Origins (2 page)

Captain Ostrow burst into the briefing room, jostling himself into a place at the tactical display. He scowled bitterly.

“I'd rather that you hadn't started the briefing without me,” he said.

“Sorry,” Jenkins said, “but we've finished without you too.”

Ostrow was the Military Intelligence officer assigned to the
Independence
, and as such he was technically supposed to sanction every operation that we conducted in Directorate territory. According to our mission parameters, we needed him to endorse that we had “just cause” for each mission: that we weren't acting without our military authority. He was a genuine pain in the ass.

“Funny how that worked out,” Mason said, smiling.

“I've been looking over this intel,” said Ostrow, “and I've got to say, I'm not convinced. This is the third target you've identified this week—”

“The third
potential
,” I said, firmly. I could use their own language against them, if Mili-Intel wanted to play it that way. “Which means that it could be an actual.”

“It could be a mining station,” Ostrow countered. “It's just as likely. And this supposed intelligence chatter could be explained by movement of contraband, of arms or warheads…” He shook his head. “The board is a no-go on this operation. It's a red signal.”

The room settled into an agitated quiet, troopers waiting for my response. Their concern wasn't necessary. I had absolutely no intention of backing down; not on this or any other operation in Directorate space. The bastards were going to pay for what they'd done to us, and we were going to get our people back.

“I've read the intelligence files too,” I said, “and
I'm
approving this mission. I'll answer for it if I'm wrong.”

“Which is exactly why you shouldn't be conducting these operations yourself. You're too damned close. He was your man. This is Directorate space, for Christo's sake. Just our presence here is violating so many treaties that I don't have time to list them…”

I heard the pinch in Ostrow's response as he trailed off. He knew that he had gone too far. I saw Martinez's face drop across the display, and held up a hand to warn him not to react.

“They killed thousands of servicemen and women in Damascus,” I said. “Did that violate any of your goddamn treaties?”

“I realise that,” Ostrow said, reading the anger that his comment had generated around the table. Even so, he gave it one last try: “That aside, this operation is not sanctioned by Command or the Pentagon. Resources are tight enough as it is; with the losses at
Liberty Point
, you should be on the frontline! This could trigger a major diplomatic incident—”

“
Another
major diplomatic incident,” I corrected.

“We're already at DEFCON one—”

Jenkins looked at me expectantly. Eyes are windows into the soul, the old cliché went. When I looked into her eyes, I saw hurt and sadness: a combination of emotions that I knew only too well. There was no way I could add to that. Kaminski and Jenkins had been together, for what it was worth, and she had taken his loss worst of all.

“The mission is a go,” I said, ignoring Ostrow. “On my approval, if no one else's. Strike force proceed as briefed.”

Every soldier in the briefing room slammed a hand to their hearts.

I looked down at my missing left hand.

Both hands on my plasma rifle, I faced the snowstorm. It was blindingly bright outside, and although I was wearing a full tactical helmet I fought the very human urge to put a hand up to my face to shield my eyes. The sky was a brilliant white – Rodonis Capa nothing more than an ineffectual blur on the horizon – and the snow was so intense that it was disorienting.

“Everybody out,” Jenkins yelled over the comm-net. Sealed inside our powered combat-suits, this was our only method of communication. “Go, go, go!”

I kicked off my boot-magnetics and armed my M95 plasma rifle. The Trident Class V suits were insulated and carried full life support, but even wrapped in that battle-tech the cold hit me immediately. The Directorate's nickname for the world – Cold Death – seemed more than apt. I felt the pull of Capa's gravity: the dropship had been gradually moving into the world's gravity well since we'd broken orbit. A surge of combat-drugs – a cocktail especially designed to keep me killing – hit my bloodstream.

As planned, Scorpio One had landed on top of a low, flat building – a hangar of some sort. The other teams started to call in to Jenkins; meeting the same level of resistance. The Raiders were pinned down a couple of hundred metres south, in one of the open yards between structures, and the Vipers were taking heavy fire beside a garage in the east—

Blam!

