Dark Age

by Pierce Brown

  “Ground floor,” I bark. Thraxa and sixteen others rip downward with me just as glass explodes outward from the second floor. He took a gravLift shaft down. I fire my pulseFist on full auto. Screwface flies underneath, taking slow aim. Chunks of concrete erupt as Lune weaves through our fire and takes off through a canyon of mercantile buildings, heading north.

  “Damn, kid can fly,” Thraxa mutters.

  “Thank Cassius, the pretty bastard,” Screwface curses.

  Is he here too? I pray not. If he’s gone over…

  As Lysander gains altitude, I spare a look south of the city to the spaceport. The torchShip I ordered to destroy the Spirit lowers itself midway up the Morning Star’s hull to gain a firing solution. Too slow. Too damn slow. Just blow that EMP to hell. I radio them to shoot through the Morning Star.

  Lune’s lead has diminished. We’re barely two hundred meters behind him, close enough to see him looking back over his shoulder at us with the naked eye. He wears light armor and a heavy old helmet.

  “What the…” Screwface mutters. “Boss, nine o’clock.”

  Lysander’s face blooms in the skyline, a broadcast to all the holoscreens. Not just that. Inside a passing skyscraper, the rooms fill with sudden illumination. The whole city glows with his message. Somehow he hardhacked the feed.

  I don’t listen to his words. He’ll be exhorting them to arms, as he watched me do on Phobos so many years ago. The attack will come from the inside first. He’s heading for the prisoner camp in the shadow of the Hippodrome.

  Fireballs bloom around the prison camp. Not at the guard towers with their antipersonnel cannons or at the tank garages, but along the walls. Through the billowing smoke, men on fire flail in chaotic dances. From the sky they look like lightning bugs in fog. More explosions go off across the city. Not one near the heavily defended shield generator.

  My targeting system registers a lock on Lune’s gravBoots’ thermal signature and I fire my six mini-missiles. Vapor trails scar the air between us as they reel him in. Then he seems to divide, impossibly.

  “Bailed out!” Screwface calls.

  Lysander’s gravBoots carry on without him as he falls barefoot from the sky. The missiles streak after the boots and detonate with a white flash. Lysander plummets downward end over end before crashing into the central pool of the Water Gardens. We overshoot him and by the time we bank around it is too late. Warning lights appear on my holoDisplay indicating rapidly changing electric and magnetic fields. A black pupil spawns at the center of the Morning Star as the lights of the ships wink out.

  Dark is the tide that rolls over the spaceport and the city, swallowing the phalanxes of tanks and Drachenjägers upon the Field of Phaethon. It plunges the office spires, the Hippodrome, the Mound, and the great shield generators into darkness. Above, the iridescent shield that protected us against Atalantia flickers, and then goes off. The glittering cloak of fliers that drifted over the city glitters no more, and the ships become indistinct shadows as they plummet from the sky.

  We fall with them.

  HELIOPOLIS, CITY OF THE SUN, lies in darkness. Darrow and his Howlers disappear from the sky as their gravBoots fail and they plummet down into shadows. Ships crash across the skyline without the dignity of balls of fire or white flashes from overloading reactors.

  I swim to the edge of the pool and jump down to the next level of the fountain, nearly losing hold of the Horn of Helios as I drop down. There’s a terrific crash from above as a troop carrier collides with the head of Poseidon, breaking off his right ear and tearing the carrier in two. One piece slams down into the topmost pool plate. The second spins through the air, passing less than ten meters over my head. Half a hundred men are still strapped into their seats. Their faces pass close enough I can see the acne on a Brown’s forehead before they smash into a building below.

  Water rains down on me.

  I look up. Over my head, the topmost plate of the Gardens is cracking under the weight of the larger half of the carrier. I jump from the pool to the one beneath just as the topmost plate gives way and a hundred tons of marble and ship smash down on the pool beneath. It becomes an avalanche of stone and water and ship collapsing each plate, gaining on me as I jump frantically down the monument.

