Genesis Read online

  She slid over to the view port and flipped on the screen. There was a ship behind them. Ten thousand kilometres behind and moving much faster than they were.

  “Riley!” she shouted through the ship’s com. “There’s a ship behind us.”

  “How big?”

  “Bigger than us. I think it’s an F-class.”

  He ran up the stairs, carrying the suits. “It’ll be a Helios vessel for sure.” He handed her a suit. “How far behind are they?”

  “Maybe five minutes. Do Helios ships have core drives?”

  “Some of them,” Riley said tightly, watching the screen closely. “How long till the power can be diverted?”

  “I have to manually override the life support.”

  “Go do it. We might be able to outrun them.”

  Rosie thrust her legs into the suit and ran down the stairs, shoving her arms into it while she ran and zipping it up. The life support system was behind her aunt’s sleeping quarters in the belly of the ship. It was dim down there and smelled of engine and sulphur, but she squeezed through the small space and crawled to it. She was hyper-aware of the minutes ticking away as she pulled out the controls and switched the system to manual override. Please let me do it right, she prayed, then pulled the plug. The constant whirring suddenly stopped. She had about ten minutes of air left before she needed a breather. She crawled out and jogged back to the bridge.

  Riley was strapping himself into the copilot’s chair. Rosie hesitated. She’d never tried to pilot on full core drive before. Not even in a simulator.

  Riley handed her a helmet. “Rosie, here.”

  She jumped. She’d been staring at the console.

  Rosie took the helmet and snapped it on over her head. She fitted gloves over her hands and clipped them to her sleeves. Then she sat down and strapped herself in. Once gravity failed, the straps would be the only thing holding her to the chair.

  “Switch the power over,” said Riley. “They’re coming!”

  The Helios ship was closing fast. She turned on her breather and grabbed the controls and began the sequence, flipping everything to the ion core drive. The pod began to oscillate and rumbled beneath her as all the power was sucked into the vast energy vortex. Gravity disappeared and she punched the core drive to full capacity.

  CHAPTER 22

  Pip sat on the table next to Rosie’s aunt, his knees pulled up to his chest, watching her. She was very pale and still. The only indication she was alive came from the slight rise and fall of her chest.

  The nanoplast had stopped the bleeding and Yuang had allowed her to be injected with some blood and tissue replicators, but that was all. He’d strapped her to the med bed and left Pip to watch her. If she died, Rosie would never forgive him.

  He picked up the small medigun and shot her with another dose of nano-repair cells and watched the slow beep of her heart on the monitor.

  When Yuang had given him his orders, he hadn’t expected any of this to happen.

  He had only asked him to watch Riley and to report on him. But Yuang hadn’t known then who Riley was. He’d thought he was just some guy poking around in things that may or may not be important. Now everything was messed up.

  He leaned his head back against the cold hull of the ship and closed his eyes. He hadn’t slept for two days and things were starting to get – clouded. Rosie was clouding him up. Messing with his reasoning. It had been harder than he’d thought to betray them. Only the thought of why he was doing it had kept him on track. Do the job and he could go home.

  That was still how he thought of the Enclave: home. The place he’d grown up, safe, or so he’d thought. He hadn’t been back since he was ten. Eight years he’d been on Earth. He missed Mars: the smell of the sulfurous air, the red dust and the clean, warm corridors of the Enclave. He should be happy to be going back – relieved to get away from Earth’s stink and the threat of the MalX. But part of him was uneasy.

  Before his parents died, the Enclave had been all he’d known. Now it was different. He’d seen things on Earth that didn’t add up to what he’d been taught. Ferals that Helios took and didn’t bring back. Riley saying there were things about Helios that even he didn’t know. And now what was happening to Rosie’s family.

  He rubbed his eyes. He had a headache and was nauseous from hunger. He should look for something to eat – there would probably be some protein bars in the galley. And he should ask Yuang for a shot of the antiviral, just to be certain. It wasn’t a real cure, but Yuang had said it would stop him getting the MalX while he was on Earth. Now he was going home, surely Yuang should give him one more, just in case.

