“Something funny, kid?” I asked.
“Just your choice of words. I only need one man to get in.” He drew his weightless body down the cockpit. “Follow me.”
I watched him go by and turned my attention to Aria, busy entering coordinates for Undina. “Aria,” I said. I could tell she wanted to look back, but it’s tough to defy a pistol against the back of your head. She was looking out for two people now. Another illegitimate child to keep the immaculate Graves bloodline thriving into the uncertain future.
“Aria, you just keep us from being shot down,” I said. “I’ll find a way to get us out of this.
She nodded half-heartedly.
“Try it, Earther,” the guard at her back sneered. “I’m begging you.”
“Your future king is in her belly,” I said. “You really think I believe that you’re going to blow her head off? Damn Ringers. No wonder I always fleeced your kind in poker before you ruined Titan.”
“We have orders to kill her and pull Lord Trass’s child out ourselves if she tries anything.”
Aria swallowed and squeezed her eyelids shut while the Ringer got more comfortable behind her. I’d never wanted to snap someone’s neck so badly.
“Why didn’t you just leave me behind and run, Aria,” I said. “You and Maz would have made it easy.”
“I’m not you,” she answered. The twitches of a smile touched the corner of her lips, which made me feel better. Kale hadn’t sucked all the fight out of her yet.
“Thank Earth for that. You remember that job years back when that lunatic tried holding you hostage?”
“Which one?”
I snickered. “Who got you out of all of them without a scratch?”
“Lord Trass said to follow him, now.” A pulse rifle slid up against my side, and I turned to see another pale-faced Ringer floating in the command deck’s exit. “Move.”
“All right, all right. Keep your pants on.” I used the rungs lining the ceiling to propel myself out of the room, thankful for zero G providing my battered body a rest. “Keep flying, Aria, you hear me? Keep flying.”
The moment I was out of the command deck and back into the main sleep pod cabin, Kale slapped a familiar hand-terminal into my palm.
“What’s this?” I asked. “Need someone to teach you how to use Earther tech?”
“You never stop, do you?” he said. “No wonder Aria would never come right out and say what a piece of mudstomping trash you were.”
“Just trying to live up to my reputation.”
“And that’s exactly why I need you.” Kale pushed off the wall and grabbed hold of an empty sleep pod. Two of his men helped him inside. “You’re going to contact Undina and tell your boss that you captured me and are on your way. You broke through Madame Venta’s blockade so that he could get the credit for bringing the self-proclaimed king of Titan to justice.”
“Luxarn Pervenio didn’t become the richest man in Sol because he’d stupid, kid. You really think he’s going to believe that?”
“A Pervenio man, through and through. You would never lie to him. How would he know that you murdered his son? Or hid a daughter from him that became my ambassador?
“You really thought of it all, didn’t you?”
“Not until you fell into my lap.” He regarded his men. “Close me in and watch him. If he tries anything, you know what to do.”
“I saw the way you looked at her back on Mars,” I said. “I have to believe you wouldn’t hurt her.”
“Do you really want to test that?”
His men closed him in before I could answer, and I found myself being aimed at by guns from every angle. I glanced down at the hand-terminal he gave me. How does the most famous rebel in post-Meteorite history break into a clandestine facility buried within an asteroid so close to Earth and filled with elite operatives? He gets invited in.
“Let’s go,” one of the guards ordered. “Lord Trass says you need to act confident.”
I sighed. “Shouldn’t be tough.” I activated the device and navigated to Solnet. I didn’t have any way to contact Luxarn directly, but Undina was a mine on its surface. Mostly stripped bare and forgotten, but still active. Like any business verified by the USF, I could contact them as a concerned customer.
“Undina Mining Facility,” someone in the support office said. A finely groomed man in formal attire appeared on the screen. Everything to make the mine appear like a proper enterprise.
“I need to speak with your boss,” I said.
“The foreman is on vacation, but if you’d like to leave a message.”
“Not that boss. Luxarn Pervenio.”
