Sigil of the Wolf - 23. Chapter 23

Karin City - Karin

The page rustled as it turned, the only other sound in the room apart from the crackling of a fire in the hearth.

Edward opened an eye, basking in the warmth. After the harsh cold of Karin City, he was thankful for the heat. He was in a bed, warm under heavy woollen blankets. He turned to look at the man sitting in the winged armchair beside the fire, a large old book sitting in his lap as he read.

The older VonGrippen looked up from the pages, sitting easily in the chair wearing his uniform tunic undone, his head resting against his fingers as he watched the boy. "You shouldn't try to get up," he said, concern rustling the thickly accented words, "You took a nasty knock."

Edward lay there, quietly looking at his grandfather, the silver buttons of the uniform tunic sparkling as they reflected the dancing firelight. An Imperial Warlord, Archduke of the Empire... but at that moment he was simply a grandfather sitting worriedly at his boy's bedside.

"You're dead..." Edward said, feeling on the edge of tears, his head hurt, he was so confused.

"So are you, technically," VonGrippen replied, a light smile touching his face.

Edward laid his head back against the soft downy pillow staring up at the rough plaster ceiling and its long wooden beams. "This is a dream..." he murmured.

"Perhaps," VonGrippen replied quietly, "But we can enjoy this dream together for a short while."

Edward shook his head, blinking back tears. "I need you granddad," knowing how small his voice sounded, "the Empire needs you..."

"My time came and went," VonGrippen replied calmly, his deep brown eyes looking weary beneath his heavy grey brows, "I couldn't remain..."

"Peligia." Edward replied softly.

"Peligia changed everything." VonGrippen leaned forward in his chair, setting the book aside. "I explained to you once, long ago, that this had to happen, that you would have to trust that I had your best interests at heart." He smiled sadly, "That what I had to do was the right thing."

Edward closed his eyes, fighting back the tears. "You left us all behind, you ran away..."

VonGrippen stood and crossed to sit on the edge of the bed, his aged fingers brushing Edward's hair back from his eyes. "I told you that your path was the hardest, that there would be a lot of suffering along it. That is the price Peligia exacts for being found..."

"To hell with Peligia," Edward murmured opening his eyes again, the azure orbs blazing, "To hell with you and your damnable need to do what's right regardless of what it costs the people around you, what it cost me... what it cost all those innocent people on Earth." His bitter words spilled out in a rush, "You weren't there; you don't know what it was like to be forced to watch your people herded like cattle... the slaughter of our armies... You didn't see Lord Morvanor standing in your place trying to fight them off..." He choked back a sob. "It was easy for you to make that choice when you weren't the one who had to suffer."

"You're my grandson," VonGrippen replied in his usual patient calm, "The only thing I have left that the Empire hasn't taken from me." The old man shook his head again, touching Edward's face tenderly and wiping away the tears. "To have to leave you behind... I suffered as well."

"But you're dead," Edward said, swallowing, a fresh tear sliding down his face, "You're gone... and you knew it, you knew that you wouldn't live to see the consequences of that choice."

"Sometimes that is the burden of command." VonGrippen stood again and walked to the window. "I had to stop Kardiac butchering his way across the Galaxy, creating his master race that..." He turned, "But you know the rhetoric. What you don't know is how much I wanted to stay, how much I wanted to cast that carcass off of the dais in the Imperial Palace and arrest every last one of those bastards claiming to bring the word of the Emperor... They had no idea what kind of man he was..."

"You told me," Edward turned his head, "He was your friend..."

"And I helped him create his Empire," VonGrippen said, returning his gaze to the window, "I helped create what they would later pervert into..." he shook his head, "I made a mistake and we all paid for it."

"Why are you here?" Edward asked.

VonGrippen looked back over his shoulder. "General Iver is looking for a new Emperor to unite his Empire."

"Me." Edward said simply.

"You have his blood, and you were the only remnant of the Emperor to survive the destruction of the palace," VonGrippen returned to the bed buttoning up his tunic, "You can't allow them to do to you what they did to him. Find Highlord Taine, he loves you..."

