One of them broke away from his companions and began marching directly towards Vladric. The guards quickly intercepted, but he persisted.
‘Commander Mors, may I have a word?’ he said.
‘Mind your tone and stand aside,’ Sig snapped, catching a faint whiff of alcohol.
Vladric raised a hand.
‘What’s your name, captain?’ he said.
‘Lazrel, sir,’ the dishevelled man said. Desperation was in his eyes. ‘Atticus Lazrel.’
Sig would have warned that this was a bad time, but it was too late.
‘Well, Captain Lazrel,’ Vladric said. ‘How can I help you?’
‘Sir, I’ve served Ceti for years,’ Atticus said. ‘I’ve never questioned anything asked of me. Not until now.’
‘What have we asked that imposes such a burden?’
Released by the guards, Atticus straightened up.
‘There’s a food convoy en route to Ironbound Prospect,’ he said. ‘I’ve been given orders to raid it.’
The Prospect was an asteroid colony on the Inner Rim side of the Belt. Although Navy patrols generally thinned the further one travelled from Eileithyia, any sortie inside the Belt was risky. The burn time from Zeus to Hera was three weeks; the return trip could take twice as long, depending on what was stolen and how much fuel remained. If Atticus Lazrel was instructed to target this convoy, it was either because he was a highly skilled captain, or because his commanding officer was intentionally setting him up to fail.
Sig had a strong suspicion it was the latter.
‘Ironbound,’ Vladric began, ‘is the property of Merckon Industries, correct?’
‘Yes, sir,’ Atticus said. ‘They get three shipments per year. The first was lost to privateers, the second to engine failure. I’ve been ordered to take the third … Ironbound can’t produce its own food. I have family there. They’ve been rationing for weeks and will starve if that shipment doesn’t get through.’
Atticus waited for sympathy.
‘Sir, my firstborn is there,’ he implored. ‘Vladric, please.’
Sig held his breath.
‘You realise those supplies are needed here,’ Vladric said, without a single trace of emotion. ‘And that Merckon refuses to negotiate a trade agreement with us?’
‘They can’t resupply,’ Atticus insisted. ‘That should be enough reason to consider other options.’
A smile surfaced beneath Vladric’s blank stare.
‘You see, Sig?’ he said. ‘Do you trust the men in your command?’
‘With my life,’ Sig repeated.
‘Would you trust this one?’
‘No,’ Sig answered.
Vladric turned his glare back to Atticus.
‘Don’t despair, Captain,’ he said. ‘We’ll bring your family here, and share their firstborn food with us ghosts as well.’
Atticus looked relieved.
‘Thank you, Command—’
‘I’ll also send more firepower to ensure our victory and the safe transport of your loved ones to Brotherhood, where they will begin their new lives with Ceti – after you’ve been executed for treason.’
The blood drained from the man’s face.
‘What?’
Sig nodded towards the guards. Two of them forced Atticus’s traitor arms behind his back.
‘I was trying to help my family!’
‘You’ve had the means to help them for some time,’ Vladric growled. ‘Since you can’t, I will.’
‘Then I’ll raid the convoy!’ Atticus protested. I’ll do what you—’
‘A Ceti captain follows orders without question,’ Vladric said. ‘He finds a way to honour his duty to family and our brotherhood.’
‘Please, I beg your forgiveness—’
Vladric’s face turned from indifference to anger.
‘Governor Lareck!’ he snarled. ‘Get this traitor out of my sight before I kill him myself. Seize his funds and property. The ship is ours, the rest belongs to his children.’
Sig glared at Atticus, who was now sobbing.
‘Guards,’ Sig said quietly.
It was best never to look back. Bystanders, even the few who might have been searching for the courage to intervene, all returned to their business as the guards dragged Atticus back towards the tram platform.
Sig knew that word of his sentence would spread quickly.
