Dark Age

by Pierce Brown

  He leans forward. “Then hypothetically, I am intrigued. But I should hear no more, of course.”

  “Of course.”

  “I’ll take my leave, then.” He stands and shakes Daxo’s hand, then mine. A servant appears to guide him to a secondary door in the floor. Before he descends, he glances about. “Senator Telemanus. I must admit, the architecture certainly makes a statement. It is a remarkable man who can bare his balls to the world.”

  Daxo is stunned silent. Publius bows. The door closes. And I burst into a fit of laughter.

  Daxo waits for me to recover, entirely ignoring Publius’s remark. He taps his chin in thought with a forefinger the size of a steak knife as I sit down. “You want to know how I lured him here?”

  “Sure, let’s talk about that.”

  “I told him Darrow sent a communiqué from Mercury telling us to beseech Publius cu Caraval. ‘He is the conscience of the Republic, and our last hope.’ ”

  “You are a cretin.”

  “Yes, aren’t I? There is only one thing in which Publius is not forthcoming—his irascible vanity.”

  “Unique trait.”

  “Sarcastic ripostes are seldom clever enough to prove that they are little more than the desperate cries for validation of a petty and insecure mind.”

  “Oh, shut up, Father.”

  “He did teach us half of what we know.”

  “The cold, evil half.”

  “Which has kept us alive amongst predators, my dear. Returning to my thrust—when has a Copper ever been a savior?” He chuckles to himself. “Now all you have to do is wrest the Silvers away from Quick, and victory shall be ours.”

  “Stop talking in that tone. We already seem evil enough in this aquatic lair of yours. All that’s missing is you twirling a mustachio.”

  He strokes the gold angels embedded on his bald head instead. “Speaking of facial hair…”

  “Theodora has Sevro under control.”

  “Does she?”

  I sigh. “Daxo…”

  “It is hardly pedantic to advise my Sovereign to utilize her best assets. Theodora has proven herself capable, but she is not me nor is she you. Nor is she any of the two hundred Peerless on Luna equipped for the task.”

  He sighs and pets a passing gigavok through a water sphere, almost losing a finger for it. He smiles, not offended. He likes it when things obey their natures.

  “I confess. I have always viewed Sevro as a marginal character in our great endeavor. He is ill-tempered, rash, and braggadocious in nature. I don’t know if he’s ever read a book. Let me loose, and I will subdue the illiterate halfman in short order.”

  I pretend to consider it.

  If one listed all the qualities a tyrant might possess, one might start by describing Daxo au Telemanus. He is cruel, thorough, calculating, cold, arrogant, and, though he does not lack empathy, he is fairly unconvinced of its logical merits. Just as he is entirely unconvinced of demokracy. But he is obsessively competitive. And he chose his team long ago.

  More than any man I’ve ever met, Daxo was entirely content being a lonely child. Thank Jove Kavax told me to memorize Paradise Lost before I met his firstborn. We might have lost the war if he found me wanting.

  “A thought’s just occurred to me,” I say. “Did you model yourself after Milton’s depiction of Lucifer?”

  “Finally.” A slow, immense smile spreads across his lips; he is as pleased as a lizard on a hot rock. “To be weak is miserable, doing or suffering.”

  “Jove on high,” I say. “It took me twenty-seven years to get that.”

  “You are my only friend to guess.”

  “Daxo, you only keep one friend.”

  “At a time. You lasted longer than the rest. There are more private secrets to uncover. Hiding in plain sight.”

  “The gigavok are metaphors for your virility, and your fear that if you had children, they would eat each other.”

  “Fuck.”

  He glares at me.

  I lean back. “You see, communication is our salvation. So…no, you don’t get to play with Sevro. Exponential oddity is a perilous game.”

  “Very well.” He sighs his colossal body from his couch and offers me a hand. The waters part as he escorts me to the gravity well. We look up at the light of the politico chamber. “Are you certain we can’t dissolve the Senate?” he asks. “It would just be so much simpler to feed them to my metaphors.”

  “No.”

  “Worth a try.”

  We put our heads together and recite our mantra.

  Matter, how tiny my share

  Time, how brief my allotment

  Fate, how small my roll to play

  Self, all that can be mastered

  Then, hand in hand, we ascend.

