by Ada Harper
“You’re telling me this now?” Olivia was all for clearing the air before a fight but this was ridiculous.
“Yes, now.” Alais’s voice was serious, bringing her up short. “I thought you should know.”
Guilt made Olivia gnaw her lip. “I’m sorry if earlier—”
“You’ve gotten used to everything being about you, haven’t you?” The reproach stung, even laced with amusement. “This isn’t about you. It’s about me.” Alais indulged in a smile at Olivia’s confusion, even as she kept on checking her gun. “I might not desire sex, but I do want to find someone who could love me, as I am. We can both agree your heart is already taken.”
“Oh.” Olivia blinked. “What about your family?”
“I suppose...” Alais paused, eyes focusing nowhere. “I suppose if they can’t have a married heir they’ll have to find pride in a dead hero.”
“Oh, no. You’re gonna live,” Olivia said viciously. “You can’t dump me if you’re dead.”
“I’ll keep that in mind.” Alais glanced her way. “Don’t look so guilty. I’m going to find that person. And you’ll be expected to throw the party when I do.”
Olivia found an exhausted laugh. “Will there be dancing?”
“None. It’ll be marvelous.”
“I’ll look forward to it.” The ground shuddered again. Right. Olivia swallowed the spike of dread. “Where do you need me?”
“I’m putting long-range and caricaes with no hand-to-hand experience in the gallery.” Alais nodded to the stairs leading to the senate level over-looking the throne. “It’ll give you the best chance to fall back and support the escape.”
Olivia stopped. “That’s not the plan we discussed.”
“No, it’s hers.” Alais inclined her head. Sabine had taken her place on the Imperial throne. Zahira sat next to her, gold eyes on Olivia. Sabine had changed into dark pants and a fine embroidered coat cut in a high-collared style that Olivia had learned was indicative of nobility. The crimson satin was stiff with intricate filigree and minute scenes that seemed to play out the rise of the Empire itself. Around her throat, the de Corvus gold-silver torque gleamed like a second set of teeth. She looked like an ancient ruler from a coin, unbowed in the face of death.
Her expression was the only thing that gave it away. The grip on the sleek, small pistol in her hand a bit too tight.
Olivia hefted her rifle over her shoulder. “You people are so damn dramatic.” She caught Sabine’s gaze and calmly walked to the base of the dais. She dropped her ammo bag and chose the right side, filling in the blind spot created by Sabine’s injured eye. Zahira joined her, pressing briefly against her legs once before looking to the doors. Gods, she didn’t even want to get Galen’s dog shot. She was screwed.
“I ordered you to the gallery,” Sabine said.
Olivia began twirling the dial on her scope to accommodate the range to the doors. “You did. Shame I’m still the one person here you can’t order.”
“Olivia—”
“Sabine.” Olivia set down her rifle and looked the empress in the eye. “People need you. I love Galen but he would make a miserable, shitty emperor. He needs you alive.”
Her lips parted, mask cracking. “What Galen needs—”
A shrieking clap, a sound like a thousand popped airlocks, ripped through her words. The air sucked painfully out of Olivia’s chest and just as suddenly returned in a rush. The shield fell.
Olivia gripped the stock of her gun and turned. At the head of the barricades, Alais was a silhouette in the dust columns the fading sunlight painted in the air. Her voice was clear in the sudden quiet. “Positions.”
The forces would tighten their perimeter on the estate before breaching. The volunteers shifted uneasily, murmurs just a tremble below panic. Zahira had melted into shadows again. Olivia checked her position between the door and the throne.
She almost missed it when they started praying.
“Lady keep us from the long shadow...”
It was old, an old chant. Older than the Empire, in the pre-Crisis common tongue, not Imperial. Olivia turned her head, but the whisper came from the barricades, the gallery, everywhere. It grew, one thready, shaking whisper at a time until it seemed to come from the throne room floor itself.
“Lady guard us from the long shadow
In darkness may our eyes be open
Lady grant our children peace...”
