Iron Gold

Darrow, the ArchImperator of the Solar Republic, returns to Earth after his victory on Mercury, two years after leaving. He is greeted by crowds who equally acclaim him and curse him for the seemingly never-ending war, and reunites with his best friend Sevro, who serves as his Imperator. After being greeted by some other friends and advisors, Darrow finally reaches the assembled Senators of the Republic, led by his beloved wife Virginia, the Sovereign of the Republic. She is also known as Mustang to her loved ones.

Darrow and Sevro take a shuttle to the Sovereign’s Moon retreat and find their respective children, Pax and Electra, dueling with swords. After their practice ends, Electra embraces her father happily but Pax, now 10 years old, is distant toward Darrow. Darrow is stung by his son’s reaction to his return and worries about their relationship.

He then sees his mother, who tells Darrow that they have been worried about him. Darrow also sees Dancer, his old mentor and a former warrior turned senator. Although a loyal friend, Dancer does not hesitate to stand up against Darrow to condemn the bombing of Tyche. He leads the Vox Populi, a socialist movement that promotes equality between the Colors. During their conversation, Dancer warns Darrow against becoming the kind of tyrant that he once set out to vanquish.

Darrow enjoys dinner with his friends and family, including Virginia, Pax, Sevro, his wife Victra, their daughters, and Darrow’s brother Kieran and his daughter Rhonna. The atmosphere is light-hearted and relaxed, with everyone exchanging banter and news. Darrow longs for more evenings like this and joins Virginia in their room for a moment of quiet. They happily fantasize about retiring from their responsibilities in a few years, but a messenger interrupts them: The Senate is requesting an emergency meeting the next day to discuss Darrow’s decision to attack Mercury despite the senator’s vote against it.

Lyria, an 18-year-old Red girl from Mars, recounts the past two years of her life, since the uprising that gave birth to the Solar Republic. Although Darrow, also known as the Reaper, freed the Martian miners from enslavement and Virginia promised them happiness and peace, things have not improved much. Now living on the surface, the miners work hard to survive and Lyria’s clan, the Gammas, are targeted by rebel groups.

Lyria reminisces about her former life in the mines, with her siblings and her parents. She now lives in a small hut with her sister Ava and her young children, their younger brother Tiran, and their father, who is disabled. Their mother is dead, and their other brothers and Ava’s husband have joined the Free Legions and gone to war.

Lyria returns home at the end of the day and is greeted by Ava, who was unexpectedly able to find garlic for that night’s soup. The sisters exchange news about their day while waiting for Tiran and Ava’s boys to come home. Ava tells Lyria that her young son Liam, who is blind, is spending the night in the infirmary.

Lyria resents the Reaper’s broken promises that have left them living in misery. That night, Lyria is awakened by the sound of a ship landing nearby. When Tiran goes to investigate, Lyria goes after him and finds her brother and other men arguing with Red strangers near the landing pads. The strangers are looking for Gammas, and when some of the men point to Tiran, they shoot and kill him.

Ephraim, a 46-year-old thief, is hidden inside a wooden crate that has been snuck into the Hyperion Museum of Antiquities on Luna. While he is waiting for the right time to begin his heist, he reminisces about his late fiancé. Unwilling to dwell on painful memories, he takes a drug that dulls empathy.

One of his accomplices, a strong Obsidian woman named Volga, finally opens the crate. She and Ephraim join the rest of their crew: Dano, a young Red Terran, and Cyra, a Green Terran locksmith. Cyra hacks through museum security and guides them to the room where their target is waiting: the Lightbringer, an antique razor sword. Volga takes care of the security drones while Dano evades the pressure sensors to grab the sword. When the alarms start ringing, Ephraim pours acid onto the floor so they can escape.

The next day, Ephraim brings the sword to Oslo, a White academician who ordered the theft for a mysterious client. After inspecting it, Oslo pays Ephraim who, cynical about life and feeling aimless, gets drunk. A few days later, he joins his crew in a bar to split the money. His friends ask him to stay and drink with them, but Ephraim, disillusioned and bitter, leaves.

Lysander is a 20-year-old Gold and the only survivor of his family’s massacre by the Rising. He lives on an old ship, Archimedes, with Cassius au Bellona, a Gold who helped the Rising and has sworn to protect Lysander, and Pytha, a Blue pilot. Together, they travel through space and offer help to whoever needs it.

