She powered the view-screen down herself and stood. Without another word or even a glance back at me, she left the room, clearly affected by the death of one of the men under her command. Gareth snorted and followed her.
Hayes plopped down onto the couch beside me. “You get used to her,” he said. “She isn’t all bad.” He patted me on the back and held out the ration bar from earlier. “You forgot this, by the way.”
“What will they do to them?” I asked as he dropped it onto my lap.
“Who?”
“The crew of the Piccolo.”
“That what you’re worried about?” Hayes said. “They’ll lock ’em up on the station for a bit while they try to figure out what happened. Standard procedure.”
“Standard? I’ve heard about how they interrogate prisoners in that place. You’re all so worried about our people, why’d you leave them on the ship to be taken in?”
“We don’t have the supplies for ‘em. The Sunfire would fall apart faster than it already is. Would you rather us all starve here together, or let them take a few lumps before Pervenio realizes they don’t know anything?”
“I...” I bit my lower lip. I’d traded my mother’s freedom for the imprisonment of the woman I loved. Whether or not Cora knew anything, Pervenio Station’s cells were infamous for a reason. They’d try whatever it took to get answers out of her and the others before they set them free.
“Kid, eventually, you got to realize that this was going to happen with or without you,” Hayes said.
“I’m sure you know that’s not true.”
In my peripherals, I noticed Hayes’s brow furrow. “She told you, didn’t she?” he said. “Pretty crazy, isn’t it?”
“Do you all really expect me to believe anything she told me?” It was insane. Trass was a genius, a brilliant scientist and inventor who’d constructed the ark that would carry human beings farther through space than ever before in only a handful of years, under the pressure of impending Armageddon. Me? I was a reformed thief who couldn’t even save his mom from sickness on his own. Sure, I could repair a faulty harvesting vacuum or a flickering light, but I was far from a genius.
“Personally, I don’t care as long as it gets the job done,” Hayes replied. “I didn’t believe her either when we first met, but she can be very convincing.”
“We’ll see about that.”
“Your pop worked hard to keep the lot of you hidden from Pervenio. Seems like as good an indication as any that that’s what you all are. Wouldn’t do Pervenio Corp any good having a bunch of Trass’s running around after they took over.”
“You knew him too?”
“Nah. Alann let very few people actually know him, but I’d see him around before I got stuck here. This, all of this—the Children of Titan—he helped start it.”
“So that’s what you’re calling yourselves?” I said, making no effort to mask my disdain.
“Look down, kid.” Hayes tapped the orange circle printed on the chest plate of my armor. “You’re one of us now. Better get used to it.”
“Shoving me in your armor doesn’t make me one of you.”
“Do you think I asked to be trapped on this piece of junk for three years either? It sure as hell would’ve been easier not to have been born a Ringer. But let me ask you this: If you’d known you’d wind up here, if you’d known everything that would happen, would you have said no to helping your mom?”
The question gave me pause, and as soon as he noticed that, he grinned. I wanted to be irritated by his reaction, but I couldn’t because I knew he was right. I would have done it all the same, and if I didn’t, it would’ve been Cora or Desmond, or some new Ringer crew member I’d never met before forced to do their bidding. Rin didn’t seem like the type of woman who’d give up easily.
“Exactly!” Hayes said. He hopped to his feet. “Now, what do you say we cheer you up a bit. We’ve got a gift for you. I swear on your great-however-many-times-grandpa, you’ll love it.”
“I’m not—”
“Won’t accept any ‘nos.’” He yanked on my arm, his powered suit easily providing the muscle to haul me upright. “After three years with those two, no way I’m dealing with another sorry sack. Oh.” He bent over, picked up the ration bar, and shoved it into my hand. “And would you eat the damn thing already? You pass out, and it’ll be my ass.”
With that, he left the room. I guess I was starving because once he was around the corner, I ripped open the wrapper and shoved half of the bar into my mouth. Chicken soup-flavored, it tasted like heaven. I scarfed down the rest and hurried to catch up with him, struggling to match his strides. He was far more accustomed than I to walking in these suits.
