Genesis

by Lara Morgan

  Rosie was afraid he’d been going to say that. “But we might not have enough power left to control the landing at all.”

  Riley said nothing. He didn’t have to; they both knew that if the heat shield didn’t work, they’d be dead anyway.

  “But what about my dad and aunt? If we don’t make it …”

  “If we’re gone and the diary is destroyed, he might let them go.” But he didn’t look at her as he said it.

  “Yeah, right,” Rosie said softly.

  “I’m sorry, Rosie, that’s all we’ve got.”

  “Yeah.” She felt strange, detached.

  “There’s always the chance that he won’t be able to resist talking to me,” Riley said. “We have a lot of … history. He probably won’t fire unless he has to. It might buy us time to make it. And we could make it. Then, once we land, we’ll get you to Genesis. I have some friends in the colony who can help. You can hide and I’ll go see Yuang at the Enclave. I’ll make him let your aunt and dad go.”

  Sure, whatever. She stared out at the stars. He made it sound so easy. She wanted it to be easy. She wanted her aunt to be okay, her dad to be here with her, and her mum back. But that was a fairytale; this was reality. Reality was Helios and the MalX, Pip betraying her and Yuang waiting to kill them. And she’d be damned if it was all going to be for nothing.

  “If we do this and we survive,” she said, “I’m coming with you. I want to help you stop Helios.”

  He gave her a long, level look. “Rosie …”

  “No.” She glared at him. “My mum died from the MalX, my friend is dead, probably my aunt as well and for all I know, so is my dad. Helios has killed everyone I love. I am not going to hide in the colony while you go off and get yourself killed. Besides, how are you going to do it alone?”

  “I’ll find a way.”

  “How? Once you offer yourself up, they’ll probably kill you. If we can figure out a way for me to get in, while Yuang’s busy with you, I could try to get some of the information we need or at least stop the selfdestruct. We have the codes.” She knew she was right. A strange recklessness had come over her. She knew she could die but it didn’t seem real, any of it. She just had to act.

  “Rosie, it’s too–”

  “Dangerous? Riley, we can’t just let all those people die. I’m good at computers; I’ve been top of my class for the last two years. I can get in. I can stop the selfdestruct and maybe I can even figure out a way to get the lab files without the code key.”

  “And what happens if you get caught?”

  “Then I guess I join the rest of my family,” she said bluntly. “But if you tell me the codes and give me some idea of the layout of the Enclave, perhaps I won’t.” She met his stubborn stare. “Who else have you got, Riley?”

  His jaw tightened. No one was the answer and she could see that he knew it.

  With slow movements he pulled his sister’s diary from his pocket.

  “I don’t know how to activate it,” she said.

  He punched in the password. “I don’t have the Enclave layout but we can come up with a rough idea. I know a bit about it.” He watched her as she took the diary and began scrolling through the codes. There were eight including the selfdestruct deactivation sequence. She thought she should be able to memorise them.

  “If I find someone else at the colony, the deal is off,” he said. “I do have some friends there.”

  “Fine,” she said, but really, who was he trying to kid? It was just her and him. She paused, not sure what she’d committed herself to, then began readying the ship and reciting the code sequences in her head.

  CHAPTER 24

  Pip sat staring at Essie and tapped his fingers on his knee. For the first time he wished he was back on Earth. He couldn’t think straight up here.

  Yuang confused him. Sometimes he thought he was pleased with him but then he was sure he despised him. He couldn’t seem to get a handle on him any more.

  When he was a boy, and Yuang had only been an assistant, he had been kind to him. He would often visit and tell stories about the time before the MalX, before the Melt and the flooding of the world. Sometimes he’d bring chocolate. But one day he’d stopped coming and he hadn’t seen him again for two years. Then he was different.

