Morning Star

  “Tell them to stop firing!” I say, pointing my razor at him. His own is on his hip. He knows how little it means to draw it against me. “Do it now.”

  “No.”

  “That’s Mustang!” I say.

  “She chose her fate.”

  “How many men did you send?” I ask coldly. “How many did you send to the Pax to bring me back here? Fifteen thousand? How many are on those destroyers?” I slide back the protective sheath over my datapad on my left forearm and summon the reactor diagnostics of the Pax. It pulses red. We’ve reversed the coolant flow to let the reactor overheat. A slight increase in the output demand and it goes thermal. “Tell them to cease fire or their lives are forfeit.”

  He lifts his gentle chin. “According to my conscience I can give no such order.”

  He knows what it means

  “Then this is on both of us.”

  His head snaps toward his comBlue. “Cyrus, tell the destroyers to take evasive action.”

  “Too late,” Victra says as I raise the output on the generator. It throbs an evil crimson on my datapad, washing us with its light. And on the hologram behind Roque, the Pax begins to release gouts of blue flame. Frantically responding to their Imperator, the destroyers halt their barrage on Mustang and try to jet away, but a bright light implodes in the center of the Pax, enveloping the metal decks and crumpling the hull as energy spasms outward. The shock wave hits the destroyers and, crumpling their hulls, smashes them into one another. The Colossus shudders around us and we’re knocked through space as well, but her shielding holds. The Dejah Thoris drifts, lights dark. I can only pray that Mustang is alive. I bite the inside of my cheek to make me focus.

  “Why didn’t you just use our guns,” Roque says, shaken by the loss of his men, of his destroyers, at being so outmaneuvered. “You could have crippled them….”

  “I’m saving these guns,” I say.

  “They won’t save you.” He turns back to me. “My fleet has yours in flight. They will decimate the remainder and return here and take the Colossus back. Then we’ll see then how well you hold a bridge.”

  “Silly Poet. Haven’t you wondered where Sevro is?” Victra asks. “Don’t tell me you lost track of him in all this.” She nods to the screen where his fleet pursues the routed forces of the Moon Lords and Orion toward Jupiter. “He’s about to make his entry.”

  When the battle began, the outermost of the inner four moons of Jupiter, Thebe, was in far rotation. But as the battle dragged on, her orbit brought her closer, and closer, taking her across the path of my now-retreating navy, just under twenty thousand kilometers from Io. Led by Antonia’s flagship, Roque’s fleet pursued, as they should have, to complete the destruction of my forces. What they did not anticipate was that my ships had always planned to bring them to Thebe, the proverbial dead horse.

  While I negotiated with Romulus, teams of Helldivers were melting caverns into the face of barren Thebe. Now, as Roque’s battlecruisers and torchShips pass the moon, Sevro and six thousand soldiers in starShells pour out of the caverns. And out the other side of the moon pours two thousand leechCraft packed with fifty thousand Obsidians and forty thousand screaming Reds. Railguns spray. Flak deploys last minute. But my forces envelope the enemy, latching onto a their hulls like a cloud of Luna gutter mosquitos to burrow into their guts and claim the ships from the inside.

  Yet even my victory carries betrayal. Romulus had Gold leechCraft of his own prepared to launch from the surface of the moon, so that he could capture ships as well to balance my gains. But I need the ships more than he. And my Reds collapsed the mouth of their tunnels at the same time Sevro launches. By the time he realizes the sabotage, my fleet will outnumber his.

  “I could not lure you to an asteroid field, so I brought one to you,” I say to Roque as we watch the battle unfold.

  “Well played,” Roque whispers. But we both know the plan works only because I have a hundred thousand Obsidian and he does not. At most, his entire fleet has ten thousand. Probably more like seven. Worse, how could he have known that I had so many when every other Sons of Ares attack has rested on the backs of Reds? Battles are won months before they are fought. I never had enough ships to beat him. But now my ships will continue to flee, continue to run away from his guns as my men carve his battlecruisers apart from the inside. Slowly his ships will become my ships and fire on the very vessels they’re in formation with. You can’t defend against that. He can vent the ships, but my men will have magnetic gear, breathing masks. He’ll only kill his own.

