I ignored him and placed a hand on Varus’s shoulder. The Cogent’s head whipped around, his single exposed eye somehow equally inexpressive and intimidating.
“It isn’t always as easy as pulling the trigger,” I said to him.
“Is there another way to fire this pulse pistol?” he asked, voice as stale as Zhaff’s was.
Again, I smirked. “No, what I mean is… Do you want to kill me?”
“I do not.”
“Good.” I patted him on the back and strolled out into the shooting aisle. I went about twenty meters and then turned toward him. “Instructor, position a target right behind me.”
The instructor went to key the commands, then paused. His lip twisted. “Maybe I should ask Doct—”
“I’m fine. Just do it.”
He didn’t look happy but obliged. I noticed the cerulean glow of a holographic target on the back of my arm.
“Now, the target behind me has me hostage,” I addressed Varus.
“He does not,” Varus said.
“Pretend. He’s your target, but he has a gun on me, and I’m upper-level Pervenio management.” He opened his mouth to reply, but I stopped him. “I know. Just imagine it. You’re left with two choices. He either escapes with a valuable hostage, or you risk taking the shot. What do you do?”
Varus eyed his instructor, who offered little more than a shrug. “I contact my primary handler and inquire how to proceed,” he stated.
“There’s no time. The man he has is your handler, and you’re in a dead zone. Hell, imagine I’m Luxarn Pervenio himself. I see how well you shoot with nothing in the way, but can you make that shot? With everything on the line. Can you?”
“Yes,” Varus said.
He raised his pulse pistol, and in that split second between him aiming and squeezing the trigger, my mind transported me back to Titan. Zhaff had my daughter in his clutches, so I pulled a gun on him. His weapon was up by the time my shot hit him but not quickly enough. His helmet snapped back before he crumpled to the ground in a heap of twisted limbs.
The vision caused me to reel, and Varus’s shot struck my shoulder. I was lucky they were only using flathead training bullets, but the force was still enough to knock me back on my ass. His black-clad figure ran to me, yellow eye-lens glinting. I had to shake my head a few times to remind myself who it really was. Shave a boy’s head, cover one eye, and make him pale from lack of sunlight—they all start to look the same.
“You moved into the path of the bullet,” he stated categorically as he hauled me to my feet. “You are in need of medical assistance.”
“I’m fine!” I shrugged him off and stumbled toward the wall. I leaned on it to gather myself and steady my breathing and heart rate. Thirty years on the job, never once had a gun pointed in my direction made me cower. I didn’t have nightmares. Like any collector with the stomach to stay in the game, I placed all the traumatic, dreadful things I’d seen deep in my brain, buried beneath a well of liquor.
Damn, I needed a drink.
“Malcolm,” someone whispered to me. I didn’t answer. “Malcolm.”
“What!” I snapped. I turned to see Dr. Aurora. Varus and the instructor were already back at the firing station, watching me. “Oh, Doc, it’s you.”
“Are you all right?”
I exhaled. “Yeah, I’m fine. Just needed a breather.” I’m sure my expression betrayed my words, since her craggy brow furrowed. All her tests and prodding, I wonder if she knew what I’d only just discovered. That it didn’t matter whether or not I even wanted to stay in my line of work for Mr. Pervenio—I was done. That a collector who can’t escape the specters of his past always is.
“Mr. Pervenio is requesting to meet with you immediately,” she said. She presented my worn duster as well as my beloved long-barreled F-3000 pulse pistol, collector issued. She’d joined me on more missions than I could remember.
“About?” I asked. I lifted the pistol and spun it around. It had a few new scrapes and blemishes from what had happened on Titan, but the old girl was in as good a shape as ever. I hadn’t realized how much I’d missed her until she was back in my hand, like a long-lost friend.
“In my last report, I informed him you are back in satisfactory health. He would like to discuss the future of your employment.”
“I can’t wait,” I droned.
Maybe Dr. Aurora was just eager to get rid of me and return to helping people who actually needed it. I took my belongings and followed her out, offering Varus a nod of encouragement on my way. I’m not sure he needed it. He didn’t look in the least bit rattled. Zhaff never had either, even right before the moment I put him down like a rebel offworlder.
