The Eternity War: Dominion

by Jamie Sawyer

  “‘Ithaca Prime’…” I said, rolling the words around in my mouth, trying them out for size. It was like putting a name to a face; being able to identify a long-held adversary, only to find that it was no longer my enemy. “It has a certain ring to it, I suppose.”

  “The Deep Ones represent the controlling minds of all Krell Collectives,” General Draven continued. “They have not been in direct communication with the Alliance, but we understand that they remain uninfected. Several Krell war-fleets have fallen back to this location. Military Intelligence believes these have been recalled to defend the Reef Stars, and specifically Ithaca Prime, against infection.”

  The image now changed to a long-distance view of Krell bio-ships, sailing through the cold of space. I couldn’t identify the Collective to which they belonged, but there were several fleets, likely hundreds of vessels, and they appeared to be uninfected.

  “Intelligence also suggests the movement of human assets within the Maelstrom,” General Draven said. “Black Spiral ships have been observed in neighbouring star systems. They appear to be progressing towards the centre of the Maelstrom. These ships can move with relative freedom, as a result of the Spiral’s control of the Shard Gates.”

  Riggs is probably on one of those ships, I thought to myself. With the arch-bastard Warlord, moving closer to the Maelstrom’s dying heart…

  Director Mendelsohn nodded along with Draven. He stirred from his seat. “Science Division is of the opinion that the Spiral is planning to contaminate the Deep Ones with Harbinger. Needless to say, if this occurs, the consequences will be catastrophic. Given how Harbinger spreads, the infection of the Krell’s higher consciousness will trigger a mass-infection event.”

  Mendelsohn called up some more imagery on the tri-D. Krell homeworlds obliterated by rains of plasma. Pyres composed of stacked alien bodies. Then human colonies, slaughtered by the infected Krell. Finally, that weird black material that polluted every system that Harbinger claimed: spirals of shadow matter growing in deep space. My stomach churned as I remembered Mendelsohn’s images aboard the Destiny. The Maelstrom would be turned in on itself, a breeding ground for Shard starships.

  “This is the result of a Harbinger infection,” General Draven said, quietly now. “Every planet, every system, that falls, is corrupted. Every Shard Gate we have lost is filled with these infected bastards, moths drawn to the flame. We still don’t know why the Spiral are doing this, what they want to achieve. This operation will therefore fulfil a dual purpose. We will both inoculate the Deep Ones—by force, if necessary—and land a killing blow to the Spiral.”

  A ripple of applause spread through the chamber.

  In the well of the briefing room, an officer stirred. She was a stern-looking woman with short red hair, shaved into a pseudo-buzzcut, wearing a Navy uniform of a type I didn’t recognise. She had no rank insignia or medals. For some reason, her whole presentation screamed black operations. Hers was a face that had seen things—the jagged Z-shaped scar down her left cheek suggested a story in itself—and she wasn’t afraid to ask questions.

  “General Draven, how do we intend to dispense the Harbinger cure?” she asked.

  “Good question,” I muttered.

  General Draven nodded, as though he had been expecting this challenge. “Thank you, Commander Dieter. This is an essential part of the mission. There will be two methods. First, Simulant Operations squads will be assigned to each battlegroup. All squads will be equipped with Pathfinder suits, in the expectation of a deployment via drop-capsule into enemy territory. Virtual testing of the cure suggests that even a single application, applied directly to a Krell nesting site, could be sufficient to neutralise the Harbinger virus.

  “Second, each starship will be equipped with a limited number of anti-viral warheads. These munitions can be deployed directly from orbit, to the infected sites. Again, Science Division believes that a direct strike via this method will be sufficient to establish inoculation.”

  More graphics popped up around Draven. A table of organisation demonstrated the distribution of the various assets across the operation. The fleet had been organised into five main battlegroups, with each spearheaded by a dreadnought.

  “The UAS Defiant will lead the charge,” Draven said. “She will head up the 1st Battlegroup Division. The 2nd Battlegroup will fall under Admiral Tharsis’s command, and will be led by the UAS Titan’s Dream. The 3rd Battlegroup will be led by the UAS Sweet Justice, and Admiral Vester will assume command. That will be supported by the 4th and 5th Battlegroups, led respectively by Captains Abdullah and Kleinman.”

