Текст книги "Golden Son"

Автор книги: Brown Pierce

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“Prepare for evasive action,” I hear Mustang say back in the cabin.

“What’s happening?” Pliny whines.

“TACTUS!” I bellow. Victra and Sevro run at my heels. The other Howlers and Housemembers call to me, confused as I sprint through the passenger bay.

Screwface unbuckles his crashbelt. “He went past with the boy.”

“Down!” I say, shoving him in his seat. “Everyone stay seated!”

Tactus wouldn’t. He couldn’t. But why the hell not? Why would I ever assume he wouldn’t do what’s best for him? It’s in his nature.

We slide down railings to the storage level, past the room where the Jackal operates on Quinn. I shove open the door to the cargo hold and am greeted by the howling of wind. The hatch hangs open to show darkness wounded by city lights far beneath. Clown and an Augustus lancer lie unconscious, bleeding. They slide slowly toward the open bay door. As for Tactus, he’s nothing but a distant dot in the darkness. I cannot see him clearly, but I know what he has taken: Lysander.

“Sevro.” I grip my friend’s shoulder. “Stop!” He’s seething. Looks like he wants to jump out the back of the ship and follow Tactus into the air. He can’t. It’s too late. Instead, we catch the two unconscious Golds before they slip down the open ramp. Victra shuts it at the control panel. The door hisses closed.

“He doesn’t have any communications gear,” Victra says breathlessly. “Not after the EMP.”

“Doesn’t need the gorydamn gear.” Sevro points to Clown’s naked feet. “The bastard has gravBoots. Soon as he hits the ripWing scanners, he’ll be picked up.”

I do the math. “We have two minutes till they send boarding parties.”

20

HELLDIVER

I should have known what Tactus would do. He killed his first Primus, Tamara, in the Institute. He only ever followed strength. Only ever sought victory. I knew he was a beast, but I thought he was my beast. I thought I could trust him. No, I thought I could change him. I curse myself. Arrogant fool. I stalk back to the cockpit, where Augustus addresses the Blue pilot.

“Pilot, will you be able to take us clear?”

“No, dominus. Geomet models don’t show a probability of escape.” Her response is fittingly Blue—emotionally distant, efficient, and declarative. Her body is thin, faintly avian. Like she’s made all of twigs, neck long, bald head slightly smaller. Eyes large and as uncannily azure as the digital tattoos of her skull. When she moves, it’s as though she’s submerged in water. Asteroid born, judging by her flat accent.

“What is the likely scenario?”

“They will destroy our engines with ripWing fire. Precipitating a hull breach that will kill all aboard. Alternatively, precipitating a leechCraft assault. Capturing all aboard.”

“Or they’ll just blast us from the gory sky,” Sevro adds.

“Blue, deliver me to my ship and you will receive command of a frigate,” Augustus offers.

“I would prefer a cruiser,” she notes.

“A cruiser, then.”

“Very well.” The Blue adjusts several knobs. “I will fly well, but the paradigm must be altered before they engage our vessel, if we are to survive.”

The stork climbs toward the edge of Luna’s atmosphere. This ship is a big-bellied beast. Fat with storage room, because all they’re meant to do is birth soldiers out of the tubes in their guts. Men like me would tear her apart in our ripWings. We used ships like this at the Academy to launch men in starShells at enemy asteroid bases.

Friction fire wreaths the ship.

“If the hull is breached, hold your breath, dominii,” the pilot instructs. “We don’t have sufficient survival helmets aboard.”

Victra frowns. “Our lungs will explode if we do that.”

“Then exhale,” the Blue replies. “And have thirty secs of life while eardrums explode and blood vessels swell like inflated balloons. I will hold my breath.”

Sevro looks back at me, wide-eyed. “I hate space.”

“You hate everything.”

