The Tabit Genesis (34 page)

‘Gryphons, new targets will be in range momentarily,’ he said, his voice as nasal as ever. ‘Ruslov, they are priority.’

Wyllym’s search radar picked out a host of new contacts: Navy warships, all executing a textbook intercept on the Ceti fleet. It was the cruiser ONW
Gettysburg
, escorted by the frigates the ONW
Rio
and ONW
Cologne
, and at least one hundred corvettes.

‘Gryphons, this is Admiral Larksson,’ the scruffy old man announced from the
Gettysburg
. ‘I seem to have misplaced my invitation to this reception. We are here to assist.’

The Ceti fleet maintained its deadeye course straight for the
Archangel
, now some twenty thousand kilometres behind the Gryphons.

‘New targets for you, Tarkon,’ Ruslov announced. ‘Think you can handle it?’

Wyllym’s HUD was now instructing him to attack the
Gettysburg.

‘Gryphons, please respond,’ Admiral Larksson said.

Wyllym closed his eyes for a moment, asking some invisible power for strength. Then he switched channels.

‘Augustus, if you can hear me, I’m breaking cover,’ he said. ‘Hedricks just ordered me to fire on the
Gettysburg
. The Gryphons are fighting for Ceti. I’ll do what I can. Send word to Tabit Prime. Lyons out.’

Then he switched back to the Gryphon comm channel. The Ceti fleet was in visual range, a distinct patch of glitter in the black eternal distance.

‘
Gettysburg
, this is Gunfighter One-Three,’ Wyllym said. ‘I’m with you.’

‘Big mistake, Tarkon,’ Ruslov mocked. All three of his wingmen were about to open fire. ‘I’m sending you back to Mama Cerlis in a box.’

‘Lieutenant Tarkon would be intimidated.
Viceroy
,’ Wyllym growled, disabling the voice modulator. ‘I’m not.’

The worst part of cryosleep is waking up with the same exact thought you had when the lights went out. In the darkness, you feel the deepest chill you’ve ever known. By then, the journey is over, and experienced voyagers know they’re being thawed out. Months could have passed, and mentally you feel like nothing’s changed beyond the fact you’re suddenly freezing and sick to your stomach.

But your body knows otherwise. And substance abuse issues make the experience a lot worse.

It’s been more than forty-eight hours since the icebox pumped my veins with chemicals to kick-start my metabolism. I’ve been tethered to a bunk ever since, and I have no desire to leave it. Although the
Breakaway
’s viewports are covered for battle, it’s all I can do to push all the visual cues of space travel out of my head.

Honestly, I’d rather be dead than aboard this ship.

I fell asleep thinking three things: the annoyance of being unable to control my shaking; that I would absolutely murder Dusty if he was standing between me and a joint; and that Vladric Mors was nearby, plotting to kill me.

Inexperienced travellers panic when they wake from cryo because that’s when the reality of their commitment hits. You sleep to speed up your perception of time during a long journey, and there’s no going back. My commitment was boarding a ship running head first into a war we can’t win. And since Vladric was leading the charge, I fully expected
Griefmaker
to turn her guns on us. It was just a matter of time.

I would welcome that. If only the bastard had found the mercy to do it while I was sleeping.

‘Jack, get up here!’ Dusty shouted. ‘
Now
!’

My only friend, and I hate him. His bossing, my claustrophobia, the irritating sound of his nasal little voice. Anger and fear make a dangerous combination.

‘Hurry up!’ he hollered. ‘We’re close!’

The
Breakaway
was decelerating hard; I knew because I was getting pulled towards the front of the ship.

‘C’mon Jack, shake it off!’

The fucking bastard. Right on cue, I’m literally shaking again. I’m craving drugs so badly that I can
see
myself smoking. It’s so real I can taste the bitter, beautiful smell in the back of my throat.

Then I realise it’s just bile, and that no one can help me except the prick screaming at me like a drill sergeant.

By the time I made it to the bridge, I could barely fit through the entrance. Dusty, who was plugged into the
Breakaway
’s command module, was secured to the captain’s chair in a four-point harness. His head was covered with a bulky helmet that gave him a virtual simulation of the space outside, which he manipulated with a combination of thoughts and hand gestures.