  Zero read from the table of organisation, and pointed out, “The Jackals haven’t been attached to any of those battlegroups.”

  “Maybe they forget about us,” suggested Novak.

  “Just listen,” I said.

  “Some ships have been assigned secondary objectives,” General Draven said. Names of ships, and the squads allocated to each, appeared on the holo. “These ships have specialist assignments, in support of the main fleet.”

  “It’s okay,” Feng said to Zero. “See, we’ve been assigned to the Valkyrie.”

  General Draven continued, oblivious to the Jackals’ reaction. “The Valkyrie will be tasked with exploration of a potential lead on Special Asset X-93, also known as the Aeon. Jenkins’ Jackals and the Executioners will be responsible for making contact with the Aeon, in an attempt to obtain their support. Other teams will have similar objectives. Those squads with such orders will receive individual briefings, given their specialised nature.”

  My wrist-comp pinged as it received a fresh data-inload.

  “The Executioners?” Feng whispered to my left. “Have you ever worked with them, ma’am?”

  “No,” I said, “but I hear good things about them.” I continued reading from my wrist-comp. “It’s not them that I’m worried about.”

  “Shit,” Novak drawled, as he did the same. “We go into Maelstrom under Captain Heinrich!”

  “Looks that way,” I said.

  Secretary Lopez sat at the back of the podium, not making eye contact with me or his daughter. I couldn’t help but feel betrayed. Why hadn’t he mentioned this plan during the meeting on Destiny? Not the mission, but that we were going to be deployed under Captain Heinrich.

  The briefing continued. General Draven handed the floor to a Navy admiral, and the specifics of squad deployment and ordnance distribution—none of which was relevant to the Jackals—were addressed. I began to tune out, and around me lots of other troopers did the same. Most squads were eager for deployment, now that they knew the plan.

  “… throughout the Amartes sub-cluster,” droned on the admiral, trying his best to keep the crowd’s attention. “Although certain jump-routes have become unstable as a result of quantum interference, we believe that…”

  Even the warden-form, safely harnessed in the cell behind the officer, looked bored. Lopez wanted to show it off, to demonstrate how successful his plan had been…

  The tri-D graphic hovering beside the ageing admiral shivered with static. Goosebumps crawled over my skin. P’s stance dropped. Its mind sharpened, grazing mine. I was awake. Air escaped my lungs in a sort of gasp. I hadn’t meant to make any noise at all, and it pierced the quiet of the auditorium.

  “Are you paying attention, Lieutenant?” Heinrich asked.

  “Yes. Sorry, sir. I mean, ah, no.”

  “What?”

  I stood up. “Something’s wrong.”

  “Sit down, Lieutenant!” Captain Heinrich said, his voice rising in volume until it was a positive yell. “You’re interrupting proceedings. Pay attention to the damned briefing!”

  On the podium, the admiral’s words caught in his mouth. He frowned, old face creasing, staring at the corrupted holographic projection beside him.

  A figure formed in a burst of static.

  It was Sergeant Clade Cooper, also known as the Warlord of the Drift.

  CHAPTER NINE

 
; DOMINION COME

  Projected directly into the briefing room, Warlord was clad in his trademark exo-suit—the armour battered and worn, a Black Spiral insignia sprayed onto the chest-plate, tattered camo-cloak draped over his shoulders. That was of a type worn by Army Rangers, a reminder of what the man had once been. His helmet was locked in place, crude skull-motif stencilled over the visor plate. A forced silence spread through the room. Although almost everyone had watched Warlord’s messages to the Alliance, very few had seen him for real.

  “Get a tech up here,” Secretary Lopez said, standing, waving a hand at the tri-D. “Close this channel down!”

  “I have come to deliver a message,” Warlord said. “This ends. Now.”

