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

by Rhett C. Bruno

  “You skinny pieces of Ringer filth!” Trevor cried. “When I get out of here, I’m going to snap your necks!”

  I shoved the cloth back in, and Rin carved another red line onto his chest. When he was done screaming, she swung his head toward her mouth and whispered, “You keep it up, you’ll look like me by the time I’m done with you.”

  “At least that would be an improvement,” Gareth signed.

  “I’m going to remove the gag again, Trevor,” I said calmly. “If you scream, Rin’s going to whittle my name into your stomach. Do you understand?” Trevor nodded fretfully. “Good. Now we’ve heard that Basaam has been staying in New Beijing for the week before attending the summit tonight.”

  “That’s not true,” Trevor huffed after I freed the gag. “He’s still at our facility on Europa, where you’ll never be able to get him. Martelle Station is a damn fortress, not like Pervenio’s.”

  “Are you really so eager to get back in Madame Venta’s good graces that you’d die for her?” Rin raised the knife again.

  “All right!” he yelped. “Fine! He’s in New Beijing. With all the extra security needed at the Assembly compliments of you Ringers, he took an extended vacation. He’s trying to grease palms with the Departure Ark committee just to ensure his design gets selected, even though it’s a shoo-in. Thing’s brilliant.”

  “Where is he staying?” I asked.

  “I couldn’t tell you. I run security at Europa specifically. Since he’s not there, he gave me the month off. First vacation in too damn long.” He chuckled. “You picked up the wrong officer.”

  Rin pressed the edge of the blade into his soft pink flesh, but I stopped her. “He’s telling the truth.”

  “I swe—” His eyes brightened. “Yeah, I am. So just let me down, and we’ll pretend this never happened, okay? I told you everything I know.”

  “Gareth, where is his hand-terminal?” I asked.

  My mute guardian shuffled through a pile of belongings before pulling out the shiny device. It was top of the line. There was a time I would’ve killed to get my hands on one like that in the Darien markets. He tossed it to me.

  “Screen is locked,” he signed. “Thumbprint and password verification required.”

  “Didn’t get a chance to ask for it?” Rin remarked. Gareth rolled his eyes.

  I tapped the hand-terminal against the cut on Trevor’s stomach. “As his chief of security on Europa’s Martelle Station, I’m guessing you can access his travel itinerary if you wanted,” I said. “Even while you’re off duty.”

  “I wouldn’t know,” Trevor replied.

  “Listen, Trevor. I can spend the next few hours talking to my people on Titan and figuring out how to slice through, but if we can’t do it before the summit, Basaam might already be on his way back to Europa. I can’t have that. Like you said, it’s a fortress.”

  “What a shame for you.”

  “How about you save me the trouble and tell me how to access your security logs. If you do me that favor, I’ll let you leave here in one piece.”

  He snickered. “How about your deformed friend here sucks my cock through her cheek first. Then I’ll tell you.”

  Rin lunged at him, but Gareth jumped in front of her to hold her back. I clutched Trevor by the jaw. “Say something like that again, and I’ll let her slice it off. Don’t be a fool. Don’t throw your life away for them.”

  “I’m just trying to negotiate is all. ‘Cause you see, King Trass, I know you mad Ringers are going to kill me no matter what I tell you. I might as well get something out of it, and I’m sure underneath all those scars, she’s as ripe as any skelly whore.”

  I tore the knife out of Rin’s hand and jammed it through his rib cage. It didn’t strike anything vital, but I covered his mouth with one hand and twisted the blade. Skelly. I hated that term more than anything. All the years of Earther security officers and colleagues barking insults at me and my people raged through my mind like a Titanian storm. I felt the batons smashing my stomach; I saw my mom rotting away in a quarantine and Director Sodervall smirking before he spaced Cora for no good reason.

