To avoid distinctions such as “up” and “down” or “top” and “bottom”—meaningless, even harmful when operating in a world where orientation is often relative—the IMEC’s two surfaces have been given direction-neutral names. The “red” or “city” side bears the closest resemblance to the old Ninth City, supporting its most recognizable landmarks, including the Forum, of which the Basilica makes up a prominent portion. The “green” or “country” side is more residential in character, its skyline less ambitious, hosting the majority of the IMEC’s open space and its only large body of water. Both sides are equally well protected, however, bristling with our towering City Guns and battle spires, amply supplied with garrisons ready to sortie at a moment’s notice.
At present, the model of IMEC-1 is a grid of carefully arranged pieces. The Board, so frantic since this morning, is quiet but for a few buzzing circles of last-minute positioning and preparation. Here inside the Basilica, the scene is more frenetic. Officers jog back and forth carrying messages and orders along a layer cake of platforms extending nearly floor to ceiling—or perhaps ceiling to ceiling is the better description. Gravity reverses at the level dividing the Basilica’s mirrored halves, so that from each side’s perspective the other appears upside down. Climbing from one to the other is a simple if bowel-jabbing procedure, though it’s difficult to shake the subliminally disorienting sense of passing into some reflected, parallel world.
Every piece on the Board, from the heavy, rounded cubes representing full cohorts to the starlike, luminous specks that mark our fontani, carries an abundance of information. The exact content of that information depends on the subject in question and its position relative to the IMEC. In the case of distant enemy units, we may get only a grainy visual, but if a squad of milites happens to be marching past the Basilica, we can watch them from any angle we choose, read the condition of their bodies and equipment, gauge their morale, see through their eyes, smell through their noses. Instruments for reading such intelligence—some large and baroque, others small and fragile—are mounted along the platforms that encircle the Board, the densest clusters indicating posts where commanders roost to observe and direct the Legion’s movements. Low-ranking officers like me are issued only small durbunler, devices similar to binoculars in design and appearance and—with a little imagination—function.
Fontanus Charles Cossou joins me while I’m standing along one of the platforms, scanning the IMEC’s City Side. As the lenses of my durbun pass over each piece, the legionaries signified sweep into view. I’ve spotted a cohort of milites loading into one of the battle spires, and by adjusting my durbun’s dials, I can observe them filing onto the assault platforms circling up the spire like kernels on a cob, taking their places in quiet rows, nervously fiddling with their lazels and adjusting their armor.
“They’re ready,” Charles says. He’s watching the pieces on the Board, but the way he says it makes me think he can see those milites better than I can.
I lower my durbun to salute. “There are a lot of inexperienced legionaries out there, sir. I hope we did enough to prepare them.”
Charles doesn’t acknowledge my salute. Like many of the oldest veterans, he doesn’t put much stock in legionary protocol. “You’ve given us a chance, Vinneas,” he says. “That’s what we needed more than anything. Assuming this contraption of yours holds together.”
“I’ve made sure there’s a supply of bubble gum and duct tape on hand, sir,” I say, my standard response to concerns regarding the structural or conceptual soundness of IMEC-1. I’ve heard a lot of these over the past month, and few have been delivered with a grin, like this one from Charles. Having accepted my proposal, the Consulate felt obliged to transfer me over to Command, officially to advise on the preparations for defending Earth. As far as I’ve been able to discover, my duties consist solely of absorbing frustrated rants from my fellow officers whenever we encounter any kind of problem or setback. For this, I have been awarded the foolishly lofty rank of centurio. I might have been made an optio or tesserario, except that I was already a censor, and despite being a dead end in terms of rising to the highest levels of the Legion, the censors do head up their own division of operations, making them equal to centuriones in the overall chain of command. The Consulate couldn’t very well demote me for my part in our new plan, so here I am.
“Excellent,” Charles says, still grinning. “We’ll do the rest. Or they will,” he concedes, indicating the milites and several other pieces gliding across the Board. “If all goes according to plan, I won’t come into it at all.”
“You’re part of the reserve?”
