Exodus

by Jamie Sawyer

  Another speaker: “Honoured Leader, we must move. Our ship has been breached …”

  The blast door to Flight-bay One stood in front of me.

  “Then scramble a response—”

  “They have already reached the flight-deck—”

  I laughed at that. There’s only one of me, I thought.

  Then Tang again: “Someone help me!”

  I slipped my last two demo-charges from my pack. Then thought-commanded the activation sequences and magged one into place on the doors.

  “What’s the other charge for?” Zero asked.

  “You’ll see. I’m going in.”

  CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE

  WARGAMES

  Flight-bay One’s hatch blew in.

  I stormed onto the deck. Two dropships were nestled in the docking clamps, their noses pointing to the sealed bay doors. Both ships had rear ramps open and looked as though they had been in the process of unloading their cargo. A dozen or so Directorate Shadows in Ikarus suits, carrying heavy rifles like those they had used on Kronstadt, were deploying from the dropships.

  Commander Kwan stood at the foot of the ramp. An aide at one elbow and a commando at the other. They seemed to be hustling him, aware of an urgency that he obviously could not sense. I was pleased to see that he hadn’t walked away from Kronstadt unscathed. On the contrary, one side of his exo-suit was damaged, the leg trailing behind him awkwardly.

  Kwan wasn’t the only one to have been scarred by Kronstadt. Tang stumbled out of the same dropship, clutching at the remains of her armour. Her surgical mask hung at her neck, and the skin of her exposed face smoked from exposure to the planet’s rain. The many-armed surgical harness swayed around her.

  The Directorate Shadows opened fire on me as I rolled into the bay. There was much yelling and confusion, which was fine by me. I scattered several Shadows with another frag grenade from my rifle.

  “Desist!” Kwan yelled, firing his ceremonial pistol. Rounds sliced the air. “I command that you surrender yourself—”

  “Shut up, Kwan. This is getting old. I’m giving the orders now.”

  The Directorate fell back into the open bays of their dropships. Kwan and Tang into one, most of the Shadows into another. My null-shield flaring bright, and taking more fire than I really should’ve been, I tossed an incendiary grenade into the cabin of the second ship. The resulting explosion was contained but lethal, shredding the armoured bodies with simple efficiency.

  “Stop her!” screamed Tang, banshee-like. She and Kwan were at the mouth of the other dropship.

  ARMOUR BREACH, my suit said.

  Shit. An AP round had penetrated the armour at my thigh. I stumbled, took a volley from a fire team positioned behind some cargo crates at the edge of the chamber. More Shadows were breaching the bay now. Medical warnings danced across my HUD. I also saw another alert there: CONNECTION LOST. I’d lost my link back to the Firebird, perhaps as a result of damage to my armour, or some disturbance in surrounding space.

  The world narrowed to a single point. To that chamber, to the hostiles that surrounded me. And to Kwan, cowering in the back of the dropship …

  I focused on him. “I go, I’m taking you all out with me.”

  Kwan paused, stopped firing his pistol. His eyes widened with a mixture of anger and fear. He held up a hand, and the remaining Shadows ceased fire too.

  I’d fixed the remaining demo-charge to the chest-plate of my armour, and now I tapped it. The display flashed to indicate that it was armed.

  “Don’t you people learn anything? I’m disposable. Whatever happens, I’m not coming back from this.”

  Something rumbled in the deck, and despite the Directorate troopers’ discipline, several faltered.

  “If I die, this charge goes off,” I continued. “It’s keyed to my vital signs.”

  The response was not what I expected.

  “We’re not your enemy,” Tang said. She wrung her hands, her ruined face contorted in pain.

  I laughed. “You sure look like it. You killed Captain Carmine.”

  “That was a necessity,” said Kwan. His gun-arm was lowered, but he wasn’t relaxed. If his fear was alcoholic, I could’ve got drunk on the terror that dwelt in his dark beady eyes.

  “And so you come here for vengeance?” Tang asked, the accusation plain in her voice. “The Krell are everywhere! What does the loss of one captain matter to this war?”

