Origins

by Jamie Sawyer

  “Legion, we will deploy into the Shard ruins and track Kyung’s forces.” The squad nodded. I activated the comm-link back to the Colossus, now thousands of klicks behind us, still in orbit around the Devonian moon. “This is Lazarus Actual. Loeb, do you read me?”

  “I copy,” came Loeb’s voice, “but your signal is weak.”

  “Then I’ll keep this short. As soon as James has the survivors, he will lift off and return to the Colossus. I want you to remain on-site until I give the order.”

  “Affirmative,” Loeb said, his voice echoing through the void.

  Layered beneath the transmission, a sound within a sound, something else was present. A distant, pitched whining: a crescendo of white noise. The Artefact’s signal. Had it already started? Had Kyung already activated the Shard transmitter? Despite the intensely uncomfortable psychic itch at the back of my hindbrain, it did not feel like that was the case. This was the preamble, the aching urge of the alien machine to make contact. What came next: that would be so much worse.

  “Keep the engines hot, and ensure that the Colossus’ AI is still live. Lazarus out.”

  “Colossus ou—” Loeb started. His voice was consumed in a poisonous squall of static.

  The Dragonfly’s flightpath dropped.

  “Commencing atmosphere breach,” James declared.

  We all held tight as the Dragonfly fell to Devonia.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE

  THE ARTEFACT

  Amid a swirl of dust and plant-matter, the Dragonfly engaged VTOL engines.

  “Holy shit,” James said. “This is some serious voodoo.”

  Unlike the last time we had dropped, now the Dragonfly skated low over the landscape. The green jungles and swamps were a desiccated brown, more of the black rock revealed beneath the seabed. Some surface features were toppling in on themselves – mountains crumbling beneath the shifting alien topography.

  “Christo only knows what that is…” said Kaminski, pointing ahead.

  The Maze – where James had originally landed – had become a network of alien glyphs: light spilling from the geometric forms out into space. Much of the rock structures, what I had assumed to be evidence of old volcanic activity, had been exposed as parts of the enormous Artefact world-engine. It was the heart of Devonia; a black cluster that formed the eye of the storm.

  The Dragonfly’s engines shifted in pitch as we hit turbulence, wind and rain lashing the outer hull.

  “Approaching coordinates,” James said. “Looks like they’re expecting us.”

  A single red light arced across the horizon: a flare fired from somewhere inside the Maze. Military-grade – the type our battle-suits had been equipped with. It could only be Elena, using the equipment that the Legion had left behind on extraction.

  “Go,” I said. “Follow the flare, and put us down there.”

  Jenkins and Kaminski manned the door-mounted assault cannons, as James dropped the Dragonfly into the Maze. I opened the gunship’s rear deployment ramp and clung to the safety rigging.

  Much of the jungle had been flattened now, trees thrashing in the increasing wind, becoming a living sea. The sky strobed with lightning, reflecting off the Ark Angel’s tarnished hull. She had been revealed by the changed weather patterns, part of her space frame tilting as the ravine-wall into which she’d crashed had come tumbling down.

  Beneath us, coming up fast, I saw the survivors emerging from the jungle.

  Please let her be safe…

  A wind-whipped figure became visible. I activated my tactical-helmet magnification, and zoomed in… Elena. Like the survivors of some great flood, she and the remaining Endeavour crew had climbed atop the Angel’s hull: an island amid the increasing chaos. They had salvaged whatever weaponry and other equipment they could.

  The Dragonfly still hovering twenty metres above the ground, I leapt from the ramp. The thruster pack on my Ares suit activated and I glided to Elena’s group.

  Elena vaulted across the wet hull; came to greet me. She carried a prism-gun and kept both hands on her the weapon, but her expression softened behind her face-plate. Our helmets touched, enabling suit-to-suit communication through the armour.

  “Mon chéri! I thought that I had lost you.”

  The wind swirling around us, two impossible lovers within a universe at war, I returned her smile.

  “I’m never going to let you go,” I said.

  “The Directorate are here,” she said. “We saw their ships. I thought that they had taken you!”

