Titan's Fury: A Science Fiction Thriller (Children of Titan Book 4)
Page 15
“We didn’t ask for the Meteorite,” I said.
“We would have found a way to destroy it anyway. I don’t blame Earth for what happened here either. Your ancestors survived a hell I can’t imagine. Every day must feel like a blessing to be protected no matter the cost.”
“Why didn’t you just give Kale whatever it is he wants?”
“I spent fifty years fighting in this very station for my people to be treated fairly,” Orson said. “To get paid what we deserved; for Pervenio to take proper precautions to ensure our health. To be trained to take on the same jobs Earthers had. And do you know what?”
I shook my head.
“We earned some semblance of respect,” Orson said. “Our slender limbs and fingers made us valuable at putting together the tiny pieces that comprise a larger whole, and we were cheaper than machines. We earned enough to survive in a factory that became renowned for its working conditions despite Earthers and Ringers working side by side.”
I noted his use of “Ringer,” a word the rest of his kind seemed allergic to these days. My fingers relaxed. I can honestly say I wasn’t sure what was going to happen next, but I was no longer nervous. He was different from the other Ringers I’d encountered; from a different time.
“I had that victory,” Orson said. “No amount of Earther slurs or insults could take that away. I wore them proudly.”
“You ever feel like ancient men like us should’ve hung it up before we wound up here?” I said.
“Every day.” A tear rolled down Orson’s cheek. “I never thought I’d live to see a free Titan again. Now our king wants me dead because we won’t work like slaves anymore. Because we already fought so hard for more, and he doesn’t even see it.”
I didn’t realize my gun-hand had begun quaking until he stopped speaking. I swallowed the lump forming in my throat. For years, I thought I was numb to the world. Fighting, fucking, killing—that was my life. Then Zhaff was assigned to me, and Aria came back, and the next thing I knew, I was a human feeling pity for sick Ringers.
Orson Fring was as familiar to me as a hole in the wall, yet my heart thumped in my chest like I was in my first firefight, and I knew... he didn’t deserve to die.
“C’mon.” I holstered the pistol I hadn’t been able to fire since I'd unloaded it at Zhaff, and took Orson’s arm.
“What are you doing?” he said.
“Getting you out of here. Kale will be pleased enough with you out of his hair, and you can come back to your docks when this all blows over. Time is the only collector who’s gonna take us old-timers, right?”
“No.” Orson shook me off, then grasped my hand and positioned it over my pulse pistol. “I’m too tired to keep fighting and starting over. This new world, whatever it is, it isn’t for me.”
“Too bad. Let’s go.”
I went to grab him again, but he drew my pistol for me. I backed away slowly as he held it with two hands, shaking even more than mine had been. I’d underestimated another Ringer and found myself at the mercy of my own gun again.
“Take it, please,” he stammered, flipping it around and offering me the butt.
I’d dealt with far too many murderous offworlders not to listen, but as my fingers wrapped around the grip, he aimed it at himself and pulled me close. The barrel pressed into the center of his chest. It took all the effort in his weak Ringer muscles to hold me there.
“Do what you came to do,” Orson whispered.
“Not for him,” I said.
“Then for me. Give this one kindness to a stranger, Malcolm Graves. Don’t make me beg another Earther for something.”
“I…” Words got trapped in my throat. All the breath fled my lungs.
“Please,” he begged. “Thanks to you, I got another decade with my son. I’m ready to join him now in the skies of Titan. I’m done with all the fighting.”
“It doesn’t have to go like this.”
“It does. You still have something left to lose, and this time, I get to give a stranger a chance at extra time with his child.”
Orson’s fingers folded over mine, but he wasn’t strong enough to force me to pull the trigger. So I stared into the eyes of the first man in my life who wasn’t begging me to live or for me to kill him for selfish reasons. There was no payoff for his family, no infamy in it for his order like the herald on Mars.
“Please…” he said again.
I nodded slowly, biting my lip. My hand felt as numb as the artificial leg on the same side. It was like pushing aside a boulder, but I squeezed gradually and never broke eye-contact. I had to picture Aria’s smile just so I could keep going, one millimeter at a time, until the shot went off.