  * * *

  —

  Hundreds of political adjuncts quiet as we arrive.

  “Good morning!” I say to the Optimate army as Daxo looms over my shoulder like an evil Proctor. Silence falls. Their faces turn toward us in excitement. Gods, so many are as young as I was when I served Octavia. “I hope you’re all rested. I’ll be brief. Most of you have done this before on the Conscription Accords and that sham of a peace treaty. We’ve learned our lesson from those losses: press to the Forum. And we didn’t have momentum then. We’ve got it now, dammit. Three days from today, we vote to save eight million lives. Until then, cancel your families, cancel your social calendars…” They laugh at that fantasy. Daxo has no patience to teach anyone but obsessive-compulsive Martians, and stone-cold political killers. “You have only this…”

  I toss up a hologram pyramid the size of an assault shuttle, subdivided into empty blocks representing the seventy-one-vote majority needed to give me the power over the defense fleets.

  “Fill. This. Pyramid,” I say. “Twice we’ve tried to vote. Twice, the Vox have turned the screws and denied us the eight Tribunes to call a quorum. With his victory, Imperator O’Lykos has given us the Tribunes. With ours, we give him a chance.”

  They rap their knuckles on their desks.

  “For those of you fresh in from Mars, prepare yourselves. Good demokracy on Luna is not like that of Agea. Here, good demokracy is a knife fight. No vote is set in stone. No word eternal. What we gain, we must fight to the bone to keep. The Vox will use every tactic at their disposal. Daxo has given you your assignments. He alone channels my will.” They know that already. “From here to the vote, Hyperion will descend into a fit of political hysteria. But we will endure because…”

  “Hic sunt leones!” they shout, as is their custom. I feel the inner heat building toward that exultant moment. I extend my hand to Daxo, and take from his titanic hands the giant hourglass Mickey grew from Venusian glass coral and gifted me upon the legalization of inter-Color reproduction. I hold it up, cherishing the vibrations before the storm, the fear and nervousness bubbling from my allies, and then slam it down.

  “Fill. This. Pyramid!”

  Senator holograms blink away. Aides enter their iso pods. In my offices in the Citadel of Light, in the halls of Senate Crescent, all over Hyperion, thousands of soldiers in my political army rotate the great pistons of our demokratic engine. Lobbyists flood restaurants and offices. Trillionaires turn their screws. Organizers activate their armies. Media surrogates prepare for cameras. Senators become the courted, the hunted, the pressured, the wooed, the fooled, the bamboozled, the corrupted, and the purchased.

  A thrill of excitement goes up my leg. I do love this.

  YOUR MAJESTY, YOU HAVE SUFFERED a catastrophic collision.

  Two life forms in critical danger.

  A distress signal has been sent to your employer.

  A distress signal has been sent to your employer.

  Smoke in the nostrils. Pressure. Shivering. Try to move. Can’t. Th
umping blood in the deep of my thigh. Lights stutter and crackle. Bent metal everywhere. Panic creeping.

  Pinned to the floor by collapsed hull. Right leg trapped. Bullet hole in chest, no exit wound, resFlesh torn. Probably fatal. Smoke. A boy gasping. Push myself up. Can’t. Why not? Left radius and ulna snapped. Compound fracture. Pokes out through skin. Looks like a barracks “beef” rib through blood pudding.

  Losing blood. Body cold. Hear voices. Threat? Reach for weapon. Can’t find it. Darkness creeping in.

  Molten square opens hole in hull. Crash of metal. Volga? No. Filthy creatures in tatters. Big boys. Glowing laser eyes. Respirators, radiation gear. Scavengers. Swat my hand away. Look under my eyelids. On my neck. Searching for legion ink.

  A distress signal has been sent to your employer.

  A distress signal has been sent to your employer.

  Fear. Bickering. A child’s body dragged out. Limp. Heavy cutting laser. Going to help me. Cut the hull away. Free me. Smell roasting meat. Mouth waters. Feel pressure. Look down. My hip, but no leg. Where is my leg?

  Volga. Help me.

  I fall out of the horror back into the shell of my body. Incomprehensible agony radiates from the interior of my right thigh. The rest of me does not move.

