Iron Gold

  I lose my footing on a rusted stair and nearly fall as the weight of the suit pulls me toward the ground. I stumble up, firing two quick shots with my pistol. I score a lucky hit. Someone grunts and a shadow of blood sprays on the wall as the green energy bolts hit meat, giving me time to reach the docking level.

  I race through the metal door and close it behind me, cranking on the hatch as hard as I can to seal it. But the wheel stops and then turns against me as someone stronger on the other side begins to open it. I backpedal and fire three shots into the hatch, turning the metal wheel into red-hot slag and jamming the door. The muscle fibers of my arm tremble from the pistol’s recoil. They’ll be through the door in a moment, but I bought myself precious seconds.

  “Hundred meters straight. Fifth left. Straight twenty meters. First right.”

  I follow Pytha’s instructions, but as I turn to flee the door, I slam into someone and we both go down, hard. I roll as I fall and aim my pistol back up at my assailant. But it’s not an Obsidian. It’s the Gold girl. She’s limping to her feet, bearing half a dozen new wounds on her oil-slick skin. Her jacket is in tatters. She carries my razor in her hand. It is bloody to the hilt. Clumps of white hair cling to the gore.

  How she is standing is a miracle. At her stomach, layers of skin and fat pull back along a six-inch gash to the right of the belly button. Looks like an axe wound. She hunches there, listening to the Obsidians hammering on the door.

  “Give me my razor,” I say.

  “Move.” She lunges toward the door with her razor and sticks it through the molten metal. A raider on the other side screams and she draws the razor back. Blood hisses as the molten metal turns it to vapor.

  “Where’s your ship?” she asks, turning on me with wild, incandescent eyes. The door wheezes as the Obsidians knock half of it off its hinges. “Where is your gorydamn ship?” The Luna accent falters under the adrenaline in her voice, replaced by something very different. The wound in her gut is leaking blood badly.

  “This way.” I move to help her walk, but she flinches away. “Don’t be a fool. You can barely stand,” I say. Glancing back at the bending door, she relents with a hiss of air between her teeth and throws her arm around mine. We hobble fast as we can, putting the door behind us, passing through the cargo level, containers and cranes to every side.

  We take a right. Cassius stands guarding the interior of the transfer bridge that connects our ship to the Vindabona, clad in his EVO suit and helm. He fires his pulseRifle over our heads at the pack that rounds the corner behind us. The distorted energy screams past my ears. There’s a howl. I glance back and see an Obsidian’s head disappear, neck spouting blood. Magnetically shot bolts as long as my forearm rip past us and embed themselves into walls. Then we’re past Cassius and stumbling into the narrow causeway. He follows behind me, his pulseRifle roaring as he unloads the last of its battery into an Obsidian warrior who jumps into the causeway after us. The man’s torso tears in half and spins backward, leaving his legs behind on the causeway. Cassius kicks the legs off the ship.

  “Disengage!” he shouts to Pytha. Our bulkhead door seals, closing off the causeway as I spill with the Gold girl to the transfer bay floor inside the Archimedes, panting and soaked with sweat and blood. The girl leans her forehead against the metal floor and coughs in pain. Pytha pulls an emergency disengage from the Vindabona and we bank away. Cassius stares down at me. I feel his rage, despite his helm’s smooth visage.

  There’s silence except for weeping from the crew we rescued. They’re sprawled like us on the floor, huddled together, some in exaltation, others still in fear, not yet believing that they could possibly be safe. They’re not.

  “You idiot,” Cassius says down at me. “What the hell were you thinking?” Before I can answer, he kicks my razor from the Gold’s hands. He bends, as if to grab her face to look for the dread mark on her cheek, when the floor of the Archi opens up between us. He twists back and away as a fist-sized gray blur shrieks through and then goes out through the ceiling with a monstrous gasp of air. A hole has been ripped in the ship. Depressurization sirens scream. Red pulses from the overhead lights. Another railgun slug pierces our hull, slamming through the floor up through the body of the paunchy Red man we rescued, spraying us with his blood. Pytha shouts something in our coms. Pressure screams out of the holes. Then the cellular armor slides over the external damage and the mad gout of air stops. The sirens cease their wailing, but the warning lights continue to throb.

