Origins

by Jamie Sawyer

  “And now the slate is clean,” Elena said.

  “So what’s this, then? A new start?”

  “It can be, if you want it to be.”

  “I’d like that.”

  “We can change things,” she whispered to me. “We can change it all. Once this place is destroyed, things will be different. We can make sure that they – the Shard – can never come through.” Elena nuzzled into my neck, coiled around me. “We can have that future together, Conrad. I let you go once, and I’ll never let you go again.”

  I held her, and we kissed. She tasted salty and earthy in my mouth, the warmth of her body invigorating me.

  I never wanted to break this moment—

  CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR

  THEY ARE HERE

  The neural-link was severed between me and my simulant, and I was back in my tank.

  What the fuck is happening?

  I jerked awake; reached to tear the respirator mask from my face, simultaneously blinking fluid from my eyes. There was a slight, disorienting fluctuation in gravity – between the surface of Devonia, and the artificial generator of the starship – but it wasn’t this slowing me down. I was hampered by the shakes – convulsions that gripped my body.

  “This is an emergency…” the AI warbled, its voice piped into my ear-bead.

  Then Mason and Martinez were shouting at the same time, Martinez speaking Spanish so fast that I couldn’t follow him. Younger, faster, stronger, both were probably recovering from the extraction more quickly than me. They weren’t happy with whatever it was they had discovered. Bodies hurried past my tank – blue blurs through the amniotic – and an emergency bulb flashed from the ceiling of the SOC, throwing the room into amber light. I reached for the emergency evacuation button. Finally, my right hand decided to obey my command. The tank began to purge and the door control activated—

  “This is an emergency…”

  The deck rocked beneath me, violently and perilously, and the fluid in the tank shook, data-cables whipping against the canopy. Admiral Loeb stood at the door.

  “Out!” he yelled, voice cutting through the other noise. “Everyone out of the damned tanks!”

  I slowly complied, taking in what other details I could. Why is Loeb carrying a service pistol? Dr Serova was at my shoulder, her face contorted in distress. She shoved a fresh pair of fatigues in my direction.

  “Get dressed and get smart!” Loeb shouted, like a drill instructor straight out of Army Basic. To one of the medtechs: “Break open the armoury and get them armed – now!”

  The Legion had dismounted their tanks as well. Loeb stomped the SOC, waving his pistol in the air.

  “This is an emergency…”

  “What’s going on?” I slurred. “You had no right to break the connection. Elena is down there – we’ve found them!”

  “I didn’t break it!” Loeb countered. “They are here!”

  “Who’s here? I ordered you not to extract us!”

  Loeb unceremoniously grabbed the collar of my fatigue. His eyes were wild with anger and panic. “The Directorate are here, Harris. The Shanghai is in orbit around Devonia.”

  I struggled after Loeb and a cadre of his officers, all carrying peashooters, as we made haste to the CIC.

  “She hit us on the way in,” Loeb said, his face red with anger. “Two plasma missiles.”

  One of the officers gave a vociferous nod. “The first missile was caught by our null-shield, but the second was a direct hit on the power module.”

  “And no one saw her coming?” I asked, incredulously.

  “She’s a damned assassin, just like that bitch of an admiral!” Loeb said, waving his hands around, almost ignorant of the fact that he was still carrying the M4. “Whatever stealth systems she’s got, they’re far more advanced than the dumbshit Proximan scanner-tech we’re packing.” Loeb shook his head. “I told them that this was a bad idea!”

  “Damage control is online,” the same officer said, “and that caused a power shortage to the simulator bay.”

  “Permanent?” I said.

  Loeb produced a growl from the back of his throat. “Your damned simulators will still work, if that’s what you want to know.”

  “Let me guess what we’ve lost…” I said.

  “The missile launch bay is gone,” Loeb said. “We’ve lost the nukes. No space-to-ground offensive capability at all.”

  The CIC was filled with officers: faces cast blue by the increasingly bright glow of the Arkonus Abyss.

