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

by Rhett C. Bruno

  “They don’t understand what it means to believe,” I said, staring straight at her. “What it means to know deep down in your heart that you belong somewhere. Titan is our home! Ice runs through our veins. It’s time we show Earth what it means to live in fear. Stand with me this one last time, and I promise you all, we’ll never know their sickness again. From ice to ashes!”

  All of Darien shook as my people repeated those words over and over. Even the thunder constantly rumbling in Titan’s stormy skies seemed quiet in comparison. I closed my eyes and raised my arms, encouraging them to get louder and louder. It felt like I was in a dream.

  When I reopened them, the only thing that changed was that my mother was no longer watching.

  “Prepare the fleet,” I ordered Rin. “Don’t engage. Let them panic after they receive the shipments, and I promise you, Madame Venta’s orders will be ignored. Good luck.”

  I turned to re-board the Cora, but Rin seized my wrist. “Come back to us, Kale,” she whispered into my ear, so close that the smooth surface of her scars brushed my neck. “You hear me? Both of you, come back.”

  I answered with only a grunt, then entered the Cora and sealed the ramp. The survivors and healthy members from the squadron of soldiers who’d accompanied us to Mars awaited in the cockpit. Six Titanborn, fully armored. The elite crew of soldiers selected by Gareth prepared to die for their world if it came to it.

  “Lord Trass, as soon as the hangar is cleared, we’re prepared to leave,” the youngest of them addressed me, bowing his blonde head. I still had no idea what his name was despite how many times he’d saved me.

  “Excellent. All we need now is our pilot.” I stalked through the corridors of my ship, toward the hall of sleep pods that made a journey across the vastness of space feel like seconds. Four of them were filled, Basaam, Malcolm Graves, Zhaff, and Aria. The Cogent somehow clung to life after wounds that should have made him bleed out, though what was left of him was barely human.

  I drew myself over Aria’s pod, where I’d had her placed out of sight after our last interaction. She slept peacefully inside. The mother of my child. Our ambassador. I once thought she could help me forget Cora, but all I could think about when I saw her now was the woman she could never live up to.

  I tapped the control panel, and Aria’s pod opened with a hiss. Cold steam poured out, and the gelatinous substance formed to her body liquefied and drained away. Her eyes snapped open, in a state of shock, until they fell upon me.

  “What is this?” she whispered, voice still ragged from being under. She tried to sit up and reach me on her own, but I wrapped my arm around her back and helped her out. Her stomach grew more from our child every day, and until he was born, I couldn’t have her overexert herself.

  “Get in the cockpit,” I demanded. “We’re leaving.”

  She clutched her stomach and backed away. The sudden movements made her visibly nauseated, and she hunched over the pod and somehow held back from vomiting. “We’re not going anywhere with you,” she groaned.

  I drew my pulse pistol and aimed it through the viewport on Malcolm’s sleep pod. “You’re no longer our ambassador, Aria. You’re going to take us to Luxarn Pervenio, or you’ll watch your father be spaced the same way his people do it.”

  She threw herself in front of Malcolm’s sleep pod. “This is between us!” she said. “Leave him out of it.”

  “It’s too late for that.” I easily pulled her away with my powered armor on and pushed her into the waiting arms of one of my nameless guards. “I want eyes on her at all times,” I ordered.

  “You don’t have to do this, Kale!” Aria screamed. “Just let us go!”

  “Let’s go, Earther-lover,” he sneered as he prodded her along as she continued to scream.

  My crewmates aboard the Piccolo once called me that because I didn’t like to start trouble with the captain or the rest of the Earther crew members. I wasn’t sure that I’d even recognize that quiet, cowardly Ringer I used to be in the mirror anymore. It seemed like a lifetime ago.

  Eighteen

  Malcolm

  Titanborn guards directed me through the Cora. I stumbled after every one of their shoves, my artificial leg all that kept me from collapsing. They snickered. My hands were cuffed behind my back; otherwise, I would’ve smacked the smirks off their skinny Ringer faces.

