I resist glancing down at Screwface’s very dimpled chin. Unlike the rest of us, he still maintains a clean shave.
“Anything on the sensors?” I ask.
“Nil, oh bald and bearded liege.” He cups both his hands around the thermos for warmth. The nails of both fingers are bitten to nubs. “Radar and lidar are still slagged. Tried building some filters to strain the soup—you know all this.” He chews on a caf stick, swigs his coffee, and cocks his head back. “Routine may be your sanity, but you’re driving me mad.”
“You haven’t left this room in three days,” I say and nod to his slop bucket. “Your decor is starting to look very Sevro.”
He looks around. “No jade. No golden walls. No silk. I’ve got about zero in common with that deserter’s den.”
“Screw, you know he did what he thought was right.”
Screw spits on the ground. “I spent three years amongst Atalantia’s sociopaths on behalf of the Republic while he was sucking on the tit of Gold royalty. Look at my reward.” He removes his cap to show his mutilated scalp. “While we died, Sevro ran home. And I’m here waiting for that Pink to lead the Dustwalkers right to us.”
“She’s something all right, but she’s not Krypteia,” I say.
He frowns. “Then what is she?”
I think of Aurae’s skills, the book, the way she watches me like a judge sometimes. “A friend, I hope.”
“Let’s pray you’re right. Because they’re out there, hunting us. They’llwant to cut your head off for destroying the Dockyards of Ganymede. You and Victra. And Dustwalkers never stop till they find their mark.”
I share Screw’s respect for the Rim’s stalker squads, just not his agitated tenor. It’d be almost ironic if they found us and dragged me back to the Rim to pay for my sins. But it isn’t because of them or Aurae that Screw shits in a bucket for fear of abandoning the sensor station. Neither is it because of Ajax au Grimmus, who came closest to discovering us when his destroyer,Panthera,prowled within fifty thousand clicks of us five months back. Rightfully, Screw is only afraid of Fear himself.
I sympathize, because I am too.
“Atlas isn’t hunting us,” I say. He looks up at me like Pax would when I’d wake him from a bad dream. “Our trail’s cold. In relation to the System, we’re smaller than a zooplankton on a krill’s back in all the seas of all the worlds put together. Even if Atlas doesn’t think we’re dead, he won’t waste time looking.”
“Not when he knows where we want to go, you mean,” Screw murmurs. Maybe that was the wrong conclusion to lead him toward. “Shit, boss. Even if Bellona does come back with helium…it’s a long sail home and we’re the bottom of the food chain. If the enemy patrols spot us…won’t be anywhere to run. Those Rim ships are faster than us. Not that it matters. Most of the lads and lasses think Mars has already fallen anyway.”
“I need you to stop encouraging them in their pessimism. You’re a Howler. The men look to you to set the tone. So do I. You’re the only other one here from the old pack besides me.”
“Pack? Two is not a pack, goodman. Two is debris circling a drain.” He looks me over. “You’re in denial, boss. Afraid to face the facts. Sefi and her Volk abandoned the Free Legions to steal a kingdom on Mars. The White Fleet is gone. Orion is dead. Free Legions are dust. Senate hung us out to die. Virginia didn’t send reinforcements to Mercury. Sevro dumped us for his little Gold family. Clown and Pebble pixied out. Our pack’s done. Our army’s rotting on the pales. I don’t blame you. I don’t blame me. I don’t blame the troops. I blame the mobs that balked and the politicians that connived.”
So much for that spark I was seeking. I leave Aurae’s book in my bag. Screw doesn’t need words. He needs to go home.
“All the same…bitch to me, not the men,” I say.
“Yeah. Yeah.” He sips his coffee. “My bad.”
—
Leaving Screwface no better but also hopefully no worse than when I found him, I head to theArchimedes’s sparring chamber via the umbilical that attaches the ship to the base. The white padding of the chamber is stained by years of sweat. Most of it belongs to Cassius and Lysander, but I’ve made my own marks in their absence. Since Lysander broke my blade, I’ve been reduced to using the room’s practice razors—the very same ones Lysander would have trained with. Fetching one from the wall, I feel silly. Screw’s words eat at me more than I’d like.
What’s the use in training? The blade in my hand can’t fix what’s broken.
Much as I hate to admit it, resentment toward Sevro gnaws at me like it gnaws at Screwface. Sevro abandoned me when I needed him most. I could forgive him that. It’s harder to forgive his betrayal of the army. He was the first brother of the Free Legions: when he left, doubt crept into the rank and file. Into me. Worse, Sevro’s choice indicted my own choice. More than anything I wanted to return to Pax when he was kidnapped. To rescue him. To prove in the end I was there for him. I chose the duty of an Imperator over the duty of a father. Now I’m alone playing with blades.
The silence strangles me.
I almost turn back around. No one will notice if I take a day’s leave. No one will dare say I didn’t work hard enough. I yawn again. Maybe just a stretch today. Body could use it. Better to face tomorrow rested.
I almost cave. But I know by now that voice of reason is the enemy. Inside me there is a coward who fears discomfort. That coward will offer solace in the form of excuses. But it is the coward who grooms a man for his defeats. The coward who makes him accept them because he is accustomed to finding a good reason to quit. The coward inside can only be killed one way. I toss down my pack and don my training kit.
“Hello, teacher,” I say to the sphere’s computer.
“Welcome, blademaster three.”The computer’s voice is feminine and seductive, just the sort Cassius would choose. Ten years ago, I would have marveled at speaking to a computer, but the tech boom of the Republic has made the once-forbidden technology eerily commonplace. Compared with some of Quicksilver’s systems, this computer is a troglodyte.
“Martian gravity profile again?”
