Morning Star

My assault shuttle lands on the auxiliary deck of the Morning Star where Mustang was supposed to meet us. She’s not there. Neither are the Golds she was rescuing. A coterie of Sons of Ares waits for us instead, led by Theodora. She carries no weapon and looks out of place surrounded by the armored men, but they defer to her. She tells me what’s happened. My uncle’s death sparked several small fights that escalated into shootings on both sides. Now several ships roil with conflict.

“Mustang has been taken by Sefi’s men, along with Cassius and the rest of the highColor prisoners, Darrow,” Theodora announces, assessing the rest of my lieutenants.

“Gorydamn savages,” Victra mutters. “If they kill her this is done.”

“They won’t kill her,” I say. “Sefi knows Mustang’s on her side.”

“Why would she do this?” Holiday asks.

“Justice,” Victra says, drawing a look from Sevro.

“No,” I say. “No I think it’s something else altogether.”

“Gorydamn marvelous.” Victra nods back to space. “Looks like the Telemanuses are intent on slagging this all up.” Another shuttle taxis into the hangar behind us. We gather as it lands. Storming down the ramp before it even sets down, jumping to deck is the whole Telemanus clan. Daxo, Kavax, Thraxa, two other sisters I haven’t met land heavily behind them. Armed to the teeth, though Kavax’s arm is still in a sling. Behind them come thirty more of their House Golds. It’s a bloodydamn army.

“They’re going to get us all killed,” Holiday says. At my side, Sevro blinks up at the disembarking war party.

“Death begets death begets death…,” he murmurs.

“Kavax, what the hell are you doing?” I ask as his family crosses the hangar.

“Virginia needs our help,” he booms, not breaking his pace until I cut him off, blocking his way deeper into the ship. For a moment I think he’ll go through me. “We will not leave her to the mercy of savages.”

“I told you to stay on your ship.”

“Unfortunately we take orders from Virginia, not you,” Daxo says. “We know the ramifications of being here. But we will do what we must to protect our family.”

“Mustang even told you not to storm in here with knights.”

“The situation has changed,” Kavax rumbles.

“You want this to turn into a war? You want our fleet to shatter? The fastest way you do that is marching in there with a show of Gold force.”

“We will not let her die,” Kavax says.

“And what if they kill her because of you?” I ask. That’s the only thing that gives him pause. “What if they cut her throat when you storm in there?” I step close so he can see the fear on my face too and I can speak just loud enough for Daxo to hear as well. “Listen to me, Kavax, the problem with that is that you leave the Obsidian only one choice. Fight back. And you know they can. Let me handle this and we’ll get her back. Don’t and we’ll be standing over her casket tomorrow.”

Kavax looks back to his lean son, always the moderating influence, to see what he thinks. And to my relief Daxo nods. “Very well,” Kavax says. “But I will go with you, Reaper. Children, await my summons. If I fall, come with all fury.”

“Yes, father,” they say.

Breathing a sigh of relief, I turn back to my men. “Where’s Sevro?”

—

Sevro snuck away while we argued, to what purpose I don’t know. We rush after him through the corridors, Victra behind us. Holiday leads, taking information from other Sons of Ares in through the optic implant in her eye. Her men have spotted the mob in the main hangar. They’re holding a trial for Cassius for the murder of several dozen Sons of Ares, and, of course, Ares himself. No sign of Mustang. Where is she? She was supposed to stay out of sight. Meet us if she could. Did they catch her? Worse? When we reach the corridor that leads to the hangar, there’s such a press of people we can barely get through, shoving Reds and Obsidians out of the way as I pass.

They’re all shouting and pushing. Over their heads, near the center of the hangar, I see several dozen Obsidian and Reds astride the twenty-meter-high walkway that spans part of the hangar, high over the crowd. Sefi’s at their center. Seven Golds hang dead from the walkway, suspended by rubber cable ligature, feet dangling five meters above the crowd, scalps hewn off. Aureate spines are tougher than average humans. Each of these men and women would have died horribly over several minutes from cerebral anorexia, watching the crowd beneath them curse and spit at them and hurl lugnuts and wrenches and bottles. Blood clots in a long ribbon cover their chins to their chests. Tongues removed by Sefi the Quiet. Cassius and several other prisoners await their own executions upon the walkway, kneeling beside their captors, bloody and beaten. Mustang is not with them, thank Jove. They’ve stripped Cassius to the waist and carved a bloody SlingBlade across his broad chest.

“Sefi!” I shout, but I can’t be heard. Can’t see Sevro anywhere. There’s more than twenty-five thousand in a space meant for ten. Many are armed. Some wounded from the battle the week prior. All pressing into the hangar to watch the execution. The Obsidian stand titanic amidst the masses, like great boulders amidst a sea of lowColors. I never should have condensed most of the wounded and rescued crews into this hotbed of grief. The crowd has realized I’m here now and they part for me and begin to chant my name as if they think I’ve come to see justice done. The barbarity of it chills me. One of the men holding Cassius down is a Green tech who gave me coffee on Phobos. Most of the others I don’t recognize.

