by Jamie Sawyer
“Yes, but perhaps we can jury-rig a drop-capsule.” Maybe I could get Lieutenant James to assist – to send out a Wildcat? Reverse engineer a capsule? “A transport could move beyond the Artefact’s perimeter, and pick you up.”
“There’s more to this than just me,” Elena said. “The Endeavour sent me back. The expedition has suffered such losses. The crew is dying. They need help as well.”
“Where is the ship?”
Something had changed. Elena’s back arched, and she pulled away: searching the corridor. The air started to hum.
“It’s found us…” Elena whispered.
A shriek sounded deep within the Artefact.
“Get somewhere safe,” I ordered. I picked up my rifle. “I’ll turn on my suit-feeds – draw it to me.”
Elena nodded, stepping back from me now like I was a live bomb.
“Please come for me, Conrad. I want to go with you.”
Her eyes pleaded with me: I couldn’t imagine how she had done this for so long.
“What do I need to do?” I asked.
“Follow me.”
“And how do I do that?”
“Turn the Artefact on.”
Then Elena was gone. Her bio-sign was already dancing away, within seconds moving out of my scanner range and vanishing completely.
I thought-activated my feeds.
Simultaneously, the shadows around me began to buzz with activity. Like a hive of wasps, an ant hill stirred from long hibernation. I saw flashes of activity in my peripheral vision.
Then the dark took shape: sharp, angular. Two burning red eyes formed in the mechanical’s skull cavity – or an approximation of that – and a mouth shaped to speak.
“Fuck you!” I roared.
I pumped the underslung grenade launcher.
Fired once, then again for good measure: using hi-ex grenades.
The Reaper’s face translated an approximation of shock—
Then the grenades went off. Primed for a micro-second delay, the explosions were inside the mechanical. The noise was deafening and even the dampeners couldn’t stop everything from getting through.
Something told me that I had seconds to live – most likely less – and so I took the advantage. I ran for the door, reactivating my null-shield as I went.
I sensed the Shard moving behind me.
“Come on!” I yelled. I had to make sure that Elena had got away.
My hands touched the runic impressions around the door.
To my surprise, the lock suddenly gave way. The metal leaves of the iris-pattern door opened, schlicked back into the wall.
Beyond the door, the corridor opened into a vast chamber. The ceiling far above was so covered in shadow, it was impossible to make out the real dimensions of the place. A thin, precarious-looking bridge crossed a chasm, leading to an elevated platform in the middle of the room. That structure was glittering with light – almost looked as though it was composed of light. It didn’t look like it would take my weight, but I was willing to risk it. I ran, my boots against the alien construction.
Whatever is up there: that’s the target.
Black crystalline edifices, bigger than a simulant, erupted from the floor. Those were knife-sharp, etched with the same sort of markings that I had seen on the Key.
This had to be the control chamber: the Hub.
I just kept moving. Kept running.
Looked down from the bridge: the ground was so far below that I couldn’t make it out. The bridge itself was littered with Krell corpses—
Something slashed at my suit.
Again and again, a barbed whip.
The null-shield lit, but failed—
I registered multiple breaches across my back, both legs, shoulders. The pain was intense and immediate. I collapsed forwards, only just managed to stay on the bridge. Face-forward, I hit the ground hard.
EXTRACTION IMMINENT, my suit warned.
I managed to roll onto my back. Better to see what was about to kill me, I decided.
The dark spewed into the chamber.
Another tendril slammed into me: hit me somewhere in the chest. Something metallic and sharp pierced my suit. I felt wet, warm blood welling inside my armour, pumping from my debilitating wounds.
Right lung punctured. That’ll do it.
The transition from drunk to sober had been unpleasant and jarring.
The extraction from sober to drunk was a hundred times worse.
I managed to stop myself from vomiting into my tank – knew that I wouldn’t have the strength to clear up after myself – and lay in the simulator for a long while. Inebriated, I was finding it difficult to process what had just happened. The emotional upswell must’ve been tempered by my medi-suite, back on the Artefact, because now I was in my own skin – driven by natural human chemical reactions – my recollections were jumbled and hard to order.
I considered my next move. The SOC looked as I’d last left it: dark, deserted. I noted Williams’ empty tank. I probably had a few hours before the morning shift started, and Sci-Div began to ready the simulators for the day’s work.
It didn’t take me long to reach a decision.
Fuck it. I have to go back.
I reached for the tank’s internal control console. I punched the COMMENCE TRANSITION key, and closed my eyes – waiting for the absolute clarity of simulant senses—
Nothing happened.
I frowned, hit the key again.
Still nothing.
I tried again and again: but no response from the simulator.
I rested my head against the inside of the tank. The world outside was spinning, and my natural vision was doubling, but I could just about read the viewer-screen above my simulator. Words were flashing there.
“What the fuck…?”
COMMAND OVERRIDE.
I pressed the TRANSITION key again, but the error message – or whatever it was – flashed on the overhead monitor.
Something had to be wrong with the neural-link. Maybe Loeb had placed a system block on the simulator operations; or perhaps something had been damaged during the last transition. I was too damned drunk to work around the problem.
