Through Fire (Darkship Book 4)

Read Through Fire (Darkship Book 4) for Free Online

Book: Read Through Fire (Darkship Book 4) for Free Online
Authors: Sarah A. Hoyt
one outside. He turned around to face me, and his broad, homely face looked pale and haggard. “I…you’re going to think I’m insane, but it looks to me like we’re in the middle of new Turmoils.”
    “New—?”
    “Turmoils,” he said. “With a capital T. Historical disturbances, when all the bioed people were killed!” he said. “In Liberte, at least.”
    I stared. He had to be exaggerating. You see, unlike most people on Earth, I had seen images of the Turmoils. Most people on Earth had heard of them, but not in the detail we’d heard of them in Eden, partly, I thought, to hide the fact that after the Turmoils the Mules—now calling themselves Good Men and pretending to be completely non-bioenhanced—had climbed back into power. On Earth, the pictures, videos and holos of that time period were restricted or censored. On Eden they were mandatory viewing, because that was our genesis story, the reason our ancestors had left, the reason we kept our home secret from Earth and guarded it.
    For a while, at the end of the twenty-first, the fate of everyone on Earth had been determined at birth. Either you were one of the enhanced ones or you were a serf, at best a working drone, at worst one of the myriad dependent on the state for charity.
    And then it had broken.
    In Eden we were taught it had gone wrong because the biorulers, the Mules, weren’t quite human. They were genetically human, mind. Made of human DNA. Yet they hadn’t been raised as people, but as instruments of the state. They had no loyalty to humans or the ways of humans. They had wreaked havoc on the Earth while purporting to improve it. They’d destroyed vast portions of the fauna and flora of the continents and ruthlessly moved populations around, reduced some populations, enhanced others. We’d been taught it had gone wrong because governments were too powerful. Because one person, whether bioed or not, could not decide best for multitudes.
    But in any case, the results had been disastrous. The rebellion against the Mules was known as “The Turmoils,” capitalized, as though there had never been and there never would be worse disasters on Earth.
    It had started as a hunt for the Mules left behind, but, as those proved elusive, it had expanded to a hunt for all the Mule servants left behind, and, finally, for anyone who was smarter, prettier, faster—anyone who could be bioed. In some places, they’d used gen readers to identify modified genes, but in most places beauty or competence were considered evidence enough.
    Interestingly, but not unexpectedly, given the abilities they’d been endowed with, most of the Mules left behind had not only survived, they had gotten new identities and they’d thrived. They’d taken over. In the fullness of time they’d become the Good Men, Earth’s rulers under a regime that forbid bioenhancing and research, and concentrated on keeping the Earth as stable as possible. Having defeated the cloning stops in their genes, they’d also stayed in power. To keep up appearances, they had their brains transplanted into the bodies of their supposed sons, generation after generation and inheriting from themselves, to hold the Earth in an immutable grip.
    Simon had escaped the fate of the other sons of Good Men, of becoming a body donor for his “father,” because his father had suffered a disabling accident before he could have the operation performed. Simon had figured out the system and what his fate would have been. I didn’t know if he’d become a rebel then, or if he’d been a rebel before. A few other sons of Good Men had escaped the brain-transfer, and were part of the Earth-wide revolution raging against the old regime. I’d met two of them: Lucius Dante Maximilian Keeva and Jan Aldert Hans Reiner.
    It was impossible there could be Turmoils in a world where most of the territory was still in the control of the Mules-by-another-name, still part of the regime that had given Earth a vaunted

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