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The township is one of two dozen townships surrounding the Common. It is a hivelike cluster of homes carved into the rock walls of the old mines. Stone and earth are our ceilings, our floors, our home. The Clan is a giant family. Eo grew up not a stone’s throw from my house. Her brothers are like my own. Her father like the one I lost.
At the center of the township dangles a massive holoCan. It’s a square box with images on each side. Pixels are blacked out and the image is faded and fuzzy, but never has the thing faltered, never has it turned off. It bathes our cluster of homes in its own pale light. Videos from the Society.
over to either side. We’re all connected. Except for Gamma. They live in the Common, above the taverns, repair booths, silk shops, and trade bazaars. The Tinpots live in a fortress above that, nearer the barren surface of our harsh world. That’s where the ports lie that bring the foodstuffs from Earth to us marooned pioneers.
The holoCan above me shows images of mankind’s struggles, which are then followed by soaring music as the Society’s triumphs flash past. The Society’s sigil, a golden pyramid with three parallel bars attached to the pyramid’s three faces, a circle surrounding all, burns into the screen. The voice of Octavia au Lune, the Society’s aged Sovereign, narrates the struggle man faces in colonizing the planets and moons of the System.
Her hands shimmer with the symbol of Gold emblazoned upon their backs—a dot in the center of a winged circle—gold wings mark the sides of her forearms. Only one imperfection mars her golden face—a long crescent scar running along her right cheekbone.
“You brave Red pioneers of Mars—strongest of the human breed—sacrifice for progress, sacrifice to pave the way for the future. Your
“I salute you. I love you. The helium-3 that you mine is the life-blood of the terraforming process.
Soon the red planet will have breathable air, livable soil. And soon, when Mars is habitable, when you brave pioneers have made ready the red planet for us softer Colors, we will join you and you will be held in highest esteem beneath the sky your toil created. Your sweat and blood fuels the terraforming!
The Sons of Ares are called tribal murderers, called bringers of chaos.
making Mars ready for the other Colors.
“The Golds dance in pairs, Obsidians in threes, Grays in dozens,” he told me. “We dance alone, because only alone do Helldivers drill. Only alone can a boy become a man.”
Eo is of the mind that the fungus, grendel, which we distill, isn’t native to Mars and was instead planted here to enslave us to the swill.
We call that place the Pot. It is the fortress where our keepers live and sleep.
Beyond that is the uninhabitable surface of our planet—a barren wasteland that I’ve only
After a day in the Webbery harvesting spiderworm silk, I don’t know how the wives manage to look so lovely.
Hair still like old blood, irises still as rust-red as Octavia au Lune’s are golden. My skin is tight and pale, but I’m pocked with scars—burns, cuts.
But the women, they’re beyond us, beyond me. Lovely and spry despite the Webbery, despite the children they bear. They wear layered skirts down past their knees and blouses of half a dozen reds. Never anything else. Always red. They’re the heart of the clans. And how much more beautiful they will look wrapped in the imported bows and ribbons and laces contained in the Laurel boxes.
Only winning the Laurel can get you more food.
But my Color is my Color, and I am cursed as a Copper to live a tedious life of data, bureaucracy, and management.” He clucks his tongue and his copper curls bounce as his gravBoots shift.
We didn’t spend the money to send the pioneers here. Without them, we’d be on the dying Earth like the rest of humanity.
I am a Helldiver. I was born to sacrifice, to make Mars ready for man.
Our sweat and blood watered this soil. Yet it belongs to the Golds, to the Society. How long has it been this way? A hundred, a hundred and fifty years of pioneers mining and dying? Our blood and their orders. We prepare this land for Colors that have never shed sweat for us, Colors that sit in comfort on their thrones on distant Earth, Colors that have never been to Mars.
“Death isn’t empty like you say it is. Emptiness is life without freedom, Darrow. Emptiness is living chained by fear, fear of loss, of death.
Mars could be ours. It could belong to the colonists who slaved here, died here.”
The things you could do, Darrow. The things you could make happen.” She pauses and I see her eyes are glistening. “It chills me. You have been given so, so much, but you set your sights so low.”
