Dark Age

by Pierce Brown

  I don’t see where it hits her. I just hear her screaming. She stumbles away, almost dropping her hatchet. Something clanks on the wall behind where I stand. It’s connected to me. I reach backward and find metal. I pull on it till I feel pressure release in my back. It’s one of Lilath’s hatchets. I look at her, and I stumble from the pain and loss of blood as I wind up to throw it at her. She’s hunched beside the clone. There’s a ripping sound. And she stands up with a shudder. It was her nose the needles got. And she didn’t take any chances with how much of her nose she cut off. She turns back to me and pulls another hatchet from the sheath on her thigh to join the bloody one she already has.

  I throw my hatchet at her.

  She doesn’t bother dodging. It just sparks off her armor. I lose faith in the fight and I dive into the escape hole to plunge downward. The ride is a minute almost straight down through darkness. The tunnels go almost as deep as the Dragonmaw bunker. The tube levels off and deposits me on a soft landing pad, in a small room. It is one of the Citadel’s secondary fallback bunkers. There are four tubes that can access it. I pull a lever to close all four.

  They might have found everything else in my office, but not this. I’m going to pass out from blood loss soon. I rush past the weapons cases to the medical station. Arm broken, I clumsily grab the laser saw first. The blue line of energy comes to life. Without hesitating, I slice off my index finger at the bottom joint. The pain of the amputation and cauterization are meager compared with that of the lily’s toxins. I leave the gouge where my ear used to be weeping blood. The flow has already diminished, and will stop soon from coagulation. I take off the middle finger at the top joint, and just the tip of the ring finger. I discard the laser cutter and reach for the cauterizing gun. No time for anything pretty. Even with it my internal organs will likely keep bleeding in a rupture. I moan over the medical table in pain as the gun melts closed the wound on my right side. Then I seal the other ones I can reach.

  I thought I would face a dire choice. To save Sevro and my friends, or to save myself. Now I realize, there is no choice. If I don’t get out, I will die, and so will the fleet in orbit. I have to get out.

  I take three shots of stims to stay awake, then pump blood from the med station’s supply into myself as I sit woozily in front of the communications terminal. It is located beside the ejection chute. The terminal is already in Black Cathedral protocol. Someone else must’ve called it. Kavax? Holiday?

  The hidden network immediately connects me to the bridge of the Reynard, Kavax’s flagship. He turns to see me on his displays. Sophocles tilts his head toward the camera. “Kavax. I am in the small chapel.” The man’s eyes widen. Flashes from battle wash over his face. “I have internal bleeding in the kidneys and likely the liver. Left arm is broken, right hand losing function. Sevro, Clown, and Pebble are also prisoners in the Sunhall. How many clergy in the building?”

  “Four, but they are in Moonhall and connecting tunnels are compromised.”

  “I won’t be able to go to them,” I say looking down at my wound.

  “Do you know where the prisoners are located?”

  “No.”

  “Can you find out?” he asks.

  “Giving you access to internal cameras still connected to the systems,” I say. “Kavax, make the call. I’ll go back for them if you think I can make it.” He and his techs sort the feeds for a few moments to find the ones I sent. As they do I examine the defense systems I had installed in the Citadel. Nearly all of them are dark. Lilath and the clone peeled my fortress apart well. Oddly, the escape and transit systems are the only systems running. Likely so the clone and the Boneriders could move about behind the scenes while they pulled the strings of their puppet government. Kavax is done appraising the information I sent.

  “Where are they?” I ask.

  “Let me see your wounds.”

  I turn them toward the camera. “Eject,” he says. “We have teams on the ground, ready to move at exit.” Eject. My heart wants to be the person who risks it for Sevro in the face of certain death. My head can’t decide. But in this situation, the person on his end of the line is the boss. Kavax has operational control. I look emptily at the ejection tube.

  Is this what it comes down to? Leaving the best of my friends in the clutches of a ghost from my past? I suppose so. Sevro was right. I am not Mustang any longer. I am the Sovereign.

