Origins

by Jamie Sawyer

  She shook her head. “They weren’t real stories.”

  “Then what were they?”

  “They were propaganda pieces,” she said. “Just nice words to keep the public happy.”

  Sierra Delta and Sigma were both war hotspots. Sim Ops had been there, but Army line infantry – hardcopy soldiers – had spilled blood taking and holding those territories from the Krell. I was surprised to hear her describe them in such terms, having read her stories.

  “Those aren’t the only things I’ve been researching,” she added. Sounded nervous. “I’ve been researching you, actually.”

  A cold feeling crept across my skin. “Really.”

  “Yeah. I know that your father killed himself after he was discharged from the Army.” She swallowed, either aware that she had gone too far or considering whether she should go any further. “I know that your mother died during the Battle for Jupiter Outpost; that she was killed by the Directorate. I even read about your sister, though that was much harder to find.”

  “Someone has been busy,” I said. There were no official records of my father’s death. Those in higher places had done the kindness of expunging his death from the military records. “If you think that I’m letting any of that become a story—”

  She shook her head, showed me her open palms. “It’s not, it’s not. I’m just making a point.”

  “Which is?”

  “That there’s a lot of information in the mainframe, if you go looking for it.”

  “So what’s this about? The Point is an awfully long way for a not-reporter to travel, just to tell me that you’ve been doing research—”

  “Then answer my question,” she snapped. “Are you still looking for your girl?”

  I poured myself some cold coffee from the glass pot on the table. Noticed a small black box beside the pot, with a series of flickering green diodes on top.

  “Of course I’m still looking. Even if you aren’t a reporter any more, you’ll know that the Endeavour never came back. She’s lost, out there somewhere.”

  “That’s what they say,” she said. “That’s what they say.”

  “What do you mean – ‘they say’? Do you know something?”

  I remembered the non-information Brooke had tried to peddle back on Calico, and given her presentation I held no hope for a genuine new lead from her now. She abruptly turned her head, avoided making eye contact with me, then tapped a fingernail – bitten to the quick – on the box beside the coffee pot.

  “This is a jammer,” she said. “Cost me a lot, but it should stop anyone from listening in on our conversation. Just so that you know; in case you’re wearing a wire.”

  “Of course I’m not.”

  “That’s good.”

  “Why would I be?”

  “Because there are people after me, you see. Both kinds: Directorate and Alliance.”

  “Have you completely lost it?” I queried.

  “I never had it,” she said, with a weak smile. “But we should talk. I might be able to help you, Conrad. For real.”

  “All right,” I said. “I haven’t stopped looking for her. I’ve been across the Quarantine Zone. I’ve used every resource I have. But all I’ve ever found is closed doors. Locked doors, even.”

  That was all completely true. I’d fallen into a well of frustration. The rational, sober part of me had even started to believe that maybe the authorities were right. Maybe Elena, and the Endeavour expedition, really were lost in the Maelstrom. Perhaps she would never be coming back. That didn’t stop me from looking, but I feared that – one day – it probably would.

  “If the Treaty was a success,” Brooke said, “then why didn’t the expedition come back? Think about that for a moment. Does that make sense to you?”

  “They say that the ships were probably destroyed on the way to Alliance territory,” I said. I didn’t believe the words, but that was the explanation. “There are more than enough ways for a ship to be destroyed in the Maelstrom.”

  “I know you’ve been in there,” Brooke said. “And I also know that you don’t believe what you’ve just said. There were sixteen ships in that fleet, Conrad. Sixteen ships. Were they all lost in black holes?”

  “Maybe,” I said.

  “The Treaty was signed off years ago,” Brooke said. “But do you ever wonder why the terms of the Treaty have never been publicly disclosed?”

  “Not really,” I said. “We know about the Quarantine Zone—”

  “And whose idea was it that a Quarantine Zone should be established?” she said, speaking over me. “Surely that didn’t come from the Krell. I’ve seen research papers. Read files. How does something like the Krell agree to a Treaty…?”

  “I don’t know. Ask Sci-Div.”

  “Oh, I’ve tried. I’ve been inside the Science Division mainframe.”