  “They fired on the Colossus, and we’ve suffered some damage.” I paused, because saying the words made this all the more real. “The Directorate have a mothership in orbit, and she’s sent dropships to the surface. They have ground forces down here.”

  Elena nodded. “They have invaded the Shard ruins.”

  “The Legion has to go after them,” I said. “We’re going to finish this.”

  There was no question of Elena coming with us, and she didn’t even argue with me. “Be careful out there, Conrad. Remember that I’m waiting for you.”

  “I won’t forget. Get aboard the transport; it will take you to the Colossus. Anything happens at base, pull me out. Don’t try to handle it on your own.”

  Elena didn’t answer. I knew that, if it came to it, she would risk her own life – maybe even mine – to finish what had been started out here.

  “We’ll be fine,” she said, eventually. “The Krell are tied up with the Directorate.”

  “It isn’t the Krell or the Directorate I’m worried about.”

  Elena’s smile faded: became more bitter than sweet. “I know.” She swallowed, uncomfortable suddenly. “Take care, mon chéri.”

  We butted heads one last time: helmet to helmet so that our faces were almost touching.

  “See you on the other side,” I said.

  “I love you,” Elena replied.

  Sending out a wave of debris and heat, the Dragonfly touched down beside the Angel’s wreck. The Legion smoothly deployed out of the gunship. There was a changing of the guard: the survivors – ragged, tired and exhausted from a decade of guardianship of Devonia and the Artefact – began to board. James urged them on, his voice barely audible above the groan of the shifting landscape and the rising pitch of the wind. Commander Cook, also buttoned up in full armour, gave a salute as he went.

  The Legion fired thruster packs to stand beside me. Covered the clutch of survivors as they mounted the gunship.

  Elena clambered down the curved hull of the Angel, and ran for the Dragonfly. She waited as the rest of the group boarded, then tossed her prism-gun inside the waiting passenger cab. She paused at the hatch, grappling the safety rigging. The expression on her face was endlessly sorrowful.

  “Like I said: I saw you on Calico. But I couldn’t turn back to look at you. I couldn’t bring myself to say goodbye.”

  I nodded. “Maybe you can now.”

  Elena gave a sad drop of her hand, an impression of a wave, as the Dragonfly lifted off, engines glowing blue. The ship gained speed and altitude, VTOL units snapping to the nacelles. Became a blue smear against the black.

  “Good journey,” Kaminski said, to no one in particular.

  “I hope they make it,” said Jenkins.

  By now, the clouds were pressing low on the jungle: big, black, constantly shifting. There was no sun any more: only the Arkonus Abyss, charging with new life. It looked very much like one of the Shard glyphs: enormous and oppressive, claiming custody of this world. I looked towards the crumbling canyon, in the direction of the Shard ruins Elena had shown us. Like the rest of Devonia, the canyon was reconfiguring. Structures emerged from the walls at improbable angles, and it felt like gravity was throbbing all around me.

  “We go in that direction,” I said. “On the double, full thrust. We’ve got a lot of ground to cover.”

  “Are we going to die in there?” Mason asked me.

  “Almost certainly,” I said. “But it’s how you die tha
t counts.”

  Kaminski sucked his teeth, the sound sharp over the comm-net. “I think that Mason should stop asking so many questions.”

  “We can agree on that,” I said.

  “At least you called me Mason. It’s better than New Girl.”

  Kaminski sniggered, and we bounced off in the direction of the Shard ruins.

  “Area appears to have suffered extensive ecophagy,” I whispered, into my tactical helmet. “The jungle is dying at an increasing rate. All biological material appears to be suffering from exposure to the Shard technology.”

  “And it’s cold,” Mason added, “so cold.”

  The armour was recording everything we said, did and saw: likely for posterity alone, as we couldn’t make uplink to the Colossus. I doubted that anything could, with the squall of static and screaming white noise that the structures around us were generating. Every band was choked with feedback, the residue of the Artefact’s song—

  I paused. Held up a gloved hand, watched as tiny black dots danced across my battle-suit: things that I had mistaken for simple ash. They were so much worse than that, I realised. The black things probed every weakness of the suit, but quickly gave up, flying off towards easier targets. The stuff was self-replicating, creating copies of itself as it consumed the world around us. That seemed to be its primary purpose.

