Morning Star

It’s early morning as I sip coffee and eat a bowl of grain cereal my mother fetched me from the commissary. I’m not yet ready for crowds. Kieran and Leanna have already gone to work, so I sit with Dio and Mother as the children dress for school. It’s a good sign. You know a people have given up when they stop teaching their children. I finish my coffee. Mother pours me more.

“You took an entire pot?” I ask.

“The chef insisted. Tried to give me two.”

I sip from the cup. “It’s almost like the real thing.”

“It is the real thing,” Dio says. “There’s this pirate who sends us hijacked goods. Coffee’s from Earth, I think. Jamaca, they said.”

I don’t correct her.

“Oy!” a voice screams in the hallways. My mother jumps at the sound. “Reaper! Reaper! Come out and play-e-ay!” There’s a crash in the hall and the sound of stomping boots.

“Remember, Deanna told us to knock,” says a thunderous voice.

“You are so annoying. Fine.” A polite knock comes at the door. “Tidings! It’s Uncle Sevro and the Moderately Friendly Giant.”

My mother motions to one of my excited nieces. “Ella, do us kind.” Ella darts forward to open the door for Sevro. He bursts through, scooping her up. She shrieks with joy. He’s in his undersuit, a black sweat-wicking fabric that soldiers wear under pulse armor. Sweat rings stain the armpits. His eyes dance as he sees me, and he tosses Ella roughly onto a bed and charges toward me, arms outstretched. A weird laugh escapes his chest, hatchet face split with a jagged grin. His hair a dirty, sweat-soaked Mohawk.

“Sevro, careful!” my mother says.

“Reap!” He slams into me, spinning my chair sideways, clacking my teeth together, as he half lifts me out of the chair, stronger than he was, smelling of tobacco and engine fuel and sweat. He half laughs, half cries like an excited dog into my chest. “I knew you were alive. I bloodydamn knew it. Pixie bitches can’t fool me.” Pulling back, he looks down at me with a rickshaw grin. “You bloodydamn bastard.”

“Language!” my mother snaps.

I wince. “My ribs.”

“Oh, shit, sorry brotherman.” He lets me sink back into the chair, and kneels so we’re eye to eye. “I said it once. Now I’ll say it twice. If there’s two things in this world that can’t be killed, it’s the fungus under my sack and the Reaper of bloodydamn Mars. Haha!”

“Sevro!”

“Sorry, Deanna. Sorry.”

I pull back from him. “Sevro. You smell…terrible.”

“I haven’t showered in five days,” he brags, grabbing his groin. “It’s a Sevro soup in here, boyo.” He puts his hands on his hips. “You know, you look…erm…” He glances at my mother and tames his tongue. “Bloody terrible.”

A shadow falls over the room as a man enters and blocks the overhead light near the door. The children cluster joyously around Ragnar so he can barely walk.

“Hello, Reaper,” he says over their shouts.

I greet Ragnar with a smile. His face is as impassive as ever. Tattooed and pale, callused from the wind of his arctic home, like the hide of a rhinoceros. His white beard is braided into four strands, and the hair on his head shaved except for a tail of white that is braided with red ribbons. The children are asking him if he’s brought them presents.

“Sevro.” I lean forward. “Your eyes…”

He leans in close. “Do you like ’em?” Buried in that squinting, sharp-angled face, his eyes are no longer that dirty shade of Gold, but are now as red as Martian soil. He pulls back his lids so I can better see. They’re not contacts. And the right is no longer bionic.

“Bloodydamn. Did you get Carved?”

“By the best in the business. Do you like ’em?”

“They’re bloodydamn marvelous. Fit you like a glove.”

He punches his hands together. “Glad you said that. Cuz they’re yours.”

I blanch. “What?”

“They’re yours.”

“My what?”

“Your eyes!”

“My eyes…”

“Did yon Friendly Giant drop you on your head in the rescue? Mickey had your eyes in a cryobox at his joint in Yorkton—creepy place, by the by—when we raided it for supplies to bring back to Tinos to help the Rising. I figured you weren’t usin’ ’em, so…” He shrugs awkwardly. “So I asked if he’d put ’em in. You know. Bring us closer together. Something to remember you by. That’s not so weird, right?”

“I told him it was odd,” Ragnar says. One of the girls is climbing his leg.

“Do you want the eyes back?” Sevro asks, suddenly worried. “I can give them back.”

“No!” I say. “It’s just I forgot how crazy you are.”

“Oh.” He laughs and slaps my shoulder. “Good. I thought it was something serious. So I’m prime keeping them?”

“Finders keepers,” I say with a shrug.

“Deanna of Lykos, may we borrow your son for martial matters?” Ragnar asks my mother. “He has much to do. Many things to know.”

“Only if you return him in one piece. And you take some coffee with you. And bring these socks to the laundry.” My mother pushes a bag of freshly patched socks into Ragnar’s arms.