“How have I never heard of your group... organization... whatever it is?” I asked, still chewing.
“Outside of Pervenio higher-ups, few had before the recording we sent out on the Piccolo,” he answered. “For decades there’ve been factions of Titanborn protesting for more rights, with names and fancy leaders. Pervenio and his hound Director Sodervall put them all down. Unlike them, the Children of Titan aren’t a group. We’re a symbol. We’re everywhere, and nowhere—operating out of sight. Cells functioning on our own terms. This is just one of many, kid. Few of us know of each other, even fewer have seen each other, but we all know what we want.”
“And what’s that?”
“Our home back.”
A difficult sentiment to argue with. Every Ringer dreamed of what it might’ve been like to live before the Great Reunion, when our chief concern was how best to work together to acquire the resources we needed and build a prosperous, peaceful civilization. The new, better Earth Darien Trass had dreamed of. We never considered going back, and it wasn’t only because Titan’s atmosphere was often too stormy to see through. Even once we discovered that Earthers had survived a century after the Meteorite hit, we were happy to let them rebuild on their own and fight each other for control, until Luxarn Pervenio’s father showed up on our doorstep and we foolishly invited them in.
“Do you know how many Titanborn are living throughout the Ring?” Hayes asked after a few seconds went by without me responding. “And I don’t mean one-generation offworlders from Earth. I mean real, genuine men and women with roots dating back to before the Great Reunion.”
I shrugged.
“Roughly two-point-three million by census,” he answered. “Probably a couple hundred thousand more illegitimates. Hasn’t grown in decades because of our damn immune systems, but it hasn’t fallen much either since the plague’s effects leveled out. Just like Trass never thought the people we left behind would eventually enslave us, Earthers never figured their arrival would drive us to focus on settling down with a good mate and popping out baby Ringers.”
“Just so they can get sick too,” I grumbled.
“You’re not listening. By blood, we outnumber the Earthers here three to one, probably more. Eventually, new Earther immigrants will close the gap like Pervenio wants, but if we can make them fear this place too much to dig out of the mud on Earth and drag their asses over, if they choose to go to a Venta Co colony at Europa instead, or Mars, then guess what?”
“It gets better.”
“It does indeed. But if we don’t change anything, eventually, there won’t be anyone to remember the days before they arrived and the home we built. We’ll be offworlders, the same as any others, throwing our lot into the Departure Lottery just to feel like we’re worth something.”
He turned down a branch in the hallway, and as I followed, I realized, based on my knowledge of the Piccolo, where we were headed. We were at the starboard airlock wing. This hall was flanked by similar rows of benches, only there were no empty exo-suits hanging on the wall. The inner seal was closed.
I froze.
“Don’t worry,” Hayes snickered. “I’m not going to shove you out.” He keyed a command to open the inner seal, and sitting inside the airlock was Captain Saunders, his wrist cuffed to a pipe. His s
kin was whiter than any Earther’s should be, and his whole body was drenched in sweat, even though he was shivering. A torn shirt was tied around his torso, covering a gunshot wound.
“Captain Saunders!” I exclaimed and scurried over. His head slumped to the side as he wheezed. Judging by how red the floor around him was, he’d lost a lot of blood. I nudged him, but his eyelids only fluttered, and he groaned something inaudible.
“What the hell are you doing to him?” I questioned.
“Figured we’d save the worst of them for you, Mr. Trass,” Hayes said, grinning.
SIXTEEN
Hayes wasn’t pleased when I asked him to show me where the ship’s water stores were so I could retrieve some for Captain Saunders, but he reluctantly let me do as I pleased. That was the first time I began to consider that maybe he and Rin were telling the truth about who I was. No doors were locked for a Trass. The thought was so unbelievable it almost had me amused. Almost.