  I didn’t like the turn of this conversation. Brooke was speaking fast, irrationally. Hacking into the Science Division mainframe was a high-risk venture, even for an investigative reporter. For a civilian it was probably a capital offence.

  “You get caught doing that,” I said, “and I don’t think that anyone is going to find out about it.”

  Command, Sci-Div, Mili-Intel: one of those agencies would see to her. There would be no trial, no exposure of whatever she had discovered.

  Brooke’s face spasmed. “You don’t think I already know that? That’s why I have the box.”

  “Well, if you’ve been in the Sci-Div mainframe, you know more of all this than me.”

  “Don’t be facetious. How could the Endeavour’s crew negotiate with the Krell?”

  “They have leader-forms,” I said, shrugging. “I’ve seen them. Maybe they can be reasoned with—”

  “And another thing: this talk of the ‘Collective’. Bullshit. There are several Collectives across the Maelstrom, not one singular swarm as Command would have us believe. Science Division even has names for them; knows that they aren’t all the same.”

  I watched Brooke’s face. She looked very tired and her left eyelid twisted erratically, as though a reaction to stress. When she spoke, her words came in a sudden, fast burst. She was ill, I realised, and me being here wasn’t helping her.

  “How do the Krell communicate, Conrad?” she asked me, again avoiding eye contact. “That’s what I want to know. That’s what Science Division, and Command, won’t tell us. I don’t think that the Krell are even interested in the Treaty. The government is keeping all of this from us. No one is ever allowed to join up the dots.”

  She’s mad, I concluded.

  “All right, Cassi. It was nice seeing you.”

  Brooke’s hand shot across the table and she grabbed my wrist, dug her nails into the skin of my forearm. I’d often heard it said, in Sim Ops mainly, that madness gave the sufferer strength. Maybe there was some truth in that, because Cassari Brooke was much stronger than she looked.

  “I’m not fucking with you, Lazarus,” she said. “I don’t think that the mission was sent out there to establish a Treaty at all.”

  “Then why were they sent into the Maelstrom?”

  Something in the woman’s expression held me there: even if these were just the ramblings of an ex-news reporter.

  “I don’t know,” she said. She released my arm. “At least not yet.”

  “You’re mad,” I said. “You should get some help.”

  There was a clatter behind me. Mutters from some of the patrons near the door.

  Brooke moved faster than me. Shuffling papers across the table, gathering them into an open case. She scooped the black box up and put that in, too.

  “You should’ve checked whether you were followed—!” she spat at me.

  Two Military Police officers in black flak-suits approached the table. Big enough to block Brooke’s exit from the booth, both carrying lit shock-batons that danced with energy.

  “Cassari Brooke?” the lead trooper said. “Citizen serial code 451452, of Tau Ceti?”


  “No,” she said. “You’ve made a mistake. That’s not me.”

  The other trooper gave a nod. “Yes, that is you. Your ID has been confirmed via surveillance cameras outside.”

  The game was up. Brooke’s shoulders slumped.

  “You’re under arrest for illegal entry to the Point: a class-three visa violation. Get up and come with us.”

  Papers, case and other effects under her arm, Brooke got up from the table.

  “You should be asking these questions, Conrad!” she shouted to me, as she went. “I want to know what happened out there, and unless we stand up to them we’ll never find out!”

  “All right, all right,” one of the MPs said. “Keep it down.”

  “Sorry about that, sir,” the other said to me. “She’s lost it.”

  I nodded. “I thought so, too.”

  “Used to be on CNN, or something,” he said, watching his colleague march Brooke out of the diner. “Lost her job, started being a pest to the military authorities.”

  “Lot of crazies got these theories,” I said. Hating myself for the words, but still talking.

  “Mmmm,” the trooper said. “Lot of crazies. I guess Tau Ceti is a long way from the frontline. Have a nice day, sir.”

  The Mili-Pol officers left with Cassari Brooke, waving her arms and shouting as she went, and me with the cold pot of coffee.

