by Jamie Sawyer
Pariah was tethered to a medical monitor by a series of cables. Feeds ran into the gaps between the xeno’s bio-armour, where the flesh was softest.
“They’re finishing up now,” Dr Saito answered. “I must say, the Pariah is an astounding specimen, and its attachment to the Jackals is an interesting development. But I doubt that you’ve come down here to talk about the finer points of Krell bio-adaptation.” He picked up his data-slate again, and tapped at it. Put his thumb to the reader panel. “I think that my people are just about done in there.”
The two scientists, carrying trays filled with blood samples and tissue cultures, filed out of the cell. The geeks were lost in their own discussions, almost ignorant of P.
Dr Saito reached over, gently touched my forearm with his hand. “It’s immune, you know,” he said. “Pariah is the only Krell bio-form—the only example of their technology—to develop a positive response to the Harbinger virus.” But then Saito’s sidelong look was gone, and he withdrew his hand. “Just go on through. I’ll file it as a debrief session. Every trooper deserves that, right? Even Pariah.”
The glass partition between P and the rest of the science lab darkened, became opaque at Dr Saito’s command. Something like sympathy crossed behind the officer’s dark eyes.
“Thanks.”
“Go on.”
I was blasted with anti-bacterial mist in a decontamination lock—some sort of quarantine between P and the rest of the ship—and then allowed access to the nest. The place stunk. The cell had started out as clinically pristine, but P’s presence had already changed that. The weird resinous compound the Krell used to build their nests crept up the walls. P had retreated to a corner, its huge bulk semi-curled.
“Hey, P. How’s things?”
Pariah glanced up at me, barbels drooping from either side of its fish-like mouth twitching. “Jenkins-other.”
“Who else?” I said. I dropped to the floor beside P, and sat with my back against the wall. “Were you injured on Vektah?”
“Not sufficiently to inhibit our performance,” P answered.
Pariah’s armoured body was stitched with scars, some of which were old, others new. The latest injuries suffered on Vektah were already healing though. That was a consequence of P’s enhanced metabolism; it had incredible regenerative abilities. Whatever had happened on Vektah Minor, it would be okay.
“Isn’t this place a little bright for you?”
The lights were bright, and the room clinically cool.
“The others insist that the illumination remains at this level,” P said, waving a claw at the glass wall to indicate the science staff. “They say it assists their observation.”
“Maybe I’ll speak to them, get the lights lowered or something.”
“That would be preferable,” P said. “And the temperature is not comfortable, either.”
I nodded. “Got it. You want it hot and dark.”
“A compartment at the aft of the craft would be more suitable. In Engineering, for instance.”
“I don’t think that Captain Heinrich is going to allow that.”
“Understood.” P paused, and I detected glumness. “It is objective truth that the habitation conditions were preferable when we were not working with designation Heinrich.”
“I hear that.”
In other words, P had been allowed to do its own thing before we were brought back into the Alliance fold. When we’d been working outside of the chain of command, decisions such as where Pariah nested weren’t subject to the same level of micro-scrutiny.
“We sense that Jenkins-other does not like designation Heinrich either,” P said.
“You don’t need to be psychic to figure that one out, P.”
“We do not understand ‘psychic’.”
“Neither do I. What’s happening, between us?”
P turned its head and evaluated me with its alien eyes. I saw my own reflection in those black, fathomless orbs.
“Jenkins-other tasted the Deep. We are connected. We are able to sense.”
“I… I can sometimes feel you in my head. I’m not sure that I like it.”
“What is to like?” P intoned. “The connection simply is.”
“Have you told the Science Division people about this?”
“Of course not. They would not understand. They have not tasted the Deep. Has Jenkins-other informed those that observe?”
“No,” I said. “I haven’t. But I’m not sure how long I can hide it from them.”
