And then there are days like this one.
The festivities awaiting me, which began three days ago in Hestia and have been continuing in Dis for a matter of hours, are part victory celebration, part memorial service, part bon voyage party, all wrapped up in a careful schedule of elaborate meals, inspirational speeches, moments of silence, congratulatory toasts, and assorted binge drinking, culminating in a rousing valediction to Earth as our expeditionary force begins its heroic mission to close our home off from the rest of the Realms.
But as the velo I’m riding passes through Lunar Veil into Dis, at the rear of a formation carrying the last of the officers who so selflessly delayed their participation in this momentous event, it’s apparent those already at the celebration couldn’t wait for the show to begin. Even from this distance, splashes of light and color—all impromptu artifices, by the look of them—can be seen spattering like raindrops across the bubble of atmosphere surrounding IMEC-1.
Or perhaps I should say “the Keep,” as people have popularly come to refer to our expeditionary city. I haven’t yet discovered the origin of this nom de guerre, but there’s little question it has become so ubiquitous over the past month as to replace the official designation of IMEC-1 in all but the most formal and technical contexts—much to the chagrin of Kizabel, who considers her presence one such formal and technical context.
To see it now, with its gaily illuminated buildings and streets brimming with revelers, its lush forests and pristine lakes, you’d never guess that only two days ago, local time, the Keep was a virtual ruin, a confusion of rubble and wreckage. In fact, if it weren’t for the arrays of towering City Guns and toothy battle spires scattered across its surface, one could easily mistake the Keep for a perfectly ordinary, peaceful, everyday flying city.
Mine is the last velo to land, lowering onto a wide grassy lawn in the Academy’s outer courtyards. I join a line of officers filing inside, where Dux Feeroy waits to greet me with one of his signature noncommittal nods. I’m almost certain he still despises me, but it wouldn’t be politic to let his dislike show, seeing as he and I are widely viewed as the heroic duo that rescued the Legion from the brink of devastating defeat.
As commander of the reserve, Feeroy was the natural audience for my budding thoughts on worst-case scenarios, but more importantly, he was the only one who would even pretend to listen. I’d already approached—or tried to approach—every superior officer from Reydaan on down, and no few subordinates as well. None wanted anything to do with me or my worries over problems it was too late to fix. I was informed—with such consistency that I began to wonder whether there had been some kind of internal memo on the subject of never even contemplating retreat—that what mattered now was winning this battle, not what would happen if we lost, and anyway, weren’t contingency plans a matter for the reserves?
The plan I had in mind wasn’t perfect—in fact it was flawed in more ways than I cared to count—but it was better than nothing, which was what we had until then, and it was simple enough to implement. Most importantly—as far as anyone in the Legion is concerned, anyway—it worked, and far better than I could have hoped. The Valentines took some pretty extreme risks trying to capitalize on their advantage after IMEC-1 went dark, and when our guns came back online, large portions of their forces were caught out in the open. Faced with already heavy losses, they chose to retreat rather than risk annihilation. As a result of this stunning reversal, and also because almost no one in Command took any interest in my last-minute preparations, Feeroy and I were both left looking pretty good once all the smoke had cleared. Feeroy, along with the rest of Command, was perfectly happy to ignore the fact that the only reason any of us are still alive is that the evacuation force disregarded orders and joined the battle, but that doesn’t keep him from blaming me personally for their insubordination.
While I’d like to believe Feeroy’s loathing of me is a loathing tempered with respect, the best I’ve seen thus far has been cool indifference with a hint of contempt—all of which can be awkward, since I’m now part of his advisory staff. Another bit of administrative business that needed to be taken care of before we left was my latest promotion. I am now Legatus Vinneas, head of Ninth Legion’s Fourteenth Cohort. Not bad for a legionary whose only discernible duty during the last engagement was self-appointed worrier.
When I request permission to be excused from the officers’ banquet slated to follow this evening’s closing of Lunar Veil, Feeroy consents with lordly indifference. What I do with myself is beneath his interest, is his stance, though he doesn’t pass up the opportunity to get rid of me as soon as possible. “You may want to watch the closing someplace other than the Dominium,” he says, referring to the building formerly known as the Hall of the Principate, now home to the offices of Dominus Reydaan, the Keep’s supreme commander. “The crowds will make it difficult to slip away afterward.”
“My thoughts exactly,” I say, saluting. “Thank you, sir.”
When I was at the Academy, we would occasionally form classes up at the Forum for review, and it always felt like the place was so big, you could keep adding cadets forever and never run out of space. But today, the great stone plaza is overflowing from every side, and the crowd becomes denser the farther you go. The Legion domiciled on the Keep is now comprised of four full Legions—the Second, the Sixth, the Tenth, and, of course, the Ninth, each supplemented with reinforcements from the others remaining behind—and it feels like each and every one of those legionaries must be wedged in here with me.
I try to make my way without accidentally bumping anyone or treading on the multitude of toes crisscrossing beneath me like roots in an especially overgrown forest, though it quickly becomes apparent most people neither notice nor care when I blunder into them. The noise is fantastic, shouts and laughter punctuating the general human babble and the pervasive swell of music—that truly dreadful stuff always commissioned for official events.
