Jeremiah took me to the side. “If you’ve come here to spread hate, I will not stop you,” he said softly. “God teaches us to be tolerant of all peoples who have yet to embrace His grace.”
“I don’t hate, but I died once already, and I promise you I didn’t see anything but black.”
Jeremiah raised one open hand and gesticulated to the apocalyptic symbol of his order. “God comes to us in many forms. There was a time long ago when the Three Messiahs drove their followers apart because they didn’t recognize the God they all spoke with was one and the same.”
“Doesn’t speak much for your idols.”
“Perhaps God wanted them to witness all aspects of life to demonstrate the danger of separation.”
“Or maybe He cares as little about you as He does for any of us. He was happy enough to ravage the planet He made with everyone on it after all.” I joined him in front of the foreboding statue presiding over him. I suppose they got that one thing right. Fear does a hell of a job keeping people in line.
“Not everyone. The Meteorite was sent to purge and unite us after we strayed too far from the Lord’s teachings. Some lost their way and their faith and fled Earth, but so long as man continues his foolish quest to settle the heavens, we risk judgment again.”
“So then why are you people here? Mars is a long way from Earth.”
“Depends on who is asking. I presume you didn’t come here for a sermon. You don’t seem like a man willing to open his mind and heart to the Almighty Father.”
“You caught me.”
Jeremiah wagged his finger. “Ah yes. I know a collector when I see one. My guests don’t deserve the kind of trouble your breed seems to bring everywhere you go.”
“Well, lucky for you, I’m retired.” I opened my duster and flashed the fake ID proving that I was telling the truth. The news piqued his interest. “Just a concerned citizen with some innocent questions. Is there somewhere private we can talk?”
“Why pretend to seek privacy from God when we can never have it?”
I took a measured breath. Spending too long with any Three Messiahs worshipper was infuriating. Interrogating one was like yelling at a wall that could only spit back anecdotes.
“This is a pretty big presence off Earth for your church,” I said. “I’ve seen a post here and there on asteroids, but a full convent?”
“We are here to serve as a conduit for those who seek God’s grace,” Jeremiah said. “To offer them a means home through piousness. Not all the people on this world chose to leave behind God’s holy world to live here. Why should they be punished?”
“Punished like all those who died during Kale Trass’s rebellion, right?”
Jeremiah nodded sheepishly.
“It’s funny, I spent all day wondering who benefits from a tragedy like that besides warmongers,” I said. “But that bomb hit every party involved in the conflict. I was about ready to grab a bottle and give up searching until I realized I’d overlooked one group that seems to be feeding off this. An order that blames a meteorite wiping out most of the life on Earth on our failures as a species, and not cosmic misfortune.”
“And what was your conclusion?”
“That you seemed awfully calm during your interview about a bombing that took out one of your own flock.”
“I never question the will of God. It was… his time.”
“Isn’t that you, though? The voices of God, or whatever rubbish you Heralds claim. You see, I was a collector for a long, long time, so I know what an innocent man sounds like. When I heard you, I heard the voice of a man who wasn’t fazed because he wasn’t surprised.” I drew my duster far enough to the side that my pistol was in plain sight. The people filling the convent continued their prayers, though a handful couldn’t help but glance up at us. I’m guessing I didn’t look as calm as I imagined.
“I’m going to ask you one time, and you damn well better tell me the truth,” I said. “Decades dealing with fanatics like you, I’ll know if you aren’t. Do you know who was behind the bombing?”
Jeremiah’s cheeks flushed, but he maintained his calm. In fact, his apostle seemed far more rattled. She paused in her readings to look back at us, eyes glued to the shine of my pistol. “Your Holiness, should I call security?” she whispered.
“It would only be a waste of time,” the Herald replied. She bowed and returned to the text. “Venta Co. caused it,” he said to me. “The moment they offered to host those heathen Ringers so close to Earth, the very haven of God that the deserter Darien Trass forsook at its gravest time of judgment.”