It was so Imperial, the audacity to pray with a gun in your hands. Olivia’s eyes drifted over the ranks. Sweat-slicked hair shivering above the collars of ill-fitting, borrowed armor. An occasional tick of guns held in trembling hands. Half the volunteers in here would likely be executed, the other half faced a much worse future in the Syndicate. The courage to stand, with sweat in your eyes and shaking hands, when she’d spent most of her life crawling on her belly to avoid notice... Shame filled her mouth, acidic and cold. If she’d stood up sooner, if she’d trusted Galen sooner, or if she’d just stood up to the Syn at all, not become a Whisper happy to sell out people just like these to—
“In war seed our peace within.” The voice came from behind her now. Sabine sat in shadow, hand steady on her lap now. “And if our song falls silent, Lady—”
“And if our song falls silent, Lady,” the room echoed. The floor shivered.
“Then let our bones sing.”
No. Olivia checked her scope, cleared the chamber. Rubbed her eyes clear.
The gunfire crested louder outside the door now, a slow inevitable wave. The door was reinforced permasteel, with bolt struts that went deep into the very walls of Ameranthe, Alais had told her. Even if the invaders had brought a pulse generator, it would take them a dozen minutes to melt through that much steel. That is, if they didn’t decide to come in the windows. Olivia’s gaze skittered restlessly from one wide arch to another until the sound of sliding metal brought her back.
“No,” Sabine’s whisper was heavy and horrified. The giant doors hissed with sliding bolts. Someone had found a key. Or been given one. It felt like one last turn of the knife for Sabine’s rule. Olivia’s pulse slammed against her ribs and she raised her rifle as Alais called orders to hold. The plan was for Olivia to pick off any leader first before the barricades engaged. Chaos was their best chance for survival. Her scope found the crease of the doors. Olivia gritted her teeth and drew in a breath.
The doors blew open, hundreds of tons of permasteel swinging back like torn tissue as a storm of smoke, noise, and light flooded into the dim throne room. Olivia squinted, willing her eyes to adjust as the distorted shapes of soldiers moved through the shroud. They weren’t shooting, yet. She picked out a head at the front center, caught a bark of voices. The leader. Not for long: Olivia aimed, bit her teeth into a snarl, and pulled off a clean shot.
...which flew through the space where the leader had stood, dodged, as if expected. Olivia couldn’t even curse before a voice rang out loud enough to silence war itself:
“Gods dammit, kitten.”
Lyre emerged from the smoke, smirk first.
Chapter Twenty-Seven
The rifle fire seared past Galen’s head, close enough to burn his cheek with a wake of superheated air. He fell back to the pavement while Pascha barked a laugh nearly as loud as his covering fire. He cackled and hobbled to a knee again to return fire as the permacrete shattered around him.
“They’re getting feisty on us now!” Pascha hollered and there was an exhilaration in his growl that made Galen shake his head. They retreated farther into the gutted storefront they’d taken for cover.
“Keep moving. Don’t get drawn into it!” Galen had to holler to be heard over the firefight. Pascha’s beard parted with a bright smile.
“Aye, sir.” Pascha cackled as he reloaded, ignoring the places he’d seared his bushy hair. “But they line up so eager, I hate to disappoint
’em!”
“Run and gun, Lieutenant.”
Despite his order, Pascha dragged an ammo box up to get comfy in his position, like a bird making a nest. Pascha’s wounded arm was bound tight to his side with a wrap, but it didn’t stop the bear of a man from lobbing another chys-grenade into the street.
Galen shook his head and fell back to check the rest of his soldiers. After the sewer escape, the mission here on was simple by comparison: hold them there. Hold the attention of the insurrectionists long enough for Lyre to secure Ameranthe and return with enough forces to rain down hellfire.
But instead of 150 guerrilla soldiers entrenched in familiar, thick terrain ripe for skirmishes, Galen had fifteen wounded soldiers in a blasted-out war zone. Fifteen wounded soldiers, in a confined urban area surrounded by no-man’s-land and pressed in by superior forces on all sides. Somehow, he needed to make fifteen loud, as loud as a hundred fifty.
He broke them into groups of four small guerrilla units. They named each group after wolves from folktales: Korobo. Lupte. Susi. Vulko. Doglords and their wolves.
