"You fucking cunt!" The cyborg horror's voice was fletched into a sharp, grating howl as the vocoder in his throat began to falter. "You haven't learned a thing since Mum died! Since you left me to die! Everything you said on the ship was all bullshit! All of it!"
All Ed could do was watch this creature, this biomechanical beast that bore his son's face, spoke in his voice and answered to his name, writhe and vomit forth hate and blood. All he could think about was what had borne that monster. His own foolishness, his greatest error – and the terrible angel of death Sokolova who shaped the monster before him like so. His handgun, his trusty weapon of war, remained close at his side, having been holstered into the powersuit in case he lost the particle rifle.
"You're no father of mine!" it continued to scream, its vile machined voice revving like a chainsaw. "You are a parasite! A disease! And I will be the one to cut you out of the mortal coil myself! I'll tear you apart like the animal you are! Sokolova will come back for me just like you didn't! Sokolova will bring me back stronger than ever before, while you'll do nothing but cry and whine like you always have whenever things have gone wrong! Sokolova will bring me back! And when she does, she will send me to come and hunt you do-"
A thunderous pop rang through the street.
~
That bullet ripped away a chunk of Edward Frost along with reducing the upper half of his eldest son's head to a shattered mess of gore and metal fragments. What was left of his formidable constitution came crashing down like a destroyed stratoscraper.
He lay in the scorched dirt, his cheeks bearing rivers of tears cried in anguish. The only thing that would forget this disgrace most terrible was death. Only death could ever forgive him for the ineffable crimes committed on this day.
~
Diana Sparrow knew that her time had come once she had caught sight of that plasma explosion. Though present to bear witness to the entire battle, she had decided against evacuating to the bomb shelter. Instead she had sat atop a tower block within the dome covering Central District with a glass of red wine in her hand as fires erupted throughout District Two. The moment the particle rifle's power cell ruptured and exploded, she had gotten out of her deckchair, finished her wine glass and proceeded with her homunculus guard detail into the elevator.
Now that the Hound's epic ground assault had all but petered out into sporadic firefights, Sparrow was able to comb the devastated suburban streets in search of her marksman on the cliffs in comfort. The intuition that the battle had transpired outside of Frost's own address did not fail her, the hovercar in which she was riding happening upon a field of burnt out corpses and several homes now ablaze in front of her eyes. She disembarked with her guard, almost totally ignorant of the ashen husks sprawled out before her. Two armoured trucks had followed her in, pulling up behind the Sparrow Corp-marked hovercar. Out of the back doors of one truck were disgorged a squad's worth of OCCS soldiers, with White, Morgenstern and Wilkins among them. At the spectacle of death before their eyes, only White and Morgenstern avoided retching. Out of the other jumped four soldiers wearing different, urban camouflaged armour with FIA-SWAT on the front, none of whom were fazed by the ambient detritus of battle.
"There he is!" White called aloud, spotting her mortally injured commander on the ground and rushing towards him.
"What a crying shame," Sparrow seemed genuinely remorseful as he too approached him. One who knew her would know better, however.
"You..." was all Frost could stammer as he stared into space.
"Send for a medic," Sparrow commanded to one of the homunculi. "We're not done with Captain Edward Frost just yet."
The soldier nodded and made its way back toward the convoy; on the lawn, the FIA operatives were carrying body-bags as they dragged four burnt, dark gold-coloured corpses, zipping them up into them before returning to their own armoured vehicle.
"Why..." Ed wept. "Why won't you just let me die..."
"Quite simply, because we have work to do," announced Sparrow. "I can help you get what it is you now want the most. But first, we're going to take the fight to the ones who did this to your family."
"Sokolova..." Frost's face grew darker than deep night. "Strasser..."
His remaining hand gripped the dirt like a vice, dragging up ashen soil and sifting it through his clenched fingers.
"I won't rest..." he growled, fighting to make himself heard. "Even if I have to chase them ... across a thousand planets, across the whole fucking galaxy! I'll kill them! I'll kill every one of them! I swear upon every god there is I will not cease to hound the Order of Iron until every single fucking knight and every scumbag who did this to my family lies dead by my hand!"
