Golden Son (The Red Rising Trilogy, Book 2)

by Brown, Pierce

  “Is Cassius in the city?” Sevro asks.

  Mustang nods. “We think so.”

  Sevro smiles.

  “If you come upon Cassius, do not engage him,” I say. “Nor Karnus, nor Aja.”

  “You’d have us run?” Clown asks, insulted.

  “I’d have you live,” I say. “The prize is the Sovereign. Don’t be distracted by revenge, or pride. If we seize her, we are the new power in the Solar System, my friends.”

  The Howlers share wolfish grins. Sevro squares his shoulders.

  “So let’s stop picking our butts.”

  “Couldn’t have said it better myself.”

  Friendly ripWings roar overhead to clear out enemy forces along our path.

  With all our powers marshaled, we move through the green canyon. No creeping column. We go fast. Speederbikes have more pace than starShells. Those Grays and the ones on spiders tear ahead after the ripWings and heavily armored dropships that will deposit men even closer to the wall. Flashes ahead indicate they’ve detonated mines or the mine killers have done their job. No way to tell. The canyon here is narrowing. Verdant canyon walls tower hugely in the distance to either side, colossal and unreal, like the terrain of a greater, larger race than man. I can’t see all my force in so vast a place, just the tip of the spear. We come after the fast-moving Grays, a skipping column of dreadful knights in starShells of black. The deluge of rain falls even harder. Behind us roll tanks and the infantry columns in their hover skiffs, lightly armored vehicles that can carry a hundred men in a flatbed. They’ll deposit them a kilometer from the walls. Lorn’s attack from the south will be much similar.

  “Drones!” Sevro shouts through the com. A cloud of metal rises toward us from a small depot in the canyon wall to the east. The Howlers streak after the threat, their guns ripping holes in the air. Still, dronefire shreds a squad of flying Obsidians. They plummet to the ground, bodies unrecognizable. We skim over buildings now. Small towns. Resorts. Estates. Granaries. We find ourselves over a lake. See our shadows as lightning flashes above, silhouetting us.

  I see the defensive wall now. It falls over the horizon like an iron curtain. Ninety kilometers across, at this stage of the canyon, and nearly two hundred meters high, it nips the lower edge of the shield. Lakes and rivers don’t find their terminus here, but instead run beneath the wall through a thick network of durosteel bars that are strong as a ship’s hull. It would take a hundred men ten hours to drill their way through those bars.

  Most cities do not have walls so massive. They cost too much. Agea and Corinth are alone in the quality of their fortifications. We could have come through the tunnels that wend through the belly of Mars and connect every city with their mines, but I didn’t want to. There are tactics I must save. And there is an example I must set.

  Assaults like this are not protracted things. I’ve seen the histories. They are wild and manic. Technology against static objects always wins, so long as the besieger’s resolve never runs dry. Once upon a time, castles were nearly impossible to take through direct assault on a capable garrison without the price of Pyrrhic victory. So field armies laid siege and starved defenders into submission. Now, no one has the patience.

  Agea is a city of twenty million souls, but how many of those will give a lick who wins today? There is no difference between the rule of the Bellona and the rule of the Augustus. Coppers and Silvers will care. But the Reds, the Browns, the Pinks will just watch another master take the chains.

  Now they’ll see ships fill the sky. Bombs rupture the air. And they will huddle in their public tenements and fear faceless marauders. Since the dawn of man, the taking of a city has been echoed by the screams of rape, theft, and drunken horror. Peerless Scarred do not partake in such savagery. It is not profitable nor in keeping with their tastes. But if one takes a city by force, it is the belief of the Golds that the city and all those therein are now property of the conqueror. If you are strong enough, you deserve the spoils. Some spare the spoils. Some give them to the wolves, feeding cities to their Obsidian and Gray armies as reward for blood spilled.

  If I can protect this city of Agea, if I can show them that there is a better breed of man, then just maybe I’ll win Agea’s heart. Capture it. Protect it. Be loved by those in it as I’m loved by my army. But first I must crack her open.

  All along the vast defensive wall, fire ripples over steel. Like tiny flowers fast blooming upon the ninety-kilometer-wide sheer gray wall. Two feint assaults are led to my left and my right. The ripWings there fire railguns, sliding sideways as they pump munitions at the wall. Return fire from the turrets on the walls causes my eardrums to shiver and hum. I want to clutch Mustang’s hand. A nod from her stills the terror in me. But only just.