  The same as any other living organism, machine or organic.

  Martinez was praying under his breath, his comm-link open so that we could all hear his ragged, detached voice.

  “We can do without the Hail Marys, Venus,”’Ski muttered.

  “You’ll thank me later,” Martinez said. “I’m doing this for all of us. It’s protection.”

  “Leave him,” Jenkins said.

  Mason sighed. “Maybe it’ll even help.”

  “Everyone stay on internal atmosphere supplies,” I ordered. “The shit in the air isn’t natural.”

  “It’s the Creep,” Martinez said. “It’s what’s killing this planet.”

  “But it isn’t getting into our suits,” Mason added. “Which has to be something.”

  I didn’t know how long that would last. Even in a sim I knew that we were living on borrowed time. I wondered how many of the things I’d already ingested, were already trying to break down my simulated skin and bones—

  A tertiary-form erupted from a dead tree. The enormous Krell was already half-consumed by the swarm; face a blackened mess of bony protrusions, one eye sagging in its socket: a victim of the ultimate anti-organic WMD. The xeno paused, looked me up and down. Instinctively, I armed the flamer on my right gauntlet. Readied to fire it at the fish head.

  Two, three, four more of the xenos emerged from the nest.

  The Legion fell into defensive pattern around me.

  But the Krell did not attack us.

  “Wait…” I ordered.

  Rifles up and ready to shoot, the Legion did as ordered. I slowly backed away – eyes still on the Krell – and my squad copied.

  “Our fight isn’t with them,” I said. “Not now.”

  The Krell twitched its head at an opening within the canyon wall, a passageway into the Artefact itself.

  They know that this isn’t about us any more.

  The dying tertiary-form bared its teeth at me, and I saw that its hide was stitched with scars: intricate flesh-brands that looked almost ritualistic. I’ve seen those before. On Capa V, on the bodies of the Krell prisoners.

  “Kyung is down there,” I said. “That’s where we’re heading.”

  The entrance led further, deeper into the Shard necropolis: a corridor that ended with a portal-style hatch, much bigger than even the Ares suits. It was sealed, but light danced around the runic impressions that circled it, inviting activation.

  “You ever wonder what the Shard look like?” Mason asked me. “Not the Reaper, but the real Shard?”

  “I think that we might be about to find out,” I said, and touched the glyphs around the door.

  The portal contracted into the wall, and we entered a vast, open expanse: a chamber that demonstrated the antiquity of the Artefact, of the Shard themselves. A series of pillars stretched ahead of me, forming a processional column. Every surface was covered in Shard cuneiform that glittered with soft blue and green light: threw the space in a disorienting semi-illumination. Something enormous sat at the head of that column – a shadow rising above the floor of the chamber, reaching the distant roof above.

  The Legion cautiously deployed into the chamber, weapons trained on the deep shadows around us. Strange, how this place seemed almost untouched by the chaos erupting across the rest of the planet. Targeting acquisition data fluctuated across my HUD, the AI unable to fix on a solid target. Effigies of things that I couldn’t look at, couldn’t even begin to describe, had been cast from black rock: grew from the walls. Everything had sharp, otherworldly angles. Crystalline structures sprouted from the centre of the chamber, and those were all aimed at the head: at the enormous shadow that was mounted there. I swallowed as I looked in that direction. The place reminded me not so much of a location with any technological purpose, more of a temple. A temple to dark and angry gods. I had the overwhelming urge to bow down to the inert creation, to worship it.

  “What is that thing?” Jenkins asked.

  “I don’t care what it is,” Martinez said. “I only need to know where Kyung is.”

  “I hear the man,” Kaminski said. “My trigger-finger is getting tetchy—”

  The structure breathed around us, and the dark exploded.

  A spidery, fluid shape was on Jenkins.

  It slammed into her, and over the comm-link she released a pained yelp. Before she could bring up her plasma rifle, fire at the monstrous shape, she was thrown backwards against one of the Shard pillars: pinned to the metalwork by two knife-tipped forelimbs.

