Morning Star (Red Rising Saga 3)

Victra and I burst around the corner, eating up meters as a Gray tries to take his companion’s place at the gun. I cut him down with my pulseFist and Victra exchanges a four move kravat set with the Gold, before skewering him with a thrust to the chest. I finish him with a stab to the throat. Holiday has her commandos haul the QR-13 with us, only able to keep pace with our long legs because of our heavy armor.

As we press for the bridge at a full-sprint, other elements of my invasion force make for vital ship functions with a new frantic speed. It’s a lightning strike. Grays can’t move with this speed because they rely on tactics, leapfrog maneuvers, corner-shots and sly tech. The Obsidian are straight battering rams. It’s tempting to surge ahead, focus only on getting to the bridge. But I can’t abandon my plan. My platoons need me to guide them using the battlemap on my HUD. Speaking to Red and Gray platoon leaders, I coordinate on the run as Victra leads us through the maze of metal halls and ambushes. As the platoons are pinned down, I use my com to maneuver other platoons through gravLifts and halls to flank entrenched security teams. It’s an intricate dance. Not only are we racing against the destruction of Mustang’s ship. But we’re racing against the return of the leechCraft.

Roque knows this. And less than three minutes into our insertion, the ship goes into full lockdown protocol. All gravLifts and trams and bulkheads sealed off, creating a honeycomb of obstacles throughout the ship. We can only advance fifty meters at a time. It’s a devilish system, pins down boarding forces as security teams with digital keys run about the ship at ease, flanking and creating deadly killboxes and cross-fires that can shred even a boarding party like mine. There’s no way to combat it. This is the grind of war. No matter the tech or the tactics, it all comes down to terrifying moments crouching chalk-mouthed at a corner as a friend lays down cover fire and you try not to trip over the hi-tech gear that’s wrapped around your body as you advance, head lowered, legs churning. It’s not bravery, it’s fear of shaming yourself in the eyes of your friends that keeps you moving.

As we melt our way through bulkhead after bulkhead, Sefi’s Valkyrie feed the grinder. We’re ambushed from every side. Some of the best warriors I’ve ever seen fall with smoking holes in the back of their helmets from Gray marksmen. They melt under pulseFist fire. They fall to a Gold knight flanked by seven Obsidian till Victra, Sefi, and I put them down with razors.

All this to reach the bridge. All this to reach a man who I could have reached out and touched the day before. If this is the cost of honor, give me a shameful murder. If I’d have stabbed Roque in the throat then, Valkyrie would not litter the ground now.

“Men and women of the Society Navy, this is the Reaper. Your

ship has been boarded by the Sons of Ares…” I hear my voice over the ship’s general com unit. One of my platoons has reached the communication mainframe in the back half of the ship. Every boarding party in my fleet has copies of the speech Mustang and I recorded together to upload to boarded enemy vessels. It exhorts lowColors to aid my units, to deactivate lockdown protocol if they can, to unlock doors manually if they cannot, and to storm the armories. Most of these men and women are veterans. It’s unrealistic to expect the same sort of conversion as I had on the Pax’s crew, but every little bit helps.

The announcement works partially on the Colossus. It buys us precious time as we bypass several doors in seconds instead of the minutes it would take to melt through. Roque also turns off the artificial gravity, realizing by watching their tactics that my Obsidians don’t have zero g experience.

Society Grays push their way through halls like seals under water, taking their revenge on my floating Obsidians, robbed of their closing speed, who’ve mauled so many of their friends. In the end, one of my teams reactivates the gravity. I have them decrease it to one-sixth Earth standard so that my force is not encumbered by the heavy armor we wear. It’s a blessing on our lungs and legs.

After cutting through a security team of Grays, we finally reach the bridge, battered and bloody. I crouch, panting and increase the oxygen circulation in my armor. Swimming in sweat, I activate a stim injection in my gear to keep me from feeling the gash in my biceps where a Gold’s razor caught me. The needle bites into my thigh. Reports come from my other platoons that they’ve lost contact with the enemy, which means they’re being consolidated by Roque, redirected, likely to us. Back to the bridge door, I stare across the circular, exposed antechamber to the bridge and remember how my instructor at the Academy demonstrated the geometric deadliness of the space for anyone besieging a starburst bridge design like this. Three halls from three directions lead to the circular room, including a gravLift in the center. It’s indefensible, and Roque’s marines are coming.

“Roque, darling,” Victra calls up to the cameras in the ceiling as Holiday and her team set up the drill on the door. “How I have pined for you since the garden. Are you there?” She sighs. “I’ll just assume you are. Listen, I understand. You think we must be wroth with you, what with the murder of my mother, the execution of our friends, the bullets in the spine, the poison, and a year of torture for dear Reaper and I, but that’s not so. We just want to put you in a box. Maybe several. Would you like that? It’s very poetic.”

Holiday’s remaining three commandos are attaching magnetic clamps to the door and mounting their thermal drill. She taps a few commands and the eye of the drill begins to spin.

Sefi returns from her scouting. Her helmet slithers back into her armor. “Many enemies come from tunnel.” She points to the middle hall. “I killed their leader, but more Golds follow.” She didn’t just kill the leader. She brought his head back. But she’s limping and her left arm bleeds.

“Oh, hell. That’s Flagilus,” Victra says, regarding the head. “He was in my school house. Very sweet fellow actually. Wonderful cook.”

“How many are coming, Sefi?”

“Enough to give us a good death.”

“Shit. Shit. Shit.” Holiday punches the door behind me.

“It’s too thick isn’t it?” I ask.

“Yeah.” She pulls her assault helmet off. Her Mohawk is mashed to the side. Tense face dripping with sweat. “Door’s not VDY specs like the rest of the ship. It’s Ganymede Industries. Custom. At least twice as thick.”

“How long will it take to get through?” I repeat.

“At full burn? Fourteen minutes?” she guesses.

“Fourteen?” Victra repeats.

“Maybe more.”

I turn, hissing the anger out. The women know as well as I that we don’t have even five minutes. I hail Mustang’s coms. No answer. Her ship must be dying. Bloodydamn. Stay alive. Just stay alive. Why did I ever let her out of my sight?

“We charge them,” Victra’s saying. “Straight down the middle hall. They’ll run like foxes from hounds.”

“Yes,” Sefi says, finding a more kindred spirit in Victra than either might have thought prior to shedding blood together. “I will follow you, daughter of the sun. To glory.”

“Piss on glory,” Holiday says. “Let the drill do its work.”

“And sit here to die like Pixies?” Victra asks.

Before I can say a word or do much of anything, there’s a metallic wheeze behind me from the hydraulics in the wall as the door to the bridge opens.

We surge onto the bridge, expecting an ambush. Instead, it’s calm. Clean, lights dimmed, just as Roque prefers it. Beethoven streams out from hidden speakers. Everyone is still at their stations. Wan faces illuminated by pale light. Two Golds walk along the wide metal path that leads over the pits toward the front of the bridge where Roque stands orchestrating his battle before a thirty-meter-wide holographic projection. Ships dance among the sensors. Framed by fire, he cycles through images, issuing commands like a great conductor summoning the passion of an orchestra. His mind a beautiful, terrible weapon. He’s destroying our fleet. Mustang’s Dejah Thoris leaks flame from her oxygen stores as the Colossus and her three escort destroyers continue to hammer her with railguns. Men and debris float through space.This is just one part of the larger battle. The great host of his force, including Antonia, has pursued Romulus, Orion and the Telemanuses toward Jupiter.