I couldn’t contain myself any longer. I snatched him by the robes and pulled him close. The soft murmur of prayers filling the convent silenced, and I could hear the brushing sound of all the kowtowing bodies shifting to face me.
“It wasn’t only Ringers who died, Herald!” I barked.
“And every death weighs heavily on me, especially that of Apostle Grant. But God works in mysterious ways. I cannot presume to understand why He does what He does. I can merely offer my apologies for the actions of an apostle who has so clearly wounded you.”
My hand slipped off him. I staggered backward. “What did you just say?”
Jeremiah looked to the floor. “Apostle Grant was a troubled man,” he said, voice trembling. “His clan-family left him behind here so they could find work on thriving Titan when he was young. I took him in and guided him along God’s path, but when much of his family was killed during Kale’s rebellion… violence was his only solution. He lost his way. Felt that nobody was doing enough to free the survivors from Kale Trass’s prisons. For the lives he took, I offer my deepest sympathies.”
That was it? A full indictment of one of his own without me even having to issue a threat.
“Where is he?” I squeezed out of my suddenly parched throat.
Jeremiah’s head sagged, eyes closing as if in mourning. “Dead.”
“You’re lying!” I ripped out my pulse pistol and aimed it right between his eyes. He didn’t flinch. The rest of his flock screamed and took cover. His apostle had their tome clutched to her chest, arms quaking.
“Nobody panic or call anyone,” he said. “Everything will be fine.” He turned back to me. “It’s the truth. And soon Venta collectors will come barging through my door after they thoroughly review surveillance, and I’ll tell them the same. They will torture me as they have so many times before, but it won’t change what happened. Good people often die thanks to the mistakes of the wicked. Venta Co. and Kale Trass, you and I—we’ll all have to live with that. Just know that whoever you lost is in a better place now.”
“Shut up!” I punched him across the nose. His head snapped backward, and blood squirted out all over his beard, but I held him up. “Who the fuck ordered it?”
“If you’re seeking a corporeal boss or a corporate structure, you’ve come to the wrong place,” he groaned. “Grant did what he thought he had to.”
“He didn’t do it alone!” I threw Jeremiah against his order’s symbolic sculpture, one hand wrapping his throat and the other pressing my pistol against his forehead.
“I wish I could tell you I didn’t try to stop him, but in this holy place, I will not lie. Ever since the revolution started, his thoughts grew darker, so I sent him away and instructed him to seek penance in his own way before returning. I know now I should have kept him close.”
“You knew, and you still let him go?”
“I knew only his nature, not what he was planning. It is how God made him, and if I was meant to stop him, I would have. Everything happens for a reason, my son, even if God’s plan is unclear to us at the time.”
“You don’t get to blame your imaginary friend!” I squeezed his throat harder.
“You’re angry… I understand,” he muttered. “Someone was taken from you, and you want retribution. Perhaps for some reason, you even need to blame yourself. Don’t.”
I punched Jeremiah across the jaw so hard, I wasn’t s
trong enough to keep him from falling. I used the sculpture to maintain balance and aimed my gun at the top of his head.
“If vengeance is what you desire, then take it on me,” he grated through bloodied teeth. “My guidance was not enough to help him, and now someone dear to you is dead. I will forgive you, and so will God.”
My hand trembled. I felt like my eyes could shoot fire. The old Malcolm would’ve pulled the trigger and been done with it, but there were no credits on the line this time. It was in those brief seconds of hesitation that I realized killing him wouldn’t accomplish a damn thing. I’d only be helping him.
The Church of the Three Messiahs was a corporation in a sense, whether they admitted it or not. There was nothing better for business than publicity. That was why Jeremiah was so pleased to find out I wasn’t a collector. Somehow, he could tell I’d come to his convent to kill somebody, so he’d decided to tell the truth and sacrifice his life to me. And it wasn’t like months ago when the Ringer I’d hunted on Earth blew his brains out right in front of me to preserve secrets. It was a purely mathematical decision.
