“Good. And Aria?”
“Since when do you care?” I said, but not angrily.
“She’s done everything we’ve asked since we returned, even I can’t deny that. And what you said about her reaction after you told her the truth about Orson Fring, I never thought she’d be the only one to understand necessity.”
“She’s been fighting for anyone to give a damn about her much longer than I have.”
“Sometimes, it’s worth the search,” she said.
“You’re right ninety-nine percent of the time, but I’m glad you were wrong about her.”
“Me too,” Rin agreed.
I continued until there was nowhere else to go. A crater of rock, plasticrete, and twisted metal greeted me, where the Piccolo had impacted. Somewhere amongst the rubble were pieces of that ship upon which my entire life had changed. Even further down, beneath many dozens of meters of rock, was the hidden hollow where Basaam neared completion of his engine.
“Do you think Hayes is trapped down there someplace?” I asked.
“No,” Rin said. “He’s with the ashes now, watching over us. Kale.” She lay her hand on my shoulder. “I have a lot I need to tell you. Look.”
She drew her hand terminal and held it up for me to see. She’d been busy making rounds of our most essential stations around the Ring. We still hadn’t located the Cogent who’d come so near to killing Aria and me, so I couldn’t join her. Rylah oversaw the construction efforts both on Phoebe and with Basaam, while my mother focused on righting the current food shortage. I’d even gotten her to visit me for dinner a few times, furious as she still was over Orson.
A year ago, I never would have imagined sitting around a table with my mother and the mother of my future child, but I never would have imagined a Titan without Pervenio Corp either. I knew she’d come around eventually, especially with Aria on my side. Now that we were being honest, I’d come to find we had even more in common than I thought… both pushed to do things we never wanted to, for the sake of the greater good.
“Kale, are you paying attention?” Rin asked.
“Sorry, I’m just… it’s nice to finally be out of Darien,” I said.
“I’m sure. That Cogent, whoever he really is, has proven difficult to track.”
“If only we had fresh air to breathe here.” I sighed, barely paying attention to her. “One day maybe. Aria had an idea about converting this crater into a terraced hydro-farm. Reconstruct the enclosure, let it be known for something good and not all the death.”
“She’s impressed me with some ideas lately, but that one might not be enough. Now, would you look at this.”
Rin brought her hand terminal closer to my face so I had no choice but to watch. She set a recording to play of her recent visit to the Pervenio Station Detention Center, a place I’d never want to visit again even if I could. The hundreds of cells lining the walls and facing out into the infinite depths of space with a wall of sanity-killing glass were crammed with Earthers. There was barely enough space for all of them.
A few guards fed the captives with only one bowl of slop per two or three of them. I could see the gauntness of what were naturally chubby Earther cheeks. The pinkish hue of their skin grew more sallow by the day, and many of their eyes were permanently bloodshot from crying.
Rin switched to the next feed so I could see food being slid into one cell through a slot in the wall. The six people inside crowded it like savages, pushing and shoving each other to get as much as possible. Reduced to animals like so many of my people were as they withered away to bones from treatable illnesses for no good reason in the very place where I stood.
“None of us planned to hold them here for so long,” Rin said. “Without any trading arrangements outside the Ring, we can no longer afford to feed both them and our people.”
“Are you suggesting we make a deal with Earth?” I asked.
“Never. But Earth is coming with their fleet, hostages or not. They’re not of any use to us anymore, so maybe it’s time to finally use them.”
“Like we used Orson?”
“I didn’t say that,” she said.
“But we’d have to waste ships to do anything else.”
“That’s why I rushed back here.” She switched to an Earther newsfeed on Solnet called Europa’s Lens. “Watch.”
A finely manicured male reporter was on screen, with perfect, thick hair and wearing makeup so none of his wrinkles would show. He stood overlooking a busy hangar outside Martelle Station, with dozens of ships in the midst of lifting off. The corporate logos of Pervenio Corp, Venta Co., or Red Wing Company were printed on every hull.