We pop clear of Luna’s atmosphere. The fire fades and we slip into open space, where the armada’s capital ships glide like behemoths of Europa’s deep sea. Gun turrets dot their hide like barnacles, and hangar bays slice their undersides like great gills. Commercial ships float slowly along the shipping lanes. RipWings and wasps go about their patrols. None pay heed to our presence except those that escort us from Luna. The Sovereign would not broadcast this. Time ticks away.

There is nowhere to flee. We thought to pass just under the guns of the Scepter Armada when we had Lysander. But now we’ll have to run the gauntlet.

Our pilot is calm as metal.

She said the paradigm must change.

What can I do? Think. Think.

“We will open communications to one of the ships,” Augustus says. “Bribe them into sheltering us. Every man has a price.”

“We’re jammed. Can’t even broadcast,” Mustang reminds him.

We’re going to die. We all know it. Augustus doesn’t panic or surrender resolve. I don’t know how I thought he’d handle death. Maybe I hoped he would wail about and turn pale. But for all his faults, he is stalwart. After a moment, he sets a bony hand on Mustang’s shoulder. She flinches, surprised.

“Whether missile or boarding craft come, die like Golds,” Augustus says solemnly to us. Not because he wishes us to think him strong in his last moments, but because he believes in what he is—a superior being, a master of his human frailties. For him, death is merely the ultimate frailty. Humans whimper when they die. They claw for life even if there is no hope. He will not. Death is not grander than his pride.

Golds, in many ways, are so like Reds. Helldivers go to their deaths for their families, for the pride of their clan. They do not whimper when the mines collapse around them or when the pitvipers come from the shadows. They fall and their friends weep and sweep their bodies aside. But we have the Vale to look forward to; what have the Golds? When they perish, their flesh withers and their name and deeds linger till time sweeps them away. And that is all. If anyone should claw for life now, it should be the Aureate.

I claw because I carry the torch of something that must not die, must not go out. That is why I grab Sevro on the shoulder and, with a horrible, eerie laugh, tell the pilot to take us closer to the deadliest ship in orbit, one which now has angled itself to intercept us.

“Take us near the Vanguard,” I repeat to the Blue.

“That would cause our chances of survival to decrease by—”

“Never tell me the odds, just do it,” I command.

Everyone turns and looks at me. Not because I’ve said something strange but because they’ve been waiting to turn and look at me. They’ve all been silently praying I would marshal a plan. Even Augustus.

Eo said people would always look to me. She believed I had some quality, some essence that gave hope. I rarely feel it in myself. There is none in me now. Just dread. Inside I feel such a boy—angry, petulant, selfish, guilty, sad, alone—and yet they look to me. I almost break underneath their gaze, almost wither away and ask someone else to take the reins. I can’t do it. I’m small. I’m just a liar in a carved body. But that dream must not be extinguished.

So I act and they watch.

“You gone space mad?” Victra asks. “When they realize we don’t have the boy …”

“Draw an angle toward the Vanguard’s bridge,” Mustang tells the Blue.

Augustus gives me a curt nod, guessing what I plan. “Hic sunt leones.”

“Hic sunt leones,” I echo, saving my last look for Mustang, not the man who hanged my wife. She doesn’t notice. I leave the bridge with Sevro at a dead sprint. Something hits our ship. Her hull shudders. They know we don’t have Lysander.

“Howlers! Get up!” I shout.

Harpy throws up her hands. “I thought you said—”

“UP!” I roar.

Red secondary lights bathe the launch bay in bloody hues as Sevro and I load ourselves into the cold starShells. It takes two Howlers each to help us slip into the robotic carapaces. I lie in the armor as Harpy buckles my feet into the stirrups and closes the armored legs over my meat and bones. The Howlers are fast in their movements even as the ship lurches with another near missile strike. A siren howls, reporting a hull breach. I try to slow my breath as Victra fits my head into the starShell’s helmet.

