Eden's Revenge (Eden Paradox Book 3)

by Barry Kirwan

  But that wasn’t the only reason she was here. If it had been purely a mission of revenge, of eradication of the dwindling embers of humanity, she’d have sent her Principal, Serena, to do the job. No, the plight, that was why she had to oversee this job personally, why she had left high level war-room talks with the Q’Roth Supreme Commander. By a cruel twist of fate, the future survival of her beloved Alicians hinged on mankind. She needed to take back a handful of humans, the only question being how many; no Genners, that much was certain. Once she had that figure, which should arrive any minute, the human cargo could be extracted as soon as Quarantine came down. Then the rest of that dustbowl planet and all its inhabitants, including the Ossyrian guardians, would be exterminated, leaving only cinders.

  Behind her on the bridge of the three kilometre-long Q’tarin, two elite Q’Roth warriors stood draped in blood-red cloaks. They each held in their possession one half of the genetically coded key to arm the Inferno Class planet-cutter, whose tightly-coiled tendrils occupied four-fifths of the ship’s length. She longed to see the Crucible weapon in action, unfurling and embracing the planet, its eight finger-thick lance-wires stretching tens of thousands of kilometres from high orbit down to the planet’s surface. The wires would cut their way through enough of the planet’s crust to begin irreversible magma spouts and disintegration. Esperia would boil in its own lava. The Crucible was aptly named.

  She stood next to her command chair, the only seat on the bridge, while her elite Alician bridge crew manned their consoles standing up as was traditional on all Q’Roth vessels. She rarely sat in that chair, knowing the Q’Roth would see it as a sign of weakness. Despite her height in heeled boots, the two warriors towered a good metre over her. But to the rest of the Alician crew there was never any doubt as to who was in charge. That was necessary: in order to stay at the top in Alician politics there could never be any sign of weakness or doubt about a leader’s command capability. Otherwise an assassination attempt was likely; that is after all how she had finally risen to the position.

  Ten years earlier Sister Esma had traded her jet black hair for a golden Q’Roth skull cap descending to the nape of her neck, shrouding her cheeks, and drawing anyone’s attention – Q’Roth or Alician – to her wide black eyes, hooked nose and thin lips that rarely smiled. Her whole demeanour sent a message – she was deadly serious. Though to her people back home she could occasionally exhibit kindness of a sort, in battle, and particularly in front of the Q’Roth, she was always ruthless.

  Her left arm ended in a blue-black, lobster-like Q’Roth claw, capable of shearing through metal. Most believed she had taken it willingly – true to a degree – but it had also been a punishment by the Q’Roth Queen after her High Guard suffered an embarrassing defeat during humanity’s trial. The Q’Roth surgeons had also rendered Sister Esma sterile, though she would live another seven hundred years. The claw hung motionless at her side. During eighteen years it had seen little action. For Sister Esma it had only one purpose to serve. She wanted it to close around Micah’s throat.

  A year earlier, she had ambushed an Ossyrian relief vessel en route to the planet, and information gleaned from the wrecked pyramid ship’s data-core had shown the pathetic progress Micah had made in all this time; a sprawling tinpot town fringed by scraggy farms, almost no transport infrastructure. It was a travesty compared to the Alician new homeworld Savange, with its silver-spired central city, tethered spaceport and Level Five ship-outfitting industry. The Alician spaceport harboured the ships of two other species as well as the Q’Roth, earning their place in Grid society rather than cowering under a shield and Ossyrian skirts.

  She pictured Savange’s three moons, its shark-grey mountain range with peaks reaching twenty kilometres, counterpointed by nutrient-rich purple oceans. Alicians were not lowly farmers; they were traders and tacticians, participating in the war effort, assisting in numerous battles, aiding the Q’Roth in strategy and logistics. She’d seen a Level Eight report which had mentioned the bipedal newcomers, stating that the Alicians showed promise, that “they had an edge”.

