by Jamie Sawyer
“Let’s hope that we won’t be needing them for a while.”
“Some of us will never get to use them,” she said.
“I didn’t mean it like that.”
“I know, and I agree. Let’s hope,” Zero echoed. She stared around the room: at the vandalised equipment, at the smashed terminals and monitors. The damage caused by the Krell attack was plain to see. “We’re still in Krell space though. We’re still in the Maelstrom.”
“We’re doing okay.”
Zero repressed a shiver. “You know what? I never thought that something could frighten me more than the Krell. After what happened at home, after Mau Tanis. But the diseased Krell…”
This time she couldn’t repress her reaction, and I wished that I could do something to make it better.
“To think,” she went on, “before all this, I thought I was missing out on something by not going into the field. Being a simulant operator was all I’d ever wanted to be.”
I nodded. “I know, Zero.”
“Well things have changed. When we get back, I’m going to think very hard about that desk job.”
“Whatever you want to do, I’ll be behind you. Not everyone is cut out for the field, even if they can do it.”
“It’s taken a near-death experience to teach me that.” Zero rubbed her eyes, sighing to herself. “This thing—this virus, whatever it is—it’s major, isn’t it?”
“I think so,” I said. “And I expect High Command will say the same. That the navigator spoke to us … The Krell obviously think that it’s big.”
“What about the Hannover’s black box?” Zero said. “Have you analysed it yet?”
“Not yet,” I said.
“Are you going to?”
“I’m not sure. The data is heavily encrypted.”
Zero watched me carefully. “Aren’t you curious about what the box contains?”
“Of course I am.”
The data-drive—the Hannover’s black box—was safely locked away in my quarters, and I wasn’t even sure if the Fe’s systems would be able to access it. Something about the entire mission, about the importance that Sergkov had attached to that box, made me wary of opening it. Somehow, it was easier to just leave it for others to examine.
“It’s someone else’s problem,” I said, definitively.
“I understand,” Zero said.
“Glad to see you’re doing okay.”
“Is that why you came down here?” Zero asked, with a knowing grin.
“Maybe,” I said.
“It’s through there.”
She nodded towards the infirmary.
Pariah was in a converted cryogenic capsule. The device was big enough to hold the XT’s body, and it floated inside the tube, suspended in fluid. Brackish and green, it looked almost the same consistency as the stuff aboard the Krell bio-ship. I placed a hand against the outside of the glass, held it there for a moment. There was a warmth coming from inside the tank.
Pariah had stripped off its bio-suit, and folded its limbs so that it was almost half its usual size. The xeno’s head nuzzled against the inner glass, a respirator plugged over its mouth and nose.
“Can you hear me?”
The alien nodded.
“We can,” it said. The voice-box was still grafted to its neck, and had been tuned to a speaker in the capsule’s control console.
“How’s the hurt?”
“We do not understand.”
“The injuries, I mean. Are you going to pull through?”
“Define ‘pull through.’”
“You know what I mean. Quit fucking with me.”
Pariah paused, then said, “We will try.”
It, too, looked tired, if that were possible. Although many wounds pocked its body, most had been stapled shut to stem the flow of blood.
“Zero’s handiwork, huh?”
The alien blinked. “Zero’s handiwork,” it repeated. “Yes.”
“This shit going to help?” I gestured to the tube.
“We are being stored in a chemically balanced electrolyte mix,” Pariah explained. “It will increase our capacity to self-heal, and allow us to enter hibernation in due course.”
“Good, good,” I said. “I know that you didn’t have a choice back there aboard the ark-ship. I know that the, ah, other, Krell were trying to control you.”
“They are of our Collective,” it said. “Very old.”
“But I saw you fighting it too. I saw that you didn’t want to let them take control.”
“That is true,” Pariah said. The alien appeared to shiver, in a gesture that struck me as peculiarly human. “We are Kindred, but we have no experience of being part of the Collective mind. It was unpleasant.”
