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I nod. “Thraxa is already waiting in the dock.”
“So you knew I’d say yes.”
“I hoped.”
He laughs. “Bring my ship back in one piece, eh? She’s Matteo’s favorite.”
“Sir,” a concerned voice says behind me. I turn. My archLancer, Alexandar au Arcos, Lorn’s eldest and brightest grandson, stands behind me. He’s a smirking prodigy. Blade-thin with long white-blond hair and fair skin. Standing no higher than his breastbone is another of my lancers, my niece Rhonna, Kieran’s headstrong eldest daughter by his first marriage. Twenty, with a buzzed head and a flat nose. She’s only been a lancer for a year, but is eager to prove herself Alexandar’s equal.
They duck their heads against the rain as it soaks into their black Pegasus Legion jackets. Alexandar eyes the drone behind Quicksilver with disdain while my niece eyes the man himself. “They’re all here,” Alexandar says.
I look back at Quicksilver. “If the Vox find out you helped me…You might be safer on Phobos.”
“And watch as the mob steals my towers and my companies? I have security teams for a reason. I rebuilt this moon. My fight is here. Shame. You’ll miss my birthday.”
“Here’s to making the next one.” We shake hands and he departs.
—
“What you’ve heard is true,” I say.
Thirty-seven Howlers stare at me through the smoke haze from their glowing burner tips. A savage’s miscellany of psychopaths and hooligans, my pack is a scattermash of rejects that Sevro and I have collected over the past ten years. After losing twenty on Mercury, our official number is one hundred and eleven, but most have been dispersed throughout the Republic by Sevro to carry out my directives. Those who do not have homes on Luna reside within the Den, an ink-black skyscraper I liberated from the ownership of the Shadow Knight. Holiday nods to me from the back, the last to arrive. She looks like she’s been drinking. Sefi sits to the side with our ten Obsidians. With her senators abstaining from the vote, I wasn’t sure she would come.
“What you talkin’ ’bout, boss?” Min-Min, my munitions expert, says through her nose. Her metal legs are up on the table. Sunken Red eyes watch me neutrally from her dark face. Her dusty mohawk is flattened to one side, and the haggard lines of her cheek are deep in the low light. “This emergency meeting shit’s a bit gritty, doncha think?” Her robotic wolfhead ring taps against her beer bottle. “We just got back.”
“What’s he talking about?” Victra asks incredulously. Her long arms are crossed over her pregnant stomach and her jagged hair is pinned back by a clasp. She looks furious. “Do you actually live under a rock, Min-Min, or just look like it?”
“Oh, slag off, poshy. I was knee-deep in the Mass. Had this righteous Obsidian brute sandwiched between me thighs.”
“Have you not looked at the news at all today?” Pebble, one of my oldest companions, asks. Her fleshy cheeks are flushed from her hasty arrival. She and her husband, Clown, were halfway to a Mare Vaporum resort for a vacation with their children when Sevro called.
“Naw.” Min-Min sighs. “I’m analog, baby. Last thing I need to bloodydamn see is more sensationalist smut about psycho slags on Mars raping and burning. Doesn’t do me well.” She smooths her mohawk. “Not at all.”
Sevro throws his datapad at Min-Min so hard she almost takes it in the face.
She catches it and turns it over, muttering under her breath. Her eyes grow wide as she sees the headlines. “Bloodyhell.”
“What I would like to know is which one of you snitched?” Victra asks.
“Yes, please stand up so we can stab you in the spleen,” Sevro says. “Only way Dancer could have been tipped is if one of you chatted about the emissaries. If you talked to a whore, a docker, your bloodydamn mother, now’s the chance to own it.”
No one stands.
“I trust everyone in this room,” I say, knowing it’s what they need to hear. But it’s not true. The leak had to come from someone in this room. Sefi? She did not exactly support me. Is she really so tired of war? “However they found out about the emissaries, it wasn’t from one of you. You all know by now of the peace accords that the Ash Lord has requested. The Senate will soon agree to an armistice, a temporary cease-fire to negotiate the terms of a possible peace. I believe this is a ploy of the Ash Lord.”
“Damn right it is,” Sevro says.
“He knows of our division at home and is using it to gain time to regroup his forces around Venus. You all know what I fear by now.” I pull up a holoMap and walk along it, dragging my fingers through the asteroids. “I fear dragons. The Raa are coming. Maybe not today. Maybe not tomorrow. But one day Romulus will attack. We must consolidate control over the Core before that happens. If we leave the Ash Lord alive, we will be caught between two enemies. We will not win.”
“They’ll never fight together,” Victra says. “They might hate you, but I know Moonies. Even the hostages Octavia used to keep are born hating the Ash Lord. Never forget. Never forgive.”
“They do not have to fight together,” Sefi says. “They only have to fight against us.” With the heavy casualties the Obsidians faced on Mercury, I know she doesn’t relish that prospect. Then why didn’t her senators vote to support me?
I continue. “The Senate is evidently concerned that I am a liability to the peace process. They have called me a warmonger. As of now, they say I am no longer ArchImperator. Soon, I believe, there will be a warrant for my arrest.”
“Might already be one,” Sevro mutters under his breath.
“Dancer’s a bastard…” Rhonna says. When she lived in the hidden city of Tinos, he was like an uncle to her. Her fists clench in anger at the betrayal.
