Titan's Wrath

by Rhett C. Bruno

  The Cogents swept into the room in an instant, guns raised, but Kale made himself small behind their leader. The shot was too risky, even for them. I recalled the lesson I tried to teach Varus at their shooting range about being able to pull the trigger when it really counted. Only now he was dead. So many were dead.

  “Graves, stop him!” Luxarn shrieked.

  I fumbled for a response, but Kale beat me to it. “Your Collector can’t help you now,” he snarled. “None of your pets can. Tell them to drop their weapons!”

  “There is a fifty-seven percent chance of lethal injury to your person if we fire at this range, Mr. Pervenio,” one of the Cogents stated.

  “I concur,” said another.

  “Graves,” Luxarn said, seething. “Put this animal down.”

  I drew my pulse pistol just to keep up appearances, but I didn’t even bother aiming. There was no reason to twist the knife in him, no reason to provide false hope. His end had arrived the moment he placed more importance on vengeance than rebuilding his brand. This was a mercy killing.

  “Tell them to lower their weapons or you lose your head,” Kale said.

  “Judging by his expression and acute facial cues, it is likely that he will kill you regardless,” one of the Cogents said. “Would you prefer us to take the risk?”

  “Kill this madman!” Luxarn roared.

  They didn’t get the chance. I raised my pistol and fired three shots. No finger cramping on the trigger. No hesitation. From so close a range, even an old man like me couldn’t miss. The three Cogents’ chests exploded as they collapsed.

  One got off a shot while he was falling back, but the bullet burrowed harmlessly into the wall above Kale’s shoulder. Another grasped for his gun as he clung to life, but I rushed over, kicked it out of the way, and put another bullet in his head. Then I sealed and locked the office before any more Cogents arrived.

  Luxarn stumbled out of Kale’s arms and fell to his knees, his face so white with horror he looked like the very Ringers he hated. Even Kale was speechless.

  “Nobody on this rock is getting out alive anyway, right?” I said. “If you die, she dies. Get this the fuck over with, kid.”

  “Graves,” Luxarn stammered. “What is the meaning of this?”

  “Sorry, sir... I got a better offer.”

  Life takes a strange twist on you when mowing down three young men is easier than looking one old one in the face. I had to turn away from Luxarn just to keep my head straight. Feeling betrayal brings about a special kind of expression in a person. Equal parts revulsion and shock, with a dash of heartbreak for good measure.

  “I was going to name you a Director,” he said weakly. “I was going to give you the Ring!”

  “I told you I didn’t want it.”

  “This is too good,” Kale said, finally snapping out of it enough to breathe in the fact that he’d won. He circled around Luxarn, smiling, then grabbed him by the jaw. “Now you get to see what it’s like to have everything you believed in get stripped away. You get to see what it’s like to have your whole world crushed.”

  “You drag this out, you’ll get us all killed,” I said to Kale. “You think that’s all of them? Just finish what you came for.”

  “He’s not dying yet. Not until he admits what he did to us.”

  “Admit what?” Luxarn asked.

  “That every awful thing that’s happened to my people since our reunion with yours was by design.”

  “You want a confession, you skelly piece of trash? How’s this. I should have killed you all. And you, Graves. All those years you fooled us all?” He spat at my feet. “Sodervall said you were a tired old wretch before I paired you with my son. He was right.”

  Luxarn slowly got to his feet and faced Kale, stepped forward until the barrel of the boy king’s gun pressed against his forehead. “So, do it. Put me down, and I swear you will feel the wrath of Earther vengeance. Our fleet will rain nuclear fire down on Titan until it’s a smoldering husk.”

  Kale shot him in the shoulder. Luxarn flew back into the wall, blood spattering across the metal panels. Kale strode by and knelt in front of him, lifting the man’s head. Luxarn grasped at the wound, eyes wide and whole body shaking. It was a surface shot, just clipping the top of his skin, but Luxarn appeared ready to go into shock. Like he’d never felt any pain whatsoever before in his whole pampered life.