  “Here’s your choice,” I growled as he writhed in pain. “You provide us access to your hand-terminal right now, and the worst-case scenario is I put a bullet in your brain and end this quickly. Maybe I’ll even consider letting you walk out if it’s easy enough to find what we’re looking for. But if you don’t, then I’m not going to kill you here. I’m going to drag you back to Titan with us first. I’ve been told about an old form of punishment from before the Great Reunion if a Titanborn killed another. They used to cut a tiny hatch in the side of a block enclosure, not big enough to fit more than a hand. They’d take the criminal’s arm and shove it through the hatch until Titan’s air froze it solid. Then, while he watched, they’d shatter it into a million pieces.”

  I could feel Trevor’s head trembling through my glove. I knew he heard every word I was saying, but his gaze tracked Rin as she traced a circle around us like an ancient beast hunting wounded prey. Gareth stayed with her just in case she lost control.

  “But I won’t stop there,” I continued. “No. One by one, I’ll shatter every one of your limbs, keeping you alive until you’re little more than a head on a stump. Then I’ll stuff you in a glass box in the Darien Uppers for everyone to see. You’ll starve there, slowly, like one of my people decaying in a quarantine.” I removed my hand from his mouth and backed away. He was too traumatized to scream. He stared back and forth between Rin, Gareth, and me, blood trickling down his chest from the knife jutting out of his ribs.

  “I know what I’d choose,” I said. “Though perhaps you’d rather die a hero for a company that couldn’t care less about you.”

  “04172308,” Trevor mumbled. “That’s the password.”

  I typed it in, then wrenched his bound hand toward me so that I could get a clean thumbprint. The device binged that I had full access. I gawked at the screen for a few seconds. I expected a former collector to be harder to break. Their training was supposed to be unparalleled. Growing up on Darien, we were taught to fear them more than any other agent of the Earther corporatocracy.

  “Th…there, you see?” he went on. “You’re in. Just need the access codes on my ID, and you can access the security logs. Basaam’s travel itinerary will be in there somewhere, I promise.”

  I handed Gareth the terminal. He started typing, then pointed to Trevor’s ID. “Password is his birthday,” he signed, drawing a chuckle out of Rin and me.

  “What is it?” Trevor asked. “I did like you said. Now, p…please, cut me down.” He craned his neck to try and see the knife sticking out of him. “I swear, I won’t tell anybody about this. I’ll tell them I fell on it.”

  “You know, Kale, that limb-shattering idea wasn’t half bad,” Rin said. “You make that up yourself?”

  “That old fence Dexter Howser told me the story as a threat once,” I replied. “Always figured it was a myth.”

  “Maybe we can try it next time,” Gareth added.

  “Don’t make me beg!” Trevor cried. “Please! I’ll do whatever you ask. You need someone inside of Venta, right? Right? I can be that. Your informant. Anything you need. Screw ’em, right?”

  “You think we’d trust another word that comes out of your mudstomper mouth?” Rin asked. “Swapping sides whenever it suits you. You people make me sick.”

  “I helped smuggle weapons and meds onto Titan for Venta, you bitch!” he growled. “Helped you Ringers when you were still hiding from our big, bad germs.”

  “You helped yourself!” I spat. “You Earthers think you can trade your way out of anything.” I picked up the rag and presented it to Rin. “I told him to watch his mouth, but he wouldn’t listen. Do whatever you want with him.”

  “Nothing we can’t clean up,” Gareth signed.

  I shrugged. “It’s their floor.”

  “You lying, skelly bastards! I’ll kill all of—” His screams were muffled by Rin
squeezing the cloth into his mouth. She got to work carving the Pervenio logo into his chest, his muffled screams punctuated by sharp gasps.

  I brushed off my bloody gloves, then turned and stood. The sight of Aria standing in the kitchen, aghast, stopped me in my tracks.

  “It’s their floor?” she repeated.

  “I told them nobody gets in!” Rin barked.

  “Aria…” I whispered.

  She didn’t say a word. She strolled across the room toward Trevor, avoiding eye contact with everybody. I went to grab her shoulder, but she brushed me away. She stopped in front of our captive, whose muffled pleas filled the air. Then she snatched Rin’s pulse pistol out of her holster and, before any of us could stop her, put a bullet in Trevor’s chest. Right through his heart, like it wasn’t the first time she’d killed.

