Morning Star

His laughter rattles through the room. His face pale under the glow of the holo of the moon and the fleets pummeling one another in the darkness. Mustang has turned off the holodeck’s broadcast and is already analyzing the Sovereign’s data center as Cassius moves toward Lysander and I rise above Octavia’s body. My body burns from wounds.

“What did she mean, stop him?” Cassius asks me.

“I don’t know.”

“Lysander?”

The boy’s too traumatized by the horror around him to speak.

“Video went out to the ships and the planets,” Mustang says. “People are seeing Octavia’s death. Communiqué boards are flooding. They don’t know who is in control. We have to move now before they marshal behind someone.”

Cassius and I approach the Jackal. “What did you do?” Sevro’s asking. He shakes the small man. “What was she talking about?”

“Get your dog off me,” the Jackal says from under Sevro’s knees. I pull Sevro back. He paces around the Jackal, still vibrating with adrenaline.

“What did you do?” I ask.

“There’s no point in talking with him,” Mustang says.

“No point? Why do you think the Sovereign let me in her presence,” the Jackal asks from the ground. He comes up to a knee, holding his wounded hand to his chest. “Why she did not fear the gun on my hip, unless there was a greater threat keeping her in line?”

He looks up at me from under disheveled hair. His eyes calm despite the butchering we’ve done.

“I remember the feeling of being under the ground, Darrow,” he says slowly. “The cold stone under my hands. My Pluto housemembers around me, hunched in the darkness. The steam on their breaths, looking to me. I remember how afraid I was of failing. Of how long I had prepared, how little my father thought of me. All my life weighed in those few moments. All of it slipping away. We’d run from our castle, fleeing Vulcan. They came so fast. They were going to enslave us. The last of our housemembers were still running through the tunnel by the time I rigged the mines to blow, but so were Vulcan. I could hear my father’s voice. Hear him telling me how he was not surprised I failed so quickly. It was a week before we killed a girl and ate her legs to survive. She begged us not to. Begged us to choose someone else. But I learned then in that moment if no one sacrifices, then no one survives.”

Cold fear wells in me, beginning in the deep hollow of my stomach and spreading upward. “Mustang…”

“They’re here,” she says, horrified.

“What’s happening? What’s here?” Sevro hisses.

“Darrow…” Cassius whispers.

“The nukes aren’t on Mars,” I say. “They’re on Luna.”

The Jackal’s smile stretches. Slowly, he gains his feet and not one of us dares touch him. It all falls into place. The tension between him and the Sovereign. The subtle threats. His boldness in coming here into the Sovereign’s place of power. His ability to mock Aja without consequence.

“Oh, shit. Shit. Shit. Shit.” Sevro pulls his Mohawk. “Shit.”

“I never wanted to nuke Mars,” the Jackal says. “I was born on Mars. It is my birthright, the prize from which all things flow. Her helium is the blood of the empire. But this moon, this skeleton orb is, like Octavia, a treacherous old crone sucking at the marrow of the Society, crowing about what was instead of what can be. And Octavia let me ransom it. Just as you will, because you are weak and you did not learn what you should have at the Institute. To win, you must sacrifice.”

“Mustang, can you find the bombs?” I ask. “Mustang!”

She’s been struck dumb. “No. He would have masked the radiation signatures. Even if we could, we couldn’t deactivate them….” She reaches for the com to call our fleet.

“If you make the call, then I detonate a bomb every minute,” the Jackal says, tapping his ear where a little com has been implanted. Lilath must be listening. She must have the trigger. That’s what he meant. She’s his insurance. “Would I really tell you my plan if you could do anything about it?” He straightens his hair and wipes blood from his armor. “The bombs were installed weeks ago. The Syndicate smuggled the devices across the moon for me. Enough to create nuclear winter. A second Rhea, if you will. When they were in place, I told Octavia what I had done and I told her my terms. She would carry on as Sovereign until the Rising was put down, which…has taken a surprising twist…obviously. And afterward, on the day of victory, she would convene the Senate, abdicate the Morning Throne and name me her successor. In return, I would not destroy Luna.”

