Origins

by Jamie Sawyer

  Of course: that would hold the ship’s virtual black box – her flightpath data. The core would also record almost every aspect of the AI’s decisions, and justifications for everything that the ship had done since it had been abandoned.

  “We’ll make that the next objective.” The task of retrieving the data-core was likely to be technically complicated, usually only performed by appropriate Sci-Div or Naval crew. I looked to Kaminski. He was the closest we had to a technician on the force. “We’re going to be another couple of hours, at least. Are your Marines still covering the docking tube?”

  “Affirmative. They’re bored as shit.”

  “Copy. Tell them to stay frosty. We’ll report when we have more. Lazarus out.”

  “Colossus out.”

  I turned to my team. More schematics and deck plans appeared on my wrist-comp; more decks that needed to be examined before we could draw any conclusions from this place.

  “Kaminski and Mason, you go down to Data,” I said. “Make an uplink with the Colossus, retrieve the data-core. Jenkins, sweep the Engineering Deck.”

  “You want me to go with her again?” James asked. “If there’s nothing to fly, there’s not much for me to do out here…”

  “If he goes back, he’ll need an escort,” Jenkins said. “Better he comes with me.”

  “Fine,” I said. “Martinez and I will take the Science Deck.”

  “Place’s seen some action,” said Martinez, as we explored the Science Deck.

  “You always were the master of understatement.”

  “It’s a Venusian thing,” said Martinez. He was trying to sound glib, but spoke in a clipped whisper, his eyes always on the corridor, plasma rifle panning back and forth to cover the area.

  Most of the laboratories had been gutted by fire. Many of the chambers still smelt of burning plastic, the odour preserved by the lifeless state of the ship. Those rooms – with their black-stained walls and upturned lab benches – seemed the most frightening. Armour-glass windows lined the main corridor, and some of those were cracked and distorted, the glass warped so that the rooms beyond appeared to ripple as we moved past them. The ship had taken on an industrial-gothic atmosphere. The glow-globes in the ceiling had been smashed, forcing us to rely on our suit-lamps for illumination.

  “Fire support didn’t trigger,” Martinez went on.

  The ship was equipped with a full halon dispenser system and yet there was no evidence that it had made any attempt to put out the fires. The labs were surely the site of a fire, perhaps more than one: in such a confined space, an intense blaze like that would be the perfect cover – eradicating evidence of whatever had actually happened in there. They didn’t want to be seen, the voice whispered to me. You should go from here. Each footstep I took in the heavy battle-suit echoed a thousandfold. Anything in here would hear us coming a long way off.

  “Hold up,” Martinez said. “Is that a body?”

  He caught something black and shrivelled on the deck ahead of us in his suit-lamps. Looked like a bundle of dark twigs at a distance, but as I advanced I realised that Martinez was right. Fire had reduced the body, made it into a mess of blackened limbs and bone. The hair had completely burnt away, but scraps of a jumpsuit still clung to the tiny shoulders, grafted to the flesh by the extreme heat.

  Martinez stooped beside it. Went to touch it, but resisted at the last moment. I understood why – the body looked like it would collapse at the slightest touch.

  “No telling who this was,” Martinez said. “Rest in peace, poor bastard.”

  Even up close, it was impossible to identify the corpse. The face was nothing more than a black mask, teeth pegs in the leathered gums.

  “We need to take the body back,” I said. “For identification.”

  It could be her. The panic took me, and I searched the jumpsuit for some ID tag – for a name, for a department – but it was too badly burnt. My medi-suite detected the change in my psychological state, and I felt a surge of combat-drugs being pumped into me. When I looked up again, stepped back from the body like I was repulsed by it, Martinez stood in front of a closed door at the end of the passage.

  “Whoever it was,” he said, “they came from in there…” A black trail linked the corpse and the hatch. “That’s the Medical Deck.”

  “Trace it,” I said.

  Covering each other as we moved, Martinez and I crossed the boundary onto the Medical Deck. I stared down at my wrist-comp, at the deck plans. There were four large modules, noted as storage bays, on my maps. Ahead, the corpse’s trail led to one of those hatches.

