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The wind whips around us.
“This is genocide,” Alexandar roars into my ear. I push him off.
Orion, what have you done? What did I let you do?
I focus a coms laser out into the gloom to form a direct line on Orion’s engine, which hovers twenty kilometers offshore. She appears on my screen. She is breathing heavily. Her skin is covered in sweat. She kneels in the center of her circular syncNest from where she guided the hive mind. Of the six hologram Blues who should surround her, only one is not dead. He shivers on his knees, blood sheeting out his nose and ears from a cerebral hemorrhage. The blast doors of the nest are sealed. She’s locked out my security teams.
“Orion?” I say. “Orion, can you hear me? If you can hear me, stick out your right thumb.” Slowly the thumb extends. “I need to speak with you, Orion. Can you slip from the sync?” I wait. Nothing happens. Suddenly her eyes open. Her voice is a faint whisper.
“The dataflow was…too much.”
“Orion, we’re on second horizon, going straight for three. You swore we wouldn’t pass primary. What happened?”
“Four…is desired.” Her eyes close to slits. “Four will teach them.”
Four is terraforming level. The complete annihilation of the planet’s surface by storm. Her eyes are nearly closed. She can’t devote attention to anything beyond the drift much longer. “Orion, it is Darrow. Listen to me. You must turn off the engines. Scale back the storm. Can you do that for me?”
“They can’t win with Venus alone. So I will take Mercury.”
“Orion, think of the army. Think of the people. There’s nearly a billion here.”
“Rats are…complicit…rational transaction.”
“I can stop you.” Her eyes flutter. “I told you I could. Don’t make me do it.” She no longer replies to me. She is back in the sync. Without Orion’s input the Storm Gods will level-off and avert planetary destruction. But if I sever her connection, her mind will be lost by the sudden schism. I look down at the city, back to the hologram of my friend in the visor. The storm’s death will not be instantaneous. But th
e longer I wait, the worse it will get.
I initiate the override.
For a moment, nothing happens.
Then Orion’s body seizes and goes limp.
It happens that fast.
She lies there with her mouth agape. Her bright blue eyes staring at nothing as they twitch in her head. Her metal finger scrapes against the floor and then goes still. I swallow a knot in my throat. For ten years no Gold alive, not their science teams, not the crème of their astral academies, not their assassins, could kill this woman. She was a myth. And I turned her off with the flick of a switch. She was not ready for this. I felt it, but I could not believe it. Now Mercury pays.
Numb and quiet inside, I turn off the hologram, and use the override to reduce the Storm Gods’ output to zero. Then I am back in the storm.
The sound of the wind and thunder is tremendous. More knights have run up to watch the city drown. Alexandar shouts at his cousin Elandar. The two young Golds point down at people flooding toward the gravLoop and the Ash Legions stomping through them to get there themselves.
I try to make sense of the mayhem, and ask myself how we can help those still trapped in the city. I find myself without an answer. No transport ships could fly in this. We can’t carry them. We can’t even stay aloft ourselves. Alexandar jogs to me. “I’ve spoken with Elandar.” Just over two hundred Golds with the purple griffin stamped on their chests wait behind him, helmets down. “We request permission to enter the city to lend aid.”
“Permission denied.”
“Sir…”
“There’s nothing you can do down there. Tyche is lost.”
“But its people needn’t be,” he snaps. I turn to Alexandar, furious that he would contradict me now. “They’re swarming for the gravLoop—many can still escape under the mountains. But the Ash Legions in the city know it’s the only way out. If they reach it, they will mow through the civilians and use it to evacuate their men, right into Heliopolis. Again, the knights of House Arcos request permission to deter them.”
“No.”
“Sir!” I turn to see Rhonna running up the hill in her Drachenjäger. It kneels so we can speak. She squints into the wind as her cockpit pops open. Sweat pours down her face.
“What now?” I ask in exhaustion. She sees the master switch in my hands. She knows Orion is dead and doesn’t flinch. So far that makes two who know she’s dead. The army can’t find out, not now. It will break them.
“Boys caught an enemy scout. Fulminata by the looks of him.”
