“Five hundred nuclear warheads?” Sevro whispers. “ Holy bloodydamn shit. Tell me you’re joking. Go on.”
Dancer sits quietly at the warroom table, kneading his temples.
“It’s bullshit,” Holiday grunts from the wall. “If he has them, he’d have used them.”
“Let’s leave the deductions to the individuals who have actually met the man, shall we?” Victra says. “Adrius doesn’t function like a normal human.”
“That’s for damn sure,” Sevro says.
“Still, it is a solid question,” Dancer says, annoyed at the presence of so many Golds, particularly Mustang who stands beside me. “If he has them, why hasn’t he used them?”
“Because that sort of escalation will hurt him almost as much as it hurts us,” I say. “And if he uses them, the Sovereign will have every excuse to replace him.”
“Or he doesn’t have them,” Quicksilver says dismissively. He floats before us, blue holoPixels shimmering over a display panel. “It’s a ploy. Bellona knows what you care about, Darrow. He’s plucking your heartstrings with notions of oblivion. It’s bullshit. My techs would have seen major ripples if he was moving missiles. And I would have heard about plutonium enriching if the Sovereign had them built.”
“Unless they’re old missiles,” I say. “Lots of relics lying about.”
“And it’s a big solar system,” Mustang says evenly.
“I’ve got big ears,” Quicksilver replies.
“Had,” Victra says. “They’re whittling them down as we speak.”
The leaders of the rebellion sit in a semi-circle in front of a holoprojector which displays asteroid S-1988. It’s a barren hunk of rock, part of the Karin sub-family of the Koronis Family of asteroids in the Main Belt between Mars and Jupiter. The Koronis asteroids are the base for heavy mining operations by an Earth-run energy consortium and home to several disreputable astral way stations for smugglers and pirates, most notably 208 Lacrimosa, where Sevro refueled on his journey from Pluto to Mars. The locals call the smuggler’s cove Our Lady of Sorrows, where life is cheaper than a kilo of iced helium and a gram of demonDust, or so he says. He’s unusually quiet about the place and his time there.
Gold warroom meetings are held in circles or rectangles because people facing one another are more likely to engage in intellectual conflict than people sitting side by side. Golds relish that. I’m trying a different tack, having my friends face the problem—the holoprojector, so if they want to argue with one another, they have to crane their necks to do it.
“It’s a shame we don’t have the Sovereign’s oracles,” Mustang says. “Strap one on his wrist and see how forthcoming Cassius really is.”
“Sorry we don’t quite have the resources you’re used to, domina, ” Dancer says.
“That’s not what I meant.”
“We could torture him,” Sevro says. He’s in the middle of the table cleaning his fingernails with a blade. Victra leans against the wall behind him, flinching in annoyance with each flake of nail that falls onto the table. Dancer is to Sevro’s left. The meter-tall hologram of Quicksilver glows to his right, between us. Having declared Phobos a free city on behalf of the Rising, he functions as its Governor and now hunches over a small stack of thumb-sized heart oysters with a platinum octopus shucking knife, arranging the shells in five even mounds. If he’s nervous about the Jackal’s reprisals against his station, he doesn’t look it. Sefi sweats underneath her tribal furs as she stalks along the perimeter of the table like a trapped animal, making Dancer shift in agitation.
“You want the truth?” Sevro asks. “Just give me seventeen minutes and a screwdriver.”
“Should we really be having this talk with her here?” Victra asks of Mustang.
“She’s on our side,” I say.
“Are you sure?” Dancer asks.
“She was crucial to recruiting the Obsidians,” I say. “She’s connected us with Orion.” I made contact with the woman after speaking with Cassius. She’s burning hard with the Pax and a sizable remnant of my old fleet to meet me. Seems impossible I’d ever see the ornery Blue again, or that ship which was the first place to feel like home since Lykos. “Because of Mustang, we’ll have a real navy. She preserved my command. She kept Orion at the helm. Would she have done that if she didn’t have the same aims as us?”
“Which are?” Dancer asks.
“Defeating Lune and the Jackal,” she says.
