by Pierce Brown
I squint at mathematical notations written in the frost on the ship’s hull.
“Reminds me of home when they would turn off the heating,” Orion murmurs. “They liked to find new reasons to do that. First calculus I learned was on hull-frost. Fingers so numb I could barely hold the stylus.”
“Calculus. Poor lass. I only needed algebra,” I say, trying to draw her out of her daze. I wish I could say it was solely for her benefit. “Do it in marker on the side of the clawDrill cockpit with one hand.” I make a motion of digging with the other. “Can’t stop the drill, you see. Stop too long and you’re jammed.”
“You would need calculus to properly operate a clawDrill apparatus,” she replies.
“Yeah, well, Pa said the rest is all instinct. Disagree, maybe you and I can have a duel back on Mars. There’ll be new bunkers that need excavating.”
She ignores the challenge and watches a herd of pale seahorses crossing an archipelago of ice. They shake their manes and angle their fins as their stunted legs launch them off the ice back into the water. “Fathers are important,” she says. “My kind think the notion perverse.” She goes to chew her fingernails only to bite the metal of her prosthetics. She looks at the digits as if seeing them for the first time. “Still, they call me Mother, don’t they?”
“That’s the civil half of the name.”
She shrugs. “Children are disgusting. I would never have them. I cannot abide selfishness.”
There is no way, Gold or Red, to understand the empathetic connection minds make in the synaptic drift. Orion’s communication with her pilots in battle is nonverbal. Instead it is formed of a web where the electric currents in her brain bond and interact with those of the others. To have one side cut short is the cruelest of amputations. The ghosts of the dead linger in her synapses.
I wonder if she thinks of the sailors she lost in the ambush. If she felt like a mother when she saw the Annihilo break the Dream of Eo in half. If it is selfishness she cannot stand in children or if it is the fear of losing them.
“The Senate recalled too many ships. Even if you saw Atalantia coming, she would have held the orbit. The Senate lost that battle, not you.”
Her head snaps in my direction. “Harnassus lost that battle when he didn’t spit on the Senate’s orders, and sent half my fleet to Luna. Your wife lost the battle, when she did not override the Senate.”
“She will not break the New Compact—”
“And you think that a quality? Her precious morality for the price of my sailors? Or is it fear of becoming her father?” She shakes her head. “Harnassus and Virginia bear the guilt. I feel none.”
“I do. Often. For the Sons on the Rim. For the Dockyards of Ganymede.”
“Then you squander neurons.”
Her hard shell has always existed. But not to this extreme. It is easy to forget Orion’s roots. From an unsanctioned birth, then childhood, in the dim frost of Phobos’s Hive city, destined to pilot garbage haulers and take a government stipend till death, to the commander of the most successful fleet since Silenius’s Iron Armada. Amongst my own people, I had a home. Orion was never accepted by hers, until she climbed over their backs to the top, and looked down to see them all pretending to have lifted her up. Of all the soldiers left in my army, I trust her the most, because she alone has never let me down. Any other astral commander, including me, would have lost the Morning Star, the surviving ships, and the army itself.
“Rail against my wife all you like, she’s what keeps the Republic together,” I reply. “And Harnassus kept this army together when I wasn’t here, and you were captured.”
“Harnassus. Please. Oranges are pedantic apes with opposable thumbs used for two ventures: to spin wrenches and climb union ladders. He did what is in his nature.” She runs her hands along her head as if feeling for cracks in the skull.
“And what is your nature?”
“The same as yours. To kill the enemy.” As her eyes go distant, her voice softens. “Can you think in space?”
“Depends on who you ask.”
“I can’t think on the ground. Too much weight. Too many disgusting people and their refuse.” She wipes her calculus off the hull. “I know you think Atlas broke me.”
“If I thought you were broken, you’d be in the sick bay. I think you’re dented.”
She likes that. “He is an effective operator, to be certain. He presented me with a hideous desert rodent and said my pain would last only as long as the rat ate. It gnawed the flesh off my calves, nose, and cheeks before it split its stomach and died. It was effective. It horrified. It degraded.”