  “Our engines are hit,” Pytha says. “Number one is at half power. Shunting energy from it to the shields.”

  Cassius gestures to the gash on the Gold girl’s stomach. “Cauterize that or she’ll bleed out.” He rushes through the survivors of the crew to the bridge. The Gold girl is losing too much blood. Her skin is pale under the black oil and her chest rises and falls with shallow rapidity. I lift her arm to get her to the infirmary, but she’s too weak. The stims have overloaded her system. Her legs go out, so I loop my arm behind her knees and my other around her back and carry her through the narrow halls. The fierce face she wore when I first found her is gone. She’s quiet and still, her eyes watching me, so distant from the chaos around us. I lay her down on the medical bed as the Archi’s guns fire. The infirmary is small and understocked. Syringes tremble in their cases as we take another hit.

  Those screaming faces of the lowColors.

  The wails still chase me.

  They’ll all die.

  The girl watches as I cut open her soiled shirt with medical shears. Two minor lacerations rend her skin above her breasts. My main concern is the axe wound. It’s a deep and angry gouge six inches long in her lower left abdomen. What was she thinking, going back? What could have been so important? I clean the wound with an antibac spray and use the hospital-grade medical scanner to inspect her organs for damage. Her liver is lacerated. She’ll need a real surgeon, and soon. All I can do here is cauterize the capillaries and load her with bloodsim. Flesh sizzles under the laser. She groans in pain. Once it’s sealed, I apply a layer of resFlesh and strap on a compression pack. The ship shudders.

  “Who are you?” I ask the girl. “What’s your name?”

  She does not answer as her eyes drift closed. “S-1392,” she whispers. “Help…at…S-1392.” Her words trail away as she falls unconcious.

  S-1392 is the asteroid she was heading toward. But what did she mean by “help”?

  I examine her as if her face will hold the answers. The lashes of her eyes are longer than I might have expected. But even with the smear of blood and oil, I can see the stringy muscles of a fighter and a testament of old scars upon her skin. Too many for her young age. I trace my fingers over the six parallel scars that rake her lower back. Accompanying those scars are two old knife wounds near her heart, a terrible burn on her left arm, and the remnants of an old wound on the left side of her head that claimed the top corner of her ear. I thought of her as a girl when I found her in that cage. But she’s not a girl. She’s a predator in young skin. Who else would go back into that nightmare ship?

  Why did you have to take my razor?

  Did she leave something behind? I search her clothes, her body. There’s nothing hidden. No false teeth. But I have a suspicion. I run my hand over her face. The cheekbones are bold and high and covered like the rest of her face with oil. I scrape my nails along her closed eyelids. The false lashes there are well made and applied with some sort of resin. My fingers drift to her right cheek. Dread twists my belly as I feel the skin there give.

  I stand up and away.

  I know what she is.

  I suspected when she stole my razor, and then when her voice broke from the accent of the Palatine. Was she affecting that one? Was it a guise? I pick the corner of the odd patch of skin on her face till a thin layer of resFlesh—the same sort Cassius uses to disguise himself—pulls away from the cheek, revealing what lies beneath. Along her right cheekbone, slashing through the black oil at a cruel angle, is
the pale mark of a Peerless Scarred.

  SEVRO SQUIRMS ON THE WHITE CUSHION next to me as Publius cu Caraval, the Copper Tribune, leader of the Copper bloc, finishes the roll call. He’s an elegant firebrand of a man. Middle-aged, small of stature, with a narrow, pleasant face, a large nose, cold eyes, and an ambivalence toward fashion that borders on antagonism. When he’s not in his toga, he still wears the same drab suits he did as a public lowColor defense lawyer before the war. Since then, he’s risen to become a voice of reason in the divided Senate, and an occasional ally of my wife’s. They call him the Incorruptible for his punctilious nature and lack of vices.

