Empire: Book 2, The Chronicles of the Invaders (The Chronicles of the Invaders Trilogy) Read Free

invaders—Paul and Steven had been captured in just such a battle against their conquerors, before being forcibly conscripted into the Brigades—but their campaign was mostly just an annoyance to the Illyri.
    Through the window Paul watched the arid white landscape of the planet pass below. This was Torma, and it had taken them a month to reach it. Somewhere above Torma lay the Illyri destroyer Envion , now undergoing repairs after a difficult trip, or “boost,” through the final wormhole. Paul was still not used to the sensation of wormhole travel—the distortion of space and time, the sickening sense that he was leaving his brain and internal organs trailing behind him. The best that could be said was that at least it was over quickly, and he was always relieved when the trip was completed, and he found himself alive and intact.
    Peris, their Illyri training supervisor, now sat at the head of the craft, just behind Paul. The Illyri soldier had once been the commander of the guard at Edinburgh Castle, but had given up his comfortable existence in order to watch over Paul and Steven in the Brigades. Paul did not truly understand Peris’s motives, but he had accompanied the Kerr brothers from Earth, and had been with them throughout their basic training at the Brigade base on Coramal, a tiny planet in a small system a long way from anywhere interesting.
    The training had mostly involved learning how to function as a unit, along with honing the weapons skills of the recruits, teaching them the basics of Illyri technology, and improving their command of the Illyri language, mainly through immersive techniques, includingfeeding them a steady stream of words and grammar while they slept. The alien tongue proved less complex than Paul had first thought, and soon he could speak it better than most, which was undoubtedly one of the reasons why he had been promoted to sergeant. The recruits had also undergone a range of medical procedures designed to prevent their bones from becoming brittle over long periods in space, and to address the increased risk of cancer due to radiation exposure.
    Now Peris caught Paul looking at him, and nodded. Paul had grown to respect the old Illyri, even if he could not say if he liked him. The Illyri were the enemy, and Paul’s ultimate aim was to destroy their empire. If Peris got in his way, then Paul would kill him. And yet he could not look at Peris without thinking of Edinburgh, and the castle.
    And Syl.
    Face it, Paul thought, not for the first time, you’re in love with an Illyri. In an ideal world, you’d bring her civilization to its knees and then run away with her through the ruins. How do you think that’s going to work out? Oh, and there’s also the small matter that she’s millions of light-years away, separated from you by countless wormholes, and imprisoned in a convent run by a bunch of weird nuns who worship knowledge as a god. You should have just dated a girl from Leith, or even Dundee, or, at a push, Inverness.
    Beside Peris sat Faron. Although Peris exceeded him in age, experience, and wisdom, Faron was technically the ranking Illyri officer on board, and this was his first full mission. The Brigades were used to give new and inexperienced Illyri officers like Faron a taste of command. As far as Paul was concerned, Faron was particularly useless: his arrogance concealed his uncertainty, and he was contemptuous of the humans under his command, a poor attempt to mask his fear of them. Faron had only joined them on this trip because he needed to rack up a certain number of missions before he could leave the Brigades behind.
    Paul watched him sweat. Steven’s piloting of the shuttle was clearly terrifying Faron as much as Cutler, but Faron didn’t want to appear weak in front of the humans, or Peris.
    “Are we there yet?” said Cutler.
    Paul closed his eyes again, and dreamed of Syl.

CHAPTER 3
    E lda muttered her vague thanks for Syl’s timely intervention as she