“For good this time.” The man was so floored even though the news was expected that he dropped Malcolm. “It’s time to go. Blow the lift.”
“What about the Collector?” asked another Titanborn.
“Cuff him and bring him too.”
“You made a promise, Kale,” Malcolm snarled. “You made a damn promise!”
I turned to him, grabbed the barrel of his pistol, and ripped it out of his hands. “And I intend to keep it, but you’re not going to want to miss this.” I waved more men over.
“Put a bullet in my head like a fucking man,” Malcolm said.
Another bout of curses echoed through the mines when he was seized. With my men’s armor on, his Earther strength was no match. They wrenched his arms behind his back and got him moving. His bullet wound had him moaning in pain, which only stirred my men to yank harder.
Another Titanborn planted an explosive charge within the lift and closed the doors. We had no idea how many Cogents were buried down in Luxarn’s den, but they wouldn’t be able to follow us. If there was another way out, it’d be too late.
“The plasmatic pulse drives are installed and triangulated,” one of the Titanborn addressed me as we turned and set off through Undina’s barren tunnels. He had to raise his voice so I could hear him over Malcolm’s incessant grousing. “All the men are back on board the Cora, and we have a clear path.” Bodies were strewn haphazardly in our path, some armed like officers, others no more than miners. We couldn’t risk anybody making a bold move.
“Any complications?” I asked.
“None. That Earther’s instructions were all accurate. The coward gave in right away.”
“Thankfully for us. Tell them to activate all three pulse drives and open a com channel from the Cora to New London. Now.”
“Yes, Lord Trass.”
We were halfway across the station’s galley when my orders went through. A tremor shook Undina, like an earthquake, only from outside, not within. My bones chattered. Then another came, even more violent. It sent me stumbling into Malcolm and over an overturned table. My men were able to keep their balance in their armor and plucked me off him.
“What the hell was that?” Malcolm asked.
“M-Day,” I said.
Before my men grabbed him again, I watched his eyelids go wide like he’d had an epiphany. I’d wondered how long it would take him to realize that every Earther’s biggest fear was about to come true. That Javaris Venta’s plasmatic pulse drives, invented to propel an Ark ship the size of a small asteroid across Sol, were being used to do the latter.
Three and a half centuries ago, a meteorite inspired Darien Trass to send three thousand of Earth’s finest men and women to Titan. He intended for them to start a new civilization. The most brilliant minds, free of all their worldly shackles. Free to create a new paradise for man. Now a second meteorite would see my people freed from the survivors of Earth who refused to die and took that from us.
Acceleration due to a third pulse from the engines had Malcolm’s and my unarmored bodies soaring across the lobby like we were weightless. The pressure building up around my eyes was excruciating. My men snatched us out of the air before our spines cracked against the wall.
“Sorry, Lord Trass,” the Titanborn guard who caught me said. “We have to go.”
He slung me over his shoulder and took off across the lobby. Inertia fought him every step of the way, but with powered armor and mag boots, he got me to the hangar.
The Cora’s landing gear kept her planted firmly on the floor. The group trudged toward the ramp, struggling to battle the pressure despite their suits. I’d never endured sudden acceleration at this level. Even plummeting into the depths of Saturn on that luxury cruiser couldn’t compare. I couldn’t even part my lips to speak.
Pressure around my eye sockets built to the point they felt like they were going to burst. I could tell we were ascending the Cora but was slowly losing vision.
“Get him in his suit, now!” Hands fumbled across my body. I was tilted and bent until I heard the gentle hiss of a helmet sealing around my head. By the time I could focus my vision again, I was seated in the back of the Cora’s cockpit. Aria was at the controls, two guns aimed at her head. I glanced back and saw Malcolm sat slumped against the wall in the corridor to the cabin, cuffed and gritting his teeth. He too was under the gun. And last, in the copilot’s chair, sat Javaris Venta, watching through the viewport for the first time as his beloved invention worked.
