record_id: 2cff8b3e-f83d-819b-bd00-eb20717fd8d6
created_time: 2025-12-20T18:26:00.000Z
title: 12-17 Lecture: Political Exile, Character Conflict, and Spaceship Evasion
source_url: /

[TRANSCRIPTION]
Speaker 1 00:00:53
Go on. Are you picking up your training pool. 
Speaker 2 00:01:09
So, real quick, I think there's two orders, but they didn't want both of them, so you weren't going to cancel the other one, so the one ending in 263 is good, and the other one is 464, and you look like, huh, I think so, and ending in 464.
Speaker 3 00:02:26
Have a good day.
Speaker 2 00:02:59
Thanks for watching!
Speaker 2 00:05:30
Thank you.
Speaker 4 00:06:55
Well, this place has got the shit. Yep. He trails off, and gestures to the green lighting and Miriam's low light. Maybe we're just getting too cooked here. Phil, it has to be better than the Mercury Sandal. Now, yeah, yeah. He's never been a looker, but the latest tour has been hard. Phil, most of the wear seems on the inside. He sits at the desk and waits for the plan of catching her down. We fall in the rain. Smell the new foods. Like a shit show. What's one of those lines? A veteran's contract.
Speaker 4 00:07:27
The returning hero. And, uh, she tips her glass to me. We click our glasses together and down the liquor. It's cheap enough. I can taste the plastic of a bottle of jam in it. Rationed fair. My glass is refilled before it beaches the table. We do another. More. Drinking till it's murdered. Holiday examines the remnants of her last glass. Wondering how it came so soon. She reminds me of all soldiers she saw on the war. Whirls unto themselves. Tempt. Eyes constantly assessing. She awkwardly tries to make conversation because she knows she's supposed to. So, that's new. You're still contracting? You know me, kite in the wind. I swish and swish my fingers through the air.
Speaker 4 00:07:58
Which port? You wouldn't know him. She doesn't smile. I wonder if it hurts her to see him.
Speaker 1 00:08:05
Corey said, thank you.
Speaker 4 00:08:07
As much as it hurts me to see her, I was afraid of this. Of coming here, sliding back into it all. So, you're living good and easy. The only thing easy is entropy. And that's funny. It's not mine. I shrug. Now stay busy. There are other ways to stay busy. Meaningful ways. Try that. My hand instinctively drifts to my chest, where the scars from the gold are hidden under my suit jacket. I noticed her watching my hand. I drop it. Didn't take. Her data pad buzzes on her arm. On call, I ask. She silences it without looking down. Grand theft's gone up. They've got a task force now. Sovereign is tired of the city's culture being plundered by the highest bidder. Sovereign, eh? Out all lying hard.
Speaker 4 00:08:38
Still giving out amnesty passes for murderers and slavers. That's still under your skin. Greys, short in life, long in memory. Forget that little jingle. Tell me, does a new task force have a pretty insignia? I bet they do. Maybe a flying tiger, or a lion with a sword in its lustrous mouth. You were the one who chose to leave the rising air. You know why. If you didn't like how things were going, you could have stuck around, made a difference. But I guess it's easier sitting in a cheap seat storing bottles. Make a difference? You know, when the Hyperion trials started, I thought there'd finally be some justice. Honestly, George, I thought the Gauls would finally pay the bill. Even after Endymion, even after what they did to my boy, I'd touch my chest again.
Speaker 4 00:09:09
But then, your solving got cold feet, sure. Some society military brass, some high-up psychos from the Board of Quality Control got life in deep rage. But more got full pardons, because she needed their men, their money, their ships. So much for the justice. Holiday holds my gaze. After Tree died on that Martian peak, I joined the Rising. More for revenge than anything else. I wasn't a believer. Eventually, they put my Piraeus and Legion-owned skills and understanding of Gaul's culture to use, hunting fearless war criminals down. We used to call ourselves Scar Hunters. Just another slick name. I know I shouldn't press the politics with her. She's as thick in the head and set in her ways as ever. Just another grunt, seduced by the pretty demigods.
Speaker 4 00:09:41
But the booze is making me tear. You know, every time I saw a Gaul slayer walk free for the sake of them, war-effort, it was like watching them spit and trick slave. Aja might be dust, but men and women, just like that bitch, walk the world because the people holding your leash couldn't follow through. Could have put a grey ass off it. At least we finish. I drain my glass for emphasis, and feel like an idiot talking head on an HC show. Cute, empty words and flashy matching. You know, I can't help you if you're quite on job. And like that, I'm dismissed because she's always right, and I'm always just ruining my night. Public urination is a victimless crime, I say with a smile. I pull out a burner and light it.
Speaker 4 00:10:12
I meant what I said last time. About the Hyperion-Chimera match. I'd have lost a fortune on that bet. Embarrassing spectacle, but faux war is unpredictable now. Karachi is a safer bet. We could use a man like you. Come back. Help us unwind the synagogue. And save lives. I am saving a life. Mine. By staying as far away from your masters as humanly possible. She didn't treat, didn't get the same chat. She watches me through the smoke I blow in her face. If you want to do this to me, be more specific. You'll surround the bar. This isn't for him. It's not even for me. So you can sink in it and let it launch you. That's not what I mean.
Speaker 4 00:10:43
What would you want? To have a life. A purpose. I roll my eyes. Why do you bother to talk? I didn't make you. Because my brother loved you. She says, sure. She lowers her voice. More for you. And maybe you shouldn't have got me in trouble. The old holiday wouldn't hit me. Been ten years, that's all. You have to let him go, or it's going to eat you up. I shrug. What's left to eat? I didn't deserve a brother's love. I'm sure a ship don't need her pity. I flag down the bartender and he comes over with another bottle. Holiday shakes her head as I pour myself a glass. I'm not coming back here, Matthew. I'm so sorry. I'll miss you.
