I waved back toward the Cora’s cargo bay. Two Titanborn immediately ran in and returned with our three captives. I’d removed their hoods earlier to save the time, but scraps of cloth were shoved into each of their mouths to silence the grating racket of their protests.
“As soon as she walks, they walk,” I said.
Rin tapped her rifle and aimed at Basaam. “I see anything off, the first slug goes through his profitable brain.”
“Basaam!” Karl yelled. “Clan-brother. Are you injured?” Basaam gawked at Rin, then shook his head fervently. “Got anything strapped to you? Earth knows these Ringers love their bombs.” Again, Basaam shook his head. “All right, Trass. You’re lucky my mother was feeling generous today. You’ve held up your end. Here she comes.”
An explosion suddenly rocked the wall of the hangar to our right, causing anyone on that side of the room to stagger. Basaam’s streetwalking girlfriend dashed forward in a panic, and just as she passed by me, a bullet splattered her brains. One of my people panicked and returned fire, shredding Karl Venta’s kneecap. Gareth tackled me off the ramp. Rin lunged, grabbed Basaam and his clan-sister, and flung them back onto the Cora before they could escape.
Eighteen
Malcolm
Varus led me to the rest of his unit. He had a squadron of six Cogents, burrowed away in the New Beijing Redline. It wasn’t difficult getting into the cramped tunnels, with city security looking for worse offenders than squatters. We slipped in through an exhaust vent in an Old Dome alley.
Rusty barrels filled with fires illuminated the congested tube, surrounded by the poor and the depraved under hung tarps. Most didn’t even notice our peculiar group going by, too strung out on synthahol or foundry salts or whatever other new synthetics were all the rage. Redline cars rumbled by, shattering bottles that had rolled onto the tracks. I even heard the faint and distant cries of some piece of sewer trash who was too drunk to stay against the outer walls and keep out of their way.
“We are beneath the spaceport now,” Varus said as we reached a point where the single tunnel branched into three larger ones. We left the bonfires of the homeless behind, and I would’ve traded anything on me for a pair of spotters. It was pitch black.
I leaned against the wall to catch my breath. The effects of coffee and the adrenaline from being kidnapped were beginning to wear off. My human leg felt the ache of exhaustion, and my eyelids felt like they had ten-pound weights strapped to the lashes.
“This service passage leads directly beneath the main terminal,” Varus said. “It is locked, but we should be able to break through.” Varus’s eye lens projected a beam of light to help me see. He slid aside an unconscious bearded man and knelt in front of a sealed hatch so thick it looked like it was designed for a spaceship. He held a hand-terminal up to the hatch’s control panel, which bore an operation screen so fuzzy I couldn’t read anything on it. I wasn’t even sure it still worked.
I didn’t have the time or patience to wait. I nudged Varus out of the way and kicked the hinge as hard as I could with my artificial leg. It caved, and a few more kicks busted it enough for the hatch to pop out. I was left gasping for breath.
“A much more efficient use of time,” Varus acknowledged. He and the other Cogents grabbed the edge of a half-meter-thick slab of metal and yanked until it open wide enough for them to squeeze through.
Varus waved me along, and I paused. During my first days working with Zhaff, I had to endure constant questioning of my methods and his rattling off superfluous data. I had no idea what Luxarn told this group of Cogents, but they were so deferential, it made me uncomfortable. Almost reverential. Couldn’t they stare at my face with their shiny, yellow eye lenses and see all the lies I was holding in? That I’d put the best of them into a coma from which he was never likely to wake.
“Are you coming, Malcolm Graves?” Varus said. “Time is of the essence.”
I shook the thoughts out of my head and dragged my human leg along. He was right. This arrangement was only temporary. Extract Aria, and then Luxarn could do whatever he wanted with his Cogents. Kill Kale Trass, take back Titan—I couldn’t give two shits so long as she was safe. Yet, couldn’t I do that best as one of his directors rather than skulking through the shadows? If I was going to spend the rest of my life sitting around, why not be behind a real wooden desk?
“Malcolm Graves?”
