I remembered what I’d said to her once about kids like him getting creative when they go bad, and I knew this plot had his brokenhearted fingerprints all over it.
“Anything from the USF?” Kale asked.
“A transmission started coming through the moment the last warhead went offline,” Aria said reluctantly. She slowly synced the video message to the main screen.
“You win, Mr. Trass,” Talo said, looking like he was ready to faint. “I’ve transmitted signed documents satisfying your demands, and I’ll be dealing with the blowback until I die. The Ring belongs to you now, provided you divert the current course of Undina. I hope you do well with it alone. Goodbye, Mr. Trass. This is the last time Earth will ever deal with you.”
As soon as the message ended, I clapped. Everyone turned to me so fast it was like I’d set off a bomb. “Well played,” I said. “My whole life, I never saw Earth or the major corps blink, and you made them shit themselves in less than an hour.”
“How do I divert it?” Aria asked, clearly eager to move on with the subject.
Kale didn’t answer. He leaned toward the viewport, hands squeezing the backs of the seats on either side of him. Big, beautiful Earth hovered in the center. It’d been exactly a year now since I’d been there, the last M-Day when the Children of Titan made their existence known beyond their own world by blowing up a train platform in New London and robbing a hospital. They’d come far in a short time. Now Undina raced through space toward the very same city, a trail of blinding light at its back.
“You don’t,” Kale said, emotionless. Hearing his response made my heart feel like it’d plunged out of my chest. Again, it could’ve been the bullet wound, but I felt empty.
“What are you talking about?” Aria asked.
“Plot a course for Titan,” Kale said. “We’re going home.”
“You made a deal to divert Undina.”
“And now they’ll learn how worthless deals with them truly are as they spend the next century recovering.”
“They gave you want you wanted!” Aria went to shove him, but Kale grabbed her arm and squeezed. That snapped me out of a spell of lightheadedness, though, I couldn’t manage much more than to sit up.
“Do you really think a signature makes Titan ours?” Kale asked. “They’ll be back for us tomorrow, using trade and credits for leverage. They’ll do what Earthers do, manipulate and corrupt. No, this M-Day will change everything. They take us seriously now, but after this is over, they will fear us. It won’t matter if the deal is ruined, because they won’t be able to touch us. They’ll be stuck rebuilding their civilization for decades. Until our son is ruling over the Ring. That is how we win. Not with signed papers.”
If there is one thing I’ve learned about rebels, the moment they’re proficient enough to get you to respect them, they show their true colors. The moment you think they have an actual vision, they reveal their narcissism. Unable to fit in with the way the world works, they try to write it in their own image.
“There are millions of people down there, and you’re just going to wipe them out?” I asked. “Innocent people. Good people.” And Zhaff, I didn’t say out loud. I’d left him behind for a chance to live his life, and thanks to Kale, he’d die anyway. Death indeed did follow in his wake.
I’d never cared a smidge for the rabble of Earth, but it was a collector’s job, more than anything, to ensure they could live peacefully. The Amissum clan-family was down there, a few kilometers outside New London—that group of hardworking factory laborers I was born into before I ran to seek better things. They probably didn’t know enough about Ringers to even care about looking down on them.
“Kale, don’t do this,” Aria begged. “I know I hurt you, but I’ve seen the good in you. I fell in love with that man. None of that was fake.”
“You think this is about you?” Kale asked as he continued to stare at Earth. “Everyone always thinks it’s about them.”
I remembered how the Pervenio directors always looked after striking a solid deal or weaseling their way out of trouble thanks to a collector’s talents. Like they were conquering heroes. Kale seemed neither proud nor solemn. He was relieved. I knew now, going back, that when Rylah came to my cell, I should have told them to stop and keep playing along in Kale’s fantasy. Sure, he was always a deluded Ringer no thanks to his aunt, but Aria leaving him hadn’t just broken his heart… it broke him.
“It’s already done,” he said. “Basaam knew. There is no way to communicate with the engine. The energy discharged in every pulse causes too much interference. Undina can’t stop, and it can’t turn.”
