Screams filled the room. Voices in every direction shouted things like “It’s one of them!” or “Shoot him!”
Anyone in the refectory with a gun unloaded blindly toward the dark tunnel I’d emerged from, but not before I was able to sprint out unseen and duck down behind an upturned table. They were making it too easy. I waited until they had to reload and was careful to remember which of the handful of heat signatures were shaking from firing pulse-rifles. They were incapacitated in short order when I leaped out of cover and flanked them.
I felt young again. Not many missions called for taking on a group of armed combatants these days. When I first started out as a collector, little rebellions broke out all the time, on all the many colonies popping up around the solar system. Credits rolled in faster than I could count, but the more the corporations sank their talons into the solar system, the less wild it got. Presently, most of my assignments consisted of hits on poor saps who thought they could steal from Pervenio and get away with it. It got tedious.
“Look, boys! We ask to negotiate, and they send in one of their killers!” a new speaker bellowed. It was the only one who didn’t sound the least bit terrified, which I deduced meant it was their brash leader, Yev Tavar.
The headlights of a mining crawler flashed on, flooding me in a radiance so bright that I had to yank up my spotters. The vehicle consisted of an oblong operating cockpit sitting atop six spindly legs, like those of a spider. With those, it could easily clamber around the walls of the hollows blown open for mining where there was essentially no gravity, and use the blades set along its front to carve out minerals into the storage basin attached to its bottom. The vehicle’s engine roared to life, and it charged at me.
I stood my ground. Bullets fired from the rifles of the other miners pinged off tables or whizzed by my ears. I aimed my pistol at the crawler’s cockpit as long as I could, until I could see the face of the man within it. I squeezed the trigger right before I dove out of the way. The vehicle promptly slammed into the wall behind me, its legs still thrashing.
Now that I was back in darkness, I was able to escape the sights of the remaining miners with guns. I hit one in the kneecap and two others in their collarbones. When the last one fell, the only sound that remained were the moans of the injured. The others had either fled or hid in the shadows, waiting for the fight to come to a conclusion.
I hurried over to the crawler and climbed on top. The control console in the cockpit flickered as its legs began to die out. A circular gash pierced the center of the glass, and Yev Tavar lay in the seat behind it. Blood leaked out of a wound in the center of his chest. Using the external controls, I popped open the glass lid, then ripped him out. He squealed in pain as he tumbled over the side of the vehicle.
“I’ll applaud you for a solid fight,” I panted as I hopped down and knelt over his body. “But you couldn’t have thought this would work.”
“Better…” He spit up a glob of blood. “Better to try. One day, you and all those Pervenio bastards will pay for how you treat us. All I wanted was a fair negotiation.”
I tapped him on the forehead with the barrel of my gun. “You lost your rights to negotiate when you murdered the security team posted here,” I said. I got tired of giving the same speech to every righteous dissident.
“Murdered?” He started laughing so hard that blood sprayed all over my coat. He raised his shaking right hand and pointed to a generous exit leading out of the refectory. “They’re alive. Through there, tied up in the hangar.”
“How kind of you. Maybe for that, I’ll let you have a quick death.”
“We’ll… all have one now… because of you.”
I watched his gaze sweep away from my face and down toward his left hand where a hand-terminal was concealed. It didn’t take me long to realize what he meant. I shot him right between the eyes, but not before he was able to key a command. The exterior hangar of sector D opened without first depressurizing.
It was a neat trick, hacking into the hangar controls and syncing them to both his own hand-terminal and the mobile generators they were relying on. One that would require at least some level of expertise. I know I should’ve seen the device in his hand, but clearly, the directors had missed something when they’d briefed me on him. No lifer in a mine should’ve been capable of something so complex.
A loud whistling tore through the refectory. My body was towed along with it, more forcefully with each passing second. I grabbed hold of one of the mining crawler’s heavy legs before my own were thrust into the air. With my other hand, I clutched Yev’s arm. The squeals of the miners he’d decided to take down with him echoed as they too were yanked into the air and through the opening.