  “…rejecting the artificial tissue.”

  The words slither through the thick wool of my brain. My ring is gone. I look down at my body, or try to look. The body is naked, pinned to a table like a vivisected frog. My right leg is skinless synthetic meat from the hip down. Green, webby fibers spasm over translucent bone. Artificial vessels worm in fleshy strands. An emaciated human with two hundred glass eyes affixed to his head hunches near my feet, spinning membrane. Someone screams. I think it’s me.

  “Massive coronary agitation.”

  “…withdrawal complication.”

  “Keep him alive,” a voice rumbles beyond the light. “Your Queen wills it.”

  “…sedative!”

  I drift into the dark. It is warmer than I expected. There is a boy there, on a raft, his hands behind his head, his skin freckled from the sun. He floats off a shadowy shore watching a big sky, not one collared by metal towers, but dusted with stars and stretching the horizon. All I want is to float there with him. To smell the salt. To lie in that cradle as the sea rocks us to sleep.

  The moon pulses in the sky like an atomic dilation. Drawing me up into its gravity. No no no no nonononono.

  Chop ’em if they’re taller.

  Stomp ’em if they’re smaller.

  Mauler, brawler, legacy hauler…

  Chanting in the tunnel to light.

  A girl stands over me. Her hatchetface pulled into a sneer. A scalpel glints in her hand. She holds it over my throat. My memories, my life, my guilt, return and I push my throat up into the metal. “Go on, slick. Gimme a nick.”

  I laugh when she can’t. Never comes when you want it to. The laughter won’t screw off. I scramble for the Z valve inside. It ain’t there. The laughs turn to sobs. Till I’m bawling like a softfoot waking first night in his bunk to find his ass gettin’ torn up by a line of leatherneck triarii, fresh in from killing Moonies.

  I crank and crank on the Z valve.

  Volga’ll be dead by now. Dead like the Scarhunters I trained. Rest of my freelance team’s toe tags—Cyra, that greedy idiot, Dano, poor pickpocket kid I made into a real operator.

  Dead by association.

  Fuck me.

  Where’s my fucking ring? Takes me a while to realize I’m shouting it. I thrash against the restraints.

  When the tears dry up enough for me to actually see, the girl’s gone. The boy’s replaced her. So he’s alive. Well, that feels…good. Got a nasty scar that’s gonna take some healing from his right eye to his left jaw. I crack a smile that splits my dry lips. “Hey, kid.”

  “Tinman.” He dangles my engagement ring on the end of a chain. “Been watching out for it.”

  “Good lad. Give it here.”

  He doesn’t. I spot the med-bank behind him. Look at all that dope. Bottles and canisters and packages. Oh my.

  “Where are we?”

  “Mars.”

  “Mars. Huh. So, kid. Need you to do old Tinman a favor. Got some joints need oilin’. Got a condition, you know. Hard life and all. Maybe zoladone? Might be some in the med-bank back there.” He doesn’t move. “Just a little panel to take the edge off. Liquid Z ain’t kill-juice. That zombie shit’s all propaganda. Helps me with my demons.” He just watches. “Come on, now. Come onnnn. I ain’t goin’ nowhere.”

  “No.”

  “Little rich shit. Saved your ass from a pillaging. Get some Z. Don’t do me like this. I’ll eat your fucking heart.” He steps back. “Come on. Hey.” I try a smile. “Heyyyy. I didn’t mean. Was a joke.” My laugh comes out as a bark. “Gods, you’re tight as Juno’s cunt. We made a good team back there. But you gotta have my six. It’ll calm me down. Had an operation, see? Please. Please, little man?”

  “December sixteenth, 737 PCE.”

  “Huh?”

  “Four turmae necāre of Legio XIII Dracones, the best of Flavinius’s Praetorians, were given orders by Aja au Grimmus to assassinate reformers in the government in a coordinated purge. One squad visited the Hysperia Gardens, an illegal house of torture. Before insertion, they were given their standard op-cocks. What they did not know was that their customary stimulants had been replaced with zoladone.

