I watch my trap close, feeling the imminent victory drain the tension from my shoulders. The Grays of my bridge take a step forward. Even the Obsidians lean to watch the displays as Karnus’s ship registers my squadrons’ signatures. He tries to flee, blasting his engines to escape what’s coming. But the angles conspire against him. My squadrons loose missiles before Karnus can deploy a flak screen or bring his own missiles to bear. Thirty simulated nuclear explosions wrack his last ship. There is no point to capturing his ship at this point in the game, and so the Blue fighter pilots relish a little overkill.
And like that, I have won.
My bridge erupts with shouts from Grays and the Orange technicians. The Blues wrap their knuckles vigorously. The Obsidians, at odds with this hi-tech world, make no sound. My personal valet, Theodora, smiles to her younger charges at the bridge’s valet station. A former Rose courtesan well past prime age, she’s heard her fair share of secrets and serves as my social advisor.
Across the ship, from engines to kitchens, the victory transmits through holo screens. This is not just my victory. Each man and woman shares it in their own way. That is the scheme of the Society. To prosper, your superior must prosper. As I found a patron in Augustus, so must the lowColors find their own in me. It breeds a loyalty of necessity to Golds that the Color system itself cannot create by mere dictation.
Now my star will rise, and all aboard will rise with it.
Power and promise are celebrity in this culture. Not long ago, when the ArchGovernor announced he would sponsor my studies at the Academy, the HC channels blazed with speculation. Could someone so young, someone from such a piteous family, win? Look what I did at the Institute. I broke the game. I conquered the Proctors, killed one and bound the others like children. But was that a mere flash in the night? Now those prattling bastards have their answer.
“Helmsman, set course for the Academy. We’ve laurels to claim,” I announce to cheers. Laurel. The word itself echoes through my past, making bitter my mouth. Despite my smile, I feel no great joy at this victory. Just grim satisfaction.
One more step, Eo. One more step forward.
“Praetor Darrow au Andromedus.” Tactus plays with the title. “The Bellona will shit themselves. I wonder if I can leverage this into a command, or do you think I must join your fleet? Can never tell. Gorydamned bureaucracy is so tedious. Coppers to grease. Golds to lobby. My brothers will want to throw us a party, naturally.” He nudges me. “At a Brothers Rath party, even you might finally get bedded.”
“As if he’d touch your friends.” Victra squeezes my hand, fingers lingering as though she wore a gown instead of armor. “Loath as I am to say it, Antonia was right about you.”
I feel Roque flinch, and remember the sound of Antonia cutting Lea’s throat as she tried to lure me from hiding at the Institute. I had stayed in the shadows, listening to my small friend fall wetly to the mossy ground. Roque had loved Lea in his own fast way.
“I’ve told you before not to mention your sister’s name in our presence,” I say to Victra, her face souring at the curt dismissal.
I turn back to Roque.
“As Praetor, I do believe I have authority to stock my fleet with personnel of my choosing. Perhaps we should bring back some old faces. Sevro from Pluto, the Howlers from wherever the hell they got shipped off to, and maybe … Quinn from Ganymede?”
Roque flushes in the cheeks at the mention of Quinn’s name.
Personally, I wish for Sevro the most. Neither of us is particularly diligent at keeping in touch over the holoNet, especially me, because I haven’t had access to it since the Academy began. Anyway, all he’s partial to sending is holograms of uniquely perverted unicorns and video clips of him reading puns. Pluto, if anything, has made him stranger.
“Dominus.” The helmBlue’s voice draws me to the display.
“What’s wrong?” I ask.
His eyes are glazed. Distant, jacked into the ship’s sensors, seeing the raw data of the display I stare at. “Not clear, dominus. Sensor distortion. Ghosting.”
On the large central display, the asteroids are there in blue. We’re gold. Enemies red. There should be none left. Yet a red dot throbs there now. Roque and Victra walk toward it. Roque motions his hand and the data transfers to his datapad. A smaller holo globe floats in front of him. He enlarges the image and cycles through analytic filters.
“Radiation?” Victra hazards. “Debris?”
“The asteroid’s ore could cause a mirror refraction from our signal,” Roque says. “Couldn’t be software.… It’s gone.”
