Our disguise in the camel ship holds as we approach the fleet around Hildas Station, aiming for what was once Augustus’s flagship, now Pliny’s. Invictus . RipWings fly silently past us, requesting clearance codes. Our pilot sends the codes and we are escorted to join a procession of supply ships that funnel into the Invictus ’s hangar, like caravan traders lining up outside the grand gates of some desert citadel. Guns track us as we taxi.
We land with a thud. The pilot pops open the aft bay doors and I and mine hop from the ship down to the hangar’s floor. Instead of greeting Brown haulers like she might have expected, the Orange Docker looks up from her datapad to see a war party in full armored panoply. Armed to the teeth. Without hesitation, she sits down, wanting no part of this.
Sevro laughs and pats her on the head. “Wiser than Gold.”
A circus of ships fills the bay. Lights glow down from the high ceiling. Oranges and Reds scuttle about. Welding torches sizzle against hulls. Men and women shout at one another. My fellows follow me, walking through the hangar toward the lifts where we can access the rest of the ship.
And as we walk, silence spreads like wildfire. Welding torches cease to sizzle. Men no longer call out. They simply stare. I stalk forward in the front with Lorn. Mustang and Kavax au Telemanus flank us. Roque follows with Sevro and Daxo. Victra comes next with the Howlers. And then behind them all, like some sort of pale, giant shepherd, comes Ragnar.
He chose to join us from the freezer. We exchange a look, and in one nod, I know I have a new general for the rebellion. I swell with confidence.
Not a soul protests our movement, though by our attire they know we do not come for peaceful talks. My armor is black. Carved with roaring lions. A thin pulseShield flickers over it. On my left arm, my aegis activates, its opaque blue surface drinking in the light. My white razor slithers on my arm. Our boots make the sound of hail on the metal decks. I dispatch Pebble to have her Green squads crash the ship’s communications system.
A Copper sees us and makes a deal of playing with his datapad. Ragnar slips up to him, touches his shoulder hard enough to push the man to his knees. “No.”
We enter the lift and the guts of the ship without a shot being fired. We take the lift to the deck one above the command level. The lift doors open, bringing us face-to-face with a squad of Gray marines.
“Captain, you’re to accompany Virginia au Augustus to the engineering bay,” I say to the Gray. His eyes appreciate the gravity of the situation; after barely a hesitation, he salutes. His confused men fall in behind Mustang and the Telemanuses as they head off at a trot.
The ship alarm begins to wail.
The Howlers go to the engines and life support systems as my own force continues three decks up, heading not for the command deck, where Pliny will be hosting his new allies, but for the brig. Roque, Victra, Lorn, Sevro, and Ragnar slip in through the doors, subduing the guards before I even enter.
The prisoners, some forty Peerless Augustus Loyalists, are imprisoned in small duroglass cells. Sevro walks past each, freeing the men and women inside with a datakey as he goes.
“Thank the Reaper,” he says to each, repeating it four times to a towering old Peerless woman till she finally realizes she’s not getting out till she plays his little game. They each roll their eyes and say thank you. “What a good, abnormally tall and decrepit Peerless you are. Excellent,” Sevro says, and lets the woman out. “Lorn! I found a possible bedmate.” He pauses as he comes before the Jackal’s glass cage.
“What do I spy with my little eye?” Sevro happily crows. “Wait! I have two again!”
“Let me out,” the Jackal replies flatly. “I’m not playing your game, Goblin.”
“Thank the Reaper. And the name’s Sevro. You know that.”
The Jackal rolls his eyes. “Thank you, Reaper.”
“Bow like a good servant.”
“No.”
“Just let him out,” Lorn grumbles.
“He has to play my game!” Sevro says. “Shithead isn’t getting out till he plays nice. I’ll give him a riddle instead. What do I have in my pocket?”
I grow tired of the game, so behind his back, I point to my eye.
“An eyeball,” the Jackal says.
“Gorydammit, who told him?”
Roque takes the key from Sevro’s hand and scans it over the cell’s console. The Jackal joins us. “Grow up, Sevro,” Roque mutters.
“The hell is your problem?” Sevro asks. “We need to take our time anyway. Can’t let me have a little bit of fun?”
We take our time so Pliny can fear our actions. He must suspect the loyalty of most of the crew. But no doubt he has a contingent of bought-and-paid-for soldiers on board. Mercenaries, most likely. He’ll hide behind them like a shield.
“Where’s your father?” I ask the Jackal.
“I don’t know,” he says. “I don’t believe he’s on the ship. My sister make it to you safely?”
“She found us.”
“Good,” he says, turning quickly to acknowledge Lorn. “A pleasure, Arcos. My father forbade me from reading your exploits as a child. Still, I managed. Tales of Old Stoneside kept me up late into the night.”
