Morning Star

After Mustang details the broad strokes of her plan to us and we finish laughing, analyzing and dissecting its flaws, she leaves us to ruminate on it and departs to rejoin the rest of the fleet with the Telemanuses. We stay behind with Victra and the Howlers to interrogate Antonia and oversee ship repair.

The beautiful Antonia is a thing of the past. The damage she suffered was superficially catastrophic. Left orbital bone pulverized. Nose flattened, crushed so brutally they had to pull it out of her nasal cavity with forceps. Mouth so swollen it makes a hissing sound as air goes between her shattered front teeth. Whiplash and severe concussion. The ship doctors thought she was in a ship crash until they found the imprint of House Jupiter’s lightning crest in several places on her face.

“Marked by justice,” I say. Sevro rolls his eyes. “What? I can be funny.”

“Keep practicing.”

When I question Antonia, her left eye is a swollen black mass. The right peers out at me in rage, but she cooperates. Perhaps now because she thinks threats against her carry a bit of merit, and that her sister is just waiting to finish the job.

According to her, the Jackal’s last communiqué stated he was making preparations for our attack on Mars. He gathers his fleet around retaken Phobos and recalls Society ships from The Can and other naval depots. Similarly, there’s an exodus of Gold, Silver, and Copper ships away from Mars to Luna or Venus, which have become refugee centers for disenfranchised patricians. Like London during the first French Revolution or New Zealand after the Third World War when the continents brimmed with radioactivity.

The problem with Antonia’s information is that it’s difficult to verify. Impossible really, with long range and intra-planetary communication essentially back to the stone age. For all we know the Jackal might have prepared contingency information for her to give us in case she was captured under duress. If she uses that information and we act on it, we could easily be falling into a trap. Thistle would have been crucial to our understanding of information. Antonia’s murder of her was horrific, but tactically very efficient.

Holiday joins me on the bridge of the Pandora as I try to make that contact. I sit cross-legged on the forward observation post attempting to log in to Quicksilver’s digital dataDrop again. It’s late night ship-time. Lights dimmed. Skeleton crew of Blues manning the pit below guiding us back to the rendezvous with the main fleet. Shadowy asteroids rotate in the distance. Holiday plops down beside me.

“Fortify thyself,” she says, handing me a tin coffee mug.

“That’s nice of you,” I say in surprise. “Can’t sleep either?”

“Nah. Hate ships actually. Don’t laugh.”

“That’s gotta be inconvenient for a Legionnaire.”

“Tell me about it. Half of being a soldier is being able to sleep anywhere.”

“And the other half?”

“Being able to shit anywhere, wait, and to accept stupid orders without going manic.” She taps the deck. “It’s the engine hum. Reminds me of wasps.” She wiggles off her boots. “You mind?”

“Go on.” I sip the coffee. “This is whiskey.”

“You catch on quick.” She winks at me boyishly.

She nods to the datapad in my hands. “Still nothin’?”

“Asteroids are bad enough, but Society is jamming everything they can.”

“Well, Quicksilver gave them a run for it.”

We sit quietly together. Hers isn’t a naturally soothing presence, but it’s the easy one of a woman raised in the agriculture backcountry where your reputation’s only as good as your word and your hunting dog. We’re not alike in many ways, but there’s a chip on her shoulder I understand.

“Sorry about your friend,” she says.

“Which one?”

“Both. You know the girl long?”

“Since school. She was a bit nasty. But loyal…”

“Till she wasn’t,” she says. I shrug in reply. “Julii is rattled.”

“She talk to you?” I ask.

She laughs lightly. “Not a chance.” She pops a laced burner into her mouth and lights up, I shake my head when she offers me a drag. The ship’s air ducts hum. “Silence is a bitch, isn’t it?” she says after a while. “But I guess you’d know that after the box.”

I nod. “No one ever asks me about it,” I say. “The box.”

“No one asks me about Trigg.”

“Do you want them to?”

“Nah.”

“I never used to mind it,” I say. “The silence.”

“Well, you fill it with more things when you get older.”

“Wasn’t much to do in Lykos, ’cept sit around and watch the darkness in Lykos.”

“Watch the darkness. That’s so badass sounding.” Smoke jets out of her nose. “We grew up near corn. Bit less dramatic. Shitloads of it far as you could see. I’d go stand in the middle of it at night sometimes and pretend it was an ocean. You can hear it whispering. It’s not peaceful. Not like you’d think. It’s malevolent. I always wanted to be somewhere else. Not like Trigg. He loved Goodhope. Wanted to enlist at the local precinct for policing duty or be a game warden. He’d be happy kicking it in the backwater till he was old, drinking with those idiots at Lou’s, going hunting in early morning frost. I was the one who wanted out. Who wanted to hear the ocean, see the stars. Twenty years of service to the Legion. Cheap price.”

She mocks herself, but it’s curious to me that she’s choosing to open up now. She found me here. At first I thought it was because she came to console me. But there’s already whiskey on the squat woman’s breath. She didn’t want to be alone. And I’m the only one who knew Trigg even a little. I set my datapad down.

“I told him he didn’t have to come with, but I knew I was draggin’ him along. Told mom that I’d take care of him. Haven’t even been able to tell her he’s dead. Maybe she thinks we both are.”

“Were you able to tell his fiancé?” I ask. “Ephraim, right?”