“Good luck.” She leans her face close. Before I can stop her, she presses her lips to mine. I do not recoil, not this close to death. I let her lips part and cling warm and comforting around mine. Then the human moment is over, and she’s gone, lowering the massive visor of my helmet. My Howlers howl and hoot at the sight. I can’t help but wish it was Mustang who sealed me in this tin can and kissed me goodbye; but then the digital display owns my vision and I disappear from my friends into the metal launch tube. I’m alone. And scared.

Focus.

I’m cocooned, belly-down, in the spitTube. This is where most would piss themselves, separated from friends, from the warmth of life. There’s no gravity in the tube. It isn’t pressurized. I hate the weightlessness of it.

I can’t look up or my neck will break when they launch me. I can’t move side to side. My starShell is latched into a thousand toothlike magnetic hooks. They click into place like tiny insects, chattering.

In moments they’ll shoot me into space. My breath rasps. My heart rattles against my sternum. I drink in my body’s terror and smile. They said this was suicide at the Academy when I wanted to launch myself. Maybe they were right.

But this is why I was made. To dive into hell.

I’m a beetle of a man in a carapace of metal, weapons, and engines that cost more than most ships. I’ve got a pulseCannon on my right arm. When I need it, it will bloom like a haemanthus blossom.

I think of the time Eo laid a haemanthus before my front door, the time I plucked one from the wall on the night that I was supposed to win the Laurel. How far away those warm days seem from this cold place, where petals are metal instead of soft like silk.

“We’re getting pinned in. Boarding parties imminent,” Mustang’s voice comes over the com. “Priming your launch.” The ship moans as another missile almost claims us. Our shields are shot. Just the rickety hull holding us together.

“Aim true,” I say.

“Always. Darrow …” Her silence says a thousand things.

“I’m sorry,” I tell her.

“Good luck.”

“This is not fun,” Sevro groans.

The ship’s hydraulic system hisses and the metal teeth jerk me forward in the tube, loading me into the chamber. Inches before my head, the magnetic stream of the railgun hums dreadfully, daring me to glance its way.

They say that many Golds can’t take this, that even Peerless can panic and scream and cry in the spitTube. I believe it. Pixies would have heart attacks right now. Some cannot even ride in a spaceship for fear of small places and the vastness of space. Soft-bellied fools. I was born in a home smaller than the cargo bay of this ship. I made my life at the end of a clawDrill that makes this tube look like a child’s toy, all while sweating and pissing my soul away in a frysuit cobbled together from scrap.

Still there’s the terror.

“Watch how a pitviper strikes, my son.” Father once clutched me by my wrist and made me play this game. “Watch it coil upward and upward till it reaches its crest. Don’t move before then. Don’t strike out with your slingBlade. If you do, then it’ll get you. It’ll kill you. Move just when it’s coming down. Do that with the terror in life. Don’t act till you’re as scared as you’ll get, then …” He snapped his fingers.

I’m at that point when the music of the machines takes hold. The clicks and the clacks, the hisses and the hums reverberate through the hull. A countdown begins.

“Ready over there, Goblin?” I ask Sevro over the com.

“Cacatne ursus in silvis?”

Does a bear shit in the woods? The ship spins and shudders. More sirens howl.

“Latin, now?”

“Audentes fortuna juvat,” Sevro chuckles.

“Fortune favors the bold? You deserve to die if that’s really going to be the last thing you say in this life.”

“Yes? Well, you may suck my—”

My heart sticks to its downward beat.

The metal teeth jerk me forward into the tube’s magnetic stream. And it happens. Even through my suit, g-forces hit me like the backhand of the Obsidians’ thunder god. My vision flickers black. Stomach rises into throat. Lungs constrict. Blood slows in my veins. I snap forward. Lights flicker in my eyes. I don’t see the walls of the tube I’m shot through. I don’t even see the ship that brought me here. I see Eo’s face in the darkness. I black out. Bodies can’t take this. Too fast.

Darkness.

Then the darkness has holes.

