Still there’s the terror.

“Watch how a pitviper strikes, my son.” Father once clutched me by my wrist and made me play this game. “Watch it coil upward and upward till it reaches its crest. Don’t move before then. Don’t strike out with your slingBlade. If you do, then it’ll get you. It’ll kill you. Move just when it’s coming down. Do that with the terror in life. Don’t act till you’re as scared as you’ll get, then …” He snapped his fingers.

I’m at that point when the music of the machines takes hold. The clicks and the clacks, the hisses and the hums reverberate through the hull. A countdown begins.

“Ready over there, Goblin?” I ask Sevro over the com.

“Cacatne ursus in silvis?”

Does a bear shit in the woods? The ship spins and shudders. More sirens howl.

“Latin, now?”

“Audentes fortuna juvat,” Sevro chuckles.

“Fortune favors the bold? You deserve to die if that’s really going to be the last thing you say in this life.”

“Yes? Well, you may suck my—”

My heart sticks its downward beat.

The metal teeth jerk me forward into the tube’s magnetic stream. And it happens. Even through my suit, g-forces hit me like the backhand of the Obsidians’ thunder god. 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 space at fifteen times the speed of sound.

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

I rip soundlessly through space. 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 bitches.

Too bloodydamn 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 each other. 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 breathmasks and unfurl razors, readying for the kill. The second before we hit, I shoot my pulseCannon. It thumps on the thick glass. Shoot again and again and again. Then I curl into a ball and smash into the thick bridge glass 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 glass. 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 ass. Maybe he did shit himself.

We can’t hear it because of our helmets, but the ship is filled with howling as the vacuum of space 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 space. The Obsidians go silently. Not that it matters. Space makes all silent in the end.

My left arm spits sparks. My pulseCannon is shredded. Inside the suit, my arm hurts like hell. 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 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 starShell. 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.