Bronze Burning

SHADOWS AND DUST

2

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SHADOWS AND DUST

If I am the rumbling thunder, Xander was the babbling brook. A child with immense imagination and an insatiable sweet tooth, he giggled at rock crabs and talked with the dolphins. Watchful Liber was the unmanned tiller, pushed too and fro by the current of life's emotion. Inseparable as children, we fought wars between sandbars in the emerald shallows and picked seaberries from crumbling cliff sides. We learned the way of the ocean, cutting our teeth on swells in the Strait of Hecate, circumnavigating a tiny catamaran by light of star. We raced and dove. Together. A trio. A team.

All the while, impressionable Liber waited to be shown how to be a man.

News of the war reached us. The mine liquidations on Mars. The ravaging of New Thebes. Always the Legio XIII. Always the cruelty of Praetor Otho au Virius. The twins saw the heavy hand of their father nightly on the holo. And when the martial legend returned to Venus, his cold shadow strangled our sunshine-filled childhood. By the Institute, I was a Bronzie whore, and my brothers were poisoned against me. Xander is dead. I've set Liber into motion. And when I am finished, Otho will have nothing.

Still, I float in those happy memories, wondering what could have been.

The proximity alert startles me from the reverie. I stir from lotus position and check my datapad, hoping for Clodia. Instead, my pulse surges. A sleek unmarked assault shuttle registers, slipping down the spillway. Liber, then, and not Otho, coming to avenge his brother.

I hurry about my business.

The upper levels of the Tiresias are a labyrinthine sprawl of gutted concrete rooms. Empty doorways cut through the thick walls at random, opening onto dilapidated corridors and sightless balconies. It was a graffiti-riddled drug warren before my fall from grace, filled to the brim with lowColor junkies. Now, I call the central room of the fifth floor mine. The rest is vacant, save my scavenged arsenal.

I've been a busy little killer, paying my debts full time. The assassination of Copper administrators, the dismantling of an unaligned crime ring, I'm an asset in the consolidation of Syndicate power. And from every illicit operation, I've hoarded like a Green, stealing bits of tech. Most were broken and battered. Unwanted. I pieced them back together with my own hand.

My optics are first, syncing with the hundreds of makeshift microCams across the Eyes. I know and see all. I raise the facial hood of the form-fitting neoPlast suit, hiding myself from thermal detection. The scarabSkin armor creaks as I pull it over top, fitting the optic mask. Sound-dampening shoes mute my footfall. Last comes the ghostCloak. The battery pack was smashed and scrambled when it came to me. Now it faithfully renders me invisible. I am to play the silent assassin in this game I've orchestrated.

The razor of my forefathers wraps around my thigh, the deeds of our House writ in black strokes on Nemesis's red hilt. The matching kitari nestles tight against my lower back. Aegis on my left, pulseFist on my right, I am as ready for war as I can be.

I had hoped to have more. Of Clodia, there's neither news nor the proffered armor. Tapping my datapad, I send her a coded request for aid. I expect she's shared my location with Liber, but I give her a final chance to fly her true colors.

A plucked thread of despair thrills through me as I wait, and I let it echo a silent-held belief in full and devastating confirmation. I am truly alone in this life.

The north wall explodes inward, showering rubble. Two dozen lurchers in duroArmor leap the gap from their assault shuttle's ramp, separating into four-man fire teams. Three Golds follow in pulseArmor, a pair of Virius lancers and the last remaining heir. Liber made note of his brother's overestimation. The assault team is triple what an unarmored gold might require. A wise statement of caution on his part. The lurchers intend to hound me with their multiRifles, and the Golds will hunt.