Portraits revealed through your current reading position.
The stranded ArchImperator endures defeat and isolation while repairing a path back to Mars and the family his war imperiled.
Darrow is a Red of Lykos remade as a Gold who brought down the old Society and helped build the Solar Republic. His victories made him the Rising's Reaper, but his war on Mercury ended in catastrophe: much of his Free Legions force was left behind, and he escaped with only a few hundred survivors.
Six weeks into exile on the trash moon Marcher-1632, Darrow labors alongside those survivors to repair the corvette Archimedes. He is sick with guilt for the soldiers he failed and frightened for Virginia, his son, and Mars, yet he begins to accept survival and work as small steps toward home. A book left by Aurae offers him an unwelcome but timely conception of endurance: neither despair nor anger need be his destination.
A battle-worn Gold in the body of a powerful man, with the golden eyes of his Carved station; six years of war and the defeat on Mercury have left him exhausted and inwardly battered. He wears a stinking space suit while welding the Archimedes's hull.
Darrow is the Solar Republic's marooned ArchImperator and the emotional center of this opening thread. His need to reach Mars collides with the shame and exhaustion left by Mercury.
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