Iron Gold

  “The Ash Lord has sought peace?” I ask.

  “It seems war has softened his resolve. He is craven, and will be dealt with once we have retaken Mars and Luna. Rhea will be repaid in full.” Dido turns her eyes to me. “They say your family is cursed, Cassius. How lucky you are to have a brother survive the Jackal’s purge. Which one is he? Theseus? Daedalus? They would be his age by now….” She looks back to Cassius. “It doesn’t matter. If you do not give me the combination, I will let our dragons suck the marrow from his blasted bones.”

  Cassius looks over at me with love and sorrow in his eyes. He’s been searching for this for the past ten years. A chance at redemption. Denying her war is that chance. It crushes him now to know the price it will cost. But he will pay it, I realize. Even if that price is my life.

  “I swore to protect the people. That is what I will do. No matter the cost.”

  “And do you share your brother’s insanity?” Dido asks me.

  Cassius would have stayed to free the prisoners on the Vindabona. He wouldn’t have run at the first sound of Obsidians like I did, because he is a hero, and I am not. Whatever hate I have for Darrow, whatever hope these Gold have kindled in me, I cannot betray Cassius now. I love the man too much. But it breaks my heart to know that the masses he would die for would have his head on a spike if they could.

  “He speaks for the both of us,” I say again.

  Dido makes a small noise of disgust. She leans back, realizing the impasse, quick eyes searching for a way around it. “Diomedes. A bloodfeud needs resolution. Will you do the honors?”

  “No,” the stoic knight replies. She turns on him in confusion.

  “What?” Dido asks, caught off guard.

  “You heard me, Mother.”

  “He killed your sister.”

  “They are our guests.”

  “You’re joking.”

  “You blathering idiot…” Bellerephon hisses. “They’re enemies of our blood.”

  “They are our guests. If you want blood, draw it yourself.”

  “Let him alone,” Seraphina says, standing. “It is his right to refuse. I will do the deed.”

  “No,” Dido says.

  Seraphina flinches. “You doubt I can?”

  “Yes. Sit down.” She ignores Seraphina’s wounded expression and looks down the table. “Bellerephon, do what your cousin will not.”

  “With pleasure.”

  The man uncoils to his feet, long legs taking him around the table till he stands looking down his crooked nose at Cassius’s bloody face.

  “Beware, milky,” Cassius says with a feral grin. “I am a student of Aja au Grimmus.”

  “And I am the son of Atlas au Raa. Sixth shade of the Shadowfall. Slayer of Petro au Bretta, the Desert Spear.” Bellerephon’s eyes glitter with delight as he gathers phlegm and spits it onto Cassius’s face. It drips down Cassius’s cheek, running diagonal with his Peerless Scar. “This is a blood feud. The blood of my grandfather and my cousin is upon your hands. Hear me now, you wretched worm. We are devils to one another. In the name of House Raa, I, Bellerephon au Raa, challenge you to single combat in the Bleeding Place till one heart beats no more.”

  “Very well, my goodman,” Cassius replies with a brilliant smile. “I am delighted to accept.”

  IT SOUNDS LIKE THE DAMN WORLD is ending. Clustered outside the downed Gold shuttle in the center of our trap, Volga, Dano, and I look up and feel the fear. Two escort ripWings chase after the downed Augustan ship. The blast door above us locks closed as the first round of gunfire pelts its reinforced surface.

  The shuttle plummeted a kilometer through the city, drawn downward faster than the speed of gravity by the fleet-grade Sun Industries gravWell. The machine gripped the shuttle as soon as the EMP Kobachi built into the custom drone went off inside the shuttle. We almost lost the ship twice on the descent as its rotation made it drift out from the gravWell’s projection radius. Dano wrangled it back by increasing the gravity to four times Earth grav.

  Aside from the shuttle, the gravity beam pulled down a deluge of rain, seven fliers, a forest of shrubs from balconies, several clotheslines, and three shattered hoverbikers who died by smashing into the floor at nine hundred kilometers per hour. All that haul lies in a broken bone and metal soup around the shuttle in the garage of the half-completed Lower West Hyperion Hospital. Dano kicks one of the shattered hoverbiker helmets away from the breech we’ve burned into the shuttle’s hatch. The head is still inside.

