Yet even Venus itself, a planet of immense majesty with all its vast coral reefs, mysterious migrating islands, abundant flora and fauna, rigid caste structure, and human factories for the Gold military apparatus, is smaller than my pinky nail when I hold my hand at arm’s length.
As we approach and Venus grows in size, there’s time enough for the worry to set in. Soon the Carthii navy comes into view. Most of the ships and the Praetors of House Carthii were off serving Atalantia over Mercury when Apollonius stole their dockyards. Now their ships are tethered to the north pole of their home planet where they twinkle, a crown of blue splinters.
No doubt they’re tethered there by fear of what Apollonius would do to their dockyards should they try to reclaim them. If I were him, I’d have bombs and a dead man’s switch. He and I often do think alike.
I reach over to the seat beside me and pet Dominus Portobello, our lone atomic, for reassurance.
Under watch of the station’s guns and its escorts, the haulers slow as they approach the dockyards. So does the Archimedes. Amongst the yards’ complex fortifications are guns the size of skyscrapers. If death comes, we won’t have long to notice. With a tentative smile that grows the longer we don’t die, Cassius cuts the engines and initiates a lateral drift out of the haulers’ wake. The dockyards roll past, endless fortifications and industrial towers, spindles and garages as far as the eye can see. Aurae is amazed at the sight. Cassius grows dour.
“Good news. We’re not dead yet,” I say and stand. “Bad news, that was the easy part. Aurae, the Archimedes and Portobello is yours. Cassius, it’s time.”
“Remember what I taught you about axial drift. And don’t forget two port thrusters are wonky,” Cassius says to Aurae, reluctant to hand over the controls.
“I won’t crash if you don’t die,” she replies and gives him a smile. He glances around at the ship, his home, takes a breath, and heads for the garage. I linger for a moment and watch her fingers dance along the controls to the ship’s systems.
“Did Cassius actually teach you to fly, or did you just pretend to let him?”
She continues her task. “It is a master’s nature to want, just as it is a servant’s nature to provide. This does not mean the master does not provide. This does not mean a servant does not want.”
“So you humored him.”
She turns. “I am a Pink. I humor everyone.” She doesn’t sound bitter about it. “We all have our survival mechanisms, Darrow. I am and always have been air. Until now you could afford to be a rock. You didn’t have to change or alter course. Now you are cracking. That is a good thing. If you wish to be repaired…”
“You must first be broken,” I murmur. She had seen me reading the book in the Archimedes’s lounge. “It’s nonsensical half the time.”
“Of course it is. All your life your hands have been how you have interacted with the world. But the path isn’t a tool to be grabbed and used, Darrow. Because it isn’t a thing. It is a verb.”
She holds my gaze, patient, neutral.
“Why are you really here, Aurae?” I ask. “Cassius may buy the sympathizer story. You might explain your skills as part of a hetaera’s education. But—”
“I am here for Sevro,” she says. “That is the truth. Not the whole truth, but it is all the truth that matters, because it is all the truth that is useful.”
“And I suppose the path would tell me to accept that.”
“You tell me.” She smirks. “But do you really have a choice?”
I nod to Dominus Portobello. “Make sure you put that where it counts.”
She salutes.
I head for the cargo bay. Cassius is already half dressed. It took us two days of work in the machine shop to reshape the Sun Industries armor Kavax sent with Cassius to look like the spartan-baroque styled pulseArmor of a House Rath knight. Now gray and purple, detailed with bulls and Hercules on the shoulders, our guises should do the trick.
“Don’t worry, I taught her well,” Cassius says. “She’s a natural.”
“I’m sure,” I say. When we are dressed, I check my chronometer. “Ninety seconds. Buttons up.”
We don our helmets. A chill trickles over my skin as I see the world through the pulseArmor’s lenses. Even if I loathe war, my body thrills to its rituals like a drunk hearing the clink of ice into a whiskey tumbler. With Cassius armored and ready beside me, I feel infused with the luck of House Mars, sixteen again and preparing to steal the enemy standard.
We take our places at the starboard door and he pats my back. “Nut to butt, Bellona. Don’t be shy.” The jump light turns red to yellow.
“I’d rather not.”
“Cassius, we rehearsed this—”
“Yet my objections remain. If anything, you should hop on my back. You look like the warning advert for street drugs. No offense.”
“It’s Howler protocol on lateral pair-jumps. If our equipment fails, you and I can’t get separated,” I say. I shove the traction gun into his hands. “Now get on my back.”
He climbs on my back, muttering. “Let’s go to war with the Reaper of Mars, I thought. Truly, I envisioned something far more glamorous.”
Aurae triggers the doors. The faint iridescence of the pulseField is all that separates us from space now. We are close enough to distinguish viewports and doors in the metal landscape of the dockyards. With danger ahead, but my life in my hands, I come alive again. Feels good to have my boots unstuck from the mud.
I steel myself and jump.
The dockyards roll beneath us as our initial push carries Cassius and me toward them. Then the velocity we inherited from the Archimedes sends us laterally along the curve of the great eastern construction crescent. As we float above the dockyards, it’s like watching the construction process in reverse: First we pass over destroyers and torchShips, complete and lacking only paint. Then we see ships without guns, then without hulls, then without engines, until finally we pass over machines welding vast sections of durosteel for the superstructures of warships.
Workers, as tiny and numerous as ants, crawl along the surface of the warships and dockyards under the gaze of inanimate overlords—giant statues of deceased Carthii. When we reach the Vulcan Mouth, we pass under the gaze of Silenius and Carthus—colossal caryatids that glare at us from either side of the Mouth. These statues are the last sight retired ships see before they are melted down inside a furnace named for the Roman god of the forge. Silenius and Carthus, heedless of our pathetic mortal concerns, witnesses to the march of time, sneer past us toward the stars.
And then, fifteen minutes after our jump, we reach our fire point.
Careful not to throw off our trajectory, Cassius aims and fires the traction gun over my shoulder at the station. A counterforce exits out the back of the gun. We still spin a little until the payload locks on the surface of the station, and the line goes taut. The motor in the gun pulls us forward. On the surface, we abandon the gun and Cassius uses the base of a heavy railgun installation to climb off my back. He shot well. We’re only eighty meters from our target. We cross carefully, pulling ourselves along the toes of Silenius. As a battered Republic destroyer slides from the queue into the Mouth for incineration, we hop onto its hull. The incinerator doors close behind the ship.