by Pierce Brown
“No.”
“Sir!” I turn to see Rhonna running up the hill in her Drachenjäger. It kneels so we can speak. She squints into the wind as her cockpit pops open. Sweat pours down her face.
“What now?” I ask in exhaustion. She sees the master switch in my hands. She knows Orion is dead and doesn’t flinch. So far that makes two who know she’s dead. The army can’t find out, not now. It will break them.
“Boys caught an enemy scout. Fulminata by the looks of him.”
One of Octavia’s own?
“Bring him to me.”
I peer out over the submerged isthmus to the greater host of Atalantia’s legions. Those Gold knights are still on the ridge. I amplify magnification on two figures standing in the foreground. Atalantia’s face peers back at me. She wears her own optics. She makes a masturbating motion, then flings the load off into the wind, shaking her head at me. I retreat behind the bluff for fear of snipers. If anyone can shoot straight in this, it’s her Gray dragoons.
My Arcosian Knights throw a man down at my feet. He’s in Fulminata armor, all right. Here’s hoping…
I pull him up by the hair to find the handsome, lean face of a Gold male in his thirties. Eyes that could have belonged to the purest of Gold stock—and once did, before Screwface got ahold of him and gave them to Mickey—stare back at me.
I pull the man into a hug, careful not to crush him with my starShell. The Arcosian Knights look more than a little confused, but only Sevro, my wife, Theodora, and Mickey knew the details of how we carved the man a new visage and sent him amongst our enemy as a mole nearly three years ago. Though I will need to know why he didn’t warn us of Atalantia’s ambush on Orion’s fleet, I am happy to see him. I feel safer all of a sudden.
“Screwface, you old psycho,” I say, leaning into him. Alexandar stiffens at the presence of an original Howler. Rhonna grins. She loves Screwface almost as much as she loves Freihild, Sefi’s personal assassin.
“The name is Horatius au Savag, you fool. As for ‘old.’ ” Screw gives a little sniffle. “I’m nigh on thirty-five. Savvy, my goodman?” He cocks out a nasty smile. “Figured you’d be near Tyche.”
If he burned cover, something bad is on its way. “What’s happened?”
“Bad news, boss. Heliopolis is under assault.”
I feel a cold inevitability creeping upon me. “What?”
“Twenty legions of the second wave made landfall. Twenty crashed or had to abort. The storm has delayed those on the ground, but he’ll likely send a strike force for the storm engine.”
More than a million men and tanks. “Whose legions?”
“Leopards are at the vanguard.”
“Ajax.”
“I know.”
After Apollonius was captured on Luna, there was a vacuum in Gold ground command. I wondered who would rise to fill the Minotaur’s place as their preeminent Legate. Falthe seemed poised, but Ajax has been making his bid. As violent as his mother, but twice as ambitious, he will assault the city till it falls, heedless of casualties. The man’s a raging beast with the unfortunate danger of also having a brain.
“Darrow…” Screwface says, stepping close. “What’s wrong?”
“Orion is dead.”
He looks stunned. For men like him, like me, who have fought this war since the beginning, there are so few who inspire us. Orion was that. We are lesser in her absence.
I can’t afford to mourn.
With Tyche drowned and Heliopolis fallen, my army will have nowhere to retreat. We will be surrounded, bombarded, and destroyed.
The moment Harnassus predicted has finally come. I must choose between saving my army and destroying theirs. I stare across the drowning city at the Ash Legions safe inland on the Talarian Peninsula. Atalantia is there. Trapped by the storm. I can find a way to cross, I’m sure.
If Thraxa survives, if the Morning Star made it to her, if the First Legion still exists, they will give me the power to destroy Atalantia and her entire Ash Legion, the hard Lunese core of her army.
It would be the greatest victory of the war.
But it will cost me Heliopolis, and in the end, my army.
The Republic could recover. Gold will not.
Us for them would be the rational transaction.
Orion deemed it worth the price.
