“These poor souls believed in Ares. They all believed in Eo. They all believed in you.Ibelieved in you,” she says. “The hope I felt when you led us to victory against Fabii…” She laughs at herself. “Well, I forgot Helldivers are used to plunging headlong into the dark, outracing the debris they leave behind.” She tosses the holocube to me. “We are your debris, Darrow, and we matter. You’re so good at memorizing, learn the names of those you betrayed.”
She heads for the door, then stops and pulls out my neck chain and Pax’s key.
“What is this?” she asks.
“It’s from my son. He made me a bike.”
She tosses it back to me, then slams the door.
In her absence I rage at her intransigence, at Aurae’s betrayal, at this consummate inanity of my own people killing me. I should have struggled when I saw Cheon’s tell, moments before Lyria shouted a warning. I should have ripped my seat from the bolts that fastened it to thedeck—I had even chosen that seat because I noticed that rust had corroded the metal. I should have put on the Twilight Helm, killed them all, and stormed the Deep, taken Athena prisoner and had her march me to the ships she stole from the Raa. I should have left these fools to die, and gone home to save my planet.
The rage passes. In its wake, I’m left sick to my stomach. I pick up Pax’s key and put the chain around my neck. Then I pick up the cube Athena left behind. Turning it over and over in my hands, I feel it gaining weight. The mass of guilt has weighed down on my soul for so long that holding it, facing it, is harder than charging through any breach.
I activate the cube. Holograms emerge.
A thousand little horrors grow and infest my cell. They are the interrogations and executions of the Sons of Ares I betrayed. All the things I’ve run from for so many years. But it was not the moments of brutality recorded in the cube that would make me rove the rooms and halls Virginia and I shared whenever I made it home, not really. I could handle the violence, the death. It was the lives I’d cut short that would make me insane with guilt. It’s the unimaginable complexity and love and hope in those lives that I could never understand, never witness, that made me feel as if I had invited an abyss between Virginia and me as we laid in bed. A writhing, black, stinking hole that would always stand between me and my son.
I gave over lowColors like me—like Eo—to Romulus.
Why?
Because I was afraid I could not win if I didn’t. So many died for me so I could lay by my wife, cradle my son, win my war, have my peace.
I watch the executions with dry, sober eyes. Not one of the Reds, Oranges, Browns, or Pinks executed had my training or my teachers or a Mickey to make them into a god of war. Yet not one of them begged or recanted. Some died quiet. Some screamed. But most shouted a name.
I thought it would be Ares’s name that they shouted before death. Or Eo’s name. But no.
It was mine.
60
DARROW
The Weight of Guilt
The Daughters of Areshave assembled for my trial.
I shuffle through the old nickel mine draped in chains. The gold cape a few Black Owls hung around my shoulders in mockery sways. A dozen guards lead me forward. I search for Sevro in the crowd but do not find him or Lyria. My grubby prisoner’s shift itches. It feels familiar, the shift, the chains, the fear. How many different kinds of shackles have I worn over the years?
My judges are far more numerous than the guards. There must be seven thousand of the armed rebels, as many as the chamber will hold. They watch from the suspended cable walkways, dangle their feet from the circular jumpways that link the levels of the mine township, and perch atop landed skimmer hulls. They crowd the bottom level to either side of my route to the dais where I will be judged. They are equal parts women and men. In their ranks, I see what I recognize as Reds, Browns, Yellows, Pinks, and Oranges. All cover their sigils in black wraps.
“They are the original Daughters. All lost kin in Romulus’s purge,” Aurae says. Their faces may be soft from lifetimes spent far from the sun, but their eyes are harder than any miner’s hands.
On Luna, I strode before senators with contempt in my every step. It got me nowhere. So, I look these judges in their eyes, as humble as a seven-foot-tall man of war can be amongst those bred for service and toil. I take on their contempt, their anger, their resentment, just as I took in the love of my Free Legions. If I deserved one, I certainly deserve the other.
Most fearsome of all are the young. Callous youths who’ve never known me as a hero, puffing their burners, polishing their guns, picking their teeth, swaying their boots. They glare at me in silence from the jumpwalks that string across the cavern to link its levels. My eyes chance on a slim Brown girl above. She looks no older than Eo was when she died. Her hair is shaved, half of her pale face smeared in grease or war paint. A big weapon meant for a Gray lies in her lap. She sees me looking at her and she makes a gun of her hand, points it at me, and pulls the trigger.
“You said Athena preached forgiveness,” I say.
Aurae seems sad. “She did once. Now she carries a gun.”
I turn on Aurae as we reach the stage. She tried to take the gold cape from my shoulders when I entered, but had her hands swatted away by the Owls. Athena waits atop the stage wearing her helmet, a gun, and Pyrphoros. Behind her, Diomedes stands chained. Aurae watches him with pained eyes. “It’s love then?” I ask.
“He once told me that love which obstructs duty is not love. It is an addiction that must be denied.” She smiles, sad. “Maybe he was right.”
“No. He’s a noble idiot who was brainwashed by a military cult, and somehow still turned out to be a decent man. Aurae. Two-thirds of Europa’s population is still on the surface. If Diomedes and Athena can be brought to reason, then we could evacuate many of them down here. I think I can convince the Raa, but Athena will listen to you. If you—”
“She has listened to me. And to Sevro and Lyria. But Diomedes’s life is not in her hands. Neither is yours. It is in theirs.” She nods out to the Daughters and their sea of vengeful eyes.