  The meeting quickly fell from my memory: a bizarre and pointless incident. I felt sorry for Cassari Brooke, but it never made the news-feeds, and I assumed that she was removed off-station – taken somewhere she could get some proper help.

  A few months after the meet, entirely by chance, while in one of Liberty Point’s many bars I saw how Cassari Brooke had met her end. It was a brief and disappointing news story, relayed by a fellow reporter with a sympathetic expression. Cassi Brooke was found in a bathtub, on her native Tau Ceti, wrists slit.

  Pretty clichéd stuff, I remembered thinking. The authorities had reached the same conclusion – a dried-up, burnt-out ex-reporter with too much time on her hands. Someone who wanted a taste of death, and finally got it.

  CHAPTER TWENTY

  DEVONIA

  The journey to Devonia passed in a state of repressed anxiety, and the Colossus felt almost abandoned: so many empty corridors and crew modules. Those few decks left operating were populated by crewmen wearing vacuum-suits, helmets under their arms; ever ready to man the evac-pods if we got hit. There was some small irony to that, because there was nowhere to escape to out here. While the Lazarus Legion were used to suicide missions, the Navy crew weren’t, and this wasn’t what they had signed up for. That the starship hadn’t erupted into open mutiny was probably testament to Loeb’s leadership skills.

  I wandered the observation decks, checked on the comms pods. The Maelstrom was unlike human territory: without the need for radio transmissions, neutrino arrays, or any of the other comms methods that polluted space with data, the void around us was remarkably quiet. I’d heard stories of sailors driven insane by the silence and for the first time in my career I almost believed them.

  I spent a lot of time in the Simulant Operations Centre. It had always been a favoured location of mine; somewhere I could imagine making transition, escaping my real body. With the depleted science team on this mission, it was mostly quiet and dark. I found simulants racked and ready for deployment, encased in cryogenic capsules just like that in which I’d found Elena’s body. Beside them sat five Ares battle-suits, marked up with battle-honours and unit designations. The Lazarus Legion badge was proudly displayed on the shoulder guards, freshly painted. I sensed a hunger from each suit: a readiness to be occupied.

  I checked on each simulator-tank in turn; all four tanks glowed with welcoming blue light. I ran my good hand over the outer canopies, watched the liquid inside. The machines felt warm, in contrast to the cold of the ship around me—

  A reflection rippled in the canopy. Something behind me: a shape, a figure. Watching.

  “Who’s there?” I barked.

  Elena…?

  “Easy, sir. It’s only me.”

  Kaminski sat in the corner of the room, half-concealed by shadow. He leant forward, into the arc of light cast by the nearest tank.

  “Pull up a pew,” he said, waving with affected indifference. “I was just checking on the tanks myself.”

  That was patently untrue: I’d activated the simulators, not Kaminski. But when he sat back, wincing again, holding his shoulder, I decided not to correct him. He was in obvious pain. I hadn’t seen his most recent death aboard the Endeavour, but from the after-action reports I’d read that he’d been torn apart by the Krell boarders.

  “Simulated wounds playing you up?” I asked.

  “Yeah,” he said. “Those and the rest.”

  “You all right?”

  “I’m good,” he said. “But I haven’t been sleeping so well. Dr Serova thinks it’s the Arkonus Abyss.” He laughed. “I think it’s fear of death. Maybe we’re both right.”

  “You don’t have to put a brave face on it,” I said. “Truth is, ’Ski, I didn’t think that the medics were going to recertify you, back on Calico.”

  “I expected as much.”

  “It’s my fault. I twisted some arms…”

  “And I’m glad that you did,” he said, sounding distant. “I guess what happened on Capa V, it’s just not easy to forget. I know that it could’ve been worse, much worse, and I got a lucky escape…”

  His eyes darted to the SOC doorway, in the direction of Scorpio Squadron’s operations bay. The flyboys had their own room, their own dedicated facility. Somewhere in there, held in the dark and shadow, was Lieutenant James’ real body. That Kaminski might’ve ended up like that was unthinkable. He’d never been one for soul-searching, and I could tell that this was difficult: putting his fears into words.

  “Are you worried that the Directorate will come after you?” I asked, as gently as I could.

