Morning Star (Red Rising, #3)

by Pierce Brown

“No Ares to save you. No Mustang to love you. You are alone, Darrow.” The Jackal’s eyes are distant and quiet. “Like me.” He lifts up a black eyeless mask with a muzzle on it and straps it to my face. Darkening my sight. “This is how it ends.” To break me, he has slain those I love. But there is hope in those still living. In Sevro. In Ragnar and Dancer. I think of all my people bound in darkness. Of all the Colors on all the worlds, shackled and chained so that Gold might rule, and I feel the rage burn across the dark hollow he has carved in my soul. I am not alone. I am not his victim. So let him do his worst. I am the Reaper. I know how to suffer. I know the darkness. This is not how it ends.

Man is no island. We need those who love us. We need those who hate us. We need others to tether us to life, to give us a reason to live, to feel.

“Cassius’s sensibilities are offended, Adrius,” Antonia says from her place near the Jackal. She’s a poisoned apple of a woman. Shiny and bright and promising, but rotten and cancerous to the core. She killed my friend Lea at the Institute. Put a bullet in her own mother’s head, and then two more into her sister Victra’s spine.

“There, there, Calliope. You did well. You did well.” The Jackal turns to Aja. “For the public, honey is always better than vinegar. But for those who war with wrenches, with poison, with sabotage in the sewers and terror in the streets, and nibble at us like cockroaches in the night, fear is the only method.” His eyes find mine. “Fear and extermination.

“Shouldn’t we be going up?” I ask as we descend on a gravLift deeper into the heart of the mountain citadel’s prison. “Or is there a lower hangar bay?” “Good guess, sir,” Trigg says, impressed. “We’ve got a ship waiting.” Holiday pops her gum. “Trigg, you’ve got some brown on your nose. Just…there.” “Oh, shut your hole. I’m not the one who blushed when he was naked.” “Sure about that, kiddo?

“Have a heart. Darrow, you’re no murderer. You’re no Titus.” The heartbeat sound of the room deepens. White light silhouetting him. He wants pity. My pity was lost in the darkness. The heroes of Red songs have mercy, honor. They let men live, as I let the Jackal live, so they can remain untarnished by sin. Let the villain be the evil one. Let him wear black and try to stab me as I turn my back, so I can wheel about and kill him, giving satisfaction without guilt. But this is no song. This is war.

“There’s no debate here. You are a terrorist, and you must be brought to justice.” “Then why are you talking with me, you bloodydamn hypocrite?” “Because honor still matters. Honor is what echoes.” His father’s words. But they are as empty on his lips as they feel in my ears. This war has taken everything from him. I see in his eyes how broken he is. How terribly hard he is trying to be his father’s son. If he could, he would choose to be back by the campfire we made in the highlands of the Institute. He would return to the days of glory when life was simple, when friends seemed true. But wishing for the past doesn’t clean the blood from either of our hands.

“Listen to the wind, Cassius. Listen to the bloodydamn wind.” The two knights tilt their heads. And still they do not understand the strange groaning sound that drifts up from the valley floor, because how would a son and daughter of Gold ever know the sound of a clawDrill gnawing through rock? How would they guess that my people would come not from the sky, but from the heart of our planet? “Goodbye, Cassius,” I say. “Expect me.” And I push off the ledge with both legs, flinging myself backward into open air, dragging Holiday and Victra into thin air.

My enemies are too great. Too many. And I too weak. I shake my head, running my thumb over her knuckles. “I thought I would never see you again.” “Yet here you are.” Somehow she makes it sound cold. So like my mother to be the one with dry eyes when both the men can barely speak. I always wondered how I survived the Institute. It damn well wasn’t because of my father. He was a gentle man. Mother is the spine in me. The iron. And I clutch her hand as if such a simple gesture could say all that.

As he speaks, I watch my mother stare distantly at a crackling lightbulb in the ceiling. What is this like for her? For a mother to see her child broken by other men? To see the pain written in scars on his skin, spoken in silences, in far-off looks. How many mothers have prayed to see their sons, their daughters return from war only to realize the war has kept them, the world has poisoned them, and they’ll never be the same?

Delighted by the size of them and the Gold Sigils, she grabs my thumb and tries to bite it with her gums. Her world is alien to the horrors I know. All the child sees is love. Her skin is pale and soft against mine. She’s made of clouds and I of stone. Her eyes large and bright like her mother’s.

“Go on,” I say. “I don’t know if he knows what comes next. That’s why I’m glad you’re back, little brother. I know you’ve got a plan. I know you can save us.” He says it with so much faith, so much trust. “Of course I’ve a plan,” I say, because I know it’s what he needs to hear. But as my brother contentedly refills his mug, my uncle catches my eye and I know he sees through the lie and we both feel the darkness pressing in.