Lysander, Cassius, and Pytha finally reached the ship that they received a distress signal from a few days earlier. They find a seemingly abandoned smuggling ship in the middle of an asteroid field, and Lysander and Cassius go out to explore it in their space suits, worried that it might be a trap. Inside, they find evidence of a violent massacre, and they guess that the assailants were Ascomanni, disenfranchised Obsidian soldiers.

Lysander and Cassius find a few survivors, who tell them that the Ascomanni are on the upper deck and may be after the ship’s cargo or a Gold woman they are carrying. After Pytha warns them that other Ascomanni ships are on their way, Cassius and Lysander help the survivors towards an exit. Lysander decides to try and help the Gold woman. He finds her tied up in a locked room with other injured crew members.

Lysander frees the Gold woman, who is badly injured but alive. The other prisoners beg him to help them, and he tries to, but the Gold knocks him out and steals his razor before running out of the room. Without his sword, Lysander cannot free the others, and Obsidians arrive soon after. Lysander is forced to abandon the prisoners and run, guided by Pytha through his suit’s com system.

When he sees the Gold woman in a hallway, he notices that she has new injuries. They jump on the Archimedes together. As the ship flies away, shots from the Ascomanni damage it and kill one of the rescued crew members. While Cassius and Pytha tend to the ship, Lysander helps the Gold woman to the infirmary, where he discovers that she is a Peerless Scarred disguised as a regular Gold. Peerless Scarred, like Cassius, are Golds marked with a scar on their face to symbolize their outstanding fighting abilities. Before she passes out, the woman tells Lysander that she was going to asteroid S-1392.

Darrow attends a senate meeting, presided over by Virginia, to discuss the continuation of the war effort. Once the senators are assembled, Darrow reports that, after the Republic’s victory on Mercury, the Ash Lord and his army have retreated to Venus and are preparing for one last stand. The Republic can now choose to stop the war or keep going until the Empire’s last remnants are destroyed.

Some senators support Darrow’s desire to finish off the Empire, but Dancer opposes him, as the Vox Populi want to avoid further bloodshed. He argues that there is another way toward peace and introduces Julia au Bellona, a messenger from the Ash Lord. Virginia has no choice but to let her speak.

Julia au Bellona informs the senate that emissaries were sent to Darrow with an armistice offer just before his attack on Mercury, but he ignored them. Despite Darrow’s assurances that it was a trick from the Ash Lord meant to weaken him, the senators proclaim him a traitor. Darrow understands that one of the Howlers, Sevro’s fighters, must have betrayed him and told Dancer about the emissaries. The senators vote to remove Darrow from power while they come to a decision. Darrow decides to end the war once and for all.

Lyria runs home, pursued by the Red Hand, a group of Reds intent on exacting violent revenge on Gammas. She warns Ava and the children that they need to flee, then goes to help their father out of his bed. He refuses to go with them, knowing that his wheelchair will slow them down, so Lyria, Ava, and the children exchange tearful goodbyes with him.

Ava leaves for the docks with her children while Lyria runs to get Liam from the infirmary. Once she has found Liam, she runs through the streets with him, evading Red Hand soldiers and fleeing Gammas. People are killed around her, and she tries to hide in a dumpsite with some others. They are soon forced to run again when the Red Hand starts a fire around them.

Lyria, Liam, and the other fleeing Gammas run to the docks but find themselves trapped between the fire and the Red Hand. When the soldiers start shooting at them, Lyria is injured and falls to the ground. Republic ships arrive and soldiers start landing around them to fight the Red Hand. One soldier lands in the water, and Lyria dives after him to rescue him. When she brings him up to the surface, she realizes that he is a Gold.

On Luna, Ephraim meets his former sister-in-law, Holiday ti Nakamura, in a bar. She was the sister of Ephraim’s fiancé, Trigg, and the two of them meet at that bar every year for the anniversary of Trigg’s death. Ephraim and Holiday have a strained conversation; they are unable to see eye to eye because she works for the Reaper while Ephraim, disillusioned, has left the Rising. Holiday leaves, warning Ephraim that Trigg would not want him to waste his life. Ephraim, heartbroken and bitter, watches an old surveillance video of Trigg being killed by a Gold fighter. He is suddenly assaulted and knocked unconscious.

As Archimedes tries to evade the pursuing Ascomanni ships, Lysander and Cassius realize that they are out of options. As a last resort, Lysander suggests that they find asteroid S-1392, as the Peerless Scarred stranger suggested. When they get there, they find a powerful warship from the Rim hiding in the asteroid.

