I wanted more than anything to turn and look, but my feet felt like they were submerged in wet plasticrete. A gentle hand fell upon my shoulder as someone glided in front of me. I saw curly auburn hair first, then freckles dappling a rosy cheek, then Aria’s eyes, green as the forests of Earth used to be.
“By Trass, you’re alive!” she exclaimed. The sound of her excitement… now I was totally lost. Was it my aging mind playing a trick on me or my eyes growing fuzzy? After so many years wondering where she went off to, was it really possible that she would be the one to find me?
My tongue tripped over a few responses until the first one that slipped out was “Trass?”
“New habit, I guess.” She paused to use her soft hand to angle my wrinkled face toward hers. I don’t know why, but I couldn’t get myself to look straight at her without the help. Hell, I could hardly breathe. “I can’t believe it’s you!” She threw her arms around me so tight I thought my head was going to pop. Now I knew I had to be dreaming. She hadn’t hugged me like that since… I can’t remember how long. Something poked into my chest, and as she drew back a bit, I saw the Ark Ship figurine I used to carry with me after we split ways. The narrow crack running down the middle where she’d once snapped it meant it had to be the same one.
“Dad,” she said. “Are you all right?”
I stumbled out of her embrace and had to use a wall to keep myself upright. My heart was pounding; a sensation I thought I’d grown out of. Like I was in my first firefight or with a lady for the first time, or maybe having a heart attack. I squeezed my fist against my chest and struggled to steady my breathing.
“Dad.”
“I’m fine,” I said. “You surprised me is all.”
“Surprised you? I thought you were dead!”
“So did I.”
“How long have you been here? Why didn’t you tell me?”
“I didn’t realize we did that.”
Her lips twisted. “Dad…”
“Sorry… I… I don’t know what to say.”
“You think I do? I never thought I’d see you in a Departure Lottery line.”
The world suddenly snapped back into focus. This wasn’t a dream.
I looked from side to side. The line had moved a few spots forward, and the people who’d gathered behind me were grumbling that I wasn’t moving. I stepped away from them. M-Day Departure... What was wrong with me? For a moment, I was like all the fools around us, thinking I’d be one of the lucky thousands sent off to other solar systems that’d actually survive the journey and not just feel honored by a massive waste of time.
“Oh, I didn’t even realize where I was,” I said. “It’s been a long day.”
“Tell me about—”
“It’s great to see you, Aria,” I interrupted her accidentally.
“You too. Better circumstances than last time.” She chuckled. The sound of it made my heart flutter. I couldn’t imagine how many nights I’d lain awake trying to remember what her laugh sounded like before I took a drink to force myself down.
“I guess a good father would scold you for getting involved with people like that.”
“A good father wouldn’t have raised a daughter who would,” she retorted.
“I deserve that one.” I finally mustered the courage to place a hand on her shoulder and make sure one last time she wasn’t a hallucination. It didn’t pass through. Maybe I wasn’t used to her adult stature, but she felt stronger than I recalled. “Really, though. I’m glad you got out.”
Her brow furrowed as she took my hand. “You must not watch the news feeds at all anymore.”
“I try not to.”
She stepped aside to reveal two men standing in her shadow, holding pulse-rifles. At first glance, they looked like your average Old Dome gangbangers with their dirty faces, but while both were tall, one had features so stretched out and a body so stringy he could only be from once place—Titan. And their weapons. They were the same old Venta Co. model I’d found the Children of Titan using back on their homeworld. They were Ringers all right, and all that was missing was that damn orange circle painted on their chests.
My hand instinctually fell toward the grip of my pistol. I wasn’t about to be caught off guard by the Children of Titan again. They immediately shifted to aim in my direction.
“Kal—Lord Trass insisted they come along,” she said, guiding my hand away from my gun. “He doesn’t realize that I know this place better than anybody, thanks to you.”
“You’re working directly for Kale Trass now?”
“What, is Pervenio keeping you under a rock?” She pointed to a viewscreen above a bar in the shoddy restaurant nearby. On it, a news feed played footage from Kale Trass’s meeting with the USF Assembly, which had apparently already taken place. It was a private summit, so all they could show was Kale and his accomplices leaving the New Beijing Assembly Building. The young king wore a scowl. A host of Ringer escorts were behind him, and the woman at his side wasn’t the scarred one who always accompanied him in feeds. It wasn’t a Ringer at all. It was Aria, her fire-red hair starkly contrasting the white worn by the others.
“They let a doctor in there?” I asked.
“No, Dad. I’m Titan’s ambassador to the USF. You really didn’t know?”
“No…” How the hell had I missed that? Ever since I’d woken up from my coma, I’d been telling myself that I’d helped her get out from under the thumb of the Children of Titan. But there she was, my daughter, side by side with the rebel who’d conquered the Ring.
“That bombing earlier,” I rasped, my chest growing tight.
“Missed.”
“It was damn well close enough! After what I did to get you out of there, you really went crawling back?”
“I guess I am your daughter.”
