The Tabit Genesis (21 page)

‘The fact you’re here means we might be willing to change,’ Senator Martin said.

Arturus squared up to the entire group.

‘The fact we are here, Senator, means that you finally understand that you cannot impose your will on the Outer Rim,’ he said. ‘But please don’t judge me, I’m just the messenger. Now, who wants a cocktail? I
love
diplomatic receptions.’

Despite the tense atmosphere with the Senators, Arturus somehow managed to turn the ‘diplomatic reception’ into one of the most memorable events ever hosted at Tabit Prime.

The flamboyant envoy insisted on supplying his own refreshments and entertainment, opening the invitation to all government staff and effectively converting the most important legislative facility of Orionis into a dance hall. The spontaneous event, quickly approved by Vespa, created a logistical nightmare for the security team as they struggled to keep a wary eye on all the strangers on board. But the show went on without major incident, and in her view was successful in accomplishing what she wanted: to demonstrate that she could relate to voters.

Per their agreement, she kept her interaction with Arturus to a minimum. It was no secret they were siblings, but for the diplomacy to work, they had to remove their personal connection from the equation. She observed the reactions of officials who met him, noting who warmed to his charm and who didn’t. Generally, things went the way she expected; Arturus, for all his show, was still an incredibly bright individual. He managed to impress even those Senators who were predisposed to not cooperate with him under any circumstances.

Perhaps things would be different now. The ‘reception’ might have diffused tensions somewhat. After all, this was a historic occasion. Bringing the two nations together was no small feat, and under normal circumstances, she would bask in that. But the disturbing memory of her dreams made that impossible.

The revelry finally ended in the early hours of the following day. Vespa sent a note to the delegation that the scheduled meetings would be delayed for several hours to give everyone time to recover. But upon reaching the executive residency, she stumbled upon an uncomfortable scene: Arturus, with his contingent of golden warriors, standing beside a small platoon of Orionis security guards.

‘They won’t let me into the home of my own sister,’ he said, his robes undone, revealing a startlingly muscled chest beneath. Vespa always remembered him as a scrawny child.

‘He’s my brother,’ she told the guards. ‘You may stand down.’

‘We’ve been instructed to stand post here,’ the captain said.

‘Fine,’ she said, opening the door. Arturus waltzed inside, dragging a finger along the guard’s chin as he passed.

Vespa walked into the open kitchen and poured herself a glass of water. The door shut behind them.

‘I’ll have one as well, please,’ Arturus said, taking a seat at the island counter. ‘Do you keep in touch with Mum and Dad?’

‘We speak every now and then,’ she answered, pushing a glass over and sitting across from him. ‘They live on Eris now, by the way.’

‘Really? I didn’t know that,’ he said, taking a big gulp. ‘That is the most refreshing glass of recycled piss I’ve ever had.’

‘You put on quite a show at the reception.’

‘I am what I am,’ he said, taking another sip. ‘And House Alyxander relies on me to be me.’

‘I suppose you’ve found your calling,’ she said, raising her glass. ‘Cheers to that.’

‘Maybe,’ he shrugged, clinking her glass with his own. ‘It’s not a calling so much as it is a yearning.’

‘For what?’

‘More of everything. Lance Alyxander isn’t someone you’d want to die for. But he is someone who makes you desire more than you’ve ever wanted. Somehow, he manages to deliver it.’

‘We have more Earthly concerns here in Orionis.’

‘So you do. And here I am. Are we secure?’

‘Electronic jamming, voice scrambling, the works.’

‘Careful, Vespa. Only those with very dark secrets take such precautions. I hope you’re not going to ask me to have an opponent of yours succumb to a tragic accident.’

‘I asked you not to mention that.’

‘And I asked you not to have ORPHUS brought anywhere near this place,’ he admonished, pointing to the blue light in her bedroom. ‘If you won’t take my advice, then remind me why I’m here.’

‘You know the reason why.’

‘You want a formal endorsement of your candidacy from Lance Alyxander.’

‘I do,’ she said, full of hope.

Arturus sighed.

‘I have been authorised to grant such in exchange for a full copy of the Catalogue, including the classified bioweapons of the final era,’ he said.

