Morning Star

“What did she mean, Orion’s alive?” I ask Kavax. He’s as shell-shocked as I am, nervously eying the black-clad Howlers prowling through the room. We didn’t lose one, but we’re in shit shape. “Kavax!”

“What she said,” he rumbles. “Exactly what she said. The Pax is safe.”

“Darrow!” Sevro shouts as he reenters the room with Victra. They pursued Cassius through the blackened door on the far side of the room but return empty-handed and limping. “On me!” There’s more I want to ask Kavax, but Victra’s wounded. I rush to her as she leans against the shattered onyx table, hunched over a deep gash in her biceps. Her mask’s off, face twisted and sweating as she injects herself with painkillers and blood coagulant to stem the flow from the wound. I see the hint of bone through the blood.

“Victra…”

“Shit,” she says with a dark laugh. “Your boyfriend is faster than he used to be. Almost got him in the hall, but I think Aja taught him a little of your Willow Way.”

“Looked like,” I say. “You prime?”

“Don’t worry about me, darling.” She gives me a wink as Sevro calls my name again. He and Clown are bent over Moira’s smoking remains. The terrorist lord is unfazed by the carnage around us.

“One of the Furies,” Clown says. “Roasted.”

“Good cooking, Reap,” Sevro drawls. “Crispy on the edges, bloody down the middle. Just how I like. Aja’s gonna be pissed—”

“You cut my coms,” I interrupt angrily.

“You were acting a bitch. Confusing my men.”

“Acting a bitch? The hell is wrong with you? I was using my head instead of just shooting everything. We could have done without murdering half the damn room.”

His eyes are darker and crueler than those of the friend I remember. “This is war, boyo. Murder’s the name of the game. Don’t be sad we’re good at it.”

“That was Mustang!” I say, stepping close to him. “What if we killed her?” He shrugs. I poke his chest. “Did you know she would be here? Tell me the truth.”

“Naw,” he says slowly. “Didn’t know. Now back up, boyo.” He looks up at me impudently, like he wouldn’t mind taking a swing. I don’t back up.

“What was she doing here?”

“How the hell would I know?” He looks past me to Ragnar, who is pushing Kavax back toward the Howlers gathering in the center of the room. “Everyone prepare to squab out. We’re gonna have to cut through an army to get out of this shit den. Evac point is ten floors up on the black side.”

“Where’s our prize?” Victra asks, eying the carnage. Bodies litter the ground. Silvers shivering in pain. Coppers crawling across the floor, dragging broken legs.

“Probably fried,” I say.

“Prolly,” Clown agrees, casting me a commiserating look as we move from Sevro to pick through the bodies. “It’s a slaggin’ mess.”

“Did you know Mustang would be here?” I ask.

“Not at all. Seriously, boss.” He glances back at Sevro. “What’d you mean he jammed your coms?”

“Stop jawin’ and find the bloodydamn Silver,” Sevro barks from the center of the room. “Somebody grab the Pink from the hall.”

Clown finds Quicksilver at the opposite end of the room, farthest from the hallway door, to the right of the grand viewport that looks down onto Phobos. He’s lying motionless, pinned under a pillar that broke from its place in the floor to fall sideways against the wall. The blood of others covers his turquoise tunic. Bits of glass jut from wounded knuckles. I feel his pulse. He’s alive. So the mission wasn’t a damn waste. But there’s a contusion on his forehead from shrapnel. I call Ragnar and Victra, the two strongest of our party, to help pry the pillar off the man.

Ragnar wedges the razor he threw into the Death Knight’s head under the pillar, using a rock as a fulcrum, and is about to heave upward with me when Victra calls for us to wait. “Look,” she says. Where the pillar’s top meets the wall, there’s a faint blue glow along a seam that runs from the floor up the wall to form a rectangle in the wall. It’s a hidden door. Quicksilver must have been rushing toward it when the pillar fell. Victra puts her ear against the door, and her eyes narrow.

“PulseTorches,” she says. “Oh, ho.” She laughs. “Silver’s bodyguards are through there. Must have hid them in case things got tense. They’re speaking Nagal.” The language of the Obsidians. And they’re cutting their way through the wall. We’d be dead if the pillar hadn’t fallen and blocked the door.

Pure luck saved our hides. All three of us know it, and it deepens the anger I have with Sevro and calms a bit of the wildness in Victra’s eyes. Suddenly she’s seeing how reckless this was. We never should have rushed into this place without its blueprints. Sevro did what I would have done a year ago. Same result. The three of us share a common thought, glancing at the main door of the room. We don’t have long.

Ragnar and Victra help me pry Quicksilver free. The unconscious man’s legs drag behind him, broken, as Victra carries him back to the center of the room. There, Sevro is readying Clown and Pebble to push out from the room with our prisoners, Matteo and Kavax, who stares at me openmouthed. But Pebble can’t even stand. We’re all in shit shape.

