“It’s already done,” he said. “Javaris knew. There is no way to communicate with the drives. The energy they discharge causes too much interference. Undina can’t stop.”
“No… No!” She lunged for him and pounded on his chest plate. “They were all right about you. You are a monster!”
Kale’s men went to stop her, but he ordered them to back down. I tried again to stand, but a firm hand on my shoulder sent me back into my seat without a fuss. I barely had enough energy left to keep my eyes open.
“I’m going to stop this. You need to be stopped.” Aria sat back down, took control of the ship, and banked around so hard it threw everyone off balance. She raced back toward the rear of Undina, making sure to keep the Cora corkscrewing so that nobody could keep their bearings.
“Let her,” Kale instructed his men.
Aria targeted one of the pulsing engine stalks latched to the back of Undina and fired everything the Cora had left in her arsenal. They were arranged in a triangle formation around the hangar we’d entered through, so if she knocked one out, it would redirect the asteroid. Maybe this late in the game it would still hit Earth, but the middle of an ocean was preferable to New London. The planet had already been half-drowned three-hundred years prior, and Earthers were smart enough to resettle far from the new coastlines.
It was a smart move by my daughter, a brave move, but futile. Every missile was vaporized by the plasma emitted by the drives before even coming close to the surface. When Aria realized that, along with the rest of us, her jaw dropped and the Cora stopped spinning. One of Kale’s men immediately grabbed her and yanked her out of the seat.
“No!” she howled. She reached back and ripped the man’s sidearm out of its holster. Every rifle in the command deck swung to aim at her, I called out for her to stop, and that was when she did the unthinkable. Something she probably learned from the Children of Titan after so long at their side. She turned the gun on herself, aiming right through her belly button at Kale’s son.
“Get your hands off me!” She shook free and backed slowly across the command deck, toward me. “I swear, if you don’t stop it, I’ll blow us both to hell.”
“Aria, it’s too late.” Kale took a hard step toward her, but she fired once into the ceiling to stop him and then returned to aiming.
Kale raised his arms to get his men to lower their weapons, then took a different approach. He bit back his anger and tried to console her. “This is how we change Sol, Aria,” he said softly. By Earth, the crazy kid really meant it, too.
“By killing millions?” she replied.
“To ensure that millions of Titanborn will be born in control of their own lives for generations.”
“If you do this, they don’t deserve it.”
“How many of us died in the Ringer Plague so Luxarn could own the Ring? And he let it happen. He told me himself. What do you think they’ll try next?”
I snickered, and one of his men promptly wrapped a hand around my throat as if they’d forgotten I was there. “You’re really going to lie to her while I’m right here?” I asked.
“I swear it, Kale. Have Javaris redirect Undina, or we both die.”
“Don’t you dare touch my son!” his voice boomed. His features contorted, and all that sense of relief gave way to the rage that allowed him to invent such a homicidal plot in the first place. “If you hurt him, your father won’t know a day without torture. I’ll freeze him piece by piece until there’s nothing left.”
“I should have never trusted you after I saw what you did on Mars.”
“And I should have known you were too weak to be one of us.”
“I thought your aunt was the crazy one, but I was way off,” I chimed in, earning a glare from them both. “You set out to prove a Ringer was worth as much as an Earther, congratulations. We’re all human. It’s madmen like you Sol needs to be free of.”
Kale turned to me, his glower boring through me. “You don’t get to turn noble when it suits you, Collector. You and your employer did the same thing for years. Self-preservation through killing. One or a million, it makes no difference.”
“See now, that’s where you’re wrong. I told you before. You can kill Luxarn and millions of other Earthers, but it won’t bring her back. You’ll never fill that great big hole inside you.”
“I’m doing this for my people. For Titan.”
“Cora was a looker, that’s for sure, but if I’m being honest, that girl’s life wasn’t worth a million anything.”
“Don’t use her name.”
“I’ve seen just as pretty in the Martian sewers without the baggage. The little half-Ringer couldn’t have been too smart if she couldn’t see you for what you are.”
