The Lazarus War: Legion

by Jamie Sawyer

  Shit. With supreme effort, I twisted my head in her direction. Every muscle in my neck felt locked, every bone fused by the opposing forces pulling at me. Because the Legion had done this so many times before I’d been concentrating on my own drop-technique.

  Private Mason had never hard-dropped. She spiralled alongside me, maybe a hundred metres off course. Her thruster pack fired – bright blue against the glaring red of the landscape below – and she spun head over heels.

  The combat-suits carried an active camouflage suite, made to mimic the surrounding conditions. Her suit flashed an angry red – mirroring the planet below – then, as her body spun, shifted to copy the black star-field above. The armour eventually gave up completely: the onboard AI must’ve decided that it was impossible to imitate the constantly shifting environment.

  “Told you she wasn’t ready,” Kaminski tutted.

  “You want me to fetch her?” Martinez asked. He panted heavily over the comm; even he was finding this taxing.

  “I’m the nearest,” I said. This was my problem. “Adopt primary drop formation and secure the LZ.”

  “Affirmative.”

  I fired my thruster. My descent was slowing, but I was still moving fast, and that made the lateral shift difficult. I pulled alongside the twisting figure.

  Up close, I saw the damage that Mason’s uncontrolled descent had caused. Her armour plating was blackened, glowing an incandescent white in places, angry blood-red and orange in others. Inside her helmet, her face was a mask of horror – eyes wide and pallor an absolute white.

  “I…I can’t get…angle!” she stammered.

  “Breathe deep. Focus.”

  I issued the orders verbally. In my head, I requested that her suit administer a dose of combat-drugs. Almost immediately, her rhythms flattened. It wouldn’t be enough to put her out, or even stop her from panicking, but I hoped that it was enough to keep her alive.

  “Help me! Please!”

  “Fire the thruster in three short bursts.” I was becoming increasingly hot; I realised suddenly how far off course Mason had actually drifted. “Just stay with it.”

  The thrusters were all thought-activated, and a panicked mind implicitly carried delay. She spiralled again and again, armour glowing hotter with every turn: every exposed angle blistering. Streamers of smoke had started rising from the damaged exterior. Unless I helped her, she was going to roast inside the armour.

  “Fire the thruster! Now!”

  Mason fired and her descent wobbled.

  “Oh shit, oh shit, oh shit…” she babbled.

  “Keep quiet and keep the comms channel clear. Give me your hand.”

  Mason reached out to me, her gloved fingers spread. I fired my thruster again, edging nearer to her – I could almost feel the heat coming from her frazzled body, more powerful than that emanating from Maru Prime below.

  “I can’t reach—”

  She wobbled some more, spinning again. An alarm sounded in my helmet: SQUAD MEMBER IN CRITICAL CONDITION. Thanks, I hadn’t noticed.

  I reached for her, the tip of my forefinger brushing her arm.

  Distance: two hundred metres.

  “Reach again!” I shouted.

  Then suddenly Mason was upright, her thruster pack firing pure blue. She ground her teeth. Reached with splayed fingers. I grappled with her hand, locking around her wrist.

  Distance: one hundred metres.

  “Come on, Private. You can do this!”

  She nodded firmly, thruster firing in a steady rhythm.

  The distance counter slowed even further and suddenly we were over the LZ. The thruster pack gave one last, monumental fire – allowing me almost to hover above the landing pad. My feet touched down on the deck, absorbed the impact through the rest of my body. I stood for a second, breathing deep, enjoying the fact that I was on solid ground.

  “You okay?”

  Mason’s combat-suit had temporarily locked. She sagged inside the armour, sweated forehead touching her inner face-plate.

  “Christo,” she whispered. “That was a ride. Thanks.”

  I didn’t answer her, just scanned the landing pad. The rest of my squad watched on with something approaching disbelief. They were assembled outside the station’s primary airlock with weapons drawn.

  “Maybe Kaminski was right when he said that she wasn’t ready,” Jenkins said.

