Aria pressed her finger against my lips to silence me. Then she removed the top off her dress and let it fall over her belly. She pulled herself up onto me and wrapped her legs around my slender hips. She was strong, stronger than Cora ever could have been, being born on the Ring to a Titanborn mother. Before I knew it, I was lost in her touch, and all my worries about family and rivals, dead and captured men—it all washed away.
Twelve
Malcolm
“Eat up, M-mudstomper,” Desmond cackled. He slid a bowl filled with grub into my cell so hard, it tipped over.
Weeks had passed since Rin found me huddled with Orson’s body. Maybe longer. She’d had to fight off her own people to stop them from beating me to death. I expected a public execution as punishment, but they’d dragged me right back to my cell.
I crawled to the bowl on four limbs like a beast, digging in with my hands until I realized what I looked like. I grabbed it and threw it at Desmond. It clattered against the bars while facing the wrong way and spilled all over me.
Desmond laughed. “Starve for all I care.”
“What?” I grumbled. “Your lunatic king doesn’t need me for any more hits?” Pain still pulled at my sore ribs from the beating I’d taken. If they weren’t fractured already, they were now. Desmond had been keeping his distance since I returned, but I was chipping away in our limited face-time. Pissing people off was what I was best at, and after that one time seeing Rylah, she’d never shown her face again. I’d started wondering if it was my old mind playing tricks on me.
“Whatever he’s p-p-planning to do with you, I’m sure it’ll be good,” Desmond said.
“Pervenio collectors have a special place in our hearts.”
“He doesn’t tell you anything, does he?” I realized then that I hadn’t heard any newsfeeds playing in the hollow. Even at his station, Basaam often complained about his lack of access to most corners of Solnet for data. Now I could barely hear him over the racket of whatever he and his team of Ringers and now Earther slaves were building. Desmond was locked away underground with us like a sick dog, a memory from a horrible thing that Kale didn’t want to be reminded of.
“All I know is that you’re gonna get w-what’s coming to you,” he said, his gaze momentarily shifting toward Basaam Venta’s busy workspace across the hollow. “All you mudstompers a-a-are.”
I wiped the muck off the bottom of my sanitary mask and dragged my impotent, cybernetic leg toward the bars, the electromag dampener reactivated.
“What? You think some magical engine built by an Earther is going to save all of you? It’s too late for that. The things you people have done, there’s no coming back from. It’s like you didn’t even learn from us.”
“There was nothing to learn.”
“I’ve seen this before. Protestors dig in until they’re at their wits’ end and then start killing each other. How long before he has me kill you just like he had me kill Orson Fring because he can’t stand to look at your face?”
“Not this time, G-Graves,” he said, sneering. “They told me to ignore you.”
“Because they know I might talk some damn sense! What do you think they removed me from my cell for, some coffee? A chat about how Earthers tick? I’m Kale’s collector now, and it’s more of the same, just lower pay.”
“N-n-no, not the same. We’re free here now.”
“Free? Killing anyone who speaks out against him. Sounds a lot like Luxarn Pervenio to me.”
“He’s nothing like him!” He smacked the bars.
“You’re right. Worse. At least Luxarn had the decency to lock up peaceful men instead of leaving them bleeding on the floor.”
“What do you call what he had S-Sodervall do to me, then? To Cora. That’s the problem with you m-mud-mudstompers. You think you can justify everything.”
“At least we know what we are,” I said. “You lot parade around your colonies like you’re heroes all because Kale dropped a nuclear bomb on a bunch of security officers. You think they knew what was going on when they entered that quarantine? They were just doing their jobs. Men with families, children. He killed all of them and then some more. Anyone who stood in his way, and he has the rest locked in cells in the same station where Sodervall spaced your friends. Does that sound like heroes to you? You’re a bunch of damned skelly fanatics, same as you always were.”
“What the f-f-fuck did you just say?”
