Empire's Legacy

Chapter 36: The Birdhouse

The Birdhouse, C-Prime's primary housing facility for military ships and groundcraft, was located approximately twenty kilometers from the Parliament Building, on the grounds of the massive Stanton Air Base. The Parliamentary transport dropped them at the base's main gate; blank-faced guards with Longnor Mark V sidearms (biometrically locked, computer-directed targeting system, 98% accurate) checked their idents, took their fingerprints and eyescans, and waved them through onto a military transport. Fifteen minutes later, Amy followed her father off the transport onto the tarmac outside the Birdhouse's main building, where they were greeted by a diminutive woman with red hair.

"Lieutenant Perry Slater, Secretary," she said, saluting. She didn't even come up to Brenner's shoulder. "I understand you're interested in a bird. Captain Newton sent me to look after you, sir."

Brenner returned the salute. "My daughter, Ensign Annieka Brenner."

Slater saluted again. "It's an honor to meet you, ma'am. If you don't mind me saying, the Secretary's that proud of you. Says you're a natural pilot."

Amy frowned. "You must be mistaken. I'm sure my father has no cause to speak of me."

The lieutenant grinned. "All the time, ma'am. Why, he's aid if you were to take to the air with the best of the flyboys, you'd wipe the sky with them."

"Thank you, Slater, that will do," Brenner said mildly. "Before you thoroughly embarrass both of us."

"Begging your pardon, sir," Slater said. She turned towards the doors of the nearest hangar and said over her shoulder, "If you'll both just come this way, we can have a look at the birds we've got dirtside at the mo and see what might suit your needs."

The hangar was half full of military hunters, many at least as old as Amy. She let her fingers trail along the pocked underside of an S-19 Spiderhawk as she followed her father and Slater further into the hangar. It had been a long time since she'd been in the cockpit of a Spiderhawk; they were dirtside strafers, used at low altitudes in narrow confines. She'd been 15 the first time she'd taken one up into the hills behind the flight yard on Idylla, and the summer she was 17 she'd crashed her Spiderhawk into the lake after her wing stabilizers failed. Not one of her favorite birds. The Spiderhawks and their sisterhaws, the B-11 Sparrows, had been used heavily at Natterby Close in '79, but even then the Spiderhawk had been a fifteen-year-old design, clinging to functionality through a temporary software patch and parts scavenged from even older birds.

"What kind of a bird are you looking for, sir?" asked Slater, ducking under a fueling line and stopping beside a comms console. "I can probably find you just about anything other than close-range combat; even our oldest have been called up in the last couple weeks. Talk about a nightmare finding anyone who can still fly them!"

"Where are they going?" Amy asked. Brenner glanced sideways at her but remained silent.

Slater shrugged. "Couldn't say, ma'am. I'm a ground girl, see. I fix up your birds when they come in half blown to bits, but I'm not privy to where they go after I patch 'em up."

"They're grouping at Idylla," Brenner said idly, examining a large dent in the nose of the bird in front of him. "The base is large enough to serve as a staging area for the birds and their pilots until they're deployed."

He did not, Amy noticed, actually say where the birds were headed.

"So what kind of bird was it you needed, then?" Slater repeated cheerfully.

Amy opened her mouth, but her father beat her to it.

"Short-range hunter," he said. "Nothing flash."

"How about a Pelican?" Slater pulled up a diagram of the Birdhouse on the console and enlarged a quadrant. "I've got two with flight-ready status. No bells or whistles, but they're sturdy words."

Brenner looked at Amy. "You still qualified to pilot a Pelican?"

She snorted. "I can fly anything you put in front of me," she said. "You made sure of that."

He folded his hands inside his robe, a smile lurking at the corners of his mouth. "So I did," he replied. "The Pelican will be fine, Lieutenant."

The Pelican looked rather the worse for wear. If Slater hadn't sounded so certain the bird would fly, Amy would have been dubious about her ability to even get it in the air. Her hull was pitted with tiny impact craters and there was an ominous rumble somewhere deep in the engine as she rolled out of the Birdhouse and onto the tarmac.

Brenner drew his daughter away from the Pelican—away from Slater and said, very quietly, "Please be careful. Rabb is slowly but surely taking away my ability to protect you and your brother. You can think what you like about me, but I do love both you and Cam, and I have spent years of my life working to keep both of you safe. Don't do anything stupid."

"Dad—" Amy stopped, looked away. She stared at a lone, spindly tree along the Birdhouse's fence, its shape distorted by the wavering heat of the Pelican's engines. "At some point, Dad, you're going to have to make a choice." She looked back at her father. "Someday, the Commission will lose control, and all of the people you've wronged are going to want payback. Those riots you're trying to quell won't be the last of their kind." Raising her hand to stall him from speaking, she continued, "Cam and I never asked for your protection. Yeah, we've used your name and taken with that all of the repercussions it entails. But... As you yourself pointed out, you're not all-powerful." For the first time in her life, she looked at her father and saw an old man. "If Naisbitt has me or Cam killed, then what? What will you do?"

"I wish I had an answer for you," he said. "But I don't. We all make our own paths, Annieka, and I've made mine. I've always known that one day I'd answer for my sins, and if that means dying for my perceived wrongs, at your hand or another's, then so be it."

"She's ready to go up!" Slater shouted at them over the roar of the engines.

"Come with me," Amy said suddenly. "If we get you away from Naisbitt—"

"The Pelican only seats one," he replied.

She rolled her eyes. "So we get Slater to swap birds."

"So suddenly? She'll ask questions." He shook his head. "I can't leave, Annieka."

She chewed on her lower lip. "Coward."

"Yes."

"So be it."

Saluting Slater as she passed, Amy climbed the ladder into the cockpit and settled into the pilot's seat, running her fingers over the familiar controls. It was a little ridiculous. When was the Commission going to build a new bird, one that she didn't know how to fly?

She flicked a series of switches for the pre-launce sequence. "I'll get someone to return her," she called down to Slater.

Slater shrugged. "Pelicans aren't in high demand—they're too old, even for our fleet. As long as the proper paperwork gets filled out, I don't really care when she gets back. Just don't lose her!" she shouted as Amy lowered the cockpit casing. "I don't want to get hauled up before the Chancellor for losing a bird!"

Amy gave her a thumbs up and fastened the harness across her chest. "Right, my sturdy friend," she said, "let's see how you maneuver." The Pelican lifted upward with a lurch that slammed Amy back against her seat and stripped away her breath. "Ow."

Below, Slater watched with an anxious expression and said to Brenner, "I thought she was qualified to fly a Pelican."

"She is," Brenner said. "But it's probably been fifteen years since she was last in one."

"I wish you hadn't told me that," Slater said, worry knitting her brows together.

Following the initial unexpected lurch, Amy eased up on the power and soon had the Pelican rising towards the sky at a respectable pace. She tested the bird's maneuverability with a quick dip and sighed. "Let's hope you're a bit more flexible out of the atmosphere," she said, patting the dash. "And let's hope I don't run into any trouble."