“That isn’t the point. Kale Trass is dangerous. You could have been crushed like Wai or worse.”
“Wai? Would you listen to yourself, Dad? You never gave a shit about what I did unless it had to do with one of your missions.”
“I…” There I went again, pushing away like I always did. I took a deep breath to calm myself and steady my quaking hands. I was going to do my best not to make that mistake again.
“I always cared, Aria,” I said.
She sighed. “Look. I don’t want to argue with you. I’m so tired of it. Until now, I wasn’t sure why I needed to come down here, but can’t we just sit down and talk like old times? I could really use it.”
“You’re right, so could I. You name any place on the Tongueway, we’ll go.”
“I wish you wouldn’t call it that.”
“I didn’t come up with the name. Come on, anywhere. Just keep those two Ringers off me.”
She shot me an irritated look then said, “Twilight Sun?”
Of course she chose there. I honestly didn’t remember until that moment that it was the bar I’d sent her to the last time we were on Mars together, intending to get close to a criminal named Elios Sevari. They fell in lust, and then he died because of me. Story of my life. I couldn’t say why she’d ever want to go back, but now that I was truly observing her, I could tell she was distressed. And for once, it had nothing to do with me.
“After this morning, I’m probably not welcome there,” I said.
“Oh, Dad, what did you do?”
“Long story… and it wasn’t my fault.” I heard sirens again and in my peripherals saw the entrance to the Three Messiahs convent. It swarmed with Venta Co. security interrogating the worshippers. “On second thought? How about we just head in there?” I gestured to a brightly lit bar across the street.
Aria smirked. “You’ll never change.”
I noticed that the bar was nestled above a strip joint. “It’s not that. I just don’t think these old legs can get much farther.” I patted my artificial leg without thinking. She didn’t notice the clank over the din of the noisy streets. That was going to be a fun story to tell her. Five years and one awful encount
er on Titan in between… We had a lot to catch up on.
“What are you having?” I asked as we took a seat at the bar. The floor vibrated, and the bottles behind the bartender rattled from the pulsing music in the club below. My kind of place. At least, it would’ve been if not for the two hulking Titanborn guards standing behind us, sticking out like a sore thumb.
“I don’t drink anymore,” she said.
“And you call yourself my daughter.” I waved to the bartender. “Two whiskeys, rocks.”
“Dad.”
“You don’t drink it, I will.” I took out my ID to hand over so the bartender could scan it and take the rest of what little was left in my credit account.
“Water too,” Aria said as she blocked my hand and offered her ID instead. Per the USF, she was illegitimate, so I couldn’t say who the thing belonged to until she told me willingly. Not that I could talk, considering my ID said Haglin Amissum.
“I have to use Titan’s credits on something,” Aria whispered to me.
I smirked. “Fine by me. Credits are tight these days.”
“I can imagine. I’m sorry about what’s happening to Pervenio, Dad. I know you care about the company. I swear, when I got involved in all of this, I didn’t want it to affect you.”
“It’s not that. I retired.” The bartender had given her a glass of water by the time I uttered the words, and she choked on her first sip.
“You’re retired?”
I shrugged. “That’s why I’m here.”
“By Tra… Wow. I thought only you dying could cause that.”
“Same.” My first whiskey arrived, and I downed half of it in a single gulp. The swill burned all the way down, but man, did I need it.
“Well, after three decades, Pervenio must have offered you a nice severance?”
“Yep. A new leg.”
She raised an eyebrow, so I lifted my pants leg. Her eyelids opened as far as they could go as she beheld the artificial limb beneath. She’d probably never seen tech like it in her life, considering I hadn’t either. She reached out to touch it, then paused.
“It’s fine,” I said. She immediately grabbed the foot and started turning it gently so she could examine every side.
“It’s amazing!” she exclaimed. “Is there sensation?”
I shook my head. “Very little. My reward for accidentally kicking off a revolution on Titan.”
She dropped the limb. “Trust me, it was going to happen whether you got me out of there or not.”
“None of you have any idea who the man I shot to save you was, do you?”
“One of Luxarn Pervenio’s Cogents?”
What happened on Titan flashed through my head as it did so often when I was sober. I heard the bang of our pulse pistols going off, then the hole in Zhaff’s face, which he’d somehow survived enough to become a curiosity in Luxarn’s secret lab. I emptied the rest of my glass and picked up the other.
“That, yes,” I said softly. “And a friend.”
“You have friends now?” Her grin faded when she noticed I wasn’t wearing one. She took my hand and gazed straight at me, the brilliant green eyes she got from her mother teeming with remorse. “I’m so sorry.”
“Don’t be. I would’ve done it the same way every time. I only wish you’d done the smart thing and kept running.”
“I thought about it, Dad. I really did. But I couldn’t leave my patients and all my work behind. I did take one bit of your advice, though.”
“Yeah?”
“I got Elios’ son out of there on a fleeing transport. He’ll be better off placed in some clan-family after they scan through all the refugees.”
“Then you’re smarter than me. But I still wished you went with him. Being their doctor is a far cry from Kale Trass’s ambassador to fucking Earth.”
