We commandeer the boat and deactivate their radio and satellite communications and consolidate the crabbers into the cargo hold with jugs of water. Pebble welds the doors shut in case they feel a flush of patriotism coming on. Soon, the rest of our number come with Colloway on his pelican. It floats above the water on the port side of the crabber and drops the submersible we took from our weapons cache on Luna’s orbital docks. The submersible lands with a huge splash. Then the pelican sets down on the exposed deck of the crabber. Some of the lowColor Howlers—Winkle, Min-Min, and Rhonna—disembark carrying gear. The rest of the support staff, including my brother Kieran, are on Baffin Island, waiting with our escape vessel.
Winkle, a nihilistic, sleepy-eyed Green, is our lead cyber operations officer. His face is a pincushion of piercings and fashionable digital tattoos. He’s particularly fond of monsters, and a blue dragon perches on his neck, its tongue slithering up his chin. His hair is acid green and defies gravity.
“Fuck. I’m already fucking seasick,” he says, lugging his equipment out. “I’ll never be able to work on this fucking floating tetanus trap.”
“Rough ride, Winkle?”
“Char flies like a madman.” He sniffs the air. “Ugh. Smells like an asshole after Venusian stew. Thraxa, doll, will you take me off this deck and to the coms.” Thraxa leads him away to the bridge. “Never thought I’d miss the gorydamn desert….”
I hop up into the ship and find Colloway finishing his landing protocols. “You hit turbulence?”
“Manmade,” he says. “Winkle talks too much.”
I laugh. “How’s the sky?”
“Civilian traffic only. If the Republic knows we’re here, they’re waiting till you go down.”
“That’s comforting.”
“I aim to please.” He winks. The older man is so handsome it’s easy to see why they make toy figurines in his likeness.
I hop off the craft and watch my niece bring Thraxa battery packs for her power hammer. No more than a third Thraxa’s weight, Rhonna looks a child even amongst the smaller Howlers. I had a mind to leave her behind at the Den, but she won’t be in harm’s way today. Had to give her a taste of action before the more dangerous Venus leg of the mission.
“She’s still bitter about the Iron Rain,” Pebble says to me at the base of Colloway’s ship.
“Well, pouting isn’t going to make me put her in the sub.”
“She just wants to prove herself.”
“And she can, when her life and someone else’s isn’t at risk.”
“She’s as old as we were when we fell in our first Rain.”
“And look at all the dumb shit we did.” I glance over at my friend. Her cherubic face looks younger than her thirty-three years. Bright, optimistic eyes look out from cheeks as flushed as they were when she rode back with Mustang after besting House Apollo. Without malice, but possessing incredible fortitude, Pebble has faced more battles by now than even Ragnar ever saw. Seems just yesterday that Cassius was mocking her at the feast before the Passage, along with Roque, Antonia, and Priam. We see who got the last laugh.
“You know, Pebs, if Sevro is the father of the Howlers, you just might be the mother.”
“Ha. I think that’s the nicest thing anyone has said to me all year, boss.” She wrinkles her nose as, across the deck, Sevro and Clown cackle to each other as they compete to see who can urinate farther over the side of the boat. “And what…interesting progeny we have.”
When we’ve reached our coordinates at six in the morning, I follow the rest of my men out onto the deck. My muscles ache from the hard gravity of Earth. It’s been some time since I labored in a gravity gym. The air on deck is crisp and clean, the ocean calm as it laps against the rusty hull. Rhonna leans against the starboard railing with her arms folded, in a mood at being left with the support platoon on the crabber. I join her as the others make their preparations.
“Remember to keep an eye on the jamming array,” I say. “Last thing we need is for one of the crew to get free and send out a signal.”
“Yes, sir.”
“And make sure Winkle doesn’t snort too many amphetamines.”
“Yes, sir.”
“Don’t worry, my goodlady,” Alexandar says, walking past with Milia. She’s a Gold from my army at the Institute who joined the Rising with the flood of minor Martian houses that declared themselves for Mustang after the Ash Lord nuked New Thebes. Alexandar and Milia are an odd pair. Milia looks as if she’s been recently resurrected, with pale skin, sunken cheeks, and the most nihilistic temperament I’ve ever met in a human. While Alexandar wouldn’t have been out of place as one of Antonia’s pretty concubines. That fine jaw and the white-gold hair that flutters behind him like a comet tail. Even I find myself resenting the boy at times. On the outside, he’s the picture of all I ever hated. “I’ll make sure I bring you a trophy, so long as the decks are clean and scrubbed. I want them shiny enough to eat off of,” Alexandar says with a grin.
Rhonna glowers at him.
“Can’t believe you’re taking that gilded shit,” she mutters. Her jealous eyes follow the Howlers going over the side. My brother was heartbroken when she signed up for the legion training at sixteen. She was assigned to a unit in the thick of fighting on Mercury, but by merit of her examinations I had pretext to bring her onto my personal staff as a lancer. She was not pleased.
“Rhonna, you’re just too short to pass as a Gray. We’re a Society commando squad. If you’re not six feet, you’re staying on the ship. Same goes for everyone.”
“Not Min-Min.”
“Min-Min is staying in the sub. Besides, she’s a veteran.”
“You don’t think I can handle myself. Do you?” She jerks her head at the Howlers. “The rest of them think that I’m only your lancer because you’re my blood. They think I’m just dead weight.”
“No one thinks that.”
“Colloway literally said that to me.”
“Colloway is an asshole. Listen, if you weren’t my blood, we wouldn’t be having this conversation. You’d say, ‘Yes, sir,’ or I’d get a new lancer. You can’t have it both ways. Suck it up. Do your job, and you’ll get your chance.”
Her jaw works. “Yes, sir.”
I find Sevro watching me from the other side of the ship. “What?”
“You remind me of my father more every day.”
“I don’t know if that’s a compliment.”
“Me neither.” He snorts. “I want to say again, for the potentially posthumous record, that this is a shit idea.”
“Do you have another way onto Luna?” I ask.
“About a dozen that don’t include releasing a psychopath.”
“A dozen which you, me, Thraxa, and Pebble all picked apart. I thought you agreed to this.”
“It’s important the mutts think we’re synced up,” he says. “But I still don’t like it. Didn’t you learn anything from the Jackal?”
“The Jackal didn’t have a bomb in his brain.”
“I still say we should steal a Gold ship,” he says stubbornly.
“And how would we find one?” I ask. “Patrol the inner orbits and pray any fully-rigged ships of war we see don’t outgun us? If we do manage to board, fight our way through a battalion of space legionnaires, they’ll frag their codebank as soon as we board and transmit a distress signal. That means we show up at Venus, which is guarded by the totality of Society naval power, injured, depleted from corridor fighting, with nothing but our pricks in our hands. And after all that, we’d still need an army once we land there.”
“Then we stop by Mercury and pick up some legions.”
“Which of our friends will we have to kill then?” I ask sharply, and nod to the water. “This psychopath is our key, our army, and our escape plan.”