  In frenzied snapshots, I saw that the shape had pierced her armour at the shoulders – gone all the way through the plating. Her face, underlit by the bulb inside her helmet, was a ragged snarl, blood and spittle lining the interior of her face-plate.

  “Into cover, then take it down!” I yelled over the comm-link. The network was degenerating into a hateful miasma of whispers, of voices calling out to me to just give up—

  The spider-shape twisted about, flung Jenkins’ bleeding body aside. Dead, she was a heavy weight, and her armoured corpse hit a Shard machine, shattering stonework and metal—

  Four plasma rifles began to fire on full-auto.

  A null-shield lit where our plasma fire hit: a blue cage of energy that threw shadows across the chamber.

  This is not Shard tech, I realised. This is something else.

  The shape moved fast. Feet skittered across the hard floor like knife-tips on metal. It was an arachnophobe’s worst nightmare.

  Something I know.

  We chased it with plasma fire, and as the machine passed before me I caught sight of a unit badge emblazoned on the hull.

  Kaminski rolled over out of cover. Damn it. He always was a hot-head. Maybe he’d seen the same as me, reached the same conclusion.

  “You killed them all!” came a scream, hissing with static: a voice broadcast over an amplified speaker rig, driven to distortion by extreme volume.

  The shape was on Kaminski next. He fired a grenade at it – scored a direct hit – and the hi-ex round exploded against the null-shield.

  It was neither Krell nor Shard, but instead an adapted Spider MMR, salvaged from Calico Base. Driven by someone we had all hoped was dead, even if none of us actually believed it.

  “Get down!” I ordered. “Stay in cover!”

  I was sure, now, that Kaminski had seen the Spider’s pilot too, because he wouldn’t listen to me. He fired one-handed with his plasma rifle, pulses lighting the null-shield again and again.

  The machine stomped on through the onslaught, and Captain Williams came into full view. Hunched inside the driver cab of the Spider. A machine designed for mining, this exa
mple bristled with armaments: a couple of rocket pods on the shoulders, a grenade launcher mounted on one arm, a multi-barrelled kinetic cannon on the other. Seeing as how he had tossed Jenkins’ body aside, I predicted that the man-amp had been over-charged as well.

  “Sweet girl,” Williams said, gazing over at Jenkins’ body, weathering the plasma storm. “She never could let go, though.”

  Kaminski lost it. He closed the distance between Williams and him lightning fast, roaring a battle cry as he went.

  Williams also moved fast, into the middle of the chamber. If Williams knew fear – if he suspected that he might die in here – he hardly showed it. He leapt across the room, onto Kaminski. The MMR was a multi-ton mech; a locomotive that would not be stopped. As the two collided – sim and Spider – I heard and saw Kaminski’s armour splitting; his bio-signs plummeting. It was worse than a wasted gesture, and Kaminski was gone. Kaminski’s body and rifle disappeared beneath the Spider’s bulk. There was nothing the medi-suite could do to help him.

  “Then there were three…” Williams said.

  Williams was now so close that I could see his face through the canopy, and I realised that he was not simulated this time: he was the real deal. Identifiable by the tattoos over his cheeks, the jewellery dangling at his ear… and those eyes. Madness and rage dwelt there –

  THREAT DETECTED, my suit AI warned. TAKE EVASIVE ACTION.

  A high-pitched whine filled the chamber; the echo of a single round being fired from somewhere above us. Sniper rifle. My HUD suggested possible shooter locations on the gantries or walkways, hiding places all around the room. The anti-shield round – cutting edge by Alliance standards – scythed through my shield with ease. Hit my leg, the join between armoured plates. I stumbled forward. Even with my simulated body being flooded with analgesics and endorphins, it was hard to ignore the pain.

  CRITICAL DAMAGE DETECTED, my HUD told me. Impossibly, the armour hadn’t breached – for now, I was still protected from the Creep – but I couldn’t take another shot like that.

  Suddenly the rest of the chamber became filled with threat warnings. Multiple shooters, positioned around the chamber. Some above, nestled into the bizarre Shard architecture, others well-hidden behind awakening Shard machinery.