I could see his fingers itching around the trigger of his gun. I’d found a nerve, and it was time to keep poking. I didn’t care how sore my body was, I was tired of playing along. Being forced to murder a good man was the last straw; it was time for action.
“I was there in New London when your Children of Titan bombed it,” I said. “Civilians with their limbs blown off. You call that fighting for freedom? I call it an excuse for a bunch of murderers to dance around a moon pretending they own it.”
“You really think that even compares to what your p-people did to us?”
“What? Put you in quarantines because you got sick?” I paused. I’d seen the awful condition of those places. The way his people were withering away to bones under Pervenio’s watch because it was better for business. I couldn’t back down now, though.
“How does that compare to the Children of Titan spacing twenty Earthers on the Piccolo just to send a message?” I asked.
“Do you know how many times those same men sm-smacked my meal away or beat me with batons because I was a ‘filthy Ringer.’ Or h-how they made us scrub the shit out of canisters because our arms are longer, while they grinned and d-d-drank?”
“So you kill them all,” I said. “Everyone who’s ever had a bad thing to say. Then you wonder why a man like Sodervall is pushed so far he spaces a bunch of innocent Ringers like Cora just to find out how to stop the Children of Titan. He may have hit the switch, but your king is the reason she’s dead, and you can’t walk. He forced Sodervall’s hand while he hid like a coward.”
Desmond raised his gun, screamed, and fired. The gunshot echoed so loudly in the hollow, it sounded like an explosion. I’m not sure if the miss was intentional, but the bullet missed my ear by a hair. The bang sent me spinning into the wall. Desmond kicked open my cell’s door and limped at me while I held my ringing ear.
“That was your people’s fault!” Desmond yelled at the top of his lungs, anger erasing his stutter. “You did this to us, not him!” He shoved the barrel of his pulse rifle into my chest.
“Is it our fault your kind are more suited for cleaning up our messes?” I said through clenched teeth.
That was the final straw for Desmond, a former gas harvester worker who’d done just that for Earthers for most of his life. Who’d been crippled at the hands of one before watching most of his crew get spaced. He went to shift the aim of his rifle toward my head, with clear intent to shoot and hit this time, and I used that opening. I mustered all the strength in my earthborn muscles and punched him in the side of the face with my good arm. He flew against the wall, the rifle flying out of his hands. I scrambled across the floor and tackled him.
I reared back to strike him again, but by then, his head was turned away, and he was crying. “No, p-p-please,” he said, eyes twitching as he did. I imagined those were the words he spoke as Pervenio Corp tortured him for information on Kale that he didn’t have.
I couldn’t bring myself to hit him again. Seeing me, an Earther, stooped over him probably transported him back to that moment of terror. For all his gun-toting bravado, the Ringer was broken. He’d shot me in the hip, and all I could manage was pity.
“You have gone soft.” I laughed to myself. I rolled off him and barely had a chance to crawl for his weapon before more guards arrived at my cell in a hurry, holding me at gunpoint. I planned to take him out quietly since I knew his masters wanted me alive, but I’d pushed too far.
“Hands where we can see them, Earther!” they barked.
I reached for Desmond’s rifle, fighting the unimaginable pain tearing a
t my hip. My fingers only brushed the trigger before I collapsed.
My arms were promptly wrenched back. I howled in pain. Then the batons came. One blow after the other against my back and already tender ribs. All the while, Desmond remained cowering on the floor, whispering madly to be left alone. Broken, like everything else left in Kale Trass’s wake.
“Stop!” a strong, feminine voice bellowed. One last blow hit me square in the back before the guards listened.
“Lady Rylah,” one of them said. “He attacked Desmond. We—”
“Desmond was warned to keep away from him. Get him out of my sight and return to monitoring Mr. Venta’s work immediately.”
Two of them grabbed Desmond, then they all scurried out of the cell without another word. I rolled over and coughed up a spot of blood.
“You just can’t stay out of trouble, can you, Mal?” Rylah said. She knelt by my side, and I caught an eyeful of the most beautiful woman in Sol, my daughter excluded. She tried to lift me. I moaned. I’m not sure which part of my body hurt most, but I’d put a handful of credits on the bullet wound. Eventually, she gave up and sat me upright.
