Origins

by Jamie Sawyer

  “Jenkins!” I shouted again, over the comm. “What’s happening?”

  “We’ve got—”

  The outer lock door opened, and I finally saw for myself.

  A Krell primary-form stood in front of me.

  Clad in a full bio-suit, and evolved for space-combat, the alien warrior was bathed in red light, ice crystals from recent exposure to vacuum still glinting off its weathered hide. The bio-helmet that the xeno wore was scarred and battered, marking this particular primary as what passed for a veteran among the Krell warrior elite. As the hatch opened, it swivelled its head in response, eyes and nostrils flaring behind the mirrored face-plate, gills open. It lurched towards us, both pairs of arms up and ready to attack.

  I took a step back into the bay. Elena’s capsule under my left arm, I brought up my right: fired one-handed.

  Commencing combat trial.

  The Krell disintegrated under the hail of fire. Pulses illuminated the xeno’s insides – light spilling from the exo-skeleton, revealing the tracery of veins and internal organs. The mass of writhing tendrils and bio-communication devices grafted to the Krell’s back went limp, and the creature collapsed at my feet.

  “How did Loeb miss this?” Martinez said in exasperation.

  The question was largely rhetorical, and unanswerable in the circumstances. The Krell were here, and I needed to get Elena off the ship. Those were the facts.

  I stomped the body underfoot and moved out. Martinez’s suit-lamps lit beside me, catching the corridor ahead. Flashing amber security lamps had activated, and a klaxon rang out through the sector. My olfactory senses were choked with the smell of scorched Krell flesh and burning plastic: I thought-commanded my suit to switch to my internal atmosphere supply.

  The Endeavour’s AI continued: “Hull breach on Decks C-3, B-9, A-1 through 15.”

  The Krell were probably using breacher-pods. They were almost invisible in the cold of space – a living, cuttlefish-like organism with a singular purpose: to propel invaders across the void of space. That would explain how Loeb had missed them.

  I suddenly realised that Jenkins was back on the com-network. She was yelling incessantly, repeating the same words over and over.

  “I’m here, Jenkins,” I said, cutting her off.

  “We’ve got Krell across Engineering! Lots of them!”

  “There are more boarding the ship,” I said, breathing hard. “Something’s incoming.”

  This was just the advance boarding party, meant to secure the objective. Confirming my suspicions, I felt something hit the Endeavour, her space frame shuddering violently. That could be more boarders, maybe a Krell shuttle.

  “Where the fuck did they come from?” Jenkins asked.

  “How should I know?” I barked back.

  Martinez started firing again – a harsh triple-volley from his plasma rifle. Krell-shaped shadows were suddenly all over the corridor.

  “Where’re Mason and ’Ski?”

  “Fuck knows. I’ll try to reach them.”

  “Fall back to the docking tube,” I ordered. “We can’t let them get aboard the Colossus.”

  If they haven’t already…

  “Affirm—”

  The link went dead. Whether it was a technical difficulty, or Jenkins had extracted, it didn’t matter.

  A clawed hand reached from a rent in the deck tiling, wrapped around my boot. Another Krell. It closed its claws, and despite the improved armour I felt the plating in my boot crunch. I put the target down with two shots from my rifle. More baleful alien eyes stared at me in the dark. Shrieking – Krell battle-cant – filled the chamber.

  “Missiles free, Martinez,” I ordered. “Collateral damage irrelevant.”

  “Fuck yeah!” Martinez roared.

  The shoulder-mounted missile pods extended on his back. The horde of Krell at the end of the corridor were met by a ripple of detonations. Bodies were mounting up, the kill-tally increasing.

  But still it wasn’t enough.

  They were everywhere.

  Clambering out of airshafts, erupting from the deck tiles, lurching down the corridor. Each weapon discharge illuminated the corridor in a flush of orange light, threw up the shadows of more inbound attackers. We were still hundreds of metres from the docking tube, and there were just as many Krell bodies between me and the way off the ship—

  A Krell secondary-form stomped down the corridor, waving a rifle in my direction. A flurry of gloss-black spines slit the air. Damned stingers. I reflexively dodged aside – got to protect the pod! – moved before I’d even concluded that I was being shot at, and avoided the attack. My null-shield lit in response. Martinez put the bastard down with a volley of cluster missiles.

