Titan's Wrath

by Rhett C. Bruno

  “I could let you die, you know,” I said. “Tell her the radiation ravaged your withering body before we could get you under.”

  “And I wouldn’t blame you one bit. Just like you wouldn’t have blamed me if I’d pulled the trigger.”

  “Only you didn’t.”

  Malcolm groaned and leaned his head back into the pod. “I didn’t.”

  I grabbed onto the edge and, hand over hand, pulled my weightless body up so that I could look down into it. The viscous substance formed around his body, the pod automatically stabbing a few more needles into the side of his neck.

  “Do you know when I realized that I’d do anything to keep my people free?” I asked.

  “Was it when you dropped a ship on thousands of officers?” he joked, then coughed. “Or no, before that. How about when you had the innocent Earther crew members of a gas harvester publicly executed and let all the Ringers on board, your own people, take the rap for it? Yeah, that must’ve been it.”

  I didn’t let him get under my skin. Instead, I told him the truth. “One of your people took Maya’s sister hostage, and we went to rescue her,” I said. “A Pervenio man, like yourself. He set a trap, and as we were escaping it, I passed a room filled with children. Earther children. You see, he’d left them there to die because apparently living under our rule wasn’t worth living at all. So, do you know what I did next?”

  “I’ll bet it’s heroic.”

  “I left them there to die. I had time to save them, but I didn’t. Future Collectors, baton-wielding security officers, and corporate Directors, I let them all be swallowed by Saturn.”

  He didn’t answer. He merely leveled his heated, sickly gaze in my direction. I could tell how difficult it was for him to keep his eyes straight, but he managed.

  “You’re my Collector now, Malcolm Graves,” I said. “You’re going to help me get to Luxarn Pervenio when the time is right, and together we’ll show him and every Earther in Sol what it means to be afraid.”

  Even with all his training, his expression told all. I had him. I started to close the lid of his sleep pod until he whispered, “This is all about her, isn’t it?”

  I stopped. “Aria? She’s lucky she’s alive with all the secrets she kept from us.”

  He shook his head. “No. The girl you named this ship after. The girl who you left behind on the Piccolo while you ran off to play rebel. Who you left to die at the hands of a tired bigot like Sodervall. He may have flipped the switch, but you put her there.”

  “Don’t.”

  “That’s it. Cora’s dead and you can’t handle it because deep down you know the truth. That it’s your fault.”

  “No.”

  He chuckled, then coughed. “You put this crown upon your own head, Drayton. I hope you wear it proudly.”

  “No!” I slammed the lid and pushed off. Maya was there to catch me, apparently finished plotting our course in the cockpit. She rubbed my shoulders in a way that told me she hadn’t heard what he’d said.

  “It’s time to sleep, Kale,” she said.

  Her sanitary mask was removed, making the clicking of her tongue against her marred cheek with every hard syllable more noticeable. She prodded me back toward my own pod and held my body against the rim. Then, one by one, she helped remove the sections of my armor. The pieces fell away from me into the depths of the Cora, and then I plunged backward into the pod.

  “He won’t have died for nothing,” Maya said as she hooked me in. I didn’t respond. I couldn’t. My brutally scarred aunt continued prepping me for sleep as if she were my mother, until soothing pharma was flowing through my veins.

  “I know you’re worried about your child, but he’s going to be fine,” Maya assured me. “These anti-rads are strong, and it hasn’t been long. I’ll pull him out of that deceitful witch myself if I have to.”

  I reached up and closed the lid myself before she could manage another word. Finally alone. Silence.

  I wasn’t sure what would happen next. The inside of the pod felt like it was spinning, and everything seemed like a lucid dream. I hadn’t wanted to be put under during our voyage because I was afraid I’d forget Cora. But at that moment, forgetting was all I wanted to do. I wanted to evaporate into the sky of Titan. I told myself over and over that what Malcolm said was wrong. That he was only trying to get a rise out of me. Every death couldn’t possibly be on me. I couldn’t control everything.