  “We demand access to the Aeon!” Kwan yelled.

  “You don’t even know what the Aeon is,” I said. “And, now, you never will.”

  I took a step forward. I was barely five paces from Kwan, and my bones ached to reach over and tear him apart. Rifles clattered around me, brought to bear again. Tang shirked back into the dropship, almost falling over herself in an effort to get away from me.

  “Deactivate my trooper,” I ordered. “He’s one of mine, not yours.”

  “The clone is an asset of the Shadow Bureau,” Kwan said self-assuredly. “He is property of the Asiatic Directorate, and nothing—”

  “He has a name,” I said. “Feng. I want him back. Deactivate him, or I blow a hole in this ship, and you all die.”

  Kwan shook his head. “Never. The Directorate does not barter with hostile agencies!”

  “This isn’t bartering. I’m making a demand. Deactivate him.”

  The deck quaked again. No telling exactly why that was. Maybe the ship was moving off, trying to make safe distance from Kronstadt. But the reaction of those around me—no doubt equipped with in-head comms systems, which would allow them to make direct contact with the Retribution’s bridge—told a very different story. The Directorate were spooked.

  They come.

  Pariah forced its way into my head, whether I wanted it there or not. The communication was loaded with urgency and menace.

  “Deactivate Feng,” I said. “I’m not going to ask again.”

  Tang broke first. She held out a conciliatory hand, the fingertips of her glove burnt, exposing charred flesh beneath.

  “Assure our safety,” she said, “and we can discuss the process.”

  That obviously struck Kwan as a surprise. He glared sidelong at Tang.

  “Stand down, Surgeon-Major! These people cannot be reasoned with!” he implored. “They are animals!”

  “The agent can be deactivated by a microburst transmission,” Tang said, swallowing away her pride. “I can provide the access code, if you can assure our safe retreat from the Mu-98 system—”

  Kwan’s pistol was against the side of Tang’s head faster than I registered.

  “There will be no retreat,” he shouted, spittle flying from his lips, “and there will be no surrender!”

  He fired.

  Tang’s head exploded. The insides of her skull plastered the deck, and her surgical harness immediately lost rigidity. Her body slumped sideways.

  Kwan snapped his pistol round. Aimed at me.

  The hangar shuddered, and something inside the Retribution detonated. Had my rampage triggered a chain reaction? Maybe, but this felt more urgent, more dangerous. The Retribution had been hit by something, and she was going down. Troopers began to retreat around me, boots pounding as the Shadows’ morale broke.

  “Where are you going?” Kwan screamed at his men. “Any soldier leaving this ship will face the full penalty for desertion!”

  Kwan fired at the closest Shadow, felling him with a shot in the back. Another scrambled past the corpse.

  I knocked Kwan’s pistol aside with the back of my armoured hand. Grabbed the torso plate of his armour and lifted him off his feet.

  “Deactivate Feng! Now!”

  “They will consume us all,” Kwan raved. “Your Alliance does not have the strength to stand against them. Only the Greater Asiatic Directorate, united behind me—Supreme Leader Kwan—is capable of weathering this storm!”

  Pariah was trying to make contact with me again. I could feel the alien’s mind probing mine, transmitting a fre
sh wave of emotion. This was my only method of contact with the Firebird, but it was frustratingly imprecise. All I knew was that P was trying to tell me something.

  “The agent is mine!” Kwan yelled. “The Aeon is mine!”

  The deck listed. The dropship behind Kwan broke free of its docking clamp, the squeal of metal on metal filling the air as it slid sideways.

  The rage spilled out of me, and I shook Kwan’s body with bone-breaking force. He barely seemed to feel the assault. His face had taken on a manic expression, as though he knew this was over, and rather than escape it, he had chosen to embrace it.

  “There’s nothing that you can do to save—” Kwan started.

  But before he could finish the sentence, the Retribution exploded. Deep within the hull, her energy core destabilised, and the entire warship came apart.

  Kwan, Tang, and the remainder of the Directorate task force were gone.

  And me?

  I made extraction.

