Long Live The Emperor (Imperial Hammer Book 3) Read online

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  Space cities have been locked in war for centuries over the resources of an asteroid belt.

  Humans pilot swarms of pod fighters to protect their city’s mining operations from other cities, risking everything and suffering multiple deaths and regenerations. Then Landry goes through a regeneration which introduces an error that will destroy the delicate balance of the war.

  Resilience is a space opera short story by award-winning SF author Cameron Cooper.

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  Epic science fiction at its finest. Realistic far future worlds. Incredible characters and scenarios. – Amazon reader.

  This short story has not been commercially released for sale. It is only available as a gift to readers who subscribe to Cam’s email list.

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  Table of Contents

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  About Long Live the Emperor

  Praise for The Imperial Hamer series:

  Title Page

  1

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  About the Author

  Other books by Cameron Cooper

  Copyright Information

  About Long Live the Emperor

  The Imperial Hammer versus the self-aware interstellar array.

  The array is their enemy, but Danny and the crew of the Supreme Lythion must pretend to be allies while they desperately search for the hidden factory where the array builds its army of super-suits.

  The clock is ticking. The Emperor is besieged and fending off assassination attempts at every turn, while innocent humans are cut off from the empire and left to starve. And sooner or later, the array will learn the truth about Danny.

  When that happens, its wrath will be overwhelming.

  Long Live the Emperor is the third book in the Imperial Hammer space opera science fiction series by award-winning SF author Cameron Cooper.

  The Imperial Hammer series:

  1.0: Hammer and Crucible

  2.0: Star Forge

  3.0: Long Live the Emperor

  4.0: Severed

  5.0: Destroyer of Worlds

  Space Opera Science Fiction Novel

  Praise for The Imperial Hamer series:

  Fun, fast paced, full of action and humor.

  I greedily read in this in one day. You will want to as well.

  Lots of action and a boatload of twists and turns that grab your attention and won't let go. It has kept me up way past bedtime!

  This is a read that really sucks you in!

  Excellent characters, twists and turns throughout.

  Written in such a natural hand that you can fully image the spectacular universe the author has created.

  1

  Naari City above Syvatoga.

  I tripped for the third time and nearly sprawled full length in the four inches of black, noxious liquid swirling around our ankles. Juliyana hauled me onto my feet, saving me from wearing the stuff and learning intimately what it was made of.

  “If it helps, we all think it’s your fault we’re here,” Dalton murmured. Despite keeping his volume down, his voice still travelled, the sibilants hissing.

  Sauli, ahead of us, waved with a sharp motion, telling us to shut up. He didn’t look any happier to be here, and this was a familiar environment for him. He’d worked station engineering and maintenance for years. But I don’t think he’d regularly waded through crap. And I really hoped that was purely a metaphor.

  We were in the bowels of Naari City station and even though it didn’t look like it, we were on a rescue mission.

  After four months of a lockdown of transport and communications, the array, whom everyone called Noam, had relented and allowed limited traffic back onto the station, which had saved the twelve-thousand-plus city from starving. Access to the upper levels, though, was mysteriously unavailable to anyone. Which was a problem, because the man I badly wanted to speak to lived on the upper levels.

  “I can get us up there,” Sauli had said, when we had brainstormed around the dinner table just how the hell we were supposed to outsmart a sentient transport array that had the sum of all human knowledge to tap into.

  “You know Naari station?” Dalton asked, surprised.

  “A station is a station is a station,” Sauli said. “They change shape but all the essentials are in the usual places.”

  “Sounds a lot like humans, in that way,” Juliyana murmured, stirring her ice cream into glop.

  Varg thumped her tail, her jaws open. That was her amusement showing.

  “And parawolves,” I added.

  Varg had radiated warmth and happiness, but that might have been because Juliyana was eating ice cream and always gave Varg the bowl when she was done.

  Varg was not so happy now we were in the tunnel. Sauli’s idea of getting us to the upper levels beyond the locked and useless drop shafts and elevators and closed and sealed stairways was to ease through tunnels and pipes and climb maintenance ladders. A lot of ladders. Varg could handle the ladders, if we got out of the way and let her use her front claws to grip the back edge of the flat rungs. She stepped up a back paw at a time and relied on impetus more than the strength of her grip to get herself up. I followed up behind her, as a back stop, and had caught her a couple of times already.

  And now we were moving through lumpy liquid in a tunnel too low to stand in. Bending over and shuffling along would have been easier if we could push off from the floor occasionally, but there was no way I was putting my hands in that stuff. My back was complaining about the constant bending.

  I was only grateful that Sauli had warned us to have a sealed, waterproof outer layer to shuck on and off. Once we got to the top level of the city and emerged from the maintenance tunnels, we would draw attention to ourselves, if we left damp trails of unspeakable stuff.