My mind drifted in and out. I slapped myself across the face a few times to gain focus. My fingers wrapped the first step of the ladder, and I climbed. One step up the cramped passage and I knew where we were. An elevator shaft. Judging by the layer of grime wrapping every rung, nobody had bothered cleaning the place in decades either.
Mars was funny that way. It had been settled so suddenly and aggressively by corporations that layers of infrastructure wound up buried as the domes went up, one taller and wider than the next. Whatever skyscraper we were in transformed into a massive pier supporting the current spaceport.
Varus glanced down to check on me, and the light from his eye lens sliced through the blackness to provide more answers. An elevator car hung crookedly from a cluster of wilting cables, the Pervenio logo stamped on the side.
I chuckled, then coughed as I inhaled a mouthful of dust. It was almost like Luxarn had been planning this forever. That was how he knew about a route only someone who’d spent a lifetime mapping the warren of tunnels and sewers beneath New Beijing would be aware of. His father had it constructed even before his company abandoned Mars for the greener pastures around Saturn. All of Earth had thought the Pervenios were mad, going so far away and toward a people on Titan who hadn’t yet responded to any communications.
“One hundred more meters,” Varus informed me.
“Not ninety-nine?” I joked.
“Ninety-nine now.”
My smirk was concealed by the darkness. It seemed Cogents still hadn’t been trained to comprehend sarcasm. I remembered all those times Zhaff had taken one of my jokes too literally. His eye lens would stare at me, gears churning behind the glass, brain trying to make sense of whatever idiom I’d spouted.
My hand slipped as I went to grab the next rung. My human foot came loose with it, too sore to fight the inertia of my swing. If not for my artificial leg, I would’ve taken a plummet that even Mars’s weak gravity wouldn’t have made possible to survive, but it jammed between two rungs and allowed me to regain my bearings. A rusty bolt clattered down the shaft.
“Please hurry, Mr. Graves,” Varus called down.
“You don’t worry about me,” I panted.
My exhaustion was mounting, allowing any distraction to break my attention too easily. I decided it was best to watch my hands and feet. I concentrated on each step the little light afforded me. One hand up, second hand, push off with my fake leg. The other was too tired to do anything but maintain balance. If I had been climbing this high under Earth’s gravity, I probably would’ve had a heart attack.
By the time Varus heaved me up through a service hatch at the top, I couldn’t remember ever having been more beat in my life. Not even after months in a sleep pod traveling across the solar system. My entire body was drained, with my hands suffering from a bad case of the shakes.
I sat and squeezed my fists over and over to try and drive blood back into them. I should’ve exercised instead of spending my time on Mars shoving liquor down my gullet and napping. Maybe then I could have fought off the collectors who took Aria and avoided all of this.
“Focus, Malcolm,” I whispered to myself, banging the back of my head lightly against a column. Varus placed his hand behind my neck to stop me. He pointed up. We were in a compact structural cavity crammed with thick columns and beams transferring weight down to the buried skyscraper. The Cogents all had to crouch to fit under the low ceiling.
“Thermals spot three officers in the hangar above,” one of the Cogents whispered. “Communications signal indicates they belong to Red Wing Company.”
“That’s
all Kale has with him?” I asked.
“They rent this entire wing,” Varus said. “We are beneath the hangar adjacent to Kale Trass’s.”
“Mobile fusion cutter ready,” said a female Cogent.
A small, gun-shaped device in her hand ignited, and she began to trace the white-hot tip across the ceiling. Sparks shot out as the structural alloy melted away. When the circle was complete, Varus positioned himself in the center and raised his hands against the loosened slab. Three others formed a circle around him, facing outward.
“Dislodging in three... two… one.” Varus finished counting down, then his thick Earther legs stretched, and his biceps bulged. He freed the portion of the floor and propped it upward. The Cogents around him stood in sync, all together firing three calculated shots from silenced pulse pistols through the reveal. I didn’t hear screams, only the gentle thud of three bodies collapsing in the hangar above.
