by Jamie Sawyer
I held the gun rigid—aimed very directly at the hooded figure—but whoever this wise guy was, he didn’t flinch. The idea of a full clip from a machine pistol didn’t seem to give him much concern.
“I am not fucking with you! Identify, or I will shoot!”
“Lower the gun, Jenkins,” came the growl of a response.
Oh Christo. I recognised that voice.
“You already know who I am.”
The hood fell with a single motion.
“I’m Lazarus.”
CHAPTER TEN
RESURRECTION
Lieutenant Colonel Conrad Harris stood in front of me.
The man also known—better known—as Lazarus. At the peak of the Krell War, Harris had been commanding officer of the Lazarus Legion—once regarded as the finest fighting formation in the Alliance Army.
I hadn’t seen Harris in many years. He was tall, broad shoulders filling the survival suit, with dark hair clipped short, but still slightly unkempt. Rough-shaven, a sprinkle of whiskers over his chin. His face was stitched with pockmarks and scars, each recalling a battle in which we had fought together. Now there’s a face that tells a story, I thought. Harris was middle-aged in a non-specific way that some men are, and save for the addition of some creases to his face, another layer of cragginess to his brow, he was more or less how I remembered him. He stood there, watching me intently with his brown eyes.
Is this actually happening? I asked myself. It was so unreal, so far-fetched, that it simply couldn’t be true. Was I lying in a Directorate interrogation tank, subject to a bizarre and convoluted simulation somehow designed to secure intelligence? But in the end, it wasn’t Harris that convinced me that this was real. My emotional reaction to seeing him was like a gut-punch: the result of so many memories fighting for release. We’d served together in the Simulant Operations Programme for years, and we had been through the worst that the Krell had to offer. No one but the real Lazarus could have that effect on me.
I lowered the gun and ran to him.
“Long time no see, Jenkins,” he said.
Harris accepted the hug awkwardly. That was as much of a greeting as I was going to get from Lazarus. Hell, the man never was very good with personal affection, and the intervening years hadn’t changed that.
“He’s … you’re alive?” Zero murmured, getting to her feet. Despite her condition, and what we had just been through, she brimmed with excitement like a small child.
Harris’ face remained impassive, but I detected the slightest hint of amusement around his eyes, the twitch of his lips.
“He never really died,” I said.
The Jackals were in a state of abject amazement. Lopez sighed in astonishment, and even Novak was quietly impressed. To be rescued from Jiog was one thing. To be rescued by Lazarus—hero of the Alliance, and a man whom everyone thought was dead—was another altogether … Everyone in Sim Ops knew Harris; his myth had become as much a part of the Programme as the tanks and sims themselves.
“We used to call you the Red Demon,” Feng said. He’d pulled off his helmet now, and his hair and face were bathed in sweat. “You were the man who could not be killed.”
Now Harris did smile. It was a half-hearted expression, the smile of a man who rarely used it, or perhaps rarely had the opportunity.
“Tell that to the medics,” he said, his voice the crunch of wet gravel. I hadn’t heard a Detroit accent like his in a long time. “They say that I had the opposite problem.”
“He died too many times,” came another voice.
One of Harris’ entourage had removed their headgear too.
“Dr. Marceau …?” Zero said. “How can this …? What are you both doing here?”
Dr. Elena Marceau: another Sim Ops legend. She’d been one of the doctors at the heart of the Simulant Operations Programme, as I understood it, and also Harris’ lover. Along with Harris, she had gone into hiding at the end of the Krell War, when High Command had declared Harris dead.
Dr. Marceau shook her hair free from her suit, and gave a curt nod in my direction. She was slender and pretty, big dark eyes and long brunette hair tied back in a plait. But I knew not to be fooled by her looks—although Dr. Marceau wasn’t military, she was a damned tough cookie. It’d been a long time since I’d last seen her too. Her sharp features carried the years well, and she still had a cold and precise beauty.
“It is good to see you, Lieutenant Jenkins,” she said.
“And you, Dr. Marceau.”
“Please, call me Elena. We’ve been through this before.”
