The railgun in its left arm lowers, as does the giant pulseFist in its right, and from its cockpit, amplified by its external speakers, comes a bloodcurdling howl. Both of my eardrums rattle as it opens fire directly above us. I shimmy out from under the mech to see the pilot through the canopy. Under a bird’s nest of hair, a demonic, bearded face black with grease screams in the stuttered light of the starShell’s deluge.
Sevro.
I almost pass out from joy. Murderous glee shimmers in his bloodshot eyes. He shouts something at me and jerks his head to get behind him. Cassius and I don’t have to be told twice. We scramble behind the starShell. Medical supplies and vacuum helmets have been taped to its back. Cassius strips them off. I slap the chassis. The starShell doesn’t move. I hammer at it again and again until Sevro finally takes a step back. Then another. Without breaking his stream of fire, he covers our retreat back down the hall. Cassius injects my neck with a battle stim and slaps resFlesh on my new wounds. The familiar itchy energy rushes through me. I wipe my bloody hands on my tattered jumpsuit and grip Bad Lass.
By the time we reach an intersection and get free of the line of fire, the starShell is spewing smoke. Sevro remains within it, unwilling to stop killing. He fires back down the hall even as its right leg is shot out. At the last moment, he pops the rear hatch and escapes out the back.
He’s dressed in battered scarabSkin. A trophy necklace of fetid ears hangs from his neck. I want to kiss him, hug him till his head pops off, but he’s all business. After two quick hand signals for us to follow and keep pace, he takes off at a run. We follow.
The Carthii invasion rolls on all around us. With my damaged ears, I feel removed from it. Battles thunder in the distance. Mechanized troopers clomp down hallways. Even with the stims, it’s all we can do to keep up. Cassius and I are a mess. My injured calf slows me. Cassius must have suffered a concussion because he can’t stop vomiting, even when Sevro takes us into a maintenance tunnel. More than a half dozen times Sevro slows to deactivate tripwires and improvised traps in the darkness. By the time we emerge into a viewing garden I have a clearer picture of Sevro’s stay on the dockyards. He must have escaped soon after his imprisonment and spent the past months waging a one-man guerilla war against Apollonius.
The tranquility of the garden is as shocking as the violence of the battle. Birds and purple spider sloths watch us from the garden’s trees as Sevro hands me his datapad. I dial in the fallback frequency to hail Aurae. When she answers, Sevro snatches the datapad away and strides up to the viewing deck window to peer into space as he talks. Outside Carthii destroyers and troop barges flow past, illuminated by the whitewash of artillery fire and the orange flames of oxygen burps from the station.
After a few minutes, Sevro signals us to put on our helmets. He takes a thin wire from a pouch on his kit and ties one end around a railing and the other around his belt. Then he extends a hand to me. I extend mine to Cassius. He shakes his head. He knows what’s coming. I insist and he takes it. Hands locked, Sevro guides us to the railing. Cassius and I lie down and wrap our legs around it. On his back, Sevro lifts his strange weapon, points it at the glass, waits, then fires until the glass explodes outward. Pressure gushes out of the viewing deck. Flowers, birds, sloths, and trees fly past. The pressure the room contained is limited, and the flow of debris soon slows. As the cold of the vacuum begins to drain the heat from our bodies, we release our legs and let Sevro push us toward space.
Sevro lets out the wire bit by bit until we dangle out the open window like a balloon on a string. The cold is total. My teeth chatter in my helmet. Explosions flash along the metal horizon. I lose feeling in my fingers and toes first. Then my legs and arms. A shadow falls over us. Sevro nods to me. Drunk from the effects of the cold, I let go of his hand and receive a push. I float away from Sevro. He goes the other way, back toward the windowless garden, where he releases the wire from his belt and pushes off to head our direction. He passes Cassius and me just as we float into a cargo bay filled with crates stamped with winged heels. The Archimedes.
The bay doors of the Archimedes close behind us. Pressure gushes back in to the hold but not gravity. I’m too cold to do anything but shiver and float with my hand locked around Cassius’s. I feel out of my body as Sevro strips his helmet and pushes us through the ship. When he finds the medBay he separates me from Cassius to secure me in one of the medical beds and drape a thermal blanket over me before taking off my helmet.
With Cassius still floating in the air behind him, Sevro shouts to Aurae. I can’t hear what. He looks back at me. His red eyes are shiny with tears in his grease-dark face. He lowers his forehead to mine and only pulls back when gravity returns. Cassius plummets from the air to crunch into the floor. He curls into a shivering ball. Sevro tosses a blanket at him and heads for the cockpit.
I lie there shaking, a smile on my face as the engines of the Archimedes vibrate and the ship accelerates away from the battle.
10
LYSANDER
Iron Fist
I MAKE MY GRAND ENTRANCE to my party on a pegasus from Horatia’s private herd. Slipping off its back onto the top hull of the Lightbringer, I greet Cicero and Horatia with kisses, Glirastes with a nod, my Praetorian Guard with a salute, and turn to address my waiting guests. Some are friends. Some are Atalantia’s creatures. Most are somewhere in between. All have come expecting to see me fail. They just might.
It is an accepted truism that in the Core only the Carthii build warships. Not the Votum. The Votum are fine builders, yes. But terrestrial builders. Simpletons in the sophisticated shadow of Carthii astral-construction supremacy.
Tonight we dash that myth. I hope. I have bet everything on it. The ship does look like a monster. It has no paint, and its hull is heterogenous and patched with the metal of ruined Republic ships. The front is ghastly heavy, but there are reasons for this. If it flies, that is.
The fire of braziers whips in the wind. The Golds gather in white furs and wear crowns of flowers to symbolize the planet’s rebirth. It is cold at this altitude, and it will get colder. The ship is the largest warship in existence. Eight kilometers long, 1.5 kilometers thick. It has not yet lifted off. But even lying on its side, our perch on its back provides a grand view of Heliopolis cupped between the mountains and the sea. The whole city is watching, and so are interested parties all across the Core. I lift my voice.
“My noble kinsmen, I am honored you could join me on this auspicious day. When Darrow came to Mercury, he claimed to bring freedom. Instead, he brought death. Mercury was not the first planet to fall to the Reaper, but it will be the last.”
There’s a stir in the crowd as Tharsus and a dozen of his glamorous friends arrive late and very drunk. Indecorously, they chose gravBoots over the ivory skiffs offered to my guests. They crash down in a swirl of silks and scents and doff their military boots to pull out fur slippers. They do not join to listen to my speech, but instead head for the menagerie of carvelings near the bow. Tharsus causes a racket by teasing a caged manticore. Cicero raises his eyebrow at me, annoyed at the impropriety. I carry on.
“Mercury is no stranger to hardship. Closest to the bosom of the sun, only ingenuity and hard work have made her people prosper. I thank my hosts, the gens Votum, for their hospitality, but also for reminding me of those ancient virtues. Only ingenuity and hard work can beat defeat into victory. For over a decade this ship, once the Morning Star, was Darrow’s greatest weapon. He sailed it here to break Mercury. Instead, Mercury broke both him and his ship. Not content with that, Mercury then rebuilt his ship! And tonight it will set sail for the first time.” I lift my cup to the Votum. “Horatia, Cicero: from ashes, you craft diamonds. May fortune long favor your house.”