“Be quiet.”
“Was Cora that good in the sack to make you lose your mind like this?”
“I said don’t use her name!” Kale pushed off the pilot’s chair and crashed into me, knocking me out of my chair and turning all the attention away from Aria. We tumbled down the corridor, spiraling, kicking, and punching. I snuck a few blows in with my good arm too, though my fist crunched harmlessly against his armor. I didn’t care. If he was going to ravage Earth just to fill his heart with something, then he was going to die with it. Now that I knew how far Aria was willing to go, I was done feeling helpless.
Kale and I crashed into a sleep pod so hard the lid cracked. We bounced off, and I was able to raise my synthetic leg’s knee up into his visor. He shrieked as it shattered and tiny shards stabbed his face. My fist punched through the opening and broke his nose. His flailing arm smashed my gun wound and had me seeing stars.
He pinned me against the wall and went for the pistol holstered on his hip, which I noticed was my own. I did the same. I wrestled his wrist to aim it away from me. My Earther muscles helped me stand a chance. I pushed him back and forced him to squeeze the trigger once. The bullet slashed through the neck-guard of his armor but didn’t hit meat.
The recoil allowed him to regain control, and he fired repeatedly down into my fake leg at the joint. The alloy shredded away to reveal circuitry as complex as the human nervous system. It didn’t hurt. Not even when the bullet sliced the thing’s core structure and left it dangling off my hip like a loose air recycler vent. I spotted his men behind him, struggling to line up a shot. Then Kale switched on his armor’s mag boots and gained footing. Weightlessness trapped me in his grip, with no chance to break free.
He held me against the wall with one hand and threw my gun aside. His other armored fist crashed into my jaw. “She was worth every goddamn Earther in Sol!” Kale roared. He punched me again, jarring a few teeth loose. I couldn’t even feel the pain my body hurt so much all over, but my vision became spotted with black.
Focus, Malcolm, I told myself. I added in the lie that I’d been in worse scraps, but that wasn’t true. Nobody else on the ship could get a shot at me, and I’d struck a nerve that had the boy king seeing red. But my pistol floated nearby, and as Kale beat my face to a pulp, I stretched my injured arm out. I couldn’t even feel my fingers, so I had to watch as they threaded the trigger. Dazed as I was, I knew the weight of that gun like I knew my daughter. There was a single round left.
One last kill…
“Get off him!” Aria shouted suddenly.
She’d broken free of Kale’s men and lunged to grab him. He whipped around out of reflex and struck her in the chest with his armored elbow. She was launched across the cabin into a wall. I got the shot off in the direction of his head at the same time, but realizing it was Aria who grabbed him had caused him to turn, and I missed my mark. He grabbed his ear and staggered backward, but all he was missing was an earlobe.
Titanborn guards apprehended me and threw me to my knees, guns poking me from every angle. I didn’t pay them any attention. I heard a cough that made my whole body freeze. Aria lay between two sleep pods on the other side of the cabin, eyes gaping, mouth whistling faintly as air struggled to reach her lungs. The center of
her chest was completely caved in.
Kale’s men rushed to him first, but he threw them aside and went to her. He tore off his helmet, droplets of blood streaming away from his nose and ear. He pressed his fully intact ear against her battered chest.
“What did you do?” I said. My mouth was so full of blood and broken teeth I could barely get the words out.
“Aria, breathe,” Kale said. He tapped her face. “Aria.”
Her arm quaked as she reached up and ran her fingers through his hair. I shouted and cursed, saying Earth knows what, but I couldn’t break free to reach her. She stared straight into Kale’s eyes and whispered something to him. Halfway through, she peered over at me. I couldn’t hear her over my own ranting, but whatever she said made all the rage twisting his features suddenly disappear.
CHAPTER THIRTY-EIGHT
KALE TRASS
“Aria breathe,” I said. I pulled her close and rubbed her cheek. “Aria.”
With my other hand I felt her ruptured chest. There was barely a heartbeat, and every time she breathed I could hear her lungs rattling. Her fingers slid up around my neck, and she tried to pull my ear toward her mouth, but she was too weak. I had to help her by leaning forward myself.
