Текст книги "Golden Son"

Автор книги: Brown Pierce

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35

TEATIME

Our disguise in the camel ship holds as we approach the fleet around Hildas Station, aiming for what was once Augustus’s flagship, now Pliny’s. Invictus. RipWings fly silently past us, requesting clearance codes. Our pilot sends the codes and we are escorted to join a procession of supply ships that funnel into the Invictus’s hangar, like caravan traders lining up outside the grand gates of some desert citadel. Guns track us as we taxi.

We land with a thud. The pilot pops open the aft bay doors and I and mine hop from the ship down to the hangar’s floor. Instead of greeting Brown haulers like she might have expected, the Orange Docker looks up from her datapad to see a war party in full armored panoply. Armed to the teeth. Without hesitation, she sits down, wanting no part of this.

Sevro laughs and pats her on the head. “Wiser than Gold.”

A circus of ships fills the bay. Lights glow down from the high ceiling. Oranges and Reds scuttle about. Welding torches sizzle against hulls. Men and women shout at one another. My fellows follow me, walking through the hangar toward the lifts where we can access the rest of the ship.

And as we walk, silence spreads like wildfire. Welding torches cease to sizzle. Men no longer call out. They simply stare. I stalk forward in the front with Lorn. Mustang and Kavax au Telemanus flank us. Roque follows with Sevro and Daxo. Victra comes next with the Howlers. And then behind them all, like some sort of pale, giant shepherd, comes Ragnar.

He chose to join us from the freezer. We exchange a look, and in one nod, I know I have a new general for the rebellion. I swell with confidence.

Not a soul protests our movement, though by our attire they know we do not come for peaceful talks. My armor is black. Carved with roaring lions. A thin pulseShield flickers over it. On my left arm, my aegis activates, its opaque blue surface drinking in the light. My white razor slithers on my arm. Our boots make the sound of hail on the metal decks. I dispatch Pebble to have her Green squads crash the ship’s communications system.

A Copper sees us and makes a deal of playing with his datapad. Ragnar slips up to him, touches his shoulder hard enough to push the man to his knees. “No.”

We enter the lift and the guts of the ship without a shot being fired. We take the lift to the deck one above the command level. The lift doors open, bringing us face-to-face with a squad of Gray marines.

“Captain, you’re to accompany Virginia au Augustus to the engineering bay,” I say to the Gray. His eyes appreciate the gravity of the situation; after barely a hesitation, he salutes. His confused men fall in behind Mustang and the Telemanuses as they head off at a trot.

The ship alarm begins to wail.

The Howlers go to the engines and life support systems as my own force continues three decks up, heading not for the command deck, where Pliny will be hosting his new allies, but for the brig. Roque, Victra, Lorn, Sevro, and Ragnar slip in through the doors, subduing the guards before I even enter.

The prisoners, some forty Peerless Augustus Loyalists, are imprisoned in small duroglass cells. Sevro walks past each, freeing the men and women inside with a datakey as he goes.

“Thank the Reaper,” he says to each, repeating it four times to a towering old Peerless woman till she finally realizes she’s not getting out till she plays his little game. They each roll their eyes and say thank you. “What a good, abnormally tall and decrepit Peerless you are. Excellent,” Sevro says, and lets the woman out. “Lorn! I found a possible bedmate.” He pauses as he comes before the Jackal’s glass cage.

“What do I spy with my little eye?” Sevro happily crows. “Wait! I have two again!”

“Let me out,” the Jackal replies flatly. “I’m not playing your game, Goblin.”

“Thank the Reaper. And the name’s Sevro. You know that.”

The Jackal rolls his eyes. “Thank you, Reaper.”

“Bow like a good servant.”

“No.”

“Just let him out,” Lorn grumbles.

“He has to play my game!” Sevro says. “Shithead isn’t getting out till he plays nice. I’ll give him a riddle instead. What do I have in my pocket?”

I grow tired of the game, so behind his back, I point to my eye.

“An eyeball,” the Jackal says.

