The Circuit: The Complete Saga

by Bruno, Rhett C.

  The next was the Ventiss Clan. Cassius didn’t recognize their leader. He was young, with dark hair and a sharp chin. The Ventiss were extremely proficient at managing pico credits and other resources. Data hoarders. During the war they were nothing, but that attention to detail allowed them to gain a great deal of influence as they funded repairs for a lot of the damage. They weren’t much in a fight, but Cassius could respect patience.

  The last was Zaimur Morastus’ clan. His father, Zargo, had been the one who initiated the movement to form an official Ceresian Pact to stand against the quickly spreading Tribune. They had their hands in everything in the asteroid belt, and Zargo had given the Tribunal fleet a run for its money back in the day. Unlike the others, he never wanted to surrender.

  Cassius tried to locate him near the grouping of Morastus men, but all he saw amongst them was a withering old man with loose, sagging skin. He and Yara had both led during the war, but Zargo was at least twenty years her senior, and he looked even older. His hair was disheveled, and his face was so thin that Cassius could see the outline of his jawbones, and over them a was web of blue veins as visible as his people’s armor.

  The blue death had him. A sentence to the arks for most, but not for a man with his means. Two guards sat directly on either side of him with their hands on his back, keeping him upright. Even his baggy clothing couldn’t hide just how frail he was.

  While everyone whispered amongst themselves, Zaimur stopped in the center of the circular space and looked around at his compatriots. He lifted his hand, and the guards around Cassius fanned out to surround him at a distance so that everybody could get a good look at him.

  “Why the startled faces, my friends?” he asked. “Rejoice, for I have captured Cassius Vale!” Cassius didn’t like the word captured, but he couldn’t deny that the young man was quite the showman.

  “Why have you brought this man here, Zaimur? Is he not better suited to hang from the pillars of the Buckle?” The leader of the Ventiss Clan spoke up. Rumblings of agreement filled the room.

  “Perhaps, but I wouldn’t risk him anywhere but here with us.”

  “You still haven’t answered why!” Yara Lakura grunted. “Maybe I did try to take him out first, but if I’d gotten my hands on him, I wouldn’t have let him step into this hall again. Where Cassius Vale goes, only death follows.”

  “You heard the message he transmitted. The Tribune has forsaken him as well,” Zaimur countered. “He has proposed to help us in the coming war.”

  Yara spit on the floor. “Bah. Traitor or not, we don’t need his help. Never will.”

  “My son seems to forget that we have not yet entered war.” Zargo Morastus finally spoke up. His voice reeked of exhaustion, and a fit of coughing gripped him immediately after. The android at his back handed him a glass of alcohol. He swallowed a mouthful and struggled to wipe his lips with one of his slender, trembling arms. The men at his sides then helped him to his feet and held him upright as he glared down his nose at Cassius.

  “Why fool yourself, Zargo?” Yara growled. “My ships are already prepped and ready to strike first. The longer we sit here on our asses, the longer the Tribune has to prepare.” She glowered at Cassius. “More time to send out their spies. But don’t worry, I’ll handle what’s coming for you. By the Ancients, Zargo, they blow up your mining colony and I’m the only one upset?”

  Zargo swallowed before responding, “I’m only trying to gather all the facts first. Like why they would have any interest in destroying a place with so little value as Kalliope.”

  “They don’t need a why! Fact is, we’re going to die either now or later. I for one would rather go out in flames.” A few other clan leaders grunted in agreement. “What’s wrong with you, Zargo? You were never one to shy from a fight. Blue death making you soft?”

  “I will not blindly condemn my people to death!” Zargo shouted, the exertion causing him to succumb to a fit of coughing. His men helped him sit.

  “Yet you won’t be around to see what the Tribune does to them, will you? Have you forgotten what this man did to Lutetia in their name?!” Yara hopped to her feet and raised her knife. Zaimur’s guards quickly formed a line and aimed their rifles at the Lakura leader.

