Titan (Old Ironsides Book 2)

by Dean Crawford

  Table of Contents

  TITAN

  I

  II

  III

  IV

  V

  VI

  VII

  VIII

  IX

  X

  XI

  XII

  XIII

  XIV

  XV

  XVI

  XVII

  XVIII

  XIX

  XX

  XXI

  XXII

  XXIII

  XXIV

  XXV

  XXVI

  XXVII

  XXVIII

  XXIX

  XXX

  XXXI

  XXXII

  XXXIII

  XXXIV

  XXXV

  XXXVI

  XXXVII

  XXXVIII

  XXXIX

  XL

  XLI

  XLII

  XLIII

  Unnamed

  TITAN

  © 2016 Dean Crawford

  Published:

  ASIN: B01I0H3D12

  Publisher: Fictum Ltd

  The right of Dean Crawford to be identified as author of this Work has been asserted by him in accordance with sections 77 and 78 of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.

  All rights reserved.

  Dean Crawford Books

  I

  Tethys Gaol,

  Saturn

  Xavier Reed could feel sweat building beneath the rough fabric of his clothes and a prickly heat tingled painfully at the back of his neck as he awaited his fate. The sound of metal against metal clattered around him, a mournful chorus of chains that manacled dozens of ankles and wrists, and the air was stale with the stench of unwashed bodies.

  Xavier did not look to either side or behind him. Instead he sat in absolute silence and stared straight ahead down the interior of the shuttle’s drab gray metal cabin. Ahead, rows of equally still heads stared toward an uncertain future, watched over by a pair of robotic drone guards armed with high–precision rifles charged with rounds designed not to kill but to incapacitate.

  Behind metal grills at the front of the cabin sat two human guards, this time armed with assault rifles and grim expressions. There were no windows, nothing for the rows of convicts to look at as they sat in silence and awaited the green overhead lights above the guards to turn red, signalling the landing sequence.

  Xavier swallowed thickly, his throat dry and his vision blurred. A brief vision of his wife Erin and their daughter flickered behind his eyes and he felt a black wave of anguish, hate and helplessness rise up, threatening to engulf him and send him screaming into an abyss of desperation deeper than anything that he had ever known. Nobody noticed his silent battle of will as he forced the black wave down, closed his eyes and trembled with the effort of controlling his emotions, burying them inside some deep neural tract where they could no longer bother him.

  The lights in the cabin changed to red and a harsh alarm buzzed around them, breaking Xavier out of his painful reverie. The convicts around him shuffled in their seats, some fearing what was before them, others sitting in fearless silence, enveloped within a force–field of restrained violence as though they welcomed, yearned even, to finally reach their destination.

  The shuttle’s hull vibrated as retro–rockets fired into the frigid vacuum of space outside, the craft manoeuvring and slowing as Xavier imagined it easing into the landing bays of the Tethys Gaol. He had seen the process once as a young recruit fresh into the prison service, had watched in awe as the tiny shuttles landed inside the huge prison, the immense backdrop of the gas giant Saturn and its vast and peaceful rings belying the hate and the violence that festered inside this most feared of gaols. He recalled how overwhelmingly relieved he had been that he was not aboard such a craft, not facing the terrible fate that those prisoners had been so long ago.

  And yet, here he was.

  A deep thud echoed through the cabin as the shuttle landed inside the bay, and Xavier could imagine the doors closing behind them and the atmosphere being altered inside the bay before the interior doors opened and the shuttle advanced on its landing pads into the prison proper, ranks of heavily armed guards and drones in position to quell even the slightest protest or disturbance.

  The shuttle moved for a few moments more, and then it settled again and Xavier heard the faint sound of its engines whine down as the pilots shut down the shuttle’s systems. A deep dread rose up in his chest and threatened to break free from his lips as a cry of despair as the seat beneath him folded automatically away, forcing him to stand on legs that seemed barely able to take his weight.

  The shuttle’s main exits opened on either side of the cabin and a guard’s voice boomed like cannon fire.

  ‘Out, all of you, single file!’

  The prisoners shuffled out, their chains rattling as Xavier walked among them. The air was thick with loathing, the shaming stench of fear permeating it seemed not just their clothes but the very atmosphere within the prison as he stepped down off the shuttle’s ramp and got his first look at Tethys Gaol.

  The prison was located in orbit around Saturn’s moon Tethys, with only the largest military base in the Solar System for company, Polaris Station. Considered one of the worst of the “Seven Circles of Hell”, as the various orbital prisons were described by former inmates, it was surpassed only by Io Five, another maximum security facility in orbit around the Jovian moon of Io, an intensely volcanic world that offered no means of escape even if a prisoner was able to break out of the facility, as Jupiter’s immense gravity could only be escaped by military grade vessels.

  Tethys’ structure was of hatched barred steel, the prison a former mining colony that had drawn from Saturn’s rings water ice for sale to passing vessels making their way toward the edge of the solar system, or harvested ammonia and ammonium hydrosulphide from Saturn’s atmosphere for fuels and orbital agriculture. Xavier could see immense and aged pipes running overhead the landing bay that had once contained pressurized gases destined for immense spacecraft docked alongside the mine.