My ears rang. Lights throughout the sleepy factory switched on. I lunged forward and caught Orson, then lowered him to the floor and laid him flat.
“You’re a good man… Malcolm Graves…” Orson rasped, eyes wet with tears. “Maybe you can show our king a better way. Wouldn’t that be ironic.” He coughed and turned his head, a thin line of bleed leaking from the corner of his lips.
“From ice… to ashes,” I whispered. They were Ringer words I never thought I’d say, but they felt right. This stranger deserved a proper goodbye before Kale Trass got his hands on his legacy.
I sat with Orson as he wheezed his final breaths. Until his eyes went glassy and the air rattled to a stop. I don’t think I breathed that entire time, not until my pistol slipped from my trembling grip. I stared at the weapon that had now claimed one hundred thirty-four lives. I used to tell myself all had it coming, but it wasn’t true anymore.
Workers who’d heard the gunshot started pounding on the door.
I could have run then and shot my way through a mob of fragile Ringers. I didn’t. Instead, I clung to Orson’s body and wept for the first time I could remember since I was a boy on Earth working in the Amissum clan-family’s factory. And for the first time since I ran off and became a collector, I wondered what my life might have been like if I’d stayed. I wouldn’t have anywhere near the number of stories, but maybe, just maybe, I might have been content.
“Mr. Fring!” someone shouted as the door broke open. Not a second later, I was bashed hard across the head. The last thing I saw before the world went black was Orson’s face, as peaceful as could be.
Eleven
Kale
“I’m sorry I wasn’t there to protect you,” Rin said. We stood in the Darien Uppers, surrounded by guards keeping my people at a safe distance. My aunt had me by the shoulders, checking me as if I were a damaged hovercar.
“I’m fine,” I said. “But if it weren’t for Aria, I’d be dead.”
“Yet somehow, being around her attracts enemies to you like a magnet. What if she let that Cogent in to save her father?”
“She didn’t. “
Rin rolled her eyes. “I thought your mother arrived to save the day anyway. That’s what your guards told me.”
“She did, just… the Cogent went after Aria first when he could have had me.”
“Then at least keep her somewhere else until Luxarn is dealt with. She’s not worth risking—”
“She is. I let you handle Orson your way, Rin. You’ll have to let me handle Aria. There’s nowhere safer on Titan than my quarters, and that Cogent probably knows what she’s carrying now, which means Luxarn will find out.”
“Well, we need to find out. I have all our best hunting for the Cogent. He won’t get off Titan. I can put the collector on it as well.” Nobody else had gone after my mother’s ship. As soon as Aria and I escaped, in fact, the soldiers said the Cogent backed off and completely vanished.
“I don’t think that’s a good idea.”
“He’s getting a bit more compliant, trust me. We might have to let him and Aria see each other eventually, but if you really believe we can trust her, then I don’t think it will be a big deal.”
“It has nothing to do with her. This Cogent might be more important than any of the others. As soon as we’
re done here, I want your focus to be on capturing him alive.”
“What are you talking about?” Rin asked.
“I’ll tell you after. For now, we have a man to honor.” I’m not sure if it was the way I said those words as I pulled away from her, but Rin clutched my arm.
“He didn’t suffer, if it makes you feel any better,” she said. “He pretty much begged Malcolm to do it.”
“It doesn’t. But it’s done.” Before I went to Hayes to meet with Aria, I’d told Rin to handle Orson Fring because nobody else seemed to be able to get things in line. I didn’t tell her to kill him specifically, but I might as well have.
I knew Rin, and I knew what she would do to ensure we had a fighting chance when the Earther fleet arrived. She wouldn’t have forced him to leave and risked him spilling secrets to the Earthers. I just had no idea a Cogent would nearly kill Aria and me, making it seem like a coordinated series of assassination attempts against Titanborn leadership. A Cogent whom Aria claimed might be the bastard son of Luxarn Pervenio, born from the dead.