The red dot flickers away, but the tension has spread through the bridge. All stare at the display. Nothing. There’s no one else out here except my ships and Karnus’s defeated flagship. Unless …
Roque turns to me, face drawn, terrified.
“Flee,” he manages just as the red signal burns back to life.
“Full power to engines,” I roar. “Thirty degrees plus our midline.”
“Launch remaining missiles at the surface of the asteroid,” Tactus commands.
Too late.
Victra gasps, and I see with my naked eyes what our instruments struggled to detect. One shadowed destroyer emerges from a hollow in the asteroid. A ship I thought we defeated three days ago. Its engines were off as it lay in wait. Its front half is torn and black from damage. Now its engines blast at full power. And its trajectory takes it directly toward my ship.
It’s going to ram us.
“Evac suits and pods!” I shout. Someone’s screaming for us to brace for impact. I rush to the side of the bridge where my command escape pod is built into the wall. It opens at my word. Tactus, Roque, and Victra sprint into its confines. I hold back, shouting at the Blues to hurry and unsync. For all their logic, they’ll die for their ships.
I range about the bridge, screaming at them to activate their escape hatch. The helmBlue does, pressing a button that causes a hole to dilate in the floor of the pit. One by one, they unsync and are sucked down the gravity tube into their escape pods.
“Theodora!” I shout, seeing her prying at a young Blue who still clutches his operations display with white-knuckled fear. “Get in the gorydamn pod!” She doesn’t listen. Neither does the Blue let go. I start toward them just as the proximity sensor lets loose one final warning blast.
All slows.
Bridge lights throb red.
I jump for Theodora, wrapping my arms around her.
And the destroyer hits my man-of-war at her midline.
Clutching Theodora to my chest, I’m thrown thirty meters across my bridge, slamming into a metal wall. White pain rips across my left arm along the seams of the mending break. I’m slapped with darkness. Lights dance there, first like stars, then as weaving lines of sand disturbed by wind.
Red light seeps through my eyelids. A gentle hand pulls at my clothing.
I open my eyes. I’m wrapped around a dented electrical column as the ship shudders, groaning like an ancient, dying beast sinking in the deep. The column trembles violently against my stomach as the destroyer finishes sheaving through our middle. Gutting us with slow cruelty.
Someone’s shouting my name. Sound fades back into being.
Lights bathe the bridge, alternating shades of murderous red. Warning sirens. The ship’s swan song. Theodora’s delicate old hands pull at me, like a bird pulling at a fallen statue. I’m bleeding from my forehead. My nose is broken. I wipe the stinging blood from my eyes and roll onto my back. A broken display sparks beside me. It has my blood on it. Did it fall on me? A bar lies beside it, and my eyes drift to Theodora. She pried it off. But she’s so small. Her hands cup my face.
“Get up. Dominus, if you want to live, you have to get up.” The old woman’s hands tremble from fear. “Please, get up.”
Groaning, I pull myself to my feet. My command escape pod is gone. In the collision, it must have launched. Either that or they left me behind. So too has the Blue escape pod jettisoned away. Th
e frightened Blue has become a stain on a bulkhead. Theodora can’t tear her eyes away from the sight. Tears make glassy her eyes.
“There’s another pod in my quarters,” I mutter. Then I see why Theodora winces. Not from fear, but pain. Her leg is shattered, splayed off to the side like a length of wet, cracked chalk. They don’t make Pinks to last this. “I won’t make it, dominus. Go, now.”
I bend to a knee and throw her over the shoulder of my good arm. She whimpers horribly as her leg shifts under her. I feel her teeth rattle. And I run. I run through the broken bridge toward the wound that is killing my ship, through the bridge level’s hallways into a scene of chaos. People swarm the main halls, abandoning their posts and functions as they race to escape pods and the troop carriers in the forward hangar. People who fought for me—electricians, janitors, soldiers, cooks, valets. They’ll never make it to safety. Many change course when they see me. They tumble forward, leaning against me, panicked and crazed in their mania to find safety. They pull at me, screaming, pleading. I push them off, losing a small part of my heart as each falls behind. I can’t save them. I can’t. An Orange grabs Theodora’s good leg and a Gray sergeant hits him in the forehead till he drops like a stone to the ground.
