“I am impressed, Malcolm,” is all Zhaff said. “When Father said the enemy recaptured you, I was concerned I might be required to complete our mission on my own.”
I slowly positioned myself in front of Aria and raised my hands. “Our mission?” I said.
“To bring the Children of Titan to justice after they left us and so many outside the Darien Quarantine for dead. Do not move, Doctor.” While he restrained Rylah with a single hand, he turned the aim of his pulse pistol toward Aria, who made a move for the ship controls. “You will not get the jump on us again.”
“Zhaff,” I said, “I need you to put down the gun.”
“Why are you alongside the two fugitives pivotal in attempting to have us killed?”
“Attempting… I…” Maybe the slew of surprises had my brain firing on all cylinders, but the way he was talking, it was like we were still on our last mission together, hunting smugglers who might connect us to the greater Children of Titan conspiracy. Like he’d never left. And the fact that his gun was aimed at them and not me meant he didn’t remember what I’d done.
“Wait,” I said, stepping toward him. “This is the Doctor?”
“Yes,” Zhaff answered. Aria shuffled barely a centimeter, but Zhaff’s aim tracked her.
“That day is still fuzzy.”
“That is understandable,” Zhaff said. “Father had to mobilize us before we were fully recovered. Reports state she shot both of us and fled with the stolen supplies.”
“Father?” Rylah asked. “What in Trass’ name is going on?”
“Quiet, traitor.” Zhaff wrenched her arm further and caused her to wince.
“Zhaff.” I extended my arm to stop him. “They let me out of Kale’s prison. They want to turn themselves over and offer valuable information in exchange for protection. Look at them; neither are full-bred Ringers, and they’re treated like it.” There I was, just like Rylah all those months again, trying to lie to a Cogent. But I’d spent enough time with Zhaff to pick up on his ticks and the key was, there was a load of truth behind every lie I uttered.
“It’s true!” Aria said.
“Do not speak,” Zhaff said. His tone didn’t change a note, but the threat was clear enough. I heard Aria swallow audibly. “It is a wise intention, Malcolm,” Zhaff continued. “However, Luxarn is primarily interested in the Doctor’s child now. I caught her engaging romantically with Kale Trass, and, based on his own discoveries through your exceptional work on Mars, he believes the child to be Kale’s offspring.”
Zhaff returned his pistol’s aim to the back of Rylah’s head. She stared at me, wearing the look I’d seen on so many who’d expected to die. Unlike Orson Fring, she didn’t look ready for the blackness.
Few ever were.
“Zhaff, would you listen to me?” I implored. “They have intelligence that can help us undo this. Both of them. They’ll tell us all of it, but we have to get out of here now. Trust me.”
“I do trust you, Malcolm Graves. I also know you and the information broker have history, which makes this difficult, but she cannot be trusted. Do not worry. I will eliminate her, then we can deliver the Doctor to Father, and after she gives birth, punish her for what she has done. Then you will be free to catch up on your sleep.”
I would have snickered if I weren’t so terrified. I thought back to my first days with Zhaff heading out to Old Russia on Earth when I’d told him my collector’s tip about never turning down a chance for sleep, something a wise old collector had taught me when I was still young and hungry. If he remembered that, it meant that somewhere within his shiny new shell was the Zhaff I knew.
“Zhaff, I gave them my word they’d be pardoned,” I said. “It’s all I have left.”
“Please,” Rylah begged, playing along with me. “We don’t want anything to do with this place any longer. We'll do anything.”
Zhaff’s eye-lens tilted toward me, then back at Rylah. All the while, the single eyebrow he had remained still along with every human part of his face. “I am sorry, Malcolm,” he said. “I do not believe her.”
We were back outside on Titan again, Zhaff ready to destroy the life of someone I cared about for the sake of our mission, only this time, he was the only one with a gun. He wouldn’t hesitate. He never did. So instead of shooting him, I decided to try what I should have from the beginning—telling him the truth and testing if the bond we’d built was worth more than a mission from a man who’d never really wanted him.