“You always taught me not to settle.”
“There’s a far cry from what my job was to helping a terror cell.”
“Is there? We didn’t talk for five years, Dad. I can handle myself. You have no idea the things I did to survive, to get in a position with Venta that I might be able to help the people of Titan. I spent a long time wanting to distance myself from you, but… it took seeing you that day to realize how similar we are.”
There was a time I would have dreamed of hearing her utter those words. I’d spent so long trying to groom her into a collector after all. Now hearing them made my stomach turn over. “Trust me, we aren’t. I was never good at helping people. Can’t you go back to just healing them?”
“There’s still time for both. I helped pull out the bullet you put in Rylah’s leg that day.”
“Rylah…” Now there was a name that could always get my blood pumping, of course until I remembered that the last time I saw her on Titan, she’d tried to have me killed. “You know, I figured she was part of the Children of Titan somehow. Don’t know how she managed to lie to a Cogent, though, if anyone could, it’s her. A bullet to the leg was generous.”
“I’m not judging.”
“How is she?”
“She regrets how you two left things.” She could barely keep a straight face.
“Sure. I’m guessing she’s the reason you’re still alive?” Her one eyebrow lifted a smidge like it always did when she was confused, ever since she was a little girl. “C’mon, Aria. Those men in the Q-zone hideout weren’t just shooting at me.”
“I like to tell myself that they were trying to get me away from you, but I know how it looked. I risked letting a collector in, things went south, and our hideout was exposed. Rylah helped smooth things over, since she was the one who got me in contact with the Children of Titan in the first place, but Kale trusts me now. He’s—” She hesitated, and I sensed there was more to her thought. I jumped in too soon and cut her off.
“Trust will never make you one of them.”
“I know. And I know this all seems crazy, but this would be happening with or without me. I figure I might as well try keeping the transition as peaceful as I can, you know?”
“You’ll have your hands full with this bunch.”
“Nobody knows that better than me.”
I tapped my artificial thigh. “I might.”
We shared a smirk, then Aria’s expression darkened. “Do you think there’s any hope of things getting better?”
“Between us?” She shot me one of her infamous sidelong glares. I exhaled. “Do you want the honest answer or a father’s answer?”
“I don’t know. Both maybe?”
I took her by the hand, my thumb running over her knuckles. I wanted to memorize every slope so I would never forget her touch again. “I think that with you at their side, those Ringers are a hell of a lot better off. But no. Things will never be how they were. We both know that. The moment I pulled that trigger on Titan, everything changed.”
She nodded knowingly. “I could see how difficult it was for you, Dad. I don’t know how I could possibly make it up to you.”
I reached out and stroked the pendant hanging from her neck. “You never have to.”
“To your fallen friend,” she said, raising her glass. “May he watch over you forever from the winds of Titan. From ice to ashes.”
“You really are one of them now, aren’t you?”
“I blend in when I have to. I learned that from you.”
I stared at her for a moment as she held her glass. Man, had she grown up. Stronger than me; more beautiful than her mother. And the way she was smiling—we hadn’t gotten along this well in a decade. What happened on Titan changed something. The ease with which we could disagree on almost everything remained, but the fight was gone.
I lifted my second whiskey, the first already burning a hole in my stomach and leaving my head feeling less cluttered. “To Zhaff…” I paused. All his life, he was kept a secret. His almost-death too. With Aria beside me, the shooter and the reason for the shot, thanks to his father, it was the best funeral he’d ever get. “Pervenio,” I finished.
“To Zhaff,” she said softly.
We tapped our glasses, and before I could toss mine back, blood splattered into it. Screams rattled the bar as patrons scattered. Aria’s Titanborn guards had been standing behind us, and both had holes in their foreheads. I reached for my pistol, but alcohol slowed my movements. Before I could get it up, we were at the mercy of at least a dozen Venta Co. gunmen. The two in the middle were the collectors I’d become so friendly with, apparently called off their questioning of the Herald to find me. It didn’t take thirty years of experience in their field to guess that someone at the convent tipped them off that a man by my description was involved.
“Hold your fire!” I blurted as I raised my hands. I tried to remain calm, but Aria was in their sights as well. I wasn’t about to let my mistakes place her in harm’s way for the umpteenth time. “I’ll come in quietly.”
“Dad?” Aria stuttered.
“Take her,” the brash lead collector said. Officers stormed forward to seize Aria.
“What is this?!” she shouted.
“Let go of her!” I lunged for her, but the butt of a rifle slammed against my temple before I got far. My body collapsed on top of one of the armored Titanborn corpses. I saw stars. Aria’s cries for help were drowned out by screeches. The collectors flashed their badges to pacify the patrons, and then they were gone. I don’t know what hurt more, the blow to the face or the fact that they didn’t even recognize me. Either the blood from Aria’s guards obscured my face or they had more important things to worry about. Young guns. Always too eager for credits to pay attention to all the finer details.
Children of Titan Series: Books 1-4: (A Space Opera Thriller Box Set) Page 72
