by Pierce Brown
Confused glances are exchanged. “Hypercane?” Seneca frowns through his open cockpit.
“Those aren’t possible except in the Rim,” Seraphina says, coming up from behind with Kalindora.
But I alone know that they very much are. Grandmother, you left landmines everywhere.
“Perhaps we should delay landing,” I offer neutrally. The officers glare as if I’ve spit in their eyes.
“Delay landing?” Ajax asks, incredulous. “And let a bit of weather steal our glory? I think your time amongst Moonies has made you superstitious, goodman.”
“If there are five hypercanes over the Sycorax…”
“That’s a thousand kilometers from here.”
“A storm with eighty kilopascals has the capacity to cover all of Helios—much less five of them.” I do the math. “Eight-hundred-kilometer-per-hour winds will pull down a ripWing. Electrical will slag any orbital relay. The Immunes mentioned a secondary storm. If there are pressure anomalies in the desert, we should suspend the land—”
“Lysander, enough,” Ajax says.
It’s the first time he’s used my name in front of them, though they all know who I am by now. I pull it back. There’s no way out of this. No way to avoid alienating him except by playing dumb, but then men die.
Ajax continues. “Thank you. Seneca, I told you to take your men—”
“Ajax,” Seneca interrupts, “the northern drones have gone down.”
Ajax bares his teeth. “What do you mean, gone down? Did they report enemy contact?”
“They’re not responding to commands and their feeds are static. They were picking up some sort of pressure anomaly.”
“A pressure anomaly?” Ajax glances at me as if I did this. “Hail the scouts.”
“They’re not responding either. Something is interfering with their coms.”
“Quiet,” Seraphina says. She lifts her hand to touch the wind. “Don’t you feel it?”
“What?” Kalindora says.
“The storm.”
A stone clatters against Ajax’s starShell. He looks down with a frown. Rocks bounce against my boots. Then all along the landfall, men shout and point at something to the northwest. Ajax’s eyes click upward to look past our semicircle of officers and then widen. “By Jove…”
Out there, amongst the chalk, coming down the desert flats between the mountain ranges, is a storm like those I’ve seen only in terraforming holos. A wall of sand rages across the desert. My feet root me to the ground as a great convulsive sigh of horror goes through the vanguard and the first wave.
Seraphina turns on Ajax. “Take cover.”
“Helmets up! Prepare for elements!” Ajax shouts. “Land those ships! I want those tanks on the ground!”
The army breaks into frantic contortions.
I see the missing scouts as I shout to the Praetorians to take shelter. The scouts race ahead of the storm, burning their boots for all they’re worth. Little dots chased by a great brown tide. One disappears into the darkness. Ajax shouts commands to the transport pilots, but they’re caught in landing protocol. Some try to land ahead of the storm, only to make a logjam. Others peel off, but the winds knock them off course and they clash together in the sky as the roaring of the sand wall encroaches.
It is the end of the world.
The sand hits us like a sweeping broom. I watch as three engineers setting up a communications array sprint back to their ship. The sand, traveling at hundreds of kilometers an hour, shreds their uniforms and bodies down to the bone with the thoroughness of a decay time-lapse. Kalindora is with me. We brace ourselves and the wall hits us. I’m kicked sideways, spinning on the ground end over end, unable to stand or orient myself. Finally, after colliding with its door hatch, I manage to crawl behind a heavy tank. Hidden from the wind, I watch as the wall hits the stream of transports.
Decimation.
Hundreds of spaceships with reinforced hulls, state-of-the-art ion propulsion engines, and the battle scars of a dozen engagements meet the force of the Mercurian desert. It clubs them to death with the carelessness of a gargantuan child. It throws a squadron of ripWings into the mountainside. Whips a hundred-meter tank carrier into a death spiral, smashing it into the ground where it crushes half a legion of Grays sheltering inside a ground transport. And, all at once, the mission that took a month to plan and half a year to prepare, one that was to be executed by men and women who’ve made a vocation of war, comes apart with no explanation except that the Reaper is sharing our planet, and that my family is a line of paranoid tyrants.
