Dark Age (Red Rising Saga 5)

“December sixteenth, 737 PCE.”

“Huh?”

“Four turmae necare of Legio XIII Dracones, the best of Flavinius’s Praetorians, were given orders by Aja au Grimmus to assassinate reformers in the government in a coordinated purge. One squad visited the Hysperia Gardens, an illegal house of torture. Before insertion, they were given their standard op-cocks. What they did not know was that their customary stimulants had been replaced with zoladone.

“Upon insertion, the killsquad received new orders that even Aja knew her prized dragoons would find…difficult. Freed from empathy by the zoladone, the dragoons followed their orders and butchered seventy-five men, women, and children guilty not of sedition, but of enduring a life of sexual torture, and possessing compromising information on loyal members of the ruling regime. Including Atalantia au Grimmus. Afterwards, the dragoons melted their victims with hydraxic acid. Even the children.” I know this already. But the judgment of a child is a horrible thing. It was his race that gave the order. Not mine. “When Trigg ti Nakamura came off the zoladone high, Holiday found him with a gun in his mouth. She encouraged him to seek Ares to make up for the blood on his hands. This according to her testimony on…”

I thrash forward at him. Things that’d make an ironclad leatherneck with six rain badges turn her head and blink pour out of my mouth. Slides off Pax like he’s on the Z himself.

“Do you want to live like a zombie, when they made him one?” He holds up the ring. “This ring belongs to Ephraim ti Horn. When he asks for it back, I’ll give it to him.”

“—gives you the right?” I snarl. “Spoiled little—”

“You asked for Z before you asked for Volga,” he snaps. “But you risked your life for her? You’re an addict, Tinman. If you refuse to hold yourself to account, I’ll do it for you. Jove knows, you don’t have anyone else.”

I lie awake screaming at him long after his footsteps echo away. Soon I grow too tired. In the silence, memories of Trigg hunt me down. Volga soon joins. In the cacophony, I revert to all I know, and from my lips seeps the old footfuck creed veterans screamed into my face as we marched until it was drilled into our gray matter to replace human vertebrae with titanium chain links. I whisper as I fall asleep:

Chop ’em if they’re taller.

Stomp ’em if they’re smaller.

Mauler, brawler, legacy hauler,

smoke that crow, earn this holler.

Mauler, brawler, legacy hauler,

smoke that ant, pay off your collar.

Legio!

Aeterna!

Victrix!

One more time, you fuckin’ dogs!

Mauler, brawler, legacy hauler…

I WAKE IN A LARGE four-poster. Light seeps through pale blue curtains. How long have I been out? There’s an IV pumping saline into me. My stomach r

umbles as I pull it out. The itch of the zoladone hunger has morphed from rabies-infected ragebeast to small dog. It pisses in the corner and squeaks out a bark. I ignore it, for now.

Kid visited, didn’t he? Has my ring. Has Trigg’s story. That uppity brat. Gods, my head aches.

Right leg itches too, like it’s made of Venusian acid ants. I toss off the blankets to reveal my legs. The artificial muscles and sinew are now covered by a new growth of pale skin that mismatches with my darker left leg. It’s fancy tech—well muscled already. Puckered pink flesh makes a knot on my mid-torso where Gorgo’s rail slug passed through the Duke of Hands and then into me. More pink flesh makes a finger-long ridgeline on my forearm where it broke in the crash. I peek under my medical shorts.

Hello, oldboy. Glad you’re still around.

I wiggle the toes. Nerves are already calibrated. No phantom pain, except a weird ache in my chest. Only get work this good if you got the patronage of a rich house. But I ain’t rich. I ain’t a crusader. So qui solvente? Who’s paying? Where’s Volga? Where am I?

I push open the curtains. The suite is expansive and fit for a brooding but secretly sensitive knight from a holoCan drama. Stone walls and floor. Expensive rugs. A hearth fit to dance in. A pair of fuzzy pink slippers sit by the bedside, along with an arctic bear cloak. Someone thinks they’re hilarious.

I slip both on and go to a wooden door punctured by beams of sunlight. I’m blinded as I push it open. A wash of cool air whips in. I wrap the coat tighter and step out onto the terrace. Covered with spots of snow and topiaries, an expanse of stone pushes to a low stone balustrade covered thick with flowering vines of green and silver.

Beyond that is a sight to see.

In the first year of the Battle of Luna, my boys and I were hunting some Gold gladiator impresario when the building adjacent to ours was struck by a termite munition. When the dust cleared, a Gold woman stood in the ruins of her block empire. An arm missing from the elbow down, body fleeced of skin and all the blueprints underneath vivid as traffic arteries. She swayed there, tilting her chin upward at us. As if to say, “Witness my glory, peasants.”