffed deep in the pocket of his trench coat thumped against his thigh.

“General. A question, sir.”

The driver looked shaken; he noticed that now. She hadn’t uttered a sound after striking down the protester who’d thrown himself at the moving car, hadn’t said anything at all until now, when they’d pulled up to the White House. But then, he expected—required—the soldiers he maintained as personal aides to be stalwart creatures. “What is it, Merrick?”

“Do you think it will get worse?” The driver cleared her throat. “Sir.”

She was worried, perhaps even frightened. And she
had every right to be. He turned his attention back to the damaged car. Gusts of wind swept in the from the east, where the original Washington, DC, lay, abandoned after rising seas had rendered it too often flooded. The breeze brought the smell of salt and the equally muted roar of the demonstrations, cordoned off some five city blocks away. “Do you hear them, Merrick?”

The woman fell quiet for a moment. “Yes, sir. I do.”

“Remember the sound,” he said tersely, “for soon it will be a thing of the past. I know so, especially after some news I received today. Soon, very soon now, all will be as it once was. The government will restore order.”

“Yes, sir. Of course. Thank you, sir.”

The general left the driver behind, his leather trench coat whipping around his boots. At the security checkpoint, he handed over his attaché case for inspection and submitted to retinal and DNA scans before beginning the trek across the marble foyer to the Unity Office.

The door slammed shut behind him. His eardrums popped. A pressure seal. The air he breathed was now from a separate source from that in the rest of the White House. Clasping his hands behind his back, he watched a circle of the carpet waver and open. A platform in the same shape as the cutout rose slowly from the depths beneath the floor, accompanied by a faint whirring noise. Armstrong stepped onto it and rode down to President Beauchamp’s briefing room.

It was several degrees warmer there than the upper limit of the general’s comfort level. He preferred the chill of the north; the president, the cloying heat of the Central colony’s Louisiana district. Rich velvet wallpaper and similarly upholstered seating added to the thick, choking
atmosphere. Armstrong smelled cigar smoke in the air—and leather?

He whirled around as a soldier clad in body armor emerged from the shadows. The young man wore new boots; that explained the leather smell. “Who are you?”

“Lt. Col. Christian Bow. Presidential Special Ops,” he answered at the same time Beauchamp said, “For God’s sake, don’t frighten the boy with that scowl, Aaron.”

Armstrong swerved his glare to Beauchamp, sitting, hands folded, at his massive desk. “It’s better to be safe than sorry, Aaron. You know that.”

“Your weapon, General.” Bow held out a gloved hand. “Please.”

“What the hell is going on?” Armstrong growled.

“We continue to be in a state of national emergency. I cannot take any chances, not even with my most trusted associates.”

“So, I’m your
associate
now? Is that the new, politically correct term for supreme commander? How droll.” The general thrust his weapon into Bow’s hand. The man inclined his head with respect and left, retreating somewhere into the bowels of the White House—with Armstrong’s pistol, a family heirloom! “This associate happens to command your military, your entire armed forces—”

“And I intend for it to stay that way.”

The men exchanged dark glances. The deteriorating, volatile situation had made doubters of them all. “Do you suspect me of plotting a military coup, Julius?”

“Don’t look so insulted, Aaron. These are times of tremendous unrest in our great land. My greatest and most difficult duty is maintaining the integrity of the
United Colonies of Earth. Even at the risk of insulting those I trust the most. Especially when they pay me an unexpected visit.”

Armstrong didn’t give him the pleasure of an acknowledgment. “We got her,” he said simply.

Beauchamp’s only outward reaction was the fanning of his fingers on the burled surface of his desk. He was, after all, a master politician. No one else could have steered the UCE on an unwavering course for as many years. “Banzai Maguire. In custody.” He closed his beefy fists, as if eager to get a piece of her himself. “Congratulations are due, General.”

He acknowledged the compliment with a nod. “She’s on the way to Fort Powell, estimated time of arrival”—he glanced at his wristwatch—“nineteen thirty. Tonight.”

Beauchamp pushed himself out an arm’s length from the desk. “It will soon be over, this terrible moment in our history.” He seemed overcome by emotion. “We need a trial. Quickly.”

“After I’ve gotten what information I can out of her.”

“Interrogation . . .”

“Yes. No holds barred. Those are the orders I will give my interrogators and their guards.”

The president frowned.

“Don’t act so worried! I thought it was you who wanted her heart on a platter. I won’t kill her before you have your trial. Or at least I’ll endeavor not to.”

“Oh, I’ll see her dead; don’t doubt me on that. Just beware of turning her into a martyr, Aaron. She’s enough of a legend, unwarranted as it is.”

Armstrong nodded. “Agreed. But she’s more dangerous alive. As long as she lives, it gives the rebels hope that
they will succeed. She provides a link to the past, a past without a United Colonies of Earth. We must sever that connection—and quickly.”

“Arresting her, silencing her, isn’t enough, General. Execution for high treason is the only answer.”

“After a full military tribunal, of course.”

“Of course.”