Hearing the words of the Ash Lord on my friend’s own lips haunts me. A rational transaction. I look at the drowning population of Tyche, who welcomed us even when Heliopolis spat on us and yet still fell on the wrong side of one human being’s moral arithmetic. And I see a spiraling spiritual darkness. Ensnaring not just me, not just the friends whose cruelty I have emboldened, but Eo’s darkening dream. Did this all begin with betraying the Sons of Ares in the Rim? With the destruction of the Ganymede Dockyards? With my Rain over Mercury? So many concessions in the name of necessity. So many horrors in the name of liberty. Where is the beauty I saw when Ragnar reached for Sefi’s hand instead of his blade as he died? Where has our humanity gone? Is this why Sevro left? He felt the creep of doom and sought to cling to light?
I let fear drive my hope away. I let war become me, and my men followed.
Atalantia’s army isn’t worth mine.
If I die, it should not be taking her life. It should be saving theirs.
“Rhonna, I need you.” Those three words make her ten meters taller. “You can move in this bloodydamn wind. Take the fastest two drachens and find the Morning Star. Find Thraxa. Tell them Tyche is lost. Heliopolis is under assault. They must cross the Ladon to relieve Heliopolis.”
Her mouth hangs open. “You said…”
“I know what I said.”
The Ladon has eaten three of the greatest armies the worlds have known. Is the fourth I will feed it my own?
“How will they cross the Ladon in this?” Screwface asks.
“The Morning Star will be their stormbreaker. Captain Pelus is more than capable of the maneuver. If he’s not, Char may be with them. Tell Thraxa to follow in its shadow. I’ll take the armor through the mountains along the Kylor Pass and meet them at Heliopolis. Go.”
Rhonna spares a look to Alexandar, something passes between them, and she stands to forty meters. “Nice seein’ you, kid!” Screw calls after her as she thunders away.
Now this part.
I take a steady breath and reluctantly turn to face Alexandar. His eyes still watch Tyche in sorrow.
“Does your request stand?” I ask.
He stiffens in surprise. “Yes, sir.”
“There will be no rescue. The sea will come in.”
“Well, I haven’t had a bath in weeks.”
“Why are you doing this?” I ask, searching the strong bones of his face. “They’re just baked peasants.”
“Even peasants don’t float, sir.”
No amount of arrogance can hide the pain in his eyes. He blames himself for Angelia, perhaps even for this, but it also tears at him to see the suffering in the city. I feared he wanted to do this for me, to find favor in my eyes. All this time I held a mild disdain for him, because I thought my approval was all that mattered to the man. But he believes in the Rising. I see it now, just as I saw this moment coming. The moment I must choose to spend his life. But he has surprised me by choosing to spend it himself. I could not be prouder of the man.
He has become what Lorn should have been. And though the thought of losing him and Orion in the same hour nearly drives me to my knees, I nod.
“Very well. Take your knights.”
“Thank you, sir. If you could do me a kindness…” His bright eyes quest after Rhonna. She’s already disappeared inland. “Tell her to stop biting her nails. It’s vile.” He pauses. “And that she was wrong about me.”
On impulse, I pull out my razor and I am about to deliver him the Peerless scar
when he stops my hand. “I know what I am.”
“Do you?” I reach back to unclasp my wolfcloak from the ring on my left shoulder. Nearly losing it to the wind, I snap the clasps onto Alexandar’s mech. He falls to a knee, looking at it as if it were made all of diamonds. I lift him up. “Howlers never kneel.”
For once, he has no retort. Especially not when Screwface steps up to spit in his face to give him a proper welcome. The wind jams the spit back down his own mouth. “Bucket and box will have to wait, kid.” Screw shakes his hand and breaks the wind for us.
“Hold Atalantia as long as you can, then take the last tram and blow the tunnel behind you. Failing that, blow the tunnel and make for the mountains.” I strip off my extra batteries. Alex pushes them back.
“You must reach Heliopolis, sir.”
