Sweat started pouring down my forehead immediately, even through my visor. Everything around me was drowned in brightness from the Fusion Pulse Engine. It was as if I were walking on the surface of the sun. I crawled toward its base, anchored into the rock, and every meter closer made my armor feel like it was melting.
Earthers said that on their planet they were so near to the sun they could see it shine in the sky. That their retinas could burn if they stared. Now I understood. The engine was so blinding, I couldn’t even look up.
I’m not sure how long I trudged along the wrinkled surface of Undina, but by the time I reached the base of the engine, I felt like I’d sweated all the water out of me. Even my powered armor couldn’t help maintain the sensation in my limbs. My eyes were so watery, I could barely see.
I leaned against the base of the engine to catch my breath. Three massive, flexible arms extended from anchors dug into the crust, bending every time there was a propulsive blast from the fusion core and nozzle above. The whole contraption was slowly burrowing into the crust of the asteroid, but it would hold long enough.
I pulled myself around the structure, a wave of heat distortion making it difficult to tell how close I was to anything without touching it. I dug my fingers into the plating and tore a piece off to reveal the manual control panel.
Maybe it was the heat, or maybe Basaam’s programming, but the whole screen was dark. This was the first field test for the drives, so nobody could be sure what would happen when they were attached to an asteroid, in space, without the proper housing and cooling an Ark could afford.
After a handful of failed attempts at activating the controls, I went to punch it out of frustration, but in the reflection, saw two lights. I turned around too late to get out of the way of a small transport ship, which had likely once been used to convey ore to the factories on Luna. It crashed into one of the engine’s structural arms, pinning me against it. Without my armor on, I’d have been dead, but still, my entire rib cage felt like it’d been pulverized.
My lips were chapped, and my throat so dry, it hurt to inhale. I held my breath instead as I struggled to break free. I punched the ship in a Pervenio logo on its hull, again and again, screaming to help pour all my energy into every blow. I pictured Director Sodervall’s smiling face when he spaced my people, and Luxarn’s when I ended his reign for good.
After I lost count, I started to picture Aria’s instead. She stood at my side on Mars when every Earther turned their nose up at us. I pictured my mother, frail and dying in the Pervenio Quarantine before I saved her. I pictured Rylah and Gareth, placing my first rifle in my hands and believing in some worthless Ringer pickpocket to lead Titan into the future. And then I saw Cora, gazing up at me with her brilliant blue eyes in that single night we spent alone together before she died.
I was thrust back to the present when the ship shifted enough for me to fall free. I would have laughed in relief if I could. I clung to one of the Fusion Pulse Engine’s struts and tried to pull myself up. Then I felt a sudden, stinging sensation in my chest. I looked down. A hole cut through my chest plate. My suit was designed to automatically seal it upon exposure, but I’d been shot. I couldn’t hear anything over the engine.
I fell to my knees, clutching my chest as I rolled over against the engine’s support. I coughed, and blood sprayed the inside of my visor. Through it, I saw a shadowy figure topple out of the ship’s cockpit. Whoever it was wore an exo-suit, but the sleeve for his left arm fluttered, and his left leg dragged behind him as he limped. Through the visor, I couldn’t spot the whites of any eyes.
“Zhaff…” I rasped. “You have to stop it.” I raised my arm to point at the locked engine controls, but Zhaff shot me through the bicep. It fell limp to my side, but my body remained too overwhelmed by heat to feel anything.
I groped through the darkness to find something to help me up while Zhaff holstered his firearm and limped over to the engine controls. I pushed against the ship with my knee and was able to get to my feet. I grabbed the first part I could find and tried to use it to pull myself at him until I realized that Zhaff had a hand terminal raised to the engine’s emergency controls.
With only his single hand, he typed like only a Cogent could until the engine controls winked on and he moved to them. I felt the structural arm I was wrapped around shake, then lower. A wave of intense heat burned my cheek through my visor and made my insides feel like they were going to boil. I peered up and saw that the direction of the engine’s pulses had changed, shifting Undina’s direction.
