Titan's Wrath

by Rhett C. Bruno

  My mag boots switched off, and I steadied myself against the Cora’s exit ramp while the ship’s acceleration wracked my body. It was sealed, like it should be during flight and without depressurization, but I tapped the control panel and overrode the system.

  Then I waited. I closed my eyes and tried to clear my mind of everything, which was as impossible as it had been since the day Maya told me I was a Trass. All the awful things I’d done I thought I did for my people, but it was clear now that wasn’t always true. I did them because of those awful memories of an Earther security officer calling me Ringer like I wasn’t worth a name. I did them for Cora and my mother. And most of all, I did them for me.

  G forces tugged on my body as the Cora turned hard. Geoff Parker, one of my Titanborn subjects whose name I’d finally cared enough to learn, kept us from crashing. My finger hovered over the controls to open the ramp. I waited until the wails of a newborn infant echoed down the halls of the Cora.

  Then I set the inner door of the cargo bay to seal, closed my visor and hit the command to open the ship’s ramp. As soon as it cracked open, explosive decompression yanked me out into space. My body flew across the starry void at speeds that would have ripped me apart if not for my suit. One last flight without a G-pill so I could feel everything.

  Undina filled my vision, surrounded by the glowing blue of Earth, it was so close now. I was headed for the center point between the three plasmatic engines where I wouldn’t immediately burn up. They pulsed like nuclear bombs over and over.

  I didn’t need my wings in space, so I held a straight line until the edge of one of Undina’s hangars was in reach. My elbow snapped as I struck, sending me tumbling along the surface until I was able to grab hold of a rocky outcrop with my good hand. That shoulder was nearly torn from its socket, but somehow held long enough for me to magnetize my boots.

  Sweat started pouring down my forehead immediately. Everything around me was drowned in brightness from the plasmatic engines. It was as if I were walking on the surface of the sun. I crawled toward one of them, and every meter closer made my armor feel like it was melting.

  Earthers said that on their planet they were so near to the sun they could see it in the sky. That their retinas could burn if they stared. Now I understood. The engine was so blinding I couldn’t even look up.

  I’m not sure how long I trudged along the wrinkled surface of Undina, but by the time I reached the base of the engine, I felt like I’d sweated all the water out of me. Even my powered armor couldn’t help keep the sensation in my limbs. My eyes were so watery I could barely see.

  I leaned against the base of the engine to catch my breath. My men had fastened it with dense anchors stabbed deep into the asteroid’s crust. Three massive, flexible arms extended from there, bending every time there was a propulsive blast. The whole contraption was slowly burrowing into the crust of the asteroid, but it would hold long enough.

  I pulled myself around the structure, a wave of heat distortion making it difficult to tell how close I was to anything without touching it. I dug my fingers into the plating and tore a piece off to reveal the manual control panel.

  Maybe it was the heat, or maybe Javaris’s programming, but the whole screen was dark. This was the first field test for the drives, so nobody could be sure what would happen when they were attached to an asteroid, in space, without the proper housing and cooling an Ark could afford.

  I went to punch it out of frustration but suddenly found my body heaved off the ground by one of the engine’s powerful pulses. My suit’s mag boots were no match for Javaris’s creation. I grabbed hold of one of the thing’s anchors just before my body was sucked into the fallout and turned to ashes.

  My lips were chapped and my throat so dry it hurt to inhale. I held my breath instead as I drew myself back down. Then I reared my fist back and punched one of the bending arms supporting the engine as hard as possible. I hit it again, and again, screaming to help put all of my energy into every blow. I pictured Director Sodervall’s smiling face when he spaced my people, and Luxarn’s when I ended his reign for good.

  After I lost count, I started to picture Aria’s instead. She stood at my side on Mars when every Earther turned their nose up at us. I pictured my mother, frail and dying in the Pervenio Quarantine before I saved her. I pictured Maya and Gareth, placing my first rifle in my hands and believing in some worthless Ringer pickpocket to lead Titan into the future. And then I saw Cora, gazing up at me with her brilliant blue eyes in that sole night we spent together before she died.

