She was a one-man warship capable of fending off attacks from the worst manner of scrap pirates hiding throughout the asteroid belt… or helping take down the remnants of Luxarn’s forces around the Ring. Like his personal recordings, the Cora was one of the many technical marvels earned during our takeover of Pervenio Station. Its name was my single addition.
I switched on my helmet’s com-link. “I am now,” I said.
“I was hoping you finally decided to listen to me and stay onboard,” Rin replied, her voice now over coms.
I shot her a disapproving glance. Her visor obscured her face, half of it a mess of mangled flesh and sinew from an explosion when she led a mutiny against an Earther ship captain long before I met her. The scars made her appear like something from a nightmare, though the sight barely affected me anymore. Ever since our revolution started, she was by my side almost every second—plotting, fighting, figuring out what was best for the Ring. It was tough to find any Titanborn who’d lost more at the hands of the Earthers than her, and her coarse disposition made sure everyone around her always knew it.
“Director Lawrence ran security at Pervenio Station,” I said. “How many of us do you think he spaced there?”
Lawrence currently led the last remnants of the Pervenio security forces stationed around the Ring. According to reports, at least a hundred of them were on board a luxury cruiser, ready to make their final stand. We would’ve sent the ship spiraling down into the crushing depths of Saturn if they hadn’t managed to take a few vital Titanborn hostages before commandeering the vessel. But now we were going to get them back.
“I know,” Rin replied. “But I’m not the one responsible for our people.”
“No, you’re not.”
“We can handle this mission easy. If you were to get hurt…”
“Gareth will protect me.” I nodded toward my towering guardian, standing at the back of the other Titanborn fighters waiting for us. Like Rin, he too had been with me since the start of the revolution.
He grunted his agreement as he walked over. He didn’t say a word because he couldn’t. He could only converse through sign language. The Earthers had stolen his tongue long before we ever met.
“Something just smells wrong about this, Kale,” Rin said. “They’re desperate, and I know what that’s like. Nobody will judge if you stay behind. You can spend some more time in the cockpit with that ambassador you’re so fond of. Whatever she is to you these days.”
I ignored her last comment. “They took your half-sister, Rin. Isn’t Rylah important to the cause?”
“I know who they have!” she snapped.
I turned my head so I could glare directly at her. Out of my periphery, I noticed the Titanborn fighters watching us. They couldn’t hear what we were saying since we were on a private line, but the look Rin and I exchanged had them visibly concerned.
Rin drew a deep breath. “My apologies, Lord Trass,” she said. “As your aunt, it’s my job to protect you whenever I can. Gareth and I will take care of the Pervenio mongrels and bring Rylah back. You can trust us.”
“You’re starting to sound like my mother,” I said.
“Fine, then come,” Rin groaned. “Just don’t ever tell me that.”
“Are you two ever going to get along?”
“Do you have a time machine?” Gareth signed to me.
“She kept you from your father and your birthright,” Rin stated, unamused. “She’s lucky she’s your mother.”
“And you’re lucky you’re my aunt,” I countered. “I’m tired of hearing about it. We’re here now anyway, so let’s end this together.”
“As you command.” She turned to face straight ahead and, after a few seconds of quiet, said, “You took your g-stim, right?”
“You’re doing it again, Rin.”
She grumbled something under her breath. I shifted coms to our unit-wide channel.
“The Pervenio mudstompers out there have taken one of our own!” I shouted. “A member of my family! Let us show them what it means to be Titanborn!”
“Missiles launched,” voiced Aria over the com-link, right on schedule.
She was my ambassador to Earth, and the woman currently flying the Cora. I didn’t like placing her in the danger of combat, but with Rin needed to lead the assault of Director Lawrence’s ship, she was the only experienced pilot who could handle an Earther vessel as advanced as the Cora.
“Should be me flying,” Rin remarked.
“Please no,” Gareth signed. “I don’t want to puke again.”
“You’re welcome to stay,” I said to her. She ignored me.
