The Tabit Genesis (8 page)

A spinning globule of high protein, nutrient-rich slime floated untouched before Adam’s eyes, his appetite ruined by the confrontation under way. Tonight’s dinner originated from the discarded tube tumbling nearby: a single serving of survival rations stamped with a faded Merckon logo and overdue expiration date, its contents divided evenly among the Lethos family. Abby eyed his portion, clutching her straw, waiting for the chance to impale the neglected sustenance when he wasn’t looking.

His crippled father was smiling, and the corners of his mouth were crusted with residue that his mother had yet to clean. Instead she focused on Adam, glaring as she waited for an answer that would infuriate her more.

The spectacle of his parents filled Adam’s heart with sadness. They were gaunt and sickly, with ominous dark splotches covering their pale, mottled skin. Neither had received blood transfusions in months, and that was a death sentence in such proximity to Zeus. Dad’s hair, once a thick brown mane, was all but gone, and his sunken cheekbones seemed incapable of holding his dark eyes in place. Mom was the healthier one, but hardly looked any better. She had been beautiful, once. Now her hair was falling out in clumps, and what few strands remained floated on end like wisps of vapour.

‘
Adam
,’ she snapped for a second time. ‘What were you thinking?’

He had Abby to thank for the betrayal, though it had been wishful thinking to believe he could hide the truth forever. The rig was no longer producing
Three
, not least because Adam had been unable to visit the platform since his near deadly encounter with an Arkady hunter several weeks earlier.

His claim was that turbulence, not direct Arkady contact, had damaged the old machine. It was a plausible lie, since it wasn’t unheard of for bits of Arkady residue to collide with mining platforms, especially on the equatorial rigs. The trouble was there were a
lot
of entrails stuck to the Pegasus, including an intact hunter tentacle that Adam had managed to hide from them. He had heard from other trawlers that on occasion, freight captains would pay for Arkady samples. So he thought of a clever scheme to get rid of the evidence and raise the money he needed for repairs.

When the fuel tanker arrived to collect their meager gas harvest, Adam offered to sell the tentacle instead. The captain readily agreed to his price, and as a deal sweetener, included some spare mech parts as well. Both parties felt very good about their exchange.

Of course, Abby learned about the trade from the money transfer. When she discovered how little Adam had received versus what the sample was actually worth, she snapped. Adam was made to realise his ignorance during a profanity-laced tirade on how he had effectively traded the value of a bumper Three harvest for a handful of scraps.

‘Why wouldn’t you tell us?’ Mom demanded. ‘More to the point, why would you lie?’

Adam knew that his sister’s unpleasantness scaled with her hunger, and times were lean. The truth came out, not by accident, when they were down to their final crate of rations. The comment launched an investigation led by Dad, who still knew his way around a mech’s datacore, where the truth of what really happened that day was stored.

‘Because …’ was the only word Adam could mumble.

Abby finished the sentence for him.

‘… you’re selfish?’ she offered. ‘Or just dumb?’

‘Abigail, shush,’ Mom snapped. ‘
Because
…?’

‘I knew you’d get mad,’ Adam said.

Mom struggled to control her exasperation.

‘It’s not anger,’ she explained. ‘It’s concern for your safety. The Arkady are deadly creatures – you know they’ve killed miners before! At the first sign of them, you have to—’

‘Abort, I know,’ Adam said. ‘But I don’t … I don’t think they mean to harm us.’

Abby snorted, and Dad just kept smiling.

‘Never, ever presume to understand
any
animal’s intentions,’ Mom said, ‘let alone an alien species.’

‘It was a stupid risk,’ Abby said. ‘You should have let the thing die.’

Adam let the thought linger before answering.

‘Well, you kept going on about how important the harvest was,’ he challenged.

‘Oh, don’t you dare,’ Abby warned. ‘I said we were going to starve if we didn’t get a decent yield, but I never said to take any chances down there.’

‘If I don’t take chances, we can’t eat. Here,’ Adam said, nudging the floating globule across the table, ‘you’ll make more sense on a full stomach.’

‘Stop it, both of you,’ his mother said. ‘Abby, you’re excused.’

Abby stabbed the food with her straw and sucked until it vanished.

‘Whatever,’ she said, launching herself out of the room.

