Origins

by Jamie Sawyer

  “I want to prove myself,” Brooke went on. Her voice had lowered; she was a good actress. “I don’t want to be doing stories about virons being stuck up trees on Tau Ceti IV for the rest of my career.”

  “Virons?”

  “It’s a native to Tau Ceti,” she said. “A lizard with fur, like a cat.”

  “Does this act work on many soldiers?”

  She shrugged, the veil of vulnerability lifting instantly. “Some,” she said. “But not you?”

  “Not me. I’ll drink with you, and then I’ll get my shuttle.”

  “Fair enough. Just tell me one thing: why were you so upset when you saw Dr Marceau leaving? Off the record.”

  Before I’d had a chance to stop myself, something broke inside of me. I blurted, “I told her that if she left me, it would be the last time she would ever see me. I promised her that.” I swallowed back emotion. “That wasn’t to be.”

  “I’ve read her personnel files,” Brooke said, “such that are publicly available.”

  “By which you mean none,” I said. All of our records were restricted. Sim Ops wasn’t a secret any more, but that sort of data was still confidential. Even with Elena’s posting to the Endeavour expedition, her civilian service record was classified.

  “You’d be surprised what walls fall before a determined reporter,” Brooke said, “so we don’t need to play that game. She was Sim Ops, and she was one of the original psychologists attached to the Programme.”

  “That’s true.”

  “She was also one of the very first proponents of the Programme. A very vocal supporter of it, although she suggested that it should have very precise limits placed upon it.”

  I said nothing to that: it was all painfully true.

  “Look,” Brooke said, “I got you out of that prison van. They were going to report you to your CO—”

  “And you said that it was gratis.”

  “I’m not asking for a full interview or anything.”

  “She was my girl, and she left me for the Maelstrom,” I said, as definitively as I could. “Let’s leave it there.”

  “And today, I guess, was your attempt to stop her from leaving?”

  “Yes, it was.”

  Brooke rolled her eyes. “That’s some seriously romantic shit, Harris.”

  “Fuck you.”

  “You think that she will ever come back?”

  “I hope that she will,” I said.

  But deep down? I was sure that she wouldn’t. I thought of those starships – the expedition fleet – clustered in high orbit. All so fragile, all so weak. They weren’t warships, and they shouldn’t be taking the risk of sailing into the Maelstrom.

  “So it was personal,” Brooke said. “Fair enough. Maybe not much of a story in that. Here’s to the Treaty.”

  She raised her glass. Several patrons nearby copied her.

  I just drank hard and let it all go.

  It turned out that I had more than a drink with Cassari Brooke – better known to CNN as Cassi Brooke, prime-time reporter for the Core Worlds. The evening rapidly spiralled into multiple drinks, until the table was filled with empty glasses.

  Brooke got other information out of me, but – I was sure – not enough to make any sort of story. We talked about my father, although I studiously avoided the topic of his suicide, and then my grandfather. I was less concerned about talking about him, because there was so little to say.

  “He was Section Eight,” I said.

  “Which means?” Brooke slurred.

  “He was discharged from the Army by reason of mental instability.”

  “He went nuts?”

  I shrugged. “You could say that.”

  “How does this, ah, Section Eight, work with Sim Ops? Aren’t you all a bit crazy?”

  “Not enough for a discharge,” I said.

  “Let me give you a name. A name for a man who doesn’t ever die.”

  “I die all right. I just keep coming back.”

  “Is there a difference?” she asked, frowning.

  “The simulation isn’t real,” I said. “It only feels that way.”

  This was basic textbook stuff; the material drip-fed to the media. Although the Sim Ops Programme was still young – was still a fraction of the size of the wider Alliance Army – we were already finding difficulties. More than enough recruits had gone full Section Eight: unable to tell the difference between what was real and simulated. The brain interpreted everything experienced in a sim as real, whether in a simulant or a hardcopy. The only difference was that simulated death wasn’t final.

  “My dear Captain Harris,” she said. “Died one hundred and twelve times.” She sat upright for a moment. “Do you guys all have, like, nicknames?”

