I groaned, grabbed her by the shoulder, and heaved her to her feet. “Not in front of them,” I whispered, pulling her off to the side. She, the fearless, ruthless warrior who had ringed me into this fight shouldn’t be seen begging.
“It was my fault, Kale,” she said. “I brought Rylah into this years ago when she wanted nothing to do with the movement, but she’s never had the stomach for it. She—”
“Did you know?” I asked calmly, stopping her mid-sentence.
“Know what?”
“That she had a serious history with the collector and Aria going back before working together out of convenience. Because Aria conveniently left that part out of her promise to ‘tell me everything’ until today.”
Rin’s marred lips twisted. “I knew she recruited Aria out of Venta Co. to be our doctor like you did. I didn’t realize how well they all knew each other before that, but—”
I cut her off again. “She put both our cause and my son in jeopardy for a Pervenio collector. Who knows what else she might have been planning while I left her here in control of Titan because you trust her. You said it yourself, she didn’t want this.”
“Let me talk to her. I can figure out what she was really after.” I’d never seen my hardened aunt so rattled, not even over Hayes’ death. She’d been at my side since the beginning, helping me make the hard choices for the good of Titan, convincing me when something as horrible as taking care of Orson Fring was necessary. She was always calculating, justified. Now her tongue flicked along her open scars like it always did when she was agitated, only more so.
“So she can spin more lies?” I asked. “Keep more secrets? That was her job on the old Titan, wasn’t it? Exchanging secrets. Knowing things to get the upper hand.”
“We can trust her.”
“We can only trust our own.”
Rin grabbed me by the chest plate, her features warping with rage. If I were anybody else, she might have struck me. I didn’t flinch. Not with my people watching.
“She’s as much one of us as Aria!” she seethed. “They got on that ship together, Kale. Will you destroy her too?”
“Aria kept the same secret from me.” I pictured her at the controls of the Cora before Rin stopped them. At first, I thought it was all the collector and the Cogent’s doing, but I’d seen the security recordings from the hangar—they merely crashed the party. And Aria told me the truth the moment I got her off the ship. She wasn’t a hostage. She was as ready to fly the Cora back to Earth as any of them. Ready to abandon me.
“She will raise our child so that the blood of Trass, our blood, endures,” I said, “but she will never speak for us again, and she will never leave this place. Be happy, Rin. Now you get to say you were right about her.”
Rin released me, and her head drooped. “Only now, I don’t want to. I understand that you have to make an example of one of them, Kale. Trust me, I do. But exile Rylah instead. Make her live with her other half. I’m not asking you as your advisor but as your blood.”
“It’s only because of who you are that she isn’t being executed. Freeing a Pervenio collector and helping steal my unborn child makes us look weak enough as it is.”
“You might as well be killing her,” Rin said.
“What happened to whatever it takes?”
A mouthful of air slipped through Rin’s lips, the healthy side beginning to tremble. She stared up at me, a single tear dribbling down her cheek in and out of her grisly scars before dampening one of her red-stained bandages. “Be better than me,” she said.
I wrapped my hand around her gruesome jawline. Most people cringed at the sight of her. I had once but not anymore. “‘We’ll bear the weight of our hard choices so that they’ll never have to,’” I whispered. “We’re so close, Rin. Don’t lose sight.” I drew her into a tight embrace, then strode into the Hall of Ashes.
It was even more packed than for Gareth’s sham of a funeral. Guards formed a line on either side of me and pushed through the mob of baffled faces. Most had no idea yet that Rylah had betrayed us all. That a woman born half-of-Titan and half-of-Earth would choose the latter.
Rylah stood in front of one of the tubes the ashes of the dead were sent through, her wrists bound and stuffed into the opening. She watched me the entire way over, utter revulsion twisting her features. I’m not sure how I never saw how she felt about me before. I was blinded by Rin’s trust, I suppose. A part of me couldn’t believe my fearsome aunt had a weak spot. It made me feel even more alone under the crushing weight of my responsibilities than ever before.