"But I don't know why," Edward said, his voice sounding so small, lost, "Why does he love me?"

VonGrippen smiled sadly. "You'll know when he looks at you, and when you are safe in his arms... I have always been proud of you, Edward."

"You're leaving again," Edward said quietly.

"I must," VonGrippen replied, "I have a war to fight..."

"You always have a war to fight..." Edward's voice pitched to that of a little boy.

"Someone has to keep you safe," the old man reassured, "And one day, when there are no more wars..."

"There's always another war," Edward replied, closing his eyes. It was the same conversation they had always had while he was growing up; he knew the lines by rote. He wished just once, even in a dream, it would end differently.

"Yes," VonGrippen replied quietly, "sometimes the only peace is found in war."

* * *

Taine stood, hands wrapped around a piping hot mug of coffee James had handed to him, heavy blanket wrapped around his shoulders, watching as one by one each of the fighters landed aboard the Raptor's small flight deck, refuelled and took off again.

The small Raptor was more cramped than usual; the Fida'i had been billeted aboard the small frigate and had accompanied it when Colonel Mayfair had taken R-404 to escort the transports. James was fussing now, obviously feeling guilty for how close his Aga-Khan had come to death in the fighter.

Darien let him fuss, focusing on the fighter re-fuelling process. Once the Predator had been secured, Colonel Mayfair had ordered the captured enemy fighter pushed off of the deck to make room for the other fighters to take their turns landing. There wasn't room in that cramped bay for more than one fighter at a time, and he felt sorry for making the exhausted pilots return to the cramped cockpits and the darkness. They had no choice; with the Excalibur gone, all they could do was service the fighters and send them back up.

They'd gone through the Alert fighters, and Katz's CAP, and now it was Lauren's turn to come aboard. She emerged from the rear bay after it had pressurized again, removing her helmet and shaking out her hair. She looked like they all felt, exhausted.

"After you, we just have Nazzien, then all the fighters are refuelled." Darien said calmly.

Lauren nodded. "I told the pilots to move to safe distances and to get some sleep, if they can, in their cockpits."

Darien nodded, shooting out his wrist to look at his watch. The transports would be arriving in two hours, and at least their shuttle bays would be able to house the fighters and they pilots would be able to get some proper rest.

He'd ordered R-404 to jump ahead, knowing that it left the transports exposed, but the risk had to be taken. He wasn't about to abandon his pilots while he waited for the transports to recharge their jump drives.

Colonel Mayfair moved back along the Raptor and entered the lounge. "Scopes are clear," he said, winking at Lauren, "There's no evidence of Amsus fighters."

"I'm not so much worried about us," Darien admitted sipping his coffee, "Without ammunition the Excalibur's virtually defenceless and the transports are unescorted."

Mayfair sighed and leaned on the doorframe, folding his arms. "From what you described, there was no way you could have known the Excalibur would jump like that. An uncontrolled jump could have sent it anywhere."

Darien shook his head. "I should have been with my ship."

"Well, we're in no condition to search for her," Mayfair replied, "Even if we could sweep the surrounding space, without being close enough to the Excalibur to catch her jump co-ordinates there is no way we'll ever find her. We're going to have to wait until they can get her FTL operational and get a message out."

"I know," Darien gritted his teeth, knowing that he really had no choice at all. He shook his head and walked forward towards the cockpit, leaving Lauren to get something to eat and talk with Mayfair while he went in search of a little privacy.

The crewman flying relinquished the controls to the Highlord, and Darien sank into the familiar seat staring out at the stars. He tiredly rubbed his forehead, thinking about what should have been. He should have been on the bridge of his ship, which was where a commander was supposed to be. He should have been able to protect Elias from Iver's machinations. He should have been able to convince Nicholas Denver into an alliance with the Empire.

He was being reckless. None of his crew would come out and say it to him, they respected him too much. But Darien knew it, the whole mess on Ararat had been a direct result of his foolish assumption that he could get away with anything being who he was. It was that kind of arrogance that had cost lives, and now had cost him the Excalibur.