‘“Ready for anything”, eh?’ Vladric sneered, marching towards the lab. ‘Not with cowards like that in our ranks. Root them out now, Sig. It’ll make all the difference in this fight.’
Dr Ilya Tallendin, the chief researcher in Ceti’s weapons division, emerged from the main entrance to the complex.
‘Welcome, Commander,’ he said, giving the salute. ‘You’re just in time.’
‘That implies good news,’ Vladric said.
‘Oh, it is,’ Ilya replied, leading them inside. ‘Right this way, please.’
The weapons lab hall was an enormous cavern burrowed deep beneath the magma chamber itself. Dr Tallendin led them to an observation deck that ringed the highest elevations within; the bottom was nearly two hundred metres down and sectioned into staging areas crowded with heavy machinery. The scientists working inside wore survival suits, as the environment mimicked a pristine vacuum, with temperatures well below freezing.
On one side of the cavern floor, Sig recognised the menacing contours of a frigate’s railgun; its turret was securely bolted into the rock. Opposite, just fifty metres away, was a segment of ship armour.
Dr Tallendin cleared his throat.
‘For this test, we’re using an authentic Navy MK50 railgun, and firing it from point-blank range into the same plating used on most Ceti corvettes. The MK50 fires a slug at speeds in excess of eight kilometres per second, presenting a kinetic energy challenge, or more specifically the amount of force transferred at the point of impact, which is the output of mass times velocity—’
‘Move along,’ Sig interrupted.
‘Right. Quantum particles attain their mass through interactions with the Higgs field, “absorbing” mass via the Higgs boson. We sought to block that interaction, by either preventing the absorption itself, or by cancelling the field oscillations. As it turns out, there was a third way to—’
‘Ilya …’ Sig warned.
‘We can reduce the mass of any projectiles that travel through our shield barrier by at least ninety-five per cent,’ the doctor said.
Sig felt his jaw drop.
‘Ninety-five?’ he repeated.
‘That’s correct,’ the doctor said, looking towards the cavern floor. The scientists working within had exited, and yellow warning lights were ablaze in the test area. ‘We may be able to increase that somewhat, but not much further—’
‘Show me,’ Vladric demanded.
‘As you wish,’ the doctor said.
After a few moments, Sig thought the lab had exploded. A fireball erupted from the railgun which engulfed the target, and from that range the armour plate should have been obliterated. Instead, a sizable dent crowned the crosshairs painted onto it, and the slug itself had broken into countless white-hot fragments.
‘How…?’ Sig asked, incredulous. Vladric remained motionless throughout, his face impassive.
‘The round which struck the target had only five per cent of the mass it had when it left that railgun,’ Dr Tallendin explained. ‘Standard tungsten-based alloys with carbon nanotube layering can withstand the reduced kinetic energy transferred at impact.’
‘How long can you hold that shield up?’ Vladric asked.
‘The energy cost is low, but it takes some time for resonance generation to recover from impact,’ the doctor answered. ‘Unfortunately, the degradation penalty is high, to the order of thirty per cent per second or so.’
‘So three seconds to fully recover from a direct hit?’ Sig clarified.
‘From an inert round, yes. And explosive warheads will still detonate on contact with the shield barri
er. But with the MK50’s low rate of fire, the odds of successive rounds striking the same location during combat are very low, assuming the Navy doesn’t know how this defensive system works.’
‘They don’t know,’ Vladric interjected. ‘How soon can you equip the fleet with this?’
Dr Tallendin looked at him as though he were kidding, which Sig could tell he regretted almost immediately.
‘The fleet?’ he croaked. ‘I can deliver a corvette or two with the equipment we have here, but setting up a manufacturing line for the generators would take—’
‘I’ll give you total control of Ceti’s resources to make this happen as soon as possible,’ Vladric said.
Dr Tallendin was sceptical.
‘I am honoured, but …’
‘Ceti’s shipyards, Lethe’s mines, the Belt’s labs, every ship in our fleet, every manufacturing plant we have, and my personal word to procure anything else you need,’ Vladric insisted. ‘All you’d have to do is ask.’