Vespa’s heart sank.

‘You know I can’t do that!’

‘Then I regret to inform that he will lend his support to your opponents,’ Arturus said, placing the empty glass down. ‘He is rather inclined to expedite your removal from Orionis politics.’

‘
What?
’

‘I’m sorry, Vespa.’

‘I opened the gates for him!’ she exclaimed, springing up from her chair to pace. ‘I brought the corporations to the bargaining table! I put up with your antics to bring them here! He
owes
me!’

Arturus pushed himself from the counter.

‘Lance has done enough and more for you,’ he said. ‘You’ve become careless, sister. The Gift has corrupted your judgment and stoked your ambition.’

‘I’ve always done right by it!’ Vespa protested. ‘You know I have!’

‘I used to think so,’ Arturus said. ‘More importantly, so did
Lance
.’

‘What do you mean by that?’ Vespa demanded.

‘It was a mistake to help you dispose of Donovan Mayce,’ Arturus said. ‘The man was a bastard, but he was better for Orionis, and for House Alyxander.’

‘How dare you?’ Vespa hissed. ‘You saw what I saw.’

‘Prophecies of anarchy? The collapse of civilisation? I suppose,’ Arturus said. ‘But his secret depravity towards ghosts, women especially, enabled your scheme. You could have told the police what he was doing. You did no such thing. It was more advantageous to be a vigilante instead.’

‘
Advantageous
?’ Vespa fumed. ‘I would hardly describe the risks we took to stop this man as—’

‘Oh, I wanted what you did alright,’ Arturus interrupted. ‘Donovan Mayce deserved to die, and I convinced Lance of it. Don’t you see? Our visions are shaped by our desires. The truth is, more people benefited by his being alive than not.’

‘Do you think that little of what I’ve accomplished here?’ she said. ‘That my chancellorship is no better than what that pig would have done?’

‘The chancellorship was founded to serve humanity. His did. Yours only serves firstborns,’ Arturus said. ‘Take my advice: if you respect the institution you claim to love so much, then let the democratic process take its course and stay out of the way.’

Vespa glared at him.

‘What happened to you?’

Arturus shrugged.

‘I was punished for the folly of my advice and made to learn from the experience,’ he said. ‘Lance believes I can better serve him now that I’ve learned to isolate my desires from the truth. Vespa, we used our Gift for reasons we believed were right and just. But who were
we
to judge? That should never be our province. The future we see is only a possibility.’

Vespa calmed herself and changed tactics.

‘I keep seeing this place burn,’ she said.

He reached out and touched her hand.

‘I’ve seen it as well,’ he said. ‘More than once, especially after Mayce died.’

She looked into his eyes, wondering if he was recording the conversation.

‘Ceti is coming.’

Arturus flinched.

‘Here? To do what?’

‘Attack the
Archangel
.’

‘That’s absurd.’

‘Admiral Hedricks wanted to hide that from me. I would have never found out if not for a rogue pilot among them.’

Arturus frowned.

‘Withholding that from you is treason.’

Vespa waved her arm in disgust.

‘He can cite any number of security reasons to keep it from political scrutiny.’

‘So the man who controls your Navy and the most powerful weapon ever built is also above the law,’ Arturus said.

‘In so many words … yes.’

‘Then the dreams will become reality.’

She reached out and clasped both his hands.

‘We have to use our Gift to save people,’ she said. ‘It is an enormous responsibility we must bear together.’

‘Not we, sister,’ he said, pulling his hands away. ‘You.’

‘You have an obligation to try.’

‘My obligation is to inform Lance Alyxander of this at once.’

‘No, you can’t. Not until I tell my cabinet.’

‘I’ll give you seventy-two hours. What does Hedricks plan to do about this?’

‘He’s going to let Ceti press the attack and make a show of crushing them in plain sight of the Inner Rim.’

‘Charming. And how convenient, them coming here.’

‘I need your support, Arturus,
please
.’

‘Lance Alyxander doesn’t believe you deserve that. And given what you’ve just told me, now I fully understand why.’

