Origins (15 page)

The Warfighter known as Private Alicia Malika self-detonated.

For a long time, all I could hear was a high-pitched whine.

I wasn't on Calico any more.

I wasn't a lieutenant colonel in the Alliance Army.

I was a sergeant again – about to face promotion – and I was lying on my back among the wreckage of a monorail train, on a world called Azure.

I had no sensory perception save for the constant ringing in my ears. The sensation was excruciating: a demonic sine wave enveloping everything, becoming my only reality.

“Elena!” I shouted, searching the dark.

Her body was warm and wet. Soaked with blood, covered in frag.

Then the white noise all around me, obliterating everything.

It was not the sound generated by the explosion any more, but something much, much worse.

The Artefact's insidious signal: the Shard's call to arms.

I was close enough to the explosion to be in the primary blast zone.

The overpressure wave roared over me.

My already-aching eardrums became dense balls of pain and the air was wrenched from my lungs. I felt internal organs compressing, the bones of my ribcage crushed by the pressure. Bright splinters of pain lanced across my chest, through my shoulder. Those injuries, I knew, were secondary – likely to be less serious than anything going on inside, but they hurt all the same. My Army fatigues were no protection at all from the blast.

Then the calm: the terrifying tranquillity that comes after a life-threatening experience. I teetered on the edge of consciousness. Made my addled brain focus on the here and now. The ground beneath me. The pain in my chest. The feel of wet blood between my fingers. I grasped those details and focused on them.

Pain is good. It reminds you that you're alive.

The calm didn't last long.

“
On your feet, trooper!
”

It was Jenkins, screaming into my face. She grabbed the lapels of my fatigues and pulled me up from the floor.

I felt woozy, sick. The ringing gradually receded, so that I could register expanding pandemonium around me. My vision shivered, but I made out enough of the surrounding deck to know that this was FUBAR.

“Here they come!” someone yelled.

The terminal was shrouded in black smoke, and the air was thick with the unmistakable odour of roasting human flesh. The barricade was a mess of torn metal and body-parts, soldiers and civilians alike crumpled across it. There wasn't much of Alicia Malika left – most of the body had been incinerated by the blast, burnt rags and a few shreds of vac-suit lingering on the skeletal remains of her lower half.

A simulant suicide bomber. The perfect weapon.

Mason lay beneath me. She slowly got to her feet too.

“Th… thanks for the save…” she stammered.

“I didn't realise that I had…”

“Harris is hit,” Martinez yelled, half-turning to me. He was firing into the indig mob, slicing bodies with carbine fire as they threw themselves at the line.

“We are
gone
!” Jenkins said. “Like, yesterday gone! Up, now!”

“Ostrow!” I started. “Where's Ostrow?”

He had the
Endeavour
's intel. He knew what we were supposed to be doing, where we'd find the ship.

“I'm here,” he rumbled, stirring beside me.

Several pieces of shrapnel had peppered his face; shattered one lens of his glasses. He was on his side, clutching at the black box – crawling back towards the Spine elevator entrance.

“Can you walk?” I shouted, over-compensating because of my trashed eardrums.

“I'm fine. Lieutenant Jenkins is right; we need to go.”

I knew, from painful experience, that the most serious injuries caused by such a blast would be internal. But there was nothing that we could do to evaluate those down here. The
Colossus
would have an auto-doc and a medical bay – the best chance for any injured personnel was to get them onboard. Both Ostrow and I probably needed a full assessment–

“Fuck, fuck!” an Alliance soldier yelled.

A flaming object – a Molotov cocktail of some sort: crude but effective – sailed over the remains of the barricade. It smashed into the outer hull of the elevator cart. Flames licked over the area, caught one of the defenders. Dressed in only fatigues, the young Army woman's clothing ignited. She dropped her rifle, began to roll around on the floor, screaming.

“Get an extinguisher over here!” a trooper said. “She's on fire!”

Just then, a pistol began to discharge from the mob. Rounds spanked off the defensive barriers. Soldiers began to return fire.

“Get your shit together, troopers,” I yelled. Not just at the Legion; at anyone manning the defences. “We're getting into that elevator.”

“Go, go, go!” Baker shouted. “My Boys'll hold the fort. We'll take the next cart up!”

