The Ringer appeared more tranquil than angry. His finger grew more comfortable against the pistol’s trigger. I swallowed hard, getting ready to pounce and make my last stand, when suddenly, someone shouted.
“Drop the weapon, fugitive!”
Our heads snapped toward the origin of the voice. Zhaff’s silhouette appeared, standing between a pair of tall ruins, the yellow lens over his eye glinting. He was lining up a shot.
When I turned back to the Ringer, his lips lifted into a frail smile. “I’ll have to take you up on that drink some other time,” he whispered. “From ice to ashes.”
I realized what was about to happen and lunged out, but for the second time in too short a period, I was too slow. The Ringer turned the pistol around on himself and squeezed the trigger. The forsaken city at our backs caused the gunshot to echo as if artillery had fired. His body collapsed in a bloody heap at my feet.
NINE
A breeze whisked away the smoke hanging in the air from where the Ringer had fired my pistol. Purely out of reflex, I fell to the ground and reached for his throat to check for a pulse. I knew there was no way to survive a pulse-pistol round to the head from such close range. A gruesome, fist-sized hole was blown through the side of his skull, and his ghastly eyes stared toward the murky sky without blinking.
Zhaff arrived beside me in what seemed like an instant; his grim, emotionless façade aimed in my direction. “I told you to wait,” he said, his always-flinty voice bearing only the slightest indication of the irritation his words conveyed.
I got to my feet, straightened my duster, and mustered the brazenness of a veteran collector. “He spotted me first,” I said. “I didn’t have a choice. I had him right where I wanted before you showed up and spooked him.”
Zhaff’s eye-lens zoomed in on my face. He was so close that I could see all its components and apertures working tirelessly behind the glossy yellow surface. “You’re lying,” he stated.
“What about you? You had the shot while he was still aiming at me. If we’re going to be partners, you damn well better take it next time!”
“He was preferred alive.” Zhaff pointed to a fresh bullet hole etched in the frozen dirt only a meter away. I hadn’t noticed it earlier. “He turned the pistol on himself precisely as I fired a disarming shot at his hand.”
I looked back to the spot where I’d seen Zhaff aiming from. It was fifty meters away at least. “That’s a long way to be shooting at such a small target with my life on the line.”
“I would not have missed,” Zhaff responded with unnerving certainty. “He is worth little to Pervenio dead.”
“We get paid either way, dammit!” Saying those words out loud helped me remember that the Ringer was worth less to me dead as well.
I clenched my jaw. I knew I’d messed up. I wouldn’t have survived so long as a collector if I couldn’t recognize that. And I knew Zhaff could read it all over my face, but I wasn’t going to give the Cogent the satisfaction of hearing it. Missing out on double the credits by a fraction of a second had me irked enough as it was. Coming up short on another mission made me sick to my stomach.
I bent down next to the body and got to work prying its cold, locked fingers off my pistol’s grip. When I finally got it free and lifted it, the sky was already so dark it was hard to tell how bloody it was. I scraped the barrel against the rigid ground to clean it off as best as I could.
“What did you say to him to make him shoot himself?” Zhaff asked, breaking the silence.
I glanced up at him. I couldn’t tell if he was trying to be funny or not, if he was even capable of that.
“What did I say to him?” I said. “Trust me, this is the first time I’ve ever seen this. I’ve hunted men and women from every background you can imagine. New immigrants, old immigrants, rich and poor. Hell, I’ve even tracked down some crazed preachers of the Three Messiahs. I’ve seen them look into the end of this gun and be ready to abandon everything they ever believed in just for a few more hopeless breaths. Given the same chance as this Ringer, none of them would’ve spared my life, let alone pulled the trigger on themselves.”
“It is likely he had information about the bombing and didn’t want to risk interrogation,” Zhaff said.
“And let me guess. You would’ve gotten it out of him if we captured him alive?” I tried and failed not to allow my irritation to infiltrate my tone.