  Kale reached up to his ear as he ambled toward him. “We have Luxarn. Prepare the drives and have them ready for my return,” he said to his men over the coms. Then he kneeled in front of Luxarn. “Your fleet will run, or the rest of them will die too. Earth will pay.”

  “Damn it, Kale,” I said. “End this.” I heard footsteps outside the door. Soon, they’d bring out the fusion cutters or worse and bust their way in.

  “Don’t do this, Graves,” Luxarn sniveled. “Whatever he offered, I’ll double it. Shoot him now.”

  “I wish I could, sir. I really do.”

  “You can.”

  “He can’t,” Kale interrupted. “You see, you’re not the only one who has a bastard child. Well, had.”

  All the hope drained from Luxarn’s eyes. Any smidge of faith that he could turn me, considering I was behind Kale with an open shot, died as soon as he saw my face and realized Kale was telling the truth. We Collectors had a certain lifestyle, and siring kids outside the letter of the USF wasn’t abnormal, but most got caught. They took their slap on the wrist and let their child go away. I never had.

  “You really didn’t know?” Kale laughed. “Isn’t it wonderful to learn the secrets of the people we thought we could trust most? I wonder how many others he has.”

  “What do you want, Trass?” Luxarn growled.

  “I want you to admit it.”

  “Admit what!”

  “Everything. Admit that the Great Plague that killed so many of my people was not an accident. That you planned the whole Great Reunion to take the Ring for yourself.” Kale pushed the end of the gun into his fresh wound. Luxarn squirmed and kicked, but Kale managed to find the strength in his Ringer muscles to hold firm.

  “What do you expect him to say when you’re torturing him, Kale?” I said. “Forcing a lie to make you happy is worthless.”

  “I want the truth.”

  “You want the truth?” Luxarn slid forward, wincing. “My father and I didn’t even think about getting your people sick. All we cared about was the wealth of Saturn.”

  “That’s a lie!” Kale cracked him across the face with the butt of his gun. Blood and a cluster of teeth spewed out as Luxarn toppled. Kale wrenched him back upright, and I was about to say something when I noticed my old employer cackling. Blood leaked through the new gaps in his mouth as he did.

  “I wish it was. Though I can’t say we complained about what happened. Darien Trass and you people fled Earth like cowards while the rest of us faced judgment. But it came for you through us, didn’t it? It always does.”

  “Liar!” Kale punched him again.

  “Was it our fault you Ringers’ pathetic attempt at a new civilization made you so weak? Children of Titan.” Luxarn scoffed, a glob of red dripping from his lips. “We all came from the same rock. Your people just seemed to forget it, body and mind.”

  I heard more fidgeting at the door and glanced back. More Cogents were likely planting charges. “Kale, get on with it. We don’t have long, and you are not dying here.”

  “Listen to the traitor, Trass. You’ve lost. You came here for an apology, but you’ll never get one. We took the trash your people made on Titan and polished it. Made it something humanity could be proud of. The moment your people see that, they’ll toss you aside, I promise.”

  I could see Kale simmering inside. I’m not sure what he expected to hear, but Luxarn was once the wealthiest man in Sol for a reason. Even if what he was now paled in comparison, he’d always believed that the people of Sol were below him. That was the thing Kale and his followers failed to realize. Luxarn Pervenio di
dn’t only step on the throats of Ringers to get what he wanted. He did it to everyone. He believed he was carrying out a grand vision for settling the solar system and beyond. For ushering humanity into the next age. Hell, after a while working for Pervenio Corp., I believed in that too. In making sure that humanity’s reach was so vast we could never risk being wiped out again.

  “So, go ahead, Trass,” Luxarn said. “Kill me and prove what we’ve said about your kind from the beginning. That you’re worthless. Because the only apology you’ll ever get from me is that I cared enough to help your people survive after the Ring was already mine.”

  “Are you finished?” Kale questioned. “Good.” He shoved the pistol into Luxarn’s mouth, then shifted to the side of him so that I was in plain sight. “You gave the order that got Cora killed. I’m not here for the rest of them, because everyone is right. We won. Your company will never set foot in the Ring again.”

  “Who the fuck is Cora?” Luxarn said once Kale let up.

