by Pierce Brown
I watched the speech he gave denouncing my first attempts to send a fleet. He looked like he was picking the varnish for his own son’s casket. The guilt must be devouring him.
“If he’s alive, he’s encircled,” he continues. “Atalantia will dangle him like bait. This is just another trap. We have more ships, but only if we leave a planet vulnerable. They will lure us out, take us away from our orbit guns, and kill us, or just slip past and kill the planets. We’re vulnerable in attack, strong in defense. Who do we have left that can match Atalantia and her Gold Praetors in space? Zan?” He shakes his head. “Atalantia’ll eat her alive.”
“Kavax, Niobe, and the Arcos matriarchs will lead the fleet.”
“Golds against Golds.” He hates that he wonders how it always comes to that, because he knows the answer. “Not one of ours under sixty. Atalantia is in her prime. Ajax is a rising terror. And Atlas…Fact is, there’s five hundred of them that’d make even Nakamura run in a meat straw.”
The old soldier likes his colloquialisms. This one is for a close-quarters battle where two sides blow men into either end of a ship corridor till one runs out of breath, or men. It is an infantry term, so it is rather gross.
“More like five thousand,” Nakamura murmurs. Not one for bravado, she makes a sniping motion, her only salvation against the apex predators of my breed. I’ve seen her take down a Peerless in close quarters. I also know the price she paid. Her legs are bionic from the femur down. At least they match her robot eye.
“And then there’s Aja’s brood,” Dancer mutters. “What happens if Ajax boards the Reynard? Kavax can barely walk around the garden.”
He knows what I know. Darrow was the force of nature we rode to victory after victory. Yet whenever the Gold Legates or Praetors caught our other leaders in the field, they consistently made mincemeat of them. Wanting lowColors to be equal to Peerless in warfare is not the same as them being equal.
Without Darrow, he has no confidence in our arms. But the risk is necessary.
“Dancer, my husband and the Free Legions are our two greatest symbols. If the Republic abandons the Free Legions, Mars will give up on Luna. Then Luna falls to Atalantia. Atalantia takes Earth. Mars stands alone. And, eventually, Mars falls. Give us an alternative. A compromise. I’ll send my own ships, Kavax’s, Arcos’s, but I need a hundred ships-of-the-line from the defense fleets to stand a chance against Atalantia. That’s less than a third of Luna’s fleet.”
“And if you lose?”
“We won’t.”
He sits in silence, rubbing his outsized hands together. The movement slows as his resolve forms. I hear the door shutting before he looks up. I missed my opportunity, or perhaps it never really existed. “I cannot risk those atomics coming here,” he says. “I may hate this human swamp, but it’s filled to capacity.”
“Then I wish you good health and ill fortune.”
“Wait, Virginia.” My hand hovers over the datapad as he leans forward, voice barely above a whisper. “You know this will escalate. If I somehow fall off a balcony or eat an unruly fishbone—”
He hits the nerve.
“Pity. I never confuse you and Harmony. Yet after all this time, you still think I am my father. Or is it my brother?”
“It’s not you. It’s your people.”
“Daxo, you mean.”
“And Theodora, the Seventh, the Arcoses.”
“I have them under control.”
If he knew Sevro was here and out of control, he’d be shitting himself.
“That’s either a big fat lie or you’re drinking your own swill. You and I both know Darrow and the Reaper are two different things entirely. And the Reaper didn’t gnaw through the Society because he was a better military strategist than the Ash Lord. His gift is making men go mad. You’ve seen it.”
I have. Fighter pilots going “Polyphemus” and driving straight into the bridges of enemy torchShips so much the Golds put them in the center of the ships. Unarmored lowColors using their tattered bodies to weigh down armored Golds so their fellows can finish them, like hounds after a cougar, baying my husband’s name.
“I didn’t stop carrying a rifle because I was old or it was heavy,” he says. “I did it to counter the Reaper’s weight as I never could in the legions. Some literally think he is a god. If they think he wants it…they’ll murder cities. They’ll murder me.”