  “Call signs, you mean?” I said.

  “Yeah.”

  “Some of us,” I said. “Not me. Not yet.”

  “You should have one.” She ran a hand through her red hair, massaged her scalp. “Men don’t fear men. They’re scared of monsters. That’s what the Krell have up on us, see?”

  “I see.”

  “Men needs myths. That’s what you need to be, Harris. A myth. And with all those transitions…”

  My attention was elsewhere, directed at the tri-D viewer beside the bar. It was getting late now, and many of the customers had moved on. The tri-D was still broadcasting a composite of news recordings from throughout the day, and the remaining patrons had gathered around it, eyes focused on the glowing graphics. Much of the material was pointless rubbish – overviews of the marching bands, detailed breakdowns of the starship specifications, further biographies of the crew. But this programme had caught my attention.

  There were talking heads explaining what this mission meant to the Alliance. And not just the Alliance: Director-General Zhang, high executive of the Directorate, even made an address.

  “He always looks so calm,” I whispered. “Whatever he is saying.”

  Was that a learnt skill? I wondered. Whether he was declaring war on the Outer Colonies, suggesting trade embargoes against the Antarctic Republic, or naming his fifteenth son, there was never any malice in his tone. He never so much as looked angry. It was particularly disturbing.

  Zhang was nearly a hundred years old, but didn’t look much past forty standard: his rounded face, unlined by age or worry, bearing only the slightest hint of his ethnic Chino roots, was almost cherubic. Dressed in a black smart-suit, frame well-exercised. As premier of the largest power bloc in human space, he wielded the combined military weight of the Asiatic Directorate. Indisputably, Zhang was a dangerous man, but a man who didn’t want you to believe that he was dangerous. He smiled to the camera, nodded and gesticulated – never staying still.

  “This mission represents the future of human–Krell relations, and as a spokesperson for the Asiatic Directorate, as a representative of over two-thirds of the human population in this galaxy, we wish you luck, crew, in your voyage.” He paused, a warm smile playing on his lips. “And we will be with you, in your hearts.”

  “You think that they wanted to go too?” Brooke asked me. “Into the Maelstrom, I mean.”

  “Yeah,” I said. “I think that they wanted to go a lot.”

  The Endeavour’s mission was purely Alliance-backed, but that hadn’t stopped Zhang and his senior advisers from requesting that the ship carry Thai observers. The Thai Kingdom was the least militarised nation-state of the Directorate; with colonies as far flung as Nebaris III, it was also one of the most advanced. Other elements of the Directorate had been less diplomatic about what they saw as proper involvement in the expedition. Unified Korea – Uni-Kor – had been particularly insistent that a Directorate ship accompany the fleet. They had even threatened military repercussions if their demands were not met, but intervention from the Euro Confed had talked them down before the launch.

  “I interviewed one of his lieutenants, once,” Brooke said. Her voice suddenly sounded very lucid – not very drunk at all – and her e
yes were extremely focused. “It… wasn’t a nice experience.”

  “I reckon,” I said. I had the overwhelming urge to tell her about Carrie, about my sister: killed by Directorate Special Forces when she was barely out of adulthood.

  Brooke waved a finger at the holo. There were marching rows of soldiers, dressed in all-enclosing black suits, hides as shiny as rad-ants. Those were called hard-suits: assisted exo-skeletons for use in hazardous combat environments.

  “You know what they’re doing, now?” Brooke asked me. Before I could respond, she was talking again: “They don’t have mothers, and they don’t have fathers. They’re grown in vats, birthed from test tubes. Can you imagine it? A whole army of those bastards.”

  “I’ve heard the rumours.”

  Not all soldiers, of course, but the Directorate were resorting to cloning tech: creating Special Ops teams in crèches, out in Cambodia. Labs where all they did was build men and women, breed children that only cared about war. Command insisted that the Directorate were creating paler imitations of simulants, that their genetics programme was nothing to be afraid of, but I didn’t see it that way. What the Directorate didn’t have in quality, they would eventually have in numbers.