  Loeb, Saul and the Legion circled the tactical display. In tri-D, the tac presented an analysis of our dire situation. The Krell presence in orbit had mobilised, bio-ships darting across space at frightening speed. Their orbital stations were becoming agitated insect nests.

  “Shit…” Martinez said. “What’s happening out there?”

  “They’re responding to that,” Loeb said, emphasising the last word with a stab of his finger towards the display.

  The Shanghai Remembered hovered in near-space. Her terrible black outline was immediately recognisable, null-shield lighting as she took fire from Krell ships.

  “It looks like we hurt her at Calico,” Loeb said, his voice quivering with rage, “but it wasn’t enough to put her down.”

  The Shanghai had seen obvious damage. One armoured flank was crumpled and pocked, a wound piercing her hide so deep that even at range I could see several decks had been vented. But she was far from out of the fight. Her railguns spat projectiles into space, while banks of point-defence lasers lanced any enemy who dared come too close. Meanwhile Interceptors and Wraiths circled her in delicate patterns, giving chase to smaller prey.

  Martinez slammed a fist into the display; made the tri-D flicker. “Damn it! That was a good shot.”

  “I knew that we couldn’t get that lucky,” Jenkins muttered.

  “Better luck next life, eh?” Kaminski said, without a hint of humour.

  That Kyung had gone into Q-space with such a badly damaged ship spoke of her desperation. Rogue. That had been the word used by Command to describe her actions: gone rogue. Perhaps even worse than that…

  “Why haven’t you shot her?” Martinez said.

  Loeb’s brow remained creased, his anger star-bright. “She’s faster than us,” he said, “and we weren’t expecting her. As well as the damage to the weapons launching array, she managed to fry our counter-measures package. We start a shooting match out here, now, and we’re both dead.”

  “That isn’t going to happen,” I said. “Elena is down there, and now we know what the Revenant really is. The Endeavour expedition was sent here to harness the power of a weapon; a machine capable of destroying whole worlds. Ten years ago, this was Command’s plan – to use the Revenant to destroy the Krell. If Kyung has control of that technology…”

  Loeb paused. Glared at me through the thatch of his eyebrows. He looked very much like a predatory bird. “Christo…”

  “Devonia is an Artefact,” I explained. “The entire planet is one Master Artefact. If it’s activated, it will open the entire Shard Network.”

  Professor Saul stirred. “Is that so?”

  Kaminski nodded. “You’d love it, Prof. Except that, if Dr Marceau is right, it’s the key to ending all life in the galaxy.”

  “I think it’s a bit more complicated than that, ’Ski,” Jenkins said. “But you get the idea, Professor.”

  “All organic life, at least,” Mason added.

  “Splitting hairs there, New Girl,” said Kaminski. “Either way, if the Directorate has the Key, they can call the Revenant here.”

  “Gracia de Dios…” Martinez said, crossing himself. “We can’t let that happen.”

  “They can activate the Artefact,” Saul said. “This is what the Directorate have always wanted. The presence of the Key probably explains the Abyss’ increased energy output.”

  The Arkonus Abyss seemed to have drawn closer to Devonia, and was surely responding to something. Blue light streamed fr
om its core, polluting the dark of space: tendrils reaching for Devonia. Deep inside the rent in time-space, something dark hungered for release. I could feel data shedding from inside that space within a space, feel the cold press of the Shard Machine calling to Devonia…

  “What exactly is happening down there?” Mason said, swallowing as she spoke. “Why is Devonia… changing?”

  The clouds flashed with electrical activity, lightning playing across the globe. Even at this distance, the seas looked storm-lashed. The planet was angry.

  Professor Saul readjusted his glasses on the bridge of his nose, still crooked from his time on Capa. “If this world really is an enormous Artefact, then perhaps Devonia is reacting to the presence of the Shard Key as well.” He pointed out aspects of the planet on the display. “Already, there have been broad tectonic shifts in the northern continent. Those will lead to tidal surges planet-wide, and the bio-sphere will be significantly disturbed.”