The Font of the Principate—Old Fife, that is—looms tall over the sea of dimly lit faces, itself covered in the shadowy figures of legionaries stacked into a teetering tower silhouetted against the subtly starry sky, pouring down cheers of triumph at having climbed so high. Here and there at random, artifices pop upward with sparkling loops and darts, then bloom into pearls and blossoms of luminescence that shimmer a moment and disperse into the expanse of stars, sometimes leaving behind a sharp bang or prolonged howl and a scattering of excited applause.
It takes me nearly half an hour, but eventually I work my way around the stage erected outside the Dominium and duck into the long passageway leading beneath—the same trip I used to make during every atmospheric incursion, back when I was still with the Academy and this place was still the Hall of the Principate. Sounds from the Forum echo with a weird, eerie ebb and flow, then fade almost completely as I emerge onto the balcony on the opposite side.
It’s certainly crowded, but not nearly so much as Curator Ellmore—or I—expected. I realize the odd sensation I experienced in the passageway must have been an artifice erected to discourage unwanted guests from finding their way out here; though whether it was put in place by the people on this balcony or the officers who will be enjoying their banquet on another patio above us—and no doubt would prefer to be spared the drunken shouting of common legionaries—I don’t know.
No sooner have I stepped out from the tunnel than one of the figures gathered along the balustrade shouts, “Vinn, is that you? I thought I smelled you over there!”
The voice belongs to Imway, who greets me with an enthusiastic and slightly inebriated embrace. “Nicely done, Vinn!” he says, sniffing me for comic effect. “Been celebrating without us? You smell like you’ve finished two bottles of aquavee and taken a bath in a third. Better hope no one from Command sees you like that!” The joke being, of course, that I’m someone from Command.
“A drink or two may have spilled on me while I was en route,”
I concede.
“The trick is to get the drink into your mouth first,” Imway tells me sagely. “Here, I’ll arrange a demonstration so you can get an idea of the fundamentals.”
He slaps a hand onto my shoulder, guiding me toward the waiting group of legionaries. Most of them are holding small silver cups, though I notice a few have dropped theirs to stand at attention, a hint of unease in their postures.
Fortunately, Imway and his escadrille have all known me long enough that their first instinct is to punch me in the shoulder rather than salute, and soon everyone else is following their example of informality, my new rank—still only a few hours old, as far as anyone present is concerned—mostly forgotten. The 126th is all here, and they know that’s something worth celebrating: Very few fighting units made it out of the battle so completely intact. As I share hugs and toasts and slaps on the back, however, I notice one eques is conspicuously absent.
“Rae’s down in the city somewhere,” Kizabel says, apparently having noticed me searching the little crowd on the balcony and made an unnervingly accurate intuitive leap. She, too, has brought a group with her—most of them new faces I assume are gun-mates from her stint as an artillerywoman. “She went to check on her sister. Said she’d stop by a little later.”
“Sure, excellent,” I say, trying not to sound disappointed. By the knowing smirk on Kizabel’s face, it’s plain she isn’t fooled one bit. “It’s just that I’ve hardly seen her since we went back to Earth,” I explain lamely.
Kizabel and I worked together closely while the Keep was under repairs, but in all that time, I barely had more than a glimpse of Rae, mostly at the Stabulum, where Snuggles was undergoing painstaking restoration. Re-restoration, rather. Kizabel was less than satisfied with the repair team’s initial efforts and insisted on rebuilding everything herself. All company other than Rae could expect to be chased off in a hail of execration and dented machine parts. I’ll admit to being more than slightly jealous that an equus had more visits from Rae than I did but also somewhat relieved. I did something to offend her sometime in the recent past, but because I haven’t figured out what or when, my attempts to fix things have relied on reasoning that amounts to little better than random guessing. I’m a bit afraid to find out whether I still rate as scum. I put my chances of success at around one in twenty.
“Oh yes, absolutely,” Kizabel answers, now grinning openly. “Well, you’re trapped on a floating island together, so odds are you’ll run into each other eventually.”
It’s an awfully big flying island, big enough that two people might not see one another very often if they don’t make a point of it, and I’m about to say as much to Kizabel when I spot Fontanus Jaxten lingering at the edge of the balcony. Recalling the effect distinctions in rank had on this crowd, I opt for a comradely nod of acknowledgment rather than any greeting involving the word “sir.”
“Jax!” I call, motioning him over. “Glad you could make it!” I say this even though, in truth, I’m not very glad at all. A significant faction within the leadership—Curator Ellmore among them—believed younger legionaries ought to be categorically banned from MapleWhite, and while I don’t completely agree, I have a hard time justifying the decisions that allowed Jax to take part. Granted, he and Naomi—another of the Legion’s youngest fontani—were instrumental in our latest victory, defeating a Valentine Zero not far from where we’re standing now. Jax does look more mature—taller, leaner, with fewer marshmallowy qualities than he had the first time we met, a seeming eternity ago but in reality only a few months—but he’s still obviously a child. It may be a simple matter of perspective—no doubt I look as young to Curator Ellmore as Jax does to me—but still. He isn’t even thirteen.
