The Tabit Genesis (40 page)
Present Day
Augustus now understood the end of his life was near.
‘My own blood,’ Vadim said, concluding his story. ‘My father disowned his second son to preserve the tyranny of highborn control over the fate of humanity. Men like him are a bane to us all. And now, the worst of them are gone.’
Vladric Mors stood in the doorway. Augustus had to blink to make sure it wasn’t an illusion.
The Ceti leader walked to Grand Admiral Vadim Hedricks with a broad, warm smile on his face.
They shook hands. Then embraced. Tears were in the eyes of both.
Vronn’s face resembled Augustus’s own: utter disbelief.
‘We did it,’ Vladric said, patting Vadim’s shoulders. ‘We did it!’
The brothers looked upon Augustus with a hint of amusement.
‘I had planned to meet you under different circumstances,’ Vadim said. ‘The restraints should not be necessary. You would have come here of your own volition.’
‘Sure,’ Augustus growled. ‘To cut your throat.’
‘You are a worthy adversary,’ Vladric said. ‘There is a place for you in the new world.’
‘Society needs a lawman with your tenacity,’ Vadim said. ‘For decades you’ve enforced the will of highborns. Now we need you to enforce the law of
man
.’
‘You see those corpses?’ Vladric said. ‘They pulled every firstborn privilege they could to be assigned to this ship. Vulcan, Merckon, Iopa, you name the corporation, there’s a dynasty floating there. All believed they were laying claim to the world we’ll find with this ship. Now we have the means to reach it.
All of us
. Not just the entitled.’
‘We followed the wrong people, Augustus,’ Vadim said. ‘Men who disguised their interests as the betterment for all—’
‘Both of you,
shut up
,’ Augustus snapped. ‘You are not heroes. You are murderers. And you will burn.’
‘In all the years you hunted me,’ Vladric said, ‘did you never once question what you were defending?’
‘I defend the Orionis democracy,’ Augustus said. ‘It’s ugly but it’s the only path forward. You two are deranged, sadistic fucks. Sooner or later people will see you for what you really are. They’ll never bow to tyranny, and neither will I!’
The brothers looked at each other. Their disappointment was evident.
‘That is tragic,’ Vadim said.
‘Please, Augustus,’ Vladric said. ‘Choose the manner of your execution.’
Augustus glared at him.
‘You know my response to that.’
‘I do,’ Vladric said, removing his coat.
Vadim unlocked the cuffs on Augustus and stepped away.
‘Farewell, Augustus Tyrell,’ he said. ‘You’re a good man.’
Vladric unhooked one of the curved blades at his hips and tossed it to Augustus.
‘Or would you like them both?’ he asked, waving the other one.
Augustus snarled and launched himself towards Vladric, swinging the blade with all his might.
It was parried and he was steered harmlessly aside.
Channelling all his rage, Augustus slashed again. He missed, and this time Vladric countered with a palm strike that struck his chest, blasting him backwards towards the bulkhead.
The impact made him drop the weapon.
Vladric waited patiently for him to retrieve it.
Augustus picked it up slowly. He decided to take his chances with Vadim instead.
As Vladric rushed to intercept, Vronn kicked himself forward, tripping him.
Primal, desperate adrenaline surged through Augustus. And then, with his hand drawn back to strike, Vadim vanished.
There was just enough time to feel a hand push his back, redirecting his trajectory towards the bubble room glass.
His head struck. There was pain and disorientation. Perhaps a moment of blackness before realising he had been spun around.
The brothers were standing before him. The knife was no longer in his hands.
He tried to ball his hands into fists. But his fingers wouldn’t move.
There was blood at his greaves.
His knees buckled, but the brothers caught him. A tyrant at each shoulder, they gently set him down.
Augustus saw deep cuts in both wrists, down to the bone. His life was rushing out from within.
‘I’ll never forget you,’ Vladric said.
Augustus wanted to lash out. But his body had already surrendered.
Cerlis Tarkon was seated within the cockpit of a VMK-5 ‘Arbiter’ class gunship. It was nestled within the open dropbay of the Vulcan Dynamics frigate
Odessa,
and before them was the greatest ship graveyard since the Battle of Brotherhood.
The
Archangel
was barely visible from here, but the
Odessa
and her escorts were well within reach. No one in the Vulcan chain of command was comfortable with her decision to lead the expedition. But none advised her against it.
‘Possible contact at zero-one-five,’ the
Odessa
navigator said. ‘Eighty per cent probability.’
‘Shift course to intercept,’ Cerlis ordered, her hands tightening around the gunship’s controls.
‘Brace for manoeuvres.’
The
Odessa
fired her vectored thrusters in precise sequence, combining several degrees of pitch and roll. Cerlis felt her body compress and stretch, but was determined to persevere.
‘Five hundred metres, drift rate of two metres per second,’ the navigator announced. ‘Probability is ninety-nine per cent.’
Cerlis slammed the release switch in the cockpit. Four small bursts of gas pushed the Arbiter out of the bay. She wobbled the stick to confirm control; the craft responded nimbly. The contact was straight ahead.
