Chapter Text
Part 1: Cassius
Cassius couldn’t stop the onslaught of memories as he watched the sun set on the Olympus Mons. He was perched on a small cliffside just under the room he and Julian had shared as boys. They used sneak out onto the cliffs and and climb for hours hiding from their various tutors or caretakers. Nobody ever seemed to think to check the cliffs, but one day their father had found them in an alcove where an eagle was tending to her barely fletched eaglets.
“If your mother knew the two of you were out here, she’d ship you off to rough it with Obsidians for a year as if you were a Telemanus.” He’d said with an exasperated smirk on his face.
Julian had ducked behind Cassius at the same time Cassius had stepped in front of him. Subconsciously, Cassius had known their father was no threat, but in the split moment of shock they had defaulted to their basest instincts. Julian knew Cassius would protect him, and Cassius feared nothing more than Julian coming to harm.
That was how they’d always been. Cassius protecting Julian. That’s how it should have always been.
Tiberius au Bellona was a loving father, but he also had high expectations for his children, especially his sons. He was a Peerless Iron Gold, and his children would be the future scions of house Bellona. At the sight of Julian cowering behind his brother, his smirk had faltered for a moment. Then his eyes set on Cassius. A look of pride met Cassius’s cautious but no less resolute stance as he guarded his brother.
“Luckily for the two of you, I am not your mother, and I too grew up having far too many misadventures on the cliffs of the Mons.” He said as he took a seat on a ledge just above where the eagle was feeding her young.
Julian perked up at that. “Really father? What were your favorite climbing spots? Cassius and I found a rock yesterday that was shaped almost like an eagle in flight and we—“ Julian would have carried on for any length of time, Cassius knew, but Tiberius cut him off.
“Come closer my sons.” He said, beckoning the twins to sit with him on the ledge overlooking the nest.
They sat as Tiberius asked. “Julian, my boy, what do you see?”
Julian paused for a moment then answered acutely “A proud eagle raising her children.” His chest had puffed at that. Julian always took pride in his family, and any eagle on the Mons was a symbol of the house Bellona.
Their father didn’t affirm Julian’s appeal to familial pride, but rather turned to Cassius.
“Now Cassius what is it that you see?” His father’s gaze met his, and Cassius, unlike Julian, saw there was underlying intent in their father’s eyes. Their father wasn’t speaking to them as a father, but as an Imperator and head of house Bellona.
This wasn’t uncommon for Tiberius. He was constantly testing his sons. Expecting insight beyond the obvious. He wanted to know his sons were more than just smart. He wanted to foster wisdom, and Cassius desperately wanted to live up to his father’s expectations.
He paused for just a moment, then met his fathers eyes. “She is exhausted. Just last night when Julian and I were here she had four eaglets, but she only has three now. One of her children died in the night. She is not only raising her children alone, as we have yet to observe the father, she is grieving the loss of one of her babies.”
Tiberius smiled, and Julian cast his eyes down, but only for a moment before looking back to Cassius with pride. Even though he’d always craved their father’s pride and attention he was never jealous of Cassius when their father so readily offered to him what was so often denied Julian.
“I hadn’t even seen that Cassius. How sad that is. Father can we bring some food down near the nest to help ease the burden on the mother?” Julian asked innocently.
Cassius was often floored by his brother’s instinct for kindness. He truly saw value and wonder in all things in a way Cassius always tried, but could never quite manage.
The smile of endearment their father wore wasn’t like any smile he’d given Cassius. It was warm, but there was sadness that Cassius didn’t understand written in the lines around his eyes.
“No, my boy.” He said gently in that soft tone that Cassius also never received.
“Yes, what Cassius extrapolated is true, I found a sickly looking eaglet dead on a rock not too far down the cliff. He hadn’t the strength to survive the hours it took for the Eagle to find them food. Without a male to take turns scavenging for food with she must leave her children unprotected and unattended on the cliffside. Nobody was there to stop the eaglet from falling. That said, no Julian. I will not allow you to help her or her babies.” The last sentence was firm and brooked no argument.
