Hundreds of spaceships with reinforced hulls, state-of-the-art ion propulsion engines, and the battle scars of a dozen engagements meet the force of the Mercurian desert. It clubs them to death with the carelessness of a gargantuan child. It throws a squadron of ripWings into the mountainside. Whips a hundred-meter tank carrier into a death spiral, smashing it into the ground where it crushes half a legion of Grays sheltering inside a ground transport. And, all at once, the mission that took a month to plan and half a year to prepare, one that was to be executed by men and women who’ve made a vocation of war, comes apart with no explanation except that the Reaper is sharing our planet, and that my family is a line of paranoid tyrants.
A dark shape stumbles out of the storm to join me behind the tank.
It’s Ajax’s starShell.
He crashes down and sits unmoving, unspeaking.
Lightning flashes in the storm-obscured sky, illuminating his terrified face. His lips tremble. His eyes are wide and white and boyish. I’ve seen him like this only once before, frozen in place out there on the West Line, a kilometer-high communications hardline we used to dare each other to walk as children. The first time we tried, he froze only a quarter of the way across. What began so confidently ended with his knuckles turning white as he gripped the edge and stared down at the thousand-meter drop. I walked out to him and set a hand on his shoulder, and told him only he could walk himself to safety. A quarter kilometer back, or three-quarters forward and across. Which way he walked was up to him.
He walked back.
It was one of the defining moments of our childhood, when we both discovered the substance of his courage.
I put a hand on his shoulder now. Our eyes meet, and I know he’s back on the West Line with me. Slowly, the fear leaves him, and we share a moment of wordless comfort. Forgotten are the Praetorians, my absence, all of it. I have his back. He just has to go forward.
* * *
—
With effort, Ajax manages to gather many of his officers in the garage bay of an infantry transport. The storm has raged for thirty minutes and shows no signs of abating. The hull creaks as we cluster together in the dim light.
Seneca grumbles his way through his report. “Sixty transports destroyed in the first minute. There’s no accounting for the rest. We can’t establish communications with the fleet, command, or the transports. I’ve never seen this much electrical interference from a storm.”
“He did this…” Ajax murmurs. His eyes are fixed on the roof of the transport.
“I’m sorry, sir?” Seneca says.
“Darrow,” Kalindora confirms. “He’s mad.”
“It’s just a storm,” Seraphina says from the corner in irritation. “Unless the Slave King can summon hypercanes at the drop of a pin, it’s a freak occurrence. It will soon pass.”
“This is Mercury, not the Rim. We don’t have hypercanes. Ever.”
“He can summon storms,” I say.
Ajax snorts. “He’s a man, not a nightmare.”
“He’s using Storm Gods,” I say.
“The only Storm Gods left are on Triton and Pluto.”
“Look at the patterns of the storm,” I say, gesturing to the map. “The killzone Darrow intended to land us in was here. The storms form a circle. It can’t be coincidence. Those temperature fluctuations in the ocean must be manmade. Like this sandstorm.”
Their eyes go hard.
“He intended to pin us in, cut us off from the sky, trash our second wave, bar the landing of the third, and hunt us down inside the circle. But he didn’t expect anyone this far south. I bet my life a Storm God is out there somewhere to the northwest. It is likely to be only lightly defended.”
“Where did he get a Storm God, Lysander?” Ajax asks quietly.
“Where it was buried, I imagine.”
“And why would it be buried?”
“As a safeguard against Votum rebellion.” They blink with ir
ritating slowness, as though they are surprised that a Sovereign who would annihilate Rhea would have moral objections to keeping her family’s invisible leash on a planet as important as Mercury. “The ocean storms will have a life cycle even if the Storm God is downed. The desert storm will die quicker. We bring the engine down, the sandstorms will abate.”
“How quickly?” Seraphina asks. “An hour? Two?”