Hello, everyone. As promised, here's the new chapter. Dialogue and descriptions for this chapter were quoted almost entirely from Iron Gold, although I've reworked events since the assault on Venus is happening a whole decade early in this fic. I reworked the Ash Lord's tower from Iron Gold into being part of the estate of Haus Saud since we only get so much of Venusian history in Iron Gold. I figured there was enough wiggle room to work, so here we are.
Chapter 30: Sister Planet:
Venus
March 31st, 2841
Nearly eight hundred years ago, Venus was viewed as the evil sister of Earth, swollen from solar dust to a similar shape and size. But while Earth was blessed with water, sweet air, and a temperate disposition, Venus had a more quarrelsome spirit. Her surface, cruel enough to melt lead, was marked by interminable days and nights, each numbering 243 of her sister's. Under her foul breath, nothing could live, nothing could grow, and nothing could move but winds of carbon dioxide and torpid clouds fat with acid rain.
But then humankind came from the blackness, drank up the hydrogen of the gas giants and breathed the fresh breath into her skies. The ensuing rains fell to cover eighty percent of Venus' surface in oceans. With high-altitude mass drivers, humans scalped away at the withering atmosphere and cooled the planet's surface. With asteroids hurled from the asteroid belt and mass drivers at her equator, Venus was spun out of her torpor and into a more agreeable dance, her days now like Earth's. Humanity dressed Venus in green and blue, and she waited, eager and fresh, for the humans to come down from their floating cities to join her in her new dance, four and a half billion years plus ninety in the making…
None of this was on Darrow's mind as he soured with the Howlers into the wake of a nuclear blast, skinned in mechanized armor, smeared with char and blood, aimed like a driven spear toward the tower from which the loyalist command led their defense of Venus. A kill squad of armored Golds and Gray Legionnaires raced to meet them. There were more than twenty in total, each a sworn Peerless commander of Legio XIII Dracones. Fire and mini-missiles streaked between the war parties. Shields flashed, and armor buckled as life was ripped from men. Thraxa fired an EMP missile at the enemy formation. It detonated, dropping them all from the sky.
After the fall of Endymion and Imbirum, it took another three days for the Rising to secure total control of Luna. With the Voltron Coalition and the acquisition of the Classis Plutus, the rebels were able to rapidly move troops to and from Mars around the Ash Lord's fleet. So while the Telemanuses lead a second Conquering of Earth, Altean technicians had spent the last three days modifying the rebel ships to travel across the solar system as speeds approximate to those of the 11th Fleet or Coalition ships. Now the Rising flew across the surface of the Second Planet's oceans, conquering loyalist strongholds as they went.
Victra had dispatched a legion of Rebel forces – a mix of veterans from the Martian uprising and local recruits, just like on Luna – to launch an assault on the personal fortress of House Saud, the ruling family of Venus. Darrow disliked the idea of sacrificing the lives of loyal rebel soldiers, but the invasion force had been selected entirely by volunteer, men and women of all colors stepping forward to partake in a suicidal massed assault designed to eat up the attention of the Saud family's forces. Which meant that everyone on that mission knew they would be racking up the bulk of the casualties and signed on anyway. While the larger rebel force kept ArchGovernor Saud's men distracted, Darrow's force would come in the back door aboard a stealth ship and rip straight for the ArchGovernor's personal tower.
A Howler's body was blown to bits in front of Darrow. Two loyalist Grays died as Sevro's particle cannon sliced through their ranks. In the last two weeks, Society propaganda on Mercury and Venus had demonized the Rising to such an extent that the Sons of Ares were expecting little, if any, sympathy towards the Rising from local mid- and lowColors. Victra was reporting civilians were largely staying out of the fight, with a few zealots rushing out to aid the loyalists. Meanwhile, Darrow flew in Thraxa's shadow, the eldest Telemanus daughter acting as his vanguard. He raised his razor ahead of him like a charging knight, the blade straight and true.
Then, just shy of the speed of sound, the two war parties of machine and men met in the sky, claining together like squadrons of fallen angels. It was a horror of metal, a scream of guns and fire and shimmering swords and engines. Milia speared a gold through his head with her razor, then took a glancing blow from a passing sword. The Reaper deflected her attacker's blade from Thraxa's head as the man ripped past them. The force numbed Darrow's arm at the socket, but he held onto his blade and plunged into the enemy's ranks. He launched off Thraxa's flank and gored the chest of a Gold as they slammed together. He twisted himself at the last second, so his opponent's blade nicked off his helmet. His vision wavered as he and his enemy tumbled.
They slammed down on an outcropping of rock beneath them, metal limbs tangled together. Darrow's helm inches from the Gold's. The man pushed his pulseFist towards the rebel leader's head. Darrow let go of his razor and used a kravat arm holt, pulling the man's arm to the side as the Reaper brought his own pulseFist to the enemy's belly and fired on full auto. The man's body melted in half and superheated stone kicked up from the mountain cleft to skitter against Darrow's visor. He pushed his foe's smoldering corpse off and struggled to his feet as the man's legs flopped off the ledge to the white rocks below.