With the exception of her own personal corelink, Viola’s cabin aboard the Merckon research vessel
Lycidas
was completely devoid of electronics. There were no windows or ornaments on the bulkheads; just symmetrical trails of grey metal rivets. The living area was spacious and well furnished for a freighter, but three weeks of microgravity was already starting to wear on her. She yearned for another run along the Danube. Until the mission was complete, her only real exercise would be within these walls.

Switching off her mag greaves, she pushed off a bulkhead and launched into a tucked somersault across the cabin. End over end she spun, landing perfectly on the far side. At the point of impact, the greaves switched back on, and her strong legs absorbed the excess momentum. Lacking proper training equipment, she found herself unable to sit still for long.

Viola had been coached by her relentless father to block out emotions. But ever since learning about who – or rather
what
– she was, certain innocuous experiences now triggered overwhelming sadness. Ever since her unforgettable night with Cerlis Tarkon, the mere sight of a couple’s embrace, or a compliment paid among conversing friends, made her think of the mother she not only never knew, but had never existed in the first place. Every act of kindness she witnessed triggered a rush of emotions that her training could not repress.

With each graceful flip from one side of the cabin to the other, she thought:
I am an amniosynth.
Biologically, she was human; and by all accounts, the perfect human, one for whom all things physical and mental were no challenge to master. But emotionally, she was the product of …
what, exactly?
she wondered.
Corporate ambition? A spiteful ego?
Why does that matter to me so much?

Another flip, and her world turned upside down as she asked the most fundamental question of being human:

Why am I here?

Some religions believed human life was born to fill a higher purpose in some grand divine plan. Except in this case, ‘God’ was Klaus Silveri, the man who made his fortune from manufacturing arable dirt.

She pushed herself off with greater force this time, darting across the cabin in a blink. And still she effortlessly landed square on her feet, causing a bang that was much louder than before.

For the longest time, her passion had been the Arkady. It remained so, except now she had embraced a second passion with equal purpose. Both were quests to discover origins. One would be pursued using the
Lycidas
and its resources. For the other, she needed the help of friends, of which she had exactly two.

Carrie Lin, now an employee of Vulcan Industries following her incident with Travis Mareck, was currently prosecuting a secret investigation of Klaus Silveri.

Her other friend was Wegan, the mutant and veteran gas rig miner who cleaned the floors at Merckon Prime. Prior to her departure, he had provided black market technology that would allow her personal corelink to communicate with Brotherhood’s open network once they arrived at Zeus. That way she could conceal her efforts from Merckon, which monitored her use of the device.

There had been calls from Klaus. Nearly a dozen, in fact, and that was before the
Lycidas
soared past the orbit of Eris. In time, there would be a confrontation, but not until she had armed herself with facts.

She launched herself again, and this time when she landed there was a knock on the hatch.

Gliding over to open it, she found one of the scientists she had recruited for the mission, Dr Gavin Strong.

‘Hi,’ he said, looking around. ‘Is everything okay in here?’

‘Everything is fine,’ she said. ‘What’s up?’

Gavin was much shorter than she was, with short, unkempt auburn hair and sharp green eyes. A brilliant biologist, he was arrogant but generally pleasant to work with. He, like the rest of the scientists on board, reported directly to her.

‘We’re about to make the turn,’ he said. ‘There’s a celebration happening in the bubble. Figured you’d want to know.’

‘Thank you,’ she said. ‘I’ll be there soon.’

‘Okay,’ he said, peering inside her room again before clunking away on his greaves.

The
Lycidas
was twice the vessel that Viola had asked for.

At nearly a kilometre in length, the ship’s primary hull was a converted gas transport freighter. To study the elusive aliens in their natural habitat, it would have to maintain a low Zeus orbit for an extended period. The shielding required to protect the craft from the radiation belts had doubled the mass of the ship; a third of her length was devoted to propulsion, fuel storage, and power systems alone. Altogether, about ninety per cent of the ship’s total volume was uninhabitable. Although Viola was hoping to negotiate her way aboard mining rigs that had made contact with the Arkady, the
Lycidas
was equipped with a sensor pod and enough cable to reach the jet streams hunter specimens were known to inhabit.