Jax’s recent experiences have lent him a new self-assurance, and he converses confidently with the older legionaries around him. He is remarkably well informed on military politics and seems particularly interested in my opinions regarding how the Keep will perform in the likely event of a second engagement with the enemy during our upcoming mission. When Kizabel launches into her by-now-familiar tirade on the churlish popular habit of referring to IMEC-1 as “the Keep,” he comforts her in a way that implies a shared understanding of humanity’s natural ingratitude. We haven’t been talking long, however, before he asks me for the time.
“I should go,” he says, after I’ve fished out my watch and showed it to him. “I told Naomi I’d watch the closing with her.”
The closing of Lunar Veil will mark the official end of our victory party and the beginning of our mission into the Realms—though I have no doubt the general celebration will continue in an unofficial capacity for some time afterward. Already, the Anchors holding Lunar Veil open have been disabled, and soon the Veil will collapse, sealing us off from Hestia. A moment before that happens, however, there will be a flash on the Veil, giving everyone gathered across the Keep one final glimpse of Earth.
“Did they cancel Reydaan’s speech?” I ask. The flash is supposed to coincide with the climax of a laudatory homily from Dominus Reydaan, but my watch tells me we’re only minutes away from our big farewell, and I have yet to hear a peep from the Dominus.
“It’s been going on for a while,” Jax says. He indicates the corridor leading out to the Forum, and I recognize the faint whisper of Reydaan’s voice echoing through. Whatever artifice has sealed us off from the Forum must also be blocking most of the speech; fine by me, since I’ve proofread the thing enough times to know we’re not missing much.
Kizabel, who has drunk a little more than is good for her, begins teasing Jax about preferring the company of a female over that of his old and loyal friends. Having been on the wrong side of Kizabel’s teasing myself, I decide to intervene. “See you later, Jax. Say hello to Naomi for us.”
Jax gives me a grateful look. Kizabel, by way of adieu, shouts at him, “And tell Rae she needs to stop prancing around the city and get over here!” I can’t be sure, but Kizabel seems to have intended this comment more for me than either Jax or Rae. There are a few snickers, but Jax simply nods, as though in confirmation of an order, and vanishes, leaving only a puff of air and a hiss of static.
“Fontani,” Kizabel muses wonderingly, while along the balcony people holler with drunken approval of the display. “What I wouldn’t give to be able to do that.”
“It would make life more convenient,” I agree. As if in illustration, the air crackles again, rushing this time like a miniature tornado. The sound of howling wind is quickly replaced with an excited whoop, followed by delighted laughter, as of someone who has received a startling but not unwelcome surprise.
Rae has appeared out of thin air, not much more than an arm’s length away. It turns out Jax delivered Kizabel’s message as instructed, then took the extra step of bringing Rae directly to our balcony. I’m not sure if he did this out of courtesy or as part of some treacherous conspiracy with Kizabel, and I don’t particularly care. Either way, it means Rae is here.
Kizabel’s reaction leads me to suspect collusion on some level: She’s the first to respond to Rae’s arrival and gives the strong impression of not being taken entirely unawares. Her greeting consists of a broadside tackle, which Rae absorbs easily, squeezing her arms around Kizabel’s shoulders and lifting her several centimeters off the ground, the two of them cackling maniacally over what can only be some inside joke between them.
The full roster of the 126th Equites is next to crowd around, jostling in with boastful salutations, hearty embraces, and sloshing cups of aquavee. I am at once stunned and unsurprised to see Kizabel directly in the middle of it, trading backslaps and good-natured verbal abuse, a head shorter than anyone else but solidly holding her own. There was some tension between Kiz and the 126th a while back, a falling-out in which Rae, if I recall correctly, played a supporting role, but it looks now as if all unpleasantness has been relegated to the world of bygones, brushed away as petty differences tend t
o be when the world is on the brink of obliteration.
That’s my impression, in any case, until Imway wades into the scrum, wearing the magnanimous grin of a host arriving late to his own party. For the most part he is received exactly as his demeanor anticipates, with toasts and clasped hands and loud laughter, but a few steps from the center of the group his gallant warrior’s smile abruptly drops, replaced by an expression of confusion and dawning outrage. In the next instant he is all hail-fellow once again, fist raised to accept a cup of aquavee passed his way by shouting comrades, but there remains a slightly petulant set to his jaw, easily missed by anyone who hadn’t witnessed this brief interruption to his bonhomie. Of the sight that upset his usually unconquerable confidence, I’ve caught only the tail end, but it’s telling enough: Kizabel wedging her way from Imway’s pack to rejoin her new gunner friends.
So far as I can tell, the only other person who took note of this exchange is Rae. She catches my eye across the crowd and, with a single look, manages to convey not only that, yes, I did in fact just see what I thought I saw, but also that there’s a good deal more to the story. Whatever that is will have to wait, however, because several equites of the 126th have taken it upon themselves to include me in the festivities, by force if necessary.
“You do always travel in style,” I say to Rae, once her welcoming party has absorbed me fully enough that I can speak to her directly.
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