  The praise had not gone unnoticed by her patron, and two years earlier, the new Q’Roth Queen had offered Sister Esma her arm back. She declined. It was a symbol to others, and hardened her purpose to the very core. Maybe after humanity had been erased. Instead she had traded the rare opportunity of the Queen’s goodwill for a succession of missions, first to discreetly prevent relief from arriving at Esperia, and then to extinguish humanity once and for all. The Queen had agreed, although there might be repercussions afterwards, sanctions even, from the Tla Beth or the Ossyrians. But in the heat of the War it would be forgotten quickly, and Sister Esma had promised to make it look like an accident, a freak interaction between the engines of the departing Ossyrian ship and the quarantine barrier, resulting in a devastating chain reaction. In any case, the Queen also wanted to see humanity squashed, after the humiliation of the trial. As for the Tla Beth, they had quarantined Esperia more out of necessary legal protocol rather than actually giving a damn about the upstart race called humanity. Removing humanity from the Grid map would secretly satisfy all the parties remaining, and afterwards, all would simply move on.

  Glancing down at one of the emerald screens, she watched the Q’Roth data scroll past, its writing filled with barbed and jagged serifs; Q’Roth script looked as if it would cut clean through any paper it landed on. One field was a countdown till the quarantine shield came down. Fifty-six hours. But her eyes latched onto another icon; the analysis she had been waiting for was complete. She swung around, walked between the two guardians and barked two names.

  “Serena; Casteur.”

  An athletic blonde and a middle-aged, balding man quit their stations and fell into step behind her. As they marched through a maze of twisting, jade-coloured corridors, Sister Esma recalled her conversation with her chief medical advisor Beatrix three years earlier…

  “It is as we feared, Your Eminence. The Mannekhi genetic infusion did not take. The results were… abominations. All have been destroyed, along with the Mannekhi prisoners. There is only one option left, difficult as I know it will be to accept. The Ossyrian medic has confirmed it. She has agreed to aid in the genetic transfusion process, under duress. No one else knows of these results, they have been encrypted for your sole –”

  Sister Esma knew she should not have had Beatrix executed. Shooting the messenger was a human reaction, beneath Alician standards. But the news had been terrible. How had nine hundred years of careful planning derailed so completely? Negligible statistical collateral, she’d said to the Q’Roth Queen when Micah, Blake and twelve thousand humans had escaped the Cull. The Queen’s slits had blazed scarlet. Culls must be total, she’d replied. And yet if humanity had not escaped, the Alicians would have no future. It had been the cruelest of jokes, but now Sister Esma was determined to deliver the final punchline.

  Casteur, Serena and Sister Esma arrived outside a sealed room, the narrow glass pane in the door revealing a lone occupant, an Ossyrian doctor, sitting upright, her quicksilver eyes oddly calm, forepaws bound in magnetic cuffs. Sister Esma held up the amethyst amulet that always hung from a gold chain around her neck, and the door swished open. The female Ossyrian doctor’s snout pivoted towards her, though she did not rise from her bench.

  “Are you ready for the humans?” Sister Esma enquired.

  The Ossyrian bared her jaws as if to speak, then closed them again. She nodded towards the far wall. Sister Esma followed her gaze to the rack of empty stasis drawers from floor to ceiling which she knew ran five deep behind the wall. She raised her wristcom to her lips, staring directly at the Ossyrian, searching those silver eyes.

  “Lieutenant, transmit a message to Savange, to my aide Nera. Pick one of the Ossyrian’s offspring…” The Ossyrian was suddenly on her feet, and Serena leapt in front of Sister Esma, weapon drawn, aimed at the Ossyrian’s head. Sister Esma did not blink, and continued with the instruction. “The younge
st is to be released. Leave her in a war zone near the front, where an Ossyrian support vessel will find her. Remind her that if she breathes a word, her siblings and mother will be executed after long and painful torture.”

  “Understood.”

  Sister Esma lowered her wrist. The Ossyrian hesitated, then bowed. Serena kept her weapon drawn. Sister Esma noted that throughout the exchange, Casteur had remained behind her, near the door. Still, he had his uses, and it was the price she had to pay for executing Beatrix. She left the room, Casteur trailing in her wake, Serena backing out, not holstering her weapon till the door was sealed again.

  After re-tracing their steps through the long, low-lit silent corridors, they reached Sister Esma’s briefing room behind the bridge, and went inside. An array of weapons including gun-helmets and flow-metal armour decorated the ebony walls, all taken in battle from deceased foes. Sister Esma wasn’t afraid to bloody her own hands; many of the bladed weapons were stained with varying hues of it. One in particular, an ivory-coloured fire-sword, had a faded spray of her blood spattered along its matt-black edge. She resisted touching the scar on the right side of her abdomen where it had slashed her open. Her own counter-strike at the exact same moment had found her combatant’s throat. In battle and in life, choosing the right target had always been her way.