“No… no!” Aria lunged for him and pounded on his chest plate. “I should have strangled you with your bed sheets, you fucking coward! They were all right about you. You are a monster!”
Kale’s men went to stop her, but he ordered them to back down. I tried again to stand, but a firm hand on my shoulder sent me back into my seat without a fuss. I barely had enough energy left to keep my eyes open.
“I’m going to stop this. You need to be stopped.” Aria sat back down, took control of the ship, and banked around so hard, it threw everyone off balance. She raced back toward the rear of Undina, making sure to keep the Cora corkscrewing so that nobody could keep their bearings.
“Let her,” Kale instructed his men.
Aria targeted the pulsing engine stalk latched to the back of Undina and fired everything the Cora had left in her arsenal. Even if she knocked it out, the asteroid wouldn’t stop. All she could hope would be that a few fusion pulses after it was knocked loose of its anchor in the rock redirected it into the planets vast ocean. The planet had already been half-drowned three hundred years prior, and Earthers were smart enough to resettle far from the new coastlines along high elevations.
It was a smart move by my daughter, a rash move, but futile. The plasma emitted by the engines nuclear propulsion vaporized every missile before even coming close to the surface. When Aria realized that, along with the rest of us, her jaw dropped and the Cora stopped spinning. One of Kale’s men immediately grabbed her and yanked her out of the seat.
“No!” she howled. She reached back and ripped the man’s sidearm out of its holster. Every rifle in the command deck swung to aim at her, I called out for her to stop, and that was when she did the unthinkable. Something she probably learned from the Children of Titan after so long at their side. She turned the gun on herself, aiming right through her belly button at Kale’s son.
“Get your hands off me!” She shook free and backed slowly across the command deck, toward me. “I swear, if you don’t stop it, I’ll blow us both to hell.”
“Aria, it’s too late.” Kale took a hard step toward her, but she fired once into the ceiling to stop him and then returned to aiming.
Kale raised his arms to get his men to lower their weapons, then took a different approach. He bit back his anger and tried to console her. “This is how we change Sol, Aria,” he said softly. By Earth, the crazy kid really meant it too.
“By killing millions?” she replied.
“To ensure that millions of Titanborn will be born in control of their own lives for generations.”
“If you do this, they don’t deserve it.”
“How many of us died in the Ringer Plague so Pervenio Corp could own the Ring? And he and his father let it happen. He told me himself. What do you think they’ll try next?”
I snickered, and one of his men promptly wrapped a hand around my throat as if they’d forgotten I was there. “You’re really going to lie to her while I’m right here?” I asked.
“I swear it, Kale,” Aria said. “Have Basaam find a way to redirect Undina, or we both die.”
“Don’t you dare touch my son!” his voice boomed. His features contorted, and all that sense of relief gave way to that heartsick rage, which allowed him to invent such a homicidal plot in the first place. “If you hurt him, your father won’t know a day without torture. I’ll freeze him piec
e by piece until there’s nothing left.”
“I should have never trusted you after I saw what you did on Mars.”
“And I should have known you were too weak to be one of us.”
“I thought your aunt was the crazy one, but I was way off,” I chimed in, earning a glare from them both. “You set out to prove a Ringer was worth as much as an Earther; congratulations. We’re all human. It’s madmen like you Sol needs to be free of; doesn’t matter where they’re born.”
Kale turned to me, his glower boring through me. “You don’t get to turn noble when it suits you, Collector. You and your employer did the same thing for years. Self-preservation through killing. One or a million, it makes no difference.”
“See now, that’s where you’re wrong. I told you before. You can kill Luxarn and millions of other Earthers, but it won’t bring Cora back, and it won’t make my daughter love you again. You’ll never fill that great big hole inside you.”
“I’m doing this for my people! For Titan,” Kale shouted.
“Cora was a looker, that’s for sure, but if I’m being honest, that girl’s life wasn’t worth a million anything.”
“Stop using her name,” Kale warned.
“I’ve seen just as pretty in the Martian sewers, without the baggage. The little half-Ringer couldn’t have been too smart if she couldn’t see you for the animal you are.”
