He doesn’t ask how I knew. Later I’ll tell him that I let Aja escape from Europa so we could track her back to the Sovereign via my bomb’s radiation signature. She’s Octavia’s personal killer. Of course she would return to her side. I’ve told no one but Mustang, the Jackal, and Sevro. I couldn’t risk it spreading, especially with how Roque’s been acting.
He hangs up the com without another word, bitterness evident.
The vanguard of my force, Ragnar’s men, have made landfall in the valley ahead. I see the fat ships descending, then disappearing into the ground where the Valles Marineris stretches kilometers beneath. We have our Blues in space lay fire down on Agea itself. The deluge heats the shield, causing it to pulse opaque. We’ll be coming at her at ground level along the bottom of the hundred-kilometer-wide canyon from the north and south, just through the two-hundred-meter gap her shields must maintain above soil to avoid creating seismic disturbances.
I hop off the mountain peak at the head of my bodyguard. Sevro and Mustang accompany me as we jump to another peak, then skip through the lower foothills, taking fire as we go.
The Sovereign is the key to this war, the key to fracturing this Society so the Sons of Ares can rise. With her captured, the Society itself will wonder in confusion if it even exists without Octavia atop its throne. Senators and governors will try to seize power. There will be a dozen local wars, fracturing manpower and cohesion.
Beneath me, a world of bounty lounges along the bottom of the vast canyon—lakes and streams, waist-high grasses, trees blooming with flowers and Spartan pines growing at odd angles from the kilometers-high canyon walls despite the steep declivity. Above all this, the great floating mountain, Olympus, reigns. I glimpse the quiet castles and see deer running in the vale of Mars. But I see no children along the great rivers, no boys and girls in armor. Only memories and muddied earth. The students have already been collected. How strange that must have been—fighting for their lives with medieval weapons, only to be scooped up by dropships as invaders came from space.
We meet with Jupiter and Ragnar on one of floating Olympus’s white spires. There are dead men in the halls, on the slopes.
“They used it as a base,” Jupiter says cheerily. “Your Stained disagreed with their presumptuousness. I like the beast!” Our men secure the section of the Valles Marineris set aside for the Institute, far east of Agea in the upper arm of the grand canyon. I watch out the window as hundreds of friendly dropships descend on the staging ground, depositing more than three hundred thousand men in thirty minutes. A Gold runs out of each lowered ramp, always the first onto enemy soil.
“No resistance,” I say quietly, my starShell helm popped. I look at Mustang uneasily.
She wipes blonde hair from her eyes. “The longer we’re dug in, the harder we are to dislodge. Why are they waiting?”
“Want to cluster us up like a bunch of grapes before stomping,” Sevro guesses. “Atomics?”
“Silly children.” Jupiter goes through the pockets of one of the dead men. “That’s why we have Grays. Let them be stomped. They will lubricate our passage.”
“No atomics,” Mustang says. “Sensors would have picked them up from a hundred clicks away.” She looks out over the land. “They’re waiting because they don’t have enough men to contest our passage through the valley. Or we’ve caught them flat-footed, which is doubtful. Or they deployed too many men to halt Lorn’s advance. Or they’ve created choke points in the valley. Or they marshal them around the Citadel. Or there’s a trap ahead.”
Her mind is a machine.
“There’s a trap,” she says after a moment. “But they are overrelying upon it to stall us while they reallocate men and matériel.” She snorts in contempt. “Static defenses without massive mobile support haven’t been relevant since the Maginot Line.”
“But they know we don’t want to waste the city or the populace,” I say.
“They know that.” Mustang adjusts her datapad, examining the map. “Which shrinks our flexibility in tactics.”
“Total war is easier,” Jupiter grumbles. “Let’s use the Grays to lubricate our passage, then drop bombs at the walls under the shields. Entry gained.”
“It takes a day to break a city, then fifty years to rebuild,” Mustang snaps. “You want to sign up to oversee the reconstruction?”
“Do I look like a builder?” Jupiter asks.
“The passage to Agea is eighty kilometers wide on average, seven-kilometer-high walls on either side, all farming and agriculture for the city. Bellona likely littered the place with mines. If they had time. We didn’t exactly tell them we were coming.” Did they have time?
Mustang motions me to the side.
I walk with her away from the rest of my command staff, who roll their eyes at one another. The airy palace halls should remind me of past victory, but all I feel is steep melancholy being here. So many memories. So many lost friends, I think when I see Grays landing near Minerva castle where Pax and I once dueled.
“It’s eighty kilometers to the walls from here,” she says. “We could make the dash as planned. Just because they didn’t contest our landing doesn’t mean there’s something nefarious afoot.” She sees the hesitation in my eyes. “We are here for my father just as much as we’re here for the Sovereign. We have to move with pace.”
“You’re afraid Lorn is going to kill him if he breaks through the southern city walls first,” I guess. “Aren’t you.”
“You know their history.”
“I do.”
