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“Got you, boss Nice and easy Just a little drama and you’re done, yeah?”
With ed ar into the city roars in a weary wave as they see our tattered wolfcloaks soaring toward the Mound of Votum When we reach the Mound, the Howlers set me down near the top of the sand-covered steps Ar the wounded to the triage stations Titan cannons boom near the spaceport
I cannot walk under ht it appears as if I a men call my name I stop when I can, but soon Screwface and Rhonna haul me away to the Votum family’s reception chamber It alone provides privacy Under defaced Gold statues, I collapse on the stone stairs, too tired and wounded for my Howlers to dare strip off my armor A medicus visits I don’t know him I threaten his life if he tries to make me sleep Screwface threatens his balls if I die Rhonna pats his shoulder The medicine the man administers eases the tension in h the triangular hole in the ceiling as night falls Screa machines leak in from the darkness
In the early hours of the night, there is a cooes to check on it Rhonna sits on the steps below h Howlers keep watch all around the building Blood clots on the right side of her head The great double doors swing inward and Harnassus and Colloway enter Thraxa au Telemanus stomps in behind them, broith dust and blood, her armor holed like cheesecloth She throws a bundle of Gold standards on the floor Dozensan arripping their poles They pile them until the stack is even taller than Thraxa herself She slaether, raises her burned fist, and declares, “Victory”
It is easier to find men ill volunte
er to die, than to find those who are willing to endure pain with patience
—JULIUS CAESAR
I STARE HALF BLIND INTO a firing squad of fly-eyed cameras Out the viewport behind me, battle stations and ships of war float beyond the upper atmosphere of Luna
Eight billion eyes watch me
“Citizens of the Republic, this is your Sovereign I coht Echo of Ares On Friday evening last, the third day of the Mensis Martius, I received a brief from the brave men and woleaned from our human and mechanical network of sensors, telescopes, scout ships, and infore-scale Society military operation was under way in the orbit of Mercury The largest inyears ago I considered it in the public interest that this information be kept secret until a resolution was found
“The darker heart of reatest ht—and reed—that the whole of the Republic Expeditionary Force would be shattered by orbital bombardment, fractured into isolated centuries, and decimated by artillery, disease, starvation, and thirst That the Free Legions, the beating heart of this great human enterprise, which has broken the chains on Luna, Earth, and Mars, and around which ere to build future legions of liberty, would perish under an Iron Rain in the deserts and mountains of Mercury
“Now I stand before you with that precious word on my lips Victory Attacked from all sides, bombarded from the sky, unsupported by warships or satellites, outnuions shattered the pride of the eneainst the walls of Heliopolis, and, in the face of overwhel, but not eternal
“Now is not the tiratulate ourselves, or claim we are responsible for this miracle We are responsible only for this crisis Lured by the false promises of an enemy plenipotentiary, we allowed our resolve to weaken We allowed ourselves to believe in the better virtues of our enemy, and that peace was possible with tyrants
“That lie, seductive though it was, has been exposed as a cruel machination of statecraft created by the newly appointed Dictator of the Society remnant, Atalantia au Grients of tyranny We turned on our greatest general, the sho broke the chains of bondage, and demanded he accept a peace he knew to be a lie
“When he did not, we cried, Traitor! Tyrant! Warer! In fear of him, we recalled the Home Guard elements of the White Fleet froroup undergoing repairs on Phobos, this left Iht the duplicitous Dictator Now, her fleet, the fleet which freed all of our homes floats in ruins Two hundred of your ships of war destroyed Thousands of your sailors killed Millions of your brothers and sisters marooned Quadrillions of your wealth squandered Not by virtue of ene of your Senate”