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

by Rhett C. Bruno

  “Not you too, now,” I groused.

  “You asked me to always be honest with you.”

  “I prefer when that honesty pits you against Rin, not with her.”

  “For what it’s worth, I trust her,” Rylah said. “We half-breed girls have to stick together. Besides, I’ve seen the way she looks at you. There’s no treachery there, believe me. There was a time I made a living off the looks I gave men.”

  “It doesn’t matter anyway,” I said. “We need her.” Rylah nodded her agreement, then raised the bottle for another swig, but I wrapped my hand around hers to stop her. “And I need you in charge while we’re gone, Rylah.” I took the bottle. “Focus on reparations, the Hayes Memorial Hospital, and developing a fleet at Phoebe using what we have, and we’ll worry about the rest of the Ring beyond what Pervenio owned when we return. My mother is prepared to perform whatever outreach you need. If there’s any trouble—”

  “Kale.” She stretched out her long, scarred leg and leaned back as if she hadn’t a care in the world. “If anything goes wrong, you’ll only be hundreds of millions of kilometers away. I’ll be sure to consult with you, but nobody’s going to make a move until the USF feels this out. Every eye in Sol will be on your visit to Mars. Enjoy it. I loved a man once who spent time there. Maybe you’ll find someone too.” Her mouth formed a mischievous grin after she uttered those last words.

  I shook my head, partly out of exasperation, but mostly to hide the fact that my cheeks were again flushed. “I swear to Trass, I don’t know how you and Rin are related.”

  “I’m pretty sure they’re the ones lying about their fathers,” Gareth signed.

  Rylah slid forward on the table, ran the back of her manicured fingers up Gareth’s arm and then around the back of his neck. I’ll admit, even my perpetual frustration melted away as I watched him struggle with being so near to her. She pulled his head so close that her lips grazed his earlobe.

  “Trust me, handsome, who would make up being related to her?” she whispered. When she was finished, she glanced up in my direction. “Life is too brief to spend every minute scowling. Why don’t you head down to the docks and let the ambassador in on the celebration? Today, Pervenio finally got what was coming to them, even if they almost took me with them.”

  “Luxarn Pervenio could suffer for a thousand lifetimes, and he still wouldn’t get all that he deserves,” I said.

  Rylah groaned in frustration. “Better yet, why don’t you go and join my sister? You two are gluttons for misery. As for me.” She lowered herself off the table and started limping toward the exit. On her way, she snagged her bottle back. “I’m going to go see if there’s a Ringer out there drunk enough to pretend they don’t know who I am before I have to keep your throne warm.”

  “Titanborn,” I corrected.

  “Right. Still getting used to that.” She looked back, smiled warmly, and then left.

  “I sure know why Hayes worshipped that woman,” Gareth signed.

  “He was all talk.”

  “Think she’s in condition to look after things?”

  “She better be,” I stated. Gareth snorted in agreement.

  “Docks?”

  I considered it for a moment, then shook my head. “Take the night off, Gareth. That’s an order.”

  He objected at first, but I shook him after a little convincing. I decided that Aria could wait until the morning. I didn’t want to distract her from her work, not when there was so much at stake. Instead, I snuck out through the Bistro’s kitchen and used some of the vent lines I frequented in my heyday as a young pickpocket to get down to the Lowers alone. I traversed the narrow, subterranean passage all the way to Level B2, sticking to the shadows as I made my way to the old rocky hollow where my mother had raised me.

  While I usually stayed in a luxurious room in an Uppers hotel meant for Luxarn Pervenio when he visited, I made sure that hollow always remained unoccupied. Celebrations of our liberation continued in the ice-rock tunnels of the Lowers, where the damage of revolution was less prevalent than above. They were all too busy to spot me, out of my armor and without my entourage.

