“Luxarn Pervenio sent one of his collectors here to rattle us, just as he sent a Cogent after me in Hayes in a failed attempt on my life. They want to end what they consider a riot by killing its leaders, but we are the past, present, and future of the Ring. I promise, the man responsible for this will pay. Today I ask you, my brothers and sisters, to put aside petty desires and protests. I ask you to stand with me together so that we can show Earth that we will never bow to them again. From ice to ashes!”
I raised my fist. My people roared. Rin shut off the newsfeed, which we’d ensure made its way onto Solnet for Earth to see. Luxarn and Madame Venta had blamed us for killing the Red Wing Company board to stir their people into a frenzy. Now we were even.
“You’re getting better at that,” Rin said as she wrapped her hand around my shoulder and guided me through the raucous crowd.
“At lying?” I asked, my gaze dropping to the floor.
“No. Speaking like a leader should.”
“Maybe it will get easier one day too.”
She leaned in close. “He left us no choice, you know that. If we aren’t prepared, their fleet will wash over us like their oceans through dirt. Now a decrepit Titanborn who lost his way to greed can be a hero in death, instead of the reason we fail. Half the ship workers who stood with him are already talking about getting revenge for him by working harder than ever to stop PerVenta. Some will be of great value helping Basaam proceed as well.”
Hands extended from all around us to touch me as we passed, praising me like we’d just won a battle. The guards could hardly hold them back. I lost count of how many men and women volunteered to be sent to Phoebe and Pervenio Station to help prepare for the coming storm in the name of Orson Fring.
We stopped outside the lift to Luxarn’s old residential unit, where I lived on the rare occasion I was on Darien, as a message to my people that the Uppers were nowhere to be scared of any longer.
“We did what we had to, Kale,” Rin said. “Now get some rest, and I’ll handle the Cogent. You’ll need it.”
The doors opened, and my mother and Rylah stood waiting. Rylah was expressionless, in shock almost, but my mother fumed. Last time I saw her, we were hugging after a scrape with death and her finding out about Aria. I hadn’t seen her cheeks that red since I was a boy and my father would disappear for months at a time.
“Katrina,” Rin said. “I haven’t had a chance to thank you for saving Kale’s life.”
My mother stormed forward and slapped Rin across the face. “He’s my son. It’s my job.”
Guards went to calm her, but I stopped them. Rin calmly rubbed her face and didn’t budge. “Then you should have aimed for the Cogent’s head.”
My mother bit her lip in frustration, then glared over at me. We held each other’s gazes, wordless, until she finally said, “I told you I could handle him, and you go to her?”
“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” Rin said. “Orson was murdered by a Pervenio collector.”
“Like the one you two have been keeping locked up downstairs?”
Rin shot Rylah a cross glare. We’d been keeping Malcolm’s presence a secret from anybody who didn’t need to know, like my mother. Rylah stood strong as well.
“Rin…” she whispered. “Tell me this isn’t what I think is.”
“It was another collector,” Rin said.
“Rylah saw you take him away!” my mother yelled. “This, Aria’s condition; how much else are you two keeping from us? We’re supposed to be in this together.”
“One fight with a Cogent doesn’t mean you’ve sacrificed anywhere near what any of us have!” Rin screamed back.
My mother pushed by Rin to get in front of me. “Kale, please tell me you didn’t know about this. Tell me you didn’t invite me to Hayes to keep me distracted until that Cogent surprised us. I’m not stupid. Tell me you only wanted to tell me about Aria!”
By the end of her rant, she was shaking me by the shoulders. A lie made it to the tip of my tongue but went no further. I stared at Rin, unable to look my mother in the eye and unable to get the words out because I knew, if I lied, she would believe me.
“Kale, look me in the eyes and tell me,” my mother pled.
“Tell you what?” I snapped. “That while you were busy accidentally saving my and Aria’s lives, we had Orson Fring handled before he got us all killed over nothing anyway.”
