Morning Star: Book III of the Red Rising Trilogy (58 page)

“It will take three days to search the debris for our survivors,” I say. “We will leave then.”

“Very well. My ships will escort your fleet to the boundaries we agreed upon. When your flagship

crosses into the asteroid belt, you may never return. If one ship under your command crosses that boundary, it will be war between us.”

“I remember the terms.”

“See that you do. Give my regards to the Core. I’ll certainly give yours to the Sons of Ares you leave behind.” He terminates the signal.

—

We depart three days after my conference with Romulus, making additional repairs as we travel.

Welders and repairmen dot hulls like benevolent barnacles. Though we lost more than twenty-five capital ships during the battle, we’ve gained over seventy more. It is one of the greatest military victories in modern history, but victories are less romantic when you’re cleaning your friends off the floor.

It’s easy to be bold in the moment, because all you have is what you can process: see, smell, feel, taste. And that’s a very small amount of what is. But afterward, when everything decompresses and uncoils bit by bit, and the horror of what you did and what happened to your friends hits you. It’s overwhelming. That’s the curse of this naval war. You fight, then spend months waiting, engaged only by the tedium of routine. Then you fight again.

I’ve not yet told my men where we sail. They don’t ask me themselves, but their officers do. And

again I give them the same answer.

“Where we must.”

The core of my army is the Sons of Ares, and they are experienced in hardship. They organize dances and gatherings and force jubilation down war-weary throats. It seems to take. Men and women whistle in the halls as we distance ourselves from Jupiter. They sew unit badges onto uniforms and paint starShells in wild colors. There’s a vibrancy here different from the cold precision of the Society Navy. Still they keep mostly to their Color, blending only when assigned to do so. It’s not as harmonious as I thought it would be, but it’s a start. I feel disconnected from it all even as I smile and lead as best I know. I killed ten men in the corridors. Killed another thirteen thousand of my own when we destroyed the docks. Their faces don’t haunt me. But that feeling of dread is hard to lose.

We have not yet been able to contact the Sons of Ares. Communications are blacked out across all

channels. Which means Narol succeeded in destroying the relays as he promised. Gold and Red are

just as blind now.

I give Roque the burial he would have wanted. Not in the soil of some foreign moon, but in the sun.

His casket is made of metal. A torpedo with a hatch through which Mustang and I slip his body. The Howlers smuggled him from the overflowing morgue so we could say goodbye to him in secret.

With so many of our own dead, it would not do to see me honor an enemy so deeply.

Few mourn the death of my friend. Roque, if he is remembered by his people, will forever be

known as The Man Who Lost the Fleet. A modern Gaius Terentius Varro, the fool who let Hannibal encircle him at Cannae. Or Alfred Jones. The American general who went mad and lost his Imperium’s dreaded mech division in the Conquering. To my people, he is just another Gold who thought himself immortal till the Reaper showed him otherwise.

It’s a lonely thing carrying the body of someone dead and loved. Like a vase you know will never

again hold flowers. I wish he believed as firmly in the afterlife as I once did, as Ragnar did. I’m not sure when I lost my faith. I don’t think it’s something that just happens. Maybe I’ve been worn down bit by bit, pretending to believe in the Vale because it’s easier than the alternative. I wish Roque would have thought he was going to a better world. But he died believing only in Gold, and anything that believes only in itself cannot go happily into the night.

When it is my turn to say goodbye, I stare at his face and see nothing but memories. I think of him on the bed reading before the Gala, before I stabbed him with the sedative. I see him in his suit, pleading with me to come along with him and Mustang to the Opera in Agea, saying how much I’d

delight in the plight of Orpheus. I see him laughing by the fire at her estate after the Battle of Mars.

His arms around me as he sobbed after I came home to House Mars when we were hardly more than

boys.

Now he is cold. Eyes ringed with circles. All the promise of youth fled. All the possibilities of family and children and joy and growing old and wise together are gone because of me. I’m reminded of Tactus now, and I feel tears coming.