  The simulation collapsed. My comfortable, warm simulator-tank waited for me back on the Firebird. I snapped open my eyes.

  “Extraction confirmed,” Zero said. “Neural-link severed.”

  But whatever had just happened to the Furious Retribution was also threatening the Firebird. This was a hot extraction. The simulator had already started to drain, with the purge command initiated. I sagged in the cradle of cables and quickly unplugged myself. The Firebird’s gravity envelope shifted, suggesting that we were moving under thrust.

  “Jenkins-other must get out of the tank,” Pariah insisted. “There is no time.”

  “What the fuck just happened?” I asked. “Who wasted the Furious Retribution?” Then, as my eyes focused, and I readjusted to my own skin, “What’s Feng’s status?”

  I got my answer from the adjoining infirmary.

  “Settle down, Feng!” Lopez screamed. “I’m trying to help you!”

  He was braced on a medical cot, strapped at the waist, and he thrashed his arms and legs around, smashing everything within reach. That included Lopez. I caught a glimpse of his face, of the pained expression in his eyes. He was fighting it, trying to break the neural-implant’s control.

  “For fuck’s sake!” Lopez shouted again, dodging a flailing arm. “A little help here, people!”

  “His pulse rate is dangerously elevated,” Zero said. “I … I can’t do anything else to stop it!”

  “Then I’ll have to do it myself.”

  Lopez punched Feng. Just one blow, but hard, to the face. He immediately went rigid, still, on the bed.

  “What did you just do?” Zero called.

  “I saved his life,” Lopez said. She rubbed her hand, groaning to herself. “Feng can thank me later.”

  P stooped in front of my simulator, passing me a pair of fatigues, handling them between pinched claws like it didn’t really know what the garments were for.

  “They come,” it repeated.

  The ship’s PA system chimed. A siren blared across the deck.

  “Bridge, now!” Novak said over the comm.

  “What happened to the Retribution?” I asked again.

  P looked at me, its alien features twitching, and the mental connection I’d experienced aboard the Directorate ship became crystal clear.

  “Oh, shit,” I whispered.

  The wreckage of the Furious Retribution hung in space like a cloud, the trajectory of every last piece of her shattered hull plotted by the Firebird’s AI. Many of the evacuation-pods had been launched and were either making progress towards Kronstadt’s moons or seeking refuge among the sparse asteroid belt. Very few of them were going to make it to safety.

  “Well, that’s the Directorate out of the game, at least,” Zero managed. Despite her words, Zero didn’t sound in the slightest bit pleased with that outcome. She looked shell-shocked, as though she couldn’t process what was happening.

  The Mu-98 system had changed beyond comprehension. The Krell—or, more specifically, those fishes infected with the Harbinger virus—had taken it as their own. Their vast fleet polluted the sector, already staking claim to the moons and the asteroid fields. It even looked as though they were building things in the more distant recesses of the system. Dark structures of unknown design were springing up on the Firebird’s tactical scanner.

  “How …” I started, my voice catching in my throat, “how has this happened so fast?”

  P cocked its head at me. “There is no answer for that,” the alien replied.

  Kronstadt faced the worst of it. The planet’s orbital space was thick with the invading war-fleet, the objective of a dozen ark-ships.

  “The Alliance fleet is finished,” Lestrade said from his post at the captain’s console. “There’s nothing that we can do to help.”

  “It’s Jiog, all over again …” I whispered.

  Most of the Naval fleet was gone, and the broken hulls of dreadnoughts and heavy cruisers lingered on the scanner. Emergency broadcasts and mayday transmissions bubbled from the communications console, but the cries for help were going unanswered. Those Alliance vessels that had survived the initial attack were in retreat.

  Novak was dumbstruck. He watched on in silence, both hands clutched at the armrests of his chair. To add insult to injury, the Harbinger-infected Krell seemed to be focusing their efforts on the population centres on Kronstadt’s surface. At this distance, titanic warships were rendered like flies on the Firebird’s scanner, but they were massing around Svoboda, and the other major ports and cities of Kronstadt. Already, the planet’s surface was blackened, almost withered. Whatever ecosystem remained on Kronstadt was collapsing, soured by the influx of Krell.

