“On my back,” Zhaff said.
I was in no mood to offer a response to that. His devotion to logic was starting to seem like sarcasm after enough time with him, even though I figured it wasn’t. I stayed quiet for a few moments, and then said, “So they find out more about that bomber?”
“Further scans couldn’t locate a match for him in any database on Titan,” Zhaff replied.
“Well, he didn’t come from nowhere.”
“According to you,” he said, “he planned to be caught. It is possible whoever he is working with erased every trace of him ahead of time.”
“Altering the recorded DNA of any relatives, deleting the genetic trail… It’d take more than your average hacker to do that.”
“Or direct access to the mainframes on Pervenio Station,” Zhaff countered. “There are thousands of inhabitants around the Ring working in medical labs, with sixty-seven percent having been born on Titan.”
“Whatever they did, they made him a ghost,” I said softly. I pictured the man’s colorless face before the gunshot went off. It gave me goosebumps. The Ringer was willing to die for his cause without even needing a name of his own. No credits, no renown. Nothing.
“Pervenio will let us know if they discover anything further,” Zhaff said as our tram slowed down.
“They won’t find a thing.”
It was years of experience speaking, but I didn’t have a single doubt about it. I’d dealt with plenty of illegitimate offworlders trying not to be found. Hell, I’d fathered one. Very few of them had both the connections and killer-instinct to bomb Earth just to create a distraction. Whoever the nameless Ringer was working for or with, they were good, and I had a feeling we’d come face-to-face with them sooner rather than later if we kept on our path.
The tram came to a complete halt outside our departure bay, where the tremendous passenger liner scheduled to carry us to Titan was already waiting. The thing was easily half a kilometer long, and taller than most of the buildings down on Earth. The blocky hull was made up of a patchwork of shielded plates that guarded against radiation while crossing open space. When one was too tarnished or developed a breach, they simply tore it off and slapped a new one on, shinier than all the others surrounding it.
At least two hundred other Earther travelers were passing through security to get on. Many of them had large bags packed and wore the hopeful grins of immigrants about to set out on a fantastic new journey. I had no doubt most of them were either naïve or desperate enough to have seen one of the ads begging them to leave Earth and listened. As I looked around at all their faces, I couldn’t help but pity them. Some of the men and women were attractive enough that I knew they could make a better living working the streets of Old Russia than on the Ring, wretched as that was. There were even children being dragged along by their parents. Future offworlders.
“They couldn’t have chartered us something a little nicer?” I said to Zhaff. Not that I wasn’t used to traveling on large passenger liners, but occasionally, Pervenio would set me up on private military ships. It seemed wrong to complain since they fronted all my traveling expenses and the hopeful immigrants in line around us had probably sold everything of value they owned to buy passage to Titan.
“The only other public ships scheduled to depart Luna Station today are heading to Mars,” Zhaff replied. “The next one set to depart for Titan won’t leave for another two weeks.”
“What about private vessels?” I asked, remembering our current assignment. “One of the ships leaving this place might be hiding the supplies we’re looking for.”
Only the richest citizens of Sol could afford their own private vessels to carry them around the solar system on a whim. Those mostly belonged to corporations like Pervenio, which made Zhaff’s earliest assumption that a rival might have helped with the bombing seem a little more probable.
“That is likely,” Zhaff said, “though there are none listed as being dispatched to the Ring. Regardless, the USF’s decree to increase the inspection of departing ships after the bombing would make smuggling near impossible.”
“I doubt they’ll find anything. Somebody is being awfully careful about covering their tracks and has a lot of credits to throw around to get people looking the other way.”
“Agreed. However, Pervenio has asked for us to wait to rattle the cages of any other organizations until we reach the Ring.”
First, I wondered where Zhaff might have learned a phrase like rattle the cages, and then I sighed. “Politics, of course.”