A lucky round breached my null-shield and I felt the slug pop against my shoulder. It bounced off my combat-suit armour plating, but it still hurt.

“Fuck!” I yelled, gritting my teeth.

The ablative plate was good but, as demonstrated by the three dead sims underfoot, given enough kinetic fire eventually we'd go down like any other skin.

“You okay, sir?” Mason asked.

“Try not to get shot,” I said. “Hurts like a bitch.”

“
Area is hot
,” came the voice of an
Independence
observer, watching our progress from orbit. “
Advise immediate relocation from that site, Lazarus. Multiple hostiles closing on your position.
”

“Lazarus Actual copies.”

To describe the theatre as “hot” was a significant understatement. Fire slid by all around us, from both the roadways below and guard-posts liberally sprinkled throughout the compound. Most of it was small-arms fire – I guessed assault rifles and machine guns – but it was hard to tell in these conditions.

Barely visible through the half-light of the snowstorm, my tactical helmet identified the three other dropships. The Jaguars were big and heavy: hulls a dark grey, with bloated crew cabins and stubby wings. They were lifters, not fighters, and carried only light armament. The precise, planned formation in which they were supposed to land hadn't survived contact with Capa V, let alone the enemy.

I took a decision. “Make for safe altitude, Scorpio Squadron.”

“Baker's Boys have been assigned the landing pad,” Jenkins said. “If the Raiders take the—”

In my peripheral vision, I saw a flash of light. Immediately, I identified it as a laser weapon: a mounted cannon of some sort, big enough to generate a searing beam of ruby energy.

Scorpio Three was a couple of hundred metres to my left. She'd been skimming low over a concrete block, empty and ready for evacuees, access ramp grazing the roof.

The beam panned, like a searchlight, and hit the ship's underside.

“
Down!
” I shouted.

The wreckage of Scorpio Three went down fast, VTOL engines failing, and the shock of the exploding Jag dropship made the hangar shake. It landed somewhere in the middle of the compound, throwing up a plume of black smoke. Directorate troops – identifiable only as flashes of heat in the storm – began to move on the site.

James cursed over the comm. Scorpio One fired off a couple of Banshee missiles, unsuccessfully seeking to chase the source of the attack, and lifted skyward.

“
Scorpio One pulling out—
”

“
Copy that. Two has evaded further anti-air fire…
”

“…
Tagging multiple tangos on east wall. Looks like a laser cannon—
”

The other ships started to do the same: hulls occasionally flickering with incoming small-arms fire.

If we wanted to stay operational, we needed to get moving.

“Legion, move on that satellite dish,” I ordered. “All other squads, take immediate cover.”

I hunkered down behind the light cover and started to plan our next move. Spy-feeds from the stealthship that had scoped the outpost were superimposed onto the interior of my helmet face-plate, demonstrating where we were supposed to be.

“Looked a lot smaller from orbit,” Martinez said, gruffly. “And when there weren't people firing at us.”

“Do you get that a lot?” Jenkins asked, ducking back as a grenade exploded on the other side of the dish. Hot frag showered the area, sparked against our shields.

“They weren't supposed to know that we were coming…” Mason said.

“Devil's eyes are everywhere,” Martinez said with a shrug.

“Doesn't matter,” I said. “Getting these buildings pacified and searched; that's what we're here for.”

The outpost was situated between two mountains, criss-crossed by gantries and metal catwalks that provided numerous defensive posts. The scant overground constructions were all snow- and ice-covered; metalwork made brittle by constant exposure to the elements.

Mason knelt beside me and reached into the deep snow with her gloved hand.

“So this is snow…” she said, almost wistfully. Although Mars was mostly terraformed, it was a planet without such a weather system. “I never thought that I'd get the chance to see it. Almost pretty.”

“If it wasn't so fucking cold,” Martinez added. “Not like home at all. You ever heard of a simulant getting frostbite?”