  “Power is running down here,” Martinez said. “That bay is locked.”

  “Run an override. We need to get in there.”

  Martinez unpacked a hacker-unit. He patched into the control panel.

  I activated my communicator and switched channels. “Jenkins, you read?”

  “I read,” Jenkins responded. “We’re at the objective.”

  The Engineering Deck was a good distance from Medical and Science.

  “What have you got?”

  Jenkins whistled. “Same. Dark, empty. Nothing on the bio-scanner, but lots of machinery down here interfering with the field. We’re using the scanners on full amplification.”

  “You heard from Kaminski and Mason?”

  “Kaminski’s almost cracked the encryption. What’s your sit?”

  “We’ve got a body up on Science. About to enter Medical. Let me know when you finish your sweep.”

  “Affirmative. Jenkins out.”

  “Harris out.”

  Martinez’s hacker-unit chimed and he cracked open the door.

  Cold atmosphere hit me like a fist, punching the breath from my lungs. Blue light spilled from inside the room, cutting a rectangle across the floor outside – catching wisps of condensing cold air as it escaped from inside. This was the first active tech we’d found aboard the Endeavour. A spark of optimism lit within me.

  “Take the left flank,” I said. “I’ll take the right.”

  “Sí, jefe.”

  As big as a warehouse or hangar bay, it was crammed full of glass-fronted capsules. Stacked floor to ceiling, vertically, back-to-back so that the occupants could be inspected. The set-up reached as far as I could see: hundreds of capsules. The entire facility produced an unpleasant bronchial wheeze – a noise that suggested the facility was about to take its last breath.

  “Looks like some sort of cryogenic storage facility,” Martinez said. “But it isn’t a hypersleep bay…”

  “Don’t touch anything,” I ordered.

  “Copy that,” Martinez said. The tone of his response suggested that he wouldn’t want to anyway. “Watch your footing.”

  A shifting layer of white mist crept along the ground, concealing fat power cables and conduits. The temperature in the room was much lower than elsewhere – teetering on freezing – and I felt my skin crawling with reaction to active cryogen units.

  “There are bodies in these capsules,” Martinez said. “But I… I think that something went wrong… I don’t like this. Not at all.”

  I stopped at one of the capsules. The body beyond was visible only as a vague blur – no details or features discernible – and there was no identification on the tube. Although it was frosted, the liquid inside appeared wrong. The preservative was gel-like, static, and some of the cables holding the body in place drifted loose. The control console set into the front of the pod flashed with error messages. I reached up, went to wipe the frost from the outer canopy—

  “Shit!”

  I jumped back, startled, as a dark shape loomed through the fluid. It shifted towards the canopy and silently hit the glass.

  A corpse. Black and leathery; pickled, teeth bared in a death-grin, in a condition not much better than the thing in the corridor. The body involuntarily shifted in its watery prison; had perhaps been disturbed by our presence.

  “You okay, jefe?” Martinez asked. He appeared at the end of the aisl
e of capsules.

  “Fine,” I said, irritated. I was angered at my own reaction: at how nervy this damned ship was making me. “I’ve got a dead one here.”

  “They’re all dead,” Martinez said. “All the same.”

  We were surrounded by hundreds of decayed and decaying corpses. Every capsule had a glowing red indicator on the control panel: the same flashing error message as the machine in front of me. I brushed a gloved hand along the line of capsules. Each deader than the last. Gnarled hands, formed into claws, pressed against the glass cases. Sometimes little more than skeletal remains – skins sloughed off by the cryogen.

  The Endeavour’s crew, kept on ice. All long dead.

  We were too late.

  “I’m sorry, Colonel,” Martinez said, softly. He breathed out, producing a white plume of hot air. There was already frost on his simulated beard; forming on his eyebrows. “You want us to ship them back to the Colossus? Run some tests or something?”

  “What good will tests do?” I barked.

  I came to rest before one of the capsules. Something drew me to this one. Something indescribable.

  Could it be…?

