I linger to witness the last of the rocks settle. Knowing that Alexandar is dead, that those people he saved will soon forget him or may die yet in the siege, I wish for one small moment that I were a young man again who could charge forward nourished by his own righteousness. That man would damn the danger and search for Alexandar as Colloway searched for Orion. But that man would have died in the desert and taken all his men with him. That man isn’t what my arm
y needs. Hell, I don’t know what they need except for a miracle. I turn and head back to my transport, dragged forward by the weight of the day.
* * *
—
West of the city, between the Bay of Sirens and the old city, squats the four-century-old Votum government complex known as the Mound. It is a heavy basilica straddled by a half-kilometer-tall statue of the city’s patron god, Helios. Each of the fourteen spikes on his sun crown stretch the length of ten men to puncture the blue sky. His left hand holds a scepter, and the right moves according to the path of the sun, so that at sunset he will cup it in his palm as it sinks beyond the horizon. As if any man had such control.
“The rain is radioactive,” Harnassus says, dumping a box of dead cats on the table of the old Votum warroom. Thraxa paces along the arched windows, more interested in the bunkers our clawDrills are carving than the inconvenient report. We are all bald by now.
“We eat here, thank you very much for the drama,” Thraxa says.
Harnassus grumbles on. “…fallout from the atomics used locally. So far the Golds are scrubbing the stratosphere so there’s limited risk of permanent global contamination. But we’re in trouble. Orion drowned half our anti-rads in Tyche before we could evac them. The Gorgons eliminated another third in that bombing before we rounded them up.” Sweat soaks Harnassus’s dirty uniform. He looks even more exhausted than I feel. Like me, he put on a brave face for the men at the funeral, but the Gorgons who snuck in before we locked down Heliopolis are giving us hell, and native insurgencies have sprung up faster than Screwface can put them down. “Bottom line: we don’t have enough for our men and the civilians.”
“Why are you always bringing me bad news?” I ask him. Harnassus’s bitterness has increased exponentially since Orion summoned the storms. I sympathize with the man, even if I find him a damn thorn in my side. Hate the storms all he likes, the only reason we have an army at all is because of its cloud and electrical cover.
“Because I’m the only one not sucking your balls.”
“Oh, do say it more directly,” Thraxa says. “As if it adds gravitas…”
I rub my shoulder as I receive an anti-rad shot from the Yellow medicus. The nausea has come in waves over the last days. I thought it would be starvation that ended us, not fallout. On my way to the Mound, I saw men with red-stained handkerchiefs, others sitting in the shade with their heads in their hands as they queued for the latrines.
Harnassus plods on. “Engineering corps believes the symptoms will spike dramatically. We’re already experiencing weakness, nausea, and headaches. It will progress to vomiting and diarrhea. Which I’ve already got. The civilians will soon figure it out. We’ll have full-on riots soon as the deaths start.”
“There’ve already been riots,” Thraxa says, turning her eyes from the mountains to the refugee-choked streets of Heliopolis. “If we share our supplies, we won’t make it two weeks. We’re already on half-dose, already denying it to five hundred thousand men too far gone. These people are not our allies.”
She’s not wrong. We are not wanted here. Tyche was a fine enough home. But of the Mercurian breed, Heliopolitans are the most cantankerous, cruel, and noisy. Save Glirastes, it is hard to remember even one who welcomed us when we took the planet. And with Orion’s storm and our waning campaign, the teeth have come out. My soldiers dare not go anywhere alone at night. Mobs have already tried storming the food centers I set up. Even Glirastes has spurned my calls, lurking in his palace above the city after haranguing me about betraying my oath not to raise the storms past primary horizon. He doesn’t believe Orion went rogue.
I find myself thinking about Pax, and if I would have sent him into Tyche like Alexandar. Would I spend my boy as I’ve spent so many others? Didn’t I spend him in a way by not returning home? It all seems so transactional, war. Did I spend my boy the day he was born by the virtue of my role in the Rising? I can only hope that my wife has found him by now. That they are together and that the fleet is coming for us. Hope. Hope won’t bring back Orion or my men. But my wife deserves it. And here, shorn of everything else, I am sustained only by her strength.
“We brought this upon them, Telemanus,” Harnassus says, cooling himself with an absurd peacock fan. All power, including that of the climate control, is being conserved for the defense. “First we invade their planet and bring war to their cities. Then we sink a coastline. Now we let them wither as we huddle in their city?”
“Did I create the Mercurians to be of insubstantial fiber?” Thraxa asks. “No. They lack the warrior constitution to fight for their own freedom. Mercurian Reds are anemic compared with ours. Well, if they want to be slaves so badly, let them embrace their own degradation, I say.”
“Thank you, Ash Lord. Let me get this proper. Because they do not agree with us, we let their children decay and their families die?” Harnassus sneers. The two have been at each other’s throats since we returned to Mercury. The enmity has grown worse in Heliopolis. Harnassus considers Orion’s storm a genocide. Thraxa thinks it the noblest of sacrifices.
“The populace is a time bomb,” Thraxa says. “You want to keep it ticking. We could just let it fizzle out.” She looks to me. “They’re going to take up arms against us. We can make sure right here, right now, they can’t lift those arms.”
“I always suspected you were a demokrat of convenience,” Harnassus replies. “At least Orion’s villainy can be traced to anger. Yours is just cold blood.”
“Cold blood wins wars,” Thraxa says. “You should know. You’re no snowy virgin yourself. Not after Echo City.” Harnassus’s jaw clenches. “If the Vox had more cold blood and less envy, the fleet would never have been split and vulnerable to Atalantia, and we’d never be in this quagmire. Your friends are to blame, Harnassus. You are to blame. And now you quibble and pretend like this is all Darrow’s fault. The hypocrisy disgusts me.”
Harnassus stands to his full unimpressive height. “I will not stand by and watch children decay.”
“Then you will lie on your back shitting blood as your men decay,” Thraxa says. “While my men do not.”
“Enough,” I snap. “You’re like children. At least try, for me?” The door opens and Screwface prances in.
“Apologies,” he says, stripping off his scarlet Heliopolitan scarf and riding gloves. “Two Gorgon were caught in the water filtration plant. Blaggards thought the Reds would be on their heels from rad poisoning. Sturdy Rat Legion is sturdy. I got this place on lock.” He flops down in a chair and wrinkles his nose at Harnassus’s cats. “What’d I miss?”
“We’re just cutting to business,” I say, “Harnassus, you’ve taken stock of the engineer and support legions, Thraxa the armored and heavy infantry, Screw the special ops and navy. What do you perceive our chances of escape to be?”
They grow quiet. Screwface looks at his manicured hands.
“That low? You’d never guess we just won our greatest statistical victory of the war.”
“We just don’t have the ships to escape,” Harnassus says. “Four torchShips, one destroyer. The Morning Star may never fly again. If we take out all extraneous systems of the other ships, we could just barely fit the men. Doesn’t matter anyway. Just two of Atalantia’s dreadnoughts will make us atoms, and those torchShips of theirs are faster than the Star. If we get to space, they’ll hunt us down. But we won’t get to space. They have the gravity well. If a single ship made it to orbit, it would be a miracle.”