Elena spoke with a French accent, thicker than when I had last seen her. That figured: she had gone into hiding in Normandy, Old Earth, on a farm somewhere, so I’d been told. It made sense that the Paladin Rouge was a French ship, or at least Euro-Confed registered.
“Aren’t you supposed to be retired?” Zero asked of Elena. “I mean, I’m not trying to sound disrespectful, but …” She shook her head. “I’m just struggling with this.”
Dr. Marceau wasn’t one for smiling either—she and Harris were kindred spirits—but now she too looked amused.
“We were hiding from the Directorate,” she said. “But when the regime collapsed, there didn’t seem much point anymore.”
“You just can’t keep a good woman down,” Harris muttered. “I don’t like the word ‘hiding,’ though. We were just under the radar for a while, is all.”
“Then what changed?” Zero said.
“We figured we could be a lot more useful out here on the front than back on Old Earth.”
Elena glared sidelong at Harris. “You thought that we would, Conrad. Let’s not forget that it wasn’t my idea to come out here, mon amour.”
Harris shrugged. “The details don’t matter. It looks like we turned up just in time.”
Pariah rose to full height beside me, with both of its barb-guns deployed. This situation no doubt made less sense to the alien than it did to me, which was saying something.
“Does other require termination?” it asked me.
Elena stepped forward. Now it was her turn to look amazed. Fascination played across her eyes, her scientific mind already questioning Pariah’s existence.
“So this is the pariah-form about which we have heard so much?” she muttered, nodding her head.
“That is our designation,” said Pariah.
“Most impressive.”
The rest of the Paladin team eyed the alien cautiously. I could understand their reaction, but they seemed to be taking this a lot better than I would’ve expected. Elena and Harris clearly knew more about the Project Pariah than they should have, given the operation’s classified status.
“It’s the first fish head that we’ve ever had on the ship,” Harris said. He sniffed the air. “The first uninfected one, anyway.”
Pariah stared at Harris. The xeno was in a bad condition, steam rising from open wounds across its body. That it was alive at all was astounding.
“I killed thousands of your kind,” Harris said, “back when it was allowed. Back when the Alliance needed me.”
“We are Pariah,” P said flatly. “We are Kindred.”
I held out a hand. “Listen, Harris. The fish is with me. It comes to no harm.”
“Wouldn’t dream of it,” Harris replied. He evaluated the rest of my squad. “So these are Jenkins’ Jackals, huh?”
I expected something like disdain from him: the Jackals were no Lazarus Legion, and they were in a strung-out state.
“That’s right.”
Harris grunted a laugh. “Then welcome to our ship, Jackals. Make yourselves at home.”
Elena stepped forward. “There will be time for proper introductions later. But right now, we need to get to the Q-jump point and out of this star system.”
At her say, the crew scrambled. I was reminded that Dr. Marceau—Elena—was as much a leader as Harris ever was. She’d seen things, been places, that very few humans could ever hope to …
&
nbsp; “Gustav will make sure that you receive medical attention,” she said.
“I can wait,” I replied, shaking my head. “See to my squad first.”
Elena pulled a tight grimace. “She’s ever your protégé, Conrad. As you wish, Lieutenant.”
“I’m glad you made it out of there, Jenkins,” Harris said to me, as the Jackals followed Elena out of the cargo bay.
“Thanks for coming back for us.”
“Leave no man, or woman, behind,” he said. “That’s the rule. And I could hardly let you die down there.”
It might’ve been my imagination, but his eyes looked as though they had slightly wet on saying those words: echoes of a memory long forgotten.
“Still, I owe you one,” I said. “You didn’t need to do that.”
Harris looked at me in a very particular way. “I never said that the rescue wasn’t without a price.”
“What do you mean?”
But Harris had already turned away from me. “We’ll talk later,” he said. “Take it to the bridge, Jenkins. We’re not out of trouble yet.”
“Covering fire on portside,” yelled a crewman. “I want those missiles gone from my scanner.”
“Oui, chef,” replied another. “Firing solutions locked.”
