From Ice to Ashes

by Rhett C. Bruno

  “It’s me,” I said.

  “What’s going on?” He lifted his arm and realized that he was in a space suit.

  “We stole the Piccolo to get you out.”

  His helmet rotated so that he could get a glimpse of his surroundings. His gaze froze on the Director, jaw dropping. “By Trass, I thought I was dreaming.”

  “So did I at first.”

  He looked back at me, and his features darkened. “Cora, I—”

  I hushed him and patted his leg. “It’s not your fault. Now rest. You’ll need it.”

  He nodded and stopped fighting the urge to close his eyes and catch up on the rest he so desperately needed. I considered joining him when Maya reappeared around the corner, Vick trailing close behind.

  “He’ll do it,” she said.

  “You’re lucky I can’t turn down the chance to watch that place burn,” he said. “But there’s one condition. When they name you king, or whatever, I get to be your jester.” His solemn façade broke into a halfhearted smirk.

  “I wouldn’t have it any other way,” I replied. “You’re sure?”

  “We flew across Saturn, remember? With this suit, and if I’m fast, I should be able to slip out after I make the turn.”

  “I know you will.”

  After a long, uncomfortable silence he said, “I’m going to go check on the numbers.” I noticed his lips droop out of the corner of my eye as he turned to pull himself back out of the airlock corridor.

  “If you’re worried he’s going to go hide, don’t be,” Maya whispered to me. “He’ll do it.”

  “How did you convince him?”

  “I told him that if he doesn’t make it, we’ll name a colony block after him,” she answered. “And that if he does, I’ll personally introduce him to Mazrah as the brilliant pilot we couldn’t have survived on the Sunfire without.”

  “You’d lie to her like that?” I joked.

  “No, probably not, but I wasn’t going to crush his heart.” She snickered, then turned serious. “He didn’t need the inspiration, though—you don’t know this, but he has as much reason to hate the Q-Zones as any of us. They orphaned him before he could talk. Plus, it’s a brilliant plan. He knows it’s what any of us would do if we could. He just needed to hear it from me. Beneath all of the bluster, Vick is a good man. Titanborn through and through.”

  “You should tell him that, Maya,” I said. “Before he goes out there.”

  She grimaced. “He’ll make it. We all will.”

  —

  The rest of the trip passed quickly. I could tell by everyone’s silence that the gravity of what we were about to attempt weighed heavily on us all. Especially Vick. Once he returned from the command deck, he sat alone on the other end of the airlock corridor, staring at the wall. He looked like he wanted to do what I was asking of him about as much as I had wanted to smuggle my corrupted hand-terminal onto the Piccolo.

  Maya watched him the entire time. She’d sacrificed one of their own back on the Piccolo, but after all we’d been through I imagined it must’ve been even harder for her now. For three years she’d led them through the bowels of Saturn, and it was clear she cared for them more than she would ever let on. The tears welling in the corners of her eyes were proof enough of that— of the heart she thought she didn’t have.

  Gareth banged his pistol on the wall of the airlock, instantly rousing the Director and Desmond. He was monitoring our progress on the hand-terminal, and his signal meant that we were five minutes from hitting Titan’s atmosphere.

  “Here we go!” Maya shouted, mustering her most commanding tone. “Everyone in the airlock.”

  I’d been shaking in anticipation and immediately pushed off of my seat. I took Desmond by the hand and helped him into the airlock. “Hold on to something,” I said to him.

  Gareth didn’t move. He remained filming the Director from the floor so that there was no way for anyone on the other side to see what was happening.

  Maya drifted into the airlock and regarded the Director. “Should we let him go up in flames with his men?” She handed me a pistol. “Or make a show of it?”

  “Neither,” I replied. “Get him in a suit. He’s coming with us for now.”

  She didn’t question me. She grabbed a space suit off the corridor walls and carried it into the airlock with us. The Director said something and kicked his legs, but through his gag all I could hear were moans.

  Vick leveled his weightless body outside of the airlock and swallowed the lump in his throat. “All right, I’m going to seal you in and head up,” he said. “Pretty soon it’s going to get real bumpy. When we’re low enough, I’ll release the outer seal. Take it slow out there. I know I’m the best flier here, but I’ll be catching up to you from the command deck.”

