The metal teeth jerk me forward into the tube's magnetic stream. And it happens. Even through my suit, g-forces. .h.i.t me like the backhand of the Obsidians' thunder G.o.d. My vision flickers black. Stomach rises into throat. Lungs constrict. Blood slows in my veins. I snap forward. Lights flicker in my eyes. I don't see the walls of the tube I'm shot through. I don't even see the ship that brought me here. I see Eo's face in the darkness. I black out. Bodies can't take this. Too fast.

Darkness.

Then the darkness has holes.

Stars.

There's no meantime. One second I'm on the ship, the next I'm ripping through the deep of s.p.a.ce at ten times the speed of sound.

Many s.h.i.t their suits at this point. It's not a fear thing. It's biology and physics. The human body can take only so much. Mickey the Carver made sure mine could take just a little bit more. I hope Sevro's can too.

I rip soundlessly through s.p.a.ce. Trust that Sevro is near me. Can't see him, even on the sensors. All too fast. Toward the greatest ship in the Scepter Armada-the one we should avoid. It all happens in six seconds. Emergency missiles streak past us. The gunners see us now. Know what's happening. But we're not using thrusters, so the missiles can't lock. Flack can't detonate on so short a fuse. The unspent canisters fly past us, nearly hitting me. Our pilot took a perfect shot.

Railguns miss us. Projectiles flash past. Sevro is howling in the com. Their shields are down. They can't bring them up fast enough. It takes time. Iridescent blue flickers over their hull as the pulseShields power up. Too late, you sons of b.i.t.c.hes.

Too b.l.o.o.d.yd.a.m.n late.

I can't think. I'm screaming inside. Laughing like the flames of a wildfire. Laughing because I know it is my madness that these logical warriors cannot fight.

The bridge is close. I spare a look up. See Golds inside roaring at one another. Rushing to their evacsuits or escape pods. Staring at us approach like Mustang did when my horses of House Mars crashed into her and Pax in a muddy field. Our rage is something unique. Something these Luneborn don't understand.

Blues scatter. Obsidians pull their weapons. Two Golds don breath-masks and unfurl razors, readying for the kill. The second before we hit, I shoot my pulseCannon. It thumps on the thick gla.s.s. I shoot again and again and again. Then I curl into a ball and smash into the thick bridge gla.s.s with the full velocity of my launch as well as a last-second burst from my thruster boots.

Out of me roars a madman's scream.

21.

STAINS.

I explode through the bridge like a ball of lead shot into a store of china and gla.s.s. I crash into displays and strategy desks before blasting through the reinforced metal of the bridge walls, through the steel of the hallways till at last I slam bodily into a bulkhead a hundred meters through and past the bridge. Dazed. Can't find Sevro. I call him over the com. He groans something about his a.s.s. Maybe he did s.h.i.t himself.

We can't hear it because of our helmets, but the ship is filled with howling as the vacuum of s.p.a.ce sucks crewmembers to their deaths. It really doesn't suck them out through the shattered windows so much as the internal pressure of the ship pushes them out. Either way, Blues and Oranges and Golds fly screaming into s.p.a.ce. The Obsidians go silently. Not that it matters. s.p.a.ce makes all silent in the end.

My left arm spits sparks. My pulseCannon is shredded. Inside the suit, my arm hurts like h.e.l.l. I have a concussion. I puke inside my helmet. Fills it with a bitter stench, stings the nostrils. But I keep my feet, and my right arm works well enough. Viewshield is cracked. I stumble as I'm sucked toward the bridge too.

I crawl back through the holes I made in the walls. Make it to the bridge to find the place in chaos. Crewmembers hold on to anything to prevent themselves from being sucked into the cold darkness. A Gold girl flips past me and flies out the bulkhead. Finally, red lights flash. Emergency bulkheads slam shut all over this part of the ship to cut the pressure leak. One begins to close behind me, reinforcing a wall that I crashed through. I hold it up when I see Sevro coming. The metal groans against the robotic arm of my starSh.e.l.l. Sevro dives through just in time and the door slams shut. Bridge is locked down with us inside. Perfect.

The pressure wind dies behind us as durosteel slats slide over the demolished viewports. The ship's officers and crew pick themselves up from the ground, gasping for breath, but there is none. Oxygen and pressure are still being pumped back into the room. So those with breathing masks-the Golds, Obsidians, and Blues-watch placidly as the few Pink valets and Orange technicians on the bridge flop like fish, gasping for air that is not there. One Pink vomits blood, his lungs exploding in his chest because he tried to hold his breath. The Blues watch the deaths in horror. They have never seen men die. They are used to seeing blips on the scanners disappearing. Perhaps a distant ship exploding or gouting flame as it is boarded by Obsidians and Grays. Their understanding of the mortal coil is being adjusted.