“Glad you said that. Cuz they’re yours.” I blanch. “What?” “They’re yours.” “My what?” “Your eyes!” “My eyes…” “Did yon Friendly Giant drop you on your head in the rescue? Mickey had your eyes in a cryobox at his joint in Yorkton—creepy place, by the by—when we raided it for supplies to bring back to Tinos to help the Rising. I figured you weren’t usin’ ’em, so…” He shrugs awkwardly. “So I asked if he’d put ’em in. You know. Bring us closer together. Something to remember you by. That’s not so weird, right?” “I told him it was odd,”

The Sons of Ares are guerilla fighters. Saboteurs. Spies. But in this war, Lorn’s words haunt me. “How do sheep kill a lion? By drowning him in blood.”

“When I was a boy, we always wanted to know who the bravest of us was,” I say. “We’d sneak out of our homes at night and go down into the deeptunnels and stand with our backs to the darkness. You could hear the pitvipers if you were quiet. But you could never tell how close they were. Most boys would break and run after a minute, maybe five. I always stood the longest. Till Eo found out about our game.” I shake my head. “Now I don’t think I’d last a minute.” “Because you now know how much there is to lose.”

“I know I can’t be what these people need.” He frowns. “And how would you know what they need when you are afraid of them? When you can’t even look upon them?” I don’t know how to answer. He stands abruptly and extends a hand to me. “Come with me.”

“Ask him,” a man beside him urges. “Vanno…” “Shut up.” Vanno sighs. “Boys have been wonderin’. Did you get to keep it?” “Keep what?” “It.” He looks at my groin. “Or did they…you know…make it proportionate?” “You really want to know?” “I mean…not for personal reasons. But I’ve got money riding on it.” “Well.” I lean forward seriously. So do Vanno and his bedmates nearby. “If you really want to know, you should ask your mother.” Vanno stares at me intensely, then explodes into laughter. His bedmates laugh and spread the joke to the far edges of the room. And in that tiny moment, the mood shifts. The suffocating sterility cut through with amusement and crude jokes.

Forget a man’s name and he’ll forgive you. Remember it, and he’ll defend you forever.

I’ve never been a man of joy or a man of war, or an island in a storm. Never an absolute like Lorn. That was what I pretended to be. I am and always have been a man who is made complete by those around him. I feel strength growing in myself. A strength I haven’t felt in so long. It’s not only that I’m loved. It’s that they believe in me. Not the mask like my soldiers at the Institute. Not the false idol I built in the service of Augustus, but the man beneath. Lykos may be gone. Eo may be silent. Mustang a world away. And the Sons on the brink of extinction. But I feel my soul trickling back into me as I realize I am finally home.

“Thirty million people,” I whisper. “Incredible.” I can feel her eyes on me. “You don’t agree with Sevro’s plan, do you?” My thumb picks at a wad of pink gum stuck to the rusted bulkhead. Kidnapping Quicksilver will get us intel and access to vast weapons factories, but Sevro’s play against the economy is more concerning. “Sevro kept the Sons alive. I didn’t. So I’ll follow his lead.” “Mhm.” She eyes me skeptically. “I wonder when you started believing grit and vision were the same thing.”

Sevro’s got his knee in the man’s groin. “Pretty pajamas, boyo. Wanna see what they look like in red?” I flinch at the coldness in this voice. Knowing the tone all too well. Hearing it from the Jackal as he tortured me in Attica. “Where is your master?” Sevro twists his knee. The Pink wails in pain, but still refuses to answer. The Howlers watch the torture in silence, bent, faceless stains in the dark room. There’s no discussion. No moral question at play. I know they’ve done this before. I feel dirty in the realization, in hearing the Pink sobbing on the ground. This is more a part of war than trumpets or starships. Quiet, unremembered moments of cruelty.

“And Pax is dead. Why? ’Cause you let enemies live. This isn’t the Institute, boyo. This is war.” He jams a finger in my face. “And war is really bloodydamn simple. Kill the enemy when you can, however you can, as fast as you can. Or they kill you and yours.”

No. I’ll not let Sevro’s shortsightedness ruin us. “Slag that,” I say. “Pebble, hail Holiday. Tell her evac is squabbed. Give her our coordinates. She’s to park one kilometer beyond the glass, ass end our way.” Pebble doesn’t reach for her datapad. She glances at Sevro, torn between us, not knowing who to follow. “I’m back,” I say. “Now do it.” “Do it, Pebble,” Ragnar says.

turn to Sevro. “Lay charges at the door. Company’s coming.” He says nothing. It’s not anger behind his eyes. It’s the secret seeds of self-doubt and fear coming to blossom, hate seeping into his eyes. I know the look. I’ve felt it on my own face too many times to count. I’m ripping away the only thing he’s ever cared about. His Howlers. After all he’s done, I make them choose me over him, when he doesn’t trust I’m ready. It’s an indictment of his leadership, a validation of the intense self-doubt I know he must feel in the wake of his father’s passing.

