The Lazarus War

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The Lazarus War Page 7

by Jamie Sawyer


  “This way,” she said, turning to me.

  The soldier grabbed Daryl and propped him up. He let out an agonised gasp; the fall had probably taken it out of him. The trooper kept his rifle in the other hand, poised and ready to fire. Lucina tagged along behind them, rubbing the blackened crescent of blood that had formed at the back of her head, visible even through her thick hair.

  “In case it matters,” my mother said, “this is Private Moledina. This is my daughter, Taniya Coetzer.”

  She nodded at the other soldier. He paused and unclipped his helmet. The unit gave a brief hiss, as though he was working on his own atmosphere. Underneath, I saw that Moledina was the man from the bar. He smiled warmly; a far more pleasant response than the last time I’d seen him.

  “Nice to meet you.”

  “And you,” I said, gingerly.

  I held out a hand on autopilot. I felt stupid as soon as I realised what I’d done. Moledina laughed.

  “I wouldn’t do that if I were you,” he said. “Not if you want to keep that hand.”

  “Powered gloves,” my mother added tersely.

  “Sorry.”

  We made our way through the corridors of Liberty Point.

  I was sure that I’d never forget the things that I saw and heard aboard the station. It was hellish. The place had not just been attacked; it had been desecrated. There were bodies everywhere – Krell and Alliance. Burning rafters blocked collapsed corridors. Elevator shafts sat with doors gaping open, no cars inside. Alarms sounded in the background and I heard distant voices as we passed through junctions. Alien shrieks echoed through the station, always closely followed by the bark of kinetic weapons or the pitched hissing of plasma rifles.

  Accompanied by my mother and Moledina – having seen the mess that they had made of the Krell – I wanted to feel safe. But whenever the feeling settled in my chest, I heard another nerve-jangling scream and I’d be back on edge again.

  My mother tilted her head. Her face-plate was still transparent, now painted on the inside with glowing graphics: station maps, sector schematics.

  “Where are we going?” I asked.

  In truth, as long as it was away from the Krell I didn’t care any more.

  “Somewhere safe. Just stay quiet. It’s not far.”

  “Can’t we link up with the rest of your squad?”

  “There is no rest of my squad. I came back for you.”

  I was grateful for that but in the circumstances it was hard to feel much. I just wanted it all to be over.

  Moledina and Daryl plodded along at the rear.

  “Are there more of them in here with us?” Daryl asked.

  He couldn’t bring himself to say the word Krell. As though saying the name would summon them here.

  “Plenty more,” Moledina answered. “This place is crawling with them. Where there’s one, there will be many. It’s an old soldier’s rule.”

  My mother suddenly paused, one hand up, the other on her rifle.

  “Objective is ahead,” she said. “Stay behind me.”

  The sector beyond that door was the worst. It had been hit badly, but that wasn’t what made it so terrifying. Rather it was the purpose and content of the chamber itself.

  “You shouldn’t even be seeing this,” my mother said. “It’s highly restricted. Military-grade, need to know.”

  “Then why are you taking us through here?” I said.

  My mother looked at me with cultured impartiality, addressing the wide-ass new recruit, the back-chatting troublemaker. “Because it’s the fastest way through to Sector Three, and that’s where we need to be.”

  “Okay,” I said meekly.

  The room had the look and feel of a factory. High-ceilinged, so big that I couldn’t really see the far wall. Whatever had happened on the Point, the equipment in here seemed to be working sporadically. Heavy-lifting machinery whirred and chugged overhead. Claws carried smashed cargo across the chamber. Cut electrical cables slithered like live snakes, putting out sparks bright enough to light the chamber.

  “What are these things?” I asked.

  There were rows and rows of stacked glass capsules – about the same dimension as a hypersleep pod. I looked up and saw that more of the capsules were racked above us.

  “Those are si—” Moledina started.

  My mother cut him off. “Don’t, Private. Cap it.”