  Rin leaped at her, and I was able to get between them just in time before she seized her by the throat.

  “Who the hell do you think you are?” my aunt snarled.

  “Rin, stop!” I struggled to hold her at bay since we were both wearing powered armor. Gareth stood still, at a loss as to who to help.

  “I’ll kill her too!”

  “Are you both insane?” Aria shouted. “In here? Today? If anybody heard him or saw him. If he escaped… we’d all be killed, and Titan would be right back to how it was. Leaderless.”

  “We aren’t ever going back to that,” Rin said, beginning to simmer down enough at least that I didn’t have to expend all my energy blocking her.

  “At least now I know why we really came here. I hope whatever you got out of him was worth it.”

  “Aria,” I said. She dropped the pistol and started off toward the exit. “Aria, you don’t understand! We’re doing what we have to. You think they’ll ever take us seriously through talking? We have to make them, no matter what it takes. I have to!”

  She stopped. “Well, when you’re done, I came to tell you that the USF agreed to your terms. I’m going to go prepare for that. Hopefully, I’ll see you there tonight.” Our gazes met for the briefest moment. For the first time in months, I glimpsed the broken woman she’d been when we first met, and then, just like that, she was gone.

  Rin retrieved her gun. “Are you in control now, Kale?”

  “What do we do now?” Gareth asked. “She saw. If she talks—”

  “She won’t,” I said.

  “That’s all you’ve got to—”

  “She won’t!” I cut Rin off. “We stick to the plan. You help Gareth take Basaam Venta out of his room. Move him while everyone is distracted by the summit, and have him on the Cora before we arrive.”

  “Kale, we have to talk about this,” Rin insisted. “Now she’s shooting people?”

  “Like you haven’t done enough of that? How many people did you murder on the Piccolo just to get my attention?”

  “That was war.”

  “So is this. She is our ambassador, Rin, whether you like it or not. I suggest you get control of your fighters, who can’t seem to keep the door shut when you ask them to.”

  Rin opened her mouth to protest. Gareth quieted her by rubbing her shoulder.

  “And clean up this mess!” I yelled.

  She took a measured breath then bowed her head. “Right away, Lord Trass.”

  I stared at the door Aria departed through until the blood from Trevor’s chest pooled far enough across the floor to submerge the soles of my boots. It was so fresh and the tile so polished that I could see my reflection in it. That same shattered young man who had lain with Aria for the first time all those months ago stared back.

  Twelve

  Malcolm

  The ornately carved, faux-wood doors of the New Beijing Church of the Three Messiahs Convent were entirely out of place in the rundown heart of Old Dome. A fragrance was dispersed through its air recyclers that was much like Earth’s out in the countryside, a transition so jarring compared to the reek of the Tongueway that I actually missed the latter.

  The convent itself was brand new. Apparently, if the turmoil on Titan had been kind to any faction, it was the Church of the Three Messiahs. I suppose they appealed to transplanted Earthers who were maddened about all the death there. Those people blamed expanding beyond Earth for what had happened, and the Three Messiahs were there for them. They took in the poor and hapless on Mars who couldn’t afford to return home and provided a temporary shelter while promising to arrange transportation and residency back on Earth.

  A load of bullshit if you asked me.

  Of all the grimy people assembling for a service, not one looked to be on the verge of moving anywhere. Lucky for them, there was plenty of room in the convent for more initiates. Don’t ask me where all their credits came from to afford a lot this size in a city as jammed for space as New Beijing, but at least three Twilight Suns could fit inside.

  “Peace be with you, son of God,” an apostle by the entrance said. “Are you here for our daily sermon? We are about to begin.” She wore the usual robes of her order, except unlike the men, her shawl covered her entire face and hair—everything except for her eyes.

  “I’m here to speak with Herald Jeremiah,” I replied, blowing past her.

  “I’m sorry, he’s about to read scripture.”

  “He can wait.”