“As you wish.”

“What about the presents?” one of my nephews asks. “Didn’t you bring any?”

“I’ve got a present for you…” Sevro says.

“Sevro, no!” Dio and my mother shout.

“What?” He pulls out a bag. “It’s just candy this time.”

—

“…and that’s when Ragnar tripped over Pebble and fell out the back of the transport,” Sevro cackles. “Like a dumbass.” He’s eating a candy bar over my head as he pushes my wheelchair recklessly through the stone corridor. He sprints fast again and hops on the back to coast till we swerve into the wall. I wince in pain. “So Ragnar falls straight into the sea. Thing was at full chop, man. Waves the size of torchships. So I dive in too, thinking he needs my help, just in time for this huge…I dunno what the hell you’d call it. Some Carved beasty…”

“Demon,” Ragnar says from behind. I hadn’t noticed him following. “It was a sea demon from the third level of Hel.”

“Sure.” Sevro guides me around a corner, clipping the wall hard enough to make me bite my tongue, and sending a cluster of Sons pilots scattering. They stare after me as we trundle on. “This sea”—he looks back at Ragnar—“demon apparently thinks Ragnar is a tasty-looking morsel, so he gobbles him up almost as soon as he hits the water. So I see this, and I’m laughing my ass off with Screwface, as one would because it’s bloodydamn hilarious, and you know how Screwface loves a good joke. But then the beasty dives. So I follow. And I’m chasing it, shooting my pulseFist at a bloodydamn sea”—he looks at Ragnar again—“demon as it swims to the bottom of the damn Thermic Sea. Pressure’s building. My suit’s wheezing. And I think I’m about to die, when suddenly Ragnar cuts his way out of the scaly bitch.” He leans close. “But guess where he came out? Come on. Guess. Guess!”

“Sevro, did he come out the sea demon’s rectum?” I ask.

Sevro squeals with laughter. “He did! Right out the ass. Shot like a turd—” My chair rolls to a stop. His voice cut short, followed by a thump and sliding sound. My wheelchair rolls forward again. I look back and see Ragnar pushing it innocently along. Sevro isn’t in the hallway behind us. I frown, wondering where he went, till he bursts out of a side passage.

“You! Troll!” Sevro shouts. “I’m a terrorist warlord! Stop throwing me. You made me drop my candy!” Sevro looks at the floor of the hallway. “Wait. Where is it? Dammit, Ragnar. Where is my peanut bar? You know how many people I had to kill to get that. Six! Six!” Ragnar chews quietly above me, and though I’m probably mistaken, I think I see him smile.

“Ragnar, have you been brushing your teeth? They look splendid.”

“Thank you,” he preens as much as a man eight feet tall can preen past a mouthful of peanut butter bar. “The wizard removed my old ones. They pained me greatly. These are new. Are they not fine?”

“Mickey, the wizard,” I confirm.

“Indeed. He also taught me to read before he left Tinos.” Ragnar proves this by reading every single sign and warning we pass in the hall till we enter the hangar bay some ten minutes later. Sevro follows behind, still complaining about his lost candy. The hangar is cramped by Society standards, but is still nearly thirty meters high and sixty wide. It’s been cut into the rock by laser drills. The floor is stone, blasted black from engines. Several dilapidated shuttles sit in berths beside three shining new ripWings. Reds directed by two Oranges service the ships and stare at me as we wheel past. I feel an outsider here.

A motley group of soldiers ambles away from a battered shuttle. Some are still in armor with their wolfcloaks hanging from their shoulders. Others are stripped down to their undersuits or go bare-chested.

“Boss!” Pebble cries from under Clown’s arm. She’s as plump as ever, and she grins at me, hauling Clown along to move faster. His puffy hair is matted with sweat, and he leans on the shorter girl. Both their faces are bright when they approach, as if I were exactly as they remembered. Pebble shoves Clown off her shoulder to give me a hug. Clown, for his part, gives a ludicrous bow.

“Howlers reporting for duty, Primus,” he says. “Sorry about the kerfuffle.”

“Shit got prickly,” Pebble explains before I can speak.

“Exceedingly prickly. Something different about you, Reaper.” Clown puts his hands on his hips. “You look…slender. Did you trim your hair? Don’t tell me. It’s the beard…terribly slimming.”

“Kind of you to notice,” I say. “And to stay, considering everything.”

“What, you mean you lying to us for five years?”

“Yes, that,” I say.

“Well…” Clown says, about to light into me. Pebble thumps his shoulder.

“Of course we’d stay, Reaper!” she says sweetly. “This our family…”

“But we have demands….” Clown continues, wagging a finger. “If you desire our full services. But…for now, we must be off. I fear I have shrapnel in my ass. So I beg your leave. Come, Pebble. To the surgeons.”

“Bye, boss!” Pebble says. “Glad you’re not dead!”

“Squad dinner at eight!” Sevro calls after them. “Don’t be late. Shrapnel in your ass is not an excuse, Clown.”