Baker began to randomly fire his sidearm at the crowd, slamming another clip into the feeder when the first was empty. The soldiers around him didn't move either, instead braved the hail of incoming small-arms fire. Too many of them were already dead or dying. It was only a matter of time before the indigs broke through the cordon.

The Directorate would know where we were going now. Alicia Malika's sim was dead, but once the neural-link was broken the
Shanghai Remembered
would know that we were going up the Spine. They might even have been monitoring her, watching her feeds via a simulator somewhere. I swept the sea of angry faces; wondered how long it would be before the Directorate sent more copies of the Warfighters after us…

“Just go!” Baker said.

The Legion and Ostrow backed towards the open elevator door. Another home-made explosive hit the Spine, more fire pouring over the barricade. The crowd dragged a trooper across the divide – he disappeared, flailing and shouting.

The elevator cart was heavily armoured, and nothing the indigs had done so far was capable of disrupting the machine. The interior looked a lot like a starship cargo deck. Sealed metal crates sat on the apron, in a state of organised disarray.

“Get this cart moving,” I ordered.

Somewhere along the way, although in my current state I couldn't say when, I'd picked up a carbine again. Jenkins and I took up positions behind the crates. Picked off targets as some made a run for the doors, bodies splitting with red light. Kaminski did the same, firing with a handgun. Saul huddled behind a crate, covering his ears.

“Control panel…” Ostrow groaned. “Need… my clearance…”

“Do it!” I said.

Ostrow punched keys on the control panel, pushed his hand onto the DNA scanner. The cart lights began to flash amber, cycling in sequence. The enormous pneumatic blast doors rolled into position; years-old gears grinding as they did. More gunfire plinked against the armour-glass. The chanting reached a crescendo outside – so many voices, so disparate, that I couldn't even make out what the protest was about any more.

The doors slammed shut –
finally
– with a thunderous boom, and the cart vibrated as it mounted the magnetic rail. Inside, everything sounded muted: the ring of gunfire far away. Another improvised explosion chased us and hit the outer hull, but the elevator commenced its ascent.

I crept out from behind the crate. The cart was moving towards the upper dome, where it would enter a lock and then continue out into space. From where I crouched, I could look down on the battle below. Despite myself I involuntarily exhaled.

“Is it bad?” Jenkins asked, still hiding.

“It's bad,” I said. “Really bad.”

The dome was filled with civilians, all storming the barricades. Not just those looking for safe passage off Calico, either: now armed gangs, the groups we'd seen roaming the vandalised corridors. They had weapons – from improvised laser drills, through to carbines and pistols. It looked like some of the military armouries had been plundered.

“Baker isn't coming after us,” Jenkins said. She spoke the words as a statement, not a question. “None of them are.”

I nodded. “I… I think we're all that's left.”

Ostrow gasped for breath. He lay slumped against the control panel. Martinez put his hand on Ostrow's shoulder. He made a horrible noise at the back of his throat, but waved Martinez away when he went to prop him up. His tanned complexion had gone grey as Calico's plains.

“We'll get you to the
Colossus
—” I said.

“I've shut down the other elevators,” Ostrow interrupted, speaking fast, like he didn't know whether each word would be his last. “No one else is coming.” Both hands were suddenly on his chest, wrapped around the black box. “You need to get to the sh… ship, with this data…”

“Rest,” Martinez said. “Just take it easy for a moment.”

“I can't rest!” Ostrow barked. “And neither can the Legion. You need to do this, for all of our sakes.”

“All right,
mano
,” Martinez nodded.

The cart continued its progress, through the lock in the upper dome, and we danced between the gravity wells generated by the main base and the docks. Space opened above, Calico below. The entire outpost looked as though it had been under attack. Lights flashed and winked. Domes were breached. Some structures were blackened.

Above us was the orbital dock, the skeletal scaffold encasing several Alliance starships. Safety lights still flashed on the extremities of the mooring spars, warning pilots of the danger of getting too close. The
Colossus
was the biggest ship, but was in a state of repair. Large sections of hull plating had been removed, and the remainder was covered in robot maintenance teams like insects on shit.

“I can see her…” Kaminski muttered under his breath.

