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“Sorry to interrupt the school lesson, but we’re being hailed by planetary security,” Winkle says from the sunken communications pit. His white padded chair is tilted back. The ambient light from the holographic controls that float in front of him bathe his spindly arms in a radioactive green. He’s done this dance before, as we’ve already passed through three levels of security with the codes received from Tharsus’s buyer, the first coming at Bastion station, then twice more from Gold patrols and sensor drones as we plunged deeper and deeper into the maw of the enemy orbit. Aside from our contact with the Society, we’ve been on a coms blackout.
“Last code,” I say. “Prep the engines for max burn if it doesn’t work.”
Into the mouth of the beast indeed.
—
After passing through planetary security, we touch down beside five older assault frigates on a quiet landing strip set into the shoal of Tharsus’s island in Venus’s equatorial seas. Helmeted sentries in observation obelisks watch the ship settle onto the concrete and then look back with disinterest over the night water. “That’s it?” Sevro mutters. “Five frigates? I thought there’d be at least a dozen.”
“There’s probably more off-island,” I say.
“And if there’s not?”
The Howlers assemble in the hold near the disembarkation ramp, where they finish donning their armor. Pebble and Milia escort Apollonius from his cell. He doesn’t look a prisoner, dressed all in black and wearing a purple cloak that we found in Quicksilver’s closets. Sevro went on ahead of me and now sits on one of the parked gravBikes, sharing an apple back and forth with Tongueless, who takes small, delicate bites. Sevro glowers at Apollonius as a Howler tightens the screws on his armor’s backplate. “You remember what happens if you get clever, Apple?” He squeezes the fruit till it explodes in his grip. He wipes the pulp and juice on Apollonius’s black jacket. “A little promise from me to you.” Tongueless frowns at the smashed fruit.
“How is your wife, Barca?” Apollonius asks after a brief pause. “A magnificent woman. Tharsus and I shared her sister several times, of course—a venemous appetite, Antonia—but I cannot say I ever had the exquisite pleasure of the elder Julii. From what Tactus told me, she was like an eclipse of the sun.”
The Howlers between them back out of the way, but Sevro doesn’t
move.
“No insult meant. A mere compliment on a fine, if incongruous, coupling.”
“I have a collection you’ll be contributing to very soon,” Sevro replies, tapping his knife on his boot.
I’m wary of the Gold. He’s gotten us to the surface and honored his end of the bargain thus far, but how long will that last once he’s reunited with his brother? They’re a strange and sadistic pair. Even Tactus, the most faithful of the brothers, couldn’t be trusted farther than you could spit.
I motion Tongueless over. He’s gained almost fifteen kilos since we found him in that cell. Clown and Pebble have started training him in the onboard simulator for starShell piloting. He’s not good, but he’s certainly not bad. I was hesitant when Sevro suggested we bring him on the mission, but we need another tall body, and he knew his way around the weapons locker better than he knows his way around our kitchen. In a way, that’s more disconcerting, but I had Winkle put a security measure in his suit as an insurance policy.
“Inside the darkzone we won’t be able to transmit to the tech in Apollonius’s skull,” I tell Tongueless now. “I want you to watch him. If he steps out of line, you waste him.” I gave the same instructions to Thraxa about Tongueless and Apollonius. The Obsidian pulls one of Sevro’s knives from his belt. He must really be making an impression. Casually, as if it were encoded into his DNA as a passive trait, he twirls the blade through his fingers. He smiles and nods.
“Goodman,” I say quietly.
“Fascinating conceptual model,” Apollonius says, looking at my Howlers as I join him. “So many disparate genuses working with autonomy. I wonder, if not for the Golden monster, how long would it take for you to eat each other?”
“Well, hope you end up being around to find out,” I say. I turn to the Howlers and see Sevro watching my conversation with Apollonius. “All right, ladies and gentlemen, helmets up.” The friendly faces of my tallest Howlers disappear behind the cold masks of pulseArmor, replaced with the faces of the demons. My men wear none of their menagerie of trophies, or their wolfpelts. And the armor, which often is violently painted per the owner’s preference, is a Society commando squad’s matte black with an iron Minotaur on the breast. “You fascists look like you’d raze a village and liquidate the local populace with particle beams.”
“Ready for a genocide, sir,” Clown says, snapping to attention.
“Remember, run silent. Stay tight. We’re Golds returned with the heir.” I turn to Apollonius, who alone wears no armor, and grin. “Let’s go meet the family.”
The ramp lowers and we stare down the barrel of an anti-aircraft partical cannon with a Gray in the firing chair. Twenty other Grays and a clutch of armored Obsidians stand at the base of the ramp with their weapons casually shouldered, expecting to see a crew of motley pirates and not a garage full of heavily armored Golds.
“On your knees or you will be fired upon!” their leader shouts.
Apollonius steps forward into the floodlights, his hands held out. “Vorkian, is that how you welcome your master home?” he asks.
A dark-skinned Gray with buzzed bright white hair and a face carved from old boot leather steps out from the ranks. “Dominus…” She falls to her knees, but cannot lower her eyes. “Is it you? Is it really you?”
The men behind her fall to their knees before Apollonius even gets halfway down the landing ramp. “It seems the Void is not ready for me yet. For it is I, Apollonius au Valii-Rath, liberated from the depths and returned to command you, good Vorkian.”
“Who are they, sir?”
“Have you so long been idle that you fail to recognize loyal friends, Vorkian?” He looks back at me and smiles. I ready to blow the bomb in his skull. “They are my liberators.”
“Sir, forgive me. I did not know you were alive—”
Apollonius holds up a hand, cutting her off. “Endeavor only to serve me now, and forgiveness you may one day find. Will you serve me, Centurion Vorkian?”