Since our escape from Kronstadt, the Jackals had been through numerous debriefing sessions. We’d undergone psychometric testing, loyalty evaluation, and hypno-training. Our accounts had been subject to analysis by Military Intelligence’s most rigorous testing techniques. Pretty much everything we had seen and heard had been recorded, but this—the mind-link, as I’d taken to thinking of it—had remained secret.
“Jenkins-other is still disturbed by the others’ rejection of the Jackals’ account,” P said.
“I am,” I said. “No one believes that we found Lazarus.”
“We saw the unit designate Lazarus. We believe.”
“No one in Command accepts our account though, P. No one will even recognise the existence of the Watch.”
That was the most troubling aspect of the story for Military Intelligence. Who, or what, was the Watch? Harris had given me the scantest of details about the agency—describing it as some sort of shadow agency, working in deep cover—but we had found no evidence of the Watch’s existence. Since we’d returned from the Kronstadt mission, the Watch hadn’t made contact with us in any way at all.
“We do not understand how the others’ organisations work,” P said. “It is alien to us.”
“It feels alien to me, sometimes.”
“Then we do not stand any chance of understanding it.”
“Good point.”
“What was the purpose of Jenkins-other’s attendance?” P asked.
“I just wanted to say well done. We couldn’t have executed the mission without you.”
“Jenkins-other’s thanks are unnecessary. We did what was required. We wish to stop the spread of the rot, and the capture of the warden-form was a necessary step in that process.”
“You didn’t have to help us though.” I stared around the room, blinking at the intense light from the glow-globes overhead. “Especially considering the way that Heinrich is treating you.”
“Heinrich-other does not understand us. The unit’s reaction is to be expected.”
“Can you feel the warden-form?” I asked.
“We can. It is in pain, but…” P paused for a moment, then said, “it will not remain so.”
“Whatever, P. Whatever.” I stood up and brushed my uniform down. I could’ve sworn that the fish-gunk that covered the walls had crept further up the bulkhead since I’d entered the room. “As long as you’re keeping well.”
“We are well enough.”
“I’m not happy with how they’re treating you in here. You aren’t a prisoner.”
At that, P rose above me. The fish loomed; at full height, easily eight feet tall now. It produced both barb-guns out of their hiding places in its forearms, bones snapping and skin folding so that the weapons popped into the alien’s clawed hands.
“Make no mistake, Jenkins-other,” it said, “we are not a prisoner on this craft. The Alliance requests our assistance, and we give it freely.”
“It’s a turn of phrase,” I said. Despite P’s menacing demeanour, I wasn’t afraid. I knew that the alien’s display of force wasn’t meant for me. “Put away your toys. Don’t forget that you’re being watched.”
P’s guns retracted back into the alien’s forearms with a wet slurp. “Understood.”
“We’re heading back to Sanctuary. There’s talk of another mission. Lots of scuttlebutt.”
I felt P projecting its thoughts directly into my head for an instant and winced as it made the connection.
“Maybe,” I said. “Let’s hope so.”
“I know. I know.”
The Aeon: a fourth species, one of a pantheon of aliens that had once allied with the Krell against the Shard. The Jackals had secured key intelligence that could be used to locate the Aeon, during the Kronstadt operation. On our induction back into Alliance forces, however, that intelligence had been locked down. In some ways, the Vektah operation felt like a detour: a distraction from what really mattered.
“Just be ready,” I told P.
I left the cell, and found Dr Saito waiting for me outside. He reactivated the observation window.
“Try to do something with the heating and those lights,” I said. “P doesn’t like them that bright, and it’s too cold.”
“I’ll do what I can,” Dr Saito replied.
CHAPTER SIX
SOME SANCTUARY
Under the power of her quantum-drive, the Providence took us back towards Alliance space. There was an alarm, a ten-second warning, then a Q-jump. Then another, and another. The journey took only two days subjective, but several months objective. Time-dilation did its thing and we all paid the debt. Of course, a Shard Gate would’ve solved the problem: the Gates compressed time and allowed for near-instantaneous travel. But the Shard Gates had long since fallen to the Black Spiral, and we had no choice but to rely on good ol’-fashioned Q-travel. Still, it beats walking.