If I killed Herald Jeremiah like this, it would look like an unprovoked hate crime that would embolden others to his cause. If I didn’t, Venta Co. would find him, and he’d disappear. They’d lock him in a cell and listen to his yarn about the heartbroken apostle who blew himself up to destroy evil over and over, hoping there was something else to it when there wasn’t.
The Herald could die a martyr or slowly in a cage. Either way, he was damned. For all his high claims and pretentiousness, he made the choice any shrewd businessman would when those were the only two options—exposure.
“I’m not your judgment, you piece of shit,” I said. I released his throat and lowered my gun. He fell to his knees, gasping for air, but that wasn’t what I was focused on. All I cared about was the shimmer of disappointment in his eyes that proved I was right.
“Fine… I knew,” he squealed. “I knew what Apostle Grant was planning, and I let it happen. Is that what you want to hear?”
I kneeled beside him, keeping a watch out of the corner of my eye on the handful of apostles circling us. “I told you I can tell when a man’s telling the truth, and you already spilled it,” I said. “Now Venta’s going to hear it too. I may not be able to kill the man who murdered Wai, but he can look up from your hell as his Herald suffers for the rest of his life.”
“No!” He lunged forward and grabbed my hand. His finger tried to wriggle its way through the trigger of my pistol, and as I wrenched it away from him, my artificial leg shot forward into his arm. It was so strong that his forearm snapped in two before the bone was pulverized against the wall.
He howled in pain, his poised, assured expression completely shattering. I don’t know why I was surprised. People like him always begged for their lives before the end, and begging for death wasn’t much different when the alternative was so much worse.
I clutched his jaw and raised his face to mine. “When you do get to Heaven, Herald, tell God that Malcolm Graves says hello.” I punched him one more time across the face, and he sprawled out across the bloody floor. Everything else was for Wai, but that last punch was for me.
“Peace be with you,” I said to the young female apostle. Then I holstered my pistol and headed back toward the exit without another word. All his flock kept their distance. A few worshippers were on their hand terminals, finally deciding to ignore their Herald and call for security. Only as I left did his people run to him, cradling his head as he coughed up loose teeth.
I heaved open the convent’s heavy manual doors and stepped outside. Night had fallen upon Mars, but with all the Tongueway’s flashing signs, you wouldn’t know it. One illuminated a pair of familiar Venta Co. collectors threading the crowd in my direction. I ducked and crept off to the side before quickly realizing they weren’t coming for me. Between taking breaks to try and get even with me, they’d seemingly arrived at a possible answer about who was responsible for the bombing and were headed for the convent to question the Herald.
A chuckle escaped my lips. All those years racing Venta Co. for targets, and now I was letting them snag one free of charge.
What happened to me?
Shooting Zhaff to save my daughter. Quitting Pervenio Corp. I’d been so drunk since I got to New Beijing, it never really hit me until then that I really wasn’t a collector anymore, and not only by title. It was like that whole essence of me had evaporated. How easy it would’ve been for me to turn the Herald in to those two hothead collectors and demand a reward, yet I couldn’t care less.
It wouldn’t bring Wai back. Despite my mad spree to try and justify her death, in reality, she’d been in the wrong place at the wrong time. I’d have to live with the fact that I was partially the reason she was there, but the Herald was right about one thing—we’re barely in control. She could’ve wound up in that plaza, at that moment, no matter what I’d said to her. The victim of a senseless act of violence from a broken man, thanks to the revolution of a beleaguered people.
I was so sick of hypocrites and radicals. So sick of everyone. All the riffraff surrounding me, out for a night on the town to pretend their lives were all right or forget that they weren’t. Happy to indulge in their vices until the sun illuminated the dome and they were part of the working class again. If I stayed on Mars, before long, I’d turn into one of them or maybe had been all along. The streetwalkers were the most honest people in the city. At least they didn’t lie to themselves about what they were.
For the first time in my life, I didn’t only feel lost because I had nothing to do. I didn’t even feel like drinking. I simply felt… empty.
