I pace my bridge like a caged wolf, his meal just beyond the bars. The kindness of me hidden again behind the Reaper’s savage face. “Virga, are the Howlers in position?” I ask. Behind and below me, the skeleton crew of Blues chatter in their sterile pit. Faces illuminated by holoscreens. Subdermal implants pulsing as they sync with the ship. The captain, Pelus, a waifish gentleman who was a former lieutenant aboard the Pax when I first took the ship, awaits my orders.
“Yes, sir,” Virga says from her station. “Forward elements of the enemy fleet will be within long-range guns in four minutes.”
The arrogant might of Gold unfolds across the black of space. An unending sea of pale white splinters. I’d give anything to be able to reach out and shatter them. My own capital ships cluster in three groups around our powerful dreadnoughts above the north pole of Io. Mustang and Romulus marshal their forces around the south. And together, eight thousand kilometers apart, we watch Roque’s fleet cross the void between Europa and Io to bring us battle.
“Enemy cruisers at ten thousand kilometers,” a Blue intones.
There is no preamble for my fleet. No benediction or rite that we perform before battle like the Golds. For all our right, we seem so pale and simple compared with them. But there’s a kinship here on my ship. One I saw in the engine rooms, in the gunnery stations, on the bridge. A dream that links us together and makes us brave.
“Give me Orion,” I say without turning.
A holo of the overweight, ornery Blue ripples into life in front of me. She’s half a hundred kilometers away in the heart of Persephone’s Howl, one of my other four dreadnoughts, sitting in a command chair synced with every ship captain in my fleet save those of my strike force. Much of today relies upon her and the pirate fleet she’s assembled in the months since last we saw one another. She’s been raiding Core shipping lines. Drawing Blues to her cause. Enough to help the Sons staff the ships we stole from the Jackal with loyal men and women.
“Big fleet,” Orion says of our enemy, impressed. “I knew I never should have answered your call. I was rather enjoying being a pirate.”
“I can tell,” I say. “Your stateroom’s gaudy enough to a make a Silver blush.” The Pax has been her home for the last year and a half. She took over my old quarters and filled it right up with the booty of her raids. Rugs from Venus. Paintings from private Gold collections. I found a Titian jammed behind a bookcase.
“What can I say? I like pretty things.”
“Well, pull this off today, and I’ll find you a parrot for your shoulder. How about that?”
“Ah! Pelus told you I was looking for one. Good man, Pelus.” The waifish captain tilts his head genteelly behind me. “Damn hard to find parrots when you can’t dock planetside anywhere. We found a hawk, a dove, an owl. But no parrot. If you make it a red one I’ll personally shoot a hole in Antonia au Severus-Julii’s bridge.”
“Red parrot it is,” I say.
“Good. Good. I suppose now I should go be about the battle.” She laughs to herself and takes a tea from a valet on her bridge. “Just want to say, thank you, Darrow. For believing in me. For giving me this. After today, Blue will have no master. Goodspeed, boy.”
“Goodspeed, Admiral.”
She vanishes. I glance back at the central sensor projection. The tactical readout floats before the windows as a to-scale globe of the Jupiter system. Four tiny inner moons orbit Jupiter more closely than the four huge Galilean Moons. My eyes focus on Thebe, the outermost of them and closest to Io. It’s a small mass. Barely larger than Phobos. Long since mined for valuable minerals, and now the home of a military base that was blasted apart in the early days of the war.
“Sixty ticks till Howler coms go black,” Virga intones from her station as Victra enters the bridge, wearing thick golden armor painted with a Red slingBlade on the chest and back.
“The hell are you doing here?” I ask.
“You’re here,” she replies innocently.
“You’re supposed to be on the Shout of Mykos. ”
“This isn’t the Mykos ?” She bites her lip. “Well, I suppose I got lost. I’ll just follow you around so that doesn’t happen again. Prime?”
“Sevro sent you. Didn’t he?”
“His heart’s a black little thing. But it can break. I’m here to make sure it doesn’t by keeping you nice and cozy. Oh, and I want to say hello to Roque.”
“What about your sister?” I ask.
“Roque first. Then her.” She elbows me. “I can be a team player too.”
Grinning, I turn back to the pit. “Virga, give me a helmet patch to the Howlers.”
“Aye, sir.”
The com in my ear crackles. I activate my armor’s helmet. The transparent heads up display shows me the tags on my crew, ranks, names, everything that’s logged into the central ship register. I activate the com holo function and a semi-translucent collage of my friends’ faces appear over the sight of my ship’s bridge. “ ’Sup boss?” Sevro asks, his face is painted Red with warpaint but bathed in blue light from his mech’s HUD display. “Need a goodbye kiss or something?”
“Just checking to make sure you’re all tucked in.”
“Your kin could’ve carved us a bigger nook,” Sevro mutters. “It’s foot to face to fartbox in here.”
“So you’re saying Tactus would’ve liked it?” Victra asks. She’s patched into the panel so I hear her voice in link.
I laugh. “What didn’t he like?”
“Clothing, predominantly,” Mustang replies from her own bridge. She wears her battle armor as well. Pure Gold with a red lion roaring on her chest.