“The path is clear, Malcolm Graves.” Varus slid the slab aside, and he and the other Cogents leaped through the opening with ease. Their footsteps were as light as rats’ scampering beneath the floorboards of Earth’s shantytowns, no matter what world they appeared to have grown up on. I hauled myself through clumsily, arms shaking even harder as they supported my weight. I spilled out across the floor, the blinding lights on a faraway ceiling appearing to swirl about my vision as I rolled over. They were dizzying…
“I’m coming, Aria,” I groaned.
I blinked away the brightness and forced myself to my feet. Lying down, even for a moment, was an awful idea considering how tired I was. I had to keep up with the Cogents. If they got in that hangar without me and started shooting… “No prejudice,” were the specific words Luxarn used.
Varus and the others were already against the wall of Kale’s hangar, attaching some manner of explosive to it. The bodies of the Red Wing officers were scattered about, and in the center of the hangar sat a lone ship. They had been unloading crates filled with unmarked bags of foundry salts. The drug originated in the old factories on Titan, and the bags weren’t tagged because they weren’t the byproduct of some corps trying to make an extra buck; it was poison given away by Kale Trass for nothing. Apparently, the self-proclaimed prideful and loyal Red Wing Company had taken the bait. Free credits explained their vested interest in keeping Kale Trass in power for as long as possible.
Good, I told myself. Focus on the details, Malcolm. Stay awake. There were some parts of being a collector I couldn’t turn off. Seeing the world for what it really was happened to be one of them.
“Explosive prepared,” Varus said, and it didn’t take me long to realize he was addressing me specifically. Cogents had a way of fixing their eye lenses upon their target of conversation. “The thermal readings indicate the presence of at least fifty individuals.”
“Can you tell which one is Kale?” I asked.
“Heat interference from their ship’s engine is making it impossible to determine the exact number or specifics. Do you have a recommended attack strategy?”
“Isn’t that what you people were trained to come up with?”
Varus leaned in, the shutters in his eye-lens gyrating as he fixated on me. “Yes, however, you have been involved in the execution of one hundred thirty-two violent criminals, as well as the arrest of an unspecified number of others. Your recommendation will be valued.”
I swallowed hard as my fingers grazed the grip of my pulse pistol. I’d never counted before. One hundred thirty-two confirmed lives had been claimed by it over thirty years, and that wasn’t including any collateral.
“Mr. Graves, the exchange is commencing,” Varus interrupted my ruminations. “Your recommendation?”
“One hundred thirty-two,” I muttered.
“Confirmed.”
I couldn’t remember the names of more than a handful. And of the faces… only the last one it punished. Zhaff’s. Soon to be my one-hundred-thirty-third confirmed kill when Luxarn stomached pulling the plug. I could remember his face; it was right in front of me, every second of every day. I knew it so well that while everybody else would’ve claimed he always wore the exact same expressions as the six Cogents standing before me, I could point out all his quirks. The way his eyebrow twitched ever so slightly when I said something that didn’t compute for him. The subtle tug at the corner of his lips when he learned how to tell a joke.
“What’s one more, huh?” I said softly.
“One hundred thirty-three.”
I released a somber chuckle. Zhaff would’ve responded the same way.
“My advice,” I began, “is to shoot at Kale the way you shot at me back on Undina. Don’t focus on anybody else. They’ll be confused enough when we blow through. Get a clear shot, put one between Kale’s eyes, and get out.” Getting their attention away from Aria and Venta was my number one concern if I wanted an opening to grab her.
“Titanborn armor is dense. The proximity required for a confirmed fatal shot through his helmet is within ten meters.”
“Well, you lot don’t care about dying, do you?” He answered with silence, and that confounding blank stare Zhaff had been so proficient with.
While I waited for them, I removed the hand-terminal Varus had given me and allowed me to keep, since apparently, I was the leader of this mission. I pulled up Luxarn’s information and drafted a message. The last interaction I ever planned to have with the man.
YOU’RE WELCOME, SIR.
—MALCOLM
I took a deep breath and sent it, then grinned as I stowed the device. Simple, to the point, and ideally suited to our mostly impersonal relationship.