She looks over at me. “Don’t you see?”
I frown and shake my head.
“Together you and I…we’ve broken worlds. Who can do what we have done? What our men have done? Yet we put ourselves at the mercy of rats. We free them. Protect them. Die for them. And when we turn our backs, they unveil their little teeth and gnaw at us one bite at a time. And when we turn to face them, they cheer, and we pretend their gnawing hasn’t made us weaker. Rats cannot even govern their own appetite. How can they govern themselves?”
“You sound like one of them,” I say so low it’s almost a growl.
“Is a doctor wrong when he tells you what you don’t want to hear? We don’t have a monopoly on truth just because our aims are pretty, young man. If I were wrong, this planet would embrace us. Instead it gnaws at us. If I were wrong, the Republic’s fleet would already be here.” She looks to the sky. “Where is it, Darrow? Where is our demokracy?”
My hand drifts to the holodrop in my pocket. The small teardrop of metal holds the face of my wife. I ache to watch her messages again, to drink in her last words to me, her face, the lines that web around her eyes, to somehow evoke the warmth of her skin and breath. But I fear to do so all the same. Sixty-five million kilometers of space separate Luna and Mercury at current orbit. An even wider gulf divides me from her. I do not doubt her. But I doubt she will do what must be done. Orion hit the truth of it. She fears too much to see her father and brother in the mirror to dissolve the Senate. I know she thinks her virtue is contagious. But I fear it merely emboldens the covetous nature in mortals of weaker substance.
“My wife promised that she would wrangle the senators,” I say without conviction. “That she would bring the armada.”
“Then why did you design Operations Voyager Cloak and Tartarus? Why not just wait for salvation?”
I take my hand off the holodrop. “Because hope is an opiate, not a plan.”
“Agreed. So how much longer can you hope, absent any evidence, that the people of the Republic are good? That they will finally start pulling their own weight?”
When I do not answer, she stands, putting a hand on my shoulder in empathy. As Sevro became softer, I found solace in Orion. We have always been alike, particularly in our growing suspicions of demokracy. But it was always said in a grumble over a bottle of whiskey. Never in a screed like this. Her doubt troubles me, and I don’t know how to ease it when the same doubts echo unspoken inside me.
“How long will it take to sync your Blues?” I ask.
“About ninety minutes for full fidelity.”
“I’ll handle Harnassus today.” Her lips curl at his name. “You know his opinions on Tartarus. Last thing I need is you two clawing each other’s eyes out. You just sync up and get back to quarters. You need rest.” She walks away like a petulant child. I stand. “Imperator. Your commanding officer is speaking.”
She stops and turns. “According to our Senate, you’re not my commanding officer. You’re a traitor.”
There’s only one thing to do with doubt. Stomp on it.
“Imperator, I don’t need your opinions. I don’t care about your feelings. I don’t care if you doubt the Republic. I don’t care if you hate its people. For this army, this is an extin
ction event. My only care is that my best weapon is sharp before zero hour. Will you be sharp, Imperator?”
She snaps to attention. “As a rat’s teeth, sir.”
A FAMED OLD BEHEMOTH FLOATS above the mottled planet. It waits to swallow the corvette that ferried us from Io to Mercury.
At just under four kilometers in length, the behemoth is shaped like an atavistic spear. Her battered hull is sable, like the seashells I used to collect with my father on the shores of Luna’s Sea of Serenity. Unlike those glossy shells, she reflects no light.
Her name is Annihilo.
I annihilate.
I hope that annihilation is not the total extent of Atalantia’s designs.
“Big beast,” the man beside me says as if discussing the weather. “That killed Rhea?” I turn, wishing he were Cassius, but Cassius died trying to prevent this very moment.
The Rim has come to make peace with the profligate Core.