Beneath the helmet, he was just wearing a T-shirt, overalls, and flip-flops.

I was wearing an EVA suit.

‘Seriously?’ Dusty asked, shaking his head. ‘Whatever. Hurry up and plug in, I need you.’

‘For what?’

‘To man the guns, dude! Wake up already!’

The instrument panels surrounding the captain’s chair were lit up like the place was on fire. Reluctantly, I sat in the seat next to Dusty, fantasising about throat-chopping him.

‘There are four Gryphons stalking us out there,’ he said, excitedly.

‘That’s just great,’ I mumbled.

‘Don’t worry,’ he said. ‘They’re not crazy enough to engage.’

When I pulled the VR helmet on, I found myself staring into the Minotaur’s furious yellow eyes. I shrieked and ripped it right off.

‘
C’mon, Jack!
’ Dusty protested. ‘Pull it together!’

Trembling, I put the helmet back on. This time I was transported into the black of space, engulfed in volumetric displays of nearby contacts and their vectors through space. The entire Ceti fleet – roughly three hundred corvettes of numerous different shapes and classes – was packed together in a cloud of firepower a hundred kilometres across. The closest ship was the
Pretoria
, less than two kilometres to our starboard. Vladric’s
Griefmaker
was ten clicks ahead of us; her three engines were alight but facing opposite the direction we were travelling, and her weapon bays were open and ready for business.

‘There he is, the crowning failure of your life,’ the Minotaur growled, full of venomous disgust.

‘What?’ Dusty asked.

‘You should have ended this when you had the
fucking
chance!’ the Minotaur shouted.

‘Ended
what
?’ Dusty asked. ‘Dude, you’re freaking me out. It’s going to be alright! The
Archangel
is half a million clicks dead ahead. We’ve got the numbers and the element of surprise.’

I tried to ignore the horse-man.

‘Why haven’t we shot the Gryphons?’ I managed.

‘They’re too far away,’ Dusty said. ‘That’s what they want, to draw us out of formation, thin us out …’

‘Or they’re waiting for the
Archangel
to warm her guns on us,’ I suggested.

‘Or maybe you should just chill out,’ Dusty said. ‘Fuck, man. Get a grip.’

My hands were shaking so much that the excess movement was confusing the
Breakaway
’s weapons system.

The Minotaur snorted his approval of Dusty’s assessment, and I coughed hard to clear the stench of his breath from my sinuses.

‘I don’t understand,’ I muttered, feeling the stab of a very potent migraine at the top of my head. ‘Where’s the Navy? How did we get this close?’

‘I told you to
believe
, man,’ Dusty assured. ‘We’re gonna do this!’

A few moments later, the radar warning system blew up his pathetic optimism. An entire Navy task force suddenly appeared: the
Gettysburg
– the Navy’s newest and most lethal cruiser – plus two frigate escorts and at least a hundred Keating-class corvettes. The group was six hundred kilometres away and burning very fast to intercept us. The
Gettysburg
had the longest-ranged guns in space – non-negotiable 500mm bores – ready to put chunks of tungsten into us.

In space, ‘weapon range’ is subjective. Technically, a gun has infinite range if nothing interacts with the projectile. In naval combat, ‘effective range’ described the combination of distance, vector and velocity at which a projectile became impossible to avoid or defend against.

The
Breakaway
, along with every ship in the Ceti vanguard, was seconds from reaching that threshold. And the four Gryphons, emboldened with Big Brother on the grid, were now aggressively closing the distance between us, now less than two hundred kilometres away.

Horse-man snorted, chuckled, and then broke into outright laughter. I felt the migraine stab all the way to my chest.

‘Stop that!’ Dusty snapped, flustered at the horse-man’s throaty guffaw. ‘Get a lock on those Gryphons!’

Something very strange happened as he said that. I felt a rush of premonition, almost like a dance, and gasped at what was about to happen.

Flying in a tight diamond formation, the lead Gryphon abruptly pitched its nose downward so that it was flying perpendicular to the craft behind it.