Stars.

There’s no meantime. One second I’m on the ship, the next I’m ripping through the deep of space at ten times the speed of sound.

Many shit their suits at this point. It’s not a fear thing. It’s biology and physics. The human body can take only so much. Mickey the Carver made sure mine could take just a little bit more. I hope Sevro’s can too.

I rip soundlessly through space. Trust that Sevro is near me. Can’t see him, even on the sensors. All too fast. Toward the greatest ship in the Scepter Armada—the one we should avoid. It all happens in six seconds. Emergency missiles streak past us. The gunners see us now. Know what’s happening. But we’re not using thrusters, so the missiles can’t lock. Flack can’t detonate on so short a fuse. The unspent canisters fly past us, nearly hitting me. Our pilot took a perfect shot.

Railguns miss us. Projectiles flash past. Sevro is howling in the com. Their shields are down. They can’t bring them up fast enough. It takes time. Iridescent blue flickers over their hull as the pulseShields power up. Too late, you sons of bitches.

Too bloodydamn late.

I can’t think. I’m screaming inside. Laughing like the flames of a wildfire. Laughing because I know it is my madness that these logical warriors cannot fight.

The bridge is close. I spare a look up. See Golds inside roaring at one another. Rushing to their evacsuits or escape pods. Staring at us approach like Mustang did when my horses of House Mars crashed into her and Pax in a muddy field. Our rage is something unique. Something these Luneborn don’t understand.

Blues scatter. Obsidians pull their weapons. Two Golds don breath-masks and unfurl razors, readying for the kill. The second before we hit, I shoot my pulseCannon. It thumps on the thick glass. I shoot again and again and again. Then I curl into a ball and smash into the thick bridge glass with the full velocity of my launch as well as a last-second burst from my thruster boots.

Out of me roars a madman’s scream.

21

STAINS

I explode through the bridge like a ball of lead shot into a store of china and glass. I crash into displays and strategy desks before blasting through the reinforced metal of the bridge walls, through the steel of the hallways till at last I slam bodily into a bulkhead a hundred meters through and past the bridge. Dazed. Can’t find Sevro. I call him over the com. He groans something about his ass. Maybe he did shit himself.

We can’t hear it because of our helmets, but the ship is filled with howling as the vacuum of space sucks crewmembers to their deaths. It really doesn’t suck them out through the shattered windows so much as the internal pressure of the ship pushes them out. Either way, Blues and Oranges and Golds fly screaming into space. The Obsidians go silently. Not that it matters. Space makes all silent in the end.

My left arm spits sparks. My pulseCannon is shredded. Inside the suit, my arm hurts like hell. I have a concussion. I puke inside my helmet. Fills it with a bitter stench, stings the nostrils. But I keep my feet, and my right arm works well enough. Viewshield is cracked. I stumble as I’m sucked toward the bridge too.

I crawl back through the holes I made in the walls. Make it to the bridge to find the place in chaos. Crewmembers hold on to anything to prevent themselves from being sucked into the cold darkness. A Gold girl flips past me and flies out the bulkhead. Finally, red lights flash. Emergency bulkheads slam shut all over this part of the ship to cut the pressure leak. One begins to close behind me, reinforcing a wall that I crashed through. I hold it up when I see Sevro coming. The metal groans against the robotic arm of my starShell. Sevro dives through just in time and the door slams shut. Bridge is locked down with us inside. Perfect.

The pressure wind dies behind us as durosteel slats slide over the demolished viewports. The ship’s officers and crew pick themselves up from the ground, gasping for breath, but there is none. Oxygen and pressure are still being pumped back into the room. So those with breathing masks—the Golds, Obsidians, and Blues—watch placidly as the few Pink valets and Orange technicians on the bridge flop like fish, gasping for air that is not there. One Pink vomits blood, his lungs exploding in his chest because he tried to hold his breath. The Blues watch the deaths in horror. They have never seen men die. They are used to seeing blips on the scanners disappearing. Perhaps a distant ship exploding or gouting flame as it is boarded by Obsidians and Grays. Their understanding of the mortal coil is being adjusted.

