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All that soft shit; it ain’t for me. I’m not allowed to have it. Sevro craves all that. Sevro is weak. Sevro slags up. Sevro wants the family and the peace and the quiet.
:(((((
“So what you’re saying is, without your friends, you’d be slagged and the Rising would be ashes?” I scoff. “Welcome to the club, asshole. Where do you think I’d be without you?
PLEASE
“I wish you could see what I see, man. What Victra sees, what your girls see, what millions of Red children see when we look at you.
In the cold prison of our minds, we are alone with our self-hatred, our doubts, and guilt. No one more than Sevro. A friend may reach through the bars and hold our hand, but they cannot open the door for us. Only the prisoner has the key. All I can do is remind him we’re waiting for him when he gets out.
But how could Atlas ever respect Ajax, who had everything and gave nothing to the Society when Atlas lived amongst these patriots who have given everything for a Society that would give them nothing in return?
“Well done. Well done indeed. But really, will you take that out? You sound insane.” Fá detaches a device from his throat and sets it on the table.
Wtf
“She will,” Atlas says. “I need her nervous system, not her spine.” “And what exactly do you need her for?” I ask.
Wtf
There’s an infestation there I wanted rooted out.”
Oh no. Daughters?
It is exactly what I would have done: gain space supremacy by defeating the Raa navy, eliminate their moon defense bases, then capture the Garter to grip their whole civilization by the windpipe. Now that another leader has done it, the brutality the act required seems a sin against humankind.
Dustwalkers, Obsidians, Ascomanni, those are my fears in descending order.
Hmmm
If they are truly my enemies, then why do I want to weep?
Is Cassius a best friend? Weird how comfortable I am with the thought.
Now kith
When I see his eyes, I feel his bottomless sorrow. They are shot red from crying and panicked like a child’s. I imagined a stoic warrior beneath the helmet. Instead I see a man whose world is in tatters and his home filled with ghosts.
I remember being amused by his daughter Seraphina and wondering what her future would hold. I try to picture her going off to war. All I can see is a little girl sealed inside a starShell. Did she die at Kalyke? Here? Phobos? Earlier in the war?
He’s definitely lying, but I’ve planted the seed that needed planting. Even if he leaves our company, we will have earned his honor, and the worry about a hidden hand will keep his interest.
Darrow. Cmon.
am here to claim what is rightfully mine. The life of Volsung Fá. He killed Sefi. The sister of Ragnar. Your sworn queen, last I checked. I’ve come to declare ashvar upon him.
Darrow no
You must leave this place. When Fá learns you live, he will offer a mountain of helium for your head. He will not fight you. He will drop atomics on whatever city he believes you inhabit. He will scorch a continent from space to kill you.
Listen to him!!!
I shout and shout but even the voice of a god sponsored by Sun Industries is powerless to stop the killing.
Lyria’s words crackle through static. I look to the sky. “There’s my girl!” Cassius shouts. I don’t know if he means Lyria or his ship.
I head away from them, knowing I’ve just opened Pandora’s box, but enough is enough from this Obsidian fraud.
Darrow you fool
“We are all freaks,” he says and shows his sigils. “They made us so.”
I know magic isn’t real. I know it’s all science. But if I don’t know the science, it might as well be magic.
The man’s feet are bare, the long toenails curled into the grate floor.
SEVRO LOLOL
“Yeah? Well, I have a new rule. I don’t talk to bastards.”
Icon
“I dunno. I just think you’re a good man and you have a huge heart and I don’t think people say that enough. Just wanted you to know that I see it, Bellona.”
“Go on now. Before I try to keep you,” he says.
Don’t think I’ve seen him emote once, except sometimes when he’s looking at Aurae when she can’t see him.
Would kill for a diomedes aurae novella
will never be harmed here. We owe that much to his father. You and the Raa, on the other hand, may not be so lucky. To say nothing of the Obsidian.”
Oh god
I’m beginning to think maybe I should not have come here. I peer around the chamber.
Yea no shit
You are not a god, Darrow. You cannot wave your hand and hurl down the enemy. Mars is doomed. The Republic has lost.
“Well, I forgot Helldivers are used to plunging headlong into the dark, outracing the debris they leave behind.” She tosses the holocube to me. “We are your debris, Darrow, and we matter.
