Titan's Wrath

by Rhett C. Bruno

  “There’s no time to rest, Mal,” she said, a hint of urgency finally creeping into her previously calm demeanor.

  “Not until you tell me what’s going on,” I replied. “Last time Kale let me out, I found myself gunning down an innocent old man.”

  “I know.”

  “So you know that when I hear you’re in charge of whatever is going on back there, I’m hesitant to trust you. Given our history.”

  She groaned in frustration. “You want to know why I’m in charge? His aunt, Maya, is my half sister.”

  “The one with the...” I ran my fingers over half of my face.

  “Yep. They wanted my help back before this movement was anything. The pay was good, so I figured why not? I threw her a bone here and there using my broker network, and the next thing I know Pervenio is gone. Credits worthless. So, she sold me on a vision for a new Titan for all of us, but this? Killing protestors to save a minute. This isn’t it. It’s the same as it was under Pervenio, only with different people spreading the lies.”

  “I told Kale something like that.” She wasn’t amused. “You really were with them the whole time? Was I always just a mark then? Even back when we met?”

  “You were after my information. I was after yours.”

  “Seemed like you were after more than that.”

  “It was always Aria, Mal. The moment you introduced me to that girl, it was like looking in a mirror. I cared for you, I swear I did, but I loved her. I love her now. I got Kale to trust her, but every day since you all got back from Mars, I see his sanity slipping.”

  My heart stopped. I’d spent a lot of time wondering how my daughter could wind up working with rebels and terrorists. “It was you that brought her here, wasn’t it?”

  “Maya—”

  “Don’t lie to me.”

  She swallowed hard. “The Children of Titan needed somebody inside of Venta Co. with the connections to steal medicine on Earth because there weren’t enough credits in producing it here. We kept in contact after you and I…” Her words trailed off.

  “Stopped,” I finished for her.

  “Yeah. She hated working for Madame Venta. I thought I was helping her.”

  “By getting her wrapped up with terrorists? That wasn’t you’re damn place. You’re not her mother.”

  “And you were any better?” She grabbed my face and leaned in close. Her breath was intoxicating. Her eyes dreamy. Hazel but with so many shades of yellow sprinkled in it was like watching the sun rise over Earth’s ocean.

  “We both failed her, Mal,” she whispered. “We drove her into the grasp of a monster, but it’s not too late to help her.”

  “So that’s what this is? We’re breaking her out?” I transferred all my weight to my synthetic leg and pushed off to get to my feet. “Why didn’t you just say so?”

  “She’s already out, Malcolm. Waiting in Kale’s ship to run, but she wouldn’t leave without you. Trass knows why…”

  “Did you tell her I was a waste of time?”

  “Too many times.” Mazrah flashed a grin. I don’t care what she said, what we had was real. The way we felt about Aria just made it more so.

  “Where to?” I asked.

  She directed me toward a narrow tunnel with two empty suits of winged Ringer armor lying on tables outside. My chest tightened at the sight of them, and I got dizzy. Mazrah didn’t notice.

  “We fly,” she said. “Put it on. I tried to find the shortest Titanborn I could, but it’ll still barely fit you.” She glanced back and saw me leaning on a column, struggling for air. “Oh c’mon, Malcolm. It’s easy.”

  I grunted an incomprehensible response. It wasn’t the Ringer suits or the idea of flying through Titan’s atmosphere like a bird. It was the tunnel we were about to exit that used to be a secret Children of Titan hideout. At the end of the tunnel, on the surface, was where I’d gunned down Zhaff.

  Mazrah must have noticed that I looked like I was seeing ghosts because she rushed back to my side and lent her support.

  “Mal, I know what happened here, but you need to be strong,” she said. “Aria needs us now one last time. Kale is...broken. Maya doesn’t see it, or maybe she sees herself in him, but there’s no turning back for them now. Aria still has time to get out before her hands are too bloody to lift.”

