Origins (28 page)

“Cassari Brooke?” the lead trooper said. “Citizen serial code 451452, of Tau Ceti?”

“No,” she said. “You've made a mistake. That's not me.”

The other trooper gave a nod. “Yes, that is you. Your ID has been confirmed via surveillance cameras outside.”

The game was up. Brooke's shoulders slumped.

“You're under arrest for illegal entry to the
Point
: a class-three visa violation. Get up and come with us.”

Papers, case and other effects under her arm, Brooke got up from the table.

“You should be asking these questions, Conrad!” she shouted to me, as she went. “I want to know what happened out there, and unless we stand up to them we'll never find out!”

“All right, all right,” one of the MPs said. “Keep it down.”

“Sorry about that, sir,” the other said to me. “She's lost it.”

I nodded. “I thought so, too.”

“Used to be on CNN, or something,” he said, watching his colleague march Brooke out of the diner. “Lost her job, started being a pest to the military authorities.”

“Lot of crazies got these theories,” I said. Hating myself for the words, but still talking.

“Mmmm,” the trooper said. “Lot of crazies. I guess Tau Ceti is a long way from the frontline. Have a nice day, sir.”

The Mili-Pol officers left with Cassari Brooke, waving her arms and shouting as she went, and me with the cold pot of coffee.

The meeting quickly fell from my memory: a bizarre and pointless incident. I felt sorry for Cassari Brooke, but it never made the news-feeds, and I assumed that she was removed off-station – taken somewhere she could get some proper help.

A few months after the meet, entirely by chance, while in one of
Liberty Point
's many bars I saw how Cassari Brooke had met her end. It was a brief and disappointing news story, relayed by a fellow reporter with a sympathetic expression. Cassi Brooke was found in a bathtub, on her native Tau Ceti, wrists slit.

Pretty clichéd stuff
, I remembered thinking. The authorities had reached the same conclusion – a dried-up, burnt-out ex-reporter with too much time on her hands. Someone who wanted a taste of death, and finally got it.

The journey to Devonia passed in a state of repressed anxiety, and the
Colossus
felt almost abandoned: so many empty corridors and crew modules. Those few decks left operating were populated by crewmen wearing vacuum-suits, helmets under their arms; ever ready to man the evac-pods if we got hit. There was some small irony to that, because there was nowhere to escape to out here. While the Lazarus Legion were used to suicide missions, the Navy crew weren't, and this wasn't what they had signed up for. That the starship hadn't erupted into open mutiny was probably testament to Loeb's leadership skills.

I wandered the observation decks, checked on the comms pods. The Maelstrom was unlike human territory: without the need for radio transmissions, neutrino arrays, or any of the other comms methods that polluted space with data, the void around us was remarkably quiet. I'd heard stories of sailors driven insane by the silence and for the first time in my career I almost believed them.

I spent a lot of time in the Simulant Operations Centre. It had always been a favoured location of mine; somewhere I could imagine making transition, escaping my real body. With the depleted science team on this mission, it was mostly quiet and dark. I found simulants racked and ready for deployment, encased in cryogenic capsules just like that in which I'd found Elena's body. Beside them sat five Ares battle-suits, marked up with battle-honours and unit designations. The Lazarus Legion badge was proudly displayed on the shoulder guards, freshly painted. I sensed a hunger from each suit: a readiness to be occupied.

I checked on each simulator-tank in turn; all four tanks glowed with welcoming blue light. I ran my good hand over the outer canopies, watched the liquid inside. The machines felt warm, in contrast to the cold of the ship around me—

A reflection rippled in the canopy. Something behind me: a shape, a figure. Watching.

“Who's there?” I barked.

Elena…?

“Easy, sir. It's only me.”

Kaminski sat in the corner of the room, half-concealed by shadow. He leant forward, into the arc of light cast by the nearest tank.

“Pull up a pew,” he said, waving with affected indifference. “I was just checking on the tanks myself.”

That was patently untrue: I'd activated the simulators, not Kaminski. But when he sat back, wincing again, holding his shoulder, I decided not to correct him. He was in obvious pain. I hadn't seen his most recent death aboard the
Endeavour
, but from the after-action reports I'd read that he'd been torn apart by the Krell boarders.

“Simulated wounds playing you up?” I asked.

“Yeah,” he said. “Those and the rest.”

“You all right?”

“I'm good,” he said. “But I haven't been sleeping so well. Dr Serova thinks it's the Arkonus Abyss.” He laughed. “I think it's fear of death. Maybe we're both right.”

“You don't have to put a brave face on it,” I said. “Truth is, 'Ski, I didn't think that the medics were going to recertify you, back on Calico.”

“I expected as much.”