Cloaked in gold and black. Wrapped in the sun. A lion roaring upon his breast.
and the only line I see is that of a scar, which runs along his right cheekbone.
I’ve learned from the HC that such a scar is borne only by the finest of the Golds. The Peerless Scarred, they call them—men and women of the ruling Color who have graduated from the Institute, where they learn the secrets that will permit mankind to one day colonize all the planets of the Solar System.
Besides Octavia au Lune, this is the most famous face on Mars—that of Nero au Augustus. The ArchGovernor of Mars
They breed them for war, and watching them is like watching the coldblooded pitvipers who infest our mines. Reptiles both.
In the face of cold power, she is fire. This is the girl who danced through the smoky tav with a mane of red. This is the girl who wove me a wedding band of her own hair. This is the girl who chooses to die for a song of death.
The swill tastes strange and thicker than usual. Strange. He makes me finish the flask.
“The best thing he ever did was tell us about you. And he should have done that when you were a boy, but he kept you a secret. He’s worked for us since before your father’s death as an informer, you know.” “Is he hanged now?” “Now that he pulled you down? I should hope not. We gave him a jammer to shut off their ancient cameras. He did the work of a ghost.”
“Do you know why we call ourselves Sons of Ares, Darrow? To the Romans, Mars was the god of war—a god of military glory, defense of the hearth and home. Honorable and all. But Mars is a fraud. He is a romanticized version of the Greek god Ares.”
But I know how Gold rose to power hundreds of years ago. They call it the Conquering. They butchered any who contested them. Massacred cities, continents. Not many years ago, they reduced an entire world to ash—Rhea. The Ash Lord nuked it to oblivion.
Mars’s red and barren surface is scarred with the green of grass and struggling woods. The sky above is blue, stained with stars. The terraforming is complete.
Soon the softer Colors will join us, once Mars is habitable. But they have already joined us. Earth has come to Mars and we pioneers were left below, slaving, toiling, suffering to create and maintain the foundation of this … this empire. We
“Earth ain’t overcrowded, Darrow. Seven hundred years back, they expanded to their moon, Luna. Because it is so difficult to launch spacecraft through Earth’s gravity and atmosphere, Luna became Earth’s port through which it colonized the moons and planets of the Solar System.”
“HighReds live as maintenance workers, sanitation, grain harvesters, assembly workers. LowReds are those of us born beneath the surface—the truest slaves.
On distant Luna, buildings rise seven miles high; there the Sovereign Consul, Octavia au Lune, rules with her Imperators and Praetors. The Ash Lord, who made the world of Rhea cinders, is her minion. She controls the twelve Olympic Knights, legions of Peerless Scarred, and Obsidians as innumerable as the stars. And those Obsidians are only the elite.
The Gray soldiers prowl the cities ensuring order, ensuring obedience to the hierarchy. The Whites arbitrate their justice and push their philosophy. Pinks pleasure and serve in highColor homes. Silvers count and manipulate currency and logistics. Yellows study the medicines and sciences. Greens develop technology. Blues navigate the stars. Coppers run the bureaucracy. Every Color has a purpose. Every Color props up the Golds.
The men are freakishly muscular and tall. Their arms and chests bulge with artificial strength, and they flaunt their muscle like girls showing off new toys.
But most Golds do not walk; they are permitted gravBoots and coaches, as are any of the Coppers, Obsidians, Grays, and Silvers with
A Bronze is a faded Gold. Of the same class, but looked down on for inferior appearance, lineage, and capabilities. “Not a Bronze,” Dancer confirms.
“Or a Pixie?” “We don’t want him to go to nightclubs and eat caviar like the rest of those worthless Golds. We want him to command fleets.”
You cannot do what a Gold can do. They are killers, born to dominate us; have you ever met one of the Aureate? Sure, they may look all pretty and peaceful now. But do you know what happened in the Conquering? They are monsters.”
“The Institute is not a school, it is a culling ground where the Golds go to hack at one another till the strongest in mind and body is found. You. Will. Die.”
“The golden ancestors, they call them the iron Golds. They were hard men. They stood lean and fierce upon their battlecruisers as they laid waste to the armies and republic fleets of Earth. What creatures they were.”