“Let’s get this over with,” I said. I signaled my men to lead me to the foot of Darien Trass’s statue, where I always stood while addressing my people. They gossiped about what the announcement would be about, even though word from Phoebe about Orson had already spread after Malcolm was captured there and beaten within an inch of his life.
Rin aimed her hand terminal camera at me. “My heart…” I paused to gather myself. After all we’d been through, I couldn’t believe I felt any semblance of pity for a Titanborn who was willing to threaten our existence purely out of greed. It was probably because I knew how Aria would feel about it if she ever found out; about the secret I’d now have to keep from her after she revealed everything about herself during the tram ride home. About her father’s negligence and how he crashed back into her life, about Zhaff Pervenio, about how Madame Venta forced her to please her sexually in exchange for moving up in the organization.
“Kale,” Rin whispered, waving me along.
“My heart aches for the loss of one of our own,” I stated. It was easier to seem genuine, considering I meant it. “Orson Fring and his family have worked tirelessly to make the Ring a better place since the days of Titan’s first settlers. He was innocent of all this fighting. He didn’t deserve to die!”
My voice echoed across the Uppers so that all the Titanborn watching me around the atrium would hear every syllable.
“Luxarn Pervenio sent one of his collectors here to rattle us, just as he sent a Cogent after me in Hayes in a failed attempt on my life. They want to end what they consider a riot by killing its leaders, but we are the past, present, and future of the Ring. I promise, the man responsible for this will pay. Today I ask you, my brothers and sisters, to put aside petty desires and protests. I ask you to stand with me together so that we can show Earth that we will never bow to them again. From ice to ashes!”
I raised my fist. My people roared. Rin shut off the newsfeed, which we’d ensure made its way onto Solnet for Earth to see. Luxarn and Madame Venta had blamed us for killing the Red Wing Company board to stir their people into a frenzy. Now we were even.
“You’re getting better at that,” Rin said as she wrapped her hand around my shoulder and guided me through the raucous crowd.
“At lying?” I asked, my gaze dropping to the floor.
“No. Speaking like a leader should.”
“Maybe it will get easier one day too.”
She leaned in close. “He left us no choice, you know that. If we aren’t prepared, their fleet will wash over us like their oceans through dirt. Now a decrepit Titanborn who lost his way to greed can be a hero in death, instead of the reason we fail. Half the ship workers who stood with him are already talking about getting revenge for him by working harder than ever to stop PerVenta. Some will be of great value helping Basaam proceed as well.”
Hands extended from all around us to touch me as we passed, praising me like we’d just won a battle. The guards could hardly hold them back. I lost count of how many men and women volunteered to be sent to Phoebe and Pervenio Station to help prepare for the coming storm in the name of Orson Fring.
We stopped outside the lift to Luxarn’s old residential unit, where I lived on the rare occasion I was on Darien, as a message to my people that the Uppers were nowhere to be scared of any longer.
“We did what we had to, Kale,” Rin said. “Now get some rest, and I’ll handle the Cogent. You’ll need it.”
The doors opened, and my mother and Rylah stood waiting. Rylah was expressionless, in shock almost, but my mother fumed. Last time I saw her, we were hugging after a scrape with death and her finding out about Aria. I hadn’t seen her cheeks that red since I was a boy and my father would disappear for months at a time.
“Katrina,” Rin said. “I haven’t had a chance to thank you for saving Kale’s life.”
My mother stormed forward and slapped Rin across the face. “He’s my son. It’s my job.”
Guards went to calm her, but I stopped them. Rin calmly rubbed her face and didn’t budge. “Then you should have aimed for the Cogent’s head.”
My mother bit her lip in frustration, then glared over at me. We held each other’s gazes, wordless, until she finally said, “I told you I could handle him, and you go to her?”
“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” Rin said. “Orson was murdered by a Pervenio collector.”
“Like the one you two have been keeping locked up downstairs?”
Rin shot Rylah a cross glare. We’d been keeping Malcolm’s presence a secret from anybody who didn’t need to know, like my mother. Rylah stood strong as well.
“Rin…” she whispered. “Tell me this isn’t what I think is.”