  My stomach knots up. I’m back in the block war.

  Digging through debris. Boots stomping over rubble and bits of men. Gasping like a dying fish, lungs starved from thermobaric burrow bombs that eat the oxygen out of the air.

  I tear my eyes from the disembodied head, thankful for my helmet so my crew doesn’t see my horrified face. I didn’t take the zoladone tonight, afraid that the stomach cramps would knock me flat. I’m already feeling too much.

  The blast door shudders above us as the escorts pour more munitions into it. Soon it will buckle. We’ve four minutes before a rapid response team of Hyperion’s counterterrorism Watchmen deploy from the Twelfth Cohort headquarters.

  Already, there will be armored bodyguards jumping from the escorts, searching for some other way into my metal trap.

  I stare into the mirage of heat as our breeching device burns a hole in the hull. Volga, armored in a military-grade chestplate and helmet, pulls the breecher off and slams a steel and lead battering ram into the metal. It caves inward on her third swing. She tosses the ram aside and moves into the ship. The green magazine globe of her plasma rifle’s barrel glows as she primes the generator. Dano goes in next. I follow with the Omnivore in my trembling hands. If even one of the nasty bastards inside didn’t get knocked flat by the anacene gas, this could turn into a bloodbath.

  Trigg run through on a Gold’s razor.

  Men crumpling like cans to powerHammers.

  Ozone and burning flesh as the Gold skins my team alive.

  My hands shake harder.

  The ship is upside down and black inside. It looks like a party gone wild, all the revelers having drunk themselves to insentience right where they stood. Bodies, still buckled in their crash webbing, hang upside down in chairs from a ceiling that was once the floor. Others are sprawled atop each other in a living carpet with eyes that shine like fountain coins up at me. We pick our way through the arms of servants and leather-faced killers in tuxedos. The anacene-17 has made the muscles in their bodies, including their eyelids, unresponsive. Only their lungs and hearts still work, allowing them breaths so shallow they look dead.

  There’s no movement.

  My heart slams in my chest. We push for the forward passenger compartment in search of the prizes. As Dano bounces around the ship with a gymnast’s ease, Volga and I climb over the body of a titanic Gold with a red beard and almost step on a fox the size of a large child. It lurches up at us, snarling. I shout in surprise and kick it as it lunges. It flies down the aisle and onto Dano’s leg as he hangs with one hand from one of the upside-down passenger headrests. He screams and falls down.

  “Get off me. Get it off!”

  He flails, falling to his back, and points his gun at the animal’s skull, ready to blow its head off. Volga pushes the weapon aside and pries the fox’s jaw open to free Dano’s leg. “I’m gonna kill it!” Volga ignores him and grabs the flailing fox by the scruff of its red coat and locks it in the cockpit. We hear it slamming against the door as I haul Dano up.

  “What the hell was that?” Dano shouts into his com. Blood dribbles down his leg.

  “Shut up. Work.”

  Amidst a thick human shield of bodyguards and Golds, we find the prize.

  “He’s here,” Dano says triumphantly as he limps forward. “The little shit is bloodywell here!”

  He says it like he doubted it. He’s not the only one. The intelligence was too good. The plan too big. The stakes too high. The players far too nasty. Yet it’s
all slick and clean. Even I smile when I see the prize.

  The boy hangs suspended upside down, paralyzed and wrapped to his seat in crash webbing. Blood leaks into his hairline from a long gash on his forehead. He’s smaller than I expected, no giant like his father, but still at ten he’s almost Dano’s size. He’s dressed in a tuxedo with a gold lion clasp at his neck instead of a tie. His eyes stare at us in terror. Limping and muttering curses to himself, Dano roughly cuts the clasp off, pockets it for a trophy, and then starts cutting the crash webbing as Volga keeps her gun on the paralyzed bodyguards. We pull the boy from the seat. Dano hoists him over his shoulder and carries him out of the ship as Volga and I find the secondary prize three seats up. The slender Gold girl has a hatchet face and deep-set, angry eyes. Unlike the boy, she shows no fear, just absolute, unmitigated hatred. She’s promising me a slow death with that look as I cut her free of her crash webbing and cut the bleeding sun brooch from her jacket. I can’t resist patting her on the head. Volga puts her over a shoulder and departs the ship.