Speaker 4 00:11:13
Break the chains and all that. She stands and stares down at me. About to say something spiteful. I say up to her, you look down at me because you're in that little uniform and you think me cheap. But you're the one too stupid to realise you're wearing a collar. You're the one he'd be ashamed of. The only good thing about him being dead is that he doesn't have to see you like this. So long, then. Out the door, she glances back down at her data pad and a shadow of fear passes over her face from what she sees. Then she's gone. She's arrayed. Two glasses later, I abandon the bottle and stumble out of the bar, not at the sidewalk.
Speaker 4 00:11:44
Rain drips its way through the labyrinth of the city above and below, growing fouler by the level. I go to the edge of the sidewalk and peer over the rusted metal rail down into the airway thoroughfare. It's a thousand-metre drop to the mass's petty ground level. Flying cars and taxis blink through the gathering pod, and the signs of humping buildings, advertisements, seek miasma stains of neon greens and violet reds into the air like rainbow puss. On a digital billboard, a six-storeyed red child is wandering alone in the desert, lips cracked, skin burnt absurdly. His foot strikes something in the sand, and eagerly he begins to dig, and lo! He discovers something there in a bottle. Feverishly, he twists off the top and takes a drink. He laughs with delight and holds the glistening bottle up to the sun, where it sparkles and beads with divine drops of perspiration.
Speaker 4 00:12:17
The word Ambrosia sparkles onto the screen, a little wing-heeled logo in the corner. A distant roar comes from the sky as a large passenger ship leaves its berth at aid, aimed at the invisible stars. I drink from my bottle, wishing I'd never left Hyperion for the mass, wishing I'd gone to a pearl club and found a pink to swallow my attention. Holiday was right about one thing. This just picks at the wound. But if I don't pick, then it feels like it didn't matter. And if it didn't matter... Then neither do I. I pull my datapad out with one hand, almost dropping it over the rail, and pull up the last video played. Security cam footage.
Speaker 4 00:12:47
A wintry landscape fills the air in front of me. Careless raindrops punch through the hollow. Trigg is stranded on the bridge to a landing pad that jumps out from the mountainside, like a waiter's arm bringing a tray. A huge gold and blue armour charges him as he runs back to the Reaper. She plunges her blade through his spine, out his stomach, and hoists him in the air like a street vendor's kebab. Then she hurls him off the side of the bridge. My love spatters against the rocks beneath. His blood darkens the white snow. I hurl the datapad down into the abyss, tears and rain blurring my vision. The railing is slippery against my hands as I find myself fighting him. Standing on the edge, looking at the cars beneath and the darkness beyond them, I feel the pain just as sharply as I did ten years ago when Holiday called me.
Speaker 4 00:13:20
I was in the Piraeus insurance offices. Didn't even make a sound when I hung up. I just took off my uniform, ditched my badge and left that office for the last time. I could leave that quietly now. But as I lean forward to go over the edge, something stops me. A hand gripping the back of my jacket. I feel my feet slide out from under me as I jerk off the rail back onto the sidewall. I land hard on the wet concrete, the air rushing over me. Three pale-faced men in black leather dusters and chrome glasses stare down at me. Who the fuck? A fist the size of a small dog sends me to darkness.
Speaker 5 00:13:47
Chapter 15. Lysander. From the depths. In the cockpit, Pythor has gone silent, now locked into the ship's battleship. Her eyes stare distantly as her mind and the ship's computer function as one. Better stop thinking about how you want to die, Cassius says to me as I slide into the observation seat behind Pythor's. One engine's down thanks to you playing lawn. This is worse than the astral dump in L'Oreal. Nothing's worse than that. I look at the sensor displays and the data readouts. Never mind. We're being pursued by the three craft, not slapped-together pirate ships, but military vessels. Doesn't matter that they're old. Their engines seem to be in prime shape. Pythor's returning mid-range fire with our own railguns. Can't see the drama with it. It's all displays and sensor readouts in here. I feel the familiar shudder in the ship as her munitions funnel out their magazines into the magnetic firing rods.
Speaker 5 00:14:17
and race across space as we walk under sewers. How many more shots do we run dry? Can we lose them in the asteroid field, I ask? Not dense enough, Cassius says. Fight? Damn it! He slaps his hand on the console. You should have listened to me! I'm sorry, Cassius. Don't use my name. We have guests on board. She's unconscious. That crew isn't. You want one of them trying to collect a core bounty while we're dodging Ascomani? He shakes his head, marvelling at my stupidity. I wasn't going to stand by and let those savages eat one of us. One of us? My grandfather would have tried to save her. Of course he would have. He'd have gutted a hundred low colours to save one girl's life. Today, you killed how many? A dozen? I see their mouths frothing with fear. Their eyes wide like dying horses. All white. Was it worth it? You could have helped them, he says sorrowfully.
Speaker 5 00:14:53
For me, I know it will not. My memory will trap me with those screaming faces inside my mind. I will see their cracking nails getting meshed, smell the urine on their head, and I'll wonder how many they will save. Our ship shatters again, and I'll project our answers. Our kinetic shields send it ricocheting off into space. If they were aiming to kill, they'd use missiles. They don't aim. They want us alive, I say. Of course they do. They saw that we're golds. They'll rape us and kill us when they get bored of it. They'll eat us, I say. These ones are cannibals. How long can the engines last? We have over a week or two. Maybe an hour or two. Then we're dead metal. But where would we go? We must ask for at least five days out.
Speaker 5 00:15:26
Your grandmother ordered the destruction of one of their moons in their docks. They think I personally stalked and hailed the Rebus RR. There's a reason for that. The chance that they'll have a warship even six days away from their weapons is negligible. Ship ships. Fighting jerseys. Blood-fiddlers out on the edge of the sea. The mouth guard blockers at the console. I pride in their teeth. But this is a matter of probability. We can slip over the line, shed the outer line, fix our engines, then... No ship has crossed into rim space in ten years. I won't risk starting a war. Then what's your plan, my lads? We turn around and fight. We'd get inside one of their ships, turn the guns on the other corvettes. I've seen men do it. We're not warsmen, I say.
