“Now, Kale!” the Titanborn woman with Aria screamed.
Kale’s ship’s impulse drive sparked, blooming with a blue light so bright my eyes immediately watered. The heat it expelled made the parts of my skin that were exposed start to blister. Varus and the Cogents paused. His lips were drawn into a pin-straight line, calm, even amid a firefight. The inner machinations of his eye lens whirled, the yellow glass reflecting the engine’s star-like radiance.
“Zhaff!” I called out without thinking, my voice hoarse from lack of sleep.
He turned to face me, and then the impulse drives ignited. A tail of bluish plasma and distortion whipped across the center of the hangar. Varus and the Cogents were caught in the worst of it, the skin and muscle literally vaporized off their bones. Shock threw me to the ground just in time to avoid the same fate. I scrambled around the shipping container to the side Aria was on, jumped in front of her, and pinned our bodies so that only my synthetic leg was touching the boiling surface. It absorbed all the heat, and for the first time since it was installed, I felt the pain.
Nineteen
Kale
“Focus on the Cogents!” Rin shouted.
I stuck my pulse rifle around the ramp of the Cora and fired blindly. Pervenio Corp Cogents bore down on our position from the right, with the Venta officers basically everywhere else. The only reason we weren’t surrounded yet was because Captain Barnes kept his word, deciding shortly after the firefight commenced to try and keep us alive. I knew Aria was holed up somewhere out there because the last thing I saw before Gareth forced me to safety was Madame Venta’s sons do the same to her.
One of my men leaned out from a landing support, but the Cogents popped him in the head. Their push was unremitting. One inch out of cover and their attention was already there, as if they could predict our movements.
“Basaam and his clan-sister are safely on board and in their sleep pods!” Rin hollered to me. “We can’t survive this. Toast them now, Kale!”
“She’s still out there!” I answered.
I peered around the ramp with one eye. Past a wall of Cogents marching at us like yellow-eyed cyclops all in black, I caught a quick glimpse of Aria. She now lay out in front of the fray, with a Venta collector hunched over and punching her.
“Aria!” I screamed at the top of my lungs. Gareth jerked me back to safety, bullets whizzing by my ear.
“Gareth, cover me!” Rin said. “I’ll get her.” The Cora’s ramp rumbled as she bounded down from the cargo bay into the firefight.
Gareth held me back with one hand while with the other giving the Cogents as much as they could handle. A bullet nipped him in his gun arm, sending his pulse rifle flying and knocking him off his feet. I grabbed him by the shoulders and helped him scramble back to shelter.
“My lord!” one of my guards yelled. “They’re moving to flank us.”
Off to my right, the Titanborn who’d spoken was peppered with holes as the Cogents got an angle on him. Soon they’d gain a favorable position on us as well. There was nowhere to run. Venta Co. had the other side of the Cora completely contained.
I tapped my armor, frantically searching for the switch to activate my helmet com-link to the Cora’s command deck. “Prepare to ignite engines,” I stammered once I found it. “Full pow—” Bullets sparked on the floor less than a meter away.
My clip was low, but I managed to hit the shooter in the leg. Another yellow eye lens quickly appeared as my gun clicked empty. Gareth tried to pull himself in between us but was too slow. Another of my guards leaped in front of us instead, bullets pummeling him.
“Now!” Rin’s voice echoed over the rattle of gunfire.
Gareth grabbed our savior’s dancing corpse and used it as a shield while he fired upon the Cogents.
“Do it!” I barked over my com-link.
I drew Gareth back behind the ramp right as a dazzling tail of blue lashed across the hangar. The heat it emanated made my face feel like it was on fire, but together we watched. The Cogents were nearest, and their bodies vanished in the brightness. Venta men, Red Wing men… Anyone who wasn’t behind dense enough cover was reduced to ashes. Even the surfaces of the shipping containers facing us melted like hot wax.
It only lasted for a few seconds, but by the time the engines cooled, groans supplanted the shooting. The remaining heat was grueling, even with my suit on. Gareth and I had to use each other to support our wobbling legs. I glanced over, noticing the blood oozing out of two bullet holes in his armor as he released the pitiful whimper his tongueless mouth allowed him to.
