Iron Gold

by Pierce Brown

  “I hear you’ve been spinning quite a tale.”

  “Who are you?” I manage.

  “My name is Holiday ti Nakamura, special envoy of the Sovereign. Muzzle her.” The men come around the table. I push backward instinctively. They grab me. One slams a fist into the side of my neck. My legs turn into a puddle. Black throbs in my vision. Something metal is shoved against my face. The fingers of the device crawl around my head, pulling taut even as a rubber appendage pushes into my mouth and expands till my tongue is pinned to the floor of my mouth. I hyperventilate. “Through the nose,” the Gray woman says. She snaps her fingers in front of my face. “Breathe through your nose, girl, or you’ll pass out. Breathe.”

  I listen to her and suck oxygen down through my nose. “Shell her.”

  One of the men pulls a plastic vest down over my head. My vision is still spotty as my head emerges out the top of it. He pushes my arms together in front of me and I groan in pain from the pressure on the dislocated shoulder, then the vest inflates, wrapping around my body, pinning my arms to my chest. Once it’s inflated, armor hardens on the outside as the polymer darkens.

  “For your protection,” Holiday says. She leads me roughly by my muzzle out the door. A dozen heavily armed Lionguards with the red planet globe on their left shoulders, Martians all, wait in the rain in front of a warship bristling with guns and blazing with lights. Their rifles are up, their mechanized helmets scanning the buildings around. Several shadowy figures circle overhead. The local checkpoint Watchmen eye the Lionguards with awe and glance out the windows at the shadows in the sky. The Watchmen are under guard by more Lionguards and have had their weapons taken away. A Red Watchman with a Vox pyramid sewn onto his uniform nurses a split lip and sits handcuffed. A shattered datapad lies on the ground beside him. Holiday addresses the Watchmen.

  “The information you heard tonight is classified. Divulging even a word of it will earn you charges of treason against the Republic. A second shuttle is on its way to collect you for debriefing.” She looks at the bloodied Vox Red. “You ever wanna do anything more than sort trash in Deepgrave, I suggest you comply.” She turns back to me. “When I say run, you close your eyes and run. Understand?”

  I nod.

  “Package ready for boarding,” Holiday says into her mouthpiece. “Blackfire? Ocelot?” There’s a murmur from the com clipped to her ear. She looks at me and slings her rifle from her shoulder and primes the charge. “Three. Two. One. Run.”

  Three strobe lights sizzle white-hot light from the top of the ship, blinding out my vision before I clench shut my eyes. They pull me along at a run. I feel rain, the concrete, then the metal deck of a ship under my shoes. My vision returns, stained green by the shuttle lights as the soldiers funnel into the back with me. The shuttle jumps upward, the back ramp still open. When we’re a hundred meters from the ground, more of the Martians float up on gravBoots and land inside the craft. Only then does the ramp close.

  The warship’s engines roar and they shove me into a seat. The men don’t set their weapons down. The Gold and the Obsidian both touch razors on their forearms. Out the cockpit windows I see the shadowy figures are still escorting us. I glimpse inky-black helmets shaped like the stuff of deepmine nightmares and thick black armor as they fly through the rain.

  “Company yet?” Holiday asks the helmeted Blue pilot.

  “Sky’s clear, ma’am. Civi traffic diverted. We’ll be in gov alt in ten seconds.” My ears pop. Then it’s silent except for the engines. Everyone is edgy. Are they worried about another attack from the kidnappers? How far could their reach possibly extend?

  “Distance to Citadel?”

  “Fifty klicks.”

  Something beeps in the cockpit. “Incoming bogies. Atmospheric rippers,” the pilot says. “Descending from a skyhook. Barca markings.”

  “How many?”

  “Fourteen rippers. Two gunboats. Shall I call SkyLord support?”

  “That damn woman,” Holiday mutters. “No. Alert the Citadel but tell SkyLord to hold. I was ordered to keep this quiet; a dogfight over the city ain’t exactly whispering.”

  The Blue carries out her commands as the co-pilot speaks into his headset. “Attention Barca aircraft, this is the HAF Pride Seven, you are in violation of Republic Government space and a Sovereign’s warrant. Deviate your course immediately to civilian altitudes. You have ten seconds to comply.”