“Heading it up, in fact. I was just conferring with Feeroy.”
He nods toward a platform a few levels above ours, and when I look past the expanse of drifting pieces, I see Imperator Feeroy glaring down at us. Despite how virulently unpopular his plan to evacuate Hestia has become, Feeroy remains adamant that it is our best and safest option, and other commanders have seized upon his conviction to distract from the fact that they had been just as vocal in favor of evacuation back when the only other option seemed a gallant but doomed last stand. With Dux Reydaan assuming command of the Legion overall, Feeroy might reasonably have expected the Ninth would be his. Instead, under the logic that a commander so eager to avoid a fight should have that portion of the Legion least likely to see combat, he has been assigned the Legion’s reserve forces, who will wait behind on Earth and join the battle only if summoned. I can’t help respecting Feeroy’s commitment to his beliefs, but that doesn’t keep him from blaming me for everything that’s happened. I doubt it helps any that his decision to ship me off with the censors is the reason I’m now the Legion’s youngest centurio. In terms of angry tirades, he’s been my best customer so far.
“Has he told you anything about his plan for us out there?” Charles asks.
“No.”
“You should ask him.”
I watch as Feeroy studies the movement of pieces across the Board, far more intent than I would expect of a commander who will be leaving the majority of his troops behind. Something in his expression makes me uneasy. “Here’s to hoping you miss the whole battle, then,” I say to Charles, though one thing I’ve learned about plans is how quickly they can fall apart.
“Adventure, heh. Excitement, heh. A Jedi craves not these things.” Charles grins at me in a way that makes me feel I must be missing something. “But promise you’ll let me take this baby for a spin once we’re off in the Realms,” he adds, turning to look down at the hefty, goldenrod-colored piece used to represent the IMEC.
“It’s a deal.”
He steps back and surprises me with a sharp salute. “I’ll see you at the victory party, Centurio.”
When he’s gone, I continue scanning the IMEC, looking over the disposition of our forces. No doubt there are several officers around who’d like to expend some nervous energy by shouting at me, but as I see it, my real job is worrying about strategy. For all my glib comments about gum and duct tape, I know the IMEC is far from perfect, that there are still bugs and glitches, problems with its layout and function a month simply wasn’t enough time to fix, even with the entire Legion working nonstop. I tune the dials on my durbun, surveying first the overall placement of artillery, then the blocks of troops positioned around the city. I’m panning past a crowd in the Academy courtyards, where some of the cadets recently inducted into the Legion are mustering, and over toward the Stabulum, when a huge face abruptly pops into my field of vision.
“Hey there, Vinneas! Looking for me?”
I take a surprised step back, but when I lower my durbun, I’m alone on the platform.
The voice of Lady Jane emanates from the railing in front of me. “Ha! Scared you!”
I raise my durbun again and adjust the view to bring Lady Jane into focus. Once work on IMEC-1 began, Kizabel and I were able to convince the Consulate that Lady Jan
e would be a resource vital to finishing the project on time. She’s been indispensable in helping us respond to the contingencies of putting the theory and design of the IMEC into practice. The rest of her time she spends making a gleeful nuisance of herself.
“I hope you don’t plan on sneaking up on people like that while we’re in combat,” I say to her. “Someone is going to mistake you for a secret Valentine weapon.”
“The Valentines don’t have anything this pretty” is her reply to this sensible concern. Despite her jaunty attitude, she’s plainly anxious about the prospect of battle. To bolster her confidence, she has donned the flamboyant uniform of a CE eighteenth-century field marshal.
“Of course. How could I have been so careless?”
“So,” she says, ignoring my question and assuming a singsong tone. “Who were you looking for?”
“Just making sure we’re all in position. Reviewing the troops.”
“Really?” She smiles slyly. “It seemed a lot like you were looking for someone.”