The onboard lab was just as robust as the facility at Merckon Prime. It was equipped with a fabrication plant to handle on-the-fly engineering requirements as the mission evolved, which could also manage emergency repairs to the ship or a partnering rig. An internal hangar bay housed a complement of scientific atmospheric drones called DIVE probes; two of them had been launched shortly after the
Lycidas
left port. A repair tug and a drop shuttle capable of reaching Brotherhood from Zeus orbit filled out the ship’s flight capabilities.

All the working crew, of whom there were just nine, were trained by the Navy and doubled as the security detail. As such, a cache of personal weapons and assorted tactical kit were on board, locked in an armoury. Viola had protested against bringing the gear aboard, but the corporate mission planners insisted. There was a heavy Ceti presence around Zeus, and it was likely they would need to deal with the cartel to gain access to rigs of interest. Although they had ample financial backing to negotiate deals, it wasn’t difficult to foresee complications that might need a gun to resolve. Though very polite and generally attentive to the needs of the research team, the crew mostly kept to themselves.

Viola suspected that was because of the man they reported to: Captain Abel Mohib. A stern, gruff man, she had disliked him from the moment they had been introduced. He treated everyone with a lurid mix of contempt and condescension, demanding reverence for ‘his’ ship and of his command. Their first conversation resolutely established the ‘jurisdiction’ that Viola was expected to honour for the duration of the mission. She might be the authority on all research decisions, but he had final say concerning the safety of the ship and the mission completion parameters – which meant it was over whenever he said it was.

Captain Mohib was almost certainly ‘insurance’: a corporate man with steep incentives to protect Travis Mareck’s investment in the
Lycidas
and the discoveries they made. Viola had not seen or heard from the CEO since Cerlis Tarkon had humiliated him in his own club. But his presence was felt through Captain Mohib. More than once she had caught him taking an extra stare at her and the female scientists aboard. There was something familiar about him that she couldn’t place.

Upon reaching the observation deck, she was met by a chorus of greetings. No crewmen were in sight, but all twelve members of the research team were present. The ‘deck’ was a small armoured bubble made from the same transparent alloys as biodomes; you felt like a specimen beneath a lens when wandering across it. But the experience was as visceral as being in space. The Milky Way filled the view above them; you could almost feel the craft’s momentum here. The bubble was located atop the ‘highest’ point on the main superstructure, which was the conning tower on the former gas freighter.

Gavin and another researcher named Karyn Breznyk made their way over to greet her.

‘Hello again,’ Karyn said, extending her hand. ‘I have some news: We have DIVE data.’

She was as young as Gavin, a recent graduate from the Academy of Sciences, and untainted by the realities of corporate-funded research. She was an engineer, and had developed most of the instruments used for studying the chemical composition of Zeus’s cloud layers.

‘Did you look at it?’ Viola said sternly.

‘I had to,’ Karyn replied defensively. ‘Just to make sure everything worked properly.’

‘It wasn’t an accusation,’ Viola said. ‘What did you find?’

Captain Mohib interrupted their conversation through the room’s intercom.

‘Attention crew and passengers,’ he announced. ‘I am now adjusting our flight attitude for burndown.’

Viola felt nothing when manoeuvring thrusters fired somewhere along the
Lycidas
. Their view of the Milky Way began to rotate as the ship veered from the direction it was travelling in.

‘Both probes vanished at a depth of 190 kilometres,’ Karyn resumed. ‘But—’

‘The bright star above the bubble entrance is Eris,’ Captain Mohib announced. ‘We’re about 172 million kilometres from there. The fainter one, marked here with the green beacon, is Eileithyia.’

‘But what?’ Viola prompted.

‘One took much longer than the other to reach terminal depth,’ Karyn explained quietly. ‘We lost contact with one at 96 klicks, then reacquired it at 122. Only the heartbeat broadcast was working then.’

Viola kept her demeanour impassive.

‘That’s interesting,’ she said coolly, as Gavin and Karyn both waited for her to show a hint of excitement.

One of the scientists looked up and pointed.

‘There’s Sol,’ he said.