  Grays in combat armor rush forward like so many ants. Rocket teams deploy and soon send slithering death into the defenders. It is too much to absorb, like the space battle above, layers upon layers of activity and counteractivity. Except this has sound.

  Mines rip holes in my force. Bellona kill squads slip out of the wall a hundred meters up, flying out in glory—banners waving, gold glistening. Their shields shimmer as they’re lanced by weapon fire. I see an eagle banner amid the Bellona, and ready to set myself against it, thinking it must be Cassius, but Mustang grabs my arm.

  “The plan!” Mustang reminds me, pointing to the river. “We’ll all die against that wall. The plan.”

  Hard to remember. Hard to remember all this chaos is a distraction. What matters is the river and the work done in the night by the Sons. If they did it. The river slithers under the wall. One hundred meters wide, and more deep, it already carries corpses toward the city.

  I dive into the water. Feel the tension as the current slows, then speeds my path. Fish scatter before us. Odd not feeling the chill. The Howlers move like torpedoes beside me. Then Ragnar is with us along with his group of Obsidians. Jupiter too, all splashing down under water. Mustang is closest to me. I scan the river ahead through the murk we kicked up and find Ares’s gift.

  There. A hundred meters deep, I see it. If there’s one thing Reds can do, it’s drill. And the Sons spent the night preparing to give us passage into the city. My men will think some elite lurcher squad was sent here before the armada. They will not question how the huge grates were cut, or how the sensors meant to detect damage to the grating were fooled.

  “Once more unto the breach,” I murmur, as if Roque, Victra, or Tactus could hear me. I activate my gravBoots and move forward.

  The passage is narrow as it curls beneath the wall near the bottom of the riverbed. We travel two abreast. So I take the best fighter with me, Ragnar, as we move first through the underwater passage. My com crackles with news of the battle above. We’re losing at the wall.

  Ragnar and I clear the tunnel together. I half expected a Bellona ambush, but none comes. The Sons did their job well. We wait on the opposite side of the wall, still submerged, one hundred meters down at the bottom of the riverbed. The rest of my cadre join Ragnar and me—Mustang, Sevro, and the remaining Howlers. Fifty more Golds and three times that many Obsidians and Grays.

  I speak into my com when we’ve all gathered at the bottom of the river. “You know your orders.”

  Sevro bumps armored fists with me. Mustang does the same. Ragnar salutes with his fist balled and against his heart. Jupiter yawns into his com. Clown, Pebble, and Weed rile up the Howlers, stirring silt at the bottom of the river. The seconds tick by. My razor is looped about my arm. PulseFist in my left hand. Feel the thump of my heart and the chill of the pendant on my chest. Hear the crackle of chaos outside. My Helldiver hands ball. My eyes close. Sevro sends up a probe to see if the riverbank is safe.

  I’m to find the Sovereign.

  Ragnar is to open the gates.

  Mustang is to lower the shield so Roque can send reinforcements and we can take the city in one fell swoop. I don’t want her to leave me, but I can trust no one else with the task.

  Trust. I mu
st trust that she will live, trust that her Obsidians will protect her, and that she will protect herself. There’s a weight pressing down on my heart, a fear that she will not come back. It feels like she’s already falling into darkness. If she dies, she’ll die believing a lie. I promise myself I’ll tell her if we survive this. She deserves that much.

  Stay alive. Stay alive. All of you, stay alive.

  Mustang departs, moving farther downriver, following it for kilometers till she reaches the park near the generators. I watch her go and flounder for something to hold on to, someone to pray to. My father is with me, and so is Eo. I feel them in the beating of my heart.

  I close my eyes.

  Sevro gathers the probe he sent above and tells me that we are clear, just a girl playing in the mud above us.

  “Fight for each other,” I say over the com to those at my side in the riverbed. “Or me.” We activate our gravBoots and soar through the water, bursting through the surface of the river like inky monsters, our black starShells dripping as we fly up over the riverbank, muddy from rain that fell before the shields were raised to protect the city. Beneath us, a single unarmored Brown girl stands, ankle deep in the mud. I stare at her from behind my terrible black helm. She should be hiding with her family, not out in a besieged city. Something is wrong.

