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“Hardware is installed and operational,” Orion says. “So much for Harnassus’s whinging. Worked to the bone indeed. His Blacksmiths did fine work, for greasers.”
“They’re doped out of their minds,” Glirastes adds.
He’s right. If I were younger, I’d think valiant rage or purpose kept them steady. But I’m not the only one light on sleep. My army is a band of marionettes held up by strings called nazopran, dolomine, and zoladone.
“Will it work?” I ask Glirastes.
“I ran five million simulations, only two million of which ended in the engines imploding, killing all aboard,” Glirastes says. “So in theory, yes.”
“Comforting,” I mutter.
Harnassus trudges over, trying to catch our conversation. “Will you do the honors, Imperator?” I ask.
“This is your monster. You wake it up.” He tosses the control pad to me.
Annoyed, I activate the flight protocol. Harnassus doesn’t even watch to see the gravity engines flare underneath the ancient machine. For a dreadful moment, nothing happens. I stare down. Rise, you bastard. Rise.
“I told you it was a mistake including Harnassus,” Orion whispers. “He thought this was the only engine. He sabotaged it.”
“He’s an ass, not a traitor,” I say.
Then the Storm God lets loose a terrible groan as it feels the force of Sun Industries gravity engines urging it to waken from its slumber. Except for Harnassus, all the aides and commanders beside me step back.
With a shriek of metal, the machine begins to rise, climbing up and up until it hangs a hundred meters above, blocking the roof of the man-made cavern. Until its gravity engines create a languid field of low gravity beneath it, suspending blocks of ice. Soon the engine will be ready to join its brethren in the sea.
I smile in satisfaction.
UPON LANDING ON THE Annihilo, Diomedes and I lead the Rim deputation down a corridor of Ash Guard. Instead of the ceremonial armor appropriate for the reception of enemy dignitaries, Atalantia’s elite wear field armor. Perhaps that is because they do not formally recognize the Rim’s independence. The beetle-black metal of the field armor is dented and scuffed from war on four spheres. But the pearl House Grimmus skulls upon their breastplates are polished to a gleam.
The slight was not meant to go unnoticed, nor does it.
This is not the welcome for a prodigal son or an old ally.
This is a presentation of force to blood traitors.
As we pass the rows of hostile Grays, I wonder how many of them Atalantia pillaged from my Praetorians and my family legions. I search, but find no Praetorians. No Rhone ti Flavinius, no Exter ti Kaan, nor even Fausta ti Hu standing as officers before the ranks.
At the end of the corridor of Ash Guard, ten calamitously large Obsidian Stained stomp their axe hafts into the deck to bar our path to the waiting cadre of Core Golds. The Stained step to the side, and for the first time in a decade, the two breeds of Aureate measure one another face-to-face.
The Golds of the Core—battle-scarred and vain—drip in priceless armor gilded and monstrously shaped by the finest artificers the worlds have ever seen. Most wear their hair short, in war fashion, and their eyebrows notched. Their thick-boned frames are fortressed by heavy muscle grown under strict prenatal observation, esoteric chemical protocols, and tenacious physical competition with their peers.
I would not say they are humanity perfected. They seem more like racing Thoroughbreds jockeying for position.
In comparison, the Golds of the Rim are lean and shabby. Their bodies, like their culture, hardened by privation and self-discipline. They wear their hair long, preferring to comb it before battle in the way of the Peloponnesians. They are clad in simple leather boots and drab robes they sewed themselves. Not one amongst them wears anything that couldn’t be bought at a lowColor bazaar for fifty credits, except their kitari short swords and their long razors, which they call hasta.
The silence between the two parties stretches with contempt.
When at last one of the Core Golds speaks, it is a Martian I long thought dead. The winged
shoulders of her swan armor are dented, but the flaming heart of her breastplate burns bright in the drab hangar. Her face, smooth as alabaster in memory, is now tough as a miner’s heel. But not even war could dim the spark in the eyes of Kalindora au San. The Love Knight.
I remember her as a demure, gentle creature in love not with the glory of war, but the grace of poetry and architecture. When I was a boy, I held only one other woman her age in equal esteem: Virginia au Augustus. The wife of the Reaper, and my grandmother’s usurper.
As a man, I behold Kalindora far differently.
Even Diomedes takes a second look. Her lips, though riven by two scars, are full and seem only capable of whispers. Her nose is small and sharp, but her defining characteristic is her eyes. Every gradient of gold that exists spirals toward the pit of her pupils, paling in hue as they approach that darkness so it seems as if one stares at an eclipse.
“Is it him?” Kalindora asks a taller, younger knight in armor the color of a storm cloud. His skin is black, his eyes violent amber. The pelt of a pearl leopard sways from his powerful shoulders as he steps forward to examine me. For a moment, it feels as if we’re both looking through a dirty pane of glass, leaning and squinting to see if the apparition on the other side is really a long-lost friend or merely some trick.
