Children of Titan Series: Books 1-4: (A Space Opera Thriller Box Set)

by Rhett C. Bruno

  “I have the shot!” an officer yelled.

  “He is wanted alive,” the Cogent said.

  “Screw tha—” The Cogent shot the rifle out of the man’s hand before he could fire at me. Mr. Pervenio, still seeing the best in me after everything and keeping me alive. If the entire floor didn’t know where I was yet, that gave it away. All around the atrium, they swarmed in my direction.

  I fired off a few rounds to hold them at bay. A security drone promptly shocked the gun out of my hand with an electric bolt. I was lucky my leg kept me grounded, but the surge up my arm had it feeling like my veins were going to explode. I held my wrist as I took off for the construction zone barrier. A few officers didn’t take the Cogent’s advice—or apparently care about civilian collateral. Bullets zipped over my head and clanged off the railing.

  A security lockdown had the construction zone sealed off and locked. I didn’t slow down. At full speed, I kicked through the entry, crashing through the airlock. A gust of pressure swept me off my feet and hurled me inside before blast shutters slammed down and resealed the airlock. The zone being worked on had a temporary exo-curtain outside as well, so workers were safe from space, but it wasn’t as climatized as the occupied portions of the station. The air was cold, thin, and stale.

  Construction crewmen in light exo-suits, with auxiliary oxygen supply to make up for the conditions, rushed to me as I struggled to gather myself after being flung into a half-built wall. Heavy machinery filled the gaping space, with scaffolding and automated lifts allowing them to move amongst the development. Construction mechs lifted the massive panels that would comprise the exterior plating of the station into place. Sparks flew out as parts of the residences were welded above and below me.

  “You all right, man?” one of the workers said, shaking my shoulder.

  I squeezed my aching head. My visor was cracked, and my helmet dented. I had to pull it off before I could think.

  “Don’t move,” another worker said. “Let’s get a medical crew down here.” He whistled and pointed to a ledge a dozen meters up, where a foreman was busy directing more workers. Clearly, news of my breaking in had yet to impact construction. Shutting it down until I was handled would waste money, and like Pervenio Corp, Venta Co. always had the bottom line to consider. Oh well, I guessed they were soon to be one and the same. Bitter rivals united in their hatred for a common enemy.

  Once I could see clearly, I grabbed the worker right in front of me and wrapped my arm around his neck. “Anyone moves, I break his head off,” I growled. Yeah, me, who wasn’t even capable of shooting a collector beating his daughter anymore.

  The crowd around me backed away slowly. I reached up with my free hand and opened coms with the Cora.

  “Rin, whoever is listening, I need you to put Basaam on right now,” I said.

  “What do you need to ask him?” Rin replied.

  “Not you, him.”

  “You don’t make the rules anymore, Collector.”

  “I don’t have time for this. Put him on, now!” I coughed, and my throat rattled. The thin oxygen made shouting a pain. A few of the workers shifted their stance, and I squeezed their comrade’s throat harder.

  I heard some muffled arguing in the background, no doubt between Rin and Kale, then Basaam said, “This is Basaam. What do you need?” I hadn’t yet had the pleasure of meeting him, but I’d seen him on tech shows and other documentaries before. Sometimes waiting to make a move on a target got boring. Presently, a palpable layer of fear coated his every word.

  “Basaam, I’m sorry to meet you,” I said. “I’m their man on Martelle Station.”

  “You aren’t one of them, are you?” he asked.

  “What gave it away?”

  “Your voice.”

  I snickered. “Basaam, I’m going to need you to tell me which side of Martelle Station your lab is on. I’m going to be accessing it from the outside.”

  “Outside?” Rin said. “We already got you in.”

  “Yeah, well, you sent me in blind. I’m improvising.” I didn’t like the way a few of the workers on the scaffolding above me moved, so I started walking with my captive. “Waiting on an answer here, Basaam.”