  “Do you think that something grown in a tube has a conscience?” Brooke said, still staring at the screen.

  “No, I don’t.”

  “You did the right thing today,” she said, suddenly changing the subject. “Trying to stop Dr Marceau, I mean.”

  “I know,” I said.

  “I don’t mean like that,” Brooke said. “The Endeavour’s mission… I’ve heard things. We’ve all heard things.”

  I froze. I suddenly felt very sober, very angry and very alone. Everything else in the room dropped away from me. “Such as?”

  “Not everything is right with the expedition,” Brooke said, leaning in to me. “Not everything is as it seems. There’s a lot about it that you don’t know.”

  “Tell me,” I said. “Everything.”

  Brooke looked left, then right. She appeared genuinely frightened, her expression only slightly tempered by the fact that she was thoroughly drunk. Abruptly, she drew back from the table. I saw the barest flicker of intelligence-sharing across her pupils; that blue flash that indicated she was remotely consulting a database somewhere. Her eyes reflected on the mirrored table surface, but by the time she looked up at me – the false smile across her face again – the connection was gone.

  “I’ve seen some of the manifests,” she whispered. “There are weapons onboard. Plasma tech, kinetic carbines. She’s carrying a big armoury.”

  “That’s not news,” I said, annoyed. “There’s a whole simulant team onboard. Under Sergeant Stone; organised by O’Neil.”

  O’Neil was head of Simulant Operations; the asshole who had approved security for the mission.

  “Why do they need weapons to organise a Treaty?” Brooke said.

  “Because they’re going into the Maelstrom: they need protection.”

  I was only repeating the official line, but the words left my mouth by rote: a single Sim Ops team wouldn’t be protection enough for a whole expedition. The crew are doomed, my inner voice whispered.

  Brooke swallowed down a mouthful of liquor, noisily, and gave me a broad smile: snapping out of whatever rut she had fallen into. Her mood instantly shifted, and the moment passed. As though she had decided against whatever disclosure she had been about to make.

  “Sorry to get your hopes up, buddy,” she said. “What will we have to report on, when the war is over? That’s the real question.”

  “I’m sure you’ll find something,” I said. “Was that all you had to tell me?”

  “Pretty much. I… I feel kind of sick. It’s real hot in here.”

  The drunken look returned to her face. She had gone almost green. I stood from the table.

  “I think that I’d better go. I have a hotel room in Sector Three. The Mumbai.”

  “Fine,” I said. “Safe journey.”

  “You could say it like you mean it, trooper. It’s real nice – old-fashioned – that you’re waiting for her, even though you don’t think she’s coming back. It was good meeting you.”

  “Pity I can’t say the same,” I said, as Cassi Brooke left the bar.

  I managed to secure a bunk down at the local barracks, playing up my Sim Ops position, and the night passed uneventfully but I slept little. I constantly relived Elena leaving on the shuttle, the fact that I hadn’t stopped her. Had I been able to? Probably not, but that didn’t stop me from feeling that I hadn’t done enough. What plagued me most was the uncertainty. Had she seen me as she’d entered the shuttle hatch?

  Mostly, I was tormented that she might’ve done so, and yet still boarded the transport.

  I had come to Calico hoping to – in some way – interfere with the launch. I had naively presumed that if Elena had actually seen me, she would’ve changed her mind about leaving. I knew, deep down, that things were not that simple, but that had been my objective.

  And then there was Cassari Brooke’s disclosure that something was wrong with the expedition. What had she meant by that? Her explanation about weapons hadn’t been convincing.

  What did she really know?

  The morning: maybe that would hold some answers.

  The opposite was of course true, and the morning held just more frustration.

  I left the barracks early and went straight to the Mumbai. Post-launch, it was busy with departing tourists, but slightly less hectic than the day before. Paying no heed to the queued off-worlders, I went straight to Brooke’s hotel. Brooke wasn’t the only person who knew how to give a bribe: I paid-off the door-staff for her room number, and took the lift to her floor.

  Only to find that her room was empty. A cleaning droid was inside, stripping the bunk.