“We’ve too many prisoners,” I say. “We won’t be able to move fast. And we don’t have any EMPs this time.” Not that they’d do anyone any good on a space station when all that separates us from space is inch-thin bulkheads and air recyclers.

“Then we trim the fat,” Sevro says, stalking toward Kavax, who sits wounded and bound with his hands behind his back. He points his pulseFist into Kavax’s face. “Nothin’ personal, big man.”

Sevro pulls the trigger. I shove him sideways. The pulse blast misses Kavax’s head and slams into the ground near the slumped form of Matteo, nearly taking off the man’s leg. Sevro wheels on me, pulseFist pointing at my head.

“Get that out of my face,” I say down the barrel. Heat radiating into my eyes, causing them to sting so I have to look away.

“Who do you think that is,” Sevro snarls. “Your friend? He’s not your friend.”

“We need him alive. He’s a chip to barter. And Orion might be alive.”

“Chip to barter?” Sevro snorts. “What about Moira? Had no problem frying her, but you spare him.” Sevro squints at me, lowering his weapon. His lips curl back from his janky teeth. “Oh, it’s for Mustang. Of course it is.”

“He’s Pax’s father,” I say.

“And Pax is dead. Why? ’Cause you let enemies live. This isn’t the Institute, boyo. This is war.” He jams a finger in my face. “And war is really bloodydamn simple. Kill the enemy when you can, however you can, as fast as you can. Or they kill you and yours.”

Sevro turns from me, realizing now that the others are watching us with growing trepidation. “You’re wrong about this,” I say.

“We can’t drag them with us.”

“Halls are swarming, boss,” Screwface says, returning from the main hall. “More than a hundred security personnel. We’re slagged.”

“We can cut through them if we go light,” Sevro says.

“A hundred?” Clown says. “Boss…”

“Check your juice packs,” Sevro says, squinting at his pulseFist.

No. I’ll not let Sevro’s shortsightedness ruin us.

“Slag that,” I say. “Pebble, hail Holiday. Tell her evac is squabbed. Give her our coordinates. She’s to park one kilometer beyond the glass, ass end our way.” Pebble doesn’t reach for her datapad. She glances at Sevro, torn between us, not knowing who to follow. “I’m back,” I say. “Now do it.”

“Do it, Pebble,” Ragnar says.

Victra gives a small nod. Pebble grimaces at Sevro, “Sorry, Sevro.” She nods to me and opens up her com to hail Holiday. The rest of the Howlers look to me, and it hurts knowing I’ve made them choose like this.

“Clown, grab Moira’s datapad if it isn’t fried and get the data from the console if you can. I want to know what contract they were negotiating,” I say quickly, “Screwface, take Sleepy and cover the hall. Ragnar, Kavax is yours. He tries to flee, cut his feet off. Victra, you got any rappelling line left?” She checks her belt and nods. “Start tying us together. Everyone in the center of the room. Has to be tight.” I turn to Sevro. “Lay charges at the door. Company’s coming.”

He says nothing. It’s not anger behind his eyes. It’s the secret seeds of self-doubt and fear coming to blossom, hate seeping into his eyes. I know the look. I’ve felt it on my own face too many times to count. I’m ripping away the only thing he’s ever cared about. His Howlers. After all he’s done, I make them choose me over him, when he doesn’t trust I’m ready. It’s an indictment of his leadership, a validation of the intense self-doubt I know he must feel in the wake of his father’s passing.

It shouldn’t have been that way. I said I’d follow and I didn’t. That’s on me. But this isn’t the time for coddling. I tried words with him, tried using our friendship to make him see reason, but since I’ve been back I’ve seen him respond to things only with violence and force. So now I’ll speak his bloodydamn language. I step forward. “Unless you want to die here, sack up and get moving.”

His wrinkled little face hardens as he watches his Howlers run to do my bidding. “You get them killed, I’ll never forgive you.”

“Makes two of us. Now go.”

He turns away, running toward the door to plant the remaining explosives from his belt. I remain looking around the broken room, finally seeing organization in the chaos as my friends work together. They’ll all have deduced my plan by now. They know how manic it is. But the confidence with which they work breathes life into me. They put the trust in me that Sevro wouldn’t. Still, I catch Ragnar glancing at the viewport three times now. All our suits are compromised. Not one of us will be able to stay pressurized in vacuum. I don’t even have a mask. Whether we live or die is up to Holiday. I wish there was some way I could control the variables, but if the time in darkness taught me anything, it’s that the world is larger than my grasp. Have to trust others. “Jammers on, everyone,” I say, toggling my own on my belt. Don’t want the cameras outside spotting anyone’s exposed faces.

