There is no audio, but I hear her anyway.
Rhone kills the video and waits in respect for me to break the silence.
“Did Cicero escape?” I ask.
“We don’t know.”
“Where was Apollonius?”
“He used Cicero as a diversion and chose retreat. He told me he followed your plan, but he would not throw away his men because of the folly of a Mercurian amateur. Which is very fair, if you ask me. He is now ensconced in prime real estate. Julii’s dockyards citadel.”
I boil inside.
“The man with Victra. Who?” I ask.
“We don’t know. If you ask me. The cloak. The style. It could be a man. But…”
“But what?”
“Thraxa au Telemanus,” Diomedes says. “Windsweeper. Her style. Not common.”
Rhone watches him a little more closely. “You’ve never met Thraxa.”
“I study.” Diomedes’s eyes narrow. “I thought the Republic Obsidians defected. That they were sacking Republic cities in the Belt.”
“Not all of them want to be pirates apparently,” Rhone says.
Diomedes processes that and sighs. “A pity. This was a good plan.” He looks at me. “We are overextended, Lune. I will prepare my phalanx to pull back. We will do this the slow way now.” As he leaves, he sets a hand on my shoulder and looks out the tank door. “The edge of glory cuts both ways. Condolences. He was gifted. Loss…it is never easy.”
He walks out and tosses the apple away.
Rhone watches me as I turn to stare at the last image the drone captured. Victra stands on Ajax’s chest howling upward. “It was an ambitious plan,” Rhone says. “We can hold probably Sectors One and Eight, but we should eliminate Victra and Pegasus Legion or at least contain them before we proceed further.” I nod, numb. “It will be a grind, but I’ve done grinds before. We’ll have the numbers when your allies land their men. It’s not a loss, dominus. Not yet.”
“Not a loss?” I say and look up at his stony face. “This was supposed to be our staging ground for an Iron Rain next month. The ships. The money. The lives. That moment in Rome. Ajax…Ajax choosing me. Dying for me.” I shudder in horror. “Glirastes. All that for a slice of moon and a grind? If that’s not a loss, what do you call it?”
The old soldier frowns. “War, dominus.”
31
VIRGINIA
Détente
THE BATTLE FOR PHOBOS is turning into the type of battle students of history shake their heads at. It is pugilism without any other recourse, as uncomplicated as it is brutal, measured less by the inventiveness of clever commanders and more by their willingness to sacrifice men, and the willingness of those men to be sacrificed. While tactics can be used nearer the surface of Phobos, with either side daring the guns of opposing warships to launch canyon attacks to flank the enemy, the battle for the interior is an affair of will. How many men will Lysander or Julia or Cicero or Apollonius sacrifice to gain another level, another hundred meters of tunnel, another sector to fill?
How many sons and daughters of Mars will I spend to stop them?
Victra is still lost behind enemy lines. With no prisoner of equal value to trade, Kavax is still in enemy hands. No word has come from Darrow or Sevro. Our battered fleet dares not challenge the enemy away from the surface we still control. We cannot get reinforcements from Mars.
As the days progress, and the hours in the command center of the Hollows with Screwface, Harnassus, and Niobe bleed into one long stale nightmare fueled by coffee, protein injections, and casualty reports, I feel the gulf between my concept of leadership and Lysander’s growing. Lysander may promise a new age, but he’ll sacrifice a generation to get it.
The enemy creeps forward. Meter by meter. I see no way to turn the tide.
Knowing how easy it is to become alienated by casualty reports and to measure lives in terms of ground lost or gained, I force myself every morning and night to visit the wounded. It was Holiday who told me if I forget to feel the cost, I will grow accustomed to it. Like Darrow did. I love my husband, but I know the Republic cannot afford for me to follow in his footsteps.
Twelve days after Lune’s assault on Phobos, the medical wing of Bastion Four overflows with fresh intakes. I slept poorly, snatching only four hours of sleep between assaults against our front in the Hollows. Niobe woke me to help rebuff the latest assault.
It’s all I can do to manage a smile, a kind word, and pretend I don’t see the horror in the dying as I move bed to bed. Holiday limps behind me. Her ribs were crushed by Apollonius’s boot, and she is not yet fit for frontline duty, but she rivals me in popularity and refuses to stay in her hospital bed.
The horrors have not changed since my first visit. Young faces of all Colors are peeled back by fire, their bodies riven by metal and energy. We could heal almost any one of them, but not all of them, not all at once.
Moving bed to bed, I clutch their hands and let them talk, give each their moment even if it wears me thin. The wounded whisper the big words pushed by our Violet and Red propagandists. Freedom. Hope. Reaper. I find it remarkable that the dying have not lost faith. In fact, they cling to it more fervently than those who still retain their faces or limbs. They do not ask where Darrow is. They do not beg me to tell them why he has not returned. They clutch my hand till their knuckles go white and tell me he will return, and with him he will bring dawn for his friends, and judgment and doom to the enemies of freedom.
I weep after my visits. I am jealous of their faith. Jealous they cannot see the struggle from my seat. Thankful for it too, because I know the odds better than the young men and women who’ve given their youth, their lives for our cause. I pity them for their faith in my husband as much as I cherish and admire their conviction. Golds are a faithless breed, founded in the gross sobriety of atheism, but the rest of the Colors are willing to believe.
When they die holding my hand, when they whisper Darrow’s name, when they say they will find peace in the Vale, I break a little more, and each time I find that in the breaking I grow stronger, more desperate to protect this beautiful idea my husband has awoken, that I have helped prosper. They do not crave freedom for themselves. They crave freedom for others, for those yet unborn. In that I find a dignity greater than any Gold virtue.
Theirs is a religion of hope, not doom. But in the face of an enemy that will not stop, that takes every concession as a foothold for further aggression, I know I must find a way out of this fight or it will drink up more of Mars’s strength than we can afford.
When I arrive back in my Hollows command center from my nightly inspection, there is a commotion in the assembly area where the troops parade. Flanked by officers, Niobe greets me. Her bird’s-nest hair is tangled from a long day in the operations room. “What’s all this?” I ask of the shouting soldiers. Her eyes are filled with tears. I fear the worst until she kisses me on the mouth and takes me to see for myself.
Soldiers and medici and engineers fill the southern tunnel entrance to the assembly area with cheers so loud I think Darrow has returned. I push with Niobe through the mob to see Victra striding in looking like hell warmed over. Thraxa is beside her. Behind them lumber the fighters of Pegasus Legions. Victra’s eyes are bloodshot and feral but when she sees me she calls out: “My Sovereign! I bring tidings from Sector One. Also known as…”