Three pulsing lights as brilliant as the sun glowed on the back of Undina. Even though the asteroid was a furrowed sphere of rock, it was being propelled out of its orbit onto an unnatural course toward Earth, like a ship accelerating faster and faster.
“It really works,” Javaris marveled.
“Quiet!” One of my men smacked him.
I stood and made my way to the controls. “Aria,” I said. “Are you all right?”
“We forced her to take two G-pills,” one of my men said. “One for each of them.”
She regarded me, tears filling her eyes, then looked to her injured father. “You have to help him, Kale,” she said. “Please.”
“Keep pace with Undina,” I ordered. “If you do exactly as I say, we’ll help. You two can leave together and be done with us.”
“That wasn’t the deal,” Malcolm groaned. “Luxarn dies; she gets out.”
“And now you’ll get to join her.” I laid my hand on Aria’s shoulder, but she squirmed out from under it. “Just fly, Aria.”
“Coms are open to the USF Assembly, Lord Trass,” one of my men said.
The face of Talo Gaveren, Voice of the Assembly, appeared on the center control panel. Others ran frantically around the room behind him, but the old man tried his best to seem composed. His lips parted as he prepared to speak, but I beat him to it.
“Luxarn Pervenio is dead,” I said. “By now you’ll have realized the activity of the Undina Mining Facility is not natural. Utilizing the plasmatic pulse drives invented by Javaris Venta for your ceremony today, we have affected its orbit. In a few hours, it will slam directly into New London.”
Talo swallowed hard. “What do you want, Mr. Trass?”
“I want what we asked for on Mars. You will demand the full retreat of the Pervenio-Venta fleet, and then you will formally sign over the properties of the Ring to the Children of Titan, with no ancillary conditions. No matter whose possession they are under.”
“Mr. Trass, you have to understand. There are dozens of companies we will have to contact to gain permissions. It could take days. Weeks.”
“Do as we ask, and the asteroid will miss your capital. Fail to meet our demands and you, and all the millions around New London, will know M-Day again. This will be our only conversation until you transmit the contracts. Goodbye, Earther.”
I ended the transmission, and Javaris Venta immediately lunged at me.
“This isn’t what they were made for, you lunatic!” he screamed. My man grabbed him before he could hit me, and slammed him to the floor. “This is insanity!”
“Get him out of here,” I ordered. They obliged, and as they carried the flailing Earther out of the room, I heard Malcolm cackling.
“They’ve been preparing for another meteorite for centuries,” he said. “They’re going to blow Undina out of space.”
My men went to silence him, but I stopped them. “Do you ever feel like things happen for a reason, Graves?” I asked. “That this vessel, designed by the most brilliant visionary your people ever had, fell into our hands? And that you, for so many reasons, drove Aria to us, the most gifted pilot I’ve ever met?”
“Lord Trass,” the Titanborn behind Aria said. “They didn’t waste any time. They’ve targeted us with the full complement of their thermonuclear defensive arsenal on Luna. It’s enough to reduce Undina to pebbles before it hits.”
“Earthers.” I sighed. “Always in a rush. Aria, take us on a full burn ahead of Undina. Use everything. Shoo
t them down on approach.”
“No,” Aria said, fuming. “No, I won’t.”
“You will.” I drew my pulse pistol and aimed it at the top of Malcolm’s head. “If any of those missiles get through, your father dies. If they don’t, like I said, you’ll both walk out of this together. This is what you brought us to Mars for, Aria. Well get everything we wanted.”
“I didn’t want it like this.”
“Then you didn’t want it at all.”
“I’m not worth it, Aria,” Malcolm said. “Shoot the damn engines off of that rock and end this.”
“Destroy the missiles, or I’ll make him suffer like an Earther deserves.” I knelt and wrapped my armored fingers around Malcolm’s throat. As I did, I pressed my pistol into his wound. Just like I had to Luxarn. He writhed beneath me, but now I had my armor on, and putting the Earther in his place was even easier.
“Do it!” I bellowed.
“Fine!” Aria answered. “But I swear, this is it. I thought your people were worth helping. I thought you were worth it...but you’re just as bad as they are. Everybody is just as bad.”
