THE NIGHT HELD NO moon, and the stars shone like the drives of starships, not remote but terribly present, pressing against the roof of the world. Some of them were ships, of course. Destroyers and frigates, rapid attack interceptors and courier ships, shuttles and lightercraft and remote-pilot drones, battleships and capital ships, dreadnoughts and the superdreadnought Sieglinde reigning over all, so vast I could make out the shape of her locked in the sky above Deira.

I sketched their fire in white charcoal against the heavy black paper of my folio, setting their lights above the night-lit ramparts of the Storm Wall above, gleaming white and faintly golden. The page opposite showed the mightiest of the massive bridges that spanned the valley high above, homes and shops hanging from its sides and from below its track like the turrets of an inverted castle.

The ships above were sailing.

Sailing away.

Bancroft’s reports had confirmed my suspicions.

Only two ships had disappeared in-system in the last decade, less than the standard attrition rate among cargo haulers and the like. Such ships ran for centuries without maintenance, their various owners scraping by, content to spot-weld and patch their leaky vessels. Failure was inevitable. Entropy would wait—but it could not wait forever.

But for two ships to be destroyed within a million miles of one another inside as many months? Two data points may not indicate a trend, but we could hardly afford to ignore them. Scouts dispatched to the region had found no sign of the enemy, but that was no surprise. It was not difficult to imagine a Cielcin migratory cluster coming out of warp in a system’s Oort Cloud, masquerading as common asteroids, cutting all thrust and riding their momentum in a steady orbit around the sun. Waiting for their moment and a sign.

“The Sieglinde will withdraw with the bulk of the fleet to point-three light-years out-system and above the ecliptic, and there await the rest of the fleet,” First Strategos Hauptmann had said, standing somehow at the head of the round table, a holograph display modeling the strategic withdrawal in the space before us. “I will remain here and coordinate planetary defense from Ondu Station. Legate Corran.” And here he turned to a hard-faced woman of nearly Jaddian complexion, who cocked an eyebrow at her name. “You will have command of the Sieglinde and the rest of the fleet. Bartosz, you and the 437th will command the defense on the ground alongside Lord Marlowe’s company. Marlowe will act as your lieutenant.”

Bartosz, I thought, looking at the fox-like Sir Leonid. He had been Raine Smythe’s commander. The 437th. That meant Bassander Lin again. I studied the holographs, marked the location of Ondu Station in synchronous orbit directly above Deira, a great cylinder encircled by spires and mighty wards to which were docked the dozen or so light destroyers of the Orbital Defense Fleet. And around it the knife-blade shapes of Hauptmann’s fleet gathered, an array of several dozen vessels ranging from less than a mile in length to the almost forty-mile-long behemoth that was the Sieglinde.

“Why move the Sieglinde out-system?” one of the captains asked.

“Because they will notice it is gone,” Hauptmann answered. “If this Pale prince is as discerning as Lord Marlowe seems to believe, he imagines that I have decided to sacrifice Berenike and the Veil entire. It might make him overconfident, particularly given this second fleet he may have at his disposal. He may believe he has us in his jaws, ladies and gentlemen. Little does he know we will have him in ours.”

Commandant Bancroft cleared her throat. “We should expect them to focus their efforts on the city. They’ll guess we’re coordinating the defense from here.” As she spoke, she found her feet and moved to stand beside the First Strategos. “We expect any ground assault to come across the landing field toward the Storm Wall, which will of course be their primary target.” Her display showed a rendering of the Storm Wall with Deira behind and beneath it, the landing field unrolled and almost perfectly level, save where it was broken by the hangar domes and the round maws of blasting pits.

Otavia couldn’t help herself, and with crossed arms raised her voice. “Won’t they just hit the city from behind? Land on the far side of the canyon or in Deira proper?”

“They will,” Bancroft agreed, “but the Storm Wall will be their primary target. The city bunkers are all beneath it. That’s where our people will be when they attack.”

By way of explanation, one of the ODF junior officers said, “Tomorrow morning we’ll give orders to evacuate the city into those bunkers best we can. The Consortium has already ordered its people to the outland mining camps.”

“The Cielcin will hit those, too,” Bassander said darkly.

“Perhaps,” Hauptmann replied, “but perhaps not all of them. And in any event, it will mean fewer mouths if we’re forced to dig in here for a protracted siege.”

The junior ODF man continued, “There’s room enough in the bunkers and the underground starport terminals to house the city population. They’ll be safe enough down there from orbital bombardment.”

“You mean to sacrifice the city?” I asked, shifting forward in my seat opposite Titus Hauptmann.

The commandant looked down at her boots, afraid perhaps that I was about to embarrass her as Hauptmann had days earlier. “If it means saving the people, yes.”

I liked Bancroft. “Very good.”