  They dumped me onto the command deck. Then, before I could manage a breath, they heaved me up and into one of the seats along the back wall. Once locked acceleration restraints over my chest, they uncuffed me.

  “Glad you could finally join us, Malcolm,” Kale said. He sat in the copilot’s chair. Beside him, flying the Cora, was Aria, looking about ready to pop she was so pregnant. The control console had been repaired after Zhaff shot it. It was nowhere near as sleek anymore, but Aria seemed able to handle it.

  “Aria,” I rasped, “are you okay?”

  She went to look back, but the guard directly behind her straightened her head. He held a pulse pistol against the back of her head.

  “I’m fine, Dad,” she said, unable to contain her frustration.

  “Where the hell are you taking us?” I said.

  “I told you,” Kale said. “We’re going on a little family trip.”

  The Cora’s thrusters kicked in, and we shot forward into Titan’s stormy sky. Lightning flashed all around us. The ship rattled and whined, battered by an atmosphere so dense, a human being could fly in it. G-forces shoved me against the back on my chair, crushing my arms behind me. It felt like they were going to pop out of my shoulder sockets. All the aches in my torso flared up, worse than ever...and then we were through.

  Weightlessness took hold. I finally felt like I could breathe again, but what I saw in space immediately stole the air back from my lungs. Dozens of ships emerged alongside us, with lights from more winking all around Saturn’s moons and stations—everything that comprised the cosmological archipelago known as the Ring. The planet’s icy disks slashed across the corner of the viewport, wrapping a planet swirling with more colors than an Earthside rainbow. People said Saturn was the most stunning sight in all of Sol, but I was hardly able to pay it any attention.

  More ships hovered beyond the Ring’s most distant moons. The sunlight blooming along their flanks revealed the colors of Pervenio Corp, Venta Co., and Red Wing Company—all now under one banner. And as the Cora banked away from Saturn to face them, I realized just how many there were. They filled the entire breadth of my vision. Space fleets were the stuff of fiction. Sol had never known an interstellar war before because the USF was too focused on expansion to let any rival factions rise that would require one.

  Collectors, like I once had been, ended conflicts before they began or fought them in the shadows. Then Kale rewrote the book. Now I gazed upon an armada clearly intended for one purpose—to take back the Ring by any means necessary.

  “Are you really planning to fight that?” I asked him.

  “Relax, old man,” Kale replied. “Aria, open up coms to Rin and listen in.”

  Aria hesitated for a moment as she too got lost admiring the size of the Earther fleet. Maybe that’s the wrong word for it, but for a girl from the sewers of Mars, it was a hell of a thing to see. Doesn’t matter how many missions I smuggled her on around Sol.

  “Aria,” Kale repeated, cross.

  The guard nudged her in the back of the head with the gun. She shook her head and focused, fingers flurrying across the controls.

  “We’re reading an awful lot of movement down there, Rin Trass,” Madame Venta said over the coms. “Any closer and we’ll begin targeting.”

  “You wanted your people back,” Rin replied. “Here you go.”

  Suddenly, all the Titanborn ships stopped moving. “Engage radar jamming, mask our heat signature, and take us in slow,” Kale whispered to Aria, as if anybody outside the command deck could hear him.

  Aria did as he asked without question, even though I could tell she wanted to be on the
Cora even less than I did. I’d raised a smart girl, somehow. Not impulsive like the king sitting beside her. We decelerated and remained cruising straight toward the heart of the blockade.

  “Are you going to tell me what the plan is before or after we slam into them?” she asked.

  Kale pointed through the viewport, toward Saturn’s rings, where I recognized the tiny moon named Pan into which Pervenio Station was built. A cluster of rectangular metallic containers zipped through space away from it, with glass on one side reflecting light from the sun. Then more shot out from Pervenio Station in another direction as it spun. Toward every corner of the Ring, shadows of the cells Sodervall used to space so many blocked out the stars.

  “Look at them,” Kale marveled. “Earthers neatly packaged and shipped back to their own people like all the shiny products they waste their lives trying to buy.”

  “You’re handing them over just like that?” I asked.