  The sound of the Cogents outside grew louder. “C’mon, Kale,” I begged. We would never survive a full-on Cogent assault. As I witnessed the crazed look in Kale’s eyes while he made Luxarn choke, I worried that he never intended to.

  “She was everything to me! And you had her spaced because she was Titanborn. So, I’m going to take everything from you, and then I’ll pull the trigger. I know about Zhaff, Luxarn. I know how he was left to freeze on the surface of Titan. And I know who killed him.”

  “Kale, don’t.” I said.

  Luxarn moaned.

  “I wish it was me,” Kale continued, ignoring me. “Executing Sodervall felt good, but robbing you of your only son would have been so much better. Only I didn’t have the pleasure. None of my people did.”

  “Kale, I’m warning you.” I lifted my gun and aimed it at the back of his head. Kale didn’t react to it at all.

  “It was your own Collector who put down the freak to save his daughter, my ambassador.”

  Luxarn’s arresting, grayish eyes spread wide, directed straight at me. I’d meant to shoot him first to keep my secret, but I locked up again upon seeing his anguish. In that moment, my betrayal of Pervenio Corp. was complete. I realized why Kale wanted me at his side for this more than anything else. He knew he couldn’t break Luxarn without showing him the truth. And my expression had the truth written all over it, enough for Luxarn to know with his final breaths that Kale wasn’t lying. That he’d won.

  “May you never find peace,” Kale whispered in his ear. “For Cora.” Then he pulled the trigger. The back of Luxarn’s head blew open, splattering blood and brains all over the wall. Kale stared into Luxarn’s eyes as he lowered the body, the very glimmer of life fleeing them.

  Luxarn Pervenio, the man who took control of the ring after the Great Reunion, used his riches to build a corporate machine the likes of which humanity had never seen. His relentless dedication to advancing humanity at any cost helped set up the foundation of our interplanetary civilization. And now he was dead, his bloodline wiped away from Sol–all thanks to me.

  CHAPTER THIRTY-SIX

  KALE TRASS

  I watched the life drain from Luxarn Pervenio’s eyes. I thought the sight of the man who’d spent a lifetime grinding my people under his heel dying would make me smile. I thought it’d make me feel something.

  It didn’t.

  I knew I’d done right by Cora making sure he died as she did—broken—but that wouldn’t bring her back. And as soon as Luxarn’s cold body slumped onto the floor, dipped in a pool of his own blood and excrement, I knew it was time to finish what I came to do.

  I whipped around and aimed my pistol, and Malcolm was doing the same. A twitch of regret plagued his features. He looked like he’d aged years since he loaded me into the sleep pod and presented me to his former employer.

  “He didn’t have to know,” he said, a harsh edge entering his tone.

  “He deserved the truth,” I replied.

  “Not from you.”

  “Protecting your child is nothing to be ashamed of. He sent his to die, all so he could keep his credits flowing.”

  Malcolm took a hard step toward me and leveled his aim. A film of tears glazed his eyes. I hadn’t seen them like that before. “Zhaff was a good kid,” he said. “His death doesn’t deserve to be used as a weapon.”

  “Then don’t let it be for nothing. We made a deal, Collector. You get me in to kill Luxarn and out, and she walks.”

  He looked like he wanted to explode. He bit his lip, and his free hand squeezed so tight his knuckles went as white as a Titanborn’s.

  “Get you out?” he said, simmering. “Sure, why not. I’ve already come this far; why not keep helping a murderous psychopath? What’s a few more dead Cogents?”

  He turned and positioned himself in front of the door, a mad look in his eye. Someone banged on it from the outside.

  “What are you doing?” I asked.

  “Don’t worry,” he announced to the door. “We’re coming out now.” He reared his artificial leg back with no warning and kicked the door with all his might. A group of Cogents were crushed against the wall on the other side. It partially missed one of them, squishing her arm only, but Malcolm plugged her between the eyes without hesitation.

  He turned the corner so fast that I had no choice but to follow. Another Cogent waited around the next corner.

  “Malcolm Graves,” the young man said. “What is happening?”

