The shuttle shook violently as we pierced Titan’s thick, stormy atmosphere. Gravity kicked back in. It was only about one-seventh Earth g, but it was enough to feel a sinking sensation in my stomach.
“You are nervous,” Zhaff said to me, noticing me grab my restraints and hold on tight.
It was simply out of reflex. There may have only been a thin layer of rattling glass and metal between me and a frozen tomb, but landing safely was the least of my concerns. It was obvious he could sense something was wrong, though. I just wasn’t sure I wanted to let him know the real reason why.
“Anxious to get this over with is all,” I said.
“You are lying,” Zhaff replied. “You have been anxious ever since you stepped out of Luxarn Pervenio’s office.”
I sighed, realizing how right Luxarn was. It was foolish to try to hide anything from him. “To be honest, I never thought I’d be in the same room as the man, let alone have a conversation with him.”
I paused and stared at Zhaff’s scarred eye. I wanted to stop dancing around the issue, but it was hard to imagine he’d ever been a child, let alone beaten by one. Yet there his useless eye was, sitting like a cloudy white marble amongst a series of jagged scars. “What do you think of him?” I asked.
“We have exchanged many conversations,” Zhaff replied. “He believes that every being has a purpose, whether small or crucial, toward ensuring the future of humanity. He has dedicated his life to the expansion and evolution of our species. It is a vision that must be supported.”
“I know what he believes. I meant what do you think of him? Of Luxarn Pervenio, the man? The most powerful in all of Sol.” I took a deep breath. It wasn’t that I thought Luxarn was lying, but I decided I needed to hear the truth from Zhaff’s mouth to believe it. “Your father…”
Zhaff’s eye-lens snapped toward me and analyzed my face. He must have approved of what he saw because he returned to looking at his hand-terminal and responded with words other than That is classified. “I am surprised he told you,” he said. “My feelings toward him are irrelevant. He gave me purpose, Malcolm. Without him, I would not exist. He helped create me, like you helped create your daughter.”
My throat went dry. He left out the part where Luxarn and I both kept our illegitimate children secret for our own reasons and transformed them into weapons. Maybe Luxarn knew, and that was why he felt he could trust me with the secret.
As I stared at Zhaff’s emotionless face, I couldn’t help but wonder if Aria would’ve wound up the same if she’d stayed with me. As numb as a collector who for thirty years never once put down his gun.
“Just like that,” I said.
“Are you not satisfied with my answer?” Zhaff replied.
I loosened my restraints and reached up to lay my hand upon his tall shoulder. “I’ll tell you what, Zhaff. Let’s just worry about catching these smugglers and bringing an end to all of this. Deal?”
Zhaff considered it for a moment and then nodded. “Agreed.”
He didn’t press the issue any further. I knew I couldn’t allow myself to dwell on the thought and wind up distracted. No matter who he was, or why he was, there was work to be done. For obvious reasons, the fact that Luxarn had met with me personally had me yearning to get the job done, and done right.
I turned away from Zhaff and looked out the viewport beside my seat, barely able to see the tip of the shuttle’s stubby wings. The dense air of Titan meant they didn’t have to be long to help it balance in flight. After a few minutes, the ship stopped shaking, and we were safely through the upper atmosphere. The pilot brought us down near a factory complex built along the side of one of Titan’s famous methane lakes, puffing out smoke. There wasn’t much else to look at with storm clouds rolling in from every direction. It was a desolate place, locked eternally at nearly two hundred degrees Celsius below freezing.
As we soared over a ridge of frozen rock, I tracked a cluster of thick pipes running out of the lake toward the half-buried colony block that constituted Darien. In the newer Earther colonies around Sol, people tried to construct every structure at a scale reminiscent of the ones on Earth. The first people to settle Titan had apparently forgotten the ruined, contemporary cities of their homeworld. It was at least a two-kilometer-long chunk of metal that rose thirty meters into the air, making it appear like a monolithic ziggurat. It only seemed taller because it was surrounded by flat, sandy plains, but the brunt of the block’s pressurized, inhabitable area extended far underground. There were tiny gaps here and there for translucencies and hangar bays, but for the most part, they were completely enclosed by the double-layered metallic shell that held the unbreathable and freezing air at bay.
