The Lazarus War: Artefact

by Jamie Sawyer

  “His biorhythms have flatlined!”

  “Emergency extraction on squad leader.”

  “Cap, report. We’re taking heavy enemy fire again. The Krell are swarming our location. What’s happening?”

  “This is Captain Atkins of the UAS Oregon. All hands – prepare to abandon ship. Initialising emergency evacuation procedure.”

  CHAPTER TEN

  EVACUATION

  The dream ended.

  Reality commenced.

  EXTRACTION PROTOCOL INITIATED …

  CAPTAIN CONRAD HARRIS: DECEASED.

  I was back in the Oregon.

  I thrashed in the simulator-tank. Pain like no other seared through my head and for precious seconds I rode it. The tank began sloughing out, but far too slowly for me. There’s no time for this. I smashed a hand against the emergency release button inside the tank and the simulator door burst open. Like afterbirth, the blue fluid sloshed onto the floor of Medical. With hands still aching from simulated exposure to the cold of space, I fumbled with the cables connecting me to the simulator and unjacked myself.

  “What’s happening?” Olsen shouted. “Where is the rest of your squad? What the hell is going on?”

  The Oregon deck shook violently and I tumbled out of the tank, dripping wet. I moved like I was unfamiliar with my own body – legs too weak, body too small. Panicked techs came to assist me but I threw them off. Grabbing some fatigues, I dashed to the wall-mounted communicator – the quickest and most direct way of contacting Atkins on the bridge. Olsen and his team were still harassing me, questioning me, as another explosion sounded inside the Oregon.

  “Atkins!” I yelled into the comm. It was an emergency audio-only link. “This is Harris. I’ve extracted, but my team is still outside. Another warship is approaching from the asteroid belt.”

  “We’ve detected her,” Atkins replied, resignation sounding in his voice. “We’re experiencing serious incoming fire.” He was silent for a second and I imagined him evaluating the holo-feeds and the damage already done to his ship. “For what it’s worth, you fixed that coolant leak, but the null-shield can’t take this sort of punishment. We’re going down, Harris. The Oregon is finished.”

  I breathed deep and nodded. “Understood.”

  “Just get your team out. The med-bay will detach – use it as an escape vessel and get down to Helios.”

  “What about you?”

  Atkins laughed, humourlessly. “I’m staying put and going down with my ship. I’ve sounded the evacuation and it’s every man for himself.”

  “So be it.”

  “Your promise – back at the Point,” Atkins said, solemnly. “I want you to know that you made good on it. There’s nothing else that could be done. Good hunting, Captain Harris.”

  “Good journey, Atkins.”

  I cut the link, and I knew that Atkins had signed his own death warrant. I had been wrong about him. I pounded a fist into the terminal. He was a good man after all. How many of his crew – all decent, all dedicated – were going to die on this damned mission?

  Act now or it’s over for real. The question suddenly wasn’t whether the Oregon’s crew was going to die but whether I wanted to join them. I looked to the simulator-tanks – still occupied by my squad. I had a duty to them.

  “We’re leaving,” I declared.

  I bashed my fist onto the big red button labelled EMERGENCY EVACUATION. The Oregon trembled and creaked. Metal was shrieking somewhere, followed by the boom of an explosion. My teeth chattered in my head and I tasted iron blood in my mouth.

  Not simulant blood: my blood.

  “Strap in, Olsen!” I shouted over the cacophony. “The ship is going down.”

  Olsen realised what was happening; he had bumbled into a safety harness, screaming commands at his techs to do the same. Through shuddering vision, I saw that the other simulators were still operational. View-screens above each tank displayed the vital signs of the occupants. The simulators would be losing power, imminently, and the connection between the simulants and operators would be broken.

  “Prepare for emergency evacuation,” came the ship’s computer, in a calm female voice. The machine had no right to sound so relaxed. “Medical bay will detach from the main vessel. All personnel to take appropriate safety measures.”