  “The day is lost,” I say to the thin Imperator. But you can still save lives. Tell your fleet to stand down.”

  He shakes his head.

  “You’re in a corner, Poet,” Victra says. “There’s no getting out. Time to do the right thing. I know it’s been a while.”

  “And destroy what’s left of my honor?” he asks quietly as a group of twenty men in starShells penetrate the rear hangar of a nearby destroyer. “I think not.”

  “Honor?” Victra sneers. “What honor do you think you have? We were your friends and you gave us up. Not just to be killed. But to be put in boxes. To be electrocuted. Burned. Tortured night and day for a year.” Here in armor, it’s hard to imagine the blond warrior to have ever been a victim. But in her eyes there’s that special sadness that comes from seeing the void. From feeling cut away from the rest of humanity. Her voice is thick with emotion. “We were your friends.”

  “I swore an oath to protect the Society, Victra. The same oath you both swore the day we stood before our betters and took the scar upon our faces. To protect the civilization that brought order to man. Look upon what you’ve done instead.” He eyes the Valkyrie behind us in disgust.

  “You don’t live in a bedtime story, whimpering little sod,” she snaps. “You think any of them care about you? Antonia? The Jackal? The Sovereign?”

  “No,” he says quietly. “I have no such illusions. But it’s not about them. It’s not about me. Not every life is meant to be warm. Sometimes the cold is our duty. Even if it pulls us from those we love.” He looks pityingly at her. “You’ll never be what Darrow wants. You have to know that.”

  “You think I’m here for him?” she asks.

  Roque frowns. “Then it’s revenge?”

  “No,” she says angrily. “It’s more than that.”

  “Who are you trying to fool?” Roque asks, jerking his head toward me. “Him or yourself?” The question catches Victra off guard.

  “Roque, think of your men,” I say. “How many more have to die?”

  “If you care so much for life, tell yours to stop firing,” Roque replies. “Tell them to fall in line and understand that life isn’t free. It isn’t without sacrifice. If all take what they want, how long will it be till there’s nothing left?”

  It breaks me to hear him say those words.

  My friend has always had his own way of things. His own tides that come in and out. It is not in his nature to hate. Nor was it in mine. Our worlds made us what we are, and all this pain we suffer is to fix the folly of those who came before, who shaped the world in their image and left us the ruin of their feast. Ships detonate in his irises. Washing his pale face with furious light.

  “All this…,” he whispers, feeling the end coming. “Was she so lovely?”

  “Yes. She was like you,” I say. “A dreamer.” He’s too young to look so old. Were it not for the lines on his face and the world between us, it would seem only yesterday that he crouched before me as I shivered on the floor of the Mars Castle after killing Julian and he told me that when you’re thrown in the deep, there’s only one choice. Keep swimming or drown. I should have loved him more. I would have done anything to keep him at my side and show him the love he deserves.

  But life is the present and the future, not the past.

  It’s as if we look at each other from distant shores and the river between widens and roars and darkens till our faces are pale shards of the moon in t
he deep night. More ideas of the boys we were than the men we are. I see the resolve forming in his face. The determination pulling him away from this life.

  “You don’t have to die.”

  “I have lost the invincible armada,” he says, stepping back, his hand tightening on his razor. Behind him, the display shows Sevro’s trap ruining the main body of his fleet. “How can I go on? How can I bear this shame?”

  “I know shame. I watched my wife die,” I say. “Then I killed myself. Let them hang me to end it all. To escape the pain. I’ve felt that guilt every day since. This is not the way out.”

  “My heart breaks for who you were,” he says. “For that boy who watched his wife die. My heart broke in that garden. It breaks now knowing all you suffered. But the only solace was my duty, and now that has been robbed from me. All the remittance I’ve attempted to make…gone. I love the Society. I love my people.” His voice softens. “Can’t you see that?”

  “I can.”

  “And you love yours.” It’s not judgment, not forgiveness that he gives me. It’s just a smile. “I cannot watch mine fade. I cannot watch it all burn.”