Dr. Aurora left me alone outside Mr. Pervenio’s office in the deepest sanctum of the concealed facility. I straightened the creases of my worn duster and used the reflection in the shiny door to make sure all my effects were in order. Pistol hanging neatly, hair combed, beard trimmed. The doc even let me shave. There was nothing I could do about the new gray hairs on the top of my head or my deepened wrinkles, but at least I’d walk into my last meeting as a collector looking the part.
Nobody waited to greet me. There weren’t even officers posted outside to keep Luxarn safe. The only noise came from a small white room behind me, in which the Cogent Varus was now restrained to a reclined chair. I could tell it was him by his stocky build. A VR visor was strapped over his eyes, and who knows what was playing on it because the usually staid young man squirmed from side to side.
“Welcome, Malcolm Graves,” said a robotic voice. “Please, make yourself comfortable. Mr. Pervenio was delayed and will arrive shortly.”
I turned, startled, to see the very same service bot Luxarn Pervenio had flaunted my first time meeting him floating out of his office to receive me. The bulbous orb of metal and limbs was bizarre as ever. Its single oculus lined up with my eyes, gave them a scan, and then it allowed me inside.
Apparently, Luxarn had found a purpose for his service bot prototypes that everyday drones couldn’t really perform. Certified butler. I stepped in, and unlike the last time I entered his office, all the nerves of meeting with my employer had vanished. The bot didn’t follow.
His office on Undina was a far cry from his authentic-wood-clad one with a view of Saturn on Pervenio Station. It was swankier than the Cogent living and training chambers, but more in the way of what you’d expect the manager of an asteroid mine to have. Which made sense, considering that to the outside world, that was all Undina really was. Even I hadn’t known that buried deep in its crust was a training and research facility with the capability of installing the cybernetic marvel I now called my leg. It was no wonder Director Sodervall had been so irritated half-a-year back after I ravaged one of its mining sectors and risked exposing it to scrutiny.
I surveyed the room. A polished desk was centered in the back, with nothing on it but a console and Zhaff’s cracked eye lens. Some scrapped service bots, which Luxarn had apparently been tinkering with, lay along the floor. A painting of a beach on pre-Meteorite Earth hung on the otherwise blank wall behind his desk. I headed straight for the cabinets sunken into one side, searching for some of that fine whiskey he had the last time we spoke. Nothing.
“What are we, in a Three Messiahs church?” I mumbled.
I rummaged through the last drawer, and right before my hand came up empty, the holographic viewscreen display of Luxarn’s console caught my attention. One of the USF news feeds played on low volume, talking heads discussing the latest in Sol affairs.
“Pervenio Corp is dead,” said a newswoman positioned in front of an all-too-perfect New London skyline shot. “The interplanetary giant we’ve known since the rebuilding of civilization is gone. Buried.”
“How many corporations have we seen rise and fall?” a Pervenio Director named Barret Ulnor countered. I knew him by appearances, though he never handled offworld affairs. He ran the company’s tree farming branch on Earth, and stood amidst one of the
massive spaces before a wall of green leaves. From what I recalled, he was a buffoon—had to be to get stuck stationed on Earth.
“None with a CEO more bankable than Luxarn Pervenio,” Barret went on. “We still retain innumerable ventures throughout Sol, including the service bot filming me right now. There’s no reason to assume this is anything more than a hitch. A road bump.”
“Sure, the promise of your new service bot is keeping you afloat among the wealthy, but is pushing robotics on us really an answer? It’s a sideshow. How can you expect anyone to put faith in your employer after what happened at the Ring? The deaths of thousands of privately contracted civilians at the hands of the Children of Titan. The subsequent imprisonment of refugees in inhumane conditions on the very station his family built to oversee the Ring. The precipitate loss of a majority fraction of the gas-harvesting industry.”
