Tosin Ajayi; Chris Amies; Tina Anghelatos; Cherith
Baldry; Neville Barnes; Jamie Barras; Janet Barron;
Paul Beardsley; Jacey Bedford; Pauline Dungate;
David Fickling; Liz Holliday; Tony Jeapes; Stephen
Kilbane; Andy Lane; Kat Patrick; Alastair Reynolds;
Gus Smith; Jonathan Tweed; Liz Williams; Patricia
Wrede

PART I

One

Day One: 3 June 2153

Joel Gilmore’s life was saved by a faulty component module, the vagaries of SkySpy’s maintenance roster and a called-in favour.

The module in question was deep in the guts of the Big Scope and that was where he was wedged, hot and tired and even more hungry than when he had started. The Big Scope was one of the many items of surveillance equipment that hung in space around the SkySpy asteroid, trained permanently in-system, and Joel was surrounded by girders and strutwork and was not enjoying himself. It had taken five minutes to get this far and he wanted to go home. Not back to the base, and a meal and a shower –
home
, which had much more to offer.

In front of him, a quarter of a mile away through the visor and framed by girders, was the dull, dark rock of SkySpy. There was a much more interesting view if he squinted up through his helmet’s top-plate: the Shield, a mighty gas giant, bigger than Jupiter, eternally trailed by SkySpy on its endless trudge around the solar system. The giant was fluorescent with greens and yellows. A spectacular sight for eyes that were prepared to appreciate it.

Well, it had been one more useful lesson for life, he thought: don’t give sarky answers to admirals at your lieutenant’s exam. If you’re right then they can’t fail you, but they can take revenge in sundry other ways. For example, making your first posting in your new rank the most unwanted position in the Commonwealth Navy.

Something dark moved in the gap and obscured his view of the gas giant.

‘Are you in position?’ said a voice inside his helmet.

‘Yeah, I’m here,’ Joel muttered. ‘Pass it through.’

‘Here it is.’

No-one could mistake the pressure-suited form clinging to a girder ahead of him for a human. The fact that all four limbs pointed in the same direction was one clue. In gravity, Rusties were dumpy quadrupeds. In micro-gee they were amazingly agile, with all legs able to operate independently in any direction. Boon Round’s forefeet held the replacement module – a cube the size of Joel’s head, packed with crystal and electronics – and the Rustie passed it through the gap. The working space was so narrow that Joel could not have carried it in with him.

‘Thanks. Component three-three-zero-three-nine-oblique-alpha,’ Joel said. ‘Right here.’ In front of him, a row of similar modules poked their casing just proud of the innards of the Big Scope. He took hold of one and twisted it ninety degrees. It slid out smoothly and he passed it out to Boon Round, then pushed the replacement in and twisted it back to lock in place. It took thirty seconds.

‘
Module replacement complete
,’ said the Big Scope. ‘
All systems now optimal
.’

‘Oh, good,’ Joel said. He reminded himself for the thousandth time never to promise someone a favour. He had owed Sal Gedroyc one, and that was why he was out here right now while Sal enjoyed the first shift in the SkySpy canteen. Sal was less qualified for this work than Boon Round, so it would have been the Rustie who would have had to pull the contortionist act. But Joel was more qualified than Boon Round, and Rusties were absolute sticklers for concepts like hierarchy and precedence.

The Commonwealth was all about combining Rustie tech with human initiative, but Joel had joined the Navy to . . . well, the jury was still out on exactly
why
he had joined, but furthering his career and doing interesting things had definitely been part of it, and they both sounded better than ‘because it was inevitable’ or ‘why not?’ Putting up with Rusties, a naturally pedantic race at the best of times, had been a necessary evil and he was prepared to grin and bear it. He had even been quite sincere at the citizenship interview about his desire and ability to get on with them. But sitting out a six-month posting on a dull rock replacing components had
not
been part of the dream.

‘I do not understand your flippant attitude to maintenance work, Lieutenant,’ said Boon Round. ‘It’s very important.’

‘You don’t say?’ Joel said. Only five months and three weeks to go . . .

‘I have just said it.’

Now, that
could
have been a joke, Joel thought. Not a funny one, but a joke. He drew a breath to explore the subject further, and a glowing white spot appeared on the surface of the asteroid. It erupted a second later in a cloud of molten rock and vapour.

