Titan's Fury: A Science Fiction Thriller (Children of Titan Book 4)

by Rhett C. Bruno

  “Pervenio expected the same, but at least they paid.”

  “You want credits?” I said. “Fine. We have no use for them, and I know an Earther won’t get out of bed without them. Is one hundred thousand enough?”

  His eyebrow lifted at hearing the number. He wouldn’t be able to use them for much, locked away on Titan or dead, but Earthers had a hard time seeing past their wallets. A few seconds of silence passed between us, and I thought he might actually make things easier.

  “Generous offer, but you forget the retired part,” he said. “I’m sure you’ll find someone else, kid.”

  Rin smacked him again. “That’s Lord Trass to you,” she said.

  Malcolm spit under his mask and a bead of red dribbled from the bottom. “Not on your life.”

  “Enough,” I said. “You’re going to help Rin break into Basaam’s laboratory on Martelle Station and accept our payment, or you won’t ever see your daughter again.”

  “Being a murderer doesn’t make you a good liar,” he said. “I saw the way you look at her. Hell, I saw the way she looked back. She always did like rebels, probably thanks to me. You care about her too much to hurt her, especially after what you let happen to Cora.” Rin’s grip on his throat tightened, but he didn’t stop.

  “That’s the thing with humans,” he rasped. “We all have weaknesses. Leaders, pawns; it doesn’t matter. Luxarn Pervenio has his greed and his pride, and you, Lord Trass… you care too much. The Children of Titan may be trying to mold you into what they need, but they can’t change who you are deep down.”

  Rin was about to respond with violence, but I pulled her away and brought myself directly before the collector. I’d let him fill my head with doubts earlier, but now, hearing him speak, I could tell that he was the same as any self-entitled Earther who thought they could look down on us.

  “I cared about Cora,” I said sternly. “Aria died to me the moment I found out she was lying about who she is. Your daughter is a tool now. Nothing more. Someone who understands their language.”

  “You’re fooling yourself if you believe that.”

  “It’s simple, Collector,” Rin said. “Start helping us, or I’ll tell my men to strip Aria down and drag her out into the Uppers to be alone among my people. An outsider like her? Who knows what they’ll do without us around to protect her.”

  Malcolm glared at her. I could see his fists start to tighten, but he kept his composure. “What is it with you two? Are you jealous that Aria got blessed by ‘the king,’ and you got tossed to the curb like a stray?”

  He was good. Getting under Rin’s skin was tough enough without staring straight at her gruesome, terrifying face. I could see her muscles tensing and tugged again on her shoulder before she beat the collector to death. We didn’t exchange a word, just a nod.

  “You’ve left us no choice,” I said to Malcolm. I strode toward the command deck without even a glance back.

  “We’re not done here, Drayton!” Malcolm yelled. I heard him pull on his restraints and shout in defiance and couldn’t help the self-satisfied smirk pulling at the corners of my lips. I’d now found my way under his skin. He was right, everyone has their weaknesses, and his, more than credits or anything else, was the need to be in control.

  “Yes you are,” Rin said. “So what'll it be? Help us or watch your daughter be ravaged?”

  “How about neither?” Malcolm replied. “I know a bluff when I see one. Your king’s got goo-goo eyes. Think this is the first time I’ve seen a man fall head over heels for my daughter? And why wouldn’t he? She’s got half of me in her.”

  “Untie him.”

  I stopped in the shadows of the hall and turned to watch. Two of my men strode forward and did as she asked. One slung Malcolm over his armored shoulder as if he were no more than a sack of dirty laundry.

  They carried him kicking and thrashing across the room, then threw him against Aria’s sleep pod. Rin had warned me about this part when we came up with the plan to strongarm Malcolm into helping us. It was why she’d instructed me to leave, but I watched around the corner.

  Malcolm cursed as Rin grabbed his head and shoved it against the glass. Aria slept soundly within, no idea what was happening. It was easy to say I wanted nothing to do with her, but even seeing just a sliver, mad as I was at her, I had to believe she could explain herself.