The screen quickly cut to footage of firefights on Pervenio Station. Ringers armed with whatever they could find swarmed outmatched Pervenio officers. In the end, it froze on the image of Kale Trass with a pulse rifle in his hands. Behind him stood a woman with half her face burnt off. I recognized Kale from all the reports Director Sodervall issued when he was accused of raiding the Piccolo. The image was grainy, but there was no mistaking the look in his eyes. They exuded hate and rage I couldn’t imagine feeling toward anything. Yet, behind all that, there was no denying the fact that he was still so young. Ruler of the Ring or not, he was a kid.
“Have you seen the price of a ticket to Mars?” Barret said as the feed cut back to him. “The operations on Jupiter aren’t viable enough yet to sustain the expansion of our entire species at a decent price point. Even the recent buyout by Venta Co. of EuropaTek and Dynamo Shipworks won’t boost yield to reach half of what was harvested just last year.”
“People are going to have to get used to losing certain luxuries,” said the newswoman. “I think we’re all failing to recognize that we’re in the midst of a full-scale offworld revolution. Nothing like we’ve seen before.”
“Revolution,” he scoffed.
“That’s funny? Did you laugh when you watched the leaked recording of their captives?” The screen again shifted to display footage of the Pervenio Station Detention Center from the exterior. Each cell had glass facing out to space, like the Earther captives crammed within were on display at a zoo. Some were bloody, others crying, most both. Kale was turning the very prison lawbreaking Ringers once feared into a propaganda piece.
“Mr. Pervenio is working day and night to try and reach amenable terms with Kale Trass,” Barret said. “Once they realize how much they’re missing out on, they’ll come crawling back like all the rest. There is no humanity stronger than a united one.”
“With what resources? The Children of Titan have no interest in credits. Mr. Pervenio and all his directors may deny any losses, but rumors are, many experienced members of Pervenio’s management have either been poached or resigned to spare themselves the embarrassment of staying on a sinking ship. I’ve been told that even you were overheard speaking with Jamaru Venta.”
“Lies.”
“All right. Then would you deny that Luxarn Pervenio pushed the Titanborn population—”
“Ringer,” Barret corrected.
“Yes,” the newswoman said adversarially. “He pushed them by invading their quarantine without any discernible purpose. In my opinion, he should be tried for the deaths that occurred in the ongoing altercations. That isn’t counting the thousands upon thousands still detained by the militant Children of Titan who now have access to weapons and technology he allowed to fall into their hands.”
“Criminals who the USF must condemn and punish for their actions! It’s either that or we might as well let this murderer Kale Trass stroll right into one of our cities for us to place a crown on his head. The first king of Titan. Is that what you want?”
“I didn’t say that.”
“It’s all true, you know,” Luxarn said. The feed suddenly switched off. I’d unconsciously taken a seat at his desk to watch and leaped up so fast the chair slid all the way to the back wall. Luxarn didn’t seem to notice or care as he ambled in.
“What’s that, sir?” I asked.
“What they’re saying. It’s all true. Worse probably. Most of my other collectors have abandoned us for greener pastures too. The new directors in charge of what properties I still retain are green or worthless, like Barret Ulnor. Most of them haven’t managed more than a dock. They can hardly handle the upcoming, limited release of our service bots.” The spherical bot floated in behind him, and he tapped it on the side, causing it to sway in its flight path, bang into the wall, and shut down. “These things were supposed to rekindle human interest in robotics. What a joke.”
“They pour a mean drink as far as I can remember.” It was a subtle nudge to try and get him to offer up some of the good stuff again, but it went right over his head.
“Yes. Kale forces me to issue an early release to try and boost revenue, and now we’re shipping tin balls that can do little more than bartend a half-empty room or answer a door.”
“And fly.”
Luxarn chuckled exasperatedly. “It’s all unraveling, thanks to that monster Kale.”
“I’m sure that reporter is exaggerating. There isn’t any shame in still being one of the richest men in Sol, sir.”
“Spoken like a true collector.” He sat on the edge of his desk. “It was my father’s dream to usher humanity into our deserved future. To reach as far as we can until there isn’t a star left we haven’t seen. It’s all going to change now. We can’t spread when we aren’t safe, and every offworld colony is going to be looking over their shoulders for the next Kale Trass.”
