“Okay,” I managed, probably too softly for her to hear.
Our bodies twirled once. I clutched her hands so tight, I feared I might break them. We slammed into the cruiser, my back against her chest. Her arm wrapped tight around my gut. I groped behind me for something to grab on to, found the ship, and went to rotate my body so I was facing it. When I extended my arm, my wing got caught in the wind drift, and I was wrenched to the side. Rin lost her grip on me, and for a moment, I was separated from anything but the atmosphere.
Hayes extended his hand as far as he could and clutched my wrist. “I got you, kid!” he shouted.
Rin grabbed him, and together they hauled me back in. My chest crashed into the cruiser, and I hugged it. Fingers, feet—every appendage at my disposal found a groove in the hull before my muscles tensed.
“No wings!” Hayes said as he reached over and deactivated mine.
“Trass’s shit!” I screamed the first words that popped into my mind.
Hayes laughed, and I even heard Rin snicker before she said, “Gareth, how’s that vent going?”
He answered her by tearing off the cover and tossing it. My heart sputtered as I was provided a clear example of what had nearly happened to me. The finned piece of metal twisted across the sky and was bent in half in two separate directions before vanishing into the haze.
“All right,” Rin said. “Everybody in quick! I’m sick of this planet.”
I couldn’t agree more. One by one, we followed Gareth into the cramped passage, and I made sure I got in second. Only after I had a solid surface all around me was I finally able to draw a full breath. Every part of me shook, but I’d made it.
One thing was for certain, though. Sneaking around the Lowers was a hell of a lot safer than flying.
NINETEEN
We traversed the vent’s inner pressurization seals and busted through a grille into the spacious cargo hold of the Pervenio luxury cruiser. It was dark inside, with no need to illuminate a room filled with supplies. All I could make out were the rigid shapes of stacked containers and rolling storage racks. The emptiness did have one benefit, however. There was no reason to heat the room to Earther preference.
I clambered over a tall crate and dropped to the floor between it and another. Never had I been so happy to step foot on a ship. I would’ve kissed the floor if I wasn’t wearing a helmet.
“Still plenty stocked up,” Hayes said. “Recall order must have come real early.”
Gareth approached a container locked by a keypad. He shoved his powered fingers under the lid and, after a few seconds of prying, yanked it free. It was refrigerated, and cold steam poured out. He waved us over, and inside sat a pile of plastic-wrapped, frozen meat. I had no idea what kind of farmed animal they had been cut from. I’d never seen raw meat in my life.
“Steaks?” Hayes exclaimed. “Remind me again why we decided to hit a shit-ass gas harvester back then, Rini?”
Rin slammed the container shut. “Would you two focus?” she said. “They track stock to keep the crew in line. No touching anything.”
“This gets better and better. Kale, tell her we want to see what fine Earther cuisine tastes like. She’ll listen to you.”
The sight of the meat made my mouth water, but I was lucky: Flying across Saturn had left me feeling nauseous. I fought the urge.
“Listen to her,” I said, to a chorus of Hayes’s groans.
Rin stepped from behind a row of containers. A blade of light flared from the top of her helmet, revealing the far wall and the only door in or out. Gone were the corroded walls and exposed organs of the gas harvesters I’d grown too used to. Even the cargo hold of one of Pervenio’s prized luxury cruisers was a thing of conceived beauty. Pearlescent metal, sleek lines, lofty ceilings with perfect corners; it reminded me of the Darien Uppers.
“Cameras will be monitoring the hall outside that door, watching who comes in and how long they stay,” Rin said. “They’d never expect anybody to get in here from the atmosphere, but no way can we sneak out.”
“The vents?” I said, eager to propose doing something that I was actually proficient at.
“Not dressed like this,” Hayes countered.
“Hayes, you got a read on the coordinates earlier,” Rin said. “Approximately how long to Pervenio Station?”
“Six to ten hours, I’d wager, accounting for planet rotation.”
