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There is no dignity here. A southerly wind prevails. As we beat our fists against our hearts, the ceremony disintegrates into farce as the dank stench of rotting eggs and used toilets drifts up from the bodies. The infantry maintain their ranks, but support and naval men and women unaccustomed to the degradations of ground combat waver, many upturning their stomachs onto the baking concrete.
The bodies are arrayed to be cremated before our remaining ships of war. The battle-scarred Morning Star looms like a mountain, one and a half kilometers tall, nearly eight long. Four torchShips lie in her shadow, and the rickety remains of one destroyer. From atop her hull, welders shade themselves under the guns and pause their labor to watch. How many times has the Morning Star saved us? By the looks of her hull and the wounds she sustained from the storm and the battle, I don’t think she can do it again.
Some will call the Battle of the Ladon a victory for the Republic. I cannot. With Naran falling the night before, we have lost all the major cities of Helios. Four million of my men are missing or dead. Just over five million survive to huddle beneath the shields of Heliopolis. Supplies dwindle, especially the anti-rads. Most were in Tyche. Barely one-third of my men are fit for duty, even by our elastic standards. Our tank regiments are depleted. RipWings down to two hundred operational craft. Drachenjägers reduced to seven hundred. All that protects us from being bombarded is the shield overhead. All that protects us from being overrun are the storms beyond, and Atalantia’s fear of what new horror I’ll conjure.
Despite our vulnerability, Atalantia has not opted for another frontal attack on Heliopolis. Instead, with us trapped inside, she extends her grip over the storm-ravaged continent and squeezes with the thoughtful patience of an anaconda. It means no relief fleet is on its way.
But I must have hurt her badly.
By our estimates she lost twice as many as we did, most to the storm on the northern coast of Helios. The military camps of Venus can always provide her fresh bodies, but her precious veterans are irreplaceable—XIII Dracones, Ash Guard, Fulminata, Zero Legion, the Iron Leopards. With the Iron Leopards captured or killed, a third of the Ash Guard drowned in Tyche, Fulminata pounded by Thraxa outside Heliopolis, how many more will she sacrifice for us? None, I wager. They are needed for the Republic. She will wait for reinforcements from Venus, and use the raw recruits as a battering ram. There will be nothing we can do to stop them.
All know it.
Amongst the engineering officers, Harnassus stands like an old sea captain squinting into salt spray. Even though she suffered grievous burns in the battle, Thraxa’s shoulders loom over the heads of the Gray, Gold, and Red infantry commanders. But amongst the naval officers, there is an absence. For ten years the Blues orbited around Orion with the fidelity of moons to a planet; now the planet is gone, and the moons drift untethered. They will need a new leader.
But from where? Captain Pelus, a veteran of ten years, might have flown the Morning Star through hell, but he is no leader. All my Imperators, save Harnassus, are gone. Half my Praetors. More than two-thirds of my wing commanders. Atalantia gnaws through officers who cannot be replaced. Officers who earned their bars and then their wings under Orion and me. Where will we find more like them? In the fat, filigreed Home Guard? In the jockeying politicians of Skyhall?
I can only pillage the Ecliptic Guard so far before it is staffed completely by children.
I turn to my lancers and find no one there. Not Alexandar, not Rhonna, only Screwface. He’s taken weight off my shoulders since his return. Elated to be back with his own, he seems the only one with any energy to spare. I envy him that, and gave him Rat Legion to put his counter-espionage skill set to work clearing the city of dissidents and any spies the Fear Knight snuck in. “Where’s Rhonna?” I ask him.
“Tunnels again.”
“Colloway?”
“He split from the medWard at 0400. Was wings-up by 0430.”
“He went out again?”
“With a full squadron. Man won’t rest until he finds Orion. I thought you knew.”
I look back at the bodies. “I didn’t.”
If he dies out there, how many heroes will we have left? A murmur goes up amongst the men. I follow the current of hands that rise to shade their eyes. A ripWing smudges smoke across the morning sky. Of the twelve ripWings that went in search of Orion, three stagger back.
Colloway is not in his right mind. Since we took refuge in the city, he has been on the ground a total of ten hours. The time it takes to eat seven meals, receive two blood transfusions, exchange seven crippled ripWings for fresh ones, and be locked in the medBay under guard. Lazy guard apparently.
Early morning condensation turns to vapor as Colloway and his wingmen set their battered ripWings on the concrete before the dead. Colloway’s canopy is so mangled with enemy fire it has to be welded off. When he’s free, he bypasses the ladder and slides down his wing before coming around to the belly of the ripWing where a bloated body is clutched in its towing claw.
Colloway pries the body from the towing claw and tries to carry it. She is too heavy, even in the light gravity. He stumbles, and I find myself moving from the officers to reach him. Dozens of others join, including Screwface and Thraxa, but not Harnassus. He watches stone-faced from his officers, unable to forgive Orion, or me, for the storm and the millions of civilians it killed.
Seawater is not kind to a dead body, nor are fish. But on Orion’s swollen right hand is the trident ring I gave her when I named her Navarch of the Fleet. It rests on my shoulder as we carry her to the field of the dead and lay her amongst the lavender and corpses of fallen ripWing pilots. Colloway falls to his knees there. At first I think it from his exertion. Then he breaks into sobs. I squat behind him, knowing there is nothing to say. I take him by the shoulder to lead him away, but he thrusts my hand off and wheels on me.
“Plus twenty-four, sir,” he says. “But they’ll just send more. There are no more Orions.” He storms away from the funeral, making it halfway across the tarmac before collapsing. Medici rush to him and bear him away toward the city.
“Twenty-four makes 193 kills in six days,” Thraxa says with a whistle. “A feat which will never be encroached upon in our time.” As others grow numb, she grows callous.
I stare after Colloway.
Despite his natural laziness, there has always been a fever behind his eyes—even back on Luna with a Hyperion sprite splayed across his lap. I suspected it was a fever for kills, chasing some imaginary number where his soul would finally be quenched and deem it enough. Today is the first time I realize the number isn’t counting up. It’s counting down. How many more can he kill before he goes?
I look back on Orion’s body one last time. It is a horrible thing to see someone so full of life, so important in yours and those of others, humbled by death. The corrosion of the sea was cruel. It is no comfort to know this thing is no longer her, just the rotting shell of what held a miracle of a soul. Does she go to Eo and Ragnar and Fitchner? Or is she simply gone? I do not know. Nor do I know how I will go on without her. I feel cold despite the sun, desperate to feel the warmth of my family, my wife, my son. Knowing how short our time in the light is, am I the greatest of fools to not spend every moment by their side?
Thraxa lights a burner. “Here’s for you, old girl. How many kills you suppose you got? Bet it was more than a hundred ninety-three.”
Fighting the instinct to break Thraxa’s jaw, I turn away from her and return to the officers. Soon the warning siren blares. The legionnaires and I turn our heads. Bright white light flares from the Morning Star, washing away the meager light of morning, and when we turn back, the men are nothing but ashes. The smell of ozone sanitizes the air, and their comrades walk forward to scrape the ashes of their friends into canisters in hopes of one day giving them back to Mars. Not one of us believes we’ll ever see home again, but they sing nonetheless.
* * *
