From Ice to Ashes

by Rhett C. Bruno

  From Ice to Ashes is a work of fiction. Names, places, and incidents either are products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

  A Hydra Ebook Original

  Copyright © 2017 by Rhett C. Bruno

  All rights reserved.

  Published in the United States by Hydra, an imprint of Random House, a division of Penguin Random House LLC, New York.

  HYDRA is a registered trademark and the HYDRA colophon is a trademark of Penguin Random House LLC.

  Ebook ISBN 9780399181610

  Cover design: Arielle Pearl

  Cover illustration: © Paul Youll

  randomhousebooks.com

  v4.1

  ep

  Contents

  Cover

  Title Page

  Copyright

  Prologue

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Epilogue

  About the Author

  Prologue

  Peter Sildario, captain of the Sunfire, fell forward onto Maya’s naked chest. The middle-aged Ringer was lying on her back near the edge of his bed, one bony arm pinned under his body and the other gripping the blunt end of a shiv carved out of a rusty metal bolt. She’d stuck it in the captain’s throat, and not even his fat fingers could keep the blood from pouring all over her.

  At first his body twitched while she held it there, then it went still, and then it grew colder and colder. She tried to slither free, but the layer of sweat and blood smeared across her pasty skin didn’t help. His cumbersome Earther body was just too heavy, deep as the Sunfire was flying within the atmosphere of Saturn.

  Her ribs grew sore under his weight. It made it difficult to breathe, and after a minute she imagined that she might suffocate. She’d never wanted to be a maintenance worker on a gas harvester in the first place and had only done so by request…Now she was going to die here. She wasn’t as afraid as she thought she’d be; she only wished she could pass on far away from the captain’s foul stench.

  Three pairs of gloved hands slipped between his body and hers just before the weight caused her to pass out. They pried him up just barely enough for her to slip out from beneath his sagging belly.

  She tumbled to the floor, gasping for air. The captain was rolled back onto his chest, half-hanging off the bed with his face dipped in a deepening pool of his own blood.

  “We heard screams,” a Ringer com operator named Vick said as he ran in, his tone panicked. He too was born on the icy surface of Titan, and had a permanently crooked nose from its being broken one too many times. “What the fuck did you do, Mai?”

  “Trass, he’s dead,” said Joran, like Maya, a Sunfire maintenance worker.

  Maya ignored them. She lunged at the captain and punched him in the side. The fat on his stomach jiggled, but the weighty corpse barely budged. “How does that feel, Captain!” she screamed as she struck him again. “You like that! You want it harder?”

  Gareth, the third Ringer who’d helped dislodge her, grabbed her by the shoulders and tore her away from the corpse. Working with the engines made Gareth the strongest of them despite his also being a Ringer, so he picked her up and sat her on the red-stained bed.

  ‘Are you all right?’ he signed with his long, thin-fingered hands. His tongue had been sliced off at the back of his throat by the Earther captain lying dead before them, so he couldn’t speak.

  Maya glanced down. Her boiler-suit was torn along the back, so far down so that it wrapped around her thighs. Rows of finger-shaped marks along her slender hips stuck out against her white flesh as if drawn on with a pink highlighter. She was almost entirely exposed to the germ-infested air, a rare sight for a Ringer outside of the Lowers. Her three saviors were all clothed from head to toe in boiler-suits, and wearing sanitary masks and gloves as was customary.

  “I’m fine,” she panted, throwing her arms back through her still intact sleeves. Gareth helped her. The fit was loose from having been stretched time and time again by the voracious captain. Vick took a step to help as well, then regarded the bloody captain and stopped.

  “You’ve really done it now,” Vick said. “They’ll space us all for this.”

  “He deserved worse,” Maya growled.

  “Others will have heard the screams,” Joran said. “We’ve got to get you out of here.”

  “Yeah, where are we going to go?” Vick asked. He was sweating even more than Maya, his gaze glued to the body. “I hear Pluto is lovely this time of year.”

  Gareth shot him an angry glare as he finished helping her back into what was left of her outfit.

  “Just shut up, Vick, and let me—”

  Maya was interrupted by the three-man Sunfire security team suddenly appearing in the room’s entrance. All of them were Earthers, painting short, broad figures compared with her tall, slender one. They wore dated suits of Pervenio Corp–fashioned armor, but their shock-batons were top-of-the-line, tips crackling a vibrant blue.

  “You skelly bitch!” one of them yelled. They rushed into the room, weapons raised.

  Gareth didn’t hesitate. He ripped the shiv out of the captain’s neck and charged. He was naturally weaker than the Earthers, but he’d grown up a brawler in Titan’s Darien Lowers. Joran quickly followed, and though he wasn’t a fighter, he knew how to hold his own as a distraction. Vick wasn’t as lucky. He froze somewhere between fleeing and fighting, and got prodded in the side by a shock-baton. His convulsing body toppled forward, vomit spewing from his mouth.