“It is a distinct possibility. I have had extensive training in extracting information—”
I cut him off. “Trust me, any man willing to do that wasn’t going to get anything pried out of him. Not even by you. It’s archaic, suicide. You’d think after a meteorite almost wiped us all out that a man wouldn’t be so quick to take his own life.” The sentiments of the USF were spewing right out of my mouth before I was able to contain them.
“His people did not experience the Meteorite.”
My brow furrowed. I couldn’t say anything in response to that bit of truth. Still, as I stared down at the body again, I couldn’t help but wonder what it’d be like to be willing to die for something real, something more than credits. I could picture the Ringer’s face right before the shot went off in my mind. He didn’t hesitate at all. Pure conviction, and for what, I wasn’t sure. It didn’t make any sense to me.
“I have already contacted Pervenio airships for retrieval,” Zhaff said. “They will be here as soon as possible.”
“I don’t suppose you’ll tell them this couldn’t be avoided?” I asked, suddenly not feeling very much like I was in control. Once the directors found out about how I botched the capture of a potential lead, I’d no doubt be sent back on mandatory vacation, or worse. Forced retirement seemed just as likely a scenario.
Zhaff didn’t answer. I watched him kneel to further evaluate the corpse. He lifted the Ringer’s head and looked through the gaping wound in the side of it. Even while doing something so undignified, each of his motions was executed with unbelievable deftness. His movements were so rote, it was as if he’d done it a hundred times, even though I knew he was only recently out of training.
It finally dawned on me. Zhaff was young, precise, loyal, driven by an unyielding sense of logic, and he likely didn’t even require payment outside of his meals. All I was really doing out in the middle of the wilderness was helping to groom my own replacement.
The notion sent a chill up my spine so palpable I had to sit. We had a wait ahead of us while the Pervenio airships were en route. I left Zhaff to whatever it was he was doing and headed into the ruined shack nearby to take advantage of what little shelter it could provide.
Half an hour passed with me unsuccessfully trying to keep warm. The shack’s crumbled walls were enough to block the wind, but the full coming of night was making the air even colder. It got so dark out that I couldn’t even see my own hands, which would’ve been fine if I was able to sleep. The only light came from outside, from the faint glow of Zhaff’s hand-terminal as the Cogent continued to analyze the Ringer’s likely frozen-solid body.
As our wait extended to an hour, I started contemplating what I might be capable of doing after retirement. I had a few ideas what old collectors out of a job did until their inevitable deaths. Most of us never made it that far, and those I knew who did led secluded lives.
I could open up a restaurant on Mars, maybe, if I knew anything about cooking. Or maybe I could get a gig training security officers on burgeoning Europa. Corporations were always searching for men with field experience to help on new colonies, and that seemed to fit my wheelhouse. Though I had a feeling I’d wind up like the Ringer lying outside if I was forced to live the rest of my life doing that.
None of it had the appeal of hunting marks as they fled throughout Sol, bounties on their heads. The only possibility I sincerely entertained was spending my twilight years tracking down my daughter to see if I could even get a few words out of her in person before the end. That, at least, seemed like something as challenging as being a collector.
My hand absentmindedly fell to my pocket and Aria’s toy. I flipped it between my fingers. For whatever reason, watching the Ringer blow his own brains out caused her to stick in my head. It could’ve been because I actually felt a tiny bit of pity for him after he’d brought up how he lost his own child. More likely, what had happened merely reminded me of another mission I’d screwed up back when Aria was the closest thing I had to a partner.
It was six years ago, and we were back on her homeworld, Mars. I’d asked for her help with a mission, and she reluctantly agreed. It was the last time she ever did…
I sidled around a corner, pistol drawn. I was surrounded by total darkness, and I had my barrel-fixed light off so I wouldn’t draw attention. My spotters rested on the top of my head. No heat signatures were in sight, so they wouldn’t accomplish much covering my eyes. The darkness didn’t bother me. The smell of the sewer I was in was horrid enough, so seeing what I was standing in might’ve been enough to make me gag anyway.