Galen could practically feel the imagined disgust in Olivia’s voice when he told her that. He wanted to hear it. Wanted to see Olivia’s eye roll and hear her curse at him and...he could drown the city with the things he wanted, possible and impossible. It killed him to send Lyre to secure Ameranthe, when everything in him strained to go, throw the traitors out of his halls, protect his people. Olivia.
But Galen was the bait. The way they were reluctant to engage told him they were hoping to take captives. The reason eluded Galen; it made no sense. The crown would be sent into just as much disarray if he died in a missile attack rather than was captured. He couldn’t understand why they were being so cautious.
But it worked, at first. The four squads set up a rotating pattern, Galen trading between which group he was with to keep the enemy guessing on his location. They marked a patrol, they engaged, they ran, they recovered, they engaged again. Over and over, for six hours, crafting the illusion of a bigger, better equipped force. And it worked, up until the pulse craft cruised in.
Galen was on the rooftop with Pascha when it descended past the city. It was a black, sleek Syn craft, no markings to identify it. He felt a trickle of foreboding as it glided over the red sands to land amid the ruins of Meteore on the far side of the field.
“That’s not reinforcements,” Galen muttered the obvious. “More like a command shuttle.” An unheard-of sight, this late in a standoff.
“Maybe we can clean up here and steal it. Never piloted a Syn ride.” Pascha, ever optimistic, swung an arm around Galen’s neck and practically hauled him to the stairs. “C’mon, got a mess of those fuckers sniffing around the east lot. Let’s not let ’em get comfy.”
The shuttle signaled a change in the opposition’s strategy. And the change was dramatic, starting with the very next engagement. The next troops they sent in caught Lupte squad off-guard and Galen lost two of his best snipers. The troops suddenly seemed able to detect and anticipate their movements, popping up to pin them down with strategic attacks. It was everything he could do to keep the remaining units moving.
They consolidated—Korobo and Susi the only teams remaining. Galen sent Pascha with Susi ahead to the grav tunnel station at the far side of a block that looked like it’d been spared. The sewers had been bombed closed after their last escape, but there were pockets of the grav tunnels that had been spared. They could gain the element of surprise that way, Galen confidently told the veteran lieutenant with him, but by the grim look in her eyes he knew she saw what he did: they were being herded. Slowly pushed into falling back.
He refused to acknowledge it. Galen had slid out of worse traps. The pieces on his board were dwindling, but as long as the piece that held the crown wasn’t in check and his queen was free to move, the game was still in play. There was always a viable counter move to any opponent. He just had to find it.
Galen was determined to get back to Ameranthe. There was too much to set right. The choices Olivia had made, the actions he regretted. He’d respect her choices, even if he couldn’t repair the damage. But first he was determined to deliver her a country where she’d be safe. Safe and free. He couldn’t admit it out loud, but that had come to mean more than a throne to him. He’d tear down an empire—or a Syndicate—to guarantee it.
They reached the steps to the station to find the entrance mercifully intact. A fallen office building even gave them a modicum of cover as the unit got into position. Galen gave the signal, a sharp triple click that was loud but rebounded off the ruins around them enough that it didn’t give away a single position. They waited. Dust filtered down the collar of his shirt. Far away, trucks churned over red sand. A shadow roiled in the entrance to the station, and Galen tensed until he heard a return click and Pascha’s familiar bearlike head popped over the top of the stairs.
“Lady’s blue balls, you look like shit,” Pascha slapped Galen on the shoulder hard enough to make him miss a step. They hurried down the stairs, and Galen didn’t truly take an easy breath until they were in the cool shadows of the tunnel station, out of sniper sight. The power generators had given out not long into the assault, but Galen could just make out the outline of tidy tile and darkened vending machines. The grav rails were dead and silent, leading away like arrows into a tunnel that seemed miraculously intact. Pascha’s unit got to their feet to join them. Galen could see the exhaustion clear on every soldier’s face.
Pascha seemed proud as he gestured. “Den’s all yours, Red Wolf.”
