The Collector Read online

  This is a work of fiction. Similarities to real people, places, or events are entirely coincidental.

  THE COLLECTOR (TITANBORN UNIVERSE BOOK 0)

  First Edition. May 15, 2017.

  Copyright 2017 © Rhett C. Bruno

  Written By: Rhett C. Bruno

  Cover Art and Editing by: Steve Beaulieu

  www.beaulistic.wordpress.com

  The Titanborn Series, by Rhett C. Bruno

  Book 0: The Collector

  Book 1: Titanborn

  Book 2: From Ice to Ashes

  Chapter One

  JIMMY FRING RAN AWAY FROM HOME, and I, Malcolm Graves, was hired to bring him in. It was an odd job for a Corporate Collector, despite the title. I was usually tasked with finding those wanting to disappear or making those who refused to do so go away. Seemed like a waste of my talents to me, but if Pervenio Corp was willing to pay my fee I never complained.

  He was as close to royalty as existed in the colonies beyond the strict reign of the United Sol Federation on Earth. The heir to a privately owned cryo-engineering company on Saturn’s favored moon, Titan. Pervenio had their sights set on acquiring their operation until the owner’s son snuck onto a freighter and disappeared. It was a classic story. Child resents wealthy parents so he runs away. Child gets caught up in some nasty business in a world he doesn’t understand. A world where people don’t get fresh produce shipped from hydro-farms around the solar system.

  I’d tracked him from Saturn, through a few mid-way ports in the asteroid belt, to New Beijing, Mars. The domed city was as wild a place as you could find in Sol if you looked beneath the upper portion—beneath the gleaming towers festooned with gardens. Down there, the stench would be enough to make a rich boy like him gag. Lower New Beijing was an easy place to get lost in—a place the locals called Old Dome. Vices were waiting to be purchased with either credits or favors down every alley. Bright signs outside every storefront flashed, telling of naked women or men, gambling dens and clubs inside. And those were just the things Venta Co. allowed to be advertised. They ran the city, both the things on the surface they wanted to be seen and that which they didn’t below.

  Grabbing Jimmy and returning him to his concerned parents was supposed to be easy, but the moment he arrived he’d apparently gone straight to a Venta Co. security outpost. Operating on rival turf wasn’t exactly allowed, so ‘officially’ I was on vacation, taking in the pleasures of Old Dome. Only I didn’t take vacations. Or holidays. Not even for M-day, when humanity celebrated its survival of being slammed by an England-sized meteorite almost 300 years ago. Pervenio Corp kept me plenty busy with their rapid expansion across the solar system and I couldn’t say no to credits. Never could.

  I placed a lunch order at the Twilight Sun, a rundown bar in the shit-end of Old Dome, then stepped outside. It’ll take all night to track him down and I was starving. I puffed on a bit of spiked vapor from the e-cig resting between my lips, blending right in with the rest of the rabble.

  Jimmy Fring hurried down the sidewalk across the narrow street, constantly checking over his shoulder like he thought he was being followed. Smart, considering he was, but he searched in all the wrong places. Like anyone born off world, he was exceedingly pale, though he wore blush to try and hide that fact. The Venta Co. security captain he’d met up with led him into a vacant gambling den before signaling two officers to wait outside.

  A tip to Corporate Security Officers who are up to no good: don’t post men outside of an abandoned building if you don’t want anyone thinking there’s something illicit going on inside. Might as well hang a sign that says SIDE BUSINESS HERE. It was bad enough when one of them set up checkpoints at Redline stops to try and catch illegitimates and charge them passage fees. None of the civilians or streetwalkers roaming Old Dome would notice, eyes red from a night out drinking, snorting and fucking, but I did.

  I had no idea what was going on in there. After Jimmy went to the Venta outpost, the captain escorted two civilians to the gambling den one by one. Jimmy was the last. Getting my target while he was in Venta custody was impossible, but now it was time to make my move. I had a meal to return to.

