Origins (8 page)

I gripped the safety rail of the pit. Far from being incredible, the atmosphere was dizzying. Beneath me, flags of a hundred colonies, of tens of nation-states, were being flown. Representatives from pretty much every colony, outpost and national body had gathered here.

“The
Endeavour
's mission specs are staggering,” the reporter said. “She's one of the largest non-military vessels ever built by the Alliance. Capable of prolonged faster-than-light flight, with the most sophisticated quantum-space disruption drive ever installed in a ship of this size.”

I fought to see the gathered crew. Everyone wore the same deep-blue vac-suit, carrying black boxes on hoses connected to their chests. Again: part of the show. Parodies of earlier explorers, of the first astronauts that had probed the dark of outer space.

“She is, we're told, equipped for any eventuality,” the reporter continued. “Made to counter whatever the Krell Collective have to throw at her. But we mustn't forget that the
Endeavour
is one of several starships tasked with this mission. There are in fact sixteen ships on this expedition.”

Their names were known all across Allied space: had already captured the public's fickle imagination. The AFS
Lion's Pride
, HMS
Britannic
, UAS
Ark Angel
… Many of the vessels were multi-nationals, each differently constructed, with a dedicated role on the expedition.

“And here comes the crew!” the reporter gleefully squealed.

I panicked. Here she was.

This was a photo opportunity, and nothing more. There was no functional purpose in boarding the crew in this way. One by one, they climbed the scaffold towards the outer shuttle doors.

“Commander Cook!” someone declared. “Christopher Cook is the expedition leader, as well as the captain of the
Endeavour
.”

He turned, paused, waved at the crowd. His face – middle-aged, wise, smiling – appeared twenty-storeys high on the billboard. I felt like I knew the man already. I'd read multiple interviews in
Dispatches
, in the
Alliance Daily
. His face had been plastered over every publication that Psych Ops could put out.

“One of our own,” Vijay interrupted, nodding proudly. “He a Calican, you know.”

Cook was a family man: three wives and sixteen kids. That was supposed to be some sort of reassurance to the public, a subliminal suggestion that the mission would be coming back – that he wouldn't be abandoning his family.

“Cook's second-in-command, Lieutenant Reji Ashwari!”

Another familiar face, another cheer. Another practised walk up the gantry, into the waiting transport.

“Sergeant Thomas Stone!”

The faces went on and on. Almost all of the crew had military, or pseudo-military, titles. That had been a deliberate conceit; to get the public onside. I'd already dug into the files, tested my sources. Only Stone had any actual military experience, and he'd been assigned a five-man simulant team to provide security.

“You a okay there, see?” Vijay said. “Look a pale.”

I swallowed hard. “Five men for all those ships.”

“Dr Elena Marceau!”

I leant into the rail. Waved a hand at her, shouted. Of course, my voice was drowned by the sea of noise around me: the jubilant, senseless, pointless cheering.

Then Elena's face appeared on the billboard and it took all of my strength not to pass out. I teetered on the edge as she took the walk towards the waiting transport. There was only a couple of hundred metres between us, but it may as well have been light-years. Soon, once she had commenced her mission into the Maelstrom, it would be.

I'd never forget the way that she looked that day. The vac-suit was fitted, not as puffy as the older-style EVA gear, and her lean figure was evident as she strode the gantry. The French flag on one shoulder, the Alliance on the other. Because she was a pretty face for the cameras, Elena's inner suit hood was lowered. Her long dark hair was pulled back in a semi-utilitarian style; her red lips glossed, cheeks blushed. She had never looked more beautiful.

She paused at the end of the gantry. Framed by the open shuttle hatch. Scanned the crowd. None of the other crew had done that. Dallied at the access. Was she looking for me, or was that just my imagination?

“She's going to be putting the schedule out…” Brooke muttered to me,
sotto voce
. “She's only the fucking shipboard psych, for Christo's sake…”

There were a lot of people between her and me. I felt her gaze turn in my direction. Those dark eyes lingered on the press pit. Did she see me? We made – or at least, I thought that we made, fleeting eye contact.

Don't go. Please; don't go.

The second – that was probably all it was – passed, and Elena disappeared into the ship.

I can't let her do this.

I leant forward, tested the safety rail. It was firmly attached, would hold my weight. There was an open security corridor beneath me, only a five-metre drop.

“What you a do, boss?” Vijay asked, as though the cogs in his brain had started to whirr. “That's not a good idea—”

“Fuck it,” I said.