“Long enough for the patrons to leave the beach and start clamoring for a meal?”
“Maybe two.”
“All right, then we wait. Eventually, they’ll send a few Titanborn workers in here for supplies, and we’ll take their uniforms.”
We sat in the darkness, visors down and breathing in the fresh, scented air. The Earthers had it smelling like flowers, and the air recyclers pumping the room were so noiseless, there was no sound except for the occasional scratching of my armor across a container when I had an itch and couldn’t get to it. The floor wasn’t even vibrating from Saturn’s storms, the cruiser built sturdy enough to handle them as if they were gentle breezes.
Hayes snickered as he and Gareth whispered about something—or at least Hayes was whispering. Gareth signed, and I wasn’t paying close enough attention to see what they were on about. Rin sat across from me, her thousand-meter gaze aimed over my shoulder toward nothing. She had her pulse-rifle in her lap and continuously took it apart and put it back together again without needing to look.
“You’re going to miss it, aren’t you?” I said to her.
“Huh?” Rin shook her head as if waking from a reverie, then peered up from her gun.
“The Sunfire.”
She scoffed. “Like you miss the shadows of the Lowers maybe. You stay in a place for as many years as we were there, and it becomes a part of you. The good and the bad.”
“You never got off?”
“Once. Rendezvousing with a Venta transport in a place where the storms never cease wasn’t easy, and we couldn’t sit around during it. I didn’t trust them enough, even with my sister organizing the exchange.”
“Did you ever think about stealing it? Leaving everything behind?”
Her attention returned to her pulse-rifle. “You have a lot of questions.”
“You have a lot of answers.”
A grin tugged at the healthy side of her lips. “I thought about it. Earthers in a different color handed us food and water, guns and armor—everything we’d need to take their ship and disappear. I thought about heading to Neptune and beyond... going until the food ran out. And then I remembered.”
“That you were a Trass?” I asked.
“No, that after spending my entire life listening to every word my brother had to say, running, hiding, and taking on names, I could finally have it back. Control something.”
“No matter how awful it was?”
“Great a man as your father was, the one thing he never understood was that he didn’t have to bear the burden of Titan alone. They were never going to be able to keep you hidden forever. Eventually, the truth finds us all.”
“And a part of me is grateful for everything you’ve told me, but the rest of me—”
“Would rather live in that moment when all that mattered was kissing a girl,” Rin said. “I know. You can hate it now all you like, Kale, but once you realize what it’s like to stand for something, to truly make a difference, you’ll never look back.”
“I don’t know...”
“I do. I see him in you so clearly. When the time comes, you’ll want more than just to speak for us. It’s why you proposed this plan, and why I was so eager to accept. You’ll want a gun in your hand, leading the charge in the name of Titan, just like he dreamed of doing.” She stared longingly down at the barrel of her rifle. “It’s who we are. We see a chance at giving our people a real home in the face of hardship, and we build an ark to cross space and get to it.”
With my mind now focused, I noticed the glimmer in her eyes when she spoke of Trass—the austerity of
her façade. Our relation to him was more than faith to her. She believed it completely, and for the first time, the notion that it might be true really hit me. I could understand why my father had felt the need to bear the burden alone. To hide. They were planet-sized shoes to fill.
The cargo bay’s door whooshed open and promptly ended our conversation. The four of us immediately hopped to our feet, but Rin raised a finger to shush us. We were behind a row of storage containers, and she peeked around the end of them toward the door. I followed.
Two male Ringer workers strolled in, wearing tidy Pervenio staff uniforms. Pointed hats rested on their heads, as if they were attending a formal ball in a Pre-Meteorite era.
“One more meal before we hit zero-g,” one of them groused.
“Better than carrying one more drink to a fat mud stomper in a bathing suit,” said the other.
“Still, who could be that hungry? Can’t they wait until we dock?”
“Apparently not. We better be getting paid a full shift for this, though.”
“You know we won’t. ‘Wasted gas for a weeklong trip is expensive,’ they’ll say.”
