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“Screwface is still silent,” I say. She looks down, fearing the man is dead. It is likely, since our only mole on the Annihilo failed to warn us of Atalantia’s ambush. “Any more questions?” None. Refreshing change of scenery. “Good. To your slots. Let’s get our girl back.”

Rhonna scoops up her vacuum sack, fist-bumps Char and Tongueless, and slides down the ladder to the starShell bay. I feel a pang of guilt. I told my brother I’d keep her safe. If I wasn’t so short-staffed, I could concoct a reason to keep her on the Necromancer. But for Orion, even my niece is worth risking, especially considering her role today may be more important even than my own.

I grab Alexandar’s arm as the rest head out and gesture to Thraxa’s paint stamp. I ask him to do the honors. “I know you were close to Kalindora,” I say as he picks up the contraption. He nods at the mention of the Love Knight, his mother’s younger sister.

He toggles through the options on the paint stamp. “She spent every summer with us in Elysium, always begging Grandfather to train her. But she was best friends with Atalantia and Anastasia. He didn’t want to give Octavia another weapon.” Alexandar looks up. “When he took the house to Europa, she chose her Sovereign over her family. She is no blood of mine.” He points the paint gun at my face. “What’ll it be? Goblin black, Valkyrie blue, Minotaur purple, Julii jade…”

“Blood Red.”

* * *

—

In the spitTube again.

Waiting for the kill.

I hate this part.

A moving mind is always fed. At rest, mine eats itself.

How many times have I been here? Sealed in a womb of metal, not for birth but to eat the living? The confines afflict me with dread. Dread not of what lies beyond—you can never prepare for that game—but that this will be my eternal tomb.

Cursed to live to kill. Is this who I will always be?

Is this the life I crave? To rise before the sun? To smile at the cock and fart jokes of killers as they grow younger and I grow older? To sleep under tanks, in the ruins of cities, amongst the corpses?

I no longer believe in the Vale. I am the walking dead.

Woe to those who cross my shadow.

I miss the promise of life. The smell of rain. The murmur of waves on a shore. The sound of a full house. It is a life I have rented, but never owned.

My wife and son are real. Not ghosts in my head. They are out there breathing right now. Where are you, Pax? Is it bright where you walk? Are you afraid? Has your mother found you? Your uncle? Do you wonder if your father will come? Do you hate him for having left? Will you ever understand?

I have stolen pieces of him and his mother, which I hold for ransom, promising to one day return. I know that is a lie. Mercury will be my end.

I reach for his key, forgetting I set it in my luggage three weeks ago. My thoughts drift to his mother. Unlike Sevro, Virginia did not accuse me of parental malfeasance. She knows the shearing forces at work on my heart. How can I be a father to Pax if I abandon the millions who chose to follow me to Luna? The responsibility to many outweighs the responsibility to one, even though it breaks something inside me. I feel alone knowing Sevro would not make the sacrifice. Am I alone in my conviction, or have I gone mad?

My wife and I corresponded during my passage from Venus to Mercury before I had to go dark as I approached the planet. Now it is too dangerous. I play the last words of her final correspondence. Her voice echoes through my helmet. “Trust your wife to find our son. Trust your Sovereign to bring the armada. Trust in me enough to stay alive.”

I trust my wife. I do not trust my Sovereign.

She will find Pax with Victra and Sevro. But no rescue fleet will come for my marooned army. Most have forgotten the slingBlade of my people was not made to kill pitvipers. It was made for hacking off limbs of trapped miners. My old mentor, Dancer, has not forgotten. Now the leading senator of the Vox Populi movement, he will amputate us to save the Republic.

Atalantia expects this. If she breaks the Free Legions here, if she feeds Mercury’s resources into her war machine, who can match her in space and Atlas and the Ash Legion commanders on the ground when they sail on my mother, my brother, my sister, my son, my wife, my friends, my home?

I will not survive Mercury, I know that. The Free Legions will not survive Mercury. But we can make Atalantia pay so dearly for our deaths, that we break the back of the Gold military and secure a chance for our families, for our Republic and its fragile dream.

I put away my wife’s face as I put away the key my son gave me for his gravBike when I sailed for Mercury, and stare at the red light until the enemy com crackles.

“Anteater to Dark Tango. Escort handshake confirmed. We are go in three, two…”

Fury begins upon the planet with a spark. A lone frigate rises from a hangar hidden in the desert mountains. An escort of six Gorgon ripWings follows, burning low across the desert toward the Sycorax Sea where the ground shields do not reach. In orbit above the planet, five dreadnoughts, led by Atalantia’s Annihilo, plunge toward the western hemisphere.

Free Legion contrails form over the sea in response. Atalantia’s strike force of dreadnoughts bombards an unshielded sliver of the planet. Ground cannons reply as Republic squadrons close in on the escaping corvette. Society ripWings descend from the Annihilo. It will be a hell of a party over the western hemisphere.