“But why not father? We have so much. Why can’t we do this one kindness?” Julian asked with genuine confusion.
Rather than answer, Tiberius turned to Cassius. Once again, that expectant gaze leveled on him, but Cassius understood the lesson his father was teaching them now.
“This was the path nature chose for them.” Cassius began. “The eagles native to the cliffs of the Mons were originally carvlings engineered specifically to thrive in this extreme altitude. They can grow to be twice the size of their original eagle ancestors so their lungs can hold more air to compensate for the lower oxygen levels in the tops of the cliffs. However, their life is harsh and plagued by other predators and territorial fights with other eagles. To foster these chicks and their mother would do them a disservice as it would make them weak for the battles to come, and potentially allow weakness amongst future eagle populations.”
Tiberius nodded and Cassius knew what he would say next.
“My sons. First and foremost we are Gold, and after that we are Bellona. We are stewards of countless lives of every species and color. Our role is to ensure to strength of the society with how we govern those lives. We must always prioritize the natural order. Often times, this will feel cruel, but it is a necessary cruelty to ensure our society lives on.”
Neither Cassius nor Julian were unfamiliar with their father’s “We are Gold” speech. Now, at nine years old, they’d heard at least two dozen different variations of that same refrain.
Julian cast his eyes down and they’d gone back up the cliffs to their room with their father. Later that night Cassius had been awoken by the sound of tiny chirps. Julian had brought the eaglets to their balcony
“What are you doing?” Cassius had asked frantically.
“I went back to check on them and I found the mother dead. They will all die without her.” Julian said with the same firm voice their father used when his mind was set. He huffed then continued setting up the blankets he’d been wrapping around them. “I couldn’t just sit there and let them die when we have the resources to help. I don’t care what father says. I can be a gold and still save these eaglets. It’s the right thing to do.”
Cassius could tell Julian was cross. He’d so rarely seen his brother angry before, and never had that anger been even hinted in his direction.
“Father won’t let you keep them. He’s going to find them and have them taken right back to that alcove. Julian, I see what you’re trying to do and it’s noble, but in the end it won’t matter.”
Julian turned to his brother, and the tears gathering in the corners of his eyes caught in the warm light drifting out from their bedroom. “Father will have to rip these eaglets from my arms himself then. I know you all see me as weak, but I will fight for these eaglets and I will keep them alive.” Julian was practically yelling now. Cassius didn’t want to fight his brother, but he also knew the longer he let this go on the more it would pain Julian when their father sent the chicks back out to die. Better to have Julien see sense now before he became any more attached.
“Julien please—“ Cassius was cut off by the sound of footsteps on the terrace behind them.
“Boys what is all this?” They heard as they turned to see their mother standing in the archway that lead to the terrace.
Initially her face was simply confused but when she focused in on the tears gathering in Julien’s eyes, she pointed a rather harsh frown at Cassius. As usual, whatever had upset Julien had to have been his fault.
“Mother!” They’d cringed simultaneously.
“Mother please I found these eaglets on the cliffside. Their mother is dead and there’s nobody to feed them. They’ll die if we do not help them. Father said the Gold thing to do is to let nature take them, but I won’t stand aside and watch them die when I can help.”
Without a second thought she’d swept to Julien’s side to observe the chicks.
“Oh my kind boy.” She cooed soothing the loose curls on Julien’s forehead to the side. She had never been able to deny Julien his whims. Her little boy who wore his heart on his sleeve in a way so rare amongst their people.
“Mother, father made it clear it was not our place to help the eaglets. We’d be interrupting natures hand in keeping the eagles of the Mons strong.” Cassius explained. His tone made it clear he pitied Julien in this, but also knew their father’s word would be absolute.
For a moment, Cassius could tell she agreed with him. This was an important lesson for a Gold parent to impart on their child. That said, where Julien was concerned their mother had a soft spot the size of the sun.