  The prisoners were arranged into two lines, thirty four men in all, no women. Xavier found himself in the front rank as a tall, powerfully built man with a shock of red hair that glowed in the harsh light as though it were aflame approached them. His beard likewise glistened with photoluminescence, a recent craze on the colonies, the short lived bacteria implanted into hair. The man was evidently the warden, his belly vast, his arms thick and leading up to a bull neck and cold, almost malicious blue eyes.

  ‘Gentlemen,’ he growled as he spread his enormous arms to encompass the prison around them, ‘welcome to Tethys Gaol. I am Arkon Stone, the warden, and I sincerely hope that you do not enjoy your stay, which will likely be extended for as long as possible due to your innate inability to conform to the simple rules of society.’

  Arkon seemed to peer into their eyes one by one, seeking weakness, like one of the ancient lions that roamed the African veld in search of prey. His brittle gaze settled briefly on Xavier, just long enough that it made him feel uncomfortable.

  ‘There are two simple rules in Tethys Gaol,’ Arkon went on. ‘First: you do everything that we say or you will be punished in ways more painful than you can imagine. Second: neither I nor my guards are required to obey any rules at all. You will suffer here, both for your crimes and for our pleasure. We do not care about your welfare. Society does not care about your welfare. You have been chewed up and spat out, abandoned here to dwell on your crimes and the pain that they have caused your victims. Now, those crimes shall cause you that same pain.’

  Arkon walked along the line of prisoners, dwarfing
many of them and glaring down at each as he passed by and moved closer to Xavier.

  ‘You may believe that you have rights, but you do not,’ he growled. ‘You may feel that you can complain or seek assistance, but you may not. You may even be innocent of any crime, but we do not care for it is not our job to care.’

  Arkon walked up to Xavier and glared at him. Xavier held that glare as best he could, knowing that to show fear was to accept your doom. Arkon peered at him as he walked by but then moved on, and Xavier felt his own shoulders sag slightly with relief.

  ‘There are those among you whose crimes would appall any sane human being,’ Arkon boomed as he walked down the line behind Xavier. ‘Serial killers, rapists, armed robbers and cop killers. But I personally reserve my greatest hatred for the latter.’

  Something slammed into Xavier’s kidney with the force of a fallen angel and he cried out in agony as he dropped onto his knees, his eyes bulging with pain that soared through his body as tears spilled from his eyes. He gagged with the force of it, then felt a heavy boot slam into his spine and he jerked forward and his face smacked down onto the cold metal deck.

  From the corner of his eye he saw Arkon glaring down at him as a heavy boot slammed between his shoulder blades and pinned him in place. Xavier felt his guts convulse as he heard from high above the cackles and cheers of dozens, hundreds of criminals all cheering and pointing as Xavier squirmed beneath the warden’s boot and heard Arkon’s enraged cry echo across the entire landing bay.

  ‘Especially when he himself was a prison officer!’

  The cheers and the calls died down and Xavier felt the cold dread return, the sudden silence even worse than the cacophony. Now he could feel in the stale air a growing resentment, a hatred that could only boil over as soon as he reached the cell blocks. Arkon was setting him up for death, and Xavier knew why.

  ‘Enjoy your stay,’ Arkon growled, and then yanked his boot from Xavier’s spine as he whirled away and yelled at the guards surrounding them. ‘Put them in their cells!’

  A blast of murderous cheers echoed through the landing bay as Xavier was hauled to his feet and dragged along with the other prisoners toward the prison’s main entrance, half of them glaring at him with murder in their eyes.

  Xavier thought of his wife and daughter one last time and then fought back his tears as he was swallowed whole by the gaping black maw of Tethys Gaol.

  ***

  II

  New Washington Orbital Station,

  Earth

  Nathan Ironside was in another world, yet that world was the one he knew best.

  The acacias of Aurora gusted in the gentle breeze and whispered to him of the nearby deserts of Colorado in one breath, the busy streets of Denver in the next. The sound of his daughter Amira’s squeals of delight echoed eerily through the warm summer air as she was pushed back and forth on the garden swing, his wife’s voice tinkling nearby.

  Nathan stood on the lawn, a hose in one hand that sprayed glistening water like a shower of diamond chips across the perfect grass. The sound of traffic whispered nearby and he could hear other children in their own gardens or riding their bikes on the streets beyond the lawn. Everything was perfect, and yet he stood and stared into the middle distance as though in a trance.

  ‘You okay, honey?’

  His wife’s voice reached him from afar and Nathan managed to shake himself from his gloomy reverie and nodded, smiled.

  ‘Sure, I’m fine.’

  Amira smiled and waved. ‘Come and push me, daddy!’

  Nathan dropped the hose without question and made his way across to the swing, but then he hesitated as he looked at the two people he loved more than anything in the world. Angela, his wife, reached out for his hand, concern in her green eyes.

  ‘What’s wrong?’

  Nathan blinked away tears that stung the corner of his eyes as he sucked in a ragged breath. ‘I’m sorry, I just can’t keep doing this.’