“It's my fault. I twisted some arms…”

“And I'm glad that you did,” he said, sounding distant. “I guess what happened on Capa V, it's just not easy to forget. I know that it could've been worse, much worse, and I got a lucky escape…”

His eyes darted to the SOC doorway, in the direction of Scorpio Squadron's operations bay. The flyboys had their own room, their own dedicated facility. Somewhere in there, held in the dark and shadow, was Lieutenant James' real body. That Kaminski might've ended up like that was unthinkable. He'd never been one for soul-searching, and I could tell that this was difficult: putting his fears into words.

“Are you worried that the Directorate will come after you?” I asked, as gently as I could.

Kaminski answered my question with a question: “Do you think that we really killed the
Shanghai
at Calico?”

“I'm not sure,” I said. “But I hope so.”

“I saw the way that you looked at that ship,” he said, “and it was more than personal.”

I nodded. “Me and that ship; turns out we have history together. I didn't know until Loeb told me something about the
Shanghai
. Kyung is known as the Assassin of Thebe: responsible for the slaughter of the Alliance Navy fleet at Jupiter Outpost.”

“That's right,”'Ski said. “I remember.”

“My mother was at Jupiter Outpost. She died when I was just a kid; eight years old. I was too young to know much about how she died, who or what killed her, and it wasn't until Loeb showed me his research on Kyung that the pieces fell into place. She was captain of the
Shanghai
during the raid on Thebe, also known as Jupiter Outpost. She killed my mother.”

Kaminski raised his eyebrows. “That's some heavy shit. Real heavy. You don't get much more personal than that…”

“I guess,” I said. “So, yeah, I hope that the
Shanghai
is wasted, and I hope that Kyung went down with her.”

“I'm sorry,”'Ski stumbled, almost uncomfortable. “I never knew.”

“Nothing to be sorry about. It all happened a long time ago, and whether the
Shanghai
is dead or not, it doesn't much matter. She – my mother – is ancient history.”

But if there was a particular turning point – a junction in my life which I could trace, which I said defined me – it was definitely her death. It meant a lot more to me than I could ever admit.

“Just another reason to hate the Directorate,” Kaminski said.

I noticed that there was an opened packet of painkillers beside him, a disposable hypodermic syringe uncapped on the medical bench. I nodded at the wrappers.

“Did Dr Serova prescribe those?”

“Not exactly,” he said. “That last extraction: it was rougher than anything I've felt so far.” He paused, as though struggling to find the right words. “It didn't feel
right
.”

He stroked the digital brooch on his chest, where the holo-identifier was placed, indicating one hundred and eighty transitions. Those statistics placed him in the top strata of simulant operators, not far behind my figures. We'd been in this from the start.

“Maybe you shouldn't go back into the tanks,” I offered.

“Not going to happen, boss, so don't even say it.”

“Maybe it won't be the Krell, or the Directorate, or even the Shard, that'll get us in the end…” I said, staring absently at the blue of the functioning simulator-tank beside me. “Maybe it'll be the tanks that'll end us.”

“I can think of worse ways to go,” Kaminski said, “and at least it'd be clean.”

“A clean death. I'd drink to that.”

We sat in the darkness for a while, watching the empty tanks, counting the minutes until the next transition.

As we drew closer to Devonia, the
Colossus
' remaining functional scopes and scanners focused on our objective. Computer systems began to produce images of Devonia: renderings that became more and more detailed. Finally, I watched from the view-ports and observation windows as the planet grew to fill space, the glow of the Arkonus Abyss a baleful backdrop.

“I'm coming for you, Elena,” I whispered.

When the
Colossus
' AI declared that we had arrived at our destination, I was ready.

Devonia glared back at me.

The CIC blast-shutters had been retracted, to allow the fullest possible view with the naked eye. I stepped down into the nose of the CIC, between the weapon pods and the hardwired junior officers. Loeb had summoned all essential personnel to the CIC, to plan our next course of action.

“Is this what you expected?” Loeb asked me.

“I… I don't know,” I said, genuinely.

I'd seen Krell warzones, with and without the Lazarus Legion, and they were not
this
. They were fetid pits, worlds driven into biological overdrive by the presence of the Krell.

Devonia – in the heart of the Maelstrom, a reef world – was something else. The planet hung there, filling the port. She was apparently much smaller than Old Earth, but at this distance – without any touchstone by which to qualify her size – she appeared enormous. Wrapped in a thick layer of cloud cover, the planet was stitched into a tapestry of whites and greys. Where the cover was broken, where the clouds thinned to cotton-like consistency, the surface was a mixture of black, blue and green.

