LEGACY LOST Read Online Free

which sealed the heat beneath its dome, making life over a thousand feet above the surface of the “dead planet” possible. Icarus crashed in less than two minutes, killing all within. The lone survivors were this forty-seven, the fleeing aristocracy, and those who dwelled on the grounds of the Taliko castle at the moment that it raised its drawbridge and effectively detached itself from Icarus. (That same castle was the sole “airship” still in sight, though it was actually another heated geodesic dome with a propulsion system attached to its rear. It drifted a few hundred yards ahead, little more than a gleam of starlight on glass and the faint silhouette of spires.)
    Chance for Choice stood for a lot of things, but the death of twenty-eight thousand wasn’t one of them. Their name, as of late, had come to be associated with two major tragedies. The first, what was now called The Coronal Massacre, was the assassination attempt of Earl Kaizen Taliko, a misfire which had incidentally blinded the entire staff of royal sentries and killed hundreds of innocent guests, as well as the duke himself, Malthus Taliko.
    And now there was this tangential fiasco, which would undoubtedly be tallied on their resume of destruction: the collapse of Icarus.
    Exa Legacy had been milling around this landslide in her mind for hours now. She couldn’t sleep. While the rest of the boat lightly drowsed on makeshift bunks, even spilling out onto the deck itself, Legacy roamed in her fish-tail skirt, blouse, and golden vest – its jointed wings now folded against the back – for they had dried, and she had no other clothing onboard, this was all so sudden. Legacy roamed, idly fondling her chin, eyes drifting without anchor or destination, and she avoided any pesky outcroppings of mental images from the last twelve hours.
    Instead, she focused on the pearly clots of cloud shifting in the distance.
    Slivers of glass from store windows or busted automatons littered the street, along with an occasional spray of gears or a stray key. Single people ran past Legacy without even glancing back, though there were no groups. Fires poured out of windows, but no one came to extinguish them . . .
    The stars were so bright in the night sky without the fogged, scratched plating of a dome to obfuscate them. Hundreds of the things. And there hung the waning moon, a dusky sliver near the horizon, mysterious and foreboding. Yes. Wonderful. Focus on that.
    The ground subtly tilted beneath Legacy’s feet, and her stomach lurched. The buildings around her groaned as if under the strain of gravity, glass windows crunching like fractured teeth . . .
    The patched sail of Albatropus buffeted in the warm wind, pleasant, hypnotic clinking of metal on metal as it banged against its mast. Stop thinking about the . . .
    She shouldered her way through the gate and onto the metallic grid of the exterior aerial dock, twisted onto the railing – which was now at sixty degrees, somehow, or maybe it only seemed that way to her fevered brain – and leapt, Coal-Radia still slung over her shoulder, nothing but raging winds and sheets of frigid rain above, nothing but Icarus slowly capsizing below . . .
    No, it didn’t. It didn’t. It didn’t. It didn’t.
    Legacy gripped the rail of the stern and closed her eyes tightly, focusing intently now on that blackness, as if only a complete blackout might blot the event from space-time. There was this desperate, clawing sensation in her chest – her lungs – as if an animal struggled to breathe and was pinned . . .
    “Leg?” Vector’s voice was characteristically cheerful and alert, but just now, was sharp with concern. “What are you doing?”
    Her eyes popped open and she glanced over her shoulder. She’d been so lost in thought, or in non-thought, she’d forgotten about Vector, trapped at the helm indefinitely. She scrambled to rub at her damp eyelash and turned to join him at the wheel of the ship, gently shifting back and