“No,” said Mason, “but I think I'm about to be the first.”

“Not this again,” Jenkins said. “And for your information,
this
is most certainly not snow. This is an impression of snow. Check your wrist-comps for the chemical composition. There's barely any H2O in it.”

“She's from California,” I whispered, as I tried to get my bearings, decide where we should be heading. The cold was numbing, seemed to slow my thought-processes. “I guess she knows all about snow.”

“Better than these two off-worlders,” Jenkins said.

A stream of hard rounds hit the snow beside me.

“How many shooters we got out there?” I asked.

“I'd bet less than a hundred,” Jenkins said. “Fifty on it.”

“I'll take that bet…” Martinez said.

“Button it, troopers,” I said. “We need to act fast. Drones away. Directive: identify and flag hostiles.”

The Lazarus Legion deployed their surveillance drones. A dozen autonomous flying units detached from our backpacks and sailed out into the snow. Even as I watched, two were caught by gunfire, exploding in a hail of sparks. The others began painting hostiles. Almost immediately, ghostly green figures appeared on my HUD.
Ah, that's better: I can see them.
The drones sent back heartbeat, heat signatures, the whole deal. The info-streams combined with those of the rest of the strike force.

Martinez, back against the dish, clucked his tongue. “You owe me fifty, Jenkins.”

At least two hundred bodies were circling the compound, converging on our location.

Jenkins checked her plasma rifle. “Tell you what, I'll pay you in Venusian dollars. That suit?”

“Fuck you, Jenkins,” Martinez said. The Venusian dollar wasn't worth the unicard it was stored on. “You know I only bet in American notes.”

Mason sniggered. “Unmarked, so I hear.”

There…

Something on the drone feeds wasn't right.

“You see that?” I asked the Legion, broadcasting the feed to their HUDs as well.

“It wasn't on the orbital images…” Mason said.

The edge of the compound was a ragged, snow-bitten fence, studded with towers. One of those overlooked the landing pad: a tall, skeletal structure, with an armoured booth at the top. The sky illuminated as something up there activated, accompanied by a whip-crack every time that it fired. I magnified the image. A handful of Directorate troopers were manning the booth, firing a multi-barrelled laser weapon into the sky. I panned the drone's position, took in the rest of the security fence. The other sentry towers were only half-completed: this was the only anti-air weapon that worked.

“No way that the flyboys will be able to pick up with that thing covering the strip,” said Jenkins. “That cannon will bring down anything approaching the landing pad.”

“Plan has changed,” I declared. “We're moving on that tower before we commence the sweep.”

I opened the general channel. “This is Lazarus Actual; do you read me, Baker?”

“Affirmative,” Baker said. His suit transponder placed his team somewhere on the ground, but it was difficult to say precisely where. “We're pinned down. Where's our air support?”

“Fucked, is where,” I said. “You saw that ship go down. Intel was wrong. They have anti-air.”

He grunted. “Figures.”

“Keep your heads down and stay alive. We're going to solve the problem.”

“Copy.”

I keyed the channel to Hooper. “Hooper, I want you to stay on overwatch.”

“Solid copy, Lazarus,” he said.

Hooper's Raiders were already in position. The five-man team were equipped with M-23 Long Sight plasma rifles: a proper sniper's weapon. That was their speciality, and the team was known for it. I saw the flash of rifles from the tallest structure of the outpost; firing almost incessantly. Hooper's team would provide covering fire to the other teams as they moved across the base.

Finally, Sperenzo's Vipers.

“Sperenzo,” I said, “run harassment. Move towards your objective and wait for a lull in the fighting.”

“Not expecting that any time soon,” Sperenzo managed. “But we'll try.”

“The Legion is going off plan. We're taking out the guard tower so that Scorpio can provide air support. Lazarus out.”

We dropped from the roof and made double-time across the compound.

Squads of soldiers materialised out of the snow: equipped with assault rifles, wearing snow-camo hard-suits. There were Directorate soldiers everywhere. Resistance was far heavier than we'd anticipated.