The decree made sense. Pervenio Corp had a stranglehold on the affairs of the Ring, and if another corporation was involved, it would be an easier place to extract information. Beyond the reach of USF security, things went smoother, and there were far fewer repercussions. Corporate politics always made things interesting. In Sol, wars over control were fought in the shadows with checkbooks, with barely a shot ever fired.
It took a few hours before the liner was prepped and every passenger was thoroughly inspected. There was no rushing a passenger liner the way we had the Euro-String rail. Zhaff and I kept our eyes peeled for anything suspicious while we waited, but trying to smuggle via a public vessel seemed bold, even for a group willing to bomb New London. Private transports were much less scrutinized.
“Right this way,” a handsome young attendant greeted us once we eventually were permitted to board. He led us down the liner’s spacious central corridor toward our sleep pods.
“Good thing they’ll put us under for this trip,” I said as I looked around at the many doe-eyed immigrants walking on either side of us. “Don’t think I could take three months with this lot. You ever been on one of these?”
“Not this exact model,” Zhaff replied.
“I meant an inter-Sol vessel this size. Or did Pervenio ship you around privately for your entire life?”
“That information is classified.” I exhaled in frustration. “I have been on many vessels of this class, however, throughout my training,” Zhaff elaborated before I could say anything clever. “It is a long opportunity for sleep.” His blank façade didn’t change, but the volume of his voice rose just enough for me to wonder if he was making an attempt at being humorous.
“Not sure if it counts,” I said, smirking.
We were led into the port-side passenger hold where attendants pulled out our reserved, shelf-like sleep pods. They instructed us to place our belongings into the secure storage units underneath. I had my usual set of effects with me, which wasn’t much. My duster, ID, lucky Ark Ship, hand-terminal, and belt complete with spotters, pulse-pistol, and a few other gadgets. The tiny duffel I’d packed and brought with me only had a few changes of clothing. Zhaff had even less. We stripped down to boiler suits and loaded into our respective pods.
I’d spent the majority of my life traveling back and forth across the vacuum, but I could never get used to the induced, dreamless slumbers that came with the trips. I would wake up months later, chunks of my life having fallen away in a flash. It was like time travel except for the part where my body felt the accruing years, and I’d wake up with another patch of gray hairs.
Sometimes by the time I arrived at a new destination across Sol, the difficulty of whatever assignment I was working on had escalated. Other times, the job had been completed by another company’s collector weeks earlier, and there were no credits to be had. I hoped that wouldn’t be the case for our continued mission, and since whoever was transporting the supplies couldn’t move much faster than a passenger liner, it didn’t seem likely. Heading off a smuggler between planets was rarely tough since the distance between them was so great. Finding out who was behind their actions—that was the hard part.
A chilly, gelatinous surface hugged my body and gave me a shiver as I lay in my pod. It quickly formed to every camber of my body, ensuring I would remain comfortable under the ship’s initially high acceleration g-forces. An attendant hooked a few tubes with needles into my veins before a glass shield c
losed over me.
As I waited for the anesthetic chems to kick in, I wondered if Zhaff could even dream—and if so, what about. Probably a series of complex mathematical equations to solve for all of eternity. Or maybe a white, empty void. Before I could come up with any more ideas, I was completely under…
When my eyes next blinked open, the passenger liner slowed in its approach to Pervenio Station, Saturn. I yawned as the lid of my sleep pod popped open with a snap hiss. The trip felt short enough to have been a nap, but I knew around three months had passed.
I pulled myself out with ease since we were still in zero-g. That would change once we docked at the constantly rotating station where my muscles would be even weaker than usual from disuse. At the moment, however, I didn’t mind letting the universe cradle me.
I floated there, gazing through a narrow viewport and out into space. Saturn took up the entire view. I couldn’t see any stars, but I could see the glimmer of the planet’s blade-like belt of rock and ice. Pervenio station floated right at its heart. The entire thing was built into Pan, a tiny shepherd moon causing a breach in the outermost Ring. Only roughly thirty-five kilometers across, it was a first-choice location for the wealthiest company in all of Sol to establish their headquarters in the Ring. From what I was told, Pervenio engineers utilized tremendous nuclear thrusters to instill the tiny moon with the fastest permanent spin any cosmic body had ever been given, at least at the time. It simulates an internal gravitational pull that’s one-third the strength of Earth’s, which doesn’t sound like much, but is still more than even Titan can offer.