There is a frail quality in him that goes behind weariness of the flesh. One he has never permitted me to see before. But the frailness is not weakness. It is a cornered spirit too tired for anything except a killing blow. “If I am assassinated…the Vox will retaliate.”
“I will control my people,” I say. “I wish I believed you could control yours. I will see you in three days, Senator. Try to avoid fishbones.”
I punch off the datapad. It fizzles with broken circuits. I punch it again. What good is being smarter than everyone if no one listens? Is this how my father felt? My brother? Is evil born of pure frustration?
Holiday watches the blood drip from a gash on my knuckle. It’s already coagulating. Even Mickey couldn’t match that genetic blessing. “Centurion, if I told you to kill Dancer O’Faran, would you do it?”
“No, ma’am.”
“Why not?”
“If Darrow and Orion are dead, you two are the Republic.”
We don’t know if they are or not. Communication to the planet is down. But I reject the concept of doubt. Darrow and Pax do not die. It is a paradigm of my life that will be true until proven beyond reasonable doubt.
I lick clean the congealing blood. “Good answer.” Even Kavax would never have refused my father like that. If Holiday only knew how much her presence restrains my darker urges, she might think it wise to put a few rounds through my skull just to be safe. “Make sure the word goes through the ranks again. If anyone so much as touches a hair on Dancer’s head, the last face they’ll ever see will be mine as I entomb them in the bowels of Deepgrave, with only lonely Boneriders for company.”
“Yes, ma’am. But it’s not them you have to worry about.” She lowers her voice. “The Seventh is climbing the walls. They think the Senate is filled with traitors. If Sevro goes to them…”
“He has thirty thousand elite shock troops within twenty minutes of the Citadel. I’m aware, Nakamura. I am very much aware.” I stretch my neck as my ship approaches the Moonhall landing pad. “Silenius walked his stiletto. I’ve no doubt we’ll walk ours.”
“What makes you so confident?”
“Well, for starters, we have smaller feet.”
DICTAEON ANTRON, THE PERSONAL SKYHOOK of my closest confidant, Daxo au Telemanus, and for ten years the informal headquarters of the Vox’s nemesis, the Optimate Party, floats over the Citadel. Daxo designed it himself to look like a brain. Viewed from above, it resembles little more than a pair of very engorged testicles. And everyone, excluding perhaps four people, is afraid to say so. For years, I had him park it over the Sea of Serenity to maintain the impartiality of my office. And for aesthetics.
There’s little point to either anymore.
Under its conjoined domes, an army has assembled. Instead of armor, these soldiers wear high-collared suits, lion pins instead of phalera of valor, and carry datapads instead of rifles. The politicos of the Optimate Party are ready for war. As is Daxo’s floating office.
Inflatable beds fill hallways and offices in anticipation of the seventy-two-hour blitz before the vote. Coffee carts trundle. Medici prepare their stim stations. Commissaries check their food stores. Dozens of senators join us in hologram conference from their homes in Hyperion and offices in the Citadel.
The politicos assemble along the dome’s tiered rows of data stations that encircle the gravity shaft down to Daxo’s office.
The politicos applaud as I enter, hailing my speech and chanting for Mars in honor
of their fellow Martians, which comprise most of the Free Legions.
They know the vote will be momentous. Not just because of its material consequences, but because it represents a tectonic shift in our politics. Years ago, I predicted the natural evolution away from Color tribalism to planetary nationalism. Now it is here and people are shocked, as though interest groups carve themselves out of the ether.
We stand to lose moderate Lunese, who fear invasion. Dancer stands to lose most Martians, possibly all Reds—who often vote against me, but have rediscovered their zealotry for my husband after his victory. As for Earth—it’ll be up for grabs. But after all the shifting and shaking, the vote will come down to Copper and Obsidian—who have declared solidarity and plan to vote as blocs. Win one, it’s a knife fight. Win both, it’s victory. Lose any of our foundation—Silver, Gray, White—and it’s bedlam. The problem is, I know Sefi is not in her estate on Earth or on Luna. She smuggled herself to Mars weeks ago to link up with elements already there in Olympia. Bit by bit, she smuggles more Obsidian, and prepares her plans. Whole legions have gone missing. She thinks I don’t notice. But how will her senators vote, considering those plans? I haven’t the faintest clue.
