by Gary Gibson
Matthew cocked his head. ‘And you think you know the reason?’
‘I don’t think I know,’ Sam said softly. ‘I do know.’
Matthew gazed at him in consternation, as he couldn’t possibly understand. The powers that derived from the gene alterations didn’t seem to pass themselves on through subsequent generations. Sam and Trencher and Vaughn had each had their embryonic DNA altered in a lab, before being reimplanted into the wombs of three loyal Primalist women whom each had learned to call mother. He wondered if the Angels had deliberately wanted to prevent these abilities passing on from generation to generation. Perhaps he could understand why.
‘The wavefront of the explosion will reach this system within a few hours,’ said Sam. ‘That’s all that matters right now. And when your father opens the door of that shuttle, he’s going to get the biggest surprise of his life.’
Kim
Kim watched as their fuel reserves plummeted ever closer to zero. They were flying blind as re-entry had stripped the Goblin of most of its exterior sensors and data feeds. Elias had explained to her the Goblin was flying according to an internalized map of the terrain they were traversing, pieced together before and during their descent.
Her hands itched to guide her own ship, but she had no experience of flying in atmosphere.
As they waited for the end, Kim watched their fuel reserves sink further, so close to zero that she wondered how they were still airborne.
‘We’re just about down,’ said Elias, his voice strained. ‘We’re only a couple of hundred metres up.’
‘Any idea where we’re landing?’
‘No.’ Elias cursed. ‘All I know is, there isn’t enough fuel to make it as far as the shuttle.’
You don’t say, Kim thought to herself. And there was me just worrying about getting out of this alive.
The Goblin dropped lower, lower. It shuddered, dropped again.
‘Fuel’s all gone,’ observed Elias.
Now the Goblin dropped like a stone. Kim screamed, feeling herself become suddenly weightless again.
It seemed to Kim that a world fell on her, and consciousness fled, leaving only blackness.
Roke
‘Master Roke, Master Roke.’
It was so bitterly cold here. Roke turned, glanced out through the flap of the tent. He could see the Teive Mountains rising far to the north. A young guardsman entered the tent, and Roke set down his writing implement.
‘Master Roke. You should come outside. There are flames up in the sky.’
Roke frowned. Then, as he heard a low hubbub of commotion, a sudden stab of fear ran through him. Perhaps local rebels were intending to attack them? He looked quickly around, feeling reassured when his eye fell upon the case in which his armour was stored.
Roke stepped outside into dim twilight and glanced up towards the band of stars that had recently been renamed Xan’s Crown. A line of smoke cut across it. Roke dropped his gaze and looked around him. There were three hundred warriors in this expedition, plus half that number more of attendant smithies and random camp-followers.
The trail of smoke was very far up indeed but, despite his age, the old Master’s eyesight was still clear and sharp. He had never seen anything like this, nor ever heard of it.
His eyes followed the direction of the smoke trail. It faded out at great distance over the sea, as if a burning arrow had flown across the horizon in the far west, beyond the point where the Great Northern Sea became uncharted ocean.
At the opposite end, it pointed to the midst of the distant Teive Mountains. On our way, thought Roke, looking around at the members of his expedition, gathered in loose knots around camp fires burning in the wide spaces between tents.
Then a second miracle happened. Something new passed overhead; roaring like a west Tisane volcano containing a bellyful of angry gods. Trailing flames and smoke, it passed only a thousand or so imperial measures above their heads, heading for the forests that coated the shores of the Northern lands.
We are being attacked by demons, thought Roke. The fiery object passed far into the distance, dropping into the distant forest which was perhaps no more than a half a day’s march away.
As Roke waited for something else to happen, he noticed the camp had fallen silent. Even the exuberant wildlife of this northern wilderness had fallen quiet, as if the world and its gods had paused mid-breath.
Luke
‘Storm coming in.’
Luke glanced up and saw white cotton-wool clouds tumbling down a distant peak. He reached up and adjusted the hood of his thermal suit. They all wore white, thus fading into the gleaming, snowy landscape. He scanned the sky nervously, looking for shuttles, any sign that Vaughn was yet on to them, had anticipated what they were going to do.
It had taken time for Luke to accept Matthew’s heresies, but he was smart enough to know the seeds of rebellion had been planted when he had been blackmailed into concealing Matthew’s meetings with Sam Roy. It had been so hard, at first; Matthew had discovered Luke’s affair with Elizabeth, a girl intended for another under Vaughn’s complex breeding programme. Now Luke was a willing co-conspirator, but in the past several days he had woken many times during the night to find his teeth chattering loudly, his fading nightmares full of the fear of discovery. ‘What have we got, ten, fifteen minutes before the bad weather reaches us?’
‘Something like that,’ said Michelle. He glanced over and saw the troubled expression on her face. Luke had some idea of what she was going through. Her parents were deeply loyal to Vaughn and, although she disagreed with them to the point of betrayal, he knew she loved them dearly. But here she was, and they were – what had Matthew said? – doing the right thing.