As the simulator-tank door opened, I realised that I’d forgotten to purge the amniotic – such a basic mistake – and the used fluid sloshed across the SOC floor. I stumbled out of my tank, unsteady on my feet, and slipped on it. Too late to make any secret of what I had done. Fighting back nausea, I got to my feet and dressed. I didn’t bothered towelling myself dry – the fabric stuck to me uncomfortably.
I managed to get in front of the SOC control system and attempted to resolve the system message. Very quickly, it became apparent that this was beyond me. Punching keys in the correct order was too much, let alone accessing the system menus. I needed someone with technical knowledge, or at least someone sober. Maybe Kaminski, I thought. But he wasn’t here, and if it was a hardware issue then I’d need proper Sci-Div support. That would mean explaining how and why I’d come to make transition badly hammered.
It’ll have to wait, I decided.
Although it took me twice as long as normal, I got back to my quarters and successfully evaded any Naval crew.
I collapsed onto my bunk. Head spinning, eye sockets throbbing. Maybe it was the proximity to the Rift, or the cumulative effect of having died so many times in the last few days, but the drink had affected me far more than usual. Although I knew that I needed to confront Williams, I was too drunk to do anything about him now. I wanted the Legion behind me on this.
“Should’ve checked the percentage on that damned vodka…” I muttered to the dark.
“You shouldn’t have started drinking,” the dark answered back.
“I wish I’d never stopped.”
It took me a moment to realise that I was talking to someone else in the room. I struggled to my elbows, sat up in bed. Scanned the cabin for an intruder—
“Computer?” I slurred. “Who else is in here?”
/> “Good morning, Major Harris,” said the AI. “You are currently the only occupant of cabin sixteen, deck A-11. Do you require medical assistance?”
“No. Wake me immediately if anyone enters this cabin.”
“As you wish, Major.”
There was silence for a second, then the dark began whispering again.
“Are you going to lose everyone you love? Because in real life they don’t come back, Connie.”
I rubbed the data-ports in my forearms until I finally slept.
CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO
GOODBYE
Twenty-seven years ago
After my parents passed, Carrie and I drifted.
Both separately and together: the bond shared between siblings never broken, but strained by our increasing differences.
As I became a teenager, and Carrie was within reach of adulthood, our interests diverged. Carrie’s was singular but regularly changed: the drug of choice on the street. That was something that I knew would set her down a dangerous and self-destructive path. The drug might’ve been different, but I’d seen it all in my father.
Carrie meant what she’d said to Nelson, about becoming a pacifist. Maybe she rebelled because of our family’s military history, and the miserable home conditions only made things worse. I never really knew, because I never spoke to her any more. As we grew older we became more and more distant.
We moved around a lot in those days but the last place that we stayed with was Aunt Ritha and Leeroy. After that move, Carrie rapidly deteriorated. She spent as much time as possible away from the cramped apartment. The typical teenage girl behaviour began – dyed her hair, lost weight – but much more as well. Was it Aunt Ritha that got her started on the scolometh? Should I hate her because of it? Probably.
It was the last week in June, the day after her eighteenth birthday, when Ritha threw her out. Carrie came home blazed on meths, angry and abusive and terrified. Ritha couldn’t understand that, because the scolometh only ever made her tired and stupid. I slept through most of the exchange: it had become next to normal. Only, this time, the row had stirred Ritha from her couch – torn her from her self-inflicted torpor, away from her tri-D programmes.
I felt the prickle at the back of my neck that told me this argument was different. Half-heard words penetrated the walls. Even if I couldn’t make out the specifics, I understood the emotions being conveyed. I swiped my civilian wrist-comp, saw the time flash on the display. It was still early morning.
Carrie burst into our room, face stained with kohl and tears: eyes wider than a Centauri moon. She stood over my bunk.
“I’m going,” she declared. “I’m finished.”
How many times had I heard that said before? It was a weekly mantra. She’d go shack up with one of the older boys in her tribe, spend a few nights there. Then, when the drugs and the money ran out, she’d be back – contrite, apologetic.
“All right,” I said, rolling over, pulling the thin blanket over me.
Carrie wasn’t the only one who had learnt feigned indifference. I was a teenager too now and I’d started to deploy the same techniques. If anything, I’d got better at it than her.
“I’m not coming back, Con,” she said.
She grabbed clothes from the floor, thrust them into a canvas bag. The tri-D photo cubes from under the bed; the only physical reminders that we had of our parents. Those were supposed to be shared but I was too proud to tell her to put them back. She was packing every possession important to her.
“You’ve said that so many times before. You’ll be back.”
“She damned well won’t!” Ritha warbled, from the hall. “I’m having one of my fits, missy! My programmes is on! Your mother’d be—”
“She’s dead, Ritha!” Carrie yelled. She continued scooping up items. “They’re both dead, and do you know why they’re dead? Because of the war.”
I sighed. This was her favourite topic: the war.
“Okay,” I said. “Whatever. I’m really not interested.”
“You want to say goodbye to me?” Carrie leant over my bed again. “Because I’m going for good.”
“That’s exactly what you said last time.”