“The city is not as defensible as the Wall at any rate,” Hauptmann’s scholiast advised.

“The Cielcin may attempt a landing in it all the same,” I said, gesturing at the holograph. “Particularly if there’s a storm, the wind on the city side will be much less. Even on the far side of the canyon . . .”

A third junior ODF officer spoke up. “The far side is ill-suited to landing, my lord, and worse still for troop deployment. The marshes . . .”

Hauptmann sliced through the growing disorder with a clean precision my father would have admired, not shouting, but raising his voice just a hair, just enough to remind the seated, squabbling officers that he was the man in charge. “Sir Hadrian is quite correct. If there is to be an attack from the air it will come on the inside of the Storm Wall. Tor Jeanne, how many of Javelin-9s do we still have in storage?”

“On the Sieglinde? Eighty-seven, sir,” the scholiast answered. “Perhaps some three hundred distributed throughout the fleet.”

“Three hundred . . .” Hauptmann’s mustache frowned once more as he contemplated the Javelin missile batteries. “I’ll want them strung along the ramparts at the valley’s edge. Plasma howitzers for support where necessary.”

I saw the wisdom in this plain enough. The inner wall was situated nearly midway between the Storm Wall and the far edge of the Valles Merguli. It commanded angles of attack over both the valley itself and its far side as well as over the industrial quarters between its ramparts and the superhuman rise of the Storm Wall, and its battlements were tall enough not to be overshadowed by the surrounding spires and foundry stacks. Deira was not an ancient city by the standards of the Imperium—perhaps three millennia from its founding—but it was yet the product of another age, its walls and towers cyclopean in their antique grandeur, so mighty that we men were but ants beside them, and might have seemed pitiful were it not that we had built such marvels ourselves. More often than not, the clouds themselves pooled against the outer side of the Storm Wall, running down in gray fog or streaming up and cut to ribbons against the points of the Wall’s crown like silver knives.

In the coming weeks I ranged all over the city with Corvo or Aristedes in tow. The little commander had various notions for how the defense of the city should be carried out, and wasted no time sharing these.

I had to commend Bancroft and the governor-general, for never before had I seen so orderly an evacuation of citizens. Local prefects and the soldiers of the ODF emptied one district after another, moving people day by day into the bunkers beneath the Storm Wall and the industrial quarters, accessed through heavy vault doors and tunnels in the terraces of the city along the valley’s side. In little less than a fortnight, the city was all but emptied, its only occupants the odd utility workers and the prefects who dragged barricades across roads and bridges and who drove armored groundcars through tight corridors where the buildings stood dark and close.

Our best calculations told us we had only a matter of weeks before the Cielcin arrived, and the silence over Deira city thickened like a sauce, like the fog that dominated the airfield each time I trekked out through the tram tunnels and underground taxiways that honeycombed the landing field beneath the tarmac and stood upon the grid. Beyond the paved miles the prairie stretched forever, and far off I saw the gray hulks of the nuclear plants that powered the massive city, safe across the empty distance. Looking back into the white shadows of the Storm Wall, I spied other hulks.

The colossi waited against the wall, hunched on their massive legs: two and four and six.

Like men, some were, if men were a hundred feet tall. Still others resembled mighty beetles, or moved with the hunched indignity of a bulldog tall as any house of lords. Each was a mobile barracks, a mobile artillery unit. If the Cielcin did mean to assail the Storm Wall from the airfield, they would face our giants of steel.

So mighty a host had we assembled in our defense!

I prayed it would be enough.

---

“Hauptmann is putting us in the trenches,” I said, meaning the city itself. “He’s convinced the first assault will aim to terrify, which means berserkers in the streets.” I turned my gaze from Corvo to Aristedes, to Varro, Valka, and Durand. Crim and Pallino each sat in the far corner of the room, arms crossed, eyes hard and clear among the other chiliarchs. It was not the first time we’d all gathered before a battle, and I prayed that it would not be the last. Udax and Barda had joined us, for I’d given the order that every man and woman on the Tamerlane should be decanted from their icy slumber and brought up to speed on the situation.

The Irchtani watched in solemn silence, listening with heads cocked like curious ravens. Even Prince Alexander was present, having abandoned his white royal garments for a Legion uniform devoid of insignia or rank—as if any man with hair so red needed either.

“I want all our people except the Sixth Cohort deployed to the city with me,” I said. “I will take command on the ground. Otavia, you will take the ship and reinforce Hauptmann’s fleet in orbit protecting Ondu Station and the approaches down to the city.”

Otavia made a face. “And you?”

“I’ll be in the city,” I said. “I’m no use in a space battle.”

The captain’s frown deepened considerably. “I don’t like this throwing yourself at the enemy thing you’ve taken a liking to. It’s not prudent. You should stay in the command center with Bartosz.”

