Exodus: Book 3 of the New Frontiers Series (A Dark Space Tie-In) Read online

  Contents

  Copyright

  Acknowledgments

  Dedication

  PART 1 - CONTACT

  Prologue

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  PART 2 - CONTAGION

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  PART 3 - ARRIVAL

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  Chapter 28

  Chapter 29

  Chapter 30

  Chapter 31

  Chapter 32

  PART 4 - FOUNDATION

  Chapter 33

  Chapter 34

  Chapter 35

  Chapter 36

  Chapter 37

  Chapter 38

  Chapter 39

  Chapter 40

  Chapter 41

  Chapter 42

  Chapter 43

  Chapter 44

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  KEEP IN TOUCH

  OTHER BOOKS BY JASPER SCOTT

  ABOUT THE AUTHOR

  Exodus

  (1st Edition)

  by Jasper T. Scott

  JasperTscott.com

  @JasperTscott

  Copyright © 2017

  THE AUTHOR RETAINS ALL RIGHTS

  FOR THIS BOOK

  Illustration © Tom Edwards

  TomEdwardsDesign.com

  Acknowledgments

  As usual, this book comes to you thanks in large part to my wife, whose tireless support allows me to focus on my writing. I’d also like to thank my editor, Aaron Sikes, and my volunteer editor Dave Cantrell for their help in tracking down problems with the early draft of the book. Finally, a big thanks goes out to my advance copy readers: Bruce Thobois, Daniel Eloff, Dave Topan, Davis Shellabarger, Duncan Mcleod, Earl Hall, Gary Matthews, Gaylon Overton, George P. Dixon, Henry Clerval, Ian F. Jedlica, Ian Seccombe, Jim Meinen, LeRoy Vermillion, Mary Kastle, Michael N. Madsen, Raymond Burt, Rob Dobozy, and Wade Whitaker. Thank you all for your help in making this book the best that it could be!

  To those who dare,

  And to those who dream.

  To Everyone who’s stronger than they seem.

  “Believe in me / I know you’ve waited for so long / Believe in me / Sometimes the weak become the strong.”

  —STAIND, Believe

  PART 1 - CONTACT

  “If aliens ever visit us, I think the outcome would be much as when Christopher Columbus first landed in America, which didn't turn out very well for the American Indians.”

  —Stephen Hawking

  Prologue

  “Lieutenant Commander... Remo Taggart?” Doctor Procyon looked up from his holo screen with a tight smile as Remo walked in.

  Remo nodded. “That’s me,” he said, taking a seat in one of the chairs in front of the doctor’s desk. He folded his hands in his lap, trying not to look as nervous as he felt while Doctor Procyon sat back and read the results of his latest scans.

  Remo still remembered the diagnosis back on Mars: “I’m afraid there’s nothing we can do for you at this stage, but make you comfortable. If we had caught the tumor earlier, maybe we could have operated... but...”

  In other words, you’re screwed, Remo thought. He’d been diagnosed with stage IV GBM—Glioblastoma Multiforme—an aggressive brain tumor, the kind that his medical implant was supposed to have detected in its early stages. One in ten thousand tumors went undetected, either due to an implant malfunction or just plain old bad luck. In a way, he’d won the lottery—1st prize: death.

  At a time in human history when people were all genetically engineered from birth to be immortal, the only thing that could kill someone was a fatal accident or a rare disease. Remo had been unfortunate enough to see what was lurking behind door number two.

  But that hadn’t been the end of it. He had refused to accept the inevitability of his death. He’d spent day and night obsessively pouring over the net, looking at experimental treatment programs for all kinds of deadly diseases.

  Eventually his search had led him here—Nano Nova, an Earth-based company run by androids. Remo’s lip curled at the thought of it. He was no fan of androids—a firm believer that they would eventually turn on their human creators, but what choice did he have? It wasn’t as though he had a lot to lose.

  Now, after three months of treatments that his Solarian Navy insurance refused to cover, he still wasn’t sure if it had been worth it. He’d maxed out all his credit cards and sold his habitat back on Mars to pay for everything, leaving him destitute and sleeping on his brother’s couch, but then again—if he didn’t live, what would any of that matter?

  “So?” Remo prompted, watching the doctor’s face for any hint of a reaction. He should have known better. Androids were banned from poker tournaments for a reason.

  After a moment, Doctor Procyon looked up from his holo screen, bushy black eyebrows raised. “Your scans are clear,” he said in a bland monotone, as if reading the weather report.

  Remo blinked and shook his head. “What do you mean they’re clear?”

  A hint of a smile lifted the corners of the android’s mouth. “You are cured.”

  Remo sat very still, and said, “I don’t think I heard you right. Could you say that again, please?”

  “You’re cured.”

  Remo’s heart pounded in his chest. Hope soared, making his head feel light. This had to be a dream. “One more time,” he insisted.

  “The tumor is gone, Mr. Taggart, and there are no signs of the usual markers in your blood.”

  Remo could have jumped up from his chair and danced on the doctor’s desk. He could have kissed the man on his icy bot lips.

