Dark Age (Red Rising Saga 5)

“EMP would be better,” Freihild says.

“Wrong, moron!” I say, irritating her savage sensibilities. “Unless it’s nuclear powered, you ain’t gonna do shit to that new armor. You’re two years late. If you’re not reading mechanical specs, you’re not doing your job. When was the last time you read a spec report, skuggi?”

Freihild doesn’t answer.

“Thought so. I will teach you unconventional domestic warfare: Soc Legion spycraft, surveillance, countersurveillance, how to dance a laser grid, subvert security systems, foster insurrection on enemy soil, groom assets of every Color without beating them to a pulp, talk about anything for ten minutes, use neodymium magnets, hot-wire anything with an engine, manipulate anything with a prick or gash, and how to do it all without anyone knowing you were ever there. You will become ghost soldiers of the city jungle. You will not just become part of the underworld. You will own it. And I will make you appreciate the works of the Spanish Surrealists. Because they are the best artists the world ever conspired to create, and they are unappreciated by modern society. Are there any questions?”

They stare back blankly.

Ozgard clears his throat. “Ephraim.”

“Yes, Ozgard?”

“Forgot to mention. Only half speak Common.”

I close my eyes. “I hate you.”

“—AND IMMEDIATE CESSATION OF federal tax-shelter provisions for unionized labor, guilds, and other collectives deleterious to the will of the free market. This brings us to proposal six point three…”

Senator Britannia ag Krieg has period marks for eyes, and a widow’s peak that could chip ice for my nightly bourbon. Chief negotiator for the Zenith Ring, the Silvers’ common interest federation, Krieg stands in the center hollow of their halo table located within Sun Industries’ Zenith Spire. Stained by city lights, the clouds form a carpet far beneath the spire. At fifteen unnecessary kilometers in height, it is the tallest building in all Hyperion, dwarfing the memory of the old Society military headquarters. Another apt metaphor for its creator as well as our time.

There are no senators present, save Britannia. The kept pets are sequestered downstairs, awaiting the orders of their true masters. Thirty-three Silver trillionaires of the Zenith Ring sip tea from Ionian porcelain in smug satisfaction that they don’t visit the Sovereign, she visits them. Heralding from asteroids, planets, moons, and deepspace trade stations, they share only four common virtues: their Color, their religious conviction in their definition of the free market—not that they mind the government being their chief customer—their obsession with individual autonomy, and their determination to act, at all times, like complete assholes.

Not one of the oligarchs, save Quicksilver, was rich before the war. Now they represent the machine of war—Drachenjäger factories, shipyards, textiles, pharmaceuticals, rubber plants, shipping interests, silicon products. Without their companies, which I admit they did build against intense competition, we’d fight with sticks and stones.

Quicksilver, the lone quadrillionaire, doesn’t bother sitting at a place of prestige. He’s off to the far right of the asteroid-diamond table, sandwiched between a munitions supplier and the asteroid-mining magnate who donated the table and deducted it from his taxes.

The slump-shouldered, ham-fisted titan of industry doesn’t look like the man who, along with Fitchner, engineered the destruction of the Society. He is more concerned with the sugar in his tea than Senator Krieg’s outrageous demands. He knows he’ll get what he wants, because I don’t want to fight with sticks and stones, because I need their Silver votes, because without his helium, the ships he builds us will sputter and die.

Even the eerie silver orb robot that floats ever-present over his shoulder couldn’t make him aware of my promise to Publius. If he knew, he’d be beating me in private with verbal uppercuts and haymakers. He has been an enigma of late. His demands increasingly peculiar and opaque. Which leads me to consider the possibility that he knows something I don’t.

I interrupt Krieg’s soliloquy to gesture behind her. “What the devil is that?” The artwork beyond the ring table is a fifteen-meter-tall vanity of unrefined metal morphed into a shape roughly mimicking a winged heel.

Britannia looks back at it in irritation. “That is the Dawn of Hermes. Sculpted from fused Oort Cloud dust by the Master Maker Glirastes of Mercury. The honorable Regulus ag Sun acquired it two years ago at an Ophion Guild auction for a record purchase p

rice of ninety-four billion credits.”

Roughly the cost of two destroyers, or enough food to feed the Cimmerian assimilation camps for forty-six and a half months.

The industrialists clatter their teaspoons on their teacups in salute.

Krieg continues her ransom demands. It is not the first time I’ve wished for her to be infected by the agonizing intrusion of a parasitic organism. I should have introduced her to my brother when I had the chance. By the sound of Nakamura’s shifting armor behind me, I can tell she agrees.

A middling account executive for silicon goods before the Rising, Senator Krieg made her fortune negotiating buyouts of liberated mines from Red clans for Sun Industries during Quicksilver’s mad dash to buy up the majority of the h-3 market. What I released from my family’s holdings to Reds, he purchased not two months later.

The Reds were properly represented by the White Guilds and chose gross proceeds instead of a one-time buyout. The contracts were thorough. It was all perfectly legal. But so is murder during wartime. Who possibly could have expected there to be no gross proceeds, because the immensely rich helium mines still, according to the books, operate at a net loss?

Me, namely. But the Reds, like everyone else in our Society, suspected I acted in self-interest and thus paid no heed to my warnings.

“…resetting automation limits to their former levels, and concluding with an elimination of Senator Caraval’s ‘flesh and bone’ quotas…” Her words devolve into a faint buzzing, and I yawn as she progresses to the last demands before finally reaching her denouement.

“…an oral agreement will suffice for now, but amendments must be placed on the bill before the vote. Not all, naturally. We don’t want to kill it, but certain provisions so that we can feel comfortable moving forward in good faith. These are our…recommendations.”

The teacups tinkle, and the industrialists sit back in smug satisfaction to wait for my usual reluctant agreement. But I’ve been saving up my chips. I uncross my legs and put my boots up on the table. Quicksilver sees and tilts his head in interest. I extend a hand backward. Nakamura hands me my apple. I strip small pieces away with my bootknife and watch the Silvers as I eat.

Quicksilver chuckles to himself, and waits in good nature for me to conclude the show. They look so smug. And why not? They’ve always gotten what they want from me, because it was cheaper to agree with them than to teach them. And they are good at what they do—staggeringly efficient, inventive, ambitious, and productive. But ancient Celts didn’t invent spurs because horses are obedient.

When the apple is little but core, I toss it on the table. I extend my hand back to Holiday again. She hands me earcaps. I insert them and reach back one last time. Now she hands me her anti-tank railrifle.