“This is the scene on Europa Station,” the reporter said. “For weeks now, a record number of vessels have been armed and dispatched to resolve the tense situation on Titan. Madame Venta, who has elected to personally lead the campaign, had this to say: ‘Together, Luxarn Pervenio and I will right the wrong of this savage rebellion against reason. We will liberate the Ring from radicals, doing everything within our power to save the captives there, and we will ensure that it will again be a haven of commerce and safety for the citizens of the USF.’”
“Our New London correspondent futilely attempted to reach the Voice of the Assembly, Talos Gaveren, about reports that this outward act of aggression remains unsanctioned by the USF,” the reporter said. The feed cut to a recording of the bald old man. Talos shoved whoever was behind the camera away without comment before being quickly escorted away down the crowded New London streets.
“It’s clear that this is an unprecedented situation in the post-Meteorite era,” the reporter said. “All we can do now is hope that our brothers and sisters trapped on Titan as part of ongoing negotiations will finally be returned home, unharmed. Perhaps this display of strength will convince Kale Trass to see reason, or perhaps it will inspire them to show their true colors. Tune in for our coverage of the Crisis on Titan here, twenty-four/seven.”
“That’s only a fraction of their fleet, and it’s already completed,” Rin said. “What we saw at Martelle Station barely scratches the surface. They’ve obviously been planning for this solution much longer than anyone thought.”
“Are you surprised?” I asked.
“Only that they didn’t come sooner.”
“The USF may want all their people back unharmed, so the idea of settling far from Earth still sounds like opportunity, but Saturn’s gas and Titan’s fully autonomous colonies are worth far more than human lives. Expansion at all costs.”
“The mudstompers will never stop being greedy,” Rin said.
“And everyone wonders why we couldn’t cave to Orson Fring.”
“It’s proven to be the right move, Kale. I know how hard you took it. Production has doubled since he passed, but we still won’t have enough ships thanks to the delays. Even if every Titanborn in the Ring starts building, we won’t be able to stand against them now that they’re all together.”
I stopped and surveyed the quarantine’s ruins. Just like how this place kept us at bay, all the slowly starving Earthers filling the cells on Pervenio Station were the only thing keeping Earth from bombing Darien, and the rest of Titan, in the first place. They were our shield, at least until Madame Venta and Luxarn took charge and decided to test our resolve. And if they were coming anyway, we were stretching our resources thin for nothing.
Whether they lived or died, the fates of our countless Earther and offworld captives were suddenly irrelevant. I ran my hand along a faded Pervenio logo outside of a nonexistent door; the same I’d seen throughout my whole life emblazoned on every ship or container holding the hand-me-down piece of tech a Ringer from the Lowers could afford.
“Kale,” Rin pressed. “This isn’t time to daydream. We can’t threaten Earth’s people with a second apocalypse if there’s no Titan left to defend. Basaam is wasting his time when he might hold secrets to new weapons that can help us fight back.”
“People,” I said, my eyes going
wide as an idea popped into my head.
“What?”
“Let’s give Madame Venta back all of their people alive and unharmed,” I said.
“I know things have been pleasant for you lately, locked away on Darien with your girlfriend, but they’re our main leverage. Think, Kale.”
“I am. The Earthers are boxed up like shiny new hand terminals already, ready to be shipped all over the Ring. Casualties during the heat of battle Madame Venta and Luxarn will talk their way out of, but if we make the captives visible for all of Sol to see—”
“We give them no choice but to pick them up,” Rin finished for me. “Otherwise, we’re the merciful ones. Hard to fight when their ships are as full of innocent refugees as Pervenio Station.”
“Exactly. We can reconfigure every prison cell to launch intact, thousands of them. It should buy us enough time to get Basaam’s drives as close to Earth as possible and force them to surrender.”
Rin reached to her ear to switch on her com-link. Just then, an urgent message came through for both of us on our emergency line from the head of security at the Darien docks.
