Iron Gold (Red Rising Saga 4)

My niece grins up at me. “Sorry, Uncle, got lost on the way to the shuttle. Is this New Sparta?”

“What the hell are you doing here?”

“Stowing away,” she says. “Can I stand or are you going to shoot me?” She looks in annoyance at Alexandar’s rifle. Unlike Sevro, he still points it at her. She stands.

Sevro chuckles. “Got some big iron balls on you, don’t ya?”

“That’s the general idea.”

“I gave you an order,” I say, trying to calm myself down as Thraxa joins us.

“Yeah. You can put me in the brig if you want, but I think the cells are all filled up. Or you can let me do my job. If Sir Pukealot here can have your back, so can I.” Alexandar glowers in embarrassment. “By my count we’re two weeks in. No way to turn back now, Uncle. You’re stuck with me.” She’s right.

“You think this is about me?” I ask. “You just broke your father’s heart.”

Her jaw tightens. “It’s my life. Now, can I join the rest of the crew and get to—”

“Alexandar. Shoot the dumbass,” Sevro says.

Alexandar grins. “With pleasure.”

Her eyes widen. “No, not him. Anyone but—”

Alexandar grins and fires his spider poison round into her thigh. She spins down, grunting in pain. Her fingers curl as the paralytic spreads. “Ouch.”

“Leave her,” Sevro says when Thraxa tries to pick her up. “You’ll be able to move by tonight, shithead. Clean up your filth and find a bunk. Tomorrow you scrub the latrines in every bathroom. Starting with mine. Real shame for you because curry is on the menu tonight.” He bends down. “You sad because you ain’t with a Drachenjäger squad? A mechman? Please, we eat those little bitches for breakfast. You’re lucky to be in our glorious presence.” He leans in even closer. “You want respect? Earn it.”

“The nerve of her,” I mutter as we head out into the hallway.

“Least she didn’t come through the viewports.”

“Poor Kieran. You should have seen him ask me to leave her behind.”

“Was a bit harsh, don’t you think?” Thraxa says, catching up to us.

Sevro grins. “Listen, Thraxa, kids are like dogs. Some whimper, some bark, some growl. You just gotta find the right language and then speak it back at them.”

Alexandar smirks. “You can speak to dogs?”

“I talk to you, don’t I?”

—

Min-Min lounges in the brig guard post forward of the cellblock with her rifle leaning against the wall when Sevro and I arrive to talk with Apollonius. Her bandy metal legs are up on the console, a coffee cup balanced precariously on her hydraulic joint as she watches a holo comedy about a Red moving in with a Violet and Gray in Hyperion City; hijinks ensue. She scratches the coarse whiskers on her neck and looks back at us. “?’Lo, bosses.”

“How are the little devils today?” I ask.

“Quiet as mice.” Min-Min keeps one eye on the projection and laughs as the Red tries to reach the top cabinet in their apartment’s kitchen to get the whiskey the others hid from him. “That’s some racist shit,” she says. “We’re not all alcoholics.” The smell of whiskey wafts up from her coffee. “Tongueless is on his conjugal visit again.” I look down the hall to see the old Obsidian sitting cross-legged looking into one of the cells.

“How many is that?”

“Comes every day.”

—

Our collection of “escaped prisoners” is a motley assortment of devils. Half are men and women the Howlers labored to capture personally over the last ten years—all ten are Venusian. It seems a blasphemy that we’ve been the ones to free them. I feel the silent anger in the Howlers at mess, in the ship’s gymnasium, even when they pass in the hall. Not anger toward me or our mission, but as though this is some grand joke that existence plays on us. We circle around again to see the same faces, the same ships, the same battles. Again and again. Around and around. It’s the very reason I need to kill the man at the axis of the cycle, around which this all spins.

Tongueless sits on the floor of the hall, the warden’s dog asleep in his lap, watching Apollonius play his phantom violin through the one-way glass. The old Obsidian has cut his hair short and trimmed his beard to a fine goatee. He looks an altogether different man, sophisticated even in the military fatigues. His dog wakes and growls as we approach. Quieting only when Tongueless strokes him behind the ears.