  “Destroyed, more like it,” Loeb said.

  “But how is this happening so fast?” Martinez said. “Terraforming takes decades…”

  “Our terraforming takes decades,” Kaminski said. “Aren’t you always saying that God made Earth in seven days? Well, it looks like the Shard can unmake a world in one.”

  “There’s no point standing around here talking,” Jenkins said. “We have to stop the Directorate from getting down there.”

  Loeb shook his head sharply. “It’s too late for that. Almost as soon as she arrived, the Shanghai started deploying ships to the surface.”

  The sobering implications of that intel hit me immediately.

  “Elena is down there!” I said. “We need to—”

  But before we could plan our response any further, the communicator chimed.

  “We’re being hailed,” an officer declared.

  “Let me guess,” Kaminski said: “the Shanghai?”

  The officer nodded.

  Kyung the Assassin materialised on the communications console, in jittering tri-D.

  Even over the remote connection, her threat radius was palpable. Unlike before, I could not identify the location of her broadcast; whether she had accompanied the away party down to Devonia, or had remained aboard the Shanghai. Neither was exactly palatable – the fact that the Assassin was in the same galaxy as me was bad enough. Such recollection as I had of my mother caressed something deep in my psyche. Fond, warm memories… The face glaring back at me from the holo was anything but.

  “This,” she said, speaking slowly and precisely, “is your first and final warning. Alliance starship Colossus: leave this area immediately, and desist your illegal war-efforts against the Asiatic Directorate.”

  The Legion bristled around me, their collective anger directed towards the creature on the tri-D.

  “We aren’t going anywhere, Assassin,” I said, through clenched teeth. “I’m done running. You came for me, and here I am.”

  “You are currently irrelevant,” Kyung said, evaluating me with her dead gaze. “But if you remain here, you should be prepared for the consequences. Accept this broadcast as a formal declaration of intent.”

  “What have you got, Kyung? Your ship is in ruins. We got you at Calico.”

  “Calico was nothing,” she said. “But what happened in Damascus: that is unforgivable.”

  The various scars on Kyung’s high cheekbones were thrown into relief, like valleys and craters on a lunar landscape. Little lights flashed beneath her skin, in precise etched lines, describing patterns like subcutaneous circuitry. She was in direct communication with her ship.

  “On that, we can agree,” I said.

  “We arrive at the same conclusion via very different routes. You left me and my ships in the Maelstrom for dead.”

  “You attacked our fleet,” I said. “You killed thousands of Alliance personnel, and caused the destruction of sixteen warships.”

  And that, of course, was just the start. If Command and Loeb were right, this woman had condemned millions to death aboard the Liberty Point…

  “My battlegroup had a mission,” Kyung said. Her features twitched again. “I am biometrically linked to my ship. I am this ship. To feel her pain: it was devastating… The Krell boarded her, in number. We were…” She struggled to find the right word, then said, “violated.”

  The plasma burns on her face suddenly made sense. She had fought off the Krell, had been there when they were on the ship. A squirt of triumph ran through me: an abhorrent pleasure that I didn’t even try to repress. The lights at her end of the connection dipped and winked, casting her image in half-darkness. Was that psychosomatic feedback, caused by Kyung’s emotional reaction to the memory – bleeding over into the Shanghai? A little detail that I filed away.

  “You shamed me,” Kyung said. “You are directly responsible for the failure of my mission. I limped back to the Rim, with only a fraction of my former strength. Today, I am correcting that failure; no matter what the cost.”

  “I won’t stand by and let you do this!” I shouted. “If you know so much about the Shard, about the Artefacts, then you will know what they mean to the Krell and us!”

  “No one comes back from this,” Kyung said, her face split in a smile. It was a blistering expression. “Not even you. There will be no further warning. We will not meet again, Lazarus.”

  The communication-link severed, and Admiral Kyung’s image vanished. We all stood around the console, silent. It was all I could do to keep myself standing: to conceal the depth of my reaction.

  They have the Key, and they can activate the Artefact.