“Gorydammit, who told him?”

Roque takes the key from Sevro’s hand and scans it over the cell’s console. The Jackal joins us. “Grow up, Sevro,” Roque mutters.

“The hell is your problem?” Sevro asks. “We need to take our time anyway. Can’t let me have a little bit of fun?”

We take our time so Pliny can fear our actions. He must suspect the loyalty of most of the crew. But no doubt he has a contingent of bought-and-paid-for soldiers on board. Mercenaries, most likely. He’ll hide behind them like a shield.

“Where’s your father?” I ask the Jackal.

“I don’t know,” he says. “I don’t believe he’s on the ship. My sister make it to you safely?”

“She found us.”

“Good,” he says, turning quickly to acknowledge Lorn. “A pleasure, Arcos. My father forbade me from reading your exploits as a child. Still, I managed. Tales of Old Stoneside kept me up late into the night.”

“As did your performance at the Institute,” Lorn replies with a small smile for me. “I was afraid to close my eyes after seeing your campaign.”

The Jackal chuckles. “Seems your mission was a success on Europa, Darrow.”

“They sprang the trap as we hoped. And Aja escaped.”

“Then let’s go fix this problem and get on with our war.”

Roque looks back and forth between us, perhaps noting the familiarity with which we speak. Yet another thing I never told him. The gulf grows.

We meet Mustang in the lowColor galley during lunch hours. Hundreds of Orange deckhands and electricians mingle with the Red factory workers and Brown janitors. The buzz of conversation and the clatter of plastic trays on metal tables falters as soon as Ragnar enters the galley. Dead silence except an overexcited Brown janitor who screams at the top of his lungs. His comrades quickly cover his mouth.

Ragnar walks to the center of the room and moves one of the tables without waiting for the lowColors to get up. Pulling it free of its metal bolts, he drags it screeching across the metal floor, lowColors still sitting on the attached benches. They stay motionless, eyes huge and terrified and utterly confused at the sight of my cadre of fifty Golds.

The Telemanuses follow Ragnar, carrying between father and son a circular metal device one meter thick, two meters in diameter—the purpose of their trip to the engineering bay. Their arms are covered by armor, but the veins of their necks bulge under its weight. Mustang guides them, looking at her datapad. “Here,” she says. They drop it where she points. The Grays follow, carrying a huge battery unit, which they set on top of a nearby table.

“Howlers, make some noise,” I say into my com.

“Pardon me. Excuse me. Sorry,” Pebble says, waving her pudgy little hands. She takes a cable from the battery unit and attaches it to the disc.

There’s a crackle as the ship’s speakers activate. “Pliny,” a voice calls sweetly. I look around for Sevro and see him at a terminal with two of the Greens.

“Sevro!” Mustang and I snap.

He holds up a finger for us to wait.

“He’s on the com,” one of the Greens jabbers out sincerely. “Just a sec.”

“Dear Pliny,” Sevro sings over the com.

If your heart beats like a drum,

and your leg’s a little wet,

it’s ’cause the Reaper’s come

to collect a little debt.

He sings this three times until Ragnar throws a table into the console. Sparks shower out. Sevro looks up slowly at the table hanging over his head. It missed by inches. He wheels around. “What the gorypissandshit is your damage, you overreacting mountain troll!”

“Rhyming … nnnngh.” Ragnar makes an uncomfortable groaning sound.

“You found him,” Mustang mutters as we share a look.

“Which one?” I ask as Sevro curses the Stained out in every compound manner he knows. Adding the crux for good measure.

“You squawk like a … like a chicken,” Ragnar says in reply.

“He can’t insult me,” Sevro says, aghast. He looks at me. “Control him.”

I wash my hands of it.

“If I may suggest continuing,” Lorn says.

“Right. Serious faces, everyone.” Helmets slide from armor to cover our skulls. I see thermal readings, power levels in the digital display. “Prime it,” I tell Mustang.