“Funny running into you like this again, Ry,” I grated.
“I think I recall that last time I was the one who’d been shot,” she said. “By your partner.”
“He was impulsive.”
“Until you shot him too.”
My throat went dry. Of course she knew about that—Rylah knew about everything. That was her greatest talent. A whiz with tech for sure, and as lovely as an aged scotch, but she had a knack for knowing. I think that was why I fell hard for her all those years ago.
“Let me guess,” I said. “You know who he was too?”
“Aria told me.”
“Of course.”
“She also told me what you did for her outside the Quarantine.”
I shrugged. “I had no choice.”
“You did. Now get up.”
“What—does your king have another mission for me? If you haven’t realized yet, that lunatic shot me. I won’t be much use with a gun.”
“Good thing your daughter was a doctor, then,” she said.
Hearing that was enough to get my old ass up to my feet. Blood trickled down my artificial leg, and putting pressure on the wound with my hand hurt worse than anything yet.
“Rylah, is she okay?” I groaned.
“She’s fine, Malcolm. For now. We’re going to see her.” She wrapped her arm around my back and guided me toward the exit. I stopped.
“In exchange for what?” I knew Rylah well enough to know that dealing with her never came cheaply. And especially not free. Another thing that drew me to her back in the day.
“I can’t explain here. Just trust me.”
“Now you want me to trust you?”
“If you didn’t, Aria said to give you this.” She dropped the tiny Ark-ship figurine I’d given Aria in my hand. I stared at it and let it roll over. The thin crack from where I’d fused it back together after she broke it was still visible.
I stuffed it into my pocket then glanced back up at Rylah. Pain had me seeing two of her, but that didn’t change how she looked. My offworld darling. Last time I trusted her, we ended up in a gun-toting standoff. Ours was never a simple relationship. The closer we got, the harder I pushed away. She did the same. So it was with collectors and queens of the information underworld. We were two people destined to be alone that the universe kept smashing into each other for a cosmic laugh. Yet there I was falling into the trap again.
“All right,” I said. “But I’ll have both eyes on you.”
“You always do,” she said before leading me out of the cell.
Trusting her again was probably another on my long list of mistakes, but as much as our relationship went off the rails, I could never forget those days with her. Shirking our responsibilities as we hid in her Lowers hollow. Meals with her and Aria sitting around a table like we were some sort of old-fashioned Ringer family.
“Mr. Venta,” Rylah addressed Basaam. He glanced up from a control pad being built into what looked like an engine stalk. I’d been monitoring them for a long time now. Occasionally, they tested fusion reactions in the spherical chamber he’d had built. There was only a single, highly insulated porthole on the side facing away from my cell, and still, it was always bright enough to make my eyes tear.
“Yes?” he stammered. His glasses were so grimy, I wasn’t sure how he saw a thing.
“Do you have any congealing spray? For accidents. Our prisoner is injured.”
“I… uh.”
“Answer her!” one of the guards watching him barked, smacking a part made of cold-formed alloy with a baton.
Basaam winced and ran in front of the part. “Don’t do that!” he yelped. “It’s in my workstation. Medical kit. Where are you taking him?”
“Lord Trass wants to see him,” Rylah replied. She left me leaning against the fusion core containment sphere and then hurried to his desk. She pushed a member of Basaam’s work crew aside and rifled through the drawers until she came up with the spray. Basaam impeded her on her way back to me.
“Please, I have to speak with him too,” he said. “Helena has been locked in that cell this entire time. She needs fresh air. To stretch. A break from the darkness down here. I’m begging you.”
“We lived in tunnels like this our whole lives, Earther!” a guard snapped.
“Please! I’ve done everything you’ve asked,” Basaam said. “Work is ahead of schedule. I just need to be with her for a minute.”