  I crank open the ejection hatch, crying out from the pain as I use my broken arm. I feel very selfish as I crawl through the aperture into a small padded compartment large enough to fit ten.

  I close the hatch behind me and the lights in the compartment and in the concrete tunnel glow. Electricity channels through the two metal rails on either side of the tunnel, and the compartment shoots forward.

  It carries me away from not only Sevro, Clown, and Pebble. It carries me away from the place Daxo died and the people who killed him. It takes me away from ten years of work in a place I had always feared. I had dreamed of one day leaving the Citadel of Light behind, perhaps ousted from office in a hard-fought election against a worthy successor, or after my relevance had worn out. I once hoped it would be Dancer who took it on next. Never did I imagine my last time leaving the Citadel would be like this. As the compartment races along the forty-kilometer tunnel, I make myself a promise that this will be the second-to-last time I leave the Citadel. I will return to finish this, and then I will never see this place again.

  It feels like a dream when the compartment slows to a stop. The hatch pops open above my head and I emerge. Large men in armor stand waiting for me. But then their rifles rise, and I see the Vox upside-down pyramid on their armor.

  I stand there with my hands in the air, feeling myself fading.

  Gunfire comes from the hall, and before the men can turn around, the wall behind them erupts. High-powered rounds mow them down in seconds. A team of heavily armed Lionguard and Pegasus Legion soldiers burst in from the hall hunched over their weapons. The battered helmet of a Pegasus centurion retracts to reveal Holiday ti Nakamura.

  “Lie down, ma’am,” she barks. Two of her men expand a peculiar stretcher with two large pods on each end. Holiday forces me down onto it. I make no arguments. I can barely walk. “Reynard, this is Gray Rock. I have Gold Horse. We are on the move.” The stretcher locks me in place. I see what the pods are for when an intense pulseField throbs between them with a thrmmmm.

  Two soldiers carry the stretcher as Holiday leads the squad out of the room. Gunfire echoes through the halls. Gunship engines roar outside as we ascend the bunker via the stairs. Dozens of Vox legionnaires lie dead. More of Holiday’s lurcher squads join us. They look like a troop of evil gargoyles as they push from the bunker in force out into the light of day.

  We’re in one of my brother’s craters. Now I see why Kavax didn’t send in men through the tunnel earlier. It’s in the center of a Vox mobile infantry legion headquarters. Lionguard and Pegasus Legion gunships lay waste to the camp. Holiday leads the special forces troopers straight into the back of a waiting assault transport. Its guns rattle as we lift off as soon as I’m aboard. Fifty Pegasus troopers activate their boots and fly close behind the transport as the door seals.

  The war becomes a distant rumble.

  A medical team waiting in the assault shuttle rushes to me. Before I can object, they sedate me. I feel our escape from atmosphere distantly through the bumps that resonate through the deck. When I go weightless, I know we have made it to space. When the shuttle wheezes to a stop and clunks down on a deck, I know I have made it to the Reynard. I close my eyes and succumb to the loss of blood.

  * * *

  —

  I wake to find Darrow’s mother asleep at my bedside with Sophocles in her arms. The ship is quiet. It seems they disengaged with the Vox fleet. Monitors above me track my vitals. I am in the Reynard’s medical bay. Sophocles wakes up first and give
s a little yip and jumps on my bed. I wince as pain races through my right side from my wound.

  “Stupid animal!” Deanna says, swatting it away. She wipes sleep from her eyes and looks down on me with such protective love that I start to cry. Not for myself. But for her, for the pain I see in her eyes, and all the pain she must have felt these last days for her son, for her grandson, for Sevro, for me. And then I cry for Daxo and Theodora, and the friends I left behind with the monster. She cradles me as I do, humming in my ear as I have always wished my mother had done for me.

  * * *

  —

  Hours later, when I’ve worked up the strength, Kavax and Niobe come to see me. I worry for a moment that Nakamura was too ashamed to come, but then Deanna drags her inside. Holiday can barely meet my eyes for the shame of letting me be captured. It wasn’t her fault. I was thoroughly undone. I’d weep again to Kavax and Niobe for Daxo, but all that needs to wait.

