Origins (31 page)

Bio-weapons began to fire a steady ordnance on our position. Secondary-forms were swathing the forest with shriekers. The weapons screamed as they discharged, catching Krell and Legion alike in the onslaught. Burning bodies surrounded us in a great arc, some still moving – claws outstretched to bring us down.

The nearest Krell secondary-form moved above me, leaping monkey-like between the trees. The shrieker bio-cannon was long-barrelled and sleek, fused to the Krell's middle arms. A fleshy sac – the weapon's fuel reserve, where the secondary-form produced the napalm that powered the gun – dangled from the base of the shrieker, underslung like an ammo-drum.

I was on my back; the combined weight of the tide passing over me.

No one seemed to be firing any more.

I guessed that the rest of the Legion were down as well, that this really was the end.

The vision above me wavered like a mirage.

“
Now!
”

The amplified voice rose about the cacophony, cut through it.

Gunfire erupted from deeper within the jungle; the bright flash of plasma weaponry, and…

… something else…

The air
whooshed
around me, and a dark beam hit the nearest Krell.

The body just wasn't there any more.

The beam weapon, whatever it was, fired again and again, throwing prisms of anti-light across the clearing. Krell bodies appeared to vanish, but as I blinked in confusion – as I began to process what was happening – I realised that the bodies were almost evaporating. The weapon was igniting the bio-matter, turning the Krell to a fine ash. I'd never seen a weapon like it.

My Ares suit responded. The null-shield reacted. Fizzled into life, throwing a protective shield in front of me. Pieces of flaming Krell carapace spattered against the barrier, sizzling hot blood and bodily fluids evaporating.

The rest of the Legion stirred.

“Report!” I said.

“I'm here,” Martinez said. “
Gracia de Dios
, I'm alive…”

“… although I have no idea how,” Jenkins said. She looked utterly shell-shocked – an emotional response that I could seriously sympathise with.

“Nor me,” Mason said.

“They… they've stopped,” Kaminski panted. He got to his knees, grappling among the bodies for his rifle. “We're not going to survive another attack like that…”

The Legion were in terrible shape. Our battle-suits were pitted with stingers, scorched by boomers. Barely functional.

“Who's out there?” Mason asked.

She was answered by five shapes emerging from the jungle.

“Threat neutralised,” came another voice, made genderless and anonymous by the angry buzz of a combat-suit speaker unit. “Get moving. The Krell won't wait long.”

All eyes swivelled to the source of the noise, suits clattering.

“Who the fuck are these guys?” Kaminski said.

The five newcomers were clad in old-pattern combat-suits; museum-class models, equipment that was easily a decade out of date. The suits were sufficiently aged that the camo-fields had failed completely, and the troopers wore full tactical helmets concealing their faces. The armour had no insignia or other identification. The group were armed with plasma carbines, short-barrel security-issue models, and other, more esoteric weapons of black metal.

“I'd say thanks for the save,” I said, “if I knew who I was thanking.”

The leader kicked aside a smoking Krell carcass, weapon on hip in a way that immediately struck me as feminine, and polarised her scratched face-plate.

“It's good to see you, Conrad. If you've quite finished disturbing the wildlife, we should get out of here.”

Is this real?
I asked myself.

Elena stood in front of me, her lips twisted into a sardonic smile that suggested mild amusement rather than a reflection of the life-or-death situation that we faced.

We went to move towards each other, drawn like magnetics, but the jungle came alive again: that insectile rustling rising in volume.

“Another attack…” I said.

“Yes,” Elena said. “We need to leave here, and now.”

The newcomers began laying down covering fire with plasma rifles and the exotic firearms.

“How…?” I started, mind brimming with questions.

Something screamed low overhead. There was a blur of light.

“They have air support,” one of the team said.

“There's no time to explain!” Elena said. “The Krell will regroup fast.”

Elena waved her team onwards, splashing booted feet through the swampy ground. We followed through the undergrowth.

“Where are we going?” Mason said.