The Obsidians and Golds don’t react to the scene. Some of the Grays attempt to administer aid, but it is too late. By the time the pressure and oxygen levels are normalized, the lowColors are dead. I’ll never forget those faces. I brought them this. How many families will weep because of what I did here?

In anger, I stomp my metal boot on the steel deck. Three times. And those who did nothing while their allies died turn to see Sevro and me in our killing suits.

Oh, how those Gold and Obsidian faces finally emote.

An Obsidian charges us with a forcePike. Sevro hits him once, crushing the huge man with a metal fist. The other four link together and attack us, keening one of their hideous war chants. Sevro meets them, delighted to finally be the biggest in the room. I engage a squad of Grays who scramble for their weapons.

This is the way it goes. We’re men of metal fighting disorganized men of flesh. Like steel fists punching the inside of a watermelon. I’ve never killed men with so little regard. And it frightens me how easy I find it in war. There is no ambiguity here, no violation of moral creed. These people are warColors. They kill me or I kill them. It’s simpler than the Passage. Simpler that I don’t know them, that I don’t know their brothers and sisters, that I use metal instead of my own flesh to drive them through death’s dark door.

I am good at it, better by worlds than Sevro, and that terrifies me above all else.

I am the Reaper. Whatever doubts I had in myself fall away and I feel the stain creeping over my soul.

We do our best to save the Blues. The bridge is large, but there aren’t many Obsidians or Grays with projectile and energy weapons. No reason for them here; no one has ever come through the viewports. Two female Golds with razors are the true menace. One is tall and broad. The other has a quick face that is pinched with desperation as she charges us. With their razors, they could cut even our suits in half, so Sevro blasts them from a distance with his pulseCannon, overloading their aegises and splashing the energy onto armor where it overloads the pulseShields and eats into the armor, melting the Golds. This is why they control technology. Humans, no matter their Color, are fragile as doves in the meat grinder of war.

My enemies dead, I turn now to the Blues in the pits. “Is there a captain?” I ask.

In my suit, I stand nearly a meter taller than them. They’re still staring at the mess we made of the others. I must be a walking nightmare. Arm spitting sparks. Suit half ruined. Holding a terrible razor.

“I don’t have all day to threaten and stomp. You are erudite men and women. This is not your ship. You merely occupy it for the Gold who commands it. I now command it. So. Is there a Blue captain about?”

The captain survived. He’s a placid, clean-looking man, more limbs than torso, with a fresh gash on his face that pains him terribly. He trembles and sniffles, holding the wound as though his face would fall apart were his hands to leave it. Mother would have called him a shiteating ninnypriss. Eo would have taken a different tack, so I stand over him and speak quietly.

“You are safe,” I say. “Do not attempt anything rash.”

I pop my helmet. The sick drips out. I tell him he’s to go to the corner and strip off his star badge of rank. Trembling, he doesn’t get a chance to obey. Sevro lurches forward, takes his badge, and picks him up and moves him like a doll.

A long-faced, proud-shouldered woman with deep olive skin snorts at the demotion. Her gaze is peculiarly shrewd for a Blue. Bald, like the rest, with digital azure tattoos swirling not only along crown and temples, but over hands and neck.

Sevro lopes back to me.

“Sevro, stop pissing around.”

“I like being big.”

“I’m still bigger.”

He tries flipping me the crux in his suit, but the mechanical fingers aren’t so agile.

I give orders to the Blues in the tech pits that our friends in the stork are to be given access to one of the hangar bays. After settling themselves back into their stations, they obey. All here are loyal, because I have them under my power. But throughout the ship, who knows? They may be loyal to the Sovereign. Or they may only be loyal to the man who rules this ship. It’d be foolish to think they all operate under the same creed. I’ll have to make them.

