Morning Star

The Lion of Mars dies an ignoble death, fired upon from all sides by loyalist and rebel alike. Watching Luna crackle with nuclear explosions did more to kill the bloodlust between the two navies than any peace or truce ever did. Few men truly like seeing beauty burn. But burn it does. Before the Lion is put to rest, more than twelve bombs detonate, carving new cities of fire and ash among those of steel and concrete. The moon is in turmoil.

As is the Gold Armada. With news of the Sovereign’s death and the detonation of the bombs, the Society shudders beneath our feet. Wealthy Praetors are taking their personal ships and fracturing away, heading home to Venus, Mercury, or Mars. They do not stand together, because they do not know where to stand.

For sixty years Octavia has ruled. For most living, she is the only Sovereign they have ever known. Our civilization teeters on the brink. Electrical grids are down across the moon. Riots and panic spread as we prepare to leave the Sovereign’s sanctum. There is an escape ship, but there is no escaping what we’ve done. We’ve carved the heart out of the Society. If we leave, what takes its place?

We knew we could never win Luna by force of arms. But that was never the goal. Just as it was not Ragnar’s desire to fight until all Golds perished. He knew Mustang was the key. She always has been. That’s why he risked our lives to let Kavax go. Now Mustang stands beneath the holo of the wounded moon, hearing the silent screams of the city as keenly as I. I step close to her.

“Are you ready?” I ask.

“What?” She shakes her head. “How could he do this?”

“I don’t know,” I say. “But we can fix it.”

“How? This moon will be pandemonium,” she says. “Tens of millions dead. The devastation…”

“And we can rebuild it, together.”

The words flood her with hope, as if she’s only just remembered where we are. What we’ve done. That we’re together, alive. She blinks quickly and smiles at me. Then she looks at my arm, where my right hand used to be and touches my stomach where Aja stabbed me. “How are you still standing?”

“Because we’re not yet done.”

Battered and bloody, we join Cassius, Lysander, and Sevro before the door leading out of the Sovereign’s inner sanctum as Cassius types in the Olympic code to open the doors. He pauses to sniff the air. “What’s that smell?”

“Smells like a sewer,” I say.

Sevro stares intensely at the razors he’s taken from Aja, including the one belonging to Lorn. “I think it smells like victory.”

“Did you shit your pants?” Cassius squints at him. “You did.”

“Sevro…” Mustang says.

“It’s an involuntary muscle reaction when you’re fake executed and swallow massive amounts of haemanthus oil,” Sevro snaps. “You think I would do that on purpose?”

Cassius and I look at each other.

I shrug. “Well, maybe.”

“Yeah, actually.”

He flips us the crux and makes a face, twisting his lips till it looks like he’s going to explode. “What’s happening?” I ask. “Are you…still…”

“No!” He throws his water bottle at me. “You stuck a needle full of adrenaline into my chest, asshole. I’m having a heart attack.” He swats our hands as we try to help him. “I’m good. I’m good.” He wheezes for a moment before straightening with a grimace.

“Are you sure you’re prime?” Mustang asks.

“Left arm’s numb. Probably need a Yellow.”

We snort laughs. We look like walking corpses. Only thing keeping me up are the stim packs we found on the Praetorians. Cassius hobbles like an old man, but he’s kept Lysander close to him, vetoing Sevro’s offers to end the Lune bloodline here and now by drawing his razor. “The boy is under my protection,” Cassius sneered. And now he walks with us as a sign of our legitimacy.

“I love you all,” I say as the door begins to groan open. I adjust the unconscious Jackal, who I carry on my shoulder as a prize. “No matter what happens.”

“Even Cassius?” Sevro asks.

“Especially me, today,” Cassius says.

“Stay close,” Mustang says to us, clutching the scepter tight.

The first great door parts. Mustang squeezes my hand. Sevro vibrates with fear. Then the second rumbles and dilates open to reveal a hall filled with Praetorians, their weapons drawn and pointed into the mouth of the bunker. Mustang steps forward bearing two symbols of power, one in each hand.

“Praetorians, you serve the Sovereign. The Sovereign is dead. A new star rises.”

She continues walking toward them, refusing to break her step when she nears their line of bristling metal. I think a young Gold with furious eyes might pull the trigger. But his old captain puts a hand on the man’s weapon, lowering it.

And they break for her. Parting and lowering their weapons one by one. They back away to let her pass. Their helmets slithering back into their armor. I’ve never seen a woman so glorious and powerful as she is now. She is the calm eye of the storm and we follow in her wake. Riding the Dragon Maw lift up in silence. More than four dozen of the Praetorians have come with us.

We find the Citadel in chaos. Servants ransacking rooms, guards leaving their posts in two and threes, worried for their families or their friends. The Obsidians we said were coming are still in orbit. Sefi is with the ships. We only created the ruse to draw men from the room. But it seems word has spread. The Sovereign is dead. The Obsidians are coming.

Amidst the chaos there is only one leader. And as we move through the Citadel’s black marbled halls, past towering Gold statues and departments of state, soldiers gather behind us, their boots stampeding over the marble halls to flock to Mustang, the one symbol of purpose and power left in the building. She lifts both her symbols of power high in the air, and those who first raise weapons against us see them and me and Cassius and the swelling mass of soldiers behind us and realize they’re fighting the tide. They join us, or they run. Some take shots at us, or rush forward in small bands to halt our progress, but they’re cut down before they get within ten meters of Mustang.

By the time we come before the great ivory-white doors to the Senate Chambers, behind which Senators have been sequestered inside by Praetorians, an army of hundreds is at our backs. And only a thin line of Praetorians bars our way to the Senate Chamber. Twenty in number.