A dark shape stumbles out of the storm to join me behind the tank.
It’s Ajax’s starShell.
He crashes down and sits unmoving, unspeaking.
Lightning flashes in the storm-obscured sky, illuminating his terrified face. His lips tremble. His eyes are wide and white and boyish. I’ve seen him like this only once before, frozen in place out there on the West Line, a kilometer-high communications hardline we used to dare each other to walk as children. The first time we tried, he froze only a quarter of the way across. What began so confidently ended with his knuckles turning white as he gripped the edge and stared down at the thousand-meter drop. I walked out to him and set a hand on his shoulder, and told him only he could walk himself to safety. A quarter kilometer back, or three-quarters forward and across. Which way he walked was up to him.
He walked back.
It was one of the defining moments of our childhood, when we both discovered the substance of his courage.
I put a hand on his shoulder now. Our eyes meet, and I know he’s back on the West Line with me. Slowly, the fear leaves him, and we share a moment of wordless comfort. Forgotten are the Praetorians, my absence, all of it. I have his back. He just has to go forward.
* * *
—
With effort, Ajax manages to gather many of his officers in the garage bay of an infantry transport. The storm has raged for thirty minutes and shows no signs of abating. The hull creaks as we cluster together in the dim light.
Seneca grumbles his way through his report. “Sixty transports destroyed in the first minute. There’s no accounting for the rest. We can’t establish communications with the fleet, command, or the transports. I’ve never seen this much electrical interference from a storm.”
“He did this…” Ajax murmurs. His eyes are fixed on the roof of the transport.
“I’m sorry, sir?” Seneca says.
“Darrow,” Kalindora confirms. “He’s mad.”
“It’s just a storm,” Seraphina says from the corner in irritation. “Unless the Slave King can summon hypercanes at the drop of a pin, it’s a freak occurrence. It will soon pass.”
“This is Mercury, not the Rim. We don’t have hypercanes. Ever.”
“He can summon storms,” I say.
Ajax snorts. “He’s a man, not a nightmare.”
“He’s using Storm Gods,” I say.
“The only Storm Gods left are on Triton and Pluto.”
“Look at the patterns of the storm,” I say, gesturing to the map. “The killzone Darrow intended to land us in was here. The storms form a circle. It can’t be coincidence. Those temperature fluctuations in the ocean must be manmade. Like this sandstorm.”
Their eyes go hard.
“He intended to pin us in, cut us off from the sky, trash our second wave, bar the landing of the third, and hunt us down inside the circle. But he didn’t expect anyone this far south. I bet my life a Storm God is out there somewhere to the northwest. It is likely to be only lightly defended.”
“Where did he get a Storm God, Lysander?” Ajax asks quietly.
“Where it was buried, I imagine.”
“And why would it be buried?”
“As a safeguard against Votum rebellion.” They blink with ir
ritating slowness, as though they are surprised that a Sovereign who would annihilate Rhea would have moral objections to keeping her family’s invisible leash on a planet as important as Mercury. “The ocean storms will have a life cycle even if the Storm God is downed. The desert storm will die quicker. We bring the engine down, the sandstorms will abate.”
“How quickly?” Seraphina asks. “An hour? Two?”
“More likely several days. Maybe longer.”
The officers glower. This will ruin it all. Ajax watches me like he would a stranger. That this secret should be kept from House Grimmus bespeaks suspicion, as if Octavia and the Lunes believed even they could not be trusted. I see my friend wrestling with the pressure of the men looking at him. The pressure of Atalantia’s immense expectations. The pressure of Gold society and his own fantasies the child and then the man wove together in the moments before sleep, night after night, until they resembled nothing short of destiny.
This was to be his moment of glory.
Now he looks total annihilation in the eye.
“We were tasked with taking Heliopolis,” he says. “I will not disappoint my aunt. If Darrow planned this, if he is using a Storm God, then he did it to freeze our movement. We must contradict his intentions with all our vigor.”