  I stand alone in the dark vessel, listening to the thunder of their escorts against the blast door. Littered around me are the powerful and mighty who thought themselves untouchable. Thought themselves gods. A dark, unexpected thrill shoots through me as I realize I’ve humbled the lot of them.

  I step atop the giant who the fox was protecting. The massive man has big iron on his hip. A razor just like Aja’s. My boots smudge dirt and biker blood into his tuxedo. A Telemanus. I recognize him now. I turn to regard the cluttered cabin, wishing they could see my face and know that a lowly Gray has driven them to their knees.

  “Reap what you sow,” I say in a thick Red Martian accent. “Give my regards to your masters, my goodmen.”

  With a deep and courtly bow, paying all homage to Gold manners, I hop off the Telemanus and dip my gloved hand in a pool of blood gathered around the head of a wounded bodyguard. I press the hand into the wall, leaving a blood-red handprint.

  Blame placed, I walk toward the passenger compartment.

  Time for the part I’ve been dreading.

  I find Lyria lying amongst three other servants who had the misfortune of being unbuckled from their crash webbing. One has a broken neck. Lyria stares up at me in the darkness. To her I’ll be a masked shadow, unrecognizable, with a glint of metal in hand. But I feel as if she and she alone can see through the mask. She’ll know that Philippe did this to her. And she’ll tell them. I can’t have them piecing it all together. My life will be over.

  Make it clean.

  I point the Omnivore at her head.

  My hand shakes. Sweat trickles into my eyes inside the humid helmet. She looks up at me blankly. Even in the darkness, she can see the gun. She accepts it. There’s no wild fear in her eyes, just sadness. Resignation. Pull the trigger. Pull it, you son of a bitch.

  What is wrong with me? I’ve killed men in cold blood before. I was all professional when I explained the plan to the others. It needs to be done.

  “I’ll wrap it up nice and neat,” I said.

  You can’t pull a testimony from a corpse.

  Pull the trigger.

  It will be quick. She’ll feel nothing. I told myself I’d do it without the zoladone. That I’d sack up. I’d own this.

  I close my eyes and see her little smile to herself back in that restaurant as she ordered that last flight of oysters. It was like seeing a child laugh at an adult’s joke. So proud to feel accepted, but still self-conscious, wondering if their ignorance will be found out.

  Why did she have to smile like that?

  Like him.

  Fuck it.

  I pull the trigger.

  Nothing happens. I look down at my gun. The safety is still on. I almost throw up. I’m shaking, backing away from her, my stomach all tied up in knots, disgusted with myself. Idiot. Shoot her. Shoot her.

  I can’t. Not twice. I holster the Omnivore and turn to leave.

  I’m halfway out the door when I stop. I’m a bastard to leave her here alive. It’s worse than shooting her. The Lionheart will peel Lyria apart. They’ll think she’s a traitor.

  What are you doing, Eph?

  What are you doing?

  I watch myself from a distance as I rush back toward her. She’s light as child. I carry her out of the ship and join my friends at the bottom of the ramp, where our junker hovercar waits. Dano sits on the hood with a pistol in hand.

  “What the hell is that?” he says. I ignore him. He blocks my way. “This isn’t part of the plan.”

  “Shut up and get in the car.”

  “The hell’s your damage, you old flit? Lose your stones?” Dano reaches for his pistol. “I’ll do it for you. Wait in the car like a good little—”

  I level the Omnivore at him. “I will shoot you in the fucking head. Get in the car.” I step forward. “Now, ruster.”

  “What…” Dano steps back in terror, but not of me. I turn to see a hulking mass emerge from the hole in the ship. All shoulders and thighs, the Telemanus with the red beard slumps there, held up by his hands on the door, his legs butter from the anacene. His eyes filled with hate. I drop Lyria and raise my pistol. The anacene slows the man; he fumbles for his razor before giving up and lunging forward like a drunk bear. He hits me in the sternum so hard my vision flickers black. My gun flies from my hand and I’m lifted off my feet. I slam down into the floor, skidding into a wrecked flier.

