They were the first to learn the awesome power of my flagship.
Pytha smashed them at ranges of fifty thousand kilometers. Exactly the treatment their Allfather went to such lengths to spare them from at Kalyke. They are deadly, yes, but not when they’re the ones taken by surprise. Racing closer, my Praetors and captains vivisected their fleet with calm, professional contempt. Even the enemy’s cynical strategy of hiding their charge behind cosmosHaulers filled with civilians was nothing more than a bleak demonstration to all of Ascomanni cruelty and ignorance. RipWing pilots and dashing Bellona and Votum corvettes made mincemeat of them without even scratching their human shields. My boarding ships leapt after cosmosHaulers like flying spiders to pump in Praetorians and Gold melee brawlers trained in hostage rescue.
With the fleet in Pallas’s steady hands, my concerns lie on the surface. The emerald Garter awaits to be liberated like a maiden from a dragon.
The Rain is clockwork in its precision, and it reflects the vast doctrinal gulf that separates savages from civilization. Even on the ground, the Ascomanni are caught with their hand in the cookie jar. They thought their Allfather gave them the Garter to be the heart of their new kingdom. Now they stare up at the sky and see it raining golden death.
Lonely strands of gunfire lick up toward us by the time I can makeout the individual shapes of the Ascomanni flowing onto the battlements of Plutus. They will be discovering that many of the air batteries have been sabotaged and the blessing the Allfather bestowed upon them by tearing down the kinetic shields over Plutus has now become a curse.
Nothing protects them from my Rain, not even their prayers.
I am the first to pierce the atmospheric pulseDome over the city. Cicero is second. A flight of Ascomanni on gravBoots serve as an example to the garrison Fá left behind. More than two hundred surge up toward us from the Arbor of Akari. Cicero and I bank in opposite directions. Behind us, my spear parts. Into the gap descends a column of light from theLightbringerto gore the center of the Ascomanni formation.
Cicero and I come back together to fall upon the dazed survivors. I kill my first with my razor out before me like a lance. I take a second with a backswing that cleaves his bestial helmet in half, and my third in his spine just above the shoulders. Cicero kills twice as many with half the effort. He did not joke as we loaded up. Righteous wrath becomes my friend, the courtier. The rest are slaughtered by the New Shepherds.
Cicero and I pair up again, and surge downward to land hard on an anti-ship gun firing at Rhone’s assault shuttle. Cicero shoots open the door with his pulseFist. I follow into the firing control chamber to see a collared Green sitting in the firing chair. His torso is perforated with a shard of shrapnel. He’ll be dead in a minute. A pity. I kill the two Ascomanni monitoring him and exit to a nod from Cicero. We peer over the city. My Shepherds fall on Plutus to sow chaos in the Ascomanni defenders. Hugely outnumbered, but not for long, the Shepherds do their job and pave the way for the Grays. A curtain of dropships falls across the curve of the horizon.
War has never looked so glamourous, nor so tidy.
I cross the city as it falls to my army. All over Plutus, the Ascomanni are in flight or clustering together in knots, only to be targeted by roving gunships or picked apart by rooftop snipers or drones. Only those who retreat into Plutus’s buildings or down to the subterranean levels of the Garter buy themselves reprieve. But their coms are jammed. They are isolated. And Praetorian killsquads aided by New Shepherds are already clearing buildings block by block.
By the time I reach the spaceport with Cicero the fighting there has migrated toward the citrus groves east of the tarmacs. Thousands ofAscomanni litter the durocrete already—rather pieces of them do. Rhone’s century, joined by a cohort of New Shepherds, hit the tribes there as they rushed to their ships. Many of those ships are now on fire from bombs detonated by the Ascomanni. Spiteful cretins.
I land with Cicero beside thirty New Shepherds gathering outside a cosmosHauler. Smoke seeps from the ship’s topside. Fenixa, a fellow Lunese of thirty, salutes me. She has the honor scar I gave out on Phobos. She’s thick as a bull, fond of mathematics, and zealous in her loyalty tome.
“Imperator, we broke their defense of the spaceport in the first thirteen minutes, most fled north. Into the groves. I held here on your directives. Shall we pursue with the Grays and lend support to their fireteams?”
Rhone, directing his men from a mobile headquarters nearby, needs no help in prosecuting the massacre. He’s already ordering ammunition dumps. Fenixa itches for action. Understandable, but that’s not the impression my Golds must leave behind.
“We’re here to save lives, Fenixa,” I say. “These ships are loaded with citizens of the Society. Help them. Prioritize by the severity of the fires.”
Cicero sets the example and blasts through the cargo bay of the cosmosHauler with a plasma charge. He breaches alone. Gunfire flashes from within. I follow. By the time I make it into the hold, he’s slain the four Ascomanni waiting inside. Pulling his blade out of the belly of one, he activates his helmet lights. They illuminate a vile scene. Cages have been stacked as far as the hold stretches. They are filled with lowColors. Thousands meant for the asteroid homes of the Ascomanni.
Cicero has a spearhead sticking through his thigh. He calls out in a voice trembling with emotion. “Fear not, citizens. House Lune has come. Lysander has come! You are safe.”
To the sounds of weeping, we begin to free the lowColors.
—
I am exhausted when at last I stumble away from the smoking haulers to collapse with my Shepherds around a Praetorian medical tank. Soot scores my armor. My air filter is so clogged I can’t draw oxygen into my helmet anymore. I hack out black phlegm and take water from the tank’s hose as Fenixa passes it on. Cicero’s standing in front of the rest of us staring off. With effort, I join him in standing to set an active tone.
“The barbarity,” he murmurs to me. “We must investigate how thiscame to happen, and punish all found derelict in their duty and all collaborators.”
“Your leg, Cicero.” The spearhead is still through his thigh. Blood covers his entire boot. I motion over an early drop medicus. “Cicero. I think it’s compressing the artery you—”
“Damn my leg. I can get a new one.” He grabs the medicus and stabs a finger at a Green girl with terrible burns carried by a woman who looks to be her mother and pushes the medicus on. “Triage, goodman. We are made to last.” Cicero returns to barking at his Grays over the com.
The resting New Shepherds watch Cicero for a moment. I wait to see what they’ll do. Without looking at each other, they all get up and go back to helping the relief efforts.
Above, waves of hearthcraft—slow-moving support ships packed with water, rations, and medical supplies—descend from theLightbringer’s hangars to the spaceport to tend to our wounded and the thousands of civilians who huddle in various states of infirmity.
It looks impossibly clumsy, all the corpses, all the refugees, all the ships, gunfire still crackling in the distance, Golds barking orders at centurions who bark orders at legionnaires, who bark again at civilians, but from the awkwardness comes industry, and from the industry a feeling of order.
Cicero’s Grays must finally be performing to his liking. He shuts down his com and peers up at the sky. RipWings pass overhead.
“A long trip for such a short battle,” he says.
“The next one will be the real fight,” I reply.
