Thief Queen (Heirloom Earth Book 3), page 1
Thief Queen
Heirloom Earth, Volume 3
Elliot Hendry
Published by Elliot Hendry, 2023.
This is a work of fiction. Similarities to real people, places, or events are entirely coincidental.
THIEF QUEEN
First edition. November 7, 2023.
Copyright © 2023 Elliot Hendry.
Written by Elliot Hendry.
Table of Contents
Title Page
Copyright Page
Prologue
Chapter 01
Chapter 02
Chapter 03
Chapter 04
Chapter 05
Chapter 06
Chapter 07
Chapter 08
Chapter 09
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Epilogue
Thanks for Reading
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Prologue
Wind cut through the rigging of the cargo airship, catching at the canvas sails and thick woollen jumpers of the airship’s crew as they tended to their vessel. The air was thin and cold, despite the flickering runes scorched into the deck and the unmitigated glare of the sun. Below the ocean of clouds, through which the airship’s keel ploughed a furrow, there was weather. Up here, though, there was only the clouds and the sky and the sun and the wind. As far as the eye could see, the airship was completely and utterly alone
Linette had never felt more exposed.
She knew, logically, that it made little difference whether she was on the ground or above the clouds; the sensors of the Genesis were finely tuned and wouldn’t be troubled by a little atmospheric precipitation. They could pick her up on the ground as well as in the sky - if they cared to look. Still, that cloud cover had been a psychological reassurance if nothing else and now she was robbed of even that. She was certain that she was being watched, a prickling between her shoulder blades that did not waver regardless of where she turned or what she did. That certainty had started not long after she had sat down with Garrett, a man who shouldn’t have been on Earth, and had a supposedly private conversation about what she knew. Not for the first time, she lamented the fact that this had been their fastest method of travel to DC.
“You still there, Lin?”
The voice echoed out of the rune-carved ruby hanging from her neck, nestled in gold filigree and a sturdy iron chain. Before, when Heirloom Online had just been a game, she’d owned several far-speaking artefacts, all of them of peerless quality. Using them had been as natural as breathing and they had sounded as natural as if the person on the other end was standing in front of you. This one, by comparison, required a conscious mental effort to prod into life and sounded distant, as though the other person was shouting down a long tunnel. It had been the only one she had been able to find for sale before leaving San Francisco, though.
“I’m still here, Sam.”
“Then what’s the answer?”
Linette sighed.
“I don’t know,” she said flatly.
There was a pause on the other end. Then -
“You don’t know what your answer is or your answer is ‘I don’t know’”?
Linette rolled her eyes. “Stop being pedantic, Sam.”
“I’m just saying, there’s a difference! I mean, if you’ve got theories you can’t choose between that’s better than just not having a clue.”
A wisp of cloud drifted unnaturally against the wind, several hundred metres from the airship. Linette narrowed her eyes and pushed up from the wooden railing she had been leaning on, sending a silent message to Garrett. The large man was somewhere below deck, nursing yet another hangover.
“Well sorry to disappoint,” Linette said, “but I really don’t have a clue.”
That was a lie, of course, and not the first she’d told her friends. She’d spent years hiding her double-life from them, her increasingly brazen efforts at sabotage and resistance. Part of her had hoped that the destruction of the Eden would have meant an end to all that but another part - a more cynical, weary part, the part that had kept her alive so far - wasn’t particularly surprised. Lying was just too easy and useful to give up so quickly.
“Well great,” Sam huffed, “figures even you wouldn’t have a theory. It’s like the universe doesn’t want us to meet up again. First the portal network goes dead, then Garrett’s airship up and vanishes. What’s next?”
“Sky pirates,” Linette said.
“Ha!” Sam’s laugh echoed out of the ruby. “Don’t tempt fate.”
“No, I mean we’re being attacked by sky pirates,” Linette said, breaking the connection just as the first pirate shot up above the airship in a fountain of cloud.
They were based on the same template that she had seen a hundred times; ramshackle leather armour, thick brass goggles and an assortment of crude fur cloaks that couldn’t have done much to protect against the cold. The pirates themselves were a scrawny assortment of figures, each perched on the back of a mount that looked halfway between an eagle and a plucked chicken, all mottled feathers and sinewy wings. A dozen of them shot from beneath the clouds in the time it took for Linette to pick up her staff, the first dropping to the deck - their mount careening off with a ragged cry - less than a dozen metres away.
The crew of the airship erupted into panicked cries and darted towards the hatches leading below, pushing past the emerging figure of Garrett. He’d managed to pull on his breastplate but hadn’t bothered with the rest of his armour - the mixture of gold-etched iron plate and sleeping clothes was almost comical. The iron war hammer in his hands was nothing but serious, though, as the first pirate to rush him found out. The yelling figure took a hammer blow to the chest and rocketed out over the side of the ship, falling below the clouds a second later.