One by one those Sons nearby recognize my presence. The quiet spreads around me.

“Sefi!” I snarl. “Sefi.” At last she hears me. “What are you doing?”

“What you will not,” she calls down in her own language, not in wrath, but acceptance that she performs an unsavory but necessary deed. Like a spirit of vengeance has drifted up from Hel. Her white hair hangs long behind her. Her knife is bloody from the tongues it has claimed. And to think I vouched for her. Let her name this ship. But just because a lion lets you pet it doesn’t mean it’s tame. Kavax is horrified by the scene. He’s almost ready to call to his children, and would if Victra did not grip his arm and talk him down. There’s fear in her eyes, too. Not just at the sight above, but at what could happen to her here. I shouldn’t have brought the Golds with me.

There’s moments in life where you’re walking ahead so intent on your task that you forget to look down until you feel knee-deep in quicksand. I’m right there now. Surrounded by an unpredictable mob, looking up at a woman with the blood of Alia Snowsparrow running through her veins. My only defense a small circle of Sons of Ares and Golds. Holiday’s pulling a scorcher. Victra’s razor moves beneath her sleeve. I was too brash in storming in here. All this could go so wrong so quickly.

“Where is Mustang?” I call up to Sefi. “Did you kill her?”

“Kill her? No. The daughter of the Lion brought us from the Ice. But she stood in the way of justice, so she is in chains.” Then she’s safe.

“That’s what this is?” I call up. “Justice? Is that what was given to Ragnar’s friends who your mother hanged from the chains of the Spires?”

“This is the code of the Ice.”

“You’re not on the Ice, Sefi. You’re on my ship.”

“Is it yours?” This doesn’t sit well with the lowColors among the crowd. “We paid for it in our blood.”

“As did we all,” I say. “What about the Ice was good? You left that place because you knew it was wrong. You knew your ways were shaped by your masters. You said you’d follow me. Are you a liar now?”

“Are you? You promised my people they would be safe,” Sefi bellows down to me, pointing her axe, the weight of loss heavy upon her. “I have seen the works of these people. I have seen the war they make. The ships they sail. Words will not suffice. These Golds speak one language. And that is the language of blood. And so long as they live. So long as they speak, my people will not be safe. The power they have is too great.”

“Do you think this is what Ragnar wanted?”

“Yes.”

“Ragnar wanted you to be better than them. Than this. To be an example. But maybe the Golds are right. Maybe you are just killers. Savage dogs. Like they made you to be.”

“We will never be anything more until they are gone,” she says down to me, voice echoing around the hangar. “Why defend them?” She drags Cassius toward her. “Why weep over one who helped kill my brother?”

“Why do you think Ragnar gripped your hand instead of the sword when he died? He didn’t want you to make your life about vengeance. It’s a hollow end. He wanted more for you. He wanted a future.”

“I have seen the heavens, I have seen the hells, and I know now that our future is war,” Sefi says. “War until they fade in the night.” She drags Cassius toward her and lifts her knife to carve out his tongue But before she does, a pulseFist fires and knocks the weapon from her hands and Ares, lord of this rebellion, slams down on the walkway wearing his spiked helmet of war. The Obsidians recoil from him as he straightens, dusts off his shoulders and lets the helmet slither back into his armor.

“What is he doing?” Victra asks me.

“You dumb shits,” Sevro sneers. “You’re touching my property.” He stalks across the bridge toward Sefi. “Tsst. Get away.” Several Valkyrie bar his way. He stands nose to chest with them. “Move, you albino sack of pubic hair.”

The Obsidian moves only when Sefi tells her to. Sevro walks past the bound Golds tapping their heads playfully as he goes. “That one’s mine,” he says, pointing at Cassius. “Get your hands off him, lady.” She doesn’t move her knife. “He cut my father’s head off and put it in a box. And unless you want me to do the same to you, you’ll do me the courtesy of letting go my property.”

Sefi backs away but does not sheath her knife. “It is your blood debt. His life belongs to you.”

“Obviously.” He shoos her away. “Stand up, you little Pixie,” he barks at Cassius, kicking him with his boot and hauling him up by the cable around his neck. “Have some dignity. Stand up.” Cassius rises to his feet, awkwardly. Hands behind his back. Face swollen from the beatings. The slingBlade livid on his chest. “Did you kill my father?” Sevro flicks him on his broad chest. “Did you kill my father?”

Cassius looks down at him. No measure of humor to the man, just pride, not the vain sort I’ve seen in him over the years. War and life have drained that vigorous spirit from him. This is the face, the bearing of a man who wants nothing more than to die with a little dignity. “Yes,” he says loudly. “I did.”