  Caraval stands on a small circular plinth before the tiered C-shaped marble steps that encircle the white and red porphyry floor. Small wooden chairs are set for each senator on the steps. Behind Caraval, recessed from the plinth, squats the unadorned Morning Chair of the Sovereign. Made of whitewood carved with simple geometric designs, the chair looks dreadfully uncomfortable and is without cushion—Mustang had it removed. She leans against one of the arms of the chair and watches the senators. They sit clustered by Color and political affiliation upon the cushioned steps—Dancer’s Vox Populi to the left of the huge Liberty Doors that lead out of the Forum to the steps and the Via Triumphia. Mustang’s Optimates sit to the right. Obsidian and Copper centrists occupy the middle.

  Bored by the formality, Sevro lounges beside me in crisp military whites. He’s staring at the ceiling, infatuated by the mural there. It is a romantic rendering of the Phobos Address, my speech that launched the Rising on Phobos ten years ago. I look young and radiant in paints of gold and scarlet and float on gravBoots, cape billowing behind me like a magenta storm cloud, flanked by Howlers, the Sons of Ares, and Ragnar, even though he wasn’t exactly there. Sevro’s jaw clenches.

  “That doesn’t look anything like me.” He nods to his own image. He’s right. The eyes of the rendering are blood-red and insane. His hair’s standing on end. His teeth look like rows of shattered porcelain. “You look like a bloody saint plowed an angel and out you popped. I look like a deranged fucking mutant that eats babies.”

  I pat Sevro on the leg. Mustang catches my eye and nods up to the last of the Red Senators who have just entered the room. Dancer shuffles along at the head of the procession of my people to their seats. He feels my eyes and meets them without a smile. Even knowing he’s my adversary of the day, it’s hard not to feel fondness for him.

  With the roll call finalized, I turn my attention to Mustang.

  “A quorum being present, the floor will now hear the scheduled petition.” She looks to me. “ArchImperator.”

  The sound of my boots on stone echoes through the Senate chamber as I go to take my place on the plinth facing the senators. I spy Daxo, who sits surrounded by his fellow Gold senators on the far right. He looks like a statue of some pagan god in repose, though I know he’s still nursing as monstrous a hangover as I am. Only when the tension has reached its pinnacle do I finally speak.

  “Mercury…is liberated.”

  The right half of the senators, along with the Coppers, led smoothly by Caraval, roar their approval.

  “The First Fleet of the Republic under the command of Imperator Orion xe Aquarii met that of the Ash Lord over Mercury while the Second Fleet under my personal command launched an Iron Rain against the continent of Borealis. Through high cost, we prevailed.” The highColor senators lead the room to their feet yet again, roaring their fanatical support for the war effort. The Vox Populi remain silent. And so, I notice, do the Obsidians.

  “Now the Ash Lord is in retreat. He has recalled the greater sum of his forces to make a final stand at Venus. But soon we will follow. Brothers and sisters, we stand upon the threshold of victory.”

  It is a full minute before the renewed applause dies down.

  “But we yet have a choice to make.” I take my time, allowing the silence to grow again. “Do we allow this war to linger? To consume another generation of our young? Or do we press the enemy and grind them until the last of the chains have been shattered?” I speak over the applause this time, letting the fervor spread through me. “It has been a decade of war. But we can end it here. Now.” I spare a look up to the viewing deck above, where the holonetworks have their cameras. My enemy will be watching this later with his daughter and advisors, his nimble mind dissecting my words, divining my plans based on the response of these senators. But more importantly, he’ll be watching me. He must not see my exhaustion. Mercury was a great victory. We robbed him the Iron of his docks. But Venus…Venus is the prize.

  Even here, amidst the thunderous applause of the right, I hear Lorn’s words echo in the dark place of my mind.

  Death begets death begets death.

  “Brothers and sisters of the Republic, we are one choice away from a fully liberated Core. A free System from Sol to the asteroid belt. We would be the first men and women to ever see it. But it will be a sight not without cost.” I pause and permit, for one small moment, the weight of these last years to show on my face. “Like you, I wish for nothing more than peace. I wish for a world where the machine of war does not swallow our young.” I look to my wife. “I wish to live in a world where my child can choose his own destiny, where the sins of the past do not define the nature of his life as it has defined all of ours. Our enemies have held dominion over us for too long. First as slaves, then adversaries. And what stability, what harmony can we bring to the worlds we have freed while they continue to define us? For the sake of our brothers and sisters on Venus and Mercury…” I look to Dancer. “…for the sake of the souls we have unchained, for the sake of our children, give me the tools and I will finish this war, once and for all.”