The Sunfire’s galley was barren. Cabinet doors hung loose and tables were tossed about, stained with blood and corrosion. It was like I’d stepped into a time machine and emerged on the Piccolo years after it being abandoned. A pallet filled with ration bars like the one I’d been given earlier sat in the corner, along with a few small tanks of water. All of it bore Venta Co markings, and while I wasn’t sure how they got the supplies onto the Sunfire, there was no doubt they were how Rin and her skeleton crew had survived for so long. Some expiration dates were after the Sunfire’s supposed disappearance. I wondered if Venta knew they were backing a public execution, all to stick it to their corporate rivals.
I filled a cup with water for the captain before realizing how dry my own throat was. I downed three cups, then saved one for him. With the Venta g-stim diminishing my soreness, I also found that I was starving. I stuffed another ration bar in my mouth and grabbed two more just in case. Nobody stopped me. Hayes returned to the command deck after he saw what I was up to. Gareth stayed to watch my every move, but despite his hawkish glare, he kept his distance.
“Hey, Captain,” I said as I approached the airlock, water in hand and focused on ensuring I didn’t crush the cup with my unnaturally strong grip. I kneeled beside him. “C’mon, you need this.”
He was barely conscious. I grabbed his jaw and pried open his mouth enough to pour some water inside. Most of it dribbled down his chin, washing the blood away, but some of it got in. He coughed, and I held his mouth shut so he wouldn’t spit it out before I forced in some more. When it seemed he’d had his fill, I yanked on the cloth wrapping his torso and dripped some into the area of his wound. He moaned and pushed at my arm, but with my suit on, he couldn’t fight me off. I continued cleaning him until the cup was empty.
“You’ll thank me for that,” I said.
I noticed the whites of his eyes peeking through a narrow crack in his eyelids as his head turned to face me. He shivered again. The Sunfire was cold, even for Ringers, so I couldn’t imagine how he must have felt. I got back up and returned to the room I’d first awakened in. All I could find was a ratty blanket, but I knew it was the best I’d get. I couldn’t risk letting him borrow any of my clothes. After falling face-first into a pool of his Earther blood, I was lucky I wasn’t already covered in rashes and vomiting, even though for once in my life, a trip to quarantine was the least of my concerns.
When I returned to the airlock, I lay the blanket over his shoulders. He grabbed the ends, crossed his arms, and failed in an attempt to whisper. Then his head drooped back against the wall, and he passed out. So I waited for an hour, maybe two. I waited so long that I started to doze off...
I stood in front of a transparent divider. It was similar to the one in the Darien Q-Zone that separated my mother and me. One by one, a crowd of people on the other side turned to reveal their faces.
First, I saw John, a bandage wrapped around his head. Then came the other familiar faces of the Piccolo’s Earther crew, until Captain Saunders appeared. Blood leaked out of a widening hole in his stomach as he stood.
“Help us.” I could hear their muffled cries, but there was no intercom through which to reply. Lester parted the crowd and limped toward me, bruised and bloody. Yavik arrived next to him, along with a few more recognizable Ringers. Desmond approached last, only he wasn’t alone. He took Cora’s hand as she wept.
“You did it now, Kale,” he sneered.
“Why did you do this?” Cora sniveled. It was hard to hear her over the constant repetition of the Earthers asking for help.
“Cora,” I said and placed my hands against the glass. “Cora!”
Someone touched my shoulder. I turned to see my mother standing beside me, completely healthy and wearing a bright smile. Finally, I was on her side of the divider.
“Don’t watch, Kale,” she said with a calming presence. “It’ll all be over soon.”
I looked nervously between her and the entire crew of the Piccolo. Desmond cackled. The captain cursed me as his belly opened farther. Cora peered up at me through the bloody fingers covering her face, heartbroken.
An obnoxious klaxon blared. My mother took my hand. Then, the back wall of the room the crew was in whooshed open, and their screams were squelched as they vanished into blackness.
“Cora!” I shouted as my eyes sprang open. I was panting, the salty tang of sweat on my lips as more dribbled down my face. I searched from side to side and discovered Rin beside me. The ghastly nature of her face shocked me once again now with the brighter halogen lights of the airlock beaming down on her. She held a cup of water.