  I stared down the tunnel. It seemed to get longer the more I did. Aria and I had run down it the last time I tried to get her off Titan. I could remember as clear as day. Me thinking we were smooth sailing until Zhaff found me forsaking our Pervenio contract to bring the Children of Titan Doctor to justice.

  “Malcolm,” Mazrah slapped my cheek lightly. “You have to focus.”

  I shook my head out. “All right,” I said. “For Aria.”

  CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT

  KALE TRASS

  “Lord Trass, we weren’t expecting you,” a Titanborn guard addressed me. He and a host of men immediately scurried to their posts at the entrance to the Ziona Colony Quarantine on Titan. Like the one outside Darien that I destroyed, it was carved into a lonely plateau far from anybody. Pervenio logos all over were scratched away in the waiting lobby, where Ringers used to wait for hours under constant watch before visiting with their sick relatives.

  “He’d like to observe our captives,” Maya replied, standing at my side.

  “Of course.” The guard fumbled through a bag and drew two sanitary masks for Maya and me. “You should wear these.”

  “I’m fine,” I said. “We shouldn’t need them on Titan.”

  “A change of owners doesn’t mean they aren’t Earthers.” Maya took the masks and presented one to me until finally I took it. “Thank you.”

  We were escorted into a large decontamination chamber. A web of pink lasers and warm air brushed across my body after I stripped down. The tingle it gave my skin was second nature. I’d spent most of my life passing through the things. Between the Earther-run Uppers and the Lowers, at every dock, every time I visited a Q-zone—eventually Pervenio Corp. had them everywhere to try and keep the amount of quarantined Ringers at an affordable minimum. Before we took over, the medicine we needed was produced only on Earth. I knew only a handful of Titanborn who could pay for the stuff until Aria, my father, and the Children of Titan stole their formulas and vials from a hospital on Earth. But Pervenio was kind enough to feed sick Ringers at least, and food, no matter how foul, cost credits.

  I redressed, my clothing crisp and uncomfortably wrong. Then we stepped into the quarantine. This portion was identical to the one in Darien, with brightly lit white walls and ceilings, and uniform tiled floors. It was supposed to be calming yet drove me insane if I spent too much time there. My people were used to the dim, rocky Lowers beneath the surface of Titan after all, even if I was hoping we’d one day grow out of that.

  One step inside and I couldn’t help but be brought back to those days on Titan before everything changed…

  I boarded the Darien Q-Zone line, same as I did every day when my mother was sick nearly a year ago, and the vehicle rose through twenty meters of rock toward the bright surface. The entire ride to the Darien Q-Zone, I stared through a window in hopes that I might see the silhouette of Saturn through Titan’s cloudy sky. I never did. Dazzling strings of lightning flickered in the distance and a storm gathered to obscure my view.

  The line at the quarantine lobby was shorter than usual, though Earther security was even tighter. When I finally got there, the crotchety Earther receptionist croaked: “Name and ID.”

  I already had it on hand and ready to hand over. She studied it the same way she always did, as if it were her first time seeing it—seeing me. My mother had been sick for months by that time, which meant this same woman had gazed over my Pervenio-Issued ID dozens of times.

  “Visiting?” she asked after she returned it to me.

  “Katrina Drayton.”

  She typed into her computer. “Hand-term—” She stopped herself. “One moment.” She leaned in closer and stroke
d the keys more aggressively. My fingers were tapping on the counter by the time she finally looked up again. The expression on her creased face was the same as usual, but I knew something was wrong.

  “My apologies, Mr. Drayton,” she said. “Update just came in. According to the nurses, no visitors today.”

  “Is she all right?” I questioned.

  “No changes in condition. Note just says she wasn’t able to get much sleep last night and is under sedation.”

  “Can you tell her it’s me?” My own mother, and this Earther woman served as the gatekeeper, restricting the only person in Sol who truly cared about her.

  “I’m afraid you’ll have to come back tomorrow.” The old woman looked past me toward the rest of the line, as if I wasn’t even there. “Next!”