He is right, so I keep them. “Then your armor will be spent before morning, but if you can get to the Kylor Pass, you can follow it due south and make Heliopolis in two weeks. I forbid you to die, Howler. I want my cloak back. Sevro will never let me hear the end of it.”
“Yes, sir.” Resolution makes a thin line of his mouth. “Hail Reaper.”
I salute him and the knights behind. “Hail Arcos.”
He bows slightly in Screwface’s direction. “An honor, sir. Big fan.”
I watch from the hill with Screw as Alexandar and his Martian kin depart. Beset by rain and storm, the famous knights of Elysium trot down the hill in purple and silver armor to plunge toward the drowning city. They look like the last lords and ladies of a doomed age. Two hundred and three against an army and the sea.
I turn with a heavy heart and head back to my men to lead them south toward the battle in the desert that will decide the fate of us all.
I WAKE IN DARKNESS TO the sound of my starShell’s low-oxygen warning. Seraphina is dead. Her prowess in battle far outstripped mine, yet I am alive, and she is not.
It feels so unfair. That should not have been the end of her story.
Just like Cassius’s end.
From a distance, death seems the end of a story. But when you are near, when you can smell the burning skin, see the entrails, you see death for what it is. A traumatic cauterization of a life thread. No purpose. No conclusion. Just snip.
I knew war was dreadful, but I did not expect to fear it.
How can anyone not, when death is just a blind giant with scissors?
This will not end well. Dido will sense a devious hand at work, because she did not see her daughter become a smear of organs. But Romulus knew. He dreaded this. He gave his life to stop this, and he failed.
I do not look forward to telling Diomedes. If I even get the chance.
The last thing I remember is existence breaking in two. At least that is the sound the sky made when the Storm God fell to the desert floor.
It was not Kalindora or Rhone or Cicero whose payload destroyed the engine. Bitterly contested by the garrison, my Praetorians made three charges against the teeth of the enemy railguns. Only on the last did I manage to dispose my final missile into the gravity engines. It was not a conscious choice to forge ahead alone. An enemy munition simply destroyed my radio transmitter, so I did not know my wingmen were dead. Hours later I still do not know their names.
I feel that is immoral.
I run a diagnostic. My railgun ammunition is depleted. Little charge remains in the energy core that feeds the pulseFist, engines, and life support. The starShell is already sapping power from my pulseArmor to continue to function. I will have to disconnect soon.
It takes the better part of five minutes to free myself from the sand. When I do, I lower my canopy and gasp for air. The morning smells of petrichor and ozone. It is already seventy degrees Celsius.
The sun hides behind irradiated clouds. Lightning dances in the black north. Though I am in a pocket of peace, the sandstorm still roils in the deep desert. In all directions, veils of dust shimmy across the landscape like tattered skirts. Mounds of sand shiver around me as Praetorians and Scorpions climb their way out of the sand.
It is 0630.
Ajax should be here by now.
Did the storm take him?
What fate has befallen the invasion to the north? Is all lost to the sea?
As I move to help the Praetorians, my starShell rattles in protest and freezes as hydraulic fluid pours from the pelvis. I release the inner latch and climb out. I barely recognize the war rig I rode down to the planet. Only my pulseArmor is undented. I check to make sure my Bellona razor is still in its leg holster. Then I ping Seraphina’s tracking node. There are no results.
The Ladon has taken the daughter of Romulus.
A bloodfly as thick as my thumb pesters my face. I barely move as it bites and drinks from my neck. I push it against my skin until it pops.
More buzz nearby. Hundreds.
I follow their current until they make a cloud over something on the ground. A dying horse. It is a wild sunblood mare, the most cherished of Mercury’s carved wonders. Its legs are beyond mangled, and its skin is gone. Only its orange mane remains untouched by the feasting flies. Rhone kneels beside it, his starShell discarded in a dune.
Freed of his own starShell, Cicero saunters over, rubbing his jaw with his pulseArmor gauntlet. “Oh, pity. A sunblood.”