The Providence was sufficiently large that many of the commissioned officers had their own quarters. That wasn’t anything to write home about: my compartment was big enough to hold my property locker and a cot, all told. But it was private, and by the time we’d finished post-mission debrief, that was all I cared about. I was ready to collapse straight into bed, eager to get some shut-eye before we reached Sanctuary.
I slid open the door to my compartment. The chamber beyond was dark.
“Lights,” I instructed.
The AI didn’t respond, and I felt an immediate prickle down my spine.
No. Not here. Not now…
The fact that I could conduct mind-to-mind communication with Pariah wasn’t the only secret I was hiding from Command. When I got back to my quarters, the other one was waiting for me.
“Lights!” I yelled. “That’s an order!”
The computer didn’t respond. The chamber view-port was open, the star field outside was bright, but there were plenty of shadows in the small room. A shape detached from the dark and became distinct. I recognised the ghost, because I’d seen it plenty of times before.
“So you think that this will help?” it asked.
The figure’s bright, perfect teeth were visible in the low light. It grinned, reflecting the stars outside. The expression was positively malicious.
Corporal Daneb Riggs.
“You’re not real,” I said. Repeated, over and over: like a nursery rhyme to keep me safe from the bogeyman. “You’re not real. You’re not real…”
Riggs gave a tired sigh. “Quit the bullshit, Jenk.”
“You’re dead.”
“We both know that isn’t true. I escaped Darkwater Farm, and I’ll keep escaping.”
“You’re not real…”
But the words were worthless, were useless. They wouldn’t protect me here, or anywhere. Was there anything in the universe, I wondered, capable of stopping this son of a bitch?
“Of course I’m not real,” said Riggs. “But does that actually matter?”
My sometime confidant, and former lover, stood in the corner of the room. He appeared to me as I’d known him. Tall, rugged and youthful; aged a decade or so younger than me. Riggs’ upper body was well-muscled, and wore his Alliance Army uniform almost nonchalantly, as though it didn’t really matter. Maybe that had been portentous: ultimately neither the uniform, nor the flag, had meant anything to Daneb Riggs. He had betrayed me and the Jackals and everything that we stood for.
Riggs detached from the dark. He ran a hand down his clean-shaven face, as though tired, and put another through his messy dark hair. Sat on the end of the bunk.
“Seeing you, here, like this,” he said, staring down at the bed sheets. “It brings back real memories, you know?”
“Fuck you.”
“Every chance we got; we used to steal the moment and make off to your quarters. Do you remember that? We had some good times.”
“None of it mattered.”
“You let me in, didn’t you?” Riggs’ voice dripped with lecherous glee. “You let me do this to you, the Alliance, the Jackals.” He grinned now, and again the expression was tired. “How’ve you been, Jenk?”
“Fine,” I said, taking a different approach to the hallucination. “I’m fine.”
“I don’t think you are,” he said. “You might be back in the fold, so to speak, but everyone is waiting for you to step a foot wrong.”
“That’s not true.”
“Who’s going to fuck up first? Will it be Novak: lifer, prisoner, a man obsessed with finding his family’s killer? Or maybe Feng. They took the metal out of his head, I hear.”
“Feng’s fine too,” I said. “He’s looking forward to seeing you again.”
Riggs stood. He was physically imposing, but that didn’t scare me. What really frightened me was the extent of my own hatred for the boy. I’d never hated something so much, so powerfully, as I hated Riggs.
“And still you haven’t found the Aeon. Military Intelligence is sitting on your intel, right?”
“Don’t concern yourself with it.”
“The standard military mantra of ‘hurry up and wait’, I guess. Or maybe you don’t have the ships to go after it.”
“We’ve got plenty of ships. But it doesn’t matter, because you aren’t real.”