“Relax, Kale,” she said. “It was only a dream.”
I sat up and wiped my brow. “I was hoping all of this was,” I said.
“So did I.” She crouched beside me and glared at Captain Saunders. He continued to shiver and clutch the blanket tightly against his chest. “You can try to help him as much as you want, but it isn’t going to change anything that happened.”
“What are you going to do to him?” I asked.
“Like Hayes told you, that’s not up to me,” she said.
“Maybe we are family, but I’m not a murderer.”
“It’d be a mercy at this point. There’s nowhere else for him to go but out the hatch. Aren’t you tired of being called ‘Earther-lover?’”
“Water...” Captain Saunders croaked. He pawed at Rin’s leg, his arm barely able to move.
“You want this?” Rin regarded him with disdain. She tilted the cup in her hand and slowly allowed it to drip over the rim onto the floor.
“Stop! Just leave him alone.” I grabbed the cup from her and held it under his mouth. He struggled through a few sips alone before I had to support his head to help.
Rin snickered and sat against the wall across from me. She poked him in the head, watching with delight as it caused his entire body to tip.
“Fine,” she said. “If you can tell me one reason your captain deserves to live, then I’ll happily pilot this ship straight to Pervenio Station and turn myself in.”
I took a moment to think, and then said, “He gave me my first chance. Got me out of the shadows.”
“Please. If your father wasn’t who he was, you would’ve never escaped your life of thievery on Darien alive. Saunders helped you? He enslaved you. You broke into his clan-brother’s residence and got caught, so he made you work it off for a year, even though nothing was stolen. Then he started paying you like he does the other Titanborn members of his crew and made you feel as if your life had changed. Brought you the joy of credits. The Earthers working next to you make double your wage, at least, but it’s more than you could ever earn legally in the Lowers, so that’s fine. Why should we be treated the same as our brethren from the homeworld?”
My hands tightened into fists. I wanted to scream at her, but I restrained myself. “Did you bring me here just to have somebody new to lecture?” I said.
“No,” Rin said. “I want you to stop blaming the universe for how our people live and start bla
ming the Earthers. He’s the same as any of them. All that matters to them is the profit margin and let anyone who stands in the way of it rot in quarantine. They’ll make bastards out of us all.”
“And ‘kill as many as possible’ is the only answer you could come up with? Trass wouldn’t have wanted this.”
“Trass died thinking Earth was going with him. ‘He gave his life to give us the Ring.’ How thrilled do you think he would be to see how they’ve corrupted his vision? Robbed it of its very soul.”
“You tell me,” I said. “You’re the expert on him.”
She bit her mangled lip, then sighed. “Do you want to know how I wound up on the Sunfire?”
I glared at her but said nothing. She must have taken that as a “yes,” because she began telling the story anyway.
“Your dad spent his whole life running,” she said. “Director Sodervall and his employer never stopped hunting the descendants of Trass after the Great Reunion. They knew we weren’t all gone, not yet. Alann struggled to hide us every step of the way. My name changed countless times. He didn’t want that for you, and neither did your mom. So we hacked the system and gave you a dead father with the name ‘Drayton.’ Years later, Alann grew tired of having to look out for his little sister too. He decided that I should hide on a gas harvester, out of sight, until the Children of Titan were ready to make a real difference.
“The crew of the Sunfire were the ones eventually meant to be placed in the airlock and evacuated for all the Ring to see. You were never meant to be involved. But the Sunfire had a captain just like this one. He liked to prey on the Titanborn women he hired. Put a little bonus into their paychecks after he took them, and then toss them away if they got sick. For the first few shifts, I was a good girl following her brother’s orders. I met Hayes, Gareth, and Joran, and we helped harvest tons of gas in the name of Luxarn Pervenio. And every night, I or some other poor Titanborn woman, would be escorted away to the captain’s room and he’d have his way.
Children of Titan Series: Books 1-4: (A Space Opera Thriller Box Set) Page 41
