The Tabit Genesis (7 page)

‘Best keep that to yourself,’ Myrha cautioned.

‘I know,’ he said, as they approached a statue that was taller than all the rest. ‘But you remind me too much of
her
.’

Reaching nearly as high as the armoured glass ceiling was the likeness of a beautiful, robust woman with long, flowing hair. Surrounded by Lightspears, her muscular arm pointed towards the stars, leading them into the heavens.

‘She would have been so proud,’ he said.

Myrha gazed up at the likeness of her mother.

‘I wish I had known her,’ she said.

‘You have her courage,’ Masaad continued, with sadness in his voice. ‘And her strength.’

Though her death was served by pirates, it was House Alyxander that Maez and the rest of House Obyeran blamed for the murder of Lyanna Obyeran. She had died the way she always lived: nobly serving others. Pirates had attacked a privateer outpost on KC-185, an asteroid between Zeus and Heracles, and Lyanna’s ship – a pre-Lightspear corvette called
Dauntless
– had been the closest vessel that could assist. Ever the bold and fearless captain, Lyanna destroyed two pirate corvettes and led a boarding party inside the outpost to rescue survivors. But she took a serious wound during the battle, and refused treatment while civilians remained aboard. By the time the last one was evacuated, Lyanna had slipped into shock.

As the Dauntless crew worked furiously to stabilize her, more pirate ships closed in pursuit. The nearest outpost with the necessary surgical facilities was owned by House Alyxander, which had brokered a fragile détente with those same pirates, who had an affiliation with Ceti. House Alyxander considered Obyeran a weak House of little relevance; certainly not worth incurring the wrath of bloodthirsty criminals who had just watched Lyanna Obyeran cut down many of their own.

Under a pretext of keeping the peace, House Alyxander refused to allow the
Dauntless
to make port, leaving Lyanna Obyeran to die of her wounds in space. Her crew also died, fighting the pursuing pirates to the last man.

Masaad was certain that his wife would still be alive had she been aboard a Lightspear. Every Obyeran wanted a war to avenge their queen, and Masaad yearned to give them one. But he refused. Soon, they would finally understand why.

‘Whenever Maez comes here, his heart grows darker,’ Myrha said, really feeling the chill now. Even with the solar harvesters illuminating the dome, the ambient temperature inside was hovering at -15 Celsius. ‘He dreams of leading the fleet against House Alyxander.’

‘To avenge the mother he never knew,’ Masaad said. ‘Vengeance is a convenient outlet for violent tendencies.’

‘You don’t trust him.’

King Masaad drew a deep breath.

‘Maez is a weapon whose power can be harnessed for great good,’ he said. ‘Yet I fear the day we should ever unleash it. Without guidance, his wrath could be ruinous. He has loyalty and compassion for those he trusts, but he is too quick to anger. That is why I intend you to succeed me.’

Myrha gasped.

‘Father, I—’

‘Don’t act surprised,’ Masaad scoffed. ‘No one else will be, least of all Maez. He will stand by your side as the protector of our House, but all Obyerans will call you Queen.’

She felt as though the ground were shaking beneath her feet.

‘Near the end, much of Earth looked like this,’ King Masaad said, waving towards the lifeless mountain ranges beyond the dome. ‘I was born on a world with no hope. Look at us now. We live in bubbles and tunnels and caves … we were not meant for this.’

Myrha was stunned to hear him say it. Hyllus alone was home to thousands who called themselves Obyerans, and this was the only world they had ever known. Far beneath the ground where they were standing was breathable air, flowing rivers, and lush fields where grains and vegetables grew under the glare of artificial sunlight. Masaad Obyeran had broken from the pack all those years ago to build this great House, and today provided them with a life that was inspiring and worthwhile.

She would never mention it to her father – he was ever the atheist – but she felt a spiritual bond to the place.

‘For us, Earth is a myth,’ she said. ‘Hyllus is our home.’

Masaad shook his head.

‘I am old,’ he said solemnly. ‘The machines say I’m in good health, yet I sense I may not wake from my hypersleep.’

He faced her, reached up with both hands, placing them on her shoulders.

‘Myrha, by the time Alim rises, I promise that you will be walking the shores of another world and breathe its air with no mask. When we reach it, I will leave you to carry on the work I have begun.’

Myrha took a breath, staring into her father’s amber eyes.

‘Are you saying … you’ve found—?’

‘Nothing else would stop me from taking revenge on those who murdered my beloved wife,’ Masaad said, his eyes glistening. ‘Our Lightspears must carry us to a new world … not to war. That mission is greater than me … greater even than her. She made me swear it before my brothers. We all did.
Nothing
must come between us and our new home.’

‘Who else knows?’ Myrah brought herself to say.