“You think that I would have come out here without planning the retreat?” Elena asked, her voice accented with the slightest French inflection. “We've been here for a long time. We know this place.”

“Whoa!” Jenkins called, beside Kaminski. “Hold up, people!”

Maybe not so well
, I thought.

The jungle fell away ahead of us.

We were at the edge of a precipice: a sheer fall that collapsed a hundred or so metres. We'd been running alongside a river, concealed by the dense vegetation, and here it dropped into a waterfall. It threw up a fine white mist all around – the air thick with moisture.

‘Ski went to unshoulder his rifle, readying to fight the Krell again. “Looks like last stand time. There's nowhere left to run—”

“We're going over,” Elena said. “Seal your suit. The water is deep.”

“Mine is damaged—” Mason started.

“Do the best with whatever you have,” Elena said. “We won't be under for long, but when we get to the other side it's important that you do exactly as I say.”

“Got it,” I said.

“Your team too,” Elena insisted. “Even if you don't like what you see, you must trust me. I mean it!”

“You heard her,” I said to the Legion. In the circumstances, they didn't have much of a choice.

“We've got hostiles incoming!” Mason declared.

A Krell primary-form burst from the jungle behind us, but it exploded in a blossom of darkness from one of the alien firearms. Elena's team rallied at the precipice, covering our retreat.

Elena remained cool, her dark hair tied back behind her head, inside her helmet. She was hardly the woman that I knew: now a survivor, a fighter. I paused, stared at her, and she caught my eye behind her helmet's face-plate.

“When we get to the other side, turn off your suits,” she said.

“Why—?” Jenkins asked.

“As I said: trust me.”

More Krell were coming now. More black energy discharges fired around us, but I knew that this was only delaying the inevitable. They would come again, in numbers, and this time they would take us all.

“I'm not sure that I can do this,” Mason said.

“Don't tell me that you've forgotten how to swim,” Kaminski said, with one of his trademark grins. He scrambled towards the edge of the waterfall.

“No rivers on Mars,” Martinez said, getting ready to jump.

“But plenty of canals, eh?” said Kaminski.

I peered into the white waters at the base of the waterfall. It looked a very long way down. Amid the confusion, the bark of alien guns and the pitched hiss of plasma fire, Elena took my hand: glove to glove. Her touch, even through armour, was almost electric.

“I saw you,” she said. “On Calico.”

As one, we jumped over the edge.

Krell spilled from the trees and were met with a hail of plasma.

“Don't look back!” Elena shouted as we dropped. “Let the others take care of them! I'll lead the way.”

She broke away from me and plunged into the water. Her armour was lighter than mine, had been adapted for use in the jungle, and she went under and into a breaststroke almost immediately. Diving deeper, into the darkened waters.

In a full battle-suit, I hit the water
hard
.

A simulant in armour doesn't float. I went under and kept going. I was vaguely aware of the rest of the Legion coming over the edge with me – falling or dropping, depending on which way you look at it, at about the same time.

The water was a brackish mix full of deposited silt and forest debris, creeper vines acting as snares for unwary jungle denizens, Christo only knows what else. As Elena had warned, it was deep, and water was entering the suit from numerous armour breaches. It wasn't made for deep-sea exploration, but using my internal oxygen supply I could breathe well enough down here. I sank immediately, the surface rapidly becoming a watery haze, a blur of light far above me. That was soon stitched with stinger-fire – bio-rounds tracing a calm, slow trajectory through the water.

I made out Elena ahead of me, waving us on. She swam rapidly through the murky water. I followed her as best I could, but I was almost plodding along the riverbed, slow motion: like combat in zero-G.

The Krell sleekly took to the water behind us. Alien bodies became knives against the river's flow: muscles rippling, limbs contorting. Their eyes shimmered darkly, perfectly adapted for this environment. Kaminski opened up his plasma rifle: soundlessly, with a flash of light. Maybe he even got one, but more were coming, diving from above. Jenkins pumped her grenade launcher, and I felt the shockwave of an explosive going off. Debris filtered through the fast-running water, and clouds of sediment were thrown up, reducing visibility even more.