  When she sees us, she snatches from a basket a small globe device. Lightning slashes the sky. Her best dress gathers mud on the hem, turning an even deeper brown.

  “Shoot her!” Sevro snarls.

  I knock his hand aside. A tree explodes instead. And as I look high above where, on the wall, far out of range of the probe Sevro sent up, and far beyond the limits of the EMP globe the girl carries, perch Bellona knights and their Obsidian retinue. Waiting.

  The girl presses a button on the globe.

  And that’s when we begin to die.

  PART IV

  RUIN

  Rise so high, in mud you lie.

  —KARNUS AU BELLONA

  40

  MUD

  The EMP detonates. Sounds like a giant child gasping when pricked by a needle. Our electronics die. Our gravBoots sputter. StarShell synapses fail, causing the massive metal suits to be gripped by gravity. We plummet down. Most fall into the mud of the riverbank. I splash into the water. Sinking. Sinking. Ears popping. Down and down till I lodge into the mud of the river bottom. Hitting hard. Legs buckling under the weight of my starShell. Fall on my back. Can’t see my men. Only saw shapes moving over the surface of the water as I fell. Now too deep to see anything except how the river darkens with blood. Occasional lightning flashes silhouette fastsinking bodies.

  I can’t move. My starShell is too heavy. I lie like a turtle, half stuck in mud at the bottom of the river. Confused. Fear rides in me. It happened so fast. Can’t even look to my left or my right to see who is with me. My com is dead. If it weren’t, I’d probably hear screams, curses.

  This starShell brought me from space to land. A life raft, a personal castle in the middle of a war. Now it’s my coffin.

  Heart thudding. Want to scream.

  Hyperventilating. Terror traps itself in my chest, tensing me, making me swallow the air, eating it as though it’ll give me power to move. Slow down. Slow down. Think. Think. Two bodies sink near me. Heavy in their armor, they fall fast to join the others on the bottom. No grace in death, spilling blood as they go. When the killers finish with those stuck in the mud of the riverbank, they’ll come for us down here. But they don’t need to. I slow my breathing. Limited oxygen left in the suit. Recycler offline.

  Cassius knew my plan. It had to have been him. Or was I betrayed?

  I told no one but the Sons and Sevro and Mustang. None of them could have ratted. He just knew. That bloody bastard. If I could surrender, I would. I’d save the lives of those with me. But I don’t have a com.

  I jerk my body around, trying to push myself off my back. But I’m too lodged in the mud, and my suit is more than one ton of metal. I can’t shed the weight. Can’t get the starShell off. I need the electronics for that. I push up with my arms. Nothing. The mud swallows me. Mustang got away. I think. I hope. Will she know we’re down here?

  I look for Sevro, for Ragnar, my Howlers. Dark shapes around me. I’m dizzy. Slow the bloodydamn breathing. Slow. Think. They won’t even bother coming to kill me. I’ll die at the bottom of the river, staring up at the surface as one by one, my friends fall down to join me. So alone. Sevro. Ragnar. Pebble. Weed. Clown. They’re dead. Dying. Watching the same thing as me. Or maybe they’re on the bank as the Bellona walk among the paralyzed suits of armor, killing at will. I want to cry at my impotence.

  Stop. Do something. Move.

  “Rise so high, in mud you lie.” It echoes in memory.

  This is the third time they’ve left me in the muck and mire to die. I grit my teeth till I feel enamel crumble off as I put all my strength into moving my right arm. Slowly, so slowly, it makes an exodus from the sucking pressure of the mud. But it is all that’s freed. I won’t be able to get off my back. I’m too sunken in. Too heavy in the shell. Then I see it. When the EMP blast detonated, it shut down the electrical synapses, which means the suit froze, but the razor still works, and there it is like a white python around my arm.

  It will save your life for the price of a limb. Those are the words they told me when they put the slingBlade in my hand as a boy. Salvation is sacrifice. The razor’s impulse is chemical. Its switch will respond to me. It will straighten. But around my arm … I have to be fast.

  Taking a breath, I close my eyes, feeling the toggle against my suit’s thumb. I have to be faster than a licking flame. Faster than a pitviper. I flick the switch on.

