by Jamie Sawyer
Tyler activated a metal shutter on one of the lab walls. It smoothly lifted, revealing another chamber beyond. I peered into the shadowy depths.
Oh, fuck!
A Krell sprang from the dark. The creature was an evolved primary-form – body a sleek black, sprinkled with barbed protrusions. Its eyes fixed on me, and it swung its raptorial forearms. I involuntarily recoiled, wincing at the high-pitched squeal the creature made as it attacked.
“Easy, tiger,” Tyler said, catching me with an arm around my shoulder. “It’ll stop in a moment.”
“A little bit of warning next time,” I said, composing myself.
The xeno was held in a small plasglass cubicle, barely big enough to contain it, and it harmlessly slammed against the observation window. There were a series of caged cubicles beyond the shutter. Each was filled with a different Krell specimen.
Tyler punched buttons on a nearby control panel. Spotlights, one by one, fell on the cubicles. Several of them were empty.
“The room is shielded,” Tyler said. “They won’t attract any attention.”
“What is he doing with them?” I said, shaking my head. “This is a huge security threat. It’s insane.”
Kellerman must have risked the lives of his security men to capture these xeno-forms – and was risking the lives of the rest of the station staff by keeping them here.
“I’m honestly not sure,” Tyler said, shrugging. “He encrypts his research files. Initially, I think that he was running standard biological response tests. But I haven’t been able to get into his research for months, and now I don’t know what he is doing with them.”
The Krell thrashed in their cages. Most had been tethered with primitive chains. The things were in a killing rage: spitting, slathering, squealing masses of hate. Many had reacted angrily to the spotlights and were swiping ineffectually at the lights overhead.
I drew back from the wall of cages, and took in the rest of the lab. This part of the room was dedicated to a different sort of research. The dirty walls were plastered with images of the Shard starship. Relics lay disassembled on workbenches. When Kellerman – I had no doubt that he was responsible – had exhausted his supply of data-slates and paper, he had taken to scrawling his workings on the wall.
“These are star-maps,” I realised, examining the drawings. The more I looked at them, the more familiar they became. “I’ve seen these before. These are drawings of the planetarium – of the star-data from the Key.”
Tyler just shrugged. “I don’t know where it came from, but he has lots of data on the Maelstrom—”
“Can you copy the data?”
“I guess so.”
That impossible hope filled me again.
“I need you to download Kellerman’s research for me – everything. I need that star-data.” I smiled at Tyler, broadly. “I can follow her!”
This is a second chance.
Tyler scowled at me, reminding me of Blake’s reaction back in the Shard starship. She didn’t know the reason for my excitement, but I would tell her when I could. Maybe she was questioning whether she should trust me – whether I was just as mad as Kellerman.
“Slow down. Downloading Kellerman’s research will have to wait. As soon as I start the process, he’ll know that we’re moving against him. That’ll blow everything. Like I said, he has Deacon and security on his side. And anyway, I haven’t shown you everything yet.”
“It has to be now – I can’t wait. I’ll explain everything when I can, but that star-data is crucial—”
Ignoring me, Tyler walked over to one of the consoles and hit another button. More lights flashed on, illuminating the rest of the darkened silo. I was still giddy from the prospect of finding Elena—
There was a starship at the back of the silo.
I circled the craft, inspecting it. The ship was small and squat, sitting on landing supports like an insect waiting to take flight. Just the outline of the craft implied menace. She was a highly advanced model and looked to be in almost pristine condition – she certainly hadn’t been operated on the surface of Helios for long, if at all, and the metalwork gleamed under the silo lighting.
“Fucking Directorate …” I whispered.
The name Pride of Ultris was stencilled in American Standard on the nose, beneath the bridge module, along with some Chinese characters. Those were so fresh that it looked as though the paint might still be wet. An icon had been printed beneath the ship’s name; a multi-headed hydra, coiled around a sword.