Sig knew nothing of the technology, other than the fact it had been stolen. But the corporations that built up Lethe had done so with a mega-industrial output in mind, and Ceti had managed to attract smart people who knew how to use its infrastructure to maximum effect.
‘I’ll find a way,’ Dr Tallendin finally said.
‘Now that’s an attitude I can admire,’ Vladric said. ‘Succeed, and you’ll keep some of the power I’m giving you now to make this work.’
Dr Tallendin knew better than to ask the price of failure.
5
VIOLA
There was white water on the Danube this morning, and Viola had to push herself to keep pace with its swift current. She raced off the pathway marked for joggers and into the brush parallel to the river, vaulting over and under obstacles that had once left her bloody. As much as she loved the challenge, it was the sound of the running, churning water that invigorated her most. There were few places like this, and soon it would be truly unique in Orionis. The station engineers had warned residents about the speedier currents as a consequence of a larger eco-engineering effort to introduce fish stocks, a first since the colonisation of Orionis.
The ‘Danube River’, named after its ancient ancestor, ran through the entire nineteen-kilometre circumference of the torus-shaped station Luminosity. It wound through forests, orchards, and grasslands grown from original seeds and reconstructed genotypes that had arrived with the Tabit Genesis in 2638. Viola felt a surge of invigoration as she leapt over a rock outcrop, propelling herself even faster through the course. The air was thick with scents of natural vegetation growth and decay, so unlike the scrubbed, sterile gas of most ships and stations.
Curving far ahead and above her, she could see a radiant beam of reflected sunlight illuminating the darkness beyond. Were there such a thing as paradise, it would look like this. Bounding through a small stream, Viola relished the splashing of water beneath her soles, knowing it would be some time before she felt it again. Such was the price of curiosity. For today she would begin a comprehensive study of the Arkady species on Zeus, under the sponsorship and supervision of Merckon Industries.
This could well be the greatest day of her professional career. It had started well – her morning run had been exhilarating. But on approaching her flat, Viola saw her father waiting at the front door.
The sight of him made her bliss evaporate.
‘What was your time?’ he called out.
She glanced at her watch.
‘Twenty-nine minutes.’
The course was ten kilometres long. A personal best.
Her father, Dr Klaus Silveri, was unimpressed.
‘And twenty-eight seconds,’ he added. ‘A pathetic effort by any measure.’
It was just past 0600. Viola knew why he was there, and decided she would pretend he wasn’t.
‘I’m going to be late,’ she muttered, walking past him. Dressed in colonial highborn attire, her father’s back was straight as iron, and ancient lines etched a permanent scowl upon his face.
‘Are you surprised I’m here?’ he asked, following her inside.
‘I’d be pleasantly surprised if you left without another word,’ she answered, shedding her shirt.
‘Manners, child,’ her father scolded. ‘I wanted to tell you—’
‘Excuse me?’ she interrupted, motioning for privacy. Glaring at her, he slowly turned as she began removing the rest of her soaked garments, letting them drop onto the floor. Completely bare, she took a protein drink from the kitchen and made her way to the shower.
Klaus followed and stood right outside the bathroom door.
‘I wanted to offer my congratulations,’ he said. ‘This is an honour for the Silveri name. You make me so proud.’
Viola was practised at ignoring his bitter sarcasm. Gulping the sustenance down, she relaxed for a moment under the gush of water, willing her body temperature to cool.
‘That’s kind of you,’ she said, throwing open the shower doors. Viola locked onto his cold, grey eyes to make sure they didn’t wander. ‘Out of my way.’
Drying off quickly, she picked a maroon-coloured business skirt, opting against anything too revealing. The collar was high and oversized, but the rest was snug enough to flaunt her athleticism. Disregarding the impatient tapping of Klaus, she inspected the cut on her knee, which she had opened up a day earlier on the same running course. What had been a deep, serrated gash was now almost completely healed. The people of Orionis had regenerative powers far more robust than their ancestors, but her firstborn genetic modifications gave her even more of an advantage.