“You remembered.”

“Of course. He was from Luna.”

She watches me for a moment. “Yeah, Eph’s a good one. Was with a private security firm in Imbrium City. Specialized in high-value property recovery—art, sculptures, jewels. A real pretty boy. They met at one of those themed bars when we were on leave from the Thirteenth. Venusian beach regalia. Eph didn’t know about Trigg and me, that we were with the Sons and all. But I got a hold of him after we rescued you from Luna when I was out on a supply run. Used a web café. About week after I told him Trigg was gone, he sent a message saying he was going off-grid, joining the Sons on Luna. Haven’t heard from him since.”

“I’m sure he’s all right,” I say.

“Thanks. But we both know Luna’s a cluster of shit right now.” She shrugs. After a moment of picking the weightlifting calluses on her palms, she nudges me. “I want you to know, you’re doing good. I know you didn’t ask. And I’m just a grunt. But you are.”

“Trigg would approve?”

“Yeah. And he’d piss his pants if he knew were we marching on—”

She’s cut short as the holo above us beeps softly and one of the comBlue’s calls up to me. I scramble to pick up my datapad. A single message is being broadcast across all frequencies into the belt. Our first contact with Mars since we went through the asteroid belt the first time. “Play it!” Holiday says. I do and a recording appears. It’s a gray interrogation room. A man’s covered in blood, shackled to a chair. The Jackal walks into frame to stand behind him.

“Is that…” Holiday whispers beside me.

“Yes,” I say. The man is Uncle Narol.

The Jackal holds a pistol in his hand. “Darrow. My Boneriders found this one sabotaging beacons in deep space. Really is tougher than he looks. Thought he might know your mind. But he tried to bite off his own tongue instead of talking to me. Irony for you.” He walks behind my uncle. “I don’t want a ransom. I don’t want anything from you. I just want you to watch.” He lifts up the pistol. It’s a slender gray slip of metal the size of my hand. The Blues in the pit gasp. Sevro rushes onto the bridge just as the Jackal points the gun at the back of my uncle’s head. My uncle lifts his eyes to look into the camera.

“Sorry, Darrow. But I’ll say hello to your father for—”

The Jackal pulls the trigger, and I feel another part of me slip away into the darkness as my uncle slumps in his chair. “Turn it off,” I say numbly, the past flooding into me—Narol putting a frysuit helmet on my head as a boy, tussling with him at Laureltide, his sad eyes as we sat beneath the gallows after Eo’s hanging, his laugh…

“Timestamp puts it at three weeks ago, sir,” Virga, the comBlue says quietly. “We didn’t receive it because of the interference.”

“Did the rest of the fleet get this?” I ask quietly.

“I don’t know, sir. Interference is marginal now. And it’s on a pulse frequency. They’ve probably already seen it.”

And I told Orion to keep all ships scanning in case we got lucky. It will leak.

“Oh, shit,” Sevro mutters.

“What?” Holiday asks.

“We just set fire to our own fleet,” I say mechanically. The fragile alliance between the highColors and low will shatter from this. My uncle was nearly as beloved as Ragnar. Narol is gone. Just like that. I feel helpless. I shudder inside. It’s not real yet.

“What do we do?” Sevro asks. “Darrow?”

“Holiday, wake the Howlers,” I say. “Helmsman, max thrust to rear engines. I want to be with the main fleet in four hours. Get me Mustang and Orion on the com. Telemanuses too.”

Holiday snaps to attention. “Yes, sir.”

Despite the interference, I reach Orion over the com and tell her to seal off all the ship bridges and to isolate control of the guns in case anyone decides to take a potshot at our Gold allies. It takes nearly thirty minutes for the Blues to connect me with Mustang. Sevro and Victra are with me now along with Daxo. The rest of his family is on their ships. The signal is weak. Interference causing static that wavers across Mustang’s face. She’s moving through a hall. Two Golds with her. “Darrow, you’ve heard?” she says, seeing the others behind me.

“Thirty minutes ago.”

“I’m so sorry…”

“What’s happening?”

“We received the communiqué. Some jackass tech pimped it to all the sensor chiefs,” Mustang confirms. “It’s on the ship hubs throughout the fleet. Darrow…there’s already movement against highColors on several of our ships. Three Golds on Persephone were killed fifteen minutes ago by Reds. And one of my lieutenants opened up on two Obsidian who tried to take her. They’re dead.”

“Shit’s hitting the fan,” Sevro says.

“I’m evac-ing all my personnel back to our ships.” There’s gunshots in the background behind Mustang.

“Where are you?” I ask.

“On the Morning Star.”

“What the hell are you doing there? You have to get off.”

“I still have men on here. There’s seven Golds in the engine deck for logistical support. I’m not leaving them behind.”

“Then I’m sending my father’s guard,” Daxo growls from his family’s torchShips. “They’ll get you out.”

“That’s stupid,” Sevro says.

“No,” Mustang snaps. “You send Gold knights in here, and this turns into a bloodbath we don’t recover from. Darrow, you have to get back here. That’s the only thing that might stop this.”

“We’re still hours out.”

“Well, do your best. There’s one more thing…they’ve stormed the prison. I think they’re going to execute Cassius.”

Sevro and I exchange a look. “You need to find Sefi and stay with her,” I say. “We’ll be there soon.”

“Find Sefi? Darrow…she’s leading them.”