“That’s why Octavia has the Senate rounded up,” Mustang says in disgust. “So you could be Sovereign?”

“Yes.”

I stand back from him, feeling the weight of the fight on my shoulders, the weakness in my body from the strain, the loss of blood, now this…this evil. This selfishness, it’s overwhelming.

“You’re bloodydamn mad,” Sevro says.

“He’s not,” Mustang says. “I could forgive him if he were mad. Adrius, there are three billion people on this moon. You don’t want to be that man.”

“They don’t care for me. So why should I care for them?” he asks. “This is all a game. And I have won.”

“Where are the bombs?” Mustang asks, taking a threatening step toward him.

“Uh-uh,” he says, scolding her. “Touch a hair on my head, Lilath detonates a bomb.” Mustang’s beside herself.

“These are people,” she says. “You have the power to give three billion people their lives, Adrius. That is power beyond anything anyone should ever want. You have the chance to be better than Father. Better than Octavia…”

“You condescending little bitch,” he says with a small laugh of disbelief. “You really think you can still manipulate me. This one is on you. Lilath, detonate the bomb on the southern Mare Serenitatis.” We all look to the hologram of the moon above our heads, hoping beyond hope that somehow he’s bluffing. That somehow the transmission won’t go through. But a little red dot glows on the cool hologram, blossoming outward, a small almost insignificant little animation that envelops ten kilometers of city. Mustang rushes to the computer. “It’s a nuclear event,” she whispers. “There’s more than five million people in that district.”

“Were,” the Jackal says.

“You freak…” Sevro shrieks, rushing the Jackal. Cassius gets in his path, knocking him back. “Get out of my way!”

“Sevro, calm down.”

“Careful, Goblin! There’s hundreds more,” the Jackal says.

Sevro’s overwhelmed, clutching his chest where his heart must be wrenching from the drugs. “Darrow, what do we do?”

“You obey,” the Jackal says.

I force myself to ask: “What do you want?”

“What do I want?” He wraps a bit of cloth around his bleeding arm, using his teeth. “I want you to be what you always wanted, Darrow. I want you to be like your wife. A martyr. Kill yourself. Here. In front of my sister. In return, three billion souls live. Isn’t that what you’ve always wanted? To be a hero? You die, and I will be crowned Sovereign. There will be peace.”

“No,” Mustang says.

“Lilath, detonate another bomb. Mare Anguis, this time.”

Another red blossom erupts on the display. Nuclear fire ends the lives of millions. “Stop!” Mustang says. “Please. Adrius.”

“You just killed six million people,” Cassius says, not comprehending.

“They’ll think it’s us,” Sevro sneers.

The Jackal agrees. “Each bomb looks like part of an invasion. This is your legacy, Darrow. Think of the children burning now. Think of their mothers screaming. How many you can save by simply pulling a trigger.”

My friends look at me, but I’m in a distant place, listening to the moan of the wind through the tunnels of Lykos. Smelling the dew on the gears in the early morning. Knowing Eo will be waiting for me when I come home. Like she waits for me now at the end of the cobbled road, as Narol does, as Pax and Ragnar and Quinn and, I hope, Roque, Lorn, Tactus and the rest of them do. It would not be the end to die. It would be the beginning of something new. I have to believe that. But my death would leave the Jackal here in this world. It would leave him with power over those I love, over all I’ve fought for. I always thought I would die before the end. I trudged on knowing I was doomed. But my friends have breathed love into me, breathed my faith back into my bones. They’ve made me want to live. They’ve made me want to build. Mustang looks at me, her eyes glassy, and I know she wants me to choose life, but she will not choose for me.

“Darrow? What is your answer?”

“No.” I punch him in the throat. He croaks. Unable to breathe. I knock him down and jump atop him, pinning his arms to the ground with my knees so his head is between my legs. I jam my hand into his mouth. His eyes go wild. Legs kicking. His teeth cut my knuckles, drawing blood.

