“But the mines have failed you in that regard, have they not?” Zaimur said.
Talon didn’t say anything. His heart began to thump so rapidly that he thought it was going to burst from his chest.
“When that gravity generator exploded on Kalliope, I’m guessing,” Zaimur said. “When was it, a little less than a year ago?” Zaimur traced the veins up to Talon’s elbow. Talon didn’t nod, but his eyes divulged the truth. “Someone always leaves with the blue death when that happens. My father got it that day too, you know. Just happened to be visiting. It’s a slow-moving affliction, though it claimed his old body quicker than it’s taking yours. The poor man was once a god to Ceres, yet now he can’t even get up from his own bed to take a piss. He would have spent anything to find a cure. Anything. But some fates have no remedy. As you know.”
Beads of sweat rolled down Talon’s forehead. How did Zaimur know? He kept denying it to himself.
“Don’t act surprised,” Zaimur said. “It’s my job to know everything going on in the asteroid belt. I’d say you have another year or so left at best if you’re careful. Is one year long enough to spend with your precious daughter? I didn’t kill you earlier, Talon Rayne, because you’re dead already.”
“Then why would a corpse help you?” Talon asked, his voice shaking. His daughter’s face filled his thoughts. “The Tribune will have added extra defenses to their freighters with so many stolen recently. Why hasten my death sentence?”
“Because I have something that you cannot offer your daughter.” Zaimur leaned down to whisper in Talon’s ear, “A chance for her to become more than those two women over there, beautiful as they are. Look into their eyes.”
Talon hadn’t really cared enough to analyze them closely earlier. Their faces were scarred and their eyes sunken as if they had surrendered their will to live. One had an arm missing, with just a stump remaining. The other was missing an eye. Talon’s lip quivered as he pictured his daughter’s face on theirs.
“Get that gravitum for me,” Zaimur continued softly, “and I give you my promise to provide her with the chance to serve me honorably, as you once did my father.”
“I trusted Zargo,” Talon said. “How do I know I can trust you?”
“We share the same blood for one. In the end, it’s no expense on me to help her, Talon. I’m richer than you’ll ever imagine.” He rose to his full height, looking down his sharp nose. “You killed Bavor. Because of that, you owe me a debt, but it’s not personal. I could just as easily send you off to serve the Keepers with the rest of the blue deathers like I should, but I’m offering you this opportunity in good faith. My father trusted you to get the job done. I’ll trust you to do the same.”
Zaimur patted Talon on the back before returning to his seat. The supple legs of the servants waiting there immediately wrapped over his thighs, as if they were members of a living throne.
“Succeed or fail, I will make sure your daughter is taken care of,” Zaimur said. “I reward those in my service well. Perhaps, had my distinguished father done the same, you wouldn’t have abandoned him for the mines.”
Talon slumped back in his chair, staring at the slowly rotating map of the Circuit, then back at Zaimur. All he could think was how far the leadership of the Morastus Clan had fallen since Zargo fell ill.
“I don’t really have a choice, do I?” Talon asked.
“You do. But I’m not so generous with those who spurn my kindness.” His tone was calm, but his cobalt eyes bored through Talon like daggers.
Talon imagined his daughter gawking at him like she did when he told her stories. He didn’t have to think twice. A chance at leaving her protected was more than worth it. What else was he going to do now that the mines weren’t an option. Go racing in the asteroid tracks? He’d die sooner that way.
“I’ll do it,” he said. “Except we’re going to do it my way.”
“Excellent!” Zaimur declared. “Build a team you trust, and they’ll be paid handsomely. I’ll provide all the resources you may need, but try to keep my involvement as quiet as possible for now. I can’t have this tracing back to me. You never know when executors are watching.”
“I’ll try, but people usually like to know whom they’re working for before they risk giving up their lives.”
“And they will. Once you’re ready, I will personally review all of them before departure. This way they know that the gravitum is for someone important… Just in case.” Zaimur put on an impish grin.
