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But now, with the Obsidian diaspora from the poles of Earth and Mars, that myth has become reality. Bands of Obsidians, alienated by the new strange world, freed from military slavery to Gold masters—or exhausted from the Reaper’s war—embrace the legend of their ancestors.
They’ve not so much left the Ice as they’ve brought the Ice to the stars.
Inside the lift where the blood trail ends, viscera smear the button for the thirteenth deck. Cassius presses it with the hilt of his razor. I feel the righteous anger building in my friend as we rise. It infects me.
The lift wheezes to a stop, shuddering as the doors part and reveal the hall leading into the thirteenth floor of the old vessel. Cheap white lights burn down at derelict halls, casting wicked, sharp shadows. Air ventilators with clogged purifiers rattle in the ceiling. Down the center of the hall, a red trail bifurcates the rusted metal flooring. Handprints smear the ground to either side of the trail like crimson butterfly wings. Cassius leads and I follow the trail, our razors held behind us at a diagonal as Aja taught us, our aegis arms
held before us, bracers cold and inert but ready to spring into a meter-square energy shield at a moment’s notice. My new plasma pistol is light against my right thigh.
Faded yellow signs on the walls indicate washrooms and crew quarters. We check the rooms as we go. The first several are abandoned. Unmade beds and overturned pictures and chairs remain as evidence of violence. The crew was caught sleeping.
Inside the next room, we find what’s left of the crew. Corpses have been stacked in a heap against the far wall. A stagnant pool of blood expands from the pile and in it I see the reflection of a single terrified eye. I rush to the pile and pull the dead to the side to find six shivering survivors beneath the corpses. They’re bound and beaten and tied feet to hands. I bend to free them but they flinch away, making inhuman, squealing sounds. Cassius bends to a knee and removes his right gauntlet so they can see the Gold Sigils on his hand.
“Salve,” he says in a deep voice. The prisoners calm, the sign bringing them courage. “Salve, friends,” he says as their eyes search his face and see the Peerless scar there. A scar I’ve never earned.
“Dominus…” they murmur, weeping. “Dominus…”
“Peace. We’ve come to help you,” I say as I ungag a paunchy Red man. One of his eyes is swollen shut from a gash at the eyebrow. He smells like urine. “How many are there?” I ask. His crooked teeth chatter together so terribly he cannot even utter a single word. I wonder if he’s ever spoken to a Gold. I feel such pity for him. I rest a hand on his shoulder, intending to comfort him. He flinches back. “Goodman, salve. Peace,” I say softly. “You are safe now. We have come to help. Tell me how many there are.”
“Fifteen…maybe more, dominus…” he whispers in a thick Phobosian accent, fighting back tears. I look over at Cassius. Fifteen is too many without our pulseArmor. “Leader is…on…on…the bridge with the captain. Are you Moon Lords?”
“How did they board you?” I ask, ignoring his question. “Do they have a vessel?”
He nods. “Came from the asteroids, they did. Therix—our helmsman—fell asleep uplinked. Drunk.” He shudders. “We woke and…we woke and they were in the halls. Tried to run. To get to escape pods. They punished us….” His crooked teeth chatter together. I’m so close I can see the blackheads on his bulbous nose. The veins on his neck stand out from fluid redistribution from extended travel in low gravity. He’s pallid and weak in the bones. I wager it’s been half a life since he’s felt the sun’s warmth. “Their ship boarded through the cargo hangar.”
“Explains why we couldn’t see it,” I say to Cassius.
He ignores me. “Why are you so far out here with full freight?” he asks the man.
“Shouldn’t have been…shouldn’t have taken the money.”
“The money from whom?” I ask.
“The passenger. The Gold.”
Cassius and I exchange a glance. “There’s a Gold on board?” he asks. “Did they have a scar?”
“Not Peerless.” The Red shakes his head, and Cassius breathes a small sigh of relief. “She came to the captain on Psyche. Paid us to…” He swallows, glancing over our shoulders as if expecting an Obsidian to appear there. “She paid us to drop her at an asteroid…S-1392.”
“That’s near the edge of the Gulf,” I say. “Just outside Rim territory.”
“Yeah. Captain told her nothin’ was there, but she paid much as our freight. Told him we shouldn’t get involved with Golds. But he didn’t listen. He never listens….”
“Did she give a name?” Cassius asks.
“No name.” The man shakes his head. “But she sounded like him.” He points at me, and I know Cassius has the same thought. Are the Obsidians here for the ship or the Gold?
“They might not be Ascomanni,” I say. “Could be the Rising.”
“Darrow wouldn’t massacre civilians.”
“In this war, two-thirds of the dead are civilians,” I say sharply. “Have you forgotten the Sack of Luna by Sefi’s Horde?”
“Not at all. Nor have I forgotten New Thebes,” Cassius replies, referring to when my godfather, the Ash Lord, orbitally bombarded one of Mars’s great cities after she fell to the Rising.
“Boys,” Pytha’s voice crackles in our ears, cutting through the tension between us. “Boys, we have company.”
“How many?” Cassius asks.
