Chevalier by Scott Warren

Author:Scott Warren
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Scott Warren

The truck skimmed across the grass with barely a whisper from her four multi-phase motors. High hedges ringed the park, so I drove along the edge until I spotted a gap with a simple folding roadblock in the path. Not a military issue barricade, mind. Just something warning guests that vehicles weren’t allowed past that point. I gunned the motors and slammed the roadblock out of the way. If anyone else was crazy enough to be out, I figured they’d earned the right to drive across the grass.

Abandoned cars cluttered the tiered parking area outside, their owners hopefully finding their way to the underground shelters beneath the Tyunta capital city. The only people we saw on the road were dissidents and looters, less worried by the distance blasts than by making sure the governor wasn’t the only one making off with the city’s valuables. I don’t begrudge vultures; I’ve rolled a few Teutonian storefronts in my younger days. When times are tough, you do what you have to. And wartime is always tough.

This was my first time seeing Central from street level, and despite the situation I found myself awed by the scale of its architecture. Grand polycrete and glass skyscrapers towered in their geometric splendor and graceful slopes. Hanging gardens framed murals pock-marked by weapons fire. This planet was old, and we weren’t the first ones here. The bones of curving alien structures dwarfed what I would have expected to see on an industrial planet. Alien remains aren’t terribly rare, but it was unusual to see them in such good shape. After backwater milk runs on outworld settlements, I hadn’t seen a city like this since I left Teutonia.

In the simulator everything looked like a playground: a city at 1/6th scale for you to navigate in metallic skin. The week aboard the Winter had completely thrown off my perception of Tyunta Central. Temples and mosques that had been eye-height in an upright towered several stories above me. Derelict cars easily crushed underfoot I now swerved to avoid, while street-level signs too bothersome to render now told me about cafés, holo theaters, and specials on habs with views of the northern spires (whatever those were). Life on Tyunta: frozen in alabaster resin while the citizens packed into shelters and waited for the war to sort itself out. For most of them, very little would change with the new government. They’d come out, rebuild, and continue where they left off. For others, things were about to get very difficult.

I pulled up to an intersection and rounded the corner, slamming the brakes on the truck so bad I was surprised we didn’t throw someone over the hood. Ahead of us rumbled a column of planetary garrison troops in their own wheeled vehicles. I heard Runty breathe a sigh of relief beside me.

“Friendlies,” he announced.

Several of the garrison troops in the back of the smaller units began to point at us, and two small hovercrafts peeled off in our direction. The hairs on the back of my neck started to stand up.

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