A murmur spread across the crowd. Firstborns had the deepest devotion to the system of their origin. They looked upon it with sadness, fear … and, perhaps, some misplaced hope.

‘To Earth!’ a burly meteorologist named Ewan MacKilgore said, thrusting his beverage towards the ‘sky’.

One of the other scientists, an unpleasant but talented planetary science expert named Dylan Ofstursson, raised and joined him.

‘To the squids!’ he said, making a crude reference to the Arkady.

‘To Dr Silveri!’ another scientist said, drawing a chorus of approval.

Viola obligingly raised her beverage.

‘To scientific discovery,’ she said. ‘Cheers to you all!’

Captain Mohib’s voice interrupted again.

‘Commencing burndown ignition in three. Two. One. Mark,’ he declared. A half-kilometre from where they were standing, the ship’s main sequence thrusters began throttling up to one hundred per cent output.

‘Congratulations,’ he said. ‘You are now halfway to Zeus.’

There were more cheers from the group, but Viola was barely paying attention to them as Karyn continued.

‘Those probes entered the same zonal band, three thousand kilometres away from each other,’ Karyn said, her voice nearly a whisper. Gavin nodded at her with a wink, taking a sip from the tube. ‘The weather at 122 was consistent for both probes … high winds, heavy lightning, strong updraughts, but … I may be crazy, but I think that the probe slower to fall hit something solid – at least, something much denser than the atmosphere.’

‘There are simpler explanations, the simplest of which is that it just malfunctioned,’ Viola said, registering Karyn’s expression change from hopeful to disappointed.

‘Have the orbital plans been finalised yet?’ Gavin asked.

‘Yes,’ Viola said. ‘Moving this heap once we set orbit is expensive.’

‘Are we confined to the temperate zones?’ Karyn asked.

‘Absolutely,’ Viola explained. ‘The equator is dangerous. That’s what the DIVE probes are for. Your theory isn’t strong enough to reconsider our plans. What’s more, the rig that produced our largest hunter sample to date is in the southern zonal. I’m going to pay them a visit.’

‘Why not interview them remotely?’ Gavin asked.

‘Because I want to see it for myself,’ Viola said. ‘We need to rule out the chance it was drawn to that specific rig. Or better yet, find evidence that others like it will return. Have you told anyone else about this?’

‘No,’ Karyn said. ‘The data arrived just before you got here.’

‘Publish the atmospheric data,’ Viola directed. ‘Weather and chemical composition only. Nothing else.’

Karyn looked shocked.

‘But that’s … against the rules?’

‘I make the rules,’ Viola said, narrowing her eyes. ‘The other data is embargoed until we can rule out a technical issue. Are we clear?’

The two young scientists exchanged glances before answering in stereo.

‘Yes, ma’am,’ they said.

‘Viola, stop being such a child and reply to this immediately.’

It was a strange way to be productive and motivated all at once.

One by one, Viola was letting all the messages from Klaus play through her earphones as she worked from the office overlooking the lab deck. Most of the equipment was still wrapped in storage bags for the journey. Soon this place would be a hive of research, with fresher samples to biopsy, better sampling of the Zeus troposphere, and better screening for bacteria and microbes. She suspected the Arkady ecosystem extended far beyond the large genus types that harassed mining rigs.

‘This is intolerable. I’m your father. Return my call!’

Multitasking was easy. Like everything else about her, the skill had been honed during the relentless regimen imposed on her by Klaus. He was always testing her limits, constantly subjecting her to cognitive challenges under physical duress. Once, when she was just eight years old, he strapped her to a bolted chair and forced her to work through a series of spatial reasoning challenges. When she got one wrong, the test was reset. The goal was to answer one hundred correctly within five minutes, and he refused to release her until she passed.

Later that morning, somehow, she succeeded, and was rewarded with six straight hours of sleep and a light meal, followed by a new, borderline inhumane, physical challenge. It was like that nearly every day for years, in brutal clips of two to three weeks at a time, until she was admitted to Orionis University at the age of twelve. Viola didn’t remember every detail of those days, which she attributed to defensive selective memory.