  “She’s alive,” I answered, using the restricted channel between Jenkins and me. I didn’t want Mason’s confidence any more bruised than it already was.

  “You really want a ride, maybe I can show you sometime,” Kaminski said.

  Mason didn’t bother with a reply.

  “Stow that shit,” I ordered, back on the general channel. “Get us inside the station and conduct a sweep.”

  CHAPTER TWO

  TERMINAL DECLINE

  The landing pad was on an elevated spar at the periphery of the observatory. It was swathed with hot, ash-ridden winds; and debris from the battle being fought in low orbit had started to rain down, giving the false impression that Maru had a weather system.

  “No external security,” Jenkins said. “But we’ve got hostiles inbound.”

  “I see them.”

  The sky above was filled with streaking comets – rapidly becoming visible as Krell ships.

  “Krell are going to be on-station soon,” said Martinez.

  The Krell were hot-dropping, just like we had done, to get troops onto Far Eye. Their technology was a fucked-up reflection of ours: their shuttles were living things, whose sole purpose was to deliver as many Krell as possible to their destination.

  “’Ski, run a bypass on this door.”

  “Solid copy.”

  Kaminski jogged to the airlock, hooking a hacker unit to the door controls.

  “Preserve the atmosphere,” I said. “We’ve probably got unarmoured civilians in there.”

  Kaminski nodded. “Running a hotwire now. It’ll take longer than a direct breach, but should keep the civvies happy.”

  “Update on the rest of the platoon?” I asked of Jenkins.

  “Other squads are meeting resistance,” she said. “Captain Avis’ team has just extracted.”

  “Avis is an asshole,” Martinez said. “Serves him right.”

  “But more work for us,” I said. “Currently twenty-three minutes until the station reaches terminal decline.”

  “Doors breached!” Kaminski declared.

  The airlock outer doors cycled and we moved inside. The inner chamber began to repressurise – jets in the wall hissing as the decontamination procedure commenced, spraying the outside of my suit with a fine white mist. A yellow light flashed overhead, indicating the operation of the cleansing unit.

  “Welcome to Far Eye Observatory,” started the station’s computer system; with a cultured female voice. “Established in 2275, the Observatory is sponsored by the Antares Mining Consortium. Please remain still while the decontamination procedure is completed…”

  “Cancel that shit, ’Ski.”

  Kaminski acted immediately, using his wrist-comp and a direct connection to Far Eye’s artificial intelligence system. The yellow light stopped flashing and the voice trailed off. The door into the base proper opened to a darkened corridor.

  “Double-time it, people. Weapons at the ready.”

  The squad responded with the clatter of plasma rifles. We all carried M95 battle-rifles – huge, oversized long-arms only suitable for use by simulant troopers.

  “I miss my incinerator,” Jenkins absently muttered.

  “I don’t think that the civvies would appreciate it,” I said. I’d ordered rifles only on this operation, to minimise the risk of collateral damage.

  “Where is everyone?” Martinez asked.

  “Maybe these science pukes knew that the ’Ski was on the force?” Kaminski said.

  “Staff were told to gather in the Communications Centre,” I said. “Uploading route.”

  On my HUD, a fl
ashing grid appeared: directing me onwards to Communications. The base was a conglomeration of hab units, laboratories, and observation domes. Living quarters for four times the actual staff numbers but I guess there weren’t many applications for postings at the ass-end of the universe. My maps were based on the original configuration of the station, but it had been installed in orbit around Maru Prime several years ago. No telling, in the meantime, quite how much the station had changed.

  “Activate drones,” I declared.

  I carried a full complement of surveillance drones, nested around my life-support pack. About the size of a baseball, the units were equipped with miniature anti-grav generators. The air was filled with an electric whining as the drones came online, swarming around me like flies. Each active drone added to my intelligence network; broadcasting encrypted vid-and audio-feeds, temperature readings, atmospheric fluctuations. The data was streamed direct to my HUD. The flow was temporarily disorienting: the drones were a recent addition to the Sim Ops arsenal and I was still getting used to them.

