“Yes, my liege.” Pliny squints. “If it is indeed they who perpetrate the acts.”
“What other ant bites us?”
“None, that we know of. But there are spiders, ticks, rats in the worlds. The bombings are crude for Ares, indiscriminate, uncharacteristically violent. Discontiguous from the pattern of technological sabotage and propaganda in his profile. Ares is not capricious, so I struggle believing these acts originate from him.”
Augustus frowns. “Then what do you suggest?”
“Perhaps there is another terrorist group, my liege. With eighteen billion souls on the census, I hardly think one man has a monopoly on terrorism. Perhaps even a criminal syndicate. I’ve been creating a database I can share.…”
Pliny is right. The terror attacks that have plagued Mars and other planets make little sense. Dancer spoke of justice, not revenge. These attacks are petty and gruesome—the bombing of barracks, fashion outlets, bazaars, highColor coffee shops and restaurants. Ares would never condone them. They draw too many eyes for too little result, daring the Golds to act, to crush the Sons.
I’ve sent messages to Dancer via the holoBox. Nothing. Just silence. Could he be dead? Or has Ares abandoned me for this new strategy of bombing?
Pliny yawns. “Perhaps Ares has changed his tactics. He’s a deuced one.”
“If Ares is a man,” Leto says.
“Interesting.” Augustus swivels abruptly. “What makes you think Ares isn’t a man?”
“Why do we assume he’s a man? He could be a woman. Could be a group of individuals for all we know, which would go a long way toward explaining the discordant nature of these new attacks.” Leto turns to me, eyes inclusive. “Darrow, what do you think?”
“Don’t befuddle Darrow with complex questions!” Pliny crows defensively. “Make it a yes or no so he can understand.” Pliny flashes me the most pitying of smiles and squeezes my shoulder in sympathy. “Behind his lepid smiles, he’s an honest, simple beast. You should know that.”
I stand there and take it.
He turns away. “In any manner, Leto, you’re forgetting we designed Red culture to be highly patriarchal. Their identity as a people centers around the collection of resources to propagate the embryonic terraforming of Mars. Physically strenuous, grueling tasks performed by men. Tasks we don’t let their women perform, even if they are capable, pursuant to the Stratification Protocol. So, you see, it can’t be a woman, because no roughneck Ruster would follow a man or a woman who has never ridden a clawDrill.”
Leto smiles cleverly. “If Ares is a Red.”
Pliny and Augustus both laugh. “Maybe he’s a deranged Violet who’s taken his acting to a new stage,” Pliny offers.
“Or a Copper cambist beleaguered by filing provincial tax returns,” Leto adds.
“No! An Obsidian who, dare I say, has finally forsaken his terror of technology and developed the skills to use a holoCamera?” Pliny slaps his leg. “I’d give away one of my Roses just to see—”
“My goodmen. Enough.” Augustus cuts him off, tapping his finger on the desk. Pliny and Leto share a grin and turn back to Augustus. “Your recommendation, Pliny?”
“Of course.” Pliny clears his throat. “Unlike their propaganda and cyber attacks, the brutality is quite simple to counter. Ares or not, issue a simple reply. Our kill teams are prepared for tactical strikes on several terrorist training grounds beneath Mars’s surface. We should strike now. If we wait, I fear the Sovereign’s Praetorians will take matters into their own hands. Luneborn don’t understand Mars. They’ll slag it up.”
“A fool pulls the leaves. A brute chops the trunk. A sage digs the roots.” Augustus pauses. “Something Lorn au Arcos once said to my father. It’s engraved on the Hall of Blades in New Thebes. Striking training grounds will do nothing except fill the holoNet with pretty explosions. I tire of political plays. Our strategy must change. With every bombing, the Sovereign grows wearier of my administration.”
“You govern Mars,” Leto says. “Not Venus or Earth. Ours is not a placid planet. What does she expect?”
“Results.”
“What do you have in mind, my liege?” Pliny asks.
“I intend to poison the Sons of Ares’s roots. I want suicide bombers, not Grays. Find the ugliest, nastiest Reds on Mars, hold their families hostage, and threaten to kill their sons and daughters if the fathers do not do as we command. Focus the suicide bombers on surface areas with high youth density as well as two choice mines. No women bombers. I want social divide. Women against violence.”
How little life costs here. Just words in the air.
“Urban areas too,” he continues. “Not just Browns and Red miners and agriculturalists. I want dead Blue and Green children in schools or arcades next to Sons of Ares glyphs. Then we’ll see if other Colors still sing that girl’s gorydamn song.”
My heart dips a beat. Eo’s song spread further than she dreamed, reaching the holoNet and ripping across the Solar System, shared over a billion times thanks to anarchist hacker groups. Time and again, I fear I’ll be recognized. Perhaps some Gold will search through the records to find that Eo’s husband’s name was also Darrow. But even I hardly recognize that skeletal, pale boy. And as for names? There are no true records for lowRed names. I had a number designation given to me by some officious Copper administrator. L17L6363. And L17L6363 was hanged from his neck until dead, whereupon his body was stolen by an unknown perpetrator and presumably buried in the deep mines.
“You plan to alienate Red from the other Colors, then alienate the Sons from Red.” Pliny smiles. “My liege, sometimes I wonder why you even need me.”
“Do not patronize me, Pliny. It’s beneath the both of us.”
Pliny bows. “Indeed. Apologies, my liege.”
Augustus looks back to Leto. “You’re squirming like a pup.”
“I worry this will make matters worse.” Leto frowns to himself. “Right now the Sons are a nuisance, yes. But hardly our chief plight. If we do this, we could be pouring fuel on the flames. And worse, we’d be as guilty as the Sons themselves. Terrorists.”
“There is no guilt.” Pliny peers idly at a stream of data on his datapad “Not when you’re the judge.”