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The warship’s engines roar and they shove me into a seat. The men don’t set their weapons down. The Gold and the Obsidian both touch razors on their forearms. Out the cockpit windows I see the shadowy figures are still escorting us. I glimpse inky-black helmets shaped like the stuff of deepmine nightmares and thick black armor as they fly through the rain.
“Company yet?” Holiday asks the helmeted Blue pilot.
“Sky’s clear, ma’am. Civi traffic diverted. We’ll be in gov alt in ten seconds.” My ears pop. Then it’s silent except for the engines. Everyone is edgy. Are they worried about another attack from the kidnappers? How far could their reach possibly extend?
“Distance to Citadel?”
“Fifty klicks.”
Something beeps in the cockpit. “Incoming bogies. Atmospheric rippers,” the pilot says. “Descending from a skyhook. Barca markings.”
“How many?”
“Fourteen rippers. Two gunboats. Shall I call SkyLord support?”
“That damn woman,” Holiday mutters. “No. Alert the Citadel but tell SkyLord to hold. I was ordered to keep this quiet; a dogfight over the city ain’t exactly whispering.”
The Blue carries out her commands as the co-pilot speaks into his headset. “Attention Barca aircraft, this is the HAF Pride Seven, you are in violation of Republic Government space and a Sovereign’s warrant. Deviate your course immediately to civilian altitudes. You have ten seconds to comply.”
They’re not deviating. I see them now through the cockpit. Little black dots small as flies in the distance, hovering in a line to prevent us from reaching the Citadel.
“Incoming transmission.”
“Nakamura,” a woman’s deep voice growls over the com. “Should have known she’d send you. Cut your engines and deliver me the Red terrorist.”
A Blue hands Holiday a remote com. “Victra, the witness is under arrest. Do not interfere with Republic jurisdiction. I’ve been authorized by the Sovereign to deliver her using any and all means at my disposal. You don’t want this trouble.”
“Darling, I am the trouble.”
Two streaks of light rip across the darkness from her ships, missing the cockpit by bare meters. “They took my daughter. My daughter.” I shiver as I realize who is on the other side of the line.
“You want the whole damn Republic knowing about this?” Holiday snarls. “They’ll make the Sovereign step down. Divert your ships. The witness is being taken in for questioning so we can get your daughter back. You’re wasting time.”
“Questioning?” Victra laughs. “More of Virginia’s half measures. Look what that has given us. It’s my turn.”
“If you fire again on this ship, you risk killing the only lead we have. She came to us. We’re going to the Citadel.”
“You idiots lost my child. I will get her back. With words, or with iron. Your choice. Give me the Red, or I will come and cut her out of the belly of your ship. You have ten seconds to comply. Victra out.”
Holiday is worried. “Was that broadcast coming from the ships?”
“No, ma’am.”
“Pilot, full speed straight down their throats.” She turns to her men. “Weapons hot. Return fire only. She’s not in the gunships. She’s airborne.” She swings out her rifle. “Expect Gold boarders.” The men hop to their feet and point their guns back at the closed ramp. Something slams into the ship. Then three more collisions against the hull. Our ship roars through the air toward the wall of ripWings, closer, closer. Warning shots across our bow. “Faster,” Holiday says. The ceiling sparks and glows as someone drills in through the outside. The Lionguards cluster around the sparks, guns pointed up. “Faster!”
We punch through the line of ripWings. They bank to follow us. I see the Citadel glowing in the distance. The ship cracks as it breaks the sound barrier. The sparks rain down from the ceiling on me. More Augustus vessels rise up from Citadel landing pads to greet us. With them ascend dozens of men in armor, at their head a huge figure in pale blue fox armor. Niobe au Telemanus has come to war.
ONCE UPON A TIME, Venus was the evil sister of Earth, swollen from solar dust to similar shape and size. But while Earth was blessed with water, sweet air, and a temperate disposition, Venus had a more quarrelsome spirit. Her surface, cruel enough to melt lead, was marked by interminable days and nights, each numbering 243 of her sister’s. Under her foul breath, nothing could live, nothing could grow, nothing could move but winds of carbon dioxide and torpid clouds fat with acid rain.
And then man came from the blackness and drank up the hydrogen of the gas giants and breathed the fresh breath into her skies. The ensuing rains fell to cover eighty percent of her surface in oceans. With high-altitude mass drivers, man scalped away the withering atmosphere and cooled her surface. With asteroids hurled from the asteroid belt and mass drivers at her equator, he spun her out of her torpor and into an agreeable dance, her days now like her sister’s. Mankind dressed her in green and blue and she waited, eager and fresh, for the humans to come down from their floating
cities to join her in her new dance, which had been four and a half billion years plus ninety in the making.
House Carthii of Luna was the first to arrive.
Now, for the first time in my thirty-three years, I dare to see Venus in the flesh. Her clouds are thin and clutch her mottled blue body like the tails of a tattered nightgown. Diadems of ice and snow dust her poles. Emerald islands rise from her temperate blue seas. And about her neck is cinched the might of Gold, a Byzantine necklace of ships and orbital dockyards, sparkling with landing lights and loaded with half-completed frigates and destroyers all made from Mercurian steel. Around this necklace glide dark-hulled ships painted with the crowned white skull of the Ash Lord inside the pyramid of the Society. There are far fewer ships than intel suggested. Most must be on the far side of the planet.
“Mm, into the mouth of the beast,” Alexandar says from beside me on the bridge. “?‘Then, even then, Cassandra’s lips unsealed the doom to come: lips by a god’s command never to be believed or heeded by the Trojans.’?”