I watch the stork coast into a hangar bay on a display. She’s barely held together by her bolts. Two leechCraft festoon her. My Howlers will have to fight off the squads of killers they contained. They might manage, but if the Vanguard’s Obsidians and Grays besiege them in the hangar, then all is lost.

Sounds come now from the bulkhead that connects the bridge with the rest of the ship. A deepspine hissing. The door glows red from heat, a small pupil in the center of the thick gray durosteel. Obsidians or Gray marines, no doubt led by some Gold, endeavor to reclaim the ship. Should take them a little while.

“Is there a holoCam in the hall?” I ask the Blues.

They hesitate. “Blackspace, you daft gasbags,” curses the female Blue I noted before. She pushes another Blue out of the way and syncs her tattoos with the console. A holo appears on one of the screens, confirming my fear. Golds lead the party attempting to make their way onto the bridge.

“Show me the engine room, the life support nexuses, and the hangar bay,” I demand. She does. Again, Golds lead parties of Gray marines and Obsidian slave-knights to secure the ship’s vital systems. They’ll try to wrest control of it away from me. Worse, they’ll try to board or destroy the stork to kill or capture Mustang and my friends.

“Who wants this ship?” I ask severely. I stalk along the raised command podium, kicking aside a body in my way, and look down at the communications Blues in their pit. They dodge my gaze, two women no older than I. Faces pale and fresh, like morning snow, now stained with tear tracks and grime. Wide cerulean eyes raw-rimmed and shot with red. They’ve seen friends die today, and here I rage selfishly, acting as though this is my triumph. It’s so easy to lose myself.

Never forget what I am, I remind myself. Never forget.

We’re being hailed by a dozen ships and the Citadel ground command. What’s happened? they want to know. TorchShips and destroyers coast warily toward us. I open a closed-circuit com channel to the whole of my ship.

“Attention, crew of the vessel formerly known as the Vanguard, hereafter known as the Pax.” I pause dramatically, knowing that any good song, any good dance, is a game of tension leading to a climax of sound and movement.

Sevro can’t stop grinning boyishly at me. He looks like an imp in the huge suit, head so small with his helmet off. He makes a big motion with his hands to try to make me laugh. I shake my head at him. Now isn’t the time.

“My name is Darrow au Andromedus, lancer of the Martian House Augustus, and I have claimed this vessel as a spoil of war. It is mine. This means, per Societal rules of naval warfare, that your lives are mine. I am sorry for that, because it means you will likely all die.

“Your lives have been dedicated to one vocation or another—electronics, astral navigation, gunnery, janitorial service, lighting and repair, martial combat. My vocation is conquest. They teach us it in schools. And in school, they instructed me on the proper method of invading, seizing, and possessing an enemy warship. After one has captured the bridge of an enemy-held vessel, the procedure taught to us is simple: vent the ship.”

Sevro activates the hidden console secured in the back side of a navigation display, one only Golds can access. The Blues recoil in surprise. It is like going into a man’s kitchen and showing him a nuclear bomb hidden under his sink. The console scans Sevro’s golden Sigil and blinks gold. All he need do is push in a code, and the entire ship will open to space. Twenty thousand men and women will die.

“We made these ships so we could empty them. Why? Not because we distrust your loyalty—in fact we rely on that—but because there are still”—I look at the roster one of the Blues gives me—“sixty-one Golds on board. They are loyal to the Sovereign. I am her enemy. They will not obey me. They will sabotage the ship, attempt to take the bridge; they will rally you, abuse your loyalty, and lead you to certain death. Because of them and their hatred of me, you will never see your loved ones again.

“There is yet another complication. Beyond this hull, the Sovereign wonders what happened here. Soon she will realize the pride of her armada no longer belongs to her. It is mine. Her Praetors’ ships will vomit out squadrons of leechCraft carrying legions of Obsidians and Gray marines. They will be led by Gold knights who want my head, fully prepared to kill all in their path.

