Origins

by Jamie Sawyer

  “Jesus,” Jenkins whispered. “How does the guy live like that?”

  What other choice does he have? I asked myself.

  “Same as everyone,” I said, keeping my voice low. “Does what he has to.”

  “I heard that he has a kid and wife, on Tau Ceti,” Jenkins added. “I wonder if he goes home in his real body.”

  “Not like that, he doesn’t,” Kaminski muttered.

  Mason suddenly stopped eating. She pushed her plate, only half-emptied, away. “I don’t feel like eating any more,” she said.

  I sipped down another mouthful of coffee. “We’ve got a mission to execute out here,” I said, “and you can all stop with the theorising. I want everyone on point and frosty; not thinking about what could’ve happened back home. The real work starts now. We don’t know what we’re going to find on that ship.”

  Martinez sighed. “The new battle-suits are going to need some prep work,” he said. “They need to be marked up and stamped for duty.” He looked around the table. “You haven’t seen anything until you’ve seen these bad boys. They are absolute bad ass. Nothing going to stand in our way with that armour.”

  “I want those suits tested,” I said, finishing my coffee, “as well as complete weapon drills and equipment checks. No corners cut.”

  “Affirmative,” Jenkins said. “Where are you going?”

  “To see Loeb,” I said.

  The CIC was populated by newly defrosted staff, mostly gathered around the tactical display. A projection of what I guessed was the local star system was shown there: glittering in green wireframe tri-D. I paused to examine the data.

  As we drew nearer to our objective, the star system was being detected with increasing clarity. A wilted red star sat in the middle of the map, its light blurred but still strong, and a collection of rugged planets orbited the sun. The Arkonus Abyss sat among the network of planets, devouring any planetary debris that came too close: a blue rent in time-space.

  “The readings are off the charts,” Admiral Loeb said, as he approached. “I was just about to call for you, Harris.”

  He stood at the head of the table, hands behind his back: already completely alert and awake. That was the benefit of being a regular spacer; despite his age, he had the constitution to throw off the hypersleep with ease.

  “Morning, Loeb. What have we got?”

  Loeb waved at the tri-D. “We made Q-space translation exactly as planned. There’s a lot of debris out there, but we’re taking it slow and easy.”

  “Debris?” I didn’t like the sound of that.

  “Nothing we can’t handle,” Loeb said. “A lot of chaff, but not enough to provide cover for a fleet. A quasar on the edge of our sensor range, a couple of black holes nearby.” He sounded almost blasé about the whole thing, but I could understand why. He shrugged. “For the Maelstrom, none of it is unusual. Well, except for that.”

  The Arkonus Abyss.

  “The energy emissions are very similar to those recorded from the Damascus Rift,” Professor Saul added. He stood across from me, peering down at the display. “I’m certain that this is another Shard Gate. It’s emitting a fairly regular stream of tachyon particles, as well as flooding near-space with exotic radiation.”

  He magnified the map; focused on the blue rift in space broadly in the middle of the star system. It flickered, writhed with energy, as though it was a living entity, appearing as an area of non-space, visually very similar to the phenomenon we’d encountered at Damascus.

  “Far as we can tell,” Loeb said, “this one isn’t active.” He nodded at Saul. “The Professor has been lending his scientific expertise to our technical team.”

  Saul gave a tepid smile. “I’d like to help where I can, and it keeps me busy.”

  The Abyss had a hypnotic quality to it, and I felt some tiny triumph at proving its existence. Elena was really out here; she’d used this Gate to contact me at Damascus.

  “How close do we have to get to it?” I asked.

  Loeb sighed. “Nearer than I’d like. Ostrow’s coordinates take us further into the system,” he said. “Almost half an AU out from the gas giant.” A flashing beacon appeared on the holo, slowly looping around it. “Going to be a while before we can get proper eyes on the target.”

  That planet was designated by a string of numbers. Electrical storms coursed over the surface, spreading like cracks on a sheet of ice. It was encased by multiple bands of rock in almost geometric shapes, and without even consulting the scanner I knew that it would be projecting a decent volume of background radiation. Probably nothing down on the surface, I concluded – the giant was too similar to Sol’s Jupiter, and not even the Krell could make their home down there.

