Children of Titan Series: Books 1-4: (A Space Opera Thriller Box Set)

by Rhett C. Bruno

  I passed Gareth. He stood with a cane and a fresh bandage on his leg. He signed “Now you lead” to me. Beyond him, Desmond lay on a medical table, an IV connected to his arm. His head was angled toward me, his eyes still drawn wide from the thrill.

  On an adjacent table sat Rylah herself. I’d have recognized her in her tight-fitting violet dress anywhere, but the rest of her looked like she’d been through a rough battle. She offered me a nod but nothing more.

  The red-haired woman Rin had referred to as the Doctor tended to a wound in Rylah’s calf. She was the only person in the entire base who wasn’t watching me. She was also the only non-Titanborn. A necklace with a Departure Ark Ship figurine hung from her neck, a clear giveaway since no sane Titanborn would wear anything referencing M-day right now. As I got close, I saw the shimmer of dried tears on her freckled cheeks. It made me wonder if she’d chosen to be where she was, an alien to all those around her… just like Cora.

  I shook the thought out of my head and forced myself to focus. Rin waited in front of me. She was out of her armor, wearing a simple tunic like everybody else. She didn’t even have her mask on to conceal her half-burned face. The grisly sight didn’t earn a second glance from me. In her hands, she held a hand-terminal that was set to record.

  “Rylah prepared a connection from Darien to broadcast to the entire Ring,” she said. “We’re ready.” Her voice was cold and distant. It had been that way since we’d watched the Piccolo explode and Hayes not emerge from the clouds.

  “Good,” I replied. I went to step past her, but she grasped my arm. “Are you?”

  I removed her hand as gently as I could and continued on my way. I still wore every part of my powered armor except for the helmet, so I had to be careful not to hurt her.

  My mom suddenly parted the crowd and positioned herself in front of me. As one of the recuperating Q-Zone escapees, she still wore her sanitary mask. The rest of those in her situation were in a nearby cavern continuing their treatment under the watch of the Doctor.

  When we’d first arrived at the hideout and she saw me, she wept. I squeezed her so hard I almost broke her back, but as grateful as I was to be with her, no tears escaped me. Once I knew she was okay, all I could manage to ask her was whether or not she knew who I really was, who my father really was. Her expression told me everything I needed to know.

  “Kale,” she said presently, forcing a smile. “You don’t have to do this.”

  “I need to finish what I started,” I said.

  “No, you don’t. All that matters now is that we support each other.”

  A week earlier, that would have been enough for me, but more had happened in the short time since I’d left the Q-Zone to save her than in the entirety of my life before then.

  “You’ll never be stuck in a place like that again, Mom,” I said. “I promise. None of us will.” I placed my hands over her cheeks and gazed straight into her eyes. She seemed healthy. The dark rings around her eyelids were gone, and her cheeks were a lighter shade of pink.

  She choked back tears. “Kale… don’t.”

  I embraced her, pulled her tight, and pressed my lips against her forehead. Then I placed her frail body to the side and stepped forward. Director Sodervall was on his knees within the airlock that provided entry to the base, hands cuffed behind his back and a bag covering his head. Behind him, a tiny viewport offered a view of Titan’s whipping wind. Two armored Children of Titan operatives stood on either side of the open hatch, pulse-rifles at the ready. I stepped in front of them and turned to Rin.

  “Recording,” she said.

  I regarded all the people gathered in the room, then stared into the lens of the device in Rin’s hand. Then I cleared my throat. “People of the Ring,” I began. “My people. For too long, we have lived in fear. Controlled. Watched. Infected. No longer.” I spread my arms, taking care to gesture to the armored men behind me. “You all know my face and what we’ve done, but what the Voice of the Ring failed to mention is who I really am. The secret he’s been keeping since the day they arrived. My name is not Kale Drayton. It is Kale Trass.”

  The crowd arrayed before me released a collective gasp. I could only imagine the reaction of all the people throughout Titan’s numerous colony blocks or around the Ring watching their local newsfeeds, which Rylah had managed to subvert. That was a far simpler task than broadcasting to the entirety of Sol, and my message was, at first, meant only for my people and our direct enemies. It would spread soon enough.

