I dive into a wave, Thraxa au Telemanus to my right, and rip back up toward the dark sky.
It is liberating to be an outlaw once again. Octavia was right. Legitimacy and reign come with heavy burdens. But so too has my emancipation. With Wulfgar’s death, I ignited a wildfire across the Republic that has shifted popular opinion against the war and my wife. Even incorruptible Caraval raves for my arrest. For the last month, we’ve been holed up in an abandoned military base on Greenland, preparing for this mission. From the too-small cot in the cold barracks, I’ve watched Mustang give speeches in the Senate and fend off calls for impeachment. If it weren’t for her summoning Wulfgar and the knights personally to her estate, she would be out of office. Somehow she clings on.
In the pale light of the old holoCan, she looks so pure, so above the tarnish that Wulfgar’s death has put on my soul. I can’t help but feel I’ve sullied her too with the blood of a good man. I project an air of jocular confidence to my men. Many of them knew Wulfgar. But at night, when the winds sweep in off the sea to howl against the concrete bunker, I’m plagued by the demons the world has given me. Even more so by those I’ve made for myself. I can only fall asleep to the sound of her voice.
They say Republics are naturally eager to devour their heroes. I always thought my Republic was the exception. Now, Copper and Red holoNews pundits, who once objected to the ArchWarden being an Obsidian, have made Wulfgar a martyr. They rail for my capture, declaring me a menace to peace. A warmonger. Useful once, a liability now. It wounds me, but not as much as it wounds Sevro. He blames himself for Wulfgar’s death, and has shrunken inward, growing sullen in the absence of his family. Fearful, I imagine, that his daughters will believe those who say we are wrong.
We may not ever be welcomed back.
There’s nothing worse for a soldier to imagine—that there will be no home to return to once the violence is over, no way to become the men we want to be. Instead, we’re trapped in these violent guises, guises we only ever had the courage to don because of how much we love our home. Is this all we’ll ever be? Is this what I’ve made Sevro become forever?
Republic Intelligence searches for us. I know many of those men and women. They’re no fools. But they search deep space for signs of my passage to Mars and Mercury, thinking I would retreat either to my homeworld or the legions, where the populace or military would rally around me. They still don’t understand me. The only thing that lies in the tunnels of Mars or upon the desert planet is the possibility of civil war. Were I to consolidate power, I would make Mars or the legions choose a side. I would rend our fledgling Republic in two. Exactly what I believe the Ash Lord intended. No. The key to Venus and to the end of this war isn’t with my army. It lies beneath the waves of Earth.
Our quarry, a lonely deep-sea trawler, glows on the horizon.
At the mercy of the waves, it rides a giant swell up and then disappears behind the range of foaming water. For a moment, I think it’s capsized. I bank up above the water, gaining altitude till I see it riding down the slope of a wave. It is one hundred meters from stem to stern. And as I descend upon it, I see its red paint has long since given way to rust and the gnaw of the sea. Huge yellow plastic crab containers at the back of the ship rock uneasily against their restraints. Men in yellow coats labor desperately to add extra lashings to tie the loose containers down. Another wave catches the ship and it rocks hard to port, throwing one of the men into the sea and snapping his safety cable.
“Mine!” Sevro says. There’s a chorus of challenges and the game is afoot. His squadron surges forward, some diving under the water, others bowing upward to retrieve the sailor. Breaking free of the pack, Alexandar au Arcos skims tight to the surface of the water, then recklessly close to the hull before slicing down into the water just before Sevro does. A moment later Alexandar resurfaces on the far side, spiraling in the air like a surfacing dolphin, dragging the sailor up by his severed safety cord. He lowers him roughly onto the deck and lands dramatically on a knee to a chorus of boos on the com.
“Superior genetics for the win,” he crows. “Be not ashamed, geriatric friends.”
“Shut your gob, Pixie,” Sevro mutters in defeat.
Sevro and the rest of his squadron emerge from the water around the boat and land with Alexandar amongst the terrified crabbers. Most of the crabbers are Red, with a scattering of Obsidians and Browns taken to the sea to make their living. I slow my speed and descend less dramatically to land nearer the pilot’s cabin. The captain, a bearded Brown with a continental-sized paunch, stares at me from the open hatch, his magnetic boots steadying him against the rocking of the ship.
“Plebian, are you the captain of this vessel?” I ask through my helmet in as haughty a Venusian accent as I can muster. He just stares at me, eyes fixed on the dull gray Society pyramid on my armor’s chest and on the demonic visages of the scarab masks. I am the world he thought gone forever, now returned. “Kneel,” I growl. The man falls to a knee. More Howlers land—only the tallest of our number, to complete the illusion—till there’s twelve of us clad in the military accoutrement of a Society commando squad. Our helmets, our masks for the day, remain on.
I feared resistance in the crew and am relieved to only see terror. They fall to their knees, eyes downcast in fear of their returned overlords. Only the two Obsidians amongst the crew stare up at us in hatred from under their water-repellant hoods.
“We’re just crabbers,” the captain mumbles, trying to come to grips with his new reality. “Nothin’ military on board…”
“Silence, whelp. You will address me as dominus. This ship, like you, is property of the Ash Lord. Prithee, Captain, assemble your men in the cargo hold and none of you will be liquidated.” I eye the Obsidians amongst his crew. “Any attempts on the lives of my men will result in the decimation of your crew in its entirety. Defiance is death. Do you understand?”
“Yes?”
“Yes, what?” Thraxa snarls.
“Yes…dominus.”
I feel a dark pit open in my gut and motion my men to take command of the vessel.