“My Sovereign, I cannot give the order. Those are good men and women! If we don’t wait for the radiation to pump out, they’ll die!”
“Get those shields up, or go tell your family they will pay because youwouldn’t. We are here to do our jobs!” Kavax booms, then to all: “War requires monstrous deeds! If you cannot be a monster, then get out of the way!”
The engineering officer falters, unable to give the order, but I already opened a line to the shield rooms. They heard Kavax. A steady, distant voice replies.
“My Sovereign, that is a Lune out there?”the voice asks, a woman’s.
“The last one. And his Praetorians.”
“You need the shields up to attack them?”
“Yes. If they hold their landfall on the surface, their allies can pour in behind them. We need to wipe them from those breaches. Teach Lune’s allies the only thing here is death.”
The engineer on the line takes an unsteady breath. I can sense they are confirming with their colleagues.“The shields will go online in ten minutes. We will see to it personally.”
“Name? Rank?” I ask.
“Centurion Murani Legard.”
“Thank you, Centurion Legard. I hail your name.”
“Hail Lionheart. Legard out.”
In ten minutes, Legard will likely be dead. More martyrs for the cause. So many martyrs. I turn to Kavax. He is saying his farewells to Sophocles.
“When the high gates open, we’ll release the reserve ripWings. You and the mechs must wait for the shield, or you’ll be torn apart from space,” I tell him. “Kavax.”
“I have waged war before,” he says and kisses Sophocles on the mouth. “I love you, little one. Be brave for Virginia. She has the beans now.” He stands and hands me his pack of jellybeans.
“I wish I could go with you,” I say.
“Your value is here. You must guide the legions. Plug the holes in our defense.”
“Take my Lions from the hangars with you,” I offer.
“No. You will need them to reinforce the legions,” he says.
“I will see you soon,” I say and look for him to validate my hope, but the look he gives me is not that of a father to a child, not anymore. We are peers now, and we know we may never see one another again. I clasp his hand. “Good hunting.”
“Sophocles, stay. I shall return.” His men take a conical attachment off the back of his armor and hand it to my centurion Virgilus. “Look after him, yes? He’s grown tender in his old age.”
Sophocles watches Kavax go and begins to shake. I can’t watch. I turn back to the display and observe my legions making their way through the trams and sprint through corridors as I try to guess where the enemy will drill. I steel my heart for the battle to come.
When Sophocles begins to howl, I know Kavax has left the Nucleus. Part of my heart marches off with him. I stuff the jellybeans into the pocket of my armor that holds the splinter of the gallows.
24
LYSANDER
Drop Shock
Isoar out of theignorance of the spitTube into a silent madhouse where there is no up. The first glimpse of battle is as incomprehensible to my brain as calculus is to a dog. Confined between two horizons of metal—the ship and the surface of Phobos—I’m blinded a half second out of the tube. Only the heavy filters on my helmet’s optics save my ocular nerves from frying.
I fight the instinct to alter course. It won’t matter if I do, not in a drop like this. You can’t dodge anything. If you try, you’ll just slag up the fellow next to you and create a chain reaction that will mire the drop and get ten thousand killed.
Dive. Make landfall. Survive. Find my drill.
Survive.What a laugh. As if I had a say.
