LEGACY RISING by Rachel Eastwood

Author:Rachel Eastwood [Rachel Eastwood]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Published: 2015-05-23T07:00:00+00:00

The duke was waiting for Neon Trimpot in the castle’s drawing room. He reclined in a high-backed, leather-cushioned chair of rich, oiled brown, alongside a small table on which steamed a self-pour kettle and two pewter cups of tea, one full, one empty and waiting. Moving pictures loomed in silver frames on the wall, shifting between scenes of sunset on the savannah to those of ocean creatures in the blue deep, all long since lost but retained in the few pieces of art salvaged from Old Earth. A clock consumed the center of the wall, connected by the radio frequency reader in the castle keep to each automaton and sentry on the grounds.

It was through this clock face that he watched a live feed of Neon Trimpot approaching, pale and drawn, through the small cameras which were implanted into the flesh of every guard’s eye.

He supposed he could have used the royal throne room, had he desired to impress upon Trimpot his strength in his imperial position. But he didn’t want to intimidate the young rebel. Neon Trimpot had once been an anonymous threat, nefarious as he was nebulous. But, after his arrival at the annual and the consequential suspicions aroused, Malthus had been doing his research on Leopold Comstock. Though Neon Trimpot had no past, no known personality save his leadership of the malcontents, Leopold Comstock was riddled with weaknesses.

It became immediately apparent, reviewing his public records, that he was ambitious. Shrewd. Charming. He scored very highly on all his placement exams, and received invitations to join the crews of five of the seven broadcast stations. In fact, he scored most highly on his social and presentation sections, and so could have easily worked in a position as prestigious as that of Dyna Logan. But Leopold Comstock didn’t even interview for any of the openings. He seemed to fall off the radar until he was apprehended in his late teens for the theft of a boutique top hat. The matching frock coat had already been missing for weeks, and so it was probable that he had stolen it first, but not been caught. Later, the spats vanished from the boutique surplus storage. So he was clever, too. Clever and materialistic. You needed only glimpse his hot pink faux hawk to deduce that he also craved attention in a way that had nothing to do with the principles of social reform.

Malthus supposed he could respect the boy’s avarice, even if it wasn’t terribly realistic, for the son of a cobbler, whose wife worked in the public sector as a maintenance technician. This was fancy speak for “swept and polished the exterior of Taliko Center, oiled the joints of the leaves on the trees in Heroes Park.”

But. He had to try to view Comstock with sympathy.

After all, he wouldn’t be well-served in this brewing revolution by either executing its leader, or by detaining him indefinitely, or by releasing him back into his brood with no discernible shift made in his perspective.

But someone such as Leopold Comstock wouldn’t be too difficult to turn, he suspected.

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