All eyes turned toward the System Commandant, a reedy, older woman named Bancroft with a face caught in a permanent frown. She had been silent through much of the proceedings. Director of the Berenike Orbital Defense Force she might have been, but she was in the presence of seven legates and a strategos of the Imperial Legions—and not just any strategos, the First Strategos of all the Centaurine Legions, a man who answered only to the Imperial Council and to the Emperor himself. Next to such worthies, she was little more than a plebeian village eolderman brought before a planetary lord.
“None that I know of . . .” she said, shifting in her seat. “No more than usual, I mean. Maybe one or two to fuel containment leaks in the past decade. Nothing . . . nothing fraught.”
Hauptmann’s eyes narrowed. “Fraught . . .” he said. “Incident reports were made, I assume?”
Bancroft stammered, trying to articulate a response. “I . . . I . . . well, yes, I—”
“You will have those reports brought to us immediately, Commandant. Thank you.” He snapped his fingers, dismissing the system’s chief military officer as though she were a common cupbearer.
She went, and in her wake Hauptmann’s eyes surveyed us gathered officers, orbs like chips of flint. “It seems there may be something to Sir Hadrian’s clairvoyance, after all.” Hollow laughter accompanied the strategos’s words.
Bassander Lin did not join in.
* * *
“What a waste of time,” Otavia said when we were alone with Pallino and our guards on the platform awaiting the tram to return us across the industrial district and down into the Valles Merguli. “It’s a miracle, really, that your Empire can respond to any threat, much less conquer anyone else. You know?”
I could only grunt in agreement. I had lost my stomach for state meetings when I was a boy. More and more I found myself agreeing with my father: it was better for the landed palatine houses to rule directly than rely on the vast Imperial state. The feudal lords were individuals, and individually responsible to their peoples and for their territories. Better an individual than an apparatus. I thanked heaven we were not a republic, with so many competing interests given voice and power, each strangling each until blood ran in the streets. Nothing would be done about the Cielcin, not until they knocked the topless towers of the Eternal City from the sky. Or civil war and subtle politicking made us an empire again.
“It gets done because soldiers do it,” Pallino said.
“It was soldiers we just listened to talking in circles for three hours,” Corvo replied.
“Them’s officers, ma’am,” he said. “Different species.”
I could just see the tops of the highest towers in the lower district rising above the lip of the canyon, rooftops crowned with gardens bright with swaying trees. Above, the day-gray sky still sparked and flickered with fusion flame where the mighty fleet moved, changing orbits, getting out of one another’s way. “Careful, Pallino. You’re a chiliarch now.”
“And a fighting man through and through. But the captains? If those naval lads weren’t born with the silver spoon in their mouths, someone gave them one.” He paused, and I didn’t have to turn to know the man was shaking his head. “Different fucking species, I say. They’ll make the call, but it’s us who’ll fight and die. Us that’ll win the victory. And what do we get for our trouble? Frozen.”
“You’re very gloomy today,” Corvo said.
“I’m always gloomy before a fight,” he said. “And Elara’s on the Tamerlane. Always needed a woman before a fight, and she’s the only one for me.”
“At least Hauptmann’s putting the call out for reinforcements . . .” I said.
“Marlowe!”
I turned at the sound of the familiar voice, and looking back along the tram platform, past the odd clusters of soldiers and other personnel waiting beneath the iron-and-glass vaults of the tram station, saw Bassander Lin advancing, his black officer’s greatcoat slung over his shoulders like a cape. I flipped my own cape clear of my shoulder and tucked the cane beneath my arm. When Bassander was within ten paces, I said, “Lin.”
The line of fire did not redraw between us, though something stretched in its place. Not animosity, but the memory of animosity, awkward and antiseptic. His oiled hair had slipped, long strands stuck to the shaved sides of his head. I guessed he’d been running.
“You remember Pallino and Captain Corvo?” I said.