  I hit the ground level of the plaza and roll, barely outracing the debris that crashes down behind me. Chunks of rock the size of horses roll across the plaza, crumpling the bodies of bystanders and splintering trees. Something hits me hard in the back of the skull and I go sprawling.

  Blood leaks down my back when I regain my feet. Dust billows all around. I search until I find the horn. Then I run.

  Somehow, running in the darkness through the bedlam, I find the Via Triumphia. Rising legionnaires shout to one another in the black streets. I jump, grab the lip of a low wall, and scramble up till I’m on the rooftops. There I strip open my rucksack and change into lightweight boots. I wrap the loyalist razor around my left arm, and try Alexandar’s better-crafted blade. Its response to my touch is exemplary. The whip cracks as it lashes out to wrap around the metal support of an overhead solar array. I swing out across the gaps between the roofs and toggle the razor into a blade. It releases as it cuts through the array and I land on the other side. More arrays fall behind me as I swing north over the dark streets with the Horn of Helios.

  The mayhem of the prison break is illuminated in stuttered flashes of gunfire. With electricity flowing, those prisoners taken in the Battle of the Ladon were at the mercy of the Rising. Now Gold and Obsidian athletes scale the walls and tear their lowColor guards to ribbons with their bare hands.

  I keep well clear. I can’t mobilize them in the chaos on foot. Exeter and Glirastes’s servants will have laid the charges on the pen housing my Praetorians. They may already be under way. I’m the laggard here.

  I vault another roof, almost impaling myself on a clothesline pole as I head breakneck for the Hippodrome. I was meant to land in the center of the arena, where loyalists would be waiting. But Alexandar ruined my timing and jeopardized my initiative.

  Darrow was in pulseArmor. The lack of electrical assistance will paralyze the weaker Howlers under the armor’s weight, but not soldiers like Darrow or Thraxa. He’ll wake in some arcade, or upon some roof, surrounded by chaos from which no man could possibly salvage a victory. But Darrow built his legend on such moments. The EMP wave went farther than expected. I can’t see the lights of Atalantia’s ships in orbit. How far did it go on the ground? How long till she moves more elements in? Given time, Darrow will summon some martial necromancy. So when I come south for his army, it must be with shock and awe.

  I use a market stall awning to slow my descent as I swing from the rooftops down to ground level and weave through dead automobiles outside the Hippodrome. “Lune!” I shout as I approach the main pedestrian entry arch at a run.

  “Invictus!” someone replies. A dozen midColor loyalists with gas-powered rifles step out of the shadows. They wave me to the left into the arcade beneath the stadium seats where concessions are sold and bets made on race day. Gunpowder weapons crackle in the distance. I find the door to the subterranean stables unlocked. Two Rising sentries lie outside it with holes in their heads. A wall of horse stench hits my nose as I burst from the stairwell into the stables.

  Lit by the eerie flames of torches, one of Glirastes’s servants waits for me with a dozen Obsidian stablehands in the proud race-day livery of House Votum. “Hail Lune!” they say, falling to their knees on the straw-strewn floor.

  They rise again, staring at me in the low light to tend the anxious herd of saddled sunbloods. None but Obsidians could wrangle such intrepid beasts. I search their eyes. They are barely kin with those who follow Sefi. They know no other life but Mercury. No life but these horses. No life but service. I salute them as they fulfill their noble task and extend my arms for the loyalists to buckle the waiting suit o
f armor to me. It is old gear. Circuits long dead. Bone white with a crude crescent welded onto the front and back.

  Glirastes is incorrigible.

  “So you’re Cicero’s Blood of Empire,” I say to the horse set out before the rest. For once, Cicero was not hyperbolic. It is as if every horse I have seen before this day, even Atalantia’s prized creatures, were nothing more than early drafts of this ultimate creation. He towers over me, clearing twenty-five hands at the withers with still more muscled shoulder to measure. His hooves are the size of dinner plates, his mane as brilliant an orange as his irises. His white coat dappled steel gray. Haughty eyes watch me. He bucks his head as I approach, lifting the two Obsidian stablehands off their feet.