“Someone…” I smacked my lips. Despite my sealed visor, just opening my mouth made me feel like I was swallowing fire. “Someone help him!”
One of my men staggered over to us, but Gareth shoved him away. Gareth spat a glob of blood into the bottom of his helmet and pounded his fist on his abdomen. Red trickled through a gash in his armor there, the stream merging with the one already running down the length of his arm from a second hole in his left shoulder.
“I’ll be fine,” he signed. “They didn’t go in deep. What are your orders?”
I regarded him. His protruding brow constantly accentuated his grim demeanor; he appeared like the demons the Church of the Three Messiahs claimed we were. Blood and filth sullied his pale spartan features, coating the deep wrinkles a man from Titan’s low g should never bear, thanks to working in Saturn’s atmosphere. The two bullets he took were meant for me, and I knew that so long as he could walk, he’d keep fighting. My loyal guardian. The man who was the first to truly make me believe that I could lead anything.
I offered him a nod and turned to face the rest of the hangar. A broiling haze hung on the air, as if we were trapped on Mercury. Distortion from the ion stream and a layer of radiation so copious my body would start devouring itself from the inside out if I didn’t inject anti-rads soon. Even my suit wouldn’t be enough to hold it at bay for too long, and all Aria had on was a dress. I needed to get her on board the Cora quickly.
“Kill Venta,” I muttered to Gareth and the surviving Titanborn. “Then get our dead onto the ship. We’re all going home.”
They slogged through oppressive heat, stepping over shadows scorched into the floor… all that remained of the Cogents and anyone else exposed directly. Karl crawled from behind cover, his leg mangled beyond repair, body singed merely from touching anything in the ion stream’s path.
“You Ringer filth,” he moaned. Gareth raised his rifle with one arm and splattered the brains of Venta Co. royalty all over the burnished floor.
While he handled the other survivors, I went to search for Aria and Rin. My aunt had plotted ahead of time which container to get behind in the event Venta forced our hands. It was one we’d stuffed with spare parts to help resist the heat. The heat had still probably caused her and Aria to pass out. As I made my way toward it, Captain Barnes and a few Red Wing officers emerged from the opposite side of the hangar where the engine’s blaze was weakest. The entry gate was welded shut to seal them in, the wall around it charred along with every security feed.
“Mr. Trass! Are you okay?” Barnes rasped.
Gareth glanced back at me, his eyes asking for permission to open fire. I shook my head, then lumbered toward the captain. Every step felt like I was wading through water. “You kept your word!” I hollered back to him.
“We always do.” He winced as Gareth shot a Venta collector in the back who reached for a half-liquefied firearm. “What in Earth’s name happened?”
“Luxarn Pervenio’s last failed attempt on my life.”
“Kale,” someone whispered from the other side of the shipping container Rin was supposed to be behind.
I rushed around it to discover her and Aria there as expected, only they weren’t alone. An Earther wearing a grimy duster hid behind my aunt with his pistol aimed at her head. His other hand wrapped tightly around Aria’s arm. All three of their faces were flushed from the heat.
“It’s a pleasur
e to finally make your acquaintance, Kale Drayton,” the man said. The grit in his voice spoke of booze and a lifetime’s worth of scuffles. He surely wasn’t a Cogent. None of his clothing was marked with the Pervenio emblem. His face, mottled by furrows and faded scars, hid under the shadow of carelessly tousled gray hair. An unkempt salt-and-pepper beard wrapped his square jawline like he’d forgotten to shave for months.
I couldn’t place why, but I recognized him from somewhere. Nobody outside of Darien would’ve known my mother’s surname, Drayton, which I went by for most of my life. I figured maybe he was a former Pervenio officer I’d seen around the city growing up. He had the look of one. His hazel eyes were weary, like he’d already seen everything the world had to offer yet couldn’t keep himself from seeking more.
“Just put a bullet in him,” Rin gargled.
“Kale, listen to me,” Aria implored. “He’s not going to shoot anybody.” That same rattled expression she wore around Madame Venta contorted her face.