“Yes, sir!”

Sevro turns to me with a grin. “Sods didn’t even bat an eye when I told them you were a ruster. Came with me and Rags to fetch your family right off. Was wicked telling them what was what, though. This way.”

As we pass the ship Pebble and Clown exited, I see up the ramp into its belly. Two young boys work inside, blasting the floors with hoses. The water runs brownish red down the ramp onto the hangar deck, flowing not into a drain, but down a narrow trough toward the edge of the hangar, where it disappears over the edge.

“Some dads leave ships or villas for their sons. Asshat Ares left me this wretched hive of angst and peasantry.”

“Bloodydamn,” I whisper as I realize what exactly I’m looking at.

Beyond the hangar is an inverted forest of stalactites. It glitters in the artificial subterranean dawn. Not only from the water that dribbles along their slick gray surfaces, but from the lights of docks, barracks, and sensor arrays that give teeth to Ares’s great bastion. Supply ships flit between the multiple docks.

“We’re in a stalactite.” I laugh in wonder. But then I look down at the horror beneath and the weight on my shoulders doubles. A hundred meters below our stalactite sprawls a refugee camp. Once it was an underground city carved into the stone of Mars. The streets are so deep between the buildings, they’re more like miniature canyons. And the city spills over the floor of the colossal cave to the far walls kilometers away, where more honeycombed homes have been built. Streets switchback up the sandstone. But over that a new roofless city has spawned. One of refugees. Muddled skin and fabrics and hair all writhing like some weird, fleshy sea. They sleep on rooftops. In the streets. On the switchback stairs. I see makeshift metal symbols for Gamma, Omicron, Upsilon. All the twelve clans that they divide my people into.

I’m stunned by the sight. “How many are there?”

“Shit if I know. At least twenty mines. Lykos was small compared to some of the ones near the larger H-3 deposits.”

“Four hundred sixty-five thousand. According to the logs,” Ragnar says.

“Only half a million?” I whisper.

“Seems like a hell of a lot more, right?”

I nod. “Why are they here?”

“Had to give them shelter. Poor bastards all come from mines the Jackal has purged. Pumping achlys-9 into the vents if he even suspects a Sons presence. It’s an invisible genocide.”

A chill passes through me. “The Liquidation Protocol. Board of Quality Control’s last measure for compromised mines. How do you keep this all a secret? Jammers?”

“Yeah. And we’re more than two clicks underground. Pop altered the topographical maps in the Society’s database. To the Golds, this is bedrock that was depleted of helium-3 more than three hundred years ago. Clever enough, for now.”

“And how do you feed everyone?”

“We don’t. I mean, we try, but there haven’t been rats in Tinos for a month. People are sleeping toe to nose. We’ve started moving refugees into the stalactites. But disease is already ripping through the people. Don’t have enough meds. And I can’t risk my Sons getting sick. Without them. We don’t have teeth. We’re just a sick cow waiting to be slaughtered.”

“And they rioted,” Ragnar says.

“Rioted?”

“Yeah, almost forgot about that. Had to cut rations by half. They were already so small. Those ungrateful shitheads down there didn’t like that much.”

“Many lost their lives before I descended.”

“The Shield of Tinos,” Sevro says. “He’s more popular than I am, that’s for damn sure. They don’t blame him for shit rations. But I’m more popular than Dancer, because I have a badass helmet and he’s in charge of the nitty-gritty shit I can’t do. People are so stupid. Man breaks his back for them and they think he’s a dull-wit pennypincher. Least the Sons love him—and your uncle.”

“It’s like we’ve fallen back a thousand years,” I say hopelessly.

“Pretty much, except for the generators. There’s a river that runs underneath the stone. So there’s water, sanitation, power, sometimes. And…there’s lecherous shit too. Crime. Murders. Rapes. Theft. We have to keep the Gammas slags separate from everyone else. Some Omicrons hanged this little Gamma kid last week and carved the Gold Sigil into his chest, ripped the Red Sigils out of his arms. They said he was a loyalist, a goldy. He was fourteen.”

I feel sick. “We keep the lights bright. Even at night.”

“Yeah. Turn them off, it gets…otherworldy downstairs.” Sevro looks tired as he stares down at the city. My friend knows how to fight, but this is another battle entirely.

I stare down at the city, unable to find the words I need to say. I feel like a prisoner who spent his whole life digging through the wall, only to break through and find he’s dug into another cell. Except there will always be another cell. And another. And another. These people are not living. They’re all just trying to postpone the end.

“This is not what Eo wanted,” I say.

“Yeah…well.” Sevro shrugs. “Dreaming’s easy. War isn’t.” He chews on his lip thoughtfully. “You see Cassius at all?”

“Twice, at the end. Why?”

“Oh, nothing.” He turns to me, eyes glittering. “It’s just that he’s the one who put Pops down.”