“Why?”
“It’s just the market. Not personal. Pervenio doesn’t leave us gas harvesters much room for profit.”
“Why’d you name Cora navigator then?”
It was difficult to recognize the shock through his agonized expression, but I had no doubt it was there. “John couldn’t navigate worth a shit. She was better. The best. I hope to hell she’s all right.”
“That’s not it. I can handle a wrench better than Culver, but you never would’ve named me head mechanic, would you?”
“Is that what all this is about?”
“No, but I want to know. Tell me the truth, and I’ll…” I swallowed the lump forming in my throat. “Help you.”
“I want your word.”
I nodded. “You have it.”
He drew a deep, grating breath and squeezed his eyes shut. “Cora, she’s…She’s my daughter,” he said.
“What? But her mom was—”
“I know.”
I felt like I’d been struck from behind by a hover-car. It was difficult to slow my thoughts enough to formulate words. “Why?”
“I was young, Kale. Impulsive. I saw a pretty Ringer, had a little too much to drink, and I made a mistake.”
I pictured Cora lying next to me on the Piccolo, her silvery hair brushing across my nose. She was smiling, wider than I’d ever seen before, and now I knew the person behind the reason she rarely did. “Maya wasn’t lying,” I whispered, mostly to myself.
“Not a day goes by that I don’t regret it, Kale, but I tried to make the best of things once I found out. I care about that girl, that’s the truth. It’s why I never told her who I was. She doesn’t deserve to have to know.”
“That you’re the man who murdered her mom?” I said for him. “That made her an alien to everybody?”
“I didn’t murder anyone!” he protested. Raising his voice caused him to wince. “It was a young man’s mistake, just like the one that got you stuck on my ship. You can understand that, can’t you?”
“Yeah. I think I do now.”
“There. I told you.” He twisted his body, groaning, and regarded me, eyes red as the surface of Mars. “Now please…I can’t take this anymore.”
I rose to my feet wordlessly and walked over to the airlock controls.
“Thank you, Kale,” he said. “I knew you weren’t like the others.”
I placed my armored hand over the screen. My lower lip was trembling. I bit it to keep it still.
“Would you…Would you mind knocking me out first?” he asked. “I’m tired of feeling.”
My finger hovered over the command to close the inner seal, but I didn’t press it. “The Sunfire will be devoured soon,” I said. “I hope you last that long.”
His eyes gaped. “You gave your word!”
I signaled the inner seal to slam shut. Depressurizing and evacuating the airlock was as simple as pressing another button, but I walked away in silence. I could hear Captain Saunders banging against the hatch all the way down the corridor.
—
“Where’s the captain?” Vick asked me when I reached the command deck, making no effort to disguise his derision.
“He passed,” I said bluntly. He stopped what he was doing at the navigation console and gawked at me. Maya and Gareth stood behind him, holding on to his chair. They stared as well. Pulse-rifles were hooked onto the backs of all of their armor, and Gareth had a supply container strapped to his hip. It wasn’t big, but it held as much water and ration bars as we could stuff in.
“Are we ready?” I asked after they’d remained silent for a few too many seconds.
It took Maya a few more to finally answer me. “Almost,” she said. She grabbed a pulse-rifle off a rack on the wall and thrust it into my gut. “Now we are.”
I wrapped my fingers around the grip. I’d never held a rifle before in my life. The thing was dated, the white paint chipping away in parts, but it made me feel like more than a thief.
“Your father would be proud of you, Kale,” she said.
“Let’s not get emotional until we survive,” Vick said. “We’re coming up on the cruiser fast. I get any closer and their scanners will light up, so this is where we get off. Luckily nobody knows we exist, so they aren’t looking for us.”
“All right. Time to fly.”
“Wait, what?” I asked. I looked up at the command deck’s dome-shaped viewport. Ruddy-colored wisps of wind lashed beyond it, and in the distant clouds I noticed the large, dark silhouette of a ship.