  “I… I’m not sure,” Basaam stuttered. “I’ve only accessed it from within the station. They filter all sensitive work through the security headquarters. Then there are a few lifts. I—”

  “Warning, all members of the Martelle Station Residences construction crew,” a voice came over a loudspeaker. “Please evacuate the Sector G work zone. If you are unable to, engage your exo-helmets and oxygen stores immediately.”

  If the workers weren’t stirring before, that certainly got them panicked. Sparks flew out of blast shutters I’d broken through as officers on the other side got to cutting through. I heard more shouting above and below as security officers entered through airlocks on the other levels of the residences. I pushed the worker away from me and ran to a construction mech. Its operator had ditched it and was in the process of fleeing.

  “Take a breath, and dig into that big old head of yours,” I said to Basaam as I ducked under its chassis. “Is there a viewport or something identifiable?”

  “It’s an entire floor of customizable office suites,” Basaam said. “The exteriors are the same; we never see them.”

  “But you look out. What about a moon?” I said. “Europa has a fixed orbit, so are there any moons you see that I might recognize at this time? I know men like you love to stare out of windows.”

  “Callisto, no wait…”

  Security drones zipped into the space, requesting for all workers to evacuate or find shelter. They were going to drain all the oxygen out of the zone and root me out.

  “Basaam, think!” I said.

  “Io!” he blurted. Yes, that’s the one. It’s around lunchtime, and I sit at my desk and sometimes notice it while I watch the feeds. Sulfur from its extreme geologic activity makes the moon appear jaundiced.”

  “Are you sure?” I asked. We had no time to be wrong.

  “Yes. I did my thesis at Phobos Academy on the potential for using that activity as an energy source to terraform it. I wouldn’t forget.”

  “You’re a lifesaver.”

  I gripped the open cockpit of the construction mech and hauled myself up. I knew the drones would see me, but it was my only way out. The plating was thick enough to withstand solar radiation and allow for operation in the harshness of space.

  “There he is!” From above, gunfire clanked off the thing’s hull before I heard the Cogent’s shout about wanting me alive. Laser sights sliced across the room.

  “All right, let’s see what a blue-collar life might have led to,” I said. The worker had left the mech running, so I signaled the cockpit to seal. Glowing controls filled the room in front of me. My hands fit snugly through its hollowed arms to grasp two handles. Moving was supposed to be just like walking—that was what the ads always said.

  I gave the arms a try, and its massive, tool-filled limb swung. A worker ducked under it just in time, otherwise, I’d have smacked him into the outer enclosure.

  “Slowly, Malcolm. That’s it.” I lifted my human leg with a great deal of strain, and it stepped with me. Easy—my ass. Construction was a young man’s game. Operating the limbs took every bit of strength I had.

  Another drone gave the mech an electrified blast, and all the gizmos in the cockpit spun and flashed. I felt the surge in my teeth, but I didn’t slow. I pushed hard with my artificial leg, and the mech pushed off the ledge. In the reflection of the translucency, I saw the yellow of the Cogent’s eye-lens, then I plummeted.

  Layers of scaffolding and machinery zoomed by. Pressure stung my eyes as I reeled my hand back in from the arm controls and swiped through the navigation panel to figure out how to fire anti-grav thrusters.

  The shiny, rippling exo-tent, which pressurized the construction zone, tore like a wet napkin when I hit it full speed. Europa’s gravity didn’t pull hard, but
the weight of the mech was enough. What little was left of the air inside rushed out, then an emergency shutter closed off the lowest level and sealed with the tent. I only hoped no workers were stuck inside, exposed.

  “C’mon, where is it?” I strained to say. My velocity was picking up, and if I didn’t find the thrusters soon, even Europa’s thin atmosphere would be enough to boil my insides on my fall. Nerves already had my hand sweating. I peered down and saw that the ring of com relays wrapping the station were my first concern. I was heading right toward the structure.

  I found a full systems readout that allowed me to check the status of each system. I looked down at the structure, then back at the screen. “There we go!” I was directed to a switch on my right-hand side that keyed the throttle. My stomach leaped as the thrusters burned, and I came within mere meters of slamming into the station.