‘Your uncles, and now you,’ he said, resuming his stroll.

‘Where?’

‘Ch1 Orionis AB,’ he said. ‘Ten light years from here, twenty-eight from Earth.’

Myrha knew it: a binary system with a yellow-orange main sequence star very similar to Sol, which was orbited by a red dwarf companion every fourteen years. No planets, not even torch companions, had been detected, at least not the last time that anyone looked. The gaze of Orionis was locked on the Tau Ceti system, pinning its hope on the
Archangel
as a means of reaching there and joining the other human colony.

‘You know for sure there’s a habitable planet there for us?’ she asked.

‘Al Khav has been there for twenty years,’ Masaad said.

Myrha stopped in her tracks.

‘By
himself
?’

‘With his crew. They are building a colony, laying the groundwork for our arrival.’

With a wave of his hands, a bluish-white sphere appeared, suspended in the cold air. Huge white continents with specks of green and brown peeked from behind swirling white clouds, all surrounded by vast blue oceans.

‘Our new world,’ Masaad said. ‘I wanted to name it Lyanna, but your uncle has more than earned the right to name it himself.’

‘Did he get there on a Lightspear?’

Masaad beamed.

‘The Lightspears can take us there.
This
is what they were made for.’

‘Have you been in contact with him?’

‘Every day for the last eighteen years,’ he said. ‘But each message is a decade old.’

And so much could have happened in that time. The passengers of the
Tabit Genesis
could certainly attest to that, Myrha noted.

‘But you have enough information to make a decision?’ she asked. ‘We’re really going to leave here?’

‘Alim believes we should,’ he answered. ‘The world is a closer fit to Earth than Eileithyia ever was. And so far, we’re the only humans who know for certain it exists.’

‘And Al Khav?’ she asked, fearing the answer.

‘There are no intelligent civilisations, the air is breathable, and he supports a mass migration, all at once, with no notice to Orionis or anyone else.’

‘And you?’

‘I see no reason why any of us should remain, except to protect our holdings against the unlikely event any of us have to return.’

It was tempting. So tempting, in fact, that Myrha was certain it was a mistake.

‘Your silence is telling,’ Masaad said.

‘To be honest,’ she admitted, ‘I’m terrified.’

‘You should be,’ he said, ‘because now you must continue The Rites.’

The siblings had earned their lance commands in the arena, but the test of a Lightspear Fleet Command was voluntary and the most brutal trial by far. It was called The Voyage Home. A captain was towed in a disabled Lightspear to a random location with no functioning instruments or crew. The experience simulated survival conditions in extreme emergencies; explosions, EMP bursts, collisions or engine failures could leave a crew incapacitated in a ship tumbling out of control. Recovering one’s bearings under a high-G spin, often with no reference point, took special skill that only a worthy captain could master.

Many unravelled just trying to stabilise the ship. Others could not find their way back to Hyllus. There was no time limit; a captain could take a lifetime if he chose. The Lightspear was equipped with a beacon they could activate at any time to declare surrender, at which point Obyeran ships would come for them.

But for those who returned under their own means, there was no greater honour, and no greater respect among the people of House Obyeran. To date, only two captains had succeeded. One was Al Khav. The other was King Masaad himself.

‘The Queen who leads us to the new world must prove she can find her way home,’ he said.

‘And if I cannot?’

‘Myrha, I love you so much,’ he said. ‘Never doubt yourself again.’

22 February 2809

Dear Amaryllis,

Since my last note, I have participated in some rank atrocity.

My actions were so cruel they made me think of you, as I do whenever I despair. That is testament to your power, your absolute control of me. I only wish you could see my barbarism for yourself, so that you might understand the true nature of the universe.

I’m often asked what similarities there are between Orionis and the homeworld some of you remember, specifically how humans have changed since the Apocalypse. My answer is they haven’t. Ignorance blinds them. Greed kills them. Pride compels them. After all that’s happened, they still struggle to make the right choices. How can a species continue on that path? And I answer: because humans are inherently selfish. Their design is flawed; the attributes of free will and intelligence all but ensured their destruction.

Yet nature still tolerates them.
Still!
My colleagues introduced me to the poem ‘Do not go gentle into that good night’, citing its relevance to humans, whose resilience astonishes them.

Even
me
. I’m beginning to wonder if other forces are conspiring to keep you alive.

Once upon a time, a charismatic minority with inordinate political power preached that a higher power created the universe and all life within. For centuries, men amassed armies to kill one another in the name of some creed or deity. I always believed such thinking contributed more to humankind’s destruction than anything else. But given Earth’s fate and the Raothri invasion, I’ve come to realise the zealots were necessary. That their actions, twisted and despicable, played a crucial role in keeping the species alive.