  The razor tightens as it straightens, slicing through metal like a knife through pudding.

  Flick the switch off. It stops as it bites through muscle, but not through bone. I yelp at the terrible pain in my forearm. Water rushes through the shredded arm to cool the burning wound.

  Then I feel terror. Water. I just opened my suit to water. Idiot. Soon it’ll fill. I can already feel it slithering up my neck on the inside. In minutes, two or three, I’ll drown. I work my bloody forearm arm free of the shredded metal carapace and slide the slack razor off so it floats like a tentacle. Then I activate it again. It forms into a deadly question mark and I angle it toward the other gauntlet.

  My suit’s filled with water in the torso now. The air is thin. Each breath brings more stars behind my eyes. A sensation of lightness as blood seeps from the wounds on my arm. I can survive a long time holding my breath. But I hyperventilated and now I’m sucking in carbon dioxide. But then my other hand is free of the suit gauntlet. Bare and pale in the weird, dark light. Gentle clouds of blood plume from it.

  If I were not made a Helldiver, I would die in this riverbed. As it is, I skin off my starShell and the armor beneath. It is my dexterity that saves me. I cannot move my head because of the weight of the helmet. Cannot see where I cut. My skin and the pain it registers serve as my eyes. Inch by inch, I remove myself from the starShell. Inch by inch, I drag the deadly blade along my body. Shedding my blood and the shell into the water. Parting the exoskeleton. I’m like a locust slipping from its dead husk. Very delicately, I remove the helmet, cutting it off at the neck. I hold my breath, and just nick my throat.

  A scratch. So close to the jugular.

  My legs are the last part of me I free. I sit up, the broken bits of my suit scratching at my skin, and jerk my right leg out of the hewn metal. I’m alive and wounded in the cold, dark river. Helmet off. Holding my breath as spots bloom across my vision. Now I’m able to see the sunken field of men around me at the bottom of the riverbed. I swim over to the largest one and see Ragnar’s closed eyes behind his starShell’s faceplate. Tears trickle from them. His lungs are large, but there can’t be much oxygen left in that suit. He can move better than I could, because of his great strength. But no armored man could swim in this water.

  I did not think he could c
ry. Yet now he weeps, silently. Not great, dramatic tears. These are different, calm. And when he opens his eyes, I see something else in him. Some dormant part of his soul ignites. He was dead, had given in to his fate. Yet here I float in shredded black tactical cloth, bloody, looking positively deranged, but free of my shell. I’m his dark hope. I start cutting, even though my own lungs are screaming. I need him. I can’t search for Sevro. There’s no time. And I cannot surface just to be killed on sight.

  I operate on him like a proper Carver, till he wrenches himself free of his exoskeleton. Others have seen what we’re doing. But we cannot help them yet. They must hold on.

  Ragnar and I kick our way through the rough current toward the surface. Lungs starving. Ragnar’s pale, tattooed body moves through the water with a grace I can’t match. I didn’t realize Obsidians were such swimmers. Makes sense for one born near the ice floes.

  We’re near the surface when my mind loses to my body. Ten feet from the surface, I inhale water.

  Darkness.

  Feel mud between my fingers. Something moves through my chest. Water. I vomit it, hack it out into a rough hand clutched close to my mouth, quieting me. I keep puking through the fingers. Then feel an explosion of pleasure as I gasp finally for air. Beautiful air. Hand still covering my mouth. And for a moment, there is nothing. Just the pure orgasm of life into my lungs. The full rush of oxygen on empty, aching organs. And suddenly the sound of distant warfare swells. And the groans of men. We’re in a field of corpses. The wall towers high overhead. The river runs fast at our feet. It’s been minutes since the EMP, but it seems the day has passed and left us behind.

  Ragnar dragged me into the mud between two dead Obsidians. Two Bellona Golds, six Obsidians, and six Grays walk along the dark riverbank, finishing those who lie helpless. We’re lucky the rest have quit the slaughter to return to the fight at the wall. Cassius will have led them away. That means he didn’t know it was me here, but he was well aware of the hole made by the Sons, at least. For me, he would have stayed. Lucky I didn’t carry the banner Clown and Weed made for me. Double lucky I didn’t let them wear their wolfcloaks.