  Moledina didn’t argue, and we marched on through the cavernous factory.

  There were naked bodies inside the capsules, suspended in blue liquid. As I passed them, I realised that each one was the same: a hundred copies of the same adult male. Impossibly well-muscled, tethered by cables and pipes which flashed with neon compounds. Around us, the factory ventilation system churned with a mechanical wheezing and hissing; like the clones were all breathing in unison. It was unnerving.

  Curiosity got the better of me. I broke off from the convoy and approached one of the capsules. Some were damaged: I broke glass fragments underfoot, and almost slipped on a puddle of glowing blue liquid. Lots of the bodies were snagged among their feeder cables, impaled on the smashed glass of their destroyed cocoons. The place stank of antiseptic. What made it worse was that those bodies didn’t seem to care: faces still contorted into that implacable, determined scowl.

  The capsule in front of me was still operating. I wiped a hand over the control console set into the pod and saw the small monitor flashing with various error messages. There was a badge and some words stamped onto the terminal: ALLIANCE ARMY – SIMULANT OPERATIONS PROGRAMME. While I didn’t recognise that name, I knew the occupant of the pod. I’d seen him before. I recognised that face: the scar-faced man back on the concourse. The man on the poster, that they called LAZARUS.

  “Taniya? Get back here. You shouldn’t be messing with that shit…”

  I was vaguely aware of a voice behind me but I was enraptured by the man in the tube.

  I held my hand against the glass for a long moment. The events of the day were catching up with me. I suddenly felt weak, tired and terrified.

  I’m an engineer. I can’t deal with this.

  The man’s eyes sprang open.

  I passed out.

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  OVERRUN

  “Get her out of there!”

  The scream died on my lips, faded to a pitiful sigh.

  I expected to find myself in a car, sinking too quickly to the bottom of a river. Instead, I was in another command room of some sort. So this is where the survivors have gone, I thought. There were hundreds of personnel crammed into the chamber; hunched over consoles, pressed to the open view-ports. As well as the Alliance Army, there were also firefighters, cops, some Navy men. There were a couple of soldiers dressed like my mother and Moledina, and weapons piled up all over the place: on terminals, beside desks, on tables. None of the personnel had escaped unscathed: they were all battered, wounded, dirty. But mostly alive and working feverishly to keep the station afloat.

  There was an enormous Alliance emblem on the wall overlooking the workpit. The sight of that badge – a symbol that had meant almost nothing to me a few hours ago – now stirred something in my chest.

  Sci-Div medtechs were busy treating the most badly injured, and one corner of the room was filled with makeshift beds, even a couple of auto-docs. I was lying in one of those beds, and when I looked around I realised that lots of the occupants were far more badly injured than me. In fact, patting down my limbs, I found that I wasn’t physically damaged at all.

  The chamber was noisy enough that no one had even noticed my outburst, and the rest of the medical staff were so busy that my awakening had gone completely undetected. I watched the place work.

  A large holo-table in the middle of the room was attracting the most attention. A gaggle of military men – in a variety of Alliance uniforms – were focused on it. I listened in on snippets of conversation like a child eavesdropping on adults.

  “All out-system communications are down,”
one soldier said.

  Another – a much younger man, wearing a peaked cap – rubbed his hairless chin.

  “Try to get me a line to Calico, or better yet Novo Selo Launch.”

  He struck me as far too young to be an officer, but nevertheless seemed to be in charge.

  “No can do,” the other man said. That speaker was older, and looked seriously pissed off. “Captain, I can’t get you a line to XV-78, let alone Calico.”

  “And like Calico is going to do us any good anyway,” another voice chirped up.

  The locations that the soldiers were discussing were just names on maps, but I’d heard of them. Novo Selo Launch was another military outpost – a pale reflection of Liberty Point – but I supposed that there would be more soldiers there. Calico and XV-78 were mining operations, near to the Quarantine Zone: stations which I knew hardly anything about.