Darien had access to everything a self-sustaining internalized city could need. A constant stream of exhaust and smoke puffed out through vents along the top, mostly the result of underground factories and water purification plants that siphoned liquid out of Titan’s subterranean ocean and made it potable. I could also make out the angled panels of glass and steel extending away from the base of the block, housing its extensive hydroponic farms. It was like a moat of green around a metal castle. During storms, the sand would whip around and mask it, but it was a welcome view of life in an otherwise lifeless setting. The only sign of human attendance was the occasional flit of trams shooting through tubes along the raised lines that ran off into the distance toward other colonies.
If my people had designed Darien, they surely would’ve considered the ridiculous danger of not spreading out for fear of stray asteroids, but Darien was already laid out by the Ringers at the time of the Great Reunion. It was the oldest settlement on Titan, said to be constructed three centuries ago out of parts from the original ship Darien Trass built to carry over the first settlers fleeing the Meteorite.
A tiny portion of the block’s stark façade folded open as we approached, and the shuttle slipped into the revealed hangar. It was located in Darien’s shiny upper ward, filled with all manner of shops, offices, dwellings, entertainment venues, and transportation hubs. Once inside, the ship was able to touch down more gently than a ship ever could on Earth. The low g made that easy, though with my weighted boiler suit on, my body felt as if it were back on my homeworld.
Zhaff, the workers filling the shuttle, and I filed out into the busy hangar. Security was on us immediately. It figured we would arrive in Darien right as many of the monthlong gas-harvesting shifts let out. They patted us down and checked identification, conveniently overlooking my and Zhaff’s pistols once they realized who we were. They even snuck us false IDs that declared we were recent immigrant workers from the damaged Undina mining facility just in case we needed them—compliments of Director Sodervall.
Despite our treatment, I got an immediate taste for how much worse Titan had gotten since I was last there. Pervenio security officers were everywhere, and they wore thick lines of tension on their faces. Their eyes darted back and forth, tirelessly scrutinizing every weary passenger, and if someone’s skin was even a shade too white, they were checked over three times. Decontamination chambers stood at every entrance, but even they seemed to be less about keeping out diseases and more an excuse for another layer of security. People stepped in and stripped down until there was nowhere to hide anything.
We waited until the hangar was completely clear, and then, as we went to leave, I stopped at the security post.
“What are you doing, Malcolm?” Zhaff asked.
“I hope you don’t think we’re going down into the lower ward with all of this,” I replied, gesturing to my clothes, pistol, and other equipment. “We’re going to have to blend in. Like everyday harvester workers. Rylah won’t let anyone near her dressed like us. Hand-terminals only in case we need to make contact.”
No matter what we wore, anyone next to an obvious Earther like me would be in danger where we were going. A problem for another time.
I removed my duster as well as all my effects—Aria’s Ark figurine included—and ha
nded them to a security officer. Losing any of it to a greedy Ringer down below wouldn’t end well.
I took off my shirt as well since it bore a Pervenio badge. I may as well have been wearing a target. That left me in only the unmarked weighted boiler suit we’d been provided when we arrived at the station.
Zhaff scrutinized my face for a moment. “I will defer to your judgment. You are the one acquainted with the information broker.” It wasn’t necessarily a gesture of trust, but at least I was getting better at convincing him to see things my way. It was beginning to feel like a genuine partnership.
Zhaff already wore only his weighted boiler suit, so the only change to his outfit he had to make was removing the badge he wore proudly on his chest.
“No Earther going down there for leisure would be permitted to wear a gun either,” I explained. I unfastened my pistol’s holster from my belt and paused to look it over. I loved my gun as much as any man could, and I could count on one hand the amount of times I’d let it out of my sight while on duty. It usually ended poorly, but I was still alive. It had to be done.
