Her eyes twinkle. “Just one,” she says. “Still big enough to glass us. I say we play dead. Let them come in with boarding teams. Kill them all, take their shuttle, ride it over to their ship, commandeer it and…”
Ride it home.
My eyes go dark. “We might lose half the men.”
“More,” she says.
A cabal of two, we share a single mind. Our troops flow around us in the hall. They are so small. They glance up at us, their generals, for reassurance. Thraxa grips me, voice low. “If there’s opportunity, we do what we gotta do.”
“TorchShip closing! It knows we’re here!”Screw calls.
“So much for playing possum,” I say. I look at Thraxa’s blade, Bad Lass. She shields it from me with her body and we jog on.
In our rush to access the main hall’s slide, we nearly collide with engineers streaming up out of their barracks. Most wear only their field chest armor, still scuffed and dented from their trek through the Ladon. I take a chest plate from one and marshal two dozen on me. I send Thraxa to command the two railgun batteries as I head to defend the hangar.
“I should have the blade,” I call as we part.
She booms a laugh. “You had your own!”
I did. I miss my wife’s gift. I feel naked without it. Rifles are fine, but I hate being at the mercy of the quality of an enemy’s armor. Better to be close, where the kill is assured.
“Have they spotted us?” I ask into my com. “Screw?”
Screw doesn’t reply. In the hangars, I find Harnassus and several Oranges making a firing line behind a barricade. Harnassus tries to keep the fear from his voice. “It’ll be Obsidian berserkers first through the doors,” he says as I join him.
“Screw. I need a report,” I say into my com. “Are they within range of the base’s railguns yet? Screw?”
“They’re transmitting a message.”A pause. My heart thumps. Railguns prime down the firing line. Then Screw bursts into laughter.“I’ll be damned.”Has he finally snapped? Like Orion? Like Sevro?“Boss, tell Thraxa to stand down the batteries. Stand down! The torchShip’s a friendly. It’s the Wayward Chin, and he’s brought friends.”
—
The torchShip extends an umbilical to connect with our base. My troopers flock to the aperture as Colloway Char slinks out. Harnassus, Thraxa, and I wait for Char. Screw didn’t bother coming.
Instead of ducking his slender shoulders and making a beeline for me, the best pilot in the Republic slows. Colloway Char is skinny as a rail, the dark skin of his face drawn tight to show every contour of his skull. When he looks out at the men, it’s not with his usual weary tolerance, but with stony sovereignty. Char has never favored responsibility. I’d hoped he’d be a leader one day. He began that transformation on Heliopolis after Orion died, but he’s completed the transformation in my absence.
“Are you with the Telemanus fleet?” a Red engineer calls to him.
“Has Mars fallen?” shouts a Brown rifleman with rusted mod arms and sunwashed eyes.
Colloway rears on the Brown. “Has Mars fallen? Has Mars fallen?” He sneers. “Where is your faith, Martian? Mars stands. As will she always.”
The troops cry out in relief so profound it sounds like a lamentation. Char picks his way through them and tries a salute before I wrap him in an embrace. The top of his head does not even reach the bottom of my chin. I thought I’d gotten skinny, but I can feel his shoulderblades through his jumpsuit. Behind him several dozen Blues and Grays disembark and seek out friends amongst my band. I pull back from Char. Once he’s greeted Thraxa and Harnassus, I blurt out: “Virginia. Is she alive? Is Pax?”
He turns on me with the look of a weary castaway who has seen too much to think of the people we once knew back home as anything other than vague concepts. After a moment, he nods.
“Virginia is,” he murmurs. “She governs from Agea. Don’t know about your son.” I hold on to his shoulders to steady myself. Thraxa pats my back. “I saw Virginia issue an address three days ago, Darrow. Victra was by her side. As were Kavax and Niobe, and your brother, Kieran. He’s ArchGovernor now.”
I sway with so much emotion it hits like grief. I cannot speak.
“Kieran? What happened to Rollo?” Harnassus asks.
“Rollo was assassinated months ago,” Char says.
I’m so used to death I don’t blink.
ArchGovernor Kieran. Strange. I cannot imagine my reserved, polite brother holding the office Nero au Augustus once occupied. “Tell us more. We’ve been dark for months. What else?” I demand, drunk already and craving more.
“Not much. System is dark soup. Some new Gold weapon, or maybe one of ours. Rim’s? Quicksilver’s? Who knows. It’s playing havoc with sensors and broadcasts from here to the Belt. False signatures everywhere. Solar flares. Laser warfare on telescopes. Drones with atomics. Add that to the broken hulks spinning everywhere and it’s a mess. We’re putting up a fight, I think, but it’s safe to say we aren’t winning the war. Rim came in force.”
