“Negative. I’m on mission.”
“Sevro…”
“You’re telling me to abandon our only contact to Athena? Alone? Here? With Obsidians about? Naw. Bellona wants to spend his life for Moonies. Let him. I’m here for my kids. Maybe think about your own for once.”
Sevro has never wounded me more than he does with those words. I’m struck silent. I see Diomedes watching me. My pain must be written all over my face because for the first time his eyes have softened. “I have no boots. I will slow you down,” Diomedes says. “Go.” I hesitate. “I will meet the others at the perfumery. I know it. You have my parole. Go.”
He’s definitely lying, but I’ve planted the seed that needed planting. Even if he leaves our company, we will have earned his honor, and the worry about a hidden hand will keep his interest.
I storm out of the sanctum, calling Lyria as I race through the Raa family home. She replies from the cockpit of the Archimedes far to the north. “Truffle? Do you read me? You said you can fly. Time to prove it. Bring the Archimedes to Sungrave. Fly low. Pick up Aurae and Sevro, then lend fire support when able. We’re going to need it.”
54
DARROW
Pella! Pella! Pella!
“HOWLER ONE, WE’RE RUNNING OUT of time,” Cassius says. He’s followed the Obsidians outside Sungrave. They are almost to their ship with their captives. I beg him to hold on. He can’t much longer. I run faster. My gravBoots pound the stone steps of the Spine. Boom boom boom ten stairs at a time. Slag it, I start to fly in a dizzying spiral upward. Dangerous gaining such speed indoors.
Cassius’s helmet feed streams into mine taking up a corner of my HUD. He watches his quarry from a high-altitude entrance into the city. Below his position, the Obsidians lead their new slaves out from a massive gate flanked by stone caryatids toward a transport ship. The ship is parked in the center of an amphitheater-like depression in the mountain.
“They’re loading them up. If they get airborne, that ship will outpace our boots. I have to slow them down.”
I’m watching his feed so closely that I’m hit with vertigo and almost crash into a fallen statue as he plummets off his perch toward the rocks below. He stops himself only two meters above the slope—ever the patrician showman—and ricochets at a near right angle to skim down the western face of Sungrave’s mountain range.
I avoid crashing and gain confidence. My speed doubles. Antechambers, passageways, grottos blur past. I hit the breach through which we entered the city just as Cassius begins his attack. He flies low and fast over the dark mountainside. The warriors don’t see him coming in the dim light. With his razor out to his right, he decapitates an Obsidian shoving the Pink boys along on the transport’s ramp. The others barely even notice it’s happened. Cassius turns his flightpath right to flick off the arm of another Obsidian manhandling two of the Violet captives. He skewers a third Obsidian in the eyeshield of his helmet as he turns toward the noise.
Three down. Nine left. But now he has their attention.
By the time I exit the main breach and rocket into the sky, Cassius has shot out the other side of the Obsidians. A graceful flier, he absorbs only the G’s he must to slow his ricochet back into them to shoot through their ranks on a second pass. It is called the pella maneuver—in which an armored Gold ricochets back and forth like a bouncing ball between two walls, murdering with each pass. In times long gone, the pella was an impressive and reliable tactic. It was also something we taught our Volk braves to counter in the third year of the war. Cassius is in for it.
I gain altitude and head west toward the fight. It’s three kilometers away. Wind buffets my body. The broken mountain range blurs beneath me as I pick up speed. The fight still hidden from my direct line of sight, I watch Cassius’s feed with mounting anxiety.
He races back toward the Obsidians in his pella maneuver, but instead of finding a bewildered enemy, shocked and awed by his sudden attack, he finds an organized enemy with tactics refined in the killing fields of the Core. He will not have heard the first Obsidian to spot him yell, “Pella! Pella! Pella!” Nor that his fellows have taken up the call and shouted out numbers to make wedges by threes. By the time he’s upon them, the Obsidians formed their wedges. Almost all the wedges are led by a brave with a shield or in heavy armor and with a heavy triarii’s spear—and flanked by heavy guns.
Cassius is fast, so the enemy is slow to open fire, but Cassius spends so much time dodging the unexpected salvo that his attack is wasted. He feints bailing out, giving him a gap, and passes an Obsidian wedge close enough to jab at the helmet of the lead Obsidian. The blade screeches off the heavy metal, and Cassius barely bats a spear away from impaling his thigh. He fires backward with his pulseFist, missing the other two. He’s wasted his charge on only one wedge, and as he passes he does not see the Obsidians with gravBoots shoot upward from the wedges to track him.
I’m closing in. I scan the sky. It is clear. No support ships. I pull Bad Lass, prime my pulseFist, and fly several thousand meters higher, until I’m directly overtop the Obsidian ship. Cassius and the Obsidians are dots below. I see no other enemies in any direction. I angle head-down and kill my boots. Freefalling, I watch Cassius’s feed. He ricochets back for his next pass.
Unfamiliar with the Obsidian tactics, it takes him a moment to realize there are fewer wedges than before, and by the time he wonders where the other Obsidians went, they’re screaming down at him like falcons. I warn him, and he veers right just in time to dodge the first Obsidian’s lance. He’s quick enough to slash the netman’s net in half and veer upward just before it envelopes him, but he doesn’t see the heavy hammer that hits him in the left shoulder like an arrow hitting an eagle.
Cassius careens sideways and smashes down in a cloud of shattered sulfur crystals. I continue falling, still unseen by the occupied enemy. Cassius’s helmet cam view is rocks on the ground as he heaves for air. He tries to stand and falls flat, rolling sideways to see six braves sprinting at him with axes the size of Reds and scalping knives meant for hair like his. Time to focus. I turn off his visual feed and pick my targets by altitude.
The airborne Obsidians form a triangle over the fight. I fall upon them at a hundred and eight kilometers an hour. I chop through the neck of the highest Obsidian. Recall my blade. Chop another on my left as I continue down to the third. He turns on me before I get there, so I shoot him as he raises his railgun. His pulseShield takes the first two blasts. The third bends the shield back until it glows opaque. He deactivates it just before it melts inward. He banks left. I conserve ammunition, mirror his trajectory left, pirouette past his pulsefire, bat his axe to the side, and spear him through the weak armor at his throat before carrying on to the ground.
Skarde should be embarrassed. His lads are lazy today. They thought they had Io whipped. Were they still in my army, this lack of discipline would not stand. That thought fills me with contempt. These men deserted me. They left the Free Legions to die. So now they will.
Against Obsidians, speed is all. Combine that with constantly shifting between vertical levels in the sphere of battle, and you stand a chance.