“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 piece 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 only 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.
I knew what I had to do. I only wished it didn’t take seeing Aria like this for me to realize it.
I held Malcolm by the sides of his face and said, “You have to take care of him.”
My response made his bloody brow furrow, but that was all I offered. I left him against the sleep pod, with his body so broken, he couldn’t follow. I then rushed toward the command deck viewport. Undina was less than a half hour from hitting. Com messages from Earth popped up all over the display. Members of the USF begged me to stop, all those men and women who were so quick to sign off on Luxarn doing whatever was necessary to keep the Ring profitable, were now on their knees pleading with a Ringer.
Transport ships flitted across Earth away from New London. I knew it was those very same Assembly sycophants and schemers with a ride reserved for them, preserving their own lives while the civilians in New London filled the streets and watched their doom creep ever closer along the horizon.
They were Earthers, all of them—future collectors, security officers, assembly members, or corporate directors. Maybe there was a new Luxarn Pervenio down there ready to rise to power and get vengeance on us, but it took the dying words of a bastard daughter from the shit-covered sewers of Mars for me to remember what it meant to be Titanborn. What I’d forgotten in blind fury.
That we would stand against them together. That we’d taught my people how.
“One last ride, Cora,” I whispered.
I leaned over the Cora’s controls and accelerated toward the back of Undina as fast as the ship was able. Then I turned and headed back toward the cabin. Malcolm remained on his knees, wearing a thousand-meter stare, shattered. When he saw me, he didn’t even try to attack. All the fight in him was gone.
“Why?” was all he could manage. I scooped him up and battled the g-forces from the Cora’s hard burn to carry him toward the med bay.
We stopped outside. All of my men surrounded the medical bed, bracing against the pressure. Two aimed weapons at Basaam Venta’s head, forcing him to begin the procedure of removing my baby from Aria’s stomach.
“He’s s-still alive,” the frightened Earther stuttered.
“Get him out!” a Titanborn ordered.
“It’s not my area of expertise,” Basaam said.
“No excuses.”
“If my son lives, Basaam goes free,” I said. My men regarded me, and I waved over the young blonde one I was most familiar with. The order buoyed Basaam’s disposition. Nobody understood what the promise of freedom can do for a man better than me. He began requesting specific equipment at breakneck speed with the confidence of a genius.
“Lord Trass, what do you need?” the young soldier asked. His cheeks were still as soft as Luxarn’s mattress in the home I stole.
“What’s your name?” I said.
He seemed taken aback by the question at first, then shook his head and answered, “Geoff Parker.”
“Geoff. Go to the command deck and make sure we don’t crash.”
“Crash?”
“Just go.”
He glanced nervously back at Aria, then nodded and hurried by. I propped Malcolm up against the doorway. “Go to her,” I told him.
“You don’t get to walk away from this,” he rasped.
“I’m not. She fought for us to have a world of our own. I’m going to go make sure we get it.”
“Haven’t you done enough?”
I stared at Aria’s cold, impassive face, framed by strands of wavy hair as red as the surface of Mars. She wasn’t Cora and never would be, but she was dead all the same because of this hatred between my people and her father’s. I’m not sure if I ever really loved her or just told myself I did so I could feel something. I’m not sure if I could ever love again, but I was sure of one thing—she deserved better. All my people did. A king, and a father, they could be proud of.
“Not yet,” I said. I turned away, but Malcolm grabbed my arm. His grip was weaker than an Earther’s ever should be. The haggard old fool was on the cusp of death. Blood stained his mouth and shirt, and if he didn’t get treated soon, he’d probably collapse.
“One day, I’m going to kill you,” he said. “I don’t care what it takes.”
“If it had to be anyone.” I lifted his chin. “Make sure Malcolm sees Sol as it truly is, just like she did.”
“Malcolm?”
“Aria told me that was the name she wanted, before you both tried to run away.”
I removed his hand and left him behind. Even his sharp wit couldn’t produce a response before I was around the corner. For a moment, I worried that he’d follow me instead of doing the right thing, but he never came.
I entered the cargo bay alone. A rack of helmets on the far wall let me replace mine so I’d be able to breathe in space. I considered grabbing an oxygen tank, but what I was planning was a one-way journey, and there was enough woven into my suit’s stores to get me there.
My mag boots switched off, and I steadied myself against the Cora’s exit ramp while the ship’s acceleration racked my body. It was sealed, like it should be during flight and without depressurization, but I tapped the control panel and overrode the system.
Then I waited. I closed my eyes and tried to clear my mind of everything, which was as impossible as it had been since the day Rin told me I was a Trass. All the awful things I’d done, I thought I did for my people, but it was clear now that wasn’t always
true. I did them because of those awful memories of an Earther security officer calling me Ringer like I wasn’t worth a name. I did them for Cora and my mother. And most of all, I did them for me. To make me feel again.
I switched on my coms and set them to my and Rin’s private line. “Rin,” I said weakly. “Titan is yours. Tell my mother… Tell her I didn’t die a monster.” All this rebelling started with me trying to save her, so it felt fitting that my mother was the one who popped into my head as the end neared. I wished I’d have a chance to tell her myself, that I was sorry for letting her down, but Rin’s word would have to do.
“From ice to ashes,” I said staunchly, mustering all my courage. We were too far for me ever to receive her answer in time.
G-forces suddenly tugged on my body as the Cora turned hard. Geoff Parker, one of my Titanborn subjects whose name I’d finally cared enough to learn, did as I asked and kept us from crashing. My finger hovered over the controls to open the ramp. I waited until the wails of a newborn infant echoed down the halls of the Cora.
Then I set the inner door of the cargo bay to seal, closed my visor, and hit the command to open the ship’s ramp. As soon as it cracked open, explosive decompression yanked me out into space. My body flew across the starry void at speeds that would have ripped me apart if not for my suit. One last flight without a g-stim so I could feel everything.
Undina filled my vision, surrounded by the glowing blue of Earth. It was so close now. I was headed for the hangar nearest to the engine, where I wouldn’t immediately burn up while it pulsed, like nuclear bombs over and over.
I didn’t need my wings in space, so I held a straight line until the edge of the hangar was in reach. My elbow snapped as I struck, sending me tumbling along the surface until I was able to grab hold of a rocky outcrop with my good hand. That shoulder was nearly torn from its socket, but somehow held long enough for me to magnetize my boots.
Titan's Fury: A Science Fiction Thriller (Children of Titan Book 4) Page 29