“Ships in position,” Aria announced. “Prepare for dispatch.”
In unison, the Titanborn soldiers accompanying us rotated to face away from the ship’s exit ramp. Rin, Gareth, and I crossed their ranks to the very back, ensuring we’d be the first out the door when the time came.
“Today, we finally take back the Ring!” I yelled. Dozens of Titanborn fighters voiced their agreement. Gareth pounded on his chest plate.
“Oxygen on! Wings down!” I spread my arms, stretching the tensile nano-fabric strung between them and the sides of my suit. Everyone else did the same. “From ice to ashes!”
The echo of my soldiers repeating that phrase was one I’d grown used to. I closed my eyes as the words rang throughout my helmet. I remembered my first time soaring across Saturn from the Sunfire, how my hands shook and my heart pounded. Now they were both still.
A rare period of calm took hold. No gunfire or explosions. Nobody asking me what to do. I pictured Cora’s eyes, as blue as Neptune. Then the exit ramp fell open, and my body was yanked backward by the winds of Saturn. Even with a g-stim alleviating the stress of being under the intense gravity of the Ringed World, nothing could ever prepare me for that feeling. Especially considering I hadn’t taken my stim despite Rin’s prodding. My winged suit would keep me alive, and I wanted to feel everything.
My muscles were pulled in every direction. My stomach felt like it was in my throat. I opened my throbbing eyes and reveled in the pain. The tension racking my body was just the distraction I needed.
Saturn’s ruddy atmosphere whipped across my visor as we pierced the sky at incredible speeds. Bolts of lightning coruscated in the distance, as long as a Departure Ark. The great gray blob of a Pervenio luxury cruiser named the Ring Skipper encompassed most of my view straight ahead. A handful of smaller Titanborn ships surrounded it—gas harvesters that we’d stolen back mostly. Hundreds of soldiers soared toward flaming breaches in the hull.
“Redirect two degrees west,” Rin instructed over coms, her voice sounding a thousand kilometers away as the wind howled.
I lifted my left arm a smidge to alter my heading. The entire squadron turned with me, like a flock of gulls on ancient Earth. At least, everybody except for one. In the second row of our formation, one of my people must have raised his arm too much and got caught in a wind stream. His body plummeted uncontrollably toward the depths of Saturn until he was obscured by the thick clouds.
I looked away. Everything happened so fast my people didn’t have much time to train. All the scattered cells of the Children of Titan emerged under my command after Director Sodervall’s execution, but it wasn’t enough to fight. Most of the soldiers were factory-workers or hydro-farmers. Like me, they were thrown into the cauldron of war without a second to breathe.
“Hold steady,” Rin said, choosing to ignore what had happened.
The Ring Skipper neared. Bullets lashed out through one of the breaches in its upper hull as another Titanborn squadron entered. A few of those clinging to the rim were hit and tumbled out into the abyss. Pervenio wasn’t going to go down easily.
“Level out over the hull,” Rin said. “Velocities are synchronized. Come down slow around the breach. Beta squadron will clear the dining hall for us.”
My immediate view became a wall of gray metal as we soared a few meters above the ship. The first squadron to en
gage our target breach pushed forward. I lowered gradually over the hull until my hands were close enough to grip the jagged edge. Magnetized gloves ensured I wouldn’t slide away after I retracted my wings—a new improvement to our armor that allowed for boarding operations such as this.
“Alpha engaged,” Rin said. “Prepare to drop in…”
I ignored her. I couldn’t hear anything through my helmet except for roaring wind, but I could see the flashes of muzzles below. We were late to the fight. I pulled my body forward, my powered armor providing the strength to fight the storm, and plunged into the ship. The wooden floor cracked beneath my feet as I landed in the luxury cruiser’s ostentatious dining room. The tables were fastened, so they hadn’t been sucked out by pressure change, but most were broken or flipped, peppered with bullet holes.