“And sobriety,” Victra adds.
“This moon smells like royal shit,” Clown mumbles from his own starShell mech. “Worse than a dead horse.”
“You’re in a mech in vacuum,” Holiday drawls. I hear the clang and shouts of the people behind her in the hangar bay of my ship. She wears a huge blue handprint on her face. Given to her by one of her Obsidians. “It’s likely not the moon.”
“Oh. Then it must be me,” Clown says. He sniffs. “Oh, ho. It’s me.”
“I told you to shower,” Pebble mutters.
“Howler Rule 17. Only Pixies shower before battle,” Sevro says. “I like my soldiers savage, stinky, and sexy. I’m proud of you, Clown.”
“Thank you, sir.”
“Threka! Put your safety on,” Holiday shouts. “Now! Sorry. Bloodydamn Obsidians walking around with their fingers on the bloodydamn triggers . Shit is terrifying.”
“Why do we laugh and speak like children?” Sefi booms over the com, so loud my eardrums rattle.
“Bloodyshit in a handbasket,” Sevro yelps. There’s a chorus of curses at Sefi’s volume.
“Turn down your output volume!” Clown snaps at the queen.
“I do not understand….”
“Your output…”
“What is output…?”
“ ‘The Quiet’ is a bit of a misnomer, eh?” Victra asks. Mustang snorts a laugh.
“Sefi, bend down,” Holiday barks. “I can’t reach. Bend down.” Holiday’s found Sefi in the hangar and helps her turn down her output volume. The Obsidian queen sleeps with her new pulseFist every night, but she’s a bit behind on her understanding of telecommunication equipment.
“So, like the big girl asked, was there a reason for this little tête-à-tête?” Holiday says.
“Tradition, Holi,” Sevro says, mimicking her twang. “Reap’s a sentimental sap. He’s probably going to give a speech.”
“No speech,” I say.
My odd little family whines and catcalls. “You’re not going to admonish us to rage, rage against the dying of the light?” Sevro asks. But the joke feels strange, knowing it is what Roque would have said. My chest tightens again. I feel so much love for this band of misfits and oathbreakers. So much fear. I wish that I could protect them from this. Find some way to spare them the coming hell.
“Whatever happens, remember we’re the lucky ones,” I say. “We get to make a difference today. But you’re my family. So be brave. Protect each other. And come home.”
“You too boss,” Sevro says.
“Break the chains,” Mustang says.
“Break the chains,” my friends echo.
Sevro’s face becomes a snarl as he booms out: “Howlers go…”
“Ahhhwwwooooo.” They howl like fools, cracking up. One by one, their images flicker away, and I’m left in the solitude of my helmet. I breathe and say a silent prayer to whoever is listening. Keep them safe.
I let the helmet slither back into the neck of my armor. My Blues watch me from their displays. A small coterie of Red and Gray marines stand by the door, waiting to escort me to the hangar. The strings of so many lives from so many worlds all intersecting here, at this moment around mine. How many will fray? How many will end this day? Victra smiles at me, and it seems I’m too lucky already for this day to end in joy. She should not be here. She should be across the void at the helm of an enemy battle cruiser. Yet she’s here with us, seeking the redemption she thought she could never have.
“Once more unto the breach,” she says.
“Once more,” I reply. I address the crew. “How do you all feel?”
Awkward silence. They exchange nervous glances. Unsure of how to answer. Then a young Blue woman with a bald head bursts up from her console. “We’re ready to kill some bloodydamn Golds…sir.”
They laugh, tension broken.
“Anyone else?” Victra booms. They roar in reply. Marines as young as eighteen and as old as Lorn would be now slam their steel-heeled boots against the ground.
“Patch me through to the fleet,” I command. “Broadcast on an open frequency to Quicksilver. Make sure the Golds can hear me so they know where to find me.” Virga gives me a nod. I’m live.
“My friends, this is the Reaper.” My voice echoes over the master com in all one hundred and twelve capital ships in my fleet, in the thousands of ripWings, in the leechCraft and the engine rooms and the medbays where doctors and newly appointed nurses walk through empty beds with crisp white sheets, waiting for the flood. Thirty-eight minutes from now Quicksilver and the Sons of Ares on Mars will hear it, and they’ll boost the signal to the core. Whether we’re alive at that time will depend on my dance with Roque.
“In mine, in space, in city and sky, we have lived our lives in fear. Fear of death. Fear of pain. Today, fear only that we fail. We cannot. We stand upon the edge of darkness holding the lone torch left to man. That torch will not go out. Not while I draw breath. Not while your hearts beat in your chests. Not while our ships yet have menace in them. Let others dream. Let others sing. We chosen few are the fire of our people.” I beat my chest. “We are not Red, not Blue or Gold or Gray or Obsidian. We are humanity. We are the tide. And today we reclaim the lives that have been stolen from us. We build the future we were promised.
“Guard your hearts. Guard your friends. Follow me through this evil night, and I promise you morning waits on the other side. Until then, break the chains!” I pull my razor from my arm and let it take the shape of my slingBlade. “All ships, prepare for battle.”