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Be the calm.
I lean back behind the wall and listen to their conversation. The savages’ accents are thick, their voices sluggish and drunken. From Earth’s North Pole. One criticizes the flavor of the man meat and longs to eat fresh elk. His friend says something I do not understand. Something about the Ice. Another is irritated that she claimed no slaves in the taking of the ship. She asks if she could buy the Sunborn from the first. He laughs at her with his mouth full and says she belongs to their jarl, body and meat. The Sunborn; the Gold.
I expect Lorn would kill them. My own pride would see me do the same, to prove to myself that I am greater than the fear I now feel. But pride is a vanity I cannot afford. My grandmother’s lessons win out. Why fight when you can maneuver? I find a way around the commissary and continue my search, listenin
g for any sound of life.
My pre-allotted time ticks away. I’ll have to double back in two minutes. There’s nothing but the Obsidian voices echoing down the halls and the unhappy rattle of distant generators. Then…I hear something. A faint creaking from behind a bulkhead. I find the door and clasp the narrow handle. It opens slowly, sliding back into its frame and squealing as it goes. I wince, praying to Jove that no one heard. I wait, poised with my razor in the hall for the Obsidians to come running. None do. I slip into the room.
It is filled with the rest of the crew. They litter the floor in mesh cages that constrict around their bodies. All lowColors. And hanging above them from the dark room’s ceiling is a thin wire net that’s been looped around a gas pipe. It sways back and forth and inside it, and hanging upside down as the wire cuts into her bare skin, is the body of a naked woman with Gold Sigils upon the backs of her hands.
I RUSH FIRST TO THE GOLD.
Her body is contorted and twisted inside the confines of her prison. A bent metal chair lies beneath her, having been used to beat her as she hung in the net. Her right hand is a charred, burned mess from the welding torch that sits on a table. Blood seeps there, dripping onto the floor. The smell of burned skin and hair claws into my nostrils, making my eyes water.
She’s dead. She has to be.
“Help us!” a Red woman whispers out of a bloody mouth. “Dominus…”
“Quiet,” I snap, glancing back at the door. Dozens of pairs of eyes stare out at me from behind the cages. Each prisoner pleading with me.
I creep closer to the Gold, and as I reach to touch the net, her eyes flash open in the low light. Goryhell. I almost fall down. She’s alive. Black engine oil has been slathered over her body, along with fouler-smelling things.
“Dominus…” a Brown hisses.
“Salve,” I say to the Gold in a Thessalonican drawl. “I’m here to help. My name is Castor au Janus.” She watches me without speaking, giving no sign that she even understands. “I’m going to help you out, but you have to be quiet and quick. The Ascomanni are still outside. Do you understand?”
“Yes, I understand,” she says. Hers is a rich Palatine accent. It startles me. The man was right. She’s from the Luna courts as well. What is she doing all the way out here?
“Stay very still,” I say. I stand beneath the net and slide my razor across the steel cable, cutting it from the ceiling. The girl falls into my arms. I expected her to lash out, but she stays still within the tight mesh. I see now how deeply the tacNet’s cut into her skin. TacNets, or birdcages, are fired from compressed fiber cartridges and designed for police forces to engulf and constrict around a prisoner to harmlessly subdue them. But if you toggle with the contraction restrictions, you can eviscerate a prisoner to death. I set the woman on the ground and cut the wires one by one until she’s able to crawl free. She lies there naked stretching her joints, teeth chattering with the pain.
I realize now that she’s young, maybe even younger than my twenty years. I feel an overwhelming urge to protect her. I cover her body with a plastic tool sheet.
“It is well,” I say. “You’re safe now.” I stand to go help the others.
“Stims,” she manages through her chattering teeth. “Need stims.”
I bend back down and produce a syringe from the dispenser on the right thigh of my EVO suit. It’s one of my last. She snatches it from my hand and stabs it into the bicep of the burned limb. Her body convulses as the drug rushes through her system. She sighs with pleasure. “More,” she demands. I glance at the other prisoners and produce my last two. She shocks me by injecting both at the same time. It’s too much for her body mass unless she’s built up a resistance to them, which inherently means something dangerous. There’s something wrong here.
Filled with a manic energy from the stims, she stumbles to her feet. I spring back to catch her from falling, but she steadies herself using the table.
“We must leave,” I say softly to the girl. “More Ascomanni are coming. We have to be gone before their ships dock. Help me with the others.” Nodding along, she finds her clothing in a pile on the floor near the door. Still covered in oil, she dons the pants and a green jacket, fumbling with the zipper because of the drugs in her system.
“Sander,” Cassius says in my ear as I bend to cut the Red woman from her cage with my razor. “What’s your status?”
“I found the Gold, Regulus.” I patch him to my visual feed.
“Copy.” He pauses, seeing the others. “Lysander…”
“Boy,” the Gold says from behind me. I turn. She’s less than an arm’s length away. “What docking tube are you using?”
“Two-B.”
“Two-B?” She nods more to herself than to me. “I’ll return it to you in four minutes. On my honor.”
“Return what?”
There’s a blur. I don’t even see her strike as the meat of her palm collides with the side of my temple. I stumble, and something, maybe her elbow or knee, slams into my opposite ear and I go down, seeing stars. There’s pressure on my hip, and I hear her footsteps going out the door. She’s four seconds gone before I realize what she took. My razor. The one Cassius gave me on my sixteenth birthday. The one that belonged to Karnus. Its custom Bellona hilt is covered by a plain metal shell, but to Cassius it is priceless. Dazed, I lunge after her into the hallway. My legs go like rubber and I almost fall.
