Titanborn: (Children of Titan Book 1)

by Rhett C. Bruno

  “Malcolm!” he hollered behind us. “I’ll kill you!” The echoes of his screams grew softer as we zoomed toward the edge of civilization. The only thing keeping me from bursting out in laughter was the cold air rushing against my face. Leave it to the rugged Earthers of Old Russia to build their haulers without tops.

  “That was not advisable,” Zhaff remarked, still unruffled as always.

  “We’re doing this alone,” I replied. I reached over with one hand and ended his pending call to Director Sodervall. “The Ringer won’t get away again.”

  Considering I had no clue what the Ringer was trying to do, Trevor’s help would’ve made things easier. But I wasn’t sharing the credit, and I definitely wasn’t sharing credits, which Zhaff seemed to be okay with. I wasn’t sure if Cogents even needed money, so it wasn’t his choice to make. I was in charge.

  There was no one for the Ringer to kill where we were going. It was time to put his spree to an end and put my failure on Undina behind me where it belonged.

  EIGHT

  There was no wall to pass through when leaving the boundaries of the Euro-String, only a final row of shanties standing in a line, and then nothing. Civilization just stops, and the only thing beyond are ruins and wasteland. Most species of life on Earth weren’t as fortunate as humanity when it came to surviving after the M-Day. Wild animals were nearly as rare as gold, and you’d have to search high and low to find naturally-growing foliage. Livestock, forests, crops—they were all grown in contained zones along the Strings.

  I’d chased targets into the wilderness before. Most were dead by the time I found them, either frozen solid or starved to death. You could find shelter in the skeletons of ancient cities, but any supplies from the pre-Meteorite world had been used up a long time ago. The Ringer wouldn’t last long if we weren’t fast. I had no intention of letting the bastard die on his own; Pervenio wanted him alive, and I wanted that hundred grand.

  Zhaff spotted the stolen hauler a couple dozen kilometers away, parked in a ditch at the edge of a frozen river that skirted an abandoned city and snaked toward the horizon in both directions. On the other side of the river, the city was trashed. Walls were missing, and rooftops caved in on most. It was a different sort of emptiness than what we had found in the slums, as if an entire culture had vanished suddenly and left behind only the bones to tell some distant civilization “we were here!” Pretty shitty legacy, if you ask me.

  The first time I’d experienced the wilderness, a similar sight filled me with trepidation. It didn’t affect me much anymore, but it was hard not to feel a slight sense of mourning.

  We found the Ringer’s hauler empty. No visible footsteps led in any direction, but we’d traveled so far from the Euro-String that the snow would have already covered any shallow tracks left behind by the light weight of a Ringer. If the frozen river had been tread upon, no cracks showed to inform us.

  East of us, I saw the remnants of a bridge. Nothing was left of it except for the tarnished structural members around its landings and a few lonely metal columns poking up here and there through the ice. Still, I had to assume the Ringer crossed into the forsaken city somehow. There was nowhere else to go for shelter from the cold.

  I switched off our hauler and hopped down. Taking my first step after sitting in the cold for so long reminded me that I wasn’t as young as I used to be. My legs were stiff.

  “He must have crossed here on foot,” I said, stretching out my leg and tapping the ice a few times with my boot. It felt solid as bedrock, as if the river had been frozen for centuries. Probably had.

  “The ice is more than a meter thick,” Zhaff clarified. “It would take at least four men of your mass to break through it by walking.”

  “Thick enough to drive this piece of junk across?”

  He crouched and studied the ice with his eye-lens for a few seconds. “Doubtful,” he said. “The hauler would be unable to traverse the debris-covered streets in the settlement regardless.”

  “All right, then we’ll have to follow him on foot. With the head start he’s had, we’ll be lucky if we ever find him in there.”

  Zhaff stepped toward the river and turned his head slowly from side to side, surveying the length of the urban area. “Without more than two of us, it will take too long,” he decided. I couldn’t tell if he was taking a shot at me for leaving Trevor behind. “The dense portion of this settlement covers approximately eight hundred hectares,” he continued. “I will message Pervenio Corp to send airships to sweep the area.” Zhaff began typing into his hand-terminal, but I held out my arm.