  “As slow as we can,” Maya promised. She threw him a nod, and he returned one.

  “Let’s show those Pervenio mud stompers who the Ring really belongs to,” Vick said, pouring as much heart into the words as he could muster.

  He raised his hand to close the outer airlock seal, but before he could, Maya shouted, “Hey, Vick! From ice to ashes!”

  He grinned. “From ice to ashes…Beautiful.”

  The airlock sealed, and he disappeared around the corner. It was strange watching him through the tiny viewport from that vantage; seeing what John and the other Earthers had before they were evacuated. It seemed impossible that I would ever have wound up where they were, yet there I was.

  “Wait until we start shaking, then we cut the feed and suit Sodervall up,” I said. Maya nodded without averting her gaze from the viewport. I checked Gareth to make sure he heard me. He did the same.

  We braced ourselves, and a few minutes of silence later the ship lurched. The airlock started rocking, more violently with each second. We were thrown against the inner seal.

  “Cut it!” I yelled.

  Gareth smashed the hand-terminal on the floor. I grabbed the Director and released his cuffs. He squirmed, but he couldn’t compete with the strength of my suit. I lifted him, and together Maya and Gareth forced his body into the space suit.

  “Maya, you take the Director,” I said. “I don’t trust myself.”

  “With pleasure,” she replied.

  “Gareth, you’ll fly alone and keep a lookout for ships. I’ll take Desmond.”

  “Take me where?” a bewildered Desmond questioned.

  I gently lowered a helmet over his head. He wore a similar expression of terror as the Director. “You’ll be fine. Just don’t let go.” I sealed his visor.

  “Com-links on,” Mazrah shouted. “Wings ready.”

  I didn’t need any help this time. The nano-fabric wings popped out of my arms and stretched to my sides. I closed my visor and held on to the wall. The airlock rattled so intensely it hurt my joints even through the suit. I would’ve killed for a G-pill.

  “There you guys are!” Vick shouted over our shared com-link. His voice was muffled by raging winds, so I had to listen carefully to hear him. Either he was pretending to be having fun or he really was. It made me feel confident that he might actually be the best flier he boasted to be and escape unscathed.

  “How is it out there?” Maya asked.

  “Hell of a ride! Holding on to the console with my legs in the air like I’m riding an Earther pig!”

  “Are we on course?” I asked.

  “Just one more shift!” As slight as the turn was, at the speeds we were going the force of it heaved us against the side wall. I grabbed Desmond’s helmet just in time to make sure the visor of his far inferior helmet didn’t hit the wall and split open. Everybody else seemed to make it fine. “There we go.”

  “Take it easy up there!” Maya yelled.

  “Too rough for you?” Vick laughed nervously. “All right, I can see the Q-Zone—by Trass, I can see it! There are ships everywhere, taking aim at us.”

  “It’s too late,” I said.

  “On my mark, I’m releasing the seal. Hol
d on to your friends, ladies and gentlemen.

  Five…four…”

  My muscles tensed. I clutched Desmond’s arms and stretched them around my waist so that he was holding on as tight as possible.

  “One!” Vick hollered. The outer seal opened, and the ship fell around us as I was pulled out into the atmosphere where so many of my people’s ashes had been loosed. The wind took me, gripping my wings and twisting Desmond and me about. The force of it racked my brain, but the suit kept me conscious until I could straighten myself out. As I did, Desmond lost his grip on me and fell.

  The thick Titanian atmosphere and Low G slowed him enough for me to figure out how best to angle my arms to dive toward him. I snatched his body with one hand, causing us to corkscrew through the air. As we tumbled, I managed to draw him against my chest so that he could wrap his arms and legs around me. That allowed me to gain control of my wings, like I’d been flying my whole life. The storms of Titan had nothing on Saturn.

  “We’re straight!” I yelled over the coms.

  “Us too!” shouted Maya.

  Gareth snorted loud enough for us to know that his sound wasn’t merely distant thunder. Vick remained silent. That was when I finally had a chance to look around. I tilted my arms to turn, falling in line with the others at roughly the same altitude.