  I searched the area until I spotted a piece of sewer trash ripe for the picking. The skinny offworlder leaned against a wall, in a pile of garbage, in the alley beside the bar. He was sprawled out, using an eye dropper to load up on whatever drug the offworlders were abusing these days. I stuck to the bottle. It was safer that way, and Pervenio Corp preferred their Collectors not fry their brains with new synth-drugs cooked up under floorboards.

  I whistled at him and his groggy eyes rolled over slowly to regard me. He was so out of it, he didn’t bolt when he saw what I was. Brand-new Collector-issued F1300 pulse-pistol dangling from my hip. Worn duster that had seen more than its fair share of scrapes. I may not have had a Pervenio Corp badge visibly pinned to my chest, but anyone with a brain could spot a Corporate Collector if they looked hard enough.

  “You up for doing me a favor?” I said. He stared right through me like he didn’t have a thought in his head. “There are credits in it for you.” That got his attention.

  “How much,” he slurred.

  “Fifty. All you’ve got to do is walk over to those officers over there and push one.”

  His hands groped the wall as he struggled to prop himself up to get a glimpse across the street. He squinted, and the effort must have been too much because after a few seconds he plopped back down hard. “One thousand.”

  “One hundred,” I said. “And you get a night in a fancy Venta lockup, meal included. C’mon, I’m sure they’ve booted you out of enough apartments to deserve it.”

  He took another look, then cackled. “Sucker. Deal…I… Whatta I has to do again?”

  I heaved him to his feet and talked slowly. “I need you to walk over to one of those officers right there, and push him.”

  “Punch him where?” he asked.

  I sighed and took a measured breath. For all its pleasures, Old Dome could be hell to work in. Dealers, addicts, illegitimates—it was tough to find any reliable source with their head screwed on right. “Push, punch, I don’t give a shit where you hit him, just do it.”

  “You pay me first?”

  I removed his wallet from his pocket and synced the credits to his ID chit from my hand-terminal. I’d clear fifty times that if I brought Jimmy back home unharmed.

  “There. Now go. And if you try to make a run for it, it’ll be the last thing you’ll ever do.” I pushed him toward the street. He staggered into a trash bin, then squinted back at me and offered a self-assured nod. Like we were partners on a mission. Fear was usually how I got away with things on jobs. Most civilians were terrified of getting on the wrong side of a Collector and winding up in a cell or worse. Not him.

  Braindead druggies weren’t good for information, but they were easy to persuade to do something crazy. I’d planted the idea of getting revenge on Venta Co., now his from the seed, anger grew. His features twisted with rage as he turned his attention back to them. He marched sloppily across the road, nearly got clipped by a hoverbike risking the narrow streets of Old Dome, and headed straight for the officers.

  “Hey you, Venta scum!” he garbled. “Fuck you!” The crazy bastard kicked one of them in the balls and likely broke the side of his foot on carbon-plated armor. Still, it sent the assaulted officer to the ground moaning.

  “You stole my home!” the druggie screamed as the other tackled him.

  That was my cue. I slipped right behind them and into the gambling den.

  The walls were stained with colorful synthahol like someone took buckets of neon paint and splashed it around aimlessly. The smell was somehow fouler than the rest of Old Dome. A few broken slot machines still chi
med on repeat: “Thanks for playing!”

  I hurried to the basement door which was left wide open. I wished I had my spotter goggles on me so I could get a thermal—find out who might be waiting for me inside, but I’d left them behind in my room like an idiot. Jimmy had spent so many hours waiting in the Venta Co. outpost, untouchable, that by the time my surveillance wire caught him moving I was napping.

  I drew my pulse-pistol and crept down the stairs. They groaned with every step. Luckily, the noise was drowned out by a swelling hum, like someone had left a hovercar running.

  “This is the last of them,” I heard the Venta captain say.

  “Excellent,” someone replied. “My employer will be happy to assist them with their new identities.”

  I peeked around the corner. The basement was a rusty, dank hellhole, but that wasn’t my focus. Across the dimness lay a gaping hole in the wall providing access to an out-of-use sewer line. And sitting on the other side of the breach was the source of the humming. A small interstellar vessel, using the sewers like its own personal hangar, had its anti-grav engines set to neutral and ready to launch.

