Dark Age

by Pierce Brown

  With my scarless face and my drab civilian vestments, before the two Olympic Knights, I feel my ten-year absence more acutely than ever.

  “You are the man who claims to be Lysander au Lune,” Ajax sneers.

  “Ajax.” Mistaking his tone for banter, I reach to embrace him. The Stained block my path. I actually feel wounded. “Don’t you recognize me?”

  Ajax’s eyes narrow to slits. “Test him with the Manteío.”

  In Greek, it means “oracle.” I’ve played with oracles before. My heart sinks. Then a Pink slave glides forward to present me not with one of Grandmother’s pale truth-measuring creatures, but with a black metal orb ringed with serpents. In the center of the orb is an upturned needle.

  “A drop of blood, if it please the dominus.”

  Though it may look kinder than my grandmother’s oracles, I suffer no delusions. The needle will be coated with a DNA-coded poison. If I prove an imposter, my death will be a misery so profane it could only be designed by the cruelest of Venusian alchemists—the best of which Atalantia has on permanent retainer. Even if I prove my identity, the fate may be the same.

  The fact that Atalantia has my DNA at all suggests the depth of her intelligence operations. Owing to two sophisticated poisonings of Sovereigns and one dreadful incident of cloning, my family guards their DNA as if it were life itself.

  Why else would we convince the rest of the Aureate to embrace the ritual of shooting the deceased into the sun? Because it looks pretty? Nothing is to be left behind.

  I prick a thumb with the needle.

  The Core Golds watch as a single drop of blood rolls down the needle to be absorbed into the metal. Whatever poison it contained does not activate. If Atalantia didn’t have my DNA before, now she does. The orb ripples with wonderful ingenuity as the serpents carve paths along its exterior until a bust of my preadolescent face stares back at me. The slave returns it to Ajax.

  He examines the face.

  “DNA profile confirmed,” a bald Green adjunct says. His pupils glow from his uplink. “Security helix processing.” A lengthy pause. Kalindora turns, but Ajax’s eyes never leave my face. “DNA profile authenticated. Forgery probability one in thirteen trillion.”

  “I concur,” Kalindora says. Her demeanor softens.

  The Core Golds stiffen at the news, their competitive brains calculating how my return affects their individual machinations.

  Still unconvinced, Ajax tosses the Manteío to the slave. “What did my grandfather say to my mother the night he had her execute Flavius au Grecco?”

  I don’t smile at the memory. “Now that the pig is filleted and eaten, what’s for dessert?”

  His eyes widen.

  “Brother!” He springs through the Obsidians to rattle my bones with a powerful hug that lifts my feet clean off the deck. This is the Ajax I remember. The kind, generous brother who could never bridle either affection or fury. “I’m sorry, we had to be certain. The enemy is devious in his gambits.” When he sets me down, he clutches my face between his long-fingered hands and kisses me firmly on the mouth. “Little Lysander. Haha! They said you were dead. But look at you…” He dusts off my shoulders. “Corporeal as a cormorant and still a spry dandy of a thing after so long in captivity.” He makes a feint at my face. “Not that spry.”

  Captivity.

  Cassius would laugh.

  I’m not eager to disabuse Ajax of the notion just yet.

  “They said you were your mother’s spitting image,” I reply. “They didn’t say you were taller.”

  It’s an understatement. He’s far larger.

  Awash with joy, he claps my shoulders and leans his forehead down to press it against mine. He breathes deep. Scent has always been his favorite sense.

  “When we received the family code, we thought it was one of the Slave King’s tricks. Then we saw your signifier. The complexity of the code was a symphony upon my heartstrings.” He closes his eyes. “Together again.”

  “Together again, brother,” I say. It still seems impossible to me, and I hold back because I know the revelations I must share will be held against me. Only when Ajax hugs me after I have shared those revelations will this reunion be real. “I mourned for your grandfather. He deserved far better.”

  Ajax pulls away, his face downcast.