“I’m sorry, you seem to have the wrong contact information. The Undina Mining Collective is merely a subsidiary of Pervenio Corporation. Let me transfer you to the Pervenio Corporation headquarters on Earth.”
“Tell him.” I drew a deep breath and exhaled slowly. “Tell him that Malcolm Graves is on his way with a royal gift.”
The man’s brow furrowed. He turned away from the camera and typed something into his terminal. His eyes went wide momentarily; then he composed himself and turned back to me. Luxarn always had a knack for hiring professionals, unlike those sloppy bastards at Venta Co.
“I’ll transfer you right away,” he said.
The screen blinked, and Luxarn appeared on the display almost immediately. He looked worse than ever. Not only unkempt but like he hadn’t even showered in days.
“Graves, is that you?” he questioned, nearly tripping over his words like some crazy hermit living beyond the habitable strings on Earth. I’d met a few. The kind of bearded loon who lives in a shack and still believes that Earth was never almost destroyed.
“In the flesh, sir,” I said. The words came out meekly. Out of the corner of my eye, I saw one of Kale’s hounds level his rifle at my head and then into the cockpit. It wasn’t because I was nervous. Seeing Luxarn so broken, the man who for most of my life could enter a room and have all the ladies swooning and all the wealthy ready to pry open their credit accounts... It put things into a certain perspective. Kale was right. Luxarn was in a place to believe anything I had to say.
“By Earth, I thought you were dead. All the bodies were vaporized on Mars; they couldn’t identify any.”
“You know I wouldn’t go down that easy.”
“Of course not! You have no idea how good it is to see a familiar face. Where are you, Graves? Are you near Titan? Madame Venta informs me that our assault has been delayed already. I swear, it’s impossible to find good help these days.”
“I’m on my way to you in Kale’s ship. Broke free from their cell in the chaos and took it. The situation outside Titan didn’t look pretty, sir.”
“I told her not to rush. Never trust a Venta.”
“That’s why I didn’t tell her first. Sir, I have him.”
“What?”
“Kale Trass.” I angled the hand-terminal to show Kale inside of the sleep pod, eyes closed and tranquil. The thing wasn’t even on, but the young king was growing into quite the showman. “They’re trying to keep it secret that he went missing.”
Luxarn’s features lit up. “Is he—”
“Alive. Yeah.” I slapped the side of the pod. “Just fast asleep.”
“Madame Venta did say he wouldn’t talk to her. She doesn’t know?”
“I don’t trust her. Especially not after seeing how she nearly got her fleet destroyed in minutes.”
“You did the right thing, Graves. The finest Collector there ever was! I knew you couldn’t stay retired.” He laughed and clapped his hands, a bit of color finally coming to his cheeks. There were even hints of a smile, though with all the cosmetic work done to his face sagging from lack of upkeep, it was difficult to tell.
“What are your orders, sir?”
“Bring him to Undina immediately and tell nobody. I help provide Venta with the largest fleet ever assembled and she fails before she even started. Yet one Pervenio man will topple
the Trass family for good. You’ll be remembered forever for this, Graves. I’ll have a damn statue of you erected in the heart of New London myself.”
“I don’t need any of that. Kale went too far.”
“I won’t accept no this time. Together, we’re going to rebuild everything they stole from us. Madame Venta will be booted from her own company, and I’ll name you in her place. The second richest man in Sol; how does that sound? We’ll rewrite history.”
“It sounds great, sir. On my way.”
I switched off the hand-terminal, unable to bear talking to him any longer. Seeing him hell-bent on revenge was one thing, but falling headfirst into a trap was another. The shrewd, world-eating businessman Sol knew was already dead, and Kale hadn’t even pulled the trigger yet. It would be a mercy killing.
I tossed the device to one of the guards. “Happy?”
Kale popped open the lid of his sleep pod, and his men hauled him out. Then they poked me in the back with their pulse rifles.
“Well done, Collector,” Kale said. “Now get in.” His man seized me.