I’m terrified as we slide toward the broken viewport. Hands shaking. Doubting my decision as I now stare it in the face. Sevro was right. We should have pushed into the building. Killed Kavax or used him as a shield. Anything but the cold. Anything but the Jackal’s darkness from which I only just escaped. It’s just fear, I tell myself. It’s just fear making me panic. And it’s spread through my friends. I see the horror on their faces. How they look back at me and see that fear reflected in my own. I cannot be afraid. I’ve spent too long being afraid. Too long being diminished by loss. Too long being everything except what I need to be. And whether I am the Reaper, or whether it’s just another mask, it’s one I must wear, not just for them, but for myself. “Omnis vir lupus!” I shout, kicking my head back to howl, exhaling all the air in my lungs. Beside me, Ragnar’s eyes widen in wild ecstasy.

as we pretend to be brave, we become so.

And I wonder, in my last moments, if the planet does not mind that we wound her surface or pillage her bounty, because she knows we silly warm things are not even a breath in her cosmic life. We have grown and spread, and will rage and die. And when all that remains of us is our steel monuments and plastic idols, her winds will whisper, her sands will shift, and she will spin on and on, forgetting about the bold, hairless apes who thought they deserved immortality.

There’s rubble and corpses floating around the sector now. HC crews crawling everywhere.” “Ragnar?” I ask fearfully, not having heard him yet. “I am here, my friend. The Abyss will not claim us yet.” He begins to laugh. “Not just yet.”

“Imprisoned?” Kavax squints at me, then bursts into laughter. “No, lad. No. Not a man or woman has left their station. The Pax is just as you left it. Orion commands, the rest follow.” “I don’t understand. She’s letting a Blue command?” “Do you think Virginia would have let you live in that tunnel when you and Ragnar were on your knees if she did not believe in your new world?” I shake my head numbly, not knowing the answer. “She would have killed you on the spot if she thought you were her enemy. But when she sat before my hearth as a girl beside Pax and my children, what stories did I read them? Did I read them myths of the Greeks? Of strong men gaining glory for their own heads? No. I told them tales of Arthur, of the Nazarene, of Vishnu. Strong heroes who wished only to protect the weak.”

Victra rolls her eyes at the bravado. “You’re a welder with delusions of grandeur.” Rollo steps forward and knocks a set of wrenches off a table. They clatter on the ground, startling Clown and Holiday, who look up from the datapad. Rollo stares up indignantly at Victra. She’s easily a foot taller than him, but he doesn’t break his gaze. “I’m an engineer. Not a welder.”

My boys, don’t believe what they tell you in school. Government is never the solution, but it is almost always the problem. I’m a capitalist. And I believe in effort and progress and the ingenuity of our species. The continuing evolution and advancement of our kind based on fair competition. Fact of the matter is, Gold does not want man to continue to evolve. Since the conquering, they have routinely stifled advancement to maintain their heaven. They’ve wrapped themselves in myth.

“Look where we are. In space. Above a planet we shaped. Yet we live in a Society modeled after the musings of Bronze Age pedophiles. Tossing around mythology like that bullshit wasn’t made up around a campfire by an Attican farmer depressed that his life was nasty, brutish, and short.

My wife falls. I flinch, hearing the rustling of her clothing. The creaking of the rope. And I look down at the hologram, forcing myself to watch as the boy I was stumbles forward to wrap his hands with their Red Sigils around her kicking legs. I watch him kiss her ankle and pull her feet with all his feeble strength. Her haemanthus falls, and I speak. “I would have lived in peace. But my enemies brought me war. My name is Darrow of Lykos. You know my story. It is but an echo of your own. They came to my home and killed my wife, not for singing a song but for daring to question their reign. For daring to have a voice. For centuries millions beneath the soil of Mars have been fed lies from cradle to grave. That lie has been revealed to them. Now they’ve entered the world you know, and they suffer as you do. “Man was born free, but from the ocean shores to the crater cities of Mercury to the ice waste of Pluto down to the mines of Mars, he is in chains. Chains made of duty, hunger, fear. Chains hammered to our necks by a race that we lifted up. A race that we empowered. Not to rule, not to reign, but to lead us from a world torn by war and greed. Instead, they have led us into darkness. They have used the systems of order and prosperity for their own gain. They expect your obedience, ignore your sacrifice, and hoard the prosperity that your hands create. To hold tight to their reign, they forbid our dreams. Saying a person is only as good as the Colors of their eyes, of thei...

while the Society military garrison, caught reeling from the attack on their headquarters, rushes to stop the upward migration. The Legions have training and organization on their side. We have numbers and surprise. Not to mention fury.