“Listen to her,” the old man said. “Nobody has to die.”
“Then drop the weapon,” I demanded. Gareth appeared by my side so fast it was like he’d teleported. The old man’s eyes widened as he saw him.
“You’re that illegitimate from the Twilight Sun, aren’t you? Clever, kid. You’ve been planning this from the start, not because of the summit. Used that dumb fuck Trevor to get to Basaam, I’ll bet.”
I glanced at Gareth. He shrugged his shoulders. “How did you know that?” I asked.
“A hunch. Been doing this for a long time, Drayton.”
“Stop calling me that.”
“I suggest you listen to him,” Captain Barnes said as he caught up with us. “You are under arrest for violating an official USF contract of suspended hostilities.”
“Red Wing,” the man scoffed. “Why don’t you run along and let the adults handle this.”
“Why you!” Barnes raised his gun, but I lowered the barrel. Gareth took my cue and forcefully shoved him aside so that he wouldn’t intervene.
“What do you want?” I questioned.
“I want to back out of here alive,” the old man said.
“Nobody is stopping you.”
He smirked, and not like Madame Venta did when she wanted to act like she was in control. There was a blitheness to it, the kind of expression that said he hadn’t been truly afraid of anything in a long time and he wasn’t going to start now.
“I’ll make this simple, Drayton—” he began.
“I said stop calling me that!” I interrupted.
“Ashamed of your mother? I can’t say I blame you, kid. I was about your age when I left my clan-family and chose a name of my own. Nothing as fanciful as Trass, but, you know, different strokes.”
“Stop stalling.” I sidled forward, my fingers fidgeting around the trigger of my gun, desperate to put down another Earther who spoke at me like I was nothing. He took a healthy stride back, dragging Rin and Aria with him.
“Please,” Aria urged me. “Stay calm.”
“Just shoot him already,” Rin croaked.
“I’ve got a feeling we’ve both seen enough of that today,” the old man said. He coughed, causing his grip on Rin to loosen for a second. I took a hard step toward him, but he recovered and pressed the barrel of his pistol hard into her temple. Aria raised a hand to keep me back.
“Radiation. Every second you waste, your insides corrode a little more,” I said. I gestured toward the whole of the hangar, still rife with contamination.
“It can’t do a better job than whiskey.”
I drew a deep, grating breath. “I’m going to ask again. What do you want?”
“Aria. She’s walking out of here, straight to treatment and away from you. You can kill me if it makes you feel better, but she walks.”
“In exchange for what?” Aria’s brow furrowed at my query, though I couldn’t tell if she was insulted or relieved. A chance to escape her responsibilities, what I wouldn’t have given for that.
The old man motioned to Rin. “She lives.”
“Rin would gladly give her life, and you’ll be dead before she hits the floor,” I said. “You can do better.”
“I thought you people didn’t like striking deals with Earthers?” Uncertainty momentarily rippled across his face. He was stalling… human after all.
“But you’re different than the others, aren’t you? You seem equally as tired of their rotten deals as I am.”
“I can…” He searched the room, pausing on the molten remnants of a Cogent eye lens that had somehow remained intact enough to identify. “I was a Pervenio collector for three decades. That comes with certain skills. Certain privileges.”
“He’s lying, Kale,” Rin said. “Just finish him. You have to get out of here.”
Now his staunch demeanor was starting to make sense. This was what the collectors of offworlder legend were supposed to be like. Not that rat Trevor Cross.
Gareth nudged me in the side. “He’s not lying,” he signed. “He and Trevor were arguing when I took him. His retirement came up.”
“And how does a retired collector help me?” I asked.
“How do you want it to?” he replied. “I know Luxarn Pervenio. How his mind works.”
“Even where he hides?”
The Collector hesitated at first, then nodded ruefully. “I know where he shits. You let Aria go free of all this trouble, and my gun is yours. Anything you need.” He stared at Aria with the same blend of sorrow and tenderness that my mother had when I used to visit her behind the divider of the Darien Quarantine. Of all the riddles of Aria’s past, there was no denying one—this mysterious old man cared for her deeply.
“Don’t do this for me, Dad!” Aria couldn’t cover her mouth fast enough.
