She switched it off, then pried open the back and removed the battery. “In case they try to use it to track us,” she said, coughing as well. She stored it in her pocket. “Now let’s get you loaded up before it’s too late.”
She helped me back to my pod since I could barely feel my limbs. One by one, she helped remove the sections of my armor. The pieces fell away from me into the depths of the Cora, and then I plunged backward into the pod.
“He won’t have died for nothing,” Rin said as she hooked me in. I didn’t respond. I couldn’t. My brutally scarred aunt continued prepping me for sleep as if she were my mother, until soothing pharma was flowing through my veins.
“I know you’re worried about your child, but he’s going to be fine,” Rin assured me. “These anti-rads are strong, and it hasn’t been long. I’ll pull him out of that deceitful witch myself if I have to.”
It took every ounce of what little energy I had remaining, but I reached up and closed the lid myself before she could manage another word. Silence enveloped me. I was finally alone.
I wasn’t sure what would happen next. The inside of the pod felt like it was spinning, and everything seemed like a lucid dream. I hadn’t wanted to be put under during our voyage to Mars because I was afraid I’d forget Cora, but at that moment, forgetting was all I wanted to do. I wanted to evaporate into the sky of Titan.
I told myself over and over that what Malcolm said was wrong. That he was only trying to get a rise out of me. Every death couldn’t possibly be on me. I couldn’t control everything.
And as I lied to myself, again and again, my world went dark…
Epilogue
Undina was an unassuming place. A metal-rich asteroid dragged into near-Earth orbit a few million kilometers beyond the moon by Pervenio Corp to help with the construction of the Departure Ark, Hermes. The pull Luxarn used to have for the USF to allow him to draw a celestial body so near to Earth considering the fear people still held of meteorites… Madame Jamaru Venta longed for it.
Yet the interior bore none of the sleek walls and smartly designed spaces indicative of Pervenio Corp. The moment Madame Venta landed in the hangar, she felt like she’d stepped into the deepest slum on Mars. The whole place was rundown, rusting. It stank of burned-out engine cores, and there was an overbearing metallic tinge to the air, like Luxarn’s entire operation was bleeding out. A dockhand shuffled over, boiler suit rumpled and covered in grime, e-cig hanging out of his lips. Miners lounged about in the adjacent galley, nothing to do, disinterested. No drills or haulers echoed from the deep. In fact, for a mine that was still considered active, the cavernous halls were deathly quiet.
Jamaru spent a lifetime in rivalry with Luxarn Pervenio. She held equal parts respect and hatred for the man but seeing his company plunge so far troubled even her. It wasn’t pity—he’d done enough never to deserve that—but she knew how easily Venta could now wind up in the same place, dragged through the mud by some ill-fated offworlders who thought the universe owed them something.
Sol was truly changing.
A doctor met her by the opposite end of the hangar. The old hag had skin like wrinkled parchment and hair she didn’t even bother to comb.
“This way,” she croaked. She led Jamaru Venta and the armed collector guarding her to a lift. The doctor stuck out her arm to bar her. “Not him,” she said, nodding at her escort.
“Excuse me?” Jamaru glared down at the doctor’s arm. Nobody in her company would dare have the balls to touch her or to also ask her to enter a meeting in a mysterious place alone. She’d been under constant guard ever since Red Wing Company allowed that savage Ringer, Kale Trass, to escape. Ever since she found her favored clan-children in New Beijing, charred and brutalized at his hands.
“Mr. Pervenio would prefer to keep the contents of this facility undisclosed.”
He’s really lost it, Jamaru thought. She wanted to curse at the doctor and go back to her ship, but instead, a sigh came out. She’d come this far already. No need for company to make a deal with the devil.
“Wait with the ship,” she ordered the collector.
“Madame,” he replied. “You shouldn’t go in alone.”
“I’ve known Luxarn for decades. He wouldn’t dare touch me.”
She stepped into the lift, which took them deep into the bedrock of Undina. She could feel the gravity relax as they delved further away from the surface and the centripetal force of the asteroid’s incited spin. Deeper than the mines. When the doors opened, she finally entered a place that looked like it belonged to the former wealthiest man in Sol.