  And as I lied to myself again and again, my world went dark…

  INTERLUDE

  Undina was an unassuming place. A metal-rich asteroid dragged into near-Earth orbit a few million kilometers beyond the moon by Pervenio Corp. The pull he used to have, for the USF to allow him to draw a celestial body so near to Earth considering the fear people still held of meteorites… Madame Venta longed for it.

  Yet, the interior bore none of the finely dressed walls and smartly designed spaces indicative of Pervenio Corp. The moment Madame Venta landed in the hangar, she felt like she’d stepped into the deepest slum on Mars. The whole place was rundown, rusting. It stank of burned-out engine cores, and there was this overbearing metallic tinge to the air, like Luxarn’s entire operation was bleeding out. The dock hand shuffled over, jumpsuit rumpled and covered in grime, e-cig hanging out of his lips. Disinterested. Miners lounged about in the adjacent galley, nothing to do. In fact, for a mine that was still considered active, the cavernous halls were deathly quiet. No drills or haulers echoed from the deep.

  Madame Venta spent a lifetime in rivalry with Luxarn Pervenio. She held equal parts respect and hatred for the man, but seeing his company plunge so far troubled even her. It wasn’t pity—he’d done enough never to deserve that—but she knew how easily Venta could now wind up in the same place. Dragged through the mud by some ill-fated offworlders who thought the universe owed them something.

  Sol was truly changing.

  A doctor met her by the opposite end of the hangar. The old hag had skin like wrinkled parchment, and hair she didn’t even bother to comb.

  “This way,” she croaked. She led Madame Venta and the armed Collector guarding her to a lift. The doctor stuck out her arm to bar her. “Not him,” she said, nodding at her escort.

  “Excuse me?” Madame Venta glared down at the doctor’s arm. Nobody in her company would dare have the balls to touch her or to also ask her to enter a meeting in a mysterious place alone. She’d been under constant guard ever since Red Wing Company allowed that savage Ringer Kale Trass to escape. Ever since she found her clan children in New Beijing, charred and brutalized at his hands.

  “Mr. Pervenio would prefer to keep the contents of this facility undisclosed.”

  He’s really lost it, she thought. She wanted to curse at the doctor and go back to her ship, but instead a sigh came out. She’d come this far already. No need for company to make a deal with the devil.

  “Wait with the ship,” she ordered her guard.

  “Madame,” he replied. You shouldn’t go in alone.”

  “I’ve known Luxarn for decades. He wouldn’t dare touch me.”

  She stepped into the lift which took them deep into the bedrock of Undina. She could feel the gravity relax as they delved further away from the surface and the centripetal force of the asteroid’s incited spin. Deeper than the mines. When the doors opened, she finally entered a place that looked like it belonged to the former wealthiest man in Sol.

  Clean metallic walls with a genuine wood trim, polished tile floors—the place was as well put together as anything she owned. An artist couldn’t paint the picture of a more perfect research facility. There wasn’t even a mote of dust in the air. One or two researchers strolled down an adjacent hall, but that was all.

  “He’s waiting for you inside,” the doctor said when they reached the polished doors at the end of a long hall. She muttered something to a hovering service bot, and it sputtered a response. Then the doors slid open with a snap and hiss.

  Luxarn sat on the edge of his mahogany
desk within, staring at the entry like a dog waiting for a meal. The desk was the only luxurious thing inside. In fact, it was the only thing. Like the rest of the facility, the room had a lifeless, clinical quality.

  “I didn’t think you’d actually come,” Luxarn Pervenio said, smiling from ear to ear. She’d known him for decades, and for the first time his age was starting to show. Wrinkles formed around his mouth and piercing, green eyes.

  “Who’s stupid enough to turn down a meeting with Luxarn Pervenio?” she replied. She knew he had to be mentally frail after losing so much. Petting his ego like he was still king of Sol seemed the best way to make sure she wound up on the more profitable end of their bargain.

  “Too many people these days, I fear.” He crossed the room and stuck out a hand. She hesitated before shaking it. She couldn’t count on those fingers how many deals they’d shattered between each other in their quest to rule Sol. They were members of the first clan families to begin settling the worlds beyond Earth after the Meteorite hit. The old guard. Rivalry like theirs hadn’t existed since the warring countries that existed before it.

