There’s six of us.

“Two?” the female sergeant asks coldly.

“But the Pink’s a slave!” one of the Grays hisses.

“Not worth shit,” says another.

“She’s my slave,” I growl. “Do as I say.”

“Slag that.” Then I feel the silence as much as hear it, and I know one of them has pulled a gun on me. I turn, slowly. The stocky old Gray is not a fool. He’s backed out of my reach. I’ve no armor, only my razor. I might be able to kill him. The others ask what the hell he thinks he’s doing.

“I’m a free man, dominus. I should get to go,” the Gray says, voice trembling. “I have a family. It is my right to go.” He looks to his fellows, bathed in the nasty red of the emergency lights. “She’s just a whore. A jumped-up whore.”

“Marcel, put the gun down,” says the dark-skinned corporal. His eyes are heavy for his friend. “Remember your vows. We’ll draw lots.”

“It’s not fair! She can’t even have children!”

“And what would your children think of you now?” I ask.

Marcel’s eyes fill with tears. The scorcher quivers in his thick hand. Then a gunshot. His body stiffens and crumples lifelessly to the deck as the bullet from the sergeant’s scorcher carries through his head to slam into the metal bulkhead.

“We do it by rank,” the sergeant says, holstering her weapon.

Were I still the man Eo knew, I would have stood frozen in horror. But that man is gone. I mourn his passing every day. Forgetting more and more of who I was, what dreams I held, what things I loved. The sadness now is numb. And I carry on despite the shadow it casts over me.

The escape pod opens, magnetic lock thudding back. The door hisses upward. I pick Theodora from the couch and strap her into one of the seats. The straps are nearly too big, made for Golds. Then something deep and horrible roars in the belly of my ship. Half a kilometer away, our torpedo stores detonate.

Gone is the artificial gravity. Gone are the stable walls. It’s an insidious sensation. Everything spins. I slam into the escape pod’s floor. Ceiling? I don’t know. Pressure vents out of the ship. Someone vomits. I smell it rather than hear it. I shout at the Grays to get in the pod. Only one stays behind now, face drawn and quiet, as the sergeant and a corporal pull themselves into the escape pod. They strap in across from me. I activate the launch function and salute the Gray who stays behind. He salutes back, proud and loyal despite the quiet in him as he faces his last moment of life, eyes distant and thinking of some young love, some path not taken, perhaps wondering why he was not born Gold.

Then the door closes and he is gone from my world.

I’m slammed into my seat as the escape pod shoots away from the dying ship. Ripping through debris. Then we’re weightless again and drifting away from trouble as inertial dampeners kick in. Out our viewport I see my flagship burping plumes of blue and red flame. Processed helium-3, which powers both ships, ignites near my man-of-war’s engines, causing a chain-effect explosion that rips the ship apart. Suddenly I realize it wasn’t debris I felt against my escape pod as I left the ship. It was people. My crew. Hundreds of lowColors spilled into space.

The Grays sit opposite me.

“He had three girls,” the dark-skinned corporal says, shuddering as the adrenaline fades away. “Two years and he was out with a pension. And you popped him in the head.”

“After my report, coward won’t even scrape a death pension,” the sergeant sneers.

The corporal blinks at her. “You cold bitch.”

Their words fade, overcome by the beating of blood in my ears. This is my fault. I broke the rules at the Institute. I changed the paradigm and thought they wouldn’t adapt. That they wouldn’t change their strategy for me.

And now I have lost so many lives, I may never know the tally.

More people just died in a blink than during a whole year of the Institute, their deaths opening a black hole in my stomach.

Roque and Victra hail me over the coms. They will have tracked my datapad and know I am safe. I barely hear them. Anger, thick and evil, swirls inside me, making my hands shake, my heart slam.

Somehow, Karnus’s ship continues through space after bisecting my command, damaged but not broken. I stand in my pod, unbuckling the seat’s restraints. At the far end of the escape pod lies a spitTube with a preloaded starShell—a mechanized suit meant to make a man a human torpedo. It’s designed to launch Golds to asteroids or planets, because the pod wouldn’t survive atmospheric reentry. But I’ll use it for vengeance. I’ll launch myself onto that Bellona bastard’s bloodydamn bridge.

Theodora has not yet woken. I’m glad.

I tell the corporal to help me into the suit. Two minutes later, I’m in the metal carapace. Takes another two to argue with the computer over the calculations required for my trajectory to intersect with Karnus’s so that I can smash through the bridge windows. I’ve never heard of anyone doing this. Never seen it even attempted. It’s madness. But Karnus will pay.

I start my own countdown.

Three … The enemy ship passes arrogantly a hundred kilometers away. It is like a dark snake with a blue tail, a bridge in place of eyes. Between us, a hundred escape pods glimmer, so many rubies cast into the sun. Two … I pray that I will find the Vale if I do not survive this. One. My controls go dead and red flashes across my helmet. The Proctors override my computer and freeze my controls.

“NO!” I roar, watching Karnus’s ship disappear into the black.

3

BLOOD AND PISS

Eight hundred and thirty-three men and women. Eight hundred and thirty-three killed for a game. I wish I never knew the tally. I repeat the number again and again as I sit in the passenger hold of the rescue ship sent to ferry me back to the Academy. My lieutenants sit, afraid to meet my gaze. Even Roque leaves me be.

The instructors disabled my craft before I could launch. They say they did it to spare me a fool’s mistake. The gambit was rash, stupid, and unfitting a Gold Praetor. I stared blankly at them as they debriefed me via holo.

We reach the Academy in the ebbing day hours of my ship’s time cycle. The place is a great domed metal port on the fringes of an asteroid field, ringed with docks for destroyers and men-of-war. Most are filled. Home to the Academy and mid-sector command, it is one of the hives of the Society’s military for the midworlds of Mars, Jupiter, and Neptune, though it does serve other planetary forces when their orbits take them near. My fellow students will have been watching here in the dormitories. So too will have many Fleet officials and Peerless who flocked here for the final weeks of the game for parties and viewing.

None will mention the cost of life demanded by Karnus’s victory. But the defeat will set back my mission. The Sons of Ares have spies. They have hackers and courtesans to steal secrets. What they did not have was a fleet. Nor will they now.

No one greets my lieutenants or me at the dock.

Reds and Browns bustle about to the orders of two Violets and a Copper, who make preparations for Karnus’s Victory in the grand antechamber. The blue and silver of House Bellona trim the cavernous metal halls. The eagle crest of his family covers the walls. They have white rose petals for him. Red rose petals are reserved for Triumphs, true victories where Gold blood is shed. The blood of eight hundred thirty-three lowColors doesn’t count. That’s a clerical issue.

My lieutenants slept as we traveled back to the Can. I did not. Tactus and Victra stumble now ahead of me, walking silently as if still wrapped in slumber. Despite the heaviness in my shoulders, I don’t yearn for sleep. Regret lies behind my bloodshot eyes. If I sleep, I know I’ll see the faces of those I left to die in the ship’s hallways. I know I’ll see Eo. I can’t face her today.