Clean metallic walls with genuine wood trim, polished tile floors—the place was as well put together as anything she owned. An artist couldn’t paint the picture of a more perfect research facility. There wasn’t even a mote of dust in the air. One or two researchers strolled down an adjacent hall, but that was all.
“He’s waiting for you inside,” the doctor said when they reached the polished doors at the end of a long hall. She muttered something to a hovering service bot, and it sputtered a response, then the doors slid open with a snap and hiss.
Luxarn sat on the edge of his mahogany desk within, staring at the entry like a dog waiting for a meal. The desk was the only luxurious thing inside. Like the rest of the facility, the room had a lifeless, clinical quality.
“I didn’t think you’d actually come,” Luxarn Pervenio said, smiling from ear to ear. She’d known him for decades, and for the first time, his age was starting to show. Wrinkles formed around his mouth and piercing eyes.
“Who’s stupid enough to turn down a meeting with Luxarn Pervenio?” she replied, smirking. She knew he had to be mentally frail after losing so much. Petting his ego like he was still king of Sol seemed the best way to make sure she wound up on the more profitable end of their bargain.
“Too many people these days, I fear.” He crossed the room and stuck out a hand. She hesitated before shaking it. She couldn’t count on just those fingers how many deals they’d shattered between each other in their quest to rule Sol. They were members of the first clan-families to begin settling the worlds beyond Earth after the Meteorite hit. The old guard. Rivalry like theirs hadn’t existed since the warring countries that existed before it.
Now all that was unraveling, thanks to Kale, like thread from a broken spool.
“I’m sorry about what happened,” Jamaru said, struggling to make it sound wholly genuine.
“No, you aren’t.” He smirked, then turned his back to her and started pacing the room.
“You see right through me, as always. Things were simpler when it was just us out here.”
“Was it that fun living in my shadow?”
“I...” She bit back a scathing response and took a measured breath. “I know we’ve had our differences, Luxarn, but I’m here. Don’t waste my time.”
“Differences? You helped them take the Ring. You think I don’t know about the weapons you snuck over? The intel? You handed Titan to that monster on a silver platter.”
“You know you would’ve done exactly the same. Neither of us had any idea it’d put a madman in power. It was politics, pure and simple.”
“That’s the only reason you’re still alive.”
Jamaru Venta scoffed. “At least you haven’t lost your sense of humor.”
He grinned, then snapped his fingers at his service bot. “Bot, get us drinks.” It immediately hovered across the room to a mostly empty cupboard without asking what they wanted. Like he’d trained it to know.
“I don’t drink,” Jamaru Venta said.
“You do today,” Luxarn replied.
“Luxarn, it’s madness out there. Everyone is after a slice of your pie. Red Wing Company made a power grab… Red Wing, for Earth’s sake. The USF is clueless—”
“Relax, Jamaru. If you’re serious about this alliance, then everything will be taken care of.”
“You got my attention, Luxarn, but if you want any more than that,
I’ll need to see more than some old mine.”
The bot poked two glasses of whiskey into his hands with its spindly arms, and he sauntered back over to her, a hop in his step. She’d honestly expected him to be more somber. That was why she’d bought into this idea in the first place. She could manipulate that.
“Kale Trass has taken too many things I care about,” Luxarn said as he approached her. “Now he’s threatened my life, personally. It’s time to end it.”
He presented the glass and didn’t leave Jamaru much choice but to take it. She hated putting anything in her body that blunted her wit.
“PerVenta Corp,” Luxarn ruminated. “Has a nice ring, doesn’t it?”
She took one whiff of the vile liquid, which devoured the souls of weak men, and recoiled. “I’m not in the mood for your games,” she said. “He killed my biological sons, Luxarn. Not clan-children. They came from my belly, and he torched them like kitchen meat. Now I’m not agreeing to a thing until you tell me what this plan of yours is.”