It was the lives I’d cut short that would make me insane with guilt. It’s the unimaginable complexity and love and hope in those lives that I could never understand, never witness, that made me feel as if I had invited an abyss between Virginia and me as we laid in bed. A writhing, black, stinking hole that would always stand between me and my son. I gave over lowColors like me—like Eo—to Romulus. Why? Because I was afraid I could not win if I didn’t. So many died for me so I could lay by my wife, cradle my son, win my war, have my peace.
Wow
Yet not one of them begged or recanted. Some died quiet. Some screamed. But most shouted a name. I thought it would be Ares’s name that they shouted before death. Or Eo’s name. But no. It was mine.
Oh my god
My grubby prisoner’s shift itches. It feels familiar, the shift, the chains, the fear. How many different kinds of shackles have I worn over the years?
“I expected you to be an arrogant tyrant. That is what they see. Show them what you showed me. Show them who you are. A traveler on a path,”
As she recites several more accusations, I find Sevro in the crowd. It is hard to meet his eyes. They are angry. They should be. I brought us here despite his warnings. How many times have I ignored him?
You know your path. If you think you are alone on it, just look to your right, look to your left, look across the solar system, and see what I see. A tide of one people who want only one thing: liberty.”
“Civilization is based on exchange and social contracts. I was taught that the lowColors exchanged liberty for security and stability. We have failed to provide security. We have failed to provide stability. We have failed you. The contract is broken. Take your due.”
Wow
“I’m in the middle of a rescue, actually. While it is taking longer than expected, I’m optimistic with regards to its outcome.”
I love him so much
“You talked forever,” Diomedes mutters at me. “And looked weak.” “You basically told them to slag off and shoot you,” I snap.
Hahahaha
“What a waste of talent. Honestly, it’s like a bad joke. We might be the best three razormasters to share a room in the last sixty years, and it’s a prison!
“That is why our armada is gone. I did not trust my instincts. You seem to have learned from your mistakes. So I will trust my instincts now.” He looks up with dark conviction. “I believe my uncle was that imposter.
YES DIOMEDES!!!!!!
“Inertia,” I reply, abandoning my efforts on the door. “Atlas would have had to put this plan in motion years ago.” Diomedes nods his agreement. “Not even he could stop the boulder once it started rolling downhill. And…because he knows the Republic has already lost,” I admit. Cassius stares at me. “It’s true. As things stand. Atlas is preparing for the future. It’s not just about punishing you, Diomedes. That’s not how he works. He’s all about closed loops. He’ll make the Rim remember fear, and pave the way for a savior named Lune.”
darrow i could kiss u on the mouth
“They missed the ambush, Cassius. But they’ll arrive in time to play the hero. I know Atlas. All this horror he’s spread has been under the name of Atalantia—the impalements, the burnings, the pacifications. It makes sense now. He’s not a sociopath. He’s a student of history. He’ll pin all the evil on the Republic and on Atalantia, then take this war to the abyss so a snow-white savior can pull the worlds out into a shining dawn.” I laugh. Even the name of the ship is too rich. “Silenius the Light Bringer. Lysander the Light Bringer. That son of a bitch.”
Whatever animus I have for Lysander, I feel compassion for my friend, so I shut my mouth, and hope Diomedes’s words are true.
Lol
“Then he was two. Then three. Now he is Mars. He is the Daughters. He is billions. So why are we fading? Because we don’t wanna be here. We wanna be on the other side of this shit. We’re waiting to live. But this is it. This is our life until we change it. That’s all right.
Gossip like that goes through an army faster than the clap.” Aurae, Cassius, and Athena wrinkle their noses, but Diomedes nods along like it’s common wisdom.
Pls
So we do not ask for you to dismantle the hierarchy in a day. All we ask is that you swear an oath to make abolition your personal cause until the day it passes in the Decagon. If we are to be allies in war, we must know we will be peers in peace.”
LFG
“We don’t hold the sins of the ancestors against their descendants, Raa. Give me your oath and I’ll put the blade in your hand myself.”
He seems a different creature than the commander I saw in the war room. Tired, smaller somehow. His left hand has a tremor. His neck’s stooped, body contracted. I almost feel bad for interrupting his moment of respite.
:(