“Of course.” Talon nodded. “One problem though. I don’t know if I’ll be able to deactivate a Tribunal ship’s tracking systems. They’ll probably just disable it if they don’t blow the thing.”
“I don’t care about the ship. Just get me what it’s carrying and get out. Who knows, maybe our little venture will unveil which of the other clans has been naughty enough to take freighters without me knowing.”
Zaimur snapped his fingers for one of his servants to get up and refill his drink. “Bring our guest one as well. I see the makings of a beautiful partnership.” He nodded at his guards, signaling them to unbind Talon.
Talon sat still as the cuffs came off, half staring blankly and half trying to judge the quality of his new employer. A servant placed a drink in his hands, purposefully letting their skin touch for a long while on the exchange.
He’d tasted genuine alcohol before with Zaimur’s father, but at that moment, he didn’t want any. All he wanted was to go and see his daughter again—to hold her in his arms for as long as he could. But at least he was still alive. And as he brought the rim of the glass to his dry lips, he knew that was something worth drinking to.
14
Chapter Fourteen—Cassius
The White Hand hovered over Edeoria: Shaft 23, a residential earthscraper near the edge of the Ksa crater. ADIM guided the ship down slowly as the first of its gate’s jaws unfastened. Wind and dust battered the viewport, but he kept it steady as it lowered into the hole. Once through, the outer seal closed and a second one below opened to the habitable space of Shaft 23.
Wide terraces wrapped the cylindrical void with walkways of circulation receding back to hundreds of residential unit entrances. Each level was uncharacteristically overcrowded. Hammocks were slung along the railings, and people huddled around haphazard shanties. These displaced citizens were an unfortunate side effect of Cassius Vale’s latest project.
He took a moment to analyze their grimy, sullen faces through the viewport of his ship. It only strengthened his resolve.
ADIM steered further down and into a gutted hangar at the lowest level before another gate sealed above them. A unit of Tribunal soldiers waited outside beside a small transport. All of them wore oblong helmets with shiny black visors except for their apparent leader.
Cassius sighed. “Make yourself scarce, ADIM. I’ll try to get rid of them,” he ordered as his ship’s engines powered down.
“Yes, Creator. This unit will be watching.”
Cassius moved into the hangar, already fairly confident about why the soldiers were present. He tried practicing his most convincing smile while he waited for the White Hand’s exit to iris open.
“Friends, what brings you to Edeoria?” he asked, settling on his usual grim demeanor.
“I am Hand Belloth,” the leader pronounced as she took a step forward. “We come on behalf of Her Eminence, Tribune Gressler.”
Belloth’s head was shaved down to her scalp, and her nose was bent from being recently broken. Tribunal citizens would usually get an imperfection like that fixed promptly, but not her. She spoke with an unfettered sense of self-importance. Ribbons of green and gold decorated her armor of similar coloration, golden palm-prints emblazoned on her shoulders indicating that she was a Tribunal Hand in a display of literalness Cassius was used to from her masters.
“Just standard patrol,” she said. “The area below this landing platform has been quarantined for quite some time. Her Eminence wishes to inquire why and have us s
urvey the area.”
The move was bold for Nora Gressler. Hands were too high a rank to be sent for surveillance. Only four of them existed, one assigned to each member of the Tribunal Council. Where the executors were the clandestine agents stationed around the Circuit, the Hands served directly as an extension of the council’s will. They were generals, advisors, and diplomats, amongst other things. Cassius could sense Benjar’s influence behind her presence on Titan, even though Belloth was Nora’s Hand.
Looking around, Cassius noted a few Edeorian security officers around the hangar. They would do little in a firefight against an armored Tribunal squadron. He wasn’t even sure that they would side with him, being that the quarantine he’d used his prefectural powers to impose on the lower levels of Shaft 23 had forced thousands from their homes.
“I will allow nothing,” Cassius responded coolly. “You can tell your masters that the area remains confined for good reason. That will have to do, Hand Belloth.”