Then, in a devastating braking action, all her burners ignited at once.

The four fighters merged. Before I could blink, there were ten contacts spinning violently away from each other in a cloud of debris.

Two of the new contacts were broadcasting automated SOS signals. These were presumably ejected pilots. The rest were Gryphon chunks.

Even the Minotaur was shocked.

‘Wha—?’ Dusty breathed. ‘What the hell just happened?

One of the contacts – the lead Gryphon that caused the collision – suddenly sprung to life, her thrusters sputtering to stabilise a nasty spin. There were probably thirty Ceti ships illuminating the expanding debris field with fire control radar now, and all that return energy give the
Breakaway
’s sensors a very good picture of its condition. The Gryphon’s ventral side was dented up badly, and her starboard engine nacelle was a tangled mess of electrical carnage.

Judging from the condition of the other fighters, the lead pilot had presented the strongest structure of his craft as a battering ram to the Gryphons behind her. Two of the fighters crashed into each other attempting to evade, and the cockpit area of the trailing craft was grotesquely caved in.

The lead Gryphon was now burning towards the Navy fleet, presumably for protection, trailing bright hot debris behind it like a comet.

Its tail marking read One-Three.

‘That’s impossible,’ Dusty mumbled. ‘There can’t be anything alive in there.’

He had a point. By all reason, there shouldn’t be anything in that Gryphon cockpit but a film of red paste.

But I knew the pilot was alive. Critically injured, but alive. And the more I thought about him, the harder the icepick drove into me.

‘You’re wrong,’ I muttered, barely keeping my own nerves together. My teeth were clacking together like a jackhammer.

The Ceti ships around us were starting to drift out of formation.

‘How do you know that?’ Dusty said nervously.

Before I could answer, the
Gettysburg
opened fire with all eight of her rails.

Blood and bone fragments were still seeping into the deck grating when the OMSPECs resumed their work on the rapid transit controls. Augustus didn’t know who the intruders were; only that they had burst into the room shooting, and that they were using weapon technology he didn’t understand.

The OMSPEC who had been standing next to him just vanished in a burst of light. Completely absent were the kinetic effects of projectile impacts. All he saw was a strange flash erupt from the intruder’s rifle; then the OMSPEC turned into a rising apparition before disappearing for good.

A stray round – or blast, Augustus wasn’t sure which – struck one of the bound prisoners on the deck. He did
not
disintegrate, and barely flinched from the impact.

Fortunately, the assailants – all wearing Navy uniforms – were clearly not trained tactical operators. Wild, sprayed rounds vaporised random equipment throughout the medbay,
except
when they struck that eerie black armour on the
Archangel
bulkheads. Those rounds simply vanished into the surface without leaving a scratch.

OMSPEC gunfire was far more precise, shredding the intruders in the manner Augustus was accustomed to: via the forceful displacement of flesh, bone, and blood. When the last assailant fell, the OMSPECs sealed the deck entrance shut. They did not pause to mourn the loss of one of their own, nor did they lose their composure at the prospect of facing an enemy with superior firepower.

Vronn Tarkon, on the other hand, was huddled on the deck covering his head.

‘I’m sorry,’ he said, with considerable effort. ‘I’ve never been in a real firefight before.’

‘I’m not sure that’s what I’d call it,’ Augustus dismissed, kicking over a corpse whose face had collapsed around a bullet hole in the cheek. ‘Do you have any idea who the fuck these people are and why they’re shooting at us?’

‘No,’ Vronn said. ‘We were always kept isolated from the crew.’

Augustus eyed the strange rifle lying beside the corpse. It had a short, hexagon-shaped barrel surrounded by concentric tubes on both sides of the action and ‘magazine’, which was likely an energy source. The weapon had no stock, and its colour was metallic-ebony, with deep purple trim along the grip.

‘I’d stay away from that if I were you,’ Vronn warned.

‘Why?’

‘If it doesn’t recognise you, you might disappear.’

Someone shouted, and the OMSPECs scurried away from the hatch. Loud, deep bangs rang from the other side, and then a small explosion followed by a thin line of white-hot plasma broke through.