  It happened so quickly, automated by the remains of the ship’s AI. The structure of the Oregon yawned. The main body of the starship was modular, made so that more important sections were detachable in an emergency. This clearly qualified. Dull metallic detonations sounded nearby. Explosive bolts holding the ship together activated, parting the major crew modules.

  Then there was a sudden tug of acceleration as the bay was thrown clear of the main ship – built-in thrusters propelling us away from the battered vessel, to achieve safe distance. I staggered to a safety harness attached to the wall, grappling with anything nearby to remain upright. Medical equipment was thrown across the room; glass smashed against the walls. A technician sailed past me, hitting one of the tanks. Blood splashed the white walls. Anything not bolted down was in free fall. Consoles were smoking, sparking, on fire. It felt as though my world was shaking apart. My ears popped again, as the atmosphere equalised. I ground my teeth, riding out the artificial quake. Above it all, emergency sirens wailed and wailed.

  “Christo – someone – help me!” a tech screamed.

  “Get buckled in!” I shouted back.

  I stared over at the view-port, looking out into space. The Great White and the new warship both concentrated fire on the Oregon – crossing plasma beams, disgorging more fighter-ships. Atkins was right: the Oregon was finished. The null-shield flared one last time, then its oily shimmer vanished. The shield had collapsed.

  Something heavy hit my leg and a sharp – real – pain erupted in my right thigh. Blood gushed up from the wound, droplets spraying in zero-G. Disengaged from the Oregon, Medical had no gravity of its own any more.

  “Umbilical with Oregon is disconnecting,” the computer voice came again, only now it pitch-shifted and warbled as though the main computer was developing a fault. Finally, the machine was feeling the pain along with the rest of us.

  Something struck the medical bay and the techs around me shouted out in terror. Our vehicle suddenly skewed, shifting angle so that I could see part of space beyond Helios. Perhaps whatever was left of the navigational AI had decided that this approach vector was too dangerous.

  I looked back at the Oregon. Brilliant plasma and laser beams tore into the ravaged hull – without the null-shield, every impact causing an explosion. Although I saw other parts of the ship breaking away, so much was caught by enemy fire and I held no hope that there would be survivors. Evacuation pods flew past us, streaming their contents to the void. I saw some of those being chased by fighter-ships, yielding short-lived explosions as they were torn open.

  If one of the fighters chose to pursue us, then we would be equally defenceless. The medical bay was inelegant and unguided – spinning end over end towards the surface. It wasn’t a ship in and of itself; it had simply detached and started accelerating towards Helios’ surface. We were lucky, I guess, but it didn’t feel that way from where I was sitting.

  As the view spun again, away from the Oregon, I saw my squad – still clinging to the hull, surrounded by Krell. The once-proud Naval vessel had been knocked from her orbit; was being pulled down to Helios as well, striking asteroids as she performed an uncontrolled descent to the planet’s surface.

  I yelled until my voice was hoarse. I was so incredibly angry: with the world, with the universe, with any deity that cared to listen.

  We’ve lost.

  The Oregon grazed Helios’ atmosphere. Her back broke. A tremendous explosion bloomed from the bridge, filling the view-port with white light. Then it just caved in on itself, breaking apart. Several components offered their own detonations. The Krell ships gave no quarter and relentlessly fired on whatever was left of the ship.

&nbs
p; I had been in fleet actions before, but never anything like this. It was a massacre; pure and simple. There was a reason that troopers didn’t experience such battles: because no one ever lived through them.

  Inside their simulator-tanks, Kaminski, Jenkins, Martinez and Blake began to thrash, eyes wide open. Hands pressed against the insides of the glass shells. In their own bodies, they were as panicked as everyone else.

  I tried to raise a hand, to signal that we were evacuating – to tell them something, anything – but the med-bay shifted again and I was forced back into my harness. We were moving at a gut-wrenching speed. Up and down held no meaning. My body ached with the immense gravitational force. I wanted more than anything to tell my people that we were going to get through this, that we were going to survive—

  Conscious thought became so hard to undertake, so difficult to achieve. There was no time to fear death. We were at the mercy of chance; nothing more. There was no preordained, divine plan for our survival.