“If I vent you into space, there will be no one to stop them from killing me. So you see, you are my salvation, and I am yours. I will not sacrifice twenty thousand of you to kill sixty-one of my enemies. I chose this vessel above all others because of its crew. The best the Society can offer. To me you are not expendable. So what I ask of you is this: choose me as your commander and overwhelm those Golds who think you expendable.

“You have my permission, my warrant and the badge of the ArchGovernor of Mars, Nero au Augustus, to capture or kill your Gold commanders for me. Take their weapons and subdue them, then make fast the ship against the invaders who come to destroy us. Do it now. If you wait, they will kill you! I will know the first men and women to rise up. As your new master, I will reward you. The ArchGovernor will reward you. Do it now! For I have just opened every armory throughout the ship. Seize weapons, and neutralize the tyrants.”

A heavy silence as the first sparks of revolution are struck.

Sevro comes close. “That was rousing.”

“Too demokratic?” I whisper.

“I don’t think autocratic demokracy counts.” Sevro wrinkles his nose. “You did threaten to vent them into space.”

“Threaten? I thought I implied it rather smoothly.”

“Smooth as gravel, dipshit.” Sevro cackles a bit too enthusiastically and slaps his leg with his mech hand, denting the metal there. He winces, then looks up at me, slightly embarrassed. “Slag off.”

The door behind us begins to hiss. I turn to look at the glowing bulkhead. My enemies have brought a drill to assail me. My hands shake from the adrenaline. I feel the weight of dozens of blue eyes. The red of the door deepens, spreading. We haven’t long.

My razor ripples into killing form, long and terrible. “Company soon,” I say. I glance at Sevro, who has been distracted by one of the holo screens. I order the Blues to take shelter.

“They’re doing it,” Sevro murmurs. “Goryhell. Darrow, come look.”

He cycles through live visuals of Oranges and Blues ransacking the armories. Some Grays help them. Others stand by, unsure of their prerogative even as others shoot at the tide of their fellow shipmates. But no bullets can hold back this tide. They take weapons, run sloppily through halls, swelling their ranks. The roughest lead—not Blues, but Orange hangar workers and mechanics, along with Grays … one I recognize. The middle-aged corporal on my ship at the Academy, the one who escaped with us. He directs a score of men and women into the stateroom of a Gold. They subdue him respectfully. That peaceful accord is not far spread.

Three powerful squads of Golds, leading Obsidians and Grays, marshal in the life support rooms, at the engines five kilometers back to the aft of the ship, and just outside the bridge door. Those outside the bridge door number four Golds and six Obsidians. Ten Grays load weapons behind them.

“We’re still going to have company,” I say.

They’ll be coming through the door at any moment. Sparks spit from the inside of the bulkhead as their heat drill gets the better of the door. Metal drips inward, bubbling to the floor. The Blues shiver in terror, and Sevro and I square ourselves up and don our helmets, preparing for the new onslaught. Again the stench of my sick fills my nostrils. I tell the Blues to hide in the communications bay. They’ll be safe there.

A com light suddenly blinks on a console near me. Instinctively, I answer. A voice like thunder sends tremors through my bones. There is no visual.

“Can you hear me?” it asks.

“I can.” I glance over at Sevro. Whoever calls us is using a voice amplifier that sounds like the breaking of thunder. Sevro shrugs as if he hasn’t a clue who it is. “Who is this?”

“Are you a god?”

A god? An eerie quiet settles in me. That is no voice amplifier. I should have known by the cold, sluggish accent. I choose my words carefully, remembering my lore. “I am Darrow au Andromedus of the Sunborn.”

“You took the vessel and you are not yet Praetor? How?”

“I flew in through the bridge.”

“Alone from the Abyss?”

“With a companion.”

“I will come to meet you and your companion, godchild.”