The Obsidians and Golds don't react to the scene. Some of the Grays attempt to administer aid, but it is too late. By the time the pressure and oxygen levels are normalized, the lowColors are dead. I'll never forget those faces. I brought them this. How many families will weep because of what I did here?

In anger, I stomp my metal boot on the steel deck. Three times. And those who did nothing while their allies died turn to see Sevro and me in our killing suits.

Oh, how those Gold and Obsidian faces finally emote.

An Obsidian charges us with a forcePike. Sevro hits him once, crushing the huge man with a metal fist. The other four link together and attack us, keening one of their hideous war chants. Sevro meets them, delighted to finally be the biggest in the room. I engage a squad of Grays who scramble for their weapons.

This is the way it goes. We're men of metal fighting disorganized men of flesh. Like steel fists punching the inside of a watermelon. I've never killed men with so little regard. And it frightens me how easy I find it in war. There is no ambiguity here, no violation of moral creed. These people are warColors. They kill me or I kill them. It's simpler than the Pa.s.sage. Simpler that I don't know them, that I don't know their brothers and sisters, that I use metal instead of my own flesh to drive them through death's dark door.

I am good at it, better by worlds than Sevro, and that terrifies me above all else.

I am the Reaper. Whatever doubts I had in myself fall away and I feel the stain creeping over my soul.

We do our best to save the Blues. The bridge is large, but there aren't many Obsidians or Grays with projectile and energy weapons. No reason for them here; no one has ever come through the viewports. Two female Golds with razors are the true menace. One is tall and broad. The other has a quick face that is pinched with desperation as she charges us. With their razors, they could cut even our suits in half, so Sevro blasts them from a distance with his pulseCannon, overloading their aegises and splashing the energy onto armor where it overloads the pulseShields and eats into the armor, melting the Golds. This is why they control technology. Humans, no matter their Color, are fragile as doves in the meat grinder of war.

My enemies dead, I turn now to the Blues in the pits. "Is there a captain?" I ask.

In my suit, I stand nearly a meter taller than them. They're still staring at the mess we made of the others. I must be a walking nightmare. Arm spitting sparks. Suit half ruined. Holding a terrible razor.

"I don't have all day to threaten and stomp. You are erudite men and women. This is not your ship. You merely occupy it for the Gold who commands it. I now command it. So. Is there a Blue captain about?"

The captain survived. He's a placid, clean-looking man, more limbs than torso, with a fresh gash on his face that pains him terribly. He trembles and sniffles, holding the wound as though his face would fall apart were his hands to leave it. Mother would have called him a s.h.i.teating ninnypriss. Eo would have taken a different tack, so I stand over him and speak quietly.

"You are safe," I say. "Do not attempt anything rash."

I pop my helmet. The sick drips out. I tell him he's to go to the corner and strip off his star badge of rank. Trembling, he doesn't get a chance to obey. Sevro lurches forward, takes his badge, and picks him up and moves him like a doll.

A long-faced, proud-shouldered woman with deep olive skin snorts at the demotion. Her gaze is peculiarly shrewd for a Blue. Bald, like the rest, with digital azure tattoos swirling not only along crown and temples, but over hands and neck.

Sevro lopes back to me.

"Sevro, stop p.i.s.sing around."

"I like being big."

"I'm still bigger."

He tries flipping me the crux in his suit, but the mechanical fingers aren't so agile.

I give orders to the Blues in the tech pits that our friends in the stork are to be given access to one of the hangar bays. After settling themselves back into their stations, they obey. All here are loyal, because I have them under my power. But throughout the ship, who knows? They may be loyal to the Sovereign. Or they may only be loyal to the man who rules this ship. It'd be foolish to think they all operate under the same creed. I'll have to make them.

I watch the stork coast into a hangar bay on a display. She's barely held together by her bolts. Two leechCraft festoon her. My Howlers will have to fight off the squads of killers they contained. They might manage, but if the Vanguard's Obsidians and Grays besiege them in the hangar, then all is lost.

Sounds come now from the bulkhead that connects the bridge with the rest of the ship. A deepspine hissing. The door glows red from heat, a small pupil in the center of the thick gray durosteel. Obsidians or Gray marines, no doubt led by some Gold, endeavor to reclaim the ship. Should take them a little while.

"Is there a holoCam in the hall?" I ask the Blues.

They hesitate. "Blacks.p.a.ce, you daft gasbags," curses the female Blue I noted before. She pushes another Blue out of the way and syncs her tattoos with the console. A holo appears on one of the screens, confirming my fear. Golds lead the party attempting to make their way onto the bridge.

