WE EXTRACT OUR PRIZES from Deepgrave without incident, taking ten other high-value prisoners from the bowels of the station with us in our submersible. Even though they’re paralyzed and bound, the press of their bodies and the stink of their unwashed flesh, stacked in the back of the cramped cabin, is nearly more than I can bear. Stealing only Apollonius would have broadcast our intentions. Now, if the warden doesn’t live up to his end of the bargain, the Ash Lord and the Republic will think it a general jailbreak. I only hope our nonlethal methods and our access into their system doesn’t give us away too quickly.
Despite the success of the mission, I feel trapped. Imprisoned by the proximity of the scum. Apollonius lies atop the pile of fallen warlords in his kimono, like some dread corpse king. In my chest, my heart is made heavier by the dark, silent eyes of my friends hunched in the red light of the submarine—knowing they feel the same weight, that we are all party to some unspeakable deed. Thraxa, who has always held overwhelming guilt for the evil works of her own Color, stares balefully at the prisoners. Were this to go wrong, were these Golds to stand again at the head of their legions, all their evil would rip fast as a wildfire back into the world.
“Sir…I want to apologize,” Alexandar whispers carefully to me so the others can’t overhear. “I was already seasick, from the waves on the trawler, and when I saw the eyes go…well, it was mawkish of me. Not to the level I hold myself, and I hope you don’t think lesser of me for it.”
“Ragnar would puke in null gravity,” I say. “Nothing to apologize for.”
He nods, not hearing me. It must be a heavy burden, being the eldest grandchild of Lorn au Arcos. An impossible standard to follow.
Sevro wonders why I like the youth. For all the entitlement, all the arrogance, a deep vein of insecurity runs through Alexandar, and I feel a powerful protective instinct toward him. He wants to be good. If only he didn’t want to be famous as well.
He reminds me only too much of Cassius.
“Sir, I know it is base to ask. But I wonder if we could keep it between us?”
“You worried about Rhonna mocking you?” I ask. “Trust me, Alex. It’s not her you have to worry about.” I look over to Sevro, who is eavesdropping on the conversation with a nasty little smile for Alexandar. From the back of the submersible there comes a bark. I wheel around to see the skinny Obsidian smiling down at his lap. A small snout pokes through his fingers.
“Don’t tell me you brought the warden’s dog,” Sevro mutters. The Obsidian grins wickedly and opens his bony hands to show us the terrier hidden between his legs. “Dognapping? Careful, mutts, Tongueless here is a bad, bad man.”
When we surface back at the trawler, I struggle to hide my agitation and wait for my men to exit first and help load out the prisoners one by one before exiting at the last to gulp down fresh air. Yet even the brine of the sea and the cool wind of the Atlantic cannot wash away the feeling that I’ve made some irrevocable mistake.
I can’t let the Howlers see my doubt, so I emerge out of the submersible with a grand smile, and laugh to Rhonna at our catch of the day as they lay the prisoners lengthwise on the deck and shackle their hands and feet together under a clear and endless sky. “…and he puked over my boots,” Sevro says, finishing his story of Alexandar’s embarrassment to Rhonna and the support crew’s delight. Alexandar tries to laugh it off, but his cheeks are bright red. “And then we kidnapped a dog! Did you meet Tongueless? He’s a riot. Tongueless, come say hello!”
After loading up the Golds onto Colloway’s pelican, we cut open the door previously sealing the crew in, and leave the crab hauler via the pelican, flying north to our departure base in the frozen wilderness of Baffin Island. There, the Nessus, a stolen Society Xiphos-class frigate of war, lies cold and quiet under camouflage tarps in the shadow of granite escarpments. As we made our preparations for Deepgrave in Greenland, my brother Kieran hid here with the rest of the Howlers, getting ready for our departure.
They wait for us out in the snow in thermal cloaks to help load up the prisoners, watching the parade of blindfolded Golds with the solemnity of funeral mourners. I share their disgust. This dirties all of us. Compounded with the death of Wulfgar, it has darkened the mood perceptibly. I don’t imagine it will brighten as we near Venus.
On the snow, Sevro and I look up at the Nessus. Painted snow white the entire length of her hundred-meter hull and crested on her starboard and port with the winged heel of Quicksilver, she’s got some of the prettiest lines ever to dart between spheres.
“This beauty puts a rocket in my pocket,” Sevro says. “What’d Quick want for her?”
“Nothing.”
“Man doesn’t get that rich asking for nothing.” His eyes follow the last of the prisoners up the ramp. “We should keep the youngbloods away from them. Half those rich shits could talk their way out of a black hole. Especially Rath.”
“They were sentenced to solitary. Solitary is what they’ll get.”
Sevro nods to Tongueless, who is standing near the ship’s portside battery, wriggling his bare feet in the snow, arms spread wide. His spirit eyes stare off into the wilderness as a storm gathers its breath.
“What you want to do about that box of fun?”
“We’ll send him to New Sparta with the rest.” He grimaces. “What, you want to bring him with? We don’t know anything about him.”
“I like his fiber. I mean, he knocked a Peerless out with a water pipe.”
“He has to be over fifty! Jove knows how long he’s been in that cell and why he was there in the first place. It’s a risk.”
“He saved your ass. And we’d still be wandering around down there with guards up our peckers if he didn’t play guide.” He chews his lip. “To be honest, it’d be good for the pack to have an Obsidian around the table. They’re feelin’ a little light in the breeches.”
By the look in his eyes, I know he’s not just talking about the pack.