“Lin!” Garrett roared over the sudden melee, “Lin, what the hell is this?”
Linette ducked the wild swing of the pirate that lunged at her, their rusted cutlass bouncing off of the wooden railing, then reached out with her mind to nudge at the wind. Up here, it was about the only natural element that would respond to her call - not that anything should have responded to her.
None of this should have been happening.
The pirate that had attacked her snarled, twisting their lips back over fragmented teeth, and made as if to attack again - only to be blown backwards by a sudden gust of air, tumbling to the deck and losing their grip on their sword. Linette took a moment to check that the
“Lin!”
Linette looked up to find Garrett striding over the deck towards her, his breastplate and face splattered with blood. The war hammer’s head glowed a faint gold and was unnaturally free of any traces of the bodies that littered the airship. He had spent years tuning his character stats for combat and that, plus the difference in levels, meant that he hadn’t even broken a sweat.
“Hey, what’s going on?” Garrett’s face showed only concern and confusion. “I thought you said we were in danger?”
“We were.” Linette gestured around the broad deck. “They weren’t exactly friendly.”
“Yeah, but they were just pirates, Lin.” Garrett scratched at his beard, smearing blood through it. “I mean, Level 19? Sit down, bare your neck and they’d still barely scratch you. You’ve been in way worse fights. What’s got you so jumpy?”
Linette paused. What was she supposed to say to that? She’d fought a bloody civil war in space, survived an exploding spaceship and a crash-landing on a dead Earth and found out it had been merged with Heirloom Online, the full-immersion VR world that should only have existed in the server banks of the Genesis, currently orbiting thousands of miles overhead. As far as she was concerned, any one of those was a good enough reason to be jumpy, and yet -
And yet she knew the real reason. Well, had a theory anyway. A theory why the prickling between her shoulder blades never truly seemed to disappear.
“Garrett, I -”
She heard the scrape of leather on wood and the first syllables of a battle cry from behind her as Garrett’s eyes snapped to a point over her shoulder. She didn’t bother turning - not that she’d have had much of a chance as her friend’s muscles tensed and runes popped into life all over his breastplate, burning silver against the dark iron. She knew what was about to happen, had seen Garrett active Portal Step enough times in combat, but as time seemed to slow and the air seemed to thicken, she realised with horror that something was different.
Usually, when Garrett activated Portal Step, he had disappeared and
A second later the invisible grip on Linette vanished and the world lurched back into motion, the airship rocketing forward like a dog straining against a chain that had just broken. There was a wet, slapping thud and she turned, heart racing, to see what was left of the final pirate collapsed on the deck, Garrett standing over them. He let out a sigh and his shoulders slumped.
“Close one,” he said, chuckling.
“What was that?” Linette strode forward and prodded one shaking finger into the iron breastplate, the runes fading back into darkness. “Was that Portal Step?”
“Huh?” Garrett shrugged. “Yeah, why?”
“Is it always like that for you?”
“Like what?” Garrett frowned and he placed the head of the war hammer on the deck, leaning both arms on it and facing Linette. Behind him, the airship’s crew were beginning to peek their heads back out, taking in the body-strewn scene with blank, glassy eyes.
“Like the world froze,” Linette said. “Like everything else stopped and you could move normally.”
“Well yeah,” Garrett said. “A few seconds of movement for me, an instant for everyone else. That’s how it keeps everyone in sync - the server just cranks up the time dilation for me so that I can -”
His words cut off and for the first time that Linette could remember, she saw real terror pass across her friend’s face.
“Oh hell,” he swore softly. “But if there’s nothing to speed me up -”
“- everyone else has to slow down.” Linette nodded. Her heart was still racing and the cutting wind highlighted how cold and clammy her skin suddenly felt. She redoubled her grip on the staff in her hands. “Thank goodness the portal network isn’t working. Can you imagine the chaos?”
“This is pretty damn chaotic already,” Garrett said. “And you’re telling me it’s your fault?”
Linette winced. “Partly.”
“Well don’t let that get around,” Garrett said grimly. “You can fix this though, right? You can fix the world?”
“That was always the plan,” she said softly.
She turned her gaze out over the sea of clouds that stretched endlessly around them. Behind her, the crew was pulled into action by the programming that had taken over their bodies, the invisible force that even now kept the airship flying and powered the impossible magic that she could summon with a thought. Below them, far below them, lay the vast plains of what had once been the United States of America, killed by the hubris and technology of mankind. The Exodus was supposed to have been the answer, a temporary retreat to regather their strength and put their suspiciously good fortune to use. Their luck had run up against the realities of human nature, of course, and then there had been the war ...
