I’ve not slept since the battle two days ago. Neither, it seems, has Romulus. His eyes are dark with anger and exhaustion. He’s lost an arm and a son on the day and more, so much more. Neither one of us could risk meeting in person. So all we have left between us is this holo conference.
“As promised, you have your independence,” I say.
“And you have your ships,” he replies. Marble columns stretch up behind him, carved with Ptolemaic effigies. He’s on Ganymede, in the Hanging Palace. The heart of their civilization. “But they will not be enough to defeat the Core. The Ash Lord will be waiting for you.”
“I hope so. I have plans for his master.”
“Do you sail on Mars?”
“Perhaps.”
He allows a thoughtful silence. “There’s one thing I find curious about the battle. Of all the ships my men boarded, not one nuclear weapon over five megatons was found. Despite your claims. Despite your…evidence.”
“My men found plenty enough,” I lie. “Come aboard if you doubt me. It’s hardly curious that they would store them on the Colossus. Roque would want to keep them under tight watch. We’re only lucky that I managed to take bridge when I did. Docks can be rebuilt. Lives cannot.”
“Did they ever have them?” Romulus asks.
“Would I risk the future of my people on a lie?” I smile without humor. “Your moons are safe. You define your own future now, Romulus. Do not look the gift horse in the mouth.”
“Indeed,” he says, though he sees through the lie now. Knows he was manipulated. But it is the lie he must sell to his own people if he wants peace. They cannot afford to go to war with me now, but their honor would demand it if they knew what I’d done. And if they went to war with me, I would likely win. I have more ships now. But they’d hurt me bad enough to ruin my real war against the Core. So Romulus swallows my lies. And I swallow the guilt of leaving hundreds of millions in slavery and personally signing the death warrants of thousands of Sons of Ares to Romulus’s police. I gave them warning. But not all will escape. “I would like your fleet to depart before end of day,” Romulus says.
“It will take three days to search the debris for our survivors,” I say. “We will leave then.”
“Very well. My ships will escort your fleet to the boundaries we agreed upon. When your flagship crosses into the asteroid belt, you may never return. If one ship under your command crosses that boundary, it will be war between us.”
“I remember the terms.”
“See that you do. Give my regards to the Core. I’ll certainly give yours to the Sons of Ares you leave behind.” He terminates the signal.
—
We depart three days after my conference with Romulus, making additional repairs as we travel. Welders and repairmen dot hulls like benevolent barnacles. Though we lost more than twenty-five capital ships during the battle, we’ve gained over seventy more. It is one of the greatest military victories in modern history, but victories are less romantic when you’re cleaning your friends off the floor.
It’s easy to be bold in the moment, because all you have is what you can process: see, smell, feel, taste. And that’s a very small amount of what is. But afterward, when everything decompresses and uncoils bit by bit, and the horror of what you did and what happened to your friends hits you. It’s overwhelming. That’s the curse of this naval war. You fight, then spend months waiting, engaged only by the tedium of routine. Then you fight again.
I’ve not yet told my men where we sail. They don’t ask me themselves, but their officers do. And again I give them the same answer.
“Where we must.”
The core of my army is the Sons of Ares, and they are experienced in hardship. They organize dances and gatherings and force jubilation down war-weary throats. It seems to take. Men and women whistle in the halls as we distance ourselves from Jupiter. They sew unit badges onto uniforms and paint starShells in wild colors. There’s a vibrancy here different from the cold precision of the Society Navy. Still they keep mostly to their Color, blending only when assigned to do so. It’s not as harmonious as I thought it would be, but it’s a start. I feel disconnected from it all even as I smile and lead as best I know. I killed ten men in the corridors. Killed another thirteen thousand of my own when we destroyed the docks. Their faces don’t haunt me. But that feeling of dread is hard to lose.
We have not yet been able to contact the Sons of Ares. Communications are blacked out across all channels. Which means Narol succeeded in destroying the relays as he promised. Gold and Red are just as blind now.
I give Roque the burial he would have wanted. Not in the soil of some foreign moon, but in the sun. His casket is made of metal. A torpedo with a hatch through which Mustang and I slip his body. The Howlers smuggled him from the overflowing morgue so we could say goodbye to him in secret. With so many of our own dead, it would not do to see me honor an enemy so deeply.
Few mourn the death of my friend. Roque, if he is remembered by his people, will forever be known as The Man Who Lost the Fleet. A modern Gaius Terentius Varro, the fool who let Hannibal encircle him at Cannae. Or Alfred Jones. The American general who went mad and lost his Imperium’s dreaded mech division in the Conquering. To my people, he is just another Gold who thought himself immortal till the Reaper showed him otherwise.
It’s a lonely thing carrying the body of someone dead and loved. Like a vase you know will never again hold flowers. I wish he believed as firmly in the afterlife as I once did, as Ragnar did. I’m not sure when I lost my faith. I don’t think it’s something that just happens. Maybe I’ve been worn down bit by bit, pretending to believe in the Vale because it’s easier than the alternative. I wish Roque would have thought he was going to a better world. But he died believing only in Gold, and anything that believes only in itself cannot go happily into the night.
When it is my turn to say goodbye, I stare at his face and see nothing but memories. I think of him on the bed reading before the Gala, before I stabbed him with the sedative. I see him in his suit, pleading with me to come along with him and Mustang to the Opera in Agea, saying how much I’d delight in the plight of Orpheus. I see him laughing by the fire at her estate after the Battle of Mars. His arms around me as he sobbed after I came home to House Mars when we were hardly more than boys.