“Surely you do not mean to attack Heliopolis now,” Seraphina says, coming off the wall. “That storm is a monster. It’ll pin the shells to the ground. Sweep away the infantry. I’ve seen it before. You will die. So will your men.”
“She’s a Moonie, isn’t she?” Seneca growls. “Knew her eyes were too big.”
“I am Seraphina au Raa,” she snaps at the Core officers. For once it is not entirely unwelcome news. “I’ve trained for Io’s storms. And if you attack Heliopolis in this wind, you’ll all be corpses. You must wait for it to pass, or find a way to kill it.”
“I concur with the Rim on this one,” Kalindora says. “StarShells can’t fly in this. It’ll be chaos. And Heliopolis’s storm wall is no mere palisade.”
“Do you think I’m some vainglorious dullard?” Ajax snaps at the women. “They know where we landed. The Reaper would not let sand stop him from moving. He might have thermal grids in the desert by which to navigate. But he will expect the storm to stop us. He has the initiative. We must take it back. So when the sand’s veil falls, we will not be here. We will be at the walls of Heliopolis. We will land whatever transports remain en masse, and then assault the city when the storm dies.” He looks around. “I will need a commander to lead a cohort to destroy the Storm God while the rest of us push south with the titans.”
His eyes settle on me, and I feel the urgency behind them. Hostility has been replaced by desperate faith. Here is the chance to prove myself to Ajax and Atalantia. “Lysander, will you and your Praetorians do this for me? For our family?”
Kalindora shakes her head at me.
“It would be our honor,” I say.
“I will go with him,” Seraphina mutters. “This isn’t my first storm crossing. Gahja might get lost.”
“Two children leading the Praetorians?” Kalindora laughs. “Of all the jumped-up arrogance. I’ll lead the party.”
“No. I will need you here, Kalindora,” Ajax says.
“The Storm God will have a garrison,” she says. “My oath to Octavia still stands. I will defend the heir with my life. And I’m going to kill a storm engine, Ajax. Got a problem with that?”
THE DOOR OF MY TRAP slams closed.
The storm is here.
Day has become night. Black thunderheads race off the sea to blind their armada. Lightning shatters the sky, disrupting communications between their landing parties, drones, and orbit support. Winds swirl and clash from multiple storm eyes. They toss ripWings and landing craft like toys. Their first wave is trapped beneath the storm. Their second is murdered within it. Their third dare not descend.
Orion has given me my lever.
I’m putting my full weight on it.
Five thousand Drachenjägers pound for Tyche with half again as many starShells riding upon their backs. More survivors found us, swelling our ranks. We cut through the famed flower latifundia of Mercury. Our titanium feet stomping orderly rows of sunblossoms. The flower pollen paints the clawed metal feet gold. From my perch on Rhonna’s mech, I spot ships struggling in the high winds.
My columns hurdle the highway in a single bound and split up to form into wedges. This is not their first shockwave.
The enemy lies ahead. An entire division—four legions—has made landfall between Tyche and the Plains of Caduceus. In the gloom thousands of ships bearing the golden hammers of Votum unload men and war machines onto rolling fields of lavender. They intended to mop up whatever remains of my legions. But their landing has been thrown into chaos by the storm. The customary Gold landfall fortifications aren’t complete. Tank wedges are only half formed. War machines barely unloaded. Infantry sheltering from the wind behind grounded transports. They don’t expect us yet. And they don’t see us coming.
We fall upon them with malice.
A Gold in a starShell with officer markings stands with his officers around a communications array in the shelter of a hill. One of his men points. He turns just as lightning flashes, illuminating our tide of onrushing metal. Rhonna bounds forward and lands forty meters of war machine on the officers. I watch on her shoulder as the starShells crumple.
The first column of Drachenjägers fires four alpha-omegas. The nukes detonate in the center and opposite flank of their landfall, just above their two groups of titans. Daylight. Their heaviest armor—which would more than match ours—vaporizes. A rolling tide of devastation. The drachen wedges fire their particle cannons in tiers, targeting heavy armor. Five minutes before each can fire again. It makes no matter.
