The Tabit Genesis (9 page)

‘Exactly.’

‘I mean not like
this
! Living in poverty, when by rights we should be living like—’

‘Criminals,’ he said. ‘We would be criminals, Dayla. Titan has the weapons which nearly annihilated mankind. We would be guilty of—’

‘We are
not
criminals,’ Dayla snapped. ‘You had nothing do to with it.’

‘I would have been guilty of not stopping the inevitable atrocity while I had the chance.’

‘
Look at all the good your guilt has done for us!
’

The shout rang throughout their metal home, striking every bulkhead, smashing her anguish upon everything they owned.

The echo took for ever to subside.

‘I wanted our children to have a conscience,’ Tomas said finally, his voice wavering. ‘I wanted them to have a father who stood for what was right.’

Dayla pushed away from the table.

‘I just wanted them to have a good life,’ she muttered, gliding towards the door.

Corinth Naval Yards was a bulbous monstrosity distinguished by its four spinning ‘onion’ habitat domes, each over a thousand metres in diameter. Wyllym was seated in the observation tower high above them, at the end of the structural ‘z’ axis that formed the centreline of the station. Reserved for the supervision of fleet training exercises, the deck had been cleared for him; he was alone in a vast hall glowing with volumetric displays of ship telemetry. Four large transparent blisters gave him an unobstructed view of space, though from this vantage point the
Archangel
and her construction yard were out of sight, some twenty kilometres below.

Confirming Wyllym’s own suspicions, Grand Admiral Hedricks had indeed recalled him to assert his control over the Gryphons. Not only that, but he had also moved the entire training infrastructure to the proving grounds at Corinth, integrating them with Navy fleet exercises without waiting for a recommendation from Wyllym to do so. The fighters, equipment and support personnel had arrived days after he did. The Admiral never apologised, explaining that the move had been kept confidential for security reasons. Furthermore, he was expected to continue in his role as flight instructor, only now he’d be doing so under the scrutiny of the entire Navy command structure.

That was fine with Wyllym. They were welcome to relieve him anytime they wished.

With the naked eye he could only see the sporadic blue pulses of ship thrusters and the white blossoms of explosions as live rounds struck their targets far downrange. There were three proving grounds outside Corinth, each one a cube five hundred kilometres across. The largest objects in the ranges threw reflections of sunlight that might have been mistaken for dust. But these were the profiles of cruisers, frigates, asteroids, and eerie-looking structures called The Red Graves: kilometres of twisting, turning stone and metal walls modelled after the deadly, semi-aware Raothri protostruct swarms.

The AR controls allowed him to slip into the cockpit of any Gryphon and observe the action through the eyes of the pilot. Wyllym was watching several of the fighters at once; a gruelling mental exercise in command multitasking, only marginally preferable to the physical ordeals of being inside a Gryphon. The disadvantage was that although he could experience the decisions of his pilots, he couldn’t sense how they were using the Gift to guide their choices. For that, he needed to physically be there, in combat alongside of them.

It was why the Gryphon needed a human pilot in the first place. No drone could react faster than those with the Gift, and no code could simulate what the Gift could provide. But when two fighters armed with such talent met in combat, the advantage was neutralised, and the result was a brutal exhibition of raw physical endurance. Wyllym switched into one such dogfight; the two Gryphons were turning in tight circles just under a kilometre in diameter at blazing speeds, their manoeuvring thrusters turning, firing, turning, firing, struggling to get the craft’s weapons to point in a direction ahead of where their target would be. In another exercise, a pair of Gryphons were dismantling a capital ship – in this case, the ONW
Monmouth
, a Navy cruiser. Her long-range guns failed to bring the fighters down from afar; the nimble craft seemed to know the exact moment when the dummy shell would be fired, thrusting laterally or vertically to foil the targeting solution as they closed to within range of their own weapons.

Then he switched to a pair of pilots flying through The Red Graves, the most dangerous exercise by far because of the very real collision hazard. Some Raothri technology behaved like it was alive; physical structures that seemed to ‘grow’ quickly from a synthetic proto-material and assemble into the latticework that could later become a ship, a station, or an obstacle designed to protect another structure. That information was as classified as the technology of the
Archangel
, and no one with his level of clearance knew how it had been obtained. Wyllym experienced a rush as the pilot deftly weaved through the structure as it tried to kill him, changing its shape and closing off course solutions as he adjusted. The Gryphon eventually made it through, successfully managing to take down each of its targets in between turns.

