Origins

by Jamie Sawyer

  Mason appeared at the lip of the shaft, helmet bobbing as she looked over the edge. “Oh, shit!”

  Flame erupted from my flank as a secondary-form fired a shrieker; the Krell equivalent of a flamethrower. The bio-gun was loaded with a phosphorescent fuel: licking the ground with bright light.

  That was it. The Collective was awake. Hissing poured from all around me.

  I ducked beneath another gout of flame and ran for the nearest wall. Had to get out of there.

  “Go, go!” I shouted to the Legion. “Pull out and run!”

  I reached the wall and vaulted up it. An intense blossom of pain spread through my left leg – eye-watering, exquisite – but the leg held. That was the combat-suit in action: the leg joint supporting a limb that was for all intents now useless. The armour stayed rigid, and my toe slammed into the bio-coral. The porous, honeycombed material might’ve looked delicate, but it was far from it, and the structure took my weight. I scrambled up the wall, using the strength-aug of the powered armour to just get me out of—

  “The colonel is trapped down there!” Mason shouted. “Covering fire!”

  Mason started shooting. Plasma pulses rained, dropping Krell primaries as they lurched out of their prison. Martinez jogged into view, picking off bodies as they crawled up the wall after me. My fingers tore into the coral, found purchase on whatever surfaces I could, and I climbed rapidly. A claw grabbed my injured leg, but I lashed out: felt the pleasing connection of an armoured boot with a Krell skull—

  They were more interested in getting out of the pit than in taking me down, I realised. The awakening Krell bio-forms rushed past me – gills flexing as they adjusted to the frozen air – and dashed out into the snow. I’d seen behaviour like this before. They had no leader-form to guide them: were reverting to feral instinct to stay alive.

  “Take my hand,” Mason said, reaching out with an open palm.

  “I told you to go!” I said, but did as she asked. Even simulated, I felt a flood of relief to be out of the nest. “Keep that pit covered!”

  As she dragged me over the edge, from one perilous situation to another only mildly less so, I reached for the combat-webbing across my chest. I unclipped a frag grenade. Twisted the activator and tossed it back the way I’d come.

  “Fire in the hole!” Martinez yelled, already pulling back from the danger zone.

  Krell pouring out behind me, secondary-forms firing all manner of bio-weapons into the storm, the grenade went off. The explosion shook the snow, threw up a yellow flash. It was probably futile – would only anger the nest – but it felt good to kill some of them at least.

  Jenkins and the remainder of Baker’s Boys were at the end of the road. The prisoners were in abject terror, harried by gunfire from both the Directorate and the Krell escapees.

  “Well isn’t that just great,” Jenkins barked. “As if we don’t have enough to worry about.”

  I dragged my injured leg behind me. “Just get out of here! Those things are pissed, and I don’t think that they can tell the difference between us and the Directorate.”

  “Dropships are here,” Martinez said, pointing ahead.

  The sky brightened as three ships descended on the landing bay, the glow of the Jaguars’ engines visible through the swirling snow. The landing bay was barely a hundred metres away – an elevated platform lined with ladder-shafts.

  “Move, move!” I yelled. “Get through there! Ships are waiting!”

  The ships immediately deployed their rear ramps. The air crews disembarked, waving handheld beacons – guiding us through the storm.

  A Krell launched itself from between two buildings as we passed, and tore through our column.

  “’Ski!” Jenkins screamed. “Stay down!”

  The alien reached one prisoner, and ended him with a snap of the neck. Several others scattered in the xeno’s wake, but it was faster. The unaugmented humans seemed to move so slowly – so painfully slowly – and the alien lashed out with claws and talons.

  “What the fuck is that thing?” Martinez shouted.

  This was a Krell, but much bigger. Six-limbed, more heavily armoured than the primaries: eyes set so deep inside a bio-helmet that it looked almost blind, a pair of pincer-like claws replacing its frontal limbs. The thing was fucking enormous. It looked more like a lobster than a fish. A tertiary-form.