She threw our engines into full burn, passing over Undina. Based on Javaris’s calculations, the pulse drives provided such powerful thrust it’d eventually be moving well beyond our ability to catch up, but Undina was massive. Engines had been used to generate a faster spin for asteroid colonies to help with pseudo-gravity, but never to literally alter their trajectory at such a measure.
I raised Malcolm by the throat, planted him in one of the chairs, and locked him in. Then I held onto the back of Aria’s chair, magnetizing my boots so that the G forces of our burn didn’t throw me around the command deck. Dozens of thin blue trails raced away from Luna, an arsenal developed specifically to keep another meteorite from hitting Earth. We knew about it thanks to data found on Pervenio Station after we took over, and we also knew that the warheads, while immensely powerful, had been developed before the Great Reunion ever happened. They were intended to neutralize a rogue asteroid by using a drill on the tip to burrow into the crust before detonating, but they weren’t prepared to stop an asteroid from being hurled at Earth on purpose.
“How do I operate the weapons systems?” the Titanborn who took the copilot’s chair asked.
Aria smacked his hands. “I’ll handle it.” The movement made her wince and grab at her bulging stomach. I couldn’t imagine that handling these G forces while in her condition was easy, even with G-pills in her system, but we needed her. Our son’s future needed her, just this last time.
“Let her,” I ordered.
The Titanborn leaned back, and Aria transferred all controls to her station. Her fingers darted across the screens with such grace it was as if she were dancing. The Cora raced up over Undina, the rocky surface rushing beneath us. Aria targeted the first wave of thermonukes and hit one with a missile. It detonated with a flash of blue so dazzling I had to shield my eyes, taking all other nukes in the vicinity with it.
The Cora quickly spiraled downward, taking the viewport within meters of Undina as we escaped the blooming cloud of plasma from the nuke. Then Aria whipped us back around and took aim at another wave. All the vastness of space, and her targeting abilities made it seem small. She was shooting only using scanners, no visual of the nukes—blind.
The warheads came from silos all over Luna, so they were staggered. She wove in and out of nuclear fire, just barely scraping by, with Undina barreling onward in our wake. With every nuke she disabled, she was forced to push the Cora faster. Javaris’ engines had Undina accelerating exponentially.
We reached the orbital altitude around Errth as the moon, closing fast. Aria fired all the Cora’s missiles in a perfect line, detonating them to form a wall of shrapnel. A handful of nukes got caught in it, releasing a destructive wave of energy like I’d never seen. She whipped the Cora downward, pushing our engines to their max.
Even my magnetized boots and armor couldn’t hold, and I slid back across the floor. I nearly crushed Malcolm on my way toward thumping into the wall. Then Aria leveled us off, skirting beneath the wave of nuclear death.
Two warheads continued their path toward Undina, closing fast. Aria’s fingers trembled now as she worked the targeting array. I could hear her breathing heavily. She got a lock and fired. The missile clipped one in its engine and sent it sputtering on the wrong path, but she missed the other. A last-minute spray of flak wasn’t enough to stop it. It struck Undina, burrowing through the surface before a flash of blue blew a chunk off the asteroid.
Aria held her breath as we watched the newly-hewn, miniature asteroid spin off into the void. It was a sizeable portion of Undina, but the rest of it remained intact, and there were no more warheads en route. Enough mass still to level New London and every settlement on the continent.
“That’s all of them,” Aria exhaled.
She laid off the throttle, and I immediately got up and rushed forward. I craned my neck to look through the viewport at Earth, now front and center. The wispy clouds coating its surface were growing in detail. String-like settlements running across portions of the planet that remained above the surface were now thin black lines extending for hundreds of kilometers. After the Meteorite, that was how Earthers built their cities, in long stretches rather than clumps so that they were safe from single explosions. Safety from extinction drove everything they did.