  “It won’t.”

  “It will. Our age is ending. I feel the days shortening. The brief light dimming upon the kingdom of man.”

  “Roque…”

  “Let him do it,” Victra says from behind me. “He chose his fate.” I hate her for being so cold even now. How can she not see that beneath his deeds, he’s a good man? He’s still our friend, despite what he’s done to us.

  “I’m sorry for what happened, Victra. Remember me fondly.”

  “I won’t.”

  He favors her with a sad smile as he strips the Imperator badge from his left shoulder and clutches it in his hand, drawing his strength from it. But then he tosses it to the ground. There’s tears in his eyes as he strips away the other. “I do not deserve these. But I shall have glory by losing this day. More than you by vile conquest shall attain.”

  “Roque, just listen to me. This not the end. This is the beginning. We can repair what’s broken. The worlds need Roque au Fabii.” I hesitate. “I need you.”

  “There is no place for me in your world. We were brothers, but I would kill you, if only I had the power.”

  I’m in a dream. Unable to change the forces that move around me. To stop the sand from slipping through my fingers. I set this into motion but didn’t have the heart or strength or cunning or whatever the hell I needed to stop it. No matter what I do or say, Roque was lost to me the moment he discovered what I am.

  I step toward him, thinking I can take his razor from his hand without killing him, but he knows my intention and he holds up his off hand plaintively. As if to comfort me and beg me the mercy of letting him die as he lived. “Be still. Night hangs upon mine eyes.” He looks to me, eyes full with tears.

  “Keep swimming, my friend,” I tell him.

  With a gentle nod, he wraps his razor whip around his throat and stiffens his spine. “I am Roque au Fabii of the gens Fabii. My ancestors walked upon red Mars. They fell upon Old Earth. I have lost the day, but I have not lost myself. I will not be a prisoner.” His eyes close. His hand trembles. “I am the star in the night sky. I am the blade in the twilight. I am the god, the glory.” His breath shudders out. He is afraid. “I am the Gold.”

  And there, on the bridge of his invincible warship as his famous fleet falls to ruin behind him, the Poet of Deimos takes his own life. Somewhere the wind howls and the darkness whispers that I’m running out of friends, running out of light. The blood slithers away from his body toward my boots. A shard of my own reflection trapped in its red fingers.

  Victra is less shaken than I. She assumes command as I linger over Roque’s corpse. His lifeless eyes stare at the ground. Blood thunders in my ears. Yet the war rages on. Victra’s standing over the Blue operations pit, face drawn in determination.

  “Does anyone contest that this ship now belongs to the Rising?” Not a sailor says a word. “Good. Follow orders and you’ll keep your post. If you can’t follow orders, stand up now and you’ll be a prisoner of war. If you say you can follow orders but don’t, we shoot you in the head. Choose.” Seven Blues stand. Holiday escorts them out of the pit. “Welcome to the Rising,” Victra says to the remainders. “The battle is far from won. Give me a direct link to Persephone’s Howl and Reynard. Main screen.”

  “Belay that,” I say. “Victra, make the call on your datapad. I don’t want to broadcast the fact that we have taken this ship just yet.”

  Victra nods and punches her datapad several times. Orion and Daxo appear on the holo. The dark woman speaks first. “Victra, where is Darrow?”

  “Here,” Victra says quickly. “What’s your status? Have you heard from Virginia?”

  “A third of the enemy fleet is boarded. Virginia is aboard an escape pod, about to be picked up by the Echo of Ismenia. Sevro’s in the halls of their secondary flagship. Periodic reports. He’s making headway. Telemanuses and Raa are pinching….”

  “An even match,” Daxo says. “We’ll need the Colossus to tilt the odds. My father and sisters have boarded the Pandora. They’re striking for Antonia….”

  Their conversation feels a world away.

  Through my grief, I feel Sefi approach me. She kneels beside Roque. “This man was your friend,” she says. I nod numbly. “He is not gone. He is here.” She touches her own heart. “He is there.” She points to the stars on the holo. I look over at her, surprised by the deep current she reveals to me. The respect she gives Roque now doesn’t heal my wounds, but it makes them feel less hollow. “Let him see,” she says, nodding to his eyes. The purest gold, they stare now at the ground. So I unscrew my gauntlet and close them with my bare fingers. Sefi smiles and I gain my feet beside her.