“I know I’m not her,” she whispered. “I’m sorry I couldn’t be.” Her voice was so fragile it rattled like the rusty old air recyclers on the bottommost tier of the Darien Lowers.
“You don’t—” She silenced me with a quaking finger over my lips.
“You’re better than they are. I know it. Sol is filled with rotten parents… Don’t be the monster they made you.” Her gaze shifted to aim at Malcolm. “Be a father our son can be proud of even if it makes his life hell. That’s what I thought being Titanborn meant all along…”
Air whistled through her lips after those words. Her head drifted back slowly in zero G. I shook her by the shoulders, but her green eyes froze open. The brightness slowly drained from them, just as it did after I killed Luxarn Pervenio.
“Aria?” I said softly.
“Aria!” I whipped around to see Malcolm slip out of my men’s grasp, push off the wall, and soar toward me. If a look could kill, I’d be missing more than the tip of my ear. A Titanborn grabbed his foot and yanked him down, but Malcolm didn’t stop. He clawed at the floor to reach her. One of my men pressed a pulse rifle to the back of his head. Before he could fire, I grabbed the man and flung him aside.
Malcolm raced by me to his daughter’s side. “Aria!” he screamed again. Every time he did, it felt like a knife was being pushed deeper through my rib cage. I’d heard names screamed like that before, full of unbridled rage and anguish. Every time a Titanborn child was dragged off by Pervenio Corp Security to be placed in Quarantine.
“Not you too,” Malcolm whimpered. “Aria, wake up. Please. I can’t lose you too.”
I stared, dumbfounded. The Cora transformed around me, making me feel like I was back in that airlock cell on Pervenio Station where Cora was spaced. Where I found the recording of Director Sodervall hitting the commands that doomed her. Only on this occasion, I stood where he’d been, watching. All that was different was that I wasn’t smiling over executing someone only for being different than me.
“Lord Trass!” One of my men shook me to snap me back to reality. “Lord Trass. Your son.”
Malcolm huddled over Aria, in such a state of shock now he couldn’t even cry. I noticed her stomach beneath him, protruding even more now that her upper body was crushed.
“Get her...” I swallowed the lump in my throat and gathered my breath. “Get her to medical,” I ordered. I pointed to another of my men. “Wake Javaris. We need a doctor.”
“She was our Doctor,” he replied.
“He’s close enough.”
Two of my men grabbed Malcolm, but he wouldn’t let go. “No!” he snapped. “You don’t get to touch her ever again.”
I grabbed his hand and pried it free of her dress. He flailed and kicked, only one of his legs intact. His face was bloodied and bruised thanks to me, barely recognizable.
“I’ll kill you, Kale,” he wheezed. “I swear on Earth you’re going to die.”
I shoved him against a sleep pod and held him secure while my men gently lifted Aria and carried her weightless body away. Another opened Javaris’s sleep pod and pulled the confused Earther out.
“We have to save the child,” I said.
Malcolm didn’t answer at first. Instead, he stared daggers my way before spitting a glob of blood at my face. “Congratulations, kid,” he then said. “You wanted to beat Luxarn Pervenio, and you get to be him now. The most powerful man in Sol. All alone.”
All I could manage to do was stare back at him. This Earther who’d likely presided over more crimes against my people than any man except for Luxarn, and I couldn’t help but pity him. Was that how broken I looked after finding out about Cora?
It was then that I realized that no matter what Malcolm was, it didn’t mean he loved any less. However many people he’d killed, however many lives he’d ruined, he still had a heart for Aria. All those Earthers waiting under the shadow of Undina loved and were loved by clan-families and friends. And they hated, Titanborn especially, but only because the screens surrounding them told them to. Perhaps many of them were related to those Earthers who tortured my people for so long, but it wasn’t them.
I knew what I had to do.
I held Malcolm by the sides of his face and said, “You have to take care of him.”