And now here she was, living through a perfect fantasy made imperfectly real.
“I -”
Linette paused. She didn’t want to lie to Garrett, not about this, but the truth would just deflate him.
“I can’t fix it alone,” she said, not meeting Garrett’s gaze. Technically true and the omission was the least of her sins. Hell, it wasn’t even the worst thing she’d done that day.
“Let’s just get to DC.”
- -
Chapter 01
The noon sun beat down on the road, warming its broad slabs to the point where Alan could feel them radiating heat up, even from astride his horse. Here and there, piebald patches of the smooth black surface that had made up the Old World roads clung on, rising through the month-old slabs that showed decades of wear and tear. The wind blew cool and refreshing, gently rippling the bottom of his travelling cloak while the sky above was perfectly blue and unbroken by clouds. Behind them was nothing but open road for miles and miles, while ahead of them -
Towers and spires. They reached up towards the sky in every size and style and state of repair that Alan could imagine. Blocky and rusted and full of broken glass. Tapered and smooth and ivory white. Gnarled and wooden and covered in leaves - he would have thought the last type to be trees, impossibly huge trees, if not for the stained-glass windows dotting their sides and the smoke rising from their tips.
The great constructions sprawled across the valley floor beneath him, their bases hidden behind a wall that seemed unnecessarily high - what titans and giants needed a barrier that large to dissuade them? The rest of the valley was blanketed in buildings that bore some resemblance to those he had seen before, back in the town of Colma. They were stone and brick and wood and more, their roofs tilted and tiled. There was no semblance of order to them, no uniformity. Instead, they seemed to have been crammed in as tightly as possible, each straining to claim a piece of unobstructed sky. Alan knew, logically, that there must be another side to the city, must be spaces within it that were greener and less crowded, but his eyes couldn’t see that far.
There was only the endless sprawl of the dead city of London - and judging by the people he could see swarming across the fields and farms outside of the wall, the city held more life than he had ever thought possible.
“I didn’t think it would be so ...”
“Big?” Carl sat astride his own horse, halted next to Alan. Together with Carl’s sister Ella and Dev, who had joined them in their journey in Colma, the four of them barely took up half of the width of the road.
“Alive,” Alan said. “I mean, that’s got to be more people than in Colma and we haven’t even made it inside yet!”
“We’re going to have a hell of a time finding someone to help us, then,” Ella said. Her voice was low and thoughtful. Dev leaned over from her own horse - the only one of the four that had started life as a flesh-and-blood creature - and laid a hand on Ella’s shoulder, squeezing gently. Ella didn’t look away from the city below but placed her own hand over Dev’s.
“Or it makes our lives easier,” Carl said. “More people means more people who are likely to know about Old World tech.”
“Assuming they aren’t all NPCs,” Ella said. “Like Colma.”
Alan thought back to the town they had passed through weeks before. Its entire population - with the sole exception of Dev - had been caught by the NPC curse. When the Old World plague that they knew as Heirloom Online had passed over the town, offering its inhabitants a brief window to select a class, it had been the middle of the night. If that had happened here, who knew how many people still had their own minds?
“We’ll cross that bridge when we get to it,” Alan said. He let denial take the place of certainty in lending strength to his words. “The quest brought us here for a reason. There’s got to be someone who can help us - we just have to find them.”
The mental marker from the London Calling quest still tugged lightly against his mind. Alan had expected it to grow stronger as they closed in on the city but the opposite had occurred; over the past week the sensation had gradually lessened. Now that he was stood overlooking the city the awareness was less of a compass needle and more of a gentle suggestion, broad and fuzzy and spread across the horizon. It looked like they wouldn’t be able to follow it to the doorstep of whoever they were supposed to find - but then, why should it be so easy?
“Think it’s as impressive up close?” Carl scratched at his chin, his eyes locked on the city.
Alan laughed and tapped his heels lightly against the side of his horse’s body, spurring it into a gentle walking pace.
“Only one way to find out!”
~~
By the time they reached the city gates, great arches framed in elaborately carved stone, Alan had gone from impressed to overwhelmed.
They had passed through mile after mile of hamlets and villages and farms and fields on their approach. Any one of them would have been the equal of the village Alan had grown up in based on size alone and they all far surpassed it in wealth. The fields were rich with crops and cattle; the people - while all NPCs, stumbling around with glazed-over eyes - were healthy and robust, their cheeks full. They ignored the group on horseback for the most part but as the walls of London drew nearer, the traffic on the road increased. The NPCs dodged nimbly out of the horses’ way; a few waved greetings or touted goods for sale. Their movements were smoother than the NPCs in Colma and almost lifelike enough to make you forget that their true minds were locked away, their bodies piloted by some invisible script.