“As did your performance at the Institute,” Lorn replies with a small smile for me. “I was afraid to close my eyes after seeing your campaign.”
The Jackal chuckles. “Seems your mission was a success on Europa, Darrow.”
“They sprang the trap as we hoped. And Aja escaped.”
“Then let’s go fix this problem and get on with our war.”
Roque looks back and forth between us, perhaps noting the familiarity with which we speak. Yet another thing I never told him. The gulf grows.
We meet Mustang in the lowColor galley during lunch hours. Hundreds of Orange deckhands and electricians mingle with the Red factory workers and Brown janitors. The buzz of conversation and the clatter of plastic trays on metal tables falters as soon as Ragnar enters the galley. Dead silence except an overexcited Brown janitor who screams at the top of his lungs. His comrades quickly cover his mouth.
Ragnar walks to the center of the room and moves one of the tables without waiting for the lowColors to get up. Pulling it free of its metal bolts, he drags it screeching across the metal floor, lowColors still sitting on the attached benches. They stay motionless, eyes huge and terrified and utterly confused at the sight of my cadre of fifty Golds.
The Telemanuses follow Ragnar, carrying between father and son a circular metal device one meter thick, two meters in diameter—the purpose of their trip to the engineering bay. Their arms are covered by armor, but the veins of their necks bulge under its weight. Mustang guides them, looking at her datapad. “Here,” she says. They drop it where she points. The Grays follow, carrying a huge battery unit, which they set on top of a nearby table.
“Howlers, make some noise,” I say into my com.
“Pardon me. Excuse me. Sorry,” Pebble says, waving her pudgy little hands. She takes a cable from the battery unit and attaches it to the disc.
There’s a crackle as the ship’s speakers activate. “Pliny,” a voice calls sweetly. I look around for Sevro and see him at a terminal with two of the Greens.
“Sevro!” Mustang and I snap.
He holds up a finger for us to wait.
“He’s on the com,” one of the Greens jabbers out sincerely. “Just a sec.”
“Dear Pliny,” Sevro sings over the com.
If your heart beats like a drum ,
and your leg’s a little wet ,
it’s ’cause the Reaper’s come
to collect a little debt .
He sings this three times until Ragnar throws a table into the console. Sparks shower out. Sevro looks up slowly at the table hanging over his head. It missed by inches. He wheels around. “What the gorypissandshit is your damage, you overreacting mountain troll!”
“Rhyming … nnnngh.” Ragnar makes an uncomfortable groaning sound.
“You found him,” Mustang mutters as we share a look.
“Which one?” I ask as Sevro curses the Stained out in every compound manner he knows. Adding the crux for good measure.
“You squawk like a … like a chicken,” Ragnar says in reply.
“He can’t insult me,” Sevro says, aghast. He looks at me. “Control him.”
I wash my hands of it.
“If I may suggest continuing,” Lorn says.
“Right. Serious faces, everyone.” Helmets slide from armor to cover our skulls. I see thermal readings, power levels in the digital display. “Prime it,” I tell Mustang.
She activates the leechCraft thermal drill. It’s meant to burrow through the outer hull of a ship and create a breach large enough for a boarding party to pour through. So carving through the floor of a ship is nothing. And we’re only one deck above the command rooms. I jump atop the drill.
Momentum is everything to a Helldiver, to military endeavors, to life. Keep moving and dare someone to get in your path.
“You know what I said earlier?” Lorn asks me.
“About tact?” I ask.
He grins evilly behind his beard. “Slag tact. Terrify them.”
I look at Mustang. “Burn.”
She presses a button. The drill glows red. Heat radiates up into me. Spreads along the floor. LowColors flow away, abandoning their food, fleeing the room as the floor sags and melts like sand pouring down an hourglass. The drill falls through the dripping deck into the command room beneath with me riding on its back. A Helldiver again, if only for a moment.
It slams into the middle of Augustus’s great wooden table, sheaving through and impacting like a meteor into the marble floor, still melting. I cut the power cable with my razor and rise amid the smoke and steam and leaping flames as the table catches fire.
A hundred Golds of the Society stare up at me. Praetors, Legates, Judiciars, and knights of powerful houses stand with their razors drawn. All once loyal to Augustus. All now under Pliny’s thumb. Going with the wind, as they say.
And there he is, at the head of the long table, his face fast paling. Beautiful, clever Pliny. One eye left, the other sporting a temporary bionic replacement. At his right sits one of the Sovereign’s Furies, the Politico, Moira. Compared with Aja, she’s a puffy pastry of a woman. But her sweet smile is half again as sinister as her sister’s razor. Beside her is an Olympic Knight, the Storm Knight from the Japanese Isles of Earth.
“My goodmen!” I bellow through the voice amplifier in my helmet. “I have come for Pliny.” I jump down from the drill, helmet rippling back into my armor so they can see my face. I walk toward him. My friends follow through the hole. Arcos first. Then Mustang and Sevro.