  “The same thing they did to Kalliope,” Zaimur said. He stepped in front of his men with his arms spread, in the path of her knife. “If Cassius can help us stop that from ever happening again, then how can we deny that chance?”

  Yara lowered her blade and sat back down. She laughed bitterly. “You weren’t alive, boy. As far as I’m concerned, this is all some Tribunal plot to get him close to us.”

  “Quite an elaborate trick, then. They decimated Titan trying to kill Cassius before he could release any of their secrets. I’m not asking any of you to trust him. All I’m asking is that we listen—that we keep him in our custody until we pick his mind clean.”

  The entire room went into a frenzy. People from all the different clans began arguing with each other in raised whispers, so many voices overlapping that it was impossible to discern what anyone was saying.

  “Quiet!” Zargo bellowed, the timbre returning to his voice just long enough for it to silence the entire room. “Everyone quiet.”

  He stood again and his men slowly helped him down the steps. He passed by his son, who could only watch as Zargo was brought to stand in front of Cassius.

  “One war wasn’t enough for you, Vale?” he said, voice shaky. “I don’t care who split Kalliope. I don’t care how many solar-arks you’ve stolen and what your former masters did to your home. I will not have you spew a single word in this chamber. We will not suffer your lies.”

  He turned to Zaimur. “Already he poisons your mind, my son, but he made the mistake of thinking he could sway the elder minds in this room. Those who saw the war with their own two eyes. Yara and I may not agree on many things, but on this matter we share the same mind. There is no man standing before you, only a knight in the darkness—a shadow. An executor. We can spend a lifetime trying to extract the real truth out of him, but he won’t break.”

  He spun to address the rest of the room. “If I get to see Cassius Vale die before I pass on, then at least I’ll know my life accomplished something. And if war is inevitable, then what better way to inspire all our people than giving them front-row seats to the death of our gravest enemy. I vote for the public execution of the murderer Cassius Vale! Let him die with his secrets!” By the time his speech was over, his whole body was shaking.

  “Finally, the man speaks some sense!” Yara hollered, clapping slowly. “I say kill him. I’ll ship his body back to New Terrene when we’re done.”

  There was some discussion, but the decision didn’t take long. Cassius maintained his even façade as he watched the hands of every clan leader raise.

  The guards who had been serving Zaimur took orders from Zargo to seize Cassius. The Morastus prince bit his tongue and stepped to the side, his cheeks red as tomatoes fresh out of a hydrofarm. Yara sauntered down the stairs and patted Zargo on the back before grabbing his arm to help him to a seat.

  A dying man’s last stand, Cassius thought to himself.

  He would have found it romantic if it hadn’t slightly altered his plans. As Morastus henchmen dragged him across the floor, all he was concerned with was holding out his open palm as if he were signaling someone to stop and mouthing “don’t.”

  He wasn’t sure if ADIM was watching or not, but the last thing he wanted was for his creation to slaughter the lot of them and give the Tribune their victory before the first shot was even fired. The fact that they were all still living by the time he exited the room was a hopeful indication that ADIM recognized his plea.

  The android was the key to his objective on Ceres, after all. ADIM held everything that would be needed to earn the Ceresians’ trust. Cassius merely had hoped he would have had a chance to talk and reveal everything.

  Zargo Morastus’ influence saw a quick end to that. But Cassius could impr
ovise when he needed to. Nothing had changed.

  20

  Chapter Twenty—Sage

  Sage was fortunate a storm rolled in just as her journey across the supple surface of Titan began. The winds were so strong that they would’ve bowled her over if she weren’t wearing nano-armor. Brilliant bolts of reddish lightning flashed above her, but the towering hub of Edeoria in the center of the vast crater absorbed most of them.

  Ignoring all of that, interference caused by the storm provided the cover she needed to get across Edeoria without being spotted by Tribunal scouts. She had to be quick, though. There was no telling how long it would last, and there was still the off chance that she could be spotted if Yavortha set enough men to the task. She was the only person outside of a construction suit strolling out in the open alone, after all.