  She laid her hand upon my shoulder and pointed toward the lofty vaulted ceiling running down the middle of the convent. Stairs by the entrance sank into Mars’s crust so the roof could seem taller than anything else in Old Dome. The ceiling was painted blue, with pure white clouds mirroring the sky of pre-Meteorite Earth. Embedded in the center was an oculus with a screen in it that displayed imagery from a telescope seemingly placed on Mars’s surface somewhere. The pale silhouette of Earth passed slowly across the blackness of space.

  “It cannot,” she said.

  “Neither can I.”

  I brushed her off me and continued down the aisle. The dozens of worshippers stirred, positioning themselves on their knees across the floor so that they all kowtowed in the same direction. The presumed cardinal direction of Earth where the Meteorite struck, if I remembered my former dealings with the Church correctly.

  “Sir, I must ask that you come back at another time,” the apostle insisted. Her voice finally rose above a whisper, earning the attention of the congregation.

  I ignored her and persisted on my trek toward the altar, studying my surroundings out of habit. None of the wall decorations made any sense, but they were everywhere. It was like the designer had visited every spiritual ruin left on Earth and regurgitated pieces of all of them onto the polished walls. Restored paintings, which I imagine depicted scenes from their bulky text, surrounded me. Most focused on either a gruesome scene of a man nailed to a cross or various figures in the desert holding tomes and crude weaponry.

  Pews of faux wood lined the central aisle, carved with strange patterns and geometries. They were empty now, as everyone who had been seated remained on their knees. Each of the columns separating the side aisles was wrapped in text. The languages were ancient, and even though I couldn’t decipher them, there appeared to be numerous alphabets mixed together.

  I’d visited similar convents on Earth when work took me there, but never one so opulent. The USF and its larger corporations like Pervenio preferred to keep their distance from religious sects like the Three Messiahs. The groups weren’t usually violent, but doomsayers had a way of riling up the public. I only went in when they gave us no choice or decided to use their flock for smuggling. Some Heralds got off on that.

  More apostles like the one following me roamed among the crowd, offering blessings before the daily prayer began, doing whatever it was they did to make the people feel whole, all while using hand-terminals to happily accept donations.

  Herald Jeremiah stood by the reserved yet unsettling altar comprising the back of the convent. He wore the same outfit as all his brothers and sisters. In fact, the only thing that set him apart from them was a beard that fell all t
he way to his waist. Behind him towered a relief sculpture of Earth shielded by a giant hand as an onslaught of meteorites crashed into it. The altar itself was a modest stand made of real tree bark. I could tell by the scent. They must have paid a pretty penny to get it from a corporate tree farm on Earth, and it was engraved with all manner of figurative representations of the many ancient religions theirs was based on.

  Jeremiah was busy leafing through the worn pages of the multi-thousand-page tome crammed with their teachings sitting on the altar when I stopped before him. I don’t know why they didn’t just upload it into a terminal. The worshippers nearest to us gasped as I stepped onto the raised dais, like I’d broken some unspoken law. I guess I did look out of place. Worn duster, gun strapped to my side, hair a mess from an entire day hounding the Tongueway and running from collectors.

  “I said you should leave!” the apostle snapped, racing in front of me.

  “Now, now, we don’t deny any visitors here, sister,” Herald Jeremiah said. He glanced up from his text.

  “But, Your Holiness, he’s going to interrupt your service.”

  “You lead it. Can you not sense it, sister? This man is in deep pain. He needs us now more than ever.” The apostle grumbled under her breath but reluctantly moved aside. “Peace be with you, weary traveler,” Jeremiah addressed me. “And welcome.”

  “I don’t think I am,” I replied.

  Jeremiah’s thin lips cracked a smile. “Just because you’re stuck here doesn’t mean you’re forsaken by the world God created for us. He’s calling you home, my son. All you need to do is listen.”

  “I was born there, and trust me, the only thing holy about the place is in between the legs of its women.”

  I was trying to get a rise out of him. Figure out what he was all about since his faith never made much sense to me. The nearby apostle covered her mouth in revulsion, but the Herald simply nodded for her to go on. She sighed before finally replacing him at the altar. She started yammering off gibberish from their massive tome for all the worshippers to hear.