“Lord Trass,” the man said fretfully. “There’s been alert of unauthorized entry to the Cora. The dockhand says it’s just an error, but there are also reports that the Pervenio collector you’re holding was escorted out of his cell by Rylah, yet hasn’t passed any checkpoints in some time.”
I looked to Rin, my fingertips pressing into my palms. Just when things were starting to look up.
“Graves,” she growled.
Fourteen
Malcolm
Rylah and I stood at the end of the tunnel far beneath the Darien Quarantine, her hand resting on the controls for the hatch that would expose us. My powered Ringer armor was so loose, I felt like a kid back on Earth in my clan-family hand-me-downs. I raised my arms. Wings sewed from nano-fiber tensile fabric stretched from hip to forearm. It seemed insane that a human being could fly just by flapping these on Titan, but I’d seen the Ringers do it before. The moon’s atmosphere was thick as syrup.
“Wait,” I said over our coms, desperate to buy time so my nerves could catch up. “What about my gun?”
“Rin keeps it on her every second,” Rylah replied. “Looks like you’re finally going to have to let the old girl go. Now, are you ready?”
I know she wasn’t asking about the gun, but I pictured the last time I held it, forced to blow away a man whose only crime was not wanting a war. It seemed fitting that my pistol’s final kill would be an old-timer like me who didn’t quite understand the world he’d aged into.
“As I’ll ever be. Thank you, Ry. I know we were never going to work out, but I like it better when we’re not shooting each other.”
“Don’t get any ideas,” she said. “This is for Aria... mostly.” I was pretty sure I saw the corner of her lips lift as she turned her visor away from me and opened the hatch.
We were greeted by air cold enough to freeze the skin off our bones. Even the Ringer suits couldn’t impede it completely. Cold filled the crevasses of my loose suit and the space of my helmet, instantly making my ears and nose feel numb. Strong wind whipped grains of pale, icy sand through the opening.
We had to climb through a cluster of debris to get out. The Darien Quarantine above had been blown to bits by Kale Trass, and pieces of it littered the ground in every direction, still not cleaned up. Chunks as large as a hovercar were chucked as far as the Darien Enclosure roughly eight kilometers away. It was no wonder that after Pervenio security stormed the place looking for the Children of Titan hideout, not one of them survived.
“Aria’s waiting in Hangar 34 at the Darien docks!” The storm outside was so loud Rylah had to shout. Scarlet bolts of lightning forked above a distant plateau like the blades of the devil’s pitchfork in old Three Messiahs folklore.
Yup. There were few places in Sol I hated as much as Titan.
“Just get a good head start and spread your arms,” Rylah said. “The wind should lift you, even if you’re a fat old Earther.”
I think she was expecting a laugh, but I’d stopped outside to observe a pile of smooth rocks under two hunks of debris leaning on each other like an archway. One rock had a reddish patch on top, like rust. I was probably just seeing things, or it was the rock’s natural coloring, but that was the exact spot Zhaff went down after I’d shot him in the head. I’d replayed that moment enough times in my head to be sure.
“Malcolm, let’s go!” Rylah punched my arm.
I should have died there lying on the tundra with him, yet here I was with another chance at making things right. Zhaff Pervenio didn’t deserve what he got, and he didn’t deserve to become the killer his father made him. A son he’d rejected and pretended was never born all because he wasn’t perfect.
I thought seeing that spot would eat me up inside, but the Malcolm who pulled the trigger truly had died there instead of him. Everything else was borrowed time. I spent half my life in sleep pods from mission to mission, wishing for morning so that I could waste credits earned taking down some poor sap, or wishing for night so I could sneak off-ship while Aria was asleep and get into trouble.
If Zhaff had to die to teach me to cherish even an extra second with Aria, then he was a better friend than I’d ever be. I knew now he wasn’t really dead—at least not when last I saw him—but he was as good as dead to me. Only a shitty father’s guilt kept his heart beating.
“Goodbye, old friend,” I whispered.
“Malcolm!”
I turned and met Rylah’s gaze, then nodded that I was ready.