  “Malcolm, what is going on down there?” Rin questioned in my ear while I was busy catching my breath.

  “I’m working,” I panted. I tested the throttle to get a handle on how much juice to give. The fuel meter read half empty, so I didn’t have long to go. Not to mention, I saw activity at all the shipyard stations floating around Martelle Station, where defense ships would soon mobilize once everyone figured out what I was up to.

  I ascended to the lower portion of the station below the regular arrangement of small dwelling unit viewports. It was a half-sphere filled with vast translucencies and wrapped at the base by the com’s relay ring. I’d been in space plenty of times, but never where there was so little black. On one side, there was Europa, on the other Jupiter, like a great one-eyed giant ready to devour me. It was so massive that even though it was thousands upon thousands of kilometers away, I felt like I could reach out and touch it.

  I used the thrusters to spin toward the black of space and searched for a yellow moon, which in the darkness of space was tougher than I’d hoped. We were on the back side of Jupiter, so every moon was just a blotch of blackness where stars didn’t shine.

  “I’m going to need more to go on than yellow, Basaam,” I said.

  “Help him,” Rin threatened.

  “Io…. It’s uh…” Basaam paused to think. “Look for the biggest moon without signs of life on it. It is, at this point, far too hostile to be worth colonizing without a substantial concentration of resources, which, of course, I feel would be worth it. the volcanic activity could allow us to—”

  “Would you stop talking?” I interrupted.

  I scanned Jupiter’s vast archipelago, picked the best moon I could find without artificial lights twinkling near its surface, then jetted back toward the station. Drones blinked overhead, pouring out of the station to search for me. I scoured the translucencies, facing what I hoped was Io, only to find that the interiors were all unique. Some had the appearance of sterile white labs, others were filled with plants, and still others merely revealed typical open office dividers.

  “All right, Basaam, give me something to look for inside,” I said.

  “It’s the Departure Ark studies lab,” he said.

  “Great. Is there a sign on the outside of the station?”

  “There’s a three-story reinforced testing lab where we’re able to test fusion core outputs through combustion chambers. You won’t notice, but the station’s enclosure has a thin seam that allows it to fall off and flush the core out into space in case of emergency.”

  “Anything else in there?”

  “Models for burner caps, reaction chambers, ICH couplers…”

  “All right, I get it,” I interrupted. “Ship guts and all of that. Will anybody else be working?”

  “I have no idea! I’ve been here. But I’m not the only engineer on the project, and I’d imagine Venta Co. won’t delay the project too long while I’m missing.”

  I drifted around the station in orbit, looking into each of the transparencies. I was never one for the techy side of things, preferring a man’s instinct over all the new toys. It didn’t, however, take a rocket scientist to find the lab Basaam was talking about.

  I located a lofty space with a solid, metal-plated sphere suspended in the center and a catwalk around it. A dozen different control stations surrounded it, and a few engineers were inside working. More labs surrounded the cylindrical atrium, all for testing some other part of what would become a tremendous Departure Ark. Maybe they flew off toward nothing, but research for the companies vying to win Departure Ark contracts had inspired many spacefaring advancements. Contemporary Impulse drives were said to be the result of a patent used in a Red Wing Company Departure Ark decades ago.

  “Is your office the one with all of the little models?” I asked. To the right of the testing labs was a series of offices. Naturally, only essential people like Basaam would get space-views. The one furthest from the testing areas where it would be quietest had its main lights dimmed. Shelves inside bore models of Departure Arks, and not like the figurine Aria had. Even from out in space, I could see the level of detail on the meter-long models.

  “Yes…” Basaam said, voice trailing off like he was ashamed.

  “Don’t hate me, then,” I said.

  I ignored whatever he said next and drove the mech forward toward the floor-to-ceiling viewport of his office. The glass was silica-fused and specially reinforced considering the moon-based station had to be built to withstand a stray meteor or two, not to mention radiation. I grumbled a few curses as I searched for where to activate the mechs on-board fusion torch, and held it to the viewport.

