Origins

by Jamie Sawyer

  The pistol was a muted jackhammer in the enclosed environment. A round hit Williams in the shoulder: a neat hole right through the flak-plating. Another hit him in the chest; failed to penetrate his armour.

  But he kept coming. He just damned well kept coming. Inside a simulant, he didn’t care. I could probably have emptied the whole clip into him, and it would have barely slowed him down.

  Zero odds.

  “Don’t you get it?” Williams roared. “It’s over, Harris. This is the part where I smash your fucking face in, and the Alliance gets what’s coming to it.”

  He crashed into me, and we collapsed into another table. The simulant was much heavier than a man, and in his armour Williams was even more cumbersome. The carbine and service pistol were lost somewhere between us – bodies rolling across the floor.

  I felt a heavy, gloved fist impact with my head. My vision wavered, and the dissociation that comes with cranial injury swept over me. Williams grabbed my head with both hands, slammed it into the floor again and again—

  Shit. I’m going to pass out.

  He was getting the better of me. Not getting; he always had it. I would’ve liked to think that in our real skins, I could’ve taken Williams on. But even that was optimistic: he was younger, fitter and just as hungry as me. Who knew what drove the traitorous bastard? Was there an Elena for him out there somewhere, some motivation for his betrayal of the Alliance? Blow after blow connected: my face, chest, abdomen, everywhere. The force of each impact was thunderous. My hands scrabbled against the floor, searching for a weapon – anything – that I could use against him.

  “See the black, Harris,” Williams said, wet spittle lining his lips. “Go for it. Don’t fight it any more—”

  There was a noise from somewhere behind me. The hum of the door opening, boots against the deck and carpet—

  Rescue?

  “Jesus, sir! What’s happening in here?”

  Ostrow. I recognised the voice: an annoyance in any other circumstance, an opportunity for survival, a sudden reprieve, in these.

  Williams’ eyes flittered past me, to the chamber door. They flared with anger and surprise.

  “Fucking shoot him!” I shouted. “Do it!”

  Williams went to roll sideways, faster than Ostrow could shoot.

  Pistol shots rang out across the chamber, aimed at Williams. Some may even have hit him, but not enough to put him down. He was an alert, moving target: a head shot was too much to ask for.

  I stumbled to my feet, and felt the wave of anger and hate crashing around me, the white noise building in my ears. I summoned it, let it come to me. The rage was just waiting to be released.

  Let that hand bed in. You won’t know your own strength.

  The bionic hand.

  I flexed it. There was pent-up motive force in the new joints, the gentle click-clicking as the fingers closed into a fist. I pulled my new hand back and launched a punch squarely into his face—

  Williams pulled back for another round. I grappled with him, managed to close the hand around his throat. He struggled, but I held on. It felt so good. Williams’ Warfighters had killed Elena, even if it had only been simulated. He had to pay for that. They all did. Behind me, soldiers yelled for back-up – Ostrow issuing orders. They couldn’t get a clear shot at Williams, not without hitting me.

  That didn’t matter any more: Williams was a dead man.

  Bone and cartilage and flesh crunched, and the metal hand just kept closing. There was a plastic collar around Williams’ neck, carrying a metal device no bigger than my thumb. Pheromone collar, I guessed: used to fool the security dogs. That was what Williams had been referring to. Osaka’s collar had malfunctioned, called in the dogs. Accelerated the execution of their plan.

  They wanted the Endeavour’s location. That’s what they came here for.

  “V…” Williams gasped.

  “I’m done with listening to your shit.”

  The sim’s face began to turn a shade of blue, veins raising on his temples. Williams bucked beneath me and I fought his resistance. He was bleeding all over, I realised. Some of Ostrow’s shots must’ve hit home.

  “V… view…” Williams said. He was struggling to breathe now.

  I flexed the metal hand. Hunt had been right about one thing: I really didn’t know my own strength. I felt bones in the simulant’s neck pop as I tightened my grip. A bubble of pink fluid burst on Williams’ lips. His eyes – becoming bulbous – shifted to the back of the room.

  He was smiling.

  “… por…” he completed.

