by Jamie Sawyer
“The picture is from a dig on Tysis World,” I said, turning to look at Zero. It was surely no coincidence that Zero was able to recall that planet, and here was a woman with another link to the same location. “According to Harris’ files, she turned rogue and left Science Division shortly after this picture was taken.”
“So she’s not military then?” Feng enquired.
“That’s right,” I said. “Her name is Olivia Locke. She is—or at least was—a xeno-archaeologist.”
“A xeno what?” Lopez asked.
“She studies dead things and what they leave behind,” I explained. “Dead alien things.”
“What do we want from her?” Feng asked. “Why would Lazarus, or the Watch, need an archaeologist?”
“She was Chief Science Officer on Tysis World,” I said, reading from the files as I spoke. “A planet that boasts the very first evidence of Shard life. The dig there uncovered numerous relics and led to the discovery of the Shard Artefacts themselves.”
“This is some pretty deep intel,” Zero said. “That material is supposed to be classified. So what happened to this Locke woman?”
“According to her service record, she just upped and left a few years ago. Abandoned the project. She was bound by the Officials Secret Act, but simply disappeared. Went into hiding.”
“Like Lazarus,” Zero offered.
I hadn’t realised the analogy until Zero mentioned it, but she had a point. “Yeah, like Lazarus.”
“I wonder what she had to hide,” said Lopez.
“That’s what we’re going to find out. Since her ‘disappearance,’ Dr. Locke has been in sporadic contact with the Watch. She claimed that she had vital intel on the Harbinger virus that she would only disclose to Conrad Harris. She made contact with the Watch some months ago, real-time, and requested exfiltration from Kronstadt. This was before things got really bad down there.”
“But if she’ll only release the intel to Lazarus, how are we going to persuade her to give it to us?” Zero queried.
“I don’t know, put bluntly,” I said. “But we’ll cross that bridge when we come to it.”
“Can we trust this woman?” Feng asked. “Could be a trap, for all we know.”
I could understand Feng’s scepticism. We knew next to nothing about Dr. Locke, or her supposed intel, and the Jackals were currently AWOL. We also had both the Directorate and the Spiral on our tail. But my instinct told me that we had to go with this, that whatever Locke offered was worth the risk.
“It was obviously credible enough that Harris wanted to investigate it.” I paused, watching the holo in front of me. “And dangerous enough that he thought we’d need sims.”
“So what is plan?” Novak asked.
I hadn’t actually got that far, and it rather depended on what resources we had available to us. “Lopez, Feng: what’s the status on our equipment?”
Lopez smacked her lips. “We got a proper haul off Darkwater, ma’am. Ten bodies each, all on ice, ready for transition.”
“That, and the Firebird was already equipped for a recon and assault operation,” Feng added. “The armoury has M115 plasma battle-rifles, Widowmaker sidearms, personal plasma pistols, frag and incendiary grenades …” He shrugged. “More than enough firepower, I’d say.”
“You can never have enough firepower,” I answered back.
“We don’t have a dropship or a shuttle aboard,” Feng said excitedly, “but that’s not going to be a problem. We have something better. It’s a combat-suit, but not as we know it.”
He opened a data-slate, slid it across the desk in my direction. It showed a schematic of a particularly well-armoured suit, made bulky by an oversized thruster EVAMP—“extra-vehicular mobility pack”—on the back, and a triple-reinforced main body. It resembled a flying casket, with a small face-plate, a squat profile and chunky limbs.
“A Type V Pathfinder drop-suit …” I muttered. “Nice.”
The Pathfinder was the Alliance’s equivalent of the Ikarus suit, a mixture of one-man space craft and personal combat-armour. The principle was simple enough. The drop-suit was launched from a ship in low orbit, and deployed directly into the theatre of conflict from space. There was nothing subtle about the Pathfinder, and nothing particularly sophisticated either. The drop-trooper doctrine wasn’t a new idea—hell, it had been in service since Harris was a kid, serving with the Alliance Army in his own skin—but the Pathfinder armour was an update on the idea.