“Listen, Lady, maybe you can help me with something.” It isn’t just a blatant, artless change of subject. I’m still thinking about the look on Feeroy’s face as he scrutinized the Board, like he was following some pattern I couldn’t quite see. Feeroy’s ego may on occasion override his more reasoned faculties, but he remains an experienced commander with an extensive combat résumé. And if something about the battle now taking shape has caught his attention, I want to know what it is. Looking at the Board more closely, I’ve already got an idea.
“Lady, where would you say Romeo has the best chance of breaching the IMEC’s defensive perimeter?”
“That isn’t funny, Vinn.” Lady’s face registers offense that I would even suggest such a thing. “We’ve got battle spires and guns covering the whole thing. We’re one big enemy kill zone.”
“Say you had to chose a spot. Which would it be?”
She’s quiet a moment, and when I look through my durbun, I find Lady with her field goggles turned toward the real-life image of IMEC-1. “Well, I don’t know, Vinn,” she says. “I mean, it isn’t like we’re invincible or anything. The IMEC does have its flaws, though if you tell Kizabel I said that, you’re a dead man.”
Lady Jane is beginning to see what I see, what Imperator Feeroy saw. IMEC-1 is arguably the most devastating war machine mankind has ever produced, but it was still jury-rigged in under a month.
“And anyway,” Lady is saying, “that perimeter is huge. There isn’t any one place . . .” She trails off.
There it is. I feel something cold tingle at the back of my neck, the fear I’ve been working to get under control all day. IMEC-1 doesn’t have any single, disastrous weakness—not that I’ve been able to find anyway, and I’ve been looking—but it has cracks, faults, fissures; places where coverage from our artillery isn’t quite perfect, places where the vagaries of artifice or geography create blind spots in communication or command, places where the city’s layout makes it difficult for milites and equites to mount a strong defense. If I can see those weaknesses now, how long will it take the enemy to find them and press?
Our only chance of winning this battle was to introduce something new, something to offset Romeo’s advantage in numbers. IMEC-1 will do that, so long as the City Guns keep firing. But if we lose the IMEC, we lose our one solid advantage, and if that happens, we lose everything.
“Vinneas?” Lady asks. She must be thinking along the same lines I am; there’s a tremor in her voice. “What are we going to do?”
I’m not sure there’s anything to do. We’ve prepared all we can. Now it’s up to our legionaries to pull off the victory.
I shut my eyes, intending to block out everything—the Board, the Basilica, the fretful officers bustling along ladders and platforms—and focus on the problem at hand. Instead, I’m visited by the last view I had through my durbun before Lady Jane made her theatrical entrance. A scene from a Stabulum: the crowd of soldiers waiting for the order to launch, the tools of their trade lining the walls like ancient suits of armor, and Rae, in the black uniform of a legionary eques. She would have caught my attention even if she weren’t already on my mind, I think, the one still figure in the last moments of lurid anticipation before a fight.
She stood apart, her head bowed, those lovely features serene except for the slightest furrow, hinting at some deep focus. At the time, most of my attention was occupied by the sharp internal tug that goes off whenever I see her face, but looking again now, I can’t help wondering what was on her mind. The idea comes to me, suddenly, that she might have been praying. Most religions popular in CE society are alive and well among the unincorporated peoples, after all. In any other person on any other day, I wouldn’t give it much thought one way or the other. Spiritual inquiry isn’t forbidden in the Principates, only discouraged in favor of more practical applications of the supernatural. Instead, I find myself hoping, more powerfully than I thought I could hope for anything, that there was indeed a prayer somewhere in her silence, and not only that, but that something out there will hear her and keep her safe.
Several levels above, Dux Reydann stands at his command post, calling for our attention. The Basilica goes quiet, frozen but for the Board and its orbiting pieces. The blue sphere representing Earth falls slowly away from the model of IMEC-1, even as a glittering spark that must be Charles Cossou drifts down to rest on the planet’s surface. Reydann raises his voice to address everyone below, his words magnified in the enormous space: “Sound the General Call to Arms.”
There is a clattering of feet as everyone runs to their stations, the sound soon lost in the rising roar of the city’s battle call.