Tables, chairs, light fixtures torn from the walls; they all flew by me. Even the substantially sized mining crawler screeched across the steel floor. I’d have followed everything else through the refectory’s exit and across the hangar into the vacuum of space if the crawler hadn’t rotated so far that its long side wasn’t able to squeeze through.
I found myself pinned tightly against the vehicle by a pressure so violent, it felt as if my rib cage was going to cave in. From the mess hall, a knife zoomed toward me. I'd have closed my eyes if I could, but the blade glanced off the Ark figurine in my pocket and twirled out into the hanger.
After that, I watched a few bodies, including Grant’s, be sucked out through the space above the jammed crawler, but somehow I managed to hold on to Yev without passing out. My hand slipped down his arm until I was able to locate the hand-terminal within his clenched grip. I snatched it before releasing him to the great vacuum.
I couldn’t pull my arm back in front of me to see, so I started blindly keying at the screen of the device. It didn’t matter what I pressed. If I didn’t do something fast, there would be no oxygen left for me anyway. A roar of agony gathered in the bottom of my throat from having my body tugged on as if I were a children’s doll being fought over by two jealous brothers.
When it was almost too much to bear, I must’ve stroked the correct key because the deafening howl of air being sucked out into space suddenly quieted. The mining crawler plummeted, and me with it until I sat against its fractured chassis, wheezing. My limbs were so sore that I could barely feel them, let alone move them. My Ark figurine lay half out of my pocket. Since I was too weak to grab and lift it, I tipped my body over and kissed it a few times.
“Can’t get rid of me that easy,” I wheezed. I kissed it one last time, then nudged it back to safety. My daughter always said it was lucky, and I hadn’t let it out of my sight since the last time I saw her.
From halfway on the floor, I had to use my shoulder and the hauler to slide my spotters down over my eyes. I searched for the heat signatures of anyone else who’d somehow survived. I couldn’t find a single one.
I imagine the miners of sector D would’ve spaced Yev right at the beginning of the strike if they’d known what he was going to do just to hit Pervenio Corp in the wallet. As if any single man could affect that.
Offworlders… the bastards never learn.
TWO
For the first time in a long time, I was on vacation. Well, forced vacation to be more precise. At least that was what Director Sodervall called it. After cleaning up the mess on 92-Undina, that was to be my punishment for what happened. He demanded I take some time off to “relax under the pleasant g conditions of our beloved homeworld.” Like I was some sort of old man.
Sure, what happened on Undina could’ve been avoided, but it had nothing to do with my age. No one can predict the shit that happens on a job. If Pervenio had provided better intel that mentioned Yev used to be a programmer on Mars for Venta Co, then maybe I would’ve been more cautious with him. Still, there was no way to ignore a death toll of nearly fifty—including the ten security officers that Yev Tavar was holding captive—due to the hangar opening. Not to mention that an entire sector of the Undina Mine had been rendered in need of heavy repairs.
; Thirty years of loyal service kept me from having the ten thousand credits I was owed rescinded as a result, but it wasn’t enough to change Sodervall’s mind about me needing a break, no matter how ready I was to get back to it.
“Take a week or two to get your muscles right,” he’d said through my hand-terminal. “We’ll send you to New London. It’ll be M-Day when you get down, and there’ll be plenty to drink.”
He knew me too well. I wasn’t the kind of man to say no to a drink. I fought him as much as I could to keep up appearances, but in the end, it was an order, and I had no other means of getting assignments without directors backing me. So I swallowed my pride and hopped onto a shuttle bound for the capital of human civilization: New London, Earth. At the very least, I had a shiny new pile of credits to spend, which would make the punishment of being stuck in New London on M-Day more bearable.
Shortly after arriving, I settled into a suite at the most luxurious Pervenio-owned hotel in the city. I thought about catching up on some much-needed sleep, but the whole situation had me too irked to lie still. Instead, I decided to brave the unruly crowd of Earthers flooding the city for M-Day and find a place to get a glass of whiskey where I wouldn’t be sweating by the time I ordered it.