“It won’t.” Belloth placed her hand on the stock of her rifle in plain sight. “I’m on strict orders from Tribune Gressler. You will provide access.”
“Or what?” Cassius scowled.
“Or you will waste more of Her Eminence’s time! What are you hiding down there anyway, Prefect?”
Cassius went to speak, but then he heard ADIM’s voice through the comm-link in his ear. “Shall this unit rob them of their lives?”
He glanced from side to side, but there was no sign of the android anywhere.
So he glared directly at Belloth and responded, “Nothing,” all while shaking his head to signal ADIM not to strike. “But I doubt you and your men want to enter a district with a severe gravitum leak? Unless you do.” He began to circle the soldiers with long strides. “In which case I’d be happy to send you wallowing back to your masters with the blue death.”
“Gravitum leak?” Those words garnered Belloth’s attention. She took a nervous step back. “Are you sure?”
“No. As prefect of this colony, I want to rid these fair citizens of their homes. In fact, I’m hiding a bomb down there just to kill them.” Cassius laughed heartily and placed his hand on Belloth’s shoulder. “Now, please. I must meet with the maintenance officers to discuss the matter, and I’d rather not have Tribunal soldiers scaring the color from people’s cheeks.”
Belloth quickly shook the hand off with a grunt and lifted her rifle in a threatening manner. “Fine. But we’ll be watching, Prefect Vale,” she grumbled crossly before signaling her men to return to their ship.
Cassius waited until they were all on the ramp before shouting out to the Hand, “Oh, and do give Benjar Vakari my regards!”
Belloth sent a hard look back; then the ramp closed. A minute or so later, the vessel powered on and lifted off.
Once it was gone, Cassius released a long sigh of relief. After so many years of planning his revenge, it was too early for any drastic measures to be taken.
“Forgive me,” the landing platform’s foreman apologized as he stepped out of an adjacent office. “They had Tribunal clearance codes.”
“It’s no matter. But next time send them directly to me.”
The foreman bit his lip but nodded.
“Now open the access hatch,” Cassius ordered. “I must inspect the quarantined area.”
“Are you sure it’s safe? With the leak and all?”
“I said open it. And do refrain from questioning my motives in the future.”
“I’m sorry. I… I only hope the matter can be resolved soon. My family—” The foreman stopped, his eyes widening fearfully as Cassius’ rigid expression didn’t budge. He backed away with a succession of bows before hurrying back into his quarters.
After making sure the White Hand was locked, Cassius headed toward the back of the platform. The handful of Edeorian guards in their shoddy, tarnished armor tried not to stare as he disappeared around a corner.
“My sensors indicate that there is no gravitum leak,” ADIM said, only the android’s voice no longer came through the comm-link.
Cassius flinched as a section of the wall suddenly began to move, and ADIM came walking forward. His holographic camouflage had allowed him to blend in impeccably.
“Please refrain from doing that,” Cassius said. He took a few short breaths to steady himself before responding, “No, you’re correct. There’s no leak.”
“So you are not in danger?” ADIM asked. He positioned himself in front of the maintenance hatch, which led down into the quarantined area. The foreman had already signaled it to open.
“No, ADIM, but the Circuit cannot yet know what it is we are doing. It’s too delicate. We must hide the truth until the time is right.”
“This unit understands. We must lie to them to protect them from themselves.”
“Exactly. So that we can offer a brighter future.”
They descended a cramped stairwell, emerging into a space very much like the one above it. Only this area was completely uninhabited. It was silent, the dull buzzing of light fixtures the only sound to fill dozens of terraces plunging toward blackness. Three massive stilts rose from the unseen bottom to their level, supporting a cylindrical reactor casing.
“That is the same as the assembly on Earth,” ADIM said. He leaned over the rail to see the enormity of the construction.
