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A very good killer can string together a set of three moves in an onset—a one-second set of preprogrammed, carefully cultivated strikes. Everyone has their signature. As one of the top fifty with a blade in the Core, Cassius could do five. I once saw Lorn do eight. Ajax does eight. It isn’t to say he’s as good as Lorn, but he is as fast; and fighting him is like being plunged into cold water.

Pure shock.

I don’t really see the moves at this point. Even Gold eyes can’t track blades this fast. By the time he flips down to bar my way to the prison block, I’m nicked three times. But so is he. He swishes his blade like a walking stick as the Love Knight takes the opportunity to pair up with him and form the Hydra fighting stance. Alexandar limps to my side. Thraxa groans from behind us as she stumbles to join us.

The two parties stare each other down in the narrow corridor. Everyone bleeds. Come on, Rhonna. I don’t want to pay this toll yet.

“I hoped it would be like this,” Ajax says from behind his helmet. His voice is almost as deep as his grandfather’s. “First you. Then I work my way down the food chain. Your wife. Your shadow. Your Bellona.”

As much as I want to cut off Atalantia’s left and right hands by killing her best two knights, as much as I want to end Ajax before he becomes something I can’t handle, dying here doesn’t end the war.

I hail Rhonna. “Pup Two, status?” I say without taking my eyes off Ajax.

“Package is wrapped. Present deposited. Attaching cord now. Char, anytime, please.”

“Coming in hot. Getting frisky out here. Two destroyers and four torches inbound.”

“Popping off. Three, two, one.”

I turn from Ajax and wrap Alexandar and Thraxa in a hug. I had hoped my presence would draw the Olympic Knights. They all want to be the one who takes me down. I thought I could still punch through. But with the knights the Core has these days, you always buy insurance.

While I drew their eyes, Rhonna’s starShell landed on the hull beyond the prison block and welded through to steal Orion from behind their backs.

Duuuuu­uuuuu­uuuuu­m

The aft section of the ship vaporizes behind Ajax and the Love Knight as Rhonna’s bomb detonates. A maw to space opens and the pressure of the ship rips them out into vacuum. We tumble with them into the debris field. Everything’s spinning, and all we can do is hold on to one another. I see flashes of the oncomi

ng enemy ships. RipWings slip through the darkness, and the Necromancer races toward us. Just when I think it will hit us, it tips on its nose, inverts, and inhales us into its back-facing garage. The doors seal instantly and we ricochet like marbles. Rhonna’s mech is locked magnetically to the floor with arms around a bag as if it were a baby.

I grip a rung to pull myself to the viewport just as the reactors Alexandar and I retrofitted activate. A dozen dead ships glow with sudden light. Their hulks begin to crumple from the inside, and then the reactors overload in a wash of blinding light.

The two onrushing destroyers and torchShips ripple as the energy waves wash across the graveyard. The corpses of my dead starships animate into frantic contortions. I howl with Alexandar and Thraxa as the derelict hulks splinter apart to cover our retreat, sending hundred-meter shards flailing into the enemy ships Atalantia sent into the graveyard.

From the other side of the graveyard, her fleet watches their kilometer-long destroyers burn as we roar for Mercury. Colloway hails all Republic craft that the Reaper is inbound. We need cover fire.

Dripping with sweat, I jump down to the floor. Alexandar helps pull Rhonna from her mech. Thraxa winces as she pulls the vacuum bag free of the mech’s embrace. We set it gently on the floor. I close my eyes before I open the seal. Tongueless died for this. Though I knew him less well than he deserved, he will have saved more lives today than he’ll ever know.

I unzip the bag.

Inside is a shriveled woman in a prisoner jumpsuit. An oxygen globe sealed over her head. I remove it. Her skin is ashen. Her face is half gone. It looks as if it has been eaten. But her eyes are as blue as I remember. They fill with tears as Orion reaches to touch my face with the stumps of her fingers. Through tattered lips, she sneers, “Hail Reaper.”

Of iron is the last,

In no part good and tractable as former ages past.

For when that of this wicked age once open’d was the vein,

Therein all mischief rushed forth, then faith and truth were fain,

and honest shame to hide their heads; for whom stept stoutly in,

Craft, treason, violence, envy, pride, and wicked lust to win.

—OVID, METAMORPHOSES, 1.129–34

I STAND AMIDST THE BLIND. Cloudy eyes set in sun-ravaged faces stare up at the sun, at the stone obelisks, at the meager cubes of protein cupped in their blistered hands, at their leader who brought them to this cursed place, and see nothing but darkness. Their retinas have been fried by the ordnance of our enemies.

They reach to touch my red cloak as if it will heal them. They are Reds, Grays, Browns, Coppers, and the few Obsidians who chose not to heed their queen’s call to return to Earth. The legionnaires survived the Fear Knight’s ambush in the Western Ladon, only to become 2,301 casualties that we must continue to feed, supply with medical aid, and protect. Why would Atlas au Raa kill when maiming pays dividends? My men look on the living casualties with despair. Others turn their heads away, as if looking at them might invite the same fate upon themselves.