Eden's Endgame Read online

  The Eden Paradox

  Eden’s Trial

  Eden’s Revenge

  Eden’s Endgame

  Front Cover Art by John Harris

  BARRY KIRWAN

  Copyright © 2014 Barry Kirwan

  All rights reserved.

  ISBN: 1503228711

  ISBN 13: 9781503228719

  Galactic Timeline

  Prologue

  PART ONE - KALARAN

  Vortex – War Council – Awakening

  Failsafe – Recode – Savange

  Insurance – Machines – Spies

  Tunnels – Prisoner

  Releasing Angels - Titans

  PART TWO – BLAKE

  Experiment – Plan F

  Siege – Sentinels

  Preparations – Resurrection

  Massacre – Breach – Star Storm – Antigen

  PART THREE – MICAH

  Goliaths – Gabriel – Missions –

  Upgrade – Ghost in the Machine

  Lair – Hell’s End – Diaspora

  Epilogue

  Glossary

  For Chris and Dimitri

  Many thanks to my writing colleagues in Paris (MWP): Dimitri Keramitas, Chris Vanier, Mary Ellen Gallagher, Marie Houzelle and Gwyneth Hughes. Thanks also to my pre-readers, reviewers and proofers: Andy Kilner, Lydia Manx, Mike Formicelli, Jacob Bergsteiger, Gideon Roberton, Ruth Sims and Joanne Crawford, and to artist John Harris for the truly inspiring front cover artwork. Last but not least, thanks to all those readers who kept demanding this fourth and final book in the series.

  2 billion years ago

  War between Kalarash and Qorall in Jannahi Galaxy. Qorall believed dead. Galaxy destroyed. Seven Kalarash escape to Silverback Galaxy (human name: “Milky Way”).

  The Dark Age

  Various civilisations rise and fall. Five Kalarash leave Galaxy. Only Kalaran and Hellera remain.

  10 million years ago

  Grid Society founded under Kalarash guidance. Grid is a transport hub traversing a third of the galaxy. Grid Society strongly hierarchical based on Levels of intelligence. Kalarash are Level 19 [Humanity is later graded Level 3].

  2 million years ago

  Kalarash disappear. Level 17 Tla Beth (energy beings) left in charge, supported by Level 15 Rangers (reptilian).

  50000 years ago

  Anxorian (Level Sixteen) Rebellion threatens Grid. Tla Beth genetically alter Grid species 195 [Q’Roth] to become galactic foot-soldiers. Rebellion quashed. Anxorian species extinguished.

  40000 years ago

  Ossyrian (Level 8) race patronised by Tla Beth, become Medical race for the galaxy.

  Every 1000 years

  Due to their genetic alteration, Q’Roth new-borns must feed on life energy of unsponsored species Level 3 or below, occasionally (where sanctioned by the Tla Beth) Level 4. Such species are becoming rarer.

  1000 years ago

  Q’Roth harvest pacifist spider race on Ourshiwann (renamed Esperia), but fail to discover hidden egg nests.

  1000 years ago

  Q’Roth scouts land on Earth and broker a deal with the future Alician sect. In exchange for upgrading Alicians to Level 5 and promised sponsorship by Q’Roth, Alicians must keep humanity from advancement and from maintaining weapons harmful to Q’Roth (nuclear/nanotech) 900 years ago

  Ranger Shattrall crash-lands on Earth. Realises humanity targeted for culling, despite early signs of Level 4 evolution. Warns local Tibetan tribe who become Sentinels. Sentinels engage in silent war with Alicians.

  500 years ago

  Q’Roth terraform Eden, plant egg nests, then enter hibernation period.

  40 years ago

  Alicians secretly release nanoplague on Earth. 50 million people die. Nannite technology banned.

  30 years ago

  Third World War on Earth. Environment sent into irrecoverable global warming. Nuclear weapon stockpiles dismantled. Alicians gain widespread power via the religious sect known as Fundies.

  20 years ago

  Eden discovered. Blake and crew arrive and find Q’Roth eggs hatching, and Hohash artefact, whereby they discover Q’Roth intent. Micah uncovers Alician plot on Earth. Battle ensues. Earth decimated, refugees flee to Esperia. Alicians escape.