“This is never going to work, kid,” I said, shaking them off me. “You’re going to get us all killed.”
“It already has worked.”
He pushed off toward the command deck, and the lit end of a shock baton prodded me in the back before I had a chance to do anything else. The same kind that Pervenio Corp. used to use to keep disgruntled Ringers from causing a stir. My body convulsed, ten-thousand volts coursing through me. I continued to twitch even after the guards stuffed me into the pod and hooked me up, unable to scream at them for fear of vomiting.
Then they closed me in. The worst part about it other than the silence wasn’t that I knew Kale was right, but that he was also smart enough to put me under. Aria had to remain at the ship’s controls just in case, but with my brain shut off, I wouldn’t have any time to think of a way to get us out of this.
I’d have to improvise in the thick of it, the way I used to when I was a Collector. No more scheming. If I was going to clean up this mess, I’d have to be the one thing I feared was no longer possible. Myself.
Malcolm Graves. The finest Collector there ever was...in another lifetime maybe.
CHAPTER THIRTY-FOUR
KALE TRASS
More than a month on a ship with nothing to do had never gone faster. It was my second time being invited to the core planets of Sol, only this time our host thought I was already defeated. And this time, I would actually make a difference.
We were right on schedule. It was M-Day when the tiny, metal-rich asteroid known as Undina appeared through the Cora’s viewport, drifting harmlessly in orbit. The holiday was when Earthers celebrated the fact that three centuries ago a meteorite the size of a small moon slammed into their planet but they survived the threat of extinction.
Beyond Undina, Earth and its moon Luna grew closer and closer. I’d never seen the blue and brown orb of their half-drowned planet before, swirling with clouds as if it were alive. Stories said it was once lush and green all over, but now there was a single, vast ocean with spots of land after the Meteorite caused tides to rise. Offworlders who immigrated to Titan always talked about how beautiful Earth still was from space, but to me it paled in comparison to Saturn, to those rare days when Titan’s stormy skies broke and its Ring slashed across the frozen horizon.
Today celebrations would run rampant on the world that infected my people for so long. Venta Co. was supposed to unveil the designs for the new Departure Ark that would be sent to the stars in four years after being selected for the honor, and allow their people to dream of new worlds to spread their sickness to. Only Venta Co.’s CEO remained busy blockading the Ring and cleaning up the mess Maya made of their fleet and Earth’s hostages. The man who invented the engines that would power that Ark lay asleep in my ship.
“We’re here, Maya,” I said over the Cora’s coms. It’d been days since Aria could pilot the ship. Exhaustion and pregnancy forced her onto one of the ship’s medical beds. Since she was the only doctor on board, I had to trust her when she said she was on the verge of giving birth.
“Is it everything you hoped for?” Maya replied.
“It’s so much smaller than I expected.”
“Your father said the same before he landed there.”
“And then their gravity crushed him. Even their world is designed to destroy us.”
“So is ours, Kale. One hand outside and it freezes off.”
With the threat of Madame Venta’s armada neutralized for the foreseeable future, there was time for her to scold me again over Mazrah. On the eve of our victory…just like a mother.
“How is she?” I asked.
“Alive. How’s Aria?”
“Alive.”
“She should be here, you know. Your son should be born on Titan, like we all were.”
“I need her.”
“No, Kale. You needed Javaris Venta and an asteroid. You didn’t—” She sighed. “I’m sorry, Kale.”
“For what?”
“For teaching you that killing was the only way we could change anything. And I’m sorry that I’m only saying it to you now that you’re all the way across the solar system.”
“The only thing you showed me was what needed to be done. Our people need to know that Luxarn can never hurt them again, just like they needed to know that we shouldn’t ever betray our people for an Earther.”
I switched off the coms without a goodbye. If a swift victory over Venta Co. wasn’t enough to cheer her up over what happened to Mazrah—a sister she had to beg to help her own people—then nothing would. She’d done her part to help deceive Luxarn Pervenio. Now it was my turn.
