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There’s silence except for weeping from the crew we rescued. They’re sprawled like us on the floor, huddled together, some in exaltation, others still in fear, not yet believing that they could possibly be safe. They’re not.
“You idiot,” Cassius says down at me. “What the hell were you thinking?” Before I can answer, he kicks my razor from the Gold’s hands. He bends, as if to grab her face to look for the dread mark on her cheek, when the floor of the Archi opens up between us. He twists back and away as a fist-sized gray blur shrieks through and then goes out through the ceiling with a monstrous gasp of air. A hole has been ripped in the ship. Depressurization sirens scream. Red pulses from the overhead lights. Another railgun slug pierces our hull, slamming through the floor up through the body of the paunchy Red man we rescued, spraying us with his blood. Pytha shouts something in our coms. Pressure screams out of the holes. Then the cellular armor slides over the external damage and the mad gout of air stops. The sirens cease their wailing, but the warning lights continue to throb.
“Our engines are hit,” Pytha says. “Number one is at half power. Shunting energy from it to the shields.”
Cassius gestures to the gash on the Gold girl’s stomach. “Cauterize that or she’ll bleed out.” He rushes through the survivors of the crew to the bridge. The Gold girl is losing too much blood. Her skin is pale under the black oil and her chest rises and falls with shallow rapidity. I lift her arm to get her to the infirmary, but she’s too weak. The stims have overloaded her system. Her legs go out, so I loop my arm behind her knees and my other around her back and carry her through the narrow halls. The fierce face she wore when I first found her is gone. She’s quiet and still, her eyes watching me, so distant from the chaos around us. I lay her down on the medical bed as the Archi’s guns fire. The infirmary is small and understocked. Syringes tremble in their cases as we take another hit.
Those screaming faces of the lowColors.
The wails still chase me.
They’ll all die.
The girl watches as I cut open her soiled shirt with medical shears. Two minor lacerations rend her skin above her breasts. My main concern is the axe wound. It’s a deep and angry gouge six inches long in her lower left abdomen. What was she thinking, going back? What could have been so important? I clean the wound with an antibac spray and use the hospital-grade medical scanner to inspect her organs for damage. Her liver is lacerated. She’ll need a real surgeon, and soon. All I can do here is cauterize the capillaries and load her with bloodsim. Flesh sizzles under the laser. She groans in pain. Once it’s sealed, I apply a layer of resFlesh and strap on a compression pack. The ship shudders.
“Who are you?” I ask the girl. “What’s your name?”
She does not answer as her eyes drift closed. “S-1392,” she whispers. “Help…at…S-1392.” Her words trail away as she falls unconcious.
S-1392 is the asteroid she was heading toward. But what did she mean by “help”?
I examine her as if her face will hold the answers. The lashes of her eyes are longer than I might have expected. But even with the smear of blood and oil, I can see the stringy muscles of a fighter and a testament of old scars upon her skin. Too many for her young age. I trace my fingers over the six parallel scars that rake her lower back. Accompanying those scars are two old knife wounds near her heart, a terrible burn on her left arm, and the remnants of an old wound on the left side of her head that claimed the top corner of her ear. I thought of her as a girl when I found her in that cage. But she’s not a girl. She’s a predator in young skin. Who else would go back into that nightmare ship?
Why did you have to take my razor?
Did she leave something behind? I search her clothes, her body. There’s nothing hidden. No false teeth. But I have a suspicion. I run my hand over her face. The cheekbones are bold and high and covered like the rest of her face with oil. I scrape my nails along her closed eyelids. The false lashes there are well made and applied with some sort of resin. My fingers drift to her right cheek. Dread twists my belly as I feel the skin there give.
I stand up and away.
I know what she is.
I suspected when she stole my razor, and then when her voice broke from the accent of the Palatine. Was she affecting that one? Was it a guise? I pick the corner of the odd patch of skin on her face till a thin layer of resFlesh—the same sort Cassius uses to disguise himself—pulls away from the cheek, revealing what lies beneath. Along her right cheekbone, slashing through the black oil at a cruel angle, is
the pale mark of a Peerless Scarred.
SEVRO SQUIRMS ON THE WHITE CUSHION next to me as Publius cu Caraval, the Copper Tribune, leader of the Copper bloc, finishes the roll call. He’s an elegant firebrand of a man. Middle-aged, small of stature, with a narrow, pleasant face, a large nose, cold eyes, and an ambivalence toward fashion that borders on antagonism. When he’s not in his toga, he still wears the same drab suits he did as a public lowColor defense lawyer before the war. Since then, he’s risen to become a voice of reason in the divided Senate, and an occasional ally of my wife’s. They call him the Incorruptible for his punctilious nature and lack of vices.
Caraval stands on a small circular plinth before the tiered C-shaped marble steps that encircle the white and red porphyry floor. Small wooden chairs are set for each senator on the steps. Behind Caraval, recessed from the plinth, squats the unadorned Morning Chair of the Sovereign. Made of whitewood carved with simple geometric designs, the chair looks dreadfully uncomfortable and is without cushion—Mustang had it removed. She leans against one of the arms of the chair and watches the senators. They sit clustered by Color and political affiliation upon the cushioned steps—Dancer’s Vox Populi to the left of the huge Liberty Doors that lead out of the Forum to the steps and the Via Triumphia. Mustang’s Optimates sit to the right. Obsidian and Copper centrists occupy the middle.
Bored by the formality, Sevro lounges beside me in crisp military whites. He’s staring at the ceiling, infatuated by the mural there. It is a romantic rendering of the Phobos Address, my speech that launched the Rising on Phobos ten years ago. I look young and radiant in paints of gold and scarlet and float on gravBoots, cape billowing behind me like a magenta storm cloud, flanked by Howlers, the Sons of Ares, and Ragnar, even though he wasn’t exactly there. Sevro’s jaw clenches.
“That doesn’t look anything like me.” He nods to his own image. He’s right. The eyes of the rendering are blood-red and insane. His hair’s standing on end. His teeth look like rows of shattered porcelain. “You look like a bloody saint plowed an angel and out you popped. I look like a deranged fucking mutant that eats babies.”
I pat Sevro on the leg. Mustang catches my eye and nods up to the last of the Red Senators who have just entered the room. Dancer shuffles along at the head of the procession of my people to their seats. He feels my eyes and meets them without a smile. Even knowing he’s my adversary of the day, it’s hard not to feel fondness for him.
With the roll call finalized, I turn my attention to Mustang.
“A quorum being present, the floor will now hear the scheduled petition.” She looks to me. “ArchImperator.”
The sound of my boots on stone echoes through the Senate chamber as I go to take my place on the plinth facing the senators. I spy Daxo, who sits surrounded by his fellow Gold senators on the far right. He looks like a statue of some pagan god in repose, though I know he’s still nursing as monstrous a hangover as I am. Only when the tension has reached its pinnacle do I finally speak.
“Mercury…is liberated.”
The right half of the senators, along with the Coppers, led smoothly by Caraval, roar their approval.
“The First Fleet of the Republic under the command of Imperator Orion xe Aquarii met that of the Ash Lord over Mercury while the Second Fleet under my personal command launched an Iron Rain against the continent of Borealis. Through high cost, we prevailed.” The highColor senators lead the room to their feet yet again, roaring their fanatical support for the war effort. The Vox Populi remain silent. And so, I notice, do the Obsidians.
“Now the Ash Lord is in retreat. He has recalled the greater sum of his forces to make a final stand at Venus. But soon we will follow. Brothers and sisters, we stand upon the threshold of victory.”
