Contents
Children of Titan
Prologue
1. Kale Trass
2. Malcolm Graves
3. Kale
4. Malcolm
5. Kale
6. Malcolm
7. Kale
8. Malcolm
9. Kale
10. Malcolm
11. Kale
12. Malcolm
13. Kale
14. Malcolm
15. Kale
16. Malcolm
17. Kale
18. Malcolm
19. Kale
20. Malcolm
21. Kale
22. Malcolm
23. Kale
24. Malcolm
Thanks for Reading!
About the Author
TITAN’S FURY
©2019 RHETT C. BRUNO
This book is protected under the copyright laws of the United States of America. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, without the prior permission in writing of the publisher, nor be otherwise circulated in any form of binding or cover other than that in which it is published and without a similar condition including this condition being imposed on the subsequent purchaser. Any reproduction or unauthorized use of the material or artwork contained herein is prohibited without the express written permission of the authors.
Published by Aethon Books LLC.
Cover Art by: Jasper Schreurs
Cover Design, Print and eBook formatting and cover design by Steve Beaulieu.
All characters in this book are fictitious. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental. All characters, character names, and the distinctive likenesses thereof are property Aethon Books.
All rights reserved.
Children of Titan
Book 0: The Collector
Book 1: Titanborn
Book 2: Titan’s Son
Book 3: Titan’s Rise
Book 4: Titan’s Fury
Book 5: (Coming Fall 2019)
Pick up the whole
series.
Prologue
"Get away from me, freak!"
Another student at the Phobos Youth Academy gave Zhaff a shove, sending both him and his lunch tray flying into the wall. Zhaff said nothing; he never did. For as long as he could remember, he hated talking to others. There was too much to think about—too many ways a response could be formed to impart meaning.
Zhaff merely stared.
That seemed to make the bully angrier. "You want to say something?" he said, friends behind him smirking.
Zhaff didn't. After a year at the Academy, he still wasn't sure why his peers harassed him so often. It was illogical. Everyone in the program had top scores on entry exams and came from affluent, reputable clan-families who could afford the astronomical tuition meant to set them on a path toward USF administration or corporate directorship, except Zhaff only had one of those. He had been an illegitimate bastard from the Martian underworld, enrolled on a special outreach scholarship funded by Luxarn Pervenio—the man he now knew to be his biological father.
"Answer him, freak!" another boy shouted.
"He can't," the bully said. "This piece of sewer trash probably never learned how to talk. That right, Zhaff?" He grabbed Zhaff by the collar and lifted him against the wall with ease. Like most offworlders, Zhaff had grown tall, but his stringy limbs had yet to fill in.
"Would you say something!" The bully shook him.
"Something," Zhaff replied. Speaking was easier when his conversant gave direction, like how Luxarn had when he’d met with him to award the scholarship. No use of slang or local colloquialisms. Why do others insist upon making speech so difficult?
A few of the bully’s friends burst out laughing.
"You some sort of smart-ass, freak?" the bully said, cheeks flushing red as he squeezed Zhaff’s collar tighter.
Zhaff tilted his head. "Surely you know the rear-end is not the region from which human intelligence derives?" he said.
"That's it." The boy reared his hand back, revealing his intent—and his intended target point—far too early. He went to punch Zhaff in the face, but malnourished as Zhaff was, he was also exceptionally agile. He ducked his head just in time, causing the bully’s fist to slam against the metal wall. He howled in agony as Zhaff slipped under his grasp.
Walk away. That was what one of Zhaff’s instructors had told him on his first day when another over-hormonal student pushed him for staring. Ever since, he’d handled every altercation in the same manner. Except this time, one of the boy's friends stepped in his way.
"Where do you think you're going, freakshow?" he asked.
"Please, move asi—" Zhaff couldn't finish the sentence before the bully grabbed him by his shirt and threw him to the ground.
"Am I a joke to you, Zhaff?" he screamed. His voice resonated with a fury in no way suited to the situation. His fist slammed into Zhaff's cheek. In the moment, it barely hurt, however, Zhaff instantly recognized he'd suffered an orbital fracture. The onslaught wasn't finished.
"To ensure the safety of human propagation. Right, Zhaff?” the bully asked. Only the bully had suddenly aged sixty or so years, his skin scarred and craggy, his beard gray as the Earthen sky. His voice spoke of ash and whiskey. And behind him was no longer the burnished metal and wood-trimmed walls of the Academy, but stormy, orange-hued skies wrapping a frozen cliff-face.
The bully punched Zhaff again and again, pounding into his face until all Zhaff could see was blackness and blood. The others peeled the bully off before Zhaff's skull was crushed, but not before his right eye was rendered useless.
“Family,” the bully said as he was carried away. “I hope you understand, Zhaff!”
Only he didn't. Zhaff never could figure out why he’d done it. He hadn't insulted him, hadn't injured him. Perhaps a bad day had led to an explosion of rash behavior. Stress or past trauma could have that effect on people with weak constitutions. Luxarn always said sometimes people are born rotten, and that was why he ordered the bully thrown out of the Academy before Zhaff could ask him...
“Agent Zhaff,” a nearby voice echoed. “Agent Zhaff!” Someone shook his shoulder, and Zhaff had the man's sleeved wrist gripped within his new synthetic fingers even before he turned his head to face him.
"By Earth!" Pervenio Director Barret Ulnor yelped.
Zhaff released him. After that day at the academy, when Luxarn invited Zhaff to his quarters and revealed who he really was, Luxarn also told him never to let another person harm him, no matter what.
It used to be easy to tell who meant him harm. His eye lens revealed all. Through it, Zhaff simultaneously saw the rush of heat to Ulnor’s chest and every detail of the man's face, down to the fibers of hair coating his too-soft cheeks. He could see his lips twitch from one hundred meters away. Every subtle alteration on a man's face revealed intent, only, since Zhaff had woken up from a coma, something in his mind wasn't working properly. He wondered if it was the experimental, cerebral implant which had helped stimulate his brain function. It started as a Venta Co. prototype after all, and his father’s corporate rival never had been the most reliable.
Regardless, Zhaff’s mind kept wandering off to that day as a child when he was so senselessly beaten. Kept distracting him with flashes of his final moments on Titan. Flickers of Titan's sky crept into the corner of rooms. Gunshots booming like thunderclaps. He couldn't remember exactly what had happened after he and Malcolm Graves entered the Children of
Titan's secret hideout, only that the enemy had gunned them both down. Now the enemy had Malcolm prisoner and the Ring in its grasp.
An image of an old, bloodied man pounding on his face rushed through Zhaff's head again and made him stagger. His synthetic fingers raised toward his barely-human temple to try and drive out the sudden pulsing pain. His eye-lens struggled for focus.
Focus, he told himself. Mission first.
"What is it with you Cogents?" Ulnor said, still shaking his bruised wrist. "Luxarn said you were the best."
Zhaff drew a deep breath, feeling the pull only on one side of his chest. Exposure to Titan had left him with only one working lung; the other had been replaced by a new 3D-printed elastic polymer model. His throat, ravaged by cold, had been rebuilt with synthetic weaving and a respiratory aid that hummed every time it helped Zhaff inhale. Half his heart had required microelectronic augmentation to maintain optimal performance.
Zhaff knew all of the changes within his body but could feel so little of them. He was a puzzle with pieces that fit together but formed disparate images. Connections without connecting.
"We're almost there," Zhaff said. He shook his head and turned his attention to the lift’s floor counter.
“Thanks for letting me know.” Ulnor brushed off his formal tunic and checked his hair and teeth on the chrome doors. He appeared satisfied by the sight of himself. Zhaff knew little about him, only that he had connections to a wealthy clan-family.
“All right,” Ulnor said. “Once we get up there, I want you right outside the door. You aren't coming inside and scaring them away from making this deal with what's left of your face.”
"That is agreeable," Zhaff said.
"And you—oh, good. I pull this agreement off, Mr. Pervenio might start taking me more seriously. I didn't spend a year at Phobos Academy to wind up a farming director on Earth."
"You went to Phobos?"
The man chuckled. "Who here didn't?"
For a moment, Zhaff wondered if he was the one who'd beaten him—he had trouble remembering any names from that time due to the brain trauma. Then he cursed his faulty mind. That wasn't logical. He'd learned enough about his father to know the bully was somewhere terrible, or dead.
The elevator doors opened. Zhaff stepped out into the hall, his Pervenio-labeled boiler suit worn proudly. His pulse pistol hung at his hip. The floor of the Red Wing Assembly Hall was busy. Aides, dignitaries, security officers; they all waited outside the conference room where a pivotal deal allowing Pervenio Corp to supply engines for all Red Wing vessels was to be negotiated.
Director Ulnor was to serve as Luxarn's representative, and the service bot hovering behind their backs his proxy. Zhaff stood silently, ignoring the stares of so many as Director Ulnor was greeted and invited in. Luxarn bid them all hello from a screen on the service bot's lens—his first semi-public appearance since the enemy stole the Ring.
“Thank you for the escort, Zhaff,” Luxarn said through a private com-link set within Zhaff’s ear. “You know what to do.”
“Yes, sir,” Zhaff replied. That was the code-phrase indicating their operation was green-lit. It wasn’t easy smuggling what they needed to into the Red Wing headquarters. They didn’t have a central headquarters in a city like Venta or Pervenio—instead, theirs was aboard a luxury cruiser in constant rotation of Mars. The Red Wing, true to their name.
Zhaff left Director Ulnor behind and hurried toward the restrooms. He had to push through the crowd as he searched all the faces. Finally, a man in a Red Wing uniform approached from the opposite direction. Unlike the other patrons around the meeting hall, this one didn’t stare with shock at Zhaff and his reconstructed face. His eyes were set upon the ground, jaw grinding, lips parting just a hair as if he were speaking his thoughts back to himself, forehead dripping with sweat.
Nervous.
Zhaff knew that had to be his mark. A low-end security supervisor who decided he owed more loyalty to his clan-family than his employer. He passed a keycard into Zhaff’s hand as he went by, never once looking up. The manmade toxin on Zhaff’s glove rubbed onto the man’s skin. In a few short hours, he would fall ill and die without a trace, and with no way to change his mind about helping Pervenio Corp. A sacrifice, for the good of the solar system.