A razor-blade smile pulled at Sparrow's lips.
"Good answer," she stated. "A golden opportunity presents itself before your eyes to get what you want. And as I always have, I will be more than happy to help. In this case, you must want help to avenge your fallen sons..."
"Oh, I will avenge them alright..." Frost declared with an ursine growl. "I'll kill every one of those knights..."
At this moment in time, two OCCS personnel arrived at the command of one of the homunculi. Bearing a stretcher and a box of medical supplies, they started to bandage Frost's heavy wounds, beginning with his naked shoulder that had leaked a vast quantity of blood in the past two minutes.
"There's a few things we need to do before then, not least of which is getting you fixed up," Sparrow remarked. "But we'll soon be showing Sokolova and Strasser that the fun is only getting started."
"We'll stand by you, boss," White stated, Morgenstern nodding in tandem. "Every step of the way."
Frost produced a short smile. "Good..."
"That reminds me..." Sparrow turned to face Frost's two subordinates. "I have a special new mission for the two of you as well. I want you both to report to my ship and await further orders."
Frost, now liberated from his ravaged armour suit, was ready to be conveyed to distant safety. The flames of burning debris reflected in the cornea of his eyes, igniting a cerulescent simulacrum of a furious inferno born on this day.
~
CHAPTER NINE
Saturday, 18 June.
Six days after the Battle of Port Royal.
LOCATION: Low orbit
Mars, Core Space
Aboard the Bellator.
Day length: 24h 37m
Miss Sokolova?
What is it?
The sun hovered over the distant horizon, blanketing the final planet of Core Space in a colossal arc of light. Beneath Mars' sparse white clouds glittered the vast Boreal Ocean, while the snow-capped mountains of Olympus Mons, Arsia, Pavonis, Ascraeus and Alba Patera covered the Tharsis range. The highest mountain in the Solar System rose into the air like a titanic mesa, tourists commenting that its vast shadow was visible from the Amazonian Sea when the sun set in the east, and all the way out to the manufactories in Corinth when it rose in the west. During the uneasy peace between the Terran nations and the Commonwealth of Mars, tourists would flock from all over the solar system to bear witness to the Towers of Tharsis in person.
Before I leave for Ceres, I... I wanted to thank you.
For what?
Nestled between three of them – Olympus, Ascraeus and Pavonis – stood Pyrrhus, the capital of the Commonwealth, named for the legendary king of ancient Epirus who defended his city from the Romans to the final man. Five stratoscrapers almost as tall as the mountains surrounding them rose from the metropolitan sprawl to pierce the sky, forming a neat pentagon – the northernmost Volker Tower, the northeastern Izotov Tower, southeastern Ling Tower, southwestern Orlova Tower, and northwestern Hammerstein Tower, all named for great heroes of the Martian Revolutionary State that preceded the modern Commonwealth. At the centre of the towers, a vast dome – the People's Hall, from which the stratocratic government of the Martian world state ruled over the Red Planet.
For everything.
What do you mean, Ryan?
From her private viewing deck at the rear of the Bellator, a forlorn Sokolova considered how almost everything on Mars was named or fashioned for a great martial victory centuries, sometimes even millennia, prior to the present. There was the seaport of Pearl Harbour to the north of Alba Patera, the spaceport of Thermopylae on the southern tip of Chryse Bay, the huge fortress of New Verdun constructed as an artificial island on the Argyre Sea. Connecting most of them together were the dessicated remnants of vast canals stretching across the Martian surface like laser-straight veins; where ships once ferried cargo along their lengths, nuclear-powered supersonic trains took their places.
You've been like a second mother to me. I will never forget my real one, nor will I forgive my father for what he did. But I want you to know – no matter what happens, you will be with me from this day to the end of days.
I know you're afraid. To be honest, I am too. For all I know, this will be our last night together.