  “Feng’s out,” Zero said, reading the latest results from medical via a console on the bridge. “Looks like he’s dropped into some sort of deep coma. Maybe it’s as a result of the activation.” She shrugged, all out of ideas. “It’s above my head, Jenk.”

  Lopez trailed behind, still rubbing her hand from punching Feng. Almost a full house now, to witness the death of a planet.

  “What are they even doing down there?” Lopez asked. “What do the Krell want with Kronstadt?”

  “They are killing it,” Novak eventually said. “They are killing the planet.”

  “That is correct,” P said. “The atmosphere is being contaminated. The world is becoming uninhabitable, for both species.”

  “That’s not the worst of it,” Captain Lestrade said.

  “Can it get worse any worse?” Lopez asked.

  “It already has,” P answered.

  The Iron Knight. Warlord’s ship was right there, on the scanner, moving under hard thrust.

  “It was the Knight that took out the Retribution,” Zero explained. “We tracked her arrival through the Shard Gate. She came in with the Krell.”

  “The Knight is a damned cargo ship,” I said. “How did she take out the Retribution?”

  “She’s not alone,” Captain Lestrade answered.

  Individually, the starships weren’t much—more transport ships, a couple of light cruisers, some older-pattern military vessels—but combined, it was a different story. Strength in numbers made the insurgent convoy a significant threat. This was what the Spiral had been massing since the start of their activities: a fleet. Manned by fanatics, equipped with the spoils of their campaign. That included advanced military tech—weapons that they had put to good use in their surprise attack on the Furious Retribution—and I knew that we could not underestimate the Spiral any longer. They’d hit the Retribution hard, with munitions that could breach her shielding.

  “Pull us out,” I said definitively. “Maximum thrust.”

  “We’re already moving out-system,” said Captain Lestrade. “But there are bogies everywhere.”

  It was testament to the captain’s piloting abilities that we hadn’t already been hit. The ragged column of infected Krell invaders had virtually no logic to their deployment, making their flight path difficult to predict and outmanoeuvre.


  “Retain stealth,” I added.

  “Aye, ma’am.”

  “Can we make for Q-space?” Lopez asked.

  “That’s the plan,” Lestrade explained. “We’ll reach the nearest quantum-jump point in T minus two minutes …”

  There was no point in suggesting that we try to get more out of the engines, because I knew that Captain Lestrade would be doing all he could to get us out of this mess as quickly as possible.

  “What’s our destination?” Zero asked. “We should know where we’re heading.”

  “Anywhere but here will do me right now,” Lopez said.

  “We’ll jump to Indra-16,” Lestrade said. “We can regroup from there, and—”

  A chime sounded across the bridge.

  “We’re being hailed,” Captain Lestrade said. He looked up, exhaustion showing on his features. “The Iron Knight has found us.” He looked at me with grim realisation. “What are your orders?”

  Running stealth meant nothing to the Black Spiral. It was pointless to question how they had found us. Getting out of this situation alive: that was what mattered now.

  “Open a channel,” I said. “Let me speak with them, but keep us moving. I want safe clearance for Q-jump as soon as we can.”

  Warlord’s face filled the tactical display. He wore his exo-suit, a respirator at his mouth, a hood pulled up over his head, making his features difficult to see.

  “This is the UAS Firebird,” I said as bravely as I could. “We’re retreating from this system—”

  “Lieutenant Jenkins,” Warlord said. Voice a wet rasp, scything through me. The sound had a similar effect on the Jackals. Even P bristled, grew tense in expectation of violence. “You made it out of Thane system, then?”

  No thanks to Riggs, I wanted to say. Instead, I replied, “I can promise you that we will respond in kind to any act of aggression.” I was painfully aware of just how hollow a threat that really was.

  Warlord knew it too. “That’s an Intruder-class starship. Long-range recon and deep-drop. It has a limited offensive weapons package. It won’t be enough.”