Sorry for such a long wait between chapters, everyone. I got to a point where I needed to consult the book for this chapter and I didn't have my phsyical copy with me, nor could I rent the ebook version from my local library. So I had to wait until I got back to school to finish this chapter. I'll try to make sure the wait time isn't as long next time.
Chapter 6: The Last Eagle
Deja Thoris
Martian Orbit
March 16th, 2841
Mustang took a deep breath to steady herself as she led troops of all colors through the corridors of her ship. Gunfire and pulseRifle blasts echoed through the halls as she stepped into the hangar bay to find an assault shuttle marked with Praetorian colors landing in the bay, having slipped past the ship's railguns. Mustang grimaced. Just our luck we get boarded right as the battle is beginning to wind down. The rebel fleet held naval supremacy over the fourth planet, and the Sons of Ares had miraculously managed to seize control of sixty-five percent of the planet's surface in a matter of hours. Only three hundred cities, various Gold estates, and the Arctic and Antarctic landmasses remained unconquered, while all that remained of the Sovereign's forces had clustered themselves around Deimos.
The enemy fleet had been broken, Gold families fleeing for the Core with their personal warships as the tide of battle began to turn against them. With only a few die-hard loyalists protecting the Martian moon, the rebel fleet was swooping in to claim it for themselves. While Sons of Ares troops surged across the surface of Deimos, Mustang received confirmation that the Sovereign herself was ensconced aboard her brother's flagship. She and Darrow had suspected that Octavia never left Mars and had been hiding among the Augustus fleet with Adrius' help. Rebel boarding parties sending footage of Praetorians aboard the Invictus only confirmed those suspicions.
Mustang had a few ideas for how to get into the Sovereign's presence, and while she hadn't planned for the boarding shuttle, it was just what she needed. When he learned what she was planning, Sevro called to give her the code phrases to activate Sons of Ares sleeper agents in the Gray legions. But first, they needed to take out this boarding party. Kavax's youngest daughter, Thraxa, stood to her left, accompanied by half a dozen Golds, six Lurchers, and three Obsidians. Mustang had quickly freed the slave knights owned by her house when the battle first began, and since Ragnar had been spreading the truth of Gold's mortality among the other Stained for weeks, several of the newly freed slaves were eager to fight to keep their freedom.
On the other side of the group stood a Sons of Ares unit dubbed "The Pitvipers", a newly formed, motley collection of hardasses specializing in sabotage and thievery. Half of them were ex-Helldivers, and the rest were a spattering of other useful lowColors given impromptu combat training before being thrown into battle. There was something about the Red in charge of the group that struck Mustang as familiar, but she didn't have the time to dwell on it right now. Tactical feeds scrolled across her helmet display, providing real-time updates for combat on the ground and in space. Rebel forces had just taken the port city of Ismenia, weakening her brother's hold over the northern continent, Arabia Terra.
"Remember," the last daughter of House Augustus told her troops. "We are all here today because we chose to stand with the Reaper. We believe in the cause, and today, that is all that matters. We don't fight for glory or pride, or vengeance. We fight for the freedom of humanity. Register?"
"Register," the Golds and Obsididians replied instinctively.
"Break the chains," she finished, and the strike force roared in answer. As the shuttle's engines powered down, Mustang input commands on her datapad to broadcast the activation signal for the sleeper agents Fitchner had recruited from the legions. She watched the data flow in as the battle on Mars's surface continued to swing in their favor. Rebel forces had just captured the coastal city of Ishtar. That brought the total number of rebel held cities to seven hundred fifty. Rebel forces had captured a quarter of Deimos' surface. Defenses on the moon were weakening as Sons of Ares spies dropped their cover and turned on their platoons, with orders to cause as much confusion and mayhem as possible while they retreated to friendly territory.
With a hiss, the boarding door of the enemy craft finally opened, and twelve Gray legionnaires stormed out, accompanied by the familiar face Cassius au Bellona. The Bellona heir looked terrified as he looked at Mustang, and she felt a flash of guilt as she remembered how genuine the man's feelings for her had been. Tech festooned the legionnaires' black combat gear, and Mustang knew from experience that every one of these soldiers had optic implants in the eyes for thermal vision and the reading of battle maps. Under their skin, they'd have more embedded tech to help them hunt Golds and Obsidians. But that was not what angered Mustang about her opponents. Each of them had the tattoo of a XIII clutched by a moving sea dragon staining their neck, little heaps of ash at the base of the Roman numeral.
These were not ordinary soldiers. These were members of Legio XIII Dracones, the Ash Lord's favored Praetorian legion. And they were here on Mars, under the command of Grimmus' daughter. Known to civilians simply as dragoons, they were a whole independent army of thirty thousand of the Society's best troops chosen by Aja to be the Sovereign's hand away from Luna. Each of them hated lowColors with a marrow-deep racism even Golds could not match. Great, more fanatics. Mustang remarked to herself dryly. Just what we needed. Nevertheless, she had already transmitted the activation signal for Fitchner's spies. Which meant that evidently not everyone in the thirteenth legion was as fanatic as they appeared to be.
Before either side could open fire, the front half of a dragoon centurion's forehead came off with a pop, and something metal hit the wall of the hangar. Mustang stared for a moment as she calculated which of the Grays had fired the shot. Blood sprayed into the air from the heads of the nearest dragoons with another series of pops. Behind the enemy legionnaires, a nutcracker-jawed woman casually strolled through the ranks of her platoon, shooting the Loyalist soldiers point blank in the backs of their heads. The rest of the enemy Grays scrambled to pull their files up, unsure of who to fire on. But few of them were even able to utter curses before a second Gray double-tapped five of them from the back of their formation with an old-fashioned gunpowder slug shooter, a silencer on the barrel to keep it cool and quiet. Cassius whirled out of the way of gunfire, but pulseRifle fire from the Sons of Ares kept him from retaliating.
