Dark Age (Red Rising Saga 5)

“Hazard bedlam,” he says. “Whole city, looks like. Ships too. Strongpoints are solid, but there’s shuttles down all over the city. We got half the pack looking for you. Been sending out teams for them and bringing the wounded back here.” He nods to the wounded at the far side of the market as the rest of the Howlers form a semicircle around me. For a moment, I feel as if I am back at the Institute, though of their number only Screwface still has the stink of dead horse about him. Not for the first time, I’m thankful for my peculiar education. I know what to do when the lights go out.

“The city is lost. But looks like the EMP hit orbit too,” I tell them. “It’ll be hours before those dreadnoughts are back online. The fact that the skies are empty means her ground forces got hit—given the range. She’ll have to bring her other ships from picket or far-side to send armor, but once it comes she’ll have two thousand years of tech on us. Then it’s game over. We have to get as many men out of the city and into the mountains as we can before Atalantia brings those ships around. We have far less than an hour.”

I sketch a quick map of the city in the dirt with my slingBlade, making triangles for armories holding conventional weapons. They crouch to see it better in the gloom. I draw a circle for the Hippodrome to the northeast.

“Lysander knew the EMP range. If he were practical, he’d hold for reinforcements. But he’s going for glory. He’ll try to take the city while Atalantia is knocked out. He landed here.” I draw a rectangle to the south for the Water Plaza. “The POWs were held here.” I draw an X west of the Hippodrome, north of us. “Soon we’ll have several hundred thousand veteran troops pouring south with unknown armaments.” I mark several circles five kilometers south of the Hippodrome, two south of us. “These are our support barracks and administrative offices. They have not yet been evacuated. I’ve sent runners to tell them to move south en masse. The fleet is dead, so they’ll be heading for the mountain tunnels. They are hackers, medici, clerks, engineers, orderlies. Those prisoners are Iron Leopards and XX Fulminata, some of the toughest sons of bitches in the Core. With no tech, those Obsidians and Golds will be murder machines. We will not let them catch our friends. They’ve held us up, now we get their backs.

“Six main boulevards lead south. We will barricade them and hold the line here.” I draw a line across the sand south of the Water Plaza. X. On that line, what remains of my infantry in the city will die to buy the rest time. “The strongpoints have gunpowder weapons and grenades, but only enough for one man in ten. Give them to the Gray and Red snipers. All guns should be on the rooftops—expect the Golds to be running the roofs, so fortify your men the best you can between the plazas, and give them melee support. Remember they can jump streets. Use your dark-age training. This isn’t the first time gear’s been down. You fight a Gold alone, you die. Fight together.”

I give a boulevard apiece to four different Howlers, putting Screwface on the right flank, nearest the tunnels and farthest from the Mound.

“And what about you, boss?” he asks.

I put my finger in the center of the map at the Water Gardens.

“Thraxa and I will hold the Via Triumphia. Lysander is too young to go anywhere else. If he wants to make a name for himself slaughtering my men, he has to go through me. If your line breaks, do not head for the tunnels. It’s too far. Their Golds will run you down. Retreat to the Mound. We’ll make our stand there.” I look into their faces. Not a man or woman amongst them expects to survive the hour. But as the waiting has ended, so too has the fear. Not one quibbles or shies from duty. I could not be prouder. “If I do not see you at the Mound, I will meet you in the Vale. Goodspeed.” I grab Screwface as the rest disperse. “Be safe.”

He just laughs.

“Legion!” Thraxa roars.

All across the market, the infantry slam their heels together and raise their fists as we jog past. “Hail libertas! Hail Reaper!”

FRAGMENTS OF SCATTERED LEGIONS join my procession as we rush to secure the Via Triumphia, swelling our numbers to upwards of twenty thousand if I had to guess. Five thousand join us from the district’s strongpoint bearing crates of gunpowder weapons, which are disbursed to our snipers and riflemen. We have six hundred working guns in total, fifteen gas-powered grenade launchers. Though they are little more than clubs now, many cling to the energy weapons that never made them equal to Go

lds on the killing field, but at least gave them a chance. Conventional rounds just don’t pack the same punch.

To give our men polearms, we hew down fences and signposts with our razors as we pass. Another swell of men come from the now-useless artillery batteries. Thraxa waves to a little Pink girl who fogs her apartment’s window as she watches us. We have failed her like we failed those Red boys who came to my aid. Soon they will know the mines and she will be returned to the Gardens where she will know only the pleasure of others, and one day think of her childhood when the Rising came as little more than a fantasy.

We make it to the choke point just as scouts from Lysander’s force reach the rooftops on the other side of the Water Plaza. Through the legs of the mighty statue of Poseidon, I see them moving roof to roof. The fastest have already summited the stone wreckage of Poseidon’s fallen plates. They double back to report our movements as our snipers start picking them off.

“So he is pushing,” Thraxa says.“That unctuous twat. Why wouldn’t he just wait for armor?”

“He wants to make a name for himself in slaughter,” I say. “I thought better of that boy.”

“Of course you did. Sevro was right. Should have ended the line in the Maw.”

Together, we look north. The cityscape lies in darkness. The Hippodrome like the bent head of a shadowy giant. Through the roots of those buildings, Lysander’s army will be moving south. The Golds rushing ahead for glory and revenge. No doubt thinking our humane treatment of their radiation sickness to be some kind of genetic moral weakness on our part. The Obsidians won’t be far behind. And then a sea of veteran Gray killers from the shores of Venus, the furnace of Mercury, the old lands of Earth, the megahoods of Luna, and even the highlands of my home.

All coming to kill my men.

Should we not have fed them? Should we not have healed them?

The Water Plaza itself is a kilometer-by-kilometer square of white marble, in the center of which Poseidon stands over whitewashed sandstone and flowering sunblossom trees. The fallen plates make a stack of rubble to the north, but between Poseidon’s legs the plaza is flat and open. The Via Triumphia encircles the Water Gardens in a roundabout littered with dead vehicles. I send snipers into the buildings on the southern edge of the plaza and on the rooftops, putting my Howler snipers in two stone bell towers and atop a triumphal arch. Gunshots crackle as they continue picking off Lune’s scouts. I see the men of our adjacent force climbing the rooftops to the east.

A thin line of resistance forms across Heliopolis.

Far to the west, gunfire echoes. “Screwface is already under assault,” Thraxa says. “If Lune masses there, we’ll be flanked.”

“He won’t. I want you on the roof.”

She looks at our few Golds and Obsidians. “You need me as a bulwark. To hold the line.”

“We’re not going to be able to hold it,” I say. “But that boy out there can rally the whole bloodydamn system behind him if we let him become a hero. We’re here to kill him.” I shout at a group of three Rat Legion snipers. The Reds bob up to me like jackrabbits. “You any good?” I ask them. The dourest of them answers first.

“It’s our calling, sir.”

I take the gas rifles I reserved in case we ran into more Howler snipers. The three men drop their improvised weapons and cradle the guns like diamonds. I toss them the armor-piercing magazines.