The Rim Dominion is a territory on the solar system’s outer region. The Republic has a tentative peace treaty with them, but they are strictly forbidden from crossing each other’s borders. The ship easily destroys the Ascomanni pursuers and informs Archimedes that it is about to be boarded. Cassius, a well-known an enemy of the Rim, dons a disguise by using a faciem, a technological helmet that performs reconstructive surgery on his face.

Darrow meets Quicksilver, a titan of industry and an old friend, who agrees to help him. He then meets with the Howlers and tells them that he has been stripped of his powers. He gives them a choice between following him or staying behind.

The Howlers have been loyal to Darrow because they believe in the Republic, but going along with his plan may start a civil war. After some debate, some of the Howlers, including Holiday and Sefi, Queen of the highly respected Valkyries, choose to leave. Now weakened and doubtful, Darrow watches the remaining Howlers prepare to fight again. He plans on taking them to Venus to kill the Ash Lord.

After the Republic soldiers and medics have taken care of the survivors, Lyria searches through the bodies for her family. She finds Ava and her children among the dead and has a breakdown. When she wakes up in the infirmary, she and Liam are visited by the Gold soldier whose life she saved.

The Gold introduces himself as Kavax au Telemanus, a famed hero of the Rising. He thanks Lyria, offers her his help with anything she wishes, and acts kindly toward Liam. After he leaves, Lyria realizes that there is nothing for them on Mars anymore and, driven to give Liam a better life, she runs after Kavax. She begs him to take them with him, but his daughter Xana argues that they cannot legally take immigrants to Luna with them.

Kavax pretends to agree but tricks Xana by planting candy in Lyria’s pocket. When his pet fox Sophocles sniffs them out, Kavax pretends to take it as a sign and hires Lyria as his valet to circumvent the immigration process. He orders his soldiers to find Liam, and they prepare to board.

Ephraim wakes up tied up to a chair facing a powerful-looking Pink man and a threatening Obsidian named Gordo. The Pink reveals that he knows everything about Ephraim, including the museum heist details and his accomplices’ names, and he wants his stolen sword back. He introduces himself as the Duke of Hands, a leader of the Syndicate, a criminal organization, and threatens to cut Ephraim’s hand.

When Ephraim refuses to reveal his fence’s name, the Duke congratulates him. He actually contracted Ephraim to steal the sword from himself as a test and now offers the thief a new job stealing “the most valuable thing in all the worlds” (164). Despite his reluctance to deal with the Syndicate, Ephraim accepts, realizing he doesn’t have a choice.

Ephraim explains the Duke of Hands’s request to Volga, Dano, and Cyra. Cyra refuses to work for the Syndicate because it is too dangerous, and Dano agrees. Volga tries to convince them to help Ephraim, who has helped each of them in the past. After some debate, they realize that if they refuse, the Syndicate will find and kill them. They reluctantly agree to take the job, which has a one-month deadline and is the riskiest challenge they have ever faced.

Lysander, Cassius, Pytha, and the smuggler survivors are brutally taken prisoner by the Rim Dominion ship’s crew. One smuggler is killed when she tries to escape, and Lysander and his friends are kept tied up on the ground. A woman named Pandora questions Lysander, believing him to be a spy, but is interrupted by her crew, which alerts her about an injured woman in Archimedes. Her name is Seraphina, and her brother Diomedes soon arrives, happy to see her back alive.

Pandora argues that they should question Seraphina about what she may have found on her journey, but Diomedes orders her to leave Seraphina and the prisoners unharmed. Lysander recognizes the names of the people around him: Diomedes and Seraphina are the children of Romulus au Raa, Sovereign of the Rim Dominion and his family’s enemy, and Pandora is one of the Sovereign’s most famed assassins.

Before they leave for Venus, Sevro insists on saying goodbye to his daughters. Despite knowing that the Sovereign and her soldiers may be waiting to arrest him, Darrow goes along so that he can see Pax one last time. He spends some time with his son, bittersweet about leaving him again.

Virginia intercepts Darrow as he is about to leave. She pleads with him to stay and obey the laws of the Republic, but Darrow refuses. She then calls for the Wardens, fighters led by Wulfgar, Darrow’s close friend and a Republic hero. After unsuccessfully trying to change Darrow’s mind, Wulfgar reluctantly decides to take him prisoner. Darrow, cornered and desperate, fights back and kills Wulfgar. Horrified, Darrow realizes that he may have doomed the Republic by murdering one of its heroes. He flees with Sevro.