Then Mycroft caught their breath enough to murmur “Oxygen,” and I sobbed too. Fireworks devour oxygen. The chemicals may have been Martian, but precious breaths they fed on were Mars oxygen, crafted over two centuries of agonizing patience by the incremental growth of plants and microorganisms, fed on nutrients extracted from the bodies of Utopian dead. And now they burned it, undid that work, those lives, for this, these Games, to remind wrathful Earth of their solidarity, and salve the public’s bitterness about the Harbinger Peacebonding Strike. Their bid to not be Troy.