An elegant Gold Knight steps forward, leader of the men guarding the chamber. He eyes the hundred behind us, seeing the purple adherents Mustang has gathered, the Obsidians, the Grays, me. And he makes a decision. He salutes Mustang sharply.

“My brother has thirty men in the Citadel,” Mustang says. “The Boneriders. Find them and arrest them, Captain. If they resist, kill them.”

“Yes, Lady Augustus.” He snaps his fingers and departs with a fist of soldiers. The two Obsidians guarding the doors push them open for us and Mustang strides into the Senate Chamber.

The room is vast. A tiered funnel of white marble. At the bottom center is a podium from which the Sovereign presides over the ten levels of the chamber. We enter on the north side, causing a disruption. Hundreds of beady Politico eyes turn their entitled focus toward us. They will have watched the broadcast. Seen Octavia die. Seen the bombs wrecking their moon. And somewhere in the room, Roque’s mother will stand up from her seat on her marble bench and crane her neck to watch our bloody band stomping down the white marble stairs to the bottom center of the great chamber, passing Senators to our right and left, bringing silence with us instead of shouts or protests. Lysander trails behind Cassius.

You can hear the rasping panicked breath of the Senate Majority Speaker as his Pink attendants help his withered form down from the podium where he was presiding over something of great importance. They were holding an election. Here, now, in the middle of chaos. And now they look like children who’ve been caught with their hands in the biscuit jar. Of course they would never suspect that the Praetorians guarding them would support rebels. Or that we could walk from the Sovereign’s bunker unimpeded. But they’ve created a Society of fear. Where men and women must attach themselves to a rising star to survive. That’s all this is. That simple human directive that allows for this coup to work. The old power is dead. See how they flock to the new.

Mustang takes the podium with the rest of us flanking her. I toss the Jackal to the ground so the Senate can see what has become of him. He’s unconscious and pale from blood loss. Mustang looks at me. This is a moment she never wanted. But she accepts it as her burden just as I have accepted mine as Reaper. I see how it troubles her. How she will need me as I’ve needed her. But I could never stand where she stands or hold what she holds. Not without destroying everyone in this room. They would never accept it. If I am the bridge to the lowColors, she’s the bridge to the high. Only together can we bind these people. Only together can we bring peace.

“Senators of the Society,” Mustang proclaims, “I stand before you, Virginia au Augustus. Daughter of Nero au Augustus of the Lion House of Mars. You may know me. Sixty years ago Octavia au Lune stood before you with the head of a tyrant, her father, and laid her claim on the post of Sovereign to this Society.”

Her keen eyes scour the room.

“I stand before you now with the head of a tyrant.” She lifts her left hand to show the head of Octavia. One of the two objects which granted us passage here. Gold respects only one thing. And to change, they must be tamed by that one thing. “The Old Age has brought nuclear holocaust to the heart of the Society. Millions burned for Octavia’s greed. Millions burn now for my brother’s. We must save ourselves from ourselves before the inheritance of humanity is ash. Today I declare the beginning of a new age.” She looks at me. “With new allies. New ways. I have the Rising at my back. A navy made of great Golden Houses which holds the Obsidian Horde in orbit. You have a choice before you.” She tosses the head on the stone podium and raises her other hand. In it is the Dawn Scepter, bestowing upon the bearer the right to rule Society. “Bend. Or break.”

A silence fills the chamber. So vast I feel it might swallow us all into itself and begin the war anew. No Gold will be the first to bend. I could make them. But better I bend for them. I fall to my knee before Mustang. Looking up into her eyes, I put my stump over my heart and feel myself swept away by the impossible joy of the moment. “Hail, Sovereign,” I say. Then Cassius falls to his knee. And Sevro. Then Lysander au Lune and the Praetorians, and then one by one the Senators fall to their knees till all but fifty kneel and break the silence together, shouting with a single riotous voice: “Hail, Sovereign. Hail, Sovereign!”

—

A week after Mustang’s ascension, I stand beside her to watch her brother hang. But for Valii-Rath and some ten men, the Jackal’s Boneriders have been found and executed. Now their leader walks past me through the crowded Luna square. His hair is feathery and combed. His prisoner jumpsuit lime green. The lowColors around us watch in silence. A light dusting of snow falls from a thin skin of gray clouds. I’m nauseous from my radiation medication. But I came for her as she came for me to watch Roque buried. She’s quiet and serene beside me. Face pale as the marble beneath our feet. The Telemanuses stand beside her, watching impassively as the Jackal climbs the stairs of the metal scaffold to where the White hangwoman waits.

The woman reads the sentence. Jeers are shouted from the crowd. A bottle shatters at the Jackal’s feet. A stone splits his forehead. But he does not blink or buckle. He stands proud and vain as they loop the noose around his neck. I wish this would bring Pax back to us. That Quinn and Roque and Eo could live again, but this man has carved his mark in the world. The Jackal of Mars will never be forgotten.

The White moves for the lever, snow gathering on Adrius’s hair. Mustang swallows. And the trapdoor opens. On Mars there’s not much gravity, so you have to pull the feet to break the neck. They let the loved ones do it. On Luna there’s even less. But no one comes forward from the crowd as the White extends the invitation. Not a soul lifts a finger as the Jackal’s legs kick and his face purples. There’s a stillness in me watching the sight. As if I’m a million kilometers away. I cannot feel for him. Not now. Not after all he’s done. But I know Mustang does. I know this tears her apart. So I lightly squeeze her hand and guide her forward. She moves across the snow in a daze to grip her twin brother’s feet. Looking up at him as if this were a dream. She whispers something and, lowering her head, she pulls down, showing him he was loved, even at the end.