Rylah regarded the cell adjacent to mine, and from outside, I could finally see inside it as well. Basaam’s clan-sister was huddled against the back corner, a barely touched bowl of food beside her. The sounds of her weeping were common in the early days of our imprisonment, but she hadn’t made a peep in a long time. She looked emaciated.
“Give them a moment together,” Rylah said.
“Lord Trass said not to interrupt production,” the guard replied.
“And he isn’t here right now. I am. They’re human beings, for Trass’s sake.”
“Barely,” the guard snickered.
Rylah drew herself up in front of him and stood tall. Heels had her towering over him, and if there’s one thing I know about beautiful women, it’s that their scowls cut even deeper. None knew how to wield one better than her.
“He put me in charge of overseeing Basaam’s production,” she said. “Question my orders again, and I’ll reserve a cell for you.”
“Yes, ma’am,” he conceded. “Break time, everyone; get some chow!” The Ringer workers sighed in relief. Basaam had them working to the bone, day and night, creating his game-changing engine.
The guard then shoved Basaam along. “You get one minute, Earther.”
“Hold still,” Rylah said to me. I bit my lip as she sprayed the gel and sealed my wound. I’d had my share of scrapes mended before, but I could never get used to the stuff. It was too cold, like someone was shoving an icicle into me. “There,” she said. “Let’s go.”
“Look at you,” I said. “In charge. How is it you always manage that?”
“I learned from the best.”
“I’m flattered. I was always the one taking orders, though.”
She grinned. “I wasn’t talking about you.”
Rylah, she didn’t take shit, and she never lowered her price. Even for me after that first job when I needed some intel. That’s a rare thing, when somebody knows what they’re worth and won’t bend an inch. I like to think I negotiated my Pervenio contracts with the same rigor.
She led me deeper into the hollow. My hip was a scrambled mess, and my artificial leg was still stiff from the electromag dampener. The only good thing was that now every time the limb swung, I actually felt it.
“We’re not really going to see Kale, are we?” I asked, stopping.
“You always were perceptive,” she said.
I glanced back into the hollow. I
t was empty when I’d arrived, and now the center looked like a true pop-up laboratory. From hosting the sick and dying to the construction of Kale’s ultimate weapon against Earther wallets. Everyone lined up to get their meal, Ringers and Earthers forced to help them, everyone except Basaam, who stared at us.
“I promised I’d get him and his clan-sister out,” I said.
“And you promised to visit me again,” she said. “Some things aren’t meant to happen.”
“They’re right there.”
“Make no mistake, Mal, I believe in what we’re fighting for, just not how they’re doing it. My people still need Basaam, but they don’t need you.”
I watched Basaam a few seconds later, then sighed and continued on.
We reached a familiar portion of the caverns that looked like an old cafeteria that hadn’t been used in a decade. When Zhaff and I found this hideout, those very tables were covered with the bodies of sick Ringers my daughter was using stolen medicine to treat. Now it was as empty as an Earth crypt, minus any cobwebs.
Rylah groaned once we were out of view of the lab and leaned me against a wall to rest. Half-lugging an Earther body like mine was more than any offworlder could handle.
“I could move better if you took this thing off me.” I tapped the dampener wrapping my artificial leg.
“You like my invention?” she remarked.
“When I spotted you, I had a feeling this was your work.”
“You promise not to run?”
“Where the hell would I go?” I asked. “And with a bullet wound? Even I’m not that good.”
She knelt in front of me with her hand terminal out. Half a minute of flurrying fingers later, the dampener powered down and fell from me. I was too damn tired to run, my body too battered. Instead, I collapsed onto one of the lunch table’s benches to take a breather.
I yanked at my sanitary mask to try and get it off until Rylah drew a small knife and sliced the fabric. I’d never realized how hard the things made breathing until air freely flowed down my throat.
“There’s no time to rest, Mal,” she said, a hint of urgency finally creeping into her previously calm demeanor.
Children of Titan Series: Books 1-4: (A Space Opera Thriller Box Set) Page 96