Even the bottles in Sokolova's drinks cabinet, at least the ones of Martian make: Bushido Nigori, Stalingrad Vodka, Black Prince Champagne – and most egregious of all, Victory Ale, a cheap, readily available booze brewed en masse each year, on February the Twentieth, to commemorate V-M Day, the anniversary of the Federal surrender at the end of the Revolutionary War. A thick black drink with the consistency of thin tomato soup and the taste of cough medicine, ideally consumed to enhance one's already considerable state of inebriation after other, more palatable tipples. A drink that was almost too perfect for the drunken parties that were all but synonymous with the night of V-M Day.
Our future is what you have invested in me, and what I have invested in you. Even if I die on Ceres, my last thoughts will be of our short time together.
The door buzzer rang with a flanged chirrup; with one cybernetic eye synchronised to the camera outside, Sokolova knew that the visitor was a cyborg in a crimson habit. One of her Hound's former retainers, if her memory was of service.
"Enter," she spoke, her undivided focus remaining on the vast armoured window unveiling the outside.
The door split open with a clank, and the elderly retainer entered three paces into the room. He bent the knee as the door closed.
"My Lady," he began. "We have docked with Phobos Spaceport, and General Strasser has arrived with his entourage."
Only then did Sokolova grant the retainer the privilege of her attention, leaning back and rotating her head to face the retainer like a turret. Her brows were raised high with concern.
~
In the Bellator's mighty hangar bay, the Martian soldiers dressed in grey camouflaged fatigues, plate carriers and amber-lit gas masks looked almost pathetic compared to the elaborately armoured knights guarding the doorway. To the rank and file of Mars' military forces, the walking tanks under Sokolova's command were figures of quasi-legend, each said to be capable of tackling an entire platoon of Earth soldiers alone. While even for these beasts of war an entire platoon would be too much to handle, they were still ferocious warriors in their own right, said to be the finest in the Solar System outside of Mars' terrifying special forces divisions.
The retainer who had spoken to Sokolova mere moments prior emerged from the guarded doorway. His first sight lay upon the ranks of soldiers standing before the loading ramp of a VC-38 dropship, this model of craft being a later version than the VC-20s in the rest of the hangar space. Bootsteps sounded from the top of the ramp, prompting the soldiers gathered to salute by pounding their chests and bowing their head. The hangar thundered with the bang of the knights' salute.
A black trench coat and plain grey military shirt and trousers denoted an officer stepping forth from the dropship's interior. The coat was bedecked with medals, the most prominent being the four-pronged Star of Phobos, penultimate in rank to the six-pronged Martian Red Star. A black peaked cap bearing an orange band and a gleaming silver lambda crowned his head, with two golden epaulettes mounted upon his shoulders. The officer's cracked, pale face held two luminescent blue eyes with a gaze as cold as ice, with a scar running from his lower chin up his face to curve his lips into a permanent sneer.
"Welcome, General Strasser," the retainer bowed his head. "We are honoured by your presence. Lady Commander Sokolova is in her quarters at present. I have already sent for her, she should be here in a moment."
"Ah, you should never have troubled yourself!" Strasser waved him aside, aquiline eyes scanning the hangar. When they settled upon the red suited man who had followed the retainer into the bay, they illuminated his whole face.
"Mister Drakolich!" Strasser cheered, his silver gloved hands clapping together. "What a pleasure! How long has it been since we last saw one another? Months? Years?"
"I believe it to be three years, General," the man addressed as Drakolich tilted his head, rendering a lazy salute to his chest with a warm smile. His friendly voice could have been mistaken as genuine, yet one could never shake the prospect that he was hiding a much darker manifesto beneath his speech. "I recall it because that was the last time somebody ruined my suit. Do you remember that?"
"Three years too long, if you ask me," said Strasser as he shook Drakolich's hand. "And of course I remember it. I was there! Remind me who it was that tried to take us out..."
"I understand it was during a visit to the Jovian colonies," said Drakolich. "That would rule out all other candidates bar the Europan Liberation Front," he sprouted a menacing grin. "Remember that dimwit who thought he could drive a knife into my shoulder!"