  “Trass’s blood runs through my veins, as it did my father’s,” I continued. “Luxarn Pervenio and his dog Sodervall kept us in the darkness, but no longer. Those who think themselves our masters will fall! Here I stand while one of the places we’ve dreaded for decades burns, begging you as a fellow child of Titan: Rise from your hollows to reclaim our homeworld! Fight toward the light, not just on Titan, but all throughout the Ring and the stations watching over us! Don’t be afraid. The spirits of our fallen watch over us from the winds. Our freedom starts today.”

  I stepped to the side, revealing Director Sodervall. The operatives tore off his hood so all could see his bloody face. He screamed futilely into a gag.

  “To all the corporations like his who think they can own the Ring. To the USF and every citizen of Earth, I say this: Retribution is coming. There is a new Voice of the Ring, and we are the descendants of those chosen by Trass. We are Titanborn.”

  I nodded at one of the operatives, and he moved so I could reach the airlock controls. My hand hovered there as I beheld Director Sodervall’s horrified visage. I then turned to the crowd. To my friends and my family. Their jaws hung. Their eyes were glued open.

  Rin gritted her teeth and nodded at me.

  My mother wept and turned her head away.

  I pictured Cora’s smile, as radiant as Piccolo when its engines blew. Then, wordlessly, I keyed the inner seal of the airlock to close and the outer to open. Director Sodervall didn’t scream as Titan’s cold embrace greeted him. He couldn’t even squirm.

  The seconds he was out there felt like a lifetime for me. The room stayed so silent that I could hear the thud of his body collapsing into the hatch. A swipe across the controls signaled the airlock to pressurize again, and the inner seal slid back up into the ceiling. Director Sodervall’s frozen body fell through. As he hit the floor, his head and torso cracked into so many pieces they looked like one of Saturn’s ice rings wrapping what was left whole of him.

  No one dared say a word. I turned, glowered directly into Rin’s camera, and said, “From ice to ashes, Titan.”

  Epilogue

  I jolted awake. My heart raced so rapidly, my ribs were on the verge of breaking open. All I could see were blotches of white and blurred figures. As I turned my head to survey my surroundings, a respirator covering my mouth yanked it back into place.

  That was when I realized I was gagging. I grabbed the respirator, needles popping out of my arms as I moved and pulled. The long tube attached to the respirator slid out of my throat, releasing all manner of phlegm and who knows what else as I gasped for a real breath. And kept on gasping. It felt like I’d been chained to the bottom of an ocean until I was on the brink of drowning, then launched to the surface.

  I threw myself off whatever I was lying on. More needles affixed to tubes popped out from every region of my body. My legs were weaker than after a month in a sleep-pod on a passenger liner. Or at least, one of them was. I couldn’t feel the other at all, which caused me to stumble forward into a counter upon an attempt to stand. My groping hands knocked over pieces of shiny equipment. Some fell and shattered. My hearing was so distorted that they could well have been explosions.

  Fingerlike appendages wrapped my arm and heaved. Muffled voices murmured in my ears. I tore free and attempted to run, but again my numb leg caused me to fall. I grasped at the area in front of me, expecting to find air, but instead, my hand smacked into something rigid and cold.

  Once more, someone pulled a
t me, hoisting me to my feet. I threw them off and hopped along on the leg I could feel while my hands skated across a smooth wall for balance. I continued until one sank through an opening. A door. I grasped the edge, swung myself into the adjoining space, and found the wall again. This time, it was coarse and lumpy, like the face of a cavern.

  I clung to it for a few hops, then discovered I wouldn’t topple as long as I pressed all my weight on the leg I could feel, as if there were a crutch in place of the other. I’m not sure where I was planning on going, but I hobbled as quickly as I could. Faster and faster, like a kid learning how to ride a bike. Until I slammed into a railing.

  I searched for the hand-bar, and once I found it, I slouched all my weight onto my arms. My working leg burned with soreness. Each heavy breath I drew stung deep in my chest, like a blade plunged through my sternum. My vision remained cloudy, but as I rested there, the ability to sense shadows and depth returned.