  The inside of the tank was as murky as the others. I was glad of that: if Elena was in there somewhere, I didn’t want to find her like this.

  “Whatever is left of the mainframe AI,” Martinez said, “it knew to keep these cargo holds powered. Someone programmed the ship to keep this deck running. I guess that it must’ve gone wrong somehow…”

  I pressed a hand against the glass. Was I imagining things again? The machine felt as though it was gently vibrating, the canopy humming so very minutely that it wouldn’t be detectable in a real skin. Maybe it was my sim-senses kicking in—

  Not vibrating.

  Beating.

  A heartbeat?

  The body in the tank vaulted against the glass.

  My bio-scanner began to chime.

  Elena Marceau stared back at me from inside the capsule.

  She pushed her face against the inner canopy. Cheeks swollen as though she was bursting to breathe. Eyes – such beautiful, deep eyes – panicked. Forehead creased in anger. Mouth capped by a respirator mask.

  “Elena’s in this capsule!”

  And she’s alive…!

  She was naked, the curve of her lower body disappearing into the workings of the tank. Her hair spread out around her, writhing like a mass of angry sea snakes. She pounded a small fist against the glass. I felt her through the canopy – actually felt her! – and spread my hand in reaction. Bubbles escaped from Elena’s mouth, where the respirator was suctioned into place, and she thrashed. I had to get her out of there. Think! She was panicking; would drown on the cryogen unless I did something to get her out. I aimed with my rifle, readied to blow open the pod’s outer canopy—

  “Easy!” Martinez yelled. “Stop it! That’s a bad idea!”

  Before I had any opportunity to question whether any of this was real – why only Elena, out of the hundreds of bodies around us held in cryogenic storage, was alive – Martinez confirmed it for me. He knocked my arm down, hard, before I had a chance to loose a shot. Barged me aside, away from the capsule’s control console. Armour on armour produced a startling clatter.

  “What are you doing?” I asked. “She’s drowning in there!”

  Elena writhed some more, tangled in the web of cables that should’ve fed and watered her during the sleep. Martinez jabbed the controls, muttering to himself.

  “The capsule has malfunctioned,” he said as he worked. “We take her out now, and there’s a risk to her life.”

  “She’s drowning!” I repeated again.

  “She isn’t. The imbalance – whatever killed the others – hasn’t gotten to her yet.”

  Elena began to drift in the capsule. Her thrashing lessened, then stopped. She drifted back inside the pod, became more distant. Her eyes flickered shut again.

  “See,” Martinez said.

  The console flushed with new data. Bars elevated to green levels, indicating correct functions.

  “Is that what happened?” I asked. “These machines malfunctioned?”

  “Maybe,” Martinez said. Stared at the read-out. “Fuck of a way to go, but they wouldn’t feel a thing. Whatever this place is, it’s no hypersleep bay.”

  I stared at the capsule in which Elena was preserved. She was entirely still now; at rest. The gentlest rise and fall of her chest gave the lie to any suggestion that she was dead.

  “Christo, Martinez…” I said. “She’s really here. She’s real.”

  Martinez nodded. “Sí. She is.”

  I could save her. I could do this: take her home. Inside my armour, I began to shake; to feel my heart melting. Years of waiting, and it was finally happening. I would make good my promise to her, take her out of this place. The woman beyond the glass was my future – a life beyond the cycle of living and dying, beyond endless war. I turned to Martinez, wrapped an arm around him. He returned the hug, his smile broad.

  “We’ve got work to do, jefe.” He pointed at the machines. “No telling how long she’ll be safe in there. She needs to be defrosted with proper medical assistance.”

  “I… I know,” I said. I couldn’t draw my eyes from Elena’s face: her gently flickering eyelids. It took me a few seconds to drag myself out of it, to focus on the mission again. As I did so, as I ordered my emotions and began to process the implications, matters took on a whole new level of urgency. “Can the capsule be dismounted?”

  Martinez nodded. “I guess so. It’ll be heavy, but we can carry it between us. Maybe Jenkins can search for a mule down on the hangar decks.”

  “No need,” I said. “I’ve been waiting to give this strength-aug a proper run.”

