Titan Insurgents

by Kate Rauner

  Like an angry ant hill, people milled around. Cohorts surrounded Greta with questions, and Kin pushed close to the airlock.

  Maliah glanced at her sleeve. Still no message. Obviously, Evan had learned of the hijacking at the depot, but had Magnus succeeded or failed again? She balled up her fists.

  A running figure caught her eye. Fynn came bounding along the dome wall toward her. He slowed several paces away, but she saw his wild eyes and heaving chest. He'd done something, interfered somehow. That's why Magnus hadn't reported. This must mean he failed to commandeer Liam's shuttle.

  Magnus' trustees slithered forward, apparently expecting to find him at Maliah's side. They stopped in confusion when he wasn't there. Angry and frustrated, they turned toward the Mechanics.

  Her throat tightened as angry tears blurred Maliah's eyes. She was about to lose control, about to disappoint Tanaka. He'd be standing on the balcony now, calling to her for a report.

  Across the playing field, the dark tower rose like a storm cloud to the dome's flattened sky-blue curve. Groups of Kin straggled away from the airlock, slowly filling the empty space, heads bent in private conversations. Forbidden private conversations. Plotting. If Tanaka stood on that upper balcony, he'd summon them, and they'd unite.

  A short laugh loosened Maliah's throat. She wiped her eyes clear and tapped at her sleeve with trembling fingers. The holo projector was hidden from view on a kitchen serving-counter, but everyone wore an ear gel. They'd hear him.

  "Congratulations, Kin. Another grand achievement on our path to perfection." Tanaka's voice filled Maliah's mind. Kin stared at the empty balcony. His voice in their ears overwhelmed the bedlam and they grew quiet. Overhead, orange banners flapped as the fan impellers spun up to maximum in a little touch she'd added to the program.

  "Our brethren ascend to the space station to grow strong. Strong enough to conquer this moon."

  People turned in circles, searching for a figure to match the voice. Even the cohorts were wide-eyed. Kin lifted their arms, placed hands on neighbor's shoulders, and formed into lines facing the tower.

  Maliah slid past her brother, thumping his chest triumphantly as she passed. She galloped, skirting the crowd. Despite the change in balance from her growing child, she was strong and graceful. Tanaka continued to praise the Kin as she flew up the spiral stairs.

  "I salute you, explorers and victors. You are Nature's essence, her true vision of humanity. I love you." Tanaka's voice soared. "You are transformed! Filled with spirits of Nature's Old Ones!"

  Maliah gripped the railing and pumped one fist overhead. "Kin, Kin, Kin."

  Voices united to roar over the throb of the fans. "Kin, Kin, Kin!"

  All they needed was Tanaka's voice. Lines curved and joined in concentric circles, stomping out the ancient march.

  Tears finally grew heavy enough to overflow Maliah's eyes, spread across her golden face, and glisten above a fierce grin.

  Kin were committed to the rally now. They'd forgotten their confusion over a few passengers left behind. Maliah backed against the tower door and slipped inside. She needed the cybernet with its connection to Orpheus to find out what had happened to Magnus and that shuttle, but it didn't really matter. Tanaka's words rang in her ear too. Congratulations. Destiny. Love. Kin rallied outside. She followed the path of destiny.

  ***

  Max, Emily, and Brigit followed the crowd to the center of the playing field and slid into the forming circles. Fynn clutched his mother's arm, towing Greta away. With a sharp jerk of his head, he told the Mechanics to follow him. They filed between the rows of men's barracks to hide from the Kin's view, though maybe they were too caught up in the rally to notice.

  Fynn's breathing steadied, but he quaked with every step. Without a suit, he couldn't contact Drew until he felt safe pulling out his flat pad, but the worst was probably true.

  Liam's loss left him numb, but there was no way he'd mourn Magnus. A surge of fury broke through.

  Grief and revenge. The combination left Fynn trembling and his mind scattered. Once safe in the furnace dome, he collapsed in the Mechanics mess hall and pulled his knees up against his chest on one of the benches.

  Rica gripped his shoulders to tug him loose. "What happened?"

  "Liam's dead. Magnus attacked his shuttle."

  Rica's mouth opened but no words came out. She gulped and tried again. "What?"