Adam sighed.

‘We don’t know much about the Arkady,’ his father said, beginning another oft-repeated lecture. ‘We’re the aliens in
their
world. It’s always best to stay clear.’

‘I did try to stay clear,’ Adam snapped. ‘It landed right in front of me. What was I supposed to do?’

His father’s smile faded, and his head began shaking in erratic jolts.

‘When you’re young … lying seems harmless,’ he was stammering. ‘But it gets grown men into serious trouble.’

The look on Mom’s face made Adam’s stomach drop.

‘The logs show that you literally walked off the platform edge,’ she said.

All information about the mech’s movements, including the orientation of its gyroscopes, was recorded in its datacore. If you played that information back – how many steps it took, when it used its appendages, and – most damningly –
how
it used them – and transposed that information over a map of the rig platform, it was just as revealing as recorded video.

‘For God’s sake, the thing knocked you over!’ Mom exclaimed. ‘You’re lucky to be alive!’

‘It was stuck in the intake,’ Adam protested. ‘How else was I supposed to fix it?’

‘You weren’t supposed to fix
anything
under those circumstances!’ Mom snapped. ‘Do you have that little regard for your own life?’

Adam shrugged his shoulders.

‘It was dying,’ he said.

Mom stared at him incredulously.

‘Please tell me you understand that it tried to kill you,’ she said.

‘No, that’s not true,’ Adam said. ‘It was just … scared.’

‘
Scared?
’ Mom repeated.

‘That makes it even more dangerous,’ his father said, still shaking. ‘You’ve got a big heart, but we don’t want to lose you.’

‘You mean we can’t
afford
to lose the dumb ass,’ Abby yelled out from the next room.

‘Go to the hangar, please!’ her mother shouted.

‘Mmkay, Mom,’ Abby sneered.

‘The mech is fixed,’ Adam said. ‘We can start harvesting again.’

‘You’re not going back down there,’ Mom declared.

‘Uh, yeah he is,’ Abby called out again.

‘
Abigail!
’ Mom shouted.

‘If I don’t, how are we going to survive?’ Adam asked. ‘Dad’s hurt, you don’t know how to pilot, and Abby won’t try prostitution.’

‘Eat shit,’ his sister yelled, just as the door leading to the hangar closed shut.

Mom looked as if she might explode.

‘The old saying is that a good
Three
miner is one with a pulse,’ Dad said.

‘You are not going back down,’ Mom repeated. ‘Not until the radars and turrets are fixed.’

‘Mom,’ Adam said, looking at her thoughtfully. ‘Even I know we can’t afford that.’

‘I don’t care,’ was the response. ‘The answer is no.’

Adam felt anger taking control of him.

‘What about the people who hurt Dad?’ he said. ‘We could always ask them for money again.’

His mother lurched across the table but stopped short of hitting him. Adam’s reflexive flinch launched him off his seat, hurtling him backwards in the microgravity until he struck the bulkhead. She fell back into her seat, her clenched fists trembling, despair and frustration on her face.

After a few long moments, Adam finally spoke.

‘You can’t stop me from going,’ he said. ‘Excuse me.’

Adam pushed off the wall in a slow drift. He left the small room, leaving Thomas and Dawn Lethos to themselves.

Both waited until the hatch to Adam’s cabin closed before speaking.

‘I can’t believe it,’ Dawn said. ‘I’ve lost them.’

‘Not yet,’ Thomas reassured, his head shakes calming somewhat. ‘But we’re close.’

‘We can’t provide them with anything,’ she spat. ‘Not even food.’

‘It’s time to let them go,’ he said. ‘Past time, really.’

‘Go? To whom? What would they do?’

‘They’ll find their way,’ Thomas said wearily. ‘They won’t outlive us staying here. They’ve paid for our sins long enough.’

Dawn reached forward and wiped the corners of his mouth.

‘We had friends, connections,’ she said. ‘Someone must still be willing to help us. We’re firstborns, for God’s sake!’

‘Shh,’ Thomas hushed. ‘It’s too dangerous for them to know.’

‘It’s their
right
to know!’ Dawn snapped. ‘They have privileges with corporations and government—’

‘We’ve been through this so many times,’ Thomas said, his mouth reaching for the tube that allowed him to control his wheelchair. After a few puffs, the machine withdrew from the table and rolled into the corner. ‘They lost their rights the moment we changed their names.’

