by Jamie Sawyer
“It’s a star-map,” Feng exclaimed. “A fucking star-map!”
“It’s the Gyre,” I said, directing my words to the navigator. Several stars had been snuffed out though, and the map showed that detail. “Your home?”
“One time … Not this time … Long ago.” It gesticulated at the living map. “Then others came from outer dark.”
Sergkov looked up abruptly. “The Shard?” he asked.
“Shard,” the navigator repeated. “Inside Gyre. Long ago.”
Carmine had described the Gyre as a failed Shard Gate. I’d heard that sort of story before, as explanations of other bizarre features of the Maelstrom. Perhaps, in this instance, there was some truth in the description.
The navigator went on. “Rot spreads. Red Fin carries rot. Worlds die. Collective must kill stars.”
It was impossible to tell whether the Krell was talking of current, historic, or recent events. What did time mean to a species that did not record it, that did not understand the importance of individuality? I was witness to a collective intelligence that had occupied the Maelstrom in antiquity, had fought a war against the Machines long before humanity had even existed.
“You destroyed your own stars?” I asked.
“We had … have… no choice. Rot infects … everything.”
I saw things in my head. Not really images, but bursts of emotion, of feelings, wrapped in an alienness that was very nearly impenetrable. Seabeds of kelp on fire. Meteors raining from the sky, leaving fiery trails of destruction in their wake. Entire jungles burning, burning. Oceans running dry. And everywhere the silver-eyed ones. The hungry ones, those who were not of the Collective. A weapon of such power that it pained the Kindred to use it. I screamed, put my hands to my head. Held them there.
“Keira!” Riggs shouted. He moved beside me. “What’s happening to you?”
The sensation was painful, and I suspected that it was even more so in a real skin. It took a while for my head to clear, for my synapses to filter the alien contact. When they did, I was weak and debilitated.
“I don’t want to feel that again,” I said. “Some things can’t be unseen.”
I glanced around at the chamber. The Krell watched on. Their anticipation was blood-deep, perhaps pheromonal or even more complicated. Psychic energy seemed to prickle around them, especially the older specimens, and the navigator itself. Everything here was, to one degree or another, alive. The repercussions of a virus or plague or whatever this thing was—actually infecting the Krell worlds? I didn’t like it one bit.
I sensed how the virus might work. Trickling through the Collective, through the many drones. Infecting the Krell at every level. Taking the navigators and leader-forms, working its way into the spawn, the bio-ships, the arks…
I turned to Sergkov. “This is above my pay grade,” I said.
“I have the feeling that it’s above even mine,” he answered.
“We steer the ship that sails stars,” the navigator said. “We must cull those that fall from the Kindred mind.”
The star-map shifted. Showing not only the Gyre, but also the huge tranche of space that was the Maelstrom. In a reflection of what we had just seen, light winked out across the periphery of the map, leaving black stains. With each that fizzled out, the Krell’s psychic hurt accumulated. The experience was almost too much for me to bear. I felt like I was approaching neural overload, that soon the simulant would just give up and the simulation would collapse.
“Why is this happening? Where did this rot come from?” I probed.
“Collective does not know,” the navigator said. “Infected worlds cannot speak.”
I saw again flashes of the burning planets that this ark-ship—that a dozen other ark-ships just like it—had put to the flame. As with severing an infected limb, the Krell knew that they had to do it, even if every lance-strike hurt them. The shoal was weaker than ever before. The virus had claimed its dues, and was spreading at an alarming rate.
“What do you want from us?” I said, eager to make this stop.
Two venerable Krell quad-forms lumbered into the middle of the chamber. Between them, they carried my combat-suit. It was battered, worn, and punctured in multiple locations, but to my surprise it was still functional. Activation lights set into the helmet collar flashed intermittently. The quads dropped the suit in the pool in front of me, then withdrew, their weapon-limbs trained on me and the Jackals at all times.
The navigator snarled, head lifted into the air.
“We want help from others who are not us. We want help to remove the rot.”
