by Jamie Sawyer
“Here’s hoping,” I said. “What’s the issue?”
“As you know, the ship suffered damage to the portside shield array when we left North Star,” she explained. “For whatever reason, the auto-repair module can’t fix it.”
“So you want someone to go out there?”
“Got it in one.”
“We’ll see to it.”
“Carmine out.”
Sergkov had a mild smile plastered across his face as he listened to the exchange. I toyed with the idea of sending him out there—preferably without a space suit—but decided that fate was a little too kind. Riggs lingered nearby, as though he wanted to talk to me about something, but I avoided making eye contact with him. How long had it been since we’d last had a proper conversation? Well before North Star. I nodded over at Lopez, still drying herself from immersion in the tank.
“Lopez, you’re with me. We’ve got a job to do.”
“Do you ever notice the way that Daneb—Riggs, I mean—looks at you, ma’am?”
The main portside airlock was located at the aft, and Lopez and I were anchored at the outer hatch. We wore full EVA space suits, and the cold of vacuum was already teasing at my extremities. The suits were an unflattering bright orange, standard Alliance units with glass-globe helmets and magnetic locks built into the heavy boots. We carried vac-proofed repair kits on our backs: plasma welders, rivet guns, personal anchors.
“Not especially,” I said over the suit-to-suit comms. “It’s just the same as he looks at you, or Yukio, or any other woman.”
Lopez laughed, dragging a partly assembled pressure-pump from inside the lock. She almost lost control of the heavy industrial tool but snagged it as it drifted past.
“No,” Lopez said, shaking her head. “It’s different. I think that he has a crush on you.”
I turned away. “That’s the last of the equipment. You can seal the lock.”
“Copy that,” Lopez said. She activated the hatch control, which silently slid shut, locking us outside the vessel.
I activated the comms channel to the bridge. “Captain Carmine? This is Jenkins. You copy?”
“Affirmative,” Carmine said. “Aren’t you done yet?”
“We’ve only just started. I’m reporting that we’re outside the ship. Thanks for your assistance, by the way.”
“My crew’s got more than enough on their hands.”
“And I’m not a repair tech, so I’d say we’re about even.”
“Just get that shield projector fixed.”
“I’ll comm you when we’re done.”
“Copy that.”
I activated the mag-boots on my suit and stood on the hull. Lopez did the same, and we paused for a while. It took a second or so to get used to the shift in perspective.
“Whoa,” she said. “Kind of a different world out here…”
“Or lots of them,” I said.
Space was filled with star patterns, many of which—given time—I could probably name. The idea that the Maelstrom was that familiar to me was a little perverse. I was pretty sure that I couldn’t do the same for the Core Systems or many other Alliance holdings.
“Still, it’s sort of nice,” Lopez said.
“You okay? Tell me if you’re feeling panicked.”
The suits didn’t have bio-monitors like proper armour, and I felt vulnerable not being able to read Lopez’s vitals. If she freaked out in the vac, by the time I realised it’d already be too late to do anything about it.
“It’s not that,” she said. “When I was growing up on Proxima Colony, we used to take holidays on the high-orbit stations. It was kind of a family tradition.”
We plodded across the outer hull. With no tether lines, and in zero-G, it was necessary always to have a foot in connection with the hull, acting as a magnetic anchor. Around us, the landscape of the Santa Fe’s hull was bleak and mainly featureless, broken only occasionally by antennae and sensor masts.
Lopez kept talking. “They had domes like you wouldn’t believe. Big as cities, supposed to be like the Venusian Cloud Habs.”
I felt a smile tugging at the corner of my lip. “I think that’s just hype, Lopez. I once knew someone who lived on one of those Cloud Cities. He had family there. Turns out he didn’t have such a good report on them.”