  The Piccolo plummeted, a plume of flame wrapped around its bow like a red dress. The Pervenio ships hovering around Q-Zone scattered. Others, which had been following us from the station, darted through the upper atmosphere above. Both they and the antiair turrets tucked along the top of Darien’s enclosure a few kilometers away let loose a barrage of missiles simultaneously. Strings of dark smoke traced the sky, but they were all too late. The Piccolo crashed bow-first, going as fast as it could possibly go, into the lonely plateau that harbored the Darien Q-Zone.

  Its ion-engines and fusion reactor detonated instantly from the impact, causing a nuclear explosion so bright that I momentarily lost control while attempting to shield my eyes. When I flattened back out, the brightness waned to reveal a mushroom-shaped cloud. The blast painted Titan’s horizon in brilliant orange.

  I was too high up and too far away to feel the shock wave, but half of the tram-line connecting to Darien’s main enclosure toppled. Pervenio ships were smacked out of the air like insects. Rocks and debris flew in every direction. I scanned the fragments for a flying man in white, but found no one.

  Vick didn’t make it, but he took more Earthers with him than anything had since the Meteorite struck their homeworld, three centuries ago.

  Chapter 26

  I strolled down the cramped command center of what was apparently one of the Children of Titan’s many secluded hideouts. Consoles and other equipment were strewn across the floor. Even as far away as we were—within a century-old transport ship buried beneath a string of mountains—the shock wave of the Piccolo’s exploding engine was felt. Loose pieces of the ice-rock walls had snapped off, and the provisional lighting systems strung along the low metal ceiling were dim. Wires hanging between them drooped so low that I had to brush them aside while I walked, as if I were trekking through one of Earth’s Pre-Meteorite jungles.

  I was told it took five years to construct the series of tunnels leading from beneath the Darien Q-Zone to where we were. Titanborn, like me in white tunics with orange circles painted on their chests, stood in silence on either side of the room. It was strange to see so many of my people together and not wearing sanitary masks. They watched me go by with a mixture of confusion and reverence.

  By then, a few hours after the explosion, the entire Ring knew what had happened. Nobody was sure how many Pervenio Officers were killed in the initial explosion or how many were suffocating beneath the crumbling plateau, soon to die. Pervenio rescue efforts diverted much of the remaining forces, spreading them thin all across Titan and the Ring. According to Mazrah, the central lift to the Darien Lowers had been shut down to retain order as my people protested the invasion of the Q-Zone. Many of them had even begun to climb the shaft toward the Uppers in an unstoppable fury. They stormed the hydro-farms. Took control of factories, shops, and even docked ships. It didn’t matter how weak their muscles were, or how crude their weapons, with numbers on their side.

  I passed Gareth. He stood with a cane and a fresh bandage on his leg. He signed ‘Now you lead’ to me. Beyond him Desmond lay on a medical table, an IV connected to his arm. His head was angled toward me, his eyes still drawn wide from the thrill. On an adjacent table sat Mazrah. I’d have recognized her in her tight-fitting violet dress anywhere, but the rest of her looked like she’d been through a rough battle. She offered me a nod, but nothing more. The red-haired woman Maya had called the Doctor tended to a wound in Mazrah’s calf. She was the only person in the entire base who wasn’t watching me. She was also the only non-Titanborn, and as I got close I saw the shimmer of dried tears on her freckled cheeks. It made me wonder if she’d chosen to be where she was, an alien to all those around her…just like Cora.

  I shook the thought out of my head and forced myself to focus. Maya waited in front of me. She was out of her armor, wearing a simple tunic like everybody else. She didn’t even have her mask on to conceal her half-burnt face. The sight didn’t earn a second glance from me. In her hands she held a hand-terminal that was set to record.

  “Mazrah prepared a connection from Darien to broadcast to the entire surface,” she said. “We’re ready.” Her voice was cold and distant. It had been that way since we’d watched the Piccolo explode, and Vick not emerge.

  “Good,” I replied. I went to step past her, but she grasped my arm.

  “Are you?”

  I removed her hand as gently as I could and continued on my way. I was still wearing every part of my powered armor except for the helmet, so I had to be careful not to hurt her.