  “Has Heliopolis fallen?” I ask.

  “Not yet,” Kavax says. “But our agents say it only has days left.”

  “Darrow?” I ask.

  “We don’t know,” Niobe says.

  “Pax?”

  Kavax can’t answer, so Niobe does. “Ephraim ti Horn abducted them from the Obsidian. Their whereabouts are currently unknown.”

  “Abducted them? Again?”

  “We don’t know why. But it occurred immediately after the Pandora was hit. Victra is missing. Her escape shuttle was found, but the first rescue team was shot down crossing Obsidian airspace. Her legions were grounded on the orders of the ArchGovernor, for fear they would initiate a war with Sefi’s Obsidian.”

  I lean forward in hope. “Rollo survived then.” He’s a good man. Stalwart. Tough. Loyal. And he was a Son of Ares.

  “No,” Holiday says. “They assassinated him in Agea.” I sink into the bed. “Then it’s Vorol?” They shake their heads. “They got him too? Then who took the post?”

  “Some idiot,” Deanna says.

  “Kieran,” Kavax answers heavily. “Temporary appointment by Mars’s regional governors.”

  Darrow’s brother. I sent him to Mars with Niobe to negotiate with the Obsidian. I’m hopelessly behind. Wait, no, Publius and Zan mentioned this.

  “Who assaulted the ship?”

  “It looks like Sefi,” Kavax says. I just blink at him. “I never thought we should have trusted that mongrel breed. First the Coppers, then the crows.” Looking up at them, I just realize they think Publius did all this. I don’t have time to explain. Calming her husband, Niobe shows me the current disposition of ships in the system. Atalantia is still massed at Mercury, with a smaller fleet at Venus. Most of the Republic battleships are here around Luna, while the Ecliptic Guard gathers over Mars.

  “Is this fleet strong enough to break through Ash Armada over Mercury?” I ask Kavax.

  “Yes,” Kavax says.

  “No,” Niobe corrects. “We cannot defeat them without Ecliptic Guard or the Vox fleet joining us. We might be able to break through as is, but to land and load under fire…” She stiffens. “A miracle could occur, or it could be the greatest disaster of the war.”

  “We have to try,” Kavax says. “Darrow would for us.”

  Deanna heads to the door. “Deanna, stay,” I say.

  “No,” she says gruffly. “Maybe I can one day forgive you for doin’ what needs doin’. But I can’t give you permission to abandon my boy.” She steps out. Holiday still has not weighed in.

  “Virginia, there’s something else you need to know,” Niobe says. “The Rim has made a secret alliance with the Core.” It can’t get any worse. Fresh ships, fresh legions of enemies, thrown into the fray at the exact moment they could break our backs. “They are currently unaware we have this intel. We don’t know where they will strike, but we can assume it will be decisive.” She looks at her husband. “Mercury is in far orbit. I think they will hit us as we cross near the sun, when our sensors are distorted.”

  “No,” Kavax says, disagreeing again. “They will hit Mars. Take out the Phobos Dockyards. Eye for an eye.”

  “And that is why we should return to Mars,” Niobe says. “Kavax knows better the Rim, and I know better Atalantia. Mars cannot fall.”

  “No one has suggested rescuing Sevro,” I say.

  “We sent three teams in through the tunnel after we evacked you. We lost contact with them ten minutes later.” Niobe steps toward the bed. “Virginia, we have four operatives still in the building under Moonhall. They are Sevro’s best chance. But if we try to hammer our way in now—”

  Massacre, and the clone kills my friends.

  “We can’t stay here,” Niobe says. “The Vox fleet wants a fight. They’re still pursuing and we’re a million klicks away from Luna.”

  “Surely Publius can be reasoned with,” Kavax says to me. “To do all this he might have used the mob, but he can be rational. If we fight his fleet, no matter who loses, Gold wins.”