She activates the leechCraft thermal drill. It’s meant to burrow through the outer hull of a ship and create a breach large enough for a boarding party to pour through. So carving through the floor of a ship is nothing. And we’re only one deck above the command rooms. I jump atop the drill.

Momentum is everything to a Helldiver, to military endeavors, to life. Keep moving and dare someone to get in your path.

“You know what I said earlier?” Lorn asks me.

“About tact?” I ask.

He grins evilly behind his beard. “Slag tact. Terrify them.”

I look at Mustang. “Burn.”

She presses a button. The drill glows red. Heat radiates up into me. Spreads along the floor. LowColors flow away, abandoning their food, fleeing the room as the floor sags and melts like sand pouring down an hourglass. The drill falls through the dripping deck into the command room beneath with me riding on its back. A Helldiver again, if only for a moment.

It slams into the middle of Augustus’s great wooden table, sheaving through and impacting like a meteor into the marble floor, still melting. I cut the power cable with my razor and rise amid the smoke and steam and leaping flames as the table catches fire.

A hundred Golds of the Society stare up at me. Praetors, Legates, Judiciars, and knights of powerful houses stand with their razors drawn. All once loyal to Augustus. All now under Pliny’s thumb. Going with the wind, as they say.

And there he is, at the head of the long table, his face fast paling. Beautiful, clever Pliny. One eye left, the other sporting a temporary bionic replacement. At his right sits one of the Sovereign’s Furies, the Politico, Moira. Compared with Aja, she’s a puffy pastry of a woman. But her sweet smile is half again as sinister as her sister’s razor. Beside her is an Olympic Knight, the Storm Knight from the Japanese Isles of Earth.

“My goodmen!” I bellow through the voice amplifier in my helmet. “I have come for Pliny.” I jump down from the drill, helmet rippling back into my armor so they can see my face. I walk toward him. My friends follow through the hole. Arcos first. Then Mustang and Sevro.

“You said he was dead!” someone to my left snarls, razor half pulled.

“Lorn au Arcos?” murmurs another. His name rips through the place as Sevro and Roque secure the doors leading into the room.

“And KAVAX AU TELEMANUS!” Kavax booms wildly as he lands. Guess Pax had to learn it somewhere.

“The Reaper is not dead,” Mustang says, hopping down from the drill. “Nor am I. Nor is my brother. And we have come to reclaim what belongs to our father.”

These Peerless don’t know what to do.

“Liars!” Pliny cries. “You betrayed the ArchGovernor. Seize the traitors!”

Lorn makes a simple proclamation. “If anyone comes within two meters of Darrow, I kill everyone in this room.”

They don’t seem eager to call his bluff. The men I walk between jump backward. Lorn’s reputation carves a hole for me straight to Pliny. I don’t break pace.

“Pliny,” I say. “We must speak.”

“Kill him!” Pliny screams. “Kill the Reaper.”

A young man lurches forward and dies as his neighbor stabs him in the back. The neighbor looks fearfully to Lorn.

“Two point three meters,” Lorn says. “Close.”

“Kill him!” Pliny shouts futilely. “He’s just boy!”

I speak quietly, but all can hear.

“Pliny au Velocitor, you are a traitor to ArchGovenor Nero au Augustus. You have conspired to destroy his house, to forcibly marry his daughter, to kill his son, and betray him to the Sovereign, who has set herself against him. Your master raised you up, and you tried to tear him down. You have betrayed his trust all for personal gain. Worst of all, you have failed.”

“Stop him!” Pliny screams now, wildly gesticulating at me. “Moira!”

Moira whispers to the Storm Knight, and both step to the side.

“You’re supposed to be dead,” Pliny mutters. “Aja said she would kill you on Europa.”

“And who do you know that can kill me?” I say, that ridiculous Gold rage building in my voice so that it might impress all these hungry souls. “The Jackal failed. Antonia au Severus-Julii failed. Proctors Apollo and Jupiter failed. Cassius au Bellona failed. Karnus failed. Cagney failed. Aja au Grimmus and her Praetorians failed.” The hangman failed. The mines and pitvipers failed. “And now you fail.”