  And then Helios had started sending Pip to Earth to live with the Ferals. It had been a shock, going from the clean, dry Enclave to the stinking shanties by the river. Pip didn’t like to think of it, that first trip. He’d been a skinny pale brown boy, left alone with a group of people he didn’t know who smelled worse than the dank, bug-infested river. He’d been terrified they were going to leave him down there to catch the MalX and die. Yuang had kept telling him he was trying to convince them to let him go back but now he was starting to wonder if he had really tried at all.

  Essie twitched on the bed and muttered something.

  He checked the door for grunts, then leaned over and stared down at her closed eyelids. Suddenly, they opened.

  She squinted up at him. “Pipsqueak?” Her voice was hoarse and barely above a whisper.

  Pip didn’t know what to do. He just looked at her.

  “What are you staring at?” She grimaced and tried to move. “Hey, what’s going on?” Her voice got louder and she struggled weakly under the straps.

  “Sh!” He checked the passageway then locked the door. He stood by her bedside, not quite sure what to do next. He should call Yuang.

  “Let me loose.”

  “Can’t.”

  Essie sighed. “Where’s Rosie?”

  “She and Riley got away.”

  She seemed to relax a little after he said that. “So where am I?”

  Pip knew he should tell her that Rosie and Riley hadn’t really got away, that Yuang had plans for them, but he didn’t.

  “The Cosmic Mariner, Yuang’s ship.” He looked at the wound in her side, covered in thin white meditape. “Does it hurt?”

  “Give me a gun and I’ll show you. Where are we going? Mars?”

  “Yep.”

  She closed her eyes and was silent for so long, he thought she’d gone back to sleep. She hadn’t.

  “Pipsqueak.” Her eyes opened again. The whites were dull, even after the shots he’d given her.

  “Don’t call me that.”

  “Well, you are one. You’re a little shit who stabbed us in the back. How long have you been working for Yuang?”

  “I don’t work for him.”

  “Yeah, sure.” She coughed lightly. “Keep telling yourself that, whatever makes it easier.”

  “It’s never easy,” Pip mumbled.

  “What?” She tried to turn, but the straps across her chest prevented her.

  “Nothing.”

  “Listen, Pipsqueak, you may be a stinky little Feral but I don’t think you planned for things to get this bad, did you?”

  Pip didn’t answer her. He knew what she was doing. They’d had lessons in the Enclave. They were taught what to do if they were ever caught. Make friends with the enemy, and that was just what Rosie’s aunt was doing. She must have learned that in the Elite. But he couldn’t think of her as the enemy – she was Rosie’s aunt. Rosie who might die. Would Yuang really do it?

  “How far ahead of us are they?”

  “What?” He frowned, trying to keep his mind on the job. He was supposed to be watching her.

  “Rosie and Riley, how far ahead of us are they?”

  “Don’t know,” he lied.

  “Pipsqueak, come here where I can see you.” He didn’t move and she let out a frustrated sigh. “What am I going to do, talk you to death?”

  Reluctantly, he moved so he was standing where she could see him. She did look like crap. But she was talking, so he supposed what he’d done must have helped.

  “You know, Rosie liked you, Pip. She thought you were her friend.”

  “Her mistake,” he said.

  “You just want to believe that because you feel guilty. I saw the way you loo
ked at her.” Essie flinched and closed her eyes again briefly, as though something was hurting her. Pip wondered if he should give her another shot, but she opened her eyes again before he could move. “What do you think is going to happen here? Do you honestly think they’re just going to let me go? They can’t hand me to the Senate, can they? And they can’t keep me tied up here.”

  Pip shrugged. He wasn’t sure what Yuang planned to do. But even if he did know, what could he do about it?

  “You know something, don’t you, Pipsqueak?”

  “No.”

  “Liar, I can see it all over your face. What is it? Is it to do with Rosie?”

  Pip stayed silent, and a look of weary disgust came over her. “So, you’re not going to do anything, are you? You’re just going to hang us all out to get shot, or worse. Bloody Ferals.” She turned away.

  “Well, what am I supposed to do?” Pip said.

  “I don’t know, Pipsqueak,” Essie said resignedly. “Just do whatever you like. Save your own skin – it’s what you’re best at.”