  “Wide dispersal, complete tactical analysis.”

  The drone army responded immediately, darting off into the shadows. They had a practical range of about a kilometre. That would give us a tactical network sufficient to map and catalogue most of the station, whatever changes had been effected by the staff, faster than even a simulant team.

  “Move on to Communications.”

  With the thump of heavy boots against the metal floor, we moved off.

  “Quebec and Falke are out of the game,” Jenkins said. “Just made extraction. Contact has also been lost with Captain Yares.”

  The update flashed across my HUD. Each squad was running autonomously, on the initiative of their respective captain. That was a conscious decision: maintaining regular radio contact might attract Krell attention. They followed comms waves like a shark followed the scent of blood. Supposing that Yares’ team was about to make extraction, that left us and one other team. I consulted the mission timeline again: now just over nineteen minutes until terminal decline.

  “I’m getting lots of bio-readings,” Mason said. She waved at the door ahead. “Concentration of signals in that room, but several more across the station.”

  That was the problem with the bio-scanner: it couldn’t differentiate between Krell and human biological signatures.

  Without being asked, Kaminski moved up on the door to the Communications Centre and Martinez fell into a covering crouch.

  “It’s about to get hot,” Jenkins said.

  “Fucking A it is,” Martinez said. “God bless my hand.”

  Kaminski slung his M95 rifle over his shoulder, and Martinez nodded to him. He activated the controls and the doors purred open.

  “Move on.”

  Communications was ordinarily occupied by banks of computers and the AI mainframe – most of the running of the station was automated and none of the crew had any dedicated technical expertise. Now, it was crammed with personnel. Clad in EVA suits, ready for immediate evac.

  We moved up by the numbers and filtered into the room. I nodded at Jenkins and she dropped back to cover the chamber entrance.

  The staff were perched on chairs, huddled in corners, pacing nervously. The group’s spokesperson was a pudgy-faced woman, wearing a battered EVA suit, smeared black with burn marks, glass-globe helmet under her arm as though she was ready to make a spacewalk at any moment. Her hair was thinning and receding, an indication that she was used to working in deep-space – experiencing the common side-effect of anti-rad drugs. My HUD aura-tagged the woman as DR JENNIFER ANDERS, STATION SUPERVISOR. Anders pushed her way to the front of the group.

  I popped my own helmet, working on the vague assumption that presenting her with a human face – albeit simulated – might allay some of her concerns. It didn’t seem to work: there were gasps of amazement around the room as I revealed my simulated features.

  “Major Conrad Harris, Alliance Simulant Operations Programme. We’re here to effect the evacuation. You are Dr Anders?”

  The woman drew back involuntarily. She was tiny, dwarf-like, compared to my physical bulk.

  “That’s right. We did – have done – as ordered by Command,” she muttered, biting the corner of her lip. “They told us that the Krell might be coming here…invading…”

  There was another ripple of gasps through the group, more pale faces glaring up at me and my team.

  “They already know,” Anders said, nodding towards her staff. She added, haltingly: “But…none of us have…ever…faced the Krell before.”

  “Let’s try to keep it that way,” I said, with my best impression of a smile. “Our shuttle was damaged on the way down and I can’t guarantee that anyone else is coming. What other transport options do you have on site?”

  “We have a shuttle with sufficient capacity for the staff,” she said. “It’s in the secondary hangar, but it hasn’t been used for months.”

  That could be a problem. I nodded at Kaminski.

  “’Ski, get patched in, see if you can remotely activate their shuttle.”

  “Copy that.”

  Kaminski went to work again, the civilians parting to allow him access to a terminal.

  “Anything else?” I asked.

  “There’s an evacuation pod, but that only has space for a single passenger.”

  Her eyes told me that she understood why the Sim Ops team were here: that if only one man could be saved, it would be Professor Saul.