“What you did—acting as a bridge between us and the navigator: it was very helpful. More than you can imagine.”
Pariah nodded. “We are all pariahs, now.”
“I’ll never understand your kind,” I said.
“Nor I yours,” Pariah said.
“But maybe there is hope. If we can work together.”
“Perhaps.”
“When you were aboard the Azrael, why weren’t you infected?”
I could still recall every detail of the nightmarish attack by the infected Krell. The smell. The snapshot images. That final primary-form: its jaws open wide, ready to stream black fluid into my face. Could I have been infected too?
“We are not native Kindred,” Pariah said.
“Can you be infected?”
“We do not know. Dr. Skinner made us more resilient than the wild strain.”
Despite old animosities, I found myself hoping that Pariah was okay. What other secrets were locked inside the alien’s body?
Our conversation was interrupted by a chime from the bridge.
“Q-jump in T minus two minutes,” the ship’s AI declared.
I left the alien in its hibernation cell.
As Carmine had promised, we made multiple Q-jumps across the Maelstrom. Time-dilation did its thing, the ship’s quantum-clock ticking away, indicating that with every jump the universe was moving closer to forgetting us.
After each jump, I got that little tummy-roll as we breached the real-space barrier. That second of doubt: was the Q-drive going to give up? Was the hull going to breach? Thankfully, as we made our way across the Maelstrom and towards the Former Quarantine Zone, none of those things happened. There were no Krell: diseased or otherwise. No Black Spiral. Just us and the stars.
And then finally the day came. After many short quantum-skips, we were ready to commence the big jump across the FQZ and into Alliance space. Because it felt like an occasion, the Jackals gathered on the bridge.
Carmine eased herself into her command station. “Your Corporal Riggs has been very helpful in plotting our Q-jumps,” she said. Winked at me. “He’s quite a catch.”
I tried my best not to make eye contact with her. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
“Of course you don’t,” the old captain said. “All squared away for the next jump?”
“Aye, ma’am,” Yukio said. “I’m getting some error messages from the cargo deck, but it’s nothing we can’t fly on.”
Carmine clapped her hands together. Rubbed the picture of her daughters for luck. “Good, good. I, for one, can’t wait to see some friendly stars. Initiate the jump on my command.”
“Talking of Riggs,” Zero said, “has anyone seen him?”
“He was down in the shuttle bay,” Feng said. “Last I saw, anyhow. Said something about fixing the bay door sensor.”
“Jesus, is that still playing up?” I asked. It had been a recurring fault throughout the journey, and not just as a cover for my covert meetings with Riggs…
“Looks that way,” Carmine said. “Someone should go get the corporal though. He should be here for the big jump.”
“Novak, you’re on it,” I said.
The Russian nodded. “I go,” he said, shambling
out of the bridge.
“Hurry, lifer,” Carmine said. “We’re jumping in two.”
“So we risked our asses for the Hannover’s black box?” Feng said, with a tone of exasperation in his voice.
“That’s about the size of it,” I said.
“And they say that the Directorate are crazy…” he replied, shaking his head.
“I’m sure that they would kill for whatever is on the Hannover’s drive,” Lopez said.
“Thankfully we don’t have to worry about that,” I said.
“Commencing jump in T minus two minutes…” the ship’s AI declared.
But the cheer of relief that went up around the bridge was abruptly interrupted by an alert chime.
Carmine frowned down at her console. “That cargo bay really is playing up.”
Yukio continued the countdown, but I turned to Carmine. “What’s the sitrep?”
“The bay reports it has been unsealed,” Carmine said, “which patently cannot be true. Computer says that the Warhawk’s drive has been activated.”
Sudden and cold realisation hit me.
“Abort the jump,” I said. I scrambled for Carmine’s console, watching as the pre-launch sequence began to accelerate. “Now.”
“T minus twenty seconds…” the AI declared, skipping through the usual launch countdown.