  The mess slowed the guard coming at Maya and gave her enough time to think. She’d been invited to the captain’s quarters a few times before she’d had enough and killed him, and she knew he kept a loaded pulse-pistol in a stand by the head of his bed in case the crew got rowdy.

  She sprawled across the mattress and fumbled through the drawer until her reedy fingers found the rubberized handle. She whipped around and saw a shock-baton speeding toward her head. She caught the Earther’s burly arm before it shocked her, while at the same time he grabbed her pistol-hand and shoved it upward. Born on Earth, under Earth-like G conditions, he was multiple times stronger than her. Both of her arms were ready to give out when she decided to pull the trigger.

  The shot hit a power conduit running along the exposed wall behind them. Electricity coruscated through the air toward the baton’s lit end. She squirmed away from him just in time to escape the current as the guard screamed. His back wrenched, and he shook violently. While he was incapacitated, Maya reached around him and put a second bullet into the head of the guard kicking Vick’s curled-up body. Gareth and Joran didn’t need her help. The former was plunging his shiv into their guard’s chest over and over as the latter held him down.

  With the wailing, electricity-filled Earther stuck in front of her, Maya was trapped between him and the wall. She tried to slide her thin body around him without making contact, but as she did there was a crackle, followed by a deafening bang. The power conduit overloaded and went off like a stick of dynamite centimeters away from the right
side of her face, launching her across the room.

  Maya rolled over, her vision foggy, her ears ringing. There was no pain. Shadows raced toward her, screaming her name. Vick reached for her face, appearing horrified as he hesitated to touch her.

  She ran the tips of her fingers across her cheek. Still she felt nothing, but when she pulled them away charred flesh was stuck beneath her nails. She clawed at her face again, this time peeling away skin as if she were a wax sculpture held to a torch.

  Gareth pulled her to her feet while Vick yelled for her to focus. She pushed them aside and grabbed a baton off the floor. One of the Earthers was crawling toward the gun. Her vision was still cloudy, but she didn’t need to see straight to hit one of their fat bodies.

  She spit out a glob of blood, skin, and liquefied sinew, then cracked him across the head with the baton over and over until his legs stopped twitching.

  Chapter 1

  I focused on the off-duty XO of the Piccolo, a rickety, Saturn-based gas harvester on its last legs: Earther John Barnes, enjoying his time off by fleecing the Darien Lowers for cheap drinks while he gambled away his paycheck.

  The Executive Officer sat between two members of the ship’s security crew at a card table in the Sunken Credit. I knew him well after spending the last two years working maintenance on that very same ship. He had a tendency to pick fights with his Ringer subordinates just for the sake of it, and his bulging muscles meant he always won. He gave even Earthers a bad name. Not an easy task.

  He was my mark.

  A pretty server placed down a tray of drinks for them. Their fourth round. She winced as John grabbed her arm before she could hurry away. I slid my stool a tad closer so I could hear what he said to her over the din of the Sunken Credit, mostly the desperate voices of old, worn-down Ringers at slot machines and tables who’d been trying and failing to catch a break every day since they were unfortunate enough to have been born in the Darien Lowers. Noisy clusters of thick pipes ran along the rocky ceiling as well, feeding the Darien hydro-farms above near the stormy surface of Titan. The Sunken Credit was nestled into a hollow near the back of a Lowers water purification plant.

  “Aye, you mind telling your Ringer bosses to turn up the heat?” John barked.

  “Of course,” the server replied. “I’ll—”

  He cut her off, instead wrapping his arm all the way around her waist and pulling her close to the table. A full transparent bodysuit and sanitary mask kept her safe from direct contact, but she wore nothing underneath—just her skinny, malnourished figure.

  “And I thought I said to bring it neat?” he blustered. “I said that, right, boys?”

  His two smirking mates nodded. “That’s how I heard it,” one remarked. “If we wanted ice rocks we’d go outside.”

  “That’s right. Now, how about you take your skinny Ringer ass back there and fetch us another.” He handed her the tray, but first took his drink and chugged half. He slammed it down, his Earther strength causing her to scramble to keep the tray level as she hurried away.

  She slipped right between me and an old Ringer who’d long since passed out with his face on the bar. I struggled not to glance over at her. The transparent plastic outfit the bosses made every server wear in an attempt to garner more tips for the house sure wasn’t doing her any favors when it came to lecherous Earthers like John.

  “I don’t know why we still let those mud stompers in here,” the bartender remarked.

  “They tip well,” the server replied. I caught a glimpse of the parts of her face not covered by a sanitary mask, expecting to see signs of tears after she’d endured a barrage of insults over the course of the night. Instead, she appeared relatively unfazed. A real pro.

  “Well, if you want a break, just let me know.”

  She shook her head. “Just refill them. Neat.”

  The bartender poured more liquor into the Earthers’ drinks, then reached into each glass and scooped out the ice with his gloved fingers. “That ought to do it. And I’ll be sure to turn down the temperature too. Freeze their fat backs to the inside of their coats.”

  “Thanks, Chev.” The server’s mask lifted from a smile, then she picked up the tray and sauntered back toward the tableful of goons.