  “Hold off on that,” I ordered, remembering that, as far as I knew, I was in charge and Zhaff had to listen. “We’ll cross here and split up to cover as much ground as we can. If we can’t find any sign of him by nightfall, then I’ll let you make the call. It’ll save them money.”

  I knew that we, or at least I, would be paid handsomely for finding the Ringer’s location, but I was still determined to bring the culprit back myself. Even if the carelessness of the mechanic’s murder had me feeling uneasy, it wasn’t enough to sway me from that desire. Getting a short break from Zhaff wouldn’t hurt either.

  “It is unwise to separate,” Zhaff advised. “We have no knowledge of the suspect’s training.”

  “He’s a Ringer,” I scoffed. “Here, in Earth’s gravity, he’ll be about as strong as a child compared with us. Plus, I saw him. He looked sick enough to topple over at any moment without even needing the help of our planet. He emptied his gun at us earlier and didn’t have time to grab bullets, so I think either one of us could take him.”

  “He remains strong enough to rupture that mechanic’s skull.”

  I bit my lip. “Who knows how many swings it took.”

  “I have been instructed to follow your lead, Malcolm. This is, however, the third instance since our meeting when my recommendation has been disregarded. I will be taking note of all such occasions in my task report. Would you still like to proceed?”

  I thought about calling him a mindless drone and a freak, but I held my tongue. “Affirmative, and I’d love to see that report when we’re done here too.”

  “You are not authorized.”

  “All your skills and you still can’t sense sarcasm.” I sighed and shook my head. “You take the east side. I’ll take the west.”

  “Agreed. If you do locate the Ringer first, do not engage him without contacting me.”

  “Will do.”

  I exaggerated a point toward my hand-terminal before walking cautiously out onto the river. Every subsequent step helped me to gain a little more confidence in the safety of the ice.

  “What did I do to deserve this?” I grumbled under my breath once Zhaff was out of earshot.

  I readjusted my duster so I could breathe into the inside of my collar and avoid the frigid air. Then I reached down to my belt, grabbed my spotter goggles, and set them to thermal imaging. When I pulled them down over my eyes, I saw nothing but darkness.

  Hours passed. It was rare on Earth that the sky was clear enough to see the sun as anything but a dull glow. It wasn’t at the moment, but I could tell it would be setting soon. My legs were getting sore, and my cheeks felt like they were ready to crack open from the cold. Since Zhaff and I split up, I’d neither heard back from him nor found the Ringer myself.

  So much rubble and ice invaded the streets of the decrepit settlement that it was hard to traverse it quickly. Like many bodies of water after the Meteorite hit, the river had apparently flooded and was frozen soon after. The ice devastated everything it touched as it expanded. Treasure hunters dedicated their lives to digging through the ice to find artifacts from the old world, but mostly, all they discovered were the rusty chassis of ancient vehicles. I could see pieces of some popping up here and there like tiny islands of metal. It was as if every pre-Meteorite human alive had one of their own. I couldn’t imagine that was safe.

  It was hard to use landmarks to track my path when so muc
h looked the same. Signs at intersections were completely tarnished and unreadable as well, so when I was forced to cut through gutted buildings, it was impossible to know if I was going in circles without constantly double-checking the regional scans on my hand-terminal.

  I climbed up the half-collapsed stairs of what looked like an apartment building and looked out through a cavernous hole in the wall of the second floor. There was nothing out there but more rubble. I rubbed my hands together to regain some warmth before continuing on. Even with my gloves on, my fingers were numb. I decided I’d give it ten more minutes alone before I gave in and allowed Zhaff to call in the airships.

  I shimmied out through the hole and searched for a way to get a little higher on the building since the stairs inside were nowhere to be found. A sagging balcony jutted out from the building one story up. A piece of wall snapped off under the weight of my foot, but I was able to use what little feeling I had left in my fingers to heave myself onto it. Once there, I listlessly lowered my spotters over my eyes, expecting to see nothing but darkness for the hundredth time. I swept my gaze from side to side, and again there was nothing. But right before I removed them, I noticed the tiny red blip of a heat signature on the edge of my vision.

