Dancer finds me as I make final preparations to board the shuttle with Sevro and Mustang that will take us to the fleet in orbit. Tinos swarms with activity. Hundreds of shuttles and transports gathered by Dancer and his Sons of Ares leadership depart through the great tunnels to make their migration toward the South Pole, where they will still ferry the Obsidian young and old from their home to the safety of the mines, but the warriors will go to orbit to join my fleet. In twenty-four hours, they will move eight hundred thousand human beings in the greatest effort in Sons of Ares history. It makes me smile thinking how much happier Fitchner would be knowing the greatest endeavor of his legacy was to save lives instead of to take them.
After covering the evacuation with the fleet, I will burn hard for Jupiter. Dancer and Quicksilver will remain behind to continue what they started and hold the Jackal on Mars till the next evolution of the plan begins.
“It’s haunting, isn’t it,” Dancer says, watching the sea of blue engine flares that flow past our stalactite up to the great tunnel in the ceiling of Tinos. Victra stands closely with Sevro at the edge of the open hangar, two dark silhouettes watching the hope of two peoples float away into the darkness. “The Red Armada goes to war,” Dancer breathes. “Never thought I’d see the day.”
“Fitchner should be here,” I reply.
“Yes, he should,” Dancer grimaces. “It’s my greatest regret, I think. That he couldn’t live to see his son wear his helm. And you become what he always knew you to be.”
“And what’s that?” I ask, watching a Red Howler jump twice with his gravBoots and rocket off the edge of the hangar to enter the open cargo hatch of a passing troop carrier.
“Someone who believes in the people,” he says delicately.
I turn to face Dancer, glad that he’s sought me out in my last moments here among my kin. I don’t know if I’ll ever return. And if I do, I fear he will see me as a different man. One who betrayed him, our people, Eo’s dream. I’ve been here before. Saying goodbye on a landing pad. Harmony stood with him then, Mickey too as they said goodbye on that spire in Yorkton. How can I feel so melancholy for so terrible a past? Maybe that’s just the nature of us, ever wishing for things that were and could be rather than things that are and will be.
It takes more to hope than to remember.
“Do you think the Moon Lords will really help us?” he asks.
“No. The trick will be making them think they’re helping themselves. Then getting out before they turn on us.”
“It’s a risk, boy, but you like those, don’t you?”
I shrug. “It’s also the only chance we have.”
Boots clomp on the metal deck behind me. Holiday moves past up the ramp carrying a bag of gear with several new Howlers. Life moves on, carrying me with it. It’s been nearly seven years since Dancer and I met, yet it seems thirty on him. How many decades of war has he faced? How many friends has he said goodbye to that I’ve never known, that he’s never even mentioned? People who he loved as much as I love Sevro and Ragnar. He had a family once, though he rarely speaks of them now.
We all had something once. We’re each robbed and broken in our own way. That’s why Fitchner formed this army. Not to piece us together, but to save himself from the abyss his wife’s death opened in him. He needed a light. And he made it. Love was his shout into the wind. Same with my wife.
“Lorn once told me if he had been my father he would have raised me to be a good man. ‘There’s no peace for great men,’ he said.” I smile at the memory. “I should have asked him who he thinks makes the peace for all those good men.”
“You are a good man,” Dancer tells me.
My hands are scarred and brutal things. When I clench them their knuckles turn that familiar shade of white.
“Yeah?” I grin. “Then why do I want to do bad things?” He laughs at that, and I surprise him by pulling him into a hug. His good arm wraps around my hips. His head barely coming to my chest. “Sevro might’ve worn the helmet, but you’re the heart here,” I tell him. “You always have been. You’re too humble to see it, but you’re as great a man as Ares himself. And somehow, you’re still good. Unlike that dirty rat bastard.” I pull back and thump his chest. “And I love you. Just so you know.”
“Oh, bloodydamn,” he mutters, eyes tearing up. “I thought you were a killer. You gone soft on me, boy?”
“Never,” I say, winking.
He pushes me off. “Go say goodbye to your mother before you go.”
I leave him to shout at a group of Sons marines and work my way through the bustle, bumping fists with Pebble who Screwface pushes on a wheelchair toward a boarding ramp, tossing a salute to Sons of Ares I recognize, talking shit back to Uncle Narol who walks with a troop of Pitvipers. They’re destined for a sabotage mission against the Jackal’s deep space communication relays. My mother and Mustang stop talking abruptly when I arrive. Both look distraught.
“What’s the matter?” I ask.
“Just saying goodbye,” Mustang says.
My mother steps close to me. “Dio brought this from Lykos.” She opens a little plastic box and shows me the dirt inside.” My little mother smiles up at me. “You fly into night, and when all grows dark, remember who you are. Remember you are never alone. The hopes and dreams of our people go with you. Remember home.” She pulls me down to kiss my forehead. “Remember you are loved.” I hug her tight and pull back to see she has tears in her hard eyes.
“I’ll be all right, Ma,” I say.
“I know. I know you don’t think you deserve to be happy,” she says. “But you do, child. You deserve it more than anyone I know. So do what you need to do, then come home to me.” She takes my hand and Mustang’s. “Both of you come home. Then start living.”
I leave her behind, confused and emotional. “What was that about?” I ask Mustang. Mustang looks at me as if I should know.
“She’s afraid.”
“Why?”
“She’s your mother.”
I walk up my shuttle’s landing pad, with Sevro and Victra who join Mustang and I at the bottom. “Helldiver…” Dancer shouts before we reach the top. I turn back to find the gnarled man with his fist thrust in the air. And behind him the whole of the stalactite hangar watches me, hundreds of deckhands on mechanized loading trams, pilots, Blue and Red and Green, who stand at the ramps of their ships or on the ladders leading into their cockpits, helmets in hands, platoons of Grays and Reds and Obsidians standing side by side carrying combat gear and supplies—the scythe sewn onto shoulders, painted onto faces—as they board shuttles bound for my fleet. Men and women of Mars, all. Fighting for something larger than themselves. For our planet, for their people. I feel the weight of their love. I feel the hopes of all those people in bondage who watched as the Sons of Ares rose to take Phobos. We promised them something, and now we must deliver. One by one, my army raises their hands till a sea of fists clench as Eo’s did when she held the haemanthus and fell before Augustus.
Chills run through me as Sevro and Victra and Mustang and even my mother raise their hands in union. “Break the chains,” Dancer bellows. I raise my own scarred fist and step silently into the shuttle to join the Red Armada as it sails to war.