It was a tall order. The streets were mobbed. M-Day, the day that commemorated the exact moment, three centuries ago, when the fiery Meteorite crashed into Earth, was the most important holiday in all of Sol, especially for anyone who grew up on Earth like me. Hell, it was the only holiday for us, and people would come from all over the solar system to fill its largest city to celebrate the fact that, even though Armageddon had come, humanity endured.
Men would dress in their finest tunics and the women in sparkling gowns that matched the vibrant hues of their made-up faces. Most of them probably couldn’t afford their extravagant getups, but on M-Day, every Earther in New London got to pretend they were a part of the wealthy elite. They’d get drunk, they’d get merry, and they’d get a little too brazen for my taste.
I’d worked security in New London when I was younger, so I knew what it was like to flash a badge at a crowd of drunken Earthers who felt like they were invincible. Those were a few of the innumerable reasons that M-Day was my least favorite time to be on Earth.
The crowds were the worst part, though. It took me a few blocks of scouring the upper-level walkways of New London to spot a bar that looked like it had enough room for me to squeeze in. Even then, I had to step over the legs of a passed-out drunkard and push through a row of market stands to get to the door. I shook my head as I passed the vendors selling artifacts from pre-Meteorite Earth; everything from broken tech to utensils. Buying garbage like that was another thing people did on M-Day, though I’d wager at least ninety percent of it was counterfeit.
The bar was a tiny place called the Molten Crater. It was tucked into an alley across from the maglev rail station cutting through the center of the city. Only half the sign remained lit. For the life of me, I couldn’t recall whether I’d been there before.
It may have been less crowded than any other bar, but hundreds of Earthers were packed inside. Booths running down the long wall were overflowing, the fabric of the seats stained and shredded from people standing on them, lying on them, or worse. The profits from the holiday were always worth the inevitable repairs. Every so often, the entire crowd glanced up from their drinks at the bright view-screens bolted to tin-paneled walls, eagerly waiting for the broadcast of the M-Day address to commence. By my count, it wouldn’t start for another hour or so.
I weaved my way across the room, which reeked of spilled beer mixed with whatever else happened to be on the filthy, faux-wood floors. Everyone who noticed me stopped what they were doing to sneak a look.
My loose duster was purposely pulled open just enough to reveal the pulse-pistol dangling from my belt and a sliver of the Pervenio emblem printed near the shoulder of my shirt. I always chose to wear the gun on Earth as long as it was permitted. No Earther would bother me if they thought I was on duty, even though I wasn’t. Half of them were probably nervous I was going to put a bullet in the backs of their heads over something foolish they’d done years before. People have a way of thinking their mistakes are far more significant than they really are.
Once I finally made it to the bar, everyone quickly returned to their conversations, as if nothing more than a ghost had passed by and given them a shiver. Every stool was taken, so I leaned on the counter in a narrow space beside a plump Earther who was seeing how big a glass he could put down in one gulp to impress a group of finely dressed strangers. It wasn’t sitting, but it at least provided my weary legs with a much-needed break.
The bartender was a young Earther woman, pretty and with her hair dyed purple. I ordered a whiskey and slapped down my Pervenio ID, linked directly to my personal credit account.
When she returned with my drink, she swiped my ID through a scanner and perused the information that popped up for a moment. She grinned and shook her head.
“First one’s free today, Mr. Graves,” she said before moving on to the next customer.
I wasn’t going to complain. After spending a nice chunk of my reward for killing Yev Tavar on my hotel room, I wanted to make sure the credits I had would last me my whole unwanted vacation. They could be tough to come by, and even as a collector, I was prone to living job-to-job.
I lifted the cold, perspiring glass to my lips and took a swig. It was a foul bit of swill, no doubt as artificial as it was cheap. They always served the inexpensive stuff for the M-Day crowds. I reluctantly forced a mouthful down my gullet and placed it back on the bar, trying to ignore the pale reflection of myself that stared back at me from the glass. Sometimes I forgot how gray my hair was getting, or how there seemed to be a new wrinkle forming somewhere on my face every morning.
