War is our time. Sevro thought he could escape it. I thought I could end it. But our enemy is like the Hydra. Cut off one head, two more sprout. They will not sue for peace. They will not surrender. Their heart must be excised, their will to fight ground to the finest dust.
Only then will there be peace.
Lights flicker in the chasm beneath my feet. Several minutes later, a Gold in an EVA suit drifts upward to set down with me on the hull. For fear of enemy sensors, he puts his faceplate to mine to give his sound waves a medium.
“Reactor is primed and ready for necromancy.”
“Well done, Alexandar.”
He nods stoically.
The young soldier is no longer the callow, insecure youth who entered my service as a lancer four years ago. After war, most men shrink. Some from the rending of flesh. Some from the loss of fellows. Some from the loss of autonomy. But most in shame at discovering their own impotence. Confronted with horror, their dreams of destiny crumple. Only a cursed few relish the dark thrill in discovering they are natural-born killers.
Alexandar is a killer. He has proven himself the worthy heir to the legacy of his grandfather Lorn au Arcos. And I have begun to wonder if he will inherit my burden. He alone held back the tide atop the Ash Lord’s spire when Thraxa, Sevro, and I had been knocked to our knees. It woke the hunger in him. Now, he craves revenge on Atalantia for the murder of our fleet.
I miss that purity of purpose.
What was it that Lorn said again? “The old rage in colder ways, for they alone decide how to spend the young.”
How many more must I spend? What is Alexandar’s life worth? What is mine worth? As if to find the answer, I glance to my right. Past the hull of the drifting dreadnought, the eastern rim of Mercury throbs like a molten scythe.
The planet is barely larger than Luna, but this close it seems a giant. The shadows of a Society minesweeper pass over its face. It searches for the atomic mines Orion left in orbit to cover our army’s frantic retreat after Atalantia’s ambush. Few mines remain. When they are gone, only the tropospheric shields that cover the prized continent of Helios will forestall the wrath of the Ash Armada. The black ships prowl beyond the graveyard, safely out of reach of Republic ground cannons, waiting to launch an Iron Rain against my marooned army.
When the shields fall, so will the planet.
Ten million of my brothers and sisters will face annihilation.
That is why Atalantia has come. To crush the White Fleet. To kill the Free Legions. To take back Mercury and with its metals and factories, feed the Gold war machine on Venus to prepare for a single, irresistible thrust toward the heart of the Republic.
A tiny laser flickers against the hull between Alexandar’s feet. I put my helmet to his again. “They’re moving her,” I say. His eyes harden. “Time to go.”
Together, we push off the hull to float back into the graveyard. We cross through seas of frozen corpses and shattered ripWings to land two kilometers from the dreadnought on the broken fuselage of a dead torchShip. We skip along its surface until we reach a dark hangar bay. Inside, a prototype black shuttle waits—the Necromancer, the personal deepspace shuttle of the Ash Lord, which I stole from his fortress and rode from Venus to Mercury. Today I will make it earn its name.
“Anteater to Dark Tango, do you register?” The Fear Knight’s voice is cold and intelligent as it echoes over the speakers in the Necromancer’s ready bay. The voice matches the man. Atlas au Raa, Atalantia’s most effective field commander, is a far cry from his honorable brother, Romulus. Implanted on the surface with his Zero Legion guerrillas, Atlas sows chaos behind our lines and is responsible for my delayed reunion with my army. They don’t even know I am here. But neither does the enemy.
The planet was blockaded by the Ash Armada when I arrived to Mercury three weeks ago. Fortunately, the Necromancer’s stealth capabilities are the most advanced in the Society armada, and the debris field hid our approach.
Hiding in the graveyard, I have used the decryption software on the Necromancer to eavesdrop on the Fear Knight’s correspondence. He reports his horrors, his impalements, his mutilations, with the detachment of a doctor administering medicine to a patient. Today, he discusses a different matter.
“Dark Tango registers, go for Anteater.” A thin Copper voice answers for Atalantia. Some sinister blackops administrator on the Annihilo.
“Slave Two is packaged and prepped for delivery,” Atlas drawls. “Blood Medusa primed. Dance floor’s looking crowded, confirm escort landfall and chaperone overwatch.”
“Landfall confirmed. Escorts: Love, Death, and Storm delivered to chalk, minus twenty. ETA to handshake forty minutes. Chaperone overwatch primed. Request escort handshake confirmation. Delivery active pending your go.”
“Registers. Will confirm handshake. Anteater out.”
The audio clicks off.
Slave Two they call my friend. Since the day Sevro and I hijacked Orion’s ship in our escape over Luna, the Blue has been my confidante, my stalwart ally, my saving grace against the incredible sophistication of Gold naval Praetors. Now she is their captive.
Slave Two. Those motherfuckers.
Before we arrived, Orion was kidnapped by the Fear Knight from her headquarters in Mercury’s capital of Tyche. Her personal guard slaughtered. Her fingers left on her bed to mock the Free Legions.
Unable to extract her to orbit, the Fear Knight managed to stay a step ahead of the trackers my commanders sent in pursuit. I listened to the bastard’s reports as he skinned some of them alive and tortured Orion in his hidden mountain bases. Today, he attempts to ferry her to orbit to face Atalantia’s arcane psychotechs. It will be a neural extraction—a science in which only my wife is Atalantia’s equal. Orion may have resisted torture, but when Atalantia peels through the layers of her mind, the planetary defense architecture of the Republic will be laid bare.
I cannot permit that to happen.
“Fascist assholes,” my niece, Rhonna, mutters and tightens her synaptic gloves in Alexandar’s direction.
“It was the baked Red peasants who gave up Orion. Not Golds,” Alexandar says as he scalps a warhawk onto the giant head of Thraxa au Telemanus with his razor. It matches my own. Thraxa admires it in the reflection of her notched warhammer: Wee Lass.
“The whole planet is an asshole,” Rhonna replies. “You should think of buying a villa, Princess.”
He blows her a kiss in reply.
“Atalantia’s got some flair, at least,” Colloway drawls. Never one for wasted effort, the best fighter pilot in the Republic lies on a crate of pulseArmor smoking a burner. His slim limbs splay every direction while pale blue eyes gaze dreamily at the curling smoke. “Remember Dreadhammer and Lightbane? Jove, was the Ash Lord on the nose. If he called it a nose. Probably called it Airdevourer or Consumer of Lifegas—”