Sergei Lukyanenko - The Genome

“Ten.”

He reached for the tense green spiral and whispered:

“Sorry…”

The spiral moved off to one side, giving Alex full access to the piloting gear.

“Nine.”

The membranes of the plasma thrusters opened.

“Eight.”

The grid of the gravitational engine opened. Of course, no one was planning to take off riding a graviray, which would damage the old launch pad. But for the improbable eventuality of plasma-engine failure, the ship had to have an emergency option.

“Seven.”

Alex’s consciousness reached out to touch each member of his crew, ever so lightly, a brief, reassuring, and grateful contact.

“Six.”

The gluon reactor started pulsing, boosting the energy output. Paul had a wonderful sense of timing….

“Five.”

Alex turned on the engines.

The ship smoothly leaned on its tail, not leaving the surface yet, but standing on its hind supports alone. Gravity compensation worked perfectly, so there was no change in the gravity vector within the ship itself.

“Four.”

A firestorm burst out around the vessel.

“Three.”

The ship quivered, leaving the surface.

“Two.”

They were already standing “in the pillar.” The ship still looked chained to the planet to an outside observer, when really it had already broken free.

“One.”

The energy flooded into the engines, throwing them into full-power mode.

“Zero. Take-off.”

And they were airborne. The ship was piercing the sky with a swift thrust, no longer bound by gravity, or any orders from flight control, or laws of Quicksilver Pit. Somewhere below them were the dirty and malodorous capital, the honorable president San Li, the smog-blackened sky, speshes and naturals, astronauts and planet-dwellers, humans and Others.

Only the ship remained, and the seven humans and two Others aboard it, and the invisible route charted among the stars.

The parting clouds dabbed the ship’s body. The city below them diffused into a murky, glowing blot. It even looked rather pretty from the dark distance…. At sixteen thousand feet, Alex switched over to the graviray and the vessel gave a slight jolt. Darn it! Botched a smooth transition.

“Nice transition, Captain,” said Morrison, as if to calm him down; a slight jolt when switching to another set of engines was almost inevitable. But at the same time, Morrison was reminding him, “I noticed.”

Alex grinned, increasing the traction. Glanced at an Otter coming in for landing through the adjacent corridor. The narrow cone of the gravity engine’s thrusting field trailed behind the ship, and the computer traced an alarming red around its outer edges. The cone presented little danger to any ship that might sideswipe it. At the very worst, there might be minor damage to the skin plating, which would regenerate overnight. And the unwritten laws of the pilots’ fraternity would most probably prevent any official involvement. What’s more, they were well within their own take-off corridor, so it had to be the mistake of the tanker’s pilot. But to allow this kind of situation was considered bad form.

“Co-pilot, that Otter is getting into our tail. Track them.”

Xang started murmuring something at the clowns piloting the tanker. Concentrating on his own tasks, Alex paid no more attention to him.

Mirror was as light as a feather in comparison to the heavy, multi-ton vessels he had piloted for the last few years. Alex couldn’t help remembering an old book that described the ecstasy of a boy who kicked off his heavy winter boots and put on a pair of light summer shoes. Now he was feeling something very much like it.

A lightness. The universe had become not just the place where he lived, but a home he knew and loved, small and cozy, where everything was close to everything else and where he knew every little corner. Even the ship’s responses to his orders were not just precise executions of his commands, but happy continuations of his thoughts. Not a servant, but a friend. Not a machine, but a beloved.

He had experienced this kind of thing a long time ago, before his metamorphosis, when he was still an almost-ordinary kid. He would leave the house with his posse, stay out till late. Sometimes they’d be gone for several days, traveling into the thick northern forests and as far as the Baltic Sea, where they would lie on the jagged cliffs and look down from on high, through the clear water, onto the ruins of ancient cities that hadn’t survived the first ecological storm. “The gang” were five friends. Alex himself. The dark-skinned, redheaded David, who emigrated to New Jerusalem at the age of fourteen, right after his metamorphosis. Builder-speshes were in great demand there. Fam Hoh… poor Fam, he was also a spesh, a fighter-spesh. He died at fifteen, barely out of the academy, taking part in a peacekeeping mission in the Martian Free Cities. He was shot down over the desert, far from the terraformer towers, had to walk back for twenty-four hours, but died, of dehydration, hypothermia, and oxygen starvation. Gene was the only natural in their whole gang, so he was always the butt of their cruel childish jokes, and at the same time the object of their clumsy sympathy… he wanted to become a psychologist. Maybe he did, who knows…. And then there was Nadia, his devoted girlfriend, his first lover, his best friend… She was now a well-known and successful doctor-spesh. But back then, she seemed to have two separate and unrelated lives. When she was with the rest of the gang, she was a fighter daredevil, their total buddy, with whom you could share a heart-to-heart talk and have a smooch or two in a dark little corner. But at home she was always a perfect, sweet, reserved, well-behaved girl…

Alex was always the leader, though no one ever chose or appointed him as such. No one felt any need to, really, or even thought that he was the chief of their little gang. If anyone ever even mentioned that he was in charge, the rest would have laughed at such a preposterous idea. Nevertheless, that was the way it was. His crazy ideas became their common plans, and his pranks turned into group endeavors. If he was in a good mood, everyone shared his joy. That was the way it was till the very day of his metamorphosis. Even Nadia, who had had her transformation earlier, she still kept following him. When did it all change? Probably right after his metamorphosis. He didn’t leave right away. He had to wait till the next admission period at the pilot academy. They kept horsing around, just like before, shaking up the entire tiny town of Izborg… except that Alex stopped being the leader. And no new leader emerged.

Maybe the reason was that a pilot-spesh should never show too much initiative?

But now it all came back, because a captain was responsible for making decisions for everyone.

He was feeling that connection again. A oneness with all those around him. And this connection was strengthened not by orders or contractual formalities, or rules, or ranks, or by the crew’s love for him… It was something else, elusive and unutterable. Something that had helped him lead all of them—the smart boy David (a hut David had built at the age of seven lasted till the gang came of age), the pugnacious Fam (who was always careful, as any spesh should be, to match his strength to his opponent’s), the inhibited, shy boy-natural Gene (Alex really hoped his dream had come true), and Nadia, with her biting sense of humor…

His crew had turned out to be a good one, after all. Despite all the quirks and problems. The navigator continuously posted alternative routes, the co-pilot controlled the ship well, the engineer made available just the right amount of energy for any given moment. And the battle stations scoured the space around the ship for possible targets, even though the orbits around Quicksilver Pit were considered absolutely safe.