"Out," he commanded to James, who, trying to be silent, had come along the corridor to keep an eye on his charge. Darien turned his head, giving it a light shake indicating he just wanted to be alone. Dutifully James withdrew, keeping close by in case he was needed.

Darien rested an elbow on the arm of his seat, rubbing his tired face. What was he supposed to do next? Where was he supposed to turn?

His missed Elias chronically. When they were together curled up in the dark there was only one line of thought: do whatever it took to keep him safe. But he couldn't even do that. Here he was, Pax's heir and he had lost everything gambling on his own arrogance.

Arrogance? Arrogance hadn't earned the Empire its freedom, nor established a beachhead for them to try to free Earth. Arrogance hadn't been what had gotten him to where he was, nor placed the Knight's Cross around his neck. That had been him, they were his accomplishments.

He was human, he made mistakes, but Mayfair was right, he had no way of knowing what would happen to the Excalibur. That wasn't his mistake; his mistake was that he believed that it was his fault.

He needed to get a grip, get some sleep and come at it fresh. He'd be less worked up, more clear-headed and able to think. He was no use to anyone running on total exhaustion.

* * *

The door to the room creaked open, the tall red-haired woman standing in the doorway holding a tray with a steaming bowl of stew and a mountain of bread. She looked him over as she came into the room, her long Celtic wool dress rustling as she moved, setting the tray down on the side table and stoking the fire.

"Th-thank you," Edward managed, struggling to sit up, blinking at her.

The woman turned, setting the poker aside as she bent down beside his bed. "You're awake then," she remarked, "That's better than being half dead on my doorstep."

"I'm sorry," he managed, reaching up to touch the bandages wrapped around his head, and turning to see where his grandfather had gone, disappointment hitting him as he realized it had just been a dream.

"Nonsense," The woman replied, slipping the tray onto his lap, "Now you eat up and I'll have Sam up here to check on you in a bit..."

"Who-?" Edward asked, realizing he was famished.

"Sam," she said firmly, "He's a doctor, of sorts. He's the one that patched up that head of yours." She tutted again and straightened his blankets, "Now eat, your Highness."

"You know who I am," Edward murmured, tucking into the stew, unable to resist any longer as he piled a steaming spoonful into his mouth.

"The whole planet knows who you are," she said, pulling back the curtains to let sunshine into the room. "They've been looking for you for almost a week now." She smoothed her dress as she walked back to the door. An elegant woman, Edward noted. Imperial and proud, as his grandfather would say.

"You haven't told them..." He murmured.

"Of course not," she said standing in the doorway, "My family is from Geldan, I'm a McGregor, Val McGregor..."

She was a VonGrippen, at least from the House. Edward strained to remember why he knew that name. "The bars..."

"McGregor's is the finest Irish pub chain in the galaxy," she said, folding her arms, "Now eat, before I spoon feed you." And she left him to his food.

He'd barely finished the bowl of stew when the door crashed open on a lanky man dressed in a badly-fitting tweed suit. His eyes were keen and lit with an inner humour as he walked into the room.

"I see that the old battle-axe is fattening you up for Christmas dinner," he said robustly, as he came to sit beside the bed, fumbling around in his bag. "Do you remember me?"

Edward shook his head. "No... sir."

"Sam!" The man insisted, "Everyone calls me Sam. Now, your Highness," he moved the tray aside and lifted the bandages gingerly, "You took a nasty clout to the head, I need to see if you managed to keep all your marbles, or if we need to go out and collect them from the street."

"Dad!" a young voice called warningly from the door, and Edward turned and stared at the handsome man standing there, wearing a Karin Raiders' jersey half tucked in to and half hanging out of a well fitting pair of jeans. His hair was a total mess, but the resemblance to his father was uncanny. "They're sweeping the streets again."

Sam rose, quickly drawing the curtains closed, taking just a second to look outside before he turned. "Luther, get downstairs and warn Val..."

Edward tried to get up, but sank back into his pillows with a groan, Sam looking at him in bemusement. "That'll teach you," he said with a smile, "You just sit tight, your Highness, it's just General Iver's troops sweeping the streets..."

"H-how?" Edward asked. It didn't make any sense - how did any of them know he was on the run?