“It is true what your father says, but I will make you both a deal.” She stood and her stance became that of the peerless gold matriarch of House Bellona. “I will allow you to keep these eaglets safe and raise them, but nobody will aid you. Should they live, you will be responsible with releasing them or training them as you see fit. Should they die you will dispose of their bodies. If I hear you asked for aid from the servants in so much as bringing you food for them, you will be responsible for butchering them. These eaglets will live or die based on your actions. We are Gold that is true, and the choices we make alone decide the fates of all those we govern.”
This was probably the harshest she had ever been on Julien, but she knew their father was right. Yet she could not help but indulge him where his heart was concerned.
Cassius spoke first. “Thank you mother. We will not let you down.” The look she gave in return made it clear she did not believe him.
Julien recovered a moment later and thrust forward hugging her. “Oh thank you mother! Cassius is right. we shall keep them safe.”
Despite their efforts, all the eaglets had died within a fortnight.
Now Cassius sat on that alcove alone; a half finished bottle vodka in hand. Vodka wasn’t his liquor of choice, but anything would do to numb the gaping black hole of grief that had opened the moment he arrived home. The institute at least provided distractions and methods with which he could vent his turmoil. At home, all he could feel was the space Julien wasn’t taking up. The void he’d left was a screaming howling silence that threatened to make Cassius go mad.
He’d read somewhere once in the writings of some poet or other, that living after the loss of a twin was akin to living the rest of your life in the ashes of a wildfire. Cassius felt that was an apt statement.
He took another long swig of the vodka feeling himself falter a bit as the force of the alcohol took liberties with his sense of balance.
“Drinking your sorrows on the edge of a cliff isn’t where a father expects to find his son when there is a party being thrown in his honor.” Tiberius au Bellona said softly a few feet behind him.
There was a time Cassius would have found some clever way to retort, but whether it was the vodka slowing his thoughts, or the grief keeping a chokehold on his heart, Cassius could not find it in him to give a damn one way or the other.
Tiberius’s face was gaunt. Cassius couldn’t read the new lines there that had appeared in the months he’d been gone, but there was a piece of him that was gone too. Something Julian took with him when he’d died. Cassius turned back to the sunset without a word.
“Son I know this is hard but—“ Oh gorrydamn not this again. His father had evolved his ‘We are Gold’ speech to ‘We are Peerless’ In an effort to snap Cassius out of this haze he had been spiraling in for a week now by appealing to Cassius’s, admittedly, rather large ego. Normally Cassius just nodded or gave him a terse ‘Yes Father,’ but the vodka was making him feel adventurous.
“Y’know this is hard?” Cassius slurred back in a sing-song lilt tilting his head. He hadn’t realized just how out of sorts the alcohol had made him till just then.
“Getting beaten and pissed on was hard. Killing that simpering little thing in the passage with nothing but my bare hands was hard. Watching Darrow au fucking Andromedus be given the laurel of the Arch Primus was hard.” He turned then, snarling. “Living my life without Julien is agony. I see him in my dreams. Sometimes it’s me who kills him. Sometimes he just stands there watching me call Darrow brother while blood leaks from his eyes nose and mouth. Occasionally, he calls out for me, begging me to protect him. I’ll spoil the ending of that dream for you, I never make it to him in time, and I feel his pulse end under my fingertips.”
Cassius found that he had stood at some point. He swayed back and fourth near the edge. When had he gotten so close?
“Son.” The word was a whisper. “You need to come back from the ledge.”
For the first time Cassius looked straight down. The city of Olympia lay below them, thirty million citizens all living in the shadow of the great house Bellona. He noticed, then, droplets of water falling to the dry rock beneath him, and lifted his fingers to feel the streams of tears there.
“I suppose this scene is very unbecoming for a man of my station. What wold our guests above us think. A Peerless Scarred Bellona of Mars weeping drunk on the side of a cliff. Tell me father, If I were to stumble off this cliff while hundreds above all celebrate my ‘triumph’ at the Institute, would you deny me your favor then?” Cassius told himself he didn’t care about the twist of pain in his fathers eyes were before there had always been pride.