"Clear," the woman said.
"Plus two," the man replied, putting a boot down on the chest of one of the Grays still alive after the massacre. The other man stared up at him, bleeding from under the jaw.
"Trigg…" the legionnaire tried to protest.
"Ares sends his regards, motherfucker," the man replied, shooting his former comrade between the eyes, just under the brim of the soldier's tactical helmet. The man – Trigg, apparently – spun the slug shooter in his hand, blowing smoke from the end before sheathing it in a leg holster. With the last of the enemy troops dead, the two Grays turned their weapons on the Morning Knight and joined in firing on Cassius' pulseShields. Eventually, the shields began to flicker red. Mustang watched as his shields overloaded and Cassius ducked behind a stack of munitions crates. They couldn't use ranged weapons now without blowing up the hangar. The only way to take him out was to use ionBlades and razors. But the Obsidians were no match for an Olympic Knight, and only Mustang and Thraxa had any real experience fighting with razors.
As she ran through her options, an idea occurred to her, and she typed up a message to Darrow and Sevro, outlining the details as she mentally reworked her plan and worked out the flaws and risks. If they could get proof that the Sovereign was responsible for his family's death, she might be able to convince him to give them intel. Perhaps even use his Olympic security codes to get inside Octavia's defenses. Mustang acted quickly. While the rest of her troops closed in to cut off Cassius' escape routes, she circled around until she was standing directly in front of him. She swapped razors with one of the Golds in the group who had a thinner model, more like a fencer's blade. That was just what she needed.
"Surrender Cassius," she shouted, as she hefted the razor behind her head, the blade balanced delicately in her fingers to avoid cutting herself. "Or I will put you down."
"No," Cassius said, his face betraying the pain he was trying to mask in his voice. "You would…"
Mustang hurled the razor like a javelin, the hardened sword punching through the frot of his throat and out the back of his neck. There was no spray of blood, only a wet, meaty gurgle. He flopped back, gasping and hacking as he hit the ground hard. His feet kicked and he hissed for breath as he clutched the hilt of the heated blade. As soon as he dropped down she gave orders for Thraxa and the other Golds to take him to the medbay. It would take a few hours for him to recover, but Mustang knew he would live, even though she'd only missed his jugular by a centimeter at most.
As the rest of the strike squad kept their guard up, the two dragoons holstered their weapons as they approached the ship's defenders. Mustang stepped forward to greet the two.
"Name's Holiday ti Nakamura," the woman introduced herself. "That's Trigg, my baby brother." The woman raised a scar-notched eyebrow. "We all know who you are, but the question I want to know is why a Gold would side with the Sons of Ares over her own Color. Especially the daughter of the man who killed Persephone." Mustang let out an exasperated sigh. She had expected this from the lowColors on Mars, but that didn't mean she enjoyed being questioned about her motives.
"Do you honestly think I would be willing to cast aside everything I know for this rebellion if I didn't believe in the cause? The Reformers have been working to improve the situation of lower Colors for decades, but Darrow's shown me that open rebellion has always been inevitable."
"Not saying you don't believe in our motivation, princess," Holiday remarked snidely. "But you didn't answer my question. You believed in the cause but you could have stayed in politics and tried to legislate and negotiate to get what you want. Why throw all your comfort away for the Reaper?" Mustang groaned, not wanting to share details of her personal life with a relative stranger but having no choice if she wanted to convince the older woman of her intentions.
"Because I love him," she retorted. "Did you really think that our engagement was just a show for the sake of politics?" Holiday smiled and offered the Gold a handshake.
"Are you happy now?" Mustang asked.
"I'm satisfied," Holiday replied. "Sorry for putting you on the spot like that, luv. Wanted to make sure Trigg and I hadn't just blown our covers for someone who was going to jump ship and sell us out when the going got tough." Mustang nodded. She understood the legionnaire's reasoning, even if she didn't enjoy the suspicion. Once they finished cleaning and re-loading their weapons, the Nakamura siblings fell in line with the rest of the strike team and synced their comms to the correct frequency.
Yay! Trigg and Holiday have arrived. The third book was vague about how long they've been with the Sons of Ares, so for the sake of this story, I'm assuming that they've been undercover at least since the middle of Golden Son. It makes sense in a way. Fitchner was the Rage Knight, so it makes sense that he would have access to the Thirteenth Legion and use that opportunity to recruit new sleeper agents for the Sons.
Much like Ragnar, I am deliberately going to keep Trigg alive in this fic. And yes, Ephriam will show up as well. I am going to be writing a Gay Grays reunion scene in this fic since we never got to see them together in canon (RIP Trigg). Anyway, next chapter is going to be a Darrow chapter, followed by a Keith chapter. I have seen the new Vlogs that Dreamworks is putting on youtube, so I am going to start incorporating some of those details into the story. Darrow's chapter is going to take place entirely on Mars' southern continet. That's right everyone, we're going to the Valkyrie Spires.
And yes, the title of the chapter is supposed to be a reference to Jupiter Ascending. The final movie was terrible, but the trailers and posters looked amazing. And Eddie Redmayne is how I always picture The Jackal in my head.