“We’ll figure it out. We always do. If we can survive the apocalypse, we can survive some pissed off Ringer throwing a tantrum. He’ll realize they can’t survive alone.”
“They did before.” Luxarn stood, approached the stark wall behind me, and spread his arm across it. I could picture him back on Pervenio Station, marveling out his viewport at all he’d built. Now he regarded little more than rust, metal, and a painting of what we could never have again.
“They say Kale has organized a formal meeting with the USF on Mars,” Luxarn said. “I have a feeling he’s going to demand that Titan be granted sovereignty, and considering all the hostages he has on Pervenio Station, ready to be spaced at the flick of a switch, the Assembly will have no choice but to settle. Even now he uses them to shield against retribution.”
“Then maybe it’s time they put an end to hostilities. Let Kale have whatever it is he wants and negotiate. There’s nothing they could possibly do with all the resources they’re in control of except trade them.”
“I will not negotiate with him!” he growled. “They’re locking our people up like rats while we squabble. People I was meant to protect. Maybe there’s a Ringer under him that can be dealt with, but Kale has to be eliminated. I don’t care what the Assembly thinks. He’ll never let them go free.”
“You kill him, and they might never get that chance.” Cutting the head off snakes was my specialty for a long time, but the reporter was right about one thing. This wasn’t some mere riot. I’d gotten enough sense of that in my last visit to Titan even before the shit hit the fan.
“If he kills them, nothing will keep the USF and all its corporations from bombing Titan out of existence. Kale has to go, Graves. It’s the only way.”
I glanced at Zhaff’s eye lens. It still pained me to see it. In the reflection, I pictured him, a frosty, bloodied husk because of me. His death had to at least be a part of the rage fueling Luxarn’s lust for vengeance. I considered for a moment that maybe if I told Luxarn the truth, he’d put aside his vendetta and focus on a real solution. Then I remembered how he’d kept Zhaff’s true identity hidden for all those years while he forged him into a weapon. He might’ve loved him in his own way, but it had always been about Pervenio Corp. Company first, how I used to be.
I sighed. “Well, sir, it pains me to say you’re going to have to do it without me.”
His body whipped around to face me, and his plastic-surgery-enhanced façade didn’t appear angered, but instead fearful. “That’s nonsense. Dr. Aurora informed me that you’re finally healthy. You’re ready to finish what you and my son started and end the Children of Titan once and for all.”
“My body is fine, thanks to you, but I’d rather get out before I embarrass myself any further or lose any more limbs. I let myself be goaded right into their hideout and…” Again I noticed Zhaff’s eye lens out of the corner of my eye. My throat went dry. “And got Zhaff killed.”
Luxarn’s brow furrowed. After a few long seconds of silence, he said, “Let me show you something.”
“Sir, I—”
“I won’t take no for an answer.”
He beckoned me out of the door, and I followed begrudgingly. Mostly, probably, because though I told myself my mind was made up, his Corp had a knack for convincing me to stick around.
He led me a short distance down the hall, to a door sealed by both a retina scan and vocal confirmation. That kind of security never meant anything good, but as we entered, I realized it was another treatment room like the one I’d woken up in. Doctor Aurora stood on the opposite side, only there was no bed. A cylindrical chamber rose in the center, filled with a greenish goo. A body floated within.
“Leave us,” Luxarn ordered.
Doctor Aurora didn’t seem pleased—though she never did—as she nodded and headed out, eyes poring over data readouts on her hand-terminal. Much of the same information covered the dozens of viewscreens mounted around the white room. Far more than it took to monitor me and my new leg.
Luxarn said nothing, so I invited myself in further to get a better look at the chamber. The liquid inside was thick, so I got right up to the glass to see the face of whoever it was suspended within. That was when my heart dropped clear through my gut. I stumbled back, and if I didn’t have an artificial leg keeping me up, my knees would have given out.
Children of Titan Series: Books 1-4: (A Space Opera Thriller Box Set) Page 58
