The last time I pinned him down, I took the wrong weapon. What are hands to a creature like him?
All his evil, all his lies, are spun with the tongue. So I grab it with my helldiver hand, pinning it between forefinger and thumb like the fleshy little baby pitviper it is. “This is always how the story would end, Adrius,” I say down to him. “Not with your screams. Not with your rage. But with your
silence.”
And with a great pull, I rip out the tongue of the Jackal.
He screams beneath me. Blood bubbling from the mutilated stump at the back of his throat.
Splashing over his lips. He thrashes. I shove off him and stand in dark rage, holding the bloody instrument of my enemy as he wails on the ground, feeling the hatred rolling through me and seeing the stunned eyes of my friends. I leave the com in his ear so Lilath can hear him wailing and I stalk to the holocontrols and hail Victra’s ship. Her face appears, eyes widening at the sight of my face.
“Darrow…you’re alive…” she manages. “Sevro…The nukes…”
“You need to destroy the Lion of Mars, ” I say. “Lilath is detonating the bombs on the surface.
There’s hundreds more hidden in the cities. Kill that ship!”
“It’s at the center of their formation,” she protests. “We’ll destroy our fleet trying to get to it. It will take hours if we even manage.”
“Can we jam their signal?” Mustang asks.
“No.”
“EMPs?” Sevro asks, coming up behind me. Victra’s face brightens at the sight of him, before she
shakes her head.
“They have shielding,” she says.
“Use the EMPs on the bombs to short-circuit their radio transmitters,” I say. “Fire an Iron Rain and drop EMPs on the city till they’re out.”
“And plunge three billion people into the Middle Ages?” Cassius asks.
“We’ll be slaughtered,” Victra says. “We can’t drop a Rain. We’ll lose our army. And Gold will just keep the moon.”
Another bomb detonates. This one nearer the southern pole. And then a fourth at the equator. We know the consequences to each one. “Lilath doesn’t know exactly what’s happened to Adrius,” Cassius says quickly. “How loyal is she? Will she detonate all of them?”
“Not when he’s still whimpering,” I say. Least that’s my hope.
“Excuse me,” a small voice says. We turn to see Lysander standing behind us. We forgot about him
in the mayhem. His eyes are shot red from tears. Sevro raises a pulseFist to shoot him. Cassius knocks it aside.
“Call my godfather,” Lysander says bravely. “Call the Ash Lord. He will see reason.”
“Oh, like hell…” Sevro says.
“We just killed the Sovereign and his daughter,” I say. “The Ash Lord…”
“Destroyed Rhea,” Lysander interrupts. “Yes. And it haunts him. Call him and he will help you. My
grandmother would have wanted him to. Luna is our home.”
“He’s right,” Mustang says, pushing me from the console. “Darrow, move.” She’s in that locked zone of concentration. Unable to relate her own thoughts as she starts opening direct com channels to the Gold Praetors in the fleet. The towering men and women appear around us like silvery ghosts, standing among the corpses they watched us make. Last to appear is the Ash Lord. His face stricken with rage. His daughter and master both dead by our hands.
“Bellona, Augustus,” he growls, seeing Lysander among us. “Is it not enough…”
“Godfather, we have no time for recrimination,” Lysander says.
“Lysander…”
“Please listen to them. Our world depends on it.”
Mustang steps forward and raises her voice. “Praetors of the fleet, Ash Lord. The Sovereign is
dead. The nuclear blasts you see destroying your home are not Red weapons. They come from your own arsenal which was stolen by my brother. His Praetor, Lilath, is overseeing the detonation of more than four hundred nuclear warheads from the bridge of The Lion of Mars. They will continue until Lilath is dead. My fellow Aureate, embrace change or embrace oblivion. The choice is yours.”
“You are a traitor….” one of the Praetors hisses.
Lysander walks off the holopad to the table where he sat earlier. He picks up his grandmother ’s scepter and returns as the Praetors are issuing threats to Mustang.
“She is no traitor,” Lysander says, handing her the scepter. The blood of his grandmother staining his hands. “She is our conqueror.”
T he Lion of Mars dies an ignoble death, fired upon from all sides by loyalist and rebel alike.
Watching Luna crackle with nuclear explosions did more to kill the bloodlust between the two navies than any peace or truce ever did. Few men truly like seeing beauty burn. But burn it does. Before the Lion is put to rest, more than twelve bombs detonate, carving new cities of fire and ash among those of steel and concrete. The moon is in turmoil.