That’s when I slip forward, faster than a striking pitviper, and slap him across the face. He pitches sideways out of his seat like a leaf battered by the wind, careening into a Gold who stood to the side. She spits on him and moves for me.

“You are a worm who thought himself a serpent just because you slither. But your power was not real, Pliny. It was all a dream. Time now to wake.”

Pliny scrambles to his feet, pushing himself away from me. His carefully combed hair is a mess, and redness swells on his right cheek. I spin him around and slap him again, harder. He’s startled. Doesn’t know what to do. He was not taken from his bed during his first day at the Institute and beaten by Obsidians. He did not ride upon the snow-crusted beaches at the head of an armored column. He did not starve. So now all he can do is scramble and cry.

I seize him with my hands, raise him high into the air. But I hurt him no more. I will not demean the moment with cruelty like Karnus or Titus would. My condescension is my weapon. I set Pliny back in the ArchGovernor’s chair. I buff his dragonfly pin. Straighten his hair like a kindly mother. Pat him on his tear-stained cheek and extend my hand, which bears my House Mars ring.

He kisses it without me asking.

“Goodbye, Pliny. I leave you to your friends.”

I walk away, the eyes of all these Peerless following me, abandoning Pliny. I hear a slurping sound and do not turn, because I know what razors sound like when they kill. They didn’t even wait. Pliny is forgotten.

These Peerless thump their chests in salute to me. The monsters. They go with the wind, chasing power. But they don’t realize power doesn’t shift. Power is resolute. It is the mountain, not the wind. To shift so easily is to lose trust. And trust is what has kept me alive. Trust in my friends, and their trust in me.

The Sovereign knows this. It is why she keeps her Furies close. They would die for her, as my friends would die for me. Because in the end, what does all the power in all the worlds matter if your closest friends can betray you? The Sovereign’s father learned that when his daughter took his head. Pliny learned at the price of his life. I forgot it, distanced myself from my friends, and nearly lost everything because of it when Tactus felt as overshadowed and alienated with me as he did with his brothers. It is why I started fresh with Victra, why I told Ragnar the truth, why I must make amends with Lorn and Roque.

Trust is why Red will have a chance. We are a people bound by song and dance and families and kinship. These people are allies only because they think they must be.

I look at them now and I know they are so stern and so rigid that they will break and shatter against one another, not because of me, but because of what they are.

I float on my gravBoots, pausing to say, “Tell all who will hear, the Reaper sails to Mars. And he calls for an Iron Rain.”

36

LORD OF WAR

“Power is the crown that eats the head,” the Jackal said to me as we planned the invasion. He spoke in reference to Octavia. But the truth reaches further than that. These Golds have had power for so long. Look how they act. Look what they want. They jump at the chance for war. They come from near, from far, ships racing to join my armada as they learn that I have called for an Iron Rain, the first in twenty years. I used the Jackal to spread the news, along with footage of Pliny’s fall. Many of them are second sons and daughters, who will not inherit their parents’ estates. Warmongers, duelists, the glory-hungry. And each bring their attendants of Grays and Obsidians. The worlds of the Society wait with bated breath to see what happens today. If we lose, the Sovereign rules on. If we win—complete civil war. No world can stand apart.

Legions marshal within my ship as my armada gathers around the dock moon of Phobos. I carry my razor curved as a slingBlade; crooked and cruel, it is my scepter. My iron House Mars ring tightens as I flex my hand and stare through the viewports. The pegasus bounces against my chest.

I cannot see my enemy—Bellona and much of the Sovereign’s local fleets—but they lie between me and my planet. The Sovereign’s ancient Ash Lord comes fast from the Core to aid with his Scepter Armada, but he is still a week away. He cannot help the Bellona today.

My Blues watch me, and my generals—of Victra au Julii’s personal fleet, who abandoned her mother’s forces, of House Arcos, of the House Telemanus, and the bannermen of Augustus.