  “You having another?” the bartender asked me. I was too busy peering at John’s table to hear him at first. “Kid?”

  I looked up at him, then down. Ice inside rattled against the sides of the empty glass in my hand. I nodded and flashed him my ID to transfer some of the last few credits I had to my name. Purple synthahol lifted the perfect spheres of frozen water as he filled my glass. They didn’t bother selling the real stuff in the Darien Lowers, since barely any Ringer could afford it, but water Titan had plenty of. It was one of the few things we did have, and freezing it was easy. If there was a definition of cold, it said Titan next to it, and my people had lived there for three centuries since Darien Trass’s first settlers fled Earth to escape a meteorite large enough to wipe all life from the planet. Zero degrees Celsius was like a warm summer’s day on our former homeworld for me.

  I lifted the glass to my mouth and pretended to take a sip. The only reason it even needed ice was to dilute the dreadful taste of the lab-brewed concoction. Lucky for me, I had no plans on drinking a second. One was all I needed to strengthen my nerve, and now I had to keep my head straight.

  After he and his crew received their drinks, John smacked the table to compel their Ringer Dealer to distribute digital cards across the display built into the tabletop. No physical cards meant he didn’t have to touch anything his patrons did, though that didn’t keep him from checking his gloves and sleeves every time he had to swipe the screen just to make sure none of his pasty skin was showing. Contact with an Earther could get a Ringer stuck in quarantine. Staying out of there was the only thing more important than a good tip.

  While John and his crew played, I watched him drink with one hand and with the other whip out his hand-terminal and struggle to read whatever was open on the screen. He barely paid attention to the game, as if he had too many credits to spare…which may have been true. The device—a Pervenio-issued V3X model, just released in the past month—was worth more than I’d earn in one whole shift on the Piccolo. The screen was double the size my terminal had been before I sold it to be able to pay for the previous month’s rent without starving, exponentially faster, and able to connect to Solnet broadcasts originating from anywhere in Sol. The entire device was thin as a sheet of glass, its silvery back-casing shimmering brighter than anything else under the Sunken Credit’s failing lights.

  I was going to steal it. After leaving the Piccolo to be closer to my mom after she caught something and got stuck in quarantine, I was desperate for credits. My plan was to swipe the most expensive thing I could find and use it to try to get back into the good graces of one of the fences I used to run for. They were all still bitter about me leaving the shadows behind to try to make an honest living.

  After two years on a gas harvester, I was out of practice. John made for an easy warm-up. I knew from experience that he liked to get so drunk he wouldn’t remember how he got the bruises from the night before. The fact that he deserved to get swiped was just a bonus. I had standards, at least. I never liked stealing from people I didn’t know anything about. Earther or not, there was no saying what they’d been through. Mom taught me that, even though she hated what I used to do and was preparing to do again.

  Thirty minutes passed quickly. My staring didn’t appear suspicious, because everyone else in the gambling den had had an eye on the Earthers from the moment they’d entered. Ringers came and went, most with heads hanging in defeat and a few wearing looks that said they’d broken even and would be back tomorrow to try getting rich again. John and his friends were on another round of drinks. If they had a shred of decency—which I knew they didn’t—it was long gone. John was swaying. He went to hug the server and fell off his stool onto his knees, cackling hysterically.

&n
bsp; “Oh, c’mon, girl,” he slurred. “I don’t bite.” He grabbed her skinny leg. She kicked at him to pry free, but he didn’t budge. Waves of fear finally flooded her face. John drew himself to his feet, then tugged her tight against his puffy thermal coat. His mates chuckled the entire time.

  “I swear I’m cleaner than any of the Ringer filth you’ve fucked before,” he said. He ran his fat fingers up her back and through the ends of her hair. Seeing direct contact like that between a Ringer and an Earther made my skin crawl. She yelped and slipped down out of his grasp, causing him to again stumble to his knees.

  That was when the bouncers had finally had enough. Just what I’d been counting on. I stood and used them as cover to get closer. I wasn’t worried about John or the others recognizing me with my sanitary mask on. That was the one benefit about having to wear one everywhere: It made me difficult to differentiate from any other Ringer at first glance. What I was worried about, though, was the baton hanging openly from John’s broad hips. Weapons weren’t allowed to be worn anywhere in Darien without special permits, but no gambling den manager in the Lowers was going to stop him, considering what he was spending.

  “All right, fun’s over,” a bouncer said. “Let’s go, all of you.” The slender man towered over the Earthers by at least half a meter, but three centuries of breeding in Titan’s Low G had rendered him significantly weaker than them. John could probably throw him clear across the room if he wanted, and when the bouncer leaned down to help him up, he pretty much did just that.

  “Get the fuck off me!” he garbled. He shoved the bouncer with one of his meaty arms, and the Ringer flew back into a nearby table so hard that the fastenings at the base went loose. John’s companions jumped to their feet. They wobbled, but their stocky legs kept them upright. The other Sunken Credit bouncers surrounded them, wiry fingers curled into fists. Every patron stopped what they were doing.