  19 years ago

  Alician known as Louise hunts down and destroys one refugee ship, killing 2000. Attacks Esperia. Humanity prevails.

  19 years ago

  Qorall and his forces attack, break through the galactic barrier, and bring dark worms inside the galaxy.

  18 years ago

  Micah and crew enter the Grid. After the self-defence killing of a Q’Roth ambassador, humanity is put on trial by the Tla Beth. Humanity acquitted but placed in protective Quarantine for one generation. All children to be genetically upgraded by Ossyrians.

  18 years ago

  Kalarash presence detected on Esperia along with spider egg nests. Kalarash ship disappears with three humans on-board. Believed to have left galaxy, reason unknown.

  Past year

  The Tla Beth, aided by the Q’Roth and other races, have lost half the galaxy to Qorall’s armies. The eldest human ‘genned’ child is now eighteen. The Spider eggs have long-since hatched and live in Shimsha, near Esperantia.

  Two months ago

  As Quarantine fell, the Alicians led by Sister Esma attacked Esperia. Humanity prevailed but with significant losses, and sixty captives were taken back to the Alician homeworld, Savange. Kalaran has returned to wage war against Qorall, who has unleashed a new weapon.

  Bangkok, 2252, Eve of WWIII

  Thirteen years before the Fall of Earth

  Louise fidgeted in the long silk dress with the red dragon pattern; give her combat fatigues any day. But Nick had never seen her in a dress – naked, sure – and they were being called up tonight, so it was now or never. She shifted her weight in the bamboo chair, sipping her second Lao Pane, a kiwi whiskey shake, and mopped her brow with a paper serviette; it was forty-five in the shade, and the café aircon was bust again. Nick was already an hour late, but she’d wait. It was the fourth day in the past month they’d been put on high alert, the difference this time being that the tactical nukes had been armed, their mid-range delivery missiles prepped.

  Through the dusty window she watched people in bright colours and straw hats scurry past. Bangkok always bustled, but there were fewer smiles and animated interchanges than usual. Everyone knew a third world war was just around the corner. According to the indie sav-minds, half the population would perish. Many still didn’t accept it, but she did. Man had always waged war, on increasingly large scales. All you needed to make it go truly global was to interconnect everyone and everything. Nowhere left to hide or run to, nowhere neutral. The screen behind the counter blared out the latest last-ditch peace talks, another excuse for a barrage of rhetoric whipping up normally sane people into a frenzy. One trigger-happy finger, one inflammatory event, and the world would ignite.

  Louise leant forward, caught her reflection in the glass table-top, saw the hardness behind her features. Her state of mind wasn’t the best brochure for humanity. Twenty-two years of life had been pretty shit so far, more than her fair share of uninvited adult attention as a teenager, and once she could fight back, she’d tried and failed to reinvent herself as a teacher. Instead she’d ended up a marine after one of her few real friends pointed out she had a killer instinct, having witnessed her break a guy’s jaw in a nightclub punch-up on her eighteenth birthday.

  Her sex-life had been a disaster zone until a few weeks ago. Nick, a Canadian commando monitoring the US war games in Thailand. Love at first fuck. And now gung-ho politicians and insanely radicalised religious leaders were going to blow it for them, and for everyone else.
She could forgive them all if she and Nick could have one last afternoon of passion. Staring over people’s heads outside, she searched for his six-six frame. Come on, Nick, don’t keep a girl waiting.

  She took another sip as she watched a woman in a burka enter the café – must be baking alive inside – and take a seat opposite a man with slick black hair, shiny business attire and mirror sunglasses, none of which suited him. He looked like one of the Green-Shirt politicians who’d been warmongering over the Thai vid channels. The two of them made an odd couple, especially as she seemed to be the one running the meeting. The woman’s eyes suddenly locked onto Louise, so she turned back to gazing out the window.

  Across the busy street she spied Nick, taller than the locals, sailing towards her like a yacht cruising into harbour. She stood up to show him the dress. His shades were down but when he saw her he stopped dead and lifted them and mouthed “Wow.” He walked faster, waving his hands in the air, pretending to be exasperated by the constant flood of people and biofuel tuk-tuks in between him and the café; it made her smile. Wait till he saw what was underneath her dress.