A squadron of my men was already among them, firing at Pervenio resistance positioned behind the corner of every entrance into the room. I reached back, removed my pulse rifle, and took aim at a chunky Earther decked out in Pervenio regalia. He was getting too bold about poking around the corner, and the next time he did it, I’d have him squarely in my sights.
“Protect Lord Trass!” Rin screamed.
Before I could squeeze the trigger, the whole of my squadron landed around me, and I was lost in a sea of white armor. Rin grabbed me by the back of the neck and shoved me into a crouch. Through a forest of limbs, I saw Gareth charge the doorway. When the officer I was aiming at popped out, Gareth riddled him with holes.
“Are you trying to get yourself killed?” Rin yelled at me over our secure line.
I brushed her off and hurried to catch up with Gareth. With our unit’s reinforcements, we were taking the dining room with relative ease. All the crystal chandeliers and the garish paintings hanging on the walls were in tatters along with the Pervenio defenses.
“They’re holding our people on the command deck!” a Titanborn at the entry informed me.
I hopped on coms. “Forward squadrons advance!” I said. “I want none left alive.”
Gareth entered the adjoining hall first, and I made sure I was second. Two Pervenio mudstompers fled some ways down. Blood sprayed the wooden trim on the walls as we unloaded into their backs. Then we bounded forward with both squadrons at our backs and Rin bellyaching into my ears.
With two full squadrons following me and two more simultaneously breaching the ship’s ruptured cargo bay, Director Lawrence didn’t have enough men to secure the corridors. The blast door to the command deck was sealed shut, but my men immediately got to work bringing it down with fusion cutters.
“Form two lines at the entry,” Rin stepped in front of me and ordered. “Everything they have left will be holed up in there.”
Rows of soldiers positioned themselves before me. I went to shove them aside, but Rin pressed her palm firmly against my chest plate. “You’ve done enough,” she said sharply over our private line.
A harsh response simmered on the tip of my tongue until Gareth too moved out from my side and directly in front of me. He gestured to a blackened mark on the edge of my torso where a stray bullet had glanced off my armor.
“You fought well,” he signed. “Rin will handle the rest.”
I regarded my soldiers. Some of them trembled as they aimed, watching the sparks slowly wrap the blast door like a blooming rose, but they all stood firm. For Titan and for me. I finally conceded and took a step back.
“Do not fire unless you have a clean shot,” I ordered over the mass coms. “They’re holding our people in there. Pervenio Corp’s hold on the Ring ends today!”
Chants of affirmation rang in my ears. The fusion cutters stopped.
“Check ammo,” Rin said. “Prepare for advance!”
The thick blast door toppled inward with an earsplitting crash. My people flooded the command deck under Rin’s leadership, but not a shot was fired on either side. Gareth and I entered last.
The Ring Skipper’s command deck was a marvel of engineering. The curved portion of the semicircular space was entirely comprised of a viewport looking out upon the thunderous skies of Saturn. Its burnished steel structure was so thin it didn’t seem like it could support anything. Three stories of catwalks wrapped it, loaded with navigation consoles and other terminals, though currently, every workstation was vacated.
Director Lawrence and his troops stood near the central console on the main level. About a dozen of them were left, and they had our Titanborn hostages on their knees, pulse rifles aimed at the back of their heads. Rylah was under the watch of the new director himself. In the short time I’d known Rin’s half-sister, she’d always been perfectly manicured and flaunted her lithe physique in exquisite, skintight dresses. She’d grown up in the Lowers just as I had, but she wasn’t afraid of using both her assets and her intelligence to help her become the foremost information broker in the Ring. Now her hair was disheveled, her dress ragged, and her face blemished by splotches of blood and fresh bruises.
My fists tightened, and I immediately wished I was out front with Rin. If the new Titan we were building were a corporation like Pervenio, Rylah would be our chief technology officer. She didn’t share Trass’s blood from Rin’s father, but she had a brilliant mind. A knack for understanding how things worked that, alongside Aria, was crucial as my people adapted to the Pervenio technology we now owned.
“I’m glad you could make it!” Director Lawrence hollered across the room. The wicked smirk he wore told me he knew we had reached a stalemate.