  We reached a stretch of corridor with a view-port stretching its length. Involuntarily, I paused as I looked on space outside. A Krell bio-ship lingered on the edges of my visual, moving fast on our position. She was only a mid-sized vessel – a scoutship, designed for stealth and speed – but her hull was studded with bio-cannons, bright spines elevated along her back generating blue light. Even in the split second I had to take in the details, she had begun discharging those living weapons across near-space—

  Not just one ship, either. Space warped and smeared as more vessels popped into existence: translating from the Q. Almost all scouts like the original arrival, but in numbers enough to take down the Colossus.

  Worry about that when you need to. Stay in the now!

  The missile pods mounted on my back-plate began to pop. The smart rounds ploughed through the Krell. I pumped a grenade into my carbine underslung launcher, wishing for just more damned firepower! A Krell tertiary-form – massive, over-armoured – exploded as it caught an incendiary round. Shards of smoking carapace and body matter scattered across the corridor, flecked Elena’s capsule.

  “Keep moving!” I ordered over the general channel, to anyone left alive who could take an order.

  As I started onwards again, my ear-bead chimed.

  “Lazarus Actual, this is Colossus Command,” came Loeb’s voice.

  “I’m busy!”

  “We can’t stay here any longer! That ship is firing on us!”

  “Then return fire!”

  Something inside the Endeavour exploded. I felt the deck violently shudder, felt the entire corridor shift sideways. My stomach lurched for a second as the gravity well malfunctioned. Light bloomed across the outer aspect of the ship, through the passage view-port. I had no time to check, but that had to be one of the modules cooking off; some power-bearing component going critical.

  “The Endeavour won’t be able to take much more of this,” Loeb said. “From what we can see several decks are already beyond recovery—”

  “I don’t give a fuck about this ship any more!”

  “What about this ship?” Loeb asked. “The Endeavour is going down, and when she does she’s going to take surrounding space with her.” I remembered what Loeb had said about the Endeavour’s energy core: the bluster about having fire in her belly. “The Krell are trying to board the Colossus too. We need to break the tether, kill any stragglers at our end, then get the hell—”

  “No! Hold the position! That’s an order! We’re moving on the umbilical. We’ll be gone before the ship goes down.”

  “We’re detect—” Loeb started, but his voice was terminated by a crackle of interference.

  The pipework around me started to hiss. Steam and cryogen were being vented into the corridor; the immediate predecessor to the energy core overheating. Clouds of white gas reduced visibility. The Krell made the most of the conditions, using the venting gas as cover, all six limbs moving in the tight confines. One would often leapfrog another to reach me, but my plasma rifle was always hot. I waded through the sea of corpses – the floor made slick with the blood of the fallen.

  A warning appeared on my HUD: MISSILE AMMO DEPLETED. Damn it. I wasn’t carrying reserves. Martinez’s pods were pouring black smoke, the firing tubes glowing orange
. Maybe the tech wasn’t made for such heavy use. Like that’s going to be a complaint I’ll ever get to lodge with R & D, I thought.

  A hail of plasma pulses tore up the corridor. The wave of Krell didn’t exactly retreat, but were slowed by the onslaught.

  Jenkins appeared at my back, James with her. They were literally bathed in Krell blood, Jenkins’ camo-field flickering erratically. I nodded at them both.

  “The Legion doesn’t extract until I give the order,” I said. “And that includes you, James.”

  Lieutenant James clutched the plasma pistol in both hands, the power cell indicator flashing LOW CHARGE. He could muster neither a smile nor a witty comeback.

  “Got it.”

  “If I do go down,” I nodded at the capsule under my arm, “this is the absolute priority. Elena has to get off this ship. Have the others reported in?”

  “I can’t reach ’Ski,” Jenkins said. “Last we heard, he was pinned down with Mason in Data Processing.”

  “He knows what to do,” Martinez said.

