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“Nine point nine to be precise. Do you know how that’s possible, keeping in mind it’s been over a thousand years since a full-blooded human first reproduced with a full-blooded uhyre to create your line on Old Earth?”
“Is this a math lesson, Father?”
“It’s a survival lesson, son.” Orion had never heard that mocking tone in his father’s voice before. It took him aback. “Most of the uhyre died out with Old Earth, along with the humans there.Colossal… well,Colossalwas built contingent on uhyre DNA. It’s your blood that matters, yes, but the alien partspecifically. Nothing human about you was incorporated intoColossal’scontrol system. That’s why your familial ancestors had the foresight to freeze uhyre sperm from the original mate and use it to refresh the gene pool for as long as they could. As long as it lasted.”
“Nobody knows what was incorporated into any of the ships’ control systems except forEcliptic,” Orion rolled his eyes. This was also the first time he was hearing of frozen uhyre DNA being incorporated into the bloodline, but he supposed that wasn’t too surprising… he was just a teenager when he was sent to Mars, maybe too young to be taught such things.
“What do you think I’ve been working on this whole time? Do you know how high a percentage of uhyre blood one needs to control this ship?”
Orion balked, shocked into silence.He’sbeen working on this?
“Five percent. Under five percent, there is a high probability that the ship will be uncontrollable. We aren’t yet sure if this is going to be an instant refusal of any direction, or just a slow sputtering into instability and obsolescence. Do you know what that means for your child, Orion, should you manage to even have one?”
If any of this were true, it would mean Orion may be the last heir to retain control of the ship.
“How haven’t the other colonies been worried about this?” Orion asked, numb.
“They have been, of course.” Per raised his brows. “The other colonies run onwhollyhumangenes. They can freeze eggs and sperm. They can experiment with relevant human mutations. They can inbreed. The other colonies have long exercised ways to keep the dilution of their controlling genes to a minimum.Colossalhasn’t had such luxury.”
“And X1s…”
“X1s just might, if we’re right, be our saving grace. We have reason to believe it contains a surviving population of your relatives. Full-blooded uhyre relatives who can top up the controlling gene pool.”
“Full-blooded… Is Mother completely batshit insane?”
She had to be. The uhyre were monsters. Destroyers. The reason behind the colonies, their mission, their desperate search to replace the planet they’d lost. They were the ones who got humans addicted to them as a strategy. If it was true and they were out there, his mother was about to send them all to their deaths.
“Your mother simply listened to reason, Orion. I take full credit for the strategy. The last piece of the puzzle—” a smile tweaked Per’s lips “—was how we were going to work said genes in without at least some of the unfortunate side effects. Addiction really was the kick in the balls back on Old Earth, huh? But I think you may have just provided us with the perfect solution.”
“What?”
“We tested Kaia’s blood sample in the medbay using your mother’s exorin. Seems she’s right, and we’ve found our first ever exorin-immune subject.”
“What the fuck are you suggesting?”
Per Halen shook his head. “You can’t be so dense, my son. I’m saying we may soon have all the components we need to isolate a sustainable solution for our continued existence. Synthesize a cure for addiction as well as a way to work required genes into theColossalgene pool. But I’m sure we can work through the details later. You should go say goodbye to your mother before it’s too late.”
The bedroom doors slid open then and Orion rushed in. His mother lay on her deathbed. Orion knew that was what it was, because it was a full Upload rig. She already had the electrodes attached to her temples. How they got that thing in there from the medbay, he had no idea. But there she was, with Ptolin Geeson by her side.
“Oh, good, Orion.” Her words slurred a little, and Orion noticed the IV in her arm, pushing in the calming chemicals that were already shutting down her body. She placed her hand on the small blood reader cradled in her lap. “It’s time now. Listen to your father. He’s thought everything through.”
The air was sucked from the room, and Orion’s stomach lurched as the ship jerked. He floated into the air with the movement as the lights of the ship flickered around him.
Orion never realized how much soundColossalmade until it was gone. As he remained suspended in the air, looking at the ceiling, he heard perfect nothingness. Not even his breath. He knew what this was—the jump. His mother had done it early, taking them out of known space and through a porthole the scouts would’ve been working on for months. Problem with those was, they were one-way trips.
In the next moment, it stopped. The deep humming bass ofColossal’sheartbeat returned, reverberating through his bones.
“Shit,” he swore as the gravity turned back on and he crashed to the floor. He scrambled to his feet, glancing at the rig. She was dead, but he didn’t even need to see her to know it. The chime echoing through the ship was one of the first things any kid onColossallearned to recognize. The gentle, eerie pulsation in his ears accompanied recurring notifications in his visual overlay.
The commander was gone. There was a new commander now.
“You’re needed at the command center,” his father called to him as Orion bolted past him.
“Fuck off.”
Orion ignored the confused people he ran into on the way back to his suite. The ship was trying to stabilize with intermittent whole-body quakes, making him stumble and crash against the walls as he bolted down the main hall. He should be running the other way, to the command center. He should be assuming control of the ship. But his feet only seemed to point in one direction—back to his cabins, where Kaia was trapped and probably terrified.
When he opened the door he saw that she was definitely trapped, and she was definitely terrified.