  Fynn ran a hand through his hair and slumped. "Magnus met Liam's shuttle at the depot, pulled open the hatch, and opened the command cabin. Liam must have hit his autopilot, 'cause it rocketed straight up." He fixed his eyes on Rica, wanting her to understand. "Magnus is dead too." Fynn was certain. If somehow he wasn't, he'd be dead soon.

  The Mechanics, already in a loose circle around the benches, gripped each other's' shoulders and swayed.

  Greta yanked Fynn to his feet, her eyes wide with a question.

  "No, Mom. I didn't kill him. I would have saved them both if I could." He clenched his fists. "Magnus deserved it. I can't pretend to be sorry." Heaviness crushed back into his chest. "But, Liam. If only..."

  Fynn fished his flat pad from a pocket and read a message. "Drew says, Orpheus hasn't docked Liam's shuttle yet, but sensors show zero pressure on the bridge and in the cargo bay. No comms from Liam." His voice faded as his thick lips pressed into a flat line.

  Fynn held out the pad to show Greta the rest. No signal from Magnus. You sure he was in the shuttle?

  "He shut down his beacon," Fynn said. "I saw him at the depot, and there was no signal."

  Rica took Fynn by the hand, and the crews' circle opened for them. She dipped a shoulder and turned her head to the right. Step, step, step. They moved together, hands resting on their neighbors. Pause. Step, step, step. A familiar pattern he'd grown up with.

  Rica hopped, pushing off gently against his shoulder. The person next to her hopped, then the next, sending a wave around the circle, coming back to Fynn. He jumped. They were Kin.

  Once someone released their grip and backed out of the circle, others followed, and people drifted to their barracks or across the dome to the furnaces. Fynn flopped down on a bench with Greta and Rica on either side.

  "I'm not sorry. Not about Magnus." Fynn glared at his mother, daring her to object. "You should understand that."

  Rica frowned didn't ask what he meant. Instead, she said, "Are we going to look for the bodies?"

  "Without beacons?" Fynn sat straighter, thinking about the problem for a moment, and then collapsed his boney elbows onto his knees. "I don't know. I suppose Orpheus knows the shuttle's flight path, so we could follow it. But they could have drifted for kilometers, and besides, who cares?"

  Greta's face paled to translucence. "I thought I had everything solved. I thought Liam and Maliah had an agreement they both respected. Now the split among Kin will be worse than before. How will I get my patients to the station? Because time onboard is vital to their long-term health. Maliah needs..."

  Fynn sucked in a breath, about to say this was Maliah's fault, but he turned his words into a cough. It would do no good to upset his mother further. She was worried about Maliah and her baby.

  Greta tapped her pad. "I'm asking Drew to text me when the shuttle docks. Let me know if they find Liam's body. Or Magnus."

  She rubbed fingertips against her alabaster forehead. "I wish I knew the other pilots better. I wish I'd paid more attention in our status meetings. If only Yash was here."

  Fynn straightened at his father's name. He missed Yash in a way other Kin didn't understand. On Earth, as a doctor, his mother arranged more family life than any of his barracks mates saw, despite his teachers saying Kin was the only family. That their loyalty was only to the Kin.

  The colony was as much Yash's dream as Tanaka's, and he'd shared that dream with Fynn for a while here on Titan. Dad said he was happy they could work together because that was what they both knew best. Despite everything, maybe Fynn was lucky for his time with Yash. He reached for h
is mother's hand on one side and Rica, who'd been sitting quietly, took his other.

  Fynn rose. "I've got to talk to Maliah."

  ***

  Drew gripped the rung till his palms ached. They'd moved Kin from Evan's shuttle to the station's ring first, that was the obvious priority. And then waited for Liam's shuttle to pressurize and its cargo bay to warm. But this couldn't be avoided any longer. They had to open the hatch.

  Drew stayed put, flattening himself against the airlock wall to avoid the pilots leapfrogging backward. No one wanted to be the first into the Poseidon. Only Erik floated next to him. As the Herschel's lead medic, bodies seemed to be his jurisdiction. But Fynn's mother had asked Drew to be here. She'd welcomed him into her cottage during school breaks, long after his own parents returned to their barracks, and he wouldn't let her down.