  I hated that the collector was right. I still cared about her more than I knew I should. And it wasn’t only the child she carried. The way freckles lightly dappled her cheeks and slightly upturned nose, her narrow face and full lips—whatever half of Malcolm she’d gotten, it didn’t show.

  “You Earthers think we’re all monsters,” Rin said. “I don’t want to kill your daughter, Collector. Neither does Lord Trass. But we will do what we have to.”

  Rin tapped on the sleep pod’s control panel. Malcolm craned his neck to try and see what she was up to, but my men held him down.

  “Nobody knows the value of oxygen like us,” Rin said. “The planet we come from doesn’t have enough to breathe, you see. But like anything valuable, too much is a curse.” She keyed a command, and both Malcolm and I stared through the glass. Aria remained still for a short while, then her eyelids twitched.

  “What are you doing?” Malcolm asked.

  “You gluttonous Earthers hoard and collect, but this is what happens when you take more than your share,” Rin said. “Don’t worry. The Venta whore served our needs well, so she won’t feel a thing as too much oxygen poisons her.”

  Every part of Aria started to shake, the tremors growing in intensity with each passing moment. I could hardly watch. When Rin said she’d get Malcolm to help, I left it to her. She’d never said precisely how. I hoped Rin knew not to push far enough to injure Aria or the baby, but then I remembered how much she hated anyone who wasn’t Titanborn. How far she could go with violence just to send a message, like spacing every Earther aboard the Piccolo.

  My fingers instinctually clutched the door frame and squeezed, mostly to keep myself from running out and stopping her. This was a game of chance. Earthers like Malcolm tended to say whatever it took to get out of jams. There was still the possibility that he didn’t give a damn about his daughter and only about himself. He wouldn’t be the first Earther.

  I was about to run out and scream for Rin to stop, when Malcolm did it instead.

  “Just stop!” he roared.

  He thrashed and broke free. His foot caught one of my men in the hip with enough force to send him flying, denting his powered armor. He got a right hook across Rin’s face, but with all the dead nerve endings on that side of her cheek, it didn’t do as much damage as he’d probably hoped.

  The other Titanborn wrestled him into the air, and without mag-boots, Malcolm couldn’t get any leverage. Rin rose to her impressive height and drove her fist three times in quick succession into Malcolm’s face until his head slumped to the side.

  “Are you ready to do what we ask?” Rin asked.

  Malcolm spat more blood out from beneath his mask then nodded. “I’ll do whatever you bastards need; just leave her out of it.”

  Rin set Aria’s sleep pod to return to normal conditions. I fell back against the wall behind the corner and clutched my chest. My heart raced. Everything had happened so fast, and it was only after the fight that I realized my body had frozen rather than trying to help. I’d only seen it out of the corner of my eye because my sight had remained fixed on Aria’s shaking body.

  It’d been a long time since my chest felt like that, since nerves had my heart ready to burst through my rib cage, and my throat ready to collapse in. I drew slow, steadying breaths through my nostrils. Maybe she deserved to suffer for lying to us, but I wasn’t prepared to lose Aria yet. She was the only person left in the world who didn’t look at me like she was expecting something.

  Two

  Malcolm Graves

  For the first time, the thought popped into my head that things might have been better if I’d
never shot Zhaff to protect my daughter from Pervenio. And it wasn’t the rebellion. That would have happened with or without me. I knew that now. Shooting Zhaff and provoking Luxarn was the powder keg that set it off, but it would’ve happened some other way. The moment Kale found out Cora was murdered, he would have made sure it happened.

  But at least Aria would have been in a cell where she was safe. Pervenio didn’t space people for no good reason, well… at least, anyone but Cora and the crew of the Piccolo. But they didn’t space the daughters of career collectors. Maybe Aria deserved to be in a cell anyway for all that she’d done to help the Ringers. Perhaps I did too for hiding her from my employer. After all, she was part of a bombing on Earth I got stuck cleaning up, whether she intended to have casualties or not.

  That was the thing about any line of work where bombs and guns were necessary—there was always collateral damage. The best intentions corrupt even the best of us when the cards are on the table.