"He's awake, then," A raven-haired woman observed, walking into the room. She wore an Imperial Marine uniform, the Major's insignia on her collar.

"Hello my precious," Sam said, smiling across at her.

She gave him a dark look, before she bowed her head to the Prince. "Your Highness, don't worry, you will be safe here," she tapped Sam's arm and gestured for him to go downstairs as she stood easily, her hand resting on the heavy pistol strapped to her hip, mirroring a second on the other side. She looked down at the Prince a moment considering him, "Walker instructed me to get you out of the city as soon as we can arrange it."

Edward inclined his head. "O-okay."

She gave him a smile, or the closest she came to one. "This city was the capital of the Commonwealth, the Pirate Barons had cubby holes and smuggling routes all through it." She nodded, "we can get you out safely, and I have a ship standing by..."

"Excalibur?" Edward asked hopefully.

"No, the Anger of Hades, Captain Zoran's ship, he and I have... a history." She returned to the door, a sway in her steps as she walked. "But he's pledged to the House VonGrippen." She rested a hand lightly on the door, dancing it down the wood as she trailed a look behind her at the young Prince-ling, a sly smile on her face as she closed the door.

* * *

Firlotte swallowed as he crept down inside the computer core, the bunker-like fortifications of the room shielding him from discovery. He sat cross-legged on the floor of the darkened chamber, biting his lip and waiting. At any moment the power would reactivate and he would be able to do something.

He wasn't quite sure what, but his primary thought was to get Commander Durnham back online - at least then someone with some kind of command experience could do something where a lone techie was lost.

He shrank back, listening the booted feet running past the main doors. They had been doing that ever since the Amsus had boarded, weeding out pockets of resistance aboard the Excalibur as they rounded the crew up and escorted them to secure locations.

He looked up as the computers sprang to life, power finally reaching them, the ship getting her first look at her own situation. Ashley tilted his ball cap backwards and stood ready while she rebooted.

"Come on..." he murmured, glancing back and praying that some good and kind omnipotent being was watching out for him.

The computers flared out again, and the technician's head fell forward, his chin resting on his chest dejectedly. The Amsus weren't stupid, they knew better than to let an Imperial AI regain consciousness. That was it, then; he was on his own.

He pulled the sidearm from his holster and fiddled with it. Maybe if he could reach one of the damage control centres, he could blow the emergency hatches and vent the ship to space. Or if he could reach one of the lifeboats he could activate its emergency beacon.

He wasn't equipped for Commando work. He was a scrawny kid from Karin, one of the smaller settlements at that. Sure, he'd been in fights, but he could count them on one hand: a few in basic training, which had been a rude awakening; the hurried boarding party to rescue Katz and Elias, which he'd been a part of. Of course. there was the breaking of the Amsus lines, not exactly his finest hour. Maybe his luck would change, and he'd actually hit something this time.

He swallowed and squeezed the grip on his pistol. On the count of three he'd go, swing round the door and... Be promptly shot somewhere unpleasant.

Maybe if he just stayed there, hidden, they'd forget about him and... no, he knew that sooner or later they'd find him. It was just a matter of time, and if he was to be of any help to his crewmates he needed to figure out someway to do something. Maybe get a message to Highlord Taine? If he was still alive...

Ashley stood up and stopped. The computer that ran Commander Durnham ran on an isolated power source while it was detached from the Excalibur's computer core. He knew that from all the maintenance time he'd spent reading up on the computer system. He wasn't an expert, far from it, but when Elias had... well since he was gone, someone had to be assigned take over computer maintenance; Ashley thanked the duty roster that it was him.

He dropped to the bank of redundant memory cores, flexing his hands as he set the pistol aside. It wasn't a difficult manoeuvre, a simple removal, and he tugged on the flat computer panel, pulling it free with a click.

The green light flashing at him told him he'd been successful; well, that was the tricky part, now all he had to do was figure out how to... There were holographic projectors located all over the room, Commander Durnham could literally appear anywhere on the ship. Small, detachable units that were designed to be hot-swappable. He grabbed one of those as well, making his way back to the ladder with his prize.

Gun...