  He swallowed the sour taste in his mouth, hoping his last meal would stay put. He could do this.

  Drew opened the hatch releasing a cold draft and a stream of wobbly droplets. Erik entered first, pulling himself between tanks slowly as he searched. Drew stopped at the source of the droplets. A hose, frozen and split, had thawed. Water crawled along its surface, cocooning the plastic until it reached a bend where globules built up until they broke free.

  Based on the shuttle's telemetry, Drew expected this. He tugged a roll of waterproof tape from a pocket and wrapped the split to keep as much water out of the dock's ventilation system as he could. Erik was forward in the command cabin when he finished, so he followed, procrastinating by examining the space between tanks as if he expected to find a body Erik had missed.

  Erik sat in one of the four seats, talking to Orpheus and poking at the armrest controls. The bridge was a dull grey. Walls were blank all around since the monitors covering the front and overhead bulkheads were shut off.

  "Liam's not here," Erik said. "The cabin door hung open, and we know the cargo hatch was open until one of the other shuttles closed it. My guess is that they both fell out."

  Drew rubbed his face, relieved. He didn't want to handle a dead body and didn't want to search for one either. "Depending on the altitude when they fell, they could be anywhere. Liam had no suit, and Magnus had his beacon shut off, so there's no way to track them."

  Erik sighed. "I shut down all the manual controls the way Orpheus instructed. I suppose we should try to recover the bodies someday, but there's no rush. They're frozen solid by now and nothing's going to bother them. I'll let everyone else know."

  He meant everyone in the dock, and probably Kin in the ring, too. Drew hovered over the seats and texted Greta and Fynn. No bodies.

  Evan's voice rang through the shuttle. "Drew, get out here. We need to talk."

  In addition to the three remaining pilots and Erik, Knut was in the middle of a conversation with leaders from the three barracks units Evan had brought.

  Tyra spun to grab a different rung and glared at the closest barracks leader. "Ulrik, how could you say such a thing?"

  Drew was confused for a moment. He recognized the typically square, sturdy Viking man she confronted but didn't know him well.

  Of course. Greta sent up those who'd been on the surface the longest. That meant the Advance Team, more of the pirates who'd hijacked the Herschel in Earth orbit. In the domes, this guy must have worked on the greenhouse crew. Drew had been on Emily's maintenance crew, so they hadn't talked much. But Tyra was a pirate too, like all the pilots, so she knew him.

  Ulrik spread his arms, drifting away from the bulkhead. "I only meant that any death is a great loss."

  "Magnus murdered Liam!"

  "Did he?" Ulrik gulped like a fish. He'd been onboard the Hera and couldn't have heard Liam's final scream. He didn't understand.

  "You were in the domes," Tyra said. "This whole battle within the Kin. You've been part of it."

  "I didn't do anything. None of my unit did. There are no trustees among us."

  "You didn't stop them either." Tears crawled across her face, and Tyra swiped her cheeks fiercely.

  Evan maneuvered himself close to Tyra, shoulder to shoulder. "I'm never going down again."

  "But it's safe now," Ulrik said. "With Magnus and Tanaka both dead, the trouble's over. Maliah... she's a true Kin. Things will be different."

  Drew thought of the woman who'd taunted him into a panic attack. "What about the trustees?"

  "The newly awakened have set up barracks like on Earth, like normal," Ulrik said. "When the trustees see that no one's paying attention to them, they'll assimilate back into their units."

  Knut had been observing, maybe gathering data for some psychological study. Now he pulled himself into the same up and down orientation as the others. "There are cohorts too, exactly as Tanaka established for us on Earth. The station must be represented on the Council, and with Liam lost..."

  Tyra interrupted. "Liam was our commander and cohort for the Herschel's crew. For the permanent crew, and that's not you, Knut. No one else gets a vote in replacing him."

  "But not all your crew are onboard." Knut had his own version of a calm doctor's voice. He extended his left arm, pointing to the sleeve pad. "Medical lab and manufacturing crews are needed. There's a couple dozen Kin in the domes who'll be permanent station residents."

  Without his usual smile, Evan's blue eyes glinted hard as diamonds. "I'm not bringing anyone else up."

