My body trembles in the aftermath of the giant’s departure. Steadying myself, I turn back to the Blues, who stand transfixed, unsure of whether to look to or the HC displays or the scanners that show the Sovereign’s n-of-war encircling us. “You have nothing to fear here,” I say. “The captain of this ship was demoted because he left his viewports open. Foolishly. Rank does not excuse mistakes. I wish for a new captain. We haven’t much ti. So I will decide in sixty seconds.”
The proud-shouldered Blue cos forward past her fellows. At first, I thought the tattoos on her hands featured floral lines. Then I note a stream of mathematical notations: the Larmor formula. Maxwell’s equations in curved-space ti. Wheeler-Feynman absorber theory. And a hundred others that even I don’t recognize.
“Give the badge and I’ll carve you a hole back to Mars, boy.” Her voice has no inflection. It is flat. Precise and lazy all at once. Emotion bled out of it till only the letters and sounds of the words remain like equations in the air. “I swear it on my life.”
“ ‘Boy’?” I ask.
“You’re half my age. Shall I call you ‘lord boy’? Or will you be offended?”
Sevro raises an eyebrow, flummoxed at the Blue’s bland audacity.
“Forgive her, dominus ,” another Blue says smoothly. “She is an ensign with—”
I hold up a hand. “What’s your na, Blue?”
“Orion xe Aquarii.”
“That’s a boy’s na,” Sevro says.
“Is it? I hadn’t noticed.” Blues can be sarcastic? “My Sect intended for to be a man. I surprised them.”
“What Sect?” Sevro asks.
“She has no Sect. She was appropriated by the Copernican Sect, but dismissed shortly thereafter, for obvious reasons,” that officious Blue interrupts again. “She’s a Docker.”
Orion flinches. She swivels on the other Blue. Her voice does not rise. “And what are you but a pedantic little gasp of a fart, Pelus? Hm?”
“You see,” Pelus explains placidly, “she is a Docker. Emotional trics are unmanageable. Not her fault. She is a product of her greasy environnt.”
“Bolly that,” she says, stepping forward quickly.
She punches Pelus in the face. He wails, falling backward like he’s never been hit before. Likely because he hasn’t. Why would a Blue hit another Blue? They’re test takers, math makers, star charters. Not fighters.
“I like the rude one,” Sevro says.
“Wait, dominus ! I desire the ship!” Another Blue slides forward, staring at Pelus on the ground. “I … I deserve it. Orion is no more than a … a … laggard! Her mastery of astrophysics leaves much to be desired, to say little of her understanding of extraplanetary mass kinetics. She didn’t even attend the Observatory.”
Another Blue pushes forward.
“Forget Arnus! He’s a dodderhead at astrophysics and his assumptions in theoretical calculus are imprudent at best! I was second in command of this vessel for six months under the Ash Lord. I served upon it while it was in its dry berth. Logic supports the maneuver to place as your captain, dominus .”
The armada’s ships continue to hail us over the coms. n-of-war slide closer. Inside their bellies, brave n and won will be donning suits of armor; they’ll board leechCraft and shoot into space to land on my hull, burrow their way through, praying that they will make it ho to have a al made by their mother, their spouse. All that while my Blues shove and push to lead my ship, howling insults at one another’s math skills and academic integrity.
“Don’t listen to either of them, dominus !” shouts a woman in that slow accent. She falls to her knees. “My na is Virga xe Sedierta. I have studied the physics of astral drift in the Midnight School—far superior to the Observatory. I hold, among others, a doctorate on dark matter and gravitational lensing. Let guide your vessel, dominus . To decide in favor of another would be specious and worse: illogical!”
These Blues should have used their logic and seen that I look only at the woman who does not kneel like the rest of them. Orion, the first to speak, still stands, shoulders square, long neck unbent. Her dialect is lowborn, sharper, and more worldly than the dreamy lingo of these academics. Likely from the dock city of Phobos or the String Docks near the Academy’s Can. If she really is a Docker who didn’t go to the Observatory or the Midnight School, I wonder about the story of how she ca to be on the bridge in the first place.
“What about all that noise?” I ask Orion, gesturing to the Blues.
“They’re full of batshit, dominus .” She taps a slender finger against her temple. “I am not full of batshit.” She smiles and nods to the displays where the other torchShips creep closer. “And you’re running out of ti.” I glance to the scanner stations where alerts signal the secretive launch of two leechCraft from the Sovereign’s nearby n-of-war and cruisers. “I know I can do this, otherwise I would not have spoken out. Give a chance .”