“It was another collector,” Rin said.
“Rylah saw you take him away!” my mother yelled. “This, Aria’s condition; how much else are you two keeping from us? We’re supposed to be in this together.”
“One fight with a Cogent doesn’t mean you’ve sacrificed anywhere near what any of us have!” Rin screamed back.
My mother pushed by Rin to get in front of me. “Kale, please tell me you didn’t know about this. Tell me you didn’t invite me to Hayes to keep me distracted until that Cogent surprised us. I’m not stupid. Tell me you only wanted to tell me about Aria!”
By the end of her rant, she was shaking me by the shoulders. A lie made it to the tip of my tongue but went no further. I stared at Rin, unable to look my mother in the eye and unable to get the words out because I knew, if I lied, she would believe me.
“Kale, look me in the eyes and tell me,” my mother pled.
“Tell you what?” I snapped. “That while you were busy accidentally saving my and Aria’s lives, we had Orson Fring handled before he got us all killed over nothing anyway.”
My mother staggered back, hand over her mouth. The look on her face reminded me of that last time I’d seen her in quarantine, when she begged me to stop visiting because she’d accepted her fate. A fate I gave up everything to help her avoid. She didn’t say another word. She just rushed by me and lost herself in the crowd.
“When you got me into this, you promised we’d be better,” Rylah said to Rin.
“They will do far worse if they take Titan back,” Rin said.
“If there’s anything left to take.” Rylah followed behind my mother, but Rin grabbed her.
“Don’t you dare,” she bristled. “Like you didn’t do worse when you were peddling information to Earthers? This is war.” Rin pushed her away.
Rylah caught her balance in front of me and glanced up. I couldn’t remember ever seeing her look like she wasn’t in control of a situation.
“If we aren’t better than them, why do this at all?” she asked me. She wasn’t crying, but tears weren’t necessary. She was gone before I could offer a response.
“Leave us,” Rin ordered the guards trailing behind us, then signaled the lift’s doors to shut
. “Ignore them, Kale.”
“Why?” I said. “They’re right.”
“Right?” she scoffed. “They don’t know what it means to fight. My sister hasn’t had to work for anything her whole life. All she ever had to do was smile, and Earthers forgot what she was. And your mother? Don’t get me started. She hid you when we needed a leader. She stole you from your father, my brother.”
“She saved my son and me yesterday.”
“Only because she happened to be there because we knew she couldn’t handle what needed to be done on Phoebe. You said yourself, it was an accident. They don’t understand; they never will.”
“Sodervall would’ve spaced Orson just like he did Cora. How is what we did any different?”
Rin grasped me under the shoulders and hoisted me to my full height. “He spaced them for no reason,” she said. “Orson’s stubbornness could have cost us everything. Nobody ever said this would be easy, or that our people would agree with everything you do. That’s what it means to lead.”
“So every awful thing you do will always fall on me?” I asked.
“I’ll tell them it was all my idea, then! That I convinced you.”
“Why bother telling them the truth?”
“This is the collector getting to you again, Kale,” Rin said.
“It’s not.”
“If you told me not to, I wouldn’t have done it.”
“Exactly!” I screamed. “But I didn’t.”
“Kale.” She pulled me in close enough to see all the way through the holes in her cheek, through the strings of sinew and shiny scars. “The Children of Titan chose you because we knew you’d care enough to know when you’re doing the wrong thing for the right reasons. I only wish I was half as strong.”
The lift stopped and opened, revealing Luxarn’s dwelling unit. It was the largest in all of Darien, located at the upper level of a central tower rising up to meet the city’s massive enclosure. A contained garden was suspended around the entry, soil beds hanging between a silver lattice. Leaves and flowers draped over the edges, making it visible from the floor, covering the entire ceiling of Darien in a verdant blanket. Only now the plants were wilting and brown. At first, the water pipes continued watering them, but without maintenance, they were clogging. It was such a waste, the gardens. Plants simply for a colorful display instead of feeding. Only Earthers could be so wasteful just to make the rocky tunnels of the Lowers seem even drabber.