My blood ran cold. I’d seen it on the train on Azure. The memory was indelible. I’d seen it many times since. Now the Directorate were here, following me across time and space.
“Directorate Special Operations,” I muttered. “Deacon told me that he fought on Epsilon Ultris. Kellerman was there as well – that was where he lost his legs.”
What’s the relevance there? I wondered. Is that where the Directorate got to Kellerman? Or did he turn because of what happened on Ultris?
And in that instant, I found myself again. I wasn’t empty any more: I was driven, motivated, flooded with anger. I hated Kellerman more than ever. I wanted to destroy him, not just kill him. The memory of Elena sobbing in pain, in the Rockwell Infirmary, threatened to overwhelm me for a moment, and I bit my knuckles to hold back my wrath. I felt, briefly, the Artefact’s signal in my head – that pitched whining.
Everything fell into place.
That was the sound I heard, wrapped in the alien static. A sound within a sound – the ringing in my ears after the terrorist attack on the train. That was the sound I heard when the Artefact called to me. The signal was taunting me; reminding me of my failure.
Tyler followed me around the craft.
“You okay?” she asked. “You don’t look so well.”
I didn’t want to explain to her, so I just shook my head. Now I knew that I would help Tyler: now I knew that I had to remove Kellerman. I had justification for lethal force. He was an enemy agent, and anyone with him was just as bad.
“I’ll do what you’re asking, Tyler,” I said. “I’ll take Kellerman down. But I need the star-data, and we’ll need weapons. How many civvies have sided with you?”
“Maybe four.”
“We’ll need to think this through. We need to plan our escape off-world. My people are soldiers, not pilots. I’m not sure that we could get this starship airborne, let alone off-world. Do you know anyone with flight experience?”
“I’m a trained aerospace pilot,” Tyler said, proudly. “Got a Class Eleven flight licence. I learnt at the academy – I’ve flown commercial tugs.”
I nodded and pointed to the engines – a quad of oversized thrusters. “Tugs are different to military ships. She’s a T-89 Interceptor. Made for short cross-system jumps, and close ship-to-ship fighting. She has a quantum-space drive, but she’ll be slow flying faster than light.”
“I just know what buttons to push. And I’m pretty sure that I can fly it off-world.”
I raised an eyebrow at her. “Pretty sure, or sure?”
“Sure enough.” She waved at a bank of missiles racked under one of the stubby wings. “I can take care of the flight, but you and your people will need to do the rest. The weapon systems will be down to you.”
I laughed out loud. “They don’t make them like this in the Alliance. Those are plasma warheads – twelve of them. That gun under the nose is an H-28 laser cannon.”
“Which means?”
“That this ship could take out most of Helios.” That was an exaggeration, but the warheads were serious military hardware. “We’re talking multi-kilotonne detonations. Real heavy ordnance. The chin gun is an anti-infantry laser – it’ll cut men, or Krell, to ribbons.”
“Oh, right,” Tyler said absently. She obviously wasn’t into guns.
“Why does Kellerman need a ship like this?”
“Maybe to get off the planet if things got really bad? Maybe to make sure that the Directorate gets their pound of
flesh out of him? It has probably been here since Helios Station was established. I found it a few months ago, but there hasn’t been any air traffic like this since we arrived here.”
“If Kellerman is so damned obsessed with the Artefact, then why doesn’t he just fly over to it and activate the thing? Surely he’d try.”
“Kellerman might be mad but he isn’t stupid. He has a strong sense of self-preservation. The Artefact is the great unknown. If he uses his own ship to get there, and he’s on the away party, then it’s his neck on the line. If he sends another party over there, and he stays on Helios Station, he’s risking his ride off Helios.”
“I suppose so.” I took a final lap around the ship. There was a large crew hatch on the starboard side of the Interceptor, made for ground troops to deploy directly from the belly. “Have you been inside?”
“Once, when I first found it. There are hypersleep capsules, and berths for about twenty crew.”