“They even have a drone intelligence package, hard-linked to each suit,” Feng said. “I think that we’re going to like the Pathfinder.”
The schematic showed the Pathfinder armour with a clutch of hand-sized spy-drones, which could be controlled directly via the armour’s neural-link. I’d used them before, and knew how useful they could be in the hands of a trained operator. But that was the catch: the Jackals had never used this type of armour, and there wouldn’t be time to train them.
“You’re supposed to be qualified to use a Pathfinder suit,” I said. “To the best of my knowledge, I’m the only one with a Pathfinder badge.”
“We used the Ikarus suits on Jiog,” Lopez said defiantly, “and that was in our own skins. I’m sure that a Pathfinder suit can’t be that different, right?”
“Wrong,” I said. “The Pathfinder armour has a direct neural-link with the simulant user. It’s a difficult mistress.”
The Jackals’ faces all turned glum at that. They were still a green outfit, and we hadn’t yet moved on to the big toys used by many Sim Ops squads. It didn’t surprise me that Phoenix Squad had been assigned this sort of advanced equipment; they were a veteran unit. Deploying a green team like the Jackals with Pathfinder armour might well be throwing away bodies.
“How many suits do we have?”
“Twenty units,” Feng said. “All fully charged.”
“What a waste …” Lopez said.
“Whining isn’t going to make me change my mind,” I said. “Not only that, Lopez, but if we’re expecting to get Dr. Locke off Kronstadt, we’ll need transport. The Pathfinder armour will get us down to the surface, but it won’t get us back.”
“There’s no way this ship can take atmospheric flight,” Captain Lestrade chipped in, putting to rest any idea that the Firebird could make a drop-off or pickup. “She’s not designed for atmo, for a start, but even if we could risk a drop, that repair job on E-deck isn’t going to survive reentry and exit.”
“So how are we going to get onto Kronstadt and back out?” Lopez asked.
“I’ll think about it,” I said. “There’s still time before we reach Mu-98.”
“The ship already has a Simulant Operations Centre,” Zero completed. “One of the benefits of hijacking an Army Intruder, I guess. I’ll get that arranged how I like it.”
I winced at Zero’s use of the word “hijack,” but did my best to hide it. “Fine. Briefing’s over, people.”
The briefing broke up, but I still had work to do. Novak wasn’t the only Jackal keeping secrets.
I needed to speak with Pariah.
We might’ve changed ships, but Pariah had simply transplanted its lair from one location to another, and the Firebird’s engineering room now stank to the Core and back, walls covered in fish guts. I shut the door behind me, and the overhead glow-globes flickered on.
Pariah was waiting for me. It blinked away the light.
“You weren’t being honest back in the briefing room, P. I’d appreciate it if you told me the truth.”
“Clarify,” the alien said, tilting its head.
“I had a dog, when I was a kid,” I said, pacing the chamber. “You know, it did that same thing.”
“Did what?”
“Cock its head at me. I used to think that meant it was listening to me. Then, one day, someone told me that it meant it was trying to look like it was listening.”
P tilted its head again. “We are not canine. We are Kindred.”
“But which is it, P? Are
you listening to me—understanding me—or just pretending to understand?”
Pariah paused. “We understand you without words, if that is what Jenkins-other means.”
I rubbed my head. Sometimes, being close to the xeno gave me a deep headache. I used to put that down to the alien’s scent, but wasn’t so sure anymore. Just as P was changing, maybe I was too.
“We’ve shared a connection,” I said. “Aboard Darkwater, I felt you in my head. But I was in your head, too.”
“Such is to be part of the Collective,” P said. “To be immersed in the Deep.”
“Exactly. When Zero told us about the Aeon, I felt something from you.”
It hadn’t been much more than a ghost of a feeling, tantalisingly close, then gone. Sometimes, I got the sense that Pariah was chasing these phantoms around its own head, searching for answers, trying to unlock forbidden knowledge. The Krell psyche was vast, unknowable. If I focused too hard, the Collective—the Deep—would drag me in …
“What is the Aeon, P?”
