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“Hic sunt leones,” echo his men.
I think of my uncle as I cradle the charred stump of my right arm, shivering from pain. Is he with my father now? Does he sit with Eo by
a woodfire listening to the birds? Do they watch me? Blood weeps through the blackened flesh at my wrist. The pain is blinding. Overtaking my entire body. I’m strapped beside Mustang into a seat in two parallel rows in the back of the military assault craft amidst thirty Boneriders. The overhead light pulses an alien green. The ship shudders from turbulence. Luna is in storm. Huge thunderheads swaddling the cities. Black towers penetrating the murky clouds. All along the rooftops, motes of light dance from the headlamps of Oranges and highReds, my own brethren, who slave under the military yoke, preparing weapons that will fell their Martian kin. Brighter flood lamps bathe military scenes. Black shapes trimmed with evil red beacons zip and float between towers as squadrons of ripWings patrol the sky and Golds in gravBoots jump between towers kilometers apart, checking on defenses, preparing for the storm above, saying last words to friends, to schoolmates, to lovers.
Passing the Elorian Opera House, I see a line of Golds perched on its highest crenellation, staring up at the sky, their glorious war helms spiked with horns so they look a troupe of gargoyles balanced there, silhouetted by lightning, waiting for hell to rain.
We drive toward the cauldron of clouds that swirls around the highest skyscrapers. Beneath the cloud layer, the interlocked skin of cityscape is quiet. Dark in anticipation of orbital bombardment, except for the veins of flame that bleed across the horizon from riots in Lost City. Flashing emergency vehicles dive toward the blazes. The city has gathered its breath for hours, for days, and, with exhalation bare moments away, her seams strain and her lungs stretch to bursting.
We taxi onto a circular landing pad atop the Sovereign’s spire. There, Aja and a cohort of Praetorians meet us. The Boneriders unload with gravBoots before we land, covering the craft as it settles onto the pad. Cassius comes out, manhandling me along. He drags Sevro with his other hand like a deer carcass. Antonia shoves Mustang along. The weary winter rain of the city-moon drips down Aja’s dark face. Steam rises from her collar and a brilliant white smile slashes the night.
“Morning Knight, welcome home. The Sovereign awaits.”
—
A kilometer beneath the surface of the moon, the great gravLift known only in military myth as the Dragon Maw stops, hissing open to lead down a dimly lit concrete hall to another door emblazoned with the pyramid of the Society. There, blue light scans Aja’s irises. The pyramid fractures in half, gears and huge pistons whirring. Technology here older than the Citadel above, ancient, from a time when Earth stood the only enemy Luna knew, and the great American railguns were the fear of all Luneborn. It’s a testament to the architecture and the discipline of the Praetorians that the great bunker of the Sovereign has not had to change substantially for more than seven hundred years.
I wonder if Fitchner knew its inner workings. Doubtful. Seems a secret Aja would hoard. But I wonder if she even knows all the secrets of this place. Tunnels to the left and right of the narrow hall we pass through are long-ago collapsed, and I can’t help but wonder who once walked through them, who collapsed them and why.
We pass heavily guarded rooms aglow with holo lights. Synced Blues and Greens lying back in tech beds, IVs hooked into their bodies as data streams through their brains via uplink nodes embedded in their skulls, eyes lost to some distant plane. It’s the central nervous system of the Society. Octavia can wage a war from here even if the moon falls to ruin around her.
The Obsidians here wear black helmets with draconic shaped skulls and dark purple on their body armor. Gold letters spelling cohors nihil wind along the short-swords at their sides. Zero Legion. I’ve never heard of them, but I see what they guard: one last door of solid, unadorned metal, the deepest refuge of the Society. It dilates open with a groan and only then, a year and a half since I jumped out the back of her assault shuttle, do I see the silhouette of the Sovereign.