  “Pandora is moving lateral to sector D-6,” Orion says of Antonia’s ship. On the display, the Severus-Julii ships are separating from the Sword Armada and firing at each other to try and skin away the leechCraft which festoon them. She’s shifting power to engines and away from shields and angling away from the engagement. “Now D-7.”

  “She’s abandoning them,” Victra says, dumbfounded. “The little shit is saving her own hide.” The Society Praetors must not believe what they’re seeing. Even if I brought the Colossus to bear on them, the fleets would be evenly matched. The battle would last another twelve hours and exhaust both our fleets. Now it crumbles apart.

  Whether by cowardice or betrayal, I don’t know, but Antonia just gave us the battle on a silver platter.

  “She’s left us a gap,” Orion says. Her eyes go distant as she syncs with her ship captains and her own vessel, thrusting the huge capital ships into the region formerly occupied by Antonia, which brings them into the flank of the main enemy body.

  “Do not let her escape!” Victra snarls.

  But neither Daxo nor Orion can spare the ships to pursue Antonia. They’re too busy taking advantage of her absence. “We can catch her,” Victra says to herself. “Engines, prepare to give us sixty percent thrust, escalate by ten percent over five. Helmsman, set our course for the Pandora.”

  I make a quick assessment. Of our small battle at the rear of the warzone, we’re the only ship still battle-ready. The rest are drifting rubble. But the Colossus has not yet made an action or a declaration that its bridge has been taken by the Rising. Which means we have an opportunity.

  “Belay that,” I snap.

  “What?” Victra wheels on me. “Darrow, we have to catch her.”

  “There’s something else that needs doing.”

  “She’ll escape!”

  “And we’ll hunt her down.”

  “Not if she gets enough of a lead. We’ll be tied here for hours. You promised me my sister.”

  “And I’ll deliver. Think beyond yourself,” I say. “Bridge shield down.” I ignore the wrathful woman’s glare and walk past Roque’s body to peer into the blackness of space as the metal shielding beyond the glass viewports sl
ides into the wall. In the far distance ships flicker and flash against the marble backdrop of Jupiter. Io is beneath us, and far to our left, the city moon of Ganymede glows, large as a plum.

  “Holiday, recall all available infantry to protect the bridge and make safe the vessel. Sefi make sure no one gets through that door. Helmsman, set course for Ganymede. Do not make any Society ships aware the bridge is taken. Do I make myself clear? No broadcasts.” The Blues follow my instructions.

  “To Ganymede?” Victra asks, eying her sister’s ship. “But Antonia, the battle…”

  “The battle is won. Your sister made sure of that.”

  “Then what are we doing?”

  Our ship’s engines throb and we untangle ourselves from the wreckage of the Pax and Mustang’s devastated strike group. “Winning the next war. Excuse me.”

  I wipe blood from my armored kneecap onto my face and let my helmet slither over my head. The HUD display expands. I wait. And then, as expected, a call from Romulus comes. I let it flash on the left hand side of my screen, altering my breathing so it seems I’ve been running. I accept the call. His face expands over the left eighth of my visor’s vision. He’s in a firefight, but my vision is as constricted as his. All I can see is his face in his helmet. “Darrow. Where are you?”

  “In the halls,” I say. I pant and crouch on a knee as if taking respite. “Pressing for the Colossus’s bridge.”

  “You’re not in yet?”

  “Roque initiated lockdown protocol. It’s thick going,” I say.

  “Darrow, listen carefully. The Colossus has altered trajectory and is headed for Ganymede.”

  “The docks,” I whisper intensely. “He’s going for the docks. Can any ships intercept?”

  “No! They’re out of position. If Octavia can’t win, she’ll ruin us. Those docks are my people’s future. You must take that bridge at all cost!”

  “I will…but Romulus. He has nukes on board. What if it’s not just the docks he’s going for?”