“So do I,” I say to the group. “And torturing him doesn’t resolve anything. Cut off his fingers one by one, and what if he still says it’s true? Do we keep cutting until he says it’s not? Either way it’s a gamble.” I get a few reluctant nods and feel relief that at least one battle’s won, if a little wary knowing how savage my friends can become.
“What did he suggest we do?” Dancer asks. “I’m sure he had a proposal.”
“He wants me to have a holoconference with the Sovereign,” I say.
“Why?”
“To discuss an alliance against the Jackal. They give us intel, we kill him before he can detonate any bombs,” I say. “That’s his plan.”
Sevro giggles. “Sorry. But that would be bloodydamn fun to watch.” He pulls up his left hand and makes a talking motion with it. ‘Hello, you old rusty bitch, you recall when I kidnaped your grandchild?’?” He pulls up his right hand. “Why yes, my goodman. Just after I enslaved your entire race.” He shakes his head. “No purpose in talking to that Pixie. Not until we’re knocking on her doorstep with a fleet. You should send me and the Howlers after good old Jackal. Can’t press a button without a head.”
“The Valkyrie will attend this mission with the Howlers,” Sefi says.
“No. The Jackal will invite a personal attack,” I say, glancing at Mustang, who has already warned me off that course. “He knows us too well to be surprised by things we’ve done in the past. I’m not throwing lives away by playing into his understanding of our strengths.”
“Do you have anyone inside his inner-circle, Regulus?” Dancer asks Quicksilver. Surprisingly, the two men seem to rather like one another.
“I did. Until your Grays broke Darrow out. Adrius had his chief of intelligence purge his inner circle. My men are all dead or imprisoned or scared shitless.”
“What do you think, Augustus?” Dancer asks Mustang.
All eyes turn to her. She takes her time in replying.
“I think the reason you’ve managed to stay alive so long is because Golds are so consumed with the individual ego that they’ve forgotten how they conquered Earth. Each thinks they can rule. With Orion returning and Sevro’s gains, your greatest strength now lies with your navy and an Obsidian army. Don’t help the Sovereign. She is still the most dangerous enemy. You help her, she focuses on you. Sow more seeds of discord.”
Dancer nods in agreement. “But are we sure the Jackal would actually use the nukes on the planet?”
“The only thing my brother ever wanted was my father’s approval. He did not get it. So he killed my father. Now he wants Mars. What do you think he’ll do if he doesn’t get it?”
A menacing silence fills the room.
“I have a new plan,” I say.
“I should bloodydamn hope so,” Sevro mutters to Victra. “Do I get to hide inside anything?”
“I’m sure we can find something for you, darling,” she says.
I nod my agreement.
He waves a hand. “Well, then let’s hear it, Reaper.”
“Hypothetically, assume we take half the cities of Mars,” I say, standing and summoning a graphic from the table that shows a red tide flowing over the globe of Mars, claiming cities, pushing back the Golds. “Say we crush the Jackal’s fleet in orbit when Orion joins us, even though we are outnumbered two to one. Say we shatter his armies. With the Valkyrie’s help, we fracture the Obsidians away from the legions and have them join us, and we have a groundswell from the populace itself. The machines of industry grind to a complete halt on Mars. We’ve rebuffed the Society’s countless reinforcements and we have insurrection in every street and we have cornered the Jackal after years of warfare. And it will take years. What happens then?”
“The machines of industry don’t stop off of Mars,” Victra says. “They keep rolling. And they’ll keep pumping men and materiel here.”
“Or…,” I say.
“He uses the bombs,” Dancer says.
“Which I also believe he’ll use on the Obsidians and our army if we go ahead with operation Rising Tide,” I say.
“We’ve been prepping the operation for months,” Dancer protests. “With the Obsidians it might just work. You just want to scrap it?”
“Yes,” I say. “This planet is why we fight. The strength of rebel armies throughout history is that they have less to protect. They can rove and move and are impossible to pin down. We have so much to lose here. So much to protect. This war won’t be won in days or weeks. It will be a decade. Mars will bleed. And at the end, ask yourselves: What will we inherit? A corpse of what was once our home. We must fight this war, but I will not fight it here. I propose we leave Mars.”
Quicksilver coughs. “Leave Mars?”
Sefi steps forward from the shadows of the stone room. “You said you would protect my people.”
“Our strength is here, in the tunnels,” Dancer continues. “In our population. That’s where our responsibility lies, Darrow.” He glances at Mustang, his suspicions clear. “Don’t forget where you come from. Why you’re doing this.”
“I have not forgotten, Dancer.”
“Are you so sure? This war is for Mars.”
“It’s for more than that,” I say.
“For lowColors,” he continues, voice gaining volume. “Win here and then spread across the Society. It’s where the helium is. It is the heart of the Society, of Red. Win here, then spread. That’s how Ares intended it.”
“This war is for everyone,” Mustang corrects.
“No,” Dancer says territorially. “This is our war, Gold. I was fighting it when you were still learning how to enslave human beings at your…”
Sevro looks at me in annoyance as our friends descend into bickering. I give him a little nod and he pulls his razor and slams it into the table. It cuts halfway through and trembles there. “Reaper’s trying to speak, you shitgobblers. Besides all this Colorism bores me.” He looks around, terribly pleased with the silence. He nods to himself and waves a theatrical hand. “Reaper, please, continue. You were getting to the exciting part.”
“Thank you, Sevro. I won’t fall into the trap of the Jackal,” I say. “The easiest way to lose any war is to let the enemy dictate the terms of engagement. We must do the thing the Jackal and the Sovereign least expect of us. Create our own paradigm so they’re playing our game. Reacting to our decisions. We must be bold. Right now we’ve sparked a fire. Rebellions in almost all Society territories. We stay here, that means we are contained. I will not be contained.”
I transfer the image on my datapad to the table so that the hologram of Jupiter floats in the air. Sixty-three tiny moons dot the periphery but the four great Jovian moons dominate its orbit. These four largest—Ganymede, Callisto, Io, and Europa—are referred to collectively as Ilium. Around those moons are two of the largest fleets in the Solar System, that of the Moon Lords, and that of the Sword Armada. Sevro looks so pleased he might faint.
I’m giving him the war he didn’t even know he wanted.
“The civil war between Bellona and Augustus has exposed larger fault lines between the Core and the Outer Rim. Octavia’s main fleet, the Sword Armada, is hundreds of millions of kilometers away from its nearest support. Excepting the Sceptre Armada around Luna it is the greatest weapon Octavia has. Octavia sent our good friend Roque au Fabii to bring the Moon Lords to heel. He has shattered every fleet that has been thrown against them, even with the help of Mustang, the Telemanuses, and the Arcoses, he has beaten the Rim down. On board these ships are more than two million men and women. More than ten thousand Obsidian. Two hundred thousand Grays. Three thousand of the greatest killers alive, Peerless Scarred. Praetors, Legates, knights, squad commanders. The greatest Golds of their Institutes. This fleet has been reinforced by Antonia au Severus-Julii. And it is the instrument of fear by which the Sovereign binds the planets to her will. It, like its commander, has never been defeated.” I pause, allowing the words to sink in so they all know the gravity of my proposal.
“In forty days we’re going to destroy the Sword Armada and rip the beating heart out of the Society war machine.” I pull Sevro’s razor out of the table and toss it back to him. “Now, I’ll take your bloodydamn questions.”