I glanced up to see if anybody noticed. A few Ringers by the clumsy worker were stirring, either telling him to shut up or trying to help. I used the commotion to bolt to the office door. The office lights were on, and even though the glass’s privacy tints were active, it was the brightest area of the factory.
The door was unlocked. I raised my pistol and pushed the door open with my foot, then rushed in and locked it behind me. A man I assumed was Orson Fring sat at a desk, poring over some data on his computer terminal. He didn’t jump or hit the floor. Instead, he calmly glanced up from his work. His beard was as white as snow in Old Russia, somewhat hiding how tall low G had stretched his face. He was easily ten years my senior, maybe more. Low G also caused Ringers not to show their wrinkles and sagging flesh as drastically as mine.
“I knew it wouldn’t be long before he sent someone,” he said, staring right down the barrel of my pistol. “I didn’t realize it would be you.”
“Do I know you, old—” I didn’t finish. It didn’t seem right calling him old man after I’d gotten so used to hearing the phrase thrown my way. I edged closer, keeping my pistol aimed and watching his hands. One click, and he could switch off the office’s privacy tint, and we’d be lit up for anyone in the hangar to see. He didn’t make a move at all.
“I doubt you’d remember. You saved my son Jimmy once when he got himself into trouble.”
I scoured his face to imagine a younger version, and then it hit me. It was one of the tougher jobs to forget, what with a mad scientist trying to turn the poor boy into a cyborg servant. I wasn’t often hired to help offworlders, but Pervenio Corp. had an interest in keeping the Fring family happy so that it could keep its cheap, Ringer labor happy.
“Jimmy Fring,” I said. “I remember.”
“I recognize you from Solnet. I never got a chance to properly thank you.”
“Thanks aren’t part of the job. Hands,” I indicated as he went to stand. He presented his palms without protest, even going so far as to smile. I could see beneath the expression. Deep in his dark eyes, he was an elderly soul resigned to his fate.
“What happened to Jimmy?” I asked, lowering my firearm. Didn’t seem right having a pleasant conversation with the man while aiming at him.
“He died raiding an Earther luxury cruiser with Kale and his aunt. I tried to keep him out of things, but he had too much fight in him.”
“I know how that goes.”
He drew a deep breath. “So, what happens next?”
“Your king needs me to eliminate you. His words.”
“He’s hiring Earther Collectors now?”
“I wouldn’t say I’m under contract. He’s damn good at leaving people with impossible situations, though, I’ll give him that.”
“Ahh. Leverage.”
“Unregistered daughter.”
“Doesn’t make her any less yours. I understand. I’d have done the same for Jimmy.”
“He was a good kid from what I recall.” I didn’t really remember anything about him specifically, but it seemed like the right thing to say. I was used to targets crying or begging on their knees.
Orson closed his eyes and lifted his chin, as if imagining a cool, seaward breeze on Earth rustling his beard. “Seventy-three Earth years I’ve been alive,” he said. “I watched the first Pervenio ships sent from Earth sail over Titan. It was peaceful here before they made contact. So few remain alive who remember, but I do.”
“I can’t imagine.”
“Things were simpler. We worked to survive in a place where humans shouldn’t and spent the rest of our days finding love. Living life. Maybe it didn’t look like a paradise, but it felt like one. Then I watched thousands of my people perish from sickness. Lost control of my own docks from fear and watched my employees and family become mask-wearing wage slaves.”
“No paradise was made to last, I guess. They say Earth was once lush and green, but I have a hard time imagining that too.”
“We’re so proficient at ruining good things.”
“We didn’t ask for the Meteorite.”
“We would have found a way to ruin it anyway. And I don’t blame Earth for what happened here. Your ancestors survived a hell I can’t imagine. Every day must feel like a blessing your people must protect no matter the cost.”
“Why didn’t you just give him whatever he wants?”