  I would’ve grinned if my face weren’t so numb. I clambered down from my perch as fast as I could without killing myself. When I reached the streets, I whipped out my pulse-pistol and headed in the direction of the thermal signature.

  Once I got closer, I began monitoring my steps, making sure they were light enough not to crunch the layer of ice that seemed to be everywhere. I arrived at a break in a cluster of buildings. A small, broken-down shack sat at the bank of a narrow tributary stemming from the river. It had no roof, and most of its stone walls had crumbled away to reveal a bare interior. Beyond it, barren land extended through a haze until a faded range of mountains sliced up in the distance through the thick veil of clouds.

  I crouched behind a wall overlooking the shack and checked my spotters again. The heat signature was somewhere on the other side. I lifted my hand-terminal to my mouth and set it to contact Zhaff.

  “I think I’ve located the Ringer,” I whispered boastfully. Finding him may have been a stroke of luck, but for all Zhaff’s supposedly extraordinary abilities, to me, there was no substitute for real experience. I wanted to make sure my partner was aware of that.

  Zhaff’s response came immediately. “It will be easier to capture him alive if there are two of us. I will be able to reach your position in precisely eight minutes and seventeen seconds.” He didn’t even need to pause to calculate the number.

  “Fine, but if he starts moving, I won’t be able to wait. He’ll spot me following.”

  I ended the call before I could receive a reply. Then I peered at the ruined structure again, this time without my spotters on, and tried to locate the Ringer with my own eyes through the cracks. I couldn’t.

  Exhaling slowly, I turned my attention to my pulse-pistol, analyzing it to make sure everything was in working order. That went on for about a minute before I elected to ignore Zhaff’s warning. I could take him down alone. He was only a weak Ringer, after all. I didn’t need a partner. Plus, remaining still was making me shiver even more than I had been.

  I readied my gun and approached the shack with furtive steps. I wanted to keep the element of surprise on my side just in case the Ringer had managed to snag a few extra bullets back at the hauler shop.

  “Don’t move, Ringer!” I shouted once I poked around the corner of the shack with my pulse- pistol aimed. “Or I’ll blow a hole in you so large you’ll freeze from the inside out.”

  The Ringer sat out in front of the shack, against a pile of stones that looked like they used to belong to one of its walls. His head turned toward me, but unlike most of the targets I’d ever tracked down, he didn’t ignore the warning and attempt to run. He barely even moved. In fact, the worry seemed to drain from his face once he realized who the man barking at him was, and he returned to gazing out toward the faraway mountains.

  The first thing I noticed about him was that he wasn’t wearing his mask or gloves. They were lying on the ground next to him beside the empty old-world revolver. The next thing was that he was dressed in nothing but a thin boiler suit. The sleeves were shorter than Zhaff’s and revealed stringy arms so white that they seemed to glow under the waning sunlight. A deep gash ran across his left bicep where either me or Zhaff shot him, the blood around it frozen. He didn’t appear cold in the slightest. I was struggling to keep my teeth from chattering as I spoke, yet the Ringer didn’t even have goosebumps.

  “By Trass, I knew someone would track me down eventually, but that was faster than I expected,” the Ringer said calmly before succumbing to a fit of coughing. His sickly eyes were even redder than when I met him, like two almond-shaped rubies. Every time he exhaled, it sounded like a broken-down air recycler. If the g-pill I saw him take back at the Molten Crater was the last he had, his lungs were probably verging on collapse from enduring Earth’s gravity. “Impressive for a mud stomper,” he continued after he gathered his breath. “Shame it had to be you, though.”

  “I don’t know about that,” I said as I advanced on him. “There are some of us who only prefer one aspect of alive or dead, no matter what the reward is. Especially for offworlders who blow up innocents. Lucky for you, I’m just trying to make a living.”

  “None of you are innocent,” he stated categorically, retaining his calm façade despite the harshness of his words. “So what now, Collector?”

  I was surprised the Ringer made no effort to deny his part in the bombing. Fugitives were rarely so compliant. Because of that, it took longer than intended for me to come up with a response. When I finally did, I decided to lie.