I nod to Sevro and he tosses her the captain’s winged star.
“Get us to our fleet.”
“Rules of engagent?” she asks .
“Minimal casualties,” I say. “We are good. The Sovereign is the tyrant. That is how this must play.”
“Aye, dominus .”
I watch with Sevro as Orion takes command of my ship and sets orders to rendezvous with Augustus’s ships beyond the Rubicon Beacons. The squabbling stops as soon as I appoint Orion. They know their chance has passed, so they slip into their comfortable roles as though they wished they’d never left them. Their blue Sigils look like tridents against their forearms in this dimd lighting.
There’s a curious remoteness to Blues. An island people in the abyss of space, they were designed to survive the long journeys from Luna without mutiny. So they share. They share the sa oxygen, the sa food, the sa bunks, the sa routines, the sa pits, the sa commanders, the sa lovers, the sa Sects, the sa ambitions—to do their job with precision and rise high through rit so that they might honor their Sect.
I open a com channel to the rest of the fleet and the satellites of Luna. They can’t stop the signal. Not of this ship. Our arrays are as sophisticated as any in the Sovereign’s navy.
“Sons and daughters of Society. This is Darrow au Androdus of the House Augustus. I bring terrible tidings. Tonight, your Sovereign has broken the Compact of our Society. As my master, ArchGovernor Nero au Augustus, slept under her protection, she made attempt upon his life, the lives of his family, and those of his Praetors and aides. Along with the Bellona, she attempted the illegal and immoral murder of more than thirty Peerless Scarred. She failed.
“In retaliation, I have taken one of her flagships. And I am now besieged, with my life, as well as those of my master and his family, at risk. If we do not fight back, we will die. If we surrender, we will die. I have not vented the ship. Those aboard have seen the rit of my cause and have allied themselves with a family that would resist the power-hungry tyrant Octavia au Lune.”
Close enough to the truth.
“Hours ago, our Sovereign told to betray my house. To betray my vows. Like her father before her, she is drunk on power and now believes herself Empress. She told us to bow, witness now our reply.”
I turn the com off.
“Mr. Pelus, as you will,” Orion declares. “Let the bastards have it when they co.” She activates her own tattoos and sinks into digital speak with the rest of the crew.
The bridge is silent. A second ticks by, another. On the HC, I watch three Grays shoot a Gold in the head. In the hangars, Oranges huddle to the side as Golds lead warColors against the downed stork. Then Ragnar arrives in the hangar, and the Oranges rally around him, as do ard Reds, who’ve followed him from the halls. Many die. Sothing furious grips these Colors. And though they die, I feel the flickering of rebellion as I give them permission to do what they’ve wanted to do their entire lives. It’s there, even if you never see it till the end—that spark of individuality, of freedom. The door of the stork pops open and Mustang charges out with my Howlers to aid the lowColors and Ragnar, though even the Telemanuses keep their distance from the monstrous man.
Beyond my vessel, the enemy ships finally show their nace. The scanners swell with red. Enemies, leechCraft freshly spilt from the bellies of the armada around us, streak through space to find our hull. They aim to take us by storm.
Orion opens broadsides.
“It’s so beautiful,” Sevro murmurs. I stand in silence. Railgun payloads slam through leechCraft, shearing away tal and n, only to carry on and smash into the hulls and shields of the sa n-of-war that launched the leechCraft.
My newly appointed captain paces the command plank, arms crossed. My five-kiloter war vessel begins a roll, cycling through her banks of railguns as they hurl death into the face of the Sovereign’s fleet. Orion half turns to face , smirking for all to see.
“Now, about carving that path, dominus .”
She orders the engines to pound blackmatter. We shoot forward through the remains of two n-of-war.
My bridge is silent but for the buzz of technical orders. Missiles flash in concert beyond our hull. We deploy our flak screens, as the enemy has now deployed theirs, rendering missiles worthless. An aura of light surrounds us like a no-man’s-land. Railgun ordnance smashes into our hull, though we do not feel the reverberations here on the bridge. Our equipnt does not spark. Wiring does not fall from overhead compartnts. This ship is the pinnacle of seven hundred years of design.
Sevro nudges . “We might just gorywell make it.”
The armada around us is massive. Beyond massive. It was brought here to make the gathered lords and all their fleets out past the Rubicon Beacons tremble, and still it is not half the combined fleet. But now that very armada quakes from the inside like a corpulent body as so alien chews its way out of the host.