I turned back to Elena. She was far ahead now, swimming with all of her body. Unless we went with her and the team, we were going to get left behind.

“Follow Elena!” I ordered over the comm. “Leave the Krell!”

“I'm not sure that we can do that,” Jenkins said. One of them had reached her, grasping at her armour, dragging her back. She slammed it aside, twisted against the flow of the river to pull after me.

There was an underwater tunnel ahead: a black hole in the wall of the riverbed. Elena disappeared inside, and as I bounced after her I saw that she had broken the surface and hauled herself out.

I fought the lactic burn in my limbs, and shrugged my body along – grappling rocks to drag myself out. I turned to haul Mason out behind me. Martinez clambered up an algae-slicked rock, then Jenkins and Kaminski did the same. The Legion collapsed to the ground, finally free of the pool.

“Remember what I told you!” Elena shouted, her voice echoing around the underwater grotto. “Do everything I say. Now, turn off your suits!”

“This is madness!” Jenkins said. “There are Krell following us—”

“
Suits off!
” Elena yelled.

Elena's team erupted from the river behind us, and proficiently rolled from the shoreline. They scattered among the rocks. Immediately went still. Instinctually, this all felt so wrong, but what could I do? I copied, and watched the rest of the Legion do the same.

“Suits power down!” I ordered.

POWER DOWN, I thought-ordered my armour. My HUD flashed with a warning, protesting against the command, but I thought-activated the override code. A confirmation message filled the interior of my face-plate as the armour became a hunk of inert metal-composite, my body locked inside a potential death-trap. I was on my back, able to see around me through the transparent face-plate—

I saw Elena moving. Dashing for the wall of the cave, scrambling over the wet rocks—

No!

A Krell broke the surface of the water behind her, using its clawed limbs to scramble up and into the cave. It would be on Elena in an instant: would rip her apart—

“Stay there!” she shouted at me, voice barely audible over the Krell's scream.

Against my better judgement, against every protective tendency that I felt towards Elena, I did as she said. Watched as the primary-form bolted across the cave. None of Elena's team moved, and locked in our armour none of the Legion did either.

The sequence was dreamlike, nightmarish.

Elena touched the wall, fingers jabbing in sequence.

It was no wall, I realised. Blazing glyphs appeared where she met the surface. My instincts began to scream louder than the Krell. The surfaces of the walls around me were so finely etched that they were almost textured—

The Krell's talons were outstretched, virtually on Elena. She turned, her face fixed in a defiant scowl, though she didn't even have a weapon…

Maybe
, I realised,
she doesn't need one
.

“Not here…” Jenkins shouted. We had no comm-link, but I could hear her voice even through our powerless suits. “Not here!”

I saw a ripple across the surface of the water, something moving above – seeping from the walls. Materialising.

Then the darkness came.

A shadow within a shadow.

Liquid darkness materialised in the centre of the room, and quickly became horrifyingly distinct. It appeared between Elena, her back to the wall now, and the primary-form.

I knew this thing. I had seen it before, seen it decimate the Lazarus Legion.

Not just kill us, but revel in the slaughter.

The Shard Reaper.

Elena turned, hands pressed to the wall.

The Krell's head jerked left, right, unsure of what threat to focus on. Strands of living oil, razor-tipped, shot from the walls: criss-crossed the cavern.

Elena hit the floor in a roll, a shadow chasing her—

Got to move!
Gut-panic gripped me: it was going to catch her.

It felt like I was moving in double-gravity inside the armour; took every ounce of my strength to reach for her. My fingers clasped her shoulder, grabbed her. Then Elena's body was on top of mine – our face-plates touching, my unpowered limbs locked around her torso. She shuddered against me, her own armour powering down—

The questing tendril that had followed her suddenly broke off, darted back across the cave and found a new target. A black metal limb speared the Krell with terrible precision; hit the xeno in the sternum with enough force that the bio-armour was breached, hot innards spewing across the cave walls.