The protuberance in the largest string was the city of New London, where the USF Assembly and so many other corporate headquarters sat. And if I could look down and see them now, it meant that all the millions of people gathered for celebration could look up and see the glowing outline of Undina crashing toward them like a fireball. That they feared judgment again.
CHAPTER THIRTY-SEVEN
MALCOLM GRAVES
As I watched from my seat at the back of the command deck, I couldn’t help but be impressed with a man I’d grown to hate. Kale Trass was an insufferable freedom fighter who couldn’t see beyond his own nose to know what he already had. Yet he’d played his hand perfectly all the same.
He traveled to Mars to give a face to the rebellion and kidnap the genius they needed. He used Aria, Mazrah, Orson Fring, me, and so many others to get exactly what he wanted. To fuel his people’s anger or stoke Earth’s fear. Maybe I’d lost a ton of blood and was disappointed he’d forced me off Undina alive, but a man like me, who spent his life chasing rebels, had to admire his relentlessness.
“Anything from the USF?” Kale asked.
“A transmission started coming through the moment the last warhead went offline,” Aria said reluctantly. She slowly pulled the video message to the main screen.
“You win, Mr. Trass,” Talo said, looking like he was ready to faint. “I’ve transmitted signed documents satisfying your demands. The Ring belongs to you now, provided you divert the current course of Undina. I hope you do well with it alone. Goodbye, Mr. Trass. This is the last time Earth will ever deal with you.”
As soon as the message ended, I clapped. Everyone turned to me so fast it was like I’d set off a bomb. “Well played,” I said. “My whole life I never saw Earth or the major corps. blink, and you made them shit themselves in less than an hour.”
“How do I divert it?” Aria asked, clearly eager to move on with the subject.
Kale didn’t answer. He leaned toward the viewport, hands squeezing the backs of the seats on either side of him. Big, beautiful Earth hovered in the center. It’d been exactly a year since I’d been there, the last M-Day when the Children of Titan first made their existence known beyond their own world by blowing up a building in New London and robbing a hospital. They’d come far in a short time. Now Undina raced through space toward the very same city, a trail of blinding light at its back.
“You don’t,” Kale said emotionlessly. Hearing his response made my heart feel like it’d fallen out of my chest. Again, it could’ve been the bullet wound, but I felt empty.
“What are you talking about?” A
ria asked.
“Plot a course for Titan. We’re going home.”
“You made a deal to divert Undina.”
“And now they’ll learn how worthless deals with them truly are.”
“They gave you want you wanted!” Aria went to shove him, but he grabbed her arm and squeezed. That snapped me out of a spell of lightheadedness, but I couldn’t manage much more than to sit up.
“Do you really think a signature makes Titan ours?” Kale asked. “They’ll be back for us tomorrow, using trade and credits for leverage. They’ll do what Earthers do. This M-Day will change everything. They take us seriously now, but after this is over, they will fear us. It won’t matter if the deal is ruined because they won’t be able to touch us. They’ll be stuck rebuilding their civilization for decades. Until our son is ruling over the Ring. That is how we win. Not with signed papers.”
If there is one thing I’ve learned about rebels, the moment they’re proficient enough to get you to respect them, they show their true colors. The moment you think they have an actual vision, they reveal their narcissism. Unable to fit in with the way the world works, so they try to write it in their own image.
“There are millions of people down there, and you’re just going to wipe them out?” I asked. “Innocent people. Good people.” I’d never cared a smidge for the rabble of Earth, but it was a Collector’s job, more than anything, to ensure they could live peacefully. The Amissum clan family was down there, a few kilometers outside New London. That group of hardworking factory laborers I was born into before I ran to seek better things. They probably didn’t know enough about Ringers to even care about looking down on them.
“Kale, don’t do this,” Aria begged. “I know you’re hurt, but I’ve seen the good in you. I fell in love with that man. None of that was fake.”
Kale continued to stare at Earth. I remembered how the Pervenio Directors always appeared after striking a solid deal or weaseling their way out of trouble thanks to a Collector’s talents. Like they were conquering heroes. Kale seemed neither proud nor solemn. He was relieved.
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