  I was thrust back to the present when the engine’s arm snapped in half. The main structure of the engine dangled free. I clung to the portion of the anchor still trapped in rock and kicked the engine. It pulsed with energy one last time before breaking free and spiraling out across space. A cloud of unbearable heat passed over me, roasting my insides and making my throat bleed.

  I groped through the darkness for rock as I was blasted backward until I found a protrusion. Gasping for air, I drew myself close and held on. The heat dissipated soon after and allowed me to crawl into a nook where I could lie on my back.

  My arm trembled as I reached up to switch my coms to their long-range frequency. At such a long distance it would take some time for my message to transmit all the way to Titan, but I had no other choice.

  “Maya,” I said weakly. “Titan is yours. Tell my mother…” I coughed up blood. “Tell her. I didn’t die a monster.”

  I’d never hear the answer. Only static.

  The great, soundless void of space gave way to the familiar sound of rushing air. Being on the backside of Undina protected me from burning up upon entry into Earth’s atmosphere, but the sudden onslaught of heat more intense than even what the engines emitted was unbearable for a man born on Titan.

  I closed my eyelids and breathed in deep through my nose. My mouth tasted like rusting metal.

  A Ringer’s body wasn’t suited for Earth. That was one of the first things my people learned. The gravity was relentless on our bones and muscles but most of all on our hearts. Without suits and proper medication, it would give out after a few days. My father learned that lesson when he came to Earth alongside Aria in order to steal medicine for my people.

  Yet there I was, at the cradle of humanity exactly one year later. I set out from Titan with the intention of destroying everything my enemies held dear, but as I opened my eyes and squinted through the rushing clouds, I thought I could make out the shine of Sol.

  We were all under the light of the same star. We were all humans. Solborn. Maybe, now, the people of Earth would finally see that too.

  CHAPTER THIRTY-NINE

  MALCOLM GRAVES

  It was M-Day, September 3, 2335. Exactly three-hundred-one years to the day when a meteorite struck Earth. Millions watched in horror from the streets of New London, torn from their celebration of survival. They waited to die, helpless as Ringers in quarantine, until the asteroid was redirected at the very last moment.

  It landed in the middle of Earth’s vast ocean instead. Tidal waves ripped across the planet, but Earth’s tide had already been raised permanently by the last, larger meteorite, the coastal cities already toppled like dominoes. Earthers now stuck to the heart of the remaining landmasses, and so New London and all their strings of settlements remained mostly unharmed.

  The sky was painted a darker shade of gray from vapor and dust kicked up by the impact. Global temperatures chilled even further than they had since the first M-Day. It was nowhere near as cold as Titan, but every shiver of Earth’s populace would be a reminder of Kale Trass’s final act. His final mercy.

  I limped along the docks in the Darien Uppers, using a crutch in place of my now missing leg. A sanitary mask covered my mouth. Maya Trass made me wear it after she spared my life. The Scarred Queen of Titan was now the legal ruler of all the Ring, until Kale’s heir, and my grandson, was old enough to take over.

  It almost seemed fitting that out of the people i
n that hangar on Mars on that fateful day when I finally met Kale, Maya and I would be the only two to survive. The old wretches, burned out on living yet unable to die, though I’ve always found that the best leaders are the ones who never wanted the crown.

  The Darien Uppers had become a place of commerce again. A Venta trading vessel arrived in a nearby hangar, and although armed Ringers hounded it, the fact that it hadn’t been shot down was a step in the right direction. Maya still refused to use credits, but a man like me who’d seen all of Sol could always find a living.

  For now, I had a full-time job. As I passed a statue being erected in Kale’s memory in Darien outside the docks, I couldn’t help but think about blowing it to bits. Every day I went by, my blood began to boil, but I kept my mouth shut and did as I was asked.

  I rode the lift up one of the residential towers structuring Darien. The gardens at the top bloomed again now that the Ringers were done partying over rubble and celebrating their freedom. Maybe they’d finally remembered something life taught me—that hard work was the only way to control anything in life. As a Collector, or a grandfather.