  “Show me the locations of both.”

  Anders called up a schematic on one of the holo-terminals. The shuttle bay was somewhere on the outer rim of the station – beyond a jumbled mass of corridors that didn’t appear at all on my official station maps. The evac-pod was, predictably, even further away: on the top of the largest module. That was labelled STAFF LOUNGE. From a technical perspective, to someone who had never actually tried to escape a dying space station, that probably seemed like a good design choice. But covering either of those distances was going to be a problem: there were now less than eighteen minutes until the station got scuttled.

  Rather than demoralise the staff any more, I said: “We’ll get you all out of here as quickly as possible. Head count?”

  Anders swallowed again. “Twenty-two.”

  “Professor Saul is missing,” Mason said. “All other staff accounted for.”

  Just then, something creaked ominously in the superstructure of the station. There was a deep, resonant groan: the mournful roll of thunder. The deck listed and my suit activated my mag-locks. Anders grabbed a chair, held herself steady.

  “The station’s decay is rapidly increasing,” she said. “We…we’ve tried to…alter our drive pattern, but Maru Prime seems to be—”

  “Where is Professor Saul?” I asked, with a little more anger in my voice than I had intended.

  Anders set her jaw, face crumpling as though she might cry. “He…he’s in the primary laboratory. I told him to stay here with the rest of us…but he insisted…”

  “That’s all we need: an errant scientist,” Martinez said.

  “We’ve been there too many times before,” said Kaminski, with a dry chuckle. “Shuttle is active. Engines are online, although I’ll need to manually couple the fuel lines.”

  Dr Anders seemed to wilt beneath my gaze. No point in blaming her, I supposed; it was more important that I actually got these people off the station. I buckled my helmet back into place and activated the intel from the drone network. The drones had invaded every area of the base, throwing our sensor-grid far and wide. No Krell, yet: that meant they were still outside the structure, working their way in. Every room, down to Life Support and Drive Maintenance, had been mapped…

  Almost every room.

  A chamber – one of the larger labs – remained sealed to the drones. A handful of them had gathered outside, and I watched their high-definition vid-feeds. The bio-scanner network, fed with the results of the drone sensor array, pinged a probab
le result: someone was inside the lab.

  “Professor Saul insisted that he continue working until the last moment,” Anders said. “I tried to get everyone here, I really did. His work is highly classified, highly specialised. He has a secure entry system in place for his personal lab…”

  Time was running out fast, but – I reminded myself – we could still complete the mission.

  “New orders,” I declared to my squad. “I’m going after Saul. Mason, you’re with me. Martinez, Jenkins – escort these people to the shuttle. Kaminski, go ahead and make sure that it’s ready to leave.”

  Far Eye Observatory was dying, but not quietly.

  Rather than a slow decline into the lava world below, the station was going to have a fast, spectacular death. I knew this, because the ambient temperatures were soaring – the internal atmosphere pressing uncomfortably against the second skin of my combat-suit. If I’m finding this tough, I deliberated, then the civvies must be finding it even harder. Computer systems, probably adapted for use in the bizarre and threatening environment, were shorting out. Bulkhead hatches flashed hazard warnings. That groaning – the noise that could only be the death knell of the facility itself – had become a constant background accompaniment to my journey.

  All of this seismic activity was playing havoc with my sensor-suite. The bio-scanner worked sporadically and communications to the rest of the team were patchy.

  I took point and Mason had the rear. Although we were in a state of combat readiness, speed was our priority. We cleared corridor junctions, tore our way through internal doors.

  “External surveillance systems are off-line,” Mason remarked, as we approached Saul’s laboratory.

  “Well spotted.”

  “Conditions outside are getting worse. No way that even shielded tech could survive out there.”

  I nodded. “Sci-Div probably never thought their facility would get so close to Maru’s surface. I’m sure that the Krell will do just fine, though.” They always seemed to, no matter what the conditions. “One of nature’s bad jokes.”