They stopped by a pair of food supply crates and started loading them onto a rolling rack. “Trass damn the Children of Titan,” one said. “You’d think they realize that they’re just hurting the rest of our wallets?”
“I don’t think they care,” the other replied.
Rin drew her pulse-rifle and stalked out into the aisle. “You’re right,” she said, aiming at them. Our conversation dropped from my mind, and I remembered who she was. I hurried out beside her, fearful that she might shoot them, Ringers or not.
“Don’t move,” I warned them. “Don’t shout.”
Their hands shot into the air. Their jaws dropped beneath their sanitary masks. They couldn’t get much paler than they already were, but any hint of color fled their cheeks.
“P… please, don’t shoot,” one of them stuttered.
That was when I realized I had a pulse-rifle of my own aimed at them. I lowered it.
Rin stomped forward. “Uniforms off,” she demanded. “Don’t make me ask twice.”
“Listen to her, and you’ll be fine,” I said, hopeful I wasn’t lying.
They didn’t wait. Hands shaking, they removed their uniforms down to a pair of crummy boiler suits you couldn’t get anywhere else but in the Darien Lowers. My eyes darted between them and the barrel of Rin’s pulse-rifle the entire time.
“On the floor,” Rin said once they were undressed. They crumpled their uniforms and placed them down. “Masks and gloves too.” They hesitated for a moment and then decided to do as she asked and risk exposure.
“Good,” she said. “Now come this way.” She took a step back and beckoned them around the corner. They obeyed, at least until one of them saw my face up close. He stopped in his tracks, eyes wide like he’d seen a ghost.
“By Trass, it’s you,” he said, incredulous. “Kale D—”
Rin cracked him across the head with the butt of her rifle, knocking him out. Gareth did the same to the other.
“What are you doing!” I whispered sharply.
“Two walked in,” she replied. “Only two can walk out. Now get dressed.”
She approached their uniforms, but I tugged on her arm. “What are you going to do to them?” I asked.
“Hide them. Or do you have a better idea?” I didn’t. She pulled away from me and picked up a uniform. “From now on, you’re a servant on the—” She paused and read the tag printed above the chest. “Ring Skipper.”
“What kind of name is that?” Hayes laughed.
“An Earther one,” Rin said. “Help Kale with his armor. There’s no time to waste.”
Hayes appeared behind me and started removing my suit. Gareth helped Rin. Hayes waited until the top half was folded down over my torso before somehow switching off its power. The tiny needles stabbing my nerves slid out. I instantly fell to my knees, finding that I had to work to draw breath again. The weight of the suit, in combination with my weak natural muscles, was too much to handle. Hayes forced me onto my ass and freed my legs.
“It’ll take some time to get used to,” he said. “The g-stim we took should help.”
He drew me to my feet, and then let go without warning. I stumbled forward, legs feeling like jelly as the gravity of Saturn’s upper atmosphere pulled on them. I had to lean against the row of containers to make my way over to the uniforms. Rin held one of them in front of her face, grimacing.
“Not sure you can pass as a man,” Hayes remarked.
“Lucky for us, they think we all look the same,” she replied. “Get dressed.”
Getting it on all by myself was like exercising with heavy weights. I had to take it one exhausted arm at a time for the top half and sit to shove my wobbly legs into the pant-legs. I was puffing heavily by the end of it.
I patted the pocket to find its owner had only an ID chip with him. Then I lifted his sanitary mask. The idea of putting on someone else’s was revolting. I washed off both the mask and the man’s gloves in a service sink.
I glanced back at Rin as I snapped the mask over my mouth. I’d never seen her out of her bulky armor before. She was excessively skinny, no doubt from having survived on a limited amount of ration bars for so long. Her elbows and knees bulged like beads along a string. The uniform fell loose over her chest so that it was impossible to tell if she had breasts, though not that many Ringer women were well-endowed in that area. A sanitary mask covered the worst region of her facial scars, which surprisingly made her pleasant to look at, though I couldn’t help but smirk at the sight of her hair drawn into a bun and hiding beneath a pointed service hat. The trappings of civilian life didn’t suit her.