  Now all that was unraveling thanks to Kale, like thread from a broken spool.

  “I’m sorry about what happened,” Madame Venta said, struggling to make it sound wholly genuine.

  “No, you aren’t.” He smirked, then turned his back to her and started pacing the room.

  “You see right through me as always. Things were simpler when it was just us out here.”

  “Was it that fun living in my shadow?”

  “I...” she bit back a scathing response and took a measured breath. “I know we’ve had our differences, Luxarn, but I’m here. Don’t waste my time.”

  “Differences? You helped them take the Ring. You think I don’t know about the weapons you snuck over? The intel? You handed Titan to that monster on a silver platter.”

  “You know you would’ve done exactly the same! Neither of us had any idea it’d put a madman in power. It was politics, pure and simple.”

  “That’s the only reason you’re still alive.”

  Madame Venta scoffed. “At least you haven’t lost your sense of humor.”

  He grinned, then snapped his fingers at his service bot. “Bot, get us drinks.” It immediately hovered across the room to a mostly empty cupboard without asking what they wanted. Like he’d trained it to know.

  “I don’t drink,” Madame Venta said.

  “You do today.”

  “Luxarn, it’s madness out there. Everyone is after a slice of your pie. Red Wing Company made a power grab… Red Wing, for Earth’s sake. The USF is clueless—”

  “Relax, Julianne. If you’re serious about this alliance, then everything will be taken care of.”

  “You got my attention, Luxarn, but if you want any more than that, I’ll need to see more than some old mine.”

  The bot poked two glasses of whiskey into his hands with its spindly arms, and he sauntered back over to her, a hop in his step. She’d honestly expected him to be more somber. That’s why she’d bought into this idea in the first place. She could manipulate that.

  He presented the glass and didn’t leave her much choice but to take it. She hated putting anything in her body that blunted her wit.

  “PerVenta Corp.,” Luxarn ruminated. “Has a nice ring, doesn’t it?”

  She took one whiff of the vile liquid, which devoured the souls of weak men, and recoiled. “I’m not in the mood for your games. He killed my sons, Luxarn. Not clan children. They came from my belly, and he torched them like kitchen meat. Now, I’m not agreeing to a thing until you tell me what this plan of yours is.”

  “First. We show Red Wing what happens when you side against your own kind.”

  “How?”

  He put on a wicked grin, took a long sip of his drink, and then gestured to the door. Madame Venta turned to see three tall, pale, young offworlders standing in the doorway wearing the white armor of the Children of Titan, an orange circle printed on the chest. At first, she shuddered, thinking she’d been betrayed and sold out to the Ringers; then she noticed their faces. An eye lens was strapped onto each of their right eyes, the glass in the center glinting yellow like the body of the assassin Kale threw upon the USF’s podium back on Mars.

  “Madame Venta, it appears we have something in common. Kale Trass stole my son from me as well. He may not have come from my belly, or shared my name, but he had my blood and was the first of my Cogents.”

  He wrapped his arm around Madame Venta’s shoulder.

  “These men are his legacy. They will finish what he started, and together we will take back the Ring. Kale Trass will pay for all he’s taken from both of us.”

  CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO

  KALE TRASS

  The Darien Hall of Ashes was a place I’d hoped to avoid, but revolution brought me back time and time again. It was where Titanborn went to say goodbye to their deceased loved ones. Essentially, a dark, unadorned hall with a series of glassy tubes piercing the exterior wall of the city’s enclosure. Earthers buried their fallen in caskets beneath the ground to be devoured by worms and filth. Even on Mars or asteroids, anywhere, they would decay in boxes.

  My people released the ashes of our cremated dead into the stormy skies of Titan. We’d done it that way since the days of Trass’s first settlers, even under the heel of Pervenio Corp. The Hall of Ashes was the one segment of the Uppers where we were allowed to roam freely.