  His lack of an answer revealed enough. The Children of Titan had been crafty devils since the first time I encountered them in New London, Earth, almost a year back. All I could do now was sit back and watch.

  The Cora’s unparalleled stealth systems kept us in the dark as we approached, a short distance behind a cluster of cells which had been shot out much earlier to reach so far. It was tough to see over such a great distance, but through the translucency on the nearest one, I didn’t notice any movement from people within. A fancifully designed frigate with swooping wings that served no real purpose in space glided toward one. The trademark Venta overlapping Vs were covered by the name of the vessel—the Aphrodite.

  Its airlock extended after its thrusters fired in reverse, latching on to one of the containers. Shadows scurried through the semi-translucent tube of the airlock, the sparks of fusion cutters flickering against the blackness of space. The moment they breached the cell, it blew. The side of the frigate was split open, silvery metal shards slashing the sleek hull.

  More blasts simultaneously went off throughout the Earther fleet as they attempted to open the first wave of cells. It was like one of the fireworks displays over New London on M-Day.

  “Y… you’re killing them all?” Aria said, incredulous.

  “No,” Kale replied. “We just forgot to mention that a few of them are empty.”

  A handful more blasts boomed in the darkness, sending the Earther fleet into disarray. And that was when I realized what happens when a wealthy aristocrat who’d lived a privileged life leads an army against people that have spent their entire lives fighting to survive. Kale saw their fleet and didn’t see an insurmountable mass of alloy and weapons ordnance. He saw another scrap to claw his way out of.

  The space between the Earther and Titan fleets was promptly filled by a screen of debris and Pervenio Corp cells half-filled with real people and half-filled with explosives. Madame Venta couldn’t fire upon the Titan fleet at the risk of killing all the captives, and they couldn’t fly past the cells to engage; otherwise, all of Kale’s hostages would be left suffocate.

  And Kale wasn’t done yet. Clinging to the backs of those cells that remained intact were more Ringer soldiers in their powered armor. Raiding parties, ready to give their lives to further confuse the enemy while the Earthers hid in the safety of their expensive ships. They pushed off across space in squadrons, gripping hands and soaring toward the crippled vessels in the Earther fleet, now already breached by explosives for them to invade with ease.

  Madame Venta’s ship, the Aphrodite, was able to divert power to its impulse drives and fall back to avoid them, but it was all too little too late. Titan was going to make them lose all taste for battle without firing a single missile.

  “You son of a bitch, Trass!” Madame Venta’s screams directed at Rin echoed throughout the command deck. “I will kill each and every one of you, do you hear me, you bitch? We won’t leave until you all starve.”

  “I hope your people don’t miss us too much,” Rin answered. “Have fun cleaning up our mess for once.”

  “All captains, fall back and expand the blockade perimeter! Disperse medical evacs to each cell, but for Earth’s sake, probe them before breaching.”

  Their coms cut out, and then Rin opened a direct line to us. “You’re clear, Kale. It’ll take them weeks to regroup, and they’ll think twice about engaging with thousands of civilians on board their ships. We’ll send the second wave out the moment things start clearing up and keep them on their toes with raids.”

  “They don’t get near Titan or any other colony, Rin,” Kale said. “Is that clear?”

  “They’ll never want to come back. Advance teams have begun invading their damaged ships throughout the Ring. They’ll space as many mudstompers as they can.”

  “Make the survivors see it.”

  “They will,” Rin said. “From ice to ashes.”

  “From ice to ashes.”

  Kale ended the transmission. He leaned back and drew a deep, satisfied breath. I knew the type. I’d released a few of my own after a successful mission that took a fair bit of thinking to solve. None of what we were witnessing was Rin’s idea this time. Kale Trass had come into his own, and we had front row seats to his handiwork. To all the flashes throughout the Ring of gunfire and more empty containers filling the void with shrapnel.

  “The damn fools,” I marveled with him. I couldn’t help but be impressed. “They should have never come here.”

  “And Rin didn’t think it would work,” Kale said. “Aria, take us past the blockade at full burn.”