  Kaminski answered my question with a question: “Do you think that we really killed the Shanghai at Calico?”

  “I’m not sure,” I said. “But I hope so.”

  “I saw the way that you looked at that ship,” he said, “and it was more than personal.”

  I nodded. “Me and that ship; turns out we have history together. I didn’t know until Loeb told me something about the Shanghai. Kyung is known as the Assassin of Thebe: responsible for the slaughter of the Alliance Navy fleet at Jupiter Outpost.”

  “That’s right,”’Ski said. “I remember.”

  “My mother was at Jupiter Outpost. She died when I was just a kid; eight years old. I was too young to know much about how she died, who or what killed her, and it wasn’t until Loeb showed me his research on Kyung that the pieces fell into place. She was captain of the Shanghai during the raid on Thebe, also known as Jupiter Outpost. She killed my mother.”

  Kaminski raised his eyebrows. “That’s some heavy shit. Real heavy. You don’t get much more personal than that…”

  “I guess,” I said. “So, yeah, I hope that the Shanghai is wasted, and I hope that Kyung went down with her.”

  “I’m sorry,”’Ski stumbled, almost uncomfortable. “I never knew.”

  “Nothing to be sorry about. It all happened a long time ago, and whether the Shanghai is dead or not, it doesn’t much matter. She – my mother – is ancient history.”

  But if there was a particular turning point – a junction in my life which I could trace, which I said defined me – it was definitely her death. It meant a lot more to me than I could ever admit.

  “Just another reason to hate the Directorate,” Kaminski said.

  I noticed that there was an opened packet of painkillers beside him, a disposable hypodermic syringe uncapped on the medical bench. I nodded at the wrappers.

  “Did Dr Serova prescribe those?”

  “Not exactly,” he said. “That last extraction: it was rougher than anything I’ve felt so far.” He paused, as though struggli
ng to find the right words. “It didn’t feel right.”

  He stroked the digital brooch on his chest, where the holo-identifier was placed, indicating one hundred and eighty transitions. Those statistics placed him in the top strata of simulant operators, not far behind my figures. We’d been in this from the start.

  “Maybe you shouldn’t go back into the tanks,” I offered.

  “Not going to happen, boss, so don’t even say it.”

  “Maybe it won’t be the Krell, or the Directorate, or even the Shard, that’ll get us in the end…” I said, staring absently at the blue of the functioning simulator-tank beside me. “Maybe it’ll be the tanks that’ll end us.”

  “I can think of worse ways to go,” Kaminski said, “and at least it’d be clean.”

  “A clean death. I’d drink to that.”

  We sat in the darkness for a while, watching the empty tanks, counting the minutes until the next transition.

  As we drew closer to Devonia, the Colossus’ remaining functional scopes and scanners focused on our objective. Computer systems began to produce images of Devonia: renderings that became more and more detailed. Finally, I watched from the view-ports and observation windows as the planet grew to fill space, the glow of the Arkonus Abyss a baleful backdrop.

  “I’m coming for you, Elena,” I whispered.

  When the Colossus’ AI declared that we had arrived at our destination, I was ready.

  Devonia glared back at me.

  The CIC blast-shutters had been retracted, to allow the fullest possible view with the naked eye. I stepped down into the nose of the CIC, between the weapon pods and the hardwired junior officers. Loeb had summoned all essential personnel to the CIC, to plan our next course of action.

  “Is this what you expected?” Loeb asked me.

  “I… I don’t know,” I said, genuinely.

  I’d seen Krell warzones, with and without the Lazarus Legion, and they were not this. They were fetid pits, worlds driven into biological overdrive by the presence of the Krell.

  Devonia – in the heart of the Maelstrom, a reef world – was something else. The planet hung there, filling the port. She was apparently much smaller than Old Earth, but at this distance – without any touchstone by which to qualify her size – she appeared enormous. Wrapped in a thick layer of cloud cover, the planet was stitched into a tapestry of whites and greys. Where the cover was broken, where the clouds thinned to cotton-like consistency, the surface was a mixture of black, blue and green.