Speaker 5 00:15:60
We'd have to pivot the ship's starboard. And then we'd fire back at the fuselage and railgun fire. But if we make it through that, adding their current velocity to the velocity of the switch tube, we will hit their viewports with... I pull from my memory the detailed reports of the analysis my grandmother had me make on Dario's mathematical suicide assault at the vanguard. Potentially nine times the velocity used to reach the vanguard. Our bones will be indistinguishable from our urine. Here's a wager. What about S1392? It's the one the girl reported passage to. It's two hours late. Three hours closer than the night. Before she'd come unconscious, the girl said to help us there. What exactly did you have time to have a conversation with her? We don't know who she is. We don't know what she's from. Do you even know what kind of help she meant?
Speaker 5 00:16:30
Your opportunities are not as nice as they seem to me. Don't quote some silly me like it was your idea. Her help could be anyone. It could be the gory, dumb Ash Lord himself. For you, maybe. Your godfather would skin me alive. She has a deep-sealing chip in her senses. She used your razor. Did she have a scar? If I say yes, he went on to mess with me, too. Would you fight him? I've no scar to see. My brains are working faster. Now, if you're thinking hard this time, if Slade showed damage to our staff and trusted us, Cassius winces, we'd shudder at the heart. It wounds you to see the Archimedes. Slag it. Hyper set course for asteroid S1392. Increase engine output to 15% over the red light. I don't care if we're not together. In her sleep, she does not respond. But the ship does. I sit down as the Archimedes rumbles around us.
Speaker 5 00:17:01
Gravity pours on my body as I come on stage to strain the sub-exceleration. And the Archimedes races for the asteroid. The obsidians fall behind our sub-exceleration, and slowly they intermatch. The dice cast. While Cassius prepares the ship for potential borders by outputting the rescue crew with weapons, I return to the medbay to check on the gold to see if I can draw any information from it. she's unconscious i watch her for a moment feeling more protective than i should for the stranger, tenderly i cut the rest of her clothing away and begin to clean the oil from the skin with alcohol scrubs i drape a medical blanket over her to protect her decency when i look up her eyes are open and seem to be watching me for some time i feel color eyes on my cheeks feeling that she's the ghost but her gaze is softer now unless she looks the ways away you said there was help there.
Speaker 5 00:17:32
tries to speak with her was too late i should check your room now i pull the blanket to the side my cauterization is stopping i find fresh bandage inside the camera she flinches as i find this infected to suit her i recite one of my favorite verses from my desire as from the dark and blue and silver dark up souls and dark to the eastern light on opinions that north ruins the pure delight so fled by the soul into the realms of our regions of peace the girls swore an unconscious game by the time i finished this and this time i let her know all those lies as i leave my smart oil in the face to help mask the best flesh covering the.
Speaker 5 00:18:03
scarf and hope that i might like to cast his name at full burn we managed to close the distance, to the asteroid in under two hours the cabin is now based crimson by the warning lights, Our inertia carries us forward, but the Asgamani are closing, eating up the distance between our ships. Soon they'll reel us in with magnetic tail beams, and burn through our hull. We sit in silence. Pythas unsink to the ship. Our guns are twisted scrap. Our shields fall. The whole ship vibrates as the largest of the Asgamani craft locks onto our hull with a tow beam, slowing our velocity. Cassius unfurls his razor, and I create an iron. My hand is sweaty. My chest is tight, and my mouth chalked and dry. I sit with my legs crossed on the floor in silent meditation, letting fear flow into me, as I can get to master and his horses, and then into our hull, and into our halls. Cassius turns to me as he tightens the screws on the corpus of his pulse armor.
Speaker 5 00:18:33
We've both discarded our chunky evil suits and pulsed on the breastplates of our gift. We meet through the door. I want you to stay behind me. There's not enough room in the corridors for us to fight side by side. If I fall, make sure they do not take you alive. He looks to my face. I'm in the center of the room. His sentence drips to my attention. I follow his eyes to the rad sensor display. It warps sideways. The display's pixels disintegrate as we're dancing back and forth through the black space. Some are jarring, and I'm in the same. They don't have time to compromise our answers. Move then. I followed his eyes out the viewport from a large, seemingly benign asteroid in the distance, S-132. I think it enlarges the visual display. Shadows cloak half the asteroid. The surface is dirty pearl white and ridden with compact craters. The shadows stir. Something moves in the dark distance, streaking out from the bowels of the asteroid.
Speaker 5 00:19:05
It comes into space like a black eel, swelling its way through recesses of a dark sea cone. Flowing out of the shadow, eyes vinting with fervor. But this eel is not made of flesh and blood. It is made of metal, painted black, and marked with three-headed electric flag-like sides. It is a warship. In this empty expanse where no warship has flown for more than a decade, a first-rate destroyer races towards us.
Speaker 5 00:19:43
It lurks in distance and approaches. Beside me, I sense Cassius's eyes. What kind of ship is that? I asked. I sat down. I stood up. like this was something ever to learn. I'm beginning to understand. He looks over to me with heartbreak on his face. She had a scar, didn't she? I accept his anger many times. He thinks I've killed us, and maybe I have, but as long as we breathe, there will be more opportunities to escape. We've jumped from fire to fire now. Open the transmission, he says. Static crackles through the open channel until a cold voice calls out from the deep, an accent not heard on the streets of Mars or the Lord, since the rim closed its borders a decade ago. The long, lazy vowels that linger in the back of the throat hail from the volcano moon Jupiter, the same moon that house Ra, the leader of the rim. It is the accent of fire, not the words of dust. Attention, Archimedes, this is what the voice says. This is the Ving Dominion destroyer, Charybdis. Your communications equipment is neutralized. Any deviation from present course.