The three of them had travelled overnight, coming on foot into the foothills lying far below the plateau where they had spent almost their entire lives. They were all familiar with this territory through regular hiking trips, as they worked at maintaining and checking the shield generators dotted across the surrounding peaks. The regular patrols also helped ensure that none of the native Kaspians had wandered too close. It gave them a legitimate reason for being where they were, if questioned.
Luke scanned the skies above their heads. Nothing. What if something had gone wrong? Either way, their past lives were finished, over. They’d never be able to return home. He forced himself to think about other things, to remember how things were supposed to go.
The flight path for the Jager shuttle had been put together by a few Primalists outside of Kasper, who still believed in Vaughn’s incipient godhood. Apparently they were willing to believe this after Vaughn had manifested himself to them a few times. And, thanks to his relatively privileged position within Vaughn’s home, Matthew had found a way to remotely insert a command routine into the shuttle’s flight path that would cause the shuttle to land here first before continuing on to its rendezvous with Vaughn. The deception would be worth, at the most, a few minutes, and Jason had helped carry out the tricky and complex programming that was necessary. They’d run a considerable risk of discovery, timing being very much of the essence.
Vaughn might not trust his son any more, but Luke and Matthew and Jason were the ones who understood best how the computer systems operated.
The Jager shuttle would drop onto the floor of the valley where they waited, touching down for barely 120 seconds. That was risky, very risky. But just long enough to enter the craft, open the deepsleep coffin, and drag Trencher’s comatose form free before the shuttle lifted off and resumed its course.
Luke looked up, saw a flash of light, far up. A sudden sense of elation filled him, surprising him with the strength of it.
Come on, Matthew, thought Luke. Get out of there, now, before he comes looking for you. If Vaughn hadn’t already figured it out, he would soon, and Matthew would need to be far away by then.
Kim
She dreamed a great weight was crushing her.
Kim woke up, tried to shift, and a blazing agony of pa
in ran across her chest. I’d rather stay here forever than go through that again, she thought. She felt leaden, made of stone, the near-Earth gravity crushing her into her seat. She’d survive it, but she wouldn’t get used to it.
Still strapped into her pilot’s seat, she lay there for what felt like an eternity. The Goblin was still, quiet and dark.
But we’re alive, she thought wonderingly, then looked around and realized she couldn’t see anything. For a bone-freezing instant, she wondered if she had gone blind. She twisted her head round wildly until something glinted in the deep shadows.
We’re down, but no power. She was suddenly glad Elias had ignored her, and not aimed for water. How the hell would they have escaped? The Goblin would have sunk to the bottom like a stone, with them all trapped inside, slowly suffocating.
In interacs, she’d always been bad at playing the heroine and, to her disappointment, she wasn’t now proving much better in real life. Despite his tendencies towards piracy, Elias, she realized to her annoyance, was probably better cut out for this kind of situation.
Flexing one arm, pain shot through her again, but this time not quite so bad. She remembered how to speak. ‘Elias?’
No answer.
‘Elias?’ Please, dear God, don’t let me be the only one left alive. I can’t do this on my own.
Vincent?
Shit. She couldn’t believe she’d almost forgotten about Vincent.
She knew she had to be careful as she unbuckled herself from the safety webbing. Wherever the Goblin had landed, it tilted at an angle. She was already half hanging out of her seat. She used her good arm to untangle the straps from across her.
She tumbled out of her seat with a yell, sliding along the cockpit’s rear bulkhead. Breathing hard, her heart hammering in her chest, she felt out with one hand, touched the rim of the crawlspace.
After a couple of minutes, she felt able to lower her head enough to peer through to what had once been her cabin. It was faintly illuminated by daylight.
As she gazed around the cockpit, faint shapes started to reveal themselves. She reached up gingerly and touched the top of her head. Her first worry was that the intense pain indicated she had damaged her neck, but if that had been the case perhaps she wouldn’t feel anything at all.
Pain is good, she thought. It reminds you that you aren’t dead yet. Elias seemed to be gone. Gone for good? she wondered.
A wave of depression washed over her, almost overwhelming in its bleakness. She would be lucky to survive for a week, she realized. Even if something did not try and devour her, she would have to hide from the Kaspians. She didn’t want to think about all this.
She peered through the crawlspace, toward where her cabin was still visible. At least the whole structure didn’t shatter on impact. Then she worked her way through, grunting with pain every time she jogged her left arm against the wall. Gradually she could discern that one wall was cracked open. Real sunlight – it was years since she’d seen any – poured through a great rip in the side.
Through it things like trees were visible. She could hear strange sounds beyond. Animals? Birds? She caught a glimpse of clouds beyond the trees, far overhead, and faltered. Until she had first come to Earth, she had never walked under a naked sky before. So many years living in the Goblin had made it easy to forget what being on the surface of a world was like. And thank God for modern medicine, otherwise she’d have barely been able to crawl, let alone walk.
The securing locks on most of the storage cabinets had broken, spilling out their contents. But where the hell were Elias and Vincent? They must have already gotten out. Or perhaps something else had happened to them. No, she wouldn’t allow herself to follow that train of thought.