The countless craters dotting the surface were hollowed out, with tunnels crisscrossing the moon as if a great metal parasite had crawled inside and spread its limbs. Docking chutes jutted from the rocky outer surface like crooked fingers. No place in Sol received more ships on a monthly basis. Being located directly on the planet’s Rings made dispatching ice haulers and gas harvesters extremely efficient.
The harvesters were especially lucrative. They worked tirelessly within Saturn’s stormy atmosphere to siphon the valuable energy-efficient gases like helium-3 and deuterium that powered modern reactor cores and interplanetary impulse drives—the cornerstones of the emergent Sol-wide economy—needed. They were mostly automated these days, setting up balloons that sank into the clouds to be filled, monitored, then collected, but the fully manned harvesters could go deeper into the atmosphere, where the riches were in greater supply and where communication was impossible. People often said it was the most dangerous job in Sol, though I begged to differ.
The entire industry was part of what made the Ring so desirable and was the main reason other jealous corporations like Venta Co and the Red Wing Company set their sights on colonizing the moons of Jupiter. But even the largest of the gas giants in Sol didn’t have those gases in abundance like its ringed cousin. Saturn was a relative gold mine, and while a handful of other companies had their own smaller stations orbiting Saturn, there was no question that Pervenio ran the Ring.
By the time Zhaff woke to join me, the liner was entering its hangar on Pervenio Station. Gravity pulled me back to the floor as the ship rotated to land on the inside face of the rotating moon’s outer wall. It wasn’t strong, but it didn’t take long for my tired legs to start wobbling beneath my weight. The effects of the long trip even seemed to be impacting Zhaff. He still moved with the rigor of a well-oiled machine, of course, but I observed a slight lurch in his step. It was comforting, knowing there was something human about him, even if those signs wore off quickly.
We gathered our belongings without exchanging more than a simple nod and followed the crowd of weary immigrants off the ship. An older man, dressed in highly decorated black-and-red dress fatigues, awaited everyone directly inside the lofty hangar. A prim white beard hugged his sharp jawline, covering the jagged scar that sliced along the bottom. Director Sodervall in the flesh.
“Welcome to the Ring!” he announced to the crowd, clasping his hands together with apparent delight. “I am Director Sodervall, head of this station and your shepherd into this world. Both Pervenio Corp and the United Sol Federation thank you for your service! Humanity thanks you!”
He proceeded to give his usual speech to the immigrants. A lot of talk about starting fresh sprinkled over some lies about how grateful the locals would be for their presence. He had a knack for it as if he truly believed every word spewing from his mouth. After only a few sentences, I could see the travel-weary faces of the people he spoke to brighten with renewed excitement.
When he was done, a military escort led him and the immigrants off to physicians. I never had to go through the tedium of full immigration procedures, but I knew that the travelers would be extensively scrutinized before being fumigated, so they wouldn’t risk infecting any Ringers with Earthborn illnesses. Only then would they be released into new living arrangements, whether those were in the major colonies of Titan or on one of the many other moons and stations orbiting Saturn that were run by Pervenio Corp.
In no time, Zhaff and I were the only new arrivals left in the hangar.
“You don’t like him,” Zhaff stated. His eye-lens was aimed toward the director as he led the immigrants toward their prospective fates.
I glanced up at the Cogent. I still found his ability to so accurately read my face unsettling, but I decided to ignore it. “I wouldn’t say that. He’s been my primary handler for far too many years, but you probably know that. We just haven’t seen eye-to-eye lately.”
“Because of me?”