“Kale, let me out of here!” Rylah shouted over the raucous crowd, pulling to try and free her arms from the tube. “This is insane, just listen to me.”
I stopped directly in front of her. My guards gave us space and held the others at bay. I scanned her from head to toe. For once, she couldn’t wield her charm and beauty as a weapon. Her dress was ripped, her shoes broken. Makeup like the Earthers wore ran down from her eyes. She looked plain.
“I trusted you,” I said, seething.
“I trusted you! Trusted Rin that you’d be different when you’re just as bad as them. And trust me, Kale Trass, nobody knows that better than me. I knew all Pervenio’s little secrets, but at least they were honest before they sent us out an airlock.”
The back of my armored hand crashed into her face, splitting her cheek. She couldn’t fall with her arms jammed, but she folded over the protruding tube and spat a gob of blood.
“Kale!” Rin shouted. She burst through the guards, but I whipped around and stuck my finger in her direction.
“Stop!” I bellowed. She didn’t dare disobey. “This woman betrayed us all!” I addressed the crowd. “She attempted to free the Pervenio collector who murdered Orson Fring in cold blood.” The collective gasp of everyone watching was as loud as a tram zipping by. “But this Earther-sympathizing snake didn’t stop there. I wanted him to be born healthy before I shared the news with Titan, but my son grows within our ambassador. He is the blood of Trass, and this woman tried to take him from me. From you!”
“Traitor!” a Titanborn in the crowd spat.
“Whore!” shrieked another.
They surged inward, forcing my guards to utilize the strength of their armor to keep them from ripping Rylah apart. I raised my arms to try and control them, then circled Rylah. I pointed to her arms, trapped within the tube.
“With those hands, she deceived my guards and unlocked the Earther’s shackles,” I said. “In their attempt to escape, they joined forces with the Cogent who nearly killed me.” I gestured to a scar on my cheek from my brawl with the Cogent. Again, the crowd gasped. “But we are stronger than they think!”
They erupted, half cheering, half spewing insults at Rylah. Rin sank back behind my guards, a thousand-meter gaze aimed in the direction of her half-sister.
“I ask you, my people, what should be done to someone willing to sell us out to our enemies?” I said. “Someone willing to free an Earther and let him walk our halls, spreading his sickness and germs?”
“Kill her!” a man across the hall yelled. Chants echoing his sentiments rang out through the crowd, but I ignored them. Instead, I turned and regarded Rylah.
“You want to know why I tried to free them?” she muttered. “You.” Blood bubbled in the corner of her lips. “They’re going to wipe us out because of you. Rin wanted a heartless leader for her revolution. You got more than you bargained for, didn’t you, Sister!” She lunged at Rin, but her trapped arms snapped her back. For the first time in my life, I saw Rin flinch.
Before any of my people noticed, I clutched Rylah by her flawless jawline. “Is that what you want to see?” I said. “Titan covered in Pervenio red again so you can go back to whoring credits or screwing Earthers?”
“It can’t be worse than living under a murderer. She fell for you, Kale, and you chased her away listening to Rin. So go ahead and kill me. Because if you don’t, and you touch a hair on Aria’s body, I
swear I’ll bring this whole thing down.”
My hand fell to her throat and squeezed so that the rest of what she said was garbled. I wanted to crush her. Who knew how long she’d been whispering in Aria’s ears, turning her against me until she was willing to run. It was only the sight of my aunt out of the corner of my eye that convinced me to let go.
Rylah gagged. I turned back to my people. “The former Voice of Titan would have had her spaced without a second thought, but we are not them!” I announced. “Rylah, for your crimes against Titan in this time of struggle, you will never be able to free an Earther from his cell again. Never be able to caress and manipulate all those who thought they could trust you.”
I approached the controls for opening the tube that allowed ashes to pass through. Both Rylah and her sister’s eyes went wide. My aunt mouthed “Please” for me to stop, but her body remained still.