  It would take way longer than I could spare to cut through, but I heated it until the outer layer began to warp. Then I backed away, threw as much power into the mech’s thrusters as possible, aimed for the lounge section of his office, and gunned it with the mech’s fusion-torch-arm held out ahead. I’m pretty sure I closed my eyes as I smashed through the dense glass.

  A few of the models and his other knick-knacks were sucked out into space by the sudden change in pressure. His desk and the console attached to it slid across the floor, but not before the emergency blast shutters installed over that portion of Martelle Station sealed.

  The mech crashed into the wall, leaving its imprint in the bent metal but not breaking through. I signaled the cockpit to open and tumbled out onto the polished white tile floor. My adrenaline was waning, and every part of my body ached from the impact. Flashing red lights and a wailing klaxon made my brain feel like it was going to explode.

  “I swear, Aria, this time you do owe me,” I grumbled as I slid against the sparking wall to gather myself. One of the mech’s arms fell off, and a fire sparked in the cockpit before being squelched by automated fire suppression systems. The faint sounds of screaming echoed from out in the hall where Basaam’s employees fled.

  “Malcolm, are you in?” Rin asked.

  “I hope so,” I said. “The whole station is going to know where I am now.”

  “Good,” Rin said. “You can access the data on Basaam’s console. As soon as you find it, I’ll give you instructions on how to transmit it to the Cora.”

  I crawled a short bit on my hands and knees then got to my feet. The room was a mess, furniture overturned, shelving torn off. I nearly stepped on a digital picture frame, which showed Basaam smiling and kissing a woman. I’m not sure why, but I picked it up and placed it on his desk before coming around to face his computer console. Part one of my mission was complete: locate the data. Now, once I had it, I could start negotiating.

  I switched the console on and a holographic screen knifed up, prompting me to enter his password. “Basaam, I’m going to need to know how to log in,” I said.

  “There is a password and a vocal confirmation,” Basaam said.

  “Everyone out!” the voice of a security officer echoed from the laboratory entrance. They were here fast, and judging by the patter of clanking footsteps, they arrived in force. I scanned the room. The air recyclers were top-of-the-line, as was everything else; little more than thin rifts at the c
orners of the walls and ceiling. Drones couldn’t get through, and I couldn’t get out, not even into space, thanks to blast shutters. They could drain the oxygen, but they had no idea the construction mech was busted, and I couldn’t hide in it. One door in, one way out.

  “What are you waiting for?” I asked as I limped over to the door and ensured it was locked.

  Basaam swallowed audibly. “HELENA6713,” he said.

  I returned to the console and typed it in, received confirmation, then an automated voice requested vocal authorization. I removed the com-link from my ear and placed it on the table. Then I leaned close to it.

  “Basaam, I’m going to hold the com-link up to the speaker bar, and you do what you need to do,” I said.

  “That… that might not work.” His voice was distant without the device directly in my ear.

  “Or it might. Pervenio tech is way better.”

  “I can’t…” he started.

  “You’ll do it, or I’ll splatter her brains right now!” Rin shouted in the background.

  “It’s everything I’ve worked for!” Basaam protested.

  “Do it, now,” Rin said.

  “Malcolm Graves, we have you surrounded!” an officer shouted, now just outside Basaam’s office. “Lower your weapons and come out, or we have the authorization to use lethal force.”

  I picked up the comlink and held it to my lips. “Basaam, listen to me,” I whispered. “I know this goes against every fiber in your being. I know they probably have a gun to the head of someone you love, just like me.”

  “You don’t understand,” Basaam sniveled.

  “I do… more than anybody. You’ll hate yourself more for losing them than letting Venta Co. down, I promise you that. Now I’m going to put this com-link up to the speaker, and you’re going to get me in. Then you’re going to go back, blow a kiss to whoever it is they have, and play along until this is all over. You do that, and I swear I’ll do my best to get you out of this mess too.”