  It wasn’t cold enough to be Titan, but I was in some manner of grand hollow wreathed in solid rock. Aged air recyclers rattled through the darkness. An asteroid perhaps? My augmenting senses informed me that the gravity was too weak for it to be Earth or even Mars.

  I squeezed my eyelids as hard as I could and reopened them, trying to drive away the blurriness. They were wet with tears even though I wasn’t crying, as confused by disuse as I was about what the fuck was going on. I repeated that procedure a few more times, and then I saw.

  On the level below me, a group of twenty or so people trained in hand-to-hand combat. Only they weren’t ordinary security officers. They wore all-black boiler suits. Their hair was neat and trimmed, almost military-like. Their skin was pale and youthful. Over the left side of each one’s face, a yellow eye-lens was attached. The same as the one Zhaff wore.

  I fell to a knee. Images of the last memories I could draw on streamed through my consciousness. A gunshot piercing his helmet and leaving only Zhaff’s green eye visible through the stormy haze of Titan. Aria soaring away above him.

  My breathing hastened until I was clutching my chest as if to hold my heart inside. I stared through glass at the numerous Zhaff-like people below. They’d stopped training, each of their shiny eye-lenses aimed up at me.

  I keeled onto my side, my whole body going numb. The corners of my vision darkened as I grew woozy. Glinting yellow dots danced across the room, like stars against the blackness of space.

  There was a hell, and I, Malcolm Graves, was in it.

  THE CHILDREN OF TITAN BOOK THREE

  TITAN’S RISE

  Prologue

  Luxarn Pervenio, CEO of the solar-system-wide entity known as Pervenio Corporation, stared at the pixels of light projecting from his wooden desk on Pervenio Station, orbiting just outside of Saturn’s A ring. He leaned toward the holographic screen, the smell of rare oak greeting his nostrils. On it played a recording of Kale Trass, the newly emerged leader of the Children of Titan—an offworld, Ringer terrorist cell obsessed with retaking Titan no matter the cost.

  On the screen, Kale said heartlessly, “From ice to ashes” before he exposed former Pervenio Corp Director James Sodervall to the icy surface of Titan. Luxarn had known the grumpy old wretch since he was but a boy. His father’s right-hand man when they arrived on Titan, and then his. Now, Luxarn stared at the tiny shards of ice Sodervall had been reduced to after Kale Trass had shattered his frozen body.

  Monsters, he thought. Radicals, all of them!

  Kale had yanked on the thread and caused the entire operation around Saturn to begin unraveling like a fraying rope. Nearly half a century of the hard work Luxarn had undergone assimilating their peoples, undone. By now, the entire solar system had likely viewed the recording. The United Sol Federation’s Assembly back on Earth would say Luxarn lost control. His rivals would smell blood in the water and come for his holdings—Venta Co, Red Wing Company, and whatever else sprang up.

  “Sir, we‘ve lost the Sector C hangars,” someone addressed him urgently. “All public docks are under siege... There’s… there’s too many of them.” Luxarn glanced up to see the commander of his security forces on Pervenio Station panting in his doorway. A door set on hold-open for the first time in... he couldn’t remember how long.

  “Where did we go wrong, Commander?” Luxarn asked calmly without averting his gaze from the ghastly footage. “The stars are so near. Don’t they understand? If we squabble amongst each other like the humans of old, it’ll all be lost.”

  “I... sir.” The commander took a moment to gather himself. “There are more ships on their way, stolen from the surface of Titan. Orbital defenses are failing. They hit us there first. Somehow they knew the station’s entire layout.”

  Luxarn released a weak chuckle. “Half these halls were built by Ringer hands.”

  The commander took a few steps further into the office. “Sir, we have to get you off the station before we’re overrun.”

  Luxarn stood without a word. He turned and laid his hands against the cold viewport spanning the wall behind his desk. Beyond it, two sparking halves of a destroyed gas-harvesting vessel drifted aimlessly through the icy rocks of Saturn’s rings. Another transport hurtled toward the station, its impulse drive flaring blue as it failed.