  They’re not deviating. I see them now through the cockpit. Little black dots small as flies in the distance, hovering in a line to prevent us from reaching the Citadel.

  “Incoming transmission.”

  “Nakamura,” a woman’s deep voice growls over the com. “Should have known she’d send you. Cut your engines and deliver me the Red terrorist.”

  A Blue hands Holiday a remote com. “Victra, the witness is under arrest. Do not interfere with Republic jurisdiction. I’ve been authorized by the Sovereign to deliver her using any and all means at my disposal. You don’t want this trouble.”

  “Darling, I am the trouble.”

  Two streaks of light rip across the darkness from her ships, missing the cockpit by bare meters. “They took my daughter. My daughter.” I shiver as I realize who is on the other side of the line.

  “You want the whole damn Republic knowing about this?” Holiday snarls. “They’ll make the Sovereign step down. Divert your ships. The witness is being taken in for questioning so we can get your daughter back. You’re wasting time.”

  “Questioning?” Victra laughs. “More of Virginia’s half measures. Look what that has given us. It’s my turn.”

  “If you fire again on this ship, you risk killing the only lead we have. She came to us. We’re going to the Citadel.”

  “You idiots lost my child. I will get her back. With words, or with iron. Your choice. Give me the Red, or I will come and cut her out of the belly of your ship. You have ten seconds to comply. Victra out.”

  Holiday is worried. “Was that broadcast coming from the ships?”

  “No, ma’am.”

  “Pilot, full speed straight down their throats.” She turns to her men. “Weapons hot. Return fire only. She’s not in the gunships. She’s airborne.” She swings out her rifle. “Expect Gold boarders.” The men hop to their feet and point their guns back at the closed ramp. Something slams into the ship. Then three more collisions against the hull. Our ship roars through the air toward the wall of ripWings, closer, closer. Warning shots across our bow. “Faster,” Holiday says. The ceiling sparks and glows as someone drills in through the outside. The Lionguards cluster around the sparks, guns pointed up. “Faster!”

  We punch through the line of ripWings. They bank to follow us. I see the Citadel glowing in the distance. The ship cracks as it breaks the sound barrier. The sparks rain down from the ceiling on me. More Augustus vessels rise up from Citadel landing pads to greet us. With them ascend dozens of men in armor, at their head a huge figure in pale blue fox armor. Niobe au Telemanus has come to war.

  ONCE UPON A TIME, Venus was the evil sister of Earth, swollen from solar dust to similar shape and size. But while Earth was blessed with water, sweet air, and a temperate disposition, Venus had a more quarrelsome spirit. Her surface, cruel enough to melt lead, was marked by interminable days and nights, each numbering 243 of her sister’s. Under her foul breath, nothing could live, nothing could grow, nothing could move but winds of carbon dioxide and torpid clouds fat with acid rain.

  And then man came from the blackness and drank up the hydrogen of the gas giants and breathed the fresh breath into her skies. The ensuing rains fell to cover eighty percent of her surface in oceans. With high-altitude mass drivers, man scalped away the withering atmosphere and cooled her surface. With asteroids hurled from the asteroid belt and mass drivers at her equator, he spun her out of her torpor and into an agreeable dance, her days now like her sister’s. Mankind dressed her in green and blue and she waited, eager and fresh, for the humans to come down from their floating
cities to join her in her new dance, which had been four and a half billion years plus ninety in the making.

  House Carthii of Luna was the first to arrive.

  Now, for the first time in my thirty-three years, I dare to see Venus in the flesh. Her clouds are thin and clutch her mottled blue body like the tails of a tattered nightgown. Diadems of ice and snow dust her poles. Emerald islands rise from her temperate blue seas. And about her neck is cinched the might of Gold, a Byzantine necklace of ships and orbital dockyards, sparkling with landing lights and loaded with half-completed frigates and destroyers all made from Mercurian steel. Around this necklace glide dark-hulled ships painted with the crowned white skull of the Ash Lord inside the pyramid of the Society. There are far fewer ships than intel suggested. Most must be on the far side of the planet.

  “Mm, into the mouth of the beast,” Alexandar says from beside me on the bridge. “ ‘Then, even then, Cassandra’s lips unsealed the doom to come: lips by a god’s command never to be believed or heeded by the Trojans.’ ”

  To my other side, Rhonna sighs in exasperation. “Can’t we damn well go five bloody minutes without commentary leaking out your ass?”