But before he could rise again into the air, a pulseRifle round slammed into his back. Thankfully, the starShell protected him from the worst of the blow, even as the pulseShield in the armor flickered. He bellowed in anger and jumped off the ledge, swerving madly in the air to avoid his pursuer. Darrow glanced back just as Sevro smashed the Golden knight down into the mountainside with his own starShell. Using the mech's incredible power, the new Ares peeled off the man's arms and stomped his armored head flat. Another Gold ripped past, strafing Sevro with his pulseFist. Sevro lurched one of his armor's mechanized hands up and grabbed the Gold's foot. He jerked the leg so hard in the other direction that the opposing forces tore the man's leg off at the hip. The man spun off and collided with the mountainside at two hundred kilometers per hour.
"Get inside the tower!" Sevro shouted as he fired up at the dogfight above him. "There has to be a door to the landing pad!" The battle had broken down into aerial dogfights and men killing each other on the face of the mountainside and against the walls of the tower. Thraxa's mech fended off six Golds in an aerial cage. Men broken by her power hammer littered the mountainside below. She smashed another out of the air, but she's speared from behind. A swarm of rebel ripWings shreds her attackers before she can suffer any further injuries. Below, Pebble and Clown lead the new Howler recruits in pinning a squad of Loyalist Golds in a ravine.
"Rally to the roof!" Darrow called out over the coms, Sevro echoing his order. The remaining rebels fight their way to the roof to join him as he and Sevro flew up the mountain towards the high tower. At the top, a landing pad sixty meters in diameter was being used as a staging area by a Gray sniper team and Obsidian reinforcements. They attempted to retreat as the rebel force landed, seeking shelter behind the long wings of ArchGovernor Saud's personal shuttle.
The Reaper and Ares landed on the edge together and fought back a squad of Obsidians and Grays. Darrow rocketed into them at full speed, breaking the ribcage of a Gray against the concrete. Rolling up, he deflected the huge axe of an Obsidian and shot him in the head. The man's helmet took the blast, but Darrow stunned him enough to hew the Stained's laegs with his razor. An enemy pulseFist caught Darrow in the side before he could finish his foe, but his shield absorbed it. He shot up on his gravBoots, then came straight back down in front of the new target to exchange a series of razor slashes that ended with the Gold's arm cut off at the shoulder. Someone shot the Aureate in the side. Sevro kicked a Gray off the roof with the boot of his mech. An Obsidian launched toward him and stabbed a pulseSpear into his cockpit. Sevro moved his head at the last moment, then pulled the Obsidian off. Blood showered his mech as he crushed the Stained's head with a squeeze of his mechanized hand.
Green plasma rounds pound the legs of his mech, melting them to the point of being inoperable. A squad of hunched Grays fired at Sevro from the landing pad with huge anti-armor plasma rifles. Darrow fired at them, cutting a hole of steaming meat through their ranks. But it was too late. An EMP rocked slammed into the chest of Sevro's meck. Blue electricity sizzled out, frying the starShell's circuitry. He ejected manually, shooting straight up and over the heads of Screwface and Wulfgar, who fought like mad together against the Tide. Sevro was soon lost from sight in the fray.
The enemy pressed in, firing at the invading rebels from the air above, chewing into their ranks. A concussion munition slammed Darrow sideways. As he tried to regain his balance, an Obsidian a head taller than him hit him in the chest with a pulseHammer. The shields in his armor shorted out as the pulseArmor caved inward. He tumbled back as he felt several ribs crack. The Obsidian knocked him to the ground before he could lift his head. The behemoth was about to stomp on his hand when a pulseRifle shot from a Gray defector took the man's head clean off. Darrow nodded his head and raised his blade in salute of the man who'd had the courage to betray his unit and help the rebels.
The clarion call of a trumpted rode in with the wind. Darrow looked up to see a flight of armored knights falling from the sky, a violent figure in jade armor at their head. The jade figure landed in a crowd of Loyalist forces and cut three Golds in half with running upward blows before the tower's defenders knew what hit them. Victra had arrived.
Her reinforcements fell upon the Venusian Dragoons, carving them with razors and ionBlades, smashing them off the face of the face of the landing pad until but those who'd defected to the Rising remained alive. The Gray who'd saved Darrow's life helped him to his feet. Victra's forces – a mix of Gold Reformers and rebel lowColors – jump off the tower back towards the battle, which rages inland of House Saud's beached below. Victra walked towards the Reaper and extended her arms, pulling Darrow into a hug.
"Loyalist forces have been completely routed everywhere but here," she reported as she pulled back. "Despite our apparent teleportation from Mars to Luna, it looks like the Saud still believed we wouldn't be able to hit Venus this quickly. We took half the planet before the Pixies could even organize a decent counterattack. I doubt we'll be so fortunate on Mercury." Sevro limped towards them, and Darrow could see charred flesh through fissures in his friend's armor. Thraxa sat popped against a retaining wall as Wulfgar administered first aid. Few rebel soldiers were uninjured in this battle.
"Clown," Darrow called out. "Pebble."
"Yes, boss?" the two asked as they approached with their squad.
"Call the fleet and hold the roof," Darrow ordered as he turned to limp toward the security door leading down from the landing pad into the tower. "Sevro, Victra, with me."
So yeah, the Rising is taking control of the Core. We're going to be avoiding the whole situation in Iron Gold. Next weekend we'll be going back to Shiro and Keith on the Rim for a few chapters before we get some more Mustang and Darrow sections. I can promise that the next chapter will address Sevro's reaction to his mom still being alive.