‘Their real names may be all that saves them the next time someone comes here demanding money,’ she insisted.

‘That’s just as likely to get them ransomed or killed,’ Thomas said, as the overhead light flickered. ‘We sold our souls. Sooner or later, the devil gets his due. Adam is safer working a rig than he is anywhere in the Inner Rim. And if any of the roughnecks around here discover that these kids are firstborns …’

The only record of the Lethos family’s existence was in the Orionis Navy archives, and it had been forged by Ceti hackers who created a fictitious biometric signature designating them as Outer Rim ghosts. In truth, Tomas
Straka
was descended from the highborn founders of Titan Industries, where both he and his wife Dayla
had been executives just ten years earlier.

Titan was the leading producer of synthetic biology, specialising in the creation of artificial life forms. On the
Tabit Genesis
, biocybernetic organisms cleaned slush tanks, performed hull repairs, processed radioactive waste, and helped manufacture some of the first gas giant trawlers when the
Tabit
arrived in Orionis. But on Earth they had levelled cities, enslaved populations, and performed surgical assassinations in the Third World War.

Synthetic organisms were most often created by combining elements taken from ‘The Catalogue’, the non-human gene pool archive that the
Tabit Genesis
had brought from Earth. It contained sequencing data for every native species of life that remained in the twenty-second century. As the colonisation of Orionis expanded, parts of the Catalogue were opened for privatisation and corporate investment. With the horrors of war still fresh in the minds of highborn officials, the government acted as both broker and auditor of all sequencing sales, scrutinising every transaction with vigilance.

House Alyxander, notorious dabblers in genetics and biocybernetic technology, made no secret of their intent to acquire a
complete
copy of the Earth gene pool, including the sequences used to produce biocybernetic weapons. They were especially active in the black market, always the highest bidders for illegal sequences that could create designer mutations in humans or in exotic creatures to sell as pets. Because of their ties with Ceti and other privateer cartels, Inner Rim corporations were forbidden from conducting business with them.

Ten years earlier Tomas Straka, then the President at Titan, had stumbled upon a dark discovery: the very corporation his own ancestors founded had obtained the biocybernetic weapon sequences. And the CEO at the time – Argus Fröm – was directly implicated by the evidence. Weighing the ramifications, Tomas had taken the moral high ground and reported his findings to the Navy Police.

Arriving home an hour later, he had found Abby and Dayla – then eight months pregnant with Adam – bound and unconscious. Before he could take another step, he had been forced to his knees and restrained. Tomas didn’t see the intruder’s face as a gun was pressed to his head. He relived the experience often.

‘Did you tell anyone else what you found?’ a voice asked.

‘No,’ Tomas said.

The gun pressed harder.

‘I’ll shoot your daughter first.’

‘No!’ Tomas shouted. ‘I didn’t tell anyone else!’

‘I believe you,’ the voice said. ‘If I didn’t, she’d be dead already. We need to talk.’

‘Who are you?’

‘The messenger,’ the voice said. Tomas heard the footsteps of other men in the room. ‘When you wake up, you’ll be on a freighter. You’ll find out your options on board.’

‘My options?’

‘You have enemies. The life you knew is over. This is the only way to save your family. Do you understand? It’s highborn’s luck you aren’t dead already.’

Those were the last words he heard before awakening in orbit around Zeus. Adam was born soon after, on the Ceti outpost where the Straka family vanished from existence. The cartel had been paid by an anonymous donor to move them from the Inner Rim and to keep their true identities secret.

Little else about the deal had turned out favourably for the Lethos family ever since. Tomas would never know for certain who had betrayed him – or who had rescued them from danger.

‘I didn’t sell our souls,’ Dayla snarled. ‘You did.’

‘If our children survive, it will be because of their natural gifts, not what a plutocracy says their name entitles them to,’ Tomas said. ‘They’ll have to make their own names here.’

Dayla was despondent.

‘I hate your damned altruisms,’ she growled. ‘I always have.’

Tomas’s head began to shake erratically again.

‘What kind of people do you want your children to become?’ he asked.

‘Not like us!’