Golden Son

He looks around as I hoped he might. He calls up his men on a com at his desk. After a moment, he looks back up to us. “Sun-hwa,” he whispers. “Her men are dead and she’s gone like the wind. She survived the last attack too.” Then he laughs. “She betrayed me.” And when he sees the money transferred to Sun-hwa’s accounts, he’ll find all the corroborating evidence he needs to pin the blame on his chief of security. Only thing is, Sun-hwa is loyal as a dog and dead as a doornail in the cargo hold of the shuttle that now tears away from the Jackal’s winter citadel carrying Fitchner, Sevro, and my once-captured friends.

I come beside the Jackal as Victra tries the door again. Together we watch the ship disappear beyond the mountains. And I say in a low, menacing voice, “We will kill the rats, together. I promise. All of them.”

“After the Sovereign,” he says, patting my back. “After the Sovereign.”

46

BROTHERHOOD

I hug Dancer so hard his back cracks. He taps me in panic. I apologize and separate, feeling large as a Telemanus next to him. Outside the garage-turned-makeshift-office, the Sons of Ares warehouse rattles with industry. They brought me in through the side door and had me wait for Dancer among old engines and rusted aerlons.

Dancer pulls back from me and looks up, rusty eyes glittering with tears. Startling to think that I once considered him a handsome man. He’s in his forties; old for a Red. Hair shot with gray. Face creased by age and hardship. His right arm still hangs limp. His foot still drags. And his smile still stretches wide enough, baring uneven, imperfect teeth.

“My boy,” he says, gripping my shoulder with his left hand. It’s stronger than all the rest of him put together. He smells like tobacco. Nails are yellow. “My bloodydamn beautiful little bastard of a boy. You look so bloody grand!” He laughs and laughs again, shaking his head. “There are no words. I’m sorry I couldn’t reach you. Sorry I let Harmony use you like that. There are so many things, Darrow.”

“Stop.” I clap the back of his neck. “We’re brothers. No need for apologies. We’re bound by blood and past. But please, please don’t let it happen again.” He nods. “How is my family, do you know?”

“Alive,” he says. “Still in the mines. I know. I know. But that’s the safest place for them with this war abound. No one wants to blow up Mars’s industry. Register?”

He waves me to a seat. “Don’t know many Golds, but that Sevro’s a nasty little shit. When I delivered his father’s instructions to him out on the Rim, I thought he was going to cut me from gob to pucker.” He lights a burner, winks at me. “Never met anyone like him.”

“He’s loyal as they come,” I say. “Like you.”

“No! I mean he can swear better than any bloodydamn Red.”

“Sevro swears?” I smile. “Guess you get used to it. Though he does like saying ‘bloody’ a hell of a lot now.”

“It’s a fine word. Rolls off the tongue. Done some research.” He puffs up his chest. “Been with us since the first ancestors, you know. The first Golds, the ones with normal eyes and gold uniforms, took most of the early recruits from the poor bastards from the Irish isles after the radiation from London turned the isles into a wasteland. The Golds took the highly skilled migratory workforce and recruited them to be the first Pioneers. Their slang just stuck around, jumbled up a bit. History’s fascinating, isn’t she?”

“Harmony’s been making up her own history,” I say.

“That’s right. I’m dead!” He shakes his head and lights another burner, flicking the other onto the floor. I pick it up and put it in the wastebasket. “She went her own way about a year after you left. We discovered several Senators were going to be vacationing on the Gorgon Sea. So we showed up to bug their villa to see if we couldn’t get any secrets. We didn’t. Just lots of … depraved shit. And that was that, we thought. But not for Harmony. On the last night, she walked in and killed the Senators and their guests. Then she left us.”

“So there was never a lurcher squad that raided your headquarters?”

He shakes his head. “They came because of her. Killed about forty Sons. But she’d already left for Luna. Ares saved us. Came in hard with a mixed pack of Obsidians and Grays. Laid waste to those lurchers, then slipped away before reinforcements came. It’s lucky he killed them all. No way they wouldn’t know he was a Gold after that. Had our first face-to-face that day. Man’s bloodydamn scary.”

“Not the word I’d choose.” Though maybe it’s accurate considering how well he fooled me. “It doesn’t bother you that he’s a Gold?”

“It doesn’t bother him that we’re Reds. Ares would die for the cause, Darrow. Shit. He started it. You know why he did?”

I shake my head.