“You look gorgeous,” Hayes cackled as he dragged one of the unconscious bodies across the floor.
“Shut up,” she snapped, her healthy cheek a light shade of pink.
“Seriously. Forget your sister. I might take a run at you when this is all over.”
“I said, shut up!”
He snickered but didn’t dare push her further.
“So now what?” I asked as I put on a pair of gloves.
“We need a hand-terminal,” Rin said.
“You didn’t have any on the Sunfire?”
“None that still work. You think you’ll be able to steal one?”
“You’re joking, right?”
“Unless you’d rather break into the command deck. Rylah’s taught me a few tricks, so I should be able to relay a message to her through their com array without them realizing.”
I smiled. “Finally, you pick something I’m good at.”
“All right, then—let’s go. The kitchen is expecting our delivery.”
“You two, don’t take long,” Hayes said. Gareth held open a tall storage container while Hayes stuffed one of the bodies in. “Once we hit zero-g, you’ll be expected in restraints.”
“We won’t,” Rin said. “If anyone comes through that door—”
Hayes finished with the body and slapped the container on the side. “Give them a shiny box just like these two. I know.”
Rin and I emerged from the cargo bay, pushing the rack that the Ringer staff had prepared for us. We kept our heads down on the way out, wary of surveillance despite our disguises. A crimson carpet with gold frills extended down the center of a gracious hallway. Wonderfully elaborate faux-wood moldings ran along the edges of the tall, white-paneled ceiling, hiding thin air recycler vents pumping in unpleasantly warm air. Golden pendant lights hung from it, high enough for even the tallest Ringer to pass comfortably.
If that wasn’t enough, a row of glassy doors to our left opened up to one side of what was labeled the NATURE DECK. Inside, trees with broad, frilly leaves soared toward a latticed dome projecting the image of a clear blue sky inside, like from the stories about ancient Earth. Through them, I could see tan-colored sand with calm waves lapping at it. Lounge seats were arranged along it, beneath
massive, hanging light fixtures than shone like the sun.
An Earther with too many rolls to count lay upon one, wearing tinted glasses. He barked at a masked Ringer server carrying a tray of drinks, who’d apparently done something wrong. She remained silent and cowered.
Rin whispered something to me as I slowed to stare in awe. I was too distracted to hear her. “Kale!” she snapped when I didn’t answer right away.
“Sorry,” I replied. “What?”
“Focus,” she said. “We can’t look shocked by their decadence, as disgusting as it is.” She stared straight ahead, concentrated on our task and not fazed in the slightest by the most luxurious space I’d ever seen. “And we have to remember to follow every order we’re given,” she added.
“I’ll be fine. I’m used to having a captain.”
“I’m not worried about you.”
We turned at the first branch in the hallway away from the NATURE DECK. It looked the same as the last, only without a field of green through the doors.
“Do you have any idea where you’re going?” I asked.
“Not at all,” she said, “but they do.”
Two Earther security officers appeared from around another corner a ways down. They weren’t freelance like John and his team. These were legitimate Pervenio officers, in full armor and regalia, armed with pulse-rifles and the newest in shock-baton technology. Seeing one again made me cringe as I remembered what the lit end felt like.
“Aye, you two!” one of them hollered. “Get those back to the kitchen now. We’ve got hungry customers.”
“Staff is stretched thin,” Rin said, keeping her voice low and subservient. “They sent us to grab this, but we haven’t ever worked the kitchen.”
“I hate when they shuffle in new help.” The officer rolled his eyes, then waved us along. “Come on.”
They rushed by, and Rin and I exchanged a nod before turning the cart to follow behind them. She was smart. With our uniforms on, no Earther security officer would know who or where we were supposed to be.
Titan's Son: (Children of Titan Book 2) Page 21