  “What about the other planets, Loeb? We got eyes on them too?”

  “Such as we can,” he said, shaking his head. “The chaff the Abyss is putting out is making it difficult to build a proper picture.”

  I pointed out a blue and green world, closer still to the Abyss, held in the sway of the deadly Shard Gate. The name DEVONIA flickered along the display. Strange, I thought, that no other world out here has a name…

  “That looks like surface water,” I said. As I absorbed the imagery, it became undeniable: Devonia was the only nearby world with active surface water, and it was locked in an orbit that could even give it life-sustaining temperatures. “Water and Krell… They go together like shower and shit.”

  “That’s where the Krell will be,” Saul agreed. “And a fitting name, too.”

  He laughed, but the reaction had a forced and almost manic quality. When no one else joined in he quickly stopped. I didn’t probe that response; so far as I was concerned, unless the world was an immediate threat it wasn’t my problem.

  “We’re watching near-space for any activity,” Loeb said. “Stealth systems are at full deployment.”

  “How long?” I said.

  I couldn’t wait for this. The tang of excitement was thick in my mouth. That, but also fear: the horror that this could all be torn away from me.

  “Twelve hours, at sub-light,” Loeb said.

  “Good,” I said. “If we can make it any faster, then so be it.”

  Loeb nodded. “Understood.”

  That veil of focus that always came before a drop fell across the Lazarus Legion, and the squad dispersed across the Colossus readying for the mission. There was much to be done: weapons loading, equipment prep and simulant-checking. I ordered the Legion to assimilate the tactical database on the Endeavour and her fleet – shipboard schematics, projected entrance and exit routes, potential hazards. There was a lot to absorb, given that we didn’t know exactly what we were going to find on the ship. In other circumstances, with more time, we’d have run a simulation on the search. It could be a combat-op, a rescue mission, or something in between.

  With less than an hour to go, I sought solace in the starship’s hangar bays. They were vast, depressing chambers. Made to hold wings of fighter ships, with the two Dragonfly gunships as cargo they were now cavernously empty. I walked the elevated gantries and watched the deckhands work – supervised by Lieutenant James – on the primary Dragonfly. It was being loaded with Banshee anti-personnel missiles, the two door-guns equipped with kinetic assault cannons.

  I fished two items from my fatigue pockets: the silver flask and the packet of smokes that I’d picked up as we left Calico. Automatically, I unscrewed the cap – did my best to ignore the inscription on the outer case, words from a loved one to a partner or child who was now long dead – and smelt the contents. Malt whisky. I swigged it back hard, felt my eyes burn with the taste. Jesus; that’s good.

  “They work fast.”

  Professor Saul stood further down the gantry. I’d been so enraptured with the liquor that I hadn’t even heard him approaching. Almost cautiously, he edged beside me, leant on the railing to watch the loading process. The Dragonfly looked like a drab green bug – enormous wings spread, each racked with red-tipped missiles. The
hull gave off a vague sheen, but it had seen action and there were scorch marks and patched scars along the flanks.

  I ignored Saul’s comment, and grudgingly offered him the open flask.

  “No, no,” he said. “I don’t drink.”

  “Of course you don’t,” I said. “A religious thing?”

  Saul’s jumpsuit was open, exposing a large blue and green emblem at his chest: a pendant of the Gaia Cult. The Cult worshipped some far-out ideal of Old Earth, back when it had been green and beautiful and something to hold on to.

  “Something like that. Unless food or drink comes from Earth, it isn’t sanctified.”

  I laughed. “Sounds expensive, but for all you know, this might be Earth-produce.”

  “If it came from Calico, I doubt it.”

  I decided it was best not to ask him how he’d fared in Directorate custody: I doubted that his captors had shown much reverence for his religious beliefs. Instead, I swallowed the liquor and stared at the unopened packet of cigarettes. They were some cheap Calican brand, produced on-base, and there was a smear of blood across the plastic wrapper.