  Essie made a soft noise and her hand twitched under the straps. He gave her another shot of the nano cells, and was discarding the empty pill case when one of Helios’s soldier drones, a grunt as he called them, appeared suddenly in the doorway.

  “Oi.” The stocky red-haired man filled the exit. “Yuang wants you up top.” Like all the other grunts this one was wearing all black with a gold Helios insignia stitched on the collar of his shirt. And, just like all the other grunts, he’d been pumped so full of muscle enhancers he looked like a no-neck walking bag of rocks. Dangerous and just short of stupid, the grunts followed orders like rabid dogs and had implants that downloaded straight into their cerebral cortices so they could use any weapon they came across. They could run for days and also liked to hit things: animals, walls, him.

  Pip slipped the medigun under Essie’s mattress. “Coming,” he said and he followed him out.

  “She still alive?” The grunt jerked his head towards the medical bay.

  “Yep.”

  “Pity, she kicked me in the balls.”

  “What balls?” Pip retorted and received a slap to the side of his head, which sent him slamming into the wall.

  “Don’t be stupid.” The grunt grabbed him roughly by the arm. Pip’s head was swimming and he felt bile rise momentarily in his throat. The grunt ignored his staggering and shoved him into the ship’s lift.

  Pip’s head was still ringing from the blow as they got to the bridge. His insides were loose with nerves. What did Yuang want from him now?

  “Get a move on.” The grunt prodded him in the back.

  “Piss off!” Pip tried to shrug his hand off but the grunt only laughed and pushed him again. Anger boiled in Pip’s gut but he knew better than to fight back. He still had the scar on his thigh from the last time. He settled for quiet abuse. “Small-balled freak,” he whispered under his breath.

  Yuang was standing with his back to him in front of the wide view port, staring out at the streaming stars.

  The Cosmic Mariner had the best tech money could buy. There were no buttons or switches on Yuang’s bridge, all the controls were 3-D and AI-integrated. Yuang’s pilot, Nerita, rested, half reclined, within a curved transparent dome. An elegant helmet of fine wires sat on her dark shaved head and a single glinting eye cover connected her to the ship’s operating computer. Her hands moved in the air in front of her, manipulating constantly changing images of amber light that projected up from the floor.

  Next to her the copilot sat in front of a slim podium and next to him another man was surrounded by a semicircular console that controlled the ship’s weapons. Nerita glanced at Pip as the grunt shoved him into the room, but didn’t smile. She was less nasty to him than the rest but was still to be treated with caution.

  “Come stand by me.” Yuang called to him without turning. “Leave us, Reave, and shut the hatch.” The grunt grunted and gave Pip a final push forward then left.

  “We’ve caught up with your friend,” Yuang said, turning to him at last.

  “She’s not my friend.”

  Yuang smiled. “Of course she is. You’re just not a very good friend to her. How is our patient?”

  Pip shrugged. “How should I know? I’m not a doctor.”

  “Is she still breathing?”

  “Yes.” Pip was uncomfortable talking about Rosie’s aunt. What
if Yuang guessed he’d given her the extra stuff? “What are you going to do about Rosie and Riley?” he asked, trying to change the subject.

  “Well, they still have an item I want, since you didn’t manage to get hold of everything.” Yuang let the comment hang, just long enough to make Pip nervous. “But I don’t want to scare them,” he continued. “Shore will know what this ship can do. We are going to follow them, at a distance, until we reach Mars, then I’ll offer them a choice.”

  “What choice?” Pip didn’t like Yuang’s tone.

  Yuang looked at him. “Sometimes people need to be given a reason to do something. I will offer them two alternatives. One of those alternatives is handing over the diary that you were supposed to retrieve.”

  Pip swallowed. He knew what the other alternative would be. He’d seen what the weapons on this ship could do. A bunch of Ferals had stolen a shuttle once to escape the Enclave. They hadn’t made it more than a thousand kilometres out of the atmosphere. Their deaths had been soundless, a burst of light and heat.