“C’mon, you too,” I said as I finally mustered the courage to place it down.
He pulled out his firearm and silently looked it over. “Malcolm, I have been instructed on the current dangers of this settlement.”
“Trust me. It’s better we leave them here than have them confiscated down there. I know these kinds of people.”
He nodded and relinquished it.
At that, we both stood weaponless, in relatively unassuming clothing, with nothing but our hand-terminals, which looked like any others as long as nobody scrolled through our contacts and found a name like Sodervall. But they couldn’t without our thumbprints. The hacked terminal we’d retrieved on the Piccolo was tucked securely into the side of my boot.
I was about to signal Zhaff to move, when I regarded his face. If my jacket was a target, the device covering his eye was a bulls-eye. The thing had valuable written all over it, and I knew we wouldn’t get far in the lower ward without a thousand Ringers trying to rip it off him to sell on the black. It wasn’t like Earth where people were careful most of the time, and I wanted to keep the risk as low as possible.
“That lens. Can you remove it?” I asked. In all honesty, I had no idea whether it was attached directly to his brain or if there was even a human eye beneath, considering what I’d learned about his useless exposed one.
“I am able to, but it is calibrated to enhance my ability to see, aim, and analyze.”
“Well, you’re going to have to try to work without it. That thing will earn us way too much attention.”
Zhaff froze for a moment before nodding that he understood. “Agreed,” he said. He reached up and undid the latches built around the device, each one digging into his flesh. It took him about a minute to remove the apparatus, and underneath it, his skin was raw and chapped. The eye it revealed looked to be healthy. It was hazel, just like his father’s.
As stagnant as his face always was, his working eye was the opposite. It darted from side to side, investigating everything around him. I couldn’t help but stare. For the first time, he didn’t look like some strange cyborg out of a story. He looked like a young man with a troubled past. I hoped that he was just as capable without the augmentations the lens provided as he was with them.
“I was instructed never to lose it,” he said as he held it up to his face. I noticed the barest signs of sadness ripple across his face, as if he’d never been apart from it. It was a new look for him.
“They’ll take care of it,” I assured. I gestured toward the team in the security post. “Anything happens to any of this and Director Sodervall will have you on cleaning duty for a year,” I said to them. They each swallowed nervously before hurrying over to gather our belongings.
I guided Zhaff toward the decontamination chamber leading out of the hangar. “Now, we’re both a little too tan these days to go down to the lowers empty-handed,” I said. “I hope you have credits on you.”
“As usual, I am tapped into the Pervenio military account,” he said.
“Of course you are.” I smirked. For a moment, I’d forgotten who he was. “All right, she’s waiting for us on level B5 of the lower wards in a club called the Foundry. Let’s hurry there before she changes her mind.”
He nodded, and we stepped forward to pass through the decontamination chamber separately. I went first and was forced to strip down like meat out to market. Electrostatic cleaners made my hair stand up and tickled my skin. I hated being exposed like that. When the process was complete and I was pronounced clean, I put my boiler-suit back on so fast I nearly ripped a sleeve. Zhaff followed soon after.
Unlike the colony block’s bleak exterior, the upper ward was bright and airy. Rectangular towers ascended through the tall space on a wide grid, supporting the ceiling of the enclosure like grand columns. Each had shops and market-stands a ground-level, and above that were divided into spacious Earther apartments until they reached the ceiling. Verdant gardens hung in glassy containers between them to serve the luxurious residences on the highest level, glimmering like floating green crystals.
Life was everywhere, unlike on the surface of this rock. Thousands, both Ringer and Earthers, returned from work shifts. It was easy to tell them apart—Earthers and Ringers. Besides their pinkish faces, many Earthers had the credits to afford at least a decent weighted suit. Ringers, on the other hand, wore sanitary masks and gloves and moved with the hitched hop-step typical of walking in low gravity. I always found it kind of funny-looking when placed beside a normal stride.