  And what was one more death, anyway? I’d lived through enough of those. This felt unreal, impossible. Surely I wasn’t really going to die out here, orbiting some Christo-forsaken dust-ball on the fringes of the Krell Empire—

  Then the view through the view-port changed. Helios spiralled, so enormous that it filled the entire portal. The planet was rapidly approaching, the cloud cover coming up to meet us. We were breaching Helios’ atmosphere, drawn to Helios’ gravity and plummeting comet-like through the sky.

  And just for a moment, everything was still.

  Nothing mattered.

  On Helios’ surface, the storm clouds eddied and churned around a single point of focus: the Artefact. So black that it absorbed the light from its surroundings. A perfect anchor to this madness.

  I heard its malevolent, dark signal; piercing the shroud of white noise that existed aboard the med-bay.

  You’re imagining it, I promised myself. There’s no way that you can hear it from here.

  Then the moment was gone, and all I could hear was the screaming of the dying and the howling atmospherics against the med-bay hull.

  “Emergency warning. Brace for impact,” trilled the Medical AI. “All hands: brace for impact.”

  I closed my eyes. Someone nearby was sick, then with a wet crunching sound abruptly went silent.

  Fade to black.

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  THIS WAR WON’T LAST FOR EVER

  Eight years ago

  Elena and I had been together for two years, while we both worked on the Sim Ops Programme. I was eventually transferred from Jefferson Research Facility to Azure. Astronomical designation Tau Centauri IV, Azure was home to Fort Rockwell – an Alliance Army facility, and the biggest extra-solar military base. It was to become the launching point for the Sim Ops Programme.

  Elena had persistently petitioned for a transfer, to follow me out here. Finally, that request had been granted. She had been on Azure for a week but was quarantined to Arrivals the whole time, acclimatising to the gravity and lower atmospheric pressure.

  I met her on the day of her release. Arrivals was something like a spaceport terminal – a sterile, ugly building; six storeys high, with tiny cubicles to house immigrants. I waited inside the terminal, in Post-Quarantine Citizen Processing. That was just as bland and pale as the rest of the facility – the only dashes of colour the Arab Freeworlds flag draped on one wall and the Alliance badge opposite. Other soldiers, of assorted military stripe, milled about the room – no doubt awaiting the arrival of loved ones.

  Those came and went. People hugged around me. A bored-looking military clerk called names as each citizen was processed. I waited anxiously, eager for my turn. Awkward in my own skin. This wasn’t me.

  “Marceau, Elena,” the clerk finally declared. “French citizen of the Alliance, indefinite leave to remain.”

  She wandered through the plate-glass doors.

  I paused for a moment, overwhelmed. It was difficult for me to process just how happy I was to see her.

  Then Elena ran forward and flung her arms around me. Neither of us said anything: just embraced. I buried my head in her hair. Took her in: the warmth of her body, the smell of her. It had been three long months since we had last seen each other.

  “Are you hungry?” I finally asked.

  Elena nodded. “Very.”

  “They have a refectory on base. We could go there now—”

  “This place has no character,” Elena said, with a shrug. “It’s unpleasant. Could we go off-base for a while?”

  It didn’t matter to me where we ate or what we did; Elena was here. That was enough for me.

  “I know somewhere.”

  We left the base, crossed the military checkpoints and the perimeter. Passing Rockwell security; irritated troopers in flak-jackets, wearing tactical helmets, red-faced in the persistent heat.

  “Passes, people,” the guard said as we approached. “Biometrics or papers, doesn’t matter to me.”

  He scanned the serial code on my inner wrist. Nodded to himself.

  “What I wouldn’t give for a combat-suit and some proper air-con, eh?” he said, reading his scanner. It was clear that the comment wasn’t meant for us, and that this was a regular topic of conversation for security.

  “Heck yeah,” the guard’s partner muttered.

