My com crackles and a handsome, sundark face illuminated by starShell interior lights glows in my HUD. “Ebb of the evening, goodmen. And we thought we were the only civil company for a thousand klicks. Is that not Kalindora herself I gaze upon?”
“Cicero, you scoundrel. You’re supposed to be in the Plains of Caduceus.”
“Squeaks the mouse to the rat,” he says with light menace. “Mayhaps Love is lost in the storm, my friends. Didn’t you know Heliopolis is just a skip to the south?”
A beat of silence. “I go where I am ordered.”
“Like a good knight. The peril of oaths, no? But fear not, my intrepid father noticed a certain lack of Leopards on his flank in the Plains of Caduceus and has sent us to ensure that no skullduggery is afoot at the gates of Heliopolis.” His voice lowers. “The city belongs to my father, Scorpio, and House Votum. And we are weary of Grimmus henchmen skulking in the dark.”
“Prepare to fire,” Kalindora says over the private channel.
“I have them flanked,” Seraphina intones. “I count four hundred. Could be more.”
“Belay that,” I snap. “No Praetorian will fire on allies. Nor will you, Seraphina.”
“Yes, dominus,” Rhone says and gives the order for all Praetorians to stand down. Kalindora goes into a stony silence.
“Private communications, eh, Kalindora? I don’t need to crack your code to know what you said,” Cicero says. “Not enough that that Lunese bitch tries to steal our city. She’ll spill old blood like there’s so much of it left.”
“Salve, Cicero,” I say, taking over from Kalindora.
“And who’s that?” he asks. I share my face via hologram. I knew Cicero as a child. Not well, but on the occasions when his family visited Luna, Grandmother insisted I entertain the voluble heir of House Votum. To be honest, I found it tiresome, if not a little entertaining. He is ten years older, and thus his condescension is limitless, and hilarious. Yet unlike Ajax, he recognizes me immediately.
“Hades on high,” he says without an ounce of surprise. “Is that Lysander au Lune in the pinkish flesh?” So his father told him.
“You never do forget a face, Cicero.”
“Not the pretty ones, at least. Father didn’t lie—not dead after all. My, my. Atalantia has roped you into her schemes? How the beast now leads the master.”
“We are en route to destroy the Storm God,” I say.
“There aren’t any Storm Gods on our planet.”
“There are. Explanations can wait. You want your city back, I won’t stop you. But you won’t get there if those engines are still running. I imagine your cores are as depleted as ours.” He does not reply. “We have a pickup scheduled.” That gets his attention. “What say you lend us a hand, and we ride for Heliopolis together in the morning?”
He laughs as if he were on a beach. “For such a dramatic union, I’ll play earnest, so long as you support our claim to Heliopolis when we find Ajax, that mischievous little tart.”
Kalindora reminds me that it would put me in direct conflict with Atalantia. But she’s already done that by summoning the Praetorians.
“Heliopolis was built by House Votum, with House Votum it should remain,” I say.
“Splendid. Then the Scorpion Legion is at your service, my goodman. Or is it my liege? I suppose Father will decide. If he survives the north. Calamity, goodman.” His mind darkens. “Calamity.”
I cannot divine the strength of the Scorpion Legion as they add their numbers to ours. Though Cicero continues to babble in my ear, I’m soon lost in the now-familiar grind.
Left. Right. Left.
I’m deep in the drudgery when a hand grips my armored shoulder. I blink out of my daze to see that it is three in the morning. Landfall plus seventeen. I look back to see the Praetorians arrayed fifty deep to my right. The Scorpions emerge from the dust to my left. They must be several thousand in number.
At dire cost to our energy cores, we have made it to the eye of the storm.
I hadn’t even realized.
It is a different world. The eye is fifty kilometers in diameter. The air pacific and clear of sand, as if held in static twilight. A desert deerling watches us with suspicion. A formless beast lurks beneath the mass of a hoodoo, its eyes winking like coins. More beasts of all varieties float within the gravity shadow of the engines. They didn’t even bother to diffuse the gravity shadow.
All this is surrounded by a vortex of sand, which swirls around a monolith of gray metal.
The Storm God floats kilometers above the desert.