“First line of Departure Lottery tickets here!” someone shouted from behind a storefront. The U and the S of the USF blinked over his head, the other letter lost behind a wall of steam from an exhaust vent. “Best chance at winning a spot on the next Ark!”
USF stands like this one were the only place to get departure tickets. You couldn’t do it over Solnet because they only wanted people winning who were willing to travel across the stars. Last year, Pervenio Corp sent forth the previous Departure Ark—a ship called the Hermes—and per the news feeds, Venta Co. was a lock to be selected in this year’s M-Day celebrations to build a new Departure Ark to be dispatched from Earth in a little more than four years. Talk of a prototype engine invented by the genius Basaam Venta had people excited, so the line at the stand wrapped around the corner.
I stopped and stared at the representative behind the counter, proudly decked out in his USF uniform. In his hands was a chance at one-way tickets to a world far away. Maybe Venta had figured out a way to freeze the passengers so I’d actually survive if I won. Something new to see for an old man who’d seen everything Sol had to offer. The good and the much worse. For once, I finally understood why anyone would even want to win a Departure Lottery slot, and it had nothing to do with a prospect of expanding the dominion of the human race like the ads promoted.
Before I could overthink it, I stepped onto the end of the line. Sirens blared as a Venta security hover-car tried to force its way down the narrow avenue toward the convent, so I didn’t have much of a choice anyway. Like it was meant to be.
I made it a few spots forward without running away, when from behind me, a familiar voice said a word I never thought I’d hear again.
“Dad?”
Thirteen
Kale
The great mahogany doors of the New Beijing USF Assembly Hall swung open. I offered Aria a nod before we entered, hoping she would return it. She wouldn’t even look at me. She hadn’t since we’d left our rooms. She was freshly showered, groomed, and wearing a loose, vibrant green dress reminiscent of a jungle. I hadn’t even bothered to wash my face. Powered armor cradled my weary limbs, still stained with blood and grime from the explosion… and from Trevor.
Together, even though we couldn’t be more different, we represented Titan. Rin and Gareth didn’t accompany us. The
y’d been in touch sparingly since they left to grab Basaam, and I had to relinquish my hand-terminal and ear com-link before entering the hall. The only outside tech they allowed us to enter with was my own suit so I’d be comfortable. Everything had to be USF approved. My men weren’t even permitted to wear theirs, but after the attack, my personal safety was apparently of the utmost concern.
The last thing Rin told me before they went dark was that they had located Chief Engineer Basaam’s room and were preparing to take him. I would find the answer to whether they succeeded if I saw Basaam amongst the elite crowd invited to the hearing. Angry faces, teeming with such aversion that I couldn’t help but feel uncomfortable as their glares fell upon us.
When they saw four of my people following behind us, their disdain gave way to shock. Maybe it was the sight of Titanborn out of their armor, so tall and stringy that we barely resembled the same species as those in the crowd who were born on Earth. Or maybe it was the fact that my guards carried with them the corpse of my would-be Cogent assassin.
USF officers wrapped the edge of the yawning horseshoe-shaped space. Theirs were the only weapons present, per custom. Inside the horseshoe, two rows of seats ran the length of the hall filled with representatives of the most powerful organizations of Sol’s inner planets.
I recognized the major ones. A handful of Red Wing Company Board members and chairmen of other prominent corporations were at the front. Mining conglomerates, charities, environmental groups—anyone with a large enough stake in Sol to care about what happened around its furthest settled planet. I couldn’t even imagine the accumulated wealth and influence I was sharing a room with. One well-placed bomb and the foundation of Earther society would be shaken to its core. After the landing-platform attack, however, getting even a hand-terminal within one hundred meters of the hall was impossible.
It wasn’t enough to cut the heads off Earth’s credit-generating, expansionist machine anyway. New ones would grow to take their places, like Venta Co. had after I crippled Pervenio Corp. They needed to fear us more than how one might a vagrant in a dark alley. We needed to be like the quarantines were for us—that ever-looming presence of dread placing every step and action into question.
Children of Titan Series: Books 1-4: (A Space Opera Thriller Box Set) Page 69