“Holiday is in position,” Pebble says. I glance out the window to see the transport hovering a click beyond the window. Hardly larger than a pen tip at this distance.

“On my mark, we are going to fire at the center of the viewport,” I tell my friends, making an effort to keep the fear from my voice. “Screwface! Sleepy! Get back here. Put your masks on the unconscious prisoners.”

“Oh, goryhell,” Victra mutters. “I was hoping you had a better plan than that.”

“If you try to hold your breath, your lungs will explode. So exhale soon as the viewport shatters. Let yourself pass out. Have sweet dreams, and pray for Holiday to be as quick on the stick as Clown is in the bedroom.”

They laugh and cluster tight, letting Victra wind her rappelling line through our munitions belts so we’re together like grapes on a vine. Sevro’s finishing laying explosives at the door, Sleepy and Screwface join us, waving at him to hurry.

“Attention,” a voice booms from hidden speakers in the walls as Victra leans close to me to link me with Ragnar. “This is Alec ti Yamato. Head of Security for Sun Industries. You are surrounded. Discard your weapons. Release your hostages. Or we will be forced to fire on you. You have five seconds to comply.”

There’s no one in the room but us. The main doors are closed. Sevro runs back to us from laying the charges. “Sevro, fastlike!” I shout. He’s not halfway to us when he crumples to the ground like an empty can crushed by a boot. I’m slammed down to the floor by the same force. Knees buckling. Bones, lungs, throat all stomped down by massive gravity. My vision swims. Blood moving sluggishly to my head. I try to lift my arm. It weighs more than three hundred pounds. Security has increased the artificial gravity in the room, and only Ragnar’s not on his belly. He’s fallen to a knee, shoulders hunched and straining, like Atlas holding up the world.

“The hell is that…” Victra manages, on the floor looking past me to the door. It’s opened, and through it comes not a Gray or an Obsidian or Gold. But a giant black egg the size of a small man, rolling sideways. It’s smooth and glossy, and small white numbers mark its side. A robot. As illegal as EMPs. Augustus’s great fear. Like reaching out of an oil spill, the metal morphs at the point of the egg to reveal a small canon, which aims at Sevro. I try to rise. Try to aim my pulseFist. But the gravity is too much. I can’t even lift my arm to point the weapon. For all her strength, Victra can’t either. Sevro’s grunting on the floor, crawling away from the machine.

“The viewport!” I manage. “Ragnar. Fire at the viewport.”

His pulseFist is at his side. Straining, he begins to lift it against the massive gravity. Arm shaking. Throat gargling that eerie war chant that sounds like a distant avalanche. The sound rises, an otherworldy bellow till his whole body convulses with effort and his arm draws level and the smallest of stars is born in his palm as the pulseFist gathers its trembling molten charge.

The entirety of my friend shudders and his fingers release the trigger. His arm wrenches back. The pulsefire leaps forward to scream into the center of the glass pane. The many stars ripple as the pane bends outward and cracks shoot down the window.

“Kadir njar laga…” Ragnar bellows.

And the glass shatters. Space drinks the air of the room. Everything slides. A Copper flips past us, screaming. She goes silent when she hits vacuum. Others who cowered during our brawl cling to the broken table in the center of the room. They wrap themselves around pillars. Fingers bleeding, nails cracking. Legs flailing. Grips giving out. Corpses flip end over end out into space as the abyss hungers for everything the building has. Sevro’s ripped into the air away from the robot, lighter than our combined group. I reach for him and grab his short Mohawk till Victra wraps her legs around him and pulls him to her body.

I’m terrified as we slide toward the broken viewport. Hands shaking. Doubting my decision as I now stare it in the face. Sevro was right. We should have pushed into the building. Killed Kavax or used him as a shield. Anything but the cold. Anything but the Jackal’s darkness from which I only just escaped.

It’s just fear, I tell myself. It’s just fear making me panic. And it’s spread through my friends. I see the horror on their faces. How they look back at me and see that fear reflected in my own. I cannot be afraid. I’ve spent too long being afraid. Too long being diminished by loss. Too long being everything except what I need to be. And whether I am the Reaper, or whether it’s just another mask, it’s one I must wear, not just for them, but for myself.

“Omnis vir lupus!” I shout, kicking my head back to howl, exhaling all the air in my lungs. Beside me, Ragnar’s eyes widen in wild ecstasy. He opens his massive mouth and bellows out a howl to make his ancestors hear him from their icy crypts. Then Pebble joins, and Clown, and even regal Victra. It’s rage and fear leaving our bodies. Though space drags us across the floor to its embrace. Though death might come for us. I am home in this weird screaming mass of humanity. And as we pretend to be brave, we become so.

All except Sevro, who remains silent as we fly into space.