  View-port.

  I broke eye contact. Looked to the windows.

  A Spider mining rig loomed massive at the view-port, so near to the module exterior that it was almost on top of the room. It was ramming the outside of the chamber: about to breach the outer skin.

  “Out of the room!” I shouted.

  Williams’ body went rigid.

  I recoiled from the window. Started back towards the chamber door; barely took in Ostrow and a Marine squad looking on in amazement, as though unable to process properly what they were seeing. I couldn’t blame them for that.

  “What—?” Ostrow managed, but reached his own conclusion before he finished the sentence.

  The Spider MMR raised one of its enormous, multi-jointed legs – tipped with a claw, used to grapple the lunar surface – against the port, and tapped the glass. The action appeared almost gentle, though the consequence would be anything but. The MMRs carried powerful man-amps: I knew that the machine would be capable of smashing its way through the window. As I watched, where the tip connected with the glass, it immediately hazed. There was vacuum on the other side of the window. If the room breached, the doors would seal, trapping us in the compromised sector. No simulant to save me, no tank to hide inside.

  Ostrow was already up and at the door—

  Though the Spider was behind me, and I couldn’t see what it was doing, I could hear it. The room around me shook with the force of each impact, the glass screeching as the metal claw hit the window again and again. Jagged shadows were thrown against the walls either side of the door, the stark outlines of more Spiders advancing on the chamber. Those things had cutting tools: my panicked mind began to consider whether they might employ the laser mandibles to cut through the glass—

  The briefing room door hummed open, panels receding into the walls. Ostrow, the Marines and I piled out.

  “Get that door shut!” I yelled.

  I barely had time to register the disaster in the corridor outside. A dead dog on the floor, in a pool of viscous blood. Another MP, propped up against the wall with his or her throat cut.

  There was a crash behind me. The window to the briefing room gave way, and atmosphere began to rush from the inside of the facility. The Spider rig had broken through, clawed legs slamming into the deck.

  Pressure dropped, and the temperature plummeted.

  My ears popped, noisily and painfully: the instant reaction to vacuum. I felt my heart rate rising rapidly, my blood pressure dropping, the rush of gas from my lungs. All the typical, lethal signs of a decompression incident. I stumbled against the wall, lurched away from the door—

  Close, goddamn it!

  The lead Spider scuttled across the room. It brushed its black canopy against the ceiling, multi-jointed legs smashing aside tables and chairs. The machines were not made for use inside the base, and the MMR was so big that it only just fitted inside the room. Through a screen of tears, I saw the face of the operator inside the rig.

  The Queen of Hearts: Private Rebecca Spitari.

  She wore a hijab over her head and a full vacuum-suit, a respirator plug dangling loose from her neck, but her face was unmistakable. Snarling, she gunned the controls of the walker, sending it lurching onwards, front legs rearing up like a metal praying mantis. There were three more of the rigs in convoy behind her; partly tangled in the remains of the window, but advancing into the room.

  Ostr
ow slammed a hand against the emergency door control – again and again – and the briefing room door slid shut, seeking to seal off the leak. The only defence the facility had against this sort of disaster was to shut the sector and call it a day.

  I stumbled away from the briefing room, through the amber-lit corridor. Before I’d gone into the briefing I had barely registered the layout of this area of the base. There had been no need to do so: I hadn’t expected to be fighting down here. I’m getting old and slack, I rebuked myself.

  The dead MP on the floor had an M400 carbine across his lap. Still moving onwards towards the end of the corridor, I grabbed the rifle and slammed the SAFETY OFF stud. The weapon’s laser sighting holographic popped alive; painted the floor with a red targeting beam. I checked the ammunition clip on the reader. Sixty shots left: half full. Not good.

  “You’re hurt,” Ostrow said. I realised that he was grabbing my shoulder, trying to shake me.

  I whirled about, the carbine aimed at his face.

  “It’s me!” he said.

  Four Marines in vac-rated Alliance combat gear stood around us. Armed with carbines like mine, helmets clipped to belts.

  “Get away from me!” I shouted.