“Glad we cleared that up. He’s a murderer,” Sevro shouts to the crowd. “And what do we do to murderers?”

The crowd roars for Cassius’s life. And Sevro, after making a show of cupping his ear, gives it to them. He shoves Cassius off the edge of the walkway. The Gold plummets till the cable around his neck snaps taut, arresting his fall. He gags. Feet kick. Face reddens. The crowd roars hungrily, chanting Ares’s name.

Mobs are soulless things that feed on fear and momentum and prejudice. They do not know the spirit in Cassius, the nobility of a man who would have given his life for his family, but was cursed to live while they all died. They see a monster. A seven-foot-tall former god now mostly naked, humbled, strangling on his own hubris.

I see a man trying his best in a world that doesn’t give a shit. It breaks my heart.

Yet I do not move, because I know I’m not witnessing the death of a friend as much as I’m seeing the rebirth of another. My company does not understand. Horror stains Kavax’s face. Victra’s too—even though she held little pity for Cassius all this time, I think she mourns the savagery she sees in Sevro. It’s an ugly thing for any man to bear. Holiday pulls her weapon, eying the Reds nearby who point to Kavax. But they’re missing the show.

I watch in awe of Sevro as he bounds up onto the railing, arms wide, embracing his army. Beneath, Cassius dangles and dies and the crowd beneath makes a game of seeing who can launch themselves high enough to pull his feet. None succeed.

“My name is Sevro au Barca,” my friend cries out. “I am Ares!” He thumps his chest. “I have killed forty-four Golds. Fifteen Obsidian. One hundred and thirteen Grays with my razor.” The crowd roars in approval, even the Obsidians. “Jove knows who else with ships, railguns, and pulseFists. With nukes, knives, sharp sticks…” He trails off dramatically.

They slam their feet.

He beats his chest again. “I am Ares! I am a murderer too!” He puts his hands on his hips. “And what do we do to murderers?”

This time no one answers.

He never expected them to. He grabs the cable from the neck of one of the kneeling Golds, wraps it around his own neck, and looking to Sefi with a demented little smile, winks and backflips off the railing.

The crowd screams, but Victra’s stunned gasp is the loudest. Sevro’s rope snaps taut. He kicks, choking beside Cassius. Feet scrambling. Silent and horrible. Face turning red, on its way to purple like Cassius’s. They swing together, the Goblin and the Gold, suspended above the swirling crowd that’s now stampeding trying to get up the ladder to the walkway to cut Sevro down, but in their madness they overload the ladder and it bends away from the wall. Victra’s about to launch herself into the air on her gravBoots to save him. I hold her down. “Wait.”

“He’s dying!” she says frantically.

“That’s the point.”

It is not a boy who dangles on that line. It is not a brokenhearted orphan who needs me to pick him up. It’s a man who has been through hell and now believes in the dream of his father, in the dream of my wife. It’s a man I would die to protect even as he dies to save the soul of this rebellion.

Kavax is transfixed, watching Sefi who stares down at the curious scene. Her Obsidian are just as confused. They glance to her, searching for leadership. Ragnar believed in his sister. In her capacity to be better than the world that was given them, one in which there is no such thing as mercy, no such thing as forgiveness. Silently, she hefts her axe and swings it into Sevro’s cable and then, reluctantly, Cassius’s. Somewhere, Ragnar is smiling.

Both men tumble through the air to be caught by the swirling crowd beneath.

Kavax has not moved since Sevro jumped, watching Sefi with a profound look of confusion. Still with his hand on the com to call his children, but I lose him in the crowd. The Sons of Ares and Howlers have formed a tight circle around their leader, shoving others back. Sevro hacks for breath on all fours. I rush to him and kneel as Holiday helps Cassius, who wheezes on the ground to my left. Pebble drapes her Howler cloak over his body.

“Can you talk?” I ask Sevro. He nods, lips trembling from the pain, but his eyes are all fire. I give my arm and help him stand. I hold up a fist, demanding silence. Sons shout the others down till the twenty-five thousand breaths balance on the beating heart of my little friend. He looks out at them, startled by the love he sees, the reverence, the wet eyes.

“Darrow’s wife…” Sevro croaks, larynx damaged. “His wife,” he says more deeply. “And my father never met. But they shared a dream. One of a free world. Not built on corpses, but on hope. On the love that binds us, not the hate that divides. We have lost many. But we are not broken. We are not defeated. We fight on. But we do not fight for revenge for those who have died. We fight for each other. We fight for those who live. We fight for those who don’t yet live.

“Cassius au Bellona killed my father….” He stands over the man, swallowing before looking back up. “But I forgive him. Why? Because he was protecting the world he knew, because he was afraid.”

Victra pushes her way to the front of the circle, watching Sevro who speaks now as if it was meant for her and her alone. “We are the new age. The new world. And if we’re to show the way, then we better damn well make it a better one. I am Sevro au Barca. And I am no longer afraid.”