The Mandari bowed stiffly. “Hello.” He advanced on me, eyes held to bare slits, and a piece of me wondered for a moment if he would strike me, though I could not have a named a precise reason why I might have deserved such a thing.
He offered a hand instead, not as he had aboard the Schiavona when we’d first set sail for Forum to report to the Emperor and his Council, not as a suppliant eager to touch the robes of some saint or holy man, but as the plebeians do, one man to another. I could just see the faint white bracelet of scar protruding from his sleeve where the hand had been reattached to the wrist.
I took the offered hand and shook it.
“It is true you stopped highmatter with your bare hands?” Lin asked, glancing at the hand he’d shaken and at the glove on my left. Was that it? Had he come seeking after another miracle?
Eyes closed, I drew back. “The bones in my left arm are adamant, remember? Sagara gave them to me in return for his—and her—lives.”
Lin nodded. “I’d forgotten.” Then, “Who was it?”
The Empress, I wanted to say. And the Minister of War. But news of Bourbon’s death had reached us on Colchis, and it was better to say nothing. For Crim’s sake and my own.
“I don’t know,” I told him. “But I’ve been exiled to the front, it seems.” My attentions flickered to Otavia and Pallino, and beyond them to the tram sliding sleekly into sight on its magnetic rail. “What do you think Hauptmann will do?”
Lin answered directly. “If Bancroft’s reports indicate anything suspicious . . . divide the fleet. If they mean to take us by surprise, we must do likewise. He’ll leave a token force here in orbit, withdraw the bulk of his forces out-system, and do to the Cielcin what you think they mean to do to us.”
“You know,” I said as the tram pulled silent into the station, “I was having the very same thought.”
Lin took a sharp step backward, clearing space on the platform for my guards. “I’m glad you’re here, Marlowe.”
Returning his chilly salute, I said, “And I you, Lin.”
CHAPTER 73
BERENIKE
THE NIGHT HELD NO moon, and the stars shone like the drives of starships, not remote but terribly present, pressing against the roof of the world. Some of them were ships, of course. Destroyers and frigates, rapid attack interceptors and courier ships, shuttles and lightercraft and remote-pilot drones, battleships and capital ships, dreadnoughts and the superdreadnought Sieglinde reigning over all, so vast I could make out the shape of her locked in the sky above Deira.
I sketched their fire in white charcoal against the heavy black paper of my folio, setting their lights above the night-lit ramparts of the Storm Wall above, gleaming white and faintly golden. The page opposite showed the mightiest of the massive bridges that spanned the valley high above, homes and shops hanging from its sides and from below its track like the turrets of an inverted castle.
The ships above were sailing.
Sailing away.
Bancroft’s reports had confirmed my suspicions.
Only two ships had disappeared in-system in the last decade, less than the standard attrition rate among cargo haulers and the like. Such ships ran for centuries without maintenance, their various owners scraping by, content to spot-weld and patch their leaky vessels. Failure was inevitable. Entropy would wait—but it could not wait forever.
But for two ships to be destroyed within a million miles of one another inside as many months? Two data poin
ts may not indicate a trend, but we could hardly afford to ignore them. Scouts dispatched to the region had found no sign of the enemy, but that was no surprise. It was not difficult to imagine a Cielcin migratory cluster coming out of warp in a system’s Oort Cloud, masquerading as common asteroids, cutting all thrust and riding their momentum in a steady orbit around the sun. Waiting for their moment and a sign.
“The Sieglinde will withdraw with the bulk of the fleet to point-three light-years out-system and above the ecliptic, and there await the rest of the fleet,” First Strategos Hauptmann had said, standing somehow at the head of the round table, a holograph display modeling the strategic withdrawal in the space before us. “I will remain here and coordinate planetary defense from Ondu Station. Legate Corran.” And here he turned to a hard-faced woman of nearly Jaddian complexion, who cocked an eyebrow at her name. “You will have command of the Sieglinde and the rest of the fleet. Bartosz, you and the 437th will command the defense on the ground alongside Lord Marlowe’s company. Marlowe will act as your lieutenant.”