This was massive, bigger than anything I’d faced before. A situation so serious that the Krell couldn’t deal with it themselves, that they required our help to solve it.
“We don’t owe them,” Riggs said. “Think of everything they’ve done. Think of what they’ve done to you.”
I’d seen it all. I’d lived, and died, through the war…
“This isn’t about me,” I said back to him. “This isn’t about us.”
Lopez sighed. “Not any more, it isn’t.”
“We need to find the cure,” the navigator said. “We need to find from where the … contagion… comes. We know where it began: the worlds and ships that first … developed… it.”
“That has to be a start,” Lopez said. “Maybe Science Division: they can work on this information or something.”
Sergkov was silent beside me. He added nothing to the discussion: just as on Daktar, this was my call. I only hoped that, this time, I would make the right one.
“We will help you,” I decided. “As best we can.”
The navigator’s body appeared to relax. More gas emitted from its gills and mouth. Jesus, the thing stunk.
“We will need our ship,” I said. “We will need to leave here, to travel back to our space.”
The navigator nodded. “In craft that sails stars.”
“I want my crew back too,” I said. Standing now, on shaking legs. My determination was waxing, the repercussions of what we had just been told becoming clearer. “Including him,” I said, nodding at Pariah. “Her. Whatever you want to call it.”
“Individuality is a curse,” the navigator said through Pariah. “Those not of us will see this one day.”
“We’re fine as we are,” I said. “We must leave here.”
The navigator raised a claw. Krell approached Pariah, and relaxed the restraints. Bio-fluid dripped from open wounds across the xeno’s body, as they began to unplug it from the living machine. Pariah stood alone now, flexing damaged limbs. Testing muscles, inspecting its injured body. It was still connected to the wall by some cables, suggesting that the navigator had not yet finished communicating.
The Jackals were standing too now. Unlocking legs, grateful to no longer be kneeling in the filthy pool. They were a more than a sorry sight: filthy faces, ripped and torn uniforms. Very far from the ideal of an Army operator.
“Not others are pariahs,” the navigator said. “All.”
“This is too big for us,” Sergkov said. “I meant what I said to you: about telling you everything.”
I frowned. “Such as?”
“I haven’t been completely honest with you about the Hannover’s mission,” he started. “Once we get back to the Fe, we can discuss it.”
Sergkov held the black box out in front of him. He stared at it—
I didn’t get the chance to ask how he had hidden the drive from the Krell, because Sergkov was suddenly gone.
The black box bounced across the algae-slicked floor. Came to a stop just in front of me.
It happened too fast for even my sim-senses to track, but Sergkov was two metres off the deck and being held in a pair of the navigator-form’s talons: locked round his neck. His body was rigid, legs flapping. Gasping for breath. Own hands forming into claws, reaching desperately for the air.
“You’re killing him!” Lopez said ineffectually.
Pariah snapped back against
the wall. The Krell surrounded it, plugging the thing back in.
The navigator stirred angrily. The whole chamber did the same.
“Others must call off attack,” it said through Pariah again.
“What attack?” I said, shaking my head. “We only have one ship. Only one thing that sails stars!”
The navigator’s communication tendrils waved furiously. Sergkov’s face had turned a horrible, mortal shade of purple: verging on blue now. Legs thrashing.
“Others that sail stars come,” the navigator said. “Tell others to leave.”
Pariah’s guardians closed, and it threw them off. It grabbed at the connecting cables, readying to sever the connection between it and the navigator.
“Call off others’ attack!” the navigator said again.
The organic wall-screen illuminated with glowing coral. The Gyre provided a backdrop, and a dozen flickering lights in the foreground.
“Incoming ships,” Feng said. “Is that what you’re trying to tell us?”
“Just our luck, huh?” Novak said. His shoulders tensed as he stood, took in the Krell around him. “So, we go down fighting after all.”
“No one is fighting!” I yelled. “Those ships are not ours!”
Faster flashes of light broke away from the attackers.