“You could never lose my favor Cassius. I have never told you this, but of all my children, you have always been the one I see myself in the most.” Tiberius stretched an arm out imploring his son to take his hand and step away from the edge.
Cassius scoffed at that. “Now you’re just patronizing me. Maybe we should work backwards to the ‘ We are Peerless’ speech you were so keen on just a moment ago. I liked that better than this pity.”
“You remind me of myself after I had to kill my boyhood best friend in the passage.” Tiberius said cutting Cassius off.
Cassius just starred at him. His liquor addled mind not quite comprehending the statement.
“His name was Bartus au Vaalus. He was the last son of one of the weaker banner men of the Bellona house, but his mother had been one of my father’s war councilors for years. I only had sisters, as you know, but Bartus—“ His voice choked on the name.
“Bartus was my brother in every way but blood. Both of us were so excited and so naive when we had been placed in the same house at the institute. We had nothing but glory and valor on our minds as we went to bed that first night at the Institute.
I remember waking up in that cold stone room and seeing him broken before me. He could barely even stand. When the house Apollo proctor left the ring on the ground and locked us in, we sat there and stared at each other for an age.
After some time I walked over and sat next to him. He set his head on my shoulder and told me I was his brother and he would never see me come to harm. I took his head in my hands without so much as a word, and snapped his neck.”
Cassius said nothing, but he felt bile rise in his throat. For the first time he found himself questioning what kind of insidious society could turn men like Darrow and his father into monsters. Had he just compared his father to Darrow? Had he just thought of his father as monster?
He reminded himself that he not only loved his father, he idolized him. He was the most favored of his father’s children for a reason. One day he could very well be continuing his father’s legacy as Imperator of the Bellona fleet.
“When Julian was sent an acceptance letter your mother and I knew what it meant.”
All thoughts of love and pride for his father stopped in that moment.
“It’s why we didn’t send Julian off with you for the testing. We knew those were our last weeks with him, but we couldn’t hint to you what was going to happen. Nero au Augustus had marked our son for death. Nobody, not even the Sovereign would dare to interfere with the Board of Quality Control after their selections.”
Cassius looked at his father then and understood the man more than he ever had before. When he spoke, It felt as if he watched himself from outside his own body. “This was the lesson you were trying to teach when he wanted to save those eaglets. Sometimes there are forces we cannot fight in the name of keeping the society strong.”
The words had left Cassius empty. This was the truth of their oh so great society. The truth that a pampered, spoiled idiots like himself had to have beat into them at the institute to forge them into the conquerors the society claimed they were.
“We all have a role, Cassius. Men like us are meant to lead. Men like Bartus and Julius were meant to teach us love, but also grief. In your years you will be a great leader of men, but part of our role involves keeping the lesser colors in their place. This is the pain you will cause them. You must never forget this feeling lest you become a monster like Nero.”
Tiberius au Bellona knowingly sent his own son to be slaughtered in the passage. Sure Nero was a tyrant, and a wretch, but at least he’d used his influence to keep his weakling son alive in the institute. Tiberius had done nothing, but kiss his son goodbye and swear vengeance over his grave.
“Now please come off that ledge and take your place as a Peerless Scarred scion of House Bellona.” The tone Tiberius used had returned to the prideful swell he’d used when addressing Cassius his whole life.
Cassius’s whole body stiffened then. Finally comprehension was cutting through the haze of drunken grief. His father and mother had known. They knew Julius would die in the passage. Hell, they might’ve believed Cassius himself would be put to the task. They had stood to the side as a son they claimed they loved was executed for his elder bother’s crime. That’s why Julian had died. Karnus was a mad dog who had killed the Augustan heir, and Nero au Augustus had Julian butchered as retribution.