  Another man crossed her gaze as he glided towards the café entrance ahead of Nick: athletic frame, bald, no hat, no sunglasses, and grey one-piece jumpsuit despite the heat. Her instincts kicked in as he cut effortlessly through the crowded street, his features concentrated and alert; he was on a mission. She noticed a tattoo on the side of his neck, like a cross but with an oval at the top; the ankh symbol, she recalled. Then she remembered a briefing three days ago: a US politician had been killed in broad daylight right outside the Senate; there had been a photo of the assassin’s body, riddled with bullets, the same tattoo on his neck… She glanced down at the bag at her feet. No pistol, just her knife.

  The door tinkled as the man stepped inside, his eyes an intense emerald green. He took one brief look around, reached into his pocket, then sprang towards the woman in the burka, brandishing a metal rod. The woman, without even turning around, flung herself flat, as a thin blue blade whipped above her, finding instead the neck of the politician who was rising to his feet, a gun in his hand. The politician dropped his weapon and clutched at his throat, unable to speak or scream, only gurgle as blood gushed through his fingers. He crumpled to the floor.

  Louise stumbled backwards as the speed of events caught up with her; she couldn’t move properly in that damned long dress. Cursing, she fell to the floor, amidst the scraping sounds of furniture being kicked aside, swishes of the assassin’s ultra-thin sword, and high-pitched screams and shouts of the clientele as they clambered for the exit. Louise glanced up while her left hand dived into her bag and unsheathed her stiletto. Nick burst through the door, almost taking the frame with him, and thank god had his pistol drawn. Louise found the knife, grasped its smooth handle, and got to her feet.

  Nick was right behind the assassin, who seemed oblivious as he hacked his way through tables and chairs towards the woman in the burka, who was far more agile than she looked. Nick shouted at the guy to stop, or he would fire. The assassin didn’t turn around, just flicked his blade backwards, its blue edge slicing first through Nick’s pistol arm before it carved a line through his chest; Nick went down. The woman in the burka had her back against the wall.

  Louise darted forward and flung the knife at the killer just as he raised his sword. The stiletto plunged into the side of his neck, severing his carotid artery, a curtain of blood spraying over the wall. The woman in the burka dived to the floor. The assassin staggered backwards a pace, glared at Louise once, then tapped the sword hilt with his other hand as if entering a code, ignoring the blood spurting from his neck, and collapsed.

  Louise didn’t see him hit the ground.

  Everything turned blinding white, and she heard a deafening crack as a wave of searing heat scorched her entire body, lifted her off her feet and threw her to the other end of the café. She landed in a puddle of melting plastic furniture and burning bamboo. Her left eye still worked, the right was fused shut. She looked down her body: the dress was largely burnt off, her skin a hideous landscape of red and black, the flesh on her right arm barbecued to a crisp. Flames licked her legs, the only saving grace being that she couldn’t feel them. She was glad she couldn’t see her face. Acrid fumes made her cough and her eye water. Getting up wasn’t an option. Through the smoke and fire she tried to make out Nick’s remains.

  A tall figure walked over: the woman in the burka. Steam poured off the black material that now looked more like very fine chain mail. It flickered silver and white as if there was some kind of tech underneath. The woman was unharmed. She removed her hood and facemask, and bent forward, her eyes the blackest Louise had ever seen. Two sets of footsteps rushed in, speaking urgently in foreign accents, not Thai.

  “Your Eminence, are you alright? Thank Alessia! We must leave straightaway, the police will arrive quickly; you cannot be found here!”

  The woman did not answer them. She spoke instead to Louise.

  “You saved my life. But you have fourth-degree burns over most of your body.”

  Louise coughed, tried to speak, couldn’t, her throat and tongue dried leather, tasting of charcoal. That extent of burns meant only one thing. Louise closed her eye as the pain asserted itself with a vengeance, as if she was being boiled alive. Her body began to shudder. A single whimper of agony escaped through clenched teeth.

  The woman continued, amidst shouts and wails outside, and the crashing of the burning roof caving in all around them.