  “I didn’t know that you smoked,” Saul said.

  “I don’t,” I said, clutching the packet carefully. “They’re for her: for Elena. She’s been gone a long time, Saul, and I think she’ll appreciate a taste of home.”

  By home, I meant humanity. Elena and her team had been out of circulation – isolated – for a decade. That’d be tough on anyone. Saul nodded, but it was plain that he didn’t really understand.

  Just as I was about to ask him why he was here – why he had searched me out – he said, “Before we left for the Maelstrom, you said that you wanted to speak with me.”

  I nodded. “I did. I saw the way that you reacted when I mentioned the Revenant. Anything you want to tell me, Saul?”

  He let out a long sigh. The deck was consumed by the clangor of munitions being loaded into assault cannons, and Saul cringed. When the noise cleared, he spoke again.

  “I haven’t been entirely honest with you, but my reasons are genuine.”

  “Go on,” I said, swigging the bottle again. “Treat this as a confessional, if you will. A clean slate.”

  “Whether you believe me or not, I don’t know anything about the Endeavour’s mission,” he said. “But in this case, the absence of knowledge is perhaps more telling. The entire project was only ever accessible to echelon-four Sci-Div staff.”

  I raised an eyebrow at that. “And you’re not echelon four?”

  “I’m three,” he said. “And there are, to my knowledge, only fifteen such staff across Alliance space.”

  “All right. Then what about Operation Revenant?”

  He shook his head. “It’s not an operation, but I’m not sure exactly what it is. The word was attached to a series of glyphs found on Tysis World.”

  “Tysis World?” I asked. I recognised the name as a planet on the border of the old QZ, a planet within the confines of the Maelstrom. Saul had mentioned it once before, I suddenly recalled: during his interrogation aboard the Colossus, in Damascus. “Enlighten me.”

  “We found ruins there; Tysis was the first world which proved the existence of the Shard. Nothing as useful as the Artefact on Helios, but we were able to use what we could find. There were starship components, elements of a factory complex… Many years ago, before the end of the First Krell War, the Sci-Div team on Tysis managed to access some of the machinery left behind. I call it machinery, but it was far advanced beyond anything we have available to us now. A thinking machine: a true intelligence. I was instrumental in accessing the machine’s central core.”

  Saul watched the loading process with a certain intensity, although it was surely of no interest to him. I let him speak, chose not to interrupt or ask questions. His hands were trembling on the safety rail.

  “The Shard are an ancient race, Harris. No longer a race, even. They have transcended the flesh – become something better. They are true gods of technology.”

  “You sound like you admire them,” I said, involuntarily. I’d been here before.

  “I admire what they represent, of course. Immortality, an opportunity to escape the confines of our mortal bodies. The Shard once had incredible, world-building technologies on Tysis.” He stared sideways at me, and I noticed that he was looking at the data-ports in my forearms – the connections that allowed me to operate a simulant. “Much of what we found there we reverse-engineered. A lot of it was, obviously, beyond our comprehension, and probably remains so.”

  “So what is Revenant?” I asked. I had no time for Shard worship, and the clock was counting down.

  “Shard linguistics are not the same as human language,” Saul said, shaking himself out of it. “It’s difficult to explain, but it was a name given to a piece of machine-code. Broadly, it means ‘world-engine’ or ‘planet-killer’: a machine capable of stripping whole planets, or building them.”

  “Which was it?”

  He laughed, but the sound was forced and hollow. “The nature of their linguistics – their code – suggests both. It’s probably just a myth, and even if it did exist, it’s impossible to say whether it still does.”

  Saul had been lost in Damascus Space at the time, with Kaminski, but when the Colossus escaped through the Shard Gate – into the Shard Network – I remembered the malignant intelligence that I’d felt lingering there. Something slumbering; something vast and malicious, slowly awakening. I didn’t know whether that was linked to what Saul was telling me, but it immediately came to mind.