  She perched on her chair carved from finest Savange forest oak, facing the two Alicians. Casteur was almost four hundred years old, and looked around fifty. Serena was technically eighteen, but now, with Q’Roth surgeons at Sister Esma’s disposal, Alicians matured faster in the early years, so that the girl had the looks and demeanour of a thirty year old, and now her ageing process would pause for hundreds of years.

  Serena’s head was bowed slightly, whereas Casteur’s wasn’t. He had the arrogance of many doctors she’d encountered, irrespective of species. No matter, he had learned much from the Ossyrian. But she was in no mood for bad news.

  “Doctor, I understand your analysis is complete.”

  His chin lifted slightly, his grey eyes meeting hers. “The originals will serve our purpose. Fifty will do, but I suggest we take one hundred. The others, the ones who call themselves the Genners, are not useful.”

  She remembered why she tolerated Casteur; he was more politically astute than Beatrix had ever been, and knew which details would please, factoring in how she despised the Genners to the point of outrage; they had not earned their upgrade the way the Alicians had. She gave him the barest of nods. This time he bowed, then left.

  She studied Serena. Young and beautiful, as Sister Esma herself had never been. But she had sharpened Serena like a razor, fashioned her as she once had Louise. The thought of Louise distracted her a moment. So much time and effort invested in that one, only to lose her, for her to turn renegade. This time there would be no mistake. Besides, Serena was one of the few Alician offspring to survive the plight.

  “Serena, you know your mission.”

  The girl raised herself up, pride lighting her eyes. Her voice was smooth, self-assured, but respectful – no, Sister Esma thought, something better – she was loyal.

  “To capture one hundred human adults, fifty male, fifty female, of fathering and child-bearing age, and bring them aboard, anaesthetized. No Genners. Every other creature encountered to be culled. My troops are prepared. Six of my fellow Achillia, fourteen Q’Roth guardians, seven Raptors fuelled and tooled. My raiding party will have one hour before the planet-cutter initiates.” She dared a smile.

  Sister Esma knew from bitter experience that where humans were concerned there could be unaccounted-for variables. “Practice again. Use the Tla Beth battle simulator set to ‘unpredictable’.”

  Serena’s smile broadened. “Of course.”

  “This time, with the holographic simulation safety protocols switched off.”

  Serena’s eyes widened a fraction, then settled. She waited a few moments for any further instructions, then bowed and left.

  The door sealed, and Sister Esma leant back against the chair. The plight: a genetic mutation, a reproductive fault. Their and the Q’Roth’s doctors, and two kidnapped Ossyrians, had not been able to solve the problem. Ninety-nine per cent of Alician children were stillborn or died within a few days. When first told by the lead Ossyrian doctor that this situation was not curable, she had lashed out with her claw, decapitating the dog-faced doctor, and then turned to the other one, daring her to come to the same conclusion. A year later it had been pronounced that there was a solution, after the imprisoned Ossyrian had managed to have a consultation with a Ngank surgeon passing through the sector.

  Since Earth’s fall, the Alician population of five thousand had only grown by fifty, even after an intense breeding programme initiated by Sister Esma’s decree. She eventually quashed it, as the infant death rate was intolerable for her people. Artificial attempts to stimulate birth success fared even worse.

  She rose and moved to a shelf and poured a glass of Vintnarian Brandy, watching the blue, syrupy liquid roll around the glass, inhaling its minty vapour. She drank it down in one go, as was custom even though it seared her throat, and then hurled the empty glass into the far wall, striking and shattering against the cutlass that had almost claimed her. She retook her seat.

  Beatrix had been right, of course. Unless Sister Esma’s Alician flock found a compatible source of genetic material, they would become completely sterile as a species in two generations. Genetic obsolescence. A problem in their DNA re-sequencing, another unaccounted-for variable. The problem had not shown itself on Earth while the Alician Order had slowly grown over the last millennium – something in the environment had masked it, or most likely prevented it. But now Earth was a charred lump of rock.

