Dark Age (Red Rising Saga 5)

We put our heads together and recite our mantra.

Matter, how tiny my share

Time, how brief my allotment

Fate, how small my roll to play

Self, all that can be mastered

Then, hand in hand, we ascend.

* * *

—

Hundreds of political adjuncts quiet as we arrive.

“Good morning!” I say to the Optimate army as Daxo looms over my shoulder like an evil Proctor. Silence falls. Their faces turn toward us in excitement. Gods, so many are as young as I was when I served Octavia. “I hope you’re all rested. I’ll be brief. Most of you have done this before on the Conscription Accords and that sham of a peace treaty. We’ve learned our lesson from those losses: press to the Forum. And we didn’t have momentum then. We’ve got it now, dammit. Three days from today, we vote to save eight million lives. Until then, cancel your families, cancel your social calendars…” They laugh at that fantasy. Daxo has no patience to teach anyone but obsessive-compulsive Martians, and stone-cold political killers. “You have only this…”

I toss up a hologram pyramid the size of an assault shuttle, subdivided into empty blocks representing the seventy-one-vote majority needed to give me the power over the defense fleets.

“Fill. This. Pyramid,” I say. “Twice we’ve tried to vote. Twice, the Vox have turned the screws and denied us the eight Tribunes to call a quorum. With his victory, Imperator O’Lykos has given us the Tribunes. With ours, we give him a chance.”

They rap their knuckles on their desks.

“For those of you fresh in from Mars, prepare yourselves. Good demokracy on Luna is not like that of Agea. Here, good demokracy is a knife fight. No vote is set in stone. No word eternal. What we gain, we must fight to the bone to keep. The Vox will use every tactic at their disposal. Daxo has given you your assignments. He alone channels my will.” They know that already. “From here to the vote, Hyperion will descend into a fit of political hysteria. But we will endure because…”

“Hic sunt leones!” they shout, as is their custom. I feel the inner heat building toward that exultant moment. I extend my hand to Daxo, and take from his titanic hands the giant hourglass Mickey grew from Venusian glass coral and gifted me upon the legalization of inter-Color reproduction. I hold it up, cherishing the vibrations before the storm, the fear and nervousness bubbling from my allies, and then slam it down.

“Fill. This. Pyramid!”

Senator holograms blink away. Aides enter their iso pods. In my offices in the Citadel of Light, in the halls of Senate Crescent, all over Hyperion, thousands of soldiers in my political army rotate the great pistons of our demokratic engine. Lobbyists flood restaurants and offices. Trillionaires turn their screws. Organizers activate their armies. Media surrogates prepare for cameras. Senators become the courted, the hunted, the pressured, the wooed, the fooled, the bamboozled, the corrupted, and the purchased.

A thrill of excitement goes up my leg. I do love this.

YOUR MAJESTY, YOU HAVE SUFFERED a catastrophic collision.

Two life forms in critical danger.

A distress signal has been sent to your employer.

A distress signal has been sent to your employer.

Smoke in the nostrils. Pressure. Shivering. Try to move. Can’t. Th

umping blood in the deep of my thigh. Lights stutter and crackle. Bent metal everywhere. Panic creeping.

Pinned to the floor by collapsed hull. Right leg trapped. Bullet hole in chest, no exit wound, resFlesh torn. Probably fatal. Smoke. A boy gasping. Push myself up. Can’t. Why not? Left radius and ulna snapped. Compound fracture. Pokes out through skin. Looks like a barracks “beef” rib through blood pudding.

Losing blood. Body cold. Hear voices. Threat? Reach for weapon. Can’t find it. Darkness creeping in.

Molten square opens hole in hull. Crash of metal. Volga? No. Filthy creatures in tatters. Big boys. Glowing laser eyes. Respirators, radiation gear. Scavengers. Swat my hand away. Look under my eyelids. On my neck. Searching for legion ink.

A distress signal has been sent to your employer.

A distress signal has been sent to your employer.

Fear. Bickering. A child’s body dragged out. Limp. Heavy cutting laser. Going to help me. Cut the hull away. Free me. Smell roasting meat. Mouth waters. Feel pressure. Look down. My hip, but no leg. Where is my leg?