  I ran for Kaminski, hauled him aside. He was paralysed with fear, pale as the snow around him. I tossed him towards the landing bay—

  The Krell brayed, throwing aside the bodies. It moved onwards through the storm, past us. Directorate troops emerged from the other end of the street, firing everything they had on the Krell. The Directorate Sword might’ve been trying to sow confusion by releasing the Krell prisoners but the xenos were indiscriminate in their slaughter. The ground beneath us shook as the horde advanced.

  “More incoming!” Jenkins shouted. Her plasma rifle was on full-auto, her null-shield flashing intermittently.

  More of the enormous, up-armoured tertiary-forms erupted from the pit. They stormed ahead of the massed Krell, absorbing enemy fire with their bodies.

  “Up there, now!” I shouted at Kaminski. He and Saul clambered ahead of me, up the landing bay ladder-shaft.

  As prisoners followed me onto the platform, James went rigid. His usually cocky demeanour shattered, what little of his face I could see behind the mirrored aviator helm sagging.

  “What are you waiting for?” I said. “Get them on those ships! Start moving!”

  “Yeah, s… sure…” he said. He dropped his baton, scrambled for it in the snow. The rest of Scorpio Squadron waited for orders, just as disturbed by James’ behaviour.

  “What the fuck is wrong with you?” Jenkins screamed. “There are tertiary-forms down there!”

  “Nothing,” he said. “I just – well—”

  A volley of heavy gunfire slashed the air and James ducked back. His co-pilot stood next to him – a woman I only knew as Michaels. Even in a sim, she was wasted: her body exploded in a red haze and hit the deck, lifeless.

  “Directorate are still firing on us!” Jenkins said.

  Flashes of light from the rooftops of nearby buildings indicated that they were deploying their own sniper teams now. Several prisoners collapsed in the snow, heads and bodies stitched with hi-ex rounds.

  “Shit!” James said. “Michaels is dead!”

  “Fuck Michaels!” I said. “She’s a sim. These people aren’t!”

  I grabbed James by the shoulder, shook him hard. In my combat-sim, I was much bigger and stronger than his next-gen. “Get with it, James! I don’t want to know what’s wrong with you, only that it’s fixed!”

  “Yeah,” he said, nodding. “Sure, sure.”

  I let him go, and he turned to his crew. “Move it, move it! Get these people onto the ships!”

  The firefight was intensifying rapidly. Another of Baker’s squad bought it. More Directorate troops were surging from the destroyed compound. Krell shriekers and stingers poured the area, almost randomly. A clutch of primaries clambered onto the landing bay as we loaded up – launching at us.

  “Fuck ’em all!” Baker yelled. “I didn’t sign up for this shit!”

  Thump, thump, thump went his grenade launcher: explosives hitting aliens as they advanced.

  Survivors almost crawled into the bellies of the waiting dropships.

  “Get the ramps closed!” I shouted into the comm, unaware of whether anyone could actually hear me any more. “We’ll take care of these assholes.”

  The nearest dropship, Scorpio Four, began to lift before it had even been sealed. Sheets of snow and ice expanded from beneath as it went.

  My combat-suit successfully up-linked to the Independence’s communication-net. The icon indicating a secure comm with our ship flared across my HUD, and my ear-bead chimed incessantly. This was the sort of priority communication that I couldn’t ignore, that I had no choice but to answer.

  “This is Lazarus Actual,”
I started. “We are attempting to evac numerous POWs.”

  “You’ve got something big inbound on your location,” Navy command said.

  “Scramble some Hornets, get some air cover—”

  “Too late,” the officer replied. “They’re already on you.” She paused, then with a hint of contrition added, “They came in from the south, behind the storm.”

  “The other settlements?” I queried. The ones that we were told were of no tactical significance? Fucking marvellous.

  “Affirmative. You need to move—”

  The link died with a whine of static.

  Scorpio Four didn’t get far. The Jag dropship lifted off, VTOL motors whining, and crossed the perimeter fence. There was some small mercy in that, because almost as soon as the ship had left the proximity of the landing bay it exploded.

  A direct hit from something else in the sky.

