Morning Star (Red Rising Saga 3)

“Indeed. But I don’t mourn the opportunity lost. You’re alive, Darrow, and that means this rebellion is alive. It means Fitchner’s dream, your wife’s dream, is not yet gone from this world.”

“Why?” Sevro asks. “Why the bloodyhell would you want war? You’re the richest man in the system. You’re not an anarchist.”

“No. I am not an anarchist, a communist, a fascist, a plutocrat, or even a demokrat, for that matter. My boys, don’t believe what they tell you in school. Government is never the solution, but it is almost always the problem. I’m a capitalist. And I believe in effort and progress and the ingenuity of our species. The continuing evolution and advancement of our kind based on fair competition. Fact of the matter is, Gold does not want man to continue to evolve. Since the conquering, they have routinely stifled advancement to maintain their heaven. They’ve wrapped themselves in myth. Filled their grand oceans with monsters to hunt. Cultivated private Mirkwoods and Olympuses of their very own. They have suits of armor to make them flying gods. And they preserve that ridiculous fairy tale by keeping mankind frozen in time. Curbing invention, curiosity, social mobility. Change threatens that.

“Look where we are. In space. Above a planet we shaped. Yet we live in a Society modeled after the musings of Bronze Age pedophiles. Tossing around mythology like that bullshit wasn’t made up around a campfire by an Attican farmer depressed that his life was nasty, brutish, and short.

“The Golds claim to the Obsidians that they are gods. They are not. Gods create. If the Golds are anything, they are vampire kings. Parasites drinking from our jugular. I want a Society free of this fascist pyramid. I want to unchain the free market of wealth and ideas. Why should men toil in the mines when we can build robots to toil for us? Why should we ever have stopped in this Solar System? We deserve more than what we’ve been given. But first, Gold must fall and the Sovereign and the Jackal must die. And I believe you are the sign I’ve been waiting for, Mr. Andromedus.”

He nods at my gloved hands. “I paid for your Sigils. I paid for your bones, your eyes, your flesh. You are my friend’s brainchild. My husband’s student. The sum of the Sons of Ares. So my empire is at your disposal. My hackers. My security teams. My transports. My companies. All yours. With no reservations. No strings. No insurance policy.” He looks at Sevro. “Gentlemen. In other words, I’m all in.”

“Quite nice.” Sevro applauds, mocking Quicksilver. “Darrow, he’s just trying to buy you so he can escape.”

“Maybe,” I say. “But we can’t blow the bombs anymore.”

“Bombs?” Quicksilver asks. “What are you talking about?”

“We planted explosives in the refineries and the shipping docks,” I say.

“That’s your plan?” Quicksilver looks back and forth at us as if we’re mad. “You can’t do that. Do you have any idea what that would do?”

“An economic collapse,” I say. “Symptoms including a devaluation of stock assets, a freeze of commercial bank lending, a run on local banks, eventual stagflation. And a breakdown of social order. Show us some respect when you talk to us. We’re not dilettantes or boys. And it was our pl

an.”

“Was?” Sevro asks, stepping back from me. “So now you’re letting him dictate what we do.”

“Things have changed, Sevro. We need to reassess. We’ve new assets.”

My friend stares at me as if he doesn’t recognize my face. “New assets? Him?”

“Not just him. Orion,” I say. “You never told me Mustang contacted you.”

“Because you would have let her manipulate you,” he says without apology. “Like you did before. Like you’re letting him now.” He considers me, pointing a finger as he thinks he figures it out. “You’re afraid. Aren’t you? Afraid of pulling the trigger. Afraid of making a mistake. We finally have a chance to make Gold bleed and you wanna reassess. You wanna take time to look at our options.” He pulls the detonator from his pocket. “This is war. We don’t have time. We can take the bastard with us, but we can’t miss this chance.”

“Stop acting like a terrorist,” I snarl. “We’re better than that.”

I stare down at him, furious in the moment. He should be my simplest, strongest friendship. But because of loss, everything is twisted between us. Even with him there’s so many layers to the pain. So many levels of fear and recrimination and guilt for both of us. They once called Sevro my shadow. He’s not any longer. And I think I’ve been bitter at him these last hours because they’re proof of that. He’s his own man with his own tides. Just as I think he’s been bitter with me because I didn’t come back as the Reaper. I came back a man he didn’t recognize. And now that I’m trying to be the force he wanted, the force that’s making decisions, he doubts me because he senses weakness and that’s always made him afraid.

“Sevro, give me the detonator,” I say coldly.

“Naw.” He opens the detonator’s priming shield, revealing the red thumb toggle inside the protective casing. If he presses down, one thousand kilograms of high-yield explosives will detonate across Phobos. It won’t destroy the moon, but it’ll demolish the moon’s economic infrastructure. Helium will not flow for months. Years. And all the fears of Quicksilver will be realized. Society will suffer, but so will we.

“Sevro…”

“You got my father killed,” he says. “You got Quinn and Pax and Weed and Harpy and Lea killed because you thought you were smarter than everyone else. Because you didn’t kill the Jackal when you could. Because you didn’t kill Cassius when you could. But unlike you, I don’t flinch.”

Sevro’s thumb twitches for the detonation switch. But before he presses down, I activate a jamfield with the jammer on my belt, blocking the signal from leaving the room. “You son of a bitch,” he snarls, rushing for the door to get beyond the field.

I reach for him. He spins under my hands. My jammer’s not a strong one, so he doesn’t need to get far away from me. He bowls into the hallway, I scramble after.

“Sevro, stop!” I say as I push into the hallway. He’s already ten meters down the hall, running at full speed to get clear of my jamming field so his signal can go out. He’s quicker than I am in these small hallways. He’s going to escape. I pull my pulseFist out, aim it over his head, and fire it, but my aim is off and it nearly takes off his head. His Mohawk sizzles smoke. He stops dead in his tracks and wheels back on me, face feral.

“Sevro…I didn’t mean…”

With a howl of rage he charges me. Caught off guard, I stumble back from the manic man. He closes in a flurry. I block his first punch, but an uppercut smashes into my jaw, slamming my teeth together. Rocking me back. My teeth close on a corner of my tongue. I taste blood and almost fall. If Mickey hadn’t made bones proper, Sevro might’ve shattered my jaw. Instead, he curses, gripping his fist in pain.

I move with the uppercut and lash out with my left leg, kicking him so hard in the ribs that his whole body carries sideways into the wall, denting the metal bulkhead. I throw a straight jab with my right fist. He ducks under and my punch lands on duroSteel. Pain rattles up my arm. I grunt. He flies into me under the left elbow I swing at his head, ratcheting strikes into my stomach, aiming for my balls. I twist back, manage to grab one of his arms and swing him around as hard as I can. He slams face-first into the wall, spilling to the ground.