I ask Flagilus, one of Daxo’s premier Pink apprentices, where his master is hiding.
“In a meeting with Senator Caraval.”
“A meeting? In his office?”
Flagilus’s cadre of politicos chuckle to one another. “Much to our dismay as well. It seems Senator Caraval has more testicular fortitude than his side part would suggest. Senator Telemanus asked for you to do the honors and to join him after.”
I feel a minor pang of disappointment. Only Daxo loves this weird game as much as I do. I was not as close with him as a child. In fact, I found his intelligence entirely too much like that of a shark—restless and indefatigably predatory. But it was not Pax or Kavax or their sisters who pumped the water from my lungs when I struck my head on a coral reef as a girl.
He saved my life then, a deed that would soon become a habit. How many days did we sit together composing ridiculous game theories and mock debates after I broke my leg in a fall from my father’s prized sunblood?
Without Daxo, this is a lonely endeavor. “They can wait,” Holiday says. She’s been watching me.
“That obvious?” I ask.
“I never drink tequila without Trigg,” she says. “You and the brain have been planning this for weeks. It can wait five minutes.”
It’s just the excuse I was looking for. I flash her a smile. “Careful of the politicos. They’re carnivorous.”
“Atlas already tried that. I’m inedible.”
“That I do not doubt.”
I jump down the shaft and free-fall two hundred meters until the gravity well slows my descent. My feet touch down in the center of an aquarium. Walls of water stand a hundred meters high, held back from the central axis of the office by a stasis field. Smaller bubbles of water, restricted by secondary fields, wander through the office ferrying carnivorous passengers to and fro.
It is a game, you see. The trick for Daxo is never to let one of his seventeen infant gigavok—cartilaginous pale deepsea predators—exist within a sphere or wall of water with another. The species has stunted pituitary glands that limit their size to one meter unless their glands are stimulated via cannibalism. In six years there have been no fatalities within Daxo’s office, except the unfortunate case of the Peerless Venusian assassin who thought Daxo was sleeping. Seven gigavok shared her for lunch. It was the most horrible thing I have ever seen in my life. Victra clouted Sevro bloody when she caught him showing it to their daughter Electra late at night up in Lake Silene.
My sister-in-law, for lack of a more accurate word, has a theory that is not altogether mad. “If Dictaeon Antron is actually supposed to be a brain, pray tell what is the purpose of giant albino swimmers? They’re sperm, Virginia. Giant predatory cannibal sperm, and not even five people have the nerve to say so. Daxo is playing a joke on the world, just to measure who isn’t afraid of him. I love that freak.”
And I miss that woman, despite her irascible idiocy. She might be the only human alive who can make me lose my temper with a single sigh about how coffee just tasted better when it was picked by slaves.
I follow the sound of Daxo’s voice through an amorphous corridor of water. A gigavok stalks me from a water bubble above. I try to ignore the metaphor.
I find Daxo reclining on a fainting couch set on a Turkish rug with the insouciant entitlement of a vacationing heiress, albeit a colossal, bald heiress who is equally at ease coaxing a political concession from a rival as he is smashing Venusian skulls with his personal collection of exotic weaponry.
Sitting across from Daxo in a simple, off-the-rack suit, legs folded, hair parted, unremarkable face passive, is Publius cu Caraval, The Incorruptible, Tribune of the Copper bloc, the media’s Voice of Reason, and the most important vote in the Republic.
What a catch. How in Jove’s name did Daxo manage to part him from his soup kitchen?
“Come, come, Publius,” Daxo purrs, making a small hand gesture to acknowledge my presence. “You know how the game works. Concessions are as detestable, natural, and necessary in politics as flatulence in humans.”
“Daxo, please. We both know when it comes to battles of rhetoric, you have me unarmed. I’ve told you once, I’ll tell you again, I cannot in good conscience vote to expand the Sovereign’s powers when she continues to let Quicksilver run roughshod over this government and its people.” His voice has a surprisingly alluring quality. He’s already a fine orator. If he weren’t so Pecksniffian, and added a little bombast to make up for his lack of presence, he would be nearly as good as me.