  Maya held a transparent, spherical container filled with Gareth’s ashes in front of one of the release tubes. It had been mere hours since the Cora returned to Darien from Mars. Waking from the sleep pods had us all groggy, and I’m sure the excessive amount of anti-rads didn’t help, but at least I didn’t feel like my insides were burning anymore. I was back to being exhausted. Eternally exhausted.

  Hundreds of Titanborn crammed into the tight confines of the Hall of Ashes. Most of them didn’t know Gareth, but everyone had heard of him. The silent warrior who fought by my side from day one to take back Titan and all of Saturn’s moons from our oppressors. He was there the moment I executed Pervenio Director Sodervall on a live broadcast, and before when I found out Sodervall had murdered Cora in cold blood.

  My fists tightened. Thanks to Sodervall, her ashes would never grace the sky, her spirit never set forth to watch over all the Children of Titan. He’d spaced her without blinking, like he was emptying a garbage chute. Because that’s all we were...are...to the Earthers. Garbage. Malcolm’s words stung when I was sick, but now I saw that ugly fact with clarity. They would have done whatever it took to control us.

  “We surrender this soul unto the winds of Titan,” Maya said, regaining my attention. She lifted the orb, his ashes tumbling along the smooth inner surface. All that was left of my guardian. “May he forever watch over those chosen by Trass.”

  Maya glanced back at me. Her armor and sanitary mask were removed so that the gruesome half of her face was on display. Even her burns couldn’t mask her sorrow. She tried to appear strong, but tears welled in the corners of her eyes. Gareth had been with her when an independent Titan was merely a dream. When they were branded a terrorist cell by Pervenio Corp. Before my father died and they sought me out on the Piccolo gas harvester to be their new leader. Before they told me my true heritage as a descendant of Darien Trass.

  Mazrah rubbed her sister’s shoulders to console her. She was all done up like she was hitting up a Lowers nightclub, wounds fully healed. Seeing their faces side by side was always strange. Maybe before Maya’s scars they looked like siblings, but now they couldn’t be more opposite.

  My mother’s hand clutched mine, but I didn’t squeeze back. I didn’t want to be consoled.

  Maya slowly raised the sphere for all to see “From ice…” She paused to gather herself. Mazrah took her arm and helped her keep it up. “To ashes,” Maya finished.

  Everyone else in the hall repeated those words. Some solemnly, others with vigor. I barely murmured th
em. It felt wrong bidding Gareth farewell when he never should have died. Mars wasn’t meant to end in a shootout. No casualties. In and out with our prized inventor in hand and the USF’s rejection driving our cause. And then a Pervenio Collector burst through the door seeking out his long-lost daughter who I’d foolishly named our ambassador.

  “Kale,” Mazrah said. “Kale.”

  My gaze snapped toward her. She nodded toward Maya’s hand, which hovered over the controls to eject Gareth’s remains. Trembling. But Maya didn’t strike the key. She was waiting for me to.

  “Let her,” I said. “They were fighting this war together long before I knew it was happening.”

  “It’s not for her,” my mother whispered into my ear. “It’s for them.”

  I looked from side to side, at all the eager faces regarding me instead of Gareth’s ashes. Waiting for me to have the last word. The Earthers called me the self-proclaimed king of Titan, but sometimes I forgot that my people believed it too.

  I stepped forward and laid my hand over Maya’s. I couldn’t remember another time when she appeared so rattled. Not even after our pilot Vick died giving his life to blow the Piccolo and ravage Luxarn’s forces. “We’ll finish this for him,” I whispered. “Together.”

  She nodded, and we placed the ashes in the tube together. It squeezed into the top perfectly without falling all the way through. After striking the command, the sphere would be sucked out into Titan’s thick atmosphere. Once it reached a high enough altitude, the change in pressure would cause it to pop like a balloon, sprinkling the ashes into the clouds.

  I paused to address the crowd.

  “Gareth fought for our freedom!” I shouted. “He swore to keep me safe and died keeping that promise. He died for our freedom. From this day forward we honor all those who have died because of Earth’s greed! Who suffered under their heel and chose not to crumble! We are one Titan. And if they think they can take that from us, then we’ll freeze them all!”