If there was one human thing Zhaff might understand, it was a delinquent father trying to make things right. The best case was it’d buy me time to think of a way out of this, and the worst, he’d turn his attention to me, a true traitor, and give Rylah and Aria a chance at subduing him.
“Zhaff, don’t,” I said. “I have to tell you something about that day that will explain everything.” I turned and regarded Aria’s petrified expression. “About her. Zhaff, she’s… uh… she’s my daughter. The one I told you about.”
“That does not make any sense,” Zhaff promptly replied. His aim didn’t shift, but now his eye-lens rose to focus solely on me. “She is—”
“A bastard from Mars,” I finished for him, taking another step closer. “What happened on Titan—”
“Dad, don’t,” Aria whispered.
I looked back at my daughter and smiled. I could feel all the creases of age pulling at the corners of my lips and eyes. “I’m tired of all the lying.”
“Malcolm, what are you talking about?” Zhaff said.
“I’m saying, she’s not the reason we failed on Titan.” I turned back and stared straight into Zhaff’s eye-lens, same as I had all that time ago before I shot him. “Neither of them are. I am.”
Showing emotion was never one of Zhaff’s strong points, and it seemed especially difficult now, considering he was half-machine, but the way his lens spun to focus in and out on me, and that the rattling of his breathing stopped, I could tell I’d sparked something in his head. His gun-hand began to quake, slight enough that nobody but me would have noticed, but for him, that was like an earthquake.
“Zhaff, sorry doesn’t even begin to cut it, but we have a chance now,” I said. “A chance to make things righ—”
A loud bang interrupted me. A Ringer wearing winged armor landed on the bow of the Cora and glared in through the viewport. Kale.
“Let her go!” demanded the only voice more chilling than the half-robotic one of my former partner. Zhaff looked back toward the ship’s sleep-pod cabin, and Aria wasted no time using the distraction to make her move. She keyed the thrusters, and the Cora shot forward. Rylah elbowed Zhaff in his cybernetic gut at the same time, and that, combined with the force of acceleration, shifted his aim as he pulled the trigger.
“Aria!” I screamed.
The bullet missed her by a hair and plunged through the ship’s navigation controls. Sparks flew out, but I’d already decided to go after her rather than Rylah, and yanked her out of the captain’s chair before they seared her face.
Then we all flew backward, Aria, Rylah, and me. I was able to grab the corner of the hallway and stuck my artificial leg across it to jam it into the wall and block them from going any further. Zhaff and Rin weren’t so lucky.
The scarred witch got a few shots off. None met their mark as she flipped over a protruding sleep pod. Zhaff caught her by the arm as he plummeted toward the room’s back wall and landed as if it were the floor. There, they struggled over her firearm. Her powered armor helped give her a fighting chance, but he twisted her hand around enough to blow a hole through her left shoulder.
The Cora spun and threw them into another wall, knocking the gun free before Zhaff could shoot Rin in the head.
“We’re losing control,” Aria strained to say. “I need to get to the controls.”
I felt my foot beginning to slip and pushed harder until it sank into the wall.
“Go,” I grated. I barely had the strength to move any other human part of me, even wear
ing the Ringer armor, but Rylah was stuck against my leg and, together, we shoved Aria toward the controls. My daughter pulled herself into the seat and strapped in.
More pressure pinned my head back. All I could do was shift my gaze from the Cora’s viewport, where the view spun between Titan’s surface and Darien as Aria yanked at the ship’s yoke to try and pull us out of the spin, to the cabin.
Zhaff had Rin by the throat and punched her helmet. Somehow, she’d been able to get her visor up, but Zhaff’s fist was as artificially well-constructed as my leg. The visor shattered and the helmet broke, and Zhaff pounded the ugly side of her face until blood covered the scars.
“You will not slow human propagation any longer,” Zhaff said. Just as he finished speaking, his fist froze right before striking her again and likely killing her. His eye-lens snapped up in my direction.
“‘Family. I hope you understand, Zhaff,’” Zhaff said, repeating the last words I’d whispered to him when I thought he was dead. I could never forget them. I’d heard his voice elevated a few times. I’d even heard him make a joke, but I’d never heard his voice tremble.