Carmine shook her head at me. “There’s no problem here. It’s just a glitch.”
One of the bridge’s consoles crackled with an incoming report from elsewhere on the Fe.
“Ma’am!” Novak’s voice, thick with panic. “Shuttle bay will not open! Someone is in there, but cannot get hatch open!”
“Abort launch,” I insisted. “Do something!”
Yukio looked at Carmine for approval, and the captain nodded. “Do it.”
But when Yukio reported, I wasn’t surprised. “I’m locked out of the system, ma’am!”
“Jump imminent,” the AI declared. “All hands prepare.”
Traitor. Onboard the ship.
How had I been so stupid?
“What’s all this about?” Carmine said.
An amber security lamp had started flashing overhead.
“Jump. Jump. Jump.”
Space outside had already started to warp, to twist as the Santa Fe created its own time-space breach.
Riggs. It was Riggs all along.
“Novak!” I yelled into the communicator. “Stop that shuttle from launching!”
I heard the pitched hum of the ship’s Q-drive igniting. The gut-roll, space shifting. The console crackled again, but when it spoke it wasn’t Novak’s voice.
“I’m sorry,” Riggs mumbled. “I’m sorry!”
“Jump complete,” the ship’s AI said.
Zero’s face was a paler shade of white. “Where are we?” she managed.
I shook my head. Panic gripped me. “H—he programmed the Q-jump…”
“Shuttle bay open,” the AI reported. “Warhawk deployed.”
Feng slipped into the station Riggs had been manning.
“Oh shit…” he whispered.
The stars settled around us. The tactical display repopulated, astrogation data flooding in.
“We’re in Asiatic Directorate space,” Feng said. “Riggs has jumped us directly into Directorate space.”
Outside, a fleet of black shapes had already collected, and were moving on our position.
EPILOGUE
“There’s a storm coming,” Lieutenant Runweizer said.
“Yep,” replied Captain Uzbek. “Looks that way.”
It was hard to argue with the black clouds that gathered in the distance. They were a bruise across the horizon: massed and rolling.
“Although,” Runweizer said, turning the aerocar’s steering column so that the vehicle entered an approach pattern, gliding cross-country, “it’s rarely ever nice out here. Not any more. Not after the war, that is.”
The car’s engine gave a throaty roar as the vehicle reached ground level, and found an overgrown highway between two grey fields. Like most of the roads in this region, it could hardly be described as that. Uzbek didn’t like this place much.
“Spells rain, I’d say,” Runweizer added.
Uzbek didn’t like Runweizer much, either. He was a mouth-breather, and a noisy one at that. Coupled with his poor conversation skills, it made him a bad travel companion. His every driving habit, over the last few hours, had grown to rile Uzbek. Annoy him.
“Yep,” Uzbek said. “War did a lot of things for this place, even if it never reached it.”
“Wasn’t the chick French or something?”
“So the files say,” Uzbek answered.
“What, you don’t believe them?”
“I only believe what I can see with my own eyes. And I’ve never met her.”
“Who has? They’re recluses.”
“So I read.”
Runweizer gave a deep belly laugh and sat back in his seat. “I could probably learn a thing or two from you German guys. We run things differently out my way.”
The journey had been long, and Uzbek was tired of Runweizer’s constant small talk. Chatter that seemed formulated to irritate—a relatively easy task, given that the pair had taken a non-stop military transport from Berlin Central to Paris, then broken early to commence the cross-country drive to Normandy.
Runweizer slid the aerocar into a low gear, climbing the hillside. He sighed to himself. “If I ever retire, I’m going to choose a better place to do it than here. Somewhere warm. Off-world.”
“Yep,” Uzbek said, staring out of the window of the car, wishing that the Americans hadn’t insisted that he be accompanied by this cretinous fool. “I’ll bet.”
“Mmmm,” Runweizer said. “I’d go somewhere real nice.”
The car’s navigation system began to chime, zeroing in on the coordinates. “It’s up there.”