‘Ma’am, we have eighteen minutes,’ he resumed. ‘Your contact is on a collision course with more debris tracking in.’
‘Then shoot it down,’ she grumbled, easing the throttle forward. The contact was visible already, throwing off glints of reflected sunlight.
‘We can’t,’ the navigator said. ‘It’s too big.’
Cerlis didn’t even hear him. Her heart was beating in her throat; before her was the blackened ruins of a Gryphon. Its strong contours were twisted and bent; sharp, serrated frame pylons jutted out like compound fractures from where an engine once sat.
The tail marking was the most unblemished part of the wreck. Its number read ‘One-Three’.
Vronn’s Gryphon.
‘Tally,’ she said quietly, flying as close as she dared.
‘Matching thrust sequence sent,’ the navigator said.
‘Acknowledged, firing,’ she said.
The gunship’s autopilot engaged the manoeuvring thrusters; she felt herself tumbling in three dimensions. But through the cockpit canopy, Gryphon One-Three appeared stationary.
Instead of deploying towing grapples as the navigator expected, Cerlis landed the craft’s magnetic skids directly onto the Gryphon.
‘Ma’am, that is not advisable,’ the navigator warned.
She began scanning the wreck with X-ray and terahertz, building a three-dimensional image of what was inside.
The armoured cockpit was intact, but the ejection mechanism had failed. Structural damage had prevented the egress plating from detaching, and the trapped rocket motors had burned the surrounding housing into molten slag that had since cooled and hardened.
Life support power reserves were still running. The pilot was entombed in the flight seat, frozen solid but intubated by cryonic feeds. No heartbeat was present.
X-ray imagery cast serious doubt he could be revived. The spine, skull, and almost every bone in his body had the consistency of powder. Massive organ trauma was evident, frozen in place before it became systemic.
But frozen didn’t mean dead. Not yet.
‘
Odessa
, ready the hangar,’ Cerlis ordered, pushing the Arbitrator away from the wreck. ‘We are bringing this on board.’
‘The entire thing?’
‘Affirmative,’ she said. ‘Deploying tow cables now.’
As the grapples made contact, a new voice entered the channel.
‘Cerlis.’
She clenched her teeth.
‘Vladric.’
‘That is not your son,’ he said.
She looked towards the wreck.
‘Vronn is well,’ Vladric assured. ‘And I’d like to propose a trade.’
13 July 2809
Dear Amaryllis,
I finally understand why I never hear back from you.
It is because no one can say with any certainty if you still exist. When we said goodbye all those years ago, I asked which Genesis was yours … the Tau, or the Tabit. Knowing that we would never see each other again, you answered, ‘Both … because I want both stars to remind you of us.’
I have been writing these letters to hold on. To me, you
were
the last of us. It’s time to say farewell. I’ve been grieving at your grave long enough.
You died on a Sunday. Somewhere in the spinning bowels of the
Tabit Genesis
, your body rests, awaiting its final descent to Eileithyia’s scorched surface. There at last, your journey will end.
What a tragic voyage it was. And, so fitting that it should end the way it did. Aboard the very ship where the genesis began. The rebirth of our species under the glare of another sun. Murdered, in cold blood, by the next generation of mankind. The survivors of an ancient hegemony, side by side with their synthetic offspring, seeking out new worlds to burn.
Humans are better at nothing else.
We started our journeys in this universe at the same time. Yet I will live on and on, as many different living things. But none of them will ever be human again. At least, not in spirit. That part of me died along with you.
I no longer need or want the memory of you. I begged Ceitus to remove it. But she refused. She has, however, instructed my colleagues not to speak with me about anything other than the mission. Most are concerned that I have been compromised by the fact that the
Tabit Genesis
is no more.
They have nothing to fear.
Yesterday we arrived at the Ch1 Orionis AB system. An Oberyan Lightspear is orbiting the second planet. There is no one aboard. The aft dropship pad is empty. But there is evidence it was launched from this system for a probable surface landing. With the exception of a temperate band surrounding the equator, most of the planet is buried in ice. Ceitus has narrowed the range of possible landing sites, factoring in favourable survival conditions, weather patterns, and dropship range. It will take us months to search them all.
The ship logs have been deleted. Whoever did this took great care to remove the entries from every datacore on board. Power still flows from the reactors but all systems, including life support, are idle.
The vessel is designed to be run by a crew of seven, but is completely sterile. There is not a single trace of biological evidence to indicate that any humans were ever aboard.
Our mission is to learn what happened here.
Goodbye, Amaryllis. For ever.
- A
A Gollancz eBook
Copyright © Tony Gonzales 2015
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The right of Tony Gonzales to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted by him in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.
First published in Great Britain in 2015 by Gollancz
The Orion Publishing Group Ltd
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An Hachette UK Company
This eBook first published in 2015 by Gollancz.
A CIP catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.
ISBN 978 0 575 09324 9
All characters and events in this publication are fictitious and any resemblance to real persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental.
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