  “You can’t be here,” the droid said immediately, singular security-eye flashing in non-recognition. “You are not a registered guest.”

  “I know,” I said, “but I’m looking for one.”

  “This room is being prepared for the next occupant.”

  I looked down at my wrist-comp: it was only oh-eight-hundred hours. Still early by civilian standards. “What happened to the last guest?”

  “Gone,” the droid said, sterilely. “Checked out.”

  “When?”

  “Early. How should I know? I only clean rooms.”

  I sighed with anger. “Did she leave anything?”

  The droid shrugged its metal shoulders. “Your name Harris?”

  “Yeah, it is.”

  “Then this is for you,” it said, indicating.

  There was a folded sheet of paper on the cabinet beside the bunk. I opened it, read the message inside. It was a single line, in scrawled block letters.

  HARRIS, ABOUT THAT NAME: WILL “LAZARUS” DO? GOOD LUCK WITH THE GIRL. C X

  I crumpled the paper.

  “Fuck.”

  The droid paused over the bed for a moment. With robots, even hotel-staff bots, it’s always difficult to read an expression or motive. I could swear that this droid was smiling at me.

  “You read the news, Harris?” it asked.

  “No, why?”

  “You might want to,” it said. “Now get out of here. I have beds to make.”

  I left the room in a hurry, blood thumping in my ears. As I waited at the elevator door, I opened my wrist-comp: called up the latest news-feed. There were, of course, multiple stories about the Endeavour’s launch, about the crew, on post-expedition analysis and the prospects of the Treaty being agreed…

  And something else.

  SIM OPS: THE MAN THEY CALL LAZARUS.

  Reporter: Cassi Brooke, CNN correspondent.

  CHAPTER FOURTEEN

  GODS OF TECHNOLOGY

  We awoke under the light of a different star, light-years from the Alliance.

  I sat in the mess cradling a cup of hot coffee. It was surprisingly good; smelt real enough and tasted rich
at the back of my throat. It was my second cup: the caffeine always helped to throw off the effects of the sleep. The Legion sat around the mess hall table, trying their best to shake off the post-sleeper hangover.

  “We’re inside the Maelstrom,” I said.

  Jenkins yawned. “There was a time when that would’ve shit me up…”

  For the Legion, like death, the Maelstrom had lost its glamour, but the same could not be said for everyone aboard the ship. I noted the greenhorns and newly promoted maintenance staff eying us from across the hall. More than once, I’d heard the word “ghost-ship” and “government conspiracy” being muttered between crewmen.

  Mason sat across from me with a plate heaped with breakfast items: fried eggs, cornbread, potatoes and more. The look of the massed Navy food – so soon after we’d come out of hypersleep – made me feel vaguely queasy. She was almost rabidly consuming the food.

  “Where do you put that stuff, Mason?” Jenkins asked. “I’ve never seen a girl eat as much as you.”

  Mason barely looked up from the plate. “It’s the freezers,” she said. “They always do this to me.”

  “Right,” Jenkins said. “That’s your excuse, and you’re sticking with it.”

  “Let the girl eat,” Kaminski said. “Nine months is a long time.” He smiled, gave a bitter laugh. “No telling what’s happened to the rest of the Alliance. Maybe the Krell have given up, and the War’s over.”

  “We’re in the dark,” I said. “No comm-link, no news-feeds. But I severely doubt it.”

  Any contact with the outside world could summon the Krell, and surrounding space was likely filled with fish heads. We were in a sort of perfect isolation; unaware of the progress of the Second Krell War, the hostilities with the Directorate, or any other fate that might’ve befallen the Alliance.

  “Maybe we’ve lost,” Jenkins said. “I mean, for all we know, the Krell might’ve reached the Core Systems by now.” She waved a hand in the air. “All of this might be a waste of time.”

  Just then, Lieutenant James breezed past our table – took up a seat with some of the Navy crew in the corner of the room. He’d obviously been decanted directly into a simulator, and was back in a next-gen sim, ignorant of the whole incident in the hypersleep bay.