Speaker 5 00:20:23
will result in the destruction of your vessel. Any resistance will result in the destruction of your vessel. Stand by to boarding. The common air is off. Silence sits with us in the cockpit. Desperate, Cassius grabs the common air. Charybdis, we are not in violation of wind space. Repeat, we are in neutral territory. This is a violation of the Pax Illum. Repeat, we are not in wind space. No response. Cassius hurls the common air. Piper flinches as the plastic shatters against the metal bulkhead. Better our own kind than us and our own, I say, though I'm disquieted by the fear I see in his eyes and Piper's. We can reason with him. Reason. bring me the fascia, Python. I look at him and wonder if his fear is warranted. Lysander, get my box and yours, and put it in the vault. He pulls his house below in a wrinkly chain around his neck and pushes it into my hand. Make sure there's nothing that could lead them back to who we are. Hollows, weapons, rings, everything goes in the vault, and Carnus's razor, that cover you have on it won't fool them. Hide it, or we're dead. I rush through the halls to the living quarters, where I collect Cassius's oak box, in which he keeps his family heirlooms, the meagre remaining inheritance of a man who once could have ruled Mars. I fetch my own box, a large ivory vessel that carries the last relics of my past. I deposit both boxes in the hidden vault in the wall behind the ship's oven. I frisk my body to make sure I'm not forgotten anything. Grudgingly, I take my grandmother's ring that hangs around my.
Speaker 5 00:21:40
Casius glances down into the mask, a distant, forlorn look in his eyes, the same look he had when we had to pay for engine parts by collecting a bounty on a former gold tribute. It asks how it came to this, so far from what he thought it would be. Sparing a gentle smile to us, one that belongs to another time, a gentler version of himself, he brings the mask to his face, till only his eyes are visible. He tightens the plastic latch at the back, so it is secure to his head. Don't let me take it off, he says. Coral hold, I ask. Mantis lock. I'll break your arms in a coral hold. I obey. Sitting behind him, I wrap my legs around his midsection and loop my arms around his biceps, then under his armpits, and clasp my hands together at the middle of his spine. Iza, you flip the switch. She creeps forward, muttering to herself, he grips the activation knob on the side of the mask. On you.
Speaker 5 00:22:12
as the three hundred needles built into the plastic of the scrambler, the mask spring forward into the skin, bone, and cartilage of Cassius's face. He jerks once, twice, and then a girding scream escapes from beneath the mask like seeding steam from a kettle. His muscles knot and clench rock-hard as he thrashes back into me, twisting so viciously with his arms that I think my own will break. He screams, babbling, incomprehensible curses as he rolls, kicking out an almost catching pipe at the shin. She jumps back. The mask mercilessly pumps artificial filler at his face, grafting imitation bone onto his jaw and forehead and eye sockets. In twenty seconds the mask's indicator blinks from red to yellow, and the worst of Cassius's convulsions begin to fade. We're on our sides, breathing heavily. He mules and drifts into shallow incensions. The indicator blinks green. I disentangle myself from his arms. There's a stabbing line of pain down my forearm that insinuates a stress fracture. Pyther rushes to Cassius and gingerly unlatches the mask.
Speaker 5 00:22:43
His face is a bubbling mass of angry, swollen flesh, like a wax figure straight too close to flame. Bit by bit the swelling subsides under the anti-inflammation pack that Pyther applies. When she pulls the pack away, our handsome friend is gone, replaced by a thuggish visage with a primitive forehead, a bulbous, veiny nose, chipped ears, and a slack mouth with engorged, lazy lips. The peerless scar is gone, recessed into this new, bronzized visage. Pyther wipes tears from her eyes. She looks up at me in recrimination and jerks the smelling salts out of my hands to crack them up his nose. Your prime, Dominus, she says to him, cradling his head and wiping the vomit from his face as he comes to. Easy as sin. It's all over now. It's all over. He sits up with her help, and together we watch out the viewport to see the destroyer opening its docking bay to swallow us whole.
Speaker 6 00:23:12
Chapter 16. Darrow. The Den. I stand upon my tower as a hard rain falls. Before me, the steel skin of the Eternal City yawns into the night. Amidst the reaching towers and bloated stadiums and buzzing complexes lie dark pools of shadow where the jackal and the years of war that followed left their mark. Now, with radiation scrubbed and pulse stones removed, arthropodal construction ships from some industries drift with lazy purpose there, hauling and ferrying workers and metal.
Speaker 1 00:23:36
From Corey, Stradella, you still have two guys there tomorrow.
Speaker 6 00:24:09
Fight for the jacket.
Speaker 2 00:25:56
from corey thanks glint's from a ring on his heavy hand quick silver i say thank you for coming he.
Speaker 6 00:26:42
grunts and shakes my hand his own companion a central drone no larger than a child's skull floats behind him chrome hull shimmering in the ring a red eye pulses in its center i watch it, I watched the socialists tear off your crown. That was an embarrassing spectacle, he sneers. Mateo's men told me they'd concluded the debate. The obsidian sustained. Just sat there. Got a balance, the coppers went with the Vox. Your arrest warrant will be issued within the hour. They're voting on the armistice soon. Then you know what happens next. History is a wheel, and all mobs are the same. Full of small men with big appetite. Only way they grow is by eating men like us. He swings at me.
Speaker 6 00:27:13
You could end the Vox Populi tonight. Storm the Senate. Put them in irons. They're still my people, I say defensively. Do they know that? I don't answer. The Vox Populi are a cancer. There's only one way to deal with cancer. Cut it out. I told your wife that years ago. We've agreed to democracy. Yet, you're here, aren't you? He asks with a laugh. I haven't missed the Vox. Change isn't made by mobs like Henry, but by men who dare. H. and I knew that, and so do we, even if they spit on us. I look down at the bald man, remembering the first time we met on Phobos. How much I hated him. He's a strange creature. Full of malice and selfishness and rigid ideology.