  “Fucking hell…” Mason said. “This cannot get any worse.”

  “I think that it can,” I said. “I think that it can get a whole lot worse.”

  The dropship went down in the snow, still burning. There had been no opportunity to activate the defence systems – the bells and whistles that flyboys so love to rely upon. The ship hit the mountainside hard, flashed once, and then died. Although the weather was fucking with my tech big time, I still had partial comms with the downed ship: was able to glean enough information to tell me that there was no one left aboard. Like that’s something I need to be told, I thought.

  “Where the hell did that come from?” Jenkins asked. She breathed in ragged, angry gasps: I hadn’t even noticed that she was bleeding all over. Stingers poked from her breached armour like thorns.

  In answer to her question, three streaks of light appeared on the horizon, moving so fast that even with simulant-senses it was hard to track them.

  “Down!” I managed, as I realised what I was seeing.

  Three Wraith attack ships scorched overhead. They were fast-response gunships: delta-winged, plated with radar-baffling black armour, commonly used as air-support for Directorate covert ops. They flew low – dangerously low – and unleashed a volley of missiles on the compound. Multiple plasma warheads dropped from the black ships; fell onto the centre of the outpost. Exactly where the Krell prisoners were being held.

  “Containment?” Martinez asked.

  Dealing with an asset out of control. Maybe the Sword had alerted reinforcements in the southern settlements after all; but sought to release the Krell in a terminal act of spite.

  “Who gives a fuck,” Jenkins threw back, “if it keeps them off our backs.”

  The resultant explosion illuminated the base, threw razor-sharp debris across the open areas of the compound. Although the strike was half a klick from our location – the warheads had probably been low-yield – I could still feel the shockwave that it produced. The landing bay creaked under the stress. That moment when you realise that there is no plan any more – that all tactical intelligence is gone? I was there, and the very real feeling that we might not escape Capa V, that the prisoners might die down here, suddenly hit me.

  “Thanks for trying,” Kaminski said. “I appreciate it, even if we don’t make it…”

  “Lock that shit down, ’Ski,” I said. “We didn’t come this far to get wasted.”

  “You’re going to make it, ’Ski,” Jenkins said. “You have to make it!”

  Kaminski nodded. He dragged Saul to his feet; the professor appeared incapable of walking on his own. His features were snow-blasted but also empty. I’d seen the look before: the noise, the constant risk of death, the anxiety… Those things took their toll on a man. I hoped that he would come back from the edge, because if he went over, there was no medical technology in existence would bring him back.

  Scorpio One and Two were the only transports left. They were filled with prisoners, bodies caught by the flickering red emergency lamps of the passenger cabins. Kaminski and Saul were the last in, scrambling up the aft ramp.

  “Lazarus, get in if you’re coming!” James said.

  Gunfire strafed Scorpio One, and Kaminski flinched. A stray Krell launched itself towards the undercarriage. The dropship lifted off with the ramp still open, wobbling in the high winds.

  “Come on!” Kaminski yelled.

  The Legion stood on the landing pad and I took in the team. They were in pitiful condition: bodies stitched with Krell stingers, armour damaged, face-plates cracked. Jenkins swallowed at me, nodded. Her face was already turning blue, skin reacting to whatever Krell bio-toxin this Collective produced. Around us, the base was filled the screams of the Krell prisoners; the chatter of returning Directorate fire.

  “Go, James,” I said. “Permission to launch.”

  “Y – you’re not coming with us?” James stammered.

  “We’re already dead,” Jenkins said. “You stupid bastard.”

  “We’re expendable, James,” I said. “As ever.”

  Kaminski stood at the closing ramp. He waved at Jenkins, his face solemn. “See you on the other side, girl.”

  Jenkins tried to smile. “Too fucking true.”

  As the ramp shut, I caught sight of Professor Saul as well, huddling with a clutch of other prisoners.

  The Directorate were on the landing bay now. Kinetics spanked against the hull of Scorpio One and Two, sparking. The dropships began to lift off and the enormous metal frames clunked and plinked with more gunfire. James fired smoke launchers, sending out a skirt of white mist as he went.