“For those that could afford them, Proximan star-domes are pleasure cities. You can get anything up there; everything has a price.” She was doing a pretty good job of keeping pace with me, despite the chatter. “Daddy would send us up there for summer breaks. Pay for me and my brothers to do whatever we wanted. The domes can be reconfigured, you see. They can be made to look like whatever location you want. My brothers would usually go for trips to Fortuna, to other pleasure planets.”
Something squirmed in my stomach for a moment, and before I could stop myself, I said, “I had a brother, once.”
“But not any more?” Lopez asked.
“Directorate. Back when they were a thing.”
“What happened?” Lopez said, a little apprehensively.
“Got wasted,” I said, bluntly. No point in dressing it up. “When they bombed Low State. He was in Diego District at the time.”
“Jesus. I’m sorry.”
I shrugged—not an easy thing inside the suit and laden with gear. “Don’t be. It is what it is.”
“You’ve never mentioned it. How does Feng make you feel?”
I sighed. I’d maybe had a change of opinion about him. “He’s not Directorate. I’ve fought them. I know them, and I know he isn’t them. And no, he doesn’t know about what happened.”
“Probably better that it stays that way.”
My suit’s HUD was superimposed with graphics that identified the damaged shield projector was ahead. Set into the hull, the projector appeared to be a mushroom-head, studded with black mirrors that would ordinarily throw out the null-shield into surrounding space. Such a simple device, but the loss of the single projector had caused a chain reaction that effectively disabled the portside null-shield.
“What did you pick?” I asked. “The star-dome simulations, I mean.”
“I always picked war-stories.”
I raised an eyebrow. “Really? That doesn’t sound like you.”
“That’s what Daddy used to say. He got so angry that I wouldn’t do one of the proper simulations that I eventually started lying. I’d tell him that I’d been to Fortuna with my brothers.” I could hear the smile in her voice, as she added, “In the end, Josef and Patrico ratted me out. Daddy stopped me from using the domes. Last time I saw either of my brothers was on one of those high-orbit stations. Josef gave me that gun. Said it was for personal protection.”
“Josef’s your brother, I take it?”
“Older brother. I was the middle child.”
“What did your family think about you joining Sim Ops?”
“I’d already taken the aptitude test, and I knew that I could handle the implants. Daddy wasn’t very pleased.”
“I’ll fucking bet.”
“I told him why I took the posting.”
“Why was that?”
Lopez sighed like she maybe didn’t want to tell me, but then obviously decided that she would after all. “I told him that this was the safest way to do my military service. That this way, I wouldn’t be in any actual danger.”
I laughed. “That hasn’t really worked out so well.”
“I know.”
“You want to do the honours and open the plate? You’ve got the pressure-pump.”
“Sure,” Lopez said.
She leaned forward, over the nearest array. Although the vac-suit’s HUD wasn’t as advanced as that of a combat-suit, it was good enough to show what needed to be done. Lopez’s fingers caught at the edge of the panel, and she deployed the pressure-pump around the nearest bolt.
“Ready when you are,” she said.
“Do it.”
The first bolt gave way with a puff of escaping atmosphere—
Then, suddenly, the world turned to white and noise.
I was thrown off the hull of the Santa Fe.
A lance of pain pierced through my left arm, the limb closest to the ruptured panel. The suit, being engineer-rather than combat-issue, took a second to track the damage and begin sealing the breach. That was enough time for my ears to prickle with escaping pressure—
Not again.
I spiralled across the hull. Arms outstretched, gloved fingers grabbing uselessly for whatever handhold I could grasp.
Lopez’s pretty brunette head—her features filled with shock, a frozen sheen of blood over her lips—floated past me.
Her head, I realised with grim certainty, was no longer attached to her body.
To confirm that point, Lopez’s orange-clad frame span by too. Spread-eagled, it bounced against the hull—thrown by the force of the explosion—and then out into space.
“Lopez!” I shouted, on automatic, cursing myself that she was already dead.
I slammed into a hull panel. Caught a safety handle. Pain bloomed across my shoulder blade.