  Sister Esma noticed her claw was cutting into the armrest of the chair. Standing up, she walked to the porthole and stared towards Esperia’s orange disk. The proposed solution had almost made Sister Esma kill the second surviving Ossyrian doctor. An infusion of original human genetic material. Her claw closed, and she rammed it fist-like into the hull, sending a deafening boom around the room. Those on the bridge would hear it, too. Let them.

  The Ossyrian doctor onboard had been pregnant when captured by an Alician elite squad, her litter of six children now hostages back on Savange, so Sister Esma knew she could count on her. Releasing one of the Ossyrian’s daughters would guarantee her obedience. A camp had been prepared fifty kilometres outside Savange’s capital, a kilometre underground, to house the humans. The infusion process would take fifty years, after which the genetic mutation would be resolved. During that time, infant survival would start off close to thirty per cent, rising to ninety-nine within five years, where it would plateau. The saving grace in all of this was that the required human genome served only as a catalyst: all the newborns would be pure-bred, fertile Alicians. Initially she would let the humans live their lives underground, but if they proved difficult they would be kept in stasis except for short periods to take part in the infusion process. After the fifty years the surviving humans would be put down.

  Sister Esma turned away from the portal and closed her eyes, instructing her resident to show the year-old detailed holos and intel on humanity’s population, demographics, weapons and ship capability, as well as the Ossyrians in their pyramid ship. Nothing would be left to chance this time. Onboard and primed were the countermeasures against Ossyrian bio-weapons that all Q’Roth ships now carried, in case of accidental exposure during battle against Mannekhi and other Qorall allies. More importantly, she also had the Mannekhi weapon used to destroy pyramid-ships. Most Ossyrian vessels had been upgraded a year ago with their own defences, but not the one on Esperia. The Ossyrians would be added to a long list of unsung heroes, and the human quarantine experiment would soon be forgotten, buried in the ongoing avalanche of daily War statistics. And the Ossyrian doctor onboard would know nothing about the fate of her comrades, confined as she was to a secure and data-dry area of the ship.

  No one was goin
g to get out this time, just her ship and the hundred who would ensure the Alicians would live to see their rightful place in the galaxy.

  She instructed her resident to show the latest data on the War, in particular where the front-line had reached, and re-calculate her prime inquiry, the one she checked every day. The answer had not changed. At the current rate of progress, the War would reach Savange in two years.

  Sister Esma opened her eyes, the resident auto-shutting off, and gazed out at the stars, finding the twin yellow epsilon pulsars, a signpost to the Alicians’ new home with its grenadine sunsets in winter-time. She pictured the Terosh, dinosaur-like winged reptiles that swooped down from the cliff-tops, calling to their young. No matter that she was sterile and could never have offspring; her people, they were all her children.

  Two years until the War arrived. But she doubted it would last that long. The Tla Beth were tough, but not stupid, and were running out of options. Rumours of the Mannekhi being favoured by Qorall gave Sister Esma hope. New alliances could always be made, if necessary bowing to a higher order. The Q’Roth might fight to the last warrior’s dying breath, but that instinct had been bred into them by the Tla Beth themselves; the Alician way had always been one of cunning. Sister Esma didn’t think big, she thought long.

  Her claw relaxed. The objectives and priorities were clear: the hundred, Micah’s head, and Esperia blitzed into an asteroid belt. She returned to her chair, and activated a small control with her right hand. A melody issued forth, a little night music. She remembered Amadeus, so full of life, his hands so expressive, that candle-lit evening in Vienna. She began to hum.

  A thought intruded: no Alician musician had surpassed this human genius, despite their upgrade. Never mind, she thought, we have other talents more useful in the Grid. She closed her eyes, remembering his touch, no matter that he slept with others. She’d whispered to him afterwards that he was Level Five, but he had laughed, dismissing her fanciful ideas, and gone back to his composing. She’d watched him work till the first rays of morning, his shoulders hunched and twitching as he raced to write down the wonders in his brain, as if his subconscious sensed he was short of time. He and Leonardo had been the only two humans who had made her wonder if her strategy had been wrong during all those centuries. But the music lulled her, and she remembered watching him conduct the piece in a packed music hall. At one point, he had looked up and fleetingly waved to her with his baton.