Instead of my old friend, mentor, and guardian, it is the eldest son of Romulus au Raa who stands beside me on the bridge of the Ionian corvette. Of all the Golds of the Rim, only Diomedes was deemed fit to serve as ambassador for this dire mission. I believe the choice well made. The man has gravitas. He wears a look of wary bemusement. His dark gold hair is streaked with black and tamed by a knot. His scarred, blunt face is not handsome according to Palatine tastes, but like his slumped shoulders and brutish hands, it belies a quiet, terrible potential.
From the brief flicker of swordsmanship he demonstrated on Io, and the reverence paid to his skills by his fellows, I judge Diomedes to be the only Rim Knight equal to Cassius in the ways of the blade. Yet he alone refused to fight my friend—even at cost to his own family.
For that, Diomedes will always have my respect.
“The Annihilo was the flagship of the armada that burned Rhea. Others contributed,” I reply.
“It is hideous. Of course, it does come from Venus.”
“My godfather never cared much about how something looked. Only if it worked.” He chuckles at that.
When first I saw Diomedes, I thought he was yet another brute, like so many of the Core duelists with more testosterone than brain. I was wrong. The man is an enigma somewhere between monk and barroom brawler. He shares meals with his Grays and Obsidians. He is never the first to speak or last to laugh. When he tells jokes, they usually come as blunt, elliptical rejoinders. He can be endearing, unnerving, and brutal.
Yet when news reached us that Darrow, Sevro, and Apollonius au Valii-Rath immolated my godfather in his sickbed, Diomedes did not rejoice as did his sister and many of his compatriots. Instead he came to offer his respects.
They were a peculiar comfort.
I loved my godfather, despite his deeds. Whether that is evidence of a personal failing or a moral imperative to love those who were kind to one as a child, I may never know.
“At the Battle of Ceres, the Annihilo was broken nearly in half by Darrow’s flagship,” I continue. “Still she managed to destroy two new Republic destroyers and hold off his fleet until Carthii reinforcements arrived. She is durable.”
He leans forward gamely. “It would be interesting to board her.”
“How would you do it?”
His eyes trace her instruments of death. “Quickly.”
There’s that Moonie dry wit. I have grown fond of the man and his taciturn demeanor, but worry his blunt form of honesty will prove a poor fit for the games of the Core. As Grandmother said: “A courtier without a Dancing Mask is as vulnerable as a Praetor without armor.” Still, Atalantia would be unwise to underestimate the razormaster of the Rim. Not two months ago, he watched his father walk to his own death as a matter of honor. I would not cross him lightly.
“When Atalantia asks how long the journey took, you will tell her three months,” Diomedes says.
“You don’t want her to know how fast your ships are.”
“Strength always fears speed.” His heavy eyes search mine. “You profess a desire to make Gold whole. We are not fools. We know Atalantia will turn on us when she has the upper hand. Helios and the council believe you may be able to convince her against…rash action.”
“And what does Dido think?” He ignores that. “I will do all in my power. You have my word.”
“My mother believes this is a ploy for you to seize the throne. But remember: we will have no part in kingmaking.”
“You have my word on that as well.”
I mean it, and I think Diomedes believes me.
Damn my inheritance. All that matters is that we still the turmoil that wracks the worlds. Gold remains the only viable peacemaker. But not while Gold is itself divided. To defeat Darrow, we must heal the wounds between the Rim and the Core. For that, I sacrificed Cassius. For that, I would sacrifice myself. But would Atalantia sacrifice herself for anything?
I doubt it.
“His word,” a low voice drawls. His sister Seraphina joins us from the main compartment. “We’ve seen how mercurial that is firsthand. Salve, Accipiter Vega.”
She leans past me to pat the pilot’s shoulder with affection. Our pilot, Vega, is a child with ancient eyes. On the Rim, they believe the best pilots start at age ten and end at twenty. Vega is not yet twelve years standard.