“Then it’s definitely our ticket off Helios. There won’t be any need to send a signal from Operations – we can use this to escape.”
I patted the wing. The metallic compound used in the construction of the ship had a low profile and had been treated with stealth tech. The body of the ship felt reassuringly solid. I was sure that this was the right thing to do, and part of me even longed to confront Kellerman. Was this Martinez’s righteous vengeance, filling me? Polluting my blood, making me firm in the face of adversity?
Tyler grimaced. “But you’ll still need to take out Kellerman. He has the sky covered. He could shoot us down, as soon as we clear station airspace.”
I rounded the curve of the hull. “I promise that I will take care of him—”
“Shut the fuck up and get down on your knees!”
The words were shouted with extreme hostility, echoing all around us.
The lights overhead fizzled.
I vaulted towards the lab area – moving before I had properly registered what had happened. Tyler has set me up, I instantly decided. She’s double-crossed me. But then Tyler was screaming, and I heard a punch connect from somewhere behind me. She fell silent.
Security troops were flooding the lab.
“Show me your hands or I will shoot!”
It was Deacon, a shock-rifle jammed into my chest. I brought my gun up, trying to get clearance for a shot.
Deacon was a faster shot than me. He fired his rifle. White lightning lit the room and I collapsed to the floor, juddering and wailing. The rifle had only been set to stun but that was bad enough – 55,00 volts coursed through me. I was paralysed, convulsing uncontrollably. Shock-rifles were security-issue weapons, largely designed to cause non-lethal incapacitation, but that didn’t mean being hit by one was a pleasant experience. My pistol dropped from my hand and clattered away from me. I tried to reach for it, tried to override my body’s natural reaction to the discharge of the shock-rifle.
“Make sure that he stays down!” someone else barked. Kellerman. Just his voice infuriated me, gave me a new surge of strength—
Deacon was over me again, rifle raised. He snarled – a look of pure determination on his face. I willed my limbs to move, but my pistol was still just out of reach. Deacon lifted his rifle up, and slammed the butt into my temple.
In the space of ten minutes, so much had been promised to me, and yet it had been taken away just as quickly.
CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO
YOU KILLED BLAKE
The dark receded.
I wasn’t grateful when it did, because consciousness and pain returned together. Great waves, all over my body.
Then came the questioning, always the questioning.
“How do we activate the simulants?”
“How long before Command sends a response team?”
It was Deacon. I couldn’t see anything except vague shapes but I could sense him well enough. His face burning and full of anger, right in front of mine. I smelt his hot breath.
“My name is Captain Conrad Harris, of the Alliance Simulant Operations Programme, Alliance Army,” I said. “Serial code 93778.”
“Give us answers!”
I repeated my identification information again and again. The words became a mantra; sometimes mingled with shouted denials and screamed protestations. I was fully trained in counter-torture technique. They would not have the pleasure of breaking me. I was a prisoner of war now.
Then the beating started again and pain exploded across my ribs, back and limbs. Hard enough to hurt, but not hard enough to kill. They could have killed me immediately and easily, but I guessed that they wanted me alive.
I spat blood on more than one occasion. My injured leg had developed a deep numbness, beyond pain. Damn you all. I can take this for ever. I’ve felt worse. More ribs were cracked.
“This isn’t a military base and you aren’t subject to military law. The Doctor can do what he wants with you.”
I was dimly aware that others were screaming as well – probably from chambers nearby. I thought that I recognised Jenkins shouting something, although it could’ve been Martinez. I definitely heard Tyler: screaming so loud that the cries echoed off the walls. She was pleading for the pain to stop. I wished that I could help her.
For a moment, her voice sounded like Elena’s. Begging for help, for me to listen. Demanding that I stop her from going into the Maelstrom. I wished that I could help her too.
Blackness came again, and the cycle repeated.
One minute I was in a chair, buckled down by wrist and ankle restraints. The next I was sprawled across a cell floor. The detail might’ve just been in my head, maybe created by my subconscious to fill in the blanks. I couldn’t tell whether the torture lasted for hours or days: time became an irrelevance.