  My immediate instinct was to fight him off. I couldn’t trust anyone, not any more. But my options were limited. Behind me, the Spiders were thumping across the deck: beyond that door, there was only hard vacuum. Breached, this whole sector would go into shutdown. I had no suit, no protection against the void. These troopers had armour, and there were more than enough of them to kill me if they were traitors.

  Captain Ostrow was dressed like the Marines, but wearing dark glasses that were completely at odds with the vac-suit and made him look like a tool.

  “We don’t have time for this,” he said. “We need to get you out of here.”

  I kept my rifle trained on the four-man team, though they took no offensive action. The Marines just paused, uncertain as to what they should do. At my back, the wall vibrated violently. Wouldn’t be long before the Spiders either burst or cut their way through the wall, door, or both.

  “I’m not going anywhere,” I said. “Not until I know that we’re on the same side.”

  “I tried to shoot Williams, didn’t I?” Ostrow still had a pistol in one hand and a small black graphite case in the other. He flipped the pistol up, defensively: pinched between palm and thumb. “There’s no time to explain what’s happening, but we need to leave – right now.”

  The walls around me shuddered. I was running on adrenaline and fumes. My whole body was trembling, riding the endorphin highway. The laser-dot holographic danced as my hands began to shake.

  “I have someone with me,” Ostrow said. “Maybe she’ll convince you.”

  A small blonde-haired figure appeared behind him. Mason, dressed in her service uniform, sidearm held in both hands just like they taught you in Basic, her Directorate trophy-sword hanging from a sheath on her belt. She looked shaken but uninjured.

  “Sir?” she said, frowning at me as she evaluated my condition. “You all right?”

  “Command is dead,” I said. Reluctantly lowered the carbine. Wondered whether Mason had seen the inside of the briefing room, the carnage that Williams’ Warfighters had caused. “But I’m alive. I killed Williams.” I swallowed. “Again.”

  Mason’s expression dropped. She’d killed him on the Colossus, when he had revealed that he was a traitor. “For real?”

  “Simulated,” I said. “I’m pretty sure, at least.”

  “This place is compromised,” said Ostrow. “You’ll have to trust me. I need you to commence your mission.” He patted the black case that he was holding. “This is an intelligence package. The intelligence package. I was supposed to deliver it to you after the briefing. Please, you have to believe me.”

  The pounding behind the sealed door reached a crescendo.

  I could die in this corridor from vacuum, or I could take my chances with Ostrow and the Marines. There was hardly a choice here.

  I lowered the rifle. “Let’s go.”

  We ran through the Command Sector, and Ostrow sealed every door that we passed: blast-sealed, leaving the Spiders trapped behind six-inch-thick sheets of reinforced plasteel. The immediate risk that they posed was quickly fading, but there were other dangers lurking on the outpost.

  The evacuation siren sang out overhead.

  “This station is under martial law,” the AI declared, first in Standard then in Hindi. “Sectors Eleven, Eighteen, Sixty-Eight and Ninety-Five have been breached. Proceed to the nearest shelter, and remain on-site until Alliance forces confirm that the emergency has passed…”

  Whatever had happened in the briefing room, it wasn’t contained: it was happening across Calico. Ostrow and the Marine escort pushed their way through corridors choked with personnel. We rapidly cleared the military sector, but things only got worse as we entered the civilian districts. This was a coordinated assault, with the singular purpose of destabilising Calico Base.

  Chaos breeds, I thought. Given the right conditions.

  And what conditions these were. As I fell in step with the rest of the team, I watched the scene unfold through the mounted scope of my carbine. I expected the bullets and beams to start flying at any moment. Dissident elements – hidden in the shadows while the Alliance military were on-station, while they retained some semblance of control – had risen to the top. Graffiti so fresh that it looked wet had been sprayed onto a tunnel wall: TARIK OUT! CUT HIS STRINGS! FIGHT THE REAL ENEMY! An anti-grav mule – one of the universal transport buggies – lay overturned at the nearest junction.

  “Are the other sectors like this?” I asked.