The chamber shook. A muted explosion sounded from inside the ark-ship, sending droplets of water like rainfall all around us. The pressure dropped: a chamber had been breached somewhere. The Krell broke into agitated rustling, like a million angry locusts.
“Use your shields,” I said to the Krell. “Use them! It’s not us! We have only one thing that sails stars—”
The navigator raised Sergkov higher, and held him there…
Then snapped his neck. The major’s body gave one final twitch, then relaxed.
Lopez’s breathing accelerated. “No! It’s not us! It wasn’t him!”
I felt a wave of revulsion from the alien—directed at me, directed at my squad.
“Lopez!” I shouted. “Gun!”
I doubt that Lopez knew what I was about to do, but she didn’t question the order. Passed the pistol to me: grip down. She was learning, at least.
“Novak, get ready to use that blade.”
“With pleasure,” Novak said, producing his Adrianna-knife from a holster tucked into his waistband. “Is good way to die, yes?”
The navigator threw Sergkov aside, and let out a wail of anger and pain. The Krell closed in, surrounding the Jackals.
“Stay sharp,” I ordered. Raised the gun to my chin. “Hold tight until I get back.”
I pulled the trigger.
CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX
LIGHTING THE FIRE
It took me a moment to recover from the sudden violence of the extraction—the ache in my head was excruciating, and my mind was having a hard time accepting that I hadn’t just blown my own brains out, but that I was back in my simulator, on the Santa Fe.
The Simulant Operations Centre was in a state of utter disarray: medical equipment strewn across the floor, benches overturned, monitors smashed. The Krell had obviously been through here, searching for survivors, and it was a minor miracle that my simulator-tank was still functional. That stood stalwart, barring some damage to the outer canopy.
No time. Got to act now.
“Zero!” I barked. I still had the respirator over my mouth, and I could feel the pressure of the comms bead in my ear. “Are you out there?”
For a fraught second, my stomach went into turmoil as I scanned the SOC. There was no blood, but that didn’t mean much. The idea that the little girl I’d rescued from Mau Tanis had met her end out here, in the dark: it gripped me and wouldn’t let go.
Just as panic began to set in, I heard her voice over the comm.
“I’m here,” Zero said. She appeared from behind an upturned examination table, somewhere in the adjoining infirmary. Speaking into her headset, she said, “You’re back!”
“Damn straight. Are you okay?”
“I’m not hurt. I—I hid. The Krell came aboard the ship. I’ve managed to get the external security cameras working. I can see them outside.”
“Where’s Carmine? Is anyone else alive?”
“She’s on the bridge,” Zero said, nodding. “The Navy crew—what’s left of them—barricaded themselves in.” She swallowed. “They were searching for something. They came aboard, then backed off again.”
Maybe that explained why the Krell had missed Zero, why the Fe’s crew were still alive. Perhaps they had intended to make contact, had been searching for the Pariah. I couldn’t test that theory right now, not while the Jackals were still stranded aboard the ark-ship.
“We’ve spoken over the closed comm-net,” Zero explained, “but I thought that the Krell might detect the transmissions. The crew took out a fair few xenos, from what Yukio told me. We’ve remotely booted the ship’s engine, but the Fe’s taken a lot of damage.”
“Can she fly?”
“I think so.”
That was unexpected, given what I’d seen of her condition. Maybe Gaia was smiling on us after all. “Good job, Zero.”
She pursed her lips, uncomfortable with the praise despite the circumstances. “I was scared, ma’am. Real scared. They searched everywhere. I’ve only just made it out of the airshafts.” Pressed down her uniform again, as though any of that actually mattered given how deep in the shit we were. “Where are the others? Have you seen Feng?”
“He’s aboard the ark,” I said. “The Jackals are alive, but I don’t know for how long. That ship we saw—the Azrael—was infected with some sort of virus. The Krell can’t engineer a cure for it. They want our help.” I punched a fist against the interior of the simulator-tank, fighting a sense of resignation that threatened to claim me. “Or at least, they wanted it. One of their navigators communicated through Pariah.”