The house on the hillside wasn’t much. Small, stone-clad. Dark.
Runweizer pulled the car into a badly maintained paddock outside the building, and Uzbek got out before the vehicle had stopped moving. Felt the bracing wind cut into his uniform, pulled his tunic a little higher. Had he been an off-world operative, the Alliance would’ve provided an environment-controlled uniform. Because he was only local, based in Euro-Confed Germany, things were different.
Uzbek positively raced towards the door, so glad was he to be free of the confines of the car. The little house’s porch was wooden-slatted, and as the deck took Uzbek’s weight the building groaned. As he got closer still, he noticed that the structure looked rotted. How could anyone live like this? This wasn’t what he had expected, not at all. With mounting concern, he rapped a knuckle on the metal-grilled door.
“Doesn’t look good, boss,” Runweizer said. His heavier build made the whole porch shake as he padded up behind Uzbek, shadow falling across the door. “Doesn’t look as though there’s anyone here.”
Uzbek frowned. “Shut up, Lieutenant.”
He tried again. The door creaked, the house murmuring as it caught the wind blowing in across the surrounding farmland.
“Colonel?” Uzbek called.
“No one’s home,” Runweizer said, in his blunt American accent. He stooped at a window beside the door, hand to his forehead as he peered inside. “Take a look for yourself.”
The idiot-lieutenant was right. The inside of the farmhouse was semi-gutted, derelict. One of the window-panes had been smashed, a curtain inside fluttering lazily in the wind. It looked as though the place had been abandoned for a long time.
Uzbek frenziedly circled the house. Checked every window, hammered on every door. No response. He found that the rear entrance had been prized open by someone or something, the thin wooden door slamming rhythmically against the rotted frame, caught by the wind. The room inside had once been a kitchen, but now no one lived here: a cloak of dust over the empty table, the barren work surfaces.
“Hello?” Uzbek called out.
No a
nswer.
“This what you were expecting?” Runweizer asked. He’d tapped a cigarette from a packet in his lapel pocket, and commenced dragging on the stick noisily.
“No, Lieutenant. It is not.”
Runweizer grinned, let out a muted laugh. “Maybe someone else got here first.”
“This was a secret location. This is where he was supposed to be!”
“Things change.”
Uzbek froze. His burning indignation was dowsed—and suddenly—by the fact that Runweizer had unholstered his pistol. The arming stud was lit.
“I don’t think that will help…” he started.
“Oh, I think it will,” Runweizer said. “I think it will help a lot.”
The gun barked twice.
Uzbek grabbed for his stomach when the first shot was fired, but the second hit him in the temple. He just managed to let his jaw drop open, to form the remains of his forehead into a frown, when consciousness left him.
He collapsed on the porch.
Dead.
Runweizer finished his cigarette, then searched the rest of the house. When he tried the taps, he found that they were dry too. Although surely no one would see Captain Uzbek’s body—not for several days, at least—he took the time to drag the corpse into the abandoned living room. That was about as depressing as the kitchen. Threadbare furniture covered in a thick layer of dust, curtains so thin that they barely held out the grey light of the coming dawn.
Nothing here. No sign of anyone, either. No paperwork, no electronic devices. Runweizer used his wrist-comp to run a scan of the property—searching for listening and seeing bugs—but found nothing. Hardly surprising, really, if even a tenth of the stories they told about the man were true. He’d cover his tracks, for sure.
The lieutenant smoked another cigarette out on the porch. It was a long drive cross-country, and without any company this time. So he took his time smoking the cigarette, and then dropped it to the floor. Snubbed it out with the toe of his boot. This wasn’t a forensic job, and he didn’t care what evidence he left behind at the scene. There were some benefits to being outside usual structures.
Once he had finished, he sauntered down the porch steps to the waiting aerocar. Pulled the collar of his uniform a little higher to his neck. Those clouds on the horizon looked darker. It might even be raining in the distance.