  There was no time to worry about them; my HUD flashed with error messages, and I couldn’t tell whether they were alive or not. Another, closer explosion sounded through the decks. The entire ship was now shaking, and would not stop. Around us, the shriek of encroaching Krell continued.

  “Roll out,” I said over the comm.

  The Legion moved as one, laying down suppressing fire with plasma rifles. Another of the bulkheads began to shut on us, sliding down to seal the corridor. It was a heavy industrial hatch, made to seal the interior modules in case of catastrophic failure; a rolling vertical blast door. It would require something even heavier than a plasma rifle if we were trapped behind it.

  “Get that door open!” I shouted. The alternative route would be much longer, and involve doubling back through the Communications Deck.

  Jenkins ran to it, reaching the door just in time. The hatch pneumatic gears roared in protest as she caught the lower lip. She grunted over the comm-link, obviously struggling with the weight of the panel even with the improved strength-aug.

  “Give me a hand with this!” she shouted at James.

  James did his best, but his contribution was minimal. The door panel hovered off the ground. Both sims laboured with the task.

  “Under!” Jenkins said through gritted teeth. “Now!”

  I crouched beneath the door. Slid Elena’s capsule under – metal clanging against the deck – and began to crawl through. The panel above me jumped erratically, eager to come down. I barely managed to get under; caught a glimpse of Elena’s calm face inside the tank—

  “Incoming!” James yelled.

  There was activity on James’ side of the door, and part of the ceiling collapsed. James went down fast and easy – no armour, soft pickings for the Krell. He disappeared beneath the alien horde, firing random plasma pulses into anything that moved. Back, the voice whispered to me in jeering tones, to his twisted corpse of a body aboard your doomed ship.

  “Go!” Jenkins roared at Martinez.

  The Venusian didn’t need to be told twice. As he cleared the distance, the door’s protest changed pitch, slamming down another half-metre. Jenkins let out a low animal shout.

  “Jenkins!” I said. “We’ll hold the door!”

  Martinez and I went to grapple with the lower edge of the panel. Jenkins slid through to her waist.

  “Hold it steady!” she yelled.

  “We’re trying,” Martinez said.

  The door bucked and slid further to the floor. I roared, felt the strength-amp working in my battle-suit. It was no good: the door was too heavy. Something grabbed Jenkins on the other side of the door and pulled her back by the lower half. She let out an agonised scream. Despite our efforts, the door panel slipped through my hands and slammed down: sliced right through Jenkins’ armour, then her simulated body. I looked sideways at Martinez. He grimaced solemnly.

  The door panel hit the floor with an enormous boom, almost loud enough to cut off Jenkins’ scream. She was cut cleanly in half at the waist: simulated entrails and gene-factored blood smudged against the lower side of the door, guillotined. Simulants were made of tougher stuff than hardcopy humans, and she wasn’t dead. Not yet, but the Krell would see to that: their bodies slammed against the other side of the door, angered by the obstacle. They’d only acquired half their prize and they wanted the rest.

  “Get out of here!” Jenkins ordered, scrabbling onto her stomach to haul herself upright. She was spilling guts and blood across the floor, would be gone in seconds. “I’ll hold them!”

  I nodded. “Solid. Martinez, on me.”

  Krell just appeared in front of us, lurching out of the gas clouds and steam emissions, claws and talons outstretched to take us down.

  “It’s this way,” Martinez said, waving towards the next junction. “Docking tube is through the atrium—”

  We had emerged into the open atrium, the concourse that someone back in the Core had decided would look good with a ceiling composed of armour-glass. Krell emerged from every open corridor, flooding the area: as though Martinez and I had walked into a chokepoint—

  Space outside was filled with debris; the flickering glow of exploding warheads, energy beams igniting, and every other weapon of war that the Alliance and Krell had devised to kill one another.

  From somewhere behind us, a secondary-form began to fill the area with stinger-fire. Mostly, the rounds bounced off my armour-plate, but some got through: I felt the death-kiss of poisoned flechettes across my shoulder blades. The toxin hit me immediately – sent the world around me spinning like I’d downed a bottle of Martian spirits. Shit. Storemberg was right: they’re getting better at this. The venom was pure and fast-acting, more effective than any Krell bio-compound I’d felt so far.