“Clear a path,” the thick Gray bellows. She whips her scorcher out of her tactical holster and shoots it into the air. Another Gray, remembering himself, or perhaps thinking I’m his ticket out of this deathtrap, joins her in parting the chaos. Soon two more carve a path at gunpoint.
With their help, I make it to my suite. The door hisses open at my DNA’s touch and we move through. The Grays back in after us, training their scorchers at the thirty desperate souls who ring the entrance. The door hisses as if to close, but an Obsidian pushes through the crowd and jams herself into the doorframe, preventing the door from closing. An Orange joins her. Then a low-ranking Blue. Without hesitation, the Gray sergeant shoots the Obsidian in the head. Her companions gun down the Blue and Orange and shove them off the doorframe so it can close. I tear my eyes away from the blood on the ground to lay Theodora on one of my couches.
“Dominus, how much room is there in the escape pod?” the Gray sergeant asks me as I head to the pod’s entry lock. Her hair is buzzed in military fashion. A tattoo on her tan neck peaks from under her collar. My hands fly over the control prism, entering the password with a series of hand motions.
“Four seats. You get two. Decide amongst yourselves.”
There’s six of us.
“Two?” the female sergeant asks coldly.
“But the Pink’s a slave!” one of the Grays hisses.
“Not worth shit,” says another.
“She’s my slave,” I growl. “Do as I say.”
“Slag that.” Then I feel the silence as much as hear it, and I know one of them has pulled a gun on me. I turn, slowly. The stocky old Gray is not a fool. He’s backed out of my reach. I’ve no armor, only my razor. I might be able to kill him. The others ask what the hell he thinks he’s doing.
“I’m a free man, dominus. I should get to go,” the Gray says, voice trembling, “I have a family. It is my right to go.” He looks to his fellows, bathed in the nasty red of the emergency lights. “She’s just a whore. A jumped-up whore.”
“Marcel, put the gun down,” says the dark-skinned corporal. His eyes are heavy for his friend. “Remember your vows. We’ll draw lots.”
“It’s not fair! She can’t even have children!”
“And what would your children think of you now?” I ask.
Marcel’s eyes fill with tears. The scorcher quivers in his thick hand. Then a gunshot. His body stiffens and crumples lifelessly to the deck as the bullet from the sergeant’s scorcher carries through his head to slam into the metal bulkhead.
“We do it by rank,” the sergeant says, holstering her weapon.
Were I still the man Eo knew, I would have stood frozen in horror. But that man is gone. I mourn his passing every day. Forgetting more and more of who I was, what dreams I held, what things I loved. The sadness now is numb. And I carry on despite the shadow it casts over me.
The escape pod opens, magnetic lock thudding back. The door hisses upward. I pick Theodora from the couch and strap her into one of the seats. The straps are too big, made for Golds. Then something deep and horrible roars in the belly of my ship, half a kilometer away. Our torpedo stores detonate.
Gone is the artificial gravity. Gone are the stable walls. It’s an insidious sensation. Everything spins. I slam into the escape pod’s floor, ceiling? I don’t know. Pressure vents out of the ship. Someone vomits. I smell it rather than hear it. I shout at the Grays to get in the pod. Only one stays behind now, face drawn and quiet, as the sergeant and a corporal pull themselves into the escape pod. They strap in across from me. I activate the launch function and salute the Gray who stays behind. He salutes back, proud and loyal despite the quiet in him as he faces his last moment of life, eyes distant and thinking of some young love, some path not taken, perhaps wondering why he was not born Gold.
Then the door closes and he is gone from my world.
I’m slammed into my seat as the escape pod shoots away from the dying ship. Ripping through debris. Then we’re weightless again and drifting away from trouble as inertial dampeners kick in. Out our viewport I see my flagship burping plumes of blue and red flame. Processed helium-3, which powers both ships, ignites near my man-of-war’s engines, causing a chain-effect explosion that rips the ship apart. Suddenly I realize it wasn’t debris I felt against my escape pod as I left the ship. It was people. My crew. Hundreds of lowColors spilled into space.