"Show me the engine room, the life support nexuses, and the hangar bay," I demand. She does. Again, Golds lead parties of Gray marines and Obsidian slave-knights to secure the ship's vital systems. They'll try to wrest control of it away from me. Worse, they'll try to board or destroy the stork to kill or capture Mustang and my friends.

"Who wants this ship?" I ask severely. I stalk along the raised command podium, kicking aside a body in my way, and look down at the communications Blues in their pit. They dodge my gaze, two women no older than I. Faces pale and fresh, like morning snow, now stained with tear tracks and grime. Wide cerulean eyes raw-rimmed and shot with red. They've seen friends die today, and here I rage selfishly, acting as though this is my triumph. It's so easy to lose myself.

Never forget what I am, I remind myself. Never forget.

We're being hailed by a dozen ships and the Citadel ground command. What's happened? they want to know. TorchShips and destroyers coast warily toward us. I open a closed-circuit com channel to the whole of my ship.

"Attention, crew of the vessel formerly known as the Vanguard, hereafter known as the Pax." I pause dramatically, knowing that any good song, any good dance, is a game of tension leading to a climax of sound and movement.

Sevro can't stop grinning boyishly at me. He looks like an imp in the huge suit, head so small with his helmet off. He makes a big motion with his hands to try to make me laugh. I shake my head at him. Now isn't the time.

"My name is Darrow au Andromedus, lancer of the Martian House Augustus, and I have claimed this vessel as a spoil of war. It is mine. This means, per Societal rules of naval warfare, that your lives are mine. I am sorry for that, because it means you will likely all die.

"Your lives have been dedicated to one vocation or another-electronics, astral navigation, gunnery, janitorial service, lighting and repair, martial combat. My vocation is conquest. They teach us it in schools. And in school, they instructed me on the proper method of invading, seizing, and possessing an enemy warship. After one has captured the bridge of an enemy-held vessel, the procedure taught to us is simple: vent the ship."

Sevro activates the hidden console secured in the back side of a navigation display, one only Golds can access. The Blues recoil in surprise. It is like going into a man's kitchen and showing him a nuclear bomb hidden under his sink. The console scans Sevro's golden Sigil and blinks gold. All he need do is push in a code, and the entire ship will open to s.p.a.ce. Twenty thousand men and women will die.

"We made these ships so we could empty them. Why? Not because we distrust your loyalty-in fact we rely on that-but because there are still"-I look at the roster one of the Blues gives me-"sixty-one Golds on board. They are loyal to the Sovereign. I am her enemy. They will not obey me. They will sabotage the ship, attempt to take the bridge; they will rally you, abuse your loyalty, and lead you to certain death. Because of them and their hatred of me, you will never see your loved ones again.

"There is yet another complication. Beyond this hull, the Sovereign wonders what happened here. Soon she will realize the pride of her armada no longer belongs to her. It is mine. Her Praetors' ships will vomit out squadrons of leechCraft carrying legions of Obsidians and Gray marines. They will be led by Gold knights who want my head, fully prepared to kill all in their path.

"If I vent you into s.p.a.ce, there will be no one to stop them from killing me. So you see, you are my salvation, and I am yours. I will not sacrifice twenty thousand of you to kill sixty-one of my enemies. I chose this vessel above all others because of its crew. The best the Society can offer. To me you are not expendable. So what I ask of you is this: choose me as your commander and overwhelm those Golds who think you expendable.

"You have my permission, my warrant and the badge of the ArchGovernor of Mars, Nero au Augustus, to capture or kill your Gold commanders for me. Take their weapons and subdue them, then make fast the ship against the invaders who come to destroy us. Do it now. If you wait, they will kill you! I will know the first men and women to rise up. As your new master, I will reward you. The ArchGovernor will reward you. Do it now! For I have just opened every armory throughout the ship. Seize weapons, and neutralize the tyrants."

A heavy silence as the first sparks of revolution are struck.

Sevro comes close. "That was rousing."

"Too demokratic?" I whisper.

"I don't think autocratic demokracy counts." Sevro wrinkles his nose. "You did threaten to vent them into s.p.a.ce."

"Threaten? I thought I implied it rather smoothly."

"Smooth as gravel, dips.h.i.t." Sevro cackles a bit too enthusiastically and slaps his leg with his mech hand, denting the metal there. He winces, then looks up at me, slightly embarra.s.sed. "Slag off."

The door behind us begins to hiss. I turn to look at the glowing bulkhead. My enemies have brought a drill to a.s.sail me. My hands shake from the adrenaline. I feel the weight of dozens of blue eyes. The red of the door deepens, spreading. We haven't long.

My razor ripples into killing form, long and terrible. "Company soon," I say. I glance at Sevro, who has been distracted by one of the holo screens. I order the Blues to take shelter.

"They're doing it," Sevro murmurs. "Goryh.e.l.l. Darrow, come look."