“We do not know,” Pariah said. “Not yet. Not fully.”
“Then tell me what you do know.”
“It is something that the Collective has known of for a long, long time. Since the awakening, things have become clearer for us, but our knowledge is not always reliable.”
“Back on Darkwater, when you assaulted the Simulant Operations Centre, you felt something. You knew that there were Shard specimens on the farm, didn’t you?”
“We felt their presence,” P said. “It was a wrongness. An absence. That is what the Machines represent to us: an absence of life.”
“Are the Aeon and the Shard connected?”
“The Collective knows, but we do not.”
“I need to know if that changes. I’ve fought the Shard before. I know what the Machines are capable of.”
“As do we,” P said. “Knowledge of the Great Conflict, of the time before the Alliance-others were even known to the Kindred, is deep knowing.”
“Do you know why the Shard were on Darkwater?”
“We do not. We wish that we did.”
“When we reach Kronstadt, you’re not going to be able to come with us,” I explained. “This is a populated Alliance world, not some backwater colony. You’re out of this one, P.”
I felt a nagging emotion ebbing from the xeno, like psychic bleed. P wasn’t happy with my decision. It felt hungry.
“Understood,” Pariah intoned nonetheless. “We will await direction.”
“Play nice with Zero. I want you to be shipboard security, our early-warning system. First sign you get that the Harbinger-infected Krell might break through the Shard Gate, I need to know. You get any weird premonitions or bad feelings, tell Zero.”
P cocked its head again. “Affirmative.”
I turned to leave, but Pariah called after me.
“What happened to Jenkins’ canine-other?” it asked.
“The dog got rabies. We had to put it down.”
CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO
WAR THINGS
My military career had taken me the length and breadth of the galaxy, but I’d never been to Kronstadt before. So I did my prep, because too often the devil of a military op is in the detail. I buckled down and accessed the Firebird’s planetary database, pulling up everything I could find on the planet and its star system. Zero would’ve been proud, and in fact, I found her digital bookmarks across the files, suggesting that she had already been here.
Although I’d never visited, I’d already heard of Kronstadt. The planet had a pretty unique reputation. It was a Type III stellar body, in orbit around a star with the rather catchy designation Mu-98. Kronstadt had an atmosphere, and during the Second Space Age it had been flagged by the Alliance as a location capable of supporting human life, without the need for extensive terraforming: throw up a couple of atmosphere grids and call it a day. The Russian Federation had been the first nation out there and had staked their claim on Kronstadt. But the Russian settlers had found Kronstadt to be nowhere near as hospitable as Science Division had expected. The system’s sun put out an unhealthy amount of radiation and did something strange to the weather patterns. The star, the debris in the atmosphere, and a dozen other local variables meant that acid rain wasn’t just an inconvenience on Kronstadt: it was a killer.
So why did the Russian Federation settle good ol’ Kronstadt? During the Krell War—back when we’d been engaged in conflict with the fishes—the system had attracted the attention of both species due to the reliability of quantum-streams in this sector. Putting it simply, you could jump ships from the Core Systems, and then send them onwards to the Quarantine Zone where the real action was taking place. That made Mu-98 an important strategic location, and something worth holding on to.
We watched the Firebird’s long-distance scopes as the ship approached the edge of the Mu-98 system. The Jackals poised at tactical stations, Pariah crouched at the main display.
“Cutting thrust,” Captain Lestrade declared. “We’re in Mu-98’s outer orbit.”
We drifted, scopes and scanners probing the surrounding space.
“Are we still running dark?” I asked.
“Yes, ma’am,” Lestrade said. “Our military transponder is inactive. We can watch, but we aren’t being watched.”
“Keep us so until I say otherwise.”
“You can thank Zero for that,” Lestrade said.
Zero gave a self-conscious smile. “I try.”