  Yuang had said all of them had been infected with the MalX. That they had been planning to infect as many people on Earth with it as they could because they believed it was a plague sent by God to cleanse the Earth. Yuang said the MalX had driven them insane. Pip didn’t want to end up like that. Unlike some of the other Ferals they tested, he had no immunity. Yuang had tested him himself. He’d seen the results. He could die as easily as anyone else.

  Pip looked at the streaming stars, wondering how far ahead Rosie and Riley were. If they would only listen to Yuang. Pip had known him since he was a kid. Yuang had been like an uncle or an older brother to him since his parents had died. He’d made sure he had everything he needed. A room in the dorms, food. He was the one who visited him when he had no one. When he’d been sent to Earth it was Yuang who’d cushioned the blow, said everyone had to be tested and this was his test. Surely he wouldn’t actually kill Rosie and Riley? As soon as Yuang had what he wanted, he’d let them go. And Pip could stay in the Enclave and everything would be like before.

  Yuang watched him. “They cannot be allowed to stop what we are doing, Pip,” he said. “You know that. We are trying to save them as well as the rest of Earth. If they cannot understand that …” He shrugged and put a hand on his shoulder. “I am trying to save many lives, not just a few. Remember your parents? I wish I could have saved them.”

  “I know.” Pip tensed. “Let me talk to her,” he ventured. “She might listen to me. Let them land on Mars and I’ll go back to them. I’ll get the diary.”

  “You would get nothing. You betrayed them, Pip. You overestimate your charm. Besides, I don’t want to risk losing you.” He squeezed Pip’s shoulder, almost affectionately, then clasped his hands lightly behind his back. “If they don’t hand over what I want, I will be left with no choice.”

  “But what about the diary?” Pip said.

  “Perhaps it is safer disposed of. Anyway, enough talk.” Yuang turned away from the view port, guiding Pip with a light hand back towards the door. “Go back to the mediroom and check on the woman. We may need her to encourage them yet. I don’t want to resort to violence unless I have to. Remember why we are doing this, Pip. Remember your parents.” He pushed him towards the exit. “I’ll send Reave for you when we reach Mars.”

  CHAPTER 23

  Rosie closed her eyes against the stars, seeking some respite from the constant light. The suit felt bulky and she was battling claustrophobia. The helmet was lightweight, but it wasn’t that comfortable and smelled of stale rubber. She tried to control her desire to rip the thing off her head. There was no air left in the ship and only the basic systems were operating to stop it from becoming a vacuum. It was also freezing. Without the stabilising effect of life support, the temperature in the ship had dropped to minus thirty and she could feel the cold through her suit. The pylonic fibres stopped her freezing to death but they weren’t made to be worn for thirty-two hours. She wondered how much colder she’d be by the time they made it to Mars.

  If they did.

  Images came to her of the ship veering off course, straight into the burning atmosphere; the ship exploding as they hit the Martian soil. Her aunt wounded, clutching her stomach. Her dad somewhere else, waiting for rescue that never came, or worse, already cold.

  “Rosie,” Riley’s voice crackled in her ear. “It’s time to rotate the fuel cells.”

  She didn’t respond. She didn’t want to move right now.

  “Rosie!”

  “Okay, okay, I’m going.” Without all the ship’s computer systems on, they had to rotate the fuel cells by hand or they would overload and implode. She unclasped the straps and floated out of the bridge and towards the access tunnels, pulling herself along using whatever handholds she could find. She kept seeing Pip, looking at her with that pathetic expression on his face after he’d seen her aunt lying in a pool of blood. As if he was surprised. As if he didn’t think he was responsible. Shame and humiliation filled her again as she realised just how stupid she’d been – holding his hand, going all girly over his blue eyes, thinking he felt the same. Idiot.

  She climbed down the short ladder and into the tunnel. She had almost finished rotating the cells when Riley’s voice came through her com. “Rosie, there’s something going on up here on the console. Some lights flashing. Have you finished yet?”

  “Nearly.” She pushed the last cell into place. “What do you mean, lights flashing?”