But the pilot behind him made a critical mistake. Wyllym switched into his cockpit just in time to see – even feel – one of the fighter’s three ‘wings’ get pulverised as it clipped an obstacle. Recognising there could be no recovery from this catastrophe, a series of automated disaster mitigation systems engaged in picosecond succession; a hardening crash foam solution filled the cockpit to protect the pilot from further trauma as the Gryphon shut itself down.

The pilot – his name was Lieutenant Trace Vanders – was rendered unconscious by the impact, his body thrashed by wicked G-forces as the fighter careened out of control. An ice-cold plasma solution packed with anti-inflammatory agents was injected into his bloodstream, slowing his heartbeat and halting his body’s potentially pathogenic response to the trauma. Flash-frozen and encased in a tomb of foam that included the seat, he was ejected from the Gryphon. Rocket motors ignited to stabilise the seat’s spin through space as it hurled away from the crippled fighter, blasting distress beacons for rescue ships to follow.

‘Lieutenant Vanders’s day is over,’ a gruff voice said, startling Wyllym. ‘How many fuck-ups is that for him now?’

Wyllym backed his mind out of the doomed pilot’s link, feeling a moment of vertigo. Even the virtual experience of being ejected from a spacecraft travelling a few hundred metres per second was unpleasant. Clearing his eyes, he saw Orionis Navy Police Chief Augustus Tyrell standing at the room entrance.

‘Who let you in here?’ Wyllym demanded.

‘The same fool who promoted you to captain,’ Augustus said, striding in on magnetic greaves and offering his hand. Wyllym took it, bracing for his hand to be crushed. He wasn’t disappointed.

‘Good to see you,’ he said, trying to remember the last time they’d met.

‘Likewise,’ Augustus said. But he was all business, nodding towards the displays that were tracking Lieutenant Vanders’s life pod tumbling through space.

‘So how many is that?’ he repeated.

‘This makes three,’ Wyllym said, leaning back in his seat. The pilot’s vitals were weak, but within an acceptable range for someone in early stage cryosleep. ‘I have to expel him. Assuming he lives.’

Chief Tyrell grunted.

‘If he wakes up, he’s mine.’

‘Admiral Hedricks said the washouts are still assigned to the
Archangel
,’ Wyllym said, stifling a yawn. He’d lost track of how long he’d been up there.

‘I don’t give a shit what he wants,’ Augustus said. ‘Your trash belongs to me, not him.’

Wyllym lifted an eyebrow. His friend was among the most divisive figures in the Navy, despised by corporations, privateers and criminal cartels alike. But he was feared by all. Augustus had been the figurehead crime fighter in Orionis for the last twenty years, and his brand of justice was essentially martial law. In the Inner Rim, which was all the space up to Hera and her moons, Augustus had almost singlehandedly established a fortress of peace and order. The police presence around population centres was intimidating; no matter where a person ventured, a pair of formidably armed officers was patrolling nearby. He was an evangelistic believer that deterrence was the most effective peace-keeping tactic, and that force, when necessary, must always be brutally decisive.

But where he had earned the named ‘Tyrell the Tyrant’ was in his relentless pursuit of criminal activity past the Belt into the Outer Rim. Economists called him ‘an enemy to commerce’ thanks to his interdiction mandate: Navy police reserved the right to force any ship to burn down from intersystem freight speeds and be inspected at the Hera Transit, no matter who the owner or how much fuel it cost them. He also made sure the Navy maintained an active presence around Zeus, protecting its
Three
mining operations and sharing security resources with Inner Rim corporations. Most controversially, he sent undercover agents into privateer stations, even cartel hideouts. He spent a large portion of his budget on espionage, and gave his officers unlimited discretion to extract information from criminal operatives.

Feared, loathed, or admired, enough people believed that Orionis needed someone like him. Like Wyllym, he was the product of a generation whose brotherly innocence had been shattered by the Independence Wars. The urgency to maintain law and order for the last bastion of mankind gave him licence to embrace tactics which valued the pursuit of justice by any means. To a fault, he was loyal to the Orionis government, and mortally opposed to all those who were not.

Fortunately for Wyllym, the man considered him a close friend, and he knew better than to let himself get baited into a conversation about their favourite Admiral.

‘Lieutenant Vanders is a good man,’ Wyllym said. ‘Talented too, in spite of this debacle.’

‘So what happened then?’

‘Exhaustion,’ Wyllym said, stretching out his own carcass. He hadn’t flown in days, and it was doing miracles for his recovery. He almost felt human again. ‘We’re finding their limits.’