  Two other security officers accompanied the Venta captain. Across from them were three ragged civilians including Jimmy Fring, all looking equally nervous. A man in a white lab coat whom I didn’t recognize stood beside Jimmy, studying him like a science project. Next to him was a towering, armed guard unlike any I’d ever seen. He was unnaturally flawless, especially for offworld muscle. He had the chiseled jawline of an advertising model and was as well put-together as Luxarn Pervenio, the wealthiest man in Sol— my CEO.

  “We leave immediately,” the man in white said. “Have you all discarded your personal effects? No hand-terminals, or ID Chits, nothing that can be tracked.”

  Jimmy and the others anxiously looked to each other, then bobbed their heads in unison. Naive fool. Nothing good ever came from groups who claimed they could wipe away an identity like it was a spill on the floor. Every human born legally on Earth, through a registered clan-family and a USF permit for reproduction, was documented. Blood, DNA, retina—you name it. Offworld, the companies charged with regulating those things got a little laxer, but not by much. Not that a pampered kid from Titan would ever know anything about that.

  “All right, David, help get them on the ship.” The man in white and his striking guard began goading the civilians toward his ship, which meant I had to make my move. Stupid, Malcolm, I told myself. You rushed in too fast. Not that there were a whole lot of other options.

  I dashed across the basement and stuck my gun into the back of the Venta captain’s head. “A party?” I said. “Where was my invite?”

  The first person to make a sudden move after that was exactly who you’d expect. Jimmy’s eyes lit up like he was about to be barreled over by a hovercar, and he bolted for the ship. It distracted me enough for one of the Venta officers to grab hold of my arm and shift my aim away from their captain.

  I wrestled with him, elbowed him hard through his visor and got a shot off that shredded his foot. I spun, ducked under the butt of the other officer’s gun, and chopped him in the throat with the end of mine.

  They didn’t stand a chance. Only those who were too lazy or couldn’t make it as Collectors settled for being security officers.

  The Venta captain didn’t bother sticking around to watch his deal go through. He fled for the stairs, and I froze momentarily. The man in white and his too-handsome guard—dammit why did that matter to me? —shoved Jimmy and the other civilians into the waiting transport. I could either try my luck chasing down a spaceship, or salvage what little I could from this botched attempt at rescuing Jimmy from himself. I chose the latter.

  The spineless captain faltered on his way up the stairs, and I fired a bullet right by his nose. Close enough to shave off a few hairs and stop him in his tracks.

  “Not so fast,” I said. I kept my sights trained on him as I approached, then grabbed him by the collar and threw him down by his men. One was completely unconscious, and the other laboring to breathe.

  “I swear this isn’t what it looked like,” he stammered. He glanced up at me for the first time and cursed under his breath.

  “Relax, I’m not with Venta, and I’m not here for you.”

  The gagging officer tried to be sly and reach for his gun like I wouldn’t notice. My foot knocked him out cold on its way to pressing the captain’s face into the grimy floor. He muttered something inaudible as I rifled through his belt and removed his ID. Gavin Harris, Security Captain of New Beijing’s 4th Lower Ward. Quite a mouthful for a piece of shit who tried to run from his own dealings.

  “Captain Harris, you cost me an easy payday.” I let my weight off him a bit so that he could breathe.

  He coughed. “You’re Pervenio, aren’t you? You came to the wrong place.”

  I snickered. “Yeah, I’m sure old lady Venta will care that I’m working in New Beijing after I tell her about whatever the hell scam it is you’re running here. And don’t tell me it’s legit. I’ve been at this for twenty years, and I know a side-take when I see one.”

  “I-”

  I shoved him back down and pressed the barrel of my pistol into his hair. He was right, engaging in a firefight on Venta turf was enough to earn me a slap on the wrist from my Director—if he ever found out.

  “You’ve made me late for a meal with a very important person, Captain Harris. So, think carefully about how you handle this. One of the men you were handing over was a wealthy offworlder named Jimmy Fring.”

  “I don’t know any of their real names,” Harris squeaked out.