You see, a curious thing happened to the human population when it was culled from fourteen billion to fewer than fifty million people in just a decade. When that happened, humans were about to join the legions of extinct species that once lived on Earth. Over the long view, catastrophes – self-imposed or otherwise – are no rare occurrence. The most effective ones throw out the old variables for survival and introduce new ones. For instance, you owe your charmed life to a rogue asteroid. Before then, you were just a rodent living beneath massive reptiles who were indifferent to your existence.

But subtle attributes make all the difference when the system changes. An insignificant creature clinging to life in a remote corner of a world begins to thrive once the prevailing conditions become more favourable. Nature always hedges its bets, placing varieties of creatures with exotic combinations of attributes at the boundaries of ecosystems. The strongest of those are the ones that survive.

So it seemed that nature had failed to spread its risk with humans. The primates were all but extinct by the twenty-second century, and humans were the last of the hominidae. Evolution takes time, and the species that don’t have it expire.

Yet, uniquely, humans evolved
three
characteristics in a
single
generation. One person in three hundred thousand born after World War Three had at least one major mutation. By the time the Genesis motherships were finished, it was down to one in fifty. Unlike your ancestors, you have some tolerance to radiation thanks to an evolved DNA mismatch repair system orders of magnitude more effective than the one they had. Because of it, your body’s cells can fully repair damage from low doses of ionising radiation ninety-nine per cent of the time. The blood transfusions that are a regular part of your privileged firstborn regimen are merely an additive to scrub away what your own defences cannot, making you all but impervious to radiation sickness except in the most extreme exposure conditions.

Next is your body’s ability to heal from wounds. From initial hemostatic response to resistance to infection, every stage of cicatrisation is quicker and less prone to complications than ever before. Combined with the regenerative biotechnology advances of the last five decades, your species has within its grasp the means to end all disease and extend lifespan by centuries for every member of its population.

But the third change isn’t really a mutation. To call it such would imply we can find it in the human genome. It’s the
Gift
we’ve heard so much about, Amaryllis, and it has been hidden in plain sight for the entirety of human existence.

After the Third World War, the number of reported paranormal experiences increased by a factor of
twenty
, despite the drastic reduction in population. It was as if nature foresaw what was coming to mankind, and, in a desperate bid to save it, designed a new type of clarity: a sixth sense. To be clear, no one can
see
into the future – as in witness events forward in time and then report them back to the past. But one
can
reach a hyper-consciousness of an inevitable future based on
observable
conditions and information available
now
, at this moment – not unlike forecasting the weather.

Those endowed with the Gift reach an unparalleled level of awareness of the universe around them, down to details transcending the five physical senses; they sense every dimension of causation; they are attuned to the frequency of matter itself, able to glimpse all the possibilities at this nexus in the universe in an instant.

The
Gift is powerful. It conveys information to possessors in different ways; it finds some in their dreams, others moments before combat; some just before it’s too late and others with time to spare. Not all Gift bearers are the same; speed, skill and intelligence make all the difference. The most talented among them react the fastest to information they receive – with the
right
course of action.

As far as I know, humans are the only species in the universe that possess it. Again, you can run a Gift bearer’s DNA side by side against someone who lacks it, and you would see nothing amiss. In rare cases, active brain scans will catch a premonition episode in progress – for a fraction of a second. The regions that are most active when humans dream illuminate like supernovae whenever the Gift whispers to them.

Of course there are sceptics, and I’m sure you’re one of them. Evolution takes time, and grants no preference to species no matter how dire their situation. That should have also applied to humans. But it did not, there is no explanation why, and that is deeply unsettling. The
Gift is a mystery that has made me consider the possibility that a higher intelligence exists. For the first time in my deranged life, I am uncertain. The more I see of the universe, the less it makes sense. I suppose that distinguishes me from the zealots.

But I now think they are right to say that not everything can be explained away by science. Your notions of what real is, or ought to be, are biased, constrained by the limits of perspective from a single world. If you knew what I did … if you could see what I’ve seen, you would agree.

The Raothri are not the only intelligent race that humans have encountered. There are others, some with technology just as advanced, and possibly with the same intentions. One of them stalked the
Tabit Genesis
on its journey from Earth for years, hovering in its wake, blinking in and out of sensor range in a ghostly jeer that screamed
we are watching you.

That precious ship, holding what may have been the last humans, as vulnerable and insignificant as a mote of dust between the stars, was
allowed
to pass.

Please excuse me. I’ve more atrocities to commit. More lives to curse.

I hope I haven’t offended you. But again … you know so little.

- A

P.S. I’ve never seen Lunar Base Hadfield. UNSEC didn’t take us there.