  When they wrangle him back down, I cut my hand and wave the blood over his nose so he can smell it. He tilts his head, his eyes searching mine. I bring my nose to his, as is the dangerous custom with sunbloods. He could snap off my face with ease, but I keep my voice soothing and he lets me stroke his muzzle. With a snort, he bends his front legs in obeisance.

  The Obsidians cheer. They had wondered if the horse would find me worthy. “Blood knows blood, my liege,” their old stablemaster rumbles. “He will bear you over a sea of slaves.”

  * * *

  —

  The ramp used by charioteers to enter the Hippodrome slams down in a cloud of dust. Blood of Empire has been here before even if I have not. His hooves paw the sand, impatient for the glory to which he has become entitled. It has been years since I’ve ridden a horse, and in all of human history, how many have graced the back of such a terrible prize as this? I fear disgracing this king of horses more than I do the coming violence. With an intake of breath, I grip the Horn of Helios and dig my heels into his sides.

  It is like riding lightning.

  The ramp blurs past underneath. Suddenly we are upon the surface of the Hippodrome. No sea of faces awaits us. No adulation. Only a black sky, the empty stadium, and a ragged band of men jogging across the sand in tattered uniforms, Rhone and Kalindora at their lead. The loyalists who led the attack on the Republic prison led them here for me.

  The Praetorians and Kalindora are shocked to find me alive.

  I spare no time for pleasantries as I circle them atop Blood of Empire. “Upon Luna, upon Earth, upon Mars, they say that the Praetorian Guard is dead!” I shout. “That they have faded into the maw of history like morning fog over the sea! That nothing remains but the memory of the giants that once walked the worlds! Rhone ti Flavinius!” I cry. “Before all things, what are the Praetorian Guard?”

  “Equestrians!” he bellows.

  “And what is your duty?”

  “To protect the blood of Lune!”

  “Will you ride with me today, Rhone ti Flavinius?”

  “With honor, my liege!”

  “Are you a memory?” I ask the Praetorians as Blood continues to canter around them.

  “No!”

  “Are you giants!”

  “Yes!”

  “Will you ride with me today? For the glory of your forebearers. For the resurrection of the Society. For the honor of the guard! Will you ride with me?”

  “Yes!” they roar. Only Kalindora remains silent.

  I take the Horn of Helios from the saddle and blow a sonorous note. And from the belly of the Hippodrome, the herd of Votum, pride of Heliopolis, stampedes upward under a black sky. The stablehands bear up crates of weapons provided by the loyalists, and when my Praetorians are mounted, Kalindora walks up beside me with a look of disapproval. The left sleeve of her prisoner jumpsuit hangs slack, the arm Darrow cut off rotting in the desert. But her sword arm looks restless.

  “What a hunger for blood you have acquired in the desert,” she says. “Did you survive that sandstorm just to die in these streets? If we wait for Atalantia—”

  “We will be at her mercy. Is that why you brought me the Praetorians?” She does not reply. “He will win whose army is animated by the same spirit throughout its ranks. The Society needs victory. Not a slaughter. Too long have the rabble had a monopoly on glory. Today we reclaim it. I would have the Love Knight at my side as we do.” I extend the loyalist razor to her. With a growing smile, she reaches forward.

  THUMP. THUMP. DISTANT SCREAMS AND RAGE. The shrieking of metal on metal. In the darkness, flashes of flailing limbs, gnashing teeth, screaming mouths. I watch the violence painted in fragmented impressionist brushstrokes.

  My armor is dead. My helmet’s internal screen black, vision now constricted to the narrow duroglass emergency slits in the helmet’s eyes. Beyond my helmet is frenzy. They beat on my armor with fists, hammers, blocks of masonry, fence poles, and all manner of improvised urban weaponry.