“Be quiet.”
“Was Cora that good in the sack to make you lose your mind like this?”
“I said don’t use her name!” Kale pushed off the pilot’s chair and crashed into me, knocking me out of my chair and turning all the attention away from Aria. We tumbled down the corridor, spiraling, kicking, and punching. I snuck a few blows in too, though my fist crunched harmlessly against his armor. I didn’t care. If he was going to ravage Earth just to fill his heart with something, then he was going to die with it. Now that I knew how far Aria was willing to go, I was done feeling helpless.
Kale and I crashed into a sleep pod so hard, the lid cracked. We bounced off, and I was able to raise my artificial knee up into his visor. He shrieked as it shattered and tiny shards stabbed his face. My fist punched through the opening and broke his nose. His flailing arm smashed my gun wound and had me seeing stars.
He pinned me against the wall and went for the pistol holstered on his hip, which I noticed was my own. I did the same. I wrestled his wrist to aim it away from me. My Earther muscles helped me stand a chance. I pushed him back and forced him to squeeze the trigger once. The bullet slashed through the neck-guard of his armor but didn’t hit meat.
The recoil allowed him to regain control, and he fired repeatedly down into my fake leg at the joint. The alloy shredded away to reveal circuitry as complex as the human nervous system. It didn’t hurt. Not even when the bullet sliced the thing’s core structure and left it dangling off my hip like a loose air recycler vent. I spotted his men behind him, struggling to line up a shot at me. Then Kale switched on his armor’s mag boots and gained footing. Weightlessness trapped me in his grip, with no chance to break free.
He held me against the wall with one hand and threw my gun aside. His other armored fist crashed into my jaw. “She was worth every goddamn Earther in Sol!” Kale roared. “Nothing like your whore, traitorous daughter!” He punched me again, jarring a few teeth loose. I couldn’t even feel the pain, my body hurt so much all over, but my vision became spotted with black.
Focus, Malcolm, I told myself. I added in the lie that I’d been in worse scrapes before. Nobody else on the ship could get a shot at me, and I’d struck a nerve that had the boy king seeing red. But my pistol floated nearby, and as Kale beat my face to a pulp, I stretched my injured arm out. I couldn’t even feel my fingers, so I had to watch as they threaded the trigger. Dazed as I was, I knew the weight of that gun like I knew my daughter. There was a single round left.
One last kill…
“Get off him!” Aria shouted suddenly.
She’d broken free of Kale’s men and grabbed him by the shoulder. He whipped around out of reflex and struck her in the chest with his armored elbow. She was launched across the cabin into the wall. I got the shot off in the direction of Kale’s head at the same time, but realizing it was Aria who gripped him had caused him to turn, and I missed my mark. He grabbed his ear and staggered backward. All he was missing was an earlobe.
Titanborn guards apprehended me and threw me to my knees, guns poking me from every angle. I didn’t pay them any attention. I heard a cough that made my whole body go numb. Aria lay between two sleep pods on the other side of the cabin, just as Zhaff had after our failed escape. Her eyes gaped. Her mouth whistled faintly as air struggled to reach her lungs. The center of her chest was completely caved in, and the Ark-ship necklace I’d given to her so long ago lay in two pieces on the floor once again.
Kale’s men rushed to him first, but he threw them aside and went to her. He tore off his helmet, droplets of blood streaming away from his nose and ear. He pressed his fully intact ear against her battered chest.
“What did you do?” I said. My mouth was so full of blood and broken teeth I could barely get the words out.
“Aria, breathe,” Kale said. He tapped her face. “Aria.”
Her arm quaked as she reached up and ran her fingers through his hair. I shouted and cursed, saying Earth knows what, but I couldn’t break free to reach her. She stared straight into Kale’s eyes and whispered something to him. Halfway through, she peered over at me. I couldn’t hear her over my own ranting, but whatever she said made all the fury twisting Kale’s features suddenly disappear.
Twenty-Three
Kale
“Aria, breathe,” I said. I pulled her close and stroked her cheek. “Aria.”
