Morning Star (Red Rising Saga 3)

“Where are my friends imprisoned?” I ask. “On Ganymede? Io?”

“Imprisoned?” Kavax squints at me, then bursts into laughter. “No, lad. No. Not a man or woman has left their station. The Pax is just as you left it. Orion commands, the rest follow.”

“I don’t understand. She’s letting a Blue command?”

“Do you think Virginia would have let you live in that tunnel when you and Ragnar were on your knees if she did not believe in your new world?” I shake my head numbly, not knowing the answer. “She would have killed you on the spot if she thought you were her enemy. But when she sat before my hearth as a girl beside Pax and my children, what stories did I read them? Did I read them myths of the Greeks? Of strong men gaining glory for their own heads? No. I told them tales of Arthur, of the Nazarene, of Vishnu. Strong heroes who wished only to protect the weak.”

And Mustang has. More than that. She’s proven Eo right. And it wasn’t because of me. It wasn’t because of love. It was because it was the right thing to, and because mighty Kavax was more a father to her than her own ever was. I feel the tears in my eyes.

“You were right, Darrow,” Ragnar says. His hand falls on my shoulder. “The tide rises.”

“Then why are you here today, Kavax?”

“Because we are losing,” he says. “The Moon Lords will not last two months. Virginia knows what is happening on Mars. The extermination. The savagery of her brother. The Sons are too weak to fight everywhere.” His large eyes show the pain of a man watching his home burn. Mars is as much their heritage as it is mine. “The cost of war is too great for a certain defeat. So when Quicksilver proposed a peace, we listened.”

“And what are the terms?” I ask.

“Virginia and all her allies would be pardoned by the Sovereign. She would become ArchGovernor of Mars and Adrius and his faction would be imprisoned for life. And certain reforms would be made.”

“But the hierarchy would remain.”

“Yes.”

“If this is true, we must speak with her,” Ragnar says eagerly.

“It could be a trap,” I say, watching Kavax, knowing the mind at work behind his bluff face. I want to trust him. I want to believe his sense of justice is equal to my love for him, but these are deep waters, and I know friends can lie just as well as enemies. If Mustang isn’t on my side, then this would be the play to make. It would expose me, and there’s no doubt in my mind that however she got on this station, she’s got a nasty escort.

“One thing doesn’t make sense, Kavax. If this is true, why didn’t you make contact with Sevro?”

Kavax blinks up at me.

“We did. Months ago. Didn’t he tell you?”

—

The Howlers are packing up by the time Ragnar and I rejoin them in the ready room. “It’s all shit,” Sevro’s saying as Victra patches a gash on his back with resFlesh. Acrid smoke hisses up from the cauterizing wound. He throws down his datapad. It skitters into a corner, where Screwface collects it and brings it back to Sevro. “They’ve grounded everything, including utility flights.”

“It’s all right, boss, we’ll find a way out,” Clown say

s.

I entered the room quietly, nodding to Sevro that I’d like a word. He ignored me. His plan’s a mess. We were due to stow ourselves away inside one of the empty helium haulers going back to Mars. We would have been gone before anyone even knew Quicksilver was kidnapped, and then detonated the bombs off-station. Now, like Sevro says, it’s all shit.

“We obviously can’t stay here,” Victra says, putting the resFlesh applicator down. “We left enough DNA evidence for a hundred crime scenes back there. And our faces are everywhere. Adrius will send a whole legion for us when they find out we’re here.”

“Or blow Phobos out of the sky,” Holiday mutters. She sits on a crate of medical supplies in the corner, studying maps with Clown on her datapad. Pebble watches them from her place on the table. Her leg’s compressed with a gelCast, but the bone’s not set. We’ll need a Yellow and a full infirmary to fix what Mustang broke with a single shot. Pebble’s lucky she was wearing scarabSkin. It minimized the burn damage. Still, she’s in pain. Pupils large on a high dose of narcotics. It’s let her inhibitions loose, and I note how obviously the pudgy-faced Gold is watching Clown lean across Holiday to point at the map.

“Helium-3 is Adrius’s lifeblood,” Victra says. “He won’t risk this station.”

“Sevro…” I say. “A moment.”

“Busy right now.” He turns to Rollo. “Is there any other way off this damn rock?”

The Red leans against the med room’s gray wall next to a glossy paper cutout of a Pink model on one of Venus’s white-sand beaches. “It’s just cargo haulers down here,” he says, silently noting how our Obsidian guises have been discarded. If it startles him how many of us are Gold, he doesn’t let on. Probably knew from the start. His eyes linger on me the longest. “But they’re all grounded. They got luxury liners and private yachts in the Needles, but you go up there, you folks are caught in a minute. Two, tops. There’s facial-recognition cameras at every tram door. Retina scanners in the advertisement holos. And even if you got onto one of their ships, you gotta get past the naval pickets. Ain’t like you can just teleport to safety.”

“That’d be convenient,” Clown mutters.

“We jack a shuttle and run the pickets,” Sevro says. “Done it before.”