Daxo makes a sound of mild disgust. “Is the fate of the Free Legions worth such moral rectitude?”
“Possibly, yes. He gouges us with prices, threatens the fabric of society with his attacks on unions and the common man. Just last week, his automatons put a million laborers out of work in Endymion. It wasn’t enough he stole the Reds’ mines through legal skullduggery, he’s taking Luna too!”
“It is unreasonable to expect her to give the Silvers nothing, Publius.”
“It is immoral to allow private citizens to hold this government hostage,” Publius replies. “I am sorry, Daxo, but it is a nonstarter. The military side of your strategy is convincing, not that I could tell a decurion from a centurion. But I cannot vote for the bill if you cede to his demands. It is an issue of principle.”
I clear my throat and step out from behind the water wall. Publius jumps to his feet, startled, and sweeps into a bow perfectly attuned to the sizable respect he has for my office.
“Senator Caraval,” I say, kissing him on the cheek. “I admit I’m surprised to see you here, of all places.”
“Yes, well, desperate times call for sacrifices from us all,” he replies. He casts a look around, certainly irked by the gigavok and the ostentatiousness of the office. His own offices are kept in the same nondescript lower Hyperion building where he served as a public defender for lowColors before the Rising. His assigned offices in the Citadel are too grandiose for his tastes. Before the Rising, I couldn’t imagine a world where he and Daxo would ever be in the same room, much less speaking as relative equals. Makes me smile a little inside, especially noting Daxo’s annoyance.
“I was under the impression you viewed the legions as lost,” I say, taking a seat on a Turkish cushion.
The Incorruptible nods and retakes his seat. “A deplorable presumption on my part, I fear. The numbers, you see. While my assessment was based on the data I had at the time, I admit to a certain…dimming of faith.” He hangs his head. “I am ashamed for that, but not the assessment. I said the same to Daxo here: I judge a case based on its evidence. You know I am loath to flimflam, flip-flop, or whatever they call it these days, but the situation has changed.
What your husband did…staggering, my Sovereign. Staggering.”
“And the moral ramifications?” I ask.
He waves his hand before his face. “Fascism is a scourge. Sometimes we must sacrifice to destroy it.”
“So you no longer presume the legions lost.”
“No,” he says. “Your speech, Daxo’s dogged pursuit, the Battle of the Ladon, they have woken the slumbering patriot. If we can bring them back, we make a statement that will ring through time.” He steeples his fingers and leans forward. “Yet I am in a bind. I am from this moon. I am expected to vote with the Vox.”
“Even as they descend into fits of nonsensical maudlin hysteria stemming from Cassandra Syndrome?” Daxo asks.
Publius levels a look at him. “I disagree with them, but I will not abide intellect-slander.” He turns back to me. “My prior vocation taught me to be detailed in assessment and concise in judgment. The Vox fear momentary pain for long-term gain. We must save the legions. But the Silvers know how desperate this vote is. They will bleed you dry. I cannot allow this Republic to become another plutocracy. I will not.”
“So you blame them for ransoming their votes, yet you’ve come to do the same to me. You’ve learned well.”
“I am not proud of it. Politics is an ignoble profession. But as I said, sacrifices. My electorate does not have trillionaires, much less a quadrillionaire benefactor. We are public servants. Ten times the population of Silvers, we have but the same ten senators they have. We must use what leverage we can.”
I expected as much. He’s a patient man, honest to the point of obnoxious, but worst of all, he knows when he has a strong hand. He knows I have more tricks. He wants me to use them on Silver. Somehow he’s found the only way to keep clean hands in this world is to outsource the dirty work.
Lucky for me, I have access to gloves, and a long eye.
“Hypothetically,” I begin as if the plan weren’t already in motion for weeks now, “what if I told you I could get the Silver vote, maybe not all, but enough, without one concession? And when the Senate temporarily expands my powers, I will annul many past concessions?”