  But he didn’t do any of that. Instead, he remained frozen, his eyes wide and blinking. “Now what?” he asked.

  “Now, you get on with your life.”

  Remo nodded. His life. He had one again. He watched the doctor push a folder toward him. “What’s that?”

  “Sure Life insurance.”

  “Life insurance?” he echoed. “I thought you said I was cured? What do I need life insurance for?”

  “So that you won’t have to pay for future treatments with us.”

  “I don’t understand.”

  “This life insurance policy isn’t a payout when you die. It’s a guarantee of our work. We take a map of your brain and a scan of your body. It’s to ensure that you’ll never have to worry about death again. We don’t just treat cancer here, but a wide range of terminal problems. Our nanites will sit dormant in your blood and report back to us when there’s even a hint of something dangerous going on. They’re much more accurate than the typical Meditect implant. The insurance is included free with your treatments.”

  Remo took the folder and scanned through the legalese. It appeared to be everything Doctor Procyon had said. He grabbed a pen, his hand shaking with pent-up elation, and signed the policy.

  “Good deal,” Remo said, passing the folder back across the desk.

  Doctor Procyon nodded. “Yes.” He thrust out his h
and and stood up from his desk. “Congratulations, Mr. Taggart.”

  Remo took the doctor’s hand and shook it, enduring the android’s icy grip with a smile. “Thank you.”

  “Don’t thank me, thank Benevolence. Nano Nova is his company.”

  Remo’s smile faded to a frown, and he withdrew his hand from Doctor Procyon’s grip as a shiver slithered down his spine. “Benevolence owns this company?” The android ruler of Earth had created a company dedicated to saving humans from terminal maladies. What was his angle? Remo didn’t buy the benevolent dictator act.

  Doctor Procyon nodded. “Is that a problem?”

  Remo flashed a tight smile. “No problem. Thanks again, Doc. I better be going.” He turned and walked out the door, breezing past dozens of patients in the waiting room.

  He stepped outside into the heart of the City of the Minds, the capital of Earth. A gust of wind sent dead, dried-up leaves skittering down the sidewalk. He looked up to the sky—pure blue, not red, like the Martian sky. He scanned the park in front of Nano Nova’s treatment center. Half naked trees rained multi-colored leaves, their branches shivering in the wind. Children played in a playground, laughing and screaming as they ran around, kicking sand into the grass—skrish, skrish, skrish...

  He took a deep breath and opened his arms, palms up to the sky, feeling the sun beat down on his face. Even now in autumn, the sun was much brighter and warmer than it was on Mars. Earth was ten times—a hundred times—as habitable as Mars. It was humanity’s birthright, and yet here it was, crawling with androids. Remo glanced down the street, toggling an infrared overlay on his Augmented Reality Contacts (ARCs) to scan the passersby.

  Fully half of them were bots, but just like Doctor Procyon, they didn’t look like bots. They looked human. Remo shook his head. Do they imitate us out of envy or respect? He strongly suspected the former.

  A stiff breeze blew down the street and inflated his jacket with air, whipping the fabric around his torso and fluttering it like a flag.

  There’s a storm coming, he thought. All Martians knew it. They’d known it since before he’d even been born. It was just a matter of time before envy and imitation turned to hate and resentment. A month ago Remo didn’t think he’d be alive to see a war between humans and androids, but now he had to take the threat seriously. As a pilot with the Solarian Navy, he’d be on the front lines, among the first to die when war broke out.

  He’d just been given a new lease on life and now he had to live with this dark cloud hovering over his head. Remo thrust his hands into his pockets and started down the street, going for a walk to clear his head. The breeze blew. Leaves skittered. Pedestrians smiled and nodded as he passed by. Remo smiled thinly back, wondering if androids ever grew tired of being so cloyingly friendly. How can anyone possibly smile and nod to thousands of people every day? Instead of making him feel welcome on Earth, it made him feel uneasy, like they all knew something that he didn’t. Leaves rained over Remo’s head, a few getting stuck in his hair. He reached up and brushed them away.

  A storm is coming, he thought again, nodding to himself.

  He reached Center Square and stopped to study the holo screens blazing from the sides of the skyscrapers. One of them in particular caught his eye.

  Travel to the stars aboard the Avilon! Join Earth’s best and brightest on a mission to Wolf 1061! Apply now! A geometric code of black squares on a white background flashed up on the screen, and Remo studied it with his ARCs. An error flashed before his eyes: Code Invalid. Then Remo noticed the fine print. Applicants must all be androids, model C or newer.

  Remo smirked. Figures. But the Solarian Republic was also sending out a colony ship—the Liberty—and theirs was going to Proxima Centauri, much closer than Wolf 1061. Like the Avilon, the Liberty also restricted its applicants—human only. And they weren’t just accepting the best and brightest; they were also charging for passage. Five million Sols per ticket.

  Not a chance he could afford it.

  But a ship like that is going to need pilots. Cooks. Waiters. Remo nodded slowly to himself. If he was lucky, he’d be accepted to fill one of the joe jobs. Then he’d be able to leave the Sol system and all of its looming wars behind for good.