  “When I want your opinion,” the young captain said, “I’ll damn well ask for it. We’re trying to fight a fire here, and I don’t have the resources to spit on a fucking spark let alone this almighty shitstorm…”

  “I say that we bail out,” the older man said. “We should head for the escape shuttles, then make like a fish and swim. Old Man Cole is already out, and O’Neil turned tail fast enough.”

  Someone laughed. “Fuck O’Neil, man. Don’t even go there. And no one knows for sure whether the Old Man has actually got out.”

  “Let’s hope that he did,” another voice added. “President Francis is gone. If Cole is dead as well…”

  The captain wiped his brow. He was sweating a lot; moisture dripping from his eyebrows and nose. I might’ve found him handsome in different circumstances, but right now I just felt sorry for him. He looked like he was well out of his depth.

  “We stay and fight,” he said. “It’s the Alliance way.”

  “We’re going to be overrun,” someone else said in an accent that I didn’t recognise. “There are Directorate soldiers in Sectors Sixteen and Thirty-five.”

  “I want that shit stowed right now,” the captain said. “Those reports are unconfirmed.”

  Someone lying next to me – on another of the filthy mattresses – groaned, and a medtech darted over in his direction. I sat up, feeling guilty for occupying the bed.

  “You back in the land of the living?”

  My mother’s voice. Calming, confident.

  “You were sparked out,” my mother explained. “I told you not to look at those things.”

  “Simulant Operations…” I said. “I saw that man’s face. There were hundreds of copies of him.”

  “He needs them for what he does,” my mother said. She sounded in admiration of the bastard. “You’re in shock. Lie down.”

  I rolled over in the bed and found her sitting on a stool beside me. She pressed a hand to my chest to suggest that I lay back but I wriggled past her. I finally had some purpose here, had some importance. These people needed to know what I’d seen.

  “The reports are true,” I said. “We’ve seen them. The Directorate, I mean.”

  The officer frowned at me, and the troopers around the holo-table fell silent. Lots of pairs of eyes turned in my direction.

  “And who exactly are you, miss?” he asked in a tone of voice that suggested I was probably dog shit. “I don’t take kindly to civilians interfering in military business.”

  “She’s my daughter,” my mother said. “And if she has something to say, then you ought to listen.”

  “I’m Taniya Coetzer. I’m an engineer, employed by the De Hann Transport Company aboard a civilian starship called the Edison. Or at least, I was.” I sighed, got back to the point. “We were in the District, and we saw Directorate soldiers.”

  “With your own eyes?” the young captain asked.

  When I spoke, both Daryl and Lucina looked up at me. They had roused from nearby beds.

  I fished in my pocket for the data-clip that Daryl had given me, and held it out to them. The small device was dirty, had a dent in the casing. I hoped that it still worked.

  “My ship’s captain was sent here to deliver this to a man called Ostrow.”

  Daryl and Lucina perched around the table, and the military listened to our story.

  “Captain Ostrow is Military Intelligence,” the young captain said, “but he’s MIA.”

  “Everyone is MIA,” an American soldier added. “Probably dead.”

  The captain took off his cap and rubbed his shaven scalp anxiously. I didn’t know how much significance he would attach to the data-clip – to whatever secret it held – but his reaction was frightening. Among all of the devastation and destruction, the clip seemed to be generating enormous interest from the military men. It was something big.

  The comms officer had plugged the clip into his terminal. Data scrolled in front of him: images, graphics, text files. The green and red projections skipped across his eyes, although I knew that he wasn’t really reading the material in the physical sense. He was hooked directly to the machine by cables running to his forearm and neck ports.

  “It’s genuine,” the comms officer said. “The encryption can only be broken in certain circumstances and it only allows access by the most senior military officer on the station.”

  Eyes turned to the young captain, and he seemed to wilt beneath them. That he could open the files said far too much about the status of the rest of the base.

