“Barely got here in time,” Flavinius says. “Ascomanni are landing all over the ship. The bill is paid?”
“For the Sword Armada and more besides,” Atlas says.
“Where’s the Raa?” Markus asks.
One of the Gorgons hurls the tox leech at him. “Don’t squabble, lads. There’s always a kink,” Atlas says. He nods to the shuttle and I’m pushed along. “So few of you, Flavinius?”
“Helios only allowed the Blood to bring ten Praetorians,” Rhone answers.
Atlas looks back at me and grins.
“You have excellent taste in troops, young Lune.” With that, he swoops up the cargo ramp and Markus cracks a black egg over my head.
46
DARROW
The Sun Is Down
Sevro’s eerie laughter echoesdown the halls of theArchimedes.No one else is laughing.
When we arrived in Ilium after our month-and-a-half-long sail across the Gulf, I expected to see a running battle between the Rim Armada and Fá’s outmatched fleet. One in which we were to exploit the chaos and slip through unnoticed.
Instead, as we decelerate, we find a massacre. An inexplicable massacre.
The Dragon and Dust armadas, the dark flower of Raa naval might, have been destroyed. Their remains float in orbit around the moon of Kalyke, a shroud of detritus and broken Dominion dreams. Sevro’s laughter grates on Cassius and Aurae the worst. Lyria is just stunned by the sight of the battlefield. Few have seen anything like it. Even me.
“That’s theDustmaker,” I murmur. The warship floats in the center of the debris field. It is as dim and cratered as an asteroid.
“Was,” Sevro corrects and wipes his eyes with his sleeve. “Bellona, you have any champagne on this heap?”
I might join Sevro in celebrating the misfortune of the Rim if it were not so complete and so improbable. I cannot even begin to guess how Helios and Dido could have been so thoroughly annihilated. Is Fá’s fleet larger than Quick’s telescope led me to believe? Or was his ambush—and it had to have been an ambush—just that thorough? Just that unexpected? My skin crawls with questions.
Whoisthis Fá? No Obsidian I taught over ten years of war wasstrategically and logistically sophisticated enough to have managed this against Helios and his battle-tested Praetors of Io, Callisto, and Ganymede. Praetors who would have given me migraines.
“How did this happen?” Cassius asks Aurae. She has no idea. How would she?
Cassius may be empathetic for the Rim, but I know he’s just happy Lysander wasn’t here. With theLightbringerstill crossing the Gulf a few weeks behind us, he missed the ambush, and with Rim’s ability to help him in his war now broken, he’ll go back to the Core and the conflict Cassius dreads will be pushed to another day.
Cassius and Lyria hunch in the two pilot seats staring out at the debris field. I stand behind them. Aurae sits just behind the cockpit at the sensor and coms station as Sevro paces the hall, enjoying the dark thrill of the enemy’s catastrophe. “Are you getting any active signals from Kalyke’s cities?” I ask Aurae.
“No,” she says. “Radioscopes suggest this is ten days old.” That matches the energy flares we detected while we were crossing the Gulf. Kalyke was in far orbit then. Hidden by the Gas Giant.
“Does that mean Athena’s agents on the Moon are gone?” Lyria wonders aloud, but her voice trails away. Even she knows they are dead. Everyone here is dead. Finally, Sevro stops laughing. He stares up from the hall at the back of Lyria’s head like this is her fault.
The cozy smell of coffee is all that remains of the optimism with which the rest of us started the day. It was to be the last leg of our journey across the Gulf and signal our entry into Ilian space, where we were to meet with Athena’s contacts at Kalyke City. With the city a crater, the contacts are dead or fled. With them has disappeared our link to Athena.
My hair falls over my eyes as I hunch in thought. “Can you take us in, Cassius? We need a better look at the wreckage,” I say. “Especially theDustmaker.”
“Why?” Sevro asks. “She in there? We’re here to find Athena. Not waste time looking a gift horse in the mouth.”
“We can do both,” I say. “It’s hardly off mission to seek context. We need to know what we’re sailing into.”
“Darrow, you heard what Quick said about the hull,” Cassius says. “If we go into that debris field, we will take damage. Can’t turn on the shields. That Obsidian fleet that did this is still out there. They’ll see the shield energy signature.”
“You’re right. Skirt the perimeter then. No chances.”
Cassius glides theArchimedesaround the perimeter of the debris field, staying clear of the denser patches. Still, every minute or so metal pings off the hull. I peer into the ship graveyard, wincing with every hit. After a decade of war, horror is as common to me as flies in a stable. Yet amidst the debris, I encounter a sight so inhumane that it puts lead in my guts.