Mars is green and blue and pocked with shielded cities. White caps mark her poles. Blue oceans stretch along her equator. Fields of grass along with thick forests coat her surface. Clouds swirl about her, a cotton shift to hide her sparkling shielded cities. And there are guns. Great stations in the deserts, around the cities, where shipkilling railguns point to the sky.

My thoughts dip below the surface of the planet. I wonder what my mother is doing now. Is she making breakfast? Do they know what comes? Will they even feel it when we do?

My fingers don’t tremble even on the brink of battle. My breath is even. I was born to a family of Helldivers. I was born to a bloodline of dust and toil, born to serve the Golds. I was born to this velocity.

Yet I am terrified. Mickey carved me to be a god of war. But why do I feel like such a boy standing in silly armor? Why do I want to be five years old again, before my father died, sharing the bed with Kieran, listening to him talk in his sleep?

I turn to the sea of Gold faces.

This race—what a beautiful monster. They carry all of humanity’s strengths, except one. Empathy. They can change. I know that. Perhaps not now, perhaps not in four generations. But it begins today, the end of their Golden Age. Shatter the Bellona, weaken Gold. Drive the civil war to Luna itself and destroy the Sovereign. Then Ares will rise.

I don’t want to be here. I want to be home, with her, with my child who never was.

But can’t be. I feel the tide inside me go out, baring old wounds. This is for you, I tell her. For the world you should have lived in.

And so I return my part, feeding these wolves.

“In the fading days of autumn,” I say, voice loud and bold, “the Reds who mine the bedrock of Mars wear masks of happy ghouls to celebrate the dead claimed by the red soil, to honor their memories and subdue their spirits. We Aureate took those masks and made them our own. We gave them the faces of legend and myth to remind ourselves that there is no evil, no good. No gods. No demons. There is only man. There is only this world. Death comes for us all. But how will we shout into the wind? How will we be remembered?” I pull off one of my gloves and cut my palm very shallowly. I clench my fist till the blood coats my skin, and then press my hand to my face. “Make your blood proud long after death claims you.”

There’s the stomp of feet. Just one.

“Luna is the new Earth. It rules us and makes us bow and scrape. Our sacrifice means its gain. Again, the weak hold back the strong. After today, when we take the Thousand Cities of Mars, our ranks will swell. The Galilean Lords will swear for us. The Governors of Saturn will bow to us. Neptune will come with her ships and we will cut off the leech that is Octavia au Lune.”

And make a tyrant king. It makes so much sense to them. I don’t know how. A tyrant for a tyrant. How do they find inspiration from this? Men always have.

Another stomp.

“Every moment today will be captured by the holoCams we’ve given you.” Like it was at the Institute and when I took the Pax. The Jackal’s idea. “Each moment will be remembered. If you win glory, it will be spread across the HCs of every world. If you shame yourself or your family, it will not fade with your death.” I look to Ragnar, as though he were my headsman. Lorn rolls his eyes at the dramatic flair. “We will remember.”

Stomp.

“The cities are to be taken. The Golds who will not bend, killed. The lowColors protected. We will not collapse the mines. We will not rape her cities and despoil her verdant grounds. We are to capture the bounty of Mars. We do not want to take her corpse. She is home to many of you, so harm only the pest that destroys her from within. And when the glory of the day is over—when you wipe the blood from your sword and give the cloth to your sons and daughters, so they will remember you were party to one of the greatest battles since the Fall of Earth—remember, you have made your own destiny. It was not given to you by the Sovereign. It was not given to you by a governor. You took it like our ancestors took the worlds. We are the Second Conquerors.”

Now there’s the roar. I hate how my body shivers at the idea of glory. There’s something deep in man that hungers for this. But I think it weakness, not strength, to abandon decency for that strange darker spirit.

I look at the Jackal to the side of the bridge. He has little importance on this day. He has done his work bringing all these men and women here. He has muddled communications and sown false information, leading much of the Sovereign’s aid to the Bellona scattered chasing false rumors of elements of my fleet sneaking off to attack Luna. A ploy only. My forces are all here.