I coughed up another gob of blood and fell back. As the plume of the engines shifted, I noticed the thin blue streak of the Cora far off in the darkness. I closed my eyelids and breathed in deep through my nose. My mouth tasted like rusting metal.
I’d leaped from the Cora to fix my mistake, I’d missed the birth of my son, and the future of our free world, yet it was Malcolm’s mercy toward Luxarn’s son that saved the people of Earth. Not me. And nobody would ever know.
A sound like crackling interrupted the steady pulsating of the engine as Undina entered Earth’s upper atmosphere and its front began to burn up. A Ringer’s body wasn’t suited for Earth. That was one of the first things my people learned. The gravity was relentless on our bones and muscles, but most of all on our hearts. Without suits and proper medication, it would give out after a few days. My father learned that lesson when he came to Earth alongside Aria to steal medicine for my people.
Yet there I was, arriving at the cradle of humanity precisely one year later. I set out from Titan with the intention of destroying everything my enemies held dear, but as I opened my eyes and squinted at the dress of fire Undina wore around its horizon, I thought I could make out the shine of Sol.
We were all under the light of the same star. We were all humans. Sol-born. Maybe, now, the people of Earth would finally see that too.
“To ensure the safety of human propagation,” a faint voice spoke. I lifted my heavy head and saw Zhaff towering over me. Despite being blind, his pulse pistol aimed directly between my eyes.
I opened my mouth to say something, but before I could, Zhaff’s gun flashed, my head snapped back, and my world went black. And like Cora, I’d never be ashes upon the winds of Titan.
Twenty-Four
Malcolm
It was M-Day, September 3, 2335. Exactly three hundred one years to the day after a meteorite struck Earth. Millions watched in horror from the streets of New London, torn from their celebration of survival. They waited to die, helpless as Ringers in quarantine, until Undina was redirected at the very last moment.
It landed in the middle of Earth’s vast ocean instead. Tidal waves ripped across the planet, but Earth’s tide had already been raised permanently by the last, much-larger meteorite, the coastal cities already toppled like dominoes. Earthers now stuck to the heart of the remaining landmasses, and so New London and all their strings of settlements remained mostly unharmed.
Earth’s sky was painted a darker shade of gray from vapor and dust kicked up by the impact. Global temperatures chilled even further than they had since the first M-Day. It was nowhere near as cold as Titan, but every shiver of Earth’s populace would be a reminder of Kale Trass’s final act. His final “mercy,” as his people called it.
I liked to tell myself, from time to time, that it wasn’t Kale who’d redirected Basaam Venta’s engine. But that maybe Zhaff had one ounce of the extraordinary left in him and found a way to redirect Undina himself, saving a planet and people who’d never given a damn about him. It was better than believing the man who’d killed my daughter was a hero merely for realizing his pain pushed him too far.
A handful of ships had ejected from Undina as it hurtled toward Earth and left me holding my breath that maybe I was right, though reports from the USF said they were all found empty. And the asteroid and everything in and on it had burned up in the atmosphere or been vaporized by the impact. Still, it didn’t hurt to dream for once.
It almost seemed fitting that out of the people in that hangar on Mars on that fateful day when I finally met Kale, Rin and I would be the only two to survive. The old wretches, burned out on living yet unable to die. Though I’ve always found that the best leaders are the ones who never wanted the crown, and wretched as Rin was, she was no Kale.
The Darien Uppers had become a place of commerce again. A Venta Co. trading vessel arrived in a nearby hangar, and although armed Ringers hounded it, the fact that it hadn’t been shot down was a step in the right direction. Rin still refused to use credits throughout the Ring, but a man like me who’d seen all of Sol could always find a living.
For now, I had a full-time job. As I passed a statue being erected in Kale’s memory in Darien outside the docks, I couldn’t help but think about blowing it to bits. Every day I went by, my blood began to boil, but I kept my mouth shut and did as I was asked.