Bartosz, I thought, looking at the fox-like Sir Leonid. He had been Raine Smythe’s commander. The 437th. That meant Bassander Lin again. I studied the holographs, marked the location of Ondu Station in synchronous orbit directly above Deira, a great cylinder encircled by spires and mighty wards to which were docked the dozen or so light destroyers of the Orbital Defense Fleet. And around it the knife-blade shapes of Hauptmann’s fleet gathered, an array of several dozen vessels ranging from less than a mile in length to the almost forty-mile-long behemoth that was the Sieglinde.
“Why move the Sieglinde out-system?” one of the captains asked.
“Because they will notice it is gone,” Hauptmann answered. “If this Pale prince is as discerning as Lord Marlowe seems to believe, he imagines that I have decided to sacrifice Berenike and the Veil entire. It might make him overconfident, particularly given this second fleet he may have at his disposal. He may believe he has us in his jaws, ladies and gentlemen. Little does he know we will have him in ours.”
Commandant Bancroft cleared her throat. “We should expect them to focus their efforts on the city. They’ll guess we’re coordinating the defense from here.” As she spoke, she found her feet and moved to stand beside the First Strategos. “We expect any ground assault to come across the landing field toward the Storm Wall, which will of course be their primary target.” Her display showed a rendering of the Storm Wall with Deira behind and beneath it, the landing field unrolled and almost perfectly level, save where it was broken by the hangar domes and the round maws of blasting pits.
Otavia couldn’t help herself, and with crossed arms raised her voice. “Won’t they just hit the city from behind? Land on the far side of the canyon or in Deira proper?”
“They will,” Bancroft agreed, “but the Storm Wall will be their primary target. The city bunkers are all beneath it. That’s where our people will be when they attack.”
By way of explanation, one of the ODF junior officers said, “Tomorrow morning we’ll give orders to evacuate the city into those bunkers best we can. The Consortium has already ordered its people to the outland mining camps.”
“The Cielcin will hit those, too,” Bassander said darkly.
“Perhaps,” Hauptmann replied, “but perhaps not all of them. And in any event, it will mean fewer mouths if we’re forced to dig in here for a protracted siege.”
The junior ODF man continued, “There’s room enough in the bunkers and the underground starport terminals to house the city population. They’ll be safe enough down there from orbital bombardment.”
“You mean to sacrifice the city?” I asked, shifting forward in my seat opposite Titus Hauptmann.
The commandant looked down at her boots, afraid perhaps that I was about to embarrass her as Hauptmann had days earlier. “If it means saving the people, yes.”
I liked Bancroft. “Very good.”
“The city is not as defensible as the Wall at any rate,” Hauptmann’s scholiast advised.
“The Cielcin may attempt a landing in it all the same,” I said, gesturing at the holograph. “Particularly if there’s a storm, the wind on the city side will be much less. Even on the far side of the canyon . . .”
A third junior ODF officer spoke up. “The far side is ill-suited to landing, my lord, and worse still for troop deployment. The marshes . . .”
Hauptmann sliced through the growing disorder with a clean precision my father would have admired, not shouting, but raising his voice just a hair, just enough to remind the seated, squabbling officers that he was the man in charge. “Sir Hadrian is quite correct. If there is to be an attack from the air it will come on the inside of the Storm Wall. Tor Jeanne, how many of Javelin-9s do we still have in storage?”
“On the Sieglinde? Eighty-seven, sir,” the scholiast answered. “Perhaps some three hundred distributed throughout the fleet.”
“Three hundred . . .” Hauptmann’s mustache frowned once more as he contemplated the Javelin missile batteries. “I’ll want them strung along the ramparts at the valley’s edge. Plasma howitzers for support where necessary.”