I vaulted over a concrete barricade: a tank-trap that had been set up in the middle of the road. Two Directorate troopers knelt behind it, hooked to a missile launcher. One acted as spotter, the other as operator. As we ambushed their location, the soldiers fell back, abandoning the launcher and firing pistols at us. Martinez caught both with his plasma rifle, slicing their hard-suits open with precise energy pulses.

I cursorily inspected the nearest body. The emblem of the People's Army was printed on the soldier's chest-plate. These were regular militia; a stock Directorate military garrison.

“Perimeter is ahead,” Jenkins declared.

A ragged black line rose out of the snow: a simple chain-link fence topped with barbed wire.

“Use those snow-crawlers as cover,” I ordered. “Move on my mark.”

We dashed as one. I slid into cover behind the crawlers; pumped my grenade launcher and fired two frag grenades out into the snow. I caught a Chino soldier, but several others retreated back into cover at the other end of the road.

“Everyone intact?” I asked.

“Affirmative,” Mason said.

“I have eyes on the target,” Jenkins said. She poked her head from behind the crawler, looking to the fence and the guard tower.

“We've got to bring that thing down,” I said. “Lay down frag grenades, move up to the foot of that tower.”

“I'll take the right,” Jenkins replied.

My M95 plasma rifle – now ancient by military standards, performance far surpassed by the later upgraded M110 model, but still my preferred long-arm – illuminated the area.

I dashed for another snow-crawler, took up a position behind it. Mason and Martinez hunkered down beside some cargo drums: from the fence, a heavy automatic weapon of some description began to fire, throwing rounds against those. I saw Jenkins from the corner of my eye, moving fast between burning crates. More Chino troopers were flanking us. Her null-shield lit as she moved.

“I'm on this,” she panted.

“Stay in cover! We'll take the tower from the eastern ridge, move back around—!”

“I said that I'm on this,” she hissed.

The guard tower anti-air weapon swivelled on its mount, slowly sweeping over the compound.
Fuck.
That was a big-ass laser: if it hit Jenkins, combat-suit or not, she'd be wasted.

“Get back into cover!”

Brazenly, Jenkins pumped her grenade launcher.

The volley of grenades traced a clear, delicate trajectory; barely slowed by the wind. The tower was supported by four thin legs, planted into the snowy ground, and one of those was caught by the exploding ordnance. Jenkins kept firing. Her face, behind the visor of her helmet, was contorted in abject rage. Rounds hit her torso, bounced off her chest-plate. The combat-suit camo-field failed, illuminating her outline very precisely. It was as though sheer determination was repelling the enemy.

The structure wobbled.

From my position, I could just see the tip of the sentry tower: could see the soldiers crewing it yelling and waving below. They began to drop from the nest; to jump rather than fall.

Jenkins charged her underslung launcher again and again. The grenades whistled as they fired, peppering the foot of the guard tower.

“She's bringing it down!” Mason said.

The tower slowly toppled into the snow. It was tall enough to catch a series of gantries as it went; throwing the scream of metal-on-metal to the wind, the pleasing concussive boom of another explosion. The gorge around me echoed with the sound. Snow began to slide from the steeper mountainsides, cascading against the perimeter fence.

Jenkins just stood there for a moment. The Directorate troops had ceased firing and started to fall back – moving inside the compound.

“You okay?” I asked, as I jogged over to her position.

She nodded at me grimly. “I'm fine. I just needed to work out some stress.”

Martinez exchanged a glance with me but said nothing. This was Jenkins now. She was different; had been changed by what had happened in Damascus.

“This is still a military operation,” I said. “Follow orders.”

Jenkins looked irritated behind her face-plate; as though she had forgotten that this wasn't personal, that this was supposed to be a rescue operation rather than some opportunity to vent our anger on the Directorate. The expression was fleeting though, and she nodded in agreement.

“Solid copy that.”