“Stop it!” someone finally called out. “I told you – I want him alive!”
Kellerman again. Sitting in his chair, at the cell door; a perfect rectangle of white light framing him, piercing the dark of the torture chamber.
Everything stopped when he arrived. Now I could make out Deacon’s sweaty face. There were two security men with him, stripped to the waist, bloated with anger and hate. Bare chests all scarred and pocked by their time on Helios.
I laughed but the noise ended with a wet, painful choking that wracked my body. I’m so cold. Wetness on my forehead, over my chest. It’s blood. Just blood.
“He’s had enough. Get him cleaned up and restrained. Bring him to my chambers.”
I wore a fabric hood over my head, fastened tightly at the neck. Not so harshly that I would suffocate, but tight enough for me to understand my captors meant business. The fabric carried an overpowering stink of fetid blood and dried sweat. The hood had been used lots of times before – others, maybe equally as disloyal to Kellerman, had been in this same position.
Perhaps Tyler got something wrong. Maybe not everyone who went into the tunnels did so of their own free will.
“Take off the hood.”
Someone roughly removed the item, and I shook my head free.
We were in Kellerman’s room. He sat behind his desk and I sat in front of it – a perverse reconstruction of our meeting just days earlier, with Deacon at my back. This time my wrists were clamped to the arms of the chair. I tried to twist myself free, but cold metal bit into my flesh, and it didn’t do any good. One of my eyes was swollen, almost shut, and the other felt bruised. My vision wavered a little – I needed proper medical attention.
“You killed him, Kellerman,” I erupted. “You killed Blake!”
Kellerman regarded me coolly, and locked his gnarled fingers. His lack of reaction infuriated me. I growled across the room, tried again to free myself. The chair legs clattered on the floor. Kellerman watched on.
“You killed Blake!” I roared again.
I spat across the room. See how you like that. A gobbet of blood-tinged phlegm landed on Kellerman’s cheek. Finally, his façade broke, and his face crumpled into a frown. He wiped the spittle away, shaking his dirt
ied hand disdainfully. Behind me, I heard Deacon jumping into action, the rattle of his shock-rifle coming to aim.
“No need for concern,” Kellerman said, holding up a hand. “Captain Harris is angry. Tensions are running high.”
“Fuck you! You’re a traitor, Kellerman. A Christo-damned Directorate spy!”
“The Directorate presented me with an opportunity.”
“You lured us to Helios!”
“Not you specifically. I stopped reporting to Command in the hope that they would send a rescue team. I couldn’t afford to lose any more staff, although I still needed bodies – to go into the Artefact. I had no way of knowing that Command would send a simulant team.”
“Fuck you!” I raged again. I knew that I was losing what little energy I had left, but I couldn’t sit across from this shadow of a man – this traitor – without acting against him. “Blake was only a kid. He didn’t deserve to die. Neither did Sara, or any of the others—”
Or Elena, or our child—
“I had hoped to persuade you to help me. It was my intention to scare you with the encounter in the desert. The Krell we faced were experiments, and they were loose in that region at my request – their bio-tech communicators surgically removed. Private Blake’s death was unanticipated. Even so, I thought that it would solidify your animosity towards the Krell. Miss Tyler ruined all of that. She forced me to adopt a more direct approach.”
I knew, then, that when I next had the opportunity I would kill Kellerman.
“You’re mad. You don’t know what the Artefact is, or what it is capable of.”
“I suppose that was conveyed to you by Miss Tyler?” he said, smoothly. “I’ve already told you that the Artefact is a beacon, and that the Alliance has known about the Shard for a long time. Both of those things are true. If the Artefact is activated, it will yield access to an untold alien empire – stretched across the Maelstrom. With access to Q-jump points throughout the region, imagine the alien technology that could be salvaged. That is what the Directorate wants, and that is what I am giving them.”