  They roar in approval.

  I look to Daxo and, as we agreed, he stands to tower over his fellow senators.

  “My noble friends…” His large hands splay plaintively outward. “I know you are weary. I feel the years of war in my bones too. I believe I had hair when this all began.” There’s laughter. “I know better than you the heart of the Peerless Scarred. They do not have the spirit for peace. It is not in their nature to accept this new world we have made. They must be defeated, by all measures at our disposal. My family has supported the Reaper since before he was known. My brother died for him. I have fought for him. And I will not abandon him now. Nor should you. The Optimates stand with the Reaper. And we propose a bill to the floor for a Resolution of Liberty Eternal, to draft twenty million fresh troops, to allocate ships from the Gulf, and to levy additional taxes to fund the war effort until the Core is free.” Daxo sits back down and makes a pained expression in my direction and rubs his temple.

  Publius cu Caraval rises from his seat when the applause finally fades. His short copper hair is parted on the side, not a strand out of place. “I was told I was brought into this world to serve. To move the invisible levers of an ancient and evil machine. We all moved those levers. But now we serve the People. We are here to liberate the dignity of man. Darrow of Lykos is our greatest weapon against tyranny. Let us sharpen him again so he can break the chains for our brothers and sisters in bondage on Venus.” He touches his heart, bleeding empathy and resolution.

  A chorus of senators declare their support, each shouting over the next. Mustang stands, hammering down her Dawn Scepter. “The resolution is registered by the Senate and now open for debate.”

  All eyes turn to Dancer.

  He has not yet moved. Mustang analyzes his face. “Senator O’Faran,” she says. “Nothing?”

  “Thank you, my Sovereign.” He picks at the edges of his toga in his nervous habit before rising to his feet. To this day he loathes public speaking. His voice is hoarse and halting, as far from Publius’s as possible. “ArchImperator, my friend, my brother, can I first begin by saying how happy I am to have you home. There is no…greater son of the Republic.” Many heads nod. “I would also like to personally offer you congratulations on the partial liberation of Mercury. Despite your methods
, which I will get to in a spit.”

  I watch him warily, knowing what he intends, but not how it’s meant to be delivered.

  “You all know I am a man of war.” He looks at his rough hands. “I have held weapons. I have led men. It’s what I am. And like most of you, I am also a mortal in a war of giants.” He looks at the Golds, the Obsidians. “But I have learned that giants can be felled with words. Words are our…salvation. So I stand here before you armed only with that voice.” He pauses, grimacing to himself. “And I want to ask you, what age do you want to live in? One where the sword leads and we follow? Or an age where our voice can sing louder than an engine can roar? Was that not the Song of Persephone? The dream of Eo of Lykos?”

  There are murmurs of agreement from his supporters.

  An inner bitterness wells as he insinuates my deviation from Eo’s dream. She was mine and I lost her to them. But each time she’s mentioned, even in reverence, it seems to me as though she’s been dug from the ground and paraded for the crowd.

  “Senators, we have no power in and of ourselves,” Dancer continues slowly. “We are just vessels. Men and women chosen to speak for the People, by the People, to channel their voice to protect the People. Darrow, you helped give the People a voice. For that, we are in your debt.

  “But now you refuse to listen to that voice, to obey the laws you helped make. You were given an order by the Senate, by the People, to stand down over Mercury. You disobeyed that order. You released an Iron Rain.” He looks to Sefi. She sits several seats down from Sevro on the guest benches, watching with an unreadable expression. “Because of your impatience, a million of our brothers and sisters died in a single day. Two hundred thousand Obsidians. Two hundred thousand. A number that cannot be replaced.” The words are heavy as they fall, and I see the solemn anger of the Obsidian bloc, the same anger I’ve felt from Sefi since that day. “Not only did you do this, but you illegally pillaged elements of the Fourth Fleet that guards Mars to add to your assault on Mercury. Why?”