Maya hit a switch built into my armor, which I hadn’t noticed earlier because it was woven into the belt. I heard a rasp of air, and then something popped out of my arm plates. Maya lifted my arm, and stretching between it and my hip was some sort of orange-colored fabric.
“The finest tensile nano-fabric Venta has on the market,” Maya said. “You ever heard of the winged suits our ancestors used to traverse Titan and help construct the Blocks?”
I strummed the end of the wing, which somehow remained taut no matter where my arm went. “I thought they were myths.”
“No, merely outlawed by Pervenio so they could control transit. Until now.”
“You’re not really a Child of Titan until you soar, kid,” Vick looked back and said, smirking. “Welcome to your initiation.”
I laughed nervously. “You guys are kidding, right?”
“Serious as a Q-Zone.”
“It’s simple,” Maya said. “On my mark, Vick is going to blow the harvesting bay. The blast will shoot us forward, and we ride the acceleration all the way to the cruiser. Now, I don’t need to tell you what kind of wind speeds are out there. The armor can handle it, but we use subtle motions to keep our course true. Gusts might knock you around a bit, but remember not to panic.” She grabbed my arms and raised them to about a thirty-degree angle from my sides. “You extend any more than this and we’ll be waving goodbye.”
I glanced up at the faraway shadow of the luxury cruiser and then back down at Maya. She was completely serious. “There’s got to be a better way.”
“Not one that keeps us from getting caught,” Vick said. “Your plan, remember, kid?”
Maya rolled her eyes. “Ignore him. The cruiser’s storage hangar will be on the aft. Our relative velocities should be close enough for us to grab onto the hull, cut through an exhaust vent, and climb on board.”
“ ‘Should be’?” I said.
“I’m not a mathematician.” Vick shrugged. He backed away from the controls, stood, and faced us. “No better time than now, though.”
“G-pills,” Maya said. She opened her hand and revealed four of them on her palm. Gareth and Vick snatched one each and gulped them down. “It’ll help keep you alert.” I grabbed mine and forced it down without arguing. Too many of them could be bad for your heart long-term, but I didn’t have the time to worry about that.
“Helmets sealed, com-links activated!” Maya ordered.
Their faces disappeared behind their visors. I scrambled to close mine. I could feel my heart beating in my throat. Maya reached over and hit a button on the side of my helmet to switch on my com-link.
“Can everyone hear me?” she asked, her voice filling the inside of my helmet.
Vick offered one of his usual sarcastic remarks on Maya’s looks. Gareth gave a thumbs- up. “Yes,” was all I was able to squeeze out.
“Stow your rifle, Kale. We don’t need that yet.”
I looked down and remembered it was in my hand. I anxiously patted the backside of my armor until I found the mag-latch it attached to.
We stood silently. Nobody moved until Gareth put a hand on Maya’s shoulder, as if he could sense how she was feeling. With the other he signed: ‘You okay?’
“I’m fine,” she said, shaking him off her. “I hate this place. Thumb’s locked.”
I wasn’t sure what she meant at first, but the three of them formed three sides of a square and gripped one another’s hands. Maya and Gareth each took one of mine. I co
uld only imagine the grin on Vick’s face as he positioned himself across from me.
“Ready, Kale?” Maya said.
“I guess—”
Before I could finish she nudged Vick and he let go of her hand for a second to slap a key on the command console. The Sunfire jolted so violently that we were flung at an upward angle toward the viewport. Our suits crashed through it, headlong into the whistling, tearing winds of the gas giant.
My armor shook from the turbulence, but the wings held true. A pressure behind my eyes augmented, as bad as it was when I’d first stepped onto the Sunfire. Maybe worse. I fought through the pain to open them so that I could see what was happening. We were skydiving upward, riding a squall like dust on an Earthen breeze.
Maya issued the others numerical commands for path redirections over our com-link. I had no idea what she was talking about, so I squeezed her hand and Gareth’s as hard as I could and used them to keep my arms from angling any farther than her recommendation. We veered together, slightly right and left, through the rosy arms of Saturn’s eternal haze toward the luxury cruiser’s rapidly growing silhouette.
