From Ice to Ashes

by Rhett C. Bruno

  “Belay that order, sir,” Director Sodervall said to the only man in his corporation who outranked him. “I assure you everything is under control.”

  “Silence!” Luxarn bellowed, and even through the device his baritone voice commanded respect. I felt as if I could hear the hairs rising on the necks of every officer in the hangar. Mine would’ve too, but they were already risen, and had been since I’d first grabbed Sodervall. “I will not tolerate the murder of one of my Directors. Even one who has so spectacularly failed me. I’ve already lost too much today.” He steepled his fingers on his desk. “Now, Mr. Drayton, name your price.”

  I caught a glimpse of Desmond. He leaned on Vick’s shoulder, eyes almost entirely closed, but I think he was watching me through his eyelashes. I was reminded of something he once told me. That if credits didn’t exist, he would be king.

  “There is none,” I said. “We’ll be taking the Director down to Titan. Follow us too closely and he dies. Smuggle anybody onto the ship to kill us and he dies. Once we’re there, you can have him back. Those are my terms.”

  Mr. Pervenio’s face contorted in a way I imagine it never had before. Before he could respond, I shot the view-screen out of the officer’s hand. It exploded into a thousand silvery shards. Maya immediately pushed past the baffled officer onto the Piccolo. I nudged the shuddering Director onward and followed closely behind her.

  Chapter 24

  The group of maintenance workers inside the Piccolo’s cargo hold fled as soon as we entered. Our familiar suits lay on the floor in a row, orange circles on the chest arranged front and center.

  “Check them,” Maya said to Vick.

  He surveyed the suits, tapping the controls and lifting each side to check underneath them. “Clean,” he reported.

  “Close it,” I said.

  Gareth limped over to the controls. The cargo bay ramp lifted, and I glared at the wall of officers gathered at the base. It sealed with a prolonged hiss, which was immediately followed by an exhale from every single one of my companions.

  “I told you he’d find us a way out eventually, Mai,” Vick said, chuckling in relief.

  “You have no idea who you just insulted,” Director Sodervall grated, gaze fixed on our suits as he realized where he’d seen them before. “You might as well—”

  I finally unleashed the wave of fury I’d been holding back. “She was innocent!” I cracked him across the face with my pistol three times, so fast that by the time Maya and Vick grabbed my arms and pulled me back he was lying on the floor coughing up blood and teeth.

  “We need him!” Maya shouted.

  “Sorry,” I grunted. “I’m tired of hearing him speak.”

  “We all are, but we didn’t come this far to die now,” Vick said.

  Gareth didn’t sign anything, but he immediately approached, tore half of the bloody bandage off his leg, and stuffed it into the Director’s mouth. He offered me a thumbs-up. I nodded.

  “Maya, can your sister broadcast a live feed to the station’s security headquarters?” I asked.

  “I’m sure that’d be easy for her,” she answered. “We’ve just never had any desire to send them anything.”

  “Good. Set it up. They’ll need to see he’s alive if we don’t want to be shot down. Hold him.” I kneeled in front of the reeling Director and yanked the gag out of his mouth. He dry- heaved.

  “You fucking skellies!” he barked. “I’ll space all of you just like the others. Every single one!”

  “I hate that word.” I raised the pistol to his temple. “Now, use the com-link in your ear to tell your men to open the hangar.” His brow furrowed like he didn’t know what I was talking about, but there was a time I’d made a living being good at observing. I’d noticed it at some point while I was next to him. I reached into his ear and removed the minuscule device, no larger than my thumbnail. Pervenio Officers had only the best tech. “Don’t make me ask again.”

  He defiantly grasped the device and held it to his mouth. “Open the hangar immediately,” he mumbled. “Happy?”

  “Are there any officers hidden on board?”

  “No.”

  I hit him with my gun. “Don’t lie to me!”

  “There aren’t! To think that Luxarn actually thought he could talk some sense into you. He doesn’t know how you people really are.”

