Marauder Aegus Read Free Page B

unification with Mars.”
    She starts to pace back and forth. “I know! You think I was running just because I had to marry the baron? It was my last real chance to get out before everything went to hell.”
    My original plan would likely have taken about seven months, which is how long I have until the first Marauder warships arrive. The warships that are supposedly loyal to me. If they arrive to see a unified humanity, the likelihood of them staying peaceful is hugely increased. My plan was to slowly gain the Tsar’s favor by bringing the jungle tribes back into the cities, and by showing him my strength as a leader.
    Now I have...how long?
    “Anya,” I say. “When will your father surrender?”
    “Well,” she says, “I was going to have to marry the baron in two weeks, so it would have to be before that.”
    Two weeks .
    “And Bahamut is in Sankt Petersburg,” I say to myself. “Will he kill me on arrival?”
    “Not if you’re my fiancé,” Anya says, grinning.
    I let out a huge sigh of relief.
    “Don’t get me wrong,” Anya says. “Bahamut wanted me to marry the baron, so he’s still probably going to try to kill you, but he’ll have to be sneaky about it, which should buy you some time.”
    “Great,” I say, staring out into the clouds.

5 Anya
    I see the gleaming lights of Sankt Petersburg as we approach. I feel no real emotion other than dread: no relief that I am home again, and certainly no feeling of comfort.
    Sankt Petersburg is a gleaming city floating through the Venusian clouds. In the dense carbon dioxide atmosphere, oxygen floats like hydrogen or helium does on Earth, and the city’s ten kilometer-long oxygen tanks keep the city of two hundred thousand people afloat.
    The surface of Venus is hot enough to melt lead, but this high up it feels like a chilly winter’s day on Earth. And the gravity on Venus is just a tiny fraction less than it is on Earth, which is why Venus is the Empire’s prime target for terraforming.
    It’s why they want the planet back, and why they want me to marry the baron.
    I shake my head. They’d ruin this planet just like they did Earth.
    Royal fighter jets scramble from the city and begin to “escort” us toward the docking platform.
    “He’s trying to make sure I don’t change my mind,” I say.
    “I’m not used to Venusian customs,” Aegus says. “What is expected of your fiancé?”
    I lick my lips thinking about it.
    “It depends,” Anya says. “How mad do you want to get my father?”
    “If he’s angry,” Aegus says, “will it make him more or less likely to change his mind about surrendering?”
    “Okay,” I say. “So you don’t want him angry. You’ll have to try to charm him then.”
    Aegus grins, and his ears flick up and down, “I’m almost as good at charming as I am at killing.”
    “Please don’t use that line on my father.”
    If Aegus’s plan sucked, my plan sucks even worse. I had about twenty minutes to think it out, but I’m committed to it now. There was a zero percent chance I would have been able to get to Mars from the locked down spaceport, and Aegus was the solution that had...presented itself.
    The solution that also happened to be sinfully sexy, bulging with muscles, and–I hate to admit-–charming as hell.
    “Speaking of killing,” Aegus says. “How do you think Bahamut will try to do it?”
    “Well,” I say, “every time someone spoke out against him or got in his way, they were ordered quite suddenly on assignment ‘in the jungle,’ and a few days later they were ‘killed by savages,’ so getting sent to the jungle isn’t a good sign.”
    Aegus nods. “I think I could make good progress with the jungle tribes...it would make sense for your father to send me there. To prove myself.”
    I feel a tightness forming in my chest. My father is going to be seething angry, and it’s unlikely he’ll accept an alien husband for me. If he orders Aegus to prove himself in the jungle, I’ll be left