Sergei Lukyanenko - The Genome

Volga had simply been unlucky—a small Zzygou trading vessel had happened to be passing the planet’s space.

The vessel wasn’t a recent model. Designed for nonmilitary use, it was not at all suited for action against a planet’s surface. But the Others turned upon the planet with kamikaze-like determination. Had they targeted the spaceport’s defense stations, fate might have actually smiled on them. But the Zzygou seemed to have gone insane. They started randomly shooting at the city from their low-powered plasma cannons, and in forty-two seconds were shot down by return fire. Strange as it may seem, the Zzygou weren’t even able to drop their burning ship onto the city. Instead it crashed in one of the uninhabited outskirts, where it quickly vanished in the deep muck of the swamp.

A short newscast from the planet was full of raw and unedited provincial emotion. A very young and attractive Jewish girl was giving a heated account of the damage sustained by the city and pointing out punctured roofs, mangled roads, and ruined buildings. The worst damage was caused to “the clinic of the kind Dr. Lubarsky,” the planet’s only dental-services center. Dr. Lubarsky himself, an imposing dentist-spesh with a crew cut, was standing in front of a blazing building, giving a colorful account of how, amid the sudden flames and shaking walls, he had rescued a lady-patient, carrying her to safety… he hadn’t even had a chance to finish cleaning a complex, twisted root canal…. Upset as he was, the dentist lost control of his movements—his right thumb and index finger formed a “claw” and started jerking and clicking involuntarily, as if searching for a bad tooth.

But the dentist turned out to be lucky. The destroyed clinic had probably been insured. As for the bookstore, which belonged to Yuri C-the-Second Semetsky, it hadn’t merely collapsed, but had buried its owner under the rubble. The clone’s spouse, sobbing uncontrollably, was incoherently telling a sympathetically nodding reporter what a good man C-the-Second Semetsky had been. Way better than C-the-First, with whom she had also been acquainted… He was so fond of trout. He had such a beautiful way of imitating the call of the swamp chaffinch… Believed in reincarnation and assured everyone that he remembered his previous lives, and each one of them had ended tragically… it was as if he had foretold his own fate… But whatever might have happened in Yuri’s former lives, his present life still had a chance, however slim—the rescue workers were tirelessly digging through the ruins in hopes that the poor man may have been protected by a layer of books, before being buried under concrete panels. The words of a rescuer-spesh also sounded encouraging—he heard a rhythmical tapping under the ruins. Perhaps it was only water dripping from some broken pipes, but everyone was eager to believe that it was the beating of Semetsky’s valiant heart… Alex turned the news off.

“What a farce,” he said sharply.

The Zzygou trading vessel hadn’t, of course, had any chance whatsoever. It either had no female aboard, or the female hadn’t been able to calm the crew down. It was amazing that they had even managed to destroy a few buildings.

But one fact remained—the Swarm and the Empire had already engaged in an armed conflict.

The door signal beeped.

“Open,” Alex ordered. He was getting ready to see Watson or Holmes, but it was Janet who entered the cabin.

Never since they’d met had Alex seen the Ebenian woman so content and aglow with such charm. Janet’s appearance couldn’t be described as beautiful, after all—five specializations had made her facial features too strange. But now she seemed to be radiating a light from within.

“Janet?” Alex went off to the bar, returned with a bottle of wine. Poured her a glassful.

“Thanks, that certainly won’t hurt. I just had a talk with our friend Holmes.” Janet lowered herself into an armchair. Looked sideways at the neuro-terminal that lay on the table. “You were having some fun?”

“A bit… So what did Holmes tell you?”

“That everyone is a suspect. But I…”—Janet gave a blinding smile, raised her glass in mock salutation—“am the prime suspect.”

“And that’s what made you so happy?”

Janet shook her head, regaining her seriousness for a brief moment.

“Not at all, Alex. I’m not prone to masochism. And I don’t find these accusations pleasant in the least. After all, I didn’t kill the Zzygou.”

For a few seconds, they were looking into each other’s eyes.

“Really and truly, I am not the one who killed her,” said Janet. “I have sworn an oath to you. What made me happy is something else.”

“What?”

“The war! The Zzygou won’t stop now. The Empire will have to engage in the war.”

“Janet Ruello,” said Alex slowly, “what you’re saying is monstrous. The war will cost the Empire billions of lives.”

“Oh, please.” Janet shook her head. “That’s complete nonsense. Our illustrious detective-spesh is of the same opinion as you, but he is wrong. The Zzygou will be defeated with little bloodshed.”

“But how the hell…?”

Janet gave him a puzzled look.

“You really don’t get it? Alex, my home planet hasn’t been demolished. Eben is sealed in an isolation field, but removing it is a matter of just a few minutes… if the Emperor gives the order.”

Alex gasped. And Janet continued calmly:

“Our planet cannot be measured by ordinary criteria. Trust me—I know. There, under the eggshell, the Church is still alive, and the patriarchs, as well as most of the fleet. New ships are still being built. New weapons are still being created. And our people feel no hatred for the Empire. If the field is removed, Eben will rejoin the Empire’s ranks. And believe me, there is still nothing in the galaxy to match the power of our Liturgy cruisers or our Anathema raiders! Your Emperor…”—Alex noticed this accidental—or was it deliberate?—slip of the tongue—“is only a little kid. But the Imperial Council has more than just idiots. If war becomes imminent, they will remove the quarantine from Eben. Then the Zzygou will be doomed. I’ve estimated… we will lose from five to fifteen planets before the fighting moves to Zzygou territory. Closer to five than to fifteen. And if the South-Sea lab on Eben has already finished working on the gluon net, the ships of the Others will burn upon exiting the hyper-channels.”

“Janet… do you understand what you’ve been saying?” Alex whispered. It was clear now what Edward had been hinting at. Earth really did have a super-weapon hidden away, a weapon everyone had long forgotten.

“I hope I’ve calmed you down!”

“Janet, you have just signed your own death sentence! Now you’re not only the prime suspect, but all the clues point to you!”

“But I didn’t kill the Zzygou,” she repeated stubbornly. “I had no idea her social status was so high. But… if my death serves to liberate Eben, I’m ready to die. By any means the Others may choose to devise.”

“Good Lord, Janet, what are you raving about?” Alex lunged toward her, grabbed her by the shoulders. “Even if Eben is liberated and the Zzygou defeated—what next?”

“We’ll see.”

“No need to see. I’ll tell you what will happen. If, with Eben’s help, the Empire manages to destroy one race, all the rest of them will prick up their ears. A common anti-human front will be formed… or a coalition. You don’t really think that the Empire will be able to stand up to the combined forces of ten alien races?”

“The races of the Others are disjointed. All have their bones to pick with one another.”

“Don’t worry, they’ll temporarily forget those. Eben, its ideology and politics, were at one point the cause of tension in the whole galaxy. Even the crazy Bronins had never made it their goal to purge all space of alien life forms. Eben as part of the Empire is the alarm signal for everyone!”