He cycles through live visuals of Oranges and Blues ransacking the armories. Some Grays help them. Others stand by, unsure of their prerogative even as others shoot at the tide of their fellow shipmates. But no bullets can hold back this tide. They take weapons, run sloppily through halls, swelling their ranks. The roughest lead-not Blues, but Orange hangar workers and mechanics, along with Grays ... one I recognize. The middle-aged corporal on my ship at the Academy, the one who escaped with us. He directs a score of men and women into the stateroom of a Gold. They subdue him respectfully. That peaceful accord is not far spread.

Three powerful squads of Golds, leading Obsidians and Grays, marshal in the life support rooms, at the engines five kilometers back to the aft of the ship, and just outside the bridge door. Those outside the bridge door number four Golds and six Obsidians. Ten Grays load weapons behind them.

"We're still going to have company," I say.

They'll be coming through the door at any moment. Sparks spit from the inside of the bulkhead as their heat drill gets the better of the door. Metal drips inward, bubbling to the floor. The Blues shiver in terror, and Sevro and I square ourselves up and don our helmets, preparing for the new onslaught. Again the stench of my sick fills my nostrils. I tell the Blues to hide in the communications bay. They'll be safe there.

A com light suddenly blinks on a console near me. Instinctively, I answer. A voice like thunder sends tremors through my bones. There is no visual.

"Can you hear me?" it asks.

"I can." I glance over at Sevro. Whoever calls us is using a voice amplifier that sounds like the breaking of thunder. Sevro shrugs as if he hasn't a clue who it is. "Who is this?"

"Are you a G.o.d?"

A G.o.d? An eerie quiet settles in me. That is no voice amplifier. I should have known by the cold, sluggish accent. I choose my words carefully, remembering my lore. "I am Darrow au Andromedus of the Sunborn."

"You took the vessel and you are not yet Praetor? How?"

"I flew in through the bridge."

"Alone from the Abyss?"

"With a companion."

"I will come to meet you and your companion, G.o.dchild."

The Blues look to one another in terror. They mouth something. Stained. The heaviness of fear settles on my shoulders. Sevro and I peer around the bridge, as though the beast were hiding somewhere in the shadows. More of the door peels away, dripping inward like some glowing red, rotting fruit.

Then one of the Blues gasps and we glance back at the HC monitor to see the cameras in the halls outside the bridge door relaying a scene of horror. It-he-runs at them from behind as they prepare to make entry into the bridge-an Obsidian, but larger than any I've ever seen. But it's not just his size. It's how he moves. A dread creature st.i.tched from shadow and muscle and armor. Flowing, not running. Perverse. Like looking at a blade or a weapon made flesh. This is a creature that dogs would flee. That cats would hiss at. One that should never exist on any level above the first tier of h.e.l.l.

He smashes into the kill squad from behind with two pulsing white ionBlades that extend out of his armor three feet from his hands. The Grays he simply runs through, crushing them into the walls with his shoulders, splintering their bones. Then he starts the real killing. It's so savage I have to look away.

The heat drill continues melting the door of its own accord. And in its center forms a hole. Through it I can see men and women dying. Blood sizzles on the overheated metal.

When the Stained is done, he's bleeding from a dozen wounds, and there's only one Gold left. She stabs him with a razor, piercing his dark armor through the breastplate. He twists his body, locking the blade in, and then clutching it when she lets the blade relax back into a whip. Then he grabs her by her helmet, her golden armor glittering under the hall's lights. She tries to escape, tries to scramble away, but like a lion with a hyena in its jaws, he need simply squeeze. When she is gone, he lays her gently on the ground, tender now that he's brought her a good death. Sevro involuntarily steps back from the door.

"Mothermercy ..."

The Stained stands on the other side, the door between us slowly melting from the center. When the hole in the door is the size of a torso, he removes his helmet. A hairless, pale face stares as me. Eyes black. Wind-weathered cheeks armored with calluses like the hide of a rhinoceros. Head bald except for a meter-long white shock of hair that hangs to his mid-back.

We lock eyes and he addresses me.

"G.o.dchild Andromedus, I am Ragnar Volarus, the Stained firstborn of my mother, Alia Snowsparrow of the Valkyrie Spires north of the Dragon's Spine, south of the Fallen City, where the Winged Horror flies, brother of Sefi the Quiet, breaker of Tanos, which once stood by the water, and I make you an offering of stains."

He splays out his gigantic bloodstained hands and then reaches through the door with his right hand. His ionBlades retract into his armor. The razor still juts out of his ribs.

I'm p.i.s.sing my b.l.o.o.d.yd.a.m.n suit.

"Well, frag me blind," Sevro mutters. "Do it, Darrow. Before it changes its mind."

Taking my helmet off, I step forward. I want this one.