Firstborn - Brandon Sanderson [9]
All were still.
Then Varion let the medal drop to the grass.
Sennion’s gun was in his hand in an instant. He pointed the weapon at his son’s forehead and gave no opportunity for retraction. He simply pulled the trigger.
The energy blast burst just millimeters before Varion’s face and then dissipated. The High Admiral hadn’t moved. He was unhurt, and apparently unconcerned.
Around Dennison, the pavilion’s occupants burst into motion. Flex-blasters and slug-drivers were pulled from holsters as men jumped for cover. Soldiers and officers alike drew. Dennison stood, immobile amid the yelling and the gunfire, and realized he wasn’t surprised.
The greatest High Admiral the Fleet has ever known . . . perhaps the greatest commander mankind has ever seen. Of course he wouldn’t stop with the Reaches. Why would he? Dennison’s father fired again, weapon held just inches from Varion’s face. Again, the blast evaporated, hitting some kind of invisible shield.
This is no Imperial technology, Dennison thought, stepping forward obliviously as others opened fire. Energy bolts and slugs alike were stopped by Varion’s strange shield. Twenty years on his own, autonomous and unfettered by Imperial control. . . . Of course! He captured the most technologically advanced worlds first. That’s why some of those choices didn’t make sense. He was planning for this even back then.
Men called for Dennison’s father to get out of the way. Some were firing at Varion’s officers, but they too had the strange personal shields, and they stood calmly, not even bothering to return fire. Dennison continued to walk forward, drawn to his brother. He watched as Varion reached down and unholstered his sidearm and raised it to his father’s head.
“You are no child of mine,” Sennion said, proudly staring down his son. “I disavow you. I should have done it twenty years ago.”
Dennison froze as Varion pulled the trigger. The duke’s corpse crumpled to the ground, a few wisps of smoke rising from his head.
A wave of gun-blasts stormed from behind Dennison, ineffectively firing at Varion. The grass and earth before Varion exploded with fire and weapon blasts. Someone called for a physician.
Varion turned to regard the attack, raising a hand, waving his people back into the ship. Then he noticed Dennison. Silvermane steeped forward, carefully picking his way across the scarred ground. Dennison felt like scrambling back toward his speeder, but running would be useless. This was Varion Silvermane. He did not lose. People did not escape him. Those eyes . . . looking into those eyes, Dennison knew that this man could destroy him.
Varion stopped right in front of Dennison. The High Admiral’s eyes looked contemplative. “So,” he finally said, voice clear even over the gunfire and yells. “They did clone me. Well, the High Emperor will find that I am even capable of defeating myself.”
He turned and left. Someone finally got a big repeating Calzer gun working, and it fired a blinding barrage of blue bolts. Varion’s shields repulsed them. There should have been some blowback, at least, but there was nothing. Varion walked up the ramp to his ship as calmly as he had strolled down.
The Calzer soon drained the pavilion’s energy stores, and the weather sphere collapsed, letting in the full fury of the winds. Dennison stepped forward through lines of smoke torn and then dispersed by the gale, ignoring the voices of angry, confused, and frightened men.
Varion’s drop-ship blasted off, throwing Dennison to the ground. By the time his vision cleared, the ship was a dark speck in the air.
* * *
“We knew he had something,” Kern said, watching the holo for the tenth time. “But his shield. Where did he develop it? We put spies on each world. . . .”
“He brought them with him,” Dennison said quietly, standing against the view railing.
“What?”
“The scientists,” Dennison said from the side of the hologram room. “Varion doesn’t trust