  Even Varg had a set of nanobot booties that Lyth had designed for her. She hated them but hated the black water more. She raised each leg and minced through the water, whining mentally because I had forbidden her to make a sound. I could only imagine how the stench was impacting her acute sense of smell.

  “It’ll be easier to leave her on the ship,” Sauli had said, when Lyth and I had struggled to get the booties to stay on. “Where we’ll be going won’t be fun.”

  It should have warned me. Instead, I had Lyth build a ladder for Varg to practice on. “She knows we’re going into danger,” I told Sauli, who watched Varg slip and tumble down the training ladder with apprehension. “She wouldn’t let us leave her behind. And she’ll be useful.”

  What I didn’t tell Sauli was that I thought Varg would be more useful than he, once we reached the areas which the array, Noam, had barred everyone from entering. Sauli wasn’t a fighter. Despite learning in-fighting from Juliyana and Dalton, he didn’t have the years of training and discipline and the mental posture of a Ranger going into battle.

  Varg, on the other hand, understood never-give-up instinctively.

  Juliyana turned and wretched into the water, her back to us. We waited until she wiped her mouth and faced forward once more.

  “Sorry,”
she whispered.

  Sauli moved on. He had a pad in one hand that he was using as a compass with an artificial, preset “north”, for the maintenance tunnels weren’t mapped. We were in the second hour of our ascent up the back pipes of the station.

  “We must surely be above the blockade by now?” Dalton murmured.

  “Three levels ago,” Sauli breathed back.

  “You know he can’t hear us, right?” Dalton said. “No one can,” he muttered to himself.

  Dalton’s reminder made my wrist itch. I carefully scratched at the new scar there. All of us had one. The minor surgery had been part of the preparations. The serial chip we had each carried in our wrists all our lives were now sitting in labelled jars, each on the counter of the diner on the Lythion. Because the ship-sized Faraday cage couldn’t operate when the ship was landed and the doors were open, Noam would be able to track the chips and would presume we were relaxing.

  Lyth would move the jars about the ship from time to time, making it appear we were following normal routines and making the most of being on station by sleeping and doing as little as possible.

  We weren’t wearing earwigs and I’d had my cochlear implant removed, too. We were as analogue and untraceable as ancient humans had once been. Even our pads were isolated.

  “If we passed the barrier three levels ago and Noam hasn’t flipped his lid, then clearly, we’re home free,” Juliyana said.

  “We don’t know what is up here, yet,” I pointed out.

  “Which is why you all need to shut up,” Sauli shot back. “Sounds carries on water.”

  “That’s what this is?” Dalton muttered.

  We shut up and moved on. It took another ten minutes to traverse the tunnel, during which I breathed as little as possible. The silence and the reminder that we were as isolated as our pads was oppressive. I was used to being able to talk to Lyth whenever I wanted.

  I was very grateful when we reached the end of the tunnel. Sauli unlocked a hatch, eased it open and glanced out, then around. When he was satisfied the way was clear, he pushed the hatch fully open. “Varg. Here.” He patted the waist high hatch. It was an inspection hatch.

  Varg eyed it, her snout down. She didn’t like the size and I thought for moment she would refuse to go through and I’d have to attempt to lift over fifty kilos of parawolf and push her through. But the water and the booties were encouragement enough.

  Varg got her paw up on the hatch edging, then pushed herself through, spraying the disgusting liquid behind her. We all staggered back, grimacing. Then Sauli slithered through the hatch and we followed quickly.

  The passage on the other side was built for humans and lit with orange night lights which gave just enough illumination to see the next step. The floor was an extruded, compressed self-cleaning carbon.

  We stripped off the waterproof layers and tossed them back into the tunnel. I think all of us would be happy to be permanently trapped at this level of the station, if it meant not having to face that tunnel again.

  Sauli used his pad to send the command to Varg’s nanobot booties. Varg stood very still while the booties ran down her legs to the floor and reassembled into a block that could be stuffed into a satchel or pocket. Their microscopic size meant they would naturally shed any water or other alien molecules before they joined up with each other. The block was safe to touch.

  Varg nosed it, then swatted at it.

  I knew how she felt.

  Juliyana tucked the block of nanobots in the pack over her shoulder, making the pack sag.

  I consulted with Sauli over the pad, which now showed a proper map of the level we were on. It didn’t display our location because the pad couldn’t communicate with the station and the station couldn’t see us at all.

  I pointed. “About there, yes?” I whispered.

  Sauli looked up and down the passageway. “Yes,” he breathed. He put the pad away, and we all moved along the passage behind him, now moving on well-insulated spacer boots. Varg had retracted her claws so she didn’t click either.

  Up three more levels via ladders, which Varg was more than happy to climb, now. Then another passage similar to the one we’d just left.

  From the outer wall of the passageway, I fancied I could hear a murmur. Voices? Water? Perhaps even wind? Who knew? The last time I had been on this level, I’d grown dehydrated from the power of the sun lights bathing a parkland that stretched farther than I could see.