I leapt over the railing. The crowd was still cheering, still yelling like the bunch of idiots that they were, and hardly anyone noticed me. I landed hard on the floor, went into a roll. Knew that I had to think and move fast: that to reach the shuttle I'd have to get past security—

“Hold it!” someone shouted, moving at the end of the cordon. “Stay where you are!”

Vijay and Brooke were watching me from the press enclosure, leaning over the railing. The Mili-Pol reacted faster than I'd predicted and moved on my location. Supporting security-drones flitted over the heads of the civilian crowd.

“I can't let her go!” I yelled, tearing towards the shuttle.

Two figures appeared at the end of the open corridor, storm batons drawn and shock pistols at the ready. Big MPs wearing full flak-suits focused on me. Others were closing in too, circling the closest approach to the shuttle boarding gantry.

I swung a solid punch at the first MP. Connected with his nose; sent the brute sprawling backwards in a spray of red. He yelped, dropped his baton, cursed at me. I sidestepped the second, moved on towards the shuttle—

“No you don't!” the soldier yelled. “This is a restricted area!”

“You don't understand!” I shouted back, feeling hands grasping at my collar, dragging me back. “She can't do this!”

“Yeah, well, she's already gone,” the MP growled.

I slammed an elbow into the trooper's ribs, felt a solid connection with bone. The man gave an angered groan in response, but didn't go down like the first. He fought back, pulling me further from my objective, the open boarding hatch of the shuttle suddenly seeming an impossible distance. I struggled some more, lashed out with fists and feet—

A storm-baton slammed into my back. The device was made for exactly this purpose: a non-lethal, but extremely painful, method of detaining suspects. Electrical discharge danced up my shoulder as I slumped to the floor. Soon I was incapacitated, a pair of MPs were above me, slamming the batons into me again and again, until I couldn't fight back any more.

I caught a glimpse of the press area as I went down. The reporter watched on with intrigue in her eyes. As I rolled onto my side, and consciousness began to evaporate, I saw the shuttle boarding hatch. Elena was inside that transport, and very soon she would be leaving for the
Endeavour
and the Maelstrom.

That was the last time I saw her.

I blacked out.

Cruising at FTL speed, the
Independence
grazed the edge of some Japanese space holdings – technically, for now at least, still Alliance territory – and moved through French airspace. The trip took three days; no need for a quantum-space jump, so no need for the damned freezers. En route we lost several prisoners to miscellaneous medical conditions, and the tally of stable survivors dropped to sixty-two.

Kaminski made a fast recovery. Hot food and Jenkins did wonders for his constitution, and over the days he became more and more like his old self, despite the metal in his head. Professor Saul remained bed-bound, but I had reports that he was conscious and lucid.

As we entered Alliance space, we began to receive updates on the war. Virulent as the plague, scuttlebutt raged throughout the ship. The news wasn't good: another two star systems purged by the Krell, and still they kept coming. Several new war-fleets had entered Alliance space in the last six weeks, and we'd lost three battlegroups across the old QZ. The Navy had taken a pounding at Askari and the latest prediction on reinforcements was another two years. Those were the real effects of time-dilation from the Core; the currently insurmountable realities of running an interstellar war.

I returned to the Observation Deck on the approach, but found that it wasn't as empty as I'd expected.

“Morning.”

There was the Legion, including Kaminski. He was even dressed in full uniform. Eyes glued to the long armour-glass window.

“Morning, Legion,” I muttered. “I thought that this would be a good place for some privacy.”

“You want us to go?” Mason asked.

“No,” I said.

I was suddenly glad of the Legion's presence: their reassuring aura. I realised that I didn't want to face Calico alone. Having Kaminski back, the team being together: it felt like old times. It felt good.

“You know why they want to see you?” Jenkins said.

“No, I don't know why they want
us
,” I said. “It's not just me: the Legion goes where I go.”

“You think Ostrow knows?” Mason said.

“I doubt he'd give me a straight answer even if I asked. I don't trust spooks. Never have.”

Below, Calico bloomed like an enormous grey flower. It had been growing steadily for the past day, larger and larger until it filled every view-port. The wave of memory that the world evoked irritated me.

Post-Treaty Calico had enjoyed a period of relative calm, but corporate investments had never quite returned to pre-War levels. Ore seams had dried up and fortunes had waned. Nervous company men in their glass towers back in the Core had decided that Calico Base wasn't such a safe bet any more. The result was Calico, 2284: a mess of half-abandoned mines and refineries, of haunted hab-domes and empty dom-blocks.