“I spent fifty years fighting in this very station for my people to be treated fairly. To get paid what we deserved. For them to take proper precautions to ensure our health. To be trained to take on the same jobs Earthers had. And do you know what?” I shook my head. “We got some semblance of respect. Our slender limbs and fingers made us valuable at putting together the tiny pieces that comprise a larger whole, and we were cheaper than machines. We earned enough to survive. I had that victory, and no amount of Earther slurs or insults could take that away. I wore them proudly.”
“You ever feel like ancient men like us should’ve hung it up before we wound up here?”
“Every day.” A tear rolled down his cheek. “I never thought I’d live to see a free Titan again. Yet now our king wants me dead because we won’t work like slaves any more. Because we fought so hard for more.”
I didn’t realize my hand was quaking until he stopped speaking. I swallowed the lump forming in my throat. For years I thought I was numb to the world. Fighting. Fucking. Killing. That was my life. Then Zhaff was assigned to me and Aria came back into it, and the next I knew I was human. Orson Fring was as familiar to me as a hole in the wall, yet I could feel my heart thumping in my chest like I was in my first firefight. He didn’t deserve to die.
“C’mon.” I holstered my pistol and took his arm.
“What are you doing?” he said.
“Getting you out of here. Kale will be happy enough with you out of his hair, and you can come back to your docks when this all blows over. Time is the only Collector who’s gonna take us.”
“No.” He shook me off him, then grasped my hand and positioned it over my pulse pistol. “I’m too tired to keep fighting. This new world, whatever it is, it isn’t for me.”
“Too bad. Let’s go.”
I went to grab him again, but he drew my pistol for me. I backed away slowly as he held it with two hands, shaking. At the mercy of my own gun again.
“Take it, please,” he stammered.
I’d dealt with far too many murderous Ringers not to listen, but as my fingers wrapped around the grip, he aimed it at himself and pulled me in. The barrel pressed into the center of his chest. It took all the effort in his weak, offworld muscles to hold me there.
“Please,” he whispered.
“Not for him,” I said.
“Then for me. Do this one kindness for a stranger, Malcolm Graves. Don’t make me beg another Earther for something.”
“I…” All the breath fled my lungs.
“Please. Thanks to you I got another decade with my son. I’m ready to go to him now in the skies of Titan. I’m done with all the fighting.”
His fingers folded over my hand, but he wasn’t strong enough to force me to pull the trigger. I stared into the eyes of the first man in my life who wasn’t begging me to kill him for selfish reasons. There was no payoff due his family. There was no fame in it for his order like the Herald on Mars.
“Please…” he said again.
I hadn’t been able to pull the trigger since Zhaff died even to save my own daughter. My hand felt as numb as the synthetic leg on the same side. It felt like pushing aside a boulder, but I squeezed slowly. One millimeter at a time until the shot went off.
My ears rang. Lights throughout the sleepy factory switched on. Orson slumped in my arms, eyes glazed with tears. I lowered him to the floor and laid him flat.
“You’re a good man...Malcolm Graves…” he whimpered.
“From ice...to ashes,” I whispered. They were Ringer words I never thought I’d say, but this stranger deserved a proper goodbye before Kale Tr
ass got his hands on his legacy. I sat with him as he drew his last breaths, even as workers started pounding on the door. Until his eyes were glass.
My pistol slipped from my grasp. I looked down at the weapon that had now claimed one-hundred-thirty-four lives. I used to say they all had it coming, but it wasn’t true anymore.
I could have run then. Shot my way through a mob of fragile Ringers. I didn’t. Instead, I clung to Orson’s body and cried for the first time since I was a boy on Earth working in my clan family’s factory. And for the first time since I ran off and became a Collector, I wondered what my life might have been like if I’d stayed. I wouldn’t have anywhere near the number of stories, but maybe, just maybe, I might have been happy.
“Mr. Fring!” someone shouted. Not a second later I was bashed hard across the head. The last thing I saw before the world went black was Orson’s face, as calm as could be.
CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX
KALE TRASS
“My heart aches for the loss of a true Titanborn,” I spoke into the camera of Maya’s hand-terminal. We stood before the statue of Trass in the Darien Uppers, as I always did when I addressed my people. “Orson Fring and his family have worked tirelessly to make the Ring a better place since the days of Titan’s first settlers. He was innocent of all this fighting. He didn’t deserve to die!”
My voice echoed across the Uppers so that all the Titanborn watching me around the atrium would hear every syllable.
“Luxarn Pervenio sent one of his Collectors here to rattle us. To keep us grounded while they rouse a fleet to end a riot. But we are the past, present, and future of the Ring. I promise that the man responsible for this will pay. Today I ask you, my brothers and sisters, to put aside petty desires and protests. I ask you to stand with me together so that we can show Earth that we will never bow to them again. From ice to ashes!”
I raised my fist. My people roared. Maya shut off the newsfeed, which we’d ensure made its way onto Solnet for Earth to see. Luxarn and Madame Venta blamed us for a killing to stir their people into a frenzy. Now we were even.
“You’re getting better at that,” Maya said as she wrapped her hand around my shoulder and guided me through the raucous crowd.
“At lying?” I asked.
“No. Speaking like a leader should.”
“Maybe it will get easier one day too.”
She leaned in close. “He left you no choice. If we aren’t ready, they’ll wash over us like their oceans through dirt. Now, a decrepit Titanborn who lost his way can be a hero in death, instead of the reason we fail.”
Hands stretched out to touch me all around us, praising me like we’d just won a battle. I lost count of how many people volunteered to be sent to Phoebe to help.
We stopped outside the lift up to Luxarn’s old residential unit. “You did what you had to, Kale. Now get some rest. We’ll need it.”
The doors opened, and my mother and Mazrah stood waiting. Mazrah was expressionless, in shock almost, but my mother fumed. I hadn’t seen her cheeks that red since I was a boy and my father would disappear for months at a time. She stormed forward and slapped me across the face.
My guards went to seize her, but I stopped them. She glared up into my eyes, and we held each other’s gazes, wordless, until she finally rushed by me.
“Maya…” Mazrah whispered.
“Don’t, Sister,” Maya said.
“When you got me into this you promised we’d be better.”
“They will do far worse if they take Titan back.”
“If there’s anything left to take.” She followed behind my mother, but Maya grabbed her.
“Don’t you dare,” Maya snapped. “Like you didn’t do worse when you were peddling information to Earthers? This is war.” Maya pushed her away.
Mazrah caught her balance in front of me and glanced up. I don’t think I’d ever seen her look like she wasn’t in control. This was a woman so stunning and brilliant she could have any man in Sol begging at her feet if she wanted. She could get the important Earthers to spill their secrets and got rich selling what they said.
“If we aren’t better than them, why do this at all?” she asked me. She wasn’t crying, but tears weren’t necessary. She was gone before I could offer a response.
“Leave us,” Maya ordered our guards, then signaled the lift doors to shut. “Ignore them, Kale.”
“Why? They’re right.”
“Right?” she scoffed. “They don’t know what it means to fight. My sister hasn’t had to work hard for anything her whole life. All she ever had to do was smile and Earthers forgot what she was. Your mother? She hid you when we needed a leader.”
“Sodervall would have spaced Orson like he did Cora. How is what we did any different?”
Maya grasped me by the shoulders and hoisted me to my full height. “He spaced them for no reason. Orson would have gotten us all killed for his stubbornness. Nobody ever said this would be easy. Nobody ever said our people would agree with everything you do. That’s what it means to lead.”
“Is that why you didn’t want the crown? Trass’s blood runs in your veins too, but you sought me out instead.”
“Kale.” She pulled me close so that I was centimeters from her marred face. I’d never been close enough to see all the way through the holes, through the strings of sinew and shiny scars. I could see the back of her throat through her cheek. “They would never follow this face. I chose you because I knew that you’d care enough to know when you’re doing the wrong thing for the right reasons. I only wish I was half as strong.”
The lift stopped and opened, revealing Luxarn’s dying gardens.
“Never doubt what we’re doing here,” she said as I stepped off. “A Titan of our own.”