  The first guard waved us through. “Cleared for off-base interaction. Interpreters are available at the kiosk. Just make sure you’re back before twenty-two-hundred hours, and watch out for the base-rats. They bite.”

  “Copy that,” I said.

  Elena watched on in bemusement at the exchange, but I hurried her on through the checkpoint. Security-drones skimmed overhead, collecting on a group of children outside the perimeter fence: those were the base-rats the guard had been referring to.

  We made our way through the bustling streets of downtown Azure City, through the civilian districts. Elena’s small hand held mine firmly as we pushed through the crowds. Walking at a slower pace so that Elena was comfortable. The shopping districts were packed.

  We were hassled by traders at every turn. I confidently waved them off, but Elena was a little less certain. She paused to look at a gaudy trinket or listen to the banter of a wizened seller.

  “They can tell that you have come straight out of quarantine,” I said. “You’re an easy target. How long do you have to wear that suit for?”

  Elena wore a black bodysuit, tight to her slender figure, with a hydraulic frame on the arms and legs. She walked with a halting gait, not quite natural. The callipers allowed her body to adjust to the lower local gravity.

  “This old thing?” Elena said, lifting an arm. She sighed and shook her head. “Hardly high fashion, is it? The medtechs advised two weeks. But we’ll see.”

  “You mean that the medtechs instructed two weeks?”

  Elena laughed and shrugged. “Like I said, we’ll see.”

  “Tell me if you need a rest,” I said, gently squeezing her hand.

  “I could perhaps sit for a while,” Elena replied, blushing. “The heat is a little oppressive.”

  I knew Elena well enough that if she admitted she was in a little discomfort, it probably meant that she was in a lot. She was tough – tougher than me – and didn’t like to admit that she needed help or a break.

  “We’ll be there soon. We need to get out of the midday heat – it’s sapping. You’ll learn to avoid the boulevard when the sun is at its peak. This is different to Earth. The Azure heat will knock you out if you don’t take cover.”

  Elena looked up at the sky. It was a bright blue, cloudless in every direction; a heavy orange sun high overhead.

  The café didn’t have a name – very few of them did, in this district – but I’d eaten there before and knew that the food was good. There were tables and chairs arranged outside a sandstone building, and we sat. I chose a spot in the shade of a woven awning, tattered and faded from constant exposure to sunlight. The café was quiet, occupied b
y a mixture of military personnel and a couple of local families.

  I called over a waiter and ordered for us both. He disappeared into the shadowed interior of the café.

  “This place is amazing,” Elena said. “It wasn’t what I was expecting.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “I thought that it would be more sterile. I didn’t think that it would be so much like Earth.”

  I sometimes forgot that she hadn’t travelled like me. She had a cultured naivety, a candour that fascinated me.

  “It isn’t like the Earth that I recognise,” I said, shaking my head. “But I know what you mean.”

  The boulevard was lined with primitive buildings, cast from locally produced sandstone bricks and plaster. Across the street from us – nothing more than a beaten dirt track, worn by the tyres of heavy ground vehicles – dark-skinned men lounged in shaded open doorways. Some rocked on rusty metal chair-frames. Ancient two-D television sets blared from inside empty-windowed domiciles, volume turned up too high so that the audio became an angry crackle of static. Mothers chased down errant children – shouting rebukes in their mother-tongue.

  “The first colonists here were Arabs,” I muttered. I wasn’t really interested in the background of the place, but I’d picked up some of the history during my posting. “The Freeworlds claimed it, back before they joined the Alliance, during the Second Space Race. Then the war with the Directorate started and it didn’t matter who owned it.”

  “Who would think that such military might dwells in such beautiful surroundings?” Elena said, glancing about at the ancient buildings. “We might have squandered Earth but the cosmos still holds surprises for us.”

  She smiled. Her perfect white teeth were cast brilliant in the sunlight. My gaze lingered on her face – oval, warm.

  The waiter arrived at our table, sidling up with two bottles of beer and two plates of ersatz spiced-rice. He bowed, then disappeared back inside.