At which point Strasser almost doubled over with laughter. "Oh, now I recall! Who was the one who flayed that gangster, that Rakowski fellow? Was that one of yours?"
"Nooooo, that wasn't the gangster, that was one of the rebels ... er, Sukanto or something his name was. I think that was one of the Drakes..." Drakolich thought for a moment. Then his eyes lit up: "Ah! Now I remember! It was Hauser!"
"Hauser!" Strasser exclaimed, his face alight like a wicker-man. "Thank Odin for Hauser! And that motorsaw of hers! Of all the beastly war machines that Miss Sokolova could have brought into this world as Iron Knights, none have so matched Fräulein Hauser as of yet!"
"May she rest in Valhalla!" Drakolich cheered.
The remark prompted the two of them to howl with laughter as the indifferent soldiers and knights looked on at the chattering two.
"Speaking of, where is Miss Sokolova, anyhow?" asked Strasser as he wiped away a tear. "I would have expected her to be front and centre."
"I'm afraid losing the Hound has left her in a poor head-space," Drakolich informed the general. "Word from the Resurgent came in three days ago, and what's left of the Iron Fleet is limping back to friendly space as I speak – which isn't much, I feel compelled to point out. Over the past few days she's only left her viewing deck to eat and sleep. I don't understand it, personally, but who am I to question the will of the Broken Angel?"
"Oh, Annaroza..." Strasser shook his head with a smirk and sighed, the kind of sigh a father might yield when word was broken about the antics of a foolish daughter. "If only you knew just what a glorious victory Ryan has won for our cause..."
He raised his head back up to level, brushing off his coat. "I suppose we ought to go and find what's left of her, then."
~
Having already heard that General Strasser was on his way to visit her, Sokolova was on her way down the gilded corridors of her dreadnought. No sooner did she round the last corner before the first hangar at the back of the ship did the shapes of Strasser, Drakolich, the retainer and the guard details of the first two materialise in her sight.
"General Strasser," said Sokolova by way of greeting. No salute was rendered; no change of expression bar the forlorn stare in her amethystine eyes.
"A little bird tells me you've been feeling rather blue, Annaroza," remarked Strasser as he beckoned her to walk alongside him. "Might I ask what it is that ails you so?"
"I promised Ryan he'd fight by my side when we finally went to war," Sokolova
sighed. "I have failed him."
"Ah, but you see, your Hound has just won us a grand victory," assured Strasser. "Perhaps the grandest of them all so far!"
"How is it a victory if he is dead, and Ardent Red has been destroyed?" Sokolova scowled. "This turn of events is entirely your doing."
"It was I who set all of this in motion, yes," shrugged Strasser. "But have you learned nothing from our time together, student of mine? The past twenty years of solar history, Annaroza, have been shaped up to today as a prelude to the grand titanomachy yet to come. From the day I met you, a fugitive from Sparrow's fury trying to escape to space, to the two of us walking down the halls of this dreadnought at this very moment. Do you think I arranged for Ryan's mother, may she rest in piece, to pick up that tainted syringe all those years ago for naught? Did I start a war in the Asteroid Belt because I thought it would make for an amusing joke, even if it did? No..."
"Why, then?" Sokolova asked. "Why shatter a family apart like that? Whatever could possibly be in it for you?"
"Because I knew that it would lead up to this moment, the moment for which I have been waiting for the entirety of my long life!" said Strasser. "And so have you. Because, Annaroza, the construction I set into motion two decades ago has now entered the final stage of its erection. The foundations have been laid and the framework is up. The death of Ryan Frost, as sad as it is – and it is – was the first of many bricks. We cannot squander his sacrifice, not when the finish line is now in sight!"
"But Ardent Red is lost to us," said Sokolova. "Earth's defences cannot be penetrated without it. It was a critical component for any possible invasion of the Cradle. Now my Hound is dead too. You talk of sacrifice, but was it truly necessary to waste such young lives as Ryan and Jason Frost? They were but boys with great potential, and now they are both dead. And for what – so we could acquire half of a cyberweapon which you're not even certain will work?!"
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