  It’s almost too much to bear. “What do you think, Holiday?” I ask.

  Finally, she meets my eyes. “Retreat is the only option, ma’am. We must regroup on Mars.” If we go, that leaves Earth alone with the Vox, and the swelling Gold host. It will fall unless the clone sees it is in his interest to try to defend it with his Lunese fleet. But Mars can be defended, without help from Luna. Earth cannot.

  “Then we go to Mars,” I say.

  Though I promised my husband I would come for him, I cannot. It is a betrayal that will haunt me to the grave.

  Kavax sags in exhaustion. He sees me notice and finally seems to see the scores of wounds the mob gave me on my exposed arms, neck, and legs. I had forgotten them. The tears gather in his eyes as he leans over the bed. “All hope is not lost,” he whispers to me. I fail to see how he can believe that. He kisses my forehead. “I sent a man to Mercury to bring Darrow home if Heliopolis falls.”

  “Who?” I ask.

  “The same man who told us the Rim was coming.”

  GLIRASTES THE MASTER MAKER stands before his crudest creation.

  The starboard hangar of the Morning Star no longer exists. Harnassus’s engineering corps have carved through the midsection of the ship to create enough room to house the Spirit of Faran, our fastest and youngest torchShip. The insides of the Faran have been almost entirely gutted to make room for the most powerful electromagnetic pulse weapon assembled in all the campaigns of the war. It is not a new device on the surface, but it is the nature of war to inspire evolution.

  In his purple robes, Glirastes resembles an evil necromancer from one of Pax’s storybooks. His hands labor with some Byzantine contraption designed for his fourteen fingers. It measures arcane readouts, the meaning of which only my wife and Harnassus’s astrophysicists could ever hope to understand. Old researchers with large rheumy eyes check their own notations and murmur to one another, while the younger breed crouch in isolation, their cranial implants flickering as they attempt to keep pace with the Orange idol.

  As the EMP finishes its eighteenth preliminary test, I survey the length of the device, its nest of wave-shaped coils, each three times as thick around as a man, its blue lights and vacuum tubes. A steady whoomph, whoomph comes from the oversized helium reactor at the aft of the ship.

  The lights dim.

  Glirastes clicks his tongue at his servant, who bends to scratch his inner calf. Mid-scratch, he screams at a welder for silence. The thickset Red spits tobacco juice into the can tied to his neck by a string, turns off his torch, and hangs from the ceiling on his line. The engineers and construction teams hold their collective breath, not so much in anticipation of the result, but for fear of the Maker’s monstrous temper.

  Green integers dance across his face as his eyes dart through the report, punctuating it with murmurs of “interesting,” “perfidious instantaneous amplitude,” “shit shit i
ndecorous shit,” and more esoteric Mercurian profanities.

  “Do we have a problem, Glirastes?” I ask. Glirastes sighs as if in prayer to give himself patience.

  “Problem? You ask if we have a problem?” The folds of his neck twist red as he cranes his head to glare at me like a frazzled yet contemptuous owl. “Young man, you bamboozled me into helping you activate the Storm Gods under the pretense that you would use them only in a limited capacity, and instead turned a city I love into a coral reef. Any compassion I had for your cause has been drowned by the encroaching sea. Yet if I do not help you again, as you so eloquently and brutally elucidated when you browbeat me into helping you on this fool’s errand to rid you from my planet, the city of my birth will resemble little else in the known universe except the center of a G-type main-sequence star. The fact that I find catharsis in profanity while endeavoring to fit three years’ worth of research into three weeks of practical application does not reflect upon my enthusiasm for the work, which is little, nor the necessity, which is great. So, yes, we have a problem, but the particular nature of my frustration is isolated to a conundrum which you have neither the patience nor the temperament nor cognitive ability to understand.” He turns the data on its side, scrolls through it again. “Ah,” he says. “Never mind. I solved it.” He twirls his finger. “You, why did you stop welding? Get back to work! Must I do everything?”