  “Upon insertion, the killsquad received new orders that even Aja knew her prized dragoons would find…difficult. Freed from empathy by the zoladone, the dragoons followed their orders and butchered seventy-five men, women, and children guilty not of sedition, but of enduring a life of sexual torture, and possessing compromising information on loyal members of the ruling regime. Including Atalantia au Grimmus. Afterwards, the dragoons melted their victims with hydraxic acid. Even the children.” I know this already. But the judgment of a child is a horrible thing. It was his race that gave the order. Not mine. “When Trigg ti Nakamura came off the zoladone high, Holiday found him with a gun in his mouth. She encouraged him to seek Ares to make up for the blood on his hands. This according to her testimony on…”

  I thrash forward at him. Things that’d make an ironclad leatherneck with six rain badges turn her head and blink pour out of my mouth. Slides off Pax like he’s on the Z himself.

  “Do you want to live like a zombie, when they made him one?” He holds up the ring. “This ring belongs to Ephraim ti Horn. When he asks for it back, I’ll give it to him.”

  “—gives you the right?” I snarl. “Spoiled little—”

  “You asked for Z before you asked for Volga,” he snaps. “But you risked your life for her? You’re an addict, Tinman. If you refuse to hold yourself to account, I’ll do it for you. Jove knows, you don’t have anyone else.”

  I lie awake screaming at him long after his footsteps echo away. Soon I grow too tired. In the silence, memories of Trigg hunt me down. Volga soon joins. In the cacophony, I revert to all I know, and from my lips seeps the old footfuck creed veterans screamed into my face as we marched until it was drilled into our gray matter to replace human vertebrae with titanium chain links. I whisper as I fall asleep:

  Chop ’em if they’re taller.

  Stomp ’em if they’re smaller.

  Mauler, brawler, legacy hauler,

  smoke that crow, earn this holler.

  Mauler, brawler, legacy hauler,

  smoke that ant, pay off your collar.

  Legio!

  Aeterna!

  Victrix!

  One more time, you fuckin’ dogs!

  Mauler, brawler, legacy hauler…

  I WAKE IN A LARGE four-poster. Light seeps through pale blue curtains. How long have I been out? There’s an IV pumping saline into me. My stomach r
umbles as I pull it out. The itch of the zoladone hunger has morphed from rabies-infected ragebeast to small dog. It pisses in the corner and squeaks out a bark. I ignore it, for now.

  Kid visited, didn’t he? Has my ring. Has Trigg’s story. That uppity brat. Gods, my head aches.

  Right leg itches too, like it’s made of Venusian acid ants. I toss off the blankets to reveal my legs. The artificial muscles and sinew are now covered by a new growth of pale skin that mismatches with my darker left leg. It’s fancy tech—well muscled already. Puckered pink flesh makes a knot on my mid-torso where Gorgo’s rail slug passed through the Duke of Hands and then into me. More pink flesh makes a finger-long ridgeline on my forearm where it broke in the crash. I peek under my medical shorts.

  Hello, oldboy. Glad you’re still around.

  I wiggle the toes. Nerves are already calibrated. No phantom pain, except a weird ache in my chest. Only get work this good if you got the patronage of a rich house. But I ain’t rich. I ain’t a crusader. So qui solvente? Who’s paying? Where’s Volga? Where am I?

  I push open the curtains. The suite is expansive and fit for a brooding but secretly sensitive knight from a holoCan drama. Stone walls and floor. Expensive rugs. A hearth fit to dance in. A pair of fuzzy pink slippers sit by the bedside, along with an arctic bear cloak. Someone thinks they’re hilarious.

  I slip both on and go to a wooden door punctured by beams of sunlight. I’m blinded as I push it open. A wash of cool air whips in. I wrap the coat tighter and step out onto the terrace. Covered with spots of snow and topiaries, an expanse of stone pushes to a low stone balustrade covered thick with flowering vines of green and silver.

  Beyond that is a sight to see.

  In the first year of the Battle of Luna, my boys and I were hunting some Gold gladiator impresario when the building adjacent to ours was struck by a termite munition. When the dust cleared, a Gold woman stood in the ruins of her block empire. An arm missing from the elbow down, body fleeced of skin and all the blueprints underneath vivid as traffic arteries. She swayed there, tilting her chin upward at us. As if to say, “Witness my glory, peasants.”