“Rin…” Rylah rasped. “Get out of here!”
“Quiet!” Lawrence smacked her in the back of the head.
Rin stomped forward. “Let them go!” she demanded. “And I promise you a quick death, mudstomper.”
Lawrence continued to sneer. “I’d prefer slowly. And you’ll all join me!”
The ship lurched to the side so violently that all of us were thrown off balance. One of my people smashed into my side, sending me scrambling to find my footing. But the ship didn’t recover, stuck in a steepening tilt. In the chaos, I saw a bullet from Rin’s gun slice through Lawrence’s forehead just before he could execute Rylah. The rest of the officers went down just as quickly, trying to take a handful of hostages with them rather than put up a real fight.
“Kal—Lord Trass, they blew the engines!” Aria yelled over the com-link. “Half of Charlie and Delta Squadrons were lost. The ship is in free fall!”
“It was a trap!” Rin screamed. “Gareth, get Kale out of here now! All ships, we need emergency retrieval.”
Before I could respond, Gareth pulled me free of a body and rushed me toward the exit. “We aren’t leaving them!” I threw him off and turned around. Rin had Rylah and made her way toward us, but with the ship plunging headfirst, we were all heading uphill.
“I’ve got her,” Rin said. “Dammit, Kale, you need to go!”
I slid down the angled floor until I reached Rin and could help her carry her injured sister. “Not without all of you,” I said. Gareth arrived soon after and grabbed another hostage lucky enough to avoid a bullet from his captor. Even in our powered suits, the inertia and mounting gravity made climbing back across the command deck a challenge.
“Aria, tell all ships to grab as many soldiers as they can through existing breaches,” I ordered. “We have Rylah. You’ll be recovering us last at the command deck.”
“I won’t be able to get under the bow of the ship now,” she replied, the urgency in her tone unmistakable.
“Use a hole in the top of the dining hall, then. We’ll meet you there.”
“I’m not sure this ship can handle the pressure if the Ring Skipper goes down much farther.”
“Get it done, outsider,” Rin growled. “All I hear is how great a pilot you are. Prove it.”
“It’ll hold,” I assured. “Everyone move, now!”
Hearing my commands inspired a few of my soldiers to fall back so they could push us along. One slipped and rolled down the command deck, sha
ttering the viewport on his way out into the storm. Air rushed into the command deck, and we just barely made it into the corridor, where we could use the walls to brace ourselves. A handful more Titanborn weren’t so lucky. The viewport’s structure bent as if it were made of paper and was torn out into Saturn’s atmosphere along with everything and everybody else remaining on the command deck.
My muscles seared as we pulled ourselves along the wall back toward the dining hall. Luckily, Rin and I had been stowaways on the Ring Skipper before and knew a faster way. Reports from the other squadrons filled my ears. The pressure exerted from diving so deep into Saturn’s atmosphere forced one rescue ship to have to pull away and abandon soldiers.
“Velocity synchronized,” Aria said. “Hull integrity is holding, but I don’t know how long. Please hurry, Kale!”
“We’re close,” I strained to say. The pressure on my lungs was almost too much to bear. Every armored soldier around me ground their jaws in an effort to keep conscious. Rylah and the other few hostages we hauled along had already passed out. No human body was built to survive the real depths of Saturn but especially not a Ringer’s outside of powered armor.
“Through…here,” Rin groaned. We plowed through a swinging door into the ship’s kitchen, a mass of at least twenty people using each other’s bodies to fight gravity and inertia to move. Shiny utensils were scattered all over the floor. Light and wind pierced the many bullet holes dappling the chrome walls.
As we entered, a violent bout of turbulence sent all of us sliding. Plates and frozen food shattered. I was the first to hit the wall, and I used it to try and steady us. My arms felt like worn rubber bands. Just as I went to join back with the group, the heavy hatch of a walk-in freezer cracked open.
Titan's Rise: (Children of Titan Book 3) Page 2