  Hearing him stole back her attention from the chaos. She leaned forward and took to the controls, and we sped ahead, the pressure of acceleration again constricting me. It wasn’t like she had much choice except to listen.

  We grew close enough to the Venta fleet to be within firing range of PDCs. Aria piloted the Cora masterfully, weaving around debris and drifting ships and cells. We rolled under a frigate with failing engines, then darted up over a chunk of shrapnel large enough to cleave us in two.

  It wasn’t the best time to go all proud father, but it was preferable to harping on Kale claiming another victory. Madame Venta’s lines were completely broken. Half the ships we passed were speeding away while others drifted, unsure what to do. They were captains of commerce and leisure vessels, not commanders. Their fleet still more than doubled Kale’s, even with the damage, and boasted more advanced weaponry, but I was damn certain they’d push no further. It was like they had learned nothing from when Pervenio Corp was ousted from the Ring in the blink of an eye. Totally unprepared.

  The last row of retreating PerVenta Corp ships passed overhead, leaving only star-speckled blackness ahead of us. No targeting alerts chirped from the controls. No coms came through warning us to fall back lest we be fired upon.

  “We’re through the blockade,” Aria exhaled, her shoulders unknotting.

  “Are you sure?” Kale said.

  “We’re not dust, are we?”

  “Watch your tone while addressing Lord Trass, traitor,” the guard behind her growled.

  “Listen to him, Aria,” I said. “We wouldn’t want to hurt his feelings. The kid can’t even handle being broken up with.”

  Kale unfastened his restraints and pulled his weightless body vertical using the ceiling. “Set a course for Undina that takes us as far from Mars and Jupiter as possible,” he said. “Unless you’d both like to be turned to dust.”

  I laughed. “You’re really going to go after Luxarn? I knew you were suicidal, but if this is all the men you brought to break in there, then you’re crazier than I thought. He’s buried under rock, surrounded by Cogents, and oh, did I mention it’s only a stone’s throw from Earth and the anti-meteor defensive matrix they wasted billions of credits building on Luna?”

  Kale turned to face me, beaming. When I had first met him in person, he seemed conflicted about all the death that followed him, but a man who takes pleasure in the killing part of a fight is the kind who belongs in a cell most. I�
�d learned that from Director Sodervall a long time ago when I was just a lowly collector trainee.

  “Something funny, kid?” I asked.

  “Just your choice of words. I only need one man to get in.” He drew his weightless body down the cockpit. “Follow me.”

  I watched him go by and turned my attention to Aria, busy entering coordinates for Undina. “Aria,” I said. I could tell she wanted to look back, but it’s tough to defy a pistol against the back of your head. She was looking out for two people now—another illegitimate child to keep the immaculate Graves bloodline thriving into the uncertain future.

  “Aria, you just keep us from being shot down,” I said. “I’ll find a way to get us out of this. We’ll work together for once.”

  She nodded half-heartedly.

  “Try it, Earther,” the guard at her back sneered. “I’m begging you.”

  “Your future king is in her belly,” I said. “You really think I believe that you’re going to blow her head off? Damn Ringers. No wonder I always fleeced your kind in poker before you ruined Titan.”

  “If she tries anything, we have orders to kill her and pull Lord Trass’s child out ourselves before he’s due on M-day.”

  Aria swallowed and squeezed her eyelids shut. The Ringer got more comfortable aiming at the back of her head. I’d never wanted to snap someone’s neck so badly.

  “Why didn’t you just leave me behind and run, Aria?” I said. “You and Rylah would have made it easy. Zhaff never would have caught up.”

  “I’m not you,” she answered. The twitches of a smile touched the corner of her lips, which made me feel better. Kale hadn’t sucked all the fight out of her yet.

  “Thank Earth for that. You remember that job years back when that lunatic tried holding you hostage?”

  “Which one?”

  I chuckled. “Who got you out of all of them without a scratch?”

  “Lord Trass said to follow him, now.” A pulse rifle slid up against my side, and I turned to see another pale-faced Ringer floating in the command deck’s exit. “Move.”