  Pip turned away from her, angry. He paced back and forth. What did she know about what he’d had to do to survive? If he didn’t save his own skin, he’d have been dead years ago.

  “That’s right,” she taunted him. “Just worry about yourself. Don’t worry about all those people in the Enclave who are going to die. Don’t worry about them.”

  He went back to her bedside. “What do you mean?”

  She looked at him with narrow eyes then a glint of amusement crossed her face. “You don’t know, do you?”

  “Know what?”

  She let out a harsh, low laugh. “About what he’s planning. Yuang. Even if he gets the diary from Riley and stops him, he’s still going to detonate the place.”

  “What?” He was starting to get a bad feeling.

  “Poor little Pipsqueak. Do you really think Helios would risk anything getting out about what goes on there? He’s planning to take what he needs then make it go away – with all witnesses.”

  Pip felt hot and cold at the same time. Yuang was going to destroy the Enclave? “You’re lying,” he said.

  “Yeah, sure I am.” Her tone was caustic. “’Cos good old Yuang would never lie to you, would he?”

  He grabbed the edge of her bed, his knuckles going white from the pressure. He knew what she was saying was probably true. He felt it in his gut, a glaring truth he’d been trying not to see.

  “Even if I did unstrap you, you can’t stop him,” he said. “There are a hundred grunts on this ship, plus the crew. They’ll find you before you get anywhere near the bridge and then you’ve got to get to the weapons and …” Pip stopped. He realised he’d said too much. She’d made him angry on purpose.

  “Weapons?” she said, and her gaze measured him. “Why would they need to fire weapons? He’s got them in his sights, hasn’t he?

  Pip turned away from her, running a hand over his dreadlocks. Why had he let her make him mad?

  “Pipsqueak! You look at me. Yuang’s caught up with them. He’s going to fire on them, isn’t he?”

  Pip exhaled. “Only if they don’t stop.”

  “And he was planning on using me to force Rosie to stop?”

  Pip couldn’t answer her. But he didn’t need to.

  “So,” she said, “he threatens to slice and dice me to get Rosie and Riley to give up. And what about Adam, her dad? Do you know about him?”

  “No.”

  Essie was silent for a minute and Pip wondered if the wound was hurting her again, and why he should care so much. But before he could ask she said very quietly, “Have you ever killed anyone, Pip?”

  He half turned back to her, his arms crossed over his chest. One time he’d come close but he didn’t want to think about it. He’d been hungry and the kid had taunted him over and over.

  “I don’t think you have,” Essie went on when he didn’t answer. “And even if you think it’s not going to be you pulling the trigger, or pushing the button, if you let it happen, it’s the same thing. It changes you, Pip. Do you want to be that person?”

  He could feel her eyes on him as he stared at the floor. It was very quiet in the mediroom. The only sound was the ever-present hum of the ship, vibrating steadily as it cruised through the stars. He remembered the whites of the kid’s eyes staring at him in the dark. The glint of the knife in the moonlight and the rotten stink of the river. He thought of Rosie’s angry, accusing gaze.

  He took a long breath but didn’t move. If he let Rosie’s aunt go, what would Yuang do to him?

  CHAPTER 25

  The air in Rosie’s suit was getting thin.

  They’d swapped to the last breather from the third suit now, and she was trying not to inhale too deeply. If everything went according to plan, their chances of surviving the atmosphere breach and freefall were good, at least forty per cent. If things went badly, the chances of survival were up there with ploughing into the sun at full tilt in a tin can.

  She tried to stay focused on keeping the pod steady – and trying to miss the really big rocks when they made it to Mars.

  “Rosie, I’m going to need you to go back into the fuel cell chamber when we get close,” Riley’s voice sounded flat through her com and she could hear the hiss of the breather releasing air into his helmet.

  “How close?”

  “Close enough to see the atmosphere.”

  That close? She’d barely have time to make it back to the bridge.

  She reset the nav controls. “You want me to change the cells around to make them uneven?”