My mother staggered back, hand over her mouth. The look on her face reminded me of that last time I’d seen her in quarantine, when she begged me to stop visiting because she’d accepted her fate. A fate I gave up everything to help her avoid. She didn’t say another word. She just rushed by me and lost herself in the crowd.
“When you got me into this, you promised we’d be better,” Rylah said to Rin.
“They will do far worse if they take Titan back,” Rin said.
“If there’s anything left to take.” Rylah followed behind my mother, but Rin grabbed her.
“Don’t you dare,” she bristled. “Like you didn’t do worse when you were peddling information to Earthers? This is war.” Rin pushed her away.
Rylah caught her balance in front of me and glanced up. I couldn’t remember ever seeing her look like she wasn’t in control of a situation.
“If we aren’t better than them, why do this at all?” she asked me. She wasn’t crying, but tears weren’t necessary. She was gone before I could offer a response.
“Leave us,” Rin ordered the guards trailing behind us, then signaled the lift’s doors to shut. “Ignore them, Kale.”
“Why?” I said. “They’re right.”
“Right?” she scoffed. “They don’t know what it means to fight. My sister hasn’t had to work for anything her whole life. All she ever had to do was smile, and Earthers forgot what she was. And your mother? Don’t get me started. She hid you when we needed a leader. She stole you from your father, my brother.”
“She saved my son and me yesterday.”
“Only because she happened to be there because we knew she couldn’t handle what needed to be done on Phoebe. You said yourself, it was an accident. They don’t understand; they never will.”
“Sodervall would’ve spaced Orson just like he did Cora. How is what we did any different?”
Rin grasped me under the shoulders and hoisted me to my full height. “He spaced them for no reason,” she said. “Orson’s stubbornness could have cost us everything. Nobody ever said this would be easy, or that our people would agree with everything you do. That’s what it means to lead.”
“So every awful thing you do will always fall on me?” I asked.
“I’ll tell them it was all my idea, then! That I convinced you.”
“Why bother telling them the truth?”
“This is the collector getting to you again, Kale,” Rin said.
“It’s not.”
“If you told me not to, I wouldn’t have done it.”
“Exactly!” I screamed. “But I didn’t.”
“Kale.” She pulled me in close enough to see all the way through the holes in her cheek, through the strings of sinew and shiny scars. “The Children of Titan chose you because we knew you’d care enough to know when you’re doing the wrong thing for the right reasons. I only wish I was half as strong.”
The lift stopped and opened, revealing Luxarn’s dwelling unit. It was the largest in all of Darien, located at the upper level of a central tower rising up to meet the city’s massive enclosure. A contained garden was suspended around the entry, soil beds hanging between a silver lattice. Leaves and flowers draped over the edges, making it visible from the floor, covering the entire ceiling of Darien in a verdant blanket. Only now the plants were wilting and brown. At first, the water pipes continued watering them, but without maintenance, they were clogging. It was such a waste, the gardens. Plants simply for a colorful display instead of feeding. Only Earthers could be so wasteful just to make the rocky tunnels of the Lowers seem even drab
ber.
Two Titanborn guards stood outside the entry, fully armed and at the ready after the Cogent attack. They bowed their heads as they saw us. They were good, loyal warriors, not like the protesters on Phoebe who couldn’t see what Titan needed beyond their own selfish desires.
“Never doubt what we’re doing here,” Rin said as I stepped off the lift. “A Titan of our own.”
“At what cost?” I asked.
“Whatever it takes, like always. We’ll bear the weight of our hard choices so that our children will never have to.”
“I hope you’re right,” I said.
“You’ve trusted me this long. Only a little while longer now.”
“And I still do. But next time we make a decision like this, I want my mother and Rylah there… if they’ll ever listen again.”
“You charged me with the security of our homeworld,” Rin said. “More voices will only—”
“It’s not a request, Rin.”
The lift doors shut her out. I squeezed my temples between my thumb and forefinger and begged my chest to stop feeling so tight. My leg brushed against a withering plant struggling to survive, embarking on one last stretch for the artificial lights above that once brought life to a verdant garden.
