Society Grays push their way through halls like seals under water, taking their revenge on my floating Obsidians, robbed of their closing speed, who’ve mauled so many of their friends. In the end, one of my teams reactivates the gravity. I have them decrease it to one-sixth Earth standard so that my force is not encumbered by the heavy armor we wear. It’s a blessing on our lungs and legs.
After cutting through a security team of Grays, we finally reach the bridge, battered and bloody. I crouch, panting and increase the oxygen circulation in my armor. Swimming in sweat, I activate a stim injection in my gear to keep me from feeling the gash in my biceps where a Gold’s razor caught me. The needle bites into my thigh. Reports come from my other platoons that they’ve lost contact with the enemy, which means they’re being consolidated by Roque, redirected, likely to us. Back to the bridge door, I stare across the circular, exposed antechamber to the bridge and remember how my instructor at the Academy demonstrated the geometric deadliness of the space for anyone besieging a starburst bridge design like this. Three halls from three directions lead to the circular room, including a gravLift in the center. It’s indefensible, and Roque’s marines are coming.
“Roque, darling,” Victra calls up to the cameras in the ceiling as Holiday and her team set up the drill on the door. “How I have pined for you since the garden. Are you there?” She sighs. “I’ll just assume you are. Listen, I understand. You think we must be wroth with you, what with the murder of my mother, the execution of our friends, the bullets in the spine, the poison, and a year of torture for dear Reaper and I, but that’s not so. We just want to put you in a box. Maybe several. Would you like that? It’s very poetic.”
Holiday’s remaining three commandos are attaching magnetic clamps to the door and mounting their thermal drill. She taps a few commands and the eye of the drill begins to spin.
Sefi returns from her scouting. Her helmet slithers back into her armor. “Many enemies come from tunnel.” She points to the middle hall. “I killed their leader, but more Golds follow.” She didn’t just kill the leader. She brought his head back. But she’s limping and her left arm bleeds.
“Oh, hell. That’s Flagilus,” Victra says, regarding the head. “He was in my school house. Very sweet fellow actually. Wonderful cook.”
“How many are coming, Sefi?”
“Enough to give us a good death.”
“Shit. Shit. Shit.” Holiday punches the door behind me.
“It’s too thick isn’t it?” I ask.
“Yeah.” She pulls her assault helmet off. Her Mohawk is mashed to the side. Tense face dripping with sweat. “Door’s not VDY specs like the rest of the ship. It’s Ganymede Industries. Custom. At least twice as thick.”
“How long will it take to get through?” I repeat.
“At full burn? Fourteen minutes?” she guesses.
“Fourteen?” Victra repeats.
“Maybe more.”
I turn, hissing the anger out. The women know as well as I that we don’t have even five minutes. I hail Mustang’s coms. No answer. Her ship must be dying. Bloodydamn. Stay alive. Just stay alive. Why did I ever let her out of my sight?
“We charge them,” Victra’s saying. “Straight down the middle hall. They’ll run like foxes from hounds.”
“Yes,” Sefi says, finding a more kindred spirit in Victra than either might have thought prior to shedding blood together. “I will follow you, daughter of the sun. To glory.”
“Piss on glory,” Holiday says. “Let the drill do its work.”
“And sit here to die like Pixies?” Victra asks.
Before I can say a word or do much of anything, there’s a metallic wheeze behind me from the hydraulics in the wall as the door to the bridge opens.
We surge onto the bridge, expecting an ambush. Instead, it’s calm. Clean, lights dimmed, just as Roque prefers it. Beethoven streams out from hidden speakers. Everyone is still at their stations. Wan faces illuminated by pale light. Two Golds walk along the wide metal path that leads over the pits toward the front of the bridge where Roque stands orchestrating his battle before a thirty-meter-wide holographic projection. Ships dance among the sensors. Framed by fire, he cycles through images, issuing commands like a great conductor summoning the passion of an orchestra. His mind a beautiful, terrible weapon. He’s destroying our fleet. Mustang’s Dejah Thoris leaks flame from her oxygen stores as the Colossus and her three escort destroyers continue to hammer her with railguns. Men and debris float through space.This is just one part of the larger battle. The great host of his force, including Antonia, has pursued Romulus, Orion and the Telemanuses toward Jupiter.
To our left, twenty meters away, near the bridge’s armory, a tactical squad of Obsidian and Grays secure their heavy weapons and listen intently to their Gold commanders, preparing to defend their bridge against me.
And just to our right, at the control panel by the now open door, unseen and unnoticed by anyone else on the bridge, trembles a small Pink in a white valet’s uniform. The passcode display glows green under her hands. Her thin figure is frail against the backdrop of war. But the woman’s face is set defiantly, her finger on the door’s release button, her mouth spreading into the most delightful little smile as she shuts the door behind us.
All this in three seconds. The Gold infantry commander sees us.
Wolves, lovely as they are when they howl, kill best in silence. So I point to the left and the Obsidian surge toward the soldiers listening to the Gold. He shouts for them to turn, but Sefi is already on his men before they can lift their weapons. Dancing through them with her blades fluttering into faces and knees. Her Valkyrie smash into the rest. Only two guns go off by the time the Gold’s body slides off the end of Sefi’s razor and thumps to the floor.
Grays fire at us from the other side of the pit. Holiday and her commandos pick them off. My helmet slithers away. “Roque,” I snarl as my men continue to kill.
He’s turned now from his battle to see me. All the nobility in him, all the cold-blooded Imperator melting away, leaving him a stunned, startled man. Victra and I stalk across the bridge, Blues beneath us to every side, staring up at us in confusion and fear even as their ship is engaged in battle. Silently, Roque’s two Praetorians come at us. Both wear black and purple armor adorned with the silver quarter moon of House Lune. We pair off on the metal bridge in the hydra. Victra taking the right, me the left. My Praetorian is shorter than I. Her helmet off, hair in a tight bun, ready to proclaim the grand laurels of her family. “My name is Felicia au…” I feint a whip at her face. She brings her blade up, and Victra goes diagonal and impales her at the belly button. I finish her off with a neat decapitation.