  Saul continued: “The Shard sailed the stars when the human race was in its infancy. Their war with the Krell lasted millennia, so far as we can tell, and they were capable of blasting the fish back into the primordial ooze that birthed them. The best chance of our survival is to go under their radar, to escape their notice.”

  “Why are you telling me this now?” I said.

  Saul rubbed the circular flesh-welts on his head. “Because the Directorate have been inside my head, Colonel. They know whatever I know, and I can’t keep things from you any more.”

  “I appreciate it,” I said, even if I didn’t really buy it. Despite what had happened, despite what he’d been through, I didn’t trust Saul. After Helios and Damascus, I’d never again trust Sci-Div or Command. By comparison, maybe I should’ve questioned the intel that Ostrow gave me, but the need to find the Endeavour – to find Elena – induced a wilful compliance in me.

  “You should consider—”

  Saul’s words were cut off by a piercing siren, rising above the clatter of the gunship prep.

  “Fire on Deck A-76,” the AI declared. “Fire detected on Deck A-76. Emergency sub-routines have been engaged.”

  Saul jumped back from the railing, looked to me for guidance. The deck crew were shouting orders, rapidly filing out of the hangar.

  “Get to the Crew Deck,” I barked. “Follow the Navy.”

  I thrust the cigarettes back into my pocket, and tipped the whisky on to the gantry. I didn’t, I decided, need it any more.

  By the time I’d reached Deck A-76, the emergency siren had ceased and the crew had dispersed: gone back about their usual business. I suspected what had happened before I even reached the hold concerned. A-76 was a storage unit attached to the main armoury: an old gun-range. As I approached, the air smelt of halon gas – a fire repressant used on starships – and I could hear the Legion laughing among themselves.

  “What’s going on in here?” I yelled.

  “Sorry about that, hermano,” Martinez said, smirking. “We had a little difficulty with the new suits.”

  Jenkins was at the hold environment controls. “Martinez got over-excited. There was fire involved.”

  I shook my head. “Everyone is jumpy as hell out here. Try to be more careful.”

  Kaminski sat on a cargo crate, watching the proceedings. “It was worth it. Show him the suits, Martinez.”

  There were several hulking sets of
armour racked on the walls around him.

  “This, my friends, is the Ares battle-suit,” Martinez said. He operated the storage rack, and the armour slid out, allowing him to inspect the back of the unit and the other hidden features. He ran a hand over the matt-grey plating. “The successor to the Trident armour; fully upgraded.”

  These were undeniably of the same heritage as the Trident combat-suits, but so much more. Almost twice as large as the regular suits; up-bulked and armoured. Thick, heavy-looking plates covered the torso, shoulders and all four limbs. The helmet looked like a vast progression of that found on the regular kit; the face-plate smaller, the neck joints concealed by further armouring. The suit’s overall profile reminded me of an armoured bear. Martinez activated a control, and the armour opened like a clamshell, allowing the operator to quickly disembark.

  “Give Harris a run-down,” Jenkins said.

  “For sure. The plate is lighter, but also stronger: an impact-resistant plastic-metal fusion. Seven days of EVA capability, thanks to the life-support unit in the backpack, and it carries a jump jet and thruster pack too.” He tapped the oversized backpack mounted on the battle-suit. “For use in or out of an atmosphere.”

  The armour was equipped with a thruster pack, fitted with short-use propulsion jets. It couldn’t exactly achieve flight, not in an environment with standard gravity, but it was close enough: the wearer could move around in zero-G with virtual impunity, or jump a limited distance in gravity. The outer plating was finned and sleeker looking, more aerodynamic than the combat-suit.

  “You get stuck in space, or go into a zero-G spin,” Martinez declared, “then you can activate the harpoon.”

  A metal barrel was mounted on the right forearm and the tip of a wicked-looking harpoon was just visible in the tube. A complex arrangement of metal cabling sat at the rear of the suit, above the jump jets.

  “It’s got plasma tech,” Martinez said. “The blade carries a charged explosive; capable of penetrating starship armour, so the field-test notes say. Carries a reel with almost a kilometre’s worth of cable.”