My wrinkled hand then slowly wrapped the grip of my pistol, the only true friend I’d ever known. My index finger slipped through the trigger guard as it had so many times before. Two-point-four pounds of pressure—that was the difference between life and death for the one hundred thirty-two poor souls who’d wound up on the wrong side of the barrel.
I drew it, ducked behind a nearby container, and covered my ears. It was time to help finish what Zhaff and I had started when we met back on Earth. Time to bring an end to the Children of Titan once and for all and avenge what the boy-king Kale had done to Pervenio Corp. That would make Luxarn and me even for the bullet I’d put in Zhaff. A life for a life, both times with my daughter’s hanging in the balance.
“Blow it,” I told Varus.
A second later, the contained blast peeled open a portion of the dense wall as if it were made of paper ribbons. My ears rang as I bounded through the breach alongside the Cogents. My gun was up, but I had no eye lens to help me see through the smoke. All I could distinguish was blurs of color and flashing muzzles.
I aimed from side to side as I pressed forward, panting, trying to keep up with my Cogent entourage. When I realized how futile that was, I lowered my pistol and rushed through the fog on my own path. The head of a Venta officer exploded as I took cover behind a shipping container. Another turned and spotted me, but I kicked him in the chest with the one part of my body that couldn’t get tired. The force of my synthetic leg sent him flying, and once outside of cover, his body was ripped to shreds in the crossfire.
I peeked around the container.
Thirty years and I’d never seen employees of Earth’s three biggest corporations open fire in the same room. Gunmen took cover wherever they could find it. The Red Wing officers by the gate seemed confused about who to shoot at, but that didn’t stop most of them from doing so. The Venta Co. men unloaded in both directions, peppering fighters in white and red with bullets. And from the shadow of their ship, the Titanborn soldiers shot at anything that moved.
“Focus on the Cogents!” a woman taking cover somewhere near Kale shouted. He and the Titanborn soldiers who had survived the initial onslaught were tucked behind their ship’s loading ramp.
“Aria!” I heard Kale roar after a few more seconds of fighting.
I followed the direction of his voice and located Aria. She’d made an attempt to es
cape that Venta collector I’d gotten friendly with the past two days. He tackled her out in the open. Nobody fired at them. The Cogents were wholly focused on eliminating Kale, and neither the Titanborn nor Venta officers wanted to risk killing one of their own.
The collector crawled on top of her and started pounding her face. My heart thumped so fast that my chest stung. I leaned around the corner and took aim. They were barely ten meters away—a shot I’d made plenty of times in my life—but all my attempts at focusing had my old eyes seeing two of him. I edged farther out of cover. Aria pushed back the collector’s throat to slow his punches, groping with the other hand for the pulse pistol dangling from a fallen officer’s hip.
Pull the trigger, Malcolm! I told myself. I had the vantage now, and I had him lined up in my sights. There was no chance I could miss. But I couldn’t pull the trigger. My hand cramped. It felt freezing cold, like I was back on Titan aiming at Zhaff.
Blood suddenly spiraled out of the collector’s back. I glanced down, wondering if I’d fired without realizing, but my fingers remained stuck. Aria grasped the nearby pistol as the collector lurched from that first shot, and buried two more slugs in his stomach. A female Titanborn promptly slid next to them, pulled Aria out from under the Earther, and emptied a pulse rifle clip into the Venta ranks as they ran in my direction.
I fell back behind the shipping container, winded. I smacked myself in the head to try and wake my hand up when the Titanborn woman and Aria dove around the same shipping container, backs against the side facing the Venta officers for some reason. They didn’t notice me just around the corner. All I had to do was grab Aria, and we could book it out the way I’d come in before any of the Cogents knew the difference.
I peered around the container to see where my companions were. They were completely focused on Kale like I’d told them to be. The King of Titan used his men like a meat shield, or rather, they flocked to him as the Cogents tore into what remained of his people. Varus shot one through the chest, and another leaped in front of Kale. Bullets stung the loyal soul like a swarm of angry mutated hornets.
Children of Titan Series: Books 1-4: (A Space Opera Thriller Box Set) Page 76