Cassius felt the rage that Fitchner had so efficiently sparked in him during the draft take hold like a vice around his chest. Then, just as quickly as it had risen the tide of emotion ebbed.
He was just one man in a society of roughly eighteen billion. He was merely a spoke on a cog in an inevitable machine. His father, as an Imporator, was more than that, but still powerless against the might of authorities like The Board of Quality Control and the Sovereign.
Cassius found himself weeping into his father’s shoulder. He couldn’t remember walking away from the ledge or his father wrapping his arms around him. He felt his father grip him tight and heard the wind whip around them and the steady hum of his father’s grav boots as they lifted back towards Cassius’s balcony.
They passed the terrace where he and Julian had so often snuck out to play on those cliffs, and he wished more than anything that he could travel back to then and strike himself for all his childish fancies. How could he have been so naive to believe their world would ever allow for someone as good and gentle as Julian to live. He wanted to go back and tell Julian to run as far away from Cassius as possible. Cassius’s love had been a cancer. If he had been harder on Julian like Karnus had been to him maybe Julian would have survived. He wanted to tell Julian to hate him.
The thoughts were pouring in like a flood. It was all too much to handle. So by the time Tiberius had lifted is son to his room, and instructed His Eagle Sentries to block his access to the cliffs by any means necessary on pain of death, Cassius was long gone from the waking world.
Part 2: Narol
Narol O’Lykos was making his miserable way down the foot wide red sidewalk that ran along, and occasionally into a filthy gutter filled with piss, shit, and various other unidentifiable liquids that smelled just as if not more foul. Dancer had sent him on yet another errand to run messages back and forth between his Sons of Ares cell down in the mines and another one operating out of Agea. At first, these tasks had packed a bit of a thrill. What if he got stopped by a gray on patrol? What if someone in the sons turned coat and ratted them all out. After the third errand he realized he’d been given the least dangerous job in the entire rebellion: mailman.
Nobody stopped him, because nobody cared. With his sigils doctored to look like that of a high red he was officially seen as dirt to these people on the surface. In all honesty, depending on the dirt, he was probably worth even less than that. He had passed a garden shop where they were charging what an average red worker would make in a month for a bag of fancy fertilizer. The thought of working for someone who’d be willing to pay more for dirt than they’d be willing to pay a man who needed shelter, food, and to provide for his family really dug that old screw of hatred for The Society a little deeper into his shriveled old heart.
In the mines at least most reds live in blissful ignorance. Their lives are short and painful, loss being the only thing guaranteed. Yet they had community in a way he rarely saw up on the surface. Low reds bartered and worked together for everything. When a child got sick three houses down, but the parents still needed to make their shifts at work, the whole township would take turns caring for them till they were better. Sure, Narol knew first hand the kind of sick bastards the mines could cook up.
He’d failed to protect his own Lana from one of those kinds of people, but there had been retribution from his community. Even that slimy rat Deigo from Gamma had put the word to his gammas that night that if any man sheltered the devil that had hurt his baby girl, he’d find himself killed in a rather gruesome, painful accident on shift the next day.
Up here the high reds just kept their heads down, and Narol could hardly blame them. Loss was just as real here as it was miles under the city.
The other problem with how dull this assignment was, was that it gave him too much time to think. Narol and his thoughts had been on each others bad side for a long long time now. Too many dead that he couldn’t save.
As he wandered the winding streets he found himself lost in series of events that had led him to this moment.
It was his own fault what had happened to Loren, his boy. He hadn’t warned the hell diver about the gas pocket in time. Carron was his name. He was a boy of seventeen. The blast had killed him instantly. The blast had also lifted his drill clear out the hole he’d been diggin straight up into the scaffolding holding Loren and four other men.
He’d snapped on a harness and belayed down after them before Barlow could stop him. It was useless. Loren was gone. All those men gone in the blink of an eye, and he’d been the head talk who’d failed to stop it.