He went back and juggled the delicate computer equipment as he found the pistol and slipped it away into its holster. The question was what he did next. The ship was crawling with Amsus troops; there was nowhere onboard for him to hide.

He climbed the ladder, trying to balance the computer under an arm - no easy trick, and he was proud of himself when he poked his head up to the deck above. The deck was clear, thankfully, and he nipped up, gripping the computer tightly as he sprinted down a corridor, ducking into an access crawlspace supposedly designed to let the ship's engineers access delicate equipment protected by heavy plates of armour.

Excalibur had hundreds of the spaces. The ship had been so heavily modified from its original form that it had developed a rabbit-warren of nooks and crannies that an inventive techie with an insatiable curiosity and too much time on his hands had navigated on several occasions. Of course, he'd never had to navigate them for long, and trying to find his way to the emergency lifeboats had spilled him out onto the rafters of the mech bay.

He nearly lost the computer at that moment, grabbing at the last minute for a stray piece of cable as he realized that the access way had been cut into to make room for the large bay; probably VonGrippen's era when the bay had originally been put into the old exploration vessel. Elias and his refit had been more careful to close off random openings. Of course, no one was supposed to be crawling along ducting that was only partially shielded from live power cables...

Ashley caught his breath, sitting on the edge of the hole, looking down at the floor of the mech bay far beneath him. A number of the Marines and fleet officers had made a last stand down there, trying to repel the boarders despite Lieutenant Galadriel's pleas for them to stand down.

Suddenly the whole bickering of the Houses hadn't meant much, not when they were being shot at by the true enemy. Red or Yellow, they both lay dead together in a pile, fighting back to back to save the ship from the Amsus, and Ashley pulled his bright red ball cap off his head and looked at it. So stupid... he tossed it back into the opening and moved out onto the thin piping that was his only bridge across the bay. It ran close to the top of one of the shiny ITE mechs; it would get him down to the floor of the bay, and from there he could reach the machine shops.

If he couldn't reach a lifeboat, maybe he could reach a fighter or shuttle equipped with jump pods.

He stopped cold as a troop of Amsus marched along the main catwalk almost directly beneath him, sweeping the ship once again looking for stragglers. They were being thorough, making sure they didn't miss anything. However, thankfully for the techie high above them, none of them bothered to look up.

He successfully wobbled across the pipe, clambering down over one of the ITE mechs. Using the gun ports as steps he scampered down to the ground, keeping low as he skulked towards the bays.

He reached the machine shops, creeping along the ship, ducking under the polyurethane plastic sheets that separated each of the machine shops as he searched them. He kept his head down, listening to the sounds of the troopers moving about him, clutching Commander Durnham tight against him as he backed away from the main hangar deck, realising that the Amsus had chosen it as a primary staging point. He'd almost walked right into their midst.

His head rested back against an armour plate as he sat heavily on an outboard engine pod. He was cut off from the shuttles, and even if he could reach a fighter there was no way for him to take off - they'd kill him before he could reach one of the plane elevators. He'd never even see the flight deck.

He turned his head to the ungainly-looking vessel he was resting on. A large, shell-less tortoise crossed with a big bug. Dragonfly barely readable, painted beneath a thin layer of rust. The ship the Highlord had escaped the Shifting Sands on.

A quick inspection showed the tech that some ingenious individual had mounted jump pods to a thrustlifter - utter insanity. Firlotte appreciated it from an engineer's perspective, but more importantly from the perspective that it offered him a way off the Excalibur.

However...

He climbed aboard the ship, securing the ramp, wincing as the old pistons pulling it closed squealed loudly in protest. That had to alert every Amsus within earshot that someone was playing with one of the ships.

Firlotte didn't care; he wedged Commander Durnham's memory core under the pilot's console as he fired up the jump drive and punched in the co-ordinates for Highlord Taine's last position, jumping backwards as a hail of bullets bounced harmlessly off of the reinforced Plexiglas of the cockpit window.

He looked up at the Amsus troopers, grinned, punched the engine activation and gave them the finger.

The Dragonfly and a large spherical section of the Excalibur's machine shop jumped into hyperspace.