He thinks I speak in hyperbole. “What’s next then, when this journey ends?” he asks.
“Cassius. I wasn’t just talking about this trip. By journey, I meant my life.” He looks over at me, touched and more than a bit surprised. “You’re my brother. We let ten years slip past. Ten years we should have fought side by side. I won’t make that mistake again. Whether you like it or not, you’re with me to the end.”
A very small “Oh,” is all he can manage. He thinks for a long moment. “I mean that’s a lot of commitment, Darrow.”
I knew the sarcasm was coming but I still almost burst a stitch laughing.
“Brothers,” he murmurs. “It does feel like it fits. We’ll try it on.”
He smiles and leans back like a dog that’s had a perfect meal and is happy to sit in the sun. His thoughts must wander, because a few minutes later he asks, “Have you thought of a name for it? That blade form you found with Fá?”
“I just found a flow is all.”
He looks over. “Lorn would say it’s far too serious a flow to not have a name.”
“You can’t laugh.” He makes no promises. “Breath of Stone.”
“Why?” he asks in the voice he gets when he puts on his blademaster cap, solemn.
“In the mines there’s always a wind flowing. No sky, no sun, no seas, no rivers, no grass. It’s the only thing that keeps you sane down there. It felt like it belonged to that part of me I’d forgotten. It felt holy.”
He considers and gives a nod of approval. “I like it.”
I’m actually relieved at his approval. “When we get back, I’ll take you down if you like. You can feel it for yourself.”
“I’d like that too. Nothing like a bit of spelunking—” He jolts up in his seat. “What is that?”
“What?”
Cassius shuts down the Archimedes’s engines and kills everything but emergency power. The last thing I see on the sensor screen is a ghost flickering out. A big ghost. Diomedes bursts in like he’s invading New Sparta.
“Problem?” he asks.
Cassius points out the viewport. “Nine o’clock, eighty degrees south of our horizon. Against the orange band.”
I lean forward and a cold hand squeezes my heart. “They didn’t turn around.”
“I don’t see anything,” Diomedes says. Then his breath stops as he spots the flicker of a scout torchShip. “They’re hiding their burn in the magnetosphere too. By Akari…that’s close.”
Cassius’s voice is a whisper. “No. That’s a minnow.” Cassius summons the camera feeds from the Archi’s belly. We all stare in dread. “My goodmen, we are swimming with leviathans.”
Core warships move directly beneath us. Tough hulls. Immense firepower. Passing close enough below for us to see the hammers, crescents, and eagles on their topsides. A powerful strike force moving fast around Jupiter, bound for Io. Then, amidst all that sleek, killing mass, a monster.
The emotions awoken by seeing eight kilometers of warship depends entirely on its paint job. With the white stars of the Republic replaced by black Lune crescents and golden pyramids, my old ship moves through the storms below like doom itself.
“That’s the Morning Star,” I murmur.
Cassius seems less surprised than he’d hoped he’d be. “Was,” he reminds me. “It has a new name now.”
79
LYSANDER
Teeth of Civilization
“WE HAVE CAUGHT THE REPTILES flat-footed,” Cicero says to our New Shepherds as we’re fired out of the tubes. “Maintain discipline. Maintain your hydras. We kill them all.”
Ascomanni warships garland the orbit of Io with fireballs as I emerge from the spitTube in armor burnished to a golden sheen.
Intending to use my Rain as the centerpiece of my propaganda campaign for years to come, I’ve staged it for maximum visual and allegorical effect.
My Gold knights form a spear, with me at the tip and Cicero on my right flank. Behind us two hundred and fifty-three New Shepherds, their ranks swollen with new volunteers. Waves of Praetorians and two House Lune legions follow my Gold vanguard. To the east, Votum and the Reformers. To the west, the Bellona clients.
In our wake, the Ascomanni fleet burns. They thought they were the lone power left in Ilium. They never stood a chance. All goes according to Atlas’s plan except one thing.
The Volk are where they should be, on conquered Europa. But there were far more Ascomanni ships in orbit over Io than Atlas said there would be. Not that it matters. In fact, it’s preferred. Rhone described my feelings best as the infantry loaded up.
“The roaches are all in one bucket, and the lads are in the mood to stomp!”
This first fight will be sloppier, the men and women of our fleet filled with rage. Better to vent it now before the serious business with the vaunted Volk infantry and their nasty dreadnaughts.
Shorn of the Allfather’s blessing, the Volk, and the element of surprise that allowed the savages to taste victory at Kalyke and Sungrave, the Ascomanni are introduced to the Core school of warfare, and unmitigated slaughter.
Their response to my fleet whipping toward them around the curve of Jupiter was ridden with doctrinal flaws and hamstrung by their lack of a unified command structure. It only shows the depth of Atlas’s genius and Fá’s skill to have made them part of a force that could maul Ilium’s best.
At the sight of the onrushing Lightbringer, the largest ship any of them will have ever seen, their fleet broke before a shot was even fired. Some fled toward space, as if we would leave paths of retreat, some stood to fight, some even rushed toward us to close in and board our ships.
They were the first to learn the awesome power of my flagship.
Pytha smashed them at ranges of fifty thousand kilometers. Exactly the treatment their Allfather went to such lengths to spare them from at Kalyke. They are deadly, yes, but not when they’re the ones taken by surprise. Racing closer, my Praetors and captains vivisected their fleet with calm, professional contempt. Even the enemy’s cynical strategy of hiding their charge behind cosmosHaulers filled with civilians was nothing more than a bleak demonstration to all of Ascomanni cruelty and ignorance. RipWing pilots and dashing Bellona and Votum corvettes made mincemeat of them without even scratching their human shields. My boarding ships leapt after cosmosHaulers like flying spiders to pump in Praetorians and Gold melee brawlers trained in hostage rescue.
With the fleet in Pallas’s steady hands, my concerns lie on the surface. The emerald Garter awaits to be liberated like a maiden from a dragon.
The Rain is clockwork in its precision, and it reflects the vast doctrinal gulf that separates savages from civilization. Even on the ground, the Ascomanni are caught with their hand in the cookie jar. They thought their Allfather gave them the Garter to be the heart of their new kingdom. Now they stare up at the sky and see it raining golden death.
Lonely strands of gunfire lick up toward us by the time I can make out the individual shapes of the Ascomanni flowing onto the battlements of Plutus. They will be discovering that many of the air batteries have been sabotaged and the blessing the Allfather bestowed upon them by tearing down the kinetic shields over Plutus has now become a curse.