Morning Star (Red Rising Saga 3)

“Pity. Two millimeters.” He pinches his fingers together, illustrating how narrowly Mustang’s arrow missed Cassius’s jugular. After Sefi dispatched riders to the tribes, I took her and many of her warlords to Asgard aboard the shuttle to see the fortress there. I brought Cassius along as well and Asgard’s Yellows saved his life. “Why are you keeping him alive, Darrow? If you think he’s going to thank you for your generosity, you’ve got another thing coming.”

“I couldn’t just let him die.”

“He killed my father.”

“I know.”

“Give me a reason.”

“Maybe I think the world would be a better place with him in it,” I say tentatively. “So many people have used him, lied to him, betrayed him. All that’s defined him. It’s not fair. I want him to have a chance to decide for himself what kind of person he wants to be.”

“None of us get to be what we want to be,” Sevro mutters. “Least not for long.”

“Isn’t that why we fight? Isn’t that what you just said about Ragnar? He was made a blade but we gave him a chance to be a shield. Cassius deserves that same chance.”

“Shithead.” He rolls his eyes. “Just ’cause you’re right doesn’t mean you’re right. Anyway, eagles are hated as much as the lions. Someone here’s still going to try to pop him. And your girl too.”

“She’s got the Pitvipers with her. And she’s not my girl.”

“Whatever you say.” He collapses into one of Mickey’s stolen leather chairs and rubs a hand along his Mohawk’s ridge. “Wish she’d taken the Telemanuses with her. If she had, you’d have slagged Aja hard.” He closes his eyes and leans his head back. “Oh, hey,” he remembers suddenly, “I got you some ships.”

“I saw that. Thank you,” I say.

“Finally.” He snorts a laugh. “A sign we’re making a difference. Twenty torchships, ten frigates, four destroyers, a dreadnought. You should have seen it, Reap. Martian Navy pumped Phobos full of Legionaries, emptied their ships and we just stole their assault shuttles, flew them back with the right codes, and landed them in their hangars. My squad didn’t even fire a shot. Quicksilver’s boys even hacked the PA systems in the navy ships. They all heard your speech. It was mutiny almost before we got on board, Reds, Oranges, Blues, even Grays. It won’t work again, the PA system bit. Golds will learn to cut themselves off the network so we can’t hack in, but it got ’em hard this week. When we unite with the Pax and Orion’s other ships we’ll have a real force to slag the Pixies.”

It’s moments like this that I know I’m not alone. Damn the world, so long as I have my mangy little guardian angel. If only I was so good at guarding him as he is at guarding me. Once again he’s done all I could ask and more. As I marshaled the Obsidians, he ripped a gaping hole in the Jackal’s defense fleet. Crippled a fourth of them. Forced the rest to retreat toward the outer moon of Deimos to regroup with the Jackal’s reserves and await additional reinforcements from Ceres and the Can.

For a brief hour, he held naval supremacy over all of Mars’s southern hemisphere. The Goblin King. Then he was forced to retreat to hunker close into Phobos, where his men eliminated the trapped loyalist marines by using Rollo’s squads to cut off their air and vent them into space. I’m under no delusion. The Jackal won’t let us have the moon. He might not care about its people, but he can’t destroy the station’s helium refineries. So another assault will come soon. It won’t affect my war effort, but the Jackal will get tied down fighting the populace that we’ve woken. It’ll drain his resources without trapping me. Worst possible situation for him.

“What are you thinking?” I ask Sevro.

His eyes are lost in the ceiling. “I’m wondering how long till it’s us on the slab. And wondering why it’s gotta be us on the line. You see vids and hear stories and you think of the regular people. The ones who got a chance at life on Ganymede or Earth or Luna. Can’t help but be jealous.”

“You don’t think you’ve gotten a chance to live?” I ask.

“Not proper,” he says.

“What’s proper?” I ask.

He crosses his arms like he’s a kid in a fort looking down at the real world and wondering why it can’t be as magical as he is. “I dunno. Something far away from being a Peerless Scarred. Maybe a Pixie or even a happy midColor. I just want something to look at and say, that’s safe, that’s mine, and no one is going to try and take it. A house. Kids.”

“Kids?” I ask.

“I don’t know. I never thought of it till Pops died. Till they took you.”

“Till Victra you mean…,” I say with a wink. “Nice goatee by the way.”

“Shut up,” he says.

“Have you two—” He cuts me off, changing the subject.

“But it’d be nice to just be Sevro. To have Pops. To have known my mother.” He laughs at himself, harder than he should. “Sometimes I think about going back to the beginning and wondering what would have happened if Pops had known the Board was coming. If he’d escaped with my mother, with me.”

I nod. “I always think about how life would have been like if Eo never died. The children I would have had. What I would have named them.” I smile distantly. “I would have grown old. Watched Eo grow old. And I would have loved her more with each new scar, with each new year even as she learned to despise our small life. I would have said farewell to my mother, maybe my brother, sister. And if I was lucky, one day when Eo’s hair turned gray, before it began to fall out and she began to cough, I would hear the shift of rocks over my head on the drill and that would be it. She would have sent me to the incinerators and sprinkled my ashes, then our children would have done the same. And the clans would say we were happy and good and raised bloodydamn fine children. And when those children died, our memory would fade, and when their children died, it would be swept away like the dust we become, down and away to the long tunnels. It would have been a small life,” I say with a shrug, “but I would have liked it. And every day I ask myself if I was given the chance to go back, to be blind, to have all that back, would I?”

“And what’s the answer?”

“All this time I thought this was for Eo. I drove straight on like an arrow because I had that one perfect idea in my head. She wanted this. I loved her. So I’ll make her dream real. But that’s bullshit. I was living half a bloodydamn life. Making an idol out a woman, making her a martyr, something instead of someone. Pretending she was perfect.” I run my hand through my greasy hair. “She wouldn’t have wanted that. And when I looked out at the Hollows, I just knew, I mean I guess I realized as I was talking that justice isn’t about fixing the past, it’s about fixing the future. We’re not fighting for the dead. We’re fighting for the living. And for those who aren’t yet born. For a chance to have children. That’s what has to come after this, otherwise what’s the point?”