  My mom suddenly parted the crowd and positioned herself in front of me. As one of the recuperating Q-Zone escapees, she still wore her sanitary mask. The rest of those in her situation were in a nearby cavern continuing their treatment under the watch of the Doctor.

  When we’d first arrived in the hideout and she saw me, she wept. I squeezed her so hard I almost broke her back, but as grateful as I was to be with her, no tears escaped me. Once I knew she was okay, all I could manage to ask her was whether or not she knew who I really was, who my father really was. Her expression told me everything I needed to know.

  “Kale,” she said presently, forcing a smile. “You don’t have to do this.”

  “I need to finish what I started.”

  “No you don’t. All that matters now is that we have each other back.”

  A week earlier that would have been enough for me, but more had happened in the short time since I’d left the Q-Zone to save her than had in the entirety of my life before then.

  “You’ll never be stuck in a place like that again, Mom. I promise. None of us will.” I placed my hands over her cheeks and gazed straight into her eyes. She seemed healthy. The dark rings around her eyelids were gone, and her cheeks were a lighter shade of pink.

  She choked back tears. “Kale…don’t.”

  I wrapped my arms around her, pulled her tight, and pressed my lips against her forehead. Then I placed her frail body to the side and stepped forward. Director Sodervall was on his knees within the airlock that provided entry to the base, hands cuffed behind his back and a bag covering his head. Behind him, a tiny viewport offered a view of Titan’s whipping wind. Two armored Children of Titan operatives stood on either side of the open hatch, pulse-rifles at the ready. I stepped in front of them and turned to Maya.

  “Recording,” she said.

  I stared into the lens of the device in Maya’s hand. Then I cleared my throat. “People of the Ring,” I began. “My people. For too long we have lived in fear. Controlled. Watched. Infected. No longer.” I spread my arms, taking care to gesture to the armored men behind me. “You all know my face and what we’ve done, but what the Voice of
Titan failed to mention is who I really am. The secret he’s been keeping since the day they arrived. My name is not Kale Drayton. It is Kale Trass.”

  The crowd arrayed before me released a collective gasp. I could only imagine the reaction of all of the people throughout Titan’s numerous colony blocks watching their local newsfeeds, which Mazrah had managed to subvert. That was a far simpler task than broadcasting to the entirety of Sol, and my message was, at first, meant only for my people. It would spread fast enough.

  “Trass’s blood runs through my veins, as it did my father’s,” I continued. “Sodervall kept us in the darkness, but no longer. Those who think themselves our masters will fall! Here I stand as one of the places we’ve dreaded for decades burns, begging you as a fellow Child of Titan: Rise from your hollows to reclaim our homeworld! Fight toward the light, not just in Darien, but all throughout our world and the stations watching over us! Don’t be afraid. The spirits of our fallen stand with us. Our freedom starts today.”

  I stepped to the side, revealing Director Sodervall. The operatives tore off his hood so all could see his bloody face. He screamed futilely into his gag.

  “To all of the corporations like his who think they can own the Ring. To the USF and every citizen of Earth, I say this: Retribution is coming. There is a new Voice of Titan, and we are the descendants of those chosen by Trass. We are Titanborn.”

  I nodded at one of the operatives, and he moved so I could reach the airlock controls. My hand hovered there as I beheld Director Sodervall’s horrified visage. I then turned to the crowd. To my friends and my family. Their jaws hung. Their eyes were glued open.

  Maya gritted her teeth and nodded at me. My mom wept and shook her head. I pictured Cora’s smile, as radiant as Piccolo when its ion engines blew. Then, wordlessly, I keyed the inner seal of the airlock to close and the outer to open. Director Sodervall didn’t scream as Titan’s cold embrace greeted him. He couldn’t even squirm.

  The seconds he was out there felt like a lifetime for me. It was so silent that I could hear the thud of his body falling forward into the hatch. A swipe across the controls signaled the airlock to repressurize, and the inner seal slid back up into the ceiling. Director Sodervall’s frozen body fell through. His head and torso cracked into so many pieces they looked like one of Saturn’s ice rings wrapping what was left whole of him.