  “Yes, well, he made his mark, didn’t he? Now it is our turn.” His eyes break away from our private moment long enough to survey the Raa. His voice becomes truculent. “Unless you have a new family…”

  Kalindora clears her throat. With apologies, I greet her with less informality than I would like and introduce Diomedes and the Rim deputation. In reply to Diomedes’s formal bow, Kalindora merely clicks her tongue.

  “When we received Lysander’s communiqué, we thought you a mummer’s fiction. But here you are, bold as alley cats, and just as dusty.”

  “On behalf of the Rim Dominion—” Diomedes begins before Kalindora interrupts him.

  “Your uncle extends his apologies. Atlas would be here to greet you himself, but war is a…consuming affair.” Her lovely eyes narrow. “I’m sure you wouldn’t know.”

  Ajax steps territorially between Diomedes and me to measure the Rim Knight. “So you’re the eldest spawn of Romulus and that Venusian whore. How bold you must be to liberate Lysander from the captivity of the Traitor.” So that is what they call Cassius. Not ideal. “I suppose I owe you a debt, cousin.”

  Odd as it is to hear aloud, they are cousins. Both with the pure Raa blood of the Conquerors in their veins. But, like so many of the dwindling apex genetic lines, they hold little in common except that shared lineage and the layered animosity of ancestral infighting.

  Diomedes looks at me, then back to Ajax.

  “I hold no man in my debt,” he replies.

  “I assume the Traitor is dead?” Ajax asks. Diomedes nods. “Did you deliver the killing blow? Did he squeal?” Diomedes does not reply. “I see your aesthetic penury extends to your vocabulary. In the Core, it is polite to answer a question when asked.”

  Seraphina’s jaw muscles work as she watches her brother suffer the insult.

  “I take no joy in the demise of an honorable man,” Diomedes says to the taller man with princely dignity. “But I fear before he fell, he…slew your half-brother, Bellerephon.”

  Ajax startles Diomedes with a laugh. Despite his admitted dislike for his cousin Bellerephon, seeing amusement at the death of a man he knew all his life fills Diomedes with a sense of disappointed understanding. He is in a different world now where down is up and up is down. One can never really prepare for that.

  “Bellerephon?” Ajax laughs. “Never knew the spawn. Our spies say you were barely better than him with the blade. Tell me, who is the most exemplary of the Rim Knights? You?”

  “I would be a poor judge. But if you measure the worth of a man by his skill with a blade, then I imagine it is the person least like you.”

  Seraphina blinks at her brother as if he just grew horns. A slow smile grows.

  The Rim is not here to be pushed around.

  Kalindora raises an eyebrow at me.

  Ajax, on the other hand…well, he was mocked as a child, and does not like it any better as a man. He circles Diomedes and succumbs to mock rage when he spies the lightning and clouds on Diomedes’s cloak. “It seems you wear my crest, goodman.”

  “It is not your crest any more than it was the crest of the man who came before you. It represents an idea. In our case, humility.”

  “Humility? And how is that?”

  “A man is nothing before the storm.”

  Ajax stands nose-to-nose with the smaller man. “I am the storm. Take it off.”

  Oh, Hades is the shared thought of every single person watching, maybe even Ajax. Atalantia certainly doesn’t want him killing or getting killed by a Raa in a
hangar bay.

  Never deny your enemy a chance for retreat. Victory may cost too much.

  “Why?” Diomedes replies evenly. “I am the Storm Knight of the Rim Dominion. I make no claim to be that of the Core.”

  “Yet you are wearing it in the Core, my goodman. How could I bear such a slight to me, and to an office which I hold in such high esteem? To do so would curl my cock with indignity.”

  It’s a clever move by Ajax, and a credit to how bright he is. It allows Diomedes a way out, at a toll. Diomedes recognizes it and pays willingly. He removes his cloak and folds it in his hands.

  Ajax spoils his victory and loses the respect of all but sadists by ripping the cloak from Diomedes’s hands and pissing on it. Then Ajax seals up his pelvic armor and looks at me.

  Do you defend him?

  With Ajax, you’re either with him or against him. Today, I cannot afford the latter, and recognize the social stratagem he uses now. It is called Requisite Disrespect, a protocol of the Dancing Mask. One of Atalantia’s favorite ploys.