Scorpio One flew low overhead. The Jaguar fired a volley of Banshee missiles from hard points under each of its stubby wings, and various positions inside the compound ignited in brisk blooms of yellow light.

“James has the airspace under control, at least,” Mason said.

“About time,” said Jenkins.

The dropships conducting strafing runs over the compound did wonders to suppress the Directorate. Meanwhile, the Raiders stayed on overwatch – keeping hostiles off the rooftops and picking out RPG placements. Baker's Boys and the Vipers began calling in their objectives, securing buildings and searching the compound. Assisted by the drones, they made swift progress through the overground structures.

Seven minutes on the mission clock, the Legion assembled in an abandoned barracks.

“Nothing so far,” Martinez reported. “Whatever this place is, it isn't a POW camp.”

Jenkins marched two captured Directorate troopers into the barracks. They had been disarmed but still wore battered hard-suits, and had been identified as officers. Tan-skinned, much older than most of the Directorate troops, both men were speaking at the same time.

I nodded at Jenkins. “Keep them covered. Suit: run translation.”

My combat-suit obliged. Selected the relevant dialect and began a translation.

“
We know nothing!
” they said collectively, my suit speaking in stilted electronic tones. “
We are overseers of the mining facility…
”

It went on. They both sounded very convincing. Had it not been for the couple of hundred Directorate troops that had just tried to kill us, I might've even bought it.

“Put them with the others,” Jenkins ordered Mason.

Mason prodded the two men with her rifle, encouraging them outside. Both remonstrated about being made to go out in the cold without full headgear, but Mason barked orders in broken Chino – using her suit translation package – and the two men quickly decided that their chances of survival were better outside than in.

They should be scared
, I thought.

There was a yard in the middle of the compound, partially sheltered from wind and snow by a configuration of large buildings; overlooked by Hooper's sniper team. Mason lined the men up with the rest of the prisoners. There had been ten or so soldiers with sufficient intelligence not to throw their lives away; with enough common sense to lay down their arms. Most were kneeling in the snow, fingers locked behind their heads.

“They aren't Swords,” Mason said to me.

She was referring to the Swords of the South Chino Stars; the elite Special Operations unit that was responsible for the Damascus incident. And she was right – none of the prisoners were Swords. They were better equipped and more dangerous than the People's Army, and would probably have put up more of a fight.

“Not every Directorate agent wears a uniform,” Martinez said. “We should watch them,
jefe
.”

If nothing else, we'd take them back with us. It was scant justification for the military operation, but it might please Ostrow. Mili-Intel could milk these people: see if they had any useful intel.

Jenkins prowled between the lines of kneeling prisoners, and we watched as she did her thing. By now, I'd seen the show so many times that it'd lost its impact on me.

“You know who we are?” she asked, her suit-speakers turned up to maximum volume so that they could be heard over the wind.

At least a couple of the prisoners understood Standard, and they nodded anxiously. Jenkins stood at the end of the line; her rifle stowed, her PPG-13 plasma pistol cocked. She waved it at the prisoners. As one now, the group quivered. The cold did nothing to reduce the hate-heat emanating from Jenkins.

“Then you will know not to fuck with us. We're the Lazarus Legion, and we came here to get our people back. I want to know where they are.”

“We know nothing!” one of the solders shouted in Standard. “We only work here – guard the mines!”

The prisoners began to babble all at the same time.

“Bullshit!” Jenkins spat. She bolted towards the nearest prisoner and slammed her plasma pistol into the woman's face. “We've been listening to your transmissions. You have Alliance prisoners down here!”

This one was less easily shaken. The woman was slim, muscled, with long dark hair and almond eyes. For the briefest moment, the prisoner reminded me of Elena. I shook my head and buried the thought. Face collecting snowflakes, the woman gave no response.

“I mean it,” Jenkins said. “Start answering questions if you want to live.”

Mason stood beside me. She looked unimpressed by the display. “Do we have to go through this again?” she asked.