PART FOUR
THE KEEP
FIFTY-ONE
RAE
I am among the giants now, a soldier commissioned to ride as the heart and mind of a metallic titan. Eques is how we’re titled in the Legion, but I’ve decided the translation Vinneas proposed, “knight,” is a poor description. It’s true we wear armor of a sort, and on occasion will wield a sword or shield after a similar fashion, but our lives are utterly lacking in the noble and courtly ways that always featured in Papa’s tales of knight-errantry. In place of solemn oaths and trials of temperance and virtue, my mantle of knighthood was bestowed after a stern lecture and five days of determined bullying.
The lecture came courtesy of Centurio Kitu, chief of the Sixth Cohort’s Armored Cavalry. In language altogether eschewing the flowery grace notes of chivalry, I was informed that the experimental equus I had debuted during the Battle of Lunar Veil, confiscated promptly thereafter, had since proven so damnably temperamental toward new riders that it was decided inducting me into the Legion would be easier than convincing that fitful beast to accept someone with any actual training or experience.
There was a place for me in the Sixth Armored, provided I could satisfy my superiors all that fancy flying of mine was no fluke, and swore to obey orders from now on. Any sign I was contemplating some rogue stunt, or exhibited the mutinous predilections one might expect from a girl who’d already stolen Principate property and used it in complete disregard of legionary mandate, and I would be locked someplace safely out of the way, that uncooperative equus of mine dismantled to hinder any further mischief. It was more than I could have hoped for, or so I thought, until I discovered Kitu meant to place me with the 126th Equites, under the command of none other than Bad Cop Imway.
I learned later that Imway was as unhappy with this arrangement as I was. He lodged a formal protest with Kitu, arguing that the effectiveness of his unit depended upon intuitive trust and synchrony borne of long association, harmony my presence was sure to disrupt. Kitu’s answer was that the 126th was by far the greenest squad in the whole of Sixth Armored, with the least rapport to disrupt, and unless I proved incompetent or insubordinate, I would remain under his command. That said, Imway would have the chance to expose me as anat
hema to disciplined combat. Had there been time, I expect he would have taken months to test and torture me, but as it was, my gauntlet lasted less than a week.
The 126th made the most of their opportunity, sabotaging me at every turn, provoking me with relentless assaults upon my honor and person, daring me to prove myself unworthy of the name eques, a distinction that by their reckoning I had not earned and sullied by mere association. None of it was any real surprise. I had engaged in personal combat with their commander on two separate occasions and struck down another of their number with a sucker punch to the face. On top of that, I was the greenhorn of the group. Even in my coda, it was common for our scouts to greet new riders with a small taste of the hardships our world could offer.
I persevered, knowing that if I balked or rebelled, I would be out of the Legion faster than I could say Peter Cottontail. What I did not expect was the abruptness with which the trouble ceased. From the close of my fifth day with the 126th on, not a single harsh word or look was cast my way. Whatever they thought of me, orders were orders, and there was more at stake now than pride. I was impressed in spite of myself.
Since then, relations among the 126th have been marked by professional coolness. I’ve had the notion certain grudges and resentments have merely been set aside pending hostilities with a more dangerous enemy, but it’s plain as well not all my new comrades took pleasure in tormenting me. A twinkling, moon-faced girl bearing the complicated name of Haiyalaiya, who during long-distance maneuvers clipped my ankle and nearly sent me crashing into some frigid arctic ocean, came to me with tears brimming in her large eyes and a lengthy apology for each and every act of cruelty she had been obliged to commit, several of which I failed to remember. Sensen, meanwhile, was sure to let me know she would never willingly occupy any sky with me in it, and only her orders and duty to the Legion now keep her from kicking me like the cur I am. For a time she made a point of referring to me as “Thirteen,” a contemptuous allusion to my designation in our unit, but the name failed to gain purchase. To the 126th I am Rachel, Eques Rachel should an extra level of formality be required. That is how I know what distance remains between myself and the others. No one calls me Rae, and though it’s common for equites to reference one another by the names of their mounts, no one mentions mine, probably out of fear of accidentally cracking a smile.
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