Morning Star: Book III of the Red Rising Trilogy (23 page)

The clock’s ticking.

But that’s supposing the authorities suspect that only Quicksilver was kidnapped. I don’t know why Mustang and Cassius were meeting, but I have to assume the Jackal doesn’t know about it. That’s why I used our jammers. So the security cameras outside of Quicksilver ’s control wouldn’t ID Kavax. If the Jackal saw him here, he’d know something was amiss with his alliance with the Sovereign and Quicksilver. And I want to keep that card in my pocket till I know how best to use it and can speak with Mustang.

But what will the Sovereign think when Cassius calls her to tell her Moira is dead? And what is Mustang’s place here? There are too many questions. Too many things I don’t know. But what haunts

me as we run down metal halls, as my friends go to patch wounds and we pass armories where dozens

of Reds and Browns and Oranges load weapons and buckle armor, is what she said.

“I have the
Pax.
Orion is alive.”

With her, that could mean a dozen things, and the only one who will know is Kavax. I need to ask

him, but Ragnar ’s already taken him down another hall to the Sons lockup and Sevro’s stopped rattling off orders to others to address me. “Reap, they’re gonna hit us, and hit us hard,” he’s saying.

“You know Legion military procedures better than I do. Get to the datacenter, fastlike. Give me a timetable and their plan of attack. We can’t stop them, but we can buy time.”

“Time for what?” I ask.

“To blow the bombs and find a way out off this rock.” He puts a hand on my arm, just as cognizant

of those Sons watching as I am. “Please. Get moving.” He heads off down the hall with the rest of the Howlers, leaving me alone with Holiday. I turn to her.

“Holiday, you know Legion procedures. Get to the datacenter. Give the Sons the tactical support they need.” She looks back down the hall to where Sevro has turned a corner. “You good with that?” I ask.

“Yes, sir. Where you going?”

I tighten my gloves. “To get answers.”

—

“Virginia told us you were a Red after she left you. That is why we did not come to your Triumph,”

Kavax says up to me. He’s bound to a steel pipe, legs splayed out on the floor. Still in his armor, red-gold beard dark in the low light. He cuts a menacing figure, but I’m surprised by the openness of his face. The lack of hatred. The clarity of excitement as his nostrils flare wide in recounting his tale to Ragnar and me. Sevro told the Sons that no one was to see Kavax. But apparently they don’t think the rules much apply to the Reaper. Good on that. I don’t yet have a plan, but I know Sevro’s isn’t working. I don’t have time to navigate his feelings or struggle with him. The pieces are in motion, and I need information.

“She did not know yet what to do and so took our counsel as she did as a girl,” Kavax continues.

“We were on my ship, the
Reynard,
having roast mutton in ponzu sauce with Sophocles, though he did not like the sauce, when Agea Command called, saying the Sovereign’s loyalist forces had attacked

the Triumph in Agea. Virginia could not contact you or her father, and so feared a coup and sent Daxo and me from orbit with our knights.

“She stayed in orbit with the ships and finally contacted Roque when Daxo and I were already descending through atmosphere. Roque said the Sovereign had attacked the Triumph and wounded you and her father gravely. He urged her to come to one of his new ships
,
where he was taking you because the surface was no longer safe.” I remember Roque talking on the shuttle as the Jackal leaned over me, not being able to hear him. We landed on a ship. The Sovereign was there. She never left Mars. She was hiding in Roque’s fleet. Right under my nose. “But Virginia did not rush to your bedside.” He grins jovially. “A fool in love would do so. But Virginia is clever. She saw through Roque’s mendacity. She knew the Sovereign would not simply attack the Triumph. It would be a plan

within a plan. So she sent word to Orion and House Arcos that a coup was under way. That Roque was a conspirator. So when the assassins struck, attempting to kill Orion and the loyal commanders on their bridge, they were ready. There were firefights on bridges. In staterooms. Orion was badly shot in the arm, but she survived and then Roque’s ships opened fire on ours and the fleet fractured….”

All this while Sevro and Ragnar were discovering that Fitchner was dead and the Sons of Ares base

had been destroyed. And I lay paralyzed on the floor of Aja’s shuttle as everything came apart. No.

Not everything.

“She saved the crew’s lives,” I say.

“Yes,” Kavax says. “Your crew is alive. The one you liberated with Sevro. Even many of your Legion, who we organized and managed to evacuate from Mars before the Jackal and Sovereign’s forces took power.”

“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 says.

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.”

“They’ll shoot us down,” I say tensely. It’s pissing me off that he keeps ignoring my attempts to get him to the door.

“Didn’t last time.”

“Last time we had Lysander,” I remind him.

“And now we got Quicksilver.”

“The Jackal will sacrifice Quicksilver to kill us,” I say. “Count on it.”

“Not if we go straight vertical burn to the surface,” Sevro says. “Sons have hidden tunnel entrances.

We will fall from orbit and go straight underground.”

“I will not do that,”
Ragnar says.
“It is foolhardy. And it abandons these noble men and women
to slaughter.”

“I agree with Rags,” Holiday says. She scoots away from Clown and continues looking at her datapad, monitoring police frequencies.

“Say you get off. What happens to us?” Rollo asks. “The Jackal finds out the Reaper and Ares were

here and he’ll tear this station apart piecemeal. Any Son left behind will be dead in a week. Did you think of that?” He makes a disgusted look. “I know who you are. We knew the second Ragnar walked

into the hangar. But I didn’t think Howlers ran. And I didn’t think the Reaper took orders.”

Sevro takes a step toward him. “You got another option, shitface? Or you just gonna run your mouth?”

“Yeah, I got one,” Rollo says. “Stay. Help us take the station.”

The Howlers laugh. “Take the station? With what army?” Clown asks.

“His,” Rollo says, turning to me. “I don’t rightly know how you’re alive, Reaper. But…I was eating noodles by myself at midnight when the Sons leaked your Carving video onto the holoNet. Society cyber police shut down the site in two minutes. But once it was out…could find it on a million sites before I finished my bowl. They couldn’t contain that. And then the Phobos servers crashed. You know why?”

“Securitas’s cyber division pulled the plug,” Victra says. “It’s standard protocol.”

He shakes his head. “Servers crashed because thirty million people were trying to access the holoNet at the same time in the middle of the night. Servers couldn’t handle the traffic. Golds pulled the plug after that. So what I’m sayin’ is if you march down to the Hive and tell the lowColors there you’re alive, we can take this moon.”

“Easy as that?” Victra asks skeptically.

“That’s right. There’s round about twenty-five million lowColors here crawling over one another,

fighting for square meters, protein packages, Syndicate smack, whatever. Reaper shows his mug, all that goes to vapor. All that fighting. All that scrappin’. They
want
a leader, and if the Reaper of Mars decides to come back from the dead here…you won’t have an army, you’ll have a tide at your heels.

You register? This will change the war.”

He sends chills down my spine. But Victra’s skeptical, and Sevro’s quiet. Hurt.

“Do you know what a squad of Society Legionnaires can do to a mob of rabble?” Victra asks. “The

weapons you’ve seen are geared to taking out men in armor. PulseFists. Razors. When they use coilguns or rattlers on mobs, a single man can fire a thousand rounds a minute. It sounds like paper tearing. Human body doesn’t even know that sound is supposed to be frightening. They can superheat the water in your cellular structure with microwaves. And those are just Gray anti-mob squads. What if they unleash the Obsidian? What if Golds themselves come in their armor? What if they shut off your air? Your water?”