My hand grazed the moist, ribbed wall beside me so I could keep my bearings as I trudged forward. My feet sloshed through half a meter’s worth of shit and who knows what else. If I didn’t know any better, I’d have thought I was traipsing through the innards of a giant.
They were the waste trenches beneath Mars’s oldest colony, New Beijing, tracing dark webs beneath a tiny terraformed portion of the planet covered by a dome. Garbage, excrement, used water—they carried everything unwanted out of the colony and dumped it all in rocky trenches exposed on the planet’s surface.
I’d spent a larger portion of my life down in the sewers beneath Mars’s many domed colonies than I cared to admit. Most of them were extensive enough to serve as perfect hideouts for the homeless, prostitutes, and fugitives. It was inside them where I’d met Aria’s mother years back, and where she herself was born. Most people didn’t delve as deeply into them as I was then, but Elios Sevari, the offworlder I was after, was clearly desperate to stay hidden.
He’d stolen valuables from a Pervenio merchant stationed in another Martian city and fled to New Beijing. The Red Planet was split among many corporations, and while New Beijing was run by Venta Co, it was hard to escape the influence of my employers. Still, I was on rival turf, so I couldn’t take the man down on the surface where I’d be seen.
Elios stayed holed up somewhere in the sewers, only ever surfacing to find fences through which he could gradually sell all his stolen items. That was where my daughter came in. Aria was a perfect choice for the role of a black-market trader. By that time, she was a beautiful young woman, with fiery hair as red as the planet she was from, and skin as fair as milk. Offworlders were easily drawn to one another, so I knew it wouldn’t be hard for her to catch Elios’s eye. She only agreed to help after I promised her that she was just trying to catch him in the act of breaking the law and that nobody would get hurt.
I’d sent her into an underground cantina in New Beijing to earn his trust. After meeting Elios, however, she went missing with him for the better part of two weeks, only making contact once over Solnet to send me the merchandise she’d falsely purchased from him. I was confident that I’d taught her well enough how to survive and deceive, but I won’t say I wasn’t nervous for her life. So I’d taken things into my own hands and followed her trail into the old waste trenches to help her bring Elios down.
I rounded another corner and heard talking up ahead. I stopped, crouched, and glanced at my hand-terminal, taking care that no light would escape from the screen. A red blip on my radar displayed the location of a tracking program I’d planted in the Ark Ship figurine on Aria’s necklace when she’d gotten older and tougher to keep track of. She didn’t know it was there, but it was just in case things ever went wrong and her true identity was discovered.
I stopped and decided to finally pull my spotters over my eyes. I made sure to keep my gaze straight ahead, and after a short, malodorous walk through sludge, I found a cluster of heat signatures, Aria’s among them. I breathed a sigh of relief. She was alive.
I shuffled forward, the current of the muck covering the sound of my movement. I got close enough to distinguish the other heat signatures. There was Aria, the fugitive, Elios, as well as a child—a young boy—on the landing of a service station that popped up from the slosh.
“Elios Sevari, you are wanted by Pervenio Corporation for robbery in the first degree,” I announced. All their heads snapped toward me. Elios scrambled to the child and held out his arms to block him.
“Run!” Elios hollered to the boy. Tiny feet splashed through the sewers away from us. The boy couldn’t move fast with the muck rising to his slender waist.
“Come peacefully, and you will spend the next five years in a cell aboard Pervenio station. Resist, and the punishment is death,” I warned.
Elios slowly knelt in surrender, but as he did, Aria stepped in front of him. She switched on the light of her hand-terminal and illuminated the sewers. I lifted my spotters to see her plainly.
“Stop, Dad!” Aria yelled. “I won’t let you take him!”
“Dad?” Elios asked.
“Just pretend you never found him,” she continued. “I already gave you what he stole, and he’ll return the credits. He doesn’t deserve this after… after everything.”
“Dad…” Elios repeated.
