“These are the dark ages,” Seraphina says. “We will bring order back.”
“Says the little girl. Have you ever seen a city after orbital bombardment?”
“I saw Ganymede after the docks fell from orbit,” she replies bitterly. “I’ve seen horror—starvation. A whole city frozen.”
“You haven’t seen war.” His heavy eyes strafe the rest of the Raa. “You all think you’re the chosen people. The keepers of the flame. Please. You know how many have thought that? You’re just like the rest. Too vain to realize the flame has gone out. The dream of Gold was dead before any of us were ever born. You want a war because you think the Rising is vulnerable? Because they still battle the Core? You don’t know Darrow. You don’t know his people. If you attack, you lose everything.”
“The Slave King has already fallen,” Dido says, smiling at Cassius’s confusion. “Of course, how could you know? He has become an outlaw. His own mentor and wife have turned their backs on him. The Obsidian Horde is thinned. The remainder stirs with discontent. Their Senate devours itself and debates peace with the Pixies of the Core. They are flailing, scattered, and weak.”
“The Ash Lord has sought peace?” I ask.
“It seems war has softened his resolve. He is craven, and will be dealt with once we have retaken Mars and Luna. Rhea will be repaid in full.” Dido turns her eyes to me. “They say your family is cursed, Cassius. How lucky you are to have a brother survive the Jackal’s purge. Which one is he? Theseus? Daedalus? They would be his age by now….” She looks back to Cassius. “It doesn’t matter. If you do not give me the combination, I will let our dragons suck the marrow from his blasted bones.”
Cassius looks over at me with love and sorrow in his eyes. He’s been searching for this for the past ten years. A chance at redemption. Denying her war is that chance. It crushes him now to know the price it will cost. But he will pay it, I realize. Even if that price is my life.
“I swore to protect the people. That is what I will do. No matter the cost.”
“And do you share your brother’s insanity?” Dido asks me.
Cassius would have stayed to free the prisoners on the Vindabona. He wouldn’t have run at the first sound of Obsidians like I did, because he is a hero, and I am not. Whatever hate I have for Darrow, whatever hope these Gold have kindled in me, I cannot betray Cassius now. I love the man too much. But it breaks my heart to know that the masses he would die for would have his head on a spike if they could.
“He speaks for the both of us,” I say again.
Dido makes a small noise of disgust. She leans back, realizing the impasse, quick eyes searching for a way around it. “Diomedes. A bloodfeud needs resolution. Will you do the honors?”
“No,” the stoic knight replies. She turns on him in confusion.
“What?” Dido asks, caught off guard.
“You heard me, Mother.”
“He killed your sister.”
“They are our guests.”
“You’re joking.”
“You blathering idiot…” Bellerephon hisses. “They’re enemies of our blood.”
“They are our guests. If you want blood, draw it yourself.”
“Let him alone,” Seraphina says, standing. “It is his right to refuse. I will do the deed.”
“No,” Dido says.
Seraphina flinches. “You doubt I can?”
“Yes. Sit down.” She ignores Seraphina’s wounded expression and looks down the table. “Bellerephon, do what your cousin will not.”
“With pleasure.”
The man uncoils to his feet, long legs taking him around the table till he stands looking down his crooked nose at Cassius’s bloody face.
“Beware, milky,” Cassius says with a feral grin. “I am a student of Aja au Grimmus.”
“And I am the son of Atlas au Raa. Sixth shade of the Shadowfall. Slayer of Petro au Bretta, the Desert Spear.” Bellerephon’s eyes glitter with delight as he gathers phlegm and spits it onto Cassius’s face. It drips down Cassius’s cheek, running diagonal with his Peerless Scar. “This is a blood feud. The blood of my grandfather and my cousin is upon your hands. Hear me now, you wretched worm. We are devils to one another. In the name of House Raa, I, Bellerephon au Raa, challenge you to single combat in the Bleeding Place till one heart beats no more.”
“Very well, my goodman,” Cassius replies with a brilliant smile. “I am delighted to accept.”
IT SOUNDS LIKE THE DAMN WORLD is ending. Clustered outside the downed Gold shuttle in the center of our trap, Volga, Dano, and I look up and feel the fear. Two escort ripWings chase after the downed Augustan ship. The blast door above us locks closed as the first round of gunfire pelts its reinforced surface.
The shuttle plummeted a kilometer through the city, drawn downward faster than the speed of gravity by the fleet-grade Sun Industries gravWell. The machine gripped the shuttle as soon as the EMP Kobachi built into the custom drone went off inside the shuttle. We almost lost the ship twice on the descent as its rotation made it drift out from the gravWell’s projection radius. Dano wrangled it back by increasing the gravity to four times Earth grav.
Aside from the shuttle, the gravity beam pulled down a deluge of rain, seven fliers, a forest of shrubs from balconies, several clotheslines, and three shattered hoverbikers who died by smashing into the floor at nine hundred kilometers per hour. All that haul lies in a broken bone and metal soup around the shuttle in the garage of the half-completed Lower West Hyperion Hospital. Dano kicks one of the shattered hoverbiker helmets away from the breech we’ve burned into the shuttle’s hatch. The head is still inside.
My stomach knots up. I’m back in the block war.
Digging through debris. Boots stomping over rubble and bits of men. Gasping like a dying fish, lungs starved from thermobaric burrow bombs that eat the oxygen out of the air.
I tear my eyes from the disembodied head, thankful for my helmet so my crew doesn’t see my horrified face. I didn’t take the zoladone tonight, afraid that the stomach cramps would knock me flat. I’m already feeling too much.
The blast door shudders above us as the escorts pour more munitions into it. Soon it will buckle. We’ve four minutes before a rapid response team of Hyperion’s counterterrorism Watchmen deploy from the Twelfth Cohort headquarters.
Already, there will be armored bodyguards jumping from the escorts, searching for some other way into my metal trap.
I stare into the mirage of heat as our breeching device burns a hole in the hull. Volga, armored in a military-grade chestplate and helmet, pulls the breecher off and slams a steel and lead battering ram into the metal. It caves inward on her third swing. She tosses the ram aside and moves into the ship. The green magazine globe of her plasma rifle’s barrel glows as she primes the generator. Dano goes in next. I follow with the Omnivore in my trembling hands. If even one of the nasty bastards inside didn’t get knocked flat by the anacene gas, this could turn into a bloodbath.
Trigg run through on a Gold’s razor.