“That’s just the surface of what we want,” Dancer says.
“She’s working with us,” I stress.
“For now,” Victra says. “She’s a clever girl. Maybe she wants to use us to eliminate her enemies? Place herself in a position of power. Maybe she wants Mars. Maybe she wants more.” Seems only yesterday my council of Golds was discussing whether or not Victra was worth trusting. Roque spoke up for her when no one else would. The irony is apparently lost on Victra. Or maybe she remembers Mustang’s vocal distrust of her intentions a year ago and has decided to repay the old debt.
“I hate to agree with the Julii,” Dancer says, “but she’s right in this. Augustans are players. Not one’s been born that hasn’t been.” Apparently Dancer wasn’t impressed with Mustang’s lack of transparency earlier. Mustang expected this. In fact, she asked to stay in her room, away from this so she wouldn’t detract from my plan. But in order for this to work, in order for there to be some way to piece things together in the end, there must be cooperation.
They expect me to defend Mustang, which shows how little they know her.
“You are all being rather illogical,” Mustang says. “I don’t mean that as an insult, but simply as a statement of fact. If I meant you ill, I would have hailed the Sovereign or my brother and brought a tracking device on my ship. You know what lengths she would go to in order to find Tinos.” My friends exchange troubled glances. “But I didn’t. I know you will not trust me. But you trust Darrow and he trusts me, and since he knows me better than any of you do, I think he’s in the best position to make the call. So stop whimpering like gorydamn children and let’s be about the task, eh?”
“If you have a buzzsaw I could do it in around three minutes….” Sevro says.
“Will you shut the hell up?” Dancer barks at him. It’s the first time I’ve ever seen him lose his temper. “A man will lie through his teeth, say whatever you want to hear if you’re pulling off his toenails. It doesn’t work.” He was tortured himself by the Jackal. Just like Evey and Harmony were.
Sevro crosses his arms. “Well, that’s an unfair and massive generalization, Gramps.”
“We don’t torture,” Dancer says. “That’s final.”
“Oh, yeah, right,” Sevro says. “We’re the good guys. Good guys never torture. And always win. But how many good guys get their heads put in boxes? How many get to watch their friends’ spines cut in half?”
Dancer looks to me for help. “Darrow….”
Quicksilver pops open an oyster. “Torture can be effective if done correctly with confirmable information in a narrow scope. Like any tool, it is not a panacea; it must be used properly. Personally, I don’t really think we have the luxury of drawing moral lines in the sand. Not today. Let Barca have a go. Pulls some nails. Some eyes if need be.”
“I agree,” Theodora says, surprising the council.
“What about Matteo?” I ask Quicksilver. “Sevro shattered his face.”
Quicksilver’s knife slips on the new oyster, punching into the meat of his palm. He winces and sucks at the blood. “And if he hadn’t have passed out he would have told you where I was. From my experience, pain is the best negotiator.”
“I agree with them, Darrow,” Mustang says. “We have to be certain he’s telling the truth. Otherwise we’re letting him dictate our strategy—which is classic counterintelligence on his part. It’s what you would do.” And it’s what I tried to do till the torture started with the Jackal.
Victra, who has been silent on the issue till now, walks abruptly around the table into the holo projection so that black space and stars play across her skin. Jagged white-blond hair drifts in front of angry eyes as she pulls her gray shirt off. She’s muscled and lithe beneath and wears a compression bra. A half dozen razor scars stretch three inches at a diagonal across her flat belly. There’s more than a dozen on her sword arm. A few on her face, neck, clavicle.
“Some I’m proud of,” she says of the scars. “Some I’m not.” She turns to show us her lower back. It’s a waxy melted swath of flesh where her sister left her mark in acid. She turns back to us, raising her chin in defiance. “I came here because I didn’t have a choice. I stayed when I did. Don’t make me regret that.”
It’s startling to see the vulnerability in her. I don’t think Mustang would ever let her guard down in public like this. Sevro stares intensely at the tall woman as she tugs her shirt back on and turns back to the holo. She reaches for the asteroid with both hands to stretch the hologram. “Can we get better resolution?” she asks as if the matter is settled.