  “I… hope that th… they make it,” Jenkins said. She could hardly speak; I knew that she would be pleading for release from the skin. I’d felt that sensation myself.

  Martinez nodded. “So long as the prisoners make it out, I’ll sleep well tonight, jefe.”

  Mason slammed a hand to her chest. “For the Legion.”

  The ships were just visible on the horizon. Rising in altitude, slowly – so slowly…

  “We have clearance,” James said over the comm. “Scorpio One is sky bound…”

  “What’s that?” Mason said.

  A silo in the middle of the base – a structure that was inside the Wraiths’ target zone, but that had obviously escaped the worst of the destruction – began to rumble. I frowned, focused on the building. Snow tumbled from the roof, and the metalwork was deforming with intense stress.

  Jenkins started to laugh. “Not more. Please God, nothing else…”

  The building roof split open.

  Something erupted from inside, began to rise above the compound.

  The silo collapsed, and a Krell bio-ship emerged. In a bizarre parody of what we had just done, Krell primaries and secondaries lurched to get inside, clambering into every available pore and orifice that lined the ship’s flank. Blue light poured from the engines, and the ship pivoted on the spot, beams playing over the surrounding structures.

  Jenkins kept laughing. “The… they want to get away from here as well… Same as us…”

  “Let them go,” I said. My own voice was alien, slurred. “There’s no point.”

  The clouds had parted – just enough to allow a splinter of sunlight to stab through…

  The Wraith ships were coming back around, engines producing a noise like ripping fabric as they accelerated.

  The Krell ship rose. Alien bodies fell from it as it did so, and I noticed just how badly damaged the ship was. The vessel was half-dead, hull speckled with breaches, bone-like protrusions erupting from the belly. She wouldn’t be a threat to the Independence. From what I could see, the bio-ship was unlikely to get off-world, let alone pose any danger to our ship. But there was an undeniable majesty to the Krell bio-ship, and in her actions. This was impossible. She was out-matched, surely dead, and yet she would never give up. The Krell were tenacious, if nothing else.

  Jenkins just laughed on and on and on.

  The Wraiths dropped three specks of light from their bellies.

  “Prepare for extraction,” I said to the Legion
.

  The stars fell, scarring the sky. Accompanied by a shrieking noise: an otherworldly wailing.

  We all knew what was coming. Mason closed her eyes. Martinez dropped to one knee in a classic prayer pose. I just stood and watched; let the incoming missiles burn my simulated retinas.

  The Krell bio-ship’s engine fired blue, fin-like appendages fanning from her aft: lifting higher, following the trajectory of our ships—

  But too slow – obviously too slow. The ship was damaged and could never outrun the missiles.

  When the missiles hit, they exploded immediately. The energy release was intense and overwhelming – expanding to consume not just the compound but the surrounding airspace. A wave of cleansing heat washed over me, so hot that it was all-consuming. My armour was no protection from the heat, force and radiation, and it was peeled away in an instant. Inside, my simulant was obliterated. The pain was extraordinary, but so much that I couldn’t process it properly.

  It’ll pass, I told myself.

  Death was nothing more than an inconvenience and I’d experienced it too many times to concern myself with the novelty. The last thing I saw – as my eyes were boiled away, my simulated brain eradicated – was that bio-ship, her black outline framed by the intense release of energies. She was caught in the explosion as well, and torn apart just as easily as my simulant.

  Death two hundred and thirty-six: by nuclear detonation.

  If nothing else, it was new.

  CHAPTER FOUR

  KNOWS YOUR NAME

  We extracted back to the Independence.

  The starship’s exact astronomical coordinates were unknown, at least to me, but we were somewhere beyond the reach of any orbital response that the Directorate ground forces could muster. We were somewhere safe. Had the fact been otherwise, we’d have been smeared across real-space by now.

  And Kaminski?

  Through ears that barely functioned – a second ago, that hadn’t even existed – I heard a response over the comm-network.

  “That’s a confirm on the evac. We have two birds in the roost.”

  “Nice work, people. Another one for the Legion.”