  I was counting on Yeong Lewis’ reportedly fabulous wealth meaning that the parkland actually did stretch as far as I had been able to see and wasn’t an illusion. It was Lewis we had come to rescue.

  Sauli paused by a man-sized door. It was sealed and secured. A maintenance port for this level.

  He raised the pad, intending to hot-wire the door with the app he’d built. I touched his arm and shook my head. He rolled his eyes and put the pad away.

  Dalton moved him to one side, not roughly. He took out his combat knife and slipped the tip between the control panel for the door and the wall and hammered the hilt with his palm. The knife sliced through the panel, sending up a spark or two.

  I lunged and caught the panel cover before it hit the floor.

  Dalton bent and probed inside the panel, looking for the hitch hook. The door wasn’t a high security one, unlike some of the biofields and more lethal security levels that guarded the foyer at this level. He lifted the hook.

  The door unsealed and the door bolts withdrew.

  “Ready?” I asked everyone, as I gripped the edge of the open door.

  They nodded.

  We streamed out of the door into a garden wilderness and we all gasped, because it was raining. A sprinkler system running between the sun lights sprayed water everywhere.

  “This works,” I said, as I broke into a run. “It cuts down his possible locations to rainproof shelters and buildings. Go!”

  We spread out and ran.

  Speed was essential now. We had to find Lewis as fast as possible. That was the other reason I had insisted Varg come with us. She could smell a microbe a parsec away and was much more likely to find him than any of us.

  While we didn’t know for sure why Noam had isolated Lewis at this level, we did know that Noam would be keeping an eye on his hostage. As soon as we stepped out into the garden, Noam would spot us. We had to find Lewis and break him out of his prison before Noam could react.

  I was right on both counts.

  I had sprinted only a half-kilometer along the winding paths, passing through shady copses and an open field of grass, when Varg veered away from me and dived along a faint trail that seemed to head into impenetrable bushes thick with thumb-length thorns.

  I sighed and followed.

  The path bent sharply around the bushes and widened. A good sign.

  Another bend and firmer footing, then suddenly, we faced a little hut with a reed roof and a leather curtain for a door. It was a shelter for equipment, I guessed, hidden away because its appearance didn’t mesh with the rest of the garden.

  Varg cast about at the doorway. The rain would slow her down, but it wouldn’t completely ruin the traces she sought.

  She turned toward the bushes surrounding the hut just as Lewis stepped out of them.

  He had a shriver leveled at my nose. Rain ran down his face and soaked his clothes, but he didn’t appear to notice. The white and grey tunic and pants he wore were stained and ripped. I wondered how bad it had got up at this level, for the weeks they had been besieged. The garden would have sustained them for a while but depending on how many people had been trapped in the garden, the ripe food would have dwindled quickly.

  “Danny Andela. The Imperial Hammer,” he pronounced and lowered the gun. “Your creature did this to Naari.”

  “And I talked him out of it a week ago. Everyone but you is fine now, Murphy.” I used the name he had insisted I use when we had first met, eleven weeks ago. “I’m here to change that.” As I spoke, I pulled the old-fashioned flare out
of my thigh pocket, snapped it on and triggered it. The green flare shot up to the roof and radiated fluorescent green lines, drawing an unmistakable “over here!” signal that would be seen from just about anywhere in the garden.

  Lewis’ smile was self-aware. “If you think the array will let me go, then you are—”

  Varg growled.

  The squeal of stressed metal preceded the explosion by mere seconds. Over the tops of the bushes, about fifty meters away, what looked like a small forest of tall trees with multiple-stranded trunks exploded outward to form a gaping hole that smoked on the edges.

  Beyond the hole was beige walls…and a super-suit.

  2

  “Shit,” I breathed, as the super-suit charged through the hole.

  “You really thought the array would let you just walk in here?” Lewis asked.

  I glanced at the communications bracelet on his wrist. “Call your men. Call everyone. What weapons do you have here?”

  His eyes narrowed as he prodded at the controls on the bracelet. “Two caches at either—” He spun, the shriver snapping up, as Dalton skidded around the damp corner of the path.

  “I saw six suits before I ran,” Dalton said, breathing hard. “Don’t think there’s more. The foyer out there doesn’t have the room for more.”

  “How did he get them on my station?” Lewis demanded. He punched at the bracelet once more.

  “It hasn’t been your station for weeks,” I pointed out. “Come on. We have to get over to…”

  The rain stopped.

  “Thank you,” I told Lewis. I glanced around, orienting myself. “Where’s sunside, here?”

  As we spoke, I could hear the distinct clop and slap of super-suit metallic footsteps, heading our way. Also, the thud of running feet. Human feet. Four men, all armed, thrust their way through the sharp bushes, hissing at scratches, and gathered in the tiny clearing in front of the hut.