  Angela frowned and Nathan saw confusion and concern in Amira’s eyes as she stopped swinging and looked up at him. ‘Daddy?’

  ‘I’m sorry honey,’ Nathan replied. ‘Really I am.’

  Nathan reached up to his temple and pressed gently, and the bright sunlight and fresh scents and his wife and child and their home vanished instantly. Nathan blinked and sucked in another breath of air as he leaned back on the couch and stared vacantly across the lounge to where broad windows overlooked New Washington’s west quarter.

  The perfect blue vault of the heavens was laced with speckles of distant cloud, and he could see through the windows their shadows beneath them on the surface of the ocean far below. The panoramic view above spanned only a fraction of Earth’s surface, in this case the Pacific Ocean as it passed by three hundred kilometres below. Nathan could see tiny island chains scattered amid the vast blue oceans, and across the view stretched immense girders that supported New Washington’s vast ray–shielding that kept warmth in and the radiation and vacuum of space out. As the surface of the Earth drifted by below it also rotated in a dizzying effect as New Washington spun in space, the motion producing the natural gravity felt by the population occupying the inside of the station’s disc–like ring.

  Nathan sighed, rubbed angrily at a stray tear on his right cheek as he stood up and removed from his head a thin silver object that looked much like a hair band but for the slim blue light traversing its length. The Lucidity Lens was a device that allowed dreams to become reality, giving the wearer the ability to produce what were known as lucid dreams at will – a virtual reality indistinguishable from true reality because it was generated by the brain itself. But the device created a four hundred year old reality that only haunted Nathan, teased him and kept him trapped between two worlds, neither of which always felt entirely real.

  Nathan tossed the device onto the couch and ran his hands through his hair as he glanced at the Optical Data stream in his right eye. 10.42am, Geo–stationary Orbital Time. Despite his initial resistance, it had been required of him by the New Washington Police Department to install an ID chip, which came with the Optical Stream as standard.

  The Implanted Designator, or ID for short, was fused into the bone of his skull while the optical data display was a biomechanical electrode resting against the inside of the lens of his eye. Updated every time he moved through one of the city’s myriad checkpoints, every human being was implanted at birth with one of the personalized chips. A liquid–cell quantum storage device, everything about Nathan and every other person was recorded and stored if needed for future use. The law stated that no ID chip was ever to be tampered with, but a vibrant market existed for those able to afford tinkering with their ID and evading the law.

  Nathan closed his eyes briefly until his grief had passed and then he tightened his belt, buttoned his shirt and grabbed his badge and his weapon from a table alongside the couch. He was due for duty at 11am, the precinct just around the block from the small apartment he had been gifted by the city’s governor as a reward for his “heroic efforts” of just a few months before. The invasion of the Ayleean warrior ships and their colluding with the Director General, Franklyn Ceyron, had created a tremendous conflict into which Nathan had been hurled, despite being awoken so recently from a cryogenic slumber that had lasted four centuries. The world he had known had long ago succumbed to an alien virus and was long gone, as were five billion souls who perished before a cure was found using his own body’s preserved immune system.

  Nathan walked across his apartment, grabbed a sip of stale coffee and then walked for the door. As was his unbreakable habit, he paused as the apartment door dematerialized before him before walking through and heading for the elevator. Hard–light, one of the strangest and most bizarre technologies that Nathan had encountered since he had awoken in the twenty fourth century, allowed for light to possess mass and thus had changed the very nature of many cities. Doors were opaque or transparent and elevated walkways were walled with invisible barriers meaning tha
t nobody could fall from them. An unforeseen consequence of this freedom of visibility was that Nathan was frequently confronted with vertigo–inducing chasms between buildings to which he had not yet become accustomed. Most all folks in the city thought nothing of a six hundred foot drop just inches away from where they walked.

  Nathan travelled down in the elevator that clung to the outside of his apartment block and then joined The Belt.

  The New Washington Beltway, or simply The Belt, was a conveyor system that ringed New Washington with multiple routes and carried commuters and pedestrians along at a spritely pace without the need for the flying vehicles humming through the skies above. As The Belt carried Nathan away from the apartment block so he got a panoramic view of the sky above the city.

  Built before the scientists who designed such cities had been able to grasp the fundamentals of the Higgs Boson’s control of mass and gravity, New Washington relied instead on good old–fashioned centrifugal motion: the orbiting platform spun at a rate sufficient to generate one–G of acceleration on the inside of its outer ring, The Belt, thus providing natural gravity for those living there. In the center of the station the docking and loading bays allowed visiting spacecraft to land without worrying about gravity – docking clamps ensured that they could unload passengers and goods safely before departing again, while pedestrians at The Hub, as the station’s center was known, wore boots designed to grip the surface which allowed them to walk fairly normally. Not dissimilar in appearance to the ancient sketches of science fiction writers from centuries before, New Washington’s ring–like form was now some ten kilometres across having been repeatedly expanded to accommodate a population that could no longer afford to live on the planetary surface. The spread of the housing projects at the four points of the station’s wheel, named the Four Corners, had become a stain of poverty on what had once been mankind’s flagship orbital living–space, back then ironically only available to those super–wealthy enough to afford it.