The Collapsing Empire (The Interdependency #1)(26)

“Go faster,” Marce urged his sister.

“Anytime you want to fly a skimmer just over the city rooftops, without crashing into some random chimney, you let me know,” she replied.

In lieu of bothering his sister further, Marce looked out the skimmer bubble at the streets of Opole. Most of the residential streets were untouched, with only a few glimpses of people carrying things out to their cars, as if packing for a move. The main streets, however, were clogged with cars, and several were jammed to a standstill.

That took effort; Marce suspected some drivers had disabled autodrive to take control of their cars directly, either in a panic or because they suspected the government was somehow going to disable their movement. The end result either way was that these newly independent cars were messing things up for everyone else.

And every now and again, Marce would see columns of soldiers moving along the streets, armored vehicles among them, off to secure and/or liberate one strategic element of the city or another.

“This isn’t going to end well,” Marce said to his sister.

“Does it ever?” she asked, banking toward the Warta, the wide river that ran through Opole. She flew the skimmer to the middle of it, far enough away from either bank to discourage any further potshots. Marce suspected that technically his sister was flying the skimmer illegally—skimmers were supposed to use automation and stick to specific air routes within the city to avoid problems with other air traffic. The middle of the Warta was not one of those routes. He also suspected that today local law enforcement had other things to worry about.

Presently the skimmer left Opole behind and the land rose into rolling hills, the Warta meandering gently between them, suburbs and then rural villages nestled up against their inclines. A small tributary of the Warta branched off, into another set of hills; Vrenna followed it and within minutes was at the house.

“The house” was technically Claremont Palace, named for the province district that their father had been made count of, nearly forty standard years earlier, and from which the family now took its name. There had been a previous count, whom Marce had never met, having not been born yet; he had been persuaded to give up the title by accepting an appointment to the imperial court. The story Marce had been told was that the fellow needed very little convincing. Better to be a functionary at court than a noble on a planet of exile. The previous count departed so quickly he left most of his furniture and at least a couple of pets, cats who had been perfectly fine with the new tenants, his father had told him, so long as the food kept coming.

“Come on,” Vrenna said, as they stepped out of the skimmer, on the landing pad near the garage. “Let’s not keep Dad waiting.”

Their father, Jamies, Count Claremont, was in his office, watching the revolution on the wall monitor. He saw them enter and pointed to the monitor. “Look at this nonsense,” he said to them.

“Welcome to the revolution,” Vrenna said.

Jamies snorted. “It’s not a revolution. The ‘rebels’ are probably funded by merchant guilds who want an import tax break. Or something. The duke wouldn’t allow it. Or something. So the ‘rebels’ will take down the duke and install an ambitious noble in his place, who will cut the tariff. It’ll be rubberstamped by the emperox, because no one out there cares what happens to End. And because they think in another twenty years we’ll all just do it again.”

“Won’t we?”

“Not this time.” Jamies went to his desk, retrieved a tablet, and handed it to Marce. “We finally got it. The smoking gun. And the last bit of data I needed for the prediction model.”

Marce took the tablet and started scanning through the work there. “When did this happen?”

“Six weeks ago. A ship called Tell Me Another One experienced a Flow anomaly and then recorded a transient Flow shoal, consistent with my model. It’s observed, recorded, verified, and tracked. Everything about it fits. Everything about it is exactly what we’ve been looking for. It confirms everything we’ve suspected about the Flow.”

Marce stopped trying to scan the work, which would require hours for him to read and ingest, and looked to his father. “You’re sure about this.”

“Do you think I would tell you if I wasn’t?” Jamies said. “Have you ever known me to be anything other than exceptionally careful about this hypothesis? Do you think I didn’t throw everything I could at it to disprove it? Do you think I want it to be accurate?”

Marce shook his head. “No, Dad.”

“Don’t get me wrong, Marce. I need you to read it. I need you to tell me if there’s anything I’m missing. Anything I’ve overlooked. Because as much as the scientist in me is thrilled to have made this leap in understanding the physics of the Flow…”

“… as a human being you want to be wrong,” Marce finished.

“Yes,” Jamies said. “Yes, I very much do.”

For as long as Marce could remember, Dad had called it “the Family Secret”: his father’s examination of navigation data from every ship that had ever come to End over the last four decades. Officially Count Claremont’s role for the empire was chief imperial auditor for End. He examined the data to assure that none of the ships ever deviated from the imperially approved trade route—and thereby avoided the trade tariffs and other taxes that were required of them—that were often planned years or even decades in advance. In this, the count was one of dozens of chief imperial auditors, one in every system, who made sure money stayed where it was supposed to stay: in the pocket of the emperox first, guilds second, and everyone else somewhere rather further down the line.