Her patrician voice echoes down the hall. “…Janus, who cares about civilian casualties? Does the sea ever run out of salt? If they manage an Iron Rain, you shoot them down, whatever the cost. The last thing we desire is for the Obsidian Horde to land here and link with the riots in Lost City….”
The ruler of all I’ve ever fought against stands in a depressed circle at the center of a large gray and black room bathed in blue light from the Praetors and Ash Lord who surround her in holographic form. There’s more than forty in a semicircle, the veterans of her wars. Pitiless creatures watching me enter the room with the dark, smug contentment of cathedral statues, as if they always knew it would come to this. As if they earned this end of mine and didn’t luck into it just as they lucked into their birth.
They know what my capture means. They’ve been broadcasting it nonstop to my fleet. Trying to take our coms with hacking attacks to spread the word among my ships. Spreading it to Earth to quell the uprisings there, pimping the signal to the Core to forestall any more civil unrest. They’ll do the same with my execution. The same with Sevro’s dead body. And maybe Mustang, despite the deal Cassius thinks he’s struck. Look what befalls those who rise against, they will say. Look how even these mighty beasts fall before Gold. Who else can stand against them? No one.
Their grip will tighten.
Their reign will strengthen.
If we lose today, a new generation of Gold will rise with vigor unseen since the fall of Earth. They will see the threat to their people and they will breed creatures like Aja and the Jackal by the thousands. They’ll build new Institutes, expand their military, and throttle my people. That is the future that could be. The one Fitchner feared the most. The one I fear is coming as I watch the Jackal move past me into the room.
“His Obsidians are not trained in extraplanetary warfare,” one of the Praetors is saying.
“You want to tell that to Fabii?” the Sovereign asks. “Or perhaps to his mother? She’s with the other Senators who I had to corral in the Chamber before they could flee like little flies and take their ships with them.”
“Politico cravens…” someone murmurs.
Aside from the glowing holographs, the room is occupied by a small host of martial Golds. More than I expected. Two Olympic Knights, ten Praetorians, and Lysander. Ten years of age now, he has grown nearly half a foot since last I saw him. He carries a datapad to take copious notes of his grandmother’s conversation and smiles to Cassius as we enter, watching me with the wary interest you’d watch a tiger through duroglass. His crystal Gold eyes take in my bindings, Aja, and my missing hand. Mentally tapping the glass with a nail to see just how thick it is.
The two Olympic Knights greet Cassius quietly as we enter, so as not to disturb the Sovereign in her debriefing, though she’s noted my presence with an emotionless glance. Both knights are heavily armored and ready to defend their Sovereign.
Above the Sovereign, a globular holo dominates the domed ceiling of the room, showing the moon in perfect detail. The Ash Lord’s fleet is spread out like a screen to cover Luna’s darkside, where the Citadel is, like a concave shield. The battle is well under way. But my forces have no way of knowing that the Jackal is just waiting to swing around their flank and hammer them against the Ash Lord’s anvil. If only I could reach Orion, she might find some way to salvage this.
The Jackal quietly takes a seat to the side, patiently watching the Ash Lord give instructions to a sphere of torchShips.
“Cassius, you gorydamn hound,” the Truth Knight says, voice a deep baritone. His eyes narrow and Asiatic. He’s from Earth, and he’s more compact than us Martians. “Is it really him?”
“Bones and heart. Took him from his flagship,” Cassius says, kicking me to my knees and hauling back my head by my hair so they can better see my face. He tosses Sevro on the ground and they inspect the kill. The Joy Knight shakes his head. He’s thinner than Cassius and twice again as aristocratic, from an old Venusian family. Met him once at a duel on Mars.
“Augustus too? Don’t you just have all the luck. And Aja bagged the Obsidian. Fear and Love are going to get Victra and that White Witch….”
“I’d kill to snag Victra,” Truth says, walking around me. “That’d be a dance. Say, didn’t you bed her, Cassius?”
“I never kiss and tell.” Cassius nods to the battle. “How do we fare?”