The last time I pinned him down, I took the wrong weapon. What are hands to a creature like him? All his evil, all his lies, are spun with the tongue. So I grab it with my helldiver hand, pinning it between forefinger and thumb like the fleshy little baby pitviper it is. “This is always how the story would end, Adrius,” I say down to him. “Not with your screams. Not with your rage. But with your silence.”

And with a great pull, I rip out the tongue of the Jackal.

He screams beneath me. Blood bubbling from the mutilated stump at the back of his throat. Splashing over his lips. He thrashes. I shove off him and stand in dark rage, holding the bloody instrument of my enemy as he wails on the ground, feeling the hatred rolling through me and seeing the stunned eyes of my friends. I leave the com in his ear so Lilath can hear him wailing and I stalk to the holocontrols and hail Victra’s ship. Her face appears, eyes widening at the sight of my face.

“Darrow…you’re alive…” she manages. “Sevro…The nukes…”

“You need to destroy the Lion of Mars,” I say. “Lilath is detonating the bombs on the surface. There’s hundreds more hidden in the cities. Kill that ship!”

“It’s at the center of their formation,” she protests. “We’ll destroy our fleet trying to get to it. It will take hours if we even manage.”

“Can we jam their signal?” Mustang asks.

“No.”

“EMPs?” Sevro asks, coming up behind me. Victra’s face brightens at the sight of him, before she shakes her head.

“They have shielding,” she says.

“Use the EMPs on the bombs to short-circuit their radio transmitters,” I say. “Fire an Iron Rain and drop EMPs on the city till they’re out.”

“And plunge three billion people into the Middle Ages?” Cassius asks.

“We’ll be slaughtered,” Victra says. “We can’t drop a Rain. We’ll lose our army. And Gold will just keep the moon.”

Another bomb detonates. This one nearer the southern pole. And then a fourth at the equator. We know the consequences to each one. “Lilath doesn’t know exactly what’s happened to Adrius,” Cassius says quickly. “How loyal is she? Will she detonate all of them?”

“Not when he’s still whimpering,” I say. Least that’s my hope.

“Excuse me,” a small voice says. We turn to see Lysander standing behind us. We forgot about him in the mayhem. His eyes are shot red from tears. Sevro raises a pulseFist to shoot him. Cassius knocks it aside.

“Call my godfather,” Lysander says bravely. “Call the Ash Lord. He will see reason.”

“Oh, like hell…” Sevro says.

“We just killed the Sovereign and his daughter,” I say. “The Ash Lord…”

“Destroyed Rhea,” Lysander interrupts. “Yes. And it haunts him. Call him and he will help you. My grandmother would have wanted him to. Luna is our home.”

“He’s right,” Mustang says, pushing me from the console. “Darrow, move.” She’s in that locked zone of concentration. Unable to relate her own thoughts as she starts opening direct com channels to the Gold Praetors in the fleet. The towering men and women appear around us like silvery ghosts, standing among the corpses they watched us make. Last to appear is the Ash Lord. His face stricken with rage. His daughter and master both dead by our hands.

“Bellona, Augustus,” he growls, seeing Lysander among us. “Is it not enough…”

“Godfather, we have no time for recrimination,” Lysander says.

“Lysander…”

“Please listen to them. Our world depends on it.”

Mustang steps forward and raises her voice. “Praetors of the fleet, Ash Lord. The Sovereign is dead. The nuclear blasts you see destroying your home are not Red weapons. They come from your own arsenal which was stolen by my brother. His Praetor, Lilath, is overseeing the detonation of more than four hundred nuclear warheads from the bridge of The Lion of Mars. They will continue until Lilath is dead. My fellow Aureate, embrace change or embrace oblivion. The choice is yours.”

“You are a traitor….” one of the Praetors hisses.

Lysander walks off the holopad to the table where he sat earlier. He picks up his grandmother’s scepter and returns as the Praetors are issuing threats to Mustang.

“She is no traitor,” Lysander says, handing her the scepter. The blood of his grandmother staining his hands. “She is our conqueror.”