“Fear.” The father and son—both Olympic Knights—are strikingly similar in the shape of their eyes but little else. Atlas’s skin is the color of a gray winter sky. Ajax’s is dark brown. Atlas is slender. Ajax has more muscles than most legions. Atlas never blusters. Ajax talks shit like he was a tiny man from a poor family. “Back from butchering babies already?” he asks his father.
Atlas smiles. “Aren’t you due in South Pacifica?”
“I haven’t seen Lysander in eight months,” Ajax replies. “He’s been busy with civic engineering, you see.”
“Now you have. Give the Republic my best, Storm.” Atlas waits for Ajax to leave.
Ajax does not. “I hear you’re off to ‘pacify’ South America after the summit,” he says.
“I am.”
“Strange, considering the man who murdered my mother—the man you said was probably dead—is likely somewhere between Venus and Mars right now,” Ajax says.
“Your point?”
“My point is you never gave two shits about my mother or avenging her.”
“Your mother was a good soldier, but we had little in common except that Atalantia liked our genes. You obviously cared for your mother—so much that you willingly linger in her shadow. So why aren’tyouhunting Darrow?” Atlas asks.
I almost step back from the impending explosion of violence. If any other man had said that to Ajax, Ajax would cut him in half, then beg the man’s family to try and avenge him, then cut them in half too.
Atlas looks at the war machines staggering into the horizon, and says, “We all have our parts to play, young man. Yours is to do as you’re told until you can prove you don’t have to be told. Fortunately, you’ve made progress, on that front at least.”
Ajax grins like the skulls on his armor. “One of these days, when the war is won, Atalantia won’t need you anymore. We’ll have a talk then. Son to father.”
“If we must.” Atlas does not care at all. He strides away. “Hurry along, Lune. The Dictator won’t do business after the sun is set. She has a party to attend.”
Ajax watches after Atlas. A film of anger coats his eyes. He would call AtlasFather,I think. But Atlas does not even care enough about him to explain why Ajax is so unworthy of his respect. It is as if by not knowing the answer already, Ajax does not deserve the answer. “Slag him,” I say.
He ignores that. “Remember what I said. Kneel.”
“I won’t kneel to her,” I tell him.
He shrugs. “Do what you like. You might even get away with it. You have a knack for just that.”
“Ajax,” I call after him as he turns to leave. “It is good to see you. Despite everything.”
“Go fuck yourself, Lysander.” He flies toward a cruiser off the coast. I scratch my head. He used to be so sweet. I head for Atlas and the bikes.
“What does Atalantia know?” I ask. “If you loved my mother and father like you always say you do, you’ll tell me. What were you doing on Mercury?”
“I told you to relax.” Atlas looks at me the way I’ve seen beastmasters look at hunting dogs that don’t quite turn out. He shoves the golden bowl from my party into my lap. It is full. “You can carry Tharsus.”
—
A few dozen antelope drink from a small pond. A brilliant yellow streak sprints at them from the cover of nearby brush, and the antelopes bolt. The herd draws dusty trails eastward over the plains, where two more cheetana emerge from the tall grass and herd them north. Then a lithe, dark-skinned woman bounds down the slope, leaving plumes of dust behind her. She draws her bow on the run and seems to fire two shots at once. Both arrows catch a cheetana just as it turns and send it sprawling down to the dry earth.
Sensing they are now the prey, the other two cheetana abandon their hunt and sprint west. It won’t matter. Atalantia sets off in pursuit. Her huntmaster, a grizzled Gray with keen falcon-mod eyes, spits and revs his gravBike.
Black and white tents waver atop a nearby plateau, a source of laughter and music. Atalantia invited her closest friends and allies to enjoy the hunt before the summit. Instead of lounging in the tents with them, I start up my own bike, apply my ointment, and fall in with the procession of supplicants to follow the Dictator’s hunt west.
Two hours later, I’m sweating like a pig under the North African sun while my betrothed guts the last of her three kills. The Mediterranean might lie just sixty kilometers north, but none of its cool breeze reaches the rocky North African plains. The heat is punishing. The golden bowl is growing hot in the sun and heavy in my hands. Tharsus’s head has become very popular with the flies. I’m the last supplicant to have his audience.
After years in the Belt, Earth’s gravity is a boot on my being. Atalantia knows it. My shoulders ache, and my blood feels thick as mud. Seemingly unaffected, Atlas squints up at the sky from his place in the shade. At first I think the rangy man is inspecting the siege of Luna in the obscure distance. But no, he’s admiring the glint of the Twins of South Pacifica—two elephantine orbital railguns that the Republic scuttled when Diomedes seized them months ago. He feels me watching him and his eyes shift lower to three small gray octagons floating in the blue. WarBastions descending from orbit. They’ll be bound for Asia, and then on to join the siege of stubborn South Pacifica. These craft are stamped with Bellona eagles.
I look back at the railguns, and wonder why Atlas shifted his eyes.
The cheetana’s double-jointed legs twitch as Atalantia skins it. Trained by her mother to hunt, Atalantia is at home field dressing her kill. She usually prefers hunting in their estates in the Rockies, but those mountains have yet to be pacified. Atalantia tugs off the last of the cheetana’s fur and tosses it to a lancer, a surly young Falthe, before opening its gut to heap organs onto the dirt.
