“To build we must break,” she says. “I was listening.”
Still, I shake my head. There’s too much to overcome between us, between our people. It would be a qualified victory, on her terms. “How could I ask my men to trust a Gold army? How could I trust you?”
“You can’t. That is why I am coming with you. To prove I believe in your wife’s dream. But you have to prove something to me. That you are worthy of my trust, in turn. I know you can break. I need to see that you can build. I need to see what you will build. If the blood we will shed is for something. Prove that, and you have my sword. Fail, and you and I will go our separate ways.” She cocks her head at me. “So what do you say, Helldiver? Do you want to give it one more go?”
I help unbuckle Mustang’s pulseArmor in the cargo hold. “Cold gear is in here.” I gesture to a large plastic box. “Boots in there.”
“Quicksilver gave you the keys to his armory?” she asks, eying the winged heel on the boxes. “How many fingers did it cost him?”
“None,” I say. “He’s a Son of Ares.”
“What now?”
I grin. Comforting knowing the world isn’t an open book for her. The engines rumble and the ship rises underneath us. “Get dressed and join us in the cabin.” I leave her behind to change in private. I was more gruff than I intended. But it felt strange smiling in her presence. I find Ragnar leaning back in his chair in the passenger cabin eating chocolates, white boots up on the adjacent armrest. “No offense, but what the hell are you doing?” Holiday asks me. She stands, arms crossed, between the cockpit and the passenger cabin. “Sir.”
“Taking a risk,” I say. “I know it might seem strange to you, Holiday. But I go back with her.”
“She’s the definition of the elite. Worse than Victra. Her father—”
“Killed my wife,” I say. “So if I can stomach it, so can you.” Holiday makes a whistling sound and heads back to the cabin, unhappy with our new ally.
“So the Mustang joined our quest,” Ragnar says.
“She’s getting dressed,” I reply. “You had no right to let Kavax go. Much less tell him where we would be. What if they gave us up, Ragnar? What if they ambushed us? You would never have seen your home. If they find out we’re there, they’ll never let your people off the surface. They’ll kill them all. Did you think of that?”
He eats another chocolate. “A man thinks he can fly, but he is afraid to jump. A poor friend pushes him from behind.” He looks up at me. “A good friend jumps with.”
“You’ve been reading Stoneside, haven’t you?”
Ragnar nods. “Theodora gave it to me. Lorn au Arcos was a great man.”
“He’d be glad you think so, but take everything with a grain of salt. The biographer took some liberties. Especially in his early life.”
“Lorn would have told you that we need her. Now, in war. And after, in peace. If we do not bring her to our cause, then we will not win until every Gold is dead. That is not why I fight.”
Ragnar rises to greet Mustang as she joins us. The last time they stood eye to eye, she had a gun pointed at his head. “Ragnar, you’ve been busy since I last saw you. Not a Gold alive doesn’t know and fear your name. Thank you for releasing Kavax.”
“Family is dear,” Ragnar says. “But I warn you. We go to my lands. You are under my protection. If you play your tricks, if you play your games, that protection is forfeit. And even you will not survive long on the ice without me, daughter of the lion. Do you understand?”
Mustang bows her head respectfully. “I do. And I will repay your faith in me, Ragnar. I promise you that.”
“Enough chatter. Time to buckle up,” Holiday snaps from the cabin. Vesta’s synced with the ship and pushing out of the hangar. We find our seats. There’s twenty to choose from, but Mustang takes the one next to me in the left aisle. Her hand grazes my hip accidentally as she reaches for her seat harness.
Our ship departs the hangar, silently floating forward into the vacuum of the dim subcutaneous industrial world of Phobos. Pipes and loading docks and garbage bays as far as we can see. Closed off to the stars and the light of the sun. Few ships as lovely as ours have ever flown so far beneath the surface of Phobos. The word LowSector is rendered in white paint over an industrial transport hub where men pour into ships, and the ships trundle up out of this dim world toward the sector gates that the Sons have breached.
Our sleek yacht passes a motley fleet of slow-moving garbage haulers and freighters. Inside, men and women huddle quietly together in windowless, dirty steel cubes. Sweat drenches their backs. Their hands shake holding unfamiliar instruments: weapons. They pray they can be as brave as they’ve always imagined themselves to be. Then they’ll land in some Gold hangar. The Sons will shout orders. The doors will open and they will meet war.
I pray silently for them, clenching my hands as I stare out the window. I feel Mustang watching me. Measuring the tides deep within.
Soon we leave the industrial Stacks behind, trading the dim recesses for the neon advertisements that bathe the space boulevards of the midSector. Manmade canyons of steel to either side. Trams. Elevators. Apartments. Every screen connected to the web has been slaved by Quicksilver’s hackers, showing images of Sevro and the Sons overrunning security gates and checkpoints, painting scythes on walls.
And around us, the city of thirty million churns. Deep space commercial transports racing past little civilian taxis and skippers meant to go between the buildings here. Freighters soar from the Hollows up through the midSector toward the Needles. A flight of ripWings hunts through the streets above us. I hold my breath. With a flip of a trigger they could shred us. But they don’t. They register our highColor ship ID and hail us over the coms and offer an escort out of the warzone toward a current of yachts and skiffs that blaze quietly away from the moon.
“Stirring speech,” Victra purrs over the ship’s com as I answer the call from Quicksilver’s tower, her bored voice at odds with the warring world around us. “Clown and Screwface just took Skyresh’s main terminals. Rollo’s men have seized the water cisterns for the midSector. Quicksilver’s networks are broadcasting it all the way to Luna. Scythes popping up everywhere. There’s riots in Agea, Corinth, everywhere on Mars. And we’re hearing the same from Earth and Luna. Municipal buildings are falling. Police stations burning. You’ve woken the rabble.”
“They’ll hit back soon.”
“As you said, darling. We massacred the first responders the Jackal sent. Got a few Boneriders, just as we wanted. No Lilath or Thistle, though.”
“Damn. Worth a shot.”
“Martian Navy is on its way from Deimos. The Legions are coming, and we’re making our final preparations.”
“Good. Good. Victra, I need you to let Sevro know that we’ve added a member to our expedition. Mustang’s joined us.”
Silence from her. “Am I on a private line?”
Holiday tosses me a headset from the cockpit. I wrestle the headset on. “You are now. You don’t agree.”
The bitterness in her tone is acute. “Here are my thoughts. You can’t trust her. Look at her brother. Her father. Greed is in her blood. Of course she would ally with us. It fits her aims.” I watch Mustang as Victra speaks. “She needs us because she’s losing her war. But what happens when we give her what she needs? What happens when we’re in her way? Will you be able to put her down? Will you be able to pull the trigger?”
“Yes.”