Empire's Legacy

Chapter 37: Homeward Bound

Once out of C-Prime's atmosphere and into clear space, Amy automatically plotted a course towards Peleteth before realizing with a sigh that she'd been through the spaceport too many times recently. Kiterat would put her further from Idylla, but it had been over a year since she'd gone through it, and given her recent capture and visit to the capital, she wanted to stay low for a while. Normally she'd have dropped off the radar for the better part of a year, but with the current situation she was a bit short on options. Kiterat would have to do.

The flight to Kiterat was interminably dull. Amy found herself wishing for a solar storm, a Commie patrol-anything to ease the boredom. The Pelican's database didn't offer much in the way of entertainment; she'd already listened to Alfreadon's Symphony No. 4 (not one of his better works) three times, and suffered through give whole chapters of Bessy Tellaris's Something Borrowed before deleting the entire file from the computer. (An action she almost regretted six hours later, until she remembered just how awful it had been.)

At long last, Kiterat appeared on sensors. Upon hearing just who was requesting to dock, the Kiterat officials nearly fell over themselves to ensure her docking experience went as smoothly as possible. Not that she particularly required their assistance, she thought as she nudged the Pelican forward and into just the right spot in the dock; the suction seal triggered, fixing fast around the bird behind the cockpit casing, bringing Amy to the same pressurization as the spaceport and flooding the area with oxygen. She flipped up the casing and hauled herself out of the cockpit, indulging in a luxurious stretch before swinging herself over the side and clambering down the ladder. Upon exiting the suction seal area, she discovered a waiting escort; annoyed, she gave instructions for the Pelican to be returned to the Birdhouse and disappeared into the crowds.

Originally she'd figured to stay on Kiterat for a few days before booking Annieka Brenner passage on an expensive liner, and then vanish into steerage on a freighter, but a message from Cam forced a change of plans. Via the signal box, he sent that he'd heard chatter indicating that Idylla might be in trouble, especially given the recent influx of combat craft, pilots, and Guardsmen. He couldn't confirm anything, but he wasn't confident in his ability to keep Grey and the kid safe any longer.

She booked a suite on a cruise liner bound for Elysia under her real name for three days hence, looped six hours of footage on her room, and that afternoon boarded a crowded freighter due to drop troops and supplies at Idylla in four days. No one gave her a second glance; Ellie Taymor was quiet but polite, with brown hair and a plain face, a tendency to flinch when spoken to, and barely enough money to pay for her fare. Scarcely anyone noticed when she came aboard, and when she departed at Idylla, no one noticed she'd gone.

No one noticed her arrival on Idylla, either. A quick stop in the comfort rooms in the terminal stripped Ellie Taymor away and restored Amy Jones to her usual, unremarkable self. Unlike the last time she'd visited Cam, her trip from the dirtside tram terminal to the Brenner estate passed uneventfully. There was no need to call on her father's name, and she passed the short trip by napping, her head resting on the tram's vibrating window.

She often forgot that the house, legally, belonged to her. She hadn't lived in it in years; for all intents and purposes, it was Cam's. For all his flightiness, he'd always been more of a homebody than she had; the carefully cultivated gardens in front of the house, for instance, had Cam all over them. She'd never been the domestic type, and the thought of gardening filled her with not some little horror. Her contribution to the house before she'd vanished had been the introduction of an even more stringent surveillance system than the one her father had implemented.

The house was silent for a whole thirty seconds after Amy pushed open the front doors. Then a young voice shrieked, "Uncle Cam! Uncle Cam! Someone's breached our defenses!" and Amy felt something thwack against her thigh. She looked down to see paint spreading across the leg of her trousers. Paintball.