  I snatched the com-link from him and crushed it beneath my foot. Then I stuffed the gag back into his mouth. He lunged at me, but a blow from Maya to the back of his head with the butt of her rifle knocked him flat on his face.

  “Everyone in their armor in case he’s lying,” I said. “Keep your weapons on you. Vick, once you’re ready, get to the command deck and power the engines.”

  “Maybe you forgot, kid, but we kind of blew up the command deck’s ceiling…”

  “Do you need to be out there to pilot?”

  “Only to lower us out of the airlock, I guess,” he replied, scratching his chin. “Then I think I might be able to plot a course and get the fuck out of space.”

  “Good. Do it.” He looked to Maya, who nodded, and then he picked up a suit of armor. “Maya and Gareth, take the others and set the Director up in the airlock,” I ordered next. “I want Gareth’s gun on Sodervall every second. Maya, find something in the medical bay for his leg and to help Desmond. Strap him in outside of the airlock and get him in a space suit.”

  Gareth nodded and wasted no time starting to put on his armor. Maya took me by the arm and pulled me aside. “What about you?” she asked.

  “Just get it done.”

  I brushed her off and stepped before my suit of powered armor. I could feel Maya eyeing me as she put hers on. The first time I wore it I’d been forced in. Presently, I longed to hide my face behind the tinted visor.

  The others left the cargo bay to prepare for departure one by one, but I didn’t move. Once they were gone, I screamed at the top of my lungs. So loud that I had little doubt the officers in the hangar outside could hear me through the Piccolo’s rusty hull. When I had no more air left in me to release, I bent over my armor and started to cry. I cried until the Piccolo’s engine flaring on made the floor vibrate, the ship descended through the airlock, and my tears were caught on the unseen currents of Zero G.

  —

  Hours passed. I figured it’d take about six to reach Titan with the way Vick had the engines humming, and while I had no way of telling time, I knew we had to be getting close. Accelerative forces towed at my body. I could’ve put on my powered suit to temper them, but I didn’t want the numbness that came with it. Instead, I remained in the cargo bay, holding on to the grated floor so I didn’t float away, staring at the orange circle on the center of the armor.

  “Everything’s been prepared,” Maya said. She floated in the room’s entrance, body wrapped in armor. It suited her. Made her look like a fighter worthy of the scars on her face.

  “Good,” I replied.

  “That was an unexpected move, to say the least. You’ll be better at this leading thing than I ever was.”

  “I still couldn’t save her.”

  Maya didn’t respond at first. She drifted slowly into the room and pulled her weightless body to the floor beside me. “You know, the last thing Mazrah told me is that your mother will be at the safe house we’re going to once we reach Titan. Everyone below the Darien Q-Zone fled there before Pervenio’s army arrived.”

  “I’m glad she’s okay.”

  She sighed. “Kale…”

  “I’m going to kill him, Maya. I know I said I wouldn’t, but I lied.”

  “They’ve lied plenty of times to us. Whatever you decide, I’m with you to the end. We’re family.”

  “Trass’s,” I scoffed.

  “You invaded Pervenio Station and took Director Sodervall hostage. Impressive for a boy who never thought he’d be more than a thief. If that doesn’t make you believe, I don’t know what can. Everyone else sure as hell will.”

  “Darien Trass sa
ved people. He didn’t…” I exhaled. “He didn’t kill them.”

  “Tell that to Desmond.” She edged a bit closer to me. “All I know is that if your father could see you now, he’d be more proud than any man in Sol.”

  I turned to her, lower lip quivering. “Like I should care? My father never saw anything.”

  “That’s not true. He loved you from the moment you were born. I never saw him cry any other time but the day he let you go. We watched as your mother took you home after his fake ashes soared. You were so small back then. She gave you lettuce, do you remember?”

  “I do.”

  “I’d known him my whole life, and when I saw tears running down his cheeks I couldn’t believe it. He was always so strong…so focused. He and Katrina cried together from afar while I stood next to him stifling a grin. We’d always looked out for each other, so I resented how much he loved you both. I told him it was for the best, and when he saw how happy it made me, it broke his heart. We didn’t talk much after that. He sent me to work with Mazrah, the illegitimate daughter planted in our mom by some putrid Earther.”