He was behind Aria, but he crawled over toward a pile of bowls still full of some manner of leftover lumpy soup. In the light, I truly saw him for the first time. His left arm was a mangled stump beneath the hollow sleeve of his boiler suit, and that side of his face was also mottled with shiny scars that stretched all the way up to his receded hairline.
“I’m begging you,” Aria pleaded. “Just let him go.”
“You know I can’t do that, girl,” I said. “He doesn’t have to get hurt anymore today, though.”
“You liar!” Elios spat at Aria. His voice spoke of heartbreak and betrayal. “A collector all along.” He glared at Aria with disgust. He bent down, and as he did, I noticed the pulse-pistol lying beneath the rim of one of the bowls.
“Liar!” he screamed as he tightened his only hand around the grip. Before he could move any further, I buried a bullet in his chest.
The gun flew from Elios’s hand and got lost beneath the muck. Aria dove to catch him but was too late. He slammed against the ground, and she was left cradling his limp body in her arms. Elios tried to speak, but all that came out was a glob of blood before the life fled his eyes.
When the child heard the gunshot, he stopped running, turned around, and shrieked. He hadn’t been able to get far. “Papa?” he asked, voice shaking. He was skinnier than even offworlders ought to be.
Aria gazed up at me, tears running down her muddied cheeks. Her lips were quivering.
I stared, unable to lower my weapon. I’d never seen her look so shattered, and it didn’t take me long to realize that the reason they were so deep in the sewers was that she hadn’t intended for me to find them. She’d pretended to buy the goods from him and squared the debt, hoping that I wouldn’t follow, but I did. I always got my man, no matter the cost.
“Why, Dad?” she whimpered. “He was only trying to keep them fed.”
“He went for the gun—”
“You weren’t supposed to find us!” she snapped. “He had no other choice! An accident in the water plant crippled him, and Pervenio wouldn’t let him work anymore. Oh, Elios.” She squeezed his head against her chest. As she did, his son got close enough to see his father covered in blood and began to sob uncontrollably.
“I didn’t know,” I said. “But he was going to hurt you.” I was being honest. It’s not a collector’s job to ask questions. I did what was asked of me and made a good living doing it. That was probably why Pervenio had kept me on for so long.
“I deserved it…”
She stared down into Elios’s glassy eyes, and then placed her lips against his, blood and all. I could hear her whispering to him. The sight of her like that made
me feel sick. Who knew what lies he’d spewed to win her affections.
I waited there for a few minutes as the three of them wept, not sure what to do. Eventually, the foul stench got the better of me. “Aria,” I said, “we’ve got to go.”
She wrapped her arms around his limp body and squeezed. “I’m not leaving him.”
“Yes, you are. If Venta Co finds out we were operating here, there’ll be hell to pay.”
I reached out to soothe her, but she pulled away. “I’m not leaving him!” she shouted. She started to cry into Elios’s chest, and I placed my arm on her shoulder. That time, she didn’t fight it.
“Aria, it’s not easy what we do, but it’s necessary,” I said. “Say your goodbyes, and then we have to get rid of him.”
She slowly rose to her feet without looking back at me. “You do it, then,” she said, voice dripping with rancor. “Just another offworlder to you, right?”
“No, a thief and an attempted murderer,” I answered, trying not to let her tone make me lose my temper. I knelt by the body and took out my hand-terminal.
“Yup, just another offworlder.” She sloshed over to Elios’s son, head bowed. When she reached him, she turned him around and held him in her embrace. “It’s going to be okay,” she whispered. “Look at me, and it’ll all be okay.”
I waved my hand-terminal in front of Elios’s eyes to get a positive retinal ID and stored a bit of blood. Then I took a picture of his body, ensuring that I captured the bullet hole in his chest. Without his corpse, I needed something to present to Pervenio to get paid.
When I was done, I shoved him off the maintenance platform with my boot. He toppled into the muck with a splash, and then the slow current carried him along.
Titanborn: (Children of Titan Book 1) Page 9