I wince at that.
“He spared my life, Darrow,”Cassius says.“He doesn’t like me. He did it because I fought with honor.”
“Yeah. But I’m not you,” I say. “I’m certainly a main war objective. And you always forget. Golds have different rules for Golds than they do for Reds.”
“Darrow, look around. The Rim is out of the war against Mars,”Cassius says. “This is worse than anything you ever did. If we show him that…Well, we could do worse than having a helpful Raa out here.”
Cassius really is trying to be a moral knight. If only the world cared. Yet I am tempted. Torture did not work on the man, so perhaps this is the path to understanding Kalyke, and maybe more. Aurae says,“I’ve known Diomedes for thirteen years. You knew his father Romulus, yes?”Her expressionless helmet looks back at me, but her face shows on my HUD, captured by the cameras in her helmet.
“I know his uncle far better,” I say.
“Diomedes could be like his uncle, his father always said. But Diomedes wants to be his father. His mother, Dido, led the Dragon Armada. She is likely dead. His kin were in Sungrave…to break his honor, his parole, would be the ultimate dishonor to the dead. And he loved them more than anything.”
Apparently bored of eavesdropping, Sevro jumps from a ledge above and lands on the bike just in front of Diomedes. He squats there for a moment then jumps back to us and lands in a flurry of sulfur.“Said he gives his parole to me. Let’s stop wasting time.”
“You sure?” I ask.
“He’s in an EVO suit. I’m in this. He slags around, he’s chowder.”
I nod to Cassius to get Diomedes off the bike. Aurae begins to show me on the map where the access to the family tunnels lies. I stop her mid-sentence. She hasn’t yet seen Sungrave itself. “We won’t have to use the family tunnels,” I say. “The front door is wide open.”
—
Sungrave was once a city that demanded awe. Centuries ago, Akari au Raa carved dragons into the mountain range that hosts the top levels of the city. He did it with orbital lasers before his Reds started to burrow into the moon itself. The city rose from the frozen desert as proof of the ingenuity, grandeur, and determination of House Raa, and it stretched beneath the desert, deeper and deeper, as testament to the centuries of prosperity overseen by Akari’s ancestors. Like an iceberg, most of it lies unseen beneath the surface. Even now, fallen, dark, its dragon statues broken and radiation slithering from their shattered bodies like blood, I feel puny in its shadow, and even lesser in the shadow of Fá’s accomplishment.
Many believed Sungrave impregnable. I know I did.
Set within and beneath a mountain, the citadel of the Raa was powered by the tidal heating of the moon itself and linked through tunnels to subterranean greenhouses. Even with a half-strength garrison, it could maintain its shields against orbital bombardment and feed its people for years, while its natural features and tiered defensive fortifications made it all but impervious to ground assault. Supposedly.
It would take days to scout all the entrances into the mountain city, but we haven’t the time. Besides, nothing except our party moves on the south-facing slope. Not at the main breach, nor amongst the collapsed towers or twisted gun batteries, nor even down below where the sulfur waste meets the great and undamaged ground gates into the mountain.
Entering the city via the breach—a smooth tunnel forty meters wide littered with broken war machines and frozen defenders—is like descending into a necropolis. They died in many places, the defenders of Sungrave. In the hallways, in great grottos once rich with vegetation. In fall-back bunkers defending civilians, and in tramways and broad avenues beneath vast domed ceilings glowing with radiant fauna and waterfalls flowing from underground rivers.
First it was the urban phalanxes who died in their gray and bluearmor and then it was auxiliaries in gray and blue livery and then the citizenry in the simple cotton or wool vestments of the hierarchy. Sometimes the bodies are heaped in public agoras. Sometimes they are pinned to the walls above empty bottles of spirits. Mostly they lay where they died, which was either in flight or cowering in redoubts or trying to stand firm against the tide.
The pulseFields that provide the atmosphere to the city are mostly intact the deeper we press into the city. We doff our helmets. The air is breathable, cold and thick with the noxious, sweet smell of death. With Sevro scouting ahead, we reach the Spine without encountering a single living being. Usually there would be scavengers.
Wide enough for a hundred men to walk abreast, the Spine is a grand stone stairway that links the levels of the subterranean city together. A black stone arch carved with scenes from the Raa family’s history has been decorated with a new and odious embellishment: the decaying head of a giant dragon. I smell its stench even from the floor.
Sevro floats up to inspect the head. It’s big enough to fit four men Sevro’s size in its mouth. “Abraxes,” Aurae murmurs and looks back at Diomedes. We have not taken his helmet off or unbound him, so his expression is hidden. “The sigil-beast of the Raa herd. It was his grandfather’s dragon.”
“Wonder where the body is,” Sevro says when he returns from his inspection.
“The Garter?” I suggest.
He grunts. “Think they ate it?”
“It would make sense, wouldn’t it?” I say.
“Wait, why would they eat it?” Cassius asks.
“Old religious rite. Their way of absorbing the power of a defeated foe. Would happen in tribal wars on Mars’s poles back in the day. Fá ate Sefi’s heart, according to the briefings. Seems he’s reigniting the practice.”
We move on. The defenders made a last stand only a few levels down the Spine—Gray, Green, Orange, Red, Brown. Their corpses lie together, equal in death if not in life. I feel exposed seeing the bodies twisted together. So many of the problems I’ve caused are because I’ve valued some lives over others. The Core over the Rim. The people of Mars over the people of Mercury. Seeing what Fá has done to Io, seeing the dead of a city I planned to “liberate” one day fills me with guilt anddread in equal measure. But there is something else there: an urge to right these wrongs.
I know that’s folly. I no longer have my army, and the Volk have abandoned the dream of Eo and Ragnar, and I know much of that is my fault.
It is vain to think I can do anything out here, but my eyes wander to Diomedes and I wonder what he’s thinking behind that helmet.
