“You’re right. Skirt the perimeter then. No chances.”
Cassius glides the Archimedes around the perimeter of the debris field, staying clear of the denser patches. Still, every minute or so metal pings off the hull. I peer into the ship graveyard, wincing with every hit. After a decade of war, horror is as common to me as flies in a stable. Yet amidst the debris, I encounter a sight so inhumane that it puts lead in my guts.
Sevro sees it first, and murmurs an Obsidian curse. A great monstrosity floats in the center of the battlefield like a monument to a wicked celestial god. It drifts near the remains of the humbled Dustmaker—thousands of Blue, Gray, and Gold corpses tethered together by wires into the shape of a giant Obsidian crescent. From tip to tip, the crescent must be over four hundred meters long.
“Your men…your old braves did this?” Cassius asks.
“That must have been the Ascomanni,” I say without confidence.
Disgust wells within me, and guilt, and regret. Even as I led Ragnar’s people to war, I knew brutal tendencies always lurked within our Obsidian legions. Fá has stirred the evil sediment up from the bottom of their hearts. What he did to Sefi in Olympia, splaying her open in the Blood Eagle, was bad enough. Even though he did this to my enemies, this further perversion puts him in a very special pantheon—men who I wish to see die upon my blade.
For several hours, we skirt the debris field searching in vain for signs of survivors who could tell the tale of what happened over Kalyke. We find none. Only the eerie sound of revenant loops—the voices of dead men on dead ships calling out into the darkness for aid or reporting Ascomanni breaches in their hulls.
“I’ve got something,” Aurae calls when we round Kalyke and reach the outer extremity of the debris field where there is less radiation interference. “There are not too many signals. Looks like the Obsidians have screamer drones and have been targeting relays. But this one’s coming from deeper within Ilium. It’s not encoded.” She frowns. “I think it’s Athena. Let me see if I can isolate the signal.”
“Lyria, go watch and see how Aurae does this.” Cassius nudges the smallest of our band. Lyria pops up and heads to the sensor station, ducking her head to avoid eye contact with Sevro in the hall. The girl might have annoyed me by stowing away on our ship like Rhonna once did. But I’m impressed with how seriously she’s learning the functions and equipment of the Archimedes. You only have to tell her something once. Cassius has taken to her. Gods know they spend enough time together clinking cups into the wee hours. I know she fills the vacuum Pytha and Lysander left when they deserted Cassius, but I’m surprised how fond she is of him in return. Cassius au Bellona is the last person I’d expect a Red to like.
A hologram flares to life once Aurae and Lyria have isolated the signal. Athena’s glowing red eyes stare out from a blizzard of static. Like before, her helmet is black and Corinthian in its design. “This is Athena. The sun is down. I repeat, the sun is down. All sleepers and cells, report to your omega torches for evac. The sun is down. The sun is—” The transmission loses its battle to the high-energy jamming coming from deeper within Ilium and cuts out.
“What does that mean?” Lyria asks. “The sun is down?”
“Fallback contingency,” Aurae answers. She sounds afraid. “She’s summoned all the Daughters to Helisson.”
“Helisson?”
“Her base of operations.”
“Their version of Tinos then,” I say back to Sevro.
“And where is Helisson?” he asks.
“I don’t know.”
Sevro does not accept that. “We came a billion clicks, and you don’t know?”
“Which moon is it on? Callisto? Ganymede? Europa? One of the outer moons?” I press.
“The Krypteia’s been trying to kill Athena for a decade. I was a deep cover agent in the Raa household. I’m the last person who should know. Could you imagine if I was ever interrogated?”
She has a point, but Sevro isn’t pleased. “Then how are we supposed to contact Athena?”
“Kalyke had coms relay stations to contact her network.” We all look at the bombed-out moon. “The only other option is to reach my omega torch. A hardlink coms port.”
“Right, and where is your omega torch?” I ask.
She hesitates, apologetic. “Sungrave.”
Cassius hangs his head. Sevro starts laughing again, but his humor has fled. I close my eyes and exhale forcefully through my nose. Why is nothing easy? Why can’t I just go straight back to my love? My son?
“Is that a bad thing?” Lyria asks. “Sungrave?”
Cassius gives her a tolerant smile. “Oh, it’s only the ancient heart of Raa power. The axis of their military apparatus. An impenetrable citadel that even the Ash Lord couldn’t take. Yes, it is probably the least convenient place to go.”
“Is Athena an idiot?” Sevro asks. “Aurae? This is shoddy spycraft. Amateur hour.”
“It’s not Aurae’s fault, Sevro,” Cassius says.
“ ’Course you’d say that.”
“Sevro, the Raa court operates out of Sungrave. Where else would my omega torch be located where I could reach it?” Aurae asks. “I know this isn’t what we expected to find, but we can still contact Athena. I have a way to bypass security. There are family passages we can use.”
“How are we even discussing this as an option? Darrow, this is not what we should—”
“When life springs forth, death follows behind,” interrupts Aurae, quoting from the book. “When goodness is found, evil is close at hand…”
“The path straddles the boundary between these things,” I reply. Aurae smiles.
“And just what the everloving hell does that mean?” Sevro barks. “Are we really taking our marching orders from your ad hoc interpretations of some dusty-ass tome?”
“Your father’s dusty-ass tome,” I say.
“And how’d that go for him?” he asks, and looks at Cassius. “Oh. Right.”
Cassius doesn’t rise to the bait. I watch the debris out the viewport. If the Rim Armada can be destroyed, somehow I doubt Sungrave is as Aurae left it. “If it’s the only way to contact Athena, then that is our road,” I say. Sevro stares at me, incredulous. “Cassius, set course for Io. But go slow. Fá’s out there somewhere—”
Silent, the Archimedes steers off Kalyke. I turn, expecting Sevro to have slinked off after our tiff, but am surprised to see him still there, still staring at me as if I am unrecognizable.
As much as I want to say something, to mend the chasm between us, I realize I cannot. I know Sevro better than anyone and there’s nothing he’ll hear right now. No sense or argument will sound good to him. So I shrug and turn back to the viewport where Jupiter gazes back at me like a disembodied eye, the moons held in its thrall winking motes twirling in their orbits.
Ping. A long moment. Ping.
We all turn to look at Aurae. “What is that?” I ask.
She frowns. “A distress signal,” she says. Sevro glares at her in suspicion. “I thought we should just keep looking, in case…someone was alive.”