With my other hand, I felt her ruptured chest. There was barely a heartbeat, and every time she breathed, I could hear her lungs rattling. Her fingers slid up around my neck, and she tried to pull my ear toward her mouth, but she was too weak. I had to help her by leaning forward myself.
“I know I’m not her,” she whispered. “I’m sorry I couldn’t be, but I shouldn’t have run.” Her voice was so fragile, it rattled like the rusty old air recyclers on the bottommost tier of the Darien Lowers.
“You don’t—” She silenced me with a quaking finger over my lips.
“You’re better than they are. I know it. Sol is filled with rotten parents… Don’t be the monster they made you.” Her gaze shifted to aim at Malcolm. “Be a father our son can be proud of, even if it makes his life hell. That’s what I thought being Titanborn meant all along…”
Air whistled through her lips after those words. Her head drifted back slowly in zero G. I shook her by the shoulders, but her green eyes froze open. The brightness slowly drained from them.
“Aria?” I said softly.
“Aria!” I whipped around to see Malcolm slip out of my men’s grasp, push off the wall, and soar toward me. If a look could kill, I’d be missing more than the tip of my ear. A Titanborn grabbed his foot and yanked him down, but Malcolm didn’t stop. He clawed at the floor to reach her. One of my men pressed a pulse rifle to the back of his head. Before he could fire, I grabbed the man and flung him aside.
Malcolm raced by me to his daughter’s side. “Aria!” he screamed again. Every time he did, it felt like a knife was being pushed deeper through my rib cage. I’d heard names screamed like that before, full of unbridled rage and anguish. I heard it every time a Titanborn child was dragged off by Pervenio Corp security to be placed in quarantine.
“Not you too,” Malcolm whimpered. “Aria, wake up. Please. I can’t lose you too.”
I stared, dumbfounded. The Cora transformed around me, making me feel like I was back in that airlock cell on Pervenio Station where Cora was spaced. Where I found the recording of Director Sodervall hitting the commands that doomed her. Only, on this occasion, I stood where he’d been, watching. All that was different was that I wasn’t smiling over executing someone on
ly for being different than me, but I’d still killed her.
“Lord Trass!” One of my men shook me to snap me back to reality. “Lord Trass. Your son.”
Malcolm huddled over Aria, in such a state of shock now he couldn’t even cry. I noticed her stomach beneath him, protruding even more now that her upper body was crushed.
“Get her...” I swallowed the lump in my throat and gathered my breath. “Get her to medical,” I ordered. I pointed to another of my men. “Wake Basaam. We need a doctor.”
“She was our doctor,” he replied.
“He’s close enough.”
Two of my men grabbed Malcolm, but he wouldn’t let go. “No!” he snapped. “You don’t get to touch her ever again.”
I grabbed his hand and pried it free of her dress. He flailed and kicked, only one of his legs intact. His face was bloodied and bruised thanks to me, barely recognizable.
“I’ll kill you, Kale!” he wheezed. “I swear on Earth you’re going to die.”
I shoved him against a sleep pod and held him secure while my men gently lifted Aria and carried her weightless body away. Another opened Basaam’s sleep pod and pulled the confused Earther out.
“We have to save the child,” I said.
Malcolm didn’t answer at first. Instead, he stared daggers my way before spitting a glob of blood at my face. “Congratulations, kid,” he then said. “You wanted to beat Luxarn Pervenio; you get to be him now. The most powerful man in Sol. All alone.”
All I could manage to do was stare back at him. This Earther who’d likely presided over more crimes against my people than any man except for Luxarn, and I couldn’t help but pity him. Was that how broken I’d looked after finding out about Cora?
It was then that I realized, no matter what Malcolm was, it didn’t mean he loved any less. However many people he’d killed, however many lives he’d ruined, he still had a heart for Aria. All those Earthers waiting under the shadow of Undina loved and were loved by clan-families and friends. And they hated, Titanborn especially, but only because the screens surrounding them told them to. Perhaps many of them were related to those Earthers who tortured my people for so long, but it wasn’t them.
Children of Titan Series: Books 1-4: (A Space Opera Thriller Box Set) Page 108