  I stole myself into the hollow, locked the hatch, and lay upon the hard mattress where I grew up. Where my responsibilities consisted of thinking up what I should steal next so that I could make life easier for my mother, or dreaming about how best to ask Cora out for a drink. I begged my mind to stop racing so that I might be able to get some sleep, but it never came. Instead, I lay there, staring at the barren ceiling and listening to that recording of Luxarn Pervenio and Director Sodervall on repeat. I listened to them discuss all the reasons Cora was so senselessly killed until my mind brought me back to the first day I ever met her…

  “Drayton!” the voice of Captain Saunders thundered down the hall of Pervenio Station. I was mere seconds away from my assigned hangar when I heard him.

  I picked up my pace and darted around the corner, where I was greeted by his glower. Most Earthers tended to care about their appearance, but not him. A scraggly beard covered half his barrel-like chest.

  He had a hand-terminal out so he could check off all the members of his crew. Clearly, I was last, since the moment he spotted me, he stowed the thing.

  “You’re late,” he grumbled.

  I took a moment to catch my breath. “I’m sorry, sir. It was my first time traveling. I didn’t—”

  “You Ringers and your excuses. My brother made me hire you for that pretty Ringer servant who’s been cleaning his underwear for so long. You make him look bad, he’ll do a lot worse than me.”

  “It won’t happen again.”

  “Better not. Next time I’ll dock you a day.” He pointed toward a few other members of the crew loading up empty, transportable canisters to be filled with Saturn’s most valuable gases. “Help them load up. I want to push off the moment Pervenio inspection is through.”

  He strolled away, barking orders at someone else while I set off into the hangar. The gas harvester Piccolo was moored in the center, and as I approached, I couldn’t take my eyes off her. The ship wasn’t anything special. An old rust-bucket mostly that probably dated to before the Great Reunion, but I’d never seen a ship so large up close.

  It was the first time I’d ever stepped off Darien when I’d boarded the shuttle for Pervenio Station, passing through decontamination chamber after decontamination chamber, which Pervenio Corp said kept my kind safe from their diseases. Even so, I don’t think I’d ever kept my sanitary mask and gloves pulled on as tightly as they were that day.

  “Look, John,” one of the Earther crewmen remarked as I approached the loading ramp. “Got some fresh meat.”

  “Extra pale, just how we like them,” John answered.

  He regarded me with the same shit-eating grin so many Earthers did when they came to the Lowers, thinking they could rip off some Ringers. I thought about snapping back, then noticed the baton hanging at his side. He and the two goons on either side of him were the ship’s freelance security team. Pervenio Corp didn’t waste good men on old, manned gas harvesters that could hardly make a profit compared to the new, fully automated ones.

  “I don’t want any trouble,” I said. “I’m just here to work.” I didn’t mention that I’d promised my mother I’d be good and stay out of trouble for her sake. She’d gotten me out of trouble with her boss by offering to have me pay off my debts working for the Piccolo. Got me out from being under the thumb of the wrong kind of people too.

  John cackled. A Ringer nudged me on his way by, pushing a cart stacked so absurdly high with supplies for our four-month stint on Saturn.

  “Great,” he grumbled. “Another one eager to lick the mudstomper’s boots.”

  “Make sure to hurry back, Desmond,” John called after the man. “Wouldn’t want you to miss out on any work.”

  “Screw yourself.”

  I watched Desmond struggle to push his cart off the ramp. With so much weight piled on, it was a job more suited for an Ear
ther, but his expression said all I needed to know. He wasn’t going to let any mudstomper make him look weak.

  John’s burly arm wrapped the back of my neck, and he led me to another cart in need of loading.

  “What’s your name, kid?” he asked.

  “Ka…” I sputtered over my own name. Growing up in the Lowers, you get used to feeling uncomfortable any time an Earther is close enough to grab your throat. “Kale Drayton.”

  “We have a tradition on board the Piccolo, Kale.”

  “Yeah?”

  He glanced over at his cronies, suppressing a grin. “Yeah. The last Ringer who arrives for duty has to pick up the harvesting canisters.”

  John’s buddies knocked a stack of cylindrical containers off their rack. They clanked along the metal floor, the sound filling the hangar. I felt my heart drop further and further with every impact until they stopped rolling.