‘What was that?’ he exclaimed.

Other spots appeared next to the first, turning into matching superheated geysers, and then the spots began to move, scorching white-hot canyons across the rock. For a second, Joel just stared at the sight, aghast, his brain trying to make sense of the fact that SkySpy was being strafed by military-strength lasers. Then he swore and started to wriggle backwards out of the Big Scope, as best he could in a pressure suit intent on wedging itself into every nook and cranny.

‘Go to general band,’ Boon Round said urgently. A cacophony of voices and blaring alarms filled Joel’s helmet. Words could be picked out of the gabble.

‘
Negative radar lock. Negative radar lock.
’

‘
Fire flares. Lock on visual.
’

No-one could have got close enough to SkySpy to strafe it without very good stealth tech indeed. The base had been built by masters at remaining unobserved, but now it seemed the masters had been surpassed.

Down below him on the surface of the asteroid, hidden hatches had moved aside and turrets had sprung up into space. Joel caught the brief flaring blur of torpedoes firing off. A bright white light, SkySpy’s flares, glared through the mechanism of the Big Scope and he tried to move even faster. The flares might illuminate the attackers, but bright lights could shine both ways.

‘
Visual lock! Fire.
’

More blurs, more torpedoes, more flashes. There was a battle going on out there in space and Joel couldn’t see a bit of it.

‘This is most spectacular,’ Boon Round said. Joel gritted his teeth and kept squirming.

SkySpy had been built at a safe distance from the second world of this solar system and the creatures who lived there, but every year those creatures had pressed further outwards. They had helium retrieval bases on their moon. They had an ever-increasing space trade, with space habitats and space lanes to link them. And their mining operations had reached their system’s first asteroid belt. It had always been inevitable that one day they would be out past SkySpy, but no-one had expected it quite so soon.

The Rusties called the natives of this system The Beings of Sample World Four. Humans called them the XCs. It was short for ‘xenocides’. The inhabitants of the third world of the system, if any had still remained, could have said why.

‘
Got one!
’

For the first time in his life, Joel cheered at the destruction of a spaceship.

And then the enemy lasers opened up again and Joel could only watch helplessly – with that part of his mind not intent on extricating himself from the second juiciest target in the war zone – as their invisible beams carved trenches across the surface of SkySpy and across the turrets. One by one they fell silent.

‘I would advise speed,’ Boon Round said.

‘I’m going as fast as I can!’ Joel shrieked.

‘I’ll go round behind you. I may be able to help you out.’

‘You mean it takes this to make a Rustie have a good idea?’ Joel yelled.

‘You’re quite new here, so you might not know we prefer the term “First Breed”. “Rustie” is an entirely inaccurate human expression based upon our appearance . . .’

‘Yeah, yeah, whatever.’ In the dying light of the flares, Joel saw dark objects settling down upon the rock, no longer opposed by SkySpy’s dead defences. Then he frowned as they vanished.

‘Magnify,’ he said to his suit, and the centre of his visor expanded the view. They hadn’t vanished: they were burrowing into the rock, leaving neatly drilled holes behind them. ‘Oh, no,’ he muttered. Then, on general band: ‘This is Gilmore. They’re burrowing in. Look out for . . .’

And then the surface of the rock erupted, a fountain of vapour and debris blasting out from the first hole. And another, and another. Over the general band, Joel heard screams and shouts and the roar of explosive decompression.

‘
Power is out. Launch Lifeboat B. I say again, launch
Lifeboat B. All personnel to evacuate to Lifeboat B. I say
again, all personnel . . .
’

Boon Round’s forefeet finally grabbed Joel’s ankles and pulled him out of the Big Scope.

‘We’ve been told to evacuate,’ the Rustie said.

‘I heard!’

‘Then come on.’

The Rustie was already diving back down to SkySpy, propelled by his suit’s thrusters. Joel set his suit to follow, and foremost in his mind was the absurd thought: My God, all those drills are finally going to come in useful!

There was a drill for everything . . .

His suit thrusters cut in, throwing him down towards
the rock after Boon Round.

. . . including the very unlikely event of the XCs actually getting so far as to launch a surprise attack on the station without being spotted a light minute away.