The cause of the explosion suddenly became clear. There had been a pressure build-up behind the shield array, and removing the single bolt had allowed it to escape. Such a simple thing. The array was erratically firing now, sending a barely visible network of light across the ship’s flank.
“Jenkins!” a voice roared in my ear, piped in through my comms bead. “Jenkins! What the hell is happening out there?”
The voice had been repeating variations on that monologue for a few seconds now. I swallowed blood that had built up at the back of my throat—pretty sure that something new was busted inside my chest—and answered.
“I’m here,” I said. “I’m still here.”
“What’s happening?” It was Carmine, her tone urgent and insistent. A useful anchor on which I could focus, to stop me from giving in to the pain. “The power grid is fluctuating like crazy.”
I grappled with the safety handle. Steadied myself. The world still felt like it was spinning, and I wished for a dose of anti-vertigo drugs from a proper medi-suite, but my stomach and head were settling. That was a whole lot better than being sick in my space suit.
“Something’s blown out here,” I answered. “The shield’s pressure seal is gone. That was why it wasn’t working.”
“Whatever the damned problem is, you’ve got to fix it!”
“No can do,” I said, drolly. “Lopez is gone.”
The array crackled silently, arcing energy discharge. Meanwhile, my suit reported an unpatchable leak from the damaged arm. Unless I got inside on the double, I’d be as dead as Lopez. Her orange body was a barely visible splash of colour against the darkness of space now, vanishing quickly.
“I—I can’t move my arm,” I said.
There was noise behind Carmine’s voice. The bridge was getting busy, crew becoming excitable. How bad was this energy overload? The projector showed no prospect of reducing power discharge.
“Stay with me!” Carmine said. “I’m sending help.”
“I—I need to…” I started.
A shadow appeared on the outer hull. Moving fast.
Scuttling.
At first I thought that I had imagined it. Space could do that to even the most disciplined mind, and mine was hardly that. But as the shadow came closer, I realised exactly what it was.
The Krell pariah-form used any available anchorage point on the hull to move. It had no mag-locks, and it wasn’t until the thing was virtually on top of me that I actually noticed it was wearing armour. Its bio-suit encased almost every aspect of its body—so perfectly in tune with the XT’s musculature that it looked to be an extension. The creature lurched past, barely turning in my direction, face covered by another organic apparatus.
By the time it had reached the damaged projector, and the arcing blue light had diminished, I was already being dragged into the black. The xeno turned to watch as I finally gave in to the pain, my cold fingers dragging against the hull as I fought for purchase.
OXYGEN LEVELS CRITICAL, the HUD said, in bold, flashing text.
I gasped a final breath, and then darkness came.
“Goddamn it, Sergkov! What the hell was that?”
I conducted an emergency purge on the simulator-tank and opened the canopy. Then I stepped out, still hooked to my tank, before the hood was fully up.
Sergkov stood at the hatch to the SOC, leaning against the bulkhead. His nonchalance was obviously feigned, the smile on his face meant for me.
“What?” he asked, in his droll Slavic accent. “The Pariah offered to help.”
I strode purposefully across the deck. I jabbed a finger—still wet with amniotic—into Sergkov’s smug face.
“I told you to keep your pet on a lead. That does not mean allowing it free rein of the starship!”
“And I told you that I am mission commander,” Sergkov said. “Which means that you have no authority to countermand my orders. I wanted a field test for the Pariah.”
Lopez stirred beside me. She’d already dismounted her tank, and was wrapped in an aluminium sheet, shivering and twitching like an addict recovering from cold turkey. She had a particularly vicious injury to her neck: a deep, red laceration, in exactly the same place as her simulant. Of course, that body was currently drifting somewhere in deep-space. Lopez’s eyes were unfocused and jittery.
“That hurt…” she muttered. “A lot.”
“At least you’ve got another transition under your belt,” Feng said.
I shook with anger. “And who’s guarding the Pariah?”
“Major Sergkov said to let it out,” Feng said.
