Origins (39 page)

“Not before, you hear me?” I said. “This is important. If the neural-link breaks too early, I can't guarantee that the plan will work. We need to be sure.”

“I know,” Elena said. “But it doesn't mean that I have to like it.”

“I might be okay,” I said. “I'll
probably
be okay.”

Elena gave a weak laugh. “We can hope.”

“Don't do anything to draw attention to the
Colossus
—” I urged.

The comm-link degenerated into a hiss of white noise, and I angrily cut the connection.

Across my HUD, green lights indicated a state of readiness for the Legion. All suits sealed for EVA, all weapons primed and ready.

“Coming up on the
Shanghai
,” James declared. “She's tracking us, but she isn't firing.” He swallowed. “Not yet, at least.”

“All-stop,” I ordered.

James applied the grav-brake. The gunship slowed, sailed closer to the Directorate destroyer. The nearer we got, the more damage I noticed. I banished the creeping doubt that she wouldn't be able to fly, that her drives were somehow compromised beyond operation.

“Get buttoned up,” I said, “and open the rear access hatch.”

“Solid copy,” James said. “You want me to remain on-station?”

I shook my helmeted head. “Withdraw to the
Colossus
. This is a one-way ticket for us.”

Kaminski stood from his crash couch, his boot-mags holding him upright in zero-G. He nodded at me, smiling like he really didn't give a shit.

“Game time, people,” he said.

“On my mark.”

“Ready when you are,” Jenkins said.

From the rear of the Dragonfly, access ramp deployed, we fired our harpoon launchers. Left arms extended, aimed at the warship below us.

The harpoons traced a bright arc across space, active charges firing, trailing cables from our battle-suits. Simultaneously, we thought-activated our thruster packs. In normal gravity, the pack gave enhanced mobility: in micro-G, we
flew
. Almost immediately, I found myself outside the gunship – chasing the harpoon as it traced an unstoppable course to the
Shanghai
.

“Successful launch,” James said, over the comm-link. “You crazy bastards.”

“We're Legion,” Mason replied. “It's what we do.”

The Dragonfly's engines fired, and it retreated back to the
Colossus
.

Comet-like I sliced through the heavens, too small to be caught by any of the
Shanghai
's defensive systems, or to be of interest to the sprawling
Revenant
. I breathed in short, ragged gasps; watched the reflection of laser fire and railgun munitions on the inside of my face-plate. There was a jolt as the harpoon hit the
Shanghai
's hull – a second ahead of my arrival – and the DISTANCE TO TARGET indicator on my HUD rapidly depleted. I fired my thrusters again, readying to land.

“All clear,” Jenkins declared.

The Legion were on the outer hull of the
Shanghai
. The site was a field of charcoal; barren and vast. Chino characters bigger than me marked her armour, letters in bright white. I'd landed beside a series of campaign badges – marking successful operations on the Rim, in the Sierra Gulf, and around Jupiter.

I took stock of our situation. We were fastened to the outer hull by mag-locks in our boots and gloves. We were also alone, although I knew that we wouldn't stay that way: once the Directorate realised we were out here, they would send a response team to our location.

I checked my wargear. Plasma rifle, plasma pistol, grenades. Good enough.

Ten metres along the hull sat an airlock: closed. I had no maps or schematics to assist me, but it was a way onto the ship. Also good enough. As I watched, the outer door slid open, beams of light probing from inside.

“Weapons free,” I said. “Kill them.”

“My pleasure,” Kaminski said. “This is for Capa, you assholes.”

The first soldier – wearing a vac-proof hard-suit and an exo-skeleton – disappeared in a cloud of red mist. Bored through by a volley of pulses from Kaminski's plasma rifle, sent spiralling across the cold of space. It seemed somehow appropriate that he should get the first kill.

Already, responding to the death of their comrade, the rest of the response team was moving out. My HUD flagged six of them; even in armour, their difference in temperature registered against the vacuum. Carrying mag-rifles.

I grabbed a grenade from my combat-webbing—

THIS MUNITION TYPE IS UNSAFE FOR DEPLOYMENT IN A ZERO-GRAVITY ENVIRONMENT, my HUD warned.