“Not the kind of place I’m looking to make a home.” Galen ignored the hollow feeling in his chest as he said it. Home wasn’t a bombed-out tunnel. Home had a sharp tongue and sharper green eyes. He shouldered his weapon and gestured to the receding tunnel. “How far do we have that way?”
“To hell and back, far as I can reckon. We went half a click before turning back. Looks like the bombs missed it.”
Galen frowned. After their earlier escape, the enemy had been thorough. Every other station they’d come upon had tunnels that quickly ended in a solid wall of rubble. Honestly he’d expected the same dead end here. It could be trapped, but it also presented an undeniable opportunity. They could pop up somewhere else in the city, lose them in the warrens of tunnels or, if Galen was being a true optimist, even find a way across the red no-man’s-land undetected. To home.
Risk or not, it was too much of a hope to pass up. He traded a look with Pascha. “They’ll figure out we’ve gone to ground soon enough. We can’t have them on our tail if we go in.”
“Already ahead of you.” His teeth were a white grin in his dark beard. He waggled a field tablet in his hand. “Took a meander on the way here and laid some charges. One push and those traitor bastards will have all the distraction we need.”
Galen nodded. “Good man. Get everyone up then. We’ll go slow.” Most of the soldiers who stayed behind had been injured in one way or another. A second mad dash across the no-man’s-land was out of the question, but a steady push into the tunnel might achieve the same thing.
The first click into the tunnel was still enough to get his hopes up. The explosions Pascha had triggered rumbled dust down from the ceiling, clogging up their solar lights, but the tunnels seemed stable. Occasionally they heard boots with the steady rumble of trucks overhead. Hopefully the conspiracy forces moving in the opposite direction. Galen positioned himself near the rear of their unit. He was about to call for a rest when he paused, tilting his head.
“Hear that?” Pascha said next to him, rifle already sweeping behind them.
“The trucks stopped,” Galen confirmed grimly. It was silent above them, as if the streets had suddenly cleared. He turned, searching out the soldiers scouting ahead to order a tighter formation. As he opened his mouth, the tunnel imploded.
A vacuum of air punched him in the chest, sending both Galen and Pasc
ha to the ground. The dark above his head turned to vaporized concrete, seizing in his lungs as he tried to suck a breath. A shard of rock slammed against his cheek, stunning him. Pascha hauled him to his knees. When Galen could finally look up, the tunnel where Susi and Korobo units had been was nothing but shattered metal hash. Horror, then rage washed over him in a quick liquid succession.
He barely heard the gunfire over the shrieking aftermath of the explosion. Everything was a shadow play in the pitch dark of the tunnels. The dust-clogged air lit up with emerald blasts from enemy guns. It took Galen a moment to make sense of it—green ammo would be pulsefire, Syndicate weapons. But all the conspiracy forces they’d encountered so far had been Imperial soldiers, following the orders of traitorous nobles. Suddenly the black chopper and the change of tactics made sense.
Still, he knew how to respond to a trap. He pivoted, finding cover to return fire. Pascha was a raging bull in his periphery, taking down the closer targets with his heavy cannon. Galen focused on pinning down the figures that moved in the shadows farther off, straining to pick out a leader in the gloom.
A whistle was the only warning Galen got to tuck his head into his shoulders. Light exploded the tiles behind him as a grenade went off and he slammed back into the permacrete slab he’d been using for cover. His vision swam then cleared. A baritone howl brought his attention to Pascha. The bearlike soldier had lost his heavy gun and was rushing a smaller attacker with his bare fists. It happened within the span of a breath. A wide swing, a spark of green, a Syn pulse blade sliding through Pascha’s silhouette, right through the already injured shoulder, like a knife through butter. He hit the ground heavy and silent.
Galen roared, shoving to his feet and ignoring the way the tunnel was going gray around the edges, swaying. He threw himself at the soldier, but she moved faster than should have been possible. He landed on his shoulder, hard, and his entire right side went numb from a stun blast. The impact knocked him back. His head hit the wall hard and the entire world threatened to dim before he could get to his knees. His vision was roiling and suddenly his skull felt ill-fitting for his brain.