“Not prudent?” I said, chafing against Corvo’s perfectly reasonable counsel. “I can’t abandon the men. Besides, I want Aristedes in the comm center,” I said coolly. “He has a better head for strategy.”

“Lord Marlowe prefers tactics,” Lorian offered the congregation, smiling his pointed smile. His face darkened beneath his lank, white hair almost at once. “You’ve . . . spoken to Bartosz and Hauptmann about me?”

“About you what?” I ceased pacing in an arc up and down the landing field conference chamber. Distracted momentarily by the convoy of personnel on chariots streaking across the tarmac from one of the outer hangar domes back toward the line of colossi at the wall. “Ah.” I had forgotten. “I told Bartosz the commander would be joining him to coordinate our part of the ground defense. If he or Hauptmann gives you trouble, fall back on your rank and do your duty.” Demons above and below, I thought. If Hauptmann had thought me insubordinate, I shuddered to think what he would think of Aristedes—and him an intus, no less. “They won’t stop you doing your job, and any fool with eyes to see knows you’re good at it.”

A low quarking sound came from the Irchtani corner, and Kithuun-Barda said, “What of us, Devil Man?”

The Irchtani were fresh from the ice, and seeing the xenobites standing there in their vest-like uniform jackets, talons curled against their breasts, threw into sharp relief just how much time had passed since last I’d seen them. I had been in Gabriel’s Archive when their time—alone and as a people—to roost on Thessa had come. I had seen neither Udax nor Kithuun-Barda since Forum; since before Selene; before the knife-missile; before Breathnach and Bourbon; before Philip, Ricard, and Irshan; before Colchis, Gibson, and Horizon. Before Annica and the Quiet. The Irchtani seemed to belong to another world, another Hadrian.

I shook myself. “The First Strategos has installed anti-air artillery along the inner wall overlooking the city.” I paused, unsure how best to articulate what needed saying. “The fighting is bound to be thick there, kithuun, but those missile emplacements and the guns around them are a crucial line of defense. Your men will make a great difference there, but the Cielcin will come for them.”

“Let them try, bashanda,” Udax said, punching his open palm with one scaled fist. “We are the fighting Irchtani! We defeated their metal monster, you and me! We will do it again.”

I hoped the xenobite was right. Whatever else was true, we would be in the thick of the fighting. “Most of Hauptmann’s legionaries are keeping to space,” I said. Hauptmann planned to take the fight to the Cielcin in orbit, to capture or destroy their ships, for which he needed all the men he could get. A less experienced commander might have been offended at being relegated to groundwork, but I knew better. We were not the rearguard, but a critical element of the defense. Perhaps the critical element. “Let him win the glory, if that’s what he wants. Let him add another standard to his collection. Our duty is to protect the people.”

Valka was smiling as I spoke and caught my gaze. I returned the expression. “We’ll play this close and defensively. Kithuun-Barda, as I say, I want you and your people manning the inner wall. I’ll want cohorts three, four, and five in the industrial quarter defending the approaches to the Storm Wall with the ODF ground troops. Bartosz is taking the landing field.”

“If they attack at all like the rest of Pale,” Lorian said, shifting in his seat to draw the attention of those around him, “they’ll hit us hard and fast. Hard drop troops from orbit, get them into the city past our guns. They won’t know to hit the Storm Wall yet, they’ll go for the city.”

“What are you saying?” I asked, and ceased pacing to look at the little man with his ghost-pale eyes.

Commander Aristedes’s smile was all teeth. “Hold the guns until after they land in the valley. Then close the lid.”

“Fire on the city, you mean?” Durand sounded aghast. He had not been at the meeting with Hauptmann and Bancroft.

“It’s empty!” Lorian snapped back. “Why not? Why not do to them what that Iubalu creature did to us? Draw them in. Let them overextend themselves.” He clambered to his feet and toward the holograph table that stood between me and the others. “Keep the Irchtani on the inner wall, but put our men in the city in the approach tunnels to the bunkers where they’ll be safe. Here and here . . . and here.” He pointed with those ghoulish fingers of his. The Cielcin will hit the city and start hunting—only they won’t find anyone. Draw them in,” he said once more, “then close the lid.”

I was nodding along quite before I realized it. “Very good,” I said. “Then we’ll be prepared to fall back through the bunkers to the Storm Wall if we lose the city, and re-seal the gates behind us.” I glanced at Corvo and Durand. “Can you speak to Bancroft? We need to make sure the tunnels are cleared from the lower gates up through to the fortress proper. I want her refugees out of the way.”

“We’ll want to mine the lower gates,” Pallino said, raising his chin and his voice from the back. “Last thing we need’s the Pale fucking us in the ass if we have to retreat.”

I nodded. We had the beginnings of a plan.