  Somewhere beside me, Martinez went down. He lashed out with both arms, a flurry of wild retribution, crushing Krell bodies beneath his armoured weight. I was vaguely aware that my HUD had started to stream messages from Mason and Kaminski. Any hope I felt at that was quickly quashed: they had both extracted, swarmed by Krell on their way back through Data.

  I began to slow. I stumbled, gasped with the pain. Elena’s capsule slipped, collided with a wall.

  Not her! I screamed. Not like this. Not when I’m so close.

  Loeb was shouting over the comm-link, demanding an update. Ordering the bridge to initiate maximum fucking thrust and get us the hell away from here…

  My simulated body was shutting down. Something big and heavy landed on my back, and I felt the slash of claws through my armour. From the mass of the attacker, it had to be a tertiary-form – rendered even more lethal by my incapacitated state. Sympathetically, another module aboard the Endeavour exploded behind me, showering surrounding space with frag, crumpling the deck-plates beneath me. I slammed by back to a wall: felt the weight of the tertiary-form leave me, as the fish-head was plastered across the surface. Kept moving –

  Something enormous and thorn-covered and lethal smashed into me. I grappled with the xeno – just fucking die! – and it violently thrashed, unwilling to abandon its dedication to the Collective. I jammed my rifle into the thing’s face; fired again and again. Dead or maimed, it stopped moving. Good enough, but the rifle was empty. It was useless now, anyway. Nothing mattered unless I got Elena off this damned ship.

  Her capsule was under my arm again, and I was moving towards the docking tube. My medi-suite was flooding my body with drugs, counterattacking a hundred injuries that I hadn’t even realised I’d suffered. Warnings of suit breaches, impending power loss, imminent extraction, all scrolled across my HUD.

  Elena’s eyes were still shut, but she spoke to me. She drove me on.

  You can’t die out here, she said.

  “I can,” I said, “and I will: but I can’t let you.”

  Everything became a blur.

  Maybe it was the combination of drugs that my suit had administered, some added feature of the Ares armour, or perhaps m
y simulant was fighting off the Krell toxin. The truth didn’t matter: only that I could suddenly operate again, that was all that I cared about.

  The universe had slowed down, and I was moving faster than light.

  I ran for the docking tube. Faster and faster. The suit was doing the work, the leg attenuators pumping. If I died in the suit, I wondered, would it simply keep running?

  The Krell were just behind me.

  The Endeavour’s airlock doors were open, and the Colossus awaited—

  The docking tube began to warp. The deck rippled.

  The Colossus was moving off. More of the Endeavour had broken up; I saw the reflected glow of muted explosions cast against the Colossus’ hull. A Krell bio-ship spiralled past me, caught by one of the Colossus’ counter-measures: a small victory amid the sea of defeat. Stingrays and Needlers flitted by, breacher-pods slashing space.

  The Marines were at the end of the tube. Fingers on triggers of their laser carbines: panic in their hardcopy eyes.

  I found my voice. “Hold the airlock!” I shouted over the open comm-network. “Get this capsule inside!”

  The docking tube collapsed around me. The floor gave way, and the walls fell in. Instinctively, I grappled for something – desperate to remain upright – but that was a hopeless goal. Atmosphere began to suck from the tube, venting into space. Worse yet, I felt clawed feet on my back, my shoulders. Krell: scrabbling over me, clambering up the tube. The Marines began to fire – ruby lances flashing by, hitting tertiary- and primary-forms – but they were too few in number to do any good.

  From the corner of my eye, I saw the Colossus’ thruster engines fire. Blue against the black.

  Fuck. I wasn’t going to make it—

  I had the capsule in both hands, ready to propel it. Elena had slept through it all—

  I reached out, threw it towards the Colossus’ open lock in a single underarm sweep. The muscles in my simulated arms screamed, flooded as they were with bio-toxin.

  The capsule – so, so fragile – sailed through zero-G. Onwards towards the open airlock in the Colossus’ hull. The Marines were ready to receive it—