“You said he was dead!” someone to my left snarls, razor half pulled.
“Lorn au Arcos?” murmurs another. His name rips through the place as Sevro and Roque secure the doors leading into the room.
“And KAVAX AU TELEMANUS!” Kavax booms wildly as he lands. Guess Pax had to learn it somewhere.
“The Reaper is not dead,” Mustang says, hopping down from the drill. “Nor am I. Nor is my brother. And we have come to reclaim what belongs to our father.”
These Peerless don’t know what to do.
“Liars!” Pliny cries. “You betrayed the ArchGovernor. Seize the traitors!”
Lorn makes a simple proclamation. “If anyone comes within two meters of Darrow, I kill everyone in this room.”
They don’t seem eager to call his bluff. The men I walk between jump backward. Lorn’s reputation carves a hole for me straight to Pliny. I don’t break pace.
“Pliny,” I say. “We must speak.”
“Kill him!” Pliny screams. “Kill the Reaper.”
A young man lurches forward and dies as his neighbor stabs him in the back. The neighbor looks fearfully to Lorn.
“Two point three meters,” Lorn says. “Close.”
“Kill him!” Pliny shouts futilely. “He’s just boy!”
I speak quietly, but all can hear.
“Pliny au Velocitor, you are a traitor to ArchGovenor Nero au Augustus. You have conspired to destroy his house, to forcibly marry his daughter, to kill his son, and betray him to the Sovereign, who has set herself against him. Your master raised you up, and you tried to tear him down. You have betrayed his trust all for personal gain. Worst of all, you have failed.”
“Stop him!” Pliny screams now, wildly gesticulating at me. “Moira!”
Moira whispers to the Storm Knight, and both step to the side.
“You’re supposed to be dead,” Pliny mutters. “Aja said she would kill you on Europa.”
“And who do you know that can kill me?” I say, that ridiculous Gold rage building in my voice so that it might impress all these hungry souls. “The Jackal failed. Antonia au Severus-Julii failed. Proctors Apollo and Jupiter failed. Cassius au Bellona failed. Karnus failed. Cagney failed. Aja au Grimmus and her Praetorians failed.” The hangman failed. The mines and pitvipers failed. “And now you fail.”
That’s when I slip forward, faster than a striking pitviper, and slap him across the face. He pitches sideways out of his seat like a leaf battered by the wind, careening into a Gold who stood to the side. She spits on him and moves for me.
“You are a worm who thought himself a serpent just because you slither. But your power was not real, Pliny. It was all a dream. Time now to wake.”
Pliny scrambles to his feet, pushing himself away from me. His carefully combed hair is a mess, and redness swells on his right cheek. I spin him around and slap him again, harder. He’s startled. Doesn’t know what to do. He was not taken from his bed during his first day at the Institute and beaten by Obsidians. He did not ride upon the snow-crusted beaches at the head of an armored column. He did not starve. So now all he can do is scramble and cry.
I seize him with my hands, raise him high into the air. But I hurt him no more. I will not demean the moment with cruelty like Karnus or Titus would. My condescension is my weapon. I set Pliny back in the ArchGovernor’s chair. I buff his dragonfly pin. Straighten his hair like a kindly mother. Pat him on his tear-stained cheek and extend my hand, which bears my House Mars ring.
He kisses it without me asking.
“Goodbye, Pliny. I leave you to your friends.”
I walk away, the eyes of all these Peerless following me, abandoning Pliny. I hear a slurping sound and do not turn, because I know what razors sound like when they kill. They didn’t even wait. Pliny is forgotten.
These Peerless thump their chests in salute to me. The monsters. They go with the wind, chasing power. But they don’t realize power doesn’t shift. Power is resolute. It is the mountain, not the wind. To shift so easily is to lose trust. And trust is what has kept me alive. Trust in my friends, and their trust in me.
The Sovereign knows this. It is why she keeps her Furies close. They would die for her, as my friends would die for me. Because in the end, what does all the power in all the worlds matter if your closest friends can betray you? The Sovereign’s father learned that when his daughter took his head. Pliny learned at the price of his life. I forgot it, distanced myself from my friends, and nearly lost everything because of it when Tactus felt as overshadowed and alienated with me as he did with his brothers. It is why I started fresh with Victra, why I told Ragnar the truth, why I must make amends with Lorn and Roque.
Trust is why Red will have a chance. We are a people bound by song and dance and families and kinship. These people are allies only because they think they must be.
I look at them now and I know they are so stern and so rigid that they will break and shatter against one another, not because of me, but because of what they are.
I float on my gravBoots, pausing to say, “Tell all who will hear, the Reaper sails to Mars. And he calls for an Iron Rain.”