“This isn’t like that at all. I really mean it.”
I recognised then that there was something different about her voice. Maybe, I suddenly panicked, this is actually going to happen. I sat up in bed, watched her cleaning out her possessions in the darkness.
“Meet me down at the terminal,” she said, talking breathlessly, working fast. “Tomorrow. Ten.”
“Maybe,” I said.
Over the years, the Detroit Metro Off-World Terminal – the downtown spaceport – had grown in size and use. Once it had served as a launch pad for sub-orbitals – for those with money to burn, a quick way to get across the globe. Now it processed thousands of passengers a day, all looking to escape the confines of Old Earth: one of the UA’s largest spaceports. While it was nowhere near as big as the Seattle Main Port, the Off-World Terminal was a source of something approaching pride for the locals.
I arrived much earlier than Carrie had suggested – or rather insisted – that we meet. I still wanted to believe – still believed – that this was another of Carrie’s stunts; that she wasn’t going to go through with it. But just in case, I’d turned up early – to make sure that I didn’t miss her.
I waited outside the main passenger terminal. The port was busy and noisy. Greyhound buses lined up on the parking lot; windows concealed with heavy metal shutters, flanks pocked with burn marks and bullet holes. The nearest bus had the gun hatch open – a lazy contractor selling smokes from the roof. Two police spinners sat at the port’s main entrance, harness-bulls observing the throng and throb of the crowd as it surged into the terminal.
There was a demonstration going on outside. Protestors with homemade, poor-quality holo-placards: chanting anti-war sentiments at anyone who would listen. Some carried loudhailers wired to speakers on their shoulders. Pacifists, one and all.
Carrie stood away from the crowd. Just as the cops eyed protestors, Carrie’s eyes were always on the cops. She didn’t look exceptional, didn’t look different from the rest of the crowd: waif-like, hands plunged into the pockets of a plastic raincoat. Her face had an angular, hungry turn to it; eyes become deeper set over the last few years. Blonde hair braided and dirty. She didn’t see me; didn’t even appear to be looking for me. For a couple of minutes I watched her from the parking lot, took in this girl who was once my sister.
Although the clock over the main entrance still flashed ten minutes to ten, I started to fret that she might walk away – that she might decide that I wasn’t coming. I wandered down to meet her.
“You came,” she said. Face breaking in a restrained smile.
“I did,” I said, coolly. “But I still don’t think that you’re really going.”
Carrie grimaced. “Then you’re wrong, little brother.”
“I’ll bet that you don’t even have papers.”
Carrie kept one hand on her bag at all times. Eyes still on the cops, she scooped inside and produced some crumpled plastic sheets. Immigration papers; an off-world visa.
“This time, I do,” she said.
“How’d you get them? Are they real?”
“I’ve been doing some extra work,” Carrie said. I didn’t ask what that was, and she didn’t offer to explain: better that I didn’t know. “And of course they aren’t real.”
“Then how do you know that you’ll get off-world?”
“Because I paid well for them, and I’m meeting people. I’m not travelling alone.”
Panic overcame me. I thought about calling out to the cops, ratting on Carrie. The sudden and terrible feeling that I would be left alone with Ritha and Leeroy filled me—
“You can’t go,” I said. I didn’t have the words to express it. “Please stay.”
“I can’t.”
“Why?”
“I’ve got to be something
more than this,” Carrie said. “There are people dying on Ventris II. They need help.”
More of Carrie’s pacifist bullshit. The lapels of her plastic raincoat were lined with badges: beatnik symbols, peace slogans.
“I don’t believe you. Ventris II is a Core World.” I didn’t know the specifics at that age, but I knew enough: Ventris II was light-years from Sol. “It’ll take months of objective time to get there.”
The trip would also likely cost thousands of UA dollars. It all sounded remarkably unlikely.
At least it did until I looked into Carrie’s eyes. Cold determination, vicious certainty: those were the things dwelling in eighteen-year-old Carrie Harris’ eyes.
“I’ll come back,” Carrie whispered. She reached out to touch my face; a gentle, caring brush of my cheek. “Eventually. Give it a few years; let me find who I am. You said it yourself: I always come back.”
I swallowed. Implications were dawning on me. “Even if you do make it back, what about the debt? We’ll be out of synch by years.”
“I’ll find a way. I have to do something, Con. Something more than die down here.”
“How are you going to do that?” I asked. “By murdering the Directorate with love?”
“No. By being another pair of hands.”
“That’s rubbish, Carrie. And it isn’t really why you’re leaving, either.”
I nodded at her forearms. Her coat was transparent, exposing her frail and pale arms through the plastic. Clear needle tracks lined the inner aspects: bruises that varied in colour between vibrant blues and violent reds. Those told their own story, and it had nothing to do with leaving Earth because of any peace movement.
“I’m off that now,” Carrie said. “For good.”
“Yeah? When’d that happen? Those look fresh to me.”
Carrie shook her head. I wondered whether she would turn and leave – plough on through the mire of bodies and into the passenger terminal. She looked down at her overlarge black boots – military-grade: a poor attempt at irony.
“You ever think of that body we found in the drain?” she asked me.