  Malcolm blew the Cogent away. He passed a medical office, and a Cogent hiding inside wised up and shot him in the thigh. The force sent him into the wall hard, but his synthetic leg absorbed the blast with barely a scratch. Malcolm rolled over and put a bullet through the shooter’s eye lens. He was like a force of nature. A doctor inside squealed, but Malcolm shoved her onto the bed for her own safety.

  “Keep up, kid,” he glanced back at me and said.

  A shot reverberated down the clean, metallic halls. Blood spurted from his shoulder, but he didn’t go down. I fired around his hip and clipped the Cogent in the leg. Malcolm finished the job. I’d never seen anyone recover from a pulse pistol shot so fast, but he wedged his artificial foot under the corpse of his most recent kill and hurled it.

  The shooter fell over, and another Cogent rounding the corner was knocked off his feet by the tumbling body. Malcolm charged forward and barreled into him. By the time I caught up, he’d already shoved the Cogent against the doors of the lift out of the facility and was bashing him across the face with the butt of his gun. Once, then again, until his Earth strength had the young man’s eye lens literally sunken into his eye socket.

  Malcolm turned back to me, cheek doused in red. “Go,” he rasped as he signaled the doors to open.

  An injured Cogent appeared back down the hall across Malcolm’s swathe of death and fired. The man had to use both hands and the wall to aim properly, which was the only reason he missed. I rushed into the lift to find cover.

  Malcolm didn’t move. He closed his eyes as if he hoped one of the rounds would blow out his skull. Like his job was finished. I grasped him by the back of the collar and had to push off the wall with my feet to haul his heavy body inside. The doors sealed, and somehow he remained unscathed even though the back of the lift was riddled with holes. His legs started to give out.

  I grabbed him. “Get up,” I said.

  “I got you out,” he replied, panting. “Isn’t that enough?”

  “Not yet.”

  I slipped behind him and aimed the gun at his head. He didn’t even bother to raise his. I wasn’t sure he could. With his adrenaline waning, the wound through his good shoulder had his arm hanging slack and his eyes bloodshot. Even my Ringer muscles were strong enough to keep him at bay.

  “You won, kid. Is that what you want to hear? I don’t have anything left.” All the vim fled his voice. One final push to keep me alive for her sake, and now both his body and soul were failing.

  “You have her.”

  �
��Thirty years. That’s how long I worked for that man, and I let you murder him. How many more Zhaffs have to die before it ends? Wherever I sent him, I deserve to go too.”

  “We don’t get to choose when it ends.”

  “Tell that to all the men who’ve sent me to kill. You chose when Orson’s ended. They chose when Cora’s ended. Who’s next, kid?”

  The lift opened into the Undina Mining Facility proper, and I squeezed his neck harder. A line of Pervenio security officers awaited us, rifles pressed against their shoulders and aimed at us.

  “Step away from Mr. Graves!” their leader barked.

  I made sure Malcolm’s body covered most of mine and held my gun firmly against his head while we slowly trod forward. A Cogent could have made the shot but not this lot of tired officers. There wasn’t one of them that looked like he hadn’t recently woken from a nap.

  “Just put down your guns and get out of here,” Malcolm grumbled. “This change has been coming a long time, and none of you are going to stop that.”

  “What are you talking about? Don’t move another step, or we will fire.”

  “Don’t throw your lives away for him.”

  “Stop!”

  Bullets tore into the officers from behind. Their bodies danced like they were being worked by an invisible puppeteer before they dropped, blood pooling in all the air pockets mottling the rough-hewn floor.

  “Lord Trass, are you all right?” My guards rushed over to help me with Malcolm. They tore him from my arms and checked to make sure I wasn’t wounded.

  “Get your Ringer hands off me!” Malcolm snapped. One of my armored men punched him in the gut. He folded, but another kept him from going down so he could take another blow to the side of the face.

  “Enough!” I ordered. “Luxarn is dead, thanks to him.”

  “He’s gone?” The Titanborn could barely get the words out. It was then that I knew for sure I’d made the right call to chase him, and that Maya was wrong. There was a sense of relief to his tone, like when the pressure exerted from a launch off Titan suddenly gives way to weightlessness and all the fear of burning up goes away.