As we left the docks and plunged into a marketplace that stretched across four of the tremendous columns, my eyes were besieged by countless colorful ads. They lined the sleek walls and shone above every shop stand. Even Zhaff had to pause for a minute to allow his exposed eye to adjust. The ones closest to the docks advertised for a burgeoning market of luxury cruisers that apparently sailed around within the inner atmosphere of Saturn, where the gravitational pull was remarkably similar to Earth’s. Extravagant vacations like that made it easy to understand why Ringers resented my kind.
The farther in we got, the more dizzying it became, with all the promotional announcements struggling to broadcast above both the din of the crowd and the shouting shopkeepers.
“Blankets! Warm enough to keep you alive on the surface!” one hollered.
“Missing your family back home on Earth? Connect with them over Solnet through a brand- new hand-terminal!” yelled another.
“Weighted suits! Thin as a leaf!”
After ten minutes of walking, the end-of-shift crowd began to dissipate. Mostly Pervenio officers and Earthers were left behind. The latter were busy either shopping for the latest in high fashion or searching for the perfect entertainment venue to start off their nights. The only Ringers I could spot by then wore worker’s clothing and were doing whatever it took to keep the upper ward looking like a sterling testament to human ingenuity. From sweeping the floors of all the restaurants, bars, and shops to scrubbing the glass and walls throughout the block until everything sparkled; they did all the things Earthers didn’t want to.
In my experience, most Ringers strayed from the upper ward as much as they could. They preferred staying down in the parts of Darien that were buried beneath the surface of Titan, where the lights were dimmer, the stench fouler, and the dangers to their health less pronounced. They never got to see any sunlight, in contrast with the upper ward where areas were cut with long translucencies revealing the copper glow of Titan’s sky.
It’d been years, so nothing looked overly familiar until I spotted the towering statue of Darien Trass—the man who’d first sent ships to the Ring before the Meteorite hit Earth—rising through the upper ward’s central atrium. The walkways wrapping him were lined with generous planters displaying all sorts of colorful flora that apparently once thrived outside on pre-Meteorite Earth.
With all the mentions of him lat
ely, I couldn’t help but stare at the monument. It had to have been retouched since the Ringers first erected it back when the upper ward belonged to them because the face looked remarkably similar to Luxarn Pervenio’s. I never noticed until now that I’d seen him up close. No coincidences.
A short walk from there and we neared the main lift, which sank through the crust of Titan to the levels of the lower ward where Ringers lived. A pair of Pervenio officers rushed past us and almost bowled me and Zhaff over.
“You, halt!” one of them demanded and raised his pulse-rifle.
A group of children nearby scattered as fast as they could, threading their way into the marketplace’s crowd. They were definitely Ringers, and as I watched the officers pursue them, I wasn’t completely sure whether or not they would’ve opened fire had there not been other Earther pedestrians in the way.
I looked back to what the children were fleeing from. Three-quarters of an orange circle was painted over an advertisement for a tanning salon that would help immigrants retain their skin tone. They hadn’t been able to finish the circle before they were seen. A mob of Earther civilians had formed around it. They all looked frightened.
“They’ve even got children doing their work,” I said to Zhaff.
Zhaff didn’t respond. His single eye was fixed on the scene as we passed. In return, suspicious stares from the Earthers gathered by the symbol barraged him. I may have been used to his appearance, but I could understand their concern. The way he looked. The way he walked. I decided to grab his arm and pick up our pace. It appeared we weren’t destined to feel comfortable on any level of Darien.
We were able to reach the main lift without further complications, but once there, we found a very small percentage of Earthers to be taking the plunge with us. I’d been to Darien before, so I knew the upper ward was fine for my kind if you were simply looking to wade through crowds shopping, eating food, and having a drink. But the lower ward was the place to go if you really wanted to unwind—as long I didn’t wear a Pervenio badge and had credits to spend. At least, it was the last time I’d been there.
Titanborn: (Children of Titan Book 1) Page 18