Before all else, Praetorians are equestrians. Before they learn to shoot, they shovel stable stalls. Each is given a young horse to train while at the ludus. At the end of their training, they are given a gun and told to kill the horse. The mindless killers that do are bound for the blackops legions. Only those that prove themselves loyal to their comrades, be they beast or man, are trusted to guard the Blood.
Rhone has likely not seen a horse in many years.
“Did you know there were once fifty thousand griffin on Mars?” he asks as he strokes the mare’s forehead. “Poachers sell their talons and feathers to new money on Luna. Now there are less than five hundred.” The horse jerks as Rhone’s pulseKnife sinks into her brain. “Nothing beautiful survives the mob.”
The flies continue their feast as he stands.
They will have found Seraphina by now.
Who will they find next?
By the look in Rhone’s flinty eyes, I know I am not the only witness to the horror. “It’s just a wild mare. There’re thousands out here,” Cicero says. “My stallion, Blood of Empire, makes that one look like a pony.”
I turn to him until he leaves, muttering about the Lunese. I look back at the horse, seeing Seraphina in its place for some reason.
“Did you know her well, the Raa?” Rhone asks.
“Not as well as she deserved, I believe. She thought little of me, truth be told.”
Kalindora marches up. She looks at the sky. “Ajax is late. Praetorian, report.”
By Rhone’s count, our casualties were ninety-four. Thirty dead, the rest missing or injured. Of the nine hundred Praetorians left, only thirty starShells are still operational. Cicero’s force is slightly larger, but bore more of the casualties.
“Shell cannibalized the pulseArmor power,” Rhone continues as I walk with him amongst the Praetorians. “Over seventeen hours of sustained engagement, and that wind.” He shakes his head. “Only thirty-three have juice for boot liftoff. It’ll be a hike.” The Gray Praetorian squints south. Few features interrupt the arid playa. “We can make it.”
Cicero laughs from the nearby dune. He slides down it like a child to come to a sitting posture in front of us.
“My goodman, loath though I am to contradict a soldier of your stature, this is my desert. Any man whose boots are dead will die here unless the shuttles come. Without cooling, your pulseArmor will become an oven. How much is left in your water reserves? A third? We are kitted for heavy combat in the north, not the fucking Ladon.” He sighs. “But do you really suspect something they call the Eater of A
rmies is to be anything less than an eater of fucking armies?” He glares at me and stands. “Where the hell is that reprobate Ajax anyhow?” Manmade thunder rumbles to the south. “Ah, so he’s begun without us. That muscled, walking penis.”
I ask Rhone if the coms are still down.
He nods. “Orbit’s no go.” He gestures to a group of Praetorians atop the Storm God. “But we’re boosting our signal with a field array. Should be able to reach Iron Leopard command in a few minutes.”
“What the devil is she doing over there?” Cicero squints at Kalindora. She stands on a dune to the west, looking out at the dust-veiled deep desert. “Composing poetry?”
I use precious suit energy to join her.
I call her name as I land. She motions me to be quiet and cocks her head to the wind. Dust sprays as Cicero lands as well. “Do you hear that?” she asks.
“No,” he says. “Is it the planet asking why House Lune hid the Storm God from their vaunted ally?”
“Shut up, Cicero.”
“Only because I’m thirsty.”
I join her on a knee and listen. Granules of sand clink against my armor. A lizard’s tiny claws crackle as he moves shadow to shadow. Thunder rumbles in the north. Wind whispers around me, whistling through the boulders, through my armor. It carries the sounds of distant machines.
I bolt to my feet.
Someone moves within the storm.
“Those are Drachenjäger footfalls,” Kalindora says.
“Oh dear,” Cicero says. He backs up. “Time to go.”
Searching the waste around us, I don’t know how we can. Dunes and the storm to north and east. Flat hardpan to the south. The eastern mountains are the closest cover, but the machines move between us and them. Except for the downed Storm God, there is no refuge for our men on foot. Nor can we bear the weight of all their armor. It would take ten minutes to get everyone out of their suits. Far too long.