“Rhonna, don’t swear!” Kieran says. “He’s your commanding officer.”
“He’s my bloodydamn uncle!” She sticks a finger out at me. “I’m not a support trooper or a spy or a lass. I trained for three years for armored cav. Sucked mud at Hog’s Tooth. I was third in my class in basic, second at HT. There were only four other Reds there. And still everyone said I was only there because I was your niece.” She sticks a thumb in her chest. “I am a Solar Republic Drachenj?ger. A mechman. I did that. I had sockets put into my bones.” She shows us sockets in her forearms that attach to the three-story mech she was trained to operate. “After the PT and the bloodydamn nerve-melding, I got a spot with the Twenty-fourth. Was finally about to slag some slavers, then you show up, pull me from my unit and prove everyone right. And for what? So I can carry crates? Stay behind while my unit goes to war? Wait for the lads to return?”
“So it’s about you?” I ask.
“I just want to do my part. It’s my war too.”
“You think any individual can survive on their own in a war? You’re part of a unit. You have to trust every member of that unit. And right now, I don’t trust you not to get someone else killed. So you can either obey, or find another outfit.” I might admire her spirit, but not her control. “Do you hear me, lancer?”
For a moment I worry she’s going to spit more bile at me, but she regains her composure and snaps to rigid attention. “Hail Reaper.”
She storms out and Kieran breathes a sigh of relief.
“Thanks for the help,” I mutter.
He grins up at me innocently. “Looked like you had everything under control.”
—
Exhausted and feeling my temper getting a bit raw, I follow Kieran’s instructions to Quicksilver’s stateroom on the third level. Sevro’s commandeered the captain’s lounge’s speakers to blast some sort of classical rhyme ruckus that would have made Ragnar’s ears bleed, and Clown is whining loudly about someone stealing the blankets from his room.
The noise cuts off as I shut the door to my stateroom. For the first time in seventy-two hours, I’m alone. The room is certainly not as the Venusian shipyards intended—military austerity replaced by luxurious walnut and oak. On closer inspection, I see that there are holoprojectors built into the furniture. I turn on the ocean feature and soon waves crash against rocks on the walls. Sea stretches in every direction. I half expect Lorn to step around the corner. I sniff. The room smells like brine from the olfactory feature. “Not bad, Quick. Not bad at all.” The ceiling has turned cornflower blue and a gull flies overhead, reminding me of the beach I visited with Mustang on Earth in that breath before the war began in earnest. When I held my son for the first time and thought only of the world I would make for him. It breaks me to see how far I have turned from that path.
I peel off my own scarabSkin and liner and shower under scalding water in the marbled bathroom. Alone, my thoughts wander to my son. I try not to think of his eyes when I flew away, my razor soaked in Wulfgar’s blood. Overcome, I grip the key around my neck. At the bedside, I find a slim holoframe beside a bottle of Lagavulin 16. My wife and son float in the frame, smiling at me. Quicksilver must have had it sent. The picture was taken by my mother on the steps down to the water at Lake Silene. Another memory of theirs I never shared. Feeling hollow, I slip into bed and let the tears come quietly in the dark.
—
In the morning, the pelican, carrying my brother, Rhonna, and the support Howlers, departs south for New Sparta, Africa, and we head to the stars, rising up from the mountains, fresh covered with snow from the night’s storm, and ascend gradually into orbit. To blockade a planet is nearly impossible. You’d need the whole Republic fleet to even have a chance at it. The Nessus’s advanced stealth hull hides us from the orbital scanners, and by the time we are visually detected, we are already pushing for deep space. With these engines, nothing will catch us.
As Earth shrinks behind us, I watch it on the holoscreen, staring not at the oceans or the mountains or the glittering cities under the slow-moving veil of night, but at her moon, where my child will be tucked away in his bed and my wife will be in her office poring over documents until the small hours of the morning. I feel the distance grow between us, and I wonder if this is what it is like to be a bad father—always finding a reason to be gone, a reason that, no matter how virtuous or shining in the eyes of a child, will seem empty and false in the memories of the man he will soon become.
A WEEK AND A HALF after my first encounter with the rabbit, Kobachi finishes his custom work four days behind schedule, and three before the main event. Pisses me off because he’s slagged with my timetable. Would not be nearly as troublesome if it weren’t for the sudden increase in security in Hyperion. Something has happened, something they don’t want the general public to know. There’s no news on the HCs. Nothing but the political war between the Sovereign’s Optimates and the Vox Populi as they masticate each other in the press on the merits of the Peace. Half the fleet from Mercury is coming home, so the talking heads say, because the Senate is terrified the Reaper will rally the whole Armada and return to dissolve their power. Meanwhile we’re on overdrive adjusting our plan to ensure the increase in security doesn’t slag all our hard work.
Kobachi is making some last-minute adjustments, bent like a nearsighted hierophant over his workbench. I ease my nerves by smoking half a pack of burners in a crusty formFab chair. I go through correspondences from contractors on my ghost datapad, my tenth in the last month. Even using Syndicate freelancers, everything has to be done piecemeal so no contractor can point a finger my direction if this blows up in our faces. Which, despite the thoroughness of my plan, seems to be the outcome we’re racing toward. I feel like I’m the only one who knows it. Cyra and Dano are both infected with the excitement of all the new gear, while Volga sulks around like someone stole her favorite toy. Whenever I ask about her mood, she puts on a brave smile and says it’s nothing. Knowing her, she’s having second thoughts about the job. But doubts have never stopped her from following me before.
I smile when I see a message from the Obsidian beast himself: Gorgo has the gravWell. I’ll be damned. I feel like a kid who wished for a lizard and woke up to a dragon sitting on the lawn.