The Grays sit opposite me.
“He had three girls,” the dark-skinned corporal says, shuddering as the adrenaline fades away. “Two years and he was out with a pension. And you popped him in the head.”
“After my report, coward won’t even scrape a death pension,” the sergeant sneers.
The corporal blinks at her. “You cold bitch.”
Their words fade, overcome by the beating of blood in my ears. This is my fault. I broke the rules at the Institute. I changed the paradigm and thought they wouldn’t adapt. That they wouldn’t change their strategy for me.
And now I have lost so many lives, I may never know the tally.
More people have died in a blink than during a whole year of the Institute, their deaths opening a black hole in my stomach.
Roque and Victra hail me over the coms. They will have tracked my datapad and know I am safe. I barely hear them. Anger, thick and evil, swirls inside me, making my hands shake, my heart slam.
Somehow, Karnus’s ship continues through space after bisecting my command, damaged but not broken. I stand in my pod, unbuckling the seat’s restraints. At the far end of the escape pod lies a spitTube with a preloaded starShell—a mechanized suit meant to make a man a human torpedo. It’s designed to launch Golds to asteroids or planets, because the pod wouldn’t survive atmospheric reentry. But I’ll use it for vengeance. I’ll launch myself onto that Bellona bastard’s bloodydamn bridge.
Theodora has not yet woken. I’m glad.
I tell the corporal to help me into the suit. Two minutes later, I’m in the metal carapace. Takes another two to argue with the computer over the calculations required for my trajectory to intersect with Karnus’s so that I can smash through the bridge windows. I’ve never heard of anyone doing this. Never seen it even attempted. It’s madness. But Karnus will pay.
I start my own countdown.
Three … The enemy ship passes arrogantly a hundred kilometers away. It is like a dark snake with a blue tail, a bridge in place of eyes. Between us, a hundred escape pods glimmer like rubies cast into the sun. Two … I pray that I will find the Vale if I do not survive this. One. My controls go dead and red flashes across my helmet. The Proctors override my computer and freeze my controls.
“NO!” I roar, watching Karnus’s ship disappear into the black.
3
Blood and Piss r />
Eight hundred and thirty-three men and women. Eight hundred and thirty-three killed for a game. I wish I never knew the tally. I repeat the number again and again as I sit in the passenger hold of the rescue ship sent to ferry me back to the Academy. My lieutenants sit afraid to meet my gaze. Even Roque leaves me be.
The instructors disabled my craft before I could launch. They say they did it to spare me a fool’s mistake. The gambit was rash, stupid, and unfitting a Gold Praetor. I stared blankly at them as they debriefed me via holo.
We reach the Academy in the ebbing day hours of my ship’s time cycle. The place is a great domed metal port on the fringes of an asteroid field, ringed with docks for destroyers and men-of-war. Most are filled. Home to the Academy and mid-sector command, it is one of the hives of the Society’s military for the midworlds of Mars, Jupiter, and Neptune, though it does serve other planetary forces when their orbits take them near. My fellow students will have been watching here in the dormitories. So too will have many Fleet officials and Peerless who flocked here for the final weeks of the game for parties and viewing.
None will mention the cost of life demanded by Karnus’s victory. But the defeat will set back my mission. The Sons of Ares have spies. They have hackers and courtesans to steal secrets. What they did not have was a fleet. Nor will they now.
No one greets my lieutenants or me at the dock.
Reds and Browns bustle about to the orders of two Violets and a Copper, who make preparations for Karnus’s Victory in the grand antechamber. The blue and silver of House Bellona trim the cavernous metal halls. The eagle crest of his family covers the walls. They have white rose petals for him. Red rose petals are reserved for Triumphs, true victories where Gold blood is shed. The blood of eight hundred thirty-three lowColors doesn’t count. That’s a clerical issue.
My lieutenants slept as we traveled back to the Can. I did not. Tactus and Victra stumble now ahead of me, walking silently as if still wrapped in slumber. Despite the heaviness in my shoulders, I don’t yearn for sleep. Regret lies behind my bloodshot eyes. If I sleep, I know I’ll see the faces of those I left to die in the ship’s hallways. I know I’ll see Eo. I can’t face her today.