“The picture was taken by a Census Bureau drone,” I say. “Nearly seventy years ago. We don’t have access to the current Society military records.”
“My men are on it,” Quicksilver says. “But they’re not optimistic. We’re fighting a legion of Society counterattacks right now. Gorydamn maelstrom.”
“This is when having your father around would come in handy,” Sevro says to Mustang.
“He never mentioned anything like this to me,” she replies.
“Mother did, once,” Victra says thoughtfully. “Antonia and I. Something about nasty little goody bags that Imperators could collect on the fly if the Rim went off the tracks.”
“That matches with what Cassius says.”
She turns back to us. “Then I think Cassius is telling the truth.”
“So do I,” I say to the group. “And torturing him doesn’t resolve anything. Cut off his fingers one by one, and what if he still says it’s true? Do we keep cutting until he says it’s not? Either way it’s a gamble.” I get a few reluctant nods and feel relief that at least one battle’s won, if a little wary knowing how savage my friends can become.
“What did he suggest we do?” Dancer asks. “I’m sure he had a proposal.”
“He wants me to have a holoconference with the Sovereign,” I say.
“Why?”
“To discuss an alliance against the Jackal. They give us intel, we kill him before he can detonate any bombs,” I say. “That’s his plan.”
Sevro giggles. “Sorry. But that would be bloodydamn fun to watch.” He pulls up his left hand and makes a talking motion with it. ‘Hello, you old rusty bitch, you recall when I kidnaped your grandchild?’ ” He pulls up his right hand. “Why yes, my goodman. Just after I enslaved your entire race.” He shakes his head. “No purpose in talking to that Pixie. Not until we’re knocking on her doorstep with a fleet. You should send me and the Howlers after good old Jackal. Can’t press a button without a head.”
“The Valkyrie will attend this mission with the Howlers,” Sefi says.
“No. The Jackal will invite a personal attack,” I say, glancing at Mustang, who has already warned me off that course. “He knows us too well to be surprised by things we’ve done in the past. I’m not throwing lives away by playing into his understanding of our strengths.”
“Do you have anyone inside his inner-circle, Regulus?” Dancer asks Quicksilver. Surprisingly, the two men seem to rather like one another.
“I did. Until your Grays broke Darrow out. Adrius had his chief of intelligence purge his inner circle. My men are all dead or imprisoned or scared shitless.”
“What do you think, Augustus?” Dancer asks Mustang.
All eyes turn to her. She takes her time in replying.
“I think the reason you’ve managed to stay alive so long is because Golds are so consumed with the individual ego that they’ve forgotten how they conquered Earth. Each thinks they can rule. With Orion returning and Sevro’s gains, your greatest strength now lies with your navy and an Obsidian army. Don’t help the Sovereign. She is still the most dangerous enemy. You help her, she focuses on you. Sow more seeds of discord.”
Dancer nods in agreement. “But are we sure the Jackal would actually use the nukes on the planet?”
“The only thing my brother ever wanted was my father’s approval. He did not get it. So he killed my father. Now he wants Mars. What do you think he’ll do if he doesn’t get it?”
A menacing silence fills the room.
“I have a new plan,” I say.
“I should bloodydamn hope so,” Sevro mutters to Victra. “Do I get to hide inside anything?”
“I’m sure we can find something for you, darling,” she says.
I nod my agreement.
He waves a hand. “Well, then let’s hear it, Reaper.”
“Hypothetically, assume we take half the cities of Mars,” I say, standing and summoning a graphic from the table that shows a red tide flowing over the globe of Mars, claiming cities, pushing back the Golds. “Say we crush the Jackal’s fleet in orbit when Orion joins us, even though we are outnumbered two to one. Say we shatter his armies. With the Valkyrie’s help, we fracture the Obsidians away from the legions and have them join us, and we have a groundswell from the populace itself. The machines of industry grind to a complete halt on Mars. We’ve rebuffed the Society’s countless reinforcements and we have insurrection in every street and we have cornered the Jackal after years of warfare. And it will take years. What happens then?”
