Since we’re maintaining radio silence, we can’t get fresh news from home, and I’m anxious. The last thing we learned before setting off is that Gemini’s devastated planet just missed colliding with its neighbor, so our refugee camp is safe for now. But I have no idea if another world has been ravaged, or if the army hiding on Phobos has made a move yet.
“Have you ever seen a ship this majestic?” Admiral Horace Ignus of Leo spreads his arms wide. He and I just finished reviewing my part of the plan so that things can go smoothly when it’s time.
He’s a loud, expansive man, with a broad Leonine face and thick brown beard. When I first stepped aboard, he had his orchestra play a fanfare and greeted me with a kiss on each cheek. “Welcome, little lady,” he said. “Have no fears while you’re aboard the Firebird.” As if this were a pleasure cruise, not a battleship.
“Admiral, I was hoping to hear more about the battle strategy—”
“We’ve got that pretty much under control, darlin’. Trust me, we’ll nail that murderin’ sonofabitch.” He’s condescending, but like most Leos, he has a good sense of humor, so it’s hard not to like him. “You just keep your eye on the metaphysical stuff and leave the the physical work to us.”
All I know of our battle plan is that it’s what Ignus calls a feint. In sea sports, it’s when you pretend to go one way, and while your opponent’s distracted, your teammates go another. But since I don’t play sports, I don’t know how often it works. All I know is that without Hysan’s shields, we wouldn’t stand a chance.
The Firebird is a long black cylinder with fake gravity like Equinox. Behind us, more than two hundred other vessels trail through the sky, and unlike Firebird and ’Nox, few of them were built for speed. Gawky freighters, leisurely yachts, sluggish galleons and arks—they string out like clumsy runners at a marathon.
All twelve Houses sent spacecraft to fight Ophiuchus. Even Cancer managed to supply a barge. Scorpio contributed a squadron of sloops, even though Charon is under investigation by the Plenum. House Virgo provided mirage veils to cloak every ship from view. Sirna is stationed on the Ariean destroyer Xitium, which flies just off our starboard flank, and Lord Neith is piloting ’Nox on our port side. Rubidum’s somewhere behind us, steering a neutron zeppelin.
On Phaetonis, the Ariean generals converted a chemical plant for mass production of Psy shields, and now every vessel in our fleet carries a full-size facsimile of Hysan’s veil. Since we’re flying silent, ship-to-ship communications are tricky. Sometimes we shuttle back and forth, but mostly we use blinking signal lamps. Our entire success rests on a surprise attack.
“I just think if I knew more,” I tell Ignus as we walk together, “maybe I could help, based on what I learned from my previous encounters with Ophiuchus.”
He gazes down at me with a look of grandfatherly patience. “Little Mother, you worry too much.”
While Ignus goes to the bridge, I head to the forward observatory, going over what I know of the plan in my mind. First, we’ll zigzag through the Kyros Belt, a broad band of ice in the Fish constellation of House Pisces. The Kyros Belt will conceal our stop at a Piscene space station orbiting planet Ichthys. That’s where we’ll load up on fuel. We’ll need a lot of fuel to reach the Thirteenth House.
Then, heavily veiled, we’ll pass through Ochus’s wall of Dark Matter. When we’re within visual range, we’ll lower our Psy shields, and every Zodai in our fleet will read the patterns of his constellation to find him. We’ll need to be incredibly fast, since shields down means he’ll be able to attack us. Once we find Ochus’s base, the feint comes in.
I’m the feint.
Ignus has given me a Wasp gunship with a high-resolution Ephemeris onboard, and I’ll fly it far from the fleet. When we find him, I’ll lower my Psy shield and open an Ephemeris to attract Ochus’s attention.
The instant he attacks me, my Psy shield will switch on and keep me safe . . . I hope. And while Ochus is distracted, the fleet will move close enough to destroy his headquarters. Then, as Rubidum says, “We’ll incinerate the butcher.” But I also know I could be incinerated in the process.
I sent Nishi and Deke encrypted messages before leaving the embassy. In Nishi’s, after thanking her a million times for everything—above all, for being the best friend imaginable—I included a letter for Stanton. I asked her to track him down and deliver it if I don’t return.
Mathias finds me in the forward observatory. “The enemy knows we’re coming,” he says, storming over in a bad mood. “This armada’s too big to hide.”
I recite the facts Admiral Ignus used to ease my own worries. “We’re invisible, and we change our heading every few hours. He can’t possibly know our exact location.”
Mathias adjusts the telescope lens and looks through it. He stays glued to the eyepiece, and I can’t read his expression. His stretches of silence are more maddening than his outbursts.