I saw the wisdom in this plain enough. The inner wall was situated nearly midway between the Storm Wall and the far edge of the Valles Merguli. It commanded angles of attack over both the valley itself and its far side as well as over the industrial quarters between its ramparts and the superhuman rise of the Storm Wall, and its battlements were tall enough not to be overshadowed by the surrounding spires and foundry stacks. Deira was not an ancient city by the standards of the Imperium—perhaps three millennia from its founding—but it was yet the product of another age, its walls and towers cyclopean in their antique grandeur, so mighty that we men were but ants beside them, and might have seemed pitiful were it not that we had built such marvels ourselves. More often than not, the clouds themselves pooled against the outer side of the Storm Wall, running down in gray fog or streaming up and cut to ribbons against the points of the Wall’s crown like silver knives.
In the coming weeks I ranged all over the city with Corvo or Aristedes in tow. The little commander had various notions for how the defense of the city should be carried out, and wasted no time sharing these.
I had to commend Bancroft and the governor-general, for never before had I seen so orderly an evacuation of citizens. Local prefects and the soldiers of the ODF emptied one district after another, moving people day by day into the bunkers beneath the Storm Wall and the industrial quarters, accessed through heavy vault doors and tunnels in the terraces of the city along the valley’s side. In little less than a fortnight, the city was all but emptied, its only occupants the odd utility workers and the prefects who dragged barricades across roads and bridges and who drove armored groundcars through tight corridors where the buildings stood dark and close.
Our best calculations told us we had only a matter of weeks before the Cielcin arrived, and the silence over Deira city thickened like a sauce, like the fog that dominated the airfield each time I trekked out through the tram tunnels and underground taxiways that honeycombed the landing field beneath the tarmac and stood upon the grid. Beyond the paved miles the prairie stretched forever, and far off I saw the gray hulks of the nuclear plants that powered the massive city, safe across the empty distance. Looking back into the white shadows of the Storm Wall, I spied other hulks.
The colossi waited against the wall, hunched on their massive legs: two and four and six.
Like men, some were, if men were a hundred feet tall. Still others resembled mighty beetles, or moved with the hunched indignity of a bulldog tall as any house of lords. Each was a mobile barracks, a mobile artillery unit. If the Cielcin did mean to assail the Storm Wall from the airfield, they would face our giants of steel.
So mighty a host had we assembled in our defense!
I prayed it would be enough.
* * *
&
nbsp; “Hauptmann is putting us in the trenches,” I said, meaning the city itself. “He’s convinced the first assault will aim to terrify, which means berserkers in the streets.” I turned my gaze from Corvo to Aristedes, to Varro, Valka, and Durand. Crim and Pallino each sat in the far corner of the room, arms crossed, eyes hard and clear among the other chiliarchs. It was not the first time we’d all gathered before a battle, and I prayed that it would not be the last. Udax and Barda had joined us, for I’d given the order that every man and woman on the Tamerlane should be decanted from their icy slumber and brought up to speed on the situation.
The Irchtani watched in solemn silence, listening with heads cocked like curious ravens. Even Prince Alexander was present, having abandoned his white royal garments for a Legion uniform devoid of insignia or rank—as if any man with hair so red needed either.
“I want all our people except the Sixth Cohort deployed to the city with me,” I said. “I will take command on the ground. Otavia, you will take the ship and reinforce Hauptmann’s fleet in orbit protecting Ondu Station and the approaches down to the city.”
Otavia made a face. “And you?”
“I’ll be in the city,” I said. “I’m no use in a space battle.”
The captain’s frown deepened considerably. “I don’t like this throwing yourself at the enemy thing you’ve taken a liking to. It’s not prudent. You should stay in the command center with Bartosz.”
“Not prudent?” I said, chafing against Corvo’s perfectly reasonable counsel. “I can’t abandon the men. Besides, I want Aristedes in the comm center,” I said coolly. “He has a better head for strategy.”
“Lord Marlowe prefers tactics,” Lorian offered the congregation, smiling his pointed smile. His face darkened beneath his lank, white hair almost at once. “You’ve . . . spoken to Bartosz and Hauptmann about me?”
Demon in White Page 73