  “She’s insane…” Loeb said, slowly, quietly. There was no talk of retreat now, no suggestion that we could do anything but make a last stand against the Directorate. “Whatever happened to her ship, it’s driven her to the edge.”

  “And over,” Kaminski added.

  “She’ll do it,” Martinez said, turning away from the communicator with his hands to his head. “Madre de Dios. She will do this.”

  “Not while I’m still standing,” I said, definitively. “Can we make transition back into the simulants on Devonia?”

  I thought of Elena and the survivors. When we extracted, my sim would’ve collapsed without explanation. There was small consolation in the fact that at least Elena knew sims and how they operated.

  Loeb gave a tired shake of his head. “Dr Serova says that’s not possible. Something to do with the neural-link, the exotic particulate that the Abyss is currently emitting.”

  The explanation didn’t matter to me. Solutions: those were what I needed. “Then we go back to Devonia in new skins.” I nodded over at Lieutenant James, standing at the other end of the tac. “Prep the second Dragonfly.”

  “I’m on it,” said James.

  I felt every day of my forty-five years as I stepped back from the console.

  “Into the tanks,” I ordered.

  Minutes later, the simulants armed, the transition done, the second Dragonfly gunship scorched across Devonian space. Any pretence of stealth was now abandoned in favour of raw speed: determination to reach Devonia in as short a period as possible.

  In a simulant body as new as the day it had been cloned, I thought-linked to the gunship’s outer view-cams.

  “I’m sure that there weren’t this many ships when we were last up here,” Mason said, her face deathly serious. “Where did they all come from?”

  The Krell were reaching critical mass. Immense bio-ships were undocking from the orbital stations. Shoals of Needlers and Stingrays polluted the space lanes like clouds of chaff. The flicker and flash of bio-energy discharge filled the vista.

  “Out-system, I guess,” Jenkins said. “Looks like the Krell are calling everything in this sector to Devonia.”

  Martinez grunted. “They’re expecting something big, that’s for sure.”

  “And for once,” Kaminski said, his voice dipping into his native Brooklyn accent, “it ain’t us.”

  “Then they’re go
ing to be surprised,” I said, with a confidence that I didn’t feel.

  “You sure you want to take that in with you?” Kaminski asked Mason. “You do know that it won’t be coming back.”

  She had the mono-sword – the weapon that she had scavenged from a dead Directorate commando, her trophy from Damascus – strapped across her back, attached to her combat-webbing. The hilt of the powered sword protruded above her tactical helmet.

  “I don’t care,” she said. “It’s back-up.”

  “Cut the chatter,” I said. “How long until we reach the objective, James?”

  The flyboy had plotted the coordinates based on our last extraction, triangulating the location of the Ark Angel from our rec to the surface.

  “Three minutes,” James said. “Provided we don’t meet any resistance—”

  The Dragonfly banked sharply, avoiding a tightly formed squadron of Needlers that speared our flightpath. The bone-like ships corrected their vector, adopted a descent pattern towards the surface.

  “I can’t let that one go,” James said. “Hold tight, folks. Applying offensive measures—”

  “No!” I ordered.

  I thought-commanded the Dragonfly’s weapons to cease-fire, applying my suit’s command-override codes. James jabbed ineffectually at his fire-controls, but the gunship did not respond.

  “Don’t fire on the Krell,” I said. “Not unless we absolutely have to.”

  The Needlers disappeared from our scanner-range, taking no action against us. Indeed, the Krell were ignoring us completely. The Collective’s bio-ships and fighter-shoals were either heading towards the surface, or arraigned against the Abyss.

  James exhaled slowly. “Affirmative, Lazarus. I hope that you know what you’re doing.”

  “I never do, James,” I said, “but winging it has got me this far. Once we’re dirtside, priority is to evac those survivors.” To get Elena out of there, I thought. I glared at the back of James’ head, at his aviator-helmet. “I mean it. Don’t even think of leaving them behind.”

  “I won’t let you down,” he said.