“Too much of a coward to kill me, are you, Kale?” Rylah said. The crowd of Titanborn was too loud for anybody but me to hear her. “What’s another body on the pile you’ve started.”
“You did this to yourself, Rylah,” I said.
“You’re right. It’s what I get for looking out for anybody but myself. But you know the one thing I learned as an information broker?”
“And what is that?”
“That there’s always one secret deeper. You do what you want with me, but if Aria gets hurt because she was naïve enough to love a broken man like you, I’ll tell yours.”
I paused at the controls with one command left to open the exterior valve and expose her to Titan’s frigid air.
“You don’t know anything,” I said. “And that terrifies you, doesn’t it?”
Her bloody lips curled into an impish smile, the same that had probably been used to work over countless men before me. It was probably how she got Malcolm to trust her despite being an offworlder. Probably the reason I took Rin at her word and trusted her half-sister without digging deeper.
“There were many secrets hidden in Pervenio Station after we took it,” she said. “Pointless executions like what happened to your Cora. Technology. But my favorite was an early passage from one of Titan’s first settlers. So old that the data couldn’t be opened on our terminals, but I found my way in. Of the thousands Darien Trass brought here before the Meteorite hit, all our lives we’ve been told his daughter was among them. But Darien Trass didn’t have a biological daughter, only one he took in.” She started to snicker. “You, and my sister, and your father are as much Trasses as anyone in this room.”
She grinned all the way through her revelation, at least until she realized that I wasn’t shocked at all. I felt like I should be. Like I should have gone faint upon hearing that our entire revolution was based on a lie. I didn’t feel a thing.
Maybe she was telling the truth, but it didn’t matter. I was only a descendant of Trass because my people needed me to be. They needed a symbol, a name, to rally behind. To be honest, it was almost a relief to feel the weight of living up to the most brilliant man in human history lifting off me. The truth was that I, Rylah, every Titanborn in the room were all the children of those he selected. The three thousand most worthy people on an Earth that deserved to die.
Rylah’s features darkened when she realized her final slight had no effect. Not a soul among my people would believe her anyway. It was too late for that.
I stared straight into her eyes, never breaking contact, and then I keyed the command. The outer seal of the tube opened, allowing the bitter cold of Titan to slip through. At first, Rylah went silent, then she fell to her knees. Her cries were drowned out by the bloodthirsty crowd.
Her exposure only lasted a few seconds before I resealed the tube, but it was long enough for the chill of my world to slip by her arms and give me goosebumps. Rin threw her cane aside and ran forward to pull Rylah free from the tube. She was too weak still to help, and Rylah collapsed on top of her, her entire body shivering, her lips blue. The skin up to her forearms was frozen solid, and when her hands hit the floor, they began to crack. The only thing that kept them from shattering was that the intolerable cold had fused them together.
I laid my hand upon Rin’s shoulder as she struggled to calm her writhing sister. “Have her body warmed, then meet me at Basaam’s workstation,” I said. “Word came through this morning. His engines are complete.”
Rin glanced up at me, incredulous. She needed time, but so had I when she invaded the Piccolo and made me a rebel. The Earther fleet was near, and enough time had already been wasted dealing with traitors when we should’ve been preparing.
“That’s an order,” I said then left them behind.
My people reached out to brush my armor as I passed, praising my mercy. I heard Rylah howling in agony until I was out of the Darien Hall of Ashes. It was the same sound I’d grown used to while visiting my mother in the quarantine zone. Only, those were my people suffering. The woman at my back, no matter what Rin thought, wasn’t one of us. Not anymore.
I ditched my guards outside the lift and headed up to the glamorous home I’d never wanted. I’d meant to ask my men to try and spare some water for the garden but forgot. Now even the sole flower that fought to the sunlight for life was wilting and brown.
I told more guards standing outside the door to leave, then threw it open. Aria lay inside, cuffed to the bed and with a tracking band on her ankle, something I should have put on her from the start if I weren’t blinded by her pretty green eyes like a fool.
“Kale.” She sat up on the edge of the bed but could go no further. Her due date was nearing, and it showed. “I... It wasn’t what it looked like.”