  From the concrete, I watch as Dano pulls up his gun and shoots the monster twice in the chest. The bullet goes through his tuxedo and slaps into the ship. It doesn’t stop him. Stumbling, the Gold reaches Dano. He grabs the top lip of Dano’s chest armor, holding him still as the Red claws desperately to escape. Then the Gold swings a lazy punch. It hooks in from the right, casual, almost like an afterthought. The reinforced knuckles cave in the side of Dano’s skull. His head lolls, ear touching the opposite shoulder. A white root of spinal cord juts upright into the air.

  Drenched in Dano’s blood, the giant hurls Dano’s corpse to the side and turns his horrible bulk to me. He takes an awkward step and is blasted sideways as Volga fires through the windshield of the aircar. The plasma stream hits the Gold in his side, melting through his arm and hurling him off his feet into the ship’s hull.

  Volga rushes to me as I try to stand. There’s a dent the size of a grapefruit in the center of my chest armor. Several broken ribs scream as Volga hauls me to my feet and drags me into the car.

  “Torch the body. Get the girl…” I say through gritted teeth.

  Volga stands over Dano’s body and holds down the trigger on her rifle. Concentrated energy melts through Dano’s corpse, leaving a steaming heap of crackling tissue and oozing bones. She rushes back to Lyria. The Red girl issues horrible moans from her paralyzed throat toward the big Gold man on the ground. Volga throws her in the trunk. She grabs my gun from the ground as I stare out the windshield as the Gold, impossibly, pushes himself up to his knees. The flesh of his right side melts off the bones, anacene pumps in his blood, but he’s still trying to stand. “Paxxx…” he roars. The room vibrates as ships try to pound their way in through the roof.

  “Drive!” I shout at Volga. “Drive!”

  She jumps into the driver’s seat and slams on the pedal. As we shoot away into the darkness of our escape route, we hear the door finally give and crash down into the garage. Volga drives at breakneck speeds through the half-constructed hospital, faster than Dano did in our practice runs. We weave between support beams and equipment as I stare out the back of the car, watching in terror for pursuing airborne knights.

  I hold my chest and wheeze.

  Like an egg. Dano’s head caved in like an egg.

  After a kilometer of switchbacks and vertical elevator shafts leading to connecting buildings, we reach the staging ground in the abandoned canning warehouse and pull up in front of a makeshift clean room—metal frame pipes with plastic sheets enclosing it. I half-expected a dozen Syndicate thorns to be waiting for us
with heavy weapons and Gorgo at their head. But they want to stay as far away from this shitshow as possible. Our headlights illuminate Cyra standing nervously with the two needle-thin contractors I met two nights ago. They wear operating smocks, one a Violet, the other a Yellow.

  “Where is Dano?” Cyra asks as she comes to greet us from her mobile station. A dozen holograms from cameras she placed fill the air around it. On the holos the hospital is swarming with soldiers come for the boy. The cameras inside the garage have gone black.

  “Dead,” I say.

  “How?”

  “Gold.”

  “Shit. Shit. Shit,” Cyra says under her breath as Volga drags the children out of the back of the vehicle straight into the clean room, where she loads each onto a table. Inside, the Syndicate technicians move with haste. They slice open the children’s clothing till they are naked. No. Not children. They’re killers in training. I know what they’ll become. Golds that pop heads like eggs.

  Without even thinking, I pull out my dispenser and pop several zoladone in my mouth and crush them between my teeth. They fizz and I feel the cool fire spread against my tongue and the inside of my cheek, radiating into my blood vessels and carrying the warmth down into my body, sending chemicals to my brain to kill the fear and the pain in my ribs. I exhale a calm breath and look back at the car where Lyria lies inert.

  I turn my attention to the technicians. We’re on schedule, but the schedule doesn’t feel fast enough anymore. I shouldn’t have wasted time in the ship getting Lyria. Dano’s neck breaks again. I grimace and glance at the holograms. A flight of armored soldiers is landing around the hospital just four buildings from where we stand.

  “Hurry up!” Cyra says to the Syndicate men.

  “Don’t distract them,” I say. “Recheck the detonators. Then get out of here.”