  He nodded. “We need to increase the pressure enough to burn out the thrusters.”

  Without blowing ourselves up, she thought, or getting hit by Yuang’s missiles.

  She didn’t understand how Pip could work with someone like Yuang. How could he do it, knowing what was going on? Or did he actually think Helios was doing the right thing?

  Riley suddenly made a low noise. He was staring intently at the view screen in front of him.

  “What?”

  “Yuang’s hailing us.”

  Rosie’s insides jumped.

  “Can you put it on the holo projector?” he asked her.

  “Yes.”

  “Do it.”

  She depressed the touch pads and a transparent image of Mr Yuang appeared, with a greenish cast, on the console between them. He smiled when he saw her.

  Rosie tried to slow her racing pulse. Behind was a super high-tech-looking bridge with a black woman at the controls. Rosie had stupidly hoped to see Aunt Essie, or Pip, just to prove to him she was still alive.

  “Yuang,” Riley said.

  “Simon Shore,” Yuang replied. “So nice to see you again. You always did have a talent for survival.”

  “No thanks to your predecessor.”

  Yuang frowned. “Believe me, Simon, I would not have allowed them to torture you as they did if I had been in charge.”

  Riley’s breathing was sharp in her com and Rosie looked at him in alarm.

  “Easy to say now,” he said. “What do you want, Yuang?”

  “What does everyone want? A place of comfort, an end to fear, but that is irrelevant. The question is, Simon,” he emphasised Riley’s real name, “are you willing to kill this young woman to achieve your end?”

  Riley paused and glanced at Rosie. “That’s your plan, is it? Shoot us down, make us choose between surrender or death?”

  “It’s up to you, Simon,” Yuang said. “It’s out of my control.”

  “Shifting the blame?” Riley looked back at Yuang. “You used to be a better man.”

  “Things change, times change. There is too much at stake here now, Simon.”

  “But it’s your hand on the gun, not mine. Besides, nothing is certain. I believe a famous man once said that.”

  “Famous and deceased,” Yuang replied.

  “Where is Essie?”

  “Alive for now, but as you said, nothing is certain. You could
ensure her safety.”

  “But what of the others – the lives in the Enclave? Who will ensure theirs?”

  “You can, if you want to.” Yuang paused. “What do you think, Miss Black? Do you trust him?”

  “More than I trust you,” she said.

  He smiled. “And yet you know so little about him. About the many he has sacrificed in the name of his cause.”

  “You mean the people you’ve trampled to get to me,” Riley said.

  “You could have saved them by giving yourself up.”

  “Like now?” Riley’s tone was filled with scepticism.

  “You’ve already let Rosie and her aunt lead me right to you,” he said. “Why not cut your losses now, before more people are hurt?”

  So that was why he’d let her go when she’d seen him at Orbitcorp. Rosie met his cold smile with a frustrated glare as she remembered his wink. Riley continued talking to Yuang: going on about something to do with the past, debating about the greater good. Then, without turning to her, he tapped one finger lightly on the console.

  Her heart almost stopped as she saw the indicator flashing – Mars was close. She could see it now, the spherical shape patchy with its man-made atmosphere clinging like a semidetached shroud. Rosie drifted backwards until she was at the door of the bridge, then she turned and pushed herself away from the doorframe, arrowing down towards the hatch. She had three minutes max to change the cells and it felt like it took twenty. The cells floated so slowly from their chambers and she had almost ground her teeth flat with anxiety by the time she sneaked back into the bridge.

  Riley and Yuang were still talking but their voices were harder now, and as she settled back in the pilot’s chair, Rosie got a shock. Pip was standing at Yuang’s side. She could see just one side of his face. He looked nervous, scared almost. She didn’t think he could see her, or at least he was acting like he couldn’t. Yuang was speaking and she tuned in, trying to work out what she’d missed.

  “You can help her, Riley. Surrender and we can talk. Don’t make me fire on you.” Riley gave a bitter laugh. “I don’t think Essie will be as easy to outwit as you think. You look nervous, Yuang.”