“I wish it were that simple,” I said, deciding not to be overly honest. Titan was a clean slate, a fresh start for me and my shiny new partner to catch a big fish. At least for as long as I could tolerate him. “Don’t worry yourself about it. I know how to handle him.”
Zhaff didn’t have a response, and so we stood there quietly, waiting. Since he was the one who’d received our assignment to travel to Titan, I wasn’t sure what our next step was.
“Malcolm Graves, I presume?” a man asked from behind.
Zhaff and I turned to see a Pervenio officer strolling toward us from the other end of the hangar. He had a tall frame, which meant he was probably born on the station, but a broad, Earther jaw. He faced me, but I could tell he was discerning Zhaff out of his peripherals and wondering what to make of the Cogent’s strange appearance.
“The one and only,” I joked. “Ready to get to work.”
He wasn’t amused. “Good. I’ll lead you to your quarters, where you can recover from your journey.”
“Lead away.”
We followed the officer through a private decontamination chamber that washed away the stale, hospital-like smell of months in a sleep pod, and into a hall running parallel to the station’s many hangar bays. A long, tall translucency ran along the floor at a downward angle, and beyond it, the icy rocks that made up Saturn’s rings stretched out on a horizontal plane. Spotlights from a few working ice-hauler ships danced between them, and even farther away were the flickering lights of settlements on a dozen or so of the moons and stations that made up the vast archipelago of Saturn. Beyond that was a sea of starry blackness hankering to swallow it all.
When we reached a dormitory block, the officer stopped at a retinal scanner outside a sealed door. He placed his eye in front of it, causing the adjacent door to slide open. “Here you are, then,” he said. “Director Sodervall will meet with you as soon as possible to brief you on the situation.”
“Great,” I lied. After what had happened on Undina and then Earth, I wasn’t particularly looking forward to seeing him in person. He was a fair man, but only so long as his inferiors did what they were told and did it well.
The officer gestured toward the two beds on the opposite end of the room. A boiler suit was folded up on each of them. “Those are the newest line of weighted boiler suits. They’ll help you acclimate to the low-g conditions both here and on Titan. You’ll be able to move around more like you could on Ear
th when you’re wearing them. Welcome to Pervenio station.”
The guard gave Zhaff one more curious look-over before he marched back in the direction we came from. The room wasn’t particularly spacious, but it was filled end-to-end with workout equipment, from things as ordinary as treadmills to some complex stretching apparatuses I’d never had the nerve to test. A large porthole built into the floor on the far side poked through the moon’s rocky outer surface.
The only thing I cared about were the beds. I know I’d technically just slept for sixty days straight, but I threw on my new boiler suit and fell onto one as soon as the officer’s footsteps died out. Drifting through space can take a hell of a toll on an older man’s body.
“There is no time for rest,” Zhaff said as he began examining each piece of exercise equipment.
“There’s plenty of it,” I replied. “No Ringer’s getting off Titan now that Pervenio is on the lookout.”
He turned around and set his eye-lens directly on me. “It is not them I am concerned about.”
“Worry about yourself. Remember what I said about sleep? Unless you want me to get really grumpy, you’ll let me get some.”
I lay down flat and stretched my arms and legs as far as they could go. I’d traversed space too many times to let Zhaff tell me what I needed. Keeping my head on straight with proper rest was far more important than making sure my legs didn’t get sore. I could fight through that. A few minutes after closing my eyes, the repetitious sound of Zhaff running on one of the treadmills lulled me into a deep slumber.
ELEVEN
Hours later, I woke completely refreshed. Like I’ve said, there’s no substitute for real sleep. Zhaff remained on a treadmill, running with expectedly sublime form. His quiet breaths were measured, and there wasn’t a bead of sweat anywhere on his face. He turned to me as I swung my legs off the mattress and stretched my arms.
“Good morning, Malcolm,” he said the moment he noticed I was awake, continuing to run at full speed even as he spoke fluently. I’d never met a more efficient man in my life.
Children of Titan Series: Books 1-4: (A Space Opera Thriller Box Set) Page 11