  For miles within the Ksa Crater, a smooth layer of densely packed, colorless sand encircled around the hub of Edeoria. She’d never walked the surface before, but she’d seen it from Cassius’ terrace on multiple occasions. Presently, it wasn’t only littered with countless smooth rocks, but also with hulking fragments of debris from the conduit, all of them completely iced over by the glacial air. Their formerly molten ends would have snapped right off if she placed any weight on them.

  Sage reached the base of the sizeable mound in the center of the impact crater from which the foundation for the spindly Edeoria hub tower arose. She’d considered trying to sneak through the damaged access hatches to one of the sunken earthscrapers near where the Calypso had fallen, but decided it was too risky. Dozens of construction mechs were already outside them, hard at work making reparations.

  She’d also thought about waiting outside an operational earthscraper, but their outer seals only opened when a ship was scheduled to pass through. Since none had yet, she assumed Yavortha had halted all the circulation between the shafts in order to trap Sage on the desolate surface of Titan. At the very least, he was monitoring those places.

  A half hour, she thought. That was how long she estimated she had until her suit’s emergency oxygen stores ran out. The hub was her only option. Its tower ascended from the largest and most populated of the shaft colonies, vanishing into the murky sky. With the storm passing through, she could barely make out much beyond its lowest segment.

  After a short trek up the mound of earth packed around its base, she started to climb the structure itself. Yavortha’s beating had left her body too sore to ignore, but her artificial arm made it possible. As did the low-g conditions. She pulled herself up the tower using any protrusion she could find, trying not to pay attention to her breathing. Each inhale stung deep in her chest.

  Her foot slipped on the slender rim of a vent. Her heart fluttered nervously as she hugged the surface. It wasn’t a feeling she was used to with her implant staying her nerves. Heights had never been an issue, though neither was a fear of failure. She was getting high, however, and repeating the climb would be an impossible task in her state, if the fall didn’t kill her.

  She shook the dark thoughts out of her head and continued up. The Ascendant hovering beside the tower wasn’t much further away based on the shadow being cast over her, which along with the storm was enough to make it feel like nighttime.

  Its exterior plating was as extensive as it was dense, but every ship had weak points. When it came to Tribunal vessels, Sage knew them best. Infiltrating such ships had been a part of her job description as an executor.

  Sage had never had to breach a New Earth cruiser before, but it had the same manufacturers as all the rest. She located a narrow opening between two plates on the ship’s underside, between two of its auxiliary antigrav thrusters helping keep it in the air. An exhaust vent.

  It was positioned right below the main hangar. A bad place to head when trying not to be seen, but she didn’t have time to spare. It was only about twenty meters away, and scouring the rest of the kilometer-long warship for a place to enter wasn’t going to be possible.

  She reached the correct height on the hub just as a beeping sound near her ear told her that her suit’s oxygen stores were depleted. All she had left was what little had built up inside her helmet.

  There was no time to panic. An executor never panics. Even if she wasn’t one any longer, her training ran deep. Yavortha couldn’t take that away from her.

  Peeking over her shoulder, she judged the distance to the cruiser. Under Earth g she never would’ve been able to make the jump, but on Titan…

  She pushed off the hub as hard as she could and soared through the air until her artificial fingers grabbed hold of the Ascendant’s hull. As her body stretched, bright lines of pain flared up in her ribs where Yavortha had struck her.

  Sage screamed into her helmet but held on. After a few agonizing swings, she managed to pull herself up into the nook formed by the ship’s overlapping ablative plates.

  Once there, she took one last inhale before holding her breath. She then unsheathed the wrist-blade in her arm and cut through the vent’s fins with short, concise strokes. She couldn’t risk exerting herself too much.

  The razor-sharp blade sliced through with little effort. For all of Cassius’ faults, she had to give him credit, he knew how to build. Her arm and all its parts were his creation, even if those hands had also crafted an abomination named ADIM.