  General Draven took a step towards the hologram. “Stand down,” he said. “This is a protected channel. You will immediately desist—”

  “You’re a tired old man, Draven,” Warlord said. His voice was a wet rasp. Sick: that was the word. He sounded worse than when I’d last heard him, which made me wonder if his “addresses” to the Alliance had perhaps been pre-recorded. “You, like the Alliance, are wasted. Rotten. I do not submit to your authority.”

  The technician that Secretary Lopez had been ragging on desperately tried to manipulate the controls of the holo-feed, to block the transmission, but to no avail. It was being broadcast on every channel—protected, encrypted or otherwise.

  Secretary Lopez stood beside Draven, in a show of strength. “This will not—”

  “Rodrigo Lopez?” Warlord asked. “Do you really still think that you can interfere in this?”

  “It’s not interference,” Lopez said. “You will surrender yourself to Alliance law enforcement, on pain of death.”

  Warlord laughed. The noise made my skin crawl. “I’m not frightened of death.”

  The visor of his helmet shifted, became transparent, and Warlord showed his true face to the world. Terribly scarred, sewn back together by a barrage of operations. Less a man than a tapestry of atrocities, a reminder that just because Science Division could do something, it didn’t mean that they should. I heard Zero’s audible reaction beside me—a sharp intake of breath that she couldn’t repress—and the same response rippled through the briefing room. Warlord was an artefact of the Deep. His chestnut eyes seethed through the morass of scar tissue that made up his face.

  “But you, Secretary,” he continued, “are more than afraid. I can smell your fear from light-years away. You reek of it. Your stink repulses me.”

  Lopez stood defiant. He had an audience, after all. “Why are you doing this, Cooper? What do you want?”

  “Does there have to be a ‘want’ behind everything? Sometimes we just are. I’m living proof that the consequence of existence is enough. People like you made this mess. You let the Krell into our world. You let this happen. You made me.”

  Dark shadows danced around him; quicksilver flashes. Another ripple of surprise from the auditorium. These were Shard Reapers, coiled around Warlord like terrible but tamed snakes. Faces formed in their dark skeins, shifting in and out of reality. I had no doubt that everyone in the room saw people they had known, had loved, in those dark mirrors.

  “I am going to bring about Dominion,” Warlord promised. “I am going to bring the Shard here, to the Maelstrom. You cannot stop me. It is already too late. The Krell will be eradicated. I am salvation. All who stand against us—against me—will perish, for I am the Spiral, and I live for ever.”

  And with that, the image shivered and disappeared.

  “What was the point of that?” Feng asked. “He’s put the biggest cross in all of Alliance history on his head…”

  “It was a message,” I said. “We need to get the Secretary out of here.” I grappled my way out of my seat. “Sound the retreat, Captain Heinrich.”

  No one was listening to me. Why was no one listening to me? Only P was bristling, shaking at the triple-reinforced mag-locks that bound it. The MPs were focused on the alien, carbines up and shouting orders to stay calm, stop moving. But they had it all wrong; P wasn’t the threat. Dr Saito was still up there with them, gesticulating at the soldiers to put their weapons down.

  A hatch at the back of the warden-form’s cell slid open. P whirled around in response to the sudden movement. Two new figures, both wearing full hazmat suits, virtually indistinguishable from the other techs, entered. At first, I thought that they had realised what was happening in the briefing room. Maybe someone had triggered a security alert. That would’ve been the smart thing to do, but it wasn’t that.

  One of the new medtechs produced a pistol from the folds of his medical suit. The weapon was up in an instant.

  “Get the brass to safety,” I screamed. “P, get them moving! Away from the cell window!”

  Behind me, another MP was slamming a palm to the hatch panel, trying to access the controls that would open the briefing room’s exit.

  “We’re locked in,” he said. “We’re locked in!”

  The tech in the cell opened fire, and a medic disappeared in a blaze of pistol shots. The body collapsed sideways, bleeding out. The second newcomer—dressed in the same hazmat suit as the other—approached the warden-form. He held a canister.

  The xeno’s eyes widened. Despite the gulf between our species, I could feel the horror dawning in the alien’s mind. The imposter held the canister up. Twisted the lid. Something noxious and black—like living smoke—slid out…

  “Oh fuck,” said Feng.