A nudge from one of the shoulder nuzzles diverted him,
edging him out into space. Two more nozzles cut in to
swing him around the rock.

The surveillance gear on SkySpy was expendable – there was no tech there that would be any news to the XCs. More important was the destruction of anything that remotely hinted at how to open a step-through point. Or the precise whereabouts in space of the Commonwealth or Earth. Thermite charges were placed permanently against all computer equipment and memory banks in the station.

The dark, rough surface of SkySpy blurred past him.

What it came down to was: in the event of an attack, on-duty crew within SkySpy had to handle the defence of the station and, if necessary, go through a sequence of codes to set off the charges the moment an unfavourable outcome became evident. Off-duty crew and anyone outside the station got the hell out of there.

Joel and Boon Round came out the other side of the rock,
side thrusters burning to cancel their outward momentum.

SkySpy had two lifeboats but Lifeboat A would have been too exposed to attack. Lifeboat B had emerged from its hangar and was floating just free of the rock, protected by the bulk of the asteroid. With Boon Round still ahead of him, Joel’s suit fired a blast to put him on a final course. The airlock loomed, his suit retroed, and he and Boon Round touched down together. A suited human figure was already there.

‘In, quick,’ said the airlock master, pulling them towards the open inner door. By definition, if the lifeboat were needed then it would be a combat situation, so the ship was air-empty. She peered at the name patch on Joel’s suit. ‘Gilmore? You’re most senior on board, sir—’

‘
What?
’

‘– so get to the flight deck.’

Joel got. The human pilot, Albarazi, and a Rustie that Joel couldn’t put a name to were already there. ‘Gilmore here,’ he said as he dropped into the command couch. The autostraps wrapped snugly around him. ‘What’s happening?’

‘M-main engines powered up, course laid into the generator, standing by to burn, sir,’ said Albarazi. ‘Ready for your word.’ He and the Rustie both stared through their faceplates at Joel, poised over the controls.

The lifeboat was too small to have a step-through generator on board. All Commonwealth traffic entered and left the system via a generator in Shield orbit, which had pre-set orders to self-destruct if any ship not beaming the correct codes came towards it. The lifeboat would be there in ten minutes, it would slip through into a far-off solar system and, short of actually having confirmed proof that intelligent life existed somewhere else in the universe, the XCs would be none the wiser.

‘Airlock master,’ Joel said on the open band. ‘How many on board?’

‘
Seventeen total, sir
.’ Which left another sixty-three unaccounted for.

‘Where the hell is everyone?’ Joel muttered.

‘Dead,’ Albarazi said. He looked at Joel from dark, hollow eyes. ‘You weren’t in there. They dug in through the walls, and then they drilled through the bulkheads so we couldn’t seal up, and people were being torn to pieces and they’re dead.’

Joel made himself picture the scene. The emergency bulkheads would shut immediately there was a pressure drop, but what good was that if someone was digging tunnels all over the place? And the bulkheads only protected the outer galleries; the inner ones had always been thought to be protected by the rock itself. And though all personnel should have been suited up within seconds of the first alarm, what protection did a standard pressure-suit offer against explosive decompression all around you, with bits of rock and equipment hurtling about in hurricane-force winds?

‘Command Centre . . .?’ he said.

‘Was the first to go after the generators,’ said the Rustie. Joel made a last, desperate try on the general band.

‘This is Lifeboat B,’ he said. ‘Calling all SkySpy personnel not on board. Respond.
Please
respond.’

Silence. Joel, the pilot and the navigator looked at each other.

‘
Airlock master to flight deck. A three foot hole just
appeared in the main section. We’re under laser fire
.’

‘We’re getting out of here,’ Albarazi said. ‘Stand by . . .’

‘Wait,’ Joel said. All eyes turned to him and for the first time he understood what his father had meant when he talked about the loneliness of command. He was the most senior . . . ‘Were the records destroyed?’

‘Sir?’ Albarazi’s look suggested he really couldn’t care about the records.

‘Were the records destroyed?’ Joel shouted.

‘I – I don’t know, sir . . .’

Joel shut his eyes, took a breath, made his decision.

‘Boost to the Shield on full and get out of here,’ he said. He unstrapped himself. ‘Thirty-second countdown.’

BOOK: The Xenocide Mission

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