  The door to my dwelling unit opened as I approached. Maya strode out, not wearing her armor or her sanitary mask.

  “Graves,” she muttered as she passed.

  The light caught her scarred face in just such a way that I could see through to the back of her throat. I tried not to stare and nodded in response, like I always did. It was her choice to let me live after we returned from Undina, so it was the least I could offer.

  Mazrah sat on the bed inside. She cradled Aria’s crying son—my grandson— with a single synthetic hand she’d constructed after picking apart what was left of my leg. It was still mostly exposed circuits and joints, but it worked well enough. I happily elected not to have another fake limb put on me.

  Hands or not, she was still the most gorgeous woman I’d ever seen besides my Aria. At least now that we were both missing limbs, I had a better chance. I limped over. She smiled and held out Malcolm for me.

  “I can’t get him to sleep,” she said.

  “His mom never liked to sleep either,” I said.

  I took him and stroked his thin hair as he fussed. He had Aria’s eyes, as green as the forests of Earth before the Meteorite. Every time I held him, I remembered why any time I was outside of that room being ridiculed, I stayed quiet and lived among the Ringers. Maya decreed that the grandfather of Kale’s heir couldn’t be touched, but I endured my share of insults and spit-filled drinks every day. Whatever they threw at me, I didn’t care.

  Because as much as I hated Kale for being behind the destruction of all the most important parts of my life—from leaving me in the position to have to kill Zhaff for my daughter, to causing Aria’s death—he’d given me something I never thought I’d get and that I damn well didn’t deserve.

  A second chance.

  Thanks for Reading!

  To all you wonderful readers out there, I hope you enjoyed this book. Even if you didn’t, please consider leaving an honest review wherever you prefer to leave your bookish thoughts online. It helps more than you know.

  And if you enjoyed this story about retired Collector, Malcolm Graves, and rebel leader, Kale Trass, be sure to read the rest of the books set in the Titanborn Universe. You’ll be able to read first-hand exactly how they got where they were at the start of Titan’s Wrath!

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  Titanborn (Titanborn Universe Book 1)

  Find out more about Malcolm Graves and his history with Pervenio Corp in this gritty and innovative science fiction thriller in the vein of Philip K. Dick's Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?

  Turmoil on one of Saturn's moons rattles Earth's most powerful citizens--and draws one planet-hopping rogue into a fight he never saw coming.

  Buy Today: Amazon

  From Ice to Ashes (Titanborn Universe Book 2)

  Find out more about how Kale earned his name, and wound up embroiled in the revolution on Titan.

  A humble laborer is caught in the tensions between Earth and Titan, the now-colonized moon of Saturn, in a standalone novel set in the universe of Titanborn. To save his mother’s life, Kale Drayton agrees to smuggle something aboard his ship without understanding the repercussions of his actions.

  Buy Today: Amazon

  The Collector (Titanborn Universe Book 0)

  Wise-cracking, corporate bounty hunter Malcolm Graves has a knack for finding trouble. After twenty years working for Pervenio Corp chasing bounties and extinguishing rebellions throughout the solar system, he is on a routine pickup job hunting a wealthy offworlder heir who ran away from home. But when a mad scientist gets his hands on the boy, Malcolm finds himself caught up in a twisted plot to develop working androids.

  In this prequel novella to Rhett C. Bruno’s Titanborn Series, join Malcolm on a mission gone awry.

  Buy Today: Amazon

  About the Author

  Rhett Bruno is the author of the Amazon-bestselling space-opera series The Circuit, as well the Sci-Fi thrillers Titanborn and From Ice to Ashes.

  By night he is an author for Random House Hydra and Diversion Books. By day he is a Syracuse graduate working at an architecture firm in Connecticut. He’s also recently earned a certificate in screenwriting from the New School in NYC, in the hopes of one day writing for TV or video games.

  Rhett resides in Stamford, Connecticut, with his fiancee and their dog, Raven.

  You can find out more about his work at www.rhettbruno.com. If you’d like exclusive access to updates about his work and the opportunity to receive limited content, ARCs and more, please subscribe to his Newsletter.

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  Thanks for Reading