Empire by Michael R. Hicks

considered a priority by the bureaucracies that controlled the planet’s operation. The fires, a constant hazard throughout the year, were started by everything from lighting strikes to spontaneous combustion; any of a dozen causes. Not least of which was arson.
    Reza called up an image in his mind of the field they were in, a process made difficult because he had not worked this area for nearly two years. Since then, it had been bursting with wheat, and the orphans had nothing to do with that; that was the Hallmark Farm Combine’s business.
    “There should be a road about a klick south of here,” he remembered, the image of the arrow-straight track coming to him from a map of the area he had studied with Wiley a long time back. He looked in the direction he thought the road should be, and was relieved to see that smoke had not yet begun to boil toward the sky.
    “We’re going to have to move fast,” he said, “or the wind’ll help the fire kill us. Come on!”
    He led them in the direction of the road at a restrained jog so the younger kids could keep up. Moving through the tall wheat was tricky as it was, the stalks grasping at clothes and skin, fouling their legs when it was stepped on. The others followed Reza without complaint or argument, with Nicole bringing up the rear. Reza pushed the pace as fast as he dared, his biggest fear hearing the crackling of a blazing fire but not being able to see where it was coming from. Should they lose their sense of direction, they could find themselves trapped in the middle of an inferno with no escape.
    Nicole, last in the line of fleeing refugees, kept looking behind them. Her eyes reflected the licking tongues of the flames now just visible over the tops of the wheat stalks, coming closer under the driving influence of the wind.
    The child in front of her – a new girl, Nicole did not know her name – stumbled and fell to her hands and knees. Nicole helped her struggle to her feet, urging her onward. “ Allez! Allez! ” she cried, pushing the girl forward.
    “We’re almost there!” Reza called from the front. He had spent enough time in and around the fields to have learned how to navigate with a sort of dead reckoning, using the sun’s position and his pace count to keep him on track. “Only about fifty meters left!”
    A few moments later, he breathed a sigh of relief as he saw the regular outline of the road through the last layers of wheat. He stood to one side and passed the others of his team on through first, giving Nicole a quick hug as she emerged from the trampled trail behind them.
    The road would not necessarily protect them from the fire, Reza knew. But at least they could move in a direction opposite to the one that the fire was taking, keeping out of its way.
    “Oh,” Nicole gasped, her chest heaving with adrenaline and the effort of running what had seemed like such a long way, “ Zut alors . I did not think–”
    “Reza!” someone shrieked. “Look ou–”
    The voice was suddenly cut off with a sound Reza knew all too well: the smack of a powerful hand striking a child’s face.
    Darting through the wheat to the road’s edge, Reza just had time to see the other children fleeing down the road past Muldoon’s van. The field master and three of his goons, his teenage hatchet men, stood in two-man cordons off to either side of where Reza stood, blocking the road. They had let the other children pass, even the one who had tried to warn Reza, because they were not of interest.
    For that, at least, Reza was thankful. Without wasting another second, he disappeared back into the wheat, grabbing Nicole’s hand.
    “Follow me!” he hissed, dragging her along behind him.
    “What is it?” she gasped.
    “Muldoon,” Reza replied, his breath a controlled heaving of his chest as he fought a new path through the wheat. He was desperate to avoid their pursuers, whose footsteps he could hear somewhere behind them, crashing through the stalks. “He