My response made his bloody brow furrow, but that was all I offered. I left him against the sleep pod, with his body so broken he couldn’t follow. I then rushed toward the command deck viewport. Undina was less than a half hour from hitting. Com messages from Earth popped up all over the display. Members of the USF begged me to stop, all those men and women who were so quick to sign off on Luxarn doing whatever was necessary to keep the Ring profitable, now on their knees pleading with a Ringer.
Transport ships flitted across Earth away from New London. I knew it was those very same Assembly sycophants and schemers with a ride reserved for them, preserving their own lives while the civilians in New London filled the streets and watched their doom creep ever closer along the horizon.
They were Earthers. All of them. Future Collectors, security officers, Assembly members, or corporate Directors. Maybe there was a new Luxarn Pervenio down there ready to rise to power and get vengeance on us, but it took the dying words of a bastard daughter from the shit-covered sewers of Mars for me to remember what it meant to be Titanborn. That we would stand against them together. That we’d taught my people how.
“One last ride, Cora,” I whispered.
I leaned over the Cora’s controls and accelerated toward the back of Undina as fast as the ship was able. Then I turned and headed back toward the cabin. Malcolm remained on his knees, wearing a thousand-meter stare, shattered. When he saw me, he didn’t even try to attack. All the fight in him was gone. He looked just like I had after I discovered Cora’s fate. He was broken.
“Why?” was all he could manage. I scooped him up and battled the G forces from the Cora’s hard burn to carry him toward the med bay.
We stopped outside. All eight of my men surrounded the medical bed, bracing against the pressure. Two aimed weapons at Javaris Venta’s head, forcing him to begin the procedure of removing my baby from Aria’s stomach.
“He’s s-still alive,” the frightened Earther stuttered.
“Get him out!” a Titanborn ordered.
“It’s not my area of expertise.”
“No excuses.”
“If my son lives, he goes free,” I said. My men regarded me, and I waved the young, blonde one I was most familiar with over. The order buoyed Javaris’s disposition. Nobody understood what the promise of freedom can do for a man better than me. He began requesting specific equipment at breakneck speed with the confidence of a genius.
“Lord Trass, what do you need?” the young guard asked. His cheek
s were still as soft as Luxarn’s mattress in the home I stole.
“What’s your name?” I said.
He seemed taken aback by the question at first, then shook his head and answered, “Geoff Parker.”
“Geoff. Go to the command deck and don’t let us crash.”
“Crash?”
“Just go.”
He glanced nervously back at Aria, then nodded and hurried by. I propped Malcolm up against the doorway. “Go to her,” I told him.
“You don’t get to walk away from this,” he rasped.
“I’m not. She fought for us to have a world of our own. I’m going to go make sure we get it.”
“Haven’t you done enough?”
I stared at Aria’s cold, impassive face, framed by strands of wavy hair as red as the surface of Mars. She wasn’t Cora and never would be, but she was dead all the same because of this hatred between my people and her father’s. I’m not sure if I ever loved her. I’m not sure if I could ever love again, but I was sure of one thing. She deserved better. All my people did. A king, and a father, they could be proud of.
“Not yet,” I said. I turned away, but Malcolm grabbed my arm. His grip was weaker than an Earther’s ever should be. The haggard old fool was on the cusp of death. Blood stained his mouth and shirt, and if he didn’t get treated soon, he’d probably collapse.
“One day, I’m going to kill you, Kale Drayton,” he said. “I don’t care what it takes.”
“If it had to be anyone.” I lifted his chin. “Make sure Malcolm sees Sol as it truly is, just like she did.”
“Malcolm?”
“Aria chose the name before we left Titan.”
I removed his hand and left him behind. Even his sharp wit couldn’t produce a response before I was around the corner. For a moment, I worried that he’d follow me instead of doing the right thing, but he never came.
I entered the cargo bay alone. A rack of helmets on the far wall let me replace mine so I’d be able to breathe in space. I considered grabbing an oxygen tank, but what I was planning was a one-way journey, and there was enough woven into my suit’s stores to get me there.
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