Hearing the title drew everyone’s attention and provided Rin the opening she needed to break free. Her elbow smashed into the former collector’s stomach. As he reeled, she twisted his arm until his pulse pistol popped out of his hand. Before any of us knew it, she had his own gun aimed back at him. She would’ve pulled the trigger too if Aria hadn’t leaped between them.
Twenty
Malcolm
“Please don’t!” Aria cried.
I stood behind her, under the sights of yet another Titanborn who’d ripped a gun out of my hands. First on Earth when Zhaff was once forced to save me, then on Titan a number of times, now here. It was beginning to become a trend. If only I’d taken the time to nap instead of pointlessly gallivanting around Old Dome to try and find a good reason why Wai was dead when there was none. Then maybe I would’ve had my wits enough about me to get Aria out without starting a standoff with the adolescent king of Titan and his disfigured guard dog.
“A Pervenio collector?” the one Kale referred to as Rin said, her rage palpable. “You’ve been working with them the whole time!”
“I’m not!” Aria protested. “I swear I was going to tell you, Kale.” She coughed once, then started to dry retch. I had to grab her to keep her upright. Kale and the other Titanborn wore airtight armor and helmets, but Aria and I weren’t so fortunate. Radiation poisoning was a bitch. I recalled dealing with a bad bout of it, a decade ago back on an asteroid colony when a reactor overloaded. This was worse. It hurt all over just supporting Aria’s weight, and she wasn’t even born on Earth. My insides felt like they were fighting to squeeze through my pores.
“Working with me?” I released a weak chuckle. This was another fine mess I’d gotten her into. “I could hardly get her to talk to me.” I looked past Rin and straight at Kale. He was in shock, his gun elevated but aimed at nothing. “Malcolm Graves. That’s my name. Have you ever heard her use it? It’s because I abandoned her on Mars, and I didn’t look back. She was better off without me.”
“Well, you’re here now,” Rin growled.
“A dying father come to rectify his sins, that’s all,” I said. “You think I wanted her working with you people? Under Luxarn Pervenio’s lens? No
, I came to get her out because Earth knows I’m the reason she went running into the arms of suicidal Ringers.”
A bang at the entry reverberated across the hangar. The door was partially welded shut from their ship’s impulse drive ignition, but it wouldn’t hold long. “This property belongs to Madame Venta!” an officer outside shouted. “Open up, or we will be required to use force!”
“Venta Co. is here,” a Red Wing captain, who Kale somehow had working for him, announced. “Mr. Trass, you must leave immediately.”
“I’m aware,” Kale said.
“We may still need Aria, but let me put a bullet in this Pervenio scum,” Rin said.
Kale’s dusky eyes darted between us and the continued banging at the gate.
“I know I should’ve told you,” Aria pled. “From now on, I’ll tell you everything. Just please, let him go. He’s out of the business. He has nothing to do with any of this.” Now she was the one trying to help me. Maybe we really were starting to get along better.
“Is this who you desperately needed to go see?” Kale questioned her. “Your illegitimate father? I don’t care if he’s out; he’s still Pervenio.”
“I swear, I didn’t even know he was still alive until today.”
“C’mon, Kale,” Rin said. I could feel the familiar barrel of my pistol rustling through my hair. “It’s time.”
“Undina Mining facility,” I said.
“What?” Kale said.
“That’s where Luxarn Pervenio is holed up.”
“Look how loyal the dog is,” Rin spat.
I rolled my shoulders. It was tough being overly loyal to a man who drained my credit account out of spite after thirty years of doing whatever he asked, but that wasn’t what made me say it. Undina was the closest asteroid to Earth in the system, pulled into its orbit for ease of mining years ago when Pervenio Corp was building a Departure Ark and still had influence. It also happened to house what was left of the Cogent Initiative. An attempt at breaking in to get to him was suicide. If I couldn’t kill the boy-king and free Sol from all the trouble he was causing, then maybe he’d chase the man they held responsible for subjugating Titan and get himself killed for me.
Children of Titan Series: Books 1-4: (A Space Opera Thriller Box Set) Page 77