“The machines of industry don’t stop off of Mars,” Victra says. “They keep rolling. And they’ll keep pumping men and materiel here.”
“Or…,” I say.
“He uses the bombs,” Dancer says.
“Which I also believe he’ll use on the Obsidians and our army if we go ahead with operation Rising Tide,” I say.
“We’ve been prepping the operation for months,” Dancer protests. “With the Obsidians it might just work. You just want to scrap it?”
“Yes,” I say. “This planet is why we fight. The strength of rebel armies throughout history is that they have less to protect. They can rove and move and are impossible to pin down. We have so much to lose here. So much to protect. This war won’t be won in days or weeks. It will be a decade. Mars will bleed. And at the end, ask yourselves: What will we inherit? A corpse of what was once our home. We must fight this war, but I will not fight it here. I propose we leave Mars.”
Quicksilver coughs. “Leave Mars?”
Sefi steps forward from the shadows of the stone room. “You said you would protect my people.”
“Our strength is here, in the tunnels,” Dancer continues. “In our population. That’s where our responsibility lies, Darrow.” He glances at Mustang, his suspicions clear. “Don’t forget where you come from. Why you’re doing this.”
“I have not forgotten, Dancer.”
“Are you so sure? This war is for Mars.”
“It’s for more than that,” I say.
“For lowColors,” he continues, voice gaining volume. “Win here and then spread across the Society. It’s where the helium is. It is the heart of the Society, of Red. Win here, then spread. That’s how Ares intended it.”
“This war is for everyone,” Mustang corrects.
“No,” Dancer says territorially. “This is our war, Gold. I was fighting it when you were still learning how to enslave human beings at your…”
Sevro looks at me in annoyance as our friends descend into bickering. I give him a little nod and he pulls his razor and slams it into the table. It cuts halfway through and trembles there. “Reaper’s trying to speak, you shitgobblers. Besides all this Colorism bores me.” He looks around, terribly pleased with the silence. He nods to himself and waves a theatrical hand. “Reaper, please, continue. You were getting to the exciting part.”
“Thank you, Sevro. I won’t fall into the trap of the Jackal,” I say. “The easiest way to lose any war is to let the enemy dictate the terms of engagement. We must do the thing the Jackal and the Sovereign least expect of us. Create our own paradigm so they’re playing our game. Reacting to our decisions. We must be bold. Right now we’ve sparked a fire. Rebellions in almost all Society territories. We stay here, that means we are contained. I will not be contained.”
I transfer the image on my datapad to the table so that the hologram of Jupiter floats in the air. Sixty-three tiny moons dot the periphery but the four great Jovian moons dominate its orbit. These four largest—Ganymede, Callisto, Io, and Europa—are referred to collectively as Ilium. Around those moons are two of the largest fleets in the Solar System, that of the Moon Lords, and that of the Sword Armada. Sevro looks so pleased he might faint.
I’m giving him the war he didn’t even know he wanted.
“The civil war between Bellona and Augustus has exposed larger fault lines between the Core and the Outer Rim. Octavia’s main fleet, the Sword Armada, is hundreds of millions of kilometers away from its nearest support. Excepting the Sceptre Armada around Luna it is the greatest weapon Octavia has. Octavia sent our good friend Roque au Fabii to bring the Moon Lords to heel. He has shattered every fleet that has been thrown against them, even with the help of Mustang, the Telemanuses, and the Arcoses, he has beaten the Rim down. On board these ships are more than two million men and women. More than ten thousand Obsidian. Two hundred thousand Grays. Three thousand of the greatest killers alive, Peerless Scarred. Praetors, Legates, knights, squad commanders. The greatest Golds of their Institutes. This fleet has been reinforced by Antonia au Severus-Julii. And it is the instrument of fear by which the Sovereign binds the planets to her will. It, like its commander, has never been defeated.” I pause, allowing the words to sink in so they all know the gravity of my proposal.
“In forty days we’re going to destroy the Sword Armada and rip the beating heart out of the Society war machine.” I pull Sevro’s razor out of the table and toss it back to him. “Now, I’ll take your bloodydamn questions.”