Morning Star полностью

“Yes, sir,” Virga says from her station. “Forward elements of the enemy fleet will be within long-range guns in four minutes.”

The arrogant might of Gold unfolds across the black of space. An unending sea of pale white splinters. I’d give anything to be able to reach out and shatter them. My own capital ships cluster in three groups around our powerful dreadnoughts above the north pole of Io. Mustang and Romulus marshal their forces around the south. And together, eight thousand kilometers apart, we watch Roque’s fleet cross the void between Europa and Io to bring us battle.

“Enemy cruisers at ten thousand kilometers,” a Blue intones.

There is no preamble for my fleet. No benediction or rite that we perform before battle like the Golds. For all our right, we seem so pale and simple compared with them. But there’s a kinship here on my ship. One I saw in the engine rooms, in the gunnery stations, on the bridge. A dream that links us together and makes us brave.

“Give me Orion,” I say without turning.

A holo of the overweight, ornery Blue ripples into life in front of me. She’s half a hundred kilometers away in the heart of Persephone’s Howl, one of my other four dreadnoughts, sitting in a command chair synced with every ship captain in my fleet save those of my strike force. Much of today relies upon her and the pirate fleet she’s assembled in the months since last we saw one another. She’s been raiding Core shipping lines. Drawing Blues to her cause. Enough to help the Sons staff the ships we stole from the Jackal with loyal men and women.

“Big fleet,” Orion says of our enemy, impressed. “I knew I never should have answered your call. I was rather enjoying being a pirate.”

“I can tell,” I say. “Your stateroom’s gaudy enough to a make a Silver blush.” The Pax has been her home for the last year and a half. She took over my old quarters and filled it right up with the booty of her raids. Rugs from Venus. Paintings from private Gold collections. I found a Titian jammed behind a bookcase.

“What can I say? I like pretty things.”

“Well, pull this off today, and I’ll find you a parrot for your shoulder. How about that?”

“Ah! Pelus told you I was looking for one. Good man, Pelus.” The waifish captain tilts his head genteelly behind me. “Damn hard to find parrots when you can’t dock planetside anywhere. We found a hawk, a dove, an owl. But no parrot. If you make it a red one I’ll personally shoot a hole in Antonia au Severus-Julii’s bridge.”

“Red parrot it is,” I say.

“Good. Good. I suppose now I should go be about the battle.” She laughs to herself and takes a tea from a valet on her bridge. “Just want to say, thank you, Darrow. For believing in me. For giving me this. After today, Blue will have no master. Goodspeed, boy.”

“Goodspeed, Admiral.”

She vanishes. I glance back at the central sensor projection. The tactical readout floats before the windows as a to-scale globe of the Jupiter system. Four tiny inner moons orbit Jupiter more closely than the four huge Galilean Moons. My eyes focus on Thebe, the outermost of them and closest to Io. It’s a small mass. Barely larger than Phobos. Long since mined for valuable minerals, and now the home of a military base that was blasted apart in the early days of the war.

“Sixty ticks till Howler coms go black,” Virga intones from her station as Victra enters the bridge, wearing thick golden armor painted with a Red slingBlade on the chest and back.

“The hell are you doing here?” I ask.

“You’re here,” she replies innocently.

“You’re supposed to be on the Shout of Mykos.”

“This isn’t the Mykos?” She bites her lip. “Well, I suppose I got lost. I’ll just follow you around so that doesn’t happen again. Prime?”

“Sevro sent you. Didn’t he?”

“His heart’s a black little thing. But it can break. I’m here to make sure it doesn’t by keeping you nice and cozy. Oh, and I want to say hello to Roque.”

“What about your sister?” I ask.

“Roque first. Then her.” She elbows me. “I can be a team player too.”

Grinning, I turn back to the pit. “Virga, give me a helmet patch to the Howlers.”

“Aye, sir.”