Feng and Novak were standing around the SOC monitor station, watching what was happening outside the ship via the external cameras. The imagery was grainy and mostly monochrome—interrupted by chain lightning that still danced around the hull—but a shadow was just visible against the bright backdrop.
“Incredible,” Feng said. He was almost hypnotised by the vid-feed. “Way that thing moves out there. No mag-locks, no survival gear.”
“Is fucking fish head…” Novak added. Groaned as he repositioned his leg to get a better view of the monitor.
Sergkov smiled some more. “I could’ve sent Privates Novak or Feng into the tanks,” he said, “but the Pariah seemed more appropriate, given the urgency of the situation.”
“That thing is Krell, Sergkov,” I argued.
Sergkov shrugged. “So? The alternative was to wait for you and Private Lopez to recover.” He nodded down at Lopez’s snivelling form. “With all due respect, I don’t think that Private Lopez is going to be fit to make another transition for a while.”
“I’m fine,” she managed. She tried to get to her feet, but the strain of that simple action showed on her face.
“You don’t look that way,” Sergkov said. “Had we waited, the shield battery might have become fully depleted.”
The Pariah was impervious, or at least resilient, to the energy discharge. From this angle, it looked like the XT was right in the middle of the miniature lightning storm—a fat spider in the heart of a web of light.
“It’s doing it…” Feng said, watching the readings on the SOC console. “Fucker is actually shutting the breach down.”
“And it knows which relay to shut down how?” I asked.
“Because I told it so,” Sergkov said. “The relay schematic isn’t complicated, and—”
“And you thought that telling the Krell how to fix, or sabotage, the Sante Fe was a good idea?”
Sergkov’s expression glassed over just a little. “We’re all on the same side now.”
“Tell that to the Hannover,” Novak said without humour.
The alarm that had been sounding since I’d decanted from the tank abruptly silenced. At the same time, the Pariah deactivated the relay. The vid-feed showed no motion save for the xeno’s twitching form, never quite at ease.
Sergkov stooped
over the console and activated a communication channel. Speaking into the mike, he said, “Santa Fe to Pariah. The relay is safe. You can come inside now.”
“We are moving,” came the machine-voiced response.
“Santa Fe out,” Sergkov said.
I shook my head in disbelief. “Now it has its own communicator as well?”
“That wasn’t my doing,” Sergkov said. “You can thank Dr. Skinner for that.”
“I would, but he’s dead.”
Sergkov rolled his bottom lip. “It repaired the shield projector. That could’ve been a major hindrance to this operation, and now it’s fixed.”
“That’s not my point!” I started.
“Then what is? The Krell War is over, Lieutenant. Things have changed.”
“So people keep telling me,” I said, sighing with annoyance and … something else?
I hated to admit it, but was Major Sergkov right? I was angry with myself. I didn’t want to understand why or how the Pariah had just helped us, because I was part of the old world.
Sergkov straightened his uniform. “As you were, troopers.”
I watched in silence as he left the SOC.
“Major is one arrogant prick,” Feng said, eyes still on the monitors, the Pariah now clambering back into the airlock and aboard the ship.
I looked around the SOC. “Where’s Corporal Riggs?”
Novak slung a thumb towards the hatch. “Down in shuttle bay. Said wanted to see you.”
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
THE SHUTTLE
Despite the air-scrubbers working at maximum power, the ship’s corridors had started to develop an unpleasant odour. Maybe it was mental rather than olfactory, a by-product of my natural antipathy towards the Krell, but the whole ship smelled like fish. That was all I could think as I wandered into the shuttle bay.
“Hello?” I called.
My voice echoed around the hold, bounced off the metal walls. It was dark, the rectangle of light behind me cutting a shape across the polished deck. The Warhawk shuttle sat alone on the apron, ready for launch. Behind me, the hatch that led back into the Santa Fe hummed shut.
Scratch the dark. Place was lit. The Warhawk’s portside access hatch was open, spilling a soft glow that barely illuminated the hangar.