Speaker 6 00:27:44
Not a man I thought I'd ever trust. But he pulled himself up from obscurity on sheer will. He founded the Sons of Ares with Fitchner. He regaled the Republic from nine wars. Without him, no one would be a land of craters and ash. You're leaving, aren't you? Good, he says. Good? What help is the Reaper in a cage? He asks, nodding up to the sky. We need you in the wild. I didn't ask his advice, but it reinforces my conviction all the same. He was Fitchner's friend. I wish I could talk to the man now, just once. Would he agree with what I've done? I need your help. You know I always help my friends. Probably why I keep so few of them. You might want to hear what it is first.
Speaker 6 00:28:14
You'll never make it to your ships in orbit with the wardens after you. He guesses. You'll need one of mine. I need the Nessus. He flinches. And I need it to look as if it had been stolen. Why the Nessus? What are you planning? He grunts at my silence. Never mind. I'll put it in a dry dock for repairs. You'll know where it is. I nod. The Wraxer is already waiting on the dock. So you knew I'd say yes. I hoped. He laughs. Bring my ship back in one piece, eh? She's McTale's favorite. Sir! A concerned voice says behind me. I turn. My arch-lancer, Alexander Arcos, Lauren's eldest and brightest grandson, stands behind me. He's a smirky prodigy. Bleed thin with long white blonde hair and fair skin. Standing no higher than his breastbone is another of my lancers. My niece, Rona. Kieran's headstrong eldest daughter by his first marriage. Twenty, with a buzzed head and a flat nose. She's only been a lancer for a year, but is eager to prove herself Alexander's equal. They duck their heads against the rain as it soaks into their black Pegasus Legion jackets. Alexander eyes the drone behind Quicksilver with disdain, while my niece eyes the man himself.
Speaker 6 00:29:04
They're all here, Alexander says. I look back at Quicksilver. If the Vox find out you helped me, you might be safer on Phyllis. And watch as the mob steals my towers and my companies. I have security teams for a reason. I rebuilt this mode. My fight is here. Shame, you'll miss my birthday. Here's to making the next one. We shake hands, and he departs. What you've heard is true, I say. 37 howlers stare at me through the smoke haze from their glowing burner tips. A savage's miscellany of psychopaths and hooligans, my pack is a scattermatch of rejects that Servo and I have collected over the past ten years.
Speaker 6 00:29:34
After losing all 20 on Mercury, our official number is 111. But most have been dispersed throughout the Republic by Servo to carry out my directives. Those who do not have homes on Luna reside within the Den, an ink-black skyscraper I liberated from the ownership of the Shadow Knight. Holiday nods to me from the back, the last to arrive. She looks like she's been drinking. Setty assists to the side with our ten obsidians. With her senators abstaining from the vote, I wasn't sure she would come. What are you talking about, boss? Min Min, my emulations expert, says through her nose. Her metal legs are up on the table. Sunken red eyes watch me neutrally from her dark face. A dusty mohawk is flattened to one side, and the haggard lines of her cheek are deep in the low light.
Speaker 6 00:30:04
This emergency meeting shit's a bit gritty, don't you think? A robotic wolf-head ring taps against her beer bottle. We just got back. What's he talking about? Vitra asks incredulously. Her long arms are crossed over her pregnant stomach, and her jagged hair is pinned back by a clasp. She looks furious. Do you actually live under a rock, Min Min? I just look like it. Oh, slag off, poshy! I was knee-deep in the mass, had this righteous obsidian brute sandwiched between me thighs. Have you not looked at the news at all today? Pebble, one of my oldest companions, asks. Her fleshy cheeks are flushed from her hasty arrival. She and her husband, Clown, were halfway to a Marriott Portland resort for a vacation with their children and several cold. Nah, we're in size.
Speaker 6 00:30:35
I'm an analog, baby. Bloody damn, see, there's more sensations. Smoot about. Psycho slags on Mars, vaping and burning. Doesn't do me well. She smooths her mohawk. Not at all. Severo throws his data pad at Min Min so hard, she almost takes it in the face. She catches it and turns it over, muttering under her breath. Her eyes grow wide as she sees the headlines. Bloody hell! What I would like to know is which one of you snitched? Vitra asks. Yes, please stand up so we can stab you in the spleen, Severo says. Only way Dancer can be tipped off is one of you chatting about the emissaries. If you talk to a whore, a docker, your bloody damn mother, now's the chance to own it. No one stands. I trust everyone in this room, I say, knowing it's what they need to hear, but it's not true.
Speaker 6 00:31:06
A leak had to come from someone in this room. Say, she did not exactly support me. Is she really so tired of war? However they found out about the emissaries, it wasn't from one of you. You all know by now of the peace accords that the Ash Lord has requested. The Senate will soon agree to an armistice. A temporary ceasefire to negotiate the terms of a possible peace. I believe this is a ploy of the Ash Lord. Damn right it is, Severus says. He knows of our division at home, and is using it to gain time to regroup his forces around Venus. You all know what I fear by now. I pull up a holo-map, and walk along it. Dragging my fingers through the asteroid. I fear dragons. The Ra are coming.
Speaker 6 00:31:37
Maybe not today, maybe not tomorrow. But one day, Ronius will attack. We must consolidate control over the core before that happens. If we leave the Ash Lord alive, we will be caught between two enemies. We will not win. They'll never fight together, Beatrice says. They might hate you, but I know moonies. Even the hostages Octavia used to keep are born hating the Ash Lord. Never forget, never forgive. They do not have to fight together, Zeti says. They only have to fight against us. With the heavy casualties the Obsidians faced on Mercury, I know she doesn't relish that prospect. And why didn't her Senators vote to support me? I continue. The Senate is evidently concerned that I am a liability to the peace process.