I let the air clogging my lungs slowly escape through my teeth as I leaned over and let one of its leaves rest in my palm. I used to love sneaking around the Darien Uppers as a boy and seeing all the decorative plants Pervenio Corp put on display. All the things we Ringers didn’t have in the Lowers because it was easier to keep people down when they longed for something as simple as plants.
My fingers squeezed, the leaf so near to death, it crumbled under the pressure.
I knew Rin was right. It didn’t make things any easier, but none of this was easy. We were so close to having Earth where we wanted it. No matter what they blamed on us, Madame Venta or Luxarn Pervenio wouldn’t be able to stop what was coming now that our best workers could assist Basaam Venta. There was no room for us to show weakness or let our people divide themselves.
Orson Fring died for the good of us all, if I could ever get my mother and Rylah to forgive it. Aria might never look at me the same either, once she found out. If she found out. Then would I have to tell her about the other people I’d let die when I could have saved them? Captain Sildario, Cora’s father, whom I let crash with the Sunfire. Hayes aboard the Piccolo. Those children stuck in the freezer on the Ring Skipper.
Rin and I had allowed our trust in Aria to be comprised because of her secrets, yet I had so many of my own. We kept everything we planned to do on Mars from her, and now, what we were making her father do.
I stopped before the door to my residence. Aria waited inside under constant watch. I considered heading to my old Lowers dwelling, where I could get some silence instead. I was halfway toward turning around when I noticed a beam of light filtering in through a dusty skylight. The single pink flower it touched clung to life and color, unlike all the rest of the plants. It refused to give in to neglect.
Cora died without knowing I was capable of the things that had happened. That I was a scoundrel and a thief before Rin turned me into a smuggler and a rebel. I never got to show her the parts of me that even I didn’t like, even though she’d opened her heart to me. And now I never would.
Somehow it felt like that flower was her sending me a message; like her soul had swum through space just to reach me before I made any more mistakes. I drew out my hand terminal and pulled up that final footage of her in her cell before she was spaced. She’d died barely knowing how I felt about her. She’d died protecting me from collectors and Cogents. She’d died ignorant to who I really was, and I decided I wouldn’t make that mistake again.
An assassin could kill either of us at any time, and before death came for me, I’d let Aria in. Let her see me in every ugly shade. I’d fallen for her. Unintentionally, maybe, but since I’d nearly lost her on Mars, I realized I’d gone the longest I ever had without watching that footage of Cora or listening to Luxarn Pervenio condemn her to death.
Aria made me feel again.
I stepped into my apartment and found her standing right in the entry as if waiting for me. Her hair and clothing were a mess like she’d just woken up. She didn’t ask where I was going. Instead, she chuckled, her nose wrinkling in that particular way I struggled to resist.
“I saw your speech,” she said. “Are you okay?”
I was through the door before I knew it, my legs with a mind of their own. I went right to Aria and threw my arms around her. “I’m fine,” I whispered. “It was just… unexpected.”
“I can’t believe after all these years, Luxarn Pervenio can still find ways to shock you.” She slowly began removing the pieces of my powered armor.
“Neither can I.”
I heard shouting and flinched. A viewscreen by the bed replayed my latest speech across a Ringwide newsfeed. I hadn’t realized how loud I was projecting my voice by the end. Director Sodervall sounded similar in his final days addressing the Ring on Pervenio Corp’s behalf after I went missing.
“You’re getting better at that,” Aria said.
“Rin said the same,” I replied.
“Well, I guess we can finally agree on something.” She laughed, and I gave it my best effort to join her.
The top half of my armored suit peeled off me, the tiny needles it poked into my body to sync with my nervous system and enhance my strength sliding out with a delicate pinch. Aria took my hand, guided me toward the bed, and laid me down. Her face hovered above mine, but all I could focus on was the image of me speaking on the viewscreen behind her.