He wasn't talking about the
Colossus
: the
Shanghai Remembered
was coming into view. Martinez crossed himself, muttered a prayer under his breath. I even heard Saul – previously quiet, too stunned to say or do anything else – inhale sharply. Directorate warships had that effect on people, and especially ships as old and venerable as the
Shanghai
. She hung in low orbit, moored so that she could oversee the destruction of Calico, just as deadly as I remembered her. Whereas in Damascus she had employed stealth – had been reining in her firepower – here she unleashed it in all her hellish fury. An armour-plated destroyer class, her hull flashed with laser batteries, discharging death into the void. There were Alliance ships around her in pieces.

“There goes the Navy,” Jenkins said, matter-of-factly.

The
Shanghai
wasn't alone. Three more ships of the same pattern lingered in near-space, in the same orbit. A swarm of T-89 Interceptors and Z-5 Wraith attack ships were disengaging from the main Directorate fleet, descending on Calico Base.

We crossed beneath the shadow of the
Shanghai
, like a minnow beneath a shark, and made good our approach to the waiting
Colossus
.

“Weapons at the ready,” I said. Nodded towards the cart bulkhead. “We don't know what will be on the other side of that door. Mason and Martinez, help Ostrow. Jenkins and I will cover the door.”

The Legion rumbled agreement and got ready to move.

The engine chugged as it docked, and the cart slid into position. The amber strobe began to flash again, control panel chiming.

“Protect Kaminski, Ostrow and Saul,” I said to Jenkins. I braced against the exit bulkhead and prepared to open it. “You ready for this?”

“Looks like it,” Jenkins said. Her weapon was primed and trained on the door like it had personally offended her. “Just give me a target.”

“On my mark…” I said.

As I dropped my hand, the bulkhead opened.

The Spine terminated in a main dock. It was a vast, worklike space, caught in semi-dark, lit by the occasional LED overhead lamp and an observation window at one end of the hangar. Scores of airlock-style doors provided direct access to the ships in port. Because so many workers were stationed here, the docks had their own gravity generator. That made for better battlefield conditions, if the docks turned out to be hot.

I battle-signed to Jenkins, and took up a spot behind a stack of crates. She nodded and followed suit on the opposite flank. Our carbines were trained on the hangar.

At the other end of the dock, beneath the sign that declared DOCK THREE: UAS COLOSSUS, I saw movement. Flashes of blue uniform were visible at this distance.
Navy crew.

“Harris? That you?”

Admiral Joseph Loeb poked his head around the engine nacelle of a transport shuttle. He was clutching a pistol in an entirely unconvincing fashion, his cap pushed back on his head and sweat pouring down his face.

“It's me,” I said. To Jenkins: “Stand down.”

“What the hell is he doing here?” she asked.

Loeb grimaced and shook his head. From all around him – stowed in the shuttle cargo bays, behind crates, wherever else there was to hide – Navy crewmen and maintenance teams appeared.

“He's your captain,” Ostrow groaned from behind us. “And you need to move. Are the pilots here?”

“I am.”

James emerged from the group. He looked barely ruffled by what had happened; had obviously been up in the orbital docks the whole time. Aviator-helmet in the crook of his arm, he flashed a white-toothed grin at Jenkins.

I knew that she wouldn't be happy with the idea of going aboard the
Colossus
with James and Loeb, but she was a soldier first and foremost. Before she could argue, I said, “We don't have a choice.”

She nodded with dour resolve. “Understood.”

“These were the only officers that I could trust,” Ostrow said. “I knew that the Directorate hadn't got to them.”

Of James, I asked: “Your real body aboard the
Colossus
?”

“Sure is,” James said. “Otherwise I'd be leaving it behind, and can't have that…”

“Where's the rest of Scorpio Squadron?”

“Coming up the Spine,” James said, frowning. “You didn't see to them…”

“They're gone,” Ostrow said.

“Hang on!” James insisted. “If my squad are down there, we can't leave them—”

Ostrow began an unpleasant-sounding cough. Sounded a lot like he'd dislodged something inside of him, and it wasn't a good something. “I'm not going through this again. They're dead: everyone is dead.”

Still clutching the case, he stumbled at half-steam towards the dock, the Legion and the Navy crew in tow.

“Code red,” the ship-wide address system demanded. “Repeat: this is code red. All hands to battlestations.”