Speaker 6 00:32:10
They have called me a warmonger. As of now, they say I am no longer Archimperator. Soon, I believe, there will be a warrant for my arrest. There might already be one. Several mutters under his breath. Dancer's a bastard! Rona says. When she lived in the city of Tinos, he was like an uncle to her. Her fists clench in anger at the betrayal. No, Dancer's a good man. He's doing what he thinks is right with the tools he has, I say. Our terms have been the same. What are your orders, Bartlett? I say you go in there and dissolve it. Have new, clean elections.
Speaker 6 00:32:40
And what? Pebble asks her husband. Darrow rules as an autocrat in the meantime. Don't be ridiculous. The Republic's done if that happens. She looks to me plaintively. Can't Virginia do anything? Surely she won't let them place a warrant for your arrest? Of course she can't do anything, Victor replies. Majority rules unless she uses emergency powers. But she does that, and the Vox Populi will cry tyranny and vote for impeachment. You've seen the streets lately. The mob will back them, especially if they think they can end the war. No one cares about Venus. She's the sovereign, Roma says, which has one-tenth the power it once did. The city line helped write the laws that stripped the sovereignty of so much of its power. I told her not to, Victor sighs.
Speaker 6 00:33:11
Idealists never learn. Holiday stirs uneasily at her place on the wall. You can't really be thinking of violence now. If you mobilize the seven, then the whole legion will be ordered against them. By whom? Victor asks. What general would go against us? Wolfgar, already says. And you'll be the one coming to arrest you, Daryl. Patriotic idiot, Min Min mutters. She turns to Sephi. Can't you reign again, big lady? Aren't you their queen or some such? Sephi doesn't even look her way. Her eyes are locked on me. Please, Victor says. Half the people in this room have their faces on coins. They best have statues. Whatever army they send against us will become our army. One look at Sephi and Daryl and they'll piss their pants. Does she not see how Sephi is watching me?
Speaker 6 00:33:59
She smiles at the heads nodding along with her, but more than half in the room look nervously at their hands, and each other. They are hesitant to go against the Simmon. No one wants a civil war. Holliday gives voice to their dissent. I followed you through hell, Daryl. Don't ask me to follow you through this. I believe in the Republic. We have to put our faith in something. If you march in the Forum tomorrow, you can march without me. Loyalty gone, just like that. They trust. The mercenary, after all. Am I taught you was hard, Holly? Minion says. Ha! You're getting peaceful in your menopause. Shut up, Minion! Bevel says. She's right. That's a load of shit! Severo snaps. If they try— Enough! I say. Seeing as he's grilling this measure at the big ring.
Speaker 6 00:34:31
Gold fell because they let themselves be consumed by civil war. I won't let our Republic fall in the same way. I know how fond we are of escalation. Grins from some of my longest-serving howlers. But not this time. The 7th stays in their barracks. We're not disbanding the Senate. The peace accords will continue. They'll take months. So you're... What? Pitcher says, looking to Cerro, then me, aghast and more than a bit disappointed. Going to let them arrest you? No, love, Cerro says softly, looking back to me. Our conversation on the shuttle to the den was short and to the point. Not quite. The Ash Lord is no fool, I say. Dancer and the Vox Populi are being played. He wants me to use the 7th.
Speaker 6 00:35:03
He wants me to dissolve the Senate and seize power. It would fracture the colors and allow him to pry them away by offering stability. That's a stretch, Pitcher says. I know him. I will not break the Republic. And I will not be a prisoner. Which is why I am leaving this moment tonight. They look to each other in confusion. The question is, who's coming with me? Several steps forward to stand at my side, even as the rest of them look at me blankly. He did not agree with my plan, initially. He wanted to stay on Mars, and dare the Senate to arrest me at the center of the 7th Legion barracks. To where? Holiday asks. You're running? Victor almost spits. I'm not running. But if I tell you, then you are party to conspiracy, I say. Not to mention the plan's details will leak like word of the emissaries.
Speaker 6 00:35:35
I look at each of them, wondering again who betrayed me. You'll be outlaws. Some of you have doubts about this. That I understand. You followed me to Luna, to Mars, Earth, and Mercury. I will not pressure you now to compromise your oath to the Republic. We are family. We will survive this. But if you think your duty is here, it is time for us to part. Vale willing, we will see one another again soon. For a moment, no one moves. And Holiday walks around the table to stand in front of me, her face wracked with guilt. I followed you everywhere, but I can't abandon the Republic. I'm not abandoning it, I say. I know you believe that, sir. But I'll remain behind.
Speaker 6 00:36:05
You may not think you're starting a civil war, but there will be hell to pay. My sovereign will have need of me. I feel no anger toward her, despite the accusation in her voice. We shake hands. Watch over my family. With my last breath, sir. She thrusts her fist into the air, in the rising salute. Hail Ripper Tass! And in a smaller voice, Hail Reaper! She departs the room. Severus sneers at her departure. Any other cowards? Seeing the dark holidays departures brought into the room, Holloway Z. Char, my best pilot, sighs and delights about her. His slender body is laconic, his skin a deep ebony, and covered with serene astral tattoos. He blows a smoke ring, then stands sleepily in it,
Speaker 6 00:36:36
brushing his blue-black hair from his eyes. I didn't need cockroaches to sit at home while you have all the fun. The pilots of Warlocks watch and follow them, including women. My lancers, Rona and Alexander, join her, followed by Flutterbot. Clown can hold back no longer. He bursts to his feet. I'll go with, he says. Darling, you stay with children.
Speaker 5 00:36:51
Like him. 