  “The assassin who did this to you – and murdered your friend – is called a Sentinel. There are fifty of them roaming this doomed world. You have a choice: I can put you out of your misery here and now, or I can save you – if you agree to join me and help kill the rest of the Sentinels. The choice is yours. If you wish to die, keep your eye closed. You have ten seconds.”

  Louise thought of Nick; he deserved to be avenged. But what if this woman was evil, and the assassin had been trying to kill her for a good reason? No way to know. And right now, the world could go to hell as far as Louise was concerned. Besides, if she was dead, there was nothing after, of that she was convinced.

  She opened her eye.

  The woman touched Louise’s neck with something metallic that made a short hiss, and her body numbed as if she was wrapped in a cool cloud.

  “Bring her,” the woman said.

  Rough hands grabbed Louise’s listless body, lifted her from the sticky floor. The sirens grew louder.

  “What about the Minister, Your Eminence?”

  “Leak a report that the Fundies assassinated him. It is the spark we have been waiting for. The war starts tonight.”

  Louise’s head tilted back as she was bundled out of the café into a hover car. Behind her, in amongst the smoking carnage, she glimpsed Nick’s cremated corpse. In that moment, she hated the world and everyone in it, and was prepared to watch it all burn, until there was nothing left but ash.

  Louise could hold her breath a long time. Thirty seconds earlier she’d been standing on the bridge of a Q’Roth Battlestar with three of her Alicians and ten Q’Roth warriors, including the captain. They’d begun a routine Transpace jump, the last on her journey to the Alician homeworld Savange, taking back their precious cargo of sixty human captives. Three seconds later the front part of the ship had been breached by a vortex of unknown origin. Now she clawed her way toward an auto-sealing hatch as air roared past her, dodging equipment and anything else not lashed down as it flashed past. She snatched a breath then held it again. The doorway to the next section of the ship, where sanctuary lay, was closing. In fifteen seconds she’d be locked into a vacuum.

  Louise’s face stung with the cold. She slit her eyes almost closed to stop them freezing, and pounded her Q’Roth claw into the metal floor to prevent herself sliding into oblivion. A sharp-edged metal object hurtled towards her, ricocheted off the corridor wall and narrowly missed her face. It caught her second-in-command, Arteus, who screamed as
he tumbled into the vortex devouring the ship. Louise hauled herself forward, her eyes set on the closing hatch.

  The Q’Roth captain overtook her, his six powerful legs and sharp claws finding better purchase. The exit was almost sealed, but they both kept going, moving faster as the airstream diminished. The captain punched a claw into the last sliver between the closing hatch and its frame, and roared as he brought all his strength to bear against the motors trying to protect the rest of the vessel. He forced open a narrow gap, his upper legs shaking violently with the effort. Louise scrambled over his blue-black trapezoidal head and squeezed through, landing hard on the deck.

  She made a quick assessment: the captain was wedged in the crack, unable to get through, while air continued to bleed out of the ship. Grabbing a handhold with her Q’Roth claw, she drew her pistol with her human hand, and fired repeatedly at him until he began to lose his grip. Louise let go and slid towards him. She braced herself, one foot on the hatch, the other on the frame, and fired point blank at the two remaining claws keeping the hatch open till they glowed red. Her pistol’s charge ran out. The captain still clung on.

  She yelled through the wind, feeling the tug on her lungs. “You’re already dead, don’t take the ship with you.”

  The captain’s six vermillion eyes flared once, then settled to a deeper red.

  “It’s yours, for what little time you have left.”

  He let go.

  Through the sealing hatch, she watched him topple backwards, then regain his footing and rise almost casually, then stride towards the vortex that had already swallowed his entire bridge crew and three of her Alicians. Its swirling blue and white surface crackled with sapphire arcs of electricity that lashed out at the captain, flash-frying him before it sucked him into its depths. He did not cry out.

  She wondered if the vortex was some new weapon. There were no stars behind it, which meant the Battlestar was outside normal space. She had a hunch what was causing it. Just before the hatch sealed, she calculated how quickly it was eating the kilometre-long ship, how much time she had before the next breach, and the one after that, which would wreck the Battlestar and empty all its occupants into the vortex. Twenty minutes, call it eighteen to be on the safe side. She began a background mental count, a trick she’d learned from her Alician mentor, Sister Esma, a lifetime ago.