  Ulrik tapped Knut's shoulder. "Let's leave the pilots to talk. I must join my unit and get everyone settled in the ring." He nodded to the other barracks leaders, and they pushed off toward the opening in the deck. With a sharp nod to Evan, Knut headed in the same direction.

  Drew hooked a foot under a rung and hugged Tyra. She leaned her head against his shoulder and tears blurred his vision.

  ***

  Fynn stood in front of Maliah, feet spread and fists clenched. Sunk into a sofa in the tower lounge with her arms folded over her belly, she looked fragile.

  "You know he's dead, don't you," Fynn said.

  Her eyes narrowed. "I don't know what you're talking about."

  "Come off it. Magnus. You know he was after Liam's shuttle, and that he's disappeared. You realize that Liam's dead too?"

  She leaned back, holding his gaze for a long moment before she answered. "How do you know?"

  "I was at the depot. I saw Magnus open the cargo hatch, saw the shuttle shoot up with the door open. Heard Liam scream."

  Maliah's eyes wandered past Fynn and across the room. Her stare was so fixed that Fynn turned to look, expecting to find someone at the desk, but no one was there.

  "Martyrs." Maliah's eyes lost focus. "They must be taken to Black and White Hill to join Doctor Tanaka."

  A pang tightened Fynn's chest. He didn't like to imagine Liam out on the surface somewhere, frozen to stone. Maybe the pilots had a space version of burial at sea. But he'd rather leave Magnus lost. "They could be anywhere on the peninsula, or maybe lost in the lakes. No beacons on either one. We'll never find them."

  She didn't seem to hear him. "Our martyrs must be recovered. They must lie with Doctor Tanaka on Black and White Hill. You'll wait here with me, won't you, for a few minutes?"

  She tapped her sleeve and held up one hand, silently asking him to stay.

  Fynn rocked from foot to foot. He was about to say something, anything to fill the silence, when the balcony door opened and the trustees entered. There were only eight of them. Hard to believe they caused so much grief.

  Maliah heaved herself to her feet. "I have sad news. There's been an accident. Magnus, your cohort and my adjunct, was on the surface, tending to our fuel depot, filling a shuttle's water tanks so more Kin can be treated in orbit. Something went wrong."

  Fynn was about to protest her lies, but Maliah's eyes glowed like amber as she held his gaze. Around him, trustees stood rigid and silent.

  "The shuttle launched before Magnus was clear and he was swept away. There is no signal, no communications. He's gone. A martyr to the Kin."

  Very softly,
a short, dark trustee whispered, "Kin, Kin, Kin."

  "No one can replace Magnus, so I will serve as your cohort now. You will search for Magnus' body. My brother..." She swept a hand toward Fynn and he blinked, her spell broken. "My brother will point out the direction for you to begin."

  Walking with the trustees behind him made the back of Fynn's neck prickle. They marched to the airlock in the Mechanics dome, and Fynn's crew drifted along, close enough to be called.

  "You've all taken Emily's flier training?" Fynn asked as they donned surface suits. He was not about to join them on their mission. "If it starts to rain, come back to the domes. Liquid hydrocarbons pouring over the suit drains the heaters' batteries faster than usual. Fly low and be sure your lines of vision overlap, or you might miss something.

  "Link your comms to Orpheus like this. Now, seal your helmet and give this command."

  Fynn held his flat pad in front of the short trustee's face and watched her lips move. On her faceplate, he saw a semi-transparent map pop up with a flight path indicated.

  The Herschel had created infrared and radar altimetry maps of the entire hemisphere, though Kin had only explored a small area. The trustees would be flying northward, where no one had images in visible light.

  No matter how he felt about the search, Fynn couldn't lose this opportunity. Orpheus would track their beacons automatically. He texted Drew to be sure Orpheus activated their helmet cameras and added those images to the database.

  They'd only be able to cover a swatch a half kilometer wide, and depending on the altitude when Liam and Magnus fell, their bodies could have drifted a hundred kilometers in a slow motion fall.

  The trustees would be busy for hours every day. Maybe for weeks. Maybe until it occurred to Maliah to cancel the search. That would put a lot of operational hours on the suits.

  Liam's loss was terrible, but with the trustees distracted, Kin could create a normal life. As normal as possible, stuck inside four plastic domes on a frozen moon.