I rode the lift up one of the residential towers structuring Darien. The gardens at the top bloomed again now that the Ringers were done partying over rubble and celebrating their freedom. Maybe they’d finally remembered something life taught me—that hard work was the only way to control anything. As a collector or a grandfather.
The door to my dwelling unit opened as I approached. Rin strode out, not wearing her armor or her sanitary mask.
“Graves,” she muttered as she passed.
The light caught her scarred face in just such a way that I could see through to the back of her throat. I tried not to stare and nodded in response, like I always did. It was her choice to let me live after we returned from Undina, so it was the least I could offer. We’d been through enough, I think, to have fostered a mutual respect for each other.
Rylah sat on the bed inside, and Kale’s mother stood behind her at the back of the room, watching. I don’t think I’d heard her speak ever since we returned without Kale.
Rylah cradled Aria’s crying son with a synthetic hand she’d constructed after picking apart what was left of my leg. It was still mostly exposed circuits and joints, but it worked well enough, and she used it to repair my leg so I didn’t need a chair like an old codger.
Real hands or not, Rylah was still the most gorgeous woman I’d ever seen besides my Aria. At least now that we were both missing limbs, I had a better chance. I limped over. She smiled and held out baby Alann for me.
Yeah, Aria’s name choice for the kid didn’t really stick with Kale’s family, especially considering I was the only one alive who’d heard it. So, de facto Queen Rin got to choose while Kale’s mother didn’t seem to get a say in anything. Apparently, Alann was Kale’s dad’s name, one of the founders of the Children of Titan.
I’m not sure that warranted having his legacy carried on, but it wasn’t worth fighting over. Malcolm was a crappy name anyway—one I never cared to pass on. Not that I didn’t appreciate the sentiment, but Aria wasn’t thinking clearly whenever she had the idea. Always such a romantic. There was no reason to pretend we were closer than we really were and have me be reminded of it daily. My fault for being a shit dad, of course, but at least with Alann that could change.
“I can’t get him to sleep,” Rylah said.
“His mom never liked to sleep either,” I said.
I took Alann and stroked his thin hair as he fussed. Then I lifted the cracked Ark-ship figurine hanging from his neck, which had belonged to my daughter. I’d been able to repair it again, though now a few small chunks didn’t fit and the imperfections were noticeable. I closed my eyes and squeezed it, remembering the way Aria had stared at me on the Cora before she passed. Like, somehow, everything was going to be okay.
I looked back down at Alann. He had Aria’s eyes, as green as the forests of Earth before the Meteorite. Every time I held him, I remembered why any time I was outside of that room being ridiculed by Ringers, I stayed quiet and lived among them. Rin decreed that the grandfather of Kale’s heir couldn’t be touched, but I endured my share of insults and spit-filled drinks every day, especially since they thought I’d killed Orson on my own.
Whatever they threw at me, I didn’t care. Because as much as I hated Kale and his people for being behind the destruction of all the most important parts of my life—from leaving me in the position to have to shoot Zhaff twice for my daughter, to causing Aria’s death—he’d given me something I never thought I’d get. Something that I damn well didn’t deserve.
A second chance.
Thanks for Reading!
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If you enjoyed this story about the rebellion of Titan, consider checking out my Circuit Trilogy a Space Opera with a dark twist set in our solar system.
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About the Author
Rhett C Bruno is the USA Today Bestselling Author of 'The Circuit Saga' (Diversion Books, Podium Publishing), 'Bastards of the Ring Series' (Random House, Upcoming Audible Studios), and the 'Buried Goddess Saga' (Upcoming Audible Studios); among other works.
He has been writing since before he can remember, scribbling down what he thought were epic stories when he was young to show to his friends and family. He currently works at an Architecture firm in Connecticut after graduating from Syracuse University, but that hasn’t stopped him from recording the tales bouncing around inside of his head.
Rhett resides in Stamford, Connecticut, with his wife and their dog, Raven.
You can find out more about his work at www.rhettbruno.com
Titan's Fury: A Science Fiction Thriller (Children of Titan Book 4) Page 30