  “What about the man you dealt them to?” He shook his head, and I pushed my gun harder.

  “I didn’t know him either, I swear! It’s a different contact every time. I pass the word to anybody who might want to have their identity erased or rewritten. I bring them here at the right time, then provide clearance for an unregistered ship to come and go from New Beijing airspace. My client syncs me credits through gambling accounts so it looks legit. What would you do? It was a no brainer!”

  “You’re going to make me work for it, aren’t you?” I gave him a playful tap on his head with my pistol and carefully pronounced each of the following words: “Who is the client?”

  “They didn’t give me a name.”

  I lifted my weapon like I was going to smack him with it again and he spilled like he was only holding back to prove to himself he was tough.

  “Some robotics firm out in the belt!” he squealed. “They need human test subjects, and in exchange wipe their identity from every USF and colonial database. That’s all I know. They told me not to dig deeper.”

  I got off him and stretched my arms behind my head. “You know, Captain, I could let the three of you rot down here and nobody would know the difference. But I’m starving. So why don’t you give me something I can actually use and we’ll all walk out of here with our feet still attached."

  He swallowed the lump forming in his throat, then dug into his pockets. His fingers trembled like this was the first time in all his years in security he’d had a gun aimed his way. A pencil pusher who got in way over his head for an extra paycheck. I understood the impulse.

  I watched carefully as he removed a hand-terminal and swiped to a contacts holo-card. On it, there was nothing more than a Solnet contact number and an image of an art mannequin, half of it rendered solely with lines. No name, no address, just the ability to send a message into the ether and hope someone responded.

  “This how you contact them?” I asked.

  He nodded. “The responses are always encrypted.”

  I ripped it out of his hands and typed in a message. HEAT FROM A PERVENIO COLLECTOR AT THE LAST MEET. I MADE HIM AN OFFER TO JOIN AND HE’S IN IF HE CAN MEET AND SEE THE OPERATION. WE’LL NEED TO FIND A NEW DROP AND THE CONNECTIONS HE HAS WILL HELP KEEP US UNDER THE RADAR.

  “He’s going to know it’s not me,” Harris said.

  I added, AN
D MY PRICE IS GOING UP, then sent. It was forward, probably too forward, but it got the message across. Even if whoever I was dealing with knew it was a trap, all I needed was to get in. I could handle myself from there.

  “I’m counting on it,” I replied.

  “You know, if you did want in…”

  “Nameless robotics firm in the belt who promises to erase people? Yeah, sounds perfect.”

  “It’s good money.”

  I raised my gun and tilted it from side to side. She was a beauty, built for power, accuracy, and getting dissidents to fall in line. “So is this.”

  His features darkened and his gaze went to the floor. “You won’t tell anyone I was here, will you?”

  “How long have you been a captain?”

  “Almost a year.”

  “Still fresh. No, Mr. Harris. You can go on living your miserable, boring life, but I promise you this. One day, I’m going to show up at your desk asking you to repay the favor. I trust you’ll do the right thing.” I turned to leave the basement.

  “Wait!” he shouted. “My…my terminal.”

  “I think I’ll keep it.”

  I flipped it and shoved it into my pocket. Then I stowed my pistol and left him and his unit behind. Crooked officers didn’t bother me if they weren’t hurting children, but at least be smart about it. Seemed like the older I got, the more worthless people corps brought in. I think it was the cramped domes and stations; the lack of fresh air offworld causing everyone’s mind to wither.

  I delved back into the hubbub of Old Dome. The two officers posted outside had my homeless partner unconscious against the wall. Their brows furrowed as they saw me exit, but I drew back my duster enough so they’d see my pistol. One look and they scurried away, abandoning their captain. Typical low-rate Venta workmanship.

  Things had dragged on a little longer than I expected. My meal sat on the Twilight Sun’s bar, completely cooled. Roach Pot Pie. It may sound gross to Earthers like myself where farms remained plentiful, but it was a Martian delicacy. Our homeworld was happy to ship its unwanted bugs offworld as a source of protein. They were the only creatures that seemed to survive the meteorite in abundance.