“Is that who I think it is?” I ask.
Aurae takes a moment before nodding. “Only if you think it’s Diomedes au Raa.” Sevro looks up at her and casually puts the fusion cutterto Diomedes’s muscled neck. I swat it away, but Sevro was watching for Aurae’s reaction.
“What are you doing?” I ask him.
“He attacked Phobos,” Sevro says, still looking at Aurae.
“I thought you didn’t read the data packets.”
“Only the relevant ones,” he replies. “But I got all the data I need.” He tosses the fusion cutter to the side. “Information. Leverage. Hostage exchange. Use your head, Darrow. Why would I cut his throat? Aurae, aren’t you going to give your old master oxygen?”
Aurae puts the mask to Diomedes’s mouth. Sevro raises his eyebrows at me.
—
“Here’s what. We start skinning the Raa’s toes first,” Sevro says a few hours later. Diomedes has gained consciousness, and he’s not talking yet. Sevro has one of his knives out and leans back in one of the lounge’s sofas, his voice soft as if telling a children’s story. “You always start with the digits. I have made a paring knife that will do just fine. There’s lots of nerves in the toes. The most sensitive are under the cuticles. After we flay his toesies, we’ll salt them. Then we’ll bash them, right? One by one. Then I’ll use Tickler here and we’ll work our way up.”
He seems to relish the looks of horror on the faces of Cassius, Lyria, and Aurae, but I know he’s just winding them up, especially Aurae, to test how loyal to her former master she still might be. “Bellona, you have any acid on board?”
Cassius looks mortally offended. “I beg your pardon?”
“Acid. Hydrocloric or ipsoric are best. Naturally I prefer newt venom, but I didn’t see any aquariums on board. Unless you’re hiding them. Are you?” he asks Cassius, but watches Aurae.
“No.”
“Pity. Hear Raa are tough. Might take ipsoric.”
The excitement on theArchimedesafter discovering the identity of our new prisoner is palpable. Unfortunately, he’s as silent as granite and just as unyielding. I questioned Diomedes about Kalyke. He stared back at me, unspeaking, unblinking except when I mentioned the toxin still in his bloodstream. An unknown compound that seems to be responsible for the fits of cramping that occasionally wrack the man. I’d think it a poison from an Ascomanni weapon, but the tiny hairlike thornsAurae extracted from his fingers and face would suggest otherwise. Sevro was part right in his earlier diagnosis. Diomedes was paralyzed before he somehow got on the pod, then he must have recovered to turn on his beacon and armor up. After that, he must have gone into some sort of meditative trance to reduce his oxygen intake, because he should be dead.
What in the bloodydamn worlds went on around Kalyke?
“There will be no skinning, bashing, or salting on my ship,” Cassius says. He glances at Aurae for support. Since Kalyke she’s drawn inward. Doubly so since Diomedes was brought aboard. I’m hardly the only one who has noticed.
“All the same, I’d prefer to have answers for Kalyke before we get to Io,” I say.
“I can get you answers,” Sevro says.
“Oh. Now you want them. Wouldn’t risk debris but will carve up an honorable man,” Cassius says.
“Honorable?” Sevro smirks. “You really did miss the war, boyo.”
Cassius squares his shoulders. “I will not allow torture on my ship, Sevro. Especially not torture of that man. He is the only reason I am alive. I owe him a debt.”
“You fancy yourself a part of the Republic now. Hm? Don’t you?” He points to me with a knife. “ArchImperator.” He points to himself. “Imperator.” He points to Cassius. “Pilot.”
“He’ll be conditioned against torture,” Aurae says. “To break him would take time and instruments we don’t have.”
“You’d know,” Sevro says. “He’s your master after all. Sorry.Wasyour master. Strange no, that he’s the only survivor, and you just happened to find his signal out there?”
“It was a guess,” she says. “The signal was not on the traditional spectrum. It was a family signal he used with his siblings.”
“No torture, Sevro,” I say. “If Fá did that to their war fleet, when we get to Io, I think Diomedes may be in a mood to tell us of his own accord. And we have Aurae. She’ll get the information we need. Won’t she?” I say.
Aurae nods.
—
With Fá’s fleet still at large, Ilium feels haunted as we glide deeper into the system. Once-inhabited moons lie bombed out and quiet. Thecapabilities of our passive sensors are severely limited. They can only receive input from the physical environment around theArchimedes. Vibrations of light, radiation, heat. The mass of Jupiter, its moons, and the radiation cascading off the planet make a grand, murky sea for hostiles to hide within.