“Quite the puppet master you play,” the Jackal whispers to me as we wait for the Whites to enter the bridge behind the waiting Golds. Sevro scoots closer to me, as if to remind the Jackal of his place.

“You made most of the strings. I never thanked you,” I say quietly back to him.

His plain face wrinkles with distaste. “Must we become sentimental?”

“You helped Mustang escape. That’s why Pliny caught you.” He never mentioned it, never boasted or used it as leverage. It was the simple act of a brother helping a sister. I shrug. “And you tried your damnedest to save Quinn. Maybe you’re a better man than you know.”

He laughs that barking laugh of his. “Doubtful. But tomorrow, a traitor will be king, and an Empress shall be traitor, so maybe wicked men can be virtuous.”

I look out the viewport. “Are your satellites ready?”

“For the virus?” He nods. “My Greens will shut down all communications as soon as you give the word. For fifteen minutes, it will be quiet as death, for everyone. Their global and regional defensive units won’t have surveillance or sensors. Time enough to shatter most of the static positions.” He looks at his feet, as though suddenly self-conscious. “Save my father if you can.”

Sevro shifts, annoyed at our whispering.

“I will.”

I’d rather Augustus rot forever in a hole in the ground. But I need him once Mars is taken. Despite what I can do, I’m not a Governor or a king. I need his legitimacy, as Theodora reminded me last night. Without it, I’m just an arm with a razor.

“And you’re sure about Agea?” he asks. “About the prize? Otherwise it’s reckless.”

“One hundred percent,” I reply.

“Good. Good. Prime luck, then, Reaper.” He moves away.

“Replacing me already?” Sevro snorts, watching him go.

“He’s got one hand. You’ve got one eye. I have a type.”

The ceremonies continue. Two hundred Golds bend their knees as the Whites walk through their ranks. I try to think it a stupid, solemn thing, all these men and women with their pompous silence and their attention to tradition. But this is the history of mankind in the making. And there is a nobility to the moment.

Armor glints against the artificial light. Ethereal Whites wander through the ranks, virgin maidens barefoot in snow-white cloaks, with daggers of iron and laurels of gold. Child Whites carry the triangular golden standards—a scepter, a sword, and a scroll crowned with a laurel. I feel hands on my shoulders.

I feel their weight.

They say this is the way the Old Conquerors went to battle, with virgins of White wounding them with iron. They touch our brows with the laurel and cut our left palms with the iron as they whisper softly in our ears:

“My son, my daughter, now that you bleed, you shall know no fear, no defeat, only victory. Your cowardice seeps from you. Your rage burns bright. Rise, warrior of Gold, and take with you your Color’s might.”

Then each warrior smears the handprint of blood across his face and across the top of his demonfaced helm. One by one we stand in silence. Each Gold represents ten legions. This is the storm that will fall on Mars in a torrent of metal. Millions of Golds, Grays, and Obsidians.

“We do not fight a planet. We fight men and women. Cut off their heads and see their armies crumble,” Lorn reminds us all.

The assembly of warriors stands, faces now smeared with blood, and together we recite the names of our chief enemies. “Karnus au Bellona, Aja au Grimmus, Imperator Tiberius au Bellona, Scipia au Falthe, Octavia au Lune, Agrippina au Julii, and Cassius au Bellona. These are wanted lives.”

In the halls of my enemy, they will recite my name, and the names of my friends. He who kills the Reaper will have bounty and renown. Individual hunters and killgroups will scan our com signals, searching for me. And in packs they will descend, some for single battle. Others for the sly kill of a sniper’s bullet. Some will not even participate in the battle for Mars. They are Gray mercenaries. Freed Obsidian bounty hunters. Knights of Venus and Mercury here only for my head, using their family assets, family soldiers, to help them privately stalk me and make their own glory. The Jackal intercepted a communiqué that three of the Olympic Knights are here. They all will have watched me, studied my recordings, my victories, my defeats. And they will know my nature, the nature of my Howlers. But I will not know them.