Thunder clapped so loudly it pierced the soundproof seal of my helmet. Lightning sparkled in the distance. My bones chattered. Wind pressure pulled at my joints. This was the most terrifying thing I’d ever done, but as the G-pill kicked in and dulled the pain, I found that I was stifling a thrilled scream.
“Wind drag is slowing us!” Maya shouted loud enough for us to hear her over the rushing air.
“One thousand meters and closing!” Vick replied. “Trust me, we’ll be fine!”
If we were slowing down, I didn’t have the experience to notice. I had to fight the urge to break away from them and glide through the air like one of Earth’s birds. I’d been weightless plenty of times, but it’d never felt anywhere close to this…to flying.
“Five hundred meters!” Vick said. “Brace yourselves!” The luxury cruiser now constituted the breadth of my vision. We approached it at roughly a forty-five-degree angle from its backside.
“Kale!” Maya said. “When we land, keep your arms tight to your side.”
I nodded like an idiot first, and then replied: “Arms at the side, got it.”
“One hundred!”
We dipped as we entered the vessel’s drift stream directly under the aft. My stomach jumped, and my exhilaration gave way to fright. The others didn’t panic at all. Vick tightened his arm positioning to even us out so that we ran parallel to the lower hull. Our velocities synchronized almost flawlessly.
“Bring us up slow!” Maya said.
Their wings shifted with delicate motions, and we gradually climbed toward the ship. Again, I concerned myself only with not messing them up. We rose until we were running alongside it.
“Vick, you first!”
Vick had rotated to be on the side of our formation closest to the cruiser. I wasn’t sure what was up or down anymore. He released the others’ hands without hesitation, twirled around, and smacked against the side of the ship. His powered fingers dug into the sturdy blades of an exhaust vent, and he deactivated his wings.
“I’m on, Mai!” he hollered.
“Gareth, let’s go!”
Gareth released my hand before I was ready, but Maya was there to instantly grab me. The mute Ringer looped through the air and landed beside Vick. He wasted no time removing a cutting torch from his supply bag and getting to work on the vent.
“He’s on!”
“All right, Kale!” Maya shouted. She was now across from me, our visors so close that they were almost touching. I could see the outline of her marred face. “We’ll do this together, okay? Arms tight.”
I was short on breath. If I went drifting in space, I’d be going in one direction and there wouldn’t be much to hide me if anyone was looking for me. On Saturn I’d be whipped around like a rag doll, and plunged into a miasma so copious I’d be lost in seconds. My life was in the hands of the same woman who’d gone out of her way to destroy it.
“Okay,” I managed, probably too softly for her to hear. Our bodies twirled once. I squeezed her hands so tight I feared I might break them. We slammed into the cruiser, my back against her chest. Her arm was wrapped closely around my gut.
I groped behind me for something to grab on to, found the ship, and went to rotate my body so I was facing it. When I extended my arm, my wing got caught in the wind drift, and I was wrenched to the side. Maya lost her grip on me, and for a moment I was separated from anything but the atmosphere.
Vick extended his hand as far as he could and clutched my wrist. “I got you, kid!” he shouted. Maya grabbed him and together they hauled me back in. My chest crashed into the cruiser, and I hugged it. Fingers, feet, everything I had found a groove in the hull before my muscles tensed.
“No wings!” Vick said as he reached over and deactivated mine.
“Trass’s shit!” I screamed, the first words that had come to my mind.
Vick laughed, and I even heard Maya snicker before she asked: “Gareth, how’s that vent going?”
He answered her by tearing off the cover and tossing it. My heart sputtered as I was provided a clear example of what had nearly happened to me. The finned piece of metal twisted across the sky and was bent in half in two separate directions before vanishing into the haze.
“All right,” Maya said. “Everybody in quick! I’m sick of this planet.”
I couldn’t agree more. One by one we followed Gareth into the cramped passage, and I made sure I got in second. Only once I had a solid surface all around me was I finally able to draw a full breath. Sneaking was definitely safer than flying.