  “Which just so happens to be me,” he said. “Christo, I didn’t sign up for this shit. It’s above my pay grade.”

  “Nothing is above your pay grade any more, jefe,” another officer jibed. “You in charge, mano.”

  I looked at the exhausted faces of the gathered officers. “Did they come here for that? The Directorate, I mean.”

  “We can’t rule it out,” the comms officer said. “Could’ve been cover for the wider operation.” He let out a long, fretful sigh. “They planned this, and they sabotaged our systems. They have access to everything: material on the Krell, the QZ, the Maelstrom…”

  “What’s on the data-clip?” I asked.

  It was a ridiculous question and I really didn’t expect an answer, but the comms soldier said, “It’s intelligence from an operation into the Maelstrom.”

  “The Treaty,” the young captain said, glaring at the data-feeds as though he could dispel them with just his eyes. “The package is intel from the Endeavour’s mission.”

  I trawled up the detail: fragmentary, half-forgotten information. That mission had been years ago, while I was in the Pen. The Endeavour had been the flagship of the diplomatic mission into the Maelstrom, supposed to settle the war with the Krell. The Treaty – the ceasefire between the Krell and the Alliance – had been the result.

  “The battlegroup never came back,” my mother said. “They were lost in the Maelstrom. Declared MIA.”

  “It wasn’t a battlegroup,” the captain said. “It was an expedition.”

  “Same difference, asshole.”

  “Why would the Directorate want that information?” I said. “That was so long ago. Surely the…” – I paused, searching for the correct word – “…operation is long finished?”

  The young captain fidgeted nervously. There were either limits of his knowledge, or limits to what he was going to discuss with unauthorised civilians. “It’s classified.”

  “There are several teams operating inside the Maelstrom right now,” my mother added. “The Lazarus Legion is still out there. If we’re going to bail out, then we have to leave something behind for anyone coming back here.”

  “Lazarus will come back,” the comms officer said with a hangman’s smile. “He always does.”

  “Excuse me, Sergeant Coetzer,” the young officer said. “I’m in charge here. Respect the chain of command: it’s going to take a lot more casualties before they put you in charge. There are still several thousand personnel on-station, and we need to regroup – to rally – in order to repel the Krell incursion. We can’t abandon a multi-trillion credi
t facility…”

  There were mutters of annoyance around the table. My mother didn’t buy that. The young man was spouting military school rhetoric.

  “Then with respect, sir, we’re leaving. If the Directorate came after this intel – whatever it is – then it isn’t safe here.”

  “I’ve already said that we aren’t bailing out,” the captain said. He sounded like an unhappy child. “For a start, you can’t leave this station in that—”

  “Priority is to make evac,” my mother said, speaking over him.

  She’d unscrewed her powered gloves and pointed with her bare hands down at a holo in front of her. It was a map showing what was left of the Point: a station now fractured with warning markers, flashing indicators and whole sectors marked as uninhabitable.

  “The docking bays are all gone, so no point in looking for alternative transport in that direction. We’ll have to make for the escape shuttles.”

  I hoped that the Point had lots of those. My mother demonstrated a route across the base, through a network of corridors and service tunnels. She’d plotted a course that kept us away from the warning markers – the sectors labelled HULL BREACH and ATMOSPHERIC INSTABILITY. I noticed that even during the time it took for her to explain the plan, other areas were dropping offline –

  The room rumbled. Something exploded outside the view-ports and several of the officers ran for the windows, peering into space. Chatter spread across the room, muted panic. These men and women were better disciplined than the rabble down in the District, but not much.

  My mother rose to full height, towering over the rest of the group. That tag on her armour – ARTEMIS, and the graceful text GODDESS SQUAD – both seemed more than apt. She clipped her gloves back into place, slid the damaged helmet onto her head.

  “We’re leaving. Goddess Squad is making for the escape shuttles.”

  “What do you mean, Goddess Squad?” the captain barked. “There’s only two of you!”

 

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