Let them come make their introductions.

I’m more interested in meeting Cassius. At least that’s what I told Lorn. But he knows that’s not true. A deep shame burns in me for how I yelled like a monster at his family. I beat him fairly, but I didn’t have to like it as much as I did. Sometimes I wonder if he were raised a Red and I a Gold if he wouldn’t have ended up a better man than I am now, and I a worse man than he ever could be.

For some reason I think I could have been capable of great evil. Maybe that’s the guilt. Maybe that’s the fear of a life where I never knew Eo. I don’t know. Or maybe it’s the fear of knowing how easily I fall to pride.

My warriors disperse back to their own family vessels. I watch out the viewport as half a hundred shuttles streak away to the great armada we’ve assembled. Though they know we’re here now, our enemies did not expect us to come to Mars so quickly.

I turn my attention to my remaining commanders. Orion will lead the Pax and Roque will lead the fleet in conjunction with Victra. I approve of their plan. The rest of my inner circle lingers, except for Mustang, who goes ahead to the hangars.

I reach up slightly to thump both of the Telemanuses on their shoulders. “Pax would have looked brilliant this day.” Sophocles curls around Kavax’s ankles.

“My brother always looked brilliant,” Daxo says warmly. “Silly, shouting, trying to be like Father. But brilliant nonetheless. We’ll kill Tiberius au Bellona, don’t you worry.”

“Do I look worried?”

Both Titans nod their giant heads. Kavax has gone into his battle quiet. He cannot speak except to mumble, so Daxo continues to speak for him. “Take care of yourself, Reaper.” He spares a look back at the Jackal. “We know it’s a marriage of necessity, but don’t trust him.”

“You know I don’t.”

“Do not trust him,” Daxo repeats.

“I trust only friends.” We say our goodbyes.

Orion’s brow is wrinkled in thought. I ask her if anything is the matter as she leans over the scanner display. She’s assessing the enemy disposition in the sync. “They noticed us come into orbit an hour ago. We were vulnerable while filtering in, but they remained in defensive formation over Agea.”

“It is odd,” Roque agrees. “They cede much of the planet without a fight. Perhaps it’d be better to orient your drop to the south.…”

“I want Agea,” I say coldly.

“We’ll be shooting you into the thick, brother. The capital can wait. Seize the other cities and we can take it without assault. Why such a wild rush?”

“If we take the capital, the other cities fall.”

“And many men die.”

“It is war, Roque. Trust me on this one.”

“It’s your war.” Roque salutes. After catching a glare from Victra, he pulls me close. “Fare thee well, Primus.” He kisses both my cheeks, surprising me.

“It’s been a long road,” I say carefully.

“And we’ve miles to go before we sleep.”

“My brother.” I clasp the back of his neck and bring his forehead to mine. “I’m sorry. I’m so sorry.” I shake my head. “For Quinn. For Lea. For the gala. For a thousand slights I’ve laid upon you. You’ve been my dearest friend.” Pulling back, I avoid his eyes. “I should have said it earlier. But I was afraid.”

“In what world should you be afraid of me?” he asks.

I shake my head. “Forgive me, for everything.”

“We’ll make amends later.” He claps my shoulder. “Prime luck.”

I leave him. Lorn and I draw up just outside the bridge, where our paths diverge into different halls. He’s shaved for war, and he wears his old Rage Knight armor. He looks brilliant but smells terrible. These old knights are like the Howlers. Superstitious and unwilling to wash their gear for fear of washing away whatever luck kept them alive thus far.

“I’ve received communiqués from many old friends,” Lorn says. “They side with Bellona.”

“All old men and women?”

“The old have weathered many seasons of the young.” There’s a twinkle in his eye. “But they ask me about you. They ask if the boy warlord is really four meters tall. Is he really followed by a wolfpack? Is he a worldbreaker?”