  Remo grinned at the prospect: a new world, a new frontier, heading out to explore the unknown... and best of all, no androids. It sounded like paradise. All he had to do was pass their entrance exams.

  Here goes...

  Chapter 1

  The Year 104 AB “Anno Benevolentiae”

  Alexander leaned over his wife’s seat to gaze through the holographic “side” window of the shuttle. That window was configured to show a view from the shuttle’s bow cameras so he and Catalina could watch their approach. They were headed for a glowing white square of light in the outer hull of the Liberty. From a distance that square looked no bigger than the window he was looking through, but as they drew near, he saw that it was a yawning hangar big enough to swallow their shuttle whole. The number 72 was stenciled in bold white numerals to either side of the opening. Alexander recalled reading that the Liberty had seventy-two shuttle bays for each of its ten sections, one for every five degrees of their circumference.

  Their shuttle glided inside the hangar and set down in the middle of a vast chamber. Thunking sounds echoed through the hull as magnetic docking clamps secured them to the landing pad. A moment later, the entire landing pad rotated with a mechanical rumble. When it stopped, the view from the bow cameras showed outer space and the distant red orb that was Mars. This new space-facing position would enable the shuttle to launch at just a moment’s notice in the event of an emergency. The giant hangar doors began sliding shut, and Alexander’s view of Mars and the black void that embraced it quickly narrowed from a square to a rectangle, then to a bar and finally to a pencil-thin slice.

  One of the shuttle’s flight attendants, Ana Urikov, came back on the comms indicating that they should remain seated until Section 7 finished spinning up the ring decks to simulate artificial gravity. Alexander waited, breathless with excitement, eager to get out of the shuttle and start touring his new home. Beside him, Catalina was notably less enthusiastic, wide-eyed and gripping the armrests of her chair in bloodless fists.

  “Take it easy, darling,” he said, placing a hand over hers. They felt a jolt of movement as their seats rotated one-hundred and eighty degrees. Now they faced the back of the shuttle, but it was impossible to tell because they couldn’t see over the tops of other passengers’ chairs. The shuttle was divided into twenty-five matching compartments, each with four passengers, and a tram car running between sections.

  Captain Lieberman’s voice crackled over the intercom: “Ring decks spinning up, please stand by.”

  Alexander felt himself growing gradually heavier, the rings’ rotation pulling him back against his chair and telling him what was “down” and what was “up.”

  Ana Urikov spoke through the overhead speakers once more: “We are currently simulating Martian standard gravity—0.38 Terran Gs. You may now unbuckle and gather your belongings. We will begin debarking with compartments one and two. Please make sure you board the tram car as soon as it arrives at your compartment. Thank you.”

  Alexander unbuckled and crawled out of his seat into the aisle. Since gravity was pulling him toward the bow, he found himself standing on what had been the wall of the compartment when he’d first boarded the shuttle on Mars. What used to be the overhead luggage compartment had now become a footlocker.

  Catalina peered up at him from her chair, making no move to unbuckle.

  “We made it,” he said, grinning at her as he bent down to pop open the luggage compartment and retrieve their bags.

  Catalina nodded slowly and unbuckled. She had to crawl across his seat to get out. He held out a hand to help her up, and she stood, swaying on her feet. Alexander steadied her with a hand around her waist.

  “Are you okay?”

  “Yes... just disoriented.”

&nb
sp; “That’s normal. Going from zero-G to artificial gravity is hard even for experienced spacers. I’m surprised you didn’t need to use your barf bag.”

  Catalina winced and clutched her stomach. “Don’t... let’s talk about something else.”

  Alexander chuckled and grinned. “All right.” He turned and nodded to the tramway between them and the other side of the shuttle. “We’re up next.” Theirs was compartment number four, near the front of the shuttle. Alexander watched the glowing green number above the doors drop down to 1, pause, and then climb to 4. The doors parted with a swish, letting in a gust of cool air. Directly opposite them stood another pair of passengers with their bags—a man and a woman, holding hands, each dragging a bag on wheels behind them. Another married couple no doubt. Alexander nodded to them as he slung his carry-on over one shoulder and handed Catalina hers. The bags were easy enough to carry. With just 0.38 Gs their twenty-five-pound bags weighed less than ten.

  Once they were standing inside the tram, the doors swished shut on both sides and it dropped down to compartment three. Swish. Another four passengers stepped in—a woman and a young boy on the left, and two more women on the right. Each of those women looked to be in their early twenties, but looks were deceiving. Technically both he and Catalina were almost one hundred and sixty years old, but neither of them looked a day over thirty.

  Alexander considered the two on the right, wondering where their partners were. The Liberty was a colony ship first and foremost, but in an age of immortal, genetically-engineered geners, artificial insemination was child’s play, so he supposed that the colonists didn’t necessarily have to be coupled up.

  “Hi, I’m Benjamin,” a small voice said.

  “Nice to meet you, Benjamin. I’m Catalina.”

  Alexander turned to see the young boy who’d entered on the left shaking hands with his wife. That boy couldn’t have been more than ten years old.