“If I were a man looking for an explanation, I might care. As it is, I am a man looking for an excuse.
“When I stand before the Two Hundred and the Dictator with your head, mongrel, they will not indict me. They will applaud.”
Asmodeus disappears.
Apollonius shrugs. “Alas, the frailty of words. Steel, be thou my tongue. Attend me.” He lifts his arms and his Oranges look at each other, nod, and run forward with his armor.
“Carthii warships are moving off the pole…” a Gold officer calls and casts up a hologram for his commander. The Gold veterans watch coolly as the Carthii navy abandons their position over the north pole and streaks toward the dockyards. “What are your orders, dominus?”
Apollonius frowns, as if his Oranges fitting him in his purple panoply was an obvious mission statement. “Bequeath them hell, of course.”
The officer frowns at Vorkian, confirming with the archCenturion that the order meant open fire. She nods. Apollonius waves off the hologram as a forest of light lashes out from the station’s batteries toward the onrushing fleet. A throaty rumble trembles through the station as the enemy returns fire and the artillery battle begins. Nearly armored, Apollonius shouts to the legions who watch him from the stands.
“Legionnaires! Citizens of the dockyards! My noble friends! The dread Carthii come to drag you back under their perfidious yoke. They come in numbers many times our own. But do not quake, for I am with you. Your Minotaur will not abandon you! By my will and your hands, we took the station together. We hold it together! Summon your courage! Sharpen your will! Join your brothers and sisters at your battle stations! Carry my name! Seize your glory! Go!”
They chant his name and surge out of the stands to defend their stations.
Vorkian’s voice is flat and factual. “Dominus, we cannot stop the Carthii. They will board. They will swamp us. We will be outnumbered. Perhaps five to one. The bluff is called, and we’ve the low pair. We can’t hold the outer crescents much less the two axes.”
“They know not our true numbers nor the quality that awaits them here, Vorkian. Let them come. Let them die. Lune cannot afford to abandon me, and I grow tired of playing castellan. Let us force his hands to throw the dice.”
“Dominus, I recommend we cut our losses. Our ally would expect us to protect his investment—”
“I am his investment and so are the ships we protect,” Apollonius says. “Where is your spirit, Vorkian? Moments such as this are the forge of legends. For every campaign, there is always an inciting incident. Let this be ours.”
She pulls her sidearm. “Then let me at least tie up your loose ends.”
“My baubles?” Apollonius asks. “Horrible, no. Darrow and I have not finished our duel. I will not let him die while I am left unsatisfied. We pump him with protein and throw him a second try. There in Thessalonica where the Thermic meets the coast, we will dance again and let his blood water my vines. I will taste him in my cup with the dirt. Yes. Yes, that. A Rath red, a new vintage indeed.” He comes out of his reverie. “As for Bellona, Lune will need him for Julia. Her finances are crucial. Bring them.”
Apollonius peers at his Golds. “My fellows, I promised you the glory of reconquering our homeland. Mars lies through this moment. Go now to your legions. Deny the Carthii every meter of deck, and any measure of mercy. Ravage them. Break them. Venus is the planet of love. What is Mars the planet of again?”
They smile in silence, and rush off to answer with their deeds.
* * *
—
The hallway thunders with a storm of metal boots. Apollonius’s personal legion, the same scorpion-eating, rampart-breaking madmen who stormed the Ash Lord’s island with Sevro and me and then took on the dockyards themselves, jog down the hall singing their song.
Several hundred battle-hardened Grays, a few dozen Obsidians, and six Golds. We’re dragged on like pack mules, strapped with extra ammunition, fit with dilation collars and cuffs that can retract on command. The Obsidians make sure we keep pace and slap our asses with the hafts of their axes.
“We don’t have armor,” Cassius says. “We’ll be like peaches into a woodchipper when they hit the Carthii.”
I try to remember a line from The Path to the Vale that might console us but I’ve got blood crusted in my nostrils, on my legs, on my ribs. My only hope is that it is Sevro who blew the other bomb, and that he’s got a plan. I don’t. All I can do is wait for the opening and be ready.
“Be ready,” I say to Cassius.
“For what?”
“I don’t know.”
With Apollonius at the lead in his horned helmet we’re headed for the life-support nexus for this part of the station—which the Carthii will no doubt try to seize with their best men. My view is filled with the bobbing of metal shoulders and the glare of alarm lights and the glitter of hall cameras.
Twice the armored column has to divert because of a bulkhead that refuses to open. Suspicious. I peer past the armored shoulders and heads when we come to an abrupt stop in a corridor ten paces wide. The Grays twitch, restless. They’ve already taken their battle drugs. The column bends out of sight behind us with the curve of the hall. At the fore, Apollonius bellows in impatience at Greens in his command hub. The column about-faces to retrace its steps but the bulkhead at the rear must have closed too because the about-face goes nowhere. Centurions shout down the line for a breaching team.
“It’s him,” I murmur.
Vorkian shouts for silence. Up ahead, Apollonius puts his ear against a wall to listen for something. He backs away from the wall.
“LeechCraft!” he shouts. “Search for teardrops.”
The call echoes down the line behind us, out of sight. Cassius swallows. Teardrops. That’s what they call the first hint of molten metal on the wrong side of a leechCraft’s drill. A Gray triarius is the first to spot one. Cassius might have said something clever if he had his razor. But with his hands bound behind his back and only a prisoner jumpsuit between his body and what’s about to happen, he just looks at me.
“Peaches. Woodchipper.”
The column shifts with anxiety. They’re not in a good position should something go wrong.
Apollonius roars for the breaching team to hurry up and clear the bulkhead blocking us in. I search for some obvious salvation—a hatch opening, a plasma charge eating through the ceiling. Some sign of Sevro. Nothing. It’s enemies all the way to the bulkhead in front, enemies all the way to the curve of the hall behind. The corridors were designed to trap invaders. I’d know because I studied this place with Sevro for years. You don’t want to be trapped in a hall like this.
The breaching charges detonate against the bulkhead at the fore but fail to penetrate fully.
We’re not going to clear the hallway before the Carthii hit us.
There’s only one choice: hit the boarders in the teeth hard as possible.
Apollonius comes to the same conclusion.
Centurions bark orders and legionnaires grind into position around the breaches. The Obsidians’ grip on me tightens. Two more drill marks appear on the corridor’s left bulkhead halfway down the formation. Shit. Recognizing the danger the second and third breaches pose, Apollonius calls his Golds to the front. They open fire on the obstructing bulkhead with their pulseFists until it glows orange. They plunge their razors in like picks and hack holes in the thick metal, but they’re not faster than leechCraft drills.