  “I gave him away at birth,” Luxarn said, “but wouldn’t it be fitting now if we shared the same grave?”

  “Sir, I don’t know who you’re talking about,” the commander said.

  “No, you don’t. And I suppose that’s my greatest failing.”

  “Sir, please. We’ll wipe all the valuable data before they can get their hands on it, and we’ll thwart this rebellion, but you need to get to safety. Pervenio Corp needs you. Earth needs you.”

  Luxarn breathed in the view of Saturn’s star-and-moon-speckled archipelago one last time. His haven of resources was meant to usher in a new golden age of humanity. When the Meteorite struck Earth three centuries before and nearly wiped out his species, he wondered if his ancestors who poked their heads up from his family’s fallout shelter ever could’ve imagined standing on a space station under siege from a group of angry offworlders halfway across the solar system.

  Progress... It was something Kale and his horde of Ringers would never understand because their ancestors fled Earth, looking for greener pastures. For three hundred years, they lived in their little paradise on Titan—until Luxarn’s family arrived, answering the call of the stars and the expansion necessary to ensure humanity was never sent to the brink of extinction again.

  “Lead away,” Luxarn sighed. He followed the commander. Kale’s pale, hard gaze watched him from the holographic screen on his desk all the way out.

  “Your new ship is nearly prepped,” the commander said. “The Ringers won’t be able to catch you, no matter how hard they try.”

  In the adjoining private hangar, a prototype starship sat perched atop an active fuel line. Constructed to be Luxarn’s personal craft, it boasted a prototype impulse drive that was the fastest of its size in all of Sol. The ship was so new it didn’t even have a name yet, but Luxarn had always found disaster to be the impetus for advancement.

  A host of corporate VIPs waited outside the closed loading ramp for boarding. All the brilliant minds and sycophants who helped the unstoppable Pervenio machine chug along. Luxarn scanned the hangar but didn’t find what he was looking for.

  “Where are the bodies?” he asked. “I requested they make the trip with me.”

  The commander paused from issuing orders to a unit of officers and turned back to Luxarn. “Excuse me, sir?”

  “The bodies of my collectors retrieved from the surface of Titan before Kale blew it all to hell!” Luxarn roared. The commander winced and swallowed the lump in his throat. Malcolm and Zhaff had located the Children of Titan hideout under a Ringer quarantine but were murdered shortly before Kale detonated a nuclear engine core on top of the place, taking nearly half of Luxarn’s armed forces with it.

  “They’ve been transported directly to
the corporate med block for treatment. Didn’t anyone inform you? One is in a coma, but the doctors say without life support, he’ll die immediately. The older survived exposure. They got to him just in time.”

  Luxarn grabbed the commander by his chest plate. “Malcolm Graves is alive?”

  “Barely. Lost a leg to the cold, but that still makes him luckier than his freak partner.”

  Luxarn’s hands curled into fists. That freak partner happened to be Luxarn’s illegitimate son, Zhaff. Any other time, he would’ve had the commander spaced for spouting off like that, but he didn’t know. Nobody knew the truth except for Malcolm.

  “His Cogent partner,” Luxarn corrected.

  “Yes, sir… Sorry, sir.”

  “Take me to them immediately.”

  “Sir, there is no time. You must leave now. I’ll have them dispatched on a medical transport as soon as the survivor is stabilized.”

  “I’m not going anywhere without—”

  The far entry to the hangar exploded. The deafening blast sent Luxarn staggering, and a bullet slashed across the throat of a nearby security officer, spattering red onto Luxarn’s face.

  “They’re here!” someone hollered. A horde of white-marble-faced offworld devils appeared like foaming waves through a broken dam. Pervenio officers charged ahead to return fire. All the VIPs ducked for cover, banging on the prototype ship’s sealed ramp to be let inside.

  “We’re not done fueling!” an engineer shouted before a bullet knocked him off his feet. As Luxarn watched the chaos erupt, he couldn’t help but see the irony. Surrounded by a wealth of all the fuel humanity could want for on Saturn, they lacked it at the most crucial moment.