“Not yet,” Cassius said. “I was working on it while you were stealing the freighters, but I had some trouble configuring the plasmatic drill itself. With the data you recovered, however, it shouldn’t be too hard to finish.”
ADIM extended his palm, and a projection of the drill on Earth, broken down to its smallest components, began spinning slowly above it. “Where are the construction units?”
Cassius joined his creation at the edge of the precipice and studied the hologram. “You have been very busy lately. I was hoping that we could work on it together… Like we used to.”
“As on Ennomos?” ADIM regarded his Creator, and if that blank plate stretching down from his eyes could wield a smile, then Cassius imagined it would have. Cassius couldn’t help but wear one himself.
“Yes, ADIM,” he said. “Soon our work there will be revealed, just as I hope it will be here. Many lives will be spared if we discover gravitum in Titan’s lower mantle and prove that Earth is expendable.”
“This unit would be—” ADIM glanced down at his hand and then, as if mimicking Cassius from earlier that day, grasped him gently around the forearm. “Honored to help. Humans utilize that word in similar circumstances, but its connotation appears to vary. Is this unit’s application correct?”
“Yes. Yes, it is.” Cassius reached down to touch the android’s arm in return. “And the honor is mine… my… my son.”
15
Chapter Fifteen—Talon
After leaving Zaimur’s chambers, Talon headed to the underpass—a network of underground mag-rails navigating Ceres Prime. After Earth fell, Ceres, the largest asteroid in the solar system, was found to wield such a surplus of water in its core that it was worthy of receiving its own conduit station. It bore little in the way of valuable ore, but the countless cavities beneath the surface made it a perfect specimen for controlled underground environments. Tunnels and caverns, some man-made like the underpass, others natural, crisscrossed to form a subterranean metropolis second only to New Terrene in population.
The underpass was mostly empty by the time he arrived at his line, which took him to West 534, a housing district known mostly for generating savvy mercenaries and prostitutes. There were worse places to live on Ceres, however. Places where the gravity generators were so obsolete that over generations the people grew slightly taller and lankier, some even requiring spinal implants to stay upright.
That was how most Ceresians lived, toiling in their own filth as they scraped for a living extracting water in the depths of the asteroid or working what small underground farms were possible. Replacing body parts ruined by rot or disease with whatever tech they could scav
enge. Losing sight to hyper-low g near the core.
It was getting worse too. As the rift with the Tribune widened, only the bare necessities came in along the Circuit. Talon could sense the apprehension every time he returned home. Ceresians were beginning to fear that the Tribune was even gaining control over the Keepers of the Circuit, who operated the neutral solar-arks.
West 534 itself comprised a massive cavern filled with a random agglomeration of small metal shacks. Shafts of corrugated metal wove in and out of crags and outcrops of natural formations, piled high. In the center of it all was the dome where Talon’s rail was headed. Neon lights poured through the openings in its latticed structure, painting the whole district in an undulating aura of shifting colors.
The Dome was its unimaginative name, and it was where the people of that district and many others congregated at night to lose track of time. Not the finest club in Ceres Prime, but it was by far the most entertaining. A home to weary souls, degenerates, addicts, gamblers, strippers, all the synthrol you could buy, and finally, underground fighting rings.
Talon got off at the station in front of the club, beneath a twisting canopy of rusty iron peeling away from the dome. He brushed some of the dust off the dark-blue tunic Zaimur had provided for him, then followed a small crowd to the triangular entrance with only loose canvas serving as a door.
A human bouncer was flanked by three androids. He wore a bland suit of light-composite armor with a tarnished blue and gray color pattern—the colors of the Morastus Clan, who regulated the Dome and its district. Run by Zargo Morastus, Zaimur’s dying and increasingly incapable father, it was a little-known fact that the boss suffered from the blue death, like Talon did. Anybody who was discovered to have the affliction was supposed to be sent off to serve the remainder of their days as a Keeper. That was the unspoken agreement known by all factions on the Circuit. But Talon and Zargo shared the same secret.
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