“Train our long-distance scopes on Kronstadt,” I ordered. “I want as much information on that planet as we can get at this range.”
Soon Kronstadt appeared in all its glory, filling the tactical display. The planet was mainly grey and barren, slashed with bands of dirty cloud cover. A ripple of green around the equator—which I took to be indigenous flora, forced into retreat over the decades—was losing the struggle against relentless and planet-wide industrialisation, the result of human occupation. There were dozens of cities and major population centres, some domed, others open to the harsh environment, but all sprawling, out of control. Atmosphere grids that looked like huge skeletal umbrellas covered most of the southern hemisphere, restraining the weather system, providing breathable air. Used correctly, the atmosphere grid could be a remarkable terraforming tool. But the grids here weren’t anything like those on Alpha Centauri, or the more affluent Alliance colonies. Badly maintained, collapsed in places so that the cities beneath could be seen from space, this technology had crippled the world’s ecosystem. Just looking at Kronstadt, I could almost feel the chill of the wind against my skin, the choking fumes caused by rampant industry …
“You must be real proud,” Feng said.
The comment had been directed at Novak, and the implication was obvious: who would be proud of a world like this? Novak, however, didn’t take it that way at all. He sucked his teeth and nodded.
“Of course,” he said. “This is mighty Kronstadt. Is shining jewel of Russian Federation’s space programme, yes?”
“It’s also the only jewel in the Federation’s programme,” Zero said. “The Fed doesn’t have any other extra-solar colonies.” Yeah, she had definitely been in the mainframe. She went on: “The planet itself has a rather chequered history.”
Feng grinned, looked to Novak. “Russian, huh? So everyone sits around drinking vodka and smoking cigars?”
I shook my head. “No, but everyone does run around killing the shit out of each other. Criminal gangs are in control of most of the northern arcologies, and the south isn’t much better. The Russians aren’t picky about who governs this place. The Black Spiral, and many of the criminal organisations they count as allies, have support here.”
Zero nodded knowingly. “It’s pretty lawless.”
“Is just rough round edges,” Novak suggested.
“That’s a very generous assessment of Kronstadt’s status,” I said.
Lopez looked less than impressed as the tactical display built up a picture o
f Kronstadt. “It looks awful dirty,” she muttered. “And why are there so many ships out here?”
“Is natural, for such busy port. Kronstadt is special.”
“Real special,” Lopez echoed. “Are you crying, Novak?”
Novak looked away. “No. Of course not.”
“You are most definitely crying,” Lopez said.
“Leave it. I am just … emotional, is all.”
Lopez frowned dramatically. “The Big Man is emotional? Now I’ve heard it all.”
Zero went on with her potted history of the planet. “Kronstadt was settled during the Second Space Age. It’s been occupied for almost a hundred years, and there were once plans to expand out here. But times change, and priorities shift. The Russian Federation were struggling to cope with the Directorate, back on Old Earth, and they gave up on the extra-solar colonisation programme. This place is a relic of an earlier age.”
“And what a relic,” Novak said wistfully, sounding as though Zero had just paid him the biggest compliment ever. “Was discovered by greatest Russian space explorer of all time, Rejeik Nikolai. Now, there was a real man.”
“By the sound of things,” Feng suggested, “being a ‘Russian space explorer’ puts this guy in a pretty small group …”
“What would you know, Chino?” Novak countered. “You will find not so much likings for you down there. Russians and Directorate normally do not mix.”
Feng let the slight roll off. “So I guess you and me getting along is just a fluke?”
Novak didn’t reply to that.
“The Russian connection is not the only reason Kronstadt is so special,” Zero said. “It’s also the most isolated remaining Shard Gate in the network.”
She trained the Firebird’s scope array on the stellar anomaly towards the heart of the system. Pale blue energy spilled from within the rent in time-space. The colours projected from the open Shard Gate were so intense—despite being only computer reproductions of the real image—that I even shielded my eyes. I’d seen many Shard Gates before, but this one looked weirder than usual.