“Dear ol’ Dr Locke,” Riggs said, affecting fake sympathy. “She died for nothing. That would make sense. Lots of people you come into contact with seem to die for no good reason. Take Harris, for instance.”
“You killed Lazarus,” I said. “You killed Elena. You destroyed the Watch.”
“Did you ever stop to think that there is no Watch? That maybe it was Harris, a tired old man, doing things on his own, trying to make himself relevant in a universe that had forgotten all about him.”
“I’m going to find you,” I said, through bared teeth, “and I’m going to take you apart, piece by piece. I’m going to win this thing, Riggs. Mark my words.”
Riggs advanced on me, crossing the room. “Maybe Lopez will be the one to break first. Perhaps her father will withdraw his support for you, take away his protection. You ever wonder how that would go down, if Lopez left the Jackals?”
“It’s not going to happen.”
Riggs took another step forward. For a ghost, he sure looked and felt awfully real. I could even smell his body odour, feel the warmth of his breath. He breathed out slowly, doing his best to intimidate me.
“Or perhaps Zero will fold. She’s the softest, isn’t she? How’s she bearing up? This isn’t what she signed up for.”
“Leave Zero out of this!” I yelled, charging across the chamber, into the thing of shadow.
Except, suddenly, the lights came up. The room was empty.
“Everything okay, ma’am?”
Zero stood at the door, a look of concern plastered across her face, a cup of java in her hand. I turned around sharply, one hand balled into a fist, and Zero shrank back.
“I…” I started. Rage bubbled inside of me, unable to find a release. “I’m good.”
“I was passing by,” Zero said. “I heard shouting from your room.”
“The lights weren’t working,” I said. “I… I lost my temper with the AI.”
“Right,” Zero replied. She didn�
��t sound very convinced. “Okay.”
“They… they seem to be working now though.”
Zero gave a sympathetic smile. “The AI can be a little unreliable sometimes.”
“Yeah. Tell me about it. What’re you doing?”
“I was about to start running checks on that canister,” Zero said.
“What canister?”
“The image that you sent me,” Zero said, frowning. “From Nest Base Gamma, remember?”
I rubbed a hand over my face. “Right. Of course.”
“I’ve isolated the data.”
“Keep it that way.”
I knew that Riggs hadn’t been here. Not for real, anyway. Rationally, the hallucination had to be the product of my shattered emotional state. Even so, I still found myself checking around the room, looking for some sign of him. Where he had been sitting on the bed, there was nothing. The sheets were still in position, not even a crease to prove that Riggs had been real.
“You looking for something?” Zero said, no doubt reading my distraction. “Are you sure everything is okay?”
“It’s just… well, we’ve made a lot of quantum-jumps in a short period of time. Q-space always messes with my head.”
Zero lifted her eyebrows. “True. Ten, in the last eight hours. Only another three to go before we reach Sanctuary. Do you want some more downers?”
Downers were military-sedatives. Insomnia was a regular problem for many simulant operators.
“Can you get me some out of the infirmary without being noticed?” I retorted. “Don’t get yourself into trouble on my account.”
“I have my ways.” Zero paused, as if unsure of herself. “Are you still having the dreams?”
“Are you?” I countered.
Zero sighed, and unconsciously her hand went to her temple. Her hair was loose there, covering the remains of the burn-mark, where the Directorate had attempted to remove intelligence from her head. That hadn’t worked, but it had left her with some permanent scarring. I wasn’t the only who was often awoken at night with bad dreams…
“Touché,” she said. “You know what I mean.”
“Sorry. And yes, I’m still having them.”
Zero was referring to another of the consequences of my connection with Pariah. I’d been having dreams; virulent, vibrant and horrible dreams. Worlds on fire. Kelp-beds reduced to diseased pools. Bio-ships trailing contagion across the void. I, on the other hand, had struck a low blow, and I knew it. Zero was the last survivor of Tau Manis; a French-American colony that had been her home, and that had been destroyed during the Krell War. She’d lost every member of her family through the conflict.