  “What in Earth’s name is going on over there!” the captain shouted.

  “Sorry, cap,” John answered. “New guy’s still getting up to speed. I’ll sort him out.” John then glanced up at me, that same grin smeared across his face. I stood two heads taller than him, but I’d never felt so small. “Whoops,” he said. “We push off in thirty. You better get started.”

  My blood started to boil. My fingers dug into my palm as they curled into fists.

  “What’s wrong, boy?” he asked. “Your puny Ringers muscles too tired to do some lifting?”

  “Kid looks like he wants to punch ya,” one of his buddies said.

  “Oh, please do it. I’ve been itching to snap a skelly’s neck like a twig.”

  Anyone from the Lowers knew two things. Never trust an Earther, and never pick a fight with one unless you’ve got backup. Not a single one of the other Ringers on the crew came to my aid, even Desmond. A few gave us a passing glance, but nothing more.

  I didn’t care. I was young and stupid, and angry that I got caught stealing for the wrong man and forced to work on a rusty old ship. My arm tensed as I prepared to take my best shot—I’d only get one before I’d have to bolt—and then I saw something that paralyzed me.

  A young woman strolled down the ramp of the ship. Hybrid by the look of her, with curves no Ringer should have and hair so blonde it looked silver. Maybe I’d just never seen a woman beyond the dim, flickering lights of the Lowers, but she was the most beautiful thing I’d ever seen.

  “That’s what I thought,” John said. “Get to work, Ringer.” He brushed by, he and his friends all cackling. They nudged some of the canisters with their feet on the way by to move them even further from the rack.

  The woman stopped by the mess and knelt to help me. I was so taken aback by her, I let her lift the thing before I remembered to rush over and help her.

  “I’ve got it,” I said. I held out my arms, but the woman walked by and hauled the thing to the rack herself.

  “They’re jerks, but you’ll get used to them,” she said. All the tension in my muscles melted away as the sound of her soft, calming voice washed over me.

  I’m not even sure my response was in English. She pretended not to notice.

  “I’ll get the rest. It’s fine,” I managed to utter. “My mess.”

  “First day?” she said.

  I nodded.

  “Sometimes, with them, it’s best to just keep your mouth shut and your head down,” she said. “You’ll do fine.”

  She started ambling away toward the captain, when I blurted out, “What’s your name?” My voice cracked halfway through. If my mother heard the way I cursed at myself inwardly for sounding so stupid, she’d have had a heart attack.

  The woman turned back, her hair swishing over her slender shoulder. The tiniest inkling of a smile touched her thin lips. “Cora,” she said. “I’m the navigator.”

  I wiped the tear from my cheek and tried to force myself to think about something else, anything else. That day seemed so meaningless at the time, but I’d been thinking back to the first time I met Cora more and more since she died. Not just seeing her for the first time, but what she’d said.

  She truly believed we could ignore the way Earthers treated us, like one day they’d wake up and see the light. Beat them with kindness. She believed it because she was a better person than anyone left on Titan or Earth. It broke my heart every time I remembered the day she died to know how wrong she was.

  I squeezed my eyelids shut and pressed my head into the pillow, desperately trying to sleep. After a few minutes of silence, my thumb found the key to set the recording of Luxarn’s and Sodervall’s fateful discussion to play again. As it did, I pulled up the only image I had of Cora—a grainy, overhead view from within the cell she was condemned to right before Director Sodervall spaced her simply because she wasn’t one of them. Her face obscured by blood, tears, and messy hair; her arms and legs covered in bruises.

  Because of them, that was all I had to remember her by. Nothing else.

  Four

  Malcolm

  Coming up on sixty years of living, I wasn’t ever going to get used to my new leg. It wasn’t the moving it part. That was relatively easy as long as I avoided strenuous situations. After a week in the depths of Undina, I was a relative pro at zipping around in straight lines. Dr. Aurora had me walking a few miles on a simulated Earth-G treadmill every day, pushing me like a drillmaster. That was followed by exhaustive physical therapy on my lower body to try and rekindle all the sensations I once enjoyed. The cantankerous old bat was utterly immune to my charms.

