“And sit here to die like Pixies?” Victra asks.
Before I can say a word or do much of anything, there’s a metallic wheeze behind me from the hydraulics in the wall as the door to the bridge opens.
We surge onto the bridge, expecting an ambush. Instead, it’s calm. Clean, lights dimmed, just as Roque prefers it. Beethoven streams out from hidden speakers. Everyone is still at their stations. Wan faces illuminated by pale light. Two Golds walk along the wide metal path that leads over the pits toward the front of the bridge where Roque stands orchestrating his battle before a thirty-meter-wide holographic projection. Ships dance among the sensors. Framed by fire, he cycles through images, issuing commands like a great conductor summoning the passion of an orchestra. His mind a beautiful, terrible weapon. He’s destroying our fleet. Mustang’s Dejah Thoris leaks flame from her oxygen stores as the Colossus and her three escort destroyers continue to hammer her with railguns.
Men and debris float through space.This is just one part of the larger battle. The great host of his force, including Antonia, has pursued Romulus, Orion and the Telemanuses toward Jupiter.
To our left, twenty meters away, near the bridge’s armory, a tactical squad of Obsidian and Grays
secure their heavy weapons and listen intently to their Gold commanders, preparing to defend their bridge against me.
And just to our right, at the control panel by the now open door, unseen and unnoticed by anyone
else on the bridge, trembles a small Pink in a white valet’s uniform. The passcode display glows green under her hands. Her thin figure is frail against the backdrop of war. But the woman’s face is set defiantly, her finger on the door ’s release button, her mouth spreading into the most delightful little smile as she shuts the door behind us.
All this in three seconds. The Gold infantry commander sees us.
Wolves, lovely as they are when they howl, kill best in silence. So I point to the left and the Obsidian surge toward the soldiers listening to the Gold. He shouts for them to turn, but Sefi is already on his men before they can lift their weapons. Dancing through them with her blades fluttering into faces and knees. Her Valkyrie smash into the rest. Only two guns go off by the time the Gold’s body slides off the end of Sefi’s razor and thumps to the floor.
Grays fire at us from the other side of the pit. Holiday and her commandos pick them off. My helmet slithers away. “Roque,” I snarl as my men continue to kill.
He’s turned now from his battle to see me. All the nobility in him, all the cold-blooded Imperator melting away, leaving him a stunned, startled man. Victra and I stalk across the bridge, Blues beneath us to every side, staring up at us in confusion and fear even as their ship is engaged in battle. Silently, Roque’s two Praetorians come at us. Both wear black and purple armor adorned with the silver quarter moon of House Lune. We pair off on the metal bridge in the hydra. Victra taking the right, me the left. My Praetorian is shorter than I. Her helmet off, hair in a tight bun, ready to proclaim the
grand laurels of her family. “My name is Felicia au…” I feint a whip at her face. She brings her blade up, and Victra goes diagonal and impales her at the belly button. I finish her off with a neat decapitation.
“Bye, Felicia.” Victra spits, turning to the last Praetorian. “No substance these days. Are you of the same fiber?” The man drops his razor and goes to his knees, saying something about surrender.
Victra’s about to cut his head off anyway, when she glimpses me out of the corner of her eye.
Grudgingly, she accepts his surrender, kicking him in the face and hands him over to our Obsidians who secure the bridge. “You like the clawDrills?” Victra asks, pacing to Roque’s left. Hungry for the kill. “That’s some poetic justice for you, you little backstabbing bitch.”
The Blues still watch on, unsure of what to do. The boarding party that came for us now fills our
place in the corridor outside the bridge. We left the drill, but it would take them ten minutes at least to breach the door.
The com on Roque’s head buzzes with requests for orders. Squadrons he’d sent on attack runs now
drift, over-exposed. Their commanders used to being guided by the invisible hand now fight blind to the overall battle. It’s the flaw in Roque’s strategy. The individual initiative now creates chaos, because the central intelligence has just gone silent.
“Roque, tell your fleet to stand down,” I demand. I’m soaked with sweat. Hamstring pulled. Hand
trembling with exhaustion. I take a heavy step forward. Boot clomping on the steel. “Do it.”