My friends, the Howlers in particular, do not much like that I’ve let Cassius come to the funeral. But I could not stand the idea of sending Roque to the sun without the Bellona kissing him farewell. His legs are chained. Hands manacled behind his back with magnetic cuffs. I un-cuff them so he can say goodbye properly. Which he does. Leaning to kiss Roque farewell on the brow.

Sevro, pitiless even now, slams shut the metal lid after Cassius is done. Like Mustang, the little Gold came for me, in case I needed him. He has no love for the man, no heart for someone who betrayed me and Victra. Loyalty is everything to him. And, in his mind, Roque had none. So too with Mustang. Roque betrayed her as readily as he betrayed me. He cost her a father. And though she can understand Augustus was not the best of men, he was her father nonetheless.

My friends wait for me to say something. There’s nothing I can say that will not anger them. So, as Mustang recommended, I spare them the indignity of having to listen to compliments about a man who signed their death warrants, and instead recite the most relevant lines of one of his old favorites.

Fear no more the heat o’ the sun

Nor the furious winter’s rages,

Thou thy worldly task hast done,

Home art gone, and ta’en thy wages;

Golden lads and girls all must

As chimney sweepers come to dust

“Per aspera, ad astra,”
my Golden friends whisper, even Sevro. And with a press of a button, Roque disappears from our lives to begin his last journey to join Ragnar and generations of fallen warriors in the sun. I remain behind. The others leave. Mustang lingers with me, eyes following Cassius as he’s escorted away.

“What are your plans for him?” she asks me when we’re left alone.

“I don’t know,” I say, angry she would ask that now.

“Darrow, are you all right?”

“Fine. I just need to be alone right now.”

“OK.” She doesn’t leave me. Instead, she steps closer. “It’s not your fault.”

“I said I want to be alone.”

“It’s not your fault.” I look over at her, angry she won’t leave, but when I see how gentle her eyes are, how open to me they are, I feel the tension in my ribs release. The tears come unbidden.

Streaking down my cheeks. “It’s not your fault,” she says, pulling me close as I feel the first sob rattle my chest. She wraps her arms around my waist and puts her forehead into my chest. “It’s not your fault.”

—

Later that night my friends and I have supper together in the stateroom I’ve inherited from Roque. It’s a quiet affair. Even Sevro doesn’t have much to say. He’s been quiet since Victra left, something gnawing in the back of his mind. The trauma of the past few days weighs heavy on all of us. But these few men and women know where we travel, and it’s that knowledge that adds even more weight than

the regular soldier carries.

Mustang wants to stay behind with me, but I don’t want her to. I need time to think. So I quietly click the door shut behind her. I am alone. Not just at the table in my suite, but in my grief. My friends came to Roque’s funeral for me, not him. Only Sefi was kind about his passing, because over the course of our journey to Jupiter she learned of Roque’s prowess in battle and so respected him in a pure way the others can’t. Still, of my friends, only I loved Roque as much as he deserved in the end.

The Imperator ’s stateroom still smells like Roque. I leaf through the old books on his shelves. A piece of blackened ship metal floats in a display case. Several other trophies hang on the wall. Gifts from the Sovereign “For heroism at the Battle of Deimos” and from the ArchGovernor of Mars for

“The Defense of Aureate Society.”
Sophocles’s Theban Plays
lies open on the bedside. I’ve not changed the page. I’ve not changed anything. As if by preserving the room I can keep him alive. A spirit in amber.

I lie down to sleep, but can only stare at the ceiling. So I rise and pour three fingers of scotch from one of his decanters and watch the holoTube in the lounge. The web is down thanks to the hacking war. Creates an eerie feeling being disconnected from the rest of humanity. So I search the old programs on the ship’s computer, skimming through vids of space pirates, noble Golden knights, Obsidian bounty hunters and a troubled Violet musician on Venus, till I find a menu with recently played vids catalogued. The most recent dates to the night before the battle.

My heart thumps heavily in my chest as I sort through the vids. I look over my shoulder, like I’m

going through someone else’s journal. Some are Aegean renditions of Roque’s favorite opera,
Tristan and Isolde,
but most are feeds from our time at the Institute. I sit there, my hand in the air, about to click on the feed. But instead I feel compelled to wait. I call Holiday on my com.