  “You mean she’s like Cora is…was?”

  “Yes. I rarely saw him again until he came up with the plan for the Sunfire, but I’d have given anything to have been able to go back and tell him I was sorry. I never got the chance. Katrina contracted a rare virus, and he traveled to Earth without as much as a goodbye to find the medicine she needed. By the time he located it, our former homeworld had riddled his body with diseases. His only choice was to bomb New London as a distraction so the followers who would’ve stood with him into the vacuum could steal the medicine. He gave his life to give her one back, Kale. That is who your father was. That is who you are.”

  Hearing her story had me so choked up that I could hardly speak. It made me think of Cora. “I never even got to say goodbye,” I said softly. “I loved her.”

  “I know. And I loved him. And if you embrace who you are and become what he and Katrina were so scared to let you, then nobody will ever have to die for the reasons they did again.” She pushed off the floor. “When you’re ready, we’re all by the airlock. Ship’s on autopilot.” She drew her body out of the cargo bay without another word.

  I understood what she was trying to tell me. It didn’t make me feel any better, but I don’t think that was the point. I’d never get over what happened. None of us would. But that passion, that love, didn’t have to make us weaker. I didn’t have to forget Cora; I only had to fight the battle she never could. Destroy the thing that took her mother and almost mine as well. Free the Ring before they made bastards out of us all.

  I grabbed hold of my armor and lifted it. My face was reflected in the helmet’s visor. I was gaunt, covered forehead to chin in blood and tears, sanitary mask and all. I raised it farther so that the orange circle was directly in front of me, like the ring of flame wreathing my head in the image Director Sodervall had distributed throughout Sol.

  I remembered that day in the Uppers when Cora had pulled me out of a riot while I cowered. I was wondering how I’d act in that situation now, after all I’d been through, when suddenly it hit me.

  A ring of flame.

  I knew what I had to do. I threw on my armor—no small task while tumbling around in Zero G—and headed for the airlock.

  Chapter 25

  “There he is!” Vick exclaimed as I flew down the ceiling of the stern airlock’s corridor in my powered suit. “Our fearless leader.”

  Dried blood was crusted to the floor and walls, most of it belonging to Captain Saunders and the Earthers I’d watched die in the very same airlock. I saw flashes of that moment as I approached, but they didn’t hinder me. Not with the plan I had bouncing around inside my skull.

  Vick was strapped into a seat on one of the side aisles. Desmond was next to him. A bulky space suit used for emergency EVAC repairs on the exterior of the Piccolo covered the majority of his wounds, but he appeared less on the brink of death than earlier. Maya was across from them, deconstructing a pulse-rifle just to pass the time, the loose pieces floating.

  “How far are we?” I asked.

  “Two hours or so last I checked,” Vick answered. “Kind of an issue getting into a command deck that doesn’t have a top.”

  “Do we have any tails?”

  “Only about a dozen, all armed with enough ordnance to blow us to bits if they feel like it. Gareth’s keeping them in line, though.” Vick gestured toward our mute companion, who held on to a wall inside the open airlock to stay grounded. He aimed his pistol at Director Sodervall with one hand and held Maya’s hand-terminal with the other. The Director himself was cuffed to the same pipe where Captain Saunders had once been, with no sign that he’d ever been there. A gag kept the Director quiet. He was only half-conscious regardless, and a spattering of fresh bruises on his face didn’t make it difficult to imagine why.

  “We told them that we’ll be landing the ship by a methane lake about fifty kilometers west of Darien, and leaving the Director behind,” Maya said. “There’s a storm in the area, so scanners should lose us after we take to the sky.”

  “What about Darien?” I asked. “Has Mazrah provided an update on the situation there?”