She kneeled and started poking through the debris. Food? They’d have to have a food supply – at least until they could figure out what was safe to eat outside.
But if she was right, she had a way to find out. The knowledge they needed to survive, she was sure, was quite possibly contained within the remaining Books of Susan’s memories. She hunted around until she found them, groaning with relief when she did so.
The Goblin seemed utterly destroyed. Kim climbed up on top of an open storage door, pushing herself up to the rent in the hull. She saw grass – or something like grass – and peered at it, squinted. Was it moving? But there was no wind blowing . . . and her skin crawled. Up at the Citadel, in the North, there had been nothing living. It could have been the Arctic up there. This wasn’t the same.
Or perhaps it was just the wind. The trees nearby looked more like bundles of black snakes gathered together and thrust in the ground, with wide, spade-like leaves fleshy with veins. She tried to push her head through the rent in the hull, but something gave way beneath her. She grabbed at a piece of buckled metal, slashing the palm of her hand, then managed to boot herself over the edge. Falling to the ground, she landed with a loud oof.
Her arm filling with furious pain, she rolled over to near the roots of one of the trees, and looked up through its branches. She settled herself on one knee, then the other, and stood up unsteadily. The Goblin had carved a wide gouge through the forest. Its cargo section had split off and shattered altogether. The central cabin section was badly warped but intact. By some miracle, the cockpit seemed to be relatively undamaged. She looked around, saw Elias. He was kneeling over something, in a glade just aside from the wreck, sunlight illuminating his shoulders and his head. She walked over towards him.
‘Elias?’
She came closer, to see he was kneeling over Vincent’s supine form. Elias looked up at her, saying nothing, with a frightened expression.
‘Elias, what’s happened to Vincent? Will he be all right?’
‘I didn’t anticipate this,’ said Elias, his face deathly white.
‘You didn’t what?’
She heard a sound from the forest on her left, and turned. A face like a nightmare rushed towards her from between the trees, eyes burning bright and its teeth bared in a snarl. Something flew through the air towards her, and for the second time that day, all consciousness fled.
Matthew
Within the great caverns, they had been digging since before Matthew was born.
When you stood at the entrance to those deep caves, you could look up to a high rocky ceiling that reminded him of pictures of cathedrals. This cave was only one of a linked series that ran deep beneath the mountains. Until Sam Roy had found a way to utilize the Angel technology he found deep within the Citadel, creating a shield that could hide them from view, this had served as the home for the Kasper Primalists.
He recalled what Sam had told him once about the war that had taken place amongst the orthodox Primalists, who had become appalled by the lack of control they had over Vaughn and his two brothers, Sam and Trencher. Vaughn and Sam had remained faithful to the basic Primalist edicts, but accused those who had created them of betraying the principles of their own religion. Sam claimed they had wiped out half of the Primalist leadership in a bloody putsch, forcing Primalist-controlled corporations with offworld interests to seed the first Kasper Station crew with Primalists who had declared their loyalty to Vaughn.
The surviving Primalists who had instigated the genetics programme that had created them were only too glad to see them go, and happier still when the Hiatus came and sealed them off, seemingly forever.
Matthew was old enough to find some irony in being brought up to believe his father was the Son of God. But whatever it was that had been unleashed in Ernst Vaughn’s genes, it was genetically recessive. Matthew himself had been born an entirely normal human being, to his father’s disappointment – or perhaps relief.
He listened for any sound. So quiet here. History had happened here; events he’d only learned about, too young to understand the hardship of those early years. He could see nearby the rapid-assembly makeshift homes the First Families had originally lived in, almost lost in the cavern’s deep gloom; and the transport shuttles, similar in
design to the one that had flown Trencher down from the Jager.
Vaughn’s plan, of course, was to make use of the caverns again once the gamma radiation arrived. But Matthew felt troubled by something Sam, his uncle, had said, when Sam had told him the burster might not be natural in origin.
There were times when he did wonder about Sam’s sanity; however, the fact remained that when Sam declared something was going to come to pass, it came to pass. What had happened that morning had been the first real demonstration Matthew had seen of the man’s power. It had frightened him, making him wonder what it would be like to be imbued with such power – and thankful he’d never have to find out.
The cave where they kept a few shuttles in a ready state of repair was just ahead, and he walked rapidly through the caverns, eerily silent but for the faint echo of his boots. He suddenly sensed a presence forming just behind his shoulder, and for a brief instant feared it was his father. Freezing sweat erupted on his brow, and he thought he might faint from the terror. No way would Vaughn let him live this time.
It was only Sam, appearing in mindform, and Matthew almost moaned with relief. But the man’s form seemed warped, twisted.
‘He knows,’ said Sam, his voice strangely out of synch with the movement of his lips. ‘Get out of here, Matthew. Get out of here immediately.’
‘I’m on my way,’ said Matthew, breaking into a run. He could see the shuttles now, the same ones that had brought Vaughn and the others down into the mountains during one single, long night, mere months after the Hiatus had begun.