“At what cost, Maya?”
“Whatever it takes. We’ll bear the weight of our hard choices so that they’ll never have to.”
“I hope you’re right.”
“You’ve trusted me this long. Only a little while longer now.”
I grunted my agreement, and the lift doors shut her out. My leg brushed against a withering flower struggling to survive, embarking on one last stretch for the artificial lights above that once brought life to a verdant garden. I leaned over and let it rest in my palm. I used to love sneaking around the Darien Uppers as a boy and seeing all the decorative plants Pervenio Corp. put on display. All the things we Ringers didn’t have in the Lowers because it was easier to keep people down when they longed for something as simple as plants.
My armored fingers squeezed, the petal so near to death it crumbled under the pressure. I knew Maya was right. It didn’t make things any easier, but none of this was easy. We were so close to having Earth where we wanted it. No matter what they blamed on us, Madame Venta or Luxarn Pervenio wouldn’t be able to stop what was coming. There was no room for us to show weakness or let our people divide themselves.
Orson Fring died for the good of us all.
I stepped through the door to my residence. Aria waited inside, under guard because we didn’t want anyone figuring out she was pregnant while she was still recovering. All I wanted was silence. I turned away, with every intention now that Maya was gone of sneaking down to my old Lowers hollow and getting a fleeting chance to escape all my responsibility.
“Kale,” Aria said.
I looked back over my shoulder and saw her standing in the bedroom doorway. Her hair and clothing were a mess, like she’d just woken up. She didn’t ask where I was going. Instead, she smiled at me, the tip of her nose wrinkling in that very specific way I struggled to resist.
“I heard an Earther Collector attacked Phoebe,” she said. “Are you okay?”
She took a step back into the room, sweeping her arm as if inviting me in. I was through the door before I knew it, like my legs had a mind of their own.
“I’m fine,” I grumbled. “It was just...unexpected.”
“I can’t believe after all these years Luxarn Pervenio can still find
ways to shock you.” She slowly began removing the pieces of my armor. I was too exhausted to fight her.
“Neither can I.”
I heard shouting and flinched. A viewscreen by the bed played my latest speech. I hadn’t realized how loud I was shouting by the end. Director Sodervall sounded similar in his final days addressing the Ring on Pervenio Corp.’s behalf, after I went missing.
“You’re getting better at that,” Aria said.
“Maya said the same.”
“Well, I guess we can finally agree on something.” She chuckled, and I gave it my best effort to join her. It came out more akin to a sigh.
My armored suit peeled off me, the tiny needles it poked into my body in order to sync with my nervous system and enhance my strength sliding out with a subtle pinch. Aria took my hand, guided me toward the bed, and laid me down. Her face hovered above mine, but all I could focus on was the image of me speaking on the viewscreen behind her.
She smiled before rolling over to turn it off. Then she turned back to me. Her hands stroked my face, so warm. Some people said that the internal temperature of Titanborn had dropped noticeably in our three centuries on freezing Titan. It sure seemed like it was true whenever she touched me.
“One day all the fighting will stop, Kale,” she whispered. “No more killings or kidnappings. Just peace.”
“Sometimes I don’t think that’s possible,” I replied.
“If my father could walk away from his job, then anything is possible.”
“Do you really believe anyone can walk away from something like that?”
She ran her fingers through my hair. “I remember a time when he left me on a rooftop outside New London to go claim a bounty in the middle of M-Day. One moment we were watching a Departure Ark leave; the next it was dark, and I was freezing cold and alone. I think I was six.”
“Doesn’t sound like a very good dad.”
“Not at all. I remember him stumbling up there to get me. His breath reeked of liquor, like he’d totally forgotten about me. He was a mess.” She laughed. “But he did come back. He tried to do his best in his own way. Earthers aren’t used to raising a family on their own. He’d tell me all the time about the nine mothers and fathers in the clan family he was born into. Ask if I’d rather be polishing floors for a big, safe community like that than seeing all of Sol.”
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