—primed it and tossed it in a single sweep. The Directorate had no chance to retreat; caught outside the lock. The grenade exploded: a precise sphere of fragmentation, spreading out to cover a multi-metre radius. In zero-G, the sharp debris quickly populated the area. One Directorate Sword caught a face full of shrapnel – clutching at his breached helmet, spinning away from the ship. Two more suffered suit failures, venting atmosphere from punctures in the torso and shoulders.

Before the team could rally, before the Swords could properly reply, Mason and Martinez slaughtered them with plasma fire. Two of them managed to return fire, one almost hitting 'Ski, but it was uncoordinated. A single round bounced off my face-plate – left a nasty scar on the armour-glass – but I avoided a suit-breach.

“And that's how you do it,” Kaminski said.

In less than five seconds, the response team was gone. Just a collection of empty armoured suits and dead bodies floating from the open lock.

“We need to get inside,” I said. “And fast.”

The
Revenant
was at our backs, and somewhere beyond the third moon lingered the
Colossus
. How long until she became the target for the Shard mothership?

Quickly, we clambered inside.

We smoothly breached the inner lock – whether the ship retained atmosphere was irrelevant – and got aboard the
Shanghai
.

“You ever been on a Directorate ship before?” Martinez asked me.

“Not that I know of,” I said.

Let alone the ship responsible for killing my mother
, I thought.
Somewhere in here, someone programmed the firing solution that killed her.

“She's gone,” I said to myself. “And there's nothing I can do to help her.”

Only Elena mattered now.

“I have,”'Ski said, his expression dropping. “It didn't work out so well.”

To the rest of the squad, I said, “Smooth deployment. Priority is to reach the bridge SAP.”

“Affirmative,” the Legion chorused.

“Blast doors shutting behind us,” Martinez said, “so she still has some emergency power.”

“No way back,” Jenkins said, with a smile. “Same as ever.”

The entire corridor was bathed in flashing emergency lights, an AI calmly reciting machine-code in the distance.

Two sailors – dressed in black Directorate Naval Force uniforms – dashed through an open door, virtually into my path. They turned to face me. Young men, scalps shaven, probably Uni-Korean stock, with respirators over their lower faces. One had a kinetic pistol, and raised it in my direction. My plasma rifle was faster: the muzzle to the shooter's chest.

The Legion brought weapons up as one.

“Stop!” I yelled.

The sailor froze. Eyes locked on mine; pools of despair. Not a Sword, just a shipboard technician. Probably brought up on stories of the mighty Lazarus Legion, of the demon that was Lazarus. Let them believe it. The gunman's friend backed away a step, stumbled.

“Bridge,” I asked. “Which way?”

My suit ran the translation into Chino, and the words came out in an emotionless machine burr.

The gunman nodded towards the end of the corridor, to an open hatch that led deeper into the bowels of the ship.

“That way,” he said, in perfect Standard.

I nodded. “Go,” I said. “Evac-pods are down there.”

Whatever the Shard had done to Kyung, whatever she had become, had polluted the
Shanghai Remembered
. Every shipboard station bleated warnings and emergency response codes, and every monitor was filled with flickering, alien gibberish: reflections of the Shard machine-code.

My HUD blinked with bio-signs all around me, running through the corridors. Gravity fluctuated, had ceased altogether on some decks. We passed through a science wing of some sort. Lots of labs, branching off a central corridor. Men and women in smocks – so similar to the officers of the Alliance's Sci-Div – fleeing in panicked droves.

An enormous explosion sent a shudder through the space frame. The deck lighting failed, and we were plunged into darkness. Mason grabbed at the wall, steadied herself, and the rest of the squad paused. If the
Shanghai
lost power in orbit, or her energy core ruptured before we hit the Artefact, this whole plan would fail—

“Hostiles!” Jenkins yelled.

“This old crate isn't as dead as we thought,” Kaminski said.

Two Sword commandos wearing hard-suits bounced into view, and opened fire with mag-rifles. My null-shield failed, and I took a hit on the shoulder. Intense stabs of pain bloomed along my right side, the ablative plate cleanly penetrated by gunfire. Before they could fire again, Mason and Martinez took them down. Their smoking carcasses smashed into the wall, life-signs extinguished.

