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“Well, your kind can afford to round Not you who does the dying”

“Surprised to see you in the field, Imperator Aquarii” Harnassus wheels those slumped shoulders toward me “Why is she here?”

“I’ll tell you in the briefing”

“Right Operational security Well, their ht be evil little brainwashed warlocks, but they ain’t fools like the two of you Flying in the saot both of you?”

“Then your dreams would coines are along the volcanic range Your…warlocks will think it’s hydrothermal vents They’ll never suspect it could creep to fifty Celsius”

“Then what the hell do you need this one for?”

“Total control,” Orion says

“Total control?” Harnassus’s suspicions of being kept in the dark are confirine “Didn’t you two read the stories? Pandora doesn’t like it when you play with her box”

Orion regards him with as much respect as Sevro would a particularly small turd “Pandora was a fiction written by men to blame the miseries of the world on women I am not a fiction So, can we see these our dicks off as I pretend a hundred thousand of my sailors didn’t die for your political wet dreams?”

The two unlare at each other

“You two done?” I ask “Yeah, you’re done I want that machine in the air Now”

—

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The ice is the color of cold lips as the men and women of the famed Second swarm over the metal hull of an unearthed colossus Imprisoned for centuries in the ice, the curvature of the machine’s top hull, nearly a kilometer in diameter, is warped and rife with fissures Harnassus roves the peri He’s been in a state of agitation since Orion and her Blues entered the o

The Master Maker Glirastes stands wrapped in the fur of a polar bear Lean, bald, and as cruel looking as a vulture, the most famous artificer in the Society wrinkles his nose and sniffs a line of dee like Harnassus, he is of an entirely different class One that rubbed shoulders with Gold autarchs and sculpted libraries and arcane devices for their pleasure froh his cooperation was vital for my Rain on the planet