  I didn’t move. I’d been having possibly the shittiest week of my life and needed to see my mother. Earlier that morning, my hand-terminal had been hacked by an anonymous source calling itself ‘M’. Whoever it was had offered to have my mother cured in exchange for me helping them with a smuggling job. Something bad enough to get me spaced by Pervenio if I got caught. I’d later learn it was Maya, prepared to tell me the truth about my father and who I was, and invite me into their blooming rebellion.

  “No,” I grumbled, a harsh edge creeping into my tone.

  “Sir. Please step aside.”

  Something snapped in me. I lunged at her window, my hands wrapping around the sill so tight that my pasty knuckles somehow went even whiter. “Tell her I need to see her!” I shouted.

  A Pervenio Corp security officer seized me by the shoulders. He may have been shorter than I was, but his Earther brawn allowed him to easily tear me away from the window. I managed to squirm out of his thick arms and leap back to the window.

  “Tell her!” I roared, pounding on the glass.

  Suddenly, I felt like I was struck in my side by a bolt of lightning. I collapsed, drooling as my body convulsed from ten thousand volts of electricity surging through it. I’d been beaten plenty in my life, but it was the first time any officer had ever gotten me directly with the lit end of a shock-baton. My bones chattered, my organs felt like they were going to burst, and I think that at some point I vomited. It didn’t last long, but once I regained control of my body, I was as sore as if I’d just put in a full day cleaning the Piccolo at high G. The officer heaved me against the wall and sat me up.

  “Next time you’ll be locked up, Ringer!” the officer growled, waving his charged shock-baton. “Now get out of here!”

  He kicked me in the side once for good measure and then returned to his post at the decon-chamber. There was no mistaking the pride in his expression as he and another officer exchanged a smirk.

  I took my time and used the wall to haul myself back onto my feet, my fingers and toes still twitching from the shock. None of the many Ringers waiting in line were foolish enough to try to help me up. Stepping out of line was too dangerous under Pervenio rule. We were all on our own, fighting to survive…

  I shook the memory out of my head. That was the last time I visited my sick mother in the Darien Quarantine before being drawn into the series of events that led Maya, Gareth, Vick and me to destroying the place, with half of Luxarn Pervenio’s private army still inside.

  “I still don’t understand why you wanted to come here,” Maya said, earning back my attention. “We could have sent Mazrah or your mother to evaluate the food shortage.”

  “Sometimes it’s nice to be reminded where we came from,” I replied.

  I strolled ahead. We were within another large lobby lined with visiting rooms. I remembered sitting in one every day, a thick screen of glass between my mother and me. Now they were crammed with Earthers on either side of the divider. There wasn’t enough space in the quarantine rooms for all of them. And there wasn’t enough food any longer. The submerged Titan farms surrounding every colony block like Ziona and Darien couldn’t sustain us all much longer without outside trade.

  A few guards fed the captives, with only one bowl of slop per two of them. I could see the gauntness of what were naturally chubby Earther cheeks from the entry. The pinkish hue of their skin was growing more sallow by the day, and many of them had run out of tears so many months ago that their eyes were permanently bloodshot.

  As soon as food was slid through a slot in the wall, they crowded it like savages. Pushing and shoving each other to get as much as possible. Reduced to animals like so many of my people were as they withered away to bones from curable illnesses for no good reason.

  “I understand,” Maya said. “But I need to show you the recent reports from Europa.”

  “Nobody is stopping you.”

  A guard opened a door for me so we could delve deeper into the quarantine proper. The halls narrowed so little more than a medical cart could fit through. Scratches marred the doorframe of every tiny room lining the hall, from when Titanborn used to be dragged in by doctors after being deemed unfit to live among the general populace.

  That was Earther mercy for you. The Pervenio leaders used to talk about how gracious they were for housing the sick even though they were consumers who couldn’t benefit society. They patted themselves on the back every time they put a son or a husband on the waiting list to visit his sick relative. And they forced us to go along with it; otherwise, we’d never see that person again. For fifty years the cycle of fear went on and on until Luxarn Pervenio marched an army into the Darien Quarantine and showed my people what he really thought about risking our health.