“Your call,” I say. “His choice. But you tell him where we’re going.”
“To certain death, general mayhem? Who could resist?”
As if hearing us—impossible from the distance—Tongueless turns. He smiles, then looks up at the Quicksilver heel on the ship.
Sevro was right about the Nessus. She is a pretty thing. And a killer straight from the Venusian shipwrights. While the Republic might have a vast numerical superiority in ships and resources at her disposal, the new line of Core capital ships puts Victra and Quicksilver’s fledgling Phobos Shipyards to shame.
Quicksilver’s men captured the Nessus two years ago after she was damaged during a Gold raid on a Republic supply caravan to our main fleet around Mercury. Instead of alerting the Republic Navy like he should have, Quicksilver seized her, citing arcane salvage laws. When Republic lawyers tried to claim her for the war effort, Quick won the court battle and retrofitted her to serve as his personal interplanetary shuttle.
Which is why I need her.
Kieran waits for me in the Nessus’s lower garage as I stamp snow off my boots. He stares after Apollonius as Thraxa drags his limp body to the brig. The warden’s dog waddles behind Tongueless as Clown leads him to the galley to put some meat on his bones. “ ’Lo, brother,” Kieran says, frowning at Tongueless, wondering where he came from. I greet my brother with a hug. He jerks his head after the hooded Gold. “So that’s that prize, eh?” In his mid-thirties, my brother is skinny as a rail, freckled, and terminally optimistic. He smells like chlorine today.
“The Minotaur of Mars in the flesh,” Sevro says.
Kieran blinks from under a tangle of red hair. “He’s big. The dog his?”
“No, it was the warden’s,” Sevro says.
“Sure.” Kieran nods, as if it makes perfect sense. “And the Obsidian?”
“It’s complicated. How’s the ship?” I ask. For the past five years, Kieran’s served as the head of the Howlers’ engineering department.
“She’s tip-top slick and ready for immediate launch.” He grins. “There’s really nothin’ to fix. We been swimming half the time. You should try the pool, it’s like the Vale itself. There’s even a sauna.”
“You been swimming?” Sevro says jealously.
“What about the stores? Trust you didn’t put much of a dent in them.”
“Just the whiskey.” Kieran does a little dance. “She’s stocked for a tour of the Solar System, brother. Those Venusians will drool over what Quicksilver’s got in the holds. Gotta say, it’s some fair bait. You certain they’ll take it?”
“They had bloodydamn better,” Sevro mutters. “Otherwise we just jailbroke a bunch of savages for nothing.”
“Tharsus has a legendary appetite,” I say. “He’ll bite.” I unzip the front of my scarabSkin. Steam and stink pour out into the cold garage. Sevro undoes his own. Kieran steps away, snorting. “We’ll depart in the morning.”
Sevro grunts, his scarabSkin now a crumpled shadow on the metal floor. He’s naked underneath. “Since we’re not going anywhere, I’m going to eat.”
“Shower first,” Kieran says. “For the sake of the men.”
“Don’t be so dramatic. Ass sweat never killed a soul.”
“That’s not a fact,” Kieran calls as Sevro saunters away. “You can’t verify that.” Kieran picks up his discarded scarabSkin with a wrench. “I’ll wash this before it infests the ship. Last time, he brought sandmites back in his hair. Gave the Obsidians the worst rash. Guess we don’t gotta worry about that now.” He pauses. “How’d my girl do?”
“She was fine.” We watch Rhonna sort gear from the pelican into bins on the far side of the garage near the starShell bays. Kieran scratches his neck, leaving grease stains.
“You know when we were kids and you’d sometimes tell me ghost stories? I hate ghost stories. Scared the piss out of me, thinking Golback the Dark Creeper was going to come from the cracks in the floor and eat my teeth.”
“Golback!” I say. “I thought you loved Golback.”
He shudders. “You wanted to tell ’em, so I let you tell ’em. Point is, and it really wasn’t that good of a point…I don’t like asking for things. I know you’re sharp and all, but can I say something that will prolly be blinding obvious to you?”
“Course.”
He looks back at his daughter trudging through the snow. “Was talkin’ to some of the boys, and we all agree this is bound to get a little mad. I mean, shit, Wulfgar’s already dead, and we just broke into a maximum-security prison. I’m with you, brother. I gotta be. But I don’t want my daughter coming with us.”
“Then she won’t. And you’re not coming either.”
“Darrow…”
“This isn’t a debate, Kieran. You’ve a gift with the gears, but you’re not meant for a firefight. And that’s what we’re driving into.”
He knows what I mean. I don’t want him to die.
After the prisoners are sealed in their cells, my men slink off to the showers and then to the galley for a hot meal. I gather several of the support Howlers together in the garage to tell them they won’t be coming with us. Rhonna is amongst them. Kieran shuffles awkwardly in the corner as I give them each assignments here on Earth to aid the Howlers that will be returning from the field. They’ll need a network to help them hide and reorganize. Afterwards, Rhonna confronts her father and me.
“So this is what all the girls who wanted to be Helldivers felt when they were told they needed a prick for the job,” she says. “Respectfully, I deserve to come with.”
“And how do you figure that?” I ask. “I don’t see a wolfcloak. You’re putting the engine in front of the ship, lass.”
“Don’t call me that. You lied to me. You said I’d get a chance to show my fiber.”
“This is your chance. What you do in New Sparta will be just as important—”
“Bullshit,” she snaps.
“Say that again?”
“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 Drachenjäger. 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.