  “Sí,” Martinez said.

  There was a sudden chime over my comm-network. Martinez got it too; frowned at the result.

  Bodies in cryogenic suspension were so far under that they didn’t produce registrable vitals. I’m sure that Sci-Div has produced a scanner somewhere that can read the signs of a sleeper, but that sort of tech was too delicate for Sim Ops grunt work. I held my wrist-comp to my face, watched the read-out.

  Elena’s bio-sign had diminished again, dipped to undetectable, but I was still getting a signal. Not from inside the room, I realised, but from the corridors around us.

  “Fuck…” Martinez whispered.

  The ship was filling with moving, hot signals.

  CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

  HULL BREACH

  “Hull breach detected on Deck C-3,” the Endeavour’s AI declared, suddenly – inexplicably – operational again. “Take all necessary safety precautions.”

  Martinez snapped his helmet back into place. I did the same, and graphic warnings projected onto my HUD.

  “Whoever’s out there,” he said, “they’re all around us, and closing fast.”

  Exactly what was closing on us was mostly irrelevant. There were far too many signals for the Legion, and the Alliance Marines were stationed klicks away aboard the Colossus. Possibilities cascaded through my mind. I was already working on our escape route – considering our withdrawal through the belly of the ship: across Science, through Communications, and down the main corridor into the atrium.

  “Let’s get this capsule free,” I said.

  “Copy that.”

  We both fell to the base of the capsule, began to unhook the power conduits. It was a standard cryogenic module: would carry enough onboard preservative to keep Elena under for a couple of hours, at least.

  My comm-net chimed. Loeb.

  “This is Colossus Command,” he blurted. “We have to pull out, now! We have a fast-approaching potential on the scanners!”

  “Krell?”

  “Can’t tell, but whatever it is, it’s big.” The line crackled and popped, the signal deteriorating rapidly. “The quantum is on fire out there.”

  A ship making real-space conversion could cause quantum disturbance. It was a recognis
ed side-effect of making a Q-jump too close to another ship. I’d seen the results, and they weren’t pretty. Our scanners and comms would be fried by something coming in-system via Q-jump. Unless, I thought, it’s something worse than that. The Arkonus Abyss was painfully close. There were a thousand variables at play out here.

  “We’re evac’ing a single survivor,” I said to Loeb. “Do not – repeat do not – close that boarding tube.”

  “We have to pull out to safe distance—”

  “Do not leave the Endeavour!” I barked. “Tell the Marines to keep the docking tube open until I order otherwise.”

  “I can’t do that!” Loeb argued. His voice quivered with interference. “There are hardcopy soldiers—”

  “I have Elena!” I roared at him. “And I’m ordering you to keep that tube open!”

  Before I could formally close the communication, Jenkins’ emergency channel opened.

  “Wha… fuck… ship?” she started, her voice chopping.

  “Cannot read, Jenkins, but if you can hear me, get back to the boarding tube. We are conducting exfil on Elena’s capsule—”

  “Neg… Bay – open—”

  “I don’t copy!” I yelled. I recognised the hiss of a plasma weapon firing over Jenkins’ end of the comm. “What’s happening down there?”

  More plasma fire sounded, and lots of it. That meant multiple hostiles. James was yelling in the background.

  “Jenkins! Answer the damned comm!”

  The capsule came free from the base with a hiss of pressurised gas. Elena bobbed serenely inside.

  “Can you manage that?” Martinez said.

  “It’s fine,” I said. “I’ll take her.”

  The unit was bulky, but would fit under one arm in the battle-suit; its weight was negligible with the simulant’s abilities and the suit’s strength-aug. I was more concerned about its fragility: the glass canopy could be easily broken. Even a fracture could lead to fatal injury – the wrinkled corpses in the tubes around me were more than enough reminder of how things could end.

  “Clear us a route,” I ordered.

  Martinez reached the hatch. He jabbed a finger at the OPEN button. The lock began to peel apart with infuriating lethargy. Both hands on his rifle, he said, “Anything stands in our way, I’ll take it.”