Instead of pulseArmor, scarabSkin guards my body, concealed beneath my white uniform and cape. My hands sweat in my lambskin gloves. Only the Mind’s Eye keeps the sweat from my brow. It’s all I can do not to search the hangar for Cassius.
He is here.
Somewhere in the ranks of damaged ripWings and mechs. Or perhaps above, in the shadows of the high ceiling. It’s better I don’t know. I’m afraid Atlas will read my face immediately.
The nightRaptors hiss as they pass through the pulseField that hems in the hangar’s atmosphere. Their bulk is alienating. Battered and carbon-scored, they hover over me in a line, their engines groaning, their guns big as men. They stay there, floating as if waiting for me to kneel. When they set down, they do so in unison. Ramps unfurl from beneath their reinforced cockpits like tongues to disgorge their human cargo.
Only none comes.
An invisible jamField extends with a pop.
He knows.
No. He’s careful. Making sure no one records him.
I counted on this.
A few minutes pass. I resist the urge to flee. I wish I’d just had Pytha blast Atlas the moment his ships came in to land. But I had to be cautious. I was right to be. A fourth nightRaptor glides through space toward the hangar, far delayed behind the others.
A cautious man indeed.
As it lands, the Gorgons disembark. A Gray long-arms specialist trudges down the ramp of the rightmost ship with her rifle. Her face is half-covered with a bandage. She is hairless, her scalp bright red and peeling. She smiles at me like a ghoul—half monster, half militarist fantasy. More Gorgons follow with their gear and their wounded. Around thirty, all told. Whatever they faced on the moon of Orpheus, Atlas did not exaggerate its dangers.
Few are uninjured. Many are missing limbs and wear cautCuffs from their battle with Orpheus’s defenders. Unless some are remaining on the nightRaptors, their numbers have been depleted by eighty percent. Witnessing the state of Atlas’s dread force fills me with a measure of confidence. He’s not invulnerable.
I search their ranks for their leader, hoping to find him as wounded as his men. I am disappointed. He exits the fourth ship with all his limbs, but he is not in armor.
He is not in armor.
Clad in black fatigues, with only a pulseShield generator on his belt, he helps a bulky Gray woman bear out a man on a stretcher. Over Atlas’s shoulder is slung a reinforced pack. My eyes ache to stare at it, but it must be like the sun to them: forbidden. Atlas feels my eyes on him, and his head turns like an owl’s to meet my gaze. He calls back into the nightRaptor. My heart sinks at the heavy bootsteps. Rhone trudges out in his full Praetorian field armor. Like Atlas, the man appears uninjured.
Of course he is. He just went out to escort Atlas in. His eyes sweep the ranks of machines in the hangar.
Do they know? No. He looks at everything like that.
Rhone told me when I was younger to always have a plan to kill everyone you meet, and any deviation in a pattern is a sign of someone preparing a trap. He’s just as big of a threat as Atlas is, especially in that armor.
Atlas passes off the stretcher to a Gorgon. Together, he and Rhone make their way toward me. “You’re late,” I call.
Be entitled, but reasonable. A Palatine brat who’s learned his lesson.
Neither man replies. Rhone stops a few meters from me and nods to Markus, Drusilla, and the others. They salute him and hold the salute for Atlas. Flavinius’s eyes bore into me. He smiles, pleasant. “Heard you had a visitor.” I nod.
Atlas strides up to me with his pack on his shoulder and stops about a foot away. His eyes are everywhere, collecting data, except meeting mine.
“I told you to meet me in the barracks. Did Markus confuse my orders?” he asks.
“I told him,” Markus says.
“There’s been a problem. It couldn’t wait,” I say.
He sighs. “I left you the pig trussed, gutted, and cooked. All you had to do was eat it.”
“Diomedes is alive.”
“Yes. Markus already told me.”
He’s still not looked into my eyes.
He knows. Or he doesn’t. The man looks absolutely smashed with exhaustion.
“The feast is ruined.” Atlas’s eyes finally meet mine. “Fá is dead.” His Gorgons within earshot—which, due to their augmented hearing, is all of them—turn or stop dead in their tracks.
“Talking business in front of the ranks? Pull yourself together,” Atlas says.
Rhone takes the hint. “Clear the deck. On the double! Wounded to sick bay. Showers, grub, and comfort flesh for the rest. You’ve earned it, nils. You’ve earned it for the rest of your lives. On the double, I said!”
The mission must have been a success then. Is Eidmi in the pack on Atlas’s shoulder?
The Gorgons flow past me to either side. Atlas keeps looking at me. In time he will discover me. My only defense is his exhaustion and the magnitude of the mission he was on, and telling him the truth before he suspects it. I have to unravel it slowly but not so slowly I lose his interest. Most of all, I have to keep him here until I get the green light from Pytha.
When the last of his men have cleared the hangar, he steps back and hangs his head. He is exhausted but the act is also one of respect and profound sadness.
“You knew about Fá. That’s why you stopped the assault,” I say.
“Correct. The Kinshield is also gone. Certain patterns have been broken.”
“I’m sorry. I know they were close to you.”
“Do you have anything else?” he asks.
I glance back at Markus, Drusilla, and the other four. “Give us the deck.”
Markus looks to Atlas, who shakes his head for him to stay. “They’re in the Zero,” Atlas says. “What else, Lysander? I want to take off my boots.”
“Darrow killed Fá.”
He sighs back at Rhone. “And I thought I’d get a shower before they piled more shit on my shoulders again.”
Rhone grimaces in sympathy. “At least we have confirmation now.”
“You were aware of this?” I ask.
“Suspected. When Obsidians see a curved blade they shout ‘wolf.’ Why am I just hearing this, Markus?” Atlas asks. I think he’s lying. I think he knew of Darrow’s involvement for fact.
“I was not aware of the information,” Markus says, worried at displeasing Atlas and accusing me of withholding with the same tone.
“How did you come by it, Lysander?” Atlas asks me.
“Diomedes told me after he arrived at the Parting of the Shadow.”
“You were right. Raa was with them on the Nixian Isles,” Rhone says.
I resist the urge to look toward the exit. Pytha can’t see into the hangar. No one can with the jamField. But she will let me know when the coast is clear with a green light over the hangar’s pulseField. That light is hardwired. I picture her in the sync, watching the Gorgons filing through the halls to the lifts and then riding them deeper into the ship, their minds occupied with fantasies of hot water, food, and warm flesh. Why is it taking so long? Are some of them lingering? Has Pytha been frozen out?
Stay the course. Trust your team.
I need more time, and I need to get rid of the six Grays behind me.
Even with Pytha’s green light, this will still get messy.