Jenkins pressed the muzzle of her pistol against the woman's head and the weapon's arming indicator flashed. The man beside the endangered prisoner recoiled – probably glad that it wasn't him that was about to get wasted.

“Unless someone starts telling me what is really going on down here, I'm going to blow this bitch's brains out. Then I'm going to kill someone every minute, until I get some answers.”

The male prisoner said something in Chino. Spoke too fast for my suit to translate.

“Don't fucking mess with me,” Jenkins hissed at her prisoner.

The woman's eyes remained steely cold and she stared at Jenkins. Snow had begun to plaster her hair.

“We have nothing for you here,” she said. “We have nothing.”

Jenkins kept the gun pressed there for a long second. Martinez and Mason watched her, an air of uncertainty hanging between them—

My ear-bead chimed.

“Lazarus!” came a gruff voice. It was Baker.

I held up a hand to stay Jenkins' wrath. She paused, eyes still boring into the female prisoner's head.

“I read you, Baker. What is it?”

“We've found something,” Baker said. “You should come down and see. I'm uploading my coordinates.”

My HUD flashed with Baker's location: his surviving team had collected in a garage near to our position.

“Inbound,” I said. “Lazarus out.” I waved at Jenkins. “Stand down.”

With marked reluctance, Jenkins lowered the pistol.

“I really thought that she was going to kill that one,” Martinez said.

“Wouldn't be the first time.”

Mason sighed. “And probably won't be the last.”

“Mason, Jenkins; with me. Martinez, get those prisoners cuffed, then join us at Baker's position.” I couldn't trust Jenkins out here with the prisoners. “Keep watch on them, padre,” I said. “None of them dies unless I say so.”

“Affirmative,” Martinez said. He sounded more than a little relieved with my decision. He shook his head. “Retribution unrealised is a terrible thing.”

Baker cracked open the enormous shutter-style doors, and by the numbers we entered the depot. My drones flitted around me like fat flies – taking readings and reporting – but Baker's Boys had been the first personnel on-site. The storage shed was a hulk of a building, a vast garage filled with industrial vehicles: ore scoopers, snow-crawlers and tractors, all arranged in neat lines.

Baker's squad had been depleted to only three simulants. They squatted beside a snow-crawler, faces tight behind their illuminated face-plates.

“We're not quite sure what we have here,” Captain Baker said. He nodded at one of his troopers; a green with the name ROBINS printed across his chest.

“I keep getting readings inside the shed, sir.”

Jenkins tutted. “We came all the way cross-compound because someone got readings? Jesus.”

Robins swallowed but stood his ground. “Bio-scanner readings, ma'am.” He held up his wrist-comp: pointed out the sensor grid shown on the vambrace unit. “Lots of readings. They're coming and going.”

“There's nothing else in this area,” Baker said. “Hooper has visual on the roof. Nothing above us, nothing outside.”

I patched into the kid's scanner results. Blips appeared on my HUD. There were several life-signs – the micro-throb of possible heartbeats, the flush of heat signs. That could mean nearby bodies, but the readings were erratic and unclear.

“See?” Baker said. “Something isn't right.”

“Could be a scanner malfunction,” Mason suggested.

Robins shook his head. “I don't think so. We've all been detecting the same readings—”

“Listen!” I insisted.

I heard a noise over the comms.

A soft wailing: an intrusive spike of static at the back of my mind. It was strong enough that I winced, put a hand to the side of my helmet.

“You okay, Colonel?” Mason asked.

“Fine,” I said. “Anyone else hear that?”

Mason and Jenkins looked back at me with blank faces.

It sounded like distant moaning. I looked to the open depot doors. It was easily explainable as the sound of the wind moving through the structure, but the wind had dropped.

I swallowed.

I knew that noise. It was the Artefact.

This can't be happening again.
It had been a long time since I'd last heard the sound, and these days it rarely ever happened while I was awake: tended to come in dream and nightmare, mostly. I'd managed to repress it with my own brand of self-medication.