  They fell on me after I crashed through a storefront and struggled up from the debris, my legs snared by electrical wire. First it was two, then two became a mob. Now I cannot move for the mound of humanity atop me. They besiege the Sciantus-made armor with anything they can find. A Brown street cleaner sits on my chest hammering a long piece of rebar into the joints with a chunk of masonry, desperate for my blood. A Silver kicks at my groin till his foot breaks and he hobbles away. A Gray sits on my arm, trying to pry open my balled gauntlets so he can break my fingers one by one. Two old Red women pin my head between them and start hammering at the eyeholes with improvised chisels as they fumble for the emergency switch. They find it, but I’ve already locked it.

  Fortunately, the armor is a tough nut to crack.

  I can only imagine they’re doing the same to my downed men all over Heliopolis. Lysander has woken the sleeping giant that we kept alive with our meds. But beyond the screaming mob, the sky is black and empty of Atalantia’s ships. Did the EMP reach all the way to orbit? I see no dreadnought lights above.

  My ships will be dead at the spaceport. Our shield down.

  This is the end, but I refuse to let the mob swallow me like it did my wife.

  The mob clears except for those holding me down while several lowColors stagger over with a block of masonry the size of a man. They hold it over my head and drop it. A ringing fills my ears from the internal concussion. The reinforced warhelm dents but does not break. They get clever and drag me toward the local park, making a hideous parade, where they hold me down before a tall headless statue of a Votum ancestor. They tie electrical cables around my arms and legs, and four teams pull my body taut as the rest of them loop the cable around the neck of the statue and begin to heave. It rocks on its pedestal, each heave bringing it closer and closer to its tipping point, after which several tons of marble will fall and test the metalworking of Martian forges. I wait as the four teams on my limbs strain and sweat, pulling against what they think is my strength, but is actually the reinforced skeleton of the armor. They waste their effort. I save mine for one desperate gambit.

  When the statue finally tips forward with a cheer from the mob, I roar and jerk as hard as I can with my right leg and right arm. The sudden force sends the teams of men stumbling forward, impossibly off balance. Then I see why. Several young Heliopolitan Reds smash into them from behind, knocking them off their feet. Still they don’t let go of the line. In a sudden explosion of pure force, the muscles of my right leg and right arm pull for everything they’re worth against their teams. They’re jolted forward, even as the men on the left keep pulling, helping me drag them into the path of the teetering statue.

  The timing is almost comedic.

  Several tons of stone make wet boneless sacks of men. The teams on the left stop pulling, suddenly appalled by the sight of pulverized men and the bath of gore it entails. It is nothing to me. I unravel myself and stand in the dead heavy armor.

  That they are not the same mob that butchered Daxo and mutilated my wife does not matter. I kill them all.

  The Brown street cleaner rushes for me with his piece of rebar. My punch is slowed by the weight of my
unpowered armor, but not by much, and I am still the war god Mickey carved using all his infernal devices. I need no razor for this mindless dreck. This man is tiny. My metal fist collapses the side of his skull and shatters vertebrae. I lift the Silver who kicked my groin by his throat and squeeze until I feel spine. I shatter a man’s femur with a stomp, and collapse his sternum into his heart as I march over him to break a woman’s jaw. Rib cages crackle under armored boots like twigs as I tread through them in systematic slaughter.

  As a mob they were a single organism. In fear, they divide. In death, they become lonely as I weave them into my twitching meat carpet.

  When all have fled or died, there is no one left to kill but a convulsing Silver boy who huddles by what remains of his father underneath the statue. One sight of his wide eyes and slack jaw and desperate begging stops me like a wall. Seeing myself through his eyes, I am disgusted. So I wheel away back into my world.

  The Reds who came to my aid stand watching me. There are six of the sunbaked laborers. Not a one older than twenty. They stand with their fists in a salute. I open an external pouch manually and find the helm key. I insert it into the collar until a latch pops. I roll back the wolf’s head helm and suck down the fresh air. The young Reds stare up at me. They might have thought they recognized my armor before, but now they see my face, and they take a step back in fear.