‘Since I know you won’t listen to reason,’ her father said, inspecting her final appearance, ‘I’ve come to warn you instead.’
Viola’s grandparents, Drs Thieron and Alexia Silveri, had been bioengineers aboard the Tabit Genesis, tasked with maintaining the ‘slush tanks’ that stations and long-range ships could not function without. The tanks were an essential component of a microbe-driven distilling system that dissolved organic compounds into reusable components. For every form of human waste – septic, manufactured, even toxins – a microorganism could be engineered to transform it into fuel for another process that was useful to man. The journey from Sol to Orionis took three decades, and the thousands of slush pits the Silveris had maintained did as much to keep the Tabit’s passengers alive as the hulls separating them from the vacuum of space.
‘Another warning?’ Viola dismissed, adding some eyeliner. ‘Sounds serious.’
‘I never discouraged your interest in exobiology because, quite frankly, I underestimated your passion for it,’ Klaus said, raising his chin. ‘Had I known you would take it this far, I would have derailed your ambition much sooner.’
Viola never planned on telling him about her commitment to Merckon Industries. As a man with deep corporate connections, he would inevitably find out. But the longer the secret was kept, the less he could do about it. Or so she hoped.
Abandoning her make-up, she started for the door.
Klaus intercepted her. Her physique was much more imposing than that of the 164-year-old man in her path. Yet she stood paralysed in the space between them.
‘I say that because I’m more interested in your preservation than your career,’ he said, looking up at her. ‘I don’t mean to understate your accomplishments, but let’s be honest: genetically speaking, you are perfect. All the challenges most people struggle with you conquer with ease. Your success was never in doubt. Not until now. I do fear you’re on the wrong path.’
Viola stepped around him.
‘I’ll try not to let you down,’ she said, walking outdoors. The commuter platform was just half a kilometre away, but Klaus stayed right on her heels.
Viola’s late grandparents were pioneering biologists who had ensured mankind’s survival by passing their expertise on to the first generation of humans to be born beyond Earth.
Hydroponically-grown food was the only sustenance for the original
Tabit settlers, and their lifespans averaged 120 years of age. Population limits were tied to agricultural yield and the scarce availability of living space. In anticipation of this, the male voyagers of the Tabit Genesis had their seed frozen and were all sterilised before their journey from Earth began. But a gene bank containing a diverse genetic sampling of the human population was also brought with them.
When the Tabit settlers finished building the second torus ring about the spine of the Tabit Genesis, the first sweeping act to expand the human population was passed: ‘One Child.’ Females were encouraged to birth a single offspring via a government-supervised in vitro fertilisation pregnancy, using either pre-approved genetics from the bank, or any partner from the Tabit.
The original Firstborns thus came into the world, and among them was Klaus Silveri. One decade later, fate would steer his path to an original Tabit settler – or “highborn,” as they were known today – by the name of Mace Merckon, founder of the corporation that bore his name.
Viola lengthened her stride, glancing about to see who was witnessing the spectacle of her father giving chase.
‘Why are you giving your talents to commercial interests?’ he demanded loudly. ‘For generations, we have pursued science essential for the survival of mankind. Where do the Arkady fit into that?’
Other commuters were making their way to the platform. She focused on the gardens alongside the pathway, glittering beneath a veil of mist, distracted momentarily by their beauty.
But Klaus was relentless.
‘They’re pests, Viola,’ he spat. ‘The entomological equivalent of roaches. What possible good can come from this?’
‘I’d have to study them first to answer that,’ she said.
He grabbed her hand, and she stopped.
‘And what if there is no good?’ he challenged. ‘Have you considered that? Are you that selfish?’
The Tabit Genesis Page 4