“Why?” he asks in the voice he gets when he puts on his blademaster cap, solemn.
“In the mines there’s always a wind flowing. No sky, no sun, no seas, no rivers, no grass. It’s the only thing that keeps you sane down there. It felt like it belonged to that part of me I’d forgotten. It felt holy.”
He considers and gives a nod of approval. “I like it.”
I’m actually relieved at his approval. “When we get back, I’ll take you down if you like. You can feel it for yourself.”
“I’d like that too. Nothing like a bit of spelunking—” He jolts up in his seat. “What is that?”
“What?”
Cassius shuts down theArchimedes’s engines and kills everything but emergency power. The last thing I see on the sensor screen is a ghost flickering out. A big ghost. Diomedes bursts in like he’s invading New Sparta.
“Problem?” he asks.
Cassius points out the viewport. “Nine o’clock, eighty degrees south of our horizon. Against the orange band.”
I lean forward and a cold hand squeezes my heart. “They didn’t turn around.”
“I don’t see anything,” Diomedes says. Then his breath stops as he spots the flicker of a scout torchShip. “They’re hiding their burn in the magnetosphere too. By Akari…that’s close.”
Cassius’s voice is a whisper. “No. That’s a minnow.” Cassius summons the camera feeds from theArchi’s belly. We all stare in dread. “My goodmen, we are swimming with leviathans.”
Core warships move directly beneath us. Tough hulls. Immense firepower. Passing close enough below for us to see the hammers, crescents, and eagles on their topsides. A powerful strike force moving fast around Jupiter, bound for Io. Then, amidst all that sleek, killing mass, a monster.
The emotions awoken by seeing eight kilometers of warship depends entirely on its paint job. With the white stars of the Republic replaced by black Lune crescents and golden pyramids, my old ship moves through the storms below like doom itself.
“That’s theMorning Star,” I murmur.
Cassius seems less surprised than he’d hoped he’d be. “Was,” he reminds me. “It has a new name now.”
79
LYSANDER
Teeth of Civilization
“We have caught the reptilesflat-footed,”Cicero says to our New Shepherds as we’re fired out of the tubes.“Maintain discipline. Maintain your hydras. We kill them all.”
Ascomanni warships garland the orbit of Io with fireballs as I emerge from the spitTube in armor burnished to a golden sheen.
Intending to use my Rain as the centerpiece of my propaganda campaign for years to come, I’ve staged it for maximum visual and allegorical effect.
My Gold knights form a spear, with me at the tip and Cicero on my right flank. Behind us two hundred and fifty-three New Shepherds, their ranks swollen with new volunteers. Waves of Praetorians and two House Lune legions follow my Gold vanguard. To the east, Votum and the Reformers. To the west, the Bellona clients.
In our wake, the Ascomanni fleet burns. They thought they were the lone power left in Ilium. They never stood a chance. All goes according to Atlas’s plan except one thing.
The Volk are where they should be, on conquered Europa. But there were far more Ascomanni ships in orbit over Io than Atlas said there would be. Not that it matters. In fact, it’s preferred. Rhone described my feelings best as the infantry loaded up.
“The roaches are all in one bucket, and the lads are in the mood to stomp!”
This first fight will be sloppier, the men and women of our fleet filledwith rage. Better to vent it now before the serious business with the vaunted Volk infantry and their nasty dreadnaughts.
Shorn of the Allfather’s blessing, the Volk, and the element of surprise that allowed the savages to taste victory at Kalyke and Sungrave, the Ascomanni are introduced to the Core school of warfare, and unmitigated slaughter.
Their response to my fleet whipping toward them around the curve of Jupiter was ridden with doctrinal flaws and hamstrung by their lack of a unified command structure. It only shows the depth of Atlas’s genius and Fá’s skill to have made them part of a force that could maul Ilium’s best.
At the sight of the onrushingLightbringer,the largest ship any of them will have ever seen, their fleet broke before a shot was even fired. Some fled toward space, as if we would leave paths of retreat, some stood to fight, some even rushed toward us to close in and board our ships.