“First, we show Red Wing what happens when you side against your own kind,” Luxarn said.
“How?”
He put on a wicked grin, took a long sip of his drink, and then gestured to the door. Madame Venta turned to see a young offworlder standing in the doorway wearing the white armor of the Children of Titan, an orange circle printed on his chest. At first, she shuddered, thinking she’d been betrayed and sold out to the Ringers; then she noticed his vacant expression.
He looked like one of Luxarn’s Cogent agents, only the eye lens covering this one’s right eye wasn’t only an apparatus; it was part of him. Shiny synthetics covered half his face, extending up over his skull so that hair only grew on one side, and down his neck toward his collarbone. The other side of his face was covered by sallow, veiny skin, with a calloused white human eye that didn’t work. He was more machine than man, and as he faced blankly forward, Jamaru felt a very human chill run up her spine.
“Kale Trass may have taken your sons, but it’s time for him to meet mine,” Luxarn said as he wrapped his arm around the man’s shoulders. “Thank you for that last bit of research that made this possible, Jamaru. Now Zhaff can finish what he started, and together, we will take back the Ring. Kale Trass will pay. For everything.”
THE CHILDREN OF TITAN BOOK FOUR
TITAN’S FURY
Prologue
"Get away from me, freak!"
Another student at the Phobos Youth Academy gave Zhaff a shove, sending both him and his lunch tray flying into the wall. Zhaff said nothing; he never did. For as long as he could remember, he hated talking to others. There was too much to think about—too many ways a response could be formed to impart meaning.
Zhaff merely stared.
That seemed to make the bully angrier. "You want to say something?" he said, friends behind him smirking.
Zhaff didn't. After a year at the Academy, he still wasn't sure why his peers harassed him so often. It was illogical. Everyone in the program had top scores on entry exams and came from affluent, reputable clan-families who could afford the astronomical tuition meant to set them on a path toward USF administration or corporate directorship, except Zhaff only had one of those. He had been an illegitimate bastard from the Martian underworld, enrolled on a special outreach scholarship funded by Luxarn Pervenio—the man he now knew to be his biological father.
"Answer him, freak!" another boy shouted.
"He can't," the bully said. "This piece of sewer trash probably never learned how to talk. That right, Zhaff?" He grabbed Zhaff by the collar and lifted him against the wall with ease. Like most offworlders, Zhaff had grown tall, but his stringy limbs had yet to fill in.
"Would you say something!" The bully shook him.
"Something," Zhaff replied. Speaking was easier when his conversant gave direction, like how Luxarn had when he’d met with him to award the scholarship. No use of slang or local colloquialisms. Why do others insist upon making speech so difficult?
A few of the bully’s friends burst out laughing.
"You some sort of smart-ass, freak?" the bully said, cheeks flushing red as he squeezed Zhaff’s collar tighter.
Zhaff tilted his head. "Surely you know the rear-end is not the region from which human intelligence derives?" he said.
"That's it." The boy reared his hand back, revealing his intent—and his intended target point—far too early. He went to punch Zhaff in the face, but malnourished as Zhaff was, he was also exceptionally agile. He ducked his head just in time, causing the bully’s fist to slam against the metal wall. He howled in agony as Zhaff slipped under his grasp.
Walk away. That was what one of Zhaff’s instructors had told him on his first day when another over-hormonal student pushed him for staring. Ever since, he’d handled every altercation in the same manner. Except this time, one of the boy's friends stepped in his way.
"Where do you think you're going, freakshow?" he asked.
"Please, move asi—" Zhaff couldn't finish the sentence before the bully grabbed him by his shirt and threw him to the ground.
"Am I a joke to you, Zhaff?" he screamed. His voice resonated with a fury in no way suited to the situation. His fist slammed into Zhaff's cheek. In the moment, it barely hurt, however, Zhaff instantly recognized he'd suffered an orbital fracture. The onslaught wasn't finished.