My heart sank like a brick. I’d told him the truth, yet it was only then, when he dropped a daughter of Trass rather than kill her, that I knew—he finally remembered what had happened. He remembered that awful day on Titan when I chose family over the company.
“Why?” Zhaff said. “Why did you do it!” The way he screamed made his respirator hiss and stole all the human quality from his voice. He leaped at me, and thanks to the pressure of the ship spinning, I could do nothing but watch.
“Everyone, hold on!” Aria shouted.
The underside of the Cora slammed into Titan’s surface. Zhaff’s metallic finger scraped across my neck right before the force of the impact caused my artificial foot to slip and carve a deep trough across the wall. Rylah was whipped against a wall, and her armor kept her head from being split open. My back crunched against a sleep pod in the next room, and I flipped over before landing on my stomach and having the wind knocked out of me.
I found my way to my hands and knees, my ears ringing. Aria was in the command deck, still strapped to her seat, moaning. Rylah lay in the hall, unconscious, but it looked like she was breathing. Rin was further down the hall on her back, coughing up blood and loose teeth.
Black-gloved fingers wrapped my wrist. For a split-second, I expected the worst, then I realized how weak the grip was.
“Why...” Zhaff rasped, his respirator ticking from malfunction. His sparking artificial leg was crushed between two sleep pods, one of which had been pried loose of the wall and overturned. A conduit that ripped from its supports plunged through his torso. No blood leaked from the wound, only from the countless scrapes covering the other half of his body made by shattered glass.
He squirmed to pull himself free, but it was no use. And all the while, his eye-lens never shifted from me. I longed for that image of him lying completely still on the surface of Titan to fill my head again instead of this. At least then he’d looked peaceful and not like a wounded animal caught in a trap.
“Stop them!” a distorted voice ordered.
Kale appeared in the entry from the cabin, fully armored along with a group of Ringer soldiers. They marched into the room. The first grabbed Rin. A few more raced by toward the command deck for Aria and Rylah. One came for me, and I found my wits in time to grab his rifle and flip him over.
Skinny Ringers… now that I was in one of their powered suits too, I was as strong as three of them lumped together.
I ripped the soldier’s rifle free and went to aim at Kale, but his knee caught me in the side of my head. He pressed down on me, weak like the rest of his kind, but he aimed my own pulse pistol against the side of my head. A second later, more rifles than I could count aimed at me.
“Kale, don’t!” Aria screamed. “It wasn’t him.”
“Get her the hell out of my sight!” he roared. More of his men held her with her hands behind her back and dragged her by. She didn’t go easy, that was for sure, kicking and shouting his name, but her pregnant, unarmored body was no use against them.
“Try it,” Kale whispered in my ear, noticing my finger threading the trigger of the rifle. Rage resonated from him like a fusion core. “I’ll let her watch.”
I let the gun clank to the floor.
“That’s what I thought.” He shoved my face against the floor as he stood and allowed his men to seize me. They didn’t take any risks, at least four of them heaving me to my feet. I wound up face-to-face with Zhaff, whose eye-lens continued to fixate on me.
“Why!” Zhaff groaned. He finally gained purchase with one of his feet and pushed, causing the conduit to grate through his mechanized insides as his body slid forward along it like meat off a skewer. One of the soldiers bashed him in the head and knocked him out, putting me out of my misery, since I found myself unable to look away.
“I want the Cogent alive,” Kale said. He ordered his men to stop and walked right up to me. I fought every urge in my body not to spit on his face. “Luxarn Pervenio will want to see his son again.”
The nightmarish grin Kale put on—before then, I’d looked at him and see a troubled kid influenced by the wrong people. Not anymore. I’m not sure if he knew exactly what had happened yet, that Aria and Rylah had betrayed him, or if seeing his teacher Rin half-dead had done it.
It all happened so fast.
