“My game?” Mustang asks coyly. “My game is facts, Imperator. Are those not welcome here or is rhetoric alone permissible? Personally, I trust no man who fears facts.” She looks back to Vela, amused by her own barbs. “You can operate it for me, Vela. The password is L17L6363.” She grins at my surprise.
Vela looks to her brother. “She might send a message to Barca.”
“Deactivate my connection,” Mustang says. Romulus nods to Vela. She deactivates it. “Look in datafolders, cache number 3, please.” She does. At first the quiet Gold’s eyes narrow, confused at what she’s looking at. Then, as she reads, her lips curl back and the skin on her arms pucker with goose bumps. The rest of the small gathering watches her reaction with growing anxiety. “Illuminating, isn’t it, Vela?”
“What is it?” Romulus demands. “Show us.”
Vela glares hatefully at Roque, who is as confused as anyone, and walks the device to her brother. His face manages to remain impassive as he reads the data, fingers swiping through the files. I use Cassius’s information against his master now, turning his gift into an arrow aimed at her heart. Mustang and I thought it would be better coming from her, however. Lending the lie to the credibility of her friendship with Romulus.
“Put it up,” Romulus says, tossing the datapad to Vela.
“What is this?” Roque asks angrily. “Romulus…” His words falter as an image of Asteroid S-1988, part of the Karin sub-family of the Koronis family of asteroids in the Kuiper Belt between Mars and Jupiter, blossoms in the air. It rotates slowly over the table. The green stream of data beneath it spelling the Sovereign’s doom. It’s a series of falsified Society communiqués detailing the delivery of supplies to an asteroid without a base. The stream continues to roll, detailing high-level Society directives for “refueling” at the asteroid. Then it shows the footage of the ship I sent away from the main fleet to investigate the asteroid as the rest of us journeyed to Jupiter. Reds float through the dark warehouse. The small jets on their suits silent in the vacuum. But their Geiger meters, which are synced to their helms, crackle at the amount of radiation in the place. A far greater amount of radiation than is present in the legal five megaton warheads which are used in space combat.
Romulus stares at Roque. “If Rhea was not to be repeated, then why did your fleet empty a nuclear weapons depot before coming to our orbit?”
“We did not visit the depot,” Roque says, still trying to process what he’s seen and the implications of it. The evidence is compelling. All lies are better served with a hefty helping of the truth. “The Sons of Ares pillaged it months ago. The information is falsified.” He’s operating off of the wrong information. Which means the Sovereign has kept the Jackal’s sedition tight to her chest. And now she pays for trusting so few. He’s not prepared for this argument and it shows.
“So there is a depot,” Romulus asks. Roque realizes how devastating the admission was. Romulus frowns and continues. “Imperator Fabii, why would there be a secret depot of nuclear weapons between here and Luna?”
“That’s classified.”
“Surely you jest.”
“The Societal Navy is responsible for the security of…”
“If it was for security then wouldn’t it be nearer a base?” Romulus asks. “This is near the edge of the asteroid belt on the path a fleet from Luna would use when Jupiter is in closest orbit to the sun. As if it was a cache meant to be acquired by an Imperator on the way to my home…”
“Romulus, I realize how this looks….”
“Do you, young Fabii? Because it looks as if you were considering annihilation to be an option against people you call brother and sister.”
“This information is clearly falsified….”
“Except the existence of the depot…”
“Yes,” Roque admits. “That exists.”
“And the nuclear warheads. With that much radiation?”
“They’re for security.”
“But the rest of it is a lie?”
“Yes.”
“So you didn’t, in fact, come to my home with enough nuclear weapons to make our moons glass?”
“We did not,” Roque says. “The only warheads we have aboard are for ship-to-ship combat. Five megaton yield, max. Romulus, on my honor…”
“The same honor you had when you betrayed your friend…” Romulus gestures to me. “When you betrayed honorable, Lorn. My ally, Augustus. My father, Revus. That honor by which you watched as my daughter’s head was stomped in by a sociopathic matricide who takes orders from a sociopathic patricide?”
“Romulus…”
“No, Imperator Fabii. I do not believe you deserve the intimacy of using my given name any longer. You call Darrow a savage, a liar. But he came here wearing his heart on his sleeve. You came with the lies. Hiding behind manners and breeding…”
“ArchGovernor Raa, you must listen. There’s explanation if you will just…”
“Enough,” Romulus screams. Surging to his feet and slamming his large hand on the table. “Enough hypocrisy. Enough schemes. Enough lies you sniveling Core sycophant.” He trembles finally with the rage. “If you were not my guest, I would hurl my glove at you and cut your manhood away in the Bleeding Place. Your lost generation has forgotten what it means to be Gold. You have forsaken your heritage. Suckling at the tit of power, and why? For what? Those wings on your shoulders? Imperator.” He scoffs at the word. “You whelp. I pity a world where you decide if a man like Lorn au Arcos lives or dies. Did your parents never teach you?” They did not. Roque was raised by tutors, by books. “What is pride without honor? What is honor without truth? Honor is not what you say. It is not what you read.” Romulus thumps his chest. “Honor is what you do.”
“Then do not do this….” Roque says.
“Your master did this,” Romulus replies indifferently. “If she could not make us bow, she would make us burn. Again.”
Mustang tries and fails to keep the smile from her face as Roque watches the Moon Lords slip through his fingers. A darkness enters his cultured voice. One which leaves my heart in tatters. To think that voice once defended me. Now he guards something far less loving. A Society that cares nothing for him.
I always wondered why Fitchner selected Roque for House Mars. Until his betrayal I had known him to be only the most gentle soul. But now the Imperator shows his wrath.
“ArchGovernor Raa, listen to me carefully,” he says. “You are mistaken in believing we came here with intent to destroy you. We came to preserve the Society. Don’t give in to Darrow’s manipulation. You are better than that. Accept the Sovereign’s terms, and we may have peace for another thousand years. But if you choose this path, if you renege on our armistice, there will be no quarter. Your fleet is ragged. Darrow’s, wherever it hides, can be nothing more than a coalition of deserters in borrowed vessels.
“But we are the Sword Armada. We are the iron hand of the Legion and the fury of the Society. Our ships will darken the lights of your worlds. You know what I can do. You do not have a commander to match me. And when your ships burn, the knights of the Core will pour into your cities at the head flying columns and fill the air with ash enough to choke your children.
“If you betray your Color, the Compact, the Society—which is what this will be—Ilium will burn. I will acquaint you with ruin. I will hunt down every person you have ever known and I will exterminate their seed from the worlds. I will do so with a heavy heart. But I am a Man of Mars. A man of war. So know my wrath will be unending.” He extends a thin hand. The wolf of House Mars’ mouth is open in a silent, hungry howl. “Take my hand in kinship for the sake of your people and the sake of Gold. Or I will use it to build an age of peace upon the ashes of your house.”