Now’s our chance.
Holiday rushes forward with her misericord. The weapon looks like a dagger hilt with two colored ends and no blade. When jammed down on its black end, a magnetic charge in the hilt forces out a depleted uranium drill with a shaped charge. When jammed down on its red end, the drill has enough haemanthus tranquilizer to put down a griffin. It’s a new weapon, cheap to mass produce, and it is meant for grounded knights in armor that is as expensive as the gear for an entire legion. Like Apollonius’s.
Apollonius sees the misericord coming and thrashes against us. I can barely control one of his legs. A Lion grabs his horns and puts his feet on Apollonius’s shoulders to hold him steady for Holiday. Apollonius was hiding his true strength. He jerks his neck down and pulls the Lion into Holiday’s way. The misericord bangs against the man’s shoulder and the Lion knows he’s dead. That dose was meant for a Gold. Apollonius lunges his head sideways and drives one of his horns up into Holiday’s stomach.
Glaucus shouts in anger and pulls his sidearm. He fires a full clip into the bull helmet. The metal dents. Buckles. Glaucus fires again and I see the digger round penetrate the helmet at the cheek. Apollonius moos and his head flops sideways out of Holiday. Blood and teeth pour out the hole in the bull helmet. Still kneeling atop Apollonius, Holiday pulls a backup misericord and drives it down into Apollonius’s throat armor.
It doesn’t deploy.Lemon.
She slams it down again and again. It’s a dud. Both ends. My heart sinks. Then I lurch as Apollonius fires his boots. We hit the dome with the sound of a gong. We’re almost knocked free. My Lions outside cannot hold back his troops any longer. Still pinning his legs, I give the order to kill him. Holiday puts her rifle into the hole in his cheek.
Then I hear a clatter. A circular metal ball rolls toward us.
Apollonius didn’t have to get free. He just had to be difficult enough to put down for something like this to happen.
A grenade rolls under the domeShield and goes off. The force knocks me sideways. Dazed, head ringing I stagger up as soon as I can think of it. But amidst the groaning armored bodies, the largest is rising. I haul up Holiday and call a retreat.
27
VIRGINIA
A Good Death
Trailing blood and machinefluid we flee from engineering to a lateral tram tunnel. Its car is dead. We run all-out for two minutes. Apollonius follows. No more horn blowing. No more mockery. He wants to kill us.
We had him and we couldn’t finish the deed. We’re numb with the shock of it. Down to eighteen Lions now. Everyone is injured. Ten of us would not be able to run without the battle juice or their suits, including Holiday. Glaucus picked up my razor. I take it from him and pat the carryall. Poor Sophocles.
“Slag the shafts,” I say. “We’ll ride the shit.”
“If we even can reach sanitation,”Holiday says, dubious. Her gut wound is starting to slow her down. Glaucus and I help her along.
Cicero seems to know where we are now too. He’s squeezing in. I feel his forces constricting. Flowing from other levels. We’ll never reach sanitation. We can’t go down or up. We need help. The Bastion’s hall temperature—which I’ve gradually been increasing—is just passing ninety degrees Fahrenheit. We also still have the gear bags I had my Lions take from the armory. We still have a chance. It’s not a good one.
We can’t get close to sanitation. So with the enemy closing in, I lead my Lions into a flight-training room as close as I can to the brig. Wheezing blood, Holiday props up a Lion missing a leg and puts a gun in his hand. Her helmet is off. Her face pale and sweating.
“We left a trail of blood. We can hold here. Buy you time. You are uninjured. Take a ghostCloak and slip out,” Holiday says. She can’t raiseher left arm. Her shoulder is shot out too, but I’m more worried about the horn wound. “We failed you on the Day of Red Doves. Allow us to redeem—”
She looks crestfallen as I hoist the gear bags I had the Lions fetch from the armory earlier. I head for a side door. “We’re near the brig,” I call back. “Hold the fort and be ready to move.”
“He’s a traitor!” Holiday calls after me. “He may kill you! My Sovereign!”
I don’t slow down.
—
Cloaked, I hide in an alcove across from the brig’s entrance as Votum legionnaires thunder past in the darkness toward the sounds of gunfire. My Lions are under siege. A Gold with a brilliant sunburst helmet and white cape stops and looks at the brig door. It’s Cicero au Votum. “That is a big door,” he comments flippantly.
“It’s the brig gate,dominus,” a centurion says.
“Don’t correct me. It’s a door.”
“You want Greens on it?”
“Don’t be absurd. Keep them on the lifts. Lysander doesn’t need convicts. He needs a Sovereign and this fortress. Let’s not ape the Minotaur and drop the ball. Still. A big door. Perhaps I have friends entombed inside. I did always wonder what happened to Mercurius. We’ll crack it over supper. Come, come.”
I wait until they’re gone and rush for the brig gate. Detecting my Sovereign implant, its mass sinks into the floor. The brig is empty of guards. For obvious reasons, emergency evacuation does not include high-security prisoners. I push in and decloak. A bank of cells glows in the dimness. Inside, their residents watch me approach with my bags.
Sixty-three of them are Obsidian braves found guilty of treason against the Republic. These are the Alltribe cast-outs too guilty and too high profile to pardon. I pass brute after brute until I land upon the dread prize in a cell twice as thick as the rest. The Golds call him Sky Bastard. I know him as Valdir the Unshorn. He lies on his bed with his hands behind his back.