  … and into the warden’s mouth.

  The alien fought, thrashed.

  Director Mendelsohn crouched in front of the window, watching with a rapt expression on his face. I could see the calculations going on in his head.

  “It’s been inoculated,” he shouted, to no one in particular. Despite the certainty of his response, his voice faltered as though he had become unsure of himself. “The anti-virus will—”

  Do fuck all.

  The warden-form began to change. Silvered veins spread across its carapace, at a rate that was surely impossible. I’d never seen the virus take hold so quickly. Its body convulsed. The warden’s deep, alien eyes flickered open, and it saw with new purpose. It scanned the chamber, then tested the mag-locks that bound its limbs.

  “It’s… that’s a grav-table,” said Mendelsohn. “There’s no way that it can get loose.”

  “This guy likes being wrong,” I said to Zero.

  The alien wrenched its body free. The force required was immense, and self-destructive. Musculature strained, skeletal structure warping as the creature prised itself off the table. The mag-locks failed; popping open. Everything was soundless—the armourglass separating us from the warden was thick enough to hold back the noise—but I could imagine the tearing of muscle fibres, the cracking of bones. With a triumphant shake of its head, the xeno was up.

  Around me, the briefing room was yelling, shouting, chaos.

  The imposter medtech went to take a step back, away from the warden’s infected body. Too slow. The alien slammed the Spiral agent aside. The corpse hit a wall, sliding down the clinically white tiles, leaving a trail of crimson.

  A dozen thoughts ran through my head. How had the warden-form become reinfected so quickly? Had the Spiral somehow modified the Harbinger virus? I shunted all of that from my mind. In that instant, keeping the Secretary alive, protecting the officers, and then staying alive myself: those were my only objectives, and in that order.

  “Will that view-port hold?” Feng yelled, above the din.

  “We’re not waiting around to find out,” I answered.

  I made a dash for the podium, pushing against the tide of troopers making for the exit. Agents Cambini and Butler were encouraging Secretary Lopez to get moving, but he was in a state of complete shock. Meanwhile, the senior brass were stumbling around, failing to understand that they had to act now or die.

  Another tech was thrown aside as the warden went berserk. P was straining at its own bonds, the MPs trying to hustle t
he alien away from the window. It begrudgingly complied with the order.

  “You need to leave now, Mr Secretary,” I said, grabbing for Lopez’s forearm.

  “I’m…” he said, swallowing back alarm. “My agents—”

  On the other side of the armourglass window, the remaining imposter medtech let loose a volley from his machine-pistol. Rounds hit the window, spiderwebbing the surface. The warden stomped across the cell, and the deck shook with each footfall. It tossed aside another technician, slamming the body into the window.

  Secretary Lopez’s face was stained by fear and horror.

  Feng got his answer, as the glass wall spectacularly shattered.

  Glass fragments showered the auditorium, as the tech’s body went through the window. It sailed over my head and slammed into a senior officer with a sickening crunch.

  The remaining Spiral agent in the cell sprayed the room with gunfire. Several officers were caught in the volley, bodies blossoming red as they jerked and twisted with impacts. Draven and Heinrich dodged aside, barely managing to avoid being hit. I couldn’t properly assess the damage, but there were several cries as troopers or officers were wantonly executed.

  “I’m calling for back-up, sir,” Agent Butler said to Secretary Lopez. “We’ll get the doors—”

  His words were silenced by a round to the head, skull rupturing in a glorious red starburst, spraying the Secretary and me with gore. Secretary Lopez’s face dropped.

  “Butler!” he yelped.

  The warden-form twisted, further enraged by the gunfire. All six limbs deployed, its already huge form became truly massive. It lurched towards the Spiral agent with the pistol. In an instant, it tore the body apart, throwing the corpse across the cell. Then it turned to the shattered view-port. The xeno let out a cry that chilled me to the core, so shrill that it made the air vibrate.

  Secretary Lopez just sort of stood there, as though he had been infected with a lack of activity. An alarm sounded in the distance—the pitched warble of a security siren. I could just make out the chatter of gunfire, although that could’ve been my imagination.