I ignored her last comment. “They took your half-sister, Maya. Isn’t Mazrah 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 Maya and I exchanged had them visibly concerned.
Maya drew a deep breath. “My apologies, Lord Trass,” she said. “You asked me, as your aunt, to advise you whenever I can. Gareth and I will take care of the Pervenio mongrels and bring Mazrah back. You can trust us.”
“You’re starting to sound like my mother,” I said.
“Fine, then come,” Maya 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,” Maya 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 how we started it. Together.”
“As you command.” She turned to face straight ahead and, after a few seconds of quiet, said, “You took your G-pill, right?”
“You’re doing it again, Maya.”
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.
Aria 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 Maya needed to breach Commander Loris’ ship, she was the only experienced pilot who could handle an Earther vessel as advanced as the Cora.
“Should be me flying,” Maya 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. Maya, 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 fabric string 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, 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 backwards by the winds of Saturn. Even with a G-pill alleviating the stress of being under the strong gravity of the Ringed World, nothing could ever prepare me for that feeling. Especially since I hadn’t taken my pill despite Maya’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 wracking 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 as long as a departure ark coruscated in the distance. 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, with hundreds of soldiers flying toward flaming breaches in the hull.
“Redirect two degrees west,” Maya instructed over coms, her voice sounding a thousand kilometers away.
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 on a wind stream. His body plummeted uncontrollably toward the depths of Saturn until he was obscured by the thick clouds.
“Hold steady,” Maya said, choosing to ignore what had happened.
The Ring Skipper was coming up fast. 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,” Maya 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 engage our target breach was pushing forward. I lowered gradually over the side 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,” Maya 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.
Beta squadron 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!” Maya 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. Maya 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?” Maya 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 easily. 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 Maya bellyaching into my ears.
The push toward the command deck was easy. With two full squadrons following me and two more simultaneously breaching the ship’s ruptured cargo bay, Commander Loris 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,” Maya 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 Maya pressed her palm fi
rmly 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 the blackened marks on the edge of my torso where stray bullets had glanced off my armor.
“You fought well,” he signed. “She 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 strong. 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 Titanborn in there. Pervenio Corp.’s hold on the Ring ends today!”
Chants of affirmation rang in my ears. The fusion cutters stopped.
“Check ammo,” Maya said. “Prepare for advance!”
The thick blast door toppled inward with an earsplitting crash. My people flooded the command deck under Maya’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.
Commander Loris 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. Mazrah was under the watch of the commander himself. In the short time I’d known Maya’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 smarts 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 Maya. If the new Titan we were building was a corporation like Pervenio, Mazrah would be our chief technology officer. She didn’t share Trass’s blood from Maya’s father, but she had a brilliant mind. A knack for understanding how things worked that was crucial as my people adapted to the Pervenio technology we now owned.
“I’m glad you could make it!” Commander Loris hollered across the room. The wicked smirk he wore told me he knew we had reached a stalemate.
“Maya…” Mazrah rasped. “Get out of here!”
“Quiet!” Commander Loris smacked her in the back of the head.
Maya stomped forward. “Let them go!” she demanded. “And I promise you a quick death.”
The commander 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, and I scrambling to find my footing. But the ship didn’t recover, stuck in a steepening tilt. In the chaos, I saw a bullet from Maya’s gun slice through the commander’s forehead just before he could execute Mazrah. The rest of the officers went down just as easily, trying to take a handful of hostages with them rather than put up a real fight.
“Kale…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!” Maya 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. Maya had Mazrah and was making her way toward us, but with the ship plunging headfirst, we were all heading uphill.
“I’ve got her,” Maya said. “Dammit, Kale, you need to go!”
I slid down the angled floor until I reached Maya 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 Mazrah. You’ll be recovering us last at the command deck.”
“I won’t be able to get under the bow of the ship!” she replied.
“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,” Maya 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, shattering the viewport on his way out into the storm. Wind 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, Maya 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 stay conscious. Mazrah 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,” Maya 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 in order to move. Shiny utensils were scattered all over the floor. Light and wind pierced the countless bullet holes dappling the 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.
Children were crammed inside. At least a dozen of them, of all varying ages. Most were already unconscious, but the cries of those who weren’t were drowned out by the racket. Only I noticed them. A girl, no older than five, stared at me near the entrance. She was in too much pain to form the words to shout out for help. They’d probably been brought on board by their Pervenio Corp. fathers and mothers who decided that being sacrificed to kill me was better than living under the rule of Ringers.
Someone grabbed me by the shoulder. “C’mon, Kale!” Maya’s voice rang in my ear. “We need to get you out of here now!”
I remained still, eyes locked with the girl’s. Tears streamed down her grimy cheeks as well as all the others’. They were Earthers. All of them. The Cora was built well enough to hold for the few extra seconds longer it’d take us to gather them; to save all the potential future Collectors, security officers, and corporate Directors. All I needed to do was give the order, and my people would listen...
CHAPTER TWO
MALCOLM GRAVES
I jolted awake. My heart raced so fast my ribs felt like they were about to splinter. A
ll I could see were blotches of white and blurred figures. As I went to turn my head and survey my surroundings, a respirator covering my mouth yanked it back into place.
That was when I realized I was gagging. I grabbed the mask, a needle popping out of my arm as it moved, and started to pull. The long tube attached to the respirator slid out of my throat, releasing all manner of phlegm and who knows what else as I gasped for a real breath. And kept on gasping. It felt like I’d been chained to the bottom of an ocean until I was on the brink of drowning, then launched to the surface.
I rolled off whatever I was lying on. Dozens of needles affixed to tubes popped out of my body. My legs were weaker than after a month in a sleep pod on a passenger liner. Or at least, one of them was. I couldn’t feel the other at all, which caused me to stumble forward into a counter when I attempted to stand. My groping hands knocked over pieces of shiny equipment. Some fell and shattered. My hearing was so distorted that they could well have been explosions.
Finger-like appendages wrapped my arms and heaved. Muffled voices murmured in my ears. “Malcolm, relax,” they said. I tore free and attempted to run, but again my absent leg caused me to fall. I grasped at the area, expecting to find air, but instead my hand smacked something rigid and cold.
Something pulled at me once more, hoisting me to my feet. I threw it off me and hopped along on the leg I could feel while my hands snaked across a smooth wall for balance. I kept going until one sank through an opening. An open door. I grasped the edge, swung myself into the adjoining space, and found the wall again. This time it was coarse and lumpy like the face of a natural cliffside.
I clung to it for a few hops, then found that I wouldn’t topple so long as I pressed all my weight on the leg I could feel, as if there were a crutch in place of the other. I’m not sure where I was planning on going, but I hobbled as quickly as I could. Faster and faster, like a kid learning how to ride a rusty, pre-Meteorite bike. Until I slammed into a railing.
Titan's Wrath Page 2