The Paladin’s crew occupied all stations on the bridge, hooked to weapons terminals. According to the tri-D command display, space around Jiog was currently thick with hostile targets.
A Krell ark-ship sat in low orbit. Her vast hull was criss-crossed with impacts and unhealed injuries, like the face of a meteor-rained moon. The ark trailed tendrils of living matter behind its bulk, swarming with infected bio-fighters and other space-borne assets. Flashes of polluted seas. Sacred coral desecrated. Breeding chambers, flooded with corrupted bio-matter. And the navigator-forms: their distended bodies riddled with the virus … I blinked away the visions, fought against the strength of feeling.
“We wish to fight infection,” Pariah intoned.
The comms-antennae on Pariah’s back bristled softly, as though reading transmissions.
“Another day, fish,” Harris said. “Another day.”
The Krell were not the only threat out here. A harried and ever-dwindling Directorate fleet, consisting of a handful of battlecruisers and heavy assault transports, was positioned in orbit around Jiog.
“Will the Directorate follow us?” Zero asked.
“They won’t,” Harris said. “Captain Lestrade will see to that.”
“I am taking care of the Krell,” replied the man at the command terminal, who I took to be Lestrade. “The girl is seeing to the Directorate.”
Novak nodded at Lestrade. “He is big one, yes?”
Lestrade was taller than even Novak, but exceptionally thin with it. His skin was drawn tight over his bald head, not as old as Carmine, but well past his prime. Still, he and the others were doing a good job of keeping us out of enemy fire lanes.
“Is a piece of cakewalk,” answered a girl’s voice from a booth in the corner of the room.
Zero took an immediate interest. “Is that an interface booth?”
“You got it,” said the occupant. She poked her head out of the booth for a moment, looked over at the Jackals.
“The fish is with us,” I said, throwing a thumb at Pariah.
The girl just shrugged, unimpressed. In her teens, she was waif-like in appearance, skin a dark oak. A mane of electronic cables wired to her scalp mingled with her dreadlocked hair, and a mass of fibres sprouted from the data-ports on her forearms.
“The kid’s called Nadi,” Harris declared. “She’s the best damned hacker this side of the Asiatic Rim. A recent recruit.”
“That was how you manipulated the Directorate’s data-network, I take it?” Zero asked.
“Yeah,” Harris said. “We couldn’t have done it without her. She’s a pain in the ass, but she’s good.”
“I can hear you, old man,” Nadi answered.
“Sorry, Nadi,” Elena said. “You know that he doesn’t mean it.”
“It’s okay. I liked the part about the ‘best hacker this side of the Asiatic Rim.’ But I’m not a kid. I’m fifteen standard!”
“Which makes you a kid,” Harris said. “Less of the old man, and the saying is ‘piece of cake,’ by the way.”
“Whatever …” Nadi said.
“She’s currently so far in the Directorate’s systems that they don’t know what’s real and what isn’t,” Elena explained. “She was instrumental in your recovery from the surface.”
“What tech are you running there?” Zero asked, leaning into the booth. The girl hacker was surrounded by jury-rigged keyboards and several beaten-up computer terminals.
Nadi smiled and laughed. “I’m running a modified second-generation intercessor script,” she said. “Illegal, mostly. It’d get me ten in the slammer in most Alliance territories, but I’m using a closed system, see? All of my tech is homemade.”
“You and me need to talk, Nadi,” Zero said, impressed.
“Anytime.”
The conversation was interrupted by another crew station chiming an alarm.
“What’ve we got, Gustav?” Harris said.
“There she goes,” Gustav said. He was a younger man with blond hair and rugged good looks. “Big enough that you can see it on the view-port.”
The blasted face of Jiog confronted us: a muddy mixture of pinks and blues and greys. The curve of the planet escaped above and below the view-port, and all around us there were explosions. Some of Harris’ crew gasped in surprise as the face of the world burnt.
“The infected will not be stopped,” Pariah said.
“Fish talks truth,” Novak added. “Will there be any Directorate left?”