Professor Saul stood with his hands behind his back, good eye and bad eye focused on the view-ports as though the imagery enraptured him. “There are seas and jungles down there,” he said, waving at the window. “Mixed with strings of volcanic mountains. We should be making recordings, conduct some remote examinations. My colleagues in the xeno-biology department would kill for an opportunity like this.”

I cringed at his choice of words, but Saul didn't seem to notice.
There's a lot out here that Science Division would kill for
, I thought, as I looked out of the observation window. Beyond the arc of Devonia, the Arkonus Abyss glittered: its relationship to Devonia still unexplained.

“I've never seen a world quite like it,” Mason said.

Jenkins snorted. “That's not saying much. You haven't seen many.”

“Well, have you?” Mason asked.

Jenkins folded her arms. “No,” she said, reluctantly. “I haven't.”

“No one has,” Saul said. “Not properly, anyway. The reef worlds are so deep in Krell territory that their exploration was previously thought too perilous…”

“But this isn't anything like what we've been told to expect,” Mason said. “Of a reef world, I mean. During Basic I saw images. Vid-files, sensory simulations.”

“The Krell reef worlds are second to hell,” Martinez said, never taking his eyes from the shimmering planet. “That's what Science Division has always told us.”

“Maybe we were wrong,” Saul said. His expression spoke of the elderly professor we had grown to know in Damascus, not the war-shattered survivor of Capa.

“You're gonna need to rewrite those books, Prof,” Kaminski said.

Saul nodded. “So few, even of Science Division, have actually managed to witness the Krell in their natural habitat.” He waved a finger at the window. “But I have some reservations about this planet. At that mass, it shouldn't be capable of retaining an atmosphere.” He shivered; it was unclear whether the response was as a result of the information or the cold. “It has an extreme density. Something doesn't sit right with me.”

“That's assuming that this is their habitat,” I said, “and not… something else.”

“Whatever it is,” Loeb said, “the Krell are here in force. Shower and shit, Harris. Shower and shit. You said it yourself: there's water down there, and the Krell are here en masse.” He pointed to the tactical display, currently showing a tri-D rendering of space surrounding the Devonian body. “There are numerous Krell bio-ships in high orbit; a sizeable war-fleet.”

“Christo…” Jenkins whispered, and Kaminski whistled in surprise.

I counted fifty or so ships, of varied threat designation. Easily enough to take down the
Colossus
.

“Looks like their scout reported in,” Mason said.

“No,” Saul said, biting his lip. “The Krell have been here far longer than that. See their orbital stations?”

On the scopes, black against the blue of Devonia's seas, were coral-like growths that orbited the planet in a wide arc. There were several of them: grown to enormous proportions, spiralling out in weird anti-symmetrical shapes. From this distance, with the scopes at full magnification, it was just possible to make out bio-ships docking in the shell-like hangar bays. Blue light spilled from the innards of the Krell station-docks, betraying any suggestion that the structures were inactive. As those scattered and battered hulks of living carapace passed in front of the electronic eyes, I caught sight of markings like deliberate brands on their outer hulls. It might've just been a trick of the light, or maybe I was just strung out, but the flesh-burns looked a lot like the markings we'd seen on the Krell prisoners from Capa V.
Are they of the same war-fleet
, I wondered,
or is this just a coincidence?
The Krell rarely carried markings, rarely differentiated one shoal from the next, and that the stations carried identifiers at all was surprising.

“To date,” Loeb said, “the Krell haven't reacted to our presence. We can only assume that we're out of their sensor range.”

More surprises
, I thought. I knew that it wouldn't stay that way.

I pressed both hands down on the display, concentrated on the live-feeds. “What can we expect when we get down there?” I asked.

“Weather patterns will be extreme and violent,” Loeb said. “It'll be hot, humid as all hell. The greenhouse effect, on a massive scale.” Loeb pulled his chin. He hadn't shaved in days, and white whiskers sprouted from his rough face. “The clouds lock in surface heat, warming up the atmosphere. Barely any polar ice. That same cloud cover is acting as the best goddamned defence to our sensor-suite known to man.” Loeb shrugged. “Could be some sort of natural phenomenon, or it might be a defence manufactured by the Krell. Whatever it is, it's acting as a shield and blocking our scans.”

“Looks like boots on the ground are the only option,” I said.

“This is getting to be a regular thing,” Jenkins said. “Just leaves the decision as to how we get down there.”

Martinez paced the table, muttering to himself in pigeon Spanish. “There are enough ships there to cover most approaches to the surface. Getting down there without being seen is going to be tough…”

It would be out of the question for the
Colossus
to make the landing. She would almost certainly be seen by the Krell en route, even with stealth systems, and even then she wouldn't be capable of planetary insertion or flight. The local gravity would tear the old warship to pieces on the way down; no one had even suggested that as a viable tactic.