  He chuckles. “Like you’d know what to do with the silence.”

  “Anything would be better than you quoting Nilton.”

  “Milton, for your edification. Only that wasn’t the blind Englishman. It was the Attic.”

  I turn to look at them and they shut up, Rhonna into a moody silence, Alexandar into a luxurious one. He finds a scuff on his black chest armor and pulls out a silk handkerchief to wipe it off. “Lancer, which fleet is that?” I ask Rhonna.

  She shakes off her irritation, steps forward and pulls an image from her datapad into the air and magnifies the hulls of the capital ships. “It looks like the First and Third. There’s the sphinx of House Carthii, and the dogs of Cerana, their bannermen.” Alexandar makes a polite sound of disappointment. Rhonna scans the image in frustration, not understanding what she got wrong. “Shut up, Alexandar.”

  “I said nothing.”

  “Alexandar? Do you know the answer?” I ask.

  “First, Third, and Eleventh.”

  “Eleventh?” Rhonna asks.

  Alexandar continues smugly. “Cerana is no longer with the Third. Intel suggests that the Ash Lord has continued his reform in fleet management, and his favoring of smaller, independent forces with greater local autonomy. House Cerana was spotted operating in Martian orbit three months ago without additional support. Starhall believes there are now at least twelve main subdivisions within the Societal Navy.” He pushes his long hair from his eyes. “The lattermost fleets of course being of smaller size. The rest of the fleets are likely concealed behind the planet, as per the Ash Lord’s modus operandi.”

  “How many capital ships are in the Eleventh Fleet?” I ask, becoming annoyed with him.

  “Estimates say two destroyers, six torchships, ten frigates, sir.”

  “Correct.”

  “Thank you, sir.”

  Rhonna goes into a dark silence. I turn to her and say quietly, “What do you think I’m going to say?”

  “That I should read my briefs.”

  “Yes. But why?” She doesn’t answer, but looks over my shoulder at Alexandar.

  “Rhonna, the first rule of war is to know where your enemy is. How can you know where he is if you do not know how many he is? Say you spot one torchShip with Cerana dogs in the asteroid belt. How can you decide your course if you don’t know how many ships she travels with? How many variables are at play for ambushes and counterattacks?” I lean close and nod back to Alexandar. “And more importantly, don’t let him bait you.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “And you…” I turn back to Alexandar. He freezes as I pull a holo from my datapad showing the ship’s bridge. I rewind it and replay the self-satisfied smiles he was giving Rhonna when my back was turned. I make him watch it three times till his pale cheeks are rose red. “Don’t be such an asshole. It’s why there’s war in the first place.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  From his perch in the pilot’s chair above, Colloway chuckles in amusement, though still no smile. He’s never been fond of Alexandar, or many Golds for that matter, but he takes particular joy in seeing my dashing lancer humbled. It doesn’t happen often. Except for his mouth, the boy would make Lorn proud. He’d like everyone to think his gifts are Jove-sent, but not a moment of his life since I met him has not been spent studying or practicing the martial arts. Sometimes Lorn would let him sit in on our secret lessons in Agea. He would bring his sister’s hazelnut bread and watch with wide, enamored eyes.

  I motion Alexandar closer. “I want you to keep your distance from Apollonius.”

  “With all due respect, sir, the man has a bomb in his head.”

  “He’s a madman. He meant it when he mentioned the bloodfeud. Won’t throw a gauntlet because he knows I’ll stop it. But he still might take his chance if you turn your back.”

  “He won’t. He knows you’ll blow his head off, and I rather think he likes his head.”

  “He’ll probably wager that he’s safe. That I won’t sacrifice the mission in order to avenge your death.”

  “Of course you would.” A slow look of pain grows on his face. “Wouldn’t you?”

  “Of course I would,” I say, catching Rhonna’s eye. She knows I’m lying, because unlike Alexandar she does not suffer the shared delusion of grandeur under which all Golds secretly live their lives: that they are the chosen one, and their time is nigh. Rhonna would expect me to put the mission above her. With that single look between us, I see her in a fresh light.