  “Most are worse,” Ostrow said. “The whole of Calico is up in arms. Riot, rebellion; call it what you want.” A rifle started firing in the distance. Someone was screaming, someone else cheering. “It was only a matter of time. This place was a nuke waiting to be detonated.”

  “And the Directorate keyed the countdown…”

  “Exactly,” Ostrow said. “That wasn’t just Sector Command in there, Harris. That was High Command – the War Council.”

  “So they said.” Ideas began to occur to me. I turned to Mason. “We should get to a comms room. I can make an address to the station—”

  Ostrow laughed, briefly and bitterly. “I’ve read your debrief on the Colossus incident. Getting you on the PA is literally the last thing that we need to do. Getting out of here: that’s what matters.”

  “I need to get skinned up,” I insisted. “We need simulators, an operations centre—”

  “I have it all taken care of.”

  “Then where are we going?”

  “Up the Spine, to the Colossus.” Ostrow didn’t face me, instead waved his squad on down the corridor. The four Marines covered one another, battle-signed that the area was clear. “I’ve already overseen the loading procedure; you have simulants, armour, weapons. The ship was supposed to be ready in three days.”

  “I guess that this has changed things,” Mason muttered.

  “Events have overtaken us,” Ostrow agreed.

  “I’ll need a crew and a captain. And I’m not going anywhere without the rest of the Legion.”

  I’m not leaving them, I thought. Not again. I thought of Kaminski: of his reaction in the Spine’s terminal. Where was he? Had the Directorate sent simulants or Swords after the rest of the squad?

  “Taken care of on both counts,” Ostrow said. “You’re dealing with Military Intelligence here, not a bunch of amateurs.”

  I decided not to make any comment about how Mili-Intel had failed to predict the disaster that was enveloping Calico. Mason raised an eyebrow, acknowledging that she recognised it as well.

  “The Legion are meeting us at the Spine docking terminal,” he said. “All necessary equipment is onboard. Saul too, if my plan has worked.”

  Ostrow’s shades were for more than just appearance. The insides of the glass lenses were painted
with graphics: targeting reticules and shot acquisition data, like that we used on our combat-suits. I looked over his shoulder at info-streams flooding the small screen. Security camera footage, stuttering images reflecting against the sheen of sweat on his cheek.

  “I’m tapping into Calico’s mainframe,” he said. “They’re almost there. We need to hurry.”

  “I don’t even know what I’m walking into yet,” I said. “Command hadn’t finished briefing me.”

  “That’ll have to wait. I can give you specifics once we’re aboard the Colossus. This is highly classified shit, Harris; war-winning material.” Ostrow patted the case. “This box contains intel on your mission. Again, when we aren’t under fire, I’ll explain everything.”

  We passed through another open bulkhead. Emergency lights flashed in the corridor ceiling and there were view-screens set into the walls. Lots of them had been smashed, but some jittered and jumped with safety warnings: SEEK SHELTER NOW! RETREAT TO LOWER HAB LEVELS FOR LOCKDOWN! The seven of us formed a tight unit, guns trained in front and behind.

  “The Directorate have just breached the control rooms,” Ostrow said. One hand went to his ear, tapping a bead there. “They’ll have full control of life support – heat, atmosphere, gravity – within the next fifteen minutes.”

  “But we’ll be long gone by then, right?” Mason asked, hopefully.

  Gone, or dead.

  “Sure,” I said.

  The emergency siren was interrupted by an announcement chime. View-screens along the tunnel walls flickered to life, in sequence, all displaying the same image. A face appeared on the screens, projected in high-res tri-D: crystal-clear. It was a face that I knew; that I had seen only twice, but that I’d never forget.

  After what she had done, what she had caused.

  CHAPTER NINE

  PAYBACK

  “I am Director-Admiral Kyung.”

  The voice was almost preternaturally calm and barely accented, marking Kyung as a well-practised speaker of Standard. From the scene behind her, she was on the bridge of a starship. Poised, coiled, in the command throne: dressed in an immaculate black uniform. Behind her, Directorate officers manned the ship and tended banks of glowing consoles. We were seeing, I was sure, exactly what Kyung wanted us to, and her message was clear: I am armed and dangerous. I am in control.