“Just keep your arms steady, or the fall won’t be pretty,” she said.
She sprinted headlong into the gale. I followed her up a chunk of sunken debris like a ramp, and side by side, we raised our arms as we leaped off. I flapped mine like an idiot, but it was unnecessary. The wind snatched me off my feet, and before I knew it, the wreckage of the Darien Quarantine was lost in the fog of the mounting storm.
My heart raced. I’d been to every corner of Sol worth visiting, dealt with every manner of miscreant imaginable, I’d been on asteroid colonies when their walls were blown open, and the air sucked out. I’d watched a madman try to turn good people into cyborgs by reprogramming their brains. I’d been on ships as big as a small moon, but I’d never flown.
Pervenio Corp didn’t allow personal gliding suits on Titan when they were in control because they were too hard to monitor. Only registered vessels could legally traverse the skies. As Rylah led me through the tempest like we were a flock of birds on Earth before the Meteorite, I almost understood why the Ringers were willing to fight so hard for their planet... almost.
“Enjoying the ride?” Rylah asked.
“I’ve been on worse,” I said.
“The winds usually swirl around the Darien Enclosure. Don’t fight it too much, or you’ll lose control.”
“This isn’t your first time, huh?”
“How do you think my sources fed me information from around Titan without anyone knowing? Storms are the best time to fly.”
Rylah gradually banked left. I made out the large shadow of Darien’s three-kilometer-long enclosure coming up below us in the shape of an ancient ziggurat. The city’s Uppers filled the portion above the surface, as did its major ports. We glided around until we were level with the top, spewing out smoke and residue from the Lowers’ factories. Viewports offered glimpses of the gardens for the upper residencies within, gardens now browned and dying from neglect. The glass-covered farms sloping down all around the perimeter of the block, however, were lush and filled with busy Ringers. At least Kale hadn’t let everything rot.
Rylah dipped one arm to turn and wrapped back underneath me, heading toward a half-open hangar in the side of the enclosure. I did my best to mimic her, feeling the resistance on my wings. They weren’t used to bearing the weight of an Earther. Her feet touched down gracefully in the hangar. My wing ripped.
I tried to right my cour
se, but I was losing altitude fast and headed straight for the impenetrable shell of Darien.
“Rylah!” I screamed. I closed my eyes and prepared for impact, when something grabbed my back and lifted me. When I re-opened them, I was skidding across the hangar until I slammed against the landing gear of the Cora.
Rylah tapped down beside me, even more gracefully this time. “I’ve always wanted to see an Earther fly,” she chuckled.
I groaned and rubbed my unbelievably sore hip. Congealer helped with bleeding, but it didn’t make the bullet hole in me hurt any less. Nor all the bumps and bruises I’d endured in my lovely vacation spent amongst Ringers.
“Did you have to throw me?” I asked.
“Consider it payback for getting me shot.” She helped me to my feet. “C’mon, Aria is waiting.”
I nodded and took off for the ship’s entry ramp with my artificial leg carting me forward. The nerve endings near it stung every time my brain signaled motion now, but it was sort of refreshing. I didn’t feel as much like I had a ghost growing from me.
I bounded up the ramp into the cargo bay as fast as I could. Rylah followed me and sealed the ship. Then the cargo bay’s interior door slid open. Aria stood waiting behind it, fire-red hair tumbling over her slender shoulders like every curly strand had a mind of its own.
“Aria!” I threw my helmet off and ran to her, throwing my arms around her like it was the last time I’d ever see her. Hell, I don’t think I’d ever hugged her like that in her entire life.
“What did they do to you?” I asked.
“Nothing I didn’t ask for.” She squeezed back, but something was different about her. Even in my armor, I could feel the bump of her belly pressing against me. I held her at arm’s length and stared down. On Mars, it had been too subtle for me to notice, but now it was obvious.
I didn’t throw up, but I could feel the bile working its way up my throat. My stomach churned. She was pregnant.
Titan's Fury: A Science Fiction Thriller (Children of Titan Book 4) Page 18