She rolled over and turned it off. Then she turned back to me. Her hands stroked my face, so warm. Some people said that the internal temperature of Titanborn had dropped noticeably in our three centuries on freezing Titan. It sure seemed like it was true whenever she touched me.
“One day, all the fighting will stop, Kale,” she whispered. “No more Cogent assassins or kidnappings on either side. Just peace.”
“Sometimes I don’t think that’s possible,” I replied.
“If my father could walk away from his job, then anything is possible.”
“Do you really believe anyone can walk away from something like that?”
She ran her fingers through my hair. “I remember a time when he left me on a rooftop outside New London to go claim a bounty in the middle of M-Day. One moment we were watching a Departure Ark leave; the next it was dark, and I was freezing cold and alone. I think I was six.”
“Doesn’t sound like a very good dad,” I said.
“Not at all.” She smirked. “I remember him stumbling up there to get me. His breath reeked of liquor, like he’d totally forgotten about me. He was a mess.” She laughed. “But he did come back, and he brought me this necklace as a gift.”
“Typical Earther. Always trying to buy loyalty.”
“He did his best in his own way. Earthers aren’t used to raising a family on their own. He’d tell me all the time about the nine mothers and fathers in the clan-family he was born into. Ask if I’d rather be polishing floors for a big, safe community like that instead of seeing all of Sol.”
“My dad was the opposite,” I said. “Always promising to be around but never there. And my mother... she never left me alone. I swear, sometimes I wish she’d left me alone on a roof.”
“They’re never perfect, are they? But you know what? He was right.”
“About what?”
“Seeing Sol was so much better. As much as I complained in the moment, I wouldn’t trade any of it for a normal life.”
I exhaled. “Keeping me out of the Children of Titan was probably smart of mine too. I’d be dead by now otherwise.”
“To our distinguished families.” Aria giggled before pressing her lips against mine. It was nice to see her in a better mood, especially after the Cogent’s attack. As I closed my eyes and kissed her back, I could almost pretend I was in one
too.
“I’ve never had a home,” she whispered after she pulled away. “But I’m glad I have one here. I’m sorry I didn’t say it earlier, but in case someone else tries to kill us first, I want you to know that I think I love you too, Kale Trass.”
A smile took control of my face, spreading so wide and so unfamiliar, my cheeks went sore. “You’re one of us now, Cora Walker,” I said. “Until the end.”
I kissed her again, but her eyes bulged, as if that idea was terrifying. She backed away slightly. I could only imagine how strange belonging anywhere might feel for a woman like her who’d spent her lifetime planet-hopping.
“I’m Aria, Kale,” she said, brow furrowing with concern.
My reaction was similar, until I finally realized what I’d called her, and cursed myself. “I… I’m sorry, I know.”
“Are you sure?”
“I am,” I said. “This whole thing with Orson Fring… it just reminds me of the Piccolo and what happened to her.” I spun a loose strand of her hair around my finger and forced my smile to return. “You are Aria, the bastard queen from Mars, and you’re finally home.”
A few seconds went by in silence, and her features didn’t brighten, so I leaned down and kissed her again. “I promise you, Aria,” I said, “for the first time in so long, I’m here with you. All of me.”
“Good,” Aria whispered, her stern façade finally breaking as she returned the kiss. “But speaking of being a bastard. I know it’s safer here for me here right now with the Cogent on the loose, but do you think I could see Malcolm?” she asked.
“I’m sorry,” I said. “We can’t risk it yet.”
“I get it, Kale, I do. It’s just hard to imagine him locked up, of all people. Maybe I can talk some sense into him. His loyalty to Pervenio only ever went as far as credits, and they can’t pay him now.”
“I’ll think about it.”
“That’s all I ask,” she said.
“There’re some things I wanted to tell you first.”
“No talking yet. I’m going to make sure you never mistake me again.”
“Aria, I—"
Children of Titan Series: Books 1-4: (A Space Opera Thriller Box Set) Page 95