“At least have the damn decency not to lie to me!” I slammed my fist on the doorway, bending the frame, then stormed up to her. “You said you told me everything, but not about Rylah and your father’s history fucking. How long were you planning to run?”
“Just listen to me!”
“I’m so tired of listening.” I lifted the Ark-ship pendant with one finger then let it drop back to her chest. “Everyone told me not to trust you from the beginning, but I ignored them. They warned me that you were only out for yourself like a true mudstomper.”
“That’s not true.”
“Well, you picked a hell of a way to show it.” I said. “You want to know what I think? I think you were planning to leave the moment your summit failed and I let you visit your old home. You and your father were going to disappear until Venta mucked things up.”
“I told you, I had no idea he was alive!”
“More lies from the mouth of a whore who sold her body and soul to Madame Venta!”
Aria slapped me across the face. It stung, but I didn’t shunt. I edged closer until she fell back onto the bed and I was glaring down at her from almost half a meter above.
“Do you think I wanted that?” she asked. “I did what I had to do to survive after I was left alone, just like any of you would have.”
“You’re not one of us,” I said. “The only reason you’re not being punished like Rylah is because of who you’re carrying. And the moment he’s born—”
“You’ll what?” she said. “Kill me like Orson Fring? And probably Rylah and my father soon enough. You’re wrong, Kale, I didn’t want to leave. Every word I ever said to you, I meant. Maybe it’s just the doctor in me that thought I could help you at first, but I fell for that wounded man I met all those long months ago who believed in something. But I refuse to sit back and watch you destroy our son like my father did to me over a woman who’s gone and isn’t coming back!”
“At least she was honest!” I shouted.
“All the good it did her.”
The back of my hand lashed out to smack her in return, but I managed to stop myself before it struck. With my suit on, it could have done unrepairable damage and harmed the baby.
“Lucky for you, after we’re done, you won’t have to watch me do anything,” I said, hand quivering. “You can go to Earth for all
I care, but Titan is our son’s birthright. All of this is so that he and every one of our children can grow up in a world where we’re more than garbage.”
“No, Kale,” she whispered. “You’re doing all of this for you.”
I bit my lip. How could I have been so blind? How did I ever think she understood what we went through, when all she’d ever been was a two-faced rank-climber out to best her estranged dad? First Madame Venta, now me. If not for her bulging stomach, I’m not sure I would have been able to control myself. Even still, I turned away from her and rushed out, locking the door behind me while she screamed my name.
I ditched my guards and headed to the only place where I knew I could be alone. Down in the Lowers, far below, where I’d grown up before war or betrayal or anything—when only survival mattered. When my mother could still look at me without being disappointed.
“Lord Trass, I didn’t expect to see you,” said my old neighbor Benji Reiger as I approached. “Can I—”
“Out of my way!” I shoved the old man out of the way. His back slammed against the hatch into his dwelling, and his wife ran to him from inside to help him.
I threw open my own hatch and entered the tiny hollow I’d grown up in. I paced back and forth, unable to slow my breathing now that I was alone. I drew my hand terminal to play Cora’s last moments again. It usually allowed me to focus my anger on what needed to be done, but the moment I saw Director Sodervall’s face, I exploded.
I slammed the terminal against the floor, then grabbed one of the beds inside and ripped it out of the wall, screaming at the top of my lungs. And I didn’t stop. All the fury over what happened poured out of me, until I was left lying against the wall panting like a rabid beast, and the room I’d grown up in was torn to pieces.
Sixteen
Malcolm
Feeling my age wasn’t new, but for the first time in my life, I felt like a cripple. The pounding I took after Zhaff stopped our escape was one for my personal record books, especially after all the others since I was brought to Titan. Ringers on their own, weak. Dozens of them kicking my ribs with their armor on as they dragged me back to my cell after I’d survived a crash? Different story.
Children of Titan Series: Books 1-4: (A Space Opera Thriller Box Set) Page 100
