It is strange. Couple years ago it’d be me filing along clutching my siblings’ hands, making sure we all stick together as we flee the storm. Now, I trudge toward the maelstrom, and I’m surprised that I don’t feel unprepared. Darrow himself handed me off to the Owls. I will not let him down. I will win Volga back to the Republic.
“Wrong way, squibs!” a Gray shouts to the Black Owls in an accent so thick I can barely understand him. He sets down in front of us in beautiful blue armor. The leviathan on his chest is golden. An officer then. “Follow the lanes and get with the others.”
“We’re going up top,” I say.
The Gray snorts. His bluff face is half hidden in his helmet. Hard eyes peer out at us from the dark blue steel. “Naw, ya ain’t, little rusty. Them reptiles will make a meal of ya.”
“It’ll be the crows,” a second Gray says. “Reptiles are sacking the Dryads.”
The first Gray shrugs. “Either, neither. Yar going nowhere, lass.”
“Let us through,” a voice booms behind us and the Owls and I spin around.
Two giants in armor enter the doorway. Cassius and Sigurd. The former is unexpected. “What you doin’ here?” I ask Cassius with a smile.
“You didn’t think I’d let strangers drop you off, did you?” he asks. “I thought I’d come along in case you met trouble.”
The Gray who’d blocked us is as surprised to see a Core Gold as he is the Obsidian brave standing next to him.
“D-Dominus,” the Gray stammers and steps aside.
Cassius sweeps me into the lift along with Sigurd, leaving the Owls outside. The door closes and the motors hum to life.
“I have a warrant badge,” I say as the lift begins to rise. “I would have used it to get past that tinpot. Truth is you just can’t stay away from me, Bellona.”
“Psh. Any Golds left in Heraklion aren’t very happy with Diomedes or the Raa right now. That badge won’t mean much.” He falls in beside me. “Sorry I missed your briefing. I was playing ambassador for Diomedes.”
“Ambassador?”
“He might have convinced the Kalibar to take Athena’s offer, but some of the sealords—those who haven’t fled to Ganymede like the rest of the cowards—would rather die than ‘collude with terrorists.’ My father was friends with a few of them. Though I don’t see why. They’re stubborn as mountains. Their people will pay the price of their pride, as always.”
Haunted, he looks out the glass of the lift. The lights of the Deep shrink in the darkness as we rise. A river of bioluminescent fish illuminates his face with pearly light. I touch his vambrace. He gives me a brave smile. “I’ll escort you and Sigurd to the shuttle, but that’s as far as I can go. I’d come with you into the Obsidians wearing prosthetics, but Sigurd says I’d blow your cover.”
Sigurd nods. “You would. Krypteia tried to assassinate Fá in the Garter. Their guises were without flaw. But Fá sniffed them out. He skinned them, castrated them, and keeps them leashed to his throne.”
Cassius and I stare at him. “You sure your friends will find us first, Sigurd?” Cassius asks. “And that they won’t turn Lyria over to Fá?”
“Fenrir and Gudmund were there on Io,” Sigurd reminds him. “They wanted to come with me when I surrendered to Darrow. I begged them to stay behind in case they were needed. He has spoken to them himself on the frequency I provided.” Sigurd looks at me now. “They have no love of Fá, Lyria, and unlike my father, they are not too cowardly to act. Gudmund yearns to redeem his honor in Darrow’s eyes. Fenrir…less so, but he owes a blood-debt to Sevro and misses Attica, his favorite city in all the worlds. We will take the shuttle to them, and they will take you to Volga. On my honor, such as it remains.”
Cassius eyes Sigurd with little trust. He lowers his voice. “What’s rule number one, Lyria?”
“Don’t get caught by Ascomanni and shipped off to the far dark,” I say.
“Rule number two?”
“There is no rule number two.”
The lift begins to slow. Cassius’s anxiety mounts. I grab his massive hand. He holds mine and together we wait for the lift doors to open.
The pounding of waves and the distant thunder of the bombardment flow into the lift as the doors part with a groan. Outside, a floating gunship hovers over a sea of refugees. It blares orders and they move in military-like blocks toward the lift. I let go of Cassius’s hand and we head out.
The station is a grand stone crescent out over the water with an open face to a massive courtyard filled with humanity. The city looms, connected to the station by several pedestrian bridges. The sky throbs from distant bombardments. Grays in gun installations peer up or out over the water where warships patrol the perimeter.
“That’s us.” Cassius points across the station’s courtyard to the shuttle that will take us to the rendezvous with Gudmund and Fenrir. It waits past the refugees and a slew of military vehicles. Four Black Owls guard it. We head for the shuttle through the crowd.
We haven’t taken thirty paces when I see something—a shadow crawling on one of the gun installations looking out over the water. I tell Cassius but by the time he looks, the shadow is gone.
He picks up our pace. A faint whistle followed by a warble comes from my left.
A few dozen paces off, a giant shimmering figure stands amidst the refugees as if he’d always been there. His ghostly guise dissolves to reveal a towering warrior. He is lean and nearly eight feet tall, and naked except for a shark-head helmet. Water drips from leathery, orangish skin. His feet are clad in curious boots with twin fans on either heel. He looks around as if admiring a school of sleeping fish. Stunned refugees back away, too startled to scream or cry out at his sudden appearance.
Then he starts to kill. He does it with two blades, each as long as my legs.
With his first swing, lowColor bodies and limbs geyser up in the low gravity. He swings again and again as if sweeping rubbish with a giant broom. A young Yellow finally has the wits to scream. Then more are screaming and pushing to get away from the butcher. Laughing, the giant disappears.
The scene may not even have lasted ten seconds.
The Grays of Heraklion mobilize, shout commands. Anxiety spreads through the refugees. They stir like confused cattle. Grays make a battle line on the steps leading to the lift.
Cassius draws his razor and activates his aegis. “What was that, Sigurd?”
Sigurd peers out to the sea. “That was a Harbinger.” He sounds frightened. “They swam in past the sonar. I did not know they could swim.”
“More are coming?” Cassius asks.
“Likely they are already here.”
66
LYRIA
The Fall of Heraklion
CASSIUS TAKES CONTROL. “SIGURD, let’s plow a path. Lyria, grab my belt and don’t let go.”
We rush toward the shuttle. Cassius and Sigurd batter their way through the crowd. More shadows flit through the courtyard. The lights above go out. A Gray fires in the distance. Another Ascomanni berserker appears ahead of us and kills three Blues before she’s gunned down. Another appears to the left. A Gold knight descends to fight him.