“There will always be Directorate …” Elena answered, with more than a hint of bitterness in her voice. She had taken up one of the crew posts near the captain’s terminal, looking as natural as could be at the station.
Harris nodded. “But not on Jiog. Looks like they’re pulling out and burning their own facilities.”
“The Shadow Bureau will evacuate everything of tactical importance and abandon the rest,” Feng said. There was certain knowledge in his eyes, a strategic assessment grounded in his genetic heritage. “It’s a standard Directorate tactical response. By the books.”
“Jesus Christo,” Lopez said. “There are still prisoners down there. Can’t we help them?”
“There’s nothing we can do to stop this,” Harris said. “This is one battle that we can’t win.”
Ships screamed across the void. Transports and freighters pulled away from orbital platforms. Some larger battleships held their own against the tide of Krell invaders, but just as many were already wasted hulks, drifting in the dark, or rippling with sub-detonations that could only be components cooking off.
“Why aren’t we being hit?” Lopez asked.
“The Directorate don’t even know that we’re here,” Nadi muttered, somewhat proudly. “I’ve swapped ship IDs a dozen times already. We’re a Directorate ship one moment, then a neutral cargo freighter the next.”
“And, unless we get out of here soon,” Lestrade said, “a piece of space junk the following.”
“Is that …?” Feng started, pointing at the tac-display. He swallowed, before continuing, “Is that the Furious Retribution?”
The Furious Retribution sat at high anchor. Running hot, she was throwing wave on wave of firepower at the Krell, popping targets in every direction. Missiles launched from her flanks, the railguns on her spine chattering.
“Get us out of here,” Harris said. “We’ve seen enough.”
“Ready when you are, Captain Lestrade,” Elena said with a nod.
The captain pulled a face that suggested he would rather not have been here in the first place, and started chanting back coordinates, manipulating the data-feed in front of him. The Paladin initiated thrust. More explosions peppered the horizon outside, although the Furious Retribution sa
t stalwart on the edge of the display.
I sighed. Was it really over?
Harris unbuckled himself from his seat. “We’ll be safe soon. At ease, trooper.”
That was good enough for me.
There was something satisfying about handing over the reins, about giving up responsibility, to Harris and the crew of the Paladin Rouge. Of course, the ship stayed on high alert—Harris’ team manning the sensor systems and weapon-pods—but it was all taken care of. There was no station for me or the Jackals, and with an insistence nothing short of an order Harris directed that we rest.
“Good,” Novak said, rolling his head on his enormous shoulders. “I earn break, yes?”
“I think we all have,” agreed Lopez.
The rest of the squad were just as grateful. We got medical attention from the Paladin’s surprisingly well-equipped sick bay. The standing ship’s physician was a squat and dour woman called Maberry. She didn’t tell us anything about her reasons for being on the Paladin, or her background, but from the way she dealt with the Jackals I got the feeling she had a military history, maybe a former combat-medic. She certainly knew her way around a battlefield injury.
“Can you believe it?” Zero asked, still incredulous. Her eyes were ruddy, hair unwashed. She looked a lot like the bedraggled orphan I’d pulled from the remains of Mau Tanis Colony, all those years ago. “I mean, Lazarus, right? And Dr. Marceau? Not only are they alive, but we actually get to meet them both …”
“Simmer down, Zero,” I suggested. “We get the picture.”
“You are big fan, yes?” Novak asked.
“Of course,” Zero said, her face illuminated. “Who isn’t?”
Novak shrugged. “Am not bothered.”
“Yeah, right,” Lopez said. “We all saw your face in the cargo bay, when we first boarded the ship. You were as surprised as the rest of us.”
Novak just grunted.
“Hold still,” Maberry said. “This will hurt if you don’t.”
Maberry sealed the wound on my arm with some staples. The auto-doctor did the rest, knitting back together the injured tissue.
“The arm isn’t actually broken,” Maberry confirmed. “But it was a nasty impact. Same goes for that injury to your bicep; it clipped muscle, but it could’ve been much worse. You got lucky. The ribs, on the other hand … Try to avoid physical exertion for the next couple of weeks.”