“I've been here before,” I said, absently. “Ten years ago.”

Watching her go: boarding the shuttle, leaving human space behind…

Mason pulled an intrigued face. “Isn't this where the
Endeavour
expedition was launched?”

I saw Jenkins give her a determined frown, shaking her head
not to go there
. But Mason was always with the questions, and she wouldn't be deterred.

“Yes,” I said. “I was here when the ship launched.”

“Must've been quite the occasion,” Mason said, with genuine interest.

“It was. But Calico was very different then.”

The resurgence of the Krell threat – what the media was now calling the Second Krell War – had, perversely, led to renewed interest in the outpost, but for all of the wrong reasons. The Krell had already destroyed several border systems, and that put an enormous strain on the resources available to Calico. As of now the place was experiencing a migrant crisis. Air, water, heat: those things were finite quantities in space. The population was crippling the outpost.

“There must be something to enjoy down there,” Jenkins said.

“Maybe the open air?” Mason suggested. Her tone was playful; sarcastic even. “The plant life?”

I groaned. Calico Base had neither of those.

“What would a Martian know about open air?” Jenkins said, frowning. “Your cities are almost as bad as Earth's.”

“Except they're red,” Martinez said.

“Let's not get started on who has the best planet,” Mason said, backing away from the obs window. “Because we all know who will win that one…”

Kaminski interrupted the conversation. “What's that?” he asked, pointing to a structure in space.

Calico's orbital dock – a boxy conglomeration of workshops and hangar bays – was just visible at this distance. Several warships were either docked with the station, or moored in close proximity. The gathered fleet was substantial; comprised a variety of different starship patterns. The dock sat a few thousand klicks from the surface, tethered to Calico Base by a long metal girder that glinted in the muted starlight: a space elevator.

“The Spine,” I said. “Locals were proud of it, once.”

“That didn't work out so well,” Mason said. “Whole thing is locked down, so I hear. Only military personnel and cargo can use it now.”

“Not that,” Kaminski said. His face had grown pale, and I noticed that his hand was shaking as he pointed. “I mean the ship.”

The UAS
Colossus
was moored at Calico Base, so big that she filled several berths in the orbital dock. She dwarfed all other ships, her profile and pattern unique.

“I'd heard that she was here,” Jenkins said, with more than a hint of annoyance in her voice, “but nothing concrete…”

“You need new sources,” Mason suggested.

“When the great Keira Jenkins' scuttlebutt is unreliable…” - Martinez sucked his teeth - “you know things are FUBAR.”

It had been six months since any of us had seen the
Colossus
, and like Calico she had changed since we'd parted ways. We had been through a lot with the old warship. She had almost been put down in Damascus; had suffered debilitating interior and exterior damage. The injury to her left flank – a ripple in the ablative plate – had been enough to puncture one of the engine nacelles, and most of her essential sensor-suites had been critically damaged by the journey through the Shard Gate. I'd heard a rumour that her data-core and stacks – the thinking elements of her AI – had been seized by Science Division. They could refit her, repair her, but she wouldn't be the same ship any more.
And not without Admiral Loeb
, I thought.

“You okay?” Jenkins asked Kaminski.

“All good,” he said. “It's just… Kind of weird seeing her again.”

The
Independence
's shipboard PA chimed. “All hands, prepare for arrival at Calico Base. All hands, prepare for docking procedure.”

I sighed, turned away from the obs window. “Come on, Legion. We better get down there.”

“Has James arranged transport?” Mason asked.

“Jesus, girl,” Jenkins said, rolling her eyes, “you want to wear that interest any more blatantly? Have some respect.”

“Fuck you, Jenkins. I'm not interested in him; I'm only asking.”

“We're going down the Spine,” I said. “We can get a nice view of Calico Base on the way.”

“This day just keeps getting better…” Jenkins moaned.

The Legion were given priority disembarkation orders and the docking procedure went as smoothly as could be expected, considering that the space lanes around Calico were choked with starships. We didn't ride alone – a dozen space jockeys from Scorpio Squadron took the cart down with us – but it was a nicer ride than for the rest of the Sim Ops teams. They were assigned to dropships, and subsequently parked in holding patterns in high orbit. Professor Saul and the other prisoners were being held aboard the
Independence
; they would be dropped to the surface once appropriate medical facilities had been secured. Captain Ostrow had stayed with them for the formal debriefing procedure, and I was glad to be temporarily rid of him.