  Kale Trass personified that more than anybody. I watched him from across the Cora’s cargo hold, discussing their plan with Rin and a few other Titanborn. They wanted freedom, but after everything they’d done and would do, they’d never have it. All the death and horror would weigh on them, break them. Even from around the corner, I could see it in Kale’s eyes while Rin tortured my daughter in her sleep. He was unraveling, lying to himself about who or what he cared for while the real monsters fought.

  I still clung to my hunch that he cared for Aria too much to carry out his threat, but his people didn’t. Rin didn’t. And if anything was clear to me now, it was that she was the one pulling strings. She’d convince him to kill Aria, or maybe she already had, and by the time he knew he didn’t want it, it’d be too late.

  “From ice to ashes, Lord Trass,” she whispered to Kale as they embraced and touched their foreheads together. He said the same then headed for the exit. I caught him staring at me on his way out, and he quickly averted his gaze.

  Yep, I was still in his head. Rin knew it too because she stepped between us. It was no wonder she led from behind closed doors. I hadn’t yet had a calm moment to really take a good hard look at her. It wasn’t only her wounds making her such a grisly creature, but the way she carried herself. It was like she wanted the whole world to feel what she had. Everyone. The good and the bad.

  “So what’s the plan?” I asked. “We fly down there in your shiny white armor and get what we need?”

  “And all get killed?” she said. “You’d like that, wouldn’t you?”

  “I’ve considered it.”

  She crouched in front of me. “You think with me out of the way, Kale won’t have the balls to put her down?”

  “Something like that,” I said.

  “You people will keep underestimating him until you’re extinct.”

  “By Earth, ‘you people.’ You aren’t fucking aliens, you know that? We’re all humans doing this to each other.”

  “Perhaps you should have told your employer that,” she said. “Now get up.”

  I didn’t listen at first, but the two Titanborn behind her carrying pulse-rifles got me moving. Until Rin was off the Cora, it was clear Aria wasn’t safe. She garnered the same level of respect as Kale—though she might not realize it.

  “You know, this isn’t really how being a collector works,” I said. “They don’t force us on jobs. We can always walk away unpaid.”

  “It’s sad you believe that,” Rin replied.

  I bit my lip. She’d caught me in a blatant lie there. Luxarn had been irritated enough when I retired. Before Kale’s rebellion, he wouldn’t have let it go down so easily. He would’ve roped me in with promises of riches and more. But so much about Sol had changed since I nearly died on Titan. The only thing that never would was people.

  Rin shoved me along down the halls of the Cora. Of course, she had mag-boots, and I had to pull my way along the ceiling. My arms still felt like wet dough from being under for a month. Another reason I didn’t think it was the right time to fight back again yet.

  “What did you do to Kale?” I asked.

  “I let nature run its course,” she replied.

  “No. I’ve been racking my mind for answers. It’s easy to blame it on what happened to Cora, but I saw his records. Before you took him off the Piccolo, he was just some lowlife pickpocket trying to afford meds for his sick mother in quarantine.”

  “Better than the people like you who got her sick and stuffed her in there,” Rin said.

  “Ah, so it was you who led the Piccolo attack? I had a hunch.” Rin shoved me harder, probably frustrated that I’d tricked her into that bit of information. I wasn’t sure what I was going to do with it, but they didn’t call us collectors for nothing. Now I knew who was there when Kale went from petty thief to rebel king. And now I knew that when Cora Walker had sat in front of me and doubted her friend—more than friend—could be capable of murdering the entire Earther crew of the Piccolo, she was telling the truth. Though that Kale was gone now.

  “Everything comes back to that moment,” I said. “Kale was nothing, and then he disappeared with you and emerged the leader of the Children of Titan. You’re the secret ingredient. The moment Sodervall accuses him, his mother goes missing, and he becomes a killer; that’s when he met you. Congratulations.”

  Rin grabbed me and pushed me into the wall of the ship. She gained her strength from somewhere, because no Ringer should’ve been so strong. My lungs crunched against my rib cage and left me wincing.

  “And killing for credits makes you what?” Rin growled.

  “I know what I am,” I said. “Just like you know what you are. We understand each other, but Kale? He’s just an impressionable kid who got his heart broken at the worst possible time. What—did you look in the mirror one day and decide to mold him in your image so you didn’t have to lead?”

  She grabbed me by the back of my duster and hurled me into a cramped room. I feared the worst at first, then noticed all the flickering controls and the viewport cut into one side. Any ship the size of the Cora would be designed with at least one escape pod, especially one this cutting-edge.

  “Put this in,” Rin said. “Compliments of your employer.” She tossed me a com-link half the size of a fingernail—Pervenio tech for sure.

  “Do you people not understand retirement?” I said as I observed it. It was small enough to slide into the ear canal and avoid detection unless someone really went digging.

  “No. We barely earned enough to live.”

  I smirked. “So what’s the plan?”

  “They must know you’re with us by now. You escaped to this pod. Station Security will take you down for inspection. According to Basaam Venta, he keeps his most up-to-date research locally on his own personal computer to avoid corporate sabotage. You find your way to Basaam’s terminal and transmit all the data on his prototype Fusion Pulse Engines to us. Simple.”

  “Then you leave me behind, right? A Pervenio man screwing over Venta Co., fracturing their relationship.”

  “And you talk your way out of it,” she said, “and get to enjoy your retirement.”

  “There’s only one problem. What are you going to tell Aria when she wakes up, and I’m gone.”

  “Same story,” Rin said. “That you escaped and got yourself into trouble pulling off one last job for Luxarn because his company is your only love in life.”

  “You know, that’s not half bad. I’m guessing you came up with it and not Kale. Maybe you’ll let him think it was him.”

  “It was him.”

  I pulled myself into a seat and took a deep breath. I tried not to let the pain pulling at my sideshow. “Your loyalty is inspiring.”

  “You wouldn’t know a thing about it. Now you might want to hold on, Collector. And remember, if you fail, your daughter will never wake up.”

  A response was on the tip of my tongue when the escape pod’s hatch slammed closed. I scrambled for the restraints and only got them over one arm when
the pod shot forward. Acceleration squeezed me against the backrest, threatening to pop me like a balloon. My eyes felt like they might burst.

  Then I was pitched in the other direction. My legs swung up, and I clutched the restraints with one elbow as thrusters made the pod decelerate. The thing had enough juice to get me far away from the Cora if her engine was going to overload or she was being raided by pirates. When the velocity equaled out enough for me to collapse into the center of the small, spherical space, I vomited into my sanitary mask. Without anything in my stomach but sleep-pod IV fluids for months, warm bile coated my lips.

  I tore the mask off my face and used it to wipe my cheeks. The tight confines now reeked of my innards. I searched the myriad controls for a storage compartment, found one, and stuffed it in. Then I leaned back against the seat.

  “Can you hear me, Collector?” Rin’s smoky voice spoke into my ear, giving me a startle.

  “I—” I leaned over and fought back another gag. “Loud and clear…”

  “Your pod is broadcasting a universal distress signal. Remember, when someone picks you up, you escaped and need medical attention immediately.”

  “Perfect. Just a quick question: have you ever been to Europa? Because last time I was here, it was tiny, and by the looks of it, it isn’t any longer.” I crawled across the pod to the tiny porthole offering me a view of space.

  Jupiter comprised all of it. The Big One. Bands of reddish-white streaked its surface, broke up by the great roiling eye in the very center. Pictures didn’t do the storm justice. As massive as Jupiter was—and it made Saturn look like a belt-wearing moon by comparison—it was hard to look anywhere else. Even from millions of kilometers away, it looked like it wanted to devour everything. I wasn’t easily impressed by anything, but it’d been a few years since I’d been to Jupiter and the sight still had a way of making my jaw hang.

  Like Saturn, dozens of moons of all shapes and sizes filled the space around it. Unlike Saturn, very few of were colonized with major settlements, if at all. Darien Trass had started settling Titan three centuries ago, and Earth was playing catch up to fill all the promising spots between. Back when I was a kid, Pervenio Corp staked its future on communicating with the Ringers and preparing for a great reunion. Their biggest competitor, Venta Co, set their sights on Jupiter.