We make our escape from the armada in quick fashion.
They do not pursue us past the Rubicon Beacons, where we are joined by our small fleet as well as those of the Cordovan, the Telemanuses, the Norvo. I hope more will flock to our banners after today’s last surprise.
I examine our wake—naval detritus. Bodies of n and won float behind my vessel. They ca out of cracked and punctured ships. So are still alive but will soon freeze or suffocate. More dead in my path. How many will it take?
I leave Orion the bridge. Sevro and I find our way to the engineering bay, where we have Oranges cut us out of our mangled suits. We rush from there to the hangar, a vast tal depot scattered with ships, equipnt, and now broken n. Yellows dart about aiding the wounded and carting them off to the dbay, Grays and Oranges helping carry.
Weed prods several unard Golds with his razor. Pebble and Harpy help the Yellows. My eyes search frantically for Mustang. I find her under one of the battered stork’s wings, speaking with her father. A long wound mangles her left arm. I don’t ntion it. They were boarded by a leechCraft, and managed to shear the other off when entering the hangar.
“We’ve put the bulk of the Sovereign’s fleet behind us,” I tell Augustus.
“Where is Quinn?” Sevro asks sharply. “Did they get her to the dBay yet?”
Mustang does not answer. Instead, she looks to the ramp of the stork, where Roque descends, carrying Quinn in his arms. She’s pale. Long. And lifeless. Sevro does not move. Does not speak. His nostrils flare as a breath catches in his chest, a pitiful sob locked tight in the boy who never cries. He goes numb. Ghostlike. And I reach for him, but he pulls away not in anger, but in confusion, as though he was told the future once, and this reality is not what was promised. He stumbles backward, away from her body, looking around, before turning and fleeing the hangar.
Roque walks past with Quinn. His face is slack and tired. He wants to say sothing bitter, but he bites his tongue and just shakes his head at . He still does not know why I attacked him in his room before the gala. And now this. I’ve never seen him so broken.
“Look at her,” he tells . “Darrow, look at your friend.”
I look at Quinn and feel everything go quiet. Here she is, peaceful in death. Why can we not breathe life back into her? Why can we not simply restart the day? Do everything right. Save the ones we love.
Roque moves away with Quinn toward the hangar’s transparent pulse field, which opens into space. He’s bent and broken as he walks to the stars to push his lost girl out among them.
I grab the Jackal when I see him exit the stork, demanding to know what happened. She died, he tells . It’s just that. He’s tired like the rest of us. He rolls down his sleeves. “I won’t apologize. I did my best.”
“Of course you did,” I say, shaking myself. “Of course.”
He asks where my helt cam is. I stare at him. “The footage,” he says. “Do you even understand what you just did?” He waves around. “Two n took one of the greatest vessels ever built. Golds will flock to our banners. All it takes is my dia and your story.”
I tell him, absently, almost forgetting the dataRecorder the Sons of Ares put in my tooth to record the bomb blast. It’s activated with a clench of my molars. I clenched them as soon as I sat down in the Sovereign’s office. I reach inside my mouth and delicately pry it loose of the gums. It is smaller than a hair. The Jackal’s eyes light up.
“Where did you get this?” he asks.
“Black market,” I say. “Sovereign has damned herself. Use the recording. Make this war a fair fight.”
I leave the Jackal there and am about to leave the cleanup to others, when I notice the Oranges and lowColors watching . I can’t simply lead with violence. So I join Pebble and Harpy and lend my aid in helping the wounded to the dbay. The rest of the Howlers help too. And Mustang, and eventually even Victra.
After the last Gray is loaded on a gurney, I stand in the empty hangar. Augustus has gone to the bridge. The Jackal avoids the Telemanuses who accompany him, and instead makes for the communications hub. I’m left alone. Roque is gone. I don’t know what to do, where to go.
Blood and scorch marks stain the deck. I look at my hands. These are the consequences of my actions, and I feel so alone. I lean my head against the cold tal wall.
She cos from behind. I don’t think she says my na. I’m not sure. I just sll her damp hair as her arms wrap around . Squeezing tightly.
“I know you’re tired,” Mustang says quietly. “But Sevro needs you.”
“What about Roque?” I ask, turning to face her. So much lingers unsaid between us. So many questions unanswered. So many cris left unforgiven. So much anger and perhaps still the faint flicker of sothing more. I feel it as she cups my neck, and lets the strength in her fingers lend itself to .
“Not now,” she says. Roque blas . And he should. They all should bla . And it’s only going to get worse.
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