He’d sat in his rope and harness and pondered cutting the rope holding him. He thought of following Dale, Lana, Eo, his wife and now his boy Loren to The Vale. He thought it, but when he held his puny little knife to the rope he found he just couldn’t. Darrow had right of it. Narol was nothing but an old drunk coward. He supposed his brother and nephew got the better share of the suicidal genes.
Narol was also too much of a coward to crawl up that hole and look Dio and his grandson Oren in their red eyes and tell them that he’d failed them. It was true by the time the gas pocket had shown up on the scanners not even the best hell diver could’ve stopped their drill in time, but the drink had slowed his warning to the others under his command. Who knows if he could have stopped it, but the fact was he didn’t.
So, like a coward, Narol ran away from the only life he’d ever known to the Son’s of Ares outpost he’d sent his mostly dead nephew to more than a year ago.
When he’d arrived he had dreaded telling Darrow what had happened to Loren and more importantly, that he’d run away. He supposed he still had some sick sense of luck ‘cause when he got there Darrow was nowhere to be found, and Dancer had made it clear that he wasn’t to so much as mention his nephew to a soul in the Sons or by morning Narol would be halfway done setting the stones for his new home in The Vale.
Narol had spit some rather colorful vitriol at Dancer at that, but hadn’t pushed the issue any further.
Narol pulled out his flask to take a swig and wash some of his melancholy out, but at that exact moment a Society broadcast came across all the HC’s in the city at once. The Martian Anthem played and a violet reporter stated that this year’s Institute class had at last graduated. Narol rolled his eyes but if he walked away during a mandatory society viewing he’d draw just the kind of attention from the grays nearby that he didn’t need while carrying a sons correspondence.
The screen flashed to the footage of the ceremony, and Narol dropped his flask.
Smack dab in the middle of a massive HC was his nephew Darrow being named Arch Primus of his year at the institute, and receiving a Peerless Scar from none other than the murderous son of a bitch who’d hung Darrow’s own wife. Narol tried to tell himself his mind had finally left him. The drinking and the grief and the radiation had rendered him senile, because there was no way that golden mountain of a man was the same half dead ruster he’d left in a shallow grave just shy of eighteen months ago. But the longer he watched Darrow au Andromedus, Peerless Scarred Arch Primus of the Mars Institute declare his undying loyalty to Nero au bloody damn Augustus he saw it. That fury that settled on Darrow’s brow before he’d throw Narol a nasty right hook was unmistakable.
The entire way back to the base he’d thought of just how Dancer had turned Darrow into a bloody damn Gold. Carvers obviously, but Darrow was hardly raised as a society Gold. To make everything just a little more impossible was the idea that Darrow could stand within five feet of the man who killed his wife and not go ballistic with rage trying to kill him. Patience had never been a virtue his nephew possessed.
Narol could tell Dancer had seen the news already when he’d gone to confront him about it. He shot Narol a wary glance as Narol told him he’d seen a rather impossible sight on an HC in Agea.
Dancer’s tone was dangerous when he answered. “I’ll only say this once. Don’t ask me about Darrow. His mission is the pinnacle to everything the Son’s have been working for this whole time. I can’t put you in contact with him, and if you care about his safety at all you’ll forget you know what you know.” Dancer stared at him waiting for a response. Narol couldn’t give him one.
This is why he’d never wanted to tell the Son’s about Darrow. They’d find some wildly dangerous mission like this for him and he’d never come back from it.
‘Sorry Dale, I know I promised to keep your family safe, but I’ve gone and gotten Darrow killed.’ He thought grimly. Lana, Loren, Eo, Darrow… The list of kin he’d failed to protect seemed to grow every moment of every day.
Narol spit in the dirt and changed the subject since Dancer was clearly done talking on the issue. “You got a mission for me yet sir? Or am I to keep running correspondences back and forth like a very inefficient data pad.”
Dancer sighed. “Actually yes, I do. One of our old commanders, Harmony has gone awol and taken her whole crew with her. They used to run special ops against high priority targets. Sensitive missions that required a good bit of stealth and tactic.
