“Howlers, make some noise,” I say into my com.
“Pardon me. Excuse me. Sorry,” Pebble says, waving her pudgy little hands. She takes a cable from the battery unit and attaches it to the disc.
There’s a crackle as the ship’s speakers activate. “Pliny,” a voice calls sweetly. I look around for Sevro and see him at a terminal with two of the Greens.
“Sevro!” Mustang and I snap.
He holds up a finger for us to wait.
“He’s on the com,” one of the Greens jabbers out sincerely. “Just a sec.”
“Dear Pliny,” Sevro sings over the com.
If your heart beats like a drum,
and your leg’s a little wet,
it’s ’cause the Reaper’s come
to collect a little debt.
He sings this three times until Ragnar throws a table into the console. Sparks shower out. Sevro looks up slowly at the table hanging over his head. It missed by inches. He wheels around. “What the gorypissandshit is your damage, you overreacting mountain troll!”
“Rhyming … nnnngh.” Ragnar makes an uncomfortable groaning sound.
“You found him,” Mustang mutters as we share a look.
“Which one?” I ask as Sevro curses the Stained out in every compound manner he knows. Adding the crux for good measure.
“You squawk like a … like a chicken,” Ragnar says in reply.
“He can’t insult me,” Sevro says, aghast. He looks at me. “Control him.”
I wash my hands of it.
“If I may suggest continuing,” Lorn says.
“Right. Serious faces, everyone.” Helmets slide from armor to cover our skulls. I see thermal readings, power levels in the digital display. “Prime it,” I tell Mustang.
She activates the leechCraft thermal drill. It’s meant to burrow through the outer hull of a ship and create a breech large enough for a boarding party to pour through. So carving through the floor of a ship is nothing. And we’re only one deck above the command rooms. I jump atop the drill.
Momentum is everything to a Helldiver, to military endeavors, to life. Keep moving and dare someone to get in your path.
“You know what I said earlier,” Lorn asks me.
“About tact?” I ask.
He grins evilly behind his beard. “Slag tact. Terrify them.”
I look at Mustang. “Burn.”
She presses a button. The drill glows red. Heat radiates up into me. Spreads along the floor. LowColors flow away, abandoning their food, fleeing the room as the floor sags and melts like sand pouring down an hourglass. The drill falls through the dripping deck into the command room with me riding on its back. A Helldiver again, if only for a moment.
It slams into the middle of Augustus’s great wooden table, sheaving through and impacting like a meteor into the marble floor, still melting. I cut the power cable with my razor and rise amidst the smoke and steam and leaping flames as the table catches fire.
A hundred Golds of the Society stare up at me. Praetors, Legates, Judiciars, and knights of powerful houses stand with their razors drawn. All once loyal to Augustus. All now under Pliny’s thumb. Going with the wind, as they say.
And there he is, at the head of the long table, his face fast paling. Beautiful, clever Pliny. One eye left, the other sporting a temporary bionic replacement. At his right sits one of the Furies, the Politico, Moira. Compared with Aja, she’s a puffy pastry of a woman. But her sweet smile is half again as sinister as her sister’s razor. Beside her is an Olympic Knight, the Storm Knight from the Japanese Isles of Earth.
“My goodmen!” I bellow through the voice amplifier in my helmet. “I have come for Pliny.” I jump down from the drill, helmet rippling back into my armor so they can see my face. I walk toward him. My friends follow through the hole. Arcos first. Then Mustang and Sevro.
“You said he was dead!” someone to my left snarls, razor half-pulled.
“Lorn au Arcos?” murmurs another. His name rips through the place as Sevro and Roque secure the doors leading into the room.
“And KAVAX AU TELEMANUS!” Kavax booms wildly as he lands. Guess Pax had to learn it somewhere.
“The Reaper is not dead,” Mustang says, hopping down from the drill. “Nor am I. Nor is my brother. And we have come to reclaim what belongs to our father.”
These Peerless don’t know what to do.
“Liars!” Pliny cries. “You betrayed the ArchGovernor. Seize the traitors!”
Lorn makes a simple proclamation. “If anyone comes within two meters of Darrow, I kill everyone in this room.”
They don’t seem eager to call his bluff. The men I walk between jump backward. Lorn’s reputation carves a hole for me straight to Pliny. I don’t break pace.
“Pliny,” I say. “We must speak.”
“Kill him!” Pliny screams. “Kill the Reaper.”
A young man lurches forward and dies as his neighbor stabs him in the back. The neighbor looks fearfully to Lorn.
“Two point three meters,” Lorn says. “Close.”
“Kill him!” Pliny shouts futilely. “He’s a just a boy!”
I speak quietly, but all can hear.
“Pliny au Velocitor, you are a traitor to ArchGovenor Nero au Augustus. You have conspired to destroy his house, to forcibly marry his daughter, to kill his son, and betray him to the Sovereign, who has set herself against him. Your master raised you up, and you tried to tear him down. You have betrayed his trust all for personal gain. Worst of all, you have failed.”
“Stop him!” Pliny screams now, wildly gesticulating at me. “Moira!”
Moira whispers to the Storm Knight, and both step to the side.
“You’re supposed to be dead,” Pliny mutters. “Aja said she would kill you on Europa.”
“And who do you know that can kill me?” I say, that ridiculous Gold rage building in my voice so that it might impress all these hungry souls. “The Jackal failed. Antonia au Severus-Julii failed. Proctors Apollo and Jupiter failed. Cassius au Bellona failed. Karnus failed. Cagney failed. Aja au Grimmus and her Praetorians failed.” The hangman failed. The mines and pitvipers failed. “And now you fail.”
That’s when I slip forward, faster than a striking pitViper and slap him across the face. He pitches sideways out of his seat like a leaf battered by the wind, careening into a Gold who stood to the side. She spits on him and moves for me.
“You are a worm who thought himself a serpent just because you slither. But your power was not real, Pliny. It was all a dream. Time now to wake.”
Pliny scrambles to his feet, pushing himself away from me. His carefully combed hair is a mess, and redness swells on his right cheek. I spin him around and slap him again, harder. He’s startled. Doesn’t know what to do. He was not taken from his bed during his first day at the Institute and beaten by Obsidians. He did not ride upon the snow-crusted beaches at the head of an armored column. He did not starve. So now all he can do is scramble and cry.
I seize him with my hands, raise him high into the air. But I hurt him no more. I will not demean the moment with cruelty like Karnus or Titus would. My condescension is my weapon. I set Pliny back in the ArchGovernor’s chair. I buff his dragonfly pin. Straighten his hair like a kindly mother. Pat him on his tear-stained cheek and extend my hand, which bears my House Mars ring.
He kisses it without me asking.
“Goodbye, Pliny. I leave you to your friends.”
I walk away, the eyes of all these Peerless following me, abandoning Pliny. I hear a slurping sound and do not turn, because I know what razors sound like when they kill. They didn’t even wait. Pliny is forgotten.
These Peerless thump their chests in salute to me. The monsters. They go with the wind, chasing power. But they don’t realize power doesn’t shift. Power is resolute. It is the mountain, not the wind. To shift so easily is to lose trust. And trust is what has kept me alive. Trust in my friends, and their trust in me.