Chapter 19
We traversed the vent’s inner pressurization seals and busted through a grille into the spacious cargo hold of the Pervenio luxury cruiser. It was dark inside, with no need to illuminate a room filled with supplies. All I could make out were the rigid shapes of stacked containers and rolling storage racks. The emptiness did have one benefit, however. There was no reason to heat the room to Earther preference.
I clambered over a tall crate and dropped to the floor between it and another. Never had I been so happy to step foot on a ship. I would’ve kissed the floor if I wasn’t wearing a helmet.
“Still plenty stocked up,” Vick said. “Recall order must have come real early.”
Gareth approached a container locked by a keypad. He shoved his powered fingers under the lid and, after a few seconds of prying, yanked it free. It was refrigerated, and cold steam poured out. He waved us over, and inside sat a heap of frozen meat. I had no idea what kind of farmed animal it had been cut from. I’d never seen raw meat in my life.
“Steaks?” Vick exclaimed. “Remind me again, Mai, why we decided to hit a shit-ass gas harvester back then?”
She slammed the container shut. “Would you two focus? They track stock to keep the crew in line. No touching anything.”
“This gets better and better. Kale, tell her we want to see what fine Earther cuisine tastes like. She’ll listen to you.”
The sight of the meat made my mouth water, but I was lucky: Flying across Saturn had left me feeling nauseous. I fought the urge. “Listen to her,” I said.
Maya stepped from behind a row of containers. A blade of light flared from the top of her helmet, revealing the far wall and the only door in or out. Gone was the rust and exposed organs of the gas harvesters I’d grown too used to. Even the cargo hold of one of Pervenio’s prized luxury cruisers was a thing of conceived beauty. Pearlescent metal, sleek lines, lofty ceilings with perfect corners; it reminded me of the Darien Uppers.
“Cameras will be monitoring the hall outside that door, watching who comes in and how long they stay,” she said. “They’d never expect anybody to get in here from the atmosphere, but no way can we sneak out.”
“Vents?” I mentioned, eager to propose doing something that I was actually proficient at.
“Not dressed like this,” Vick countered.
<
br /> “Vick, you got a read on the coordinates earlier,” Maya said. “How long to Pervenio Station, do you think?”
“Six to ten hours, I’d guess, accounting for planet rotation.”
“Long enough for the patrons to start clamoring for a meal?”
“Maybe two.”
“All right, then we wait. Eventually they’ll send a few Titanborn workers in here for supplies, and we’ll take their uniforms.”
—
We sat in the darkness, visors down and breathing in the fresh, scented air. The Earthers had it smelling like flowers, and the air recyclers pumping it into the room were so noiseless there was no sound except for the occasional scratching of my armor across a container when I had an itch and couldn’t get to it. The floor wasn’t even vibrating from Saturn’s storms. The cruiser was built sturdy enough to handle them as if they were gentle breezes.
Vick snickered as he and Gareth whispered about something—or at least Vick was whispering. Gareth signed, and I wasn’t paying close enough attention to see what they were on about. Maya sat across from me, a thousand-meter gaze aimed over my shoulder toward nothing. She had her pulse-rifle in her lap, and was taking it apart and putting it back together again without needing to look.
“You’re going to miss it, aren’t you?” I said to her once she had it reassembled.
“Huh?” She shook her head as if waking from a reverie.
“The Sunfire.”
She sneered. “Like you miss the shadows of the Lowers maybe. You stay in a place for as many years as we were there, and it becomes a part of you. The good and the bad.”
“You never got off?”
“Once. Rendezvousing with a Venta transport in a place where the storms never cease wasn’t easy, and we couldn’t sit around during it. I didn’t trust them enough.”
“Did you ever think about stealing it? Leaving everything behind?”
Her attention returned to her gun. “You have a lot of questions.”
“You have a lot of answers.”
A grin tugged at the healthy side of her lips. “I thought about it. Earthers in a different color handed us food and water, guns and armor—everything we’d need to take the ship and disappear. I thought about heading to Neptune and beyond…going until the food ran out. And then I remembered.”
From Ice to Ashes Page 20
