Titanborn Read Online Free PDF Page B

sky.
    The deafening howl of engines grew so loud that it would have drowned out the crowd if they hadn’t already been rendered silent by his words. All the merchants, drunks, beggars, and security officers alike stared up at the murky sky in anticipation. Soon after, a tremendous shadow was cast over the city by the enormous ship sailing high above, right at the edge of the visible atmosphere. It was the largest one I’d ever seen, which was saying something. The details were impossible to make out from so far away, but the thing was easily a kilometer in length and had an equally long, blue-hued stream of distortion trailing behind its twin ion-engines.
    Awestruck applause started to build while the
Hermes
soared by. Without realizing it at first, even I began clapping softly. The ship soared in and out of the layered clouds, too large to be obscured by any single one. If life existed on whatever planet it wound up on, I couldn’t imagine what those creatures might think when that metal mammoth pierced the sky. And even if the ship never actually reached another star, there was no denying it was one hell of a funereal send-off.
    I was caught off guard when something caused the walkway to tremor so violently that I was thrown off my feet. Hot flames and shrapnel spit up into the air from the direction of the maglev rail station across the way. A portion of the blast tore through a USF security hover-car unlucky enough to have been flying overhead. Its engines sputtered, causing it to spin out of control and take a crash course straight toward the Molten Crater.
    The crowd around me scattered, fleeing in every direction. The whiskey I’d guzzled had me feeling loose, but I was quickly able to gather my bearings. I jumped to my feet and fell in with them, but as I did I noticed a young girl standing directly in the path of the hover-car out of the corner of my eye. She was frozen by terror, and the sight caused me to stop as well. Her hair was curly and as red as the surface of Mars, like my daughter Aria’s had been at her age. I glanced up at the glowing vehicle and then back at her before I cursed under my breath.
    “Move, move, move!” I barked, whipping out my gun to get the panicked citizens to diverge faster as I took off toward the girl. I pushed more than a few of them out of my way. I grabbed her just in time and sprawled, the hover-car grazing the top of my loose coat before it slammed into the Molten Crater’s entrance.
    A dazzling display of fire and sparks erupted as the vehicle’s engine overloaded immediately after, the force from the blast knocking my head forward into the ground. Everything went blurry, and for a moment my mind took me back to the last time I was on Earth for a Departure…
    Aria and I were in a Euro-String slum a short way east of New London. Aria was only six years old, and since she was born on Mars we were visiting Earth for the first time in her then-short life. More than anything she wanted to see a Departure in person, and we had prime seats for the show. If you looked carefully enough you could make out the city’s low skyline of shimmering buildings through wisps of black smoke puffing up from a nearby industrial node.
    A gunshot rang out. Aria stood, barely a meter tall, with my pulse-pistol clutched in her tiny hands. She gawked at the smoking barrel, and then across the dilapidated roof of the structure upon which we stood. An empty bottle rested on the parapet.
    “You’re getting close, girl,” I said to her. I leaned down and gently repositioned her. “Remember to keep your eye down the sight. You may be small, but this gun is a work of art. There’s barely any kickback.”
    Aria nodded. She pursed her lips, closed one eye, and took aim again. I held her elbow as she pulled the trigger, and this time one of the bottles burst into a million pieces.
    “Got it!” she cheered. She handed me the pistol and ran over as quickly as her tiny legs could carry her to see