Speaker 6 00:36:51
Pebble says, joining him, though I see the doubt in her eyes. Sephi and the obsidians are all who remain. Sephi, are you with me? I ask. I see her answer before she gives it. Unlike Wolfgar, she doesn't worship at the altar of the Republic. She carries the welfare of her people on her shoulders. When Ragnar died, that was her inheritance. Slowly, she stands. I care nothing for Venus or Mercury. She rolls. They are not worth obsidian blood. We have carried the rising on our backs. And for what? Her eyes scorched the roof, for gold to sit on high, for the rest of the colors to hate us, call us monsters, for us to speak, and for you to hear nothing.
Speaker 6 00:37:22
There are still obsidians left in slavery, I say, though I have seen this coming for some time now. Obsidians have borne too much. Dolls targeted them in the rain, above all others. Your brother's master still lives, I say. I remember how Ragnar put her hand in mine as he died. I thought the bond would last forever, but I felt the cracks for years now, as I asked more and more from her deep. The Ash Lord made him a slave, kept him in a fighting ring, and made him kill like a dog. My brother was a living god. But, obsidians with her, not reverently. But he is dead, the Lindemead Halls of Valhalla, singing songs before all mother death. On this middle clay, only I speak with him now. She closes her eyes.
Speaker 6 00:37:52
Her second eyes, the ones tattooed in blue on her eyelids, stare at me each time she blinks. And he tells me that my duty is not to Garrow Morningstar, not to my vengeance, but to my people. The worst part is I don't know if she is white. If Ragnar were here, what would he do? He dreamed of seeing his people free, and now they are. But they throw their sons and daughters into our war. Is that freedom? Have I used them like a gold? I have. You dumb yeti, Severus snaps. You think that peace will actually last? No peace lasts, even the wings holds. But I am your queen. She looks at me with her black eyes, and as much as I need her, I cannot fault her.
Speaker 6 00:38:23
I think our spirits are so well matched that she would come with me if she did not carry the burden left to her by her brother. But she does. If I march with you, Darrow, all obsidians march with you. I will not. It is time that others fight their own battles. Sephi, Severus says desperately, his voice strained, knowing how much weaker we will be without them. Please. I am sorry, half-man. I have spoken. She covers her heart. But, Darrow, if we do not meet again in this world, I will save a seat for you in the meat hall beside Ragnar and my king. We watch them go, knowing the strength they take with them. And for the first time in a decade, the Howlers are without the queen of the Valkyrie.
Speaker 6 00:38:55
I feel somehow as if Ragnar's spirit is finally the product, and it leaves me without his protection. When the last has left, and the door is shut, Clown turns to me. So, uh, boss, are we going to rejoin the fleet? No, Clown. I try not to let the loss of the obsidian steal my confidence. We're not going to rejoin the fleet. Not going to raise men on Mars. Not going to waste time wrangling with politicians. We're going to Venus to find the Ash Lord and cut off his head. Now, that's what I call diplomacy, Severus says. He laughs maniacally, and jumps atop the table, boots shattering a coffee cup. Who's up for some blood? He howls hideously, his old mania vibrating through the room. Min Min shoots up from her seat and howls, and soon the room wails with the cacophony of two dozen maniacs,
Speaker 6 00:39:26
pretending we do not feel the horridness of the howl, absent so many of our friends. As Severo rages atop the table, I watch Victra motionless in her seat, a hand on her newest child, watching in horror, as her husband pretends he's young again. The doubt creeps in, and I feel so very old.
Speaker 7 00:39:42
Chapter 17. Lyria. Debt. The blue sky mocks the dead that lie in the mud. The soldiers and medics that came in the second wave of Republic ships laid the bodies of the dead out in the grass beyond the east wall of the camp. Once those bodies were full of life, but now they're little more than empty husks of skin and bone. The spirits that made them have fled to the veil of our ancestors. I feel like my spirit has already joined them. The hollowness in my bones as I walk the grass looking for my sister. Here and there survivors weep over the bodies of loved ones. The woman makes animal screams over her dead child as others search for their own. My people are taught that this life is just a road to a place we are all going in the end.
Speaker 7 00:40:14
The place washed in light and love, where the very air is thick with the laughter of lovers meeting again. I can't see that world. I can only smell the burned bodies. I can only see the pale legs smeared with soot, cracking with dried blood. And everywhere flies, fat with blood, they buzz and holler in thick clouds over the day. I walk alone, having left Liam with the medics. My arms slung up, shoulder throbs despite the meds they've given me, and the skin tickles at the red flesh bandage holding the wound together. More support ships cut across the midday sky, banking around the columns of thinning black smoke. I found Tyrion, where they shot him.
Speaker 7 00:40:44
Face down in the mud. Boot prints chewed the ground around him. I couldn't even hold him to my heart one last time. His body was a ruin I could not bear. I thicked up and fled, gathering just enough courage to return to our house to see if my father somehow managed to hide. He did not. I have no parents left. Now I look for my sister in the killing field. With everybody I pass, I feel the window of hope closing, knowing there's only so many left. So many steps more till my world falls apart. But I hold on to the stubborn little voice in my head that says, maybe she escaped. I pray before I look at each new face and feel sick as I breathe sighs of relief when it is someone else's mother, someone else's sister, dead on the ground.
Speaker 7 00:41:22
I'm reaching the end of the last row. She's not there. I don't see the bright blue of her new shoes. Fifteen bodies left. Ten. And then I slow. Eels sinking into the mud. Stomach rattling into knots. The frantic wingbeat of the fly fills my ears. And I'm swallowed by horror. No! a thin body lies on the ground its throat has been hacked through to the spine red hair encircles her head in a filthy halo it's not her it can't be her but her children lie beside her their pieces.
Speaker 7 00:41:52
twisted like broken toys and one of her shoes hangs loosely on her foot covered in mud the other foot is bare her lifeless eyes stare at the sky eyes that saw my mother birth me that used to look down at me with perfect love as we lay in bed together under the covers whispering of boys and the lives we would have eyes that fell in love that watched four children come from her flesh into the world made cloudless and empty by some angry young man with a hunk of metal in his hand i feel the mud on my knees my hands my claw at my sister's body someone shrieks in the distance like.
