floor vibrates as shuttles ferry the hundreds of Peerless back to their ships. “It seems like we’re always saying farewell,” I say to Kavax after he says his goodbyes to Mustang, lifting her up easy as he might a little doll and kissing her head.
“Farewell? It is not farewell,” he rumbles with a toothy grin. “Win today and it becomes just a long hello. Much life left for the both of us, I think.”
“I don’t know how to thank you,” I say.
“What for?” Kavax asks, confused, as per usual.
“The kindness…” I don’t know how else to say it. “For watching over my friends when I’m not even one of you.”
“One of us?” His ruddy face smirks. “A fool. You speak like a fool. My boy made you one of us.”
He looks across the hangar where Mustang speaks with one of Lorn’s daughters-in-law near a transport. “She makes you one of us.” It’s all I can do to keep the tears from my eyes. “And if we damn all that, I say you’re one of us. So one of us you are.”
He lets Sophocles down from his shoulder perch to lope onto the floor. Circling, the fox jumps up
onto my leg to dig something out of a joint in my armor. A jellybean. Thraxa puts a finger to her lips behind her father. The big man’s eyes light up. “What fresh deliciousness is this, Sophocles? Oh, your favorite kind! Watermelon.” The fox returns, jumping up onto his shoulder. “See! You have his benediction as well.”
“Thank you, Sophocles,” I say, reaching to scratch him behind the ears.
Kavax slams me into a hug before departing. “Take care, Reaper.” He trundles up the ramp.
“Fishing?” he booms down at me before he’s gone ten meters.
“What?”
“Do Reds fish?”
“I never have.”
“There is a river through my estate on Mars. We will go, you and I, when this is done and sit by the bank and toss our lines and I will teach you how to tell a pike from a trout.”
“I’ll bring the whiskey,” I say.
He points a finger at me. “Yes! And we will be drunk together. Yes!” He disappears into the ship,
throwing his arm around Thraxa and calling to his other daughters about a miracle he just witnessed.
“I think he might be the luckiest of us,” I say as Mustang comes up from behind me to watch the Telemanus ship depart.
“Is it ridiculous if I ask you to be careful?” she asks.
“I promise not to do anything rash,” I reply with a wink. “I’ll have the Valkyrie with me. I doubt anyone will want to tangle with us for long.” She glances over my shoulder to where Sefi waits by my own shuttle, admiring the engines of other ships as they fly away. Mustang looks like she wants to say something, but is wrestling with how.
“You’re not invincible.” She touches the armor of my chest. “Some of us might want you around
after all of this. After all, what’s the point of all this if you go and die on me? You hear?”
“I hear.”
“Do you?” She looks up at me. “I don’t want to be left alone again. So come back.” She raps her
knuckles on my chest and turns to go to her ship.
“Mustang.” I chase after her and grab her arm, pulling her back toward me. Before she can say anything, I kiss her there surrounded by metal and engine roar. Not some delicate kiss, but a hungry one, where I pull her head to mine and feel the woman beneath the weight of duty. Her body presses against me. And I feel the shudder of fear that this will be the last time. Our lips part and I sink into her, rocking there, smelling her hair and gasping at the tightness in my chest. “I’ll see you soon.”
I pace my bridge like a caged wolf, his meal just beyond the bars. The kindness of me hidden again behind the Reaper ’s savage face. “Virga, are the Howlers in position?” I ask. Behind and below me, the skeleton crew of Blues chatter in their sterile pit. Faces illuminated by holoscreens. Subdermal implants pulsing as they sync with the ship. The captain, Pelus, a waifish gentleman who was a former lieutenant aboard the Pax when I first took the ship, awaits my orders.
“Yes, sir,” Virga says from her station. “Forward elements of the enemy fleet will be within long-range guns in four minutes.”
The arrogant might of Gold unfolds across the black of space. An unending sea of pale white splinters. I’d give anything to be able to reach out and shatter them. My own capital ships cluster in three groups around our powerful dreadnoughts above the north pole of Io. Mustang and Romulus marshal their forces around the south. And together, eight thousand kilometers apart, we watch Roque’s fleet cross the void between Europa and Io to bring us battle.
“Enemy cruisers at ten thousand kilometers,” a Blue intones.
There is no preamble for my fleet. No benediction or rite that we perform before battle like the Golds. For all our right, we seem so pale and simple compared with them. But there’s a kinship here on my ship. One I saw in the engine rooms, in the gunnery stations, on the bridge. A dream that links us together and makes us brave.