Genesis (19 page)

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. “No. 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.”

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.

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 looked 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.