“And do you trust Lorn not to finish an old grudge?”
“Lorn isn’t a murderer.”
“No. He hurts men who deserve it, like Tactus. My father deserves it as much as any man. So we must hurry. And you must tell the rest of them about the Sovereign.”
“Roque found out. Praetorians on the Warchild .”
We walk back and I address my small council.
“You know we come here for Augustus, but there’s a second reason we press on Agea. The Sovereign is here.”
“No shit?” Clown mutters.
Rotback scratches his head. “Goryhell.”
“In the Citadel?” Pebble asks, excitedly nudging anxious Weed with her knee.
“In all probability. We traced Aja here. Residual radiation from the bomb we hit Aja with on Europa. The other assaults are designed to draw manpower away from Agea so that we will have a chance to break through her walls and capture Octavia before her Ash Lord arrives with the full might of her armada.” And if the Sons have done their part as Ares promised, we should be able to get into the city without fighting through a hundred thousand armored men and women.
“Is Cassius in the city?” Sevro asks.
Mustang nods. “We think so.”
Sevro smiles.
“If you come upon Cassius, do not engage him,” I say. “Nor Karnus, nor Aja.”
“You’d have us run?” Clown asks, insulted.
“I’d have you live,” I say. “The prize is the Sovereign. Don’t be distracted by revenge, or pride. If we seize her, we are the new power in the Solar System, my friends.”
The Howlers share wolfish grins. Sevro squares his shoulders.
“So let’s stop picking our butts.”
“Couldn’t have said it better myself.”
Friendly ripWings roar overhead to clear out enemy forces along our path.
With all our powers marshaled, we move through the green canyon. No creeping column. We go fast. Speederbikes have more pace than starShells. Those Grays and the ones on spiders tear ahead after the ripWings and heavily armored dropships that will deposit men even closer to the wall. Flashes ahead indicate they’ve detonated mines or the mine killers have done their job. No way to tell. The canyon here is narrowing. Verdant canyon walls tower hugely in the distance to either side, colossal and unreal, like the terrain of a greater, larger race than man. I can’t see all my force in so vast a place, just the tip of the spear. We come after the fast-moving Grays, a skipping column of dreadful knights in starShells of black. The deluge of rain falls even harder. Behind us roll tanks and the infantry columns in their hover skiffs, lightly armored vehicles that can carry a hundred men in a flatbed. They’ll deposit them a kilometer from the walls. Lorn’s attack from the south will be much similar.
“Drones!” Sevro shouts through the com. A cloud of metal rises toward us from a small depot in the canyon wall to the east. The Howlers streak after the threat, their guns ripping holes in the air. Still, dronefire shreds a squad of flying Obsidians. They plummet to the ground, bodies unrecognizable. We skim over buildings now. Small towns. Resorts. Estates. Granaries. We find ourselves over a lake. See our shadows as lightning flashes above, silhouetting us.
I see the defensive wall now. It falls over the horizon like an iron curtain. Ninety kilometers across, at this stage of the canyon, and nearly two hundred meters high, it nips the lower edge of the shield. Lakes and rivers don’t find their terminus here, but instead run beneath the wall through a thick network of durosteel bars that are strong as a ship’s hull. It would take a hundred men ten hours to drill their way through those bars.
Most cities do not have walls so massive. They cost too much. Agea and Corinth are alone in the quality of their fortifications. We could have come through the tunnels that wend through the belly of Mars and connect every city with their mines, but I didn’t want to. There are tactics I must save. And there is an example I must set.
Assaults like this are not protracted things. I’ve seen the histories. They are wild and manic. Technology against static objects always wins, so long as the besieger’s resolve never runs dry. Once upon a time, castles were nearly impossible to take through direct assault on a capable garrison without the price of Pyrrhic victory. So field armies laid siege and starved defenders into submission. Now, no one has the patience.
Agea is a city of twenty million souls, but how many of those will give a lick who wins today? There is no difference between the rule of the Bellona and the rule of the Augustus. Coppers and Silvers will care. But the Reds, the Browns, the Pinks will just watch another master take the chains.
Now they’ll see ships fill the sky. Bombs rupture the air. And they will huddle in their public tenements and fear faceless marauders. Since the dawn of man, the taking of a city has been echoed by the screams of rape, theft, and drunken horror. Peerless Scarred do not partake in such savagery. It is not profitable nor in keeping with their tastes. But if one takes a city by force, it is the belief of the Golds that the city and all those therein are now property of the conqueror. If you are strong enough, you deserve the spoils. Some spare the spoils. Some give them to the wolves, feeding cities to their Obsidian and Gray armies as reward for blood spilled.
If I can protect this city of Agea, if I can show them that there is a better breed of man, then just maybe I’ll win Agea’s heart. Capture it. Protect it. Be loved by those in it as I’m loved by my army. But first I must crack her open.