  Once the opening was wide enough, Sage shoved her head through and tracked the upward path of the duct. It was slender, but so was she.

  She had to move fast. Even she could only hold her breath for so long, and the longer she did, the more the pain in her ribs was exacerbated. She sheathed her blade, climbed into the duct, and shimmied up the stack.

  When she reached the point where it flattened out horizontally, the outer seal of an airlock stood in her way. She could wait until the ship’s system expelled exhaust through the shaft and the two layers of the airlock opened and closed harmoniously, but there was no telling how long that would be. However, if she damaged the seal, then security systems might be alerted to her presence.

  A dilemma for sure, but she was growing dizzy and had no choice but to risk it. Sparks showered upon her visor as she attempted to hack through, not bothering to hold back this time. The plating was too thick.

  She exhaled and speedily plotted her next move as she drew in the last bit of oxygen remaining in her helmet. Then, without hesitation, she reached down to the bottom of the seal and dug her artificial fingers under it. The metal beneath it bent just enough under the pressure for her to shove her fingertips through and allow her to lift. She used her human hand to brace the shoulder connected to her artificial arm and ensure that her remaining tendons didn’t tear from the stress.

  It budged. The change in pressure blew Sage back, but she braced herself against the walls of the tight shaft until finally her efforts revealed a gap large enough for her to squeeze through.

  She was just barely able to get her entire body through before it slammed shut again. A soft whistle followed as the pressure regulated, allowing her to open her visor and gasp for air. Oxygen rushed down her throat, cold from its brief exposure to the outside air, stinging all the way down. She didn’t mind.

  Once she had her fill, she crawled through the inner layer of the airlock. It’d closed automatically during the breach, but she was grateful to see that it reopened afterwards. Now, she just had to find somewhere to go before the ship evacuated her along with whatever else was expelled through this system.

  Sage crawled through the darkness, trying to stay quiet, until a small vent cover permitted a few slivers of light. She got as close as she could and peered through into a storage area tucked into the corner of the main hangar.

  Using her wrist-blade, she unfastened the bolts and dipped down gracefully. She was fortunate enough to have arrived as the Ascendant was being prepped for departure. Numerous stacks of supply crates were still scattered around the hangar. A tremendous amount of commotion came from the crew as well.

  Noisy mechs transferre
d supplies in from the hub. The conversations of hundreds of soldiers and civilian workers by the entrance to the hangar were drowned out by heavy machinery working on dozens of fighters and transport ships.

  Sage peered around a supply crate. A Tribunal soldier approached on what appeared to be a routine patrol. He didn’t seem to be on edge, which either meant that Yavortha was trying to clean up his mistake without letting Benjar know what had happened, or that he didn’t think Sage could’ve possibly made it as far as she did. She didn’t really care which one was true.

  The soldier rounded a nearby corner and she crouched down. As soon as he was close enough, she unsheathed her blade and pounced. It was a simple move. She lifted the bottom of his helmet and reared back to stab her blade through the weak part of his unprotected armor at the base of his skull like she’d done on hundreds of occasions. Only she froze just before she could land the killing blow.

  It wasn’t the first time she had to slay a Tribunal soldier—such was the right of any executor if someone beneath them stood in the way of their objective—but it was the first time she had to do it for her own reasons.

  Sage surprised herself so much with her inability to follow through that the soldier was able to flip over. She recalled her training as quickly as she could to wrap her artificial arm around his throat so that he wouldn’t be able to say anything into his helmet’s built-in comms.

  In a struggle for his fallen gun, he managed to slam her back against a supply crate. The thing was so immense that the impact was hardly enough to make a noise, but his gun would. She yanked him down, used her legs to pull back his arms, and pinned them behind his back. Then she squeezed even harder to keep him quiet, until all he could manage was to kick futilely. There was no way to feel his pulse through her artificial arm, so Sage did the only thing she could and held him tightly until his legs went still.