I look at them and wish I could say:we have received information of an armory of unknown size located on the fringe of the asteroid belt. Your mission will be to investigate the scene, locate the armory, and acquire any possible weapons or ships that may be of use in the defense of Mars.
But I cannot. Instead, I say, “My friends, this mission may decide the fate of our Republic. I wish I could tell you its purpose, but you will be traveling through enemy-held space and the chance of capture is high. Your ships are fast, but the Rim’s are faster. Your route will also take you through the territory under attack by Volsung Fá, the warlord who stole most of the Volk fleet eight months ago. Only your captains and my emissaries know where you are going. Not all of you will survive. But at least one of your shipsmustsurvive to reach its destination. The Republic and Mars depend on you. Your children and my own depend on you. I thank you for your trust, from the bottom of my heart. Good fortune and good speed.” I lift my fist. “Hail libertas!”
“Hail Reaper!” they shout and board up.
His name isDarrow,I think. Because the Reaper is not mine. He’s not the man I love. Darrow is.Endure,I once told him. Yet it is I whomust endure. Reaper.Reaper. It never stops. They mean well, and the Reaper’s name feeds them power. But they shout for the god while I carry a hollowness inside me the size of the man.
It’s lonely. I miss my husband.
The five senators acting as my emissaries linger behind the crews to receive my parting words. They represent three Colors—Red, Gold, and Silver. They’re the best emissaries I can spare. I shake each of their hands. “You all know Regulus. He’s as prickly as a cactus, but if his heart still beats for the Rising, I know no better emissaries to help him remember it. Win him back to our cause,” I say. “Our agent has not reported in since her last transmission. And we believe her ship has been destroyed, so keep in mind that you may not be met with open arms.” I pause. “You cannot be captured en route. You all understand?”
They nod. I wish them luck and watch them board before turning to return to my own shuttle, flanked by Lionguards. Kavax waits for me there. The look in his eyes is unmistakable.
“Word from Victra?” I ask. He nods. I sigh. I had hoped that she would be able to escape the noose that’s slowly tightening around Mars. Instead, as I glance at the report, I see she’s taken more casualties than we can afford. “If we can’t punch out and hit them, this becomes a war of attrition.”
He nods again. “Fortunately, we have all the helium.”
“And they have everything else. Including helium.”
“If the Rim shares their inferior variety,” he says. “That stuff they mine from the Gas Giants is like jellybeans without sugar, you know.”
“If only reactors were as judicious as Sophocles.”
“Sarcasm never inspired anyone. Let them come, I say. Let them come and die. Atalantia, Atlas, Lysander, Ajax, Helios, Dido. We will make Mars their grave.”
I cannot share his ardor. Kavax has lost two sons. I have not yet lost my one. I see the grief in his face. The hatred in his eyes when he looks up at the sky. There the reassuring lights of our ships and orbital battle stations twinkle, but none shine so brightly as Phobos, the headquarters of our orbital defenses of Mars and the site of Victra’s precious dockyards. I try to believe our defenses are strong enough to stop what will come.
On my flight to Agea from my gun battery inspections on the Thermic coast, I saw fishing boats on the sea, children flying kites, workersdigging bunkers, and soldiers making rings for pankration in the shadows of their war machines. All know a battle is coming, but on the surface of the planet, it does not quite feel like a siege yet.
In orbit over Mars, the tale is different. Millions in the navy and defense installations are on battle-watch. With the Solar System turned into soup by the enemy’s anti-sensor drones, I feel as though we’ve returned to the dark ages. Our long-distance coms are unreliable. Our radar and lidar assaulted by false signatures. The enemy could come and we’d have less than a week’s notice.
I wag the report at Kavax. “This could have been done over coms. I take it you’re coming along to see Pax?”
He nods. “It isn’t every day the Conservatory allows a student to see his mother. Even if she is the Sovereign.”
I pat my old guardian on the shoulder and head for my shuttle. My bodyguards fall in behind us. “Pax will be happy to see you. Where is Sophocles by the way, I don’t know how you’re standing without him?”
“In the shuttle already,” he says. “I’ll bet you a bottle of Rath red that he’s chosen your seat.”
—
The wind howls as I wait for my son outside his school. The Darkstar Conservatory is perched high on a mountain. Nearby, only a few military installations and training facilities dot the range that stretches south to the continent’s end. Several hundred banners snap in the twilight. The banners are as no-nonsense as the school’s founder, Orion. Each bears the school’s sigil on a field of black—a blue trident piercing a cracking golden planet.
A perfect black sphere, the school looks as indomitable to its stark environs as I wish I felt. The Conservatory was to be the forge where the next generations of ripWing aces, destroyer captains, and torchShip daredevils were made. Already the influence of their first graduating class is being felt in the ranks, their elite alumni aiding our struggle against Gold command superiority—though many say it is too little, too late.
It was five years ago that I watched Darrow give his speech at the school’s opening ceremony. After he surrendered the rostrum to Orion, he came to stand beside me. The smile on his face, and then his lightness at the afterparty, remains one of the more pleasant memories of the last decade. He was happy. He was proud of Orion. And he saw himself, if only for one evening, as a builder of the future.
It seems so long ago now. We both thought we had so much future ahead of us. Our future has shrunken and darkened now that Pax is studying within the Conservatory’s walls. Now that the enemy is setting the table for the inevitable siege of Mars.
When Pax was born out beyond the ecliptic plane, I was on the run after my father had been murdered and Darrow taken captive by my brother in a garden on Mars. Back then I never would have imagined I’d be sending my precious boy to study at a place like the Conservatory, yet it is where he asked to go. He knows all too well the expectations the people have of him—he’s already famous as the Boy Who Killed a TorchShip. The holo experience is even available on the black web.
My son will be a warrior.
It makes no difference if he fights with ships or blades; either way the fate that awaits my son fills me with inexpressible regret and guilt. Worse, I’ve always let him know it. It was the only fight we have ever had, that day the shuttle took him from Agea south to the Conservatory. I’d have that moment back if I could. We have not spoken since, and according to school rules, we ordinarily would not be allowed to until he graduates six years from now.
But a Sovereign should be permitted some privileges, shouldn’t she?
At first, the school’s administrators, all Blues, wouldn’t let me inside. They believe the first step to creating a naval officer is severing the recruits, especially those not born Blue, from their original Color’s familial structures. No mothers, no fathers, not for those of the navy’s killing elite. Their only family will be the brothers and sisters of the sect. The school’s method is effective, but to me it feels too utilitarian and almost insidious.