“You up?”

“Now I am.”

“I need a favor.”

“Don’t you always.”

—

Twenty minutes later, Cassius, chained hand and foot, shuffles in from the hall to join me. He’s

escorted by Holiday and three Sons. I excuse them. Nodding my thanks to Holiday. “I can take care of myself.”

“Begging your pardon, sir, that’s not exactly a fact.”

“Holiday.”

“We’ll be right outside, sir.”

“You can go to bed.”

“Just shout if you need anything, sir.”

“Ironclad discipline you have here,” Cassius says awkwardly after she’s left. He stands in my circular marble atrium, eying the sculptures. “Roque always did dress up a place. Unfortunately he’s got the taste of a ninety-year-old orchestra first chair.”

“Born three millennia late, wasn’t he?” I reply.

“I rather think he would have hated the toga of Rome. Distressing fashion trend, really. They made an effort to bring it back in my father ’s day. Especially during drinking bouts and some of the breakfast clubs they had back then. I’ve seen the pictures.” He shudders. “Dreadful stuff.”

“One day they’ll say it about our high collars,” I say, touching mine.

He eyes the scotch in my hand. “This a social occasion?”

“Not exactly.” I lead him into the lounge. He’s slow and loud in the forty kilogram prisoner boots they’ve sealed his feet inside, but is still more at home in the room than I am. I pour him a scotch as he sits on the couch, still expecting some sort of trap. He raises his eyebrows at the glass.

“Really, Darrow? Poison isn’t your style.”

“It’s a cache of Lagavulin. Lorn’s gift to Roque after the Siege of Mars.”

Cassius grunts. “I never was fond of irony. Whisky, on the other hand…we never had a quarrel we

couldn’t solve.” He looks through the whisky. “Fine stuff.”

“Reminds me of my father,” I say, listening to the soft hum of the air vents above. “Not that the stuff he drank was good for anything more than cleaning gears and killing brain cells.”

“How old were you when he died?” Cassius asks.

“About six, I reckon.”

“Six.” He tilts his glass thoughtfully. “My father wasn’t a solitary drinker. But sometimes I’d find him on his favorite bench. Near this eerie path on the spine of the Mons. He’d have a whisky like this.”

Cassius chews the inside of his cheek. “Those were my favorite moments with him. No one else around. Just eagles coasting in the distance. He’d tell me what sort of trees were on the hillside. He loved trees. He’d ramble on about what grew where and why and what birds liked to roost there.

Especially in winter. Something about how they looked in the cold. I never really listened to him.

Wish I had.”

He takes a drink. He’ll find the spirit in the glass. The peat, the grapefruit on the tongue, the stone of Scotland. I can never taste anything but the smoke. “Is that Castle Mars?” Cassius asks, nodding to the hologram above Roque’s console. “By Jove. It looks so small.”

“Not even the size of the engines on a torchShip,” I say.

“Boggles the mind, the exponential expectations of life.”

I laugh. “I used to think Grays were tall.”

“Well…” He smiles mischievously. “If your metric is Sevro…” He chuckles before growing serious. “I wanted to say thank you…for inviting me to the funeral. That was…surprisingly decent of you.”

“You’d have done the same.”

“Hmm.” He’s not sure of that. “This was Roque’s console?”

“Yeah. I was going through his vids. He’s rewatched most of these dozens of times. Not the strategies or the battles against other houses. But the quieter bits. You know.”

“Have you watched them?” he asks.

“I wanted to wait for you.”

He’s struck by that, and suspicious of my hospitality.

So I press play and we fall back into the boys we were in the Institute. It’s awkward at first, but soon the whisky dispels that and the laughs come easier, the silences stretch deeper. We watch the nights when our tribe cooked lamb in the northern gulch. When we scouted the highlands, listening to Quinn’s stories by the campfire. “We kissed that night,” Cassius says when Quinn finishes a story about her grandmother ’s fourth attempt to build a house in a mountain valley a hundred kilometers from civilization without an architect.