Zero was shaking. I knew that the revelation would have this effect on her. She said nothing, only watched me with red-rimmed eyes.
“I thought that this was going to be tough for you to deal with,” I said, speaking fast, “but we can talk about that later. The others are still being held prisoner aboard the ship.”
Who was I really kidding? Riggs was still aboard the ark-ship. I loathed myself for thinking of him above the others, but it was his face that I saw in my mind’s eye—
The Santa Fe’s frame shook aggressively. Gravity seemed to shift.
“What was that…?” Zero questioned.
“Another fleet is approaching our location,” I said. “Open a communications channel to Carmine, on the bridge.”
Zero did as she was asked, moving to her nest of broken monitors. Although the main console had been damaged, she managed to pull up a holo-menu and from there activated a comm-band. That would, I knew, be traceable by the Krell.
“I’m not sure that this is a good idea,” Zero said, “but here you go…”
“Carmine? Do you read me?”
The line hissed. “Keira? That you?” came the old captain’s voice. “You’re alive, girl! Thanks to Gaia and Christo both!”
“I’m in the SOC. I’ve been aboard the ark.”
“Then you did better than us. We’re pinned down on the bridge. I have three officers left—”
“No time, Carmine. I need you to open the scanner-suite.”
“Done. What do you want to see?”
“Who’s attacking us?”
She paused, worked, for a few seconds. Come on, come on! I screamed inwardly. Then I heard a sharp intake of breath, a muttered curse.
“It … it’s impossible,” she said.
“There’s no time, Carmine.” Impatient now. Every passing second reduced the prospect of the Jackals making it out of this alive. “Who’s attacking the ark?”
“It’s the Black Spiral. I’m registering the same starship IDs as those at North Star. Jesus, it’s a goddamn fleet. A dozen ships, maybe more.”
We’d suspected that Daktar
Outpost might be part of some wider, organised plan, and now it seemed undeniable. The Black Spiral was orchestrating something against not just the Alliance, but also the Krell.
“We’ve got to get out of here,” Carmine said. “They’re overwhelming the ark-ship’s defences, and the Azrael is out there somewhere too. I can cold-boot the fusion drive, and we can get out-system: try to repair the Q-drive in space—”
“We’re not going anywhere. Not until I exfiltrate the Jackals. Await further orders. I’m pulling the shots now. Sergkov is gone.”
“Understood,” Carmine said, without hesitation or argument.
I cut the line. Zero hovered outside my tank, wringing her hands nervously.
“You know what I’m going to do,” I said over our link.
She smiled. “Ready when you are.”
Transition was fast and furious: just how I like it.
I was in a fresh simulant-body. And not just a new sim: new armour, new weapons, replenished ammo.
I rolled through the Santa Fe’s destroyed corridors, and then out of the open rent in her belly—where Pariah and I had been captured by the Krell. Briefly wondered how in the Core we were going to get the Fe space-borne with that much damage, then told myself that I couldn’t think about it. Retrieving the Jackals: that was my priority objective. Getting off the ark: that was my secondary objective. Everything else: that could wait.
I got a better look at the hangar in which the Santa Fe had been forcibly docked. Space was visible through the shaped energy field at the end of the chamber, the same tech as that we’d seen on the Azrael.
“Do you read me, Zero?” I asked, flexing a powered glove.
“Loud and clear, ma’am.”
I jumped through an open shaft. It felt damned good to be back in a fresh simulant. The HURT suit might’ve been flashy, but nothing beats a Class VI combat-suit. It was the military equivalent of a little black dress; it looked good, and it always got results. The armour was online and purring like a kitten, equipped with an M115 plasma rifle. That too felt familiar in a good way. A back-up M63 plasma pistol in my thigh holster: the best personal protection a girl could ask for. Just in case it wasn’t enough firepower, I’d strapped grenades—stun, frag, incendiary—to the chest harness. An EVAMP rounded off my inventory.