Dust Mice
As the Obsidians beginmaking their formations, two specters bound in and leap over the nearest magma river. They are shaped like humans but made of distorted air. GhostCloaks paired with skipboats, and moving fast.
One of the ghosts rushes for one of the main clusters of Obsidian and fires a blinking object onto an Obsidian forming the side of a testudo before bursting away. The second blur hurls an EMP bomb. It pulses, but only two of the suits go down. A hail of sniper fire slams into the testudo. The overlapping shields absorb the worst of it.
“Mice! Mice! Mice!”bellows an Obsidian.
“X testudo!Bastion! Bastion’s by prox! Thorns west!”
Then the first explosive detonates white. The second detonates a heartbeat later and both ghosts disappear in the resultant smoke. They were short, the ghosts. Short enough to be Reds. It’s not Dustwalkers at all.
“The Daughters,”Cassius shouts from atop me.
“No shit!”
A terrible sound rumbles over the plains as a missile strikes one of the Obsidian ships. It crashes fifty paces to my left, crushing a brave. Its missile stores detonate. The shockwaves send Cassius spinning off me. The explosions flash-melt a pack of sulfur ice. I rise to my knees. Yellow fog cloaks the battlefield.
Nearly blind, I find Cassius sprawled on the ground nearby. I helphim up. Thermal is useless with all the magma on the periphery of the battle. The fog of war becomes literal, the fighters, indistinct golems and spirits—bizarre, atavistic silhouettes appearing and disappearing at random. A hulking mass rushes for me, and then mysteriously sheds his right leg from the left knee down. Cassius swears in shock as a four-legged shadow scrambles atop the Obsidian, savages him with huge, flashing claws, and then heads our way with a weird, loping gait. Cassius raises his razor.
“Kuon hound,”he warns. I shove him to the side as the beast scampers past on all fours, knives glimmering in either hand and disappears again into the yellow murk.“What the fuck?”
“Sevro,” I reply with a grin. Athena had assets on the moon after all. “Let him hunt.”
“Where’d he come from?Where’s theArchi?”
“Dunno. We need to end this fast. Find Skarde and put him down. Stick with me.”
Together we hunt through the fog. Ghosts flicker. Obsidians leap like gods. One soars into flight and then disappears in a flash that refracts in the fog—already freezing back into crystalline form—to make tears of white fire as his ruins rain down.
“Skarde, five o’clock,” I tell Cassius. A huge, horn-crowned mass runs at top speed after an escaping ghost. Skarde lands and his spear penetrates the ghost to pin it to the ground. He tears at the ghost, rips off its helmet, and the ghostCloak guise ripples away to show a screaming Red woman impaled on his spear. Skarde hurls her into the magma flow and then swings a heavy fist at nothing. His punch summons a spray of blood and then a corpse from the ether. Sulfur crystals spew back as the ghost’s skipBoots fire against the ground, trying to escape even though their wearer is already dead.
There is no escape for our would-be-rescuers.
That’s the problem with getting the undivided attention of Obsidian air cav. They can take a punch, and once their teeth are in—whether on the ground or in the sky—they don’t let go. They chew until you wish you never had the idea to test them at all.
For the first minute the Daughters had the upper hand. After that the tide started to turn, and turn bad. But I see our opportunity as Skarde pulls his spear from another corpse and tosses the corpse into the magmariver. He’s alone. Three braves are rushing to bring him back into their formation. I claim Skarde, and give Cassius the braves. I goose my boots and shoot toward Skarde like a ballista bolt. Skarde’s battle sense is uncanny. Somehow he sees me coming. Backlit by the pulsing red river, he fires at me as I fly at him. Energy crackles across my shield, but the shield holds.
I invert, flying with my back to the ground just under his spear thrust to hack into the back of his thigh. My razor shears through the metal and finds flesh. I hard stop and pivot from flying back to standing on my feet. G’s pound me, but I’m behind Skarde. With all my strength, I drive my razor into the power unit that lies beneath the armor of his lower back and twist. Sparks spew. The armor dies with a shriek and Skarde seizes as if petrified by Medusa herself.
I kick him but he doesn’t go to his knees. Then Sevro appears from nowhere and tackles his legs out. Skarde falls. Sevro wrests the spear from his hand and runs off into the fray. I grab both of the ram horns on Skarde’s helmet. Powered by the strength of my armor, I haul the giant into the air to dangle him over the magma river. With Cassius coming to guard my back, I max out the volume on my external speakers, linking it with Sevro’s armor and Cassius’s. Even I am shocked by the magnitude of sound produced by our triumvirate.
A voice made of thunder rumbles over the battlefield.
“THIS IS REAPER. I HAVE YOUR JARL. I HAVE SKARDE. YIELD.”
No one listens, not even with Skarde dangling beneath me. The battle is a mess, spread out over a kilometer now. It does not end just because I want it to. Obsidians peer out at me from their testudos, or down from the sky. Ghosts skip in a dozen directions. Bodies lay rent and broken. Pieces too. A leg. A head. A torso. The killing does not stop. It cannot. No one can afford not to fire. I am reminded again why I hate war. I shout and shout but even the voice of a god sponsored by Sun Industries is powerless to stop the killing.
It’s a smaller voice that brings hope to end the violence—a smaller voice, and a ship that evens the odds. Lyria’s words crackle through static. I look to the sky.“There’s my girl!”Cassius shouts.I don’t know if he means Lyria or his ship.
TheArchimedesraces in with its guns blazing. Lyria’s flying is sloppy,but theArchimedesis more powerful than the assault shuttles. Whoever is on the guns is deadly accurate. One of the enemy shuttles dies in a ball of fire. It has a sobering effect on the Obsidians, and they finally start noticing that I have their war chief by his horns over the river. I call for Lyria to hold fire when I see Sigurd leading his father’s men in a withdrawal to the other side of the river under the protection of their remaining ships. TheArchimedeslowers to protect the Daughters, who form up on Sevro. He flies toward me still holding Skarde’s spear. Cassius flies the other way to help the civilians. They actually nod at one another.
Sevro pokes Skarde’s armored belly with it as he comes to a midair stop.
“Move. You’re blocking the way,” I snarl. “He’s heavy.” I drop Skarde on our side of the river. Sevro lands on top of the man’s depowered armor to be eye to eye with me. “Took your time,” I say to him.
He grunts.“I was on mission.Archigot tangled with two Volk ships near Sungrave while picking us up. Daughters came to help, but their ship went down. Big mess. All thanks to Bellona.”
“They don’t have a ship?”