  What really freaked me out about the limb was the void every time I woke up. I found myself tapping the plated thigh just to make sure the leg was there, because other than a slight pinch on my hip when I willed any part of the artificial limb to move, I felt nothing. I’d even found that I couldn’t look at the thing when I operated it. It made my skin crawl, like a neighbor I didn’t like but was forced to tolerate had latched on to me, or like a partner, like Zhaff.

  Whiskey would’ve helped a ton. My prison guard—doctor—didn’t allow any. Not that there was any. I was in the clandestine training facility of the Cogent Initiative, where mentally troubled, illegitimate children with defects like Zhaff had were provided a chance to make a difference.

  Mr. Pervenio insisted I stay until the doc gave me a clean bill of health, so I shared all my time with the Cogents. They weren’t ones for conversation, so mostly I watched them train. Not that there was anything else to do. No bars, not even a viewscreen to watch a show or a newsfeed on. Their instructors claimed Mr. Pervenio didn’t want them distracted by the turmoil in Sol, but instead to prepare their minds and bodies to end it.

  So they trained. Every second they weren’t sleeping. Martial arts, aptitude exams, physiognomy, psychology, weaponry—anything to sculpt them into perfect shadow agents. It put a whole lot into perspective about Zhaff, starting with making me feel like an idiot for ever thinking I could compete with him. Sure, I had instinct from thirty years on the job, but I’d be better off sitting in front of a screen telling them what to do than trying to keep up.

  That seemed like the foremost responsibility of a director—like what Luxarn planned to make me. So, one day after giving up on my own exercise, I limped into the firing range. My new leg could go for an eternity, but the wrinkled one I had left over was weaker than ever after months being under for space travel and treatment. Painkillers dulled the soreness, but then I could hardly feel the pinch of moving the synth leg. There was no winning.

  Varus, the youngest Cogent out of the three dozen or so in the facility, was honing his aim. Like Zhaff, he couldn’t be much older than fifteen or sixteen, only he was squatter and built like a hover-car. Born on Earth by the looks of it. Like Zhaff had, I wondered what fresh horror he’d endured at the hands of kids who didn’t understand him to wind up here.

  His yellow eye lens was fixed down the sight of a pulse pistol. He kept his other exposed eye closed.

  An instructor decked out in Pervenio gear leane
d on the wall next to the shooting range console. He was older than the Cogent, though not by much. He couldn’t even grow a beard, and it sure as hell didn’t look like he’d ever seen a real firefight. He operated the controls like a tired dockworker, directing holographic targets in the shape of men to dart around the far side of the room like a flock of frenetic hummingbirds.

  The Cogent fell into a perfect stance and fired calculated shots into the head of every target, whether they were close or far. One clip, two clips. A chart on the instructor’s console provided the stats, and there wasn’t a single miss. On the last round of the third clip, the instructor sent a target as far as possible down the long, rocky passage. Sixty meters easy. Varus lined it up a second longer than usual, fired, and plunked it right through the center of the forehead.

  “Nice shot,” I remarked.

  He turned to me, and without a shred of emotion, said, “I was off by three centimeters.” Then he returned to shooting.

  I couldn’t help but grin. He was all Zhaff, with none of the personality I’d squeezed out of him. I thought back to Zhaff on our first job, standing among the ruins of an ancient Earth city while a Ringer terrorist held me at gunpoint. He would’ve let the man kill me if it had meant a chance at taking him in alive like our mission entailed. By the end of our short time together, I’d like to think he would’ve seen the value in bending the rules to keep his partner alive.

  Maybe I did have something to teach, or maybe I just missed the kid.

  “Shut it off,” I said to the instructor. He glared at me, but I didn’t waver, and eventually, he did as I asked. He knew exactly who I was. A part of me felt like we’d met before—maybe he was a collector once who couldn’t hack it—but my aging brain was getting fuzzy when it came to stray faces.

  “What is it now, Graves?” he grumbled.