"To ensure the safety of human propagation. Right, Zhaff?” the bully asked. Only the bully had suddenly aged sixty or so years, his skin scarred and craggy, his beard gray as the Earthen sky. His voice spoke of ash and whiskey. And behind him was no longer the burnished metal and wood-trimmed walls of the Academy, but stormy, orange-hued skies wrapping a frozen cliff-face.
The bully punched Zhaff again and again, pounding into his face until all Zhaff could see was blackness and blood. The others peeled the bully off before Zhaff's skull was crushed, but not before his right eye was rendered useless.
“Family,” the bully said as he was carried away. “I hope you understand, Zhaff!”
Only he didn't. Zhaff never could figure out why he’d done it. He hadn't insulted him, hadn't injured him. Perhaps a bad day had led to an explosion of rash behavior. Stress or past trauma could have that effect on people with weak constitutions. Luxarn always said sometimes people are born rotten, and that was why he ordered the bully thrown out of the Academy before Zhaff could ask him...
“Agent Zhaff,” a nearby voice echoed. “Agent Zhaff!” Someone shook his shoulder, and Zhaff had the man's sleeved wrist gripped within his new synthetic fingers even before he turned his head to face him.
"By Earth!" Pervenio Director Barret Ulnor yelped.
Zhaff released him. After that day at the academy, when Luxarn invited Zhaff to his quarters and revealed who he really was, Luxarn also told him never to let another person harm him, no matter what.
It used to be easy to tell who meant him harm. His eye lens revealed all. Through it, Zhaff simultaneously saw the rush of heat to Ulnor’s chest and every detail of the man's face, down to the fibers of hair coating his too-soft cheeks. He could see his lips twitch from one hundred meters away. Every subtle alteration on a man's face revealed intent, only, since Zhaff had woken up from a coma, something in his mind wasn't working properly. He wondered if it was the experimental, cerebral implant which had helped stimulate his brain function. It started as a Venta Co. prototype after all, and his father’s corporate rival never had been the most reliable.
Regardless, Zhaff’s mind kept wandering off to that day as a child when he was so senselessly beaten. Kept distracting him with flashes of his final moments on Titan. Flickers of Titan's sky crept into the corner of rooms. Gunshots booming like thunderclaps. He couldn't remember exactly what had happened after he and Malcolm Graves entered the Children of Titan's secret hideout, only that the enemy had gunned them both down. Now the enemy had Malcolm prisoner and the Ring in its grasp.
An image of an old, bloodied man pounding on his face rushed throug
h Zhaff's head again and made him stagger. His synthetic fingers raised toward his barely-human temple to try and drive out the sudden pulsing pain. His eye-lens struggled for focus.
Focus, he told himself. Mission first.
"What is it with you Cogents?" Ulnor said, still shaking his bruised wrist. "Luxarn said you were the best."
Zhaff drew a deep breath, feeling the pull only on one side of his chest. Exposure to Titan had left him with only one working lung; the other had been replaced by a new 3D-printed elastic polymer model. His throat, ravaged by cold, had been rebuilt with synthetic weaving and a respiratory aid that hummed every time it helped Zhaff inhale. Half his heart had required microelectronic augmentation to maintain optimal performance.
Zhaff knew all of the changes within his body but could feel so little of them. He was a puzzle with pieces that fit together but formed disparate images. Connections without connecting.
"We're almost there," Zhaff said. He shook his head and turned his attention to the lift’s floor counter.
“Thanks for letting me know.” Ulnor brushed off his formal tunic and checked his hair and teeth on the chrome doors. He appeared satisfied by the sight of himself. Zhaff knew little about him, only that he had connections to a wealthy clan-family.
“All right,” Ulnor said. “Once we get up there, I want you right outside the door. You aren't coming inside and scaring them away from making this deal with what's left of your face.”
"That is agreeable," Zhaff said.
"And you—oh, good. I pull this agreement off, Mr. Pervenio might start taking me more seriously. I didn't spend a year at Phobos Academy to wind up a farming director on Earth."
"You went to Phobos?"
The man chuckled. "Who here didn't?"
Children of Titan Series: Books 1-4: (A Space Opera Thriller Box Set) Page 80