My own pilot, Pytha, is superstitious of Rim Blues and has not yet lost her terror of the Moonies after their Krypteia secret police tortured her. Understandable. So for the duration of the journey, she has secluded herself in my quarters watching fifty-year-old Venusian holofilms and eating meditation mushrooms gifted to her by Diomedes’s grandmother, Gaia.
The sound of Gaia’s piano echoes in my memory. Perhaps Atalantia will know if I played it as a child, and how I could have forgotten. There are chasms inside that I cannot explore. Hidden truths, or lies, or evils my brain has hidden in shadow to protect myself. What lies beneath the shadow? If it is a construct of my grandmother’s, Atalantia will know.
“We should trust him as little as we trust that Core slut,” Seraphina says to her brother. Her eyes dress me down. “Less, even. At least she has soldier’s blood, not a politician’s.”
“And soldiers are more noble by default?” I ask.
She blinks and turns to Diomedes. “If I have to share air with this Corespawn any longer, I’ll castrate him.” She looks between my legs and raises a notched eyebrow. “If anatomically possible.”
At the end of our journey together, I find myself unusually embarrassed by my initial attraction to the vicious woman. Upon close-quarters inspection, I have discovered she has few of the virtues I respect—patience, prudence, grace, humility, compassion. What virtues she does have—honesty, loyalty, courage—are contorted by her natural disposition: diabolical hunger.
But my attraction still persists. Credit ten years’ separation from my own species, I suppose. Either that or I’ve discovered a latent predisposition for wild things, and shall be doomed for life by my taste in precocious women.
“If you can’t share air, hold your breath,” Diomedes mutters to his sister.
“We should not be here,” she presses. “We’re not ambassadors. I should be with the forward commandos and you at Lux’s side leading the legions. Not glad-handing sybarites.”
Diomedes kneads the joints of his jaw.
“We are what our leaders ask us to be,” he replies.
“And if they told you to clean latrines again?”
“Then I would be beloved by all Browns. And pray the mess cooks don’t serve Venusian food too often for supper.”
She snorts at that.
“This isn’t a dishonor, Sera. I was chosen by the council to represent the Rim. You were chosen by a consul. It is an honor. It is the honor.”
“Even though you don’t believe in this war?” Her eyebrows crawl upward. “Well, don’t worry, brother. I doubt you’ll see
much of it. Damn Lux’s honor. Sending Raa when a Copper would have sufficed. We’re going to be hostages, even if this Core tramp decides she wants to ally with us before she sticks a razor in our backs.”
“I rather think it would be poison,” Diomedes replies.
Seraphina pats her brother’s cheek. “Either way, you’ll be a fine hostage. So good at following orders.”
She stalks back to join the escort soldiers.
“The Core isn’t like the Rim,” I say after she has gone, choosing my words carefully. Diomedes despises only one thing more than gossip. “Blood bubbles from spilled wine.”
“You worry that Seraphina will provoke someone into a duel.”
“Everyone, actually.”
“She is violent, not stupid. She demurs to me.”
“And if Dido gave her directives that contradict your own?”
He ignores my comment, but I know it strikes home. While Diomedes represents the Moon Council, his sister has only one master: her mother. And Dido is anything but conciliatory to the gens Grimmus. After all, along with the Jackal of Mars, they organized the affair at Darrow’s first Triumph, where Dido’s eldest daughter and her father-in-law were butchered.
Dido has not forgotten, nor has Diomedes.
He stares at the Annihilo. “My father once said anyone interesting is at war with themselves, and can thus be described in just two words. What are Atalantia’s?”
“Velvet buzzsaw.” He says nothing in reply. “Atalantia has a savage brain and immensely contagious charisma. She is hindered by neither guilt nor doubt. She knows no half measures. She is a social strategist, a herpetologist, a sculptor, a laughing, masterful woman in love with the sound of her own voice, and convinced that beauty is the pinnacle of existence—in any form.” I do not speak of her vices. It would be improper for him to ask, so he does not.
He lets the silence stretch and then looks over at me. “Do you know what I learned from my father’s death?”
I wait for him to tell me.