While I stood there, wondering where the years had gone, the space to my right was vacated and a slender man promptly squeezed in to order a water. I glanced over. There was no doubt he was an offworlder and not some recent immigrant to a Mars colony where getting some sun through the shielded domes could be even easier than it was on always-cloudy Earth. No, the man had the look of a Ringer born on Saturn’s moon, Titan.
Like all Ringers, he was excessively tall and lean with knobby joints that appeared more delicate than they really were and a long face atop his lengthy neck, which was as white and veiny as a slate of polished marble. What really gave him away, however, was the sanitary mask pulled tight across his mouth and nose to go along with the rubbery gloves yanked halfway up his forearms. I’d been to Titan, so I knew its people wore all that protection to keep from getting sick around Earthers. For that reason, among others, it was exceedingly rare to see one on Earth’s surface. None of his precautions seemed to be working very well either. The skin around his inflamed eyes was dark and saggy. Each grating breath he took sounded like a struggle.
Not wanting to get caught staring, I turned my attention to the view-screens behind the bar.
An advertisement interrupted the local newscast.
“Help preserve the human race!” a rousing male voice said as a recording panned across a post-apocalyptic scene. A burning tree sat on a hill overlooking a ruined skyline—a glorified reproduction of Earth after the Meteorite hit back in 2034. “Colonies throughout the solar system await your arrival, and Pervenio Corporation is proud to aid you in your transition. Help us add our domes to the crimson surface of Mars, or help with the harvesting of vital gases on the Ring. The fight to ensure our survival rests in your hands!”
The ad ended with the emblem of Pervenio Corp—a crimson helix wrapped around a crooked branch—projected over a crowd of people who were waving off a massive ship headed up into space. A small patch of text—which most people missed—popped up at the bottom of the screen, indicating all that couldn’t be promised when someone decided to move offworld—most significantly, their safety or legitimate work.
For everyone who grew up on Earth, i
t was one of countless century-old ads put out by the USF or any of its sanctioned corporations encouraging the diffusion of the human race. After the Meteorite drowned half the planet and nearly wiped out humanity, that was the creed that drove the survivors. The idea was not to risk extinction by staying secluded on Earth.
I’d grown weary of the message by the time I could speak. To me, it was like listening to a song I’d heard so many times, that when it came on, I found myself mouthing the words without really enjoying or realizing it.
For the offworlder I’d assumed to be a Ringer beside me, the ad evoked a far different reaction. Even under his mask, I could see the twitch of resentment pulling at his lips, and the rage filling his bloodshot eyes.
It was easy to understand why. In A.D. 2031, when the colossal meteor somehow had its course altered and was discovered to be hurtling toward Earth, a small group of scientists under the leadership of a visionary named Darien Trass turned their attention to space instead of wasting time attempting to restore its old trajectory. Trass built an Ark for three thousand people and sent it to Titan, the orange moon of Saturn. He decided back then that it was the most promising celestial body in all of Sol for human expansion due to the resources offered by it as well as the ringed gas giant it orbited. The Ring, as it became called, had everything but breathable air and warmth.
Over time, the settlers of the Ring forgot about their old world, our world, as they focused on constructing their new one. Their initial ship grew into bigger and more advanced settlements across the surface of Titan. They began adapting to the low gravity and their sunless skies, growing taller, slimmer, and paler with each ensuing generation. They even grew accustomed to the cold. On the occasions a job took me way out there, I found the temperatures in the Ringer-inhabited lower wards of their colony blocks to be unbearable. They kept them at freezing, and for them, that was like summer.
It was sometime when I was still a child that our two peoples reconnected. Those who’d stayed behind on Earth as doomsday approached, and those who’d fled for colder pastures. At first, we tried to accept each other with open arms, but as more and more immigrants from Earth flooded into the Ring, they realized it wasn’t only the Ringers’ appearance that had changed. Being in sterile environments for so many years had crippled their immune systems, and we Earthers brought with us all the bacteria and diseases that no longer affected us.
Titanborn: (Children of Titan Book 1) Page 2