  “Sorry to interrupt the school lesson, but we’re being hailed by planetary security,” Winkle says from the sunken communications pit. His white padded chair is tilted back. The ambient light from the holographic controls that float in front of him bathe his spindly arms in a radioactive green. He’s done this dance before, as we’ve already passed through three levels of security with the codes received from Tharsus’s buyer, the first coming at Bastion station, then twice more from Gold patrols and sensor drones as we plunged deeper and deeper into the maw of the enemy orbit. Aside from our contact with the Society, we’ve been on a coms blackout.

  “Last code,” I say. “Prep the engines for max burn if it doesn’t work.”

  Into the mouth of the beast indeed.

  —

  After passing through planetary security, we touch down beside five older assault frigates on a quiet landing strip set into the shoal of Tharsus’s island in Venus’s equatorial seas. Helmeted sentries in observation obelisks watch the ship settle onto the concrete and then look back with disinterest over the night water. “That’s it?” Sevro mutters. “Five frigates? I thought there’d be at least a dozen.”

  “There’s probably more off-island,” I say.

  “And if there’s not?”

  The Howlers assemble in the hold near the disembarkation ramp, where they finish donning their armor. Pebble and Milia escort Apollonius from his cell. He doesn’t look a prisoner, dressed all in black and wearing a purple cloak that we found in Quicksilver’s closets. Sevro went on ahead of me and now sits on one of the parked gravBikes, sharing an apple back and forth with Tongueless, who takes small, delicate bites. Sevro glowers at Apollonius as a Howler tightens the screws on his armor’s backplate. “You remember what happens if you get clever, Apple?” He squeezes the fruit till it explodes in his grip. He wipes the pulp and juice on Apollonius’s black jacket. “A little promise from me to you.” Tongueless frowns at the smashed fruit.

  “How is your wife, Barca?” Apollonius asks after a brief pause. “A magnificent woman. Tharsus and I shared her sister several times, of course—a venemous appetite, Antonia—but I cannot say I ever had the exquisite pleasure of the elder Julii. From what Tactus told me, she was like an eclipse of the sun.”

  The Howlers between them back out of the way, but Sevro doesn’t
move.

  “No insult meant. A mere compliment on a fine, if incongruous, coupling.”

  “I have a collection you’ll be contributing to very soon,” Sevro replies, tapping his knife on his boot.

  I’m wary of the Gold. He’s gotten us to the surface and honored his end of the bargain thus far, but how long will that last once he’s reunited with his brother? They’re a strange and sadistic pair. Even Tactus, the most faithful of the brothers, couldn’t be trusted farther than you could spit.

  I motion Tongueless over. He’s gained almost fifteen kilos since we found him in that cell. Clown and Pebble have started training him in the onboard simulator for starShell piloting. He’s not good, but he’s certainly not bad. I was hesitant when Sevro suggested we bring him on the mission, but we need another tall body, and he knew his way around the weapons locker better than he knows his way around our kitchen. In a way, that’s more disconcerting, but I had Winkle put a security measure in his suit as an insurance policy.

  “Inside the darkzone we won’t be able to transmit to the tech in Apollonius’s skull,” I tell Tongueless now. “I want you to watch him. If he steps out of line, you waste him.” I gave the same instructions to Thraxa about Tongueless and Apollonius. The Obsidian pulls one of Sevro’s knives from his belt. He must really be making an impression. Casually, as if it were encoded into his DNA as a passive trait, he twirls the blade through his fingers. He smiles and nods.

  “Goodman,” I say quietly.

  “Fascinating conceptual model,” Apollonius says, looking at my Howlers as I join him. “So many disparate genuses working with autonomy. I wonder, if not for the Golden monster, how long would it take for you to eat each other?”

  “Well, hope you end up being around to find out,” I say. I turn to the Howlers and see Sevro watching my conversation with Apollonius. “All right, ladies and gentlemen, helmets up.” The friendly faces of my tallest Howlers disappear behind the cold masks of pulseArmor, replaced with the faces of the demons. My men wear none of their menagerie of trophies, or their wolfpelts. And the armor, which often is violently painted per the owner’s preference, is a Society commando squad’s matte black with an iron Minotaur on the breast. “You fascists look like you’d raze a village and liquidate the local populace with particle beams.”