I removed my restraints and let the Cora continue on an automated course for Undina. I drifted out of the cockpit. The youngest of my men noticed me from the galley, eyes teetering on the verge of sleep.
“Is everything all right, Lord Trass?” he asked, rousing.
I glanced by him at the other Titanborn struggling to stay awake after a month-long voyage. Eight of them. Titanborn on their second mission to the inner Sol system. I didn’t know any of their names. They’d been handpicked by Gareth and Maya before we went to Mars. Now one of those two would never see a free Titan, and the other seemed to be losing her will to fight for one.
I was alone this time.
“It’s time,” I said. “Gather everyone and get to the compartment in my quarters.”
The smuggling compartment Luxarn had installed in what was supposed to be his ship was built to mask anything within from thermal and other scanners, so that he could never miss an opportunity to move something valuable. Gareth had used it to sneak out into New Beijing, grab Trevor Cross, and start all of this. Greed would be Luxarn’s downfall just like the rest of his people.
My guard bowed and left to rouse the others. I went in the other direction, toward the med bay. Aria had her arms and legs tied to the table so she didn’t float away. Her eyes were closed, a tuft of curly red hair covering one of them. Her belly was so full it looked like it was ready to burst and send my son hurtling into existence.
I drifted in as quietly as I could and drew myself along the table. I reached out slowly to rub her bulging stomach, then stopped. She needed her rest. After Malcolm and I entered Undina and turned it into a projectile, she would be the only pilot capable of keeping Earth’s defensive nuclear arsenal off us. I leaned as close as I could, until I could hear every one of her raspy breaths.
“Titan was never meant to be lived on, but it’s our world,” I whispered. “When I’m done, you won’t have to fight for it any longer. Be a better king for them than I was.” I planted a gentle kiss on Aria’s stomach, then turned to leave.
“Kale,” she whispered.
I didn’t stop. I couldn’t stop. She’d betrayed me, forced me to use her as a hostage to reach this point. I knew now that she could never be one of us, no matter who she carried. Her greatest gift to Titan would be
to ensure that my heir had an immune system strong enough to resist whatever earthborn disease our enemies might ever throw at him to try and take control, like Luxarn Pervenio had done before.
Instead, I returned to the sleep pods. My guards were busy heaving Javaris Venta out of his. Naturally, the spoiled Earther puked at once.
“Mr. Trass,” he said groggily. “What is the meaning of this? Where are we?”
“Hide him with you and keep him quiet,” I addressed my guard. “The moment we have control of the station, he will instruct you on how and where to install the engines on the asteroid’s surface.”
“Yes, Lord Trass.”
“And take Aria with you.”
“But sir, she—”
“Can’t register on their scanners either. Luxarn will be surrounded by his Cogents. We can’t risk anyone other than myself and the Collector being spotted until the time is right.”
“Of course, Lord Trass. We’ll make sure she’s comfortable. From ice to ashes.”
I nodded. Then, I signaled Malcolm’s pod to open. The intravenous tubes that kept him healthy while he was under slid out, but he didn’t move. At least, not his body. I noticed his eyelid twitch, like he was struggling to keep them closed. He was waiting to catch me off guard.
I removed Malcolm’s pulse pistol from the holster on my hip. He sprang awake suddenly, fingers grasping for my throat but squeezing only air. I’d already slid around the side of the pod and had the gun pressed up under his chin.
“I couldn’t help myself,” he said mirthfully, voice muffled by a sanitary mask.
“Get out,” I demanded.
“Are we there already?”
“Get out!” Heaving him out of the pod was easy in zero G, where Earther bulk counted for nothing.
“For Earth’s sake, give a man a moment after he wakes up from one of those things. I hate going under.” He rubbed his eyes, the same way his daughter did when she got up. “Guess I should thank you, though. It’s like sleeping in a coffin but better than months with no company except space. I’m guessing Aria isn’t talking with you much anymore, and you don’t seem to even know the names of any of the others.”
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