Speaker 7 00:42:25
they're on fire and it's long after the medics pull me away from my dead sister and her dead children long after they stick a tranquilizer into my shoulder as i realize the screams are my own, You must avoid any undue exertion, citizen, the mellow is saying. You're lucky to be alive. Keep the wound clean. I'll put your information in the system so the medics at your next stop know to recheck it for infection. I stare through her, watching an iridescent beetle the size of a thumbnail settle on my exposed knee, several inches below where the paper medical smock ends. Its pigment darkens to match my skin. Next stop.
Speaker 7 00:42:55
Looking up at the medics. She's hard into her forties. Sulfur eyes peer out from a mess of freckles. A white-filtered medical mask covers the rest of her face. Despite the sweat on her brow, she's clean. From a city. We disgust her. They're taking you and your nephew to a regional medical center, she says. You'll be safe there. Safe, I echo. She squeezes my good shoulder and then leans. There was a doctor, I say. Janice, I'm sorry. None of the medical staff survived. She leaves, and I lean back in the bed, and look down the row of cots. Hundreds of us are clustered beneath the awnings. My pants and the tattered remnants of my shirt are crumpled in a bag at the end of my bed.
Speaker 7 00:43:28
Liam adjusts his hold on my hand. He hasn't let go since I woke up. I don't know what to say to him. I'm spared the choice, and we're both eclipsed by a shadow. It blocks out the light from the nearby doorway. A man comes through the mosquito netting, blowing the eyes of the doctors, one of whom rushes to him and scoldingly points at some animal that follows him in. The man pushes the animal back out with his foot, and then closes the netting. Man isn't the right word. No bloody way. On the riverbank, he looks like a statue. Moving, upright, he looks like a god. The gold thighs are broader than my dad's chest. His hairy hands hang at his sides like giant swollen mallets, and his head is bald and shiny with sweat, and looks made from knockin' down doors.
Speaker 7 00:44:01
Liam hears his footsteps and begins to shake in fear. Are you the one known as Lyria? His voice soothes like the distant rumble of a claw drill. Yes, I manage with a dry tongue. Who are you? His eyes, the dark gold, are small and close together. A glittery and friendly way as he smiles, and pushes himself awkwardly through the cramped confines of the medical tent, till he's at my bedside. I am a man who owes you a great debt, little one. Yes, indeed. A great debt. You saved my life. It wasn't just me. Oh, but it was. I spoke to the rents at the riverbank, and they told me what you did, despite your wounds. How you swam to the depths for a stranger.
Speaker 7 00:44:33
He kneels. I have many that I love, who I will now see again, because of you. So I thank you, child, with all my heart. His hands swallow mine. He kisses my knuckles. Who are you? I ask again. He frowns. You do not know me? Eh? At a crime? He's taken aback by my tone. Telemannus, he announces grandly. He leans back, pleased at the recognition in my eyes. I am Kavix, a Telemannus, Eaglebreaker, creator of the Republic. From my side, Liam gasps. The Kavix who slew Tiberius Obelona, and flew with the Reaper to Luna, and cut off Atalantia, Obrimus' leg? The gold hadn't noticed Liam, so low is my nephew to the ground, but now he puffs up.
Speaker 7 00:45:04
his chest like a regular hell-diver, delighted to have his reputation precede him. I can see this child is very wise. She spares a look at me. Though I was not alone against the ash lady, my daughter was with me. Looking down at my little nephew, Havoc slowly realizes that Liam, with his unfocused, foggy eyes, is blind. The change in the gold startles me. His voice softens, and he kneels so that he is not so far away from my nephew. And what is your name, young knight? Liam of Logalos, Dominos. But, but I'm not a knight. That is a good name, Liam. It is an old earth name from the British Isles, and means warrior, protector.
Speaker 7 00:45:35
Does it? Liam asks. It does indeed. Your people, the first pioneers, brought more than flesh and blood with them from earth. He smiles. I knew a man with such a name, and he was very brave. But I fear you are wrong. You are a knight. He puts a hand on Liam's head, startling my nephew. See? Yes, you have a hard head. A fighter's head, just like mine. Do you want to feel my head? I've been told it is the hardest this side of Romulus. How raw! With care, Havoc lowers his head and places Liam's hand upon his great dome. You're a bloody knight. A bloody knight, Liam exclaims. His hands reach along Kavix's head to find the end of its dimensions. Liam, mind your tongue. I pray this massive man doesn't take offence, but he just chuckles.
Speaker 7 00:46:07
I am big enough for most things, Kavix says with a grin. But when I'm not, I call on my friends like your sister here. And we are friends now, little one. He pulls a small silver fox pin from a pouch. He sets it in my palm and closes my hands around it. If ever you want for anything, show this to any Republic soldier or employee, and they will find me, and I and any of my family will do what is in our power to help you. You have my word. My family, I say. What of them? He looks around. Do you want me to fetch them? We need family when we are doing this. It is important. Tell me where they are, and I shall bring them to you. They're gone. I manage in a small voice, not having any other words to describe what happened.
Speaker 7 00:46:39
Their absence does not feel real, but it creeps on me.

[AI_SUMMARY]
The lecture explores intertwined narratives in a post-war science fiction universe, focusing on character conflicts such as George's disillusionment with the 'Rising' and Holiday's loyalty, alongside spaceship evasion tactics. Darrow faces political exile and plans to assassinate an enemy leader to prevent a two-front war, causing a rift in his elite unit, the Howlers. Lyria, a civilian survivor, earns a life debt from a powerful warrior, highlighting themes of loyalty, trauma, and the complexities of justice in a fractured society.