What’s worse is that she’s also begun bombing high priority high color targets. I won’t pretend I weep for any high colors caught in the crossfire, but she’s being sloppy. Just last week she bombed a pearl club with one of the six chairmen of the board of quality control inside. He was killed, but so were fourteen pinks, eight browns, and an entire family of grays that lived next door.
She was happy to give the Son’s of Ares credit for the massacre, and the gold propaganda machine has been doing fine work making us look like murderers. “
“Bloody damn! All of that just for one man?” Narol wasn’t naive. This was war, and before the Sons were through tearing gold down from their throne, a lot of low colors were going to die. That said, killing a man gold can have replaced in a matter of days while catching innocents up in the crossfire was just sick and foolish.
“Yes. A man whose death didn’t do a thing to stop the Board of Quality Control Whatsoever. The governor has been releasing propaganda targeting us for years. This is no new phenomena, but this coupled with the loss of one of our strongest covert ops teams, has dealt us a bloody nasty blow. Hence our conversation.” Dancer took a seat after that and sighed.
“I have fighters, techs, and flyers for this team, but what I don’t have is a leader. They’re mostly boys aged sixteen to nineteen. They’re rough and most of them fancy themselves the next Ares. What they need is an experienced leader with a head for caution.” Dancer stopped and his eyes found Narol’s.
“I’m assigning you to be head talk for this team.”
At that Narol let out a hoarse bawdy laugh. “You must be manic if you think an old geezer like myself can keep up with a group of headstrong green recruits. Why would they listen to a word I say?”
“Most of these boys grew up in or around the Sons while their parents were out breaking chains. They’ve trained from a young age, and many of them have been orphaned by this war. The two who aren’t sons of Sons were orphaned by the mines at a young age. They’ve no real grasp of what it is to work the mines or how to keep a cautious head on their shoulder for survival.
I know the last thing you want is to be head talk of another team, but you are about as good as we’ve got when it comes to experienced leaders. I need someone who will keep these shits in check, and most importantly, keep as many of them as possible alive.”
Narol wasn’t laughing anymore. “I have a pretty piss poor record of keeping people alive Dancer.”
“I’ve seen your stats Narol. In the ten years you were Lambda head talk in Lykos you lost a total of fifteen men in the mines. Those kinds of numbers are unheard of amongst our people.”
Narol looked at the ceiling so that Dancer couldn’t see the tears gathering in his eyes. He’d known the names of every man that died while he wore that headset. He’d held their wives, mothers, and children while they wept after he told them their boy’s fates; with the exception of his own grandson and daughter-in-law that is.
“I know this isn’t the assignment you want but it’s the one we have for you. Either take it or go back to carrying messages till your liver gives out from the constant shower of swill you give it.”
A wry smile stretched on Narol’s face at that. This is what Narol liked about Dancer. He didn’t have any interest in sugarcoating or pampering people. If he needed to say something he was going to say it. He reminded Narol of his wife in that way.
It was at that exact thought, he stopped thinking all together. Narol could deal the ghosts of his kin that followed him through every door, but if he started thinking of his wife again, that was a despair he’d die in.
“So my options are babysitting a bunch of glory hungry children who’s balls far outweigh their brains, or spend to rest of my life carrying the mail.” Narol let out a hoarse chuckle. “Well Dancer I’ll give ya this you sure know how to sweet talk a fella.”
Dancer stiffened for an almost imperceptible moment. Narol wouldn’t have thought anything of it, but well, he’s always been a crack shot at reading people. Part of what kept him alive so long in the mines, especially when half his kin were so keen on their insurrective natures, but lacking in his own knack for self preservation.
Narol chose to ignore whatever it was that had Dancer so jumped. “I’ll lead your special ops squad. What are we calling ourselves?”
Dancer sighed in relief, and whatever’d wound him up must’ve passed because the smile under his crinkly eyes was genuine. “Your squad is called the Pit Vipers.”