Ahead, there were words printed in glowing Chino characters.

BRIDGE, my HUD translated.

The bio-scanner flickered with hot targets, converging on our location.

Rounds sprayed the wall beside me, punched through the metal-plated walls. Something inside the bulkhead exploded and steam started venting across the corridor. I felt shots hit my back, bouncing off the Ares battle-suit. At least one got through though. ATMOSPHERIC VIABILITY NEGATIVE, my suit told me.

I flipped a grenade behind me; felt the detonation against my null-shield. Two signals disappeared from my bio-scanner – two less Swords to worry about.

Then we were on the bridge: inside the enemy camp.

“Get us sealed in,” I ordered, grunting against the pain.
I can't die yet!
“Kaminski, patch us in to the mainframe.”

Mason took up a spot by the door, working on the controls, Martinez watching her back. Sporadic gunfire chased us, rounds hitting equipment around the room. Jenkins covered the approach onto the bridge, while Kaminski shouldered his rifle and followed me.

The bridge didn't look so different to that of an Alliance warship – glowing terminal screens, holo-displays and posts for a dozen or so officers. The main difference was that every crewman and woman stationed here was dead.

“Shit,” Kaminski said. “This is not an advert for permanently hardwiring your crew…”

We picked our way through the carnage, our missile pods twitching as they detected ghost-targets. The crew were all symbionts, like Kyung; bred for purpose. Probably revenants in life, rendered horrifying in death. Wide-eyed, still plugged to their stations, bleeding ears and eyes. Those were the worst – still wide, uncomprehending. Kyung had damned them all. The deck shifting beneath me again, I prodded the nearest body with the muzzle of my rifle. Gender indistinct, the officer had tried to claw his or her data-ports – to break the connection to the
Shanghai
– and had fingers wet with blood. The corpse slid from the seat, headset coming free, and a whine of static pricked my consciousness.

“Every one is the same,” Kaminski said. “Every fucking one.”

Every officer in this room had been listening to the Artefact – listening to the wave of psychic noise that had erupted as the Shard Gate had opened. Technical analyses of the Shard-transmission occupied every monitor—

A mag-round hit the back of my left calf. I stumbled forward. CRITICAL DAMAGE DETECTED, my HUD told me. Even with my simulated body being flooded with analgesics and endorphins, it was getting harder to ignore the pain.

“The door override isn't working!” Mason said, ducking back into cover as more rounds poured across the bridge.

“Then hold them off,” I ordered. “Kaminski, get on the command terminal.”

“Affirmative,”'Ski said, hurriedly moving a dead body from the main console. He unclipped a hacking-device from his belt, began to plug it into the desk. “How long have I got?”

“A minute,” Martinez broke in. “Maybe less.”

Beyond the open view-port, Devonia stared at me like an unblinking eye: stripped to its black bones. Lights winked across the surface. Little acts of resistance from the Krell, whatever was left down there.

I had to speak to her.

One last time.

“
Colossus!
” I yelled, bouncing my transmission off the
Shanghai
's comms array. “Elena!”

The line was a sheet of white noise, and my heart plummeted at the thought that she wouldn't hear me, but after a second I heard her voice.

“Conrad! We're still here!”

“We're on the bridge,” I said. “We're nearly there—”

The ship lurched starboard, and I was almost flung from the command throne. The inertial dampeners failed, sending loose debris scattering all around me. Every terminal filled with evacuation warnings; declarations that the ship was being abandoned. The view out of the obs windows shifted again—

“What the fuck are you playing at?” Jenkins yelled at Kaminski.

'Ski shook his armoured head, his gloved fingers guts-deep in the Directorate command station, diodes on the hacker flashing angrily. “I'm trying to reprogramme thrust control—”

The
Revenant
loomed massive. Directly in our flightpath. Swarmed by Krell bio-ships, but reaching out now. Sending energy pulses across space, finding targets. Did it know what we were going to do?

“Correcting course!” Kaminski declared, and the
Shanghai
steered port-side.