Augustus – Wyllym had called him ‘Ty’ since their days in the Naval Academy – took a seat across from him. His leathery face was criss-crossed with age; much of his scalp showed beneath thin strands of white hair.

‘I thought the Gift prevented this sort of thing from happening,’ he said.

‘Knowing what’s coming is one thing,’ Wyllym said, rubbing his eyes. ‘Reacting to it is something else. The lad’s not “trash”, Ty. This is a highly competitive pool for a small number of spots.’

‘I know, stop being so damn sensitive,’ the old man growled. ‘A pilot with skills like that belongs on a belt runner chasing down Ceti corvettes.’

‘Hedricks isn’t going to let that happen,’ Wyllym warned.

‘
Fuck
Hedricks,’ Augustus snapped, loud enough to make Wyllym concerned about the deck entrance being open. ‘He’s taken enough already.’

Wyllym lowered his voice.

‘I agree, but I wouldn’t be so vocal about it. You’re not untouchable, Chief.’

‘Neither is he,’ Augustus said, defiant as ever. ‘I’m not sure I understand where it says that his post lets him appropriate the best resources in Orionis for a science project.’

‘I don’t like it either, but I keep my head low. This is the Navy, right?’

‘Not the one I joined. The priorities around here aren’t what they used to be. Years ago someone like you would have earned a cruiser command by now. Now you’re a classic example of government waste.’

Wyllym stared at him for a moment.

‘Is that what you think of the Gryphons?’

‘No offence, Wyll,’ Augustus said, ‘but there must be a horse somewhere in Orionis, because its shit is all over the show you’re running here.’

‘Thanks for your support.’

The police chief leaned forward, his eyes blazing.

‘You just slammed a good pilot into a wall, and for what? To prove he can’t fly through real morph razors? That’s stupid. The red bastards can’t be beaten. You know it, I know it, anyone with a functioning brain knows it. All this nonsense does is let Hedricks trick Chancellor Jade and those Senate idiots into thinking there’s hope. Hell, you’ve seen what the SPECFOR freaks have found. The
Archangel
is a political toy that’s good for just one thing: bullying humans, that’s it.’

‘The Gift makes those Gryphons especially deadly—’

‘And there’s just what, eighteen of them, less the one you splattered in a training exercise. So what if they can dodge cannon fire? This
Archangel
business is giving the cartels a strong incentive to launch an offensive, and I mean a real one. Not isolated outpost raids but a serious push on the Inner Rim.’

‘Isn’t that a little conspiratorial?’

‘Wyll, you’re not some rookie with a hero complex any more.’

‘I’ve never had a hero complex.’

‘Whatever.
Think
, Wyll. When the
Archangel
leaves, the most powerful deterrent we’ve ever had is leaving with it, along with our most capable commanders and soldiers.’

‘It’s my understanding that our fleet strength is completely unaffected by anything the
Archangel
is doing,’ Wyllym said, surprised that he was becoming defensive. ‘There will be just as many Navy warships here as before.’

Augustus was indignant, reddening as he spoke.

‘The government bankrupted itself to build that fucking thing, so we can’t afford to replace any ships we lose. Or did you forget we depend on the Outer Rim for resources, like cheap fuel? You don’t think Ceti is aware of that?’

‘It always comes back to Ceti with you,’ Wyllym said, deciding that he’d had enough. ‘Did you come up here just to be a jerk? I don’t have time for it.’

Augustus frowned at him, surprised by the query.

‘Katrin left,’ he said, matter-of-factly. ‘Thought you’d want to know.’

Wyllym felt a pang in his stomach.

‘Are you kidding?’

‘A month before you got here. No note or explanation. I came up here to say hello and ask if maybe you’ve heard from her.’

‘I’m sorry, Ty, I haven’t,’ Wyllym said. He had introduced them during their graduation ceremony nearly thirty years ago. ‘I don’t know what to say.’

‘Bah, it was a long time coming. People change.’

‘That’s true enough.’

‘It’s been five years since we lost Danna,’ Augustus said. ‘We kept it together longer than anyone thought we would. That’s something, right?’

Danna Tyrell had been nothing like her father, and everything like her mother. A pacifist, an aspiring bioengineer, she’d been happily married to a promising young police cadet named Jake Reddeck. While he was away on assignment, Ceti marauders had raided her shuttle and tried to extort a ransom for her safe return. After a failed rescue attempt the pirates had killed everyone on board. Danna had been carrying their first child.