  “It’s up to you,” I said. “Pervenio airships are already on their way to retrieve us.”

  “So it’s that simple here on Earth?” he replied. “Offer a man chains and expect him to lock them on himself before following quietly?”

  “Again, it’s up to you.” I kept my gun aimed steady as I moved behind him until I was close enough to reach out and touch him. “Make this easy on me, and I’ll call them off. We’ll take the train back instead; just us. Unless you’d rather start the interrogation right away. Trust me, the people who want you won’t be as cordial as I am after what you did.”

  “Not so pleasant when foreigners come and murder your people, is it?” the Ringer asked scathingly, his mask of composure finally beginning to slip away. The same rage I’d seen brewing in his sickly eyes back in New London returned in full force.

  “You offworlders and your messages. If your flair for dramatics didn’t keep me employed, I might find it irritating.” I pressed the barrel of my pistol against the back of the Ringer’s head. “Now c’mon, get up. Don’t make this harder on yourself.”

  “As you wish.”

  The Ringer rose. I went to grab his wrists with my gun-free hand so I could cuff them with a band of collector-issued fiber-wire, but as I did, he whipped around with catlike fluidity and snatched the pistol out of my grip, and before I even knew what had happened, I stared down its barrel at a loaded chamber.

  The Ringer panted from low g exertion, but somehow, he still managed to hold the firearm perfectly steady. His gloveless hand wasn’t shivering the slightest bit. Not from the bite in the air or the wound on his arm. “I can feel your fear, Collector,” he said, his gravelly voice sounding suddenly empowered.

  I was stunned. Maybe I was just getting old, or my grip was weakened by the cold, but all I could think about was how I’d never seen an offworlder move so swiftly under Earth-g conditions. The man had clearly been proficiently trained.

  “You don’t want to do this,” I said, trying to remain as poised as possible in the face of death. My survival instincts kicked in. Words came pouring from my mouth. “My partner will be here any minute. And if you escape him too, then the other collectors won’t stop coming after you. How long
do you think you can hide out here before you die of whatever sicknesses ail you? Not long enough to starve, I’d wager.”

  “I’m not hiding,” the Ringer said.

  I racked my mind to come up with anything that might buy me a few more moments. Zhaff had to be close, as much as it stung my pride to know he’d been right that I should’ve waited. “Most others won’t hesitate to shoot you down on sight simply to save themselves the hassle. I’ll tell my superiors you cooperated, Ringer. I’ll make sure they treat you fairly. Get you the medicine you need.”

  “And what of the rest of my people?” the Ringer snapped. “When I left Titan, my wife was withering away to bones in one of Titan’s quarantines. My son lives in fear of being sent to that place every day. Of being infected by your kind!”

  Projecting his voice so loudly caused him to begin coughing again; this time, even more violently. When it was over with and he removed his hand from his mouth, I noticed a bloodstain on his palm. I tried not to let it show, but I could feel my usually steady heartbeat hasten as I realized I was standing in the sights of a man with nothing to lose.

  “I can look into getting her treatment if you comply,” I said. “I give you my word, Ringer… Titanborn.” I remembered from our first meeting that he preferred that term over the more widely used Ringer.

  “You can’t promise me that,” the Ringer said. By then, he’d noticed the blood on his hand as well. His gaze lingered on it for a second before he looked toward the sky. He breathed in deeply, thoroughly enjoying the chill that came with it. “It’s so like Titan out here, minus the ruins. Beautiful. You mud stompers are so consumed with leaving that you don’t even realize what you have.”

  Knowing I wasn’t going to be able to talk my way out of this, I waited for an opening to appear so I could try to get my pistol back. Somehow, even as he reminisced, the Ringer’s aim didn’t waver.

  “I’ll never see my son grow into a man,” he said. “I’ll never feel the soft touch of my wife’s lips again. Never see the silhouette of the Ring beyond the shroud…” A tear rolled out from his eye, freezing halfway down his cheek. He then stared me straight in the face. “Don’t you see, Earther? I’ve been dying ever since I came to this world, and I won’t suffer it any way but free.”