‘Persistent bastards,’ Augustus growled. ‘Vronn, I hate to tell you this, but there are no good options for getting you off this ship.’

The remaining prisoners, now unconscious thanks to sedatives found in the medbay, had provided little information. They claimed to be dock workers confined to Able for the duration of the
Archangel
’s construction, and recently given orders by Rear Admiral Lao to report for active duty on board this ship.

Augustus didn’t believe a word of it, but there just wasn’t time for a proper interrogation.

Their DNA was unregistered with the Navy and general Orionis archive. They were ghosts in every sense of the word.

Augustus looked towards the OMSPEC tech working on the Rapid Transport controls.

‘How are we doing?’ he asked.

‘Not good,’ the tech said. ‘
Archangel
rejects police authentication, and I can’t bypass locally. I don’t even understand the wiring.’

As the torch line reached a third of the way around the hatch, OMSPECs took up firing positions, this time selecting bulkheads with black armour for cover.

‘Just blast the thing,’ Augustus said, raising his voice to a shout. ‘Hey! You men get claymores in front of the hatch! Get these prisoners behind them! We’re climbing up!’

‘What’s the plan?’ Vronn asked.

‘We’ll fight our way to the Gryphon deck,’ Augustus said. ‘There has to be something else there you can fly yourself out in. Then we’re going after Mike.’

There had been no radio contact from the OMSPEC operative since the ambush, but his exosuit was still broadcasting vital signs.

‘There is another option,’ Vronn said. ‘The life pods. If we reach those, we can all eject.’

‘That’s pointless, we’ll just end up getting caught,’ Augustus said. ‘We need a real ship to escape.’

‘You can’t get that elevator to work,’ Vronn snapped. ‘What makes you think they’ll open the hangar bay for you?’

Augustus nearly lost his temper, but he knew the Gryphon pilot was right.

‘She’s not going to let us out,’ Vronn said, clearly distressed. ‘We should find Mike.’

The OMSPEC tech signalled that he was finished placing charges.

‘Do it,’ Augustus ordered.

A muffled blast followed by snapping metal rung their eardrums. The Rapid Transit car fell a metre, got stuck for a moment, and then fell away. The elevator shaft was fully exposed.

‘Masks on! Get in there!’ Augustus shouted, hoping his
Archangel
schematics were accurate. They were facing a two-hundred-metre vertical climb, assuming the gravity vectors remained aligned all the way up.

‘The nearest life pods are above us,’ Augustus said, as OMSPECs filed past. ‘We’ll get you inside one.’

Wyllym broke through on his comms.

‘ … I repeat, the Gryphons are with Ceti,’ he said, his voice laboured. ‘Ty, please acknowledge.’

Augustus paused by the shaft entrance, waving Vronn inside.

‘
All
of them?’

‘They’re attacking the
Gettysburg
group now,’ Wyllym said. ‘I’m … doing what I can.’

‘Where’s the rest of the Navy?’ Augustus asked, as the last soldier filed through. The torch line was past the halfway mark. He ducked inside and began climbing, hoping not to get run over by another car or blown to bits by a sentry system.

‘Don’t know,’ Wyllym stammered. ‘You have to broadcast for help … use civilian channels.’

‘Help? From who?’

‘Anyone,’ Wyllym breathed. ‘Their shield tech works … rail fire ineffective …’

‘You’re kidding me …’

‘They’re not all protected,’ Wyllym said. ‘Can’t tell which. We need he—’

Augustus felt a dizzying wave of sickness overwhelm him. Gravity abruptly vanished, and the transmission from Wyllym dropped.

The quick-thinking OMSPECs above him seized the opportunity and began pulling themselves ‘upwards’ as fast as they could.

‘… God in heaven,’ he heard Wyllym breathe. ‘Are you alright?’

Augustus was still feeling a little queasy.

‘I’m fine, why?’

‘The
Archangel
,’ Wyllym said. ‘It’s here!’

‘What do you mean, “here”?’

Gravity suddenly returned, and an OMSPEC tumbled past Augustus as he held on for dear life.