Story so far

In the deep Martian mining colony of Lykos, sixteen-year-old Darrow is the Helldiver of Lambda clan, prized for his speed at the drills. His people are Reds, the lowest of the Society's rigid Colors, worked like slaves to mine helium-3 while being told they are noble pioneers terraforming Mars for their Gold masters and Gray guards. Darrow's father was hanged years ago for the failed, peaceful Dancer's Rebellion, and Darrow has grown hard around that grief, scornful of his drunken Uncle Narol and hungry to win the Laurel—the quarterly prize of food and comforts that Gamma clan always claims. Chasing it, he recently took a reckless dive among his own molten drills, burning his hand but posting a record helium-3 pull, and returned home certain the prize was finally Lambda's; his wife Eo, meanwhile, seemed oddly apprehensive and hinted at a surprise of her own. Now the whole colony gathers in the Common for the Laureltide dance—a defiant celebration of song and drink and family, held beneath the very gallows where Darrow's father died, since the Society forbids the Reds even to bury their dead. Old grievances surface: Narol, stung by talk that Darrow won the Laurel, brawls with him across the table before both return sullenly to their drink. Eo grows more tense as midnight nears, twisting her skirts, smiling like she knows something Darrow does not. At last the Grays float down in their gravBoots with the copper MineMagistrate Podginus, who cuts rations from clans that lost men to a gas explosion, prattles about the simple happiness of Rusters, and finally awards the Laurel—to Gamma, once again. Lambda gets nothing.