All along the vast defensive wall, fire ripples over steel. Like tiny flowers fast blooming upon the ninety-kilometer-wide sheer gray wall. Two feint assaults are led to my left and my right. The ripWings there fire railguns, sliding sideways as they pump munitions at the wall. Return fire from the turrets on the walls causes my eardrums to shiver and hum. I want to clutch Mustang’s hand. A nod from her stills the terror in me. But only just.
Grays in combat armor rush forward like so many ants. Rocket teams deploy and soon send slithering death into the defenders. It is too much to absorb, like the space battle above, layers upon layers of activity and counteractivity. Except this has sound.
Mines rip holes in my force. Bellona kill squads slip out of the wall a hundred meters up, flying out in glory—banners waving, gold glistening. Their shields shimmer as they’re lanced by weapon fire. I see an eagle banner amid the Bellona, and ready to set myself against it, thinking it must be Cassius, but Mustang grabs my arm.
“The plan!” Mustang reminds me, pointing to the river. “We’ll all die against that wall. The plan.”
Hard to remember. Hard to remember all this chaos is a distraction. What matters is the river and the work done in the night by the Sons. If they did it. The river slithers under the wall. One hundred meters wide, and more deep, it already carries corpses toward the city.
I dive into the water. Feel the tension as the current slows, then speeds my path. Fish scatter before us. Odd not feeling the chill. The Howlers move like torpedoes beside me. Then Ragnar is with us along with his group of Obsidians. Jupiter too, all splashing down under water. Mustang is closest to me. I scan the river ahead through the murk we kicked up and find Ares’s gift.
There . A hundred meters deep, I see it. If there’s one thing Reds can do, it’s drill. And the Sons spent the night preparing to give us passage into the city. My men will think some elite lurcher squad was sent here before the armada. They will not question how the huge grates were cut, or how the sensors meant to detect damage to the grating were fooled.
“Once more unto the breach,” I murmur, as if Roque, Victra, or Tactus could hear me. I activate my gravBoots and move forward.
The passage is narrow as it curls beneath the wall near the bottom of the riverbed. We travel two abreast. So I take the best fighter with me, Ragnar, as we move first through the underwater passage. My com crackles with news of the battle above. We’re losing at the wall.
Ragnar and I clear the tunnel together. I half expected a Bellona ambush, but none comes. The Sons did their job well. We wait on the opposite side of the wall, still submerged, one hundred meters down at the bottom of the riverbed. The rest of my cadre join Ragnar and me—Mustang, Sevro, and the remaining Howlers. Fifty more Golds and three times that many Obsidians and Grays.
I speak into my com when we’ve all gathered at the bottom of the river. “You know your orders.”
Sevro bumps armored fists with me. Mustang does the same. Ragnar salutes with his fist balled and against his heart. Jupiter yawns into his com. Clown, Pebble, and Weed rile up the Howlers, stirring silt at the bottom of the river. The seconds tick by. My razor is looped about my arm. PulseFist in my left hand. Feel the thump of my heart and the chill of the pendant on my chest. Hear the crackle of chaos outside. My Helldiver hands ball. My eyes close. Sevro sends up a probe to see if the riverbank is safe.
I’m to find the Sovereign.
Ragnar is to open the gates.
Mustang is to lower the shield so Roque can send reinforcements and we can take the city in one fell swoop. I don’t want her to leave me, but I can trust no one else with the task.
Trust. I must trust that she will live, trust that her Obsidians will protect her, and that she will protect herself. There’s a weight pressing down on my heart, a fear that she will not come back. It feels like she’s already falling into darkness. If she dies, she’ll die believing a lie. I promise myself I’ll tell her if we survive this. She deserves that much.
Stay alive. Stay alive. All of you, stay alive .
Mustang departs, moving farther downriver, following it for kilometers till she reaches the park near the generators. I watch her go and flounder for something to hold on to, someone to pray to. My father is with me, and so is Eo. I feel them in the beating of my heart.
I close my eyes.
Sevro gathers the probe he sent above and tells me that we are clear, just a girl playing in the mud above us.
“Fight for each other,” I say over the com to those at my side in the riverbed. “Or me.” We activate our gravBoots and soar through the water, bursting through the surface of the river like inky monsters, our black starShells dripping as we fly up over the riverbank, muddy from rain that fell before the shields were raised to protect the city. Beneath us, a single unarmored Brown girl stands, ankle deep in the mud. I stare at her from behind my terrible black helm. She should be hiding with her family, not out in a besieged city. Something is wrong.
When she sees us, she snatches from a basket a small globe device. Lightning slashes the sky. Her best dress gathers mud on the hem, turning an even deeper brown.
“Shoot her!” Sevro snarls.
I knock his hand aside. A tree explodes instead. And as I look high above where, on the wall, far out of range of the probe Sevro sent up, and far beyond the limits of the EMP globe the girl carries, perch Bellona knights and their Obsidian retinue. Waiting.
The girl presses a button on the globe.
And that’s when we begin to die.