All I was sure of was that once again Zhaff arrived at the worst time and kept my daughter and I from riding out into the sunset, and that right at that moment, Kale had cracked. Not even his great-how-many-times-grandpa Darien Trass could save whoever he turned his fury upon next.
Fifteen
Kale
I stood outside the Darien Hall of Ashes, watching my people file inside. It felt like I was back in the Darien Quarantine before the revolution, waiting to visit my sick mother. Not a smile to be found in the crowd. Feet dragging along toward places visitors had to go but wished they would never enter.
“Kale,” my mother addressed me from behind, using the same haughty tone she always did when she was trying to teach me a lesson.
“Not now, Mother,” I replied.
I didn’t bother turning to face her until she pulled on my shoulder. “Kale, listen to me.”
“I said not now!” I shrugged her off and took a step toward the entry, but she caught up and forced her way in front of me.
“I know what she did was wrong, but she’s family,” she said. Tears glazed her eyes. Her hair was disheveled, her eyes exhausted. She almost looked like she had in the quarantine, only she could at least stand under her own weight now.
“Not with me.”
Again, I went to pass her, but she didn’t budge. “How many second chances have I given you? Stealing any Earther tech you could get your hands on. Constantly getting into fights... Killing Orson Fring… We all make mistakes, Kale. Some worse than others.”
“And what about the next one?” I bristled. “What if she or anyone else decides to sell us out to Earth? If they decide a free Titan isn’t worth the struggle? Do you know the things I did to get you free of their quarantine? Do you even understand? You can’t.”
“I didn’t ask for any of it. All I wanted was one last chance to hug my boy.”
“And now you can,” I said. “No mask, no gloves, because I turned that quarantine into dust. Not Rin, me. I’m the only one willing to do what’s necessary to survive.”
“Survive? We’ve already won, Kale! Pervenio Corp is gone. The USF was willing to sign Titan over to us. Our own world back, everything we wanted, and you rejected them. Aria told me everything. I’ve stood by and watched you push them further and further because you seem to think that the thing we all fought for isn’t good enough.”
“Good enough? Why should we settle for good enough? The Ring was ours long before they crawled out of the ashes of the Meteorite. We should beg them for scraps because one day they decided to c
ome here and infect us? Spread their Earther greed like a plague? We’ve lost too many lives because of them to settle.”
“Is Cora’s life really worth all of this? She wouldn’t—”
“This isn’t about her!” I bellowed. The echo of my voice caused my people to stop and stare. “This is about justice.”
My mother slipped out of my way, her eyes bloodshot and bulging. “What happened to you?” she said softly. “What happened to my son?”
“He learned what it takes to protect the people he cares about. Now, please, get out of my way, or I’ll have to make an example out of you as well.” I wished I could take back that last part as soon as it left my mouth. She didn’t deserve it. She was only trying to do what a good mother should, but I was tired of her not understanding the sacrifices our revolution took.
Her fear gave way to anger. “Tell your aunt congratulations. She’s finally transformed you into your father.”
She rushed by me, and I had no chance to answer. Not that I had anything to say. My father wasn’t there for us because he gave his soul to found the Children of Titan as only a Trass could. To start the fight that I was finishing. Whatever line he’d crossed, I know he did it for me. For my future. Same as I was doing for my child.
Why couldn’t my mother ever understand?
I drew a deep breath to settle myself, then started off toward the Hall of Ashes again. I barely made it two steps before Rin was in front of me to beg for Rylah as well. She appeared neither sad nor irritated, not that showing emotion with half a face was easy, especially now that it was bandaged and freshly gashed from the beating Zhaff put on her. Her left arm was in a sling, and the other gripped a cane to help her balance. Her legs shook from injury as she slowly lowered to her knees in front of me with all my people watching. If I hadn’t broken into the Cora when I did and saved her, doctors said she might have died from internal bleeding.
“Lord Trass,” she said, hoarse and needing a breath between every few words. Losing an entire cluster of teeth made her even tougher to understand as well. “I’ve come to ask you to spare my sister.”
Children of Titan Series: Books 1-4: (A Space Opera Thriller Box Set) Page 99