  “Have you ever been back here?” I asked.

  Maya bit back something else she was about to say and replied, “No. Nobody came here who planned on getting out.”

  I peered through a porthole into one of the rooms. I’d seen my mother on a camera feed when she was condemned, but that didn’t capture how small it was. There was a bed and little else. Three Earthers lay on it, hugging each other to try and stay warm since the place was programmed to a Ringer-comfortable temperature. They had to share the food from a single bowl.

  There were hundreds more rooms like it on nearly a dozen identical levels, all the way down through the hollowed-out plateau until the last few were below the moon’s crust. It was the same in every Quarantine across Titan. In Darien, the Children of Titan had made their hideout in the abandoned lowermost level, which had once been buried after a quake. Inches away from our hell they hid, until Malcolm Graves and his partner found them and made our war in the shadows public.

  “Kale,” Maya whispered with verve but was careful to ensure that no guards would hear her refer to me informally. “Would you just watch this?”

  She held a hand-terminal set to an Earther newsfeed on Solnet called Europa’s Lens in front of me. A finely manicured male reporter, with perfect, thick hair and wearing eyeliner so none of his wrinkles would show, was on screen. He stood overlooking a busy hangar, with dozens of ships in the midst of lifting off. The corporate logos of either Pervenio Corp., Venta Co., or Red Wing Co. were printed on every hull. With the latter in disarray thanks to their entire Board being assassinated, their assets were apparently available at a hefty discount.

  “This is the scene on Europa Station,” the reporter said. “For weeks, a record number of vessels has been armed and dispatched to resolve the tense situation on Titan. Madame Venta, who has elected to personally lead the campaign, had this to say: ‘Together, Mr. Pervenio and I will right the wrong of this savage rebellion against reason. We will liberate the Ring and ensure that it will again be a haven of commerce and safety for the citizens of the USF.’

  “Our New London correspondent attempted to reach Voice of the Assembly Talo Gaveren about reports that this outward act of aggression comes unsanctioned by the USF.” The feed cut to a recording of the bald old man. He shoved whoever was behind the camera away before being quickly escorted away down the crowded New London streets.

  “It’s clear that this is an unprecedented situation in the post-Meteorite
era. All we can do now is hope that our brothers and sisters trapped on Titan as part of ongoing negotiations will finally be returned home, unharmed.”

  “That’s only a fraction of their fleet,” Maya said. “They’ve obviously been planning for this much longer than anyone thought.”

  “Are you surprised?” I asked.

  “Only that they didn’t come sooner.”

  “The USF wants all these people back unharmed so that the idea of settling far from Earth still sounds like opportunity to its people. But Saturn’s gas and Titan’s fully autonomous colonies are worth far more than human lives. Expansion at all costs.”

  “The mudstompers will never stop being greedy.”

  “And Orson wondered why I couldn’t give in.”

  “Production has doubled since he passed, but we won’t have enough ships, Kale. Even if every Titanborn in the Ring starts building, we won’t be able to stand against them.”

  I stopped and surveyed the quarantine halls. All of the slowly starving Earthers filling the rooms were the only thing keeping Earth from nuking Darien, and the rest of Titan, in the first place. They were our shield, at least until Madame Venta and Luxarn were put in charge and decided to attack anyway. And if they were coming anyway, we were stretching our resources thin for nothing.

  Whether they lived or died, now the fates of our countless Earther and offworld captives were irrelevant. I ran my hand along a faded Pervenio logo, the same I’d seen throughout my whole life emblazoned on every ship or container holding the hand-me-down piece of tech a Ringer from the Lowers could afford.

  “Kale,” Maya pressed. “This isn’t time to daydream. We can’t threaten Earth with a second apocalypse if there’s no Titan left to defend. Javaris is wasting his time when he might know of weapons that can help us fight back.”

  “People,” I said, my eyes going wide as an idea came to me.