  “Last I heard the main tram station in the colony block had been converted into makeshift quarantines while Pervenio forces continue sweeping the Q-Zone. It isn’t pretty in the Lowers. Titanborn everywhere are trying to break into the Uppers and riot.”

  “Good.” I drew myself into the seat next to Maya. “How do you guys feel about helping them?”

  “Once we’re down there, we’ll find a way.”

  “No. Now.” Maya’s and Vick’s brows simultaneously furrowed. I was too keen on the plan I’d thought of to wait for their response. “Vick, I need you to go back to the command deck one more time and alter our course.”

  “What?” he questioned. “Why?”

  “I want the Piccolo diving directly for the Darien Q-Zone at full burn.”

  Maya appeared shocked by the idea, and she wasn’t alone. “We’ll never get close,” Vick said. “They’re monitoring our vector. As soon as I change it, they’ll take us down. No way would Mr. Pervenio sacrifice that many men for the Director. It’s suicide.”

  “That’s why we’re going to have to turn at the last possible second once we’re in atmosphere.”

  “Autopilot can’t handle a maneuver like that. We could miss by kilometers.”

  “We won’t if you’re at the helm.”

  “The command deck’s exposed. Diving down bow-first that fast through Titan’s atmosphere…the friction alone…I’d never make it.”

  “We’ll wait as long as we can for you. If we hit the Q-Zone now, while our people are in Darien, Pervenio Corp will never be able to recover.”

  “We don’t know if all the sick are gone,” Maya said, though her tone didn’t indicate she was opposed to my idea. “It looks like they are, but there could be stragglers. We just don’t know, since any feeds inside have been deactivated.”

  “We’ll never have this chance again, Maya. If Vick pushes the engines as fast as they can go, then nothing will be able to stop the ship.”

  “Why don’t you go out there then,” Vick countered. “I’ll happily walk you through it.”

  “I’ll do it,” Maya volunteered.

  “No,” I said. “He’s the only experienced navigator here, and if we miss we’ll never have another shot.”

  “Nah, fuck this!” Vick blurted. “I’ve done everything that was asked of me, but not this. I don’t care who you are, son of Trass. We’ve got the Director now; that’s enough. Right, Mai?”

  She stared forward, her eyes bursting with wonder as she likely imagined the same possibilities I had when the idea’d popped into my head.

  “Mai?” Vick repeated.

  “He’s right,” she said. “We’ve been waiting for a revolution, and now we have a chance to gain the upper hand before it even starts.”

&nbs
p; He shook his head. “No. I won’t do it.” He snapped off his restraints and drew himself down the corridor away from us. “You’re on your own!”

  I chased after him. He turned the corner, but before I could follow Maya blocked me with her arm.

  “I’ll talk to him,” she insisted. “He’ll listen to me.”

  She followed him, and I’d started to pull myself back toward the airlock when suddenly I heard them arguing. I stopped.

  “I know it seems insane, but you know he’s right,” Maya said fervently.

  “It is insane,” Vick replied. “With everything that’s just happened, he isn’t thinking straight.”

  “But I am. Trust me. You think flying to the Ring Skipper was any crazier? You can do this, and our people will never forget. Half of Pervenio Corp’s armed forces, gone in a flash. Imagine what we could do.”

  “Maya. We don’t know if it’s only them.”

  “No, but it’s what we wasted three years for.”

  I decided I’d snooped enough and headed back to the airlock. My plan hinged on Vick’s willingness to risk his life. If Maya couldn’t, I’d have to find a way to convince him, even if I’d later regret it.

  I returned to my seat and leaned back. After a few minutes, Gareth caught my attention and lowered his pistol for a moment to sign me something. It took me two attempts to understand that he was saying, ‘Now you lead.’

  “You think so?”

  He shrugged his shoulders. ‘Trass gave his life to give us the Ring.’

  I nodded.

  “Kale…” a hoarse voice mumbled. “It really is you…” I turned to see Desmond awake. Painkillers had calmed his nerves, and for the first time since we’d saved him, it didn’t seem like he was staring through me at some unspeakable horror.