  “Are you quite done, Ajax?” Kalindora asks with a sigh.

  Ajax wipes his hands on Diomedes’s homespun tunic. “Quite.”

  Seraphina has had enough. She steps forward, hand on kitari, stopped only by a quiet click of her brother’s tongue. Whatever that click means, she takes it very seriously.

  Ten Obsidian Stained make a guttural sound as they lower their axes. But Ajax and the Core Golds simply watch like a row of patient crocodiles. Now they know there is some hot blood in the Rim after all. Whether it is in an hour or five years, they will exploit it, either collectively or individually.

  I warned Diomedes.

  “By Juno’s cunt, your catamite is sensitive, Raa,” Ajax purrs, playing it off as a farce instead of a temperament reconnoiter.

  “My sister is merely stretching after her long journey,” Diomedes replies.

  “Sister? Sister?” Ajax asks. “But where are the tits? Do you now sear them off like Sefi’s winged lesbians?”

  “No, but on the Rim, we geld unctuous Obsidians,” Seraphina replies. “Step closer, gahja. I’ll muster a tutorial.”

  Ajax bows in amusement at the invitation. “Perhaps later, cousin. But for now, I believe Kalindora is at her wit’s end with me. Apologies, of course. It is just so exciting to have Raa back in the fold. The last ones were too short-lived.” With large stepping motions, he mocks how a Julii boot famously stomped Diomedes’s and Seraphina’s elder sister to death. Then he throws an arm around me and motions the Raa to follow. “Welcome to the Ash Legions.”

  “OPERATION VOYAGER CLOAK IS LIVE,” I tell the cluster of officers who gather in the mess hall of the construction site. Glirastes has been removed, bound for Heliopolis, where he’ll be under guard until the operation is complete. Those who remain are engineering Legates, Blue flight commanders, and cocky sky rangers, all veterans of at least two campaigns. Reliable, in other words. Harnassus sits in stony silence. “You have been laboring in darkness. The details of Voyager Cloak have been compartmentalized for security reasons. Allow me to paint the full picture.

  “What you know: Atalantia is meticulous. After our little dance in the graveyard, she has cleared the debris field and the mines. Mercury is fully blockaded. She has tactical and numerical superiority—likely two to one on the ground. From her position she can destroy any ship that attempts to breach orbit, and launch a Rain to reinforce any point on the planet within twenty minutes. Our ability to respond pales in comparison. Effectively, this gives her the ability to flank any of our units at leisure. Our shields are our only advantage. As long as they are up, she has no artillery support and will not risk landing ground elements. If our shield chain falls, we lose. Full stop.

  “Once she has destroyed us, she will turn her eyes on the Republic. Some of you believe we should hold tight for reinforcements from Luna.” I avoid looking at Harnassus. It isn’t time to dress him down. “Let me dispel that notion. If reinforcements come, Atalantia will know and launch an invasion on her terms before they can arrive. By that time, the Fear Knight will have already taken steps to weaken our position in ways we cannot counter. They will have the initiative and the sky. Again, we lose.

  “We cannot retreat, we cannot surrender, we cannot attack, we cannot wait. Our only option is to define the terms of engagement. We will invite them in.” They lean forward.

  “The tanks and infantry meant for Mars, Luna, and Earth will die here on Mercury.”

  I am proud that the officers do not flinch.

  Any illusions of rescue that my return might have awoken now dispel.

  I cannot wave my hands and whisk them back to Mars.

  This is no tale of salvation, it is one of sacrifice. This is our Thermopylae.

  “What you don’t know: Several nights ago, the first stage of Operation Voyager Cloak went into effect when the Fear Knight shot down a blacksparrow east of the Hesperides. On board was a corpse planted by Howler intelligence agents with a dataStack of intelligence information regarding a vulnerability within our shield chain.

  “It appears the Fear Knight has taken the bait. As we speak, he is being herded by the Howlers toward Eleusis, which, once destroyed, will lead to a chain-overload of shield generators, creating a small gap south of Pan in the Plains of Caduceus that Atalantia will find impossible to resist.

  “The terrain is perfect landfall. It is flat enough for her tanks. Dry enough for her titans. Wide enough to land ten legions at a time. And in perfect position to split our northern forces, overrun our defenses on the Children on the Petasos Peninsula with aerial infantry, and roll tanks westward down the coast to hit Tyche.

  “That landfall is our killbox. It is mined with atomics, surrounded by two hidden army groups supported by six of our ten remaining torchShips and Red Reach base. When Atalantia’s army lands there, it will be annihilated from three sides. She will retreat along the only route available: south into the Waste of Ladon. They say that desert eats armies. I mean to feed it another.”

  They grin and wait for the reason they’ve been gathered four hundred klicks north, barred from the field of battle by an entire sea.

  “Why then are you here?” I take a moment to look each of them in the eyes. “You are not part of Operation Voyager Cloak. The men and women in this room will form BlueReach Seven, under direct command of Orion from BlueReach One, off the coast of Tyche. If all else fails, you are my insurance policy. You are Operation Tartarus.”

  * * *

  —

  After the officers disperse to receive direct orders from Orion, I motion Harnassus to take a walk with me along the excavation site. We have business to finish. And I want witnesses. The engine has settled back into its berth after its test run. Engineers call to one another as they make last-minute adjustments. “So you figured a way to make them sync-compatible,” Harnassus says. “And a way to handle the data-load. It will be terabytes per second.”

  “I know.”

  “My Blacksmiths saw them installing foreign tech in the control room. If not my men, who designed it?”

  “We had to use all available resources on such short notice.”

  “What resources?”

  “The Master Maker Glirastes.”

  His face goes blank. “Glirastes. He’s already tinkered with enough, don’t you think?”

  “He is the only man on Mercury who studies ancient tech for pleasure,” I say. “If you could have done it, I’d have asked you.”

  “He is a Gold pet.”

  “I know you disagree with this course—”

  “That is an abuse of language.” Harnassus’s voice doesn’t rise a decibel. “When you said we would let them inside our shields, I thought I misheard. When you told me what we were unearthing, I thought I’d gone mad. Now you’re telling me there’s not one engine but seven, run with the t
ech of a Gold pet. I haven’t gone mad.” He jabs a finger up into my chest and calmly says, “You have.”

  I look down at his puny finger.

  “Control yourself, Imperator. We set the tone. Tartarus is merely—”

  “Insurance, yeah. I heard.”

  “You don’t think we can match them on the ground.”

  “No.”

  “Need I remind you this is still the army that freed both our homes?”

  “Except no Sefi, no Sevro, no Seventh.” The crossed wrenches on his uniform glint as the Terran folds his thick forearms over each other. “The enemy is freshly provisioned from Venus, her legions replenished, her machines serviced. These aren’t softfoot Pixies. These are the full Ash Legions. That means Legios XX Fulminata, XIII Dracones, X Purdus. On our best day, any of those would test our mettle. But she’s brought all of them. And this isn’t our best day. Just a week ago, my men were melting down scrap metal so we could fill the Twenty-third’s magazines. Scrap metal. Not depleted uranium. Scrap metal. Darrow, you know I am no Cassandra. But the moment the first Peerless boot touches Mercurian soil, we’ve lost the planet. This isn’t Thermopylae. This is Cannae. We will die in the Ladon.”

  I ignore the appeal to the classical obsession I share with the Golds.

  “Harnassus, we lost the planet the moment you sent half the fleet home.”

  He appraises me coolly. “So there it is. You want to flog me for it? You want an apology? Fuck you. There’s your apology. I obeyed my oath. The sword of the people should never silence its voice. And the voice of the people is the Senate. Not you.”

  “And what does the Senate tell you now?” I cup my ear. “The voice isn’t speaking. So the sword will.”

  “You know why I prefer Sevro to you? He might burn hot. But you go cold. There’s no talking to you when you’re like this. You’re inhuman. You’re a god emperor.”

  His Blacksmiths have noticed the tenor of our conversation if not its content. Thraxa worried over my choice of theater for this game, surrounded by Harnassus’s men. But you don’t get the wolf by the tongue without reaching through its teeth.