Zhaff coolly slid the card into his pocket, then made an abrupt turn into the restroom, where he washed his glove off in the sink before continuing to the back stall. A container sat on top of the toilet. The white powered suit of armor inside had been reclaimed from Ringers killed on Mars. The sight of the orange circle painted on the chest plate made Zhaff’s heartbeat off rhythm. It was part of his last memories on Titan before he’d failed. Failed his company, failed his father, and failed his partner.
Zhaff averted his gaze from the symbol as he dressed. He had the offworlder stature to fit in snugly, though he could only feel the tiny needles set within the carbon-fiber inlay, which helped augment strength along his left half. The rest of him was numb—either synthetic or covered by dead skin.
At the bottom of the container, he found a pulse-rifle, an outdated model made by Venta Co., the same type he’d used back on Titan before the Children of Titan won. His fingers froze on their way to grasp the handle.
Failure, failure, failure. The word bounced around Zhaff’s head like a rubber ball. His father told him it wasn’t his fault, but he knew—his failure had caused the Ring to fail.
He smacked himself in the synthetic half of his head, causing his vision to go temporarily fuzzy. Then again.
“Focus,” he told himself. He grabbed the gun, then hit a switch on the container, which caused it to fold up tight enough to be stored in his belt. Not a hint of evidence left behind. He returned to the exit and used thermal imaging to keep track of the assembly hall. The formalities were coming to an end, meaning everyone of importance would enter the conference room, and everyone else would return to their responsibilities.
One of the security personnel working the floor was on his way to leave the hall, only the man decided to stop to relieve himself. Zhaff hurried to the corner as the man entered and headed for a urinal. Zhaff considered shooting him, but it’d be too loud. Instead, he imagined the route he could take to avoid detection before being able to subdue him. With powered armor in addition to his synthetic limbs, applying the force necessary to render a man dead or unconscious would be simple.
Zhaff took a single step, then imagined the bully beating down on his face. Once again, the bully appeared old and haggard. Before Zhaff knew it, he was out into the hall, walking toward the conference room doors. No surveillance feeds were directly outside the bathroom—their contact informed them of that. No more guards between him and the tall, metallic doors.
Red Wing Company thought they were safe in their ship. Everyone thought they were safe until the Children of Titan ruined that. They interrupted the necessary expansion of man amongst the system and eventually toward the stars.
“Stop right there!”
Zhaff whipped around, gun raised, and saw that same officer he’d spared now aiming a pulse pistol at him. He wasn’t sure how he hadn’t heard him. Perhaps he wasn’t used to the audio receptor rather than an ear on the rebuilt half of his head.
The officer was green, twitchy. Zhaff easily had the first shot if he took it, but all he could see as he raised his weapon was loose sand spanning the distance between them and frozen rock. His veins ran cold. Lightning coruscated in the distance as a Titanian storm formed, only he wasn’t on Titan.
“Weapon!” the officer yelled.
A bang echoed, then a bullet struck Zhaff in the side of the helmet. It didn’t pierce the heavy armor, but it dented it hard enough to give Zhaff’s brain a shudder. He hit the floor, seeing red.
Failure, failure, failure.
Zhaff lifted himself onto all fours. His fists pressed into the metal floor so hard it warped. His fingers trembled with rage.
“Stay down!” the officer yelled.
The man was thirteen meters away, head exposed. He was about to make a move when he identified another officer approaching from behind, prepared to subdue him with a shock baton. Zhaff swept his leg backward, catching the second guard unaware. The man struck his own throat with the baton on his way down, instantly vomiting. Zhaff rolled over his body and sprang up. He took a glancing shot off his chest plate, which scraped off a layer of orange paint, then fired. The officer across the room toppled forward with a hole square in his forehead.
This time, Zhaff didn’t hesitate. He slapped the keycard against the reader, and the conference room door slid open. A glass table set for two dozen rested in the center of the ovular space. A latticed translucency stretched overhead, two stories high, with a view of the red planet beyond. The Red Wing board sat in their formal attire, gaping toward the door. Director Ulnor looked as shocked as any of them.
Two more security officers waited inside. Zhaff got a reading on them through the wall. He ducked as he entered, another shock baton blow soaring over his head. Zhaff grabbed the man’s arm and directed the blow into the other’s chest. His body convulsed as Zhaff flipped the other over his shoulder and planted a bullet in his head.
“The Ringers are here!” A Red Wing official bolted for the door, earning a bullet to the leg. Another reached for a personal firearm, and Zhaff shot it out of his grip. He had orders not to kill any of them until the right moment. That wasn’t the Children of Titan’s M.O.
“What is the meaning of this!” a woman seated at the head of the table asked. Director Ulnor sat on one side of her. Luxarn’s service bot floated on the other, his face projected in the center, feigning shock. His acting wasn’t convincing upon close examination. Zhaff would have to let him know later.
Titan's Fury: A Science Fiction Thriller (Children of Titan Book 4) Page 1