There’s three levels to the yacht, the upper and bottom for Gold use. The middle for cooks, servants, and crew. There’s four staterooms, a sauna, and crème leather seats with dainty little chocolates and napkins sitting primly on armrests in the passenger cabin to the far back of the cockpit. I pocket one. And then a couple more.

I’m struck by the silence in the cargo bay and the hangar as I finish lacing my boots. There’s still fifteen minutes left on my datapad’s timer, so I sit on the edge of the ramp, legs dangling off, to wait for Ragnar. I pull the chocolates from my pocket and slowly peel the foil off. Taking half a bite, I let the chocolate sit on my tongue, waiting for it to melt as I always do. And as always, I lose patience and chew it before the bottom half is melted through. Eo would make candy last for days, when we were lucky enough to have it.

Among great warriors and statesmen, there’s a young man I recognize standing by a horse. “What is wrong?” Ragnar asks. “Nothing,” I say. “I knew her son is all. Priam. He seemed decent enough.” “Decent is not enough,” Ragnar says forlornly. “Not for their world.”

’Lo, Mustang.” I search the rest of the hangar. “How did you find me?” She frowns in confusion. “I thought you wanted me to come. Ragnar told Kavax where I could find you…” She trails off. “Oh. You didn’t know.” “No.” I look back up at the ship’s mirror cockpit windows, where Ragnar must be watching me. The man’s overstepped his bounds. Even as I arranged a war, he went behind my back and endangered my mission. Now I know exactly how Sevro felt.

“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?”

“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.”

“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.”

These civilians are discovering that their place in the world is smaller than they imagined. They do not matter. In war, men lose what makes them great. Their creativity. Their wisdom. Their joy. All that’s left is their utility. War is not monstrous for making corpses of men so much as it is for making machines of them. And woe to those who have no use in war except to feed the machines.

Laughter evil and inhuman rumbles so loud I think it’s coming from the buffeting wind. But it comes from Ragnar, his head tilted back as he laughs to his gods. “Odin knows we are coming to kill him. Even false Gods do not die easily!” He throws himself from his seat and runs down the hall, laughing insanely, not listening as I shout for him to sit down. Shells whisper past him. “I am coming, Odin! I am coming for you!”

On the horizon, a bloody ribbon of red ties the twilight sky to the ragged coastline of volcanic rock. A giant man stands atop the rock. Black and huge against the red light. I blink, wondering if my mind is playing tricks on me. If I’m seeing Fitchner before my death. The man’s mouth is an open dark chasm into which no light escapes. “Darrow, tuck in!” Mustang shouts. I lower my head between my knees, wrap my arms around it. “Three…two…one.” Our ship punches into the ice.

“What was it like growing up here?” Mustang asks Ragnar. She sits cross-legged with her back against the wall. I lay adjacent to her, a backpack between, on one of the mattresses Ragnar dragged inside the room to line its floor, on my third serving of pasta. “It was home. I did not know anything else.” “But now that you do?” He smiles gently. “It was a playground. The world beyond is vast, but so small. Men putting themselves in boxes. Sitting at desks. Riding in cars. Ships. Here, the world is small, but without end.”

“That’s my family. Mother was never the same. I’d hear her crying in the middle of the day. See her staring out the window. Then one night she went for a walk at Caragmore. The estate my father gave her as a wedding present. He was in Agea working. She never came home. They found her on the rocks beneath the sea cliffs. Father said she slipped. If he was alive now, he’d still say she slipped. I don’t think he could have survived thinking anything else.” “I’m sorry,” Holiday says. “As am I.” “It’s why I’m here, since that’s what you were wondering,” Mustang says. “My father was a titan. But he was wrong. He was cruel. And if I can be something else”—her eyes meet mine—“I will be.”

“And we owe them a debt,” Ragnar says. “For Lorn, Quinn, Trigg. They came here to hunt us. Now we hunt them.”

Ragnar hurls one of his razors at Aja like a huge throwing knife. It flips end over end in the air. She doesn’t move. It slams into her. She spins backward. For a moment I think he’s killed her. But then she turns back to us, holding the razor by the hilt in her right hand. She caught it. A dark fear sweeps through me as all of Lorn’s warnings about Aja come rushing back. “Never fight a river, and never fight Aja.”

“Stop,” Mustang shouts. She’s twenty meters away, aiming her bow at Cassius. Hand quivering from the strain of the taut string. “I will put you down.” “No,” he says. “You would…” The bowstring snaps. He jerks his razor up to deflect the arrow. Misses, slower than Aja. The serrated iron tip punches through the front of his throat and out the back of his neck, the feather fletching scratching the underside of his dimpled chin.