  “If I knew, I wouldn’t be asking you. Just get up here.”

  She exhaled in exasperation but bit back her smart retort. “I’m coming now.” She flicked the cell operations back on and drifted back to the bridge.

  “You took a long time.” Riley looked worried as she floated to her chair. “These lights have been blinking on and off for the last few minutes.”

  “I had to change four cells,” she said defensively. “It takes a while.”

  “Not that long. What are these lights?”

  She checked the console then said with alarm, “It’s the low-frequency sensor. It’s picked up a moving body behind us.”

  “A ship,” said Riley and swore.

  Rosie’s heart sank and she said desperately, “Are you sure? Could it be an asteroid or space junk?”

  She switched the view port to the sensor sweep.

  Riley peered at the grid and the small dot the sensor had picked up. “It’s moving in a predictable trajectory. It’s got to be Yuang. He’s caught up, must have a core drive, or something comparable. He’ll be right on our tail when we reach Mars.” The stars reflected in the glass panel of his helmet as he looked at her. “How good a pilot do you think you are, Rosie?”

  “Are you kidding? This is the first time I’ve done it for real.”

  “Well, you’re going to have to try as hard as you can because we have to come up with a plan that’s going to get us to Mars, and on the ground, before Yuang catches up with us.”

  “But don’t you want to talk to him?”

  “Yes, but on my terms, not his,” Riley said. “Yuang’s ship will have weapons, you can guarantee it.”

  “So what do we do?”

  “He’s waiting for us to get closer to Mars.”

  “Why?”

  “Besides the fact he can’t fire in hyperspace, if I know Yuang he’ll want us to be an example to others. He wants us to be in range of the Enclave’s monitoring systems so the Ferals there can see what happens to those who defy Helios.”

  Rosie felt a chill. “What do you think he’ll do?”

  “Most likely he’ll shoot out our engines, disable us so we are forced to allow him to take over the pod or risk the ship imploding.”

  “Are you sure?” Rosie said.

  “Not one hundred per cent, no, but I got to know him – far better than I’d like – when I was captured.”

  There was something in his voice that made Rosie ask, “That’s not all, is it?”

  Riley hesitated. “N
o. If Essie’s still alive, it’s likely he’ll use her as leverage.”

  Something felt like it was slowly constricting her chest. “But if we give up, then he’ll have all of us,” she said.

  Riley slowly nodded and suddenly, it all began to sink in. If they gave up, they lost any hope of helping the people in the labs, any hope of exposing Helios. Her aunt’s sacrifice would be for nothing.

  “Aunt Essie wouldn’t want that,” she said, her voice unsteady.

  “No. She wouldn’t.”

  She stared at the console, panic starting to rise in her chest.

  “Rosie.” His voice was calm, steady. “Slow down. We don’t have much air left.”

  She realised she was starting to hyperventilate and tried to slow her breathing. “Have you got any ideas?”

  “Not yet.”

  She thought hard but she couldn’t seem to get past the part about giving up on her aunt.

  They both sat in silence for a while, until Riley pulled her around to face him. “Okay. First option: does the pod have any emergency escape craft?”

  “One,” she answered. “But I diverted all its energy to the drive. There’s no power left in it. We can’t use it. We wouldn’t survive. Planetfall would kill us.”

  “Pity.” Riley was studying the controls of the flight deck.

  He turned to her. “Okay, so how do you think you’d go controlling the pod in a freefall?”

  “What!”

  “Our original plan was to make maximum speed to Mars then squeeze the power off, using what little we had left to cruise in and land, but what would happen if we started conserving some power now?”

  “We’d slow down and they’d catch us.”

  Riley shook his head. “Yuang could have caught us already. He’s waiting until we get there. If we slow the drive a little, we’ll have a slug of energy left when we get there.”

  “To do what?”

  “We’ll use it to burn our thrusters out and create a heat shield to confuse the missiles. Yuang won’t be able to lock on to us. And if we do it at the right time, just as we hit the atmosphere, the burn of our re-entry will cover us enough to get to the ground.”