The Spine was a mutant tree searching for sunlight. An enormous structure erupting from Calico Base, metal vertebrae lined by a series of elevator carts: glass-sided, affording a panoramic view over Calico's surface. The Lazarus Legion were sprawled across the insides of the cabin, variously lolling against bulkheads and padded drop-couches.

“No weather, no sunlight, no nothing,” Jenkins added.

“That's not quite true,” Mason said. She was, tourist-like, pressed up against the armour-glass window: looking out at the approaching city. “They have Spiders.”

Beyond the confines of the crater-base, there were small dark figures on Calico's surface. At this distance they looked like spiders crawling on cheese but I knew that was just perspective playing a trick.

“Those, my friends,” said Mason, “are Spider mechanised mining rigs – ‘MMRs' for short.”

“Check out New Girl,” Kaminski said. “She's a regular bookworm.”

The rigs were actually two or three times the height of a man, just as wide – massive, multi-limbed walking machines used to extract ore from surface seams. Except for the base itself, Calico had only micro-gravity, and the Spiders used their many legs to anchor themselves to the surface.

“Creepy…” Martinez whispered. “I don't like them much.”

“Me neither,” I said.

It so turned out that real spiders were regular survivors, having been transported to most corners of the galaxy by the human race. Arachnids existed in almost all human-friendly environs and stirred the same reaction in most varieties of humanity. As the cart glided towards the terminal, several of the Spiders paused and watched us go. Although I knew that there were men in there – that the mechs were nothing more than strength-amplifiers for the drivers inside – it was easy to believe that they were big arachnids. There were hordes of them, scraping the grey surface of Calico. They were equipped with paired lasers and other industrial operating tools, all mounted on the front of the machine under the cockpit – positioned so that they looked like an open maw. Lots of the machines had graffiti and other personalised logos on the outer hulls.

“Three minutes to touchdown, sir,” Lieutenant James said.

There were some sighs from the Scorpio Squadron as the elevator made descent. We were close enough to the surface now to see every detail of the base.

“The hospitals have been busy,” Mason whispered.

Vacuum-tents were pitched out on the grey. Huge red crosses – meant to be visible from space – marked most of the structures as infirmary domes. In the distance, just beyond the Alliance base proper, were the refugee camps: of a more haggard and mismatched nature, a patchwork of oxy-tents, shanties and temporary dwellings.

“How many do you think there are down there?” Kaminski asked. His voice was low, sullen. He hadn't been speaking much, I realised.

“Millions,” Mason said, “at a guess.”

Set on Calico's frozen surface, they were maintained by temporary life-support facilities – leaching off the central heat-sink. Mobs wearing tattered vac-suits had gathered around the base of the military outpost.

“This isn't a nice place for a trooper,” James said, absently. “Even the Legion should watch itself down here.”

“I'm not scared of your bullshit, James,” Jenkins said.

“I'm not bullshitting you, California. Way I hear it this place is on the verge of civil war.”

“I do not want to be around when this place goes off,” said another of Scorpio Squadron.

James nodded along enthusiastically. “They're saying that the Alliance governor, Tarik Al Kik, is a puppet of Congress. He's trying to broker terms for an increased military garrison, but all the Workers' Union want is better working conditions. That's not easy when the life support is carrying twice the number of colonists this place was designed to hold.”

“There was a riot in the industrial sector last month,” another pilot said. “The Workers' Union holds a lot of power out here.”

“You guys are worse gossips than Jenkins,” Martinez said.

There were six million colonists on Calico, and about a million Alliance personnel. Those odds, if they ever became relevant, weren't good.

“This isn't living,” I said. “This is surviving.”

“Sometimes surviving is good enough,” Jenkins responded.

“But fighting is better,” Kaminski said.

The Legion fell quiet as the elevator commenced final descent.

The base – a carpet of glowing lights – came up to meet us.

The Spine ended in an enormous terminal; a space with the look and feel of a starport departure lounge. Concession stands lined the walls and glowing advertising holos dominated the domed ceiling, but things weren't right down here. The departures and arrivals board displayed a single message: ALL CIVILIAN TRANSPORTS ARE SUSPENDED UNTIL FURTHER NOTICE. Columns of civilians – from their appearance, not indigenous to Calico – were lined up at the gates for processing.

Kaminski looked daunted by the presence of so many people. Jenkins moved to his side, protectively, but he waved her off.

“I'm good,” he said. That was his mantra: as though, if he said those words often enough, they might even become true.

“Do you want us to call a transport to the military sector?” