Dark Age (Red Rising Saga 5)

“More likely several days. Maybe longer.”

The officers glower. This will ruin it all. Ajax watches me like he would a stranger. That this secret should be kept from House Grimmus bespeaks suspicion, as if Octavia and the Lunes believed even they could not be trusted. I see my friend wrestling with the pressure of the men looking at him. The pressure of Atalantia’s immense expectations. The pressure of Gold society and his own fantasies the child and then the man wove together in the moments before sleep, night after night, until they resembled nothing short of destiny.

This was to be his moment of glory.

Now he looks total annihilation in the eye.

“We were tasked with taking Heliopolis,” he says. “I will not disappoint my aunt. If Darrow planned this, if he is using a Storm God, then he did it to freeze our movement. We must contradict his intentions with all our vigor.”

“Surely you do not mean to attack Heliopolis now,” Seraphina says, coming off the wall. “That storm is a monster. It’ll pin the shells to the ground. Sweep away the infantry. I’ve seen it before. You will die. So will your men.”

“She’s a Moonie, isn’t she?” Seneca growls. “Knew her eyes were too big.”

“I am Seraphina au Raa,” she snaps at the Core officers. For once it is not entirely unwelcome news. “I’ve trained for Io’s storms. And if you attack Heliopolis in this wind, you’ll all be corpses. You must wait for it to pass, or find a way to kill it.”

“I concur with the Rim on this one,” Kalindora says. “StarShells can’t fly in this. It’ll be chaos. And Heliopolis’s storm wall is no mere palisade.”

“Do you think I’m some vainglorious dullard?” Ajax snaps at the women. “They know where we landed. The Reaper would not let sand stop him from moving. He might have thermal grids in the desert by which to navigate. But he will expect the storm to stop us. He has the initiative. We must take it back. So when the sand’s veil falls, we will not be here. We will be at the walls of Heliopolis. We will land whatever transports remain en masse, and then assault the city when the storm dies.” He looks around. “I will need a commander to lead a cohort to destroy the Storm God while the rest of us push south with the titans.”

His eyes settle on me, and I feel the urgency behind them. Hostility has been replaced by desperate faith. Here is the chance to prove myself to Ajax and Atalantia. “Lysander, will you and your Praetorians do this for me? For our family?”

Kalindora shakes her head at me.

“It would be our honor,” I say.

“I will go with him,” Seraphina mutters. “This isn’t my first storm crossing. Gahja might get lost.”

“Two children leading the Praetorians?” Kalindora laughs. “Of all the jumped-up arrogance. I’ll lead the party.”

“No. I will need you here, Kalindora,” Ajax says.

“The Storm God will have a garrison,” she says. “My oath to Octavia still stands. I will defend the heir with my life. And I’m going to kill a storm engine, Ajax. Got a problem with that?”

THE DOOR OF MY TRAP slams closed.

The storm is here.

Day has become night. Black thunderheads race off the sea to blind their armada. Lightning shatters the sky, disrupting communications between their landing parties, drones, and orbit support. Winds swirl and clash from multiple storm eyes. They toss ripWings and landing craft like toys. Their first wave is trapped beneath the storm. Their second is murdered within it. Their third dare not descend.

Orion has given me my lever.

I’m putting my full weight on it.

Five thousand Drachenjägers pound for Tyche with half again as many starShells riding upon their backs. More survivors found us, swelling our ranks. We cut through the famed flower latifundia of Mercury. Our titanium feet stomping orderly rows of sunblossoms. The flower pollen paints the clawed metal feet gold. From my perch on Rhonna’s mech, I spot ships struggling in the high winds.

My columns hurdle the highway in a single bound and split up to form into wedges. This is not their first shockwave.

The enemy lies ahead. An entire division—four legions—has made landfall between Tyche and the Plains of Caduceus. In the gloom thousands of ships bearing the golden hammers of Votum unload men and war machines onto rolling fields of lavender. They intended to mop up whatever remains of my legions. But their landing has been thrown into chaos by the storm. The customary Gold landfall fortifications aren’t complete. Tank wedges are only half formed. War machines barely unloaded. Infantry sheltering from the wind behind grounded transports. They don’t expect us yet. And they don’t see us coming.

We fall upon them with malice.

A Gold in a starShell with officer markings stands with his officers around a communications array in the shelter of a hill. One of his men points. He turns just as lightning flashes, illuminating our tide of onrushing metal. Rhonna bounds forward and lands forty meters of war machine on the officers. I watch on her shoulder as the starShells crumple.

The first column of Drachenjägers fires four alpha-omegas. The nukes detonate in the center and opposite flank of their landfall, just above their two groups of titans. Daylight. Their heaviest armor—which would more than match ours—vaporizes. A rolling tide of devastation. The drachen wedges fire their particle cannons in tiers, targeting heavy armor. Five minutes before each can fire again. It makes no matter.

Bedlam follows as the wedges hew through the enemy along a four-kilometer front like one hundred spears into paper. The quad railguns fire into the confused mass of enemy. Infantry simply disappears. GravBikes are cut in half. Transports peel away, only to clash against one another as the wind disrupts their flight paths.

The Drachenjägers pull their ion swords. Five thousand blue-white cleavers go to work. When the carnage itself slows the charge’s momentum, and we founder on the debris from the nukes, the starShells release. Alexandar and I spin sideways together.