Bedlam follows as the wedges hew through the enemy along a four-kilometer front like one hundred spears into paper. The quad railguns fire into the confused mass of enemy. Infantry simply disappears. GravBikes are cut in half. Transports peel away, only to clash against one another as the wind disrupts their flight paths.
The Drachenjägers pull their ion swords. Five thousand blue-white cleavers go to work. When the carnage itself slows the charge’s momentum, and we founder on the debris from the nukes, the starShells release. Alexandar and I spin sideways together.
I rip off the door of an infantry transport. A hundred Grays in wargear stare at me in green light. Alexandar opens fire with his railgun. Thunder booms overhead. Felix has fallen to a group of Grays with uranium rifles. We send them scattering and haul him to his feet. Another second and he’d be dead. The Golds are rallying to their legion standard.
The standard rises from the spine of a giant blue titan. The titan is sixty meters tall, four legs, and three main cannons, with disk-shaped alien cockpit. The standard is five meters tall and made of three emblems—the god Helios, a Society pyramid, and a giant pair of golden hammers. A Votum is with us. Please let it be Scorpio himself. Two Drachenjägers plunge toward the standard. As the titan arrests their charge with its gravity gun, Golds in starShell swarm over the Drachenjägers like a pack of velociraptors taking down a tyrannosaurus.
They jump onto the rightmost’s back and hew through the spine armor to cut the power lines connecting the stomach generator to the cockpit. The titan’s third arm pulls the top half off the cockpit. A Gold in a starShell reaches in and pulls the Orange pilot in half with his armored hands and throws her body into the wind.
Gods, can they kill.
And I thank the Vale that it is the Arcosian Knights with me. Not a Red I know could survive this outside a Drachenjäger. I search for Rhonna, but can’t find her rig in the fray.
I gather Alexandar and a hundred of his kin and we drive toward the rallying Golds from the flank. Rhonna appears to the left and her wedge draws their attention. By the time they see us coming to th
eir right, we’re amongst them, firing point-blank and drenching our blades.
With Alexandar, I mount the sixty-meter crest of the titan, and kill the two Golds defending the height. Alexandar carves the pilot out and holds him in the air. The Gold man wears an incredible suit of armor that appears nearly translucent. He slashes at Alexandar with his razor. Alexandar bats the lightning-fast blade away and pins it in his starShell’s hand. With his other hand, he squeezes the pulseHelm of the Gold until it shears off. That’s quality, there. “The Primus himself!” Alexandar shouts above the wind. “Hiding in a titan. What a Pixie.”
The veins in the forehead of the old tyrant pulse as he glares up, at the mercy of a man a quarter his age. “Blood traitor!” he snarls. Then he sees my curved blade.
“Scorpio au Votum,” I warble out my speakers. Through the rain and spattered blood on my canopy, his vain eyes meet mine, and I drink in his fear. Blood leaks down his face. “For a hundred and one years of rape, genocide, and enslavement of your fellow man, I sentence you to the mud.” There atop his titan, I cut him in half at the waist and Alexandar hurls him off the height.
“The blood of the Conquerors thins,” Alexandar drawls through the coms. He cuts the standard off the titan and hands it to me. “One more for your collection, goodman.”
I shove it back into his hands. “Build your own.”
With a grin, he holds it up against the crackling sky and leaps off to land on Rhonna, who trudges to pick us up. He stabs it down into the thick shoulders of her Drachenjäger, sharing the bounty.
“To Tyche!” I bellow. My men pick up the call and we push through the shattered remains of the division to leave it thrashing in the mud. More landfalls lie ahead. More enemy to kill. More. More. More.
A laughing zeal fills me.
By the time we leave the flower fields two hours later, only five hundred drachens have fallen, and the standards of fourteen legions decorate the shoulders of my rolling columns. Alexandar has taken four with his own hand. I trail with three. His second cousin Elander has two, along with the captain of the Drachenjägers, and Rhonna herself. We scalp the cores and battery shards from the dead for our own starShells, rearm when the winds abate, and push for the coastal highlands where Tyche and Atalantia await.