Red Rising (Red Rising Saga, #1)

by Pierce Brown

“All men are not created equal,”

They would say the meek should inherit the Earth. That the strong should nurture the gentle. This

is the Noble Lie of Demokracy. The cancer that po...

“You and I ar...

We tower above the flesh heap of man, shepherding the lesser Colors. You have...

“Power must be claimed. Wealth won. Rule, dominion, empire purchased with blood.

You do not know pain.

Soon, we will teach you why Gold rules mankind. And I promise, of those

among you, only those fit for power will survive.”

But I am no Gold. I ...

I was forged in the bowels of this hard world. Sharpened by hate. Strengthened by love. He is wrong. None of them will survive.

There is a flower that grows on Mars. It is red and harsh and fit for our soil. It is called haemanthus. It means “blood blossom.”

Not when the Golds tried him. Not when the Grays hanged him.

My brother Kieran

Eo tucked a haemanthus into Father’s left workboot

My sister Leanna

On Mars there is not much gravity. So you have to pull the feet to break the neck. They let the loved ones do it.

frysuit. The suit is some kind of nanoplastic and is hot as its name suggests. It insulates me toe to head.

I ride atop the clawDrill.

To be a Helldiver, they say your fingers must flicker fast as tongues of fire. Mine flicker faster.

My existence is vibration, the echo of my own breath, and heat so thick and noxious it feels like I’m swaddled in a heavy quilt of hot piss.

I look up the thin vertical shaft I’ve carved today. Above, precious helium-3 glimmers like liquid silver,

pitvipers that curl through the darkness seeking the warmth of my drill. They’ll eat into your suit too,

so they can lay their eggs.

Like me, their ancestors came from Earth, then Mars and the deep tunnels changed them.

I’ve been in the mines for three years. You start at thirteen. Old enough to screw, old enough to crew.

Little Eo—a tiny girl hidden beneath a mane of red. Red like the rock around me, not true red, rust-red. Red like our home, like Mars. Eo is sixteen too. And she may be like me—from a clan of Red earth diggers, a clan of song and dance and soil—but she could be made from air, from the ether that binds the stars in a patchwork. Not that I’ve ever seen stars. No Red from the mining colonies sees the stars.

But she took the short rations and waited for me to reach sixteen, wedAge for men,

“Gas pocket, that’s what,” Narol snaps.

“Remember the words of our golden leader. Patience and obedience, young one. Patience is the better part of valor. And obedience the better part of humanity. Listen to your elders.”

Loran, my cousin and Narol’s son,

The Laurel. Twenty-four clans in the underground mining colony of Lykos, one Laurel per quarter. It means more food than you can eat. It means more burners to smoke. Imported quilts from Earth. Amber swill with the Society’s quality markings.

Gamma clan has had it since anyone can remember.

Eo says the Laurel is the carrot the Society dangles, always just far enough beyond our grasp. Just enough so we know how short we really are and how little we can do about it. We’re supposed to be pioneers. Eo calls us slaves. I just think we never...

Actually, just one man cared for my uncle, and he died when my uncle pulled his feet.

she would say that my “blisters have not yet become calluses.”

Gamma has the Laurel. That’s the way things are and will ever be. We of Lambda just try to scrape by on our foodstuffs and meager comforts. No rising. No falling.

Nothing is worth risking death.

I eat too much because I’m sixteen and still growing tall; Eo lies and says she’s never got much of an appetite. Some women sell themselves for food or luxuries to the Tinpots (Grays, to be technic about it),

Those drills will melt your bones if you’re not careful. And I’m not careful. Just nimble.

The scanner flickers in my hand as it takes its reading. My suit is bubbling and I smell something sweet and sharp, like burned syrup. To a Helldiver, it is the smell of death.

Then the scanner blinks silver and I’ve got what I came for.

I see my bootheel melting. The first layer goes. The second bubbles. Then it will be my flesh.

I flip out my hinged slingBlade from its back holster.

“Minimal gas,” I say. “Drilling now, Uncle.”

My clan and Gamma’s three hundred men already have their toes under the metal railing when we reach the rectangular gravLift.

Gravity alters and we shoot upward. A Gamma scab with less than a week’s worth of rust under his nails forgets to put his toes under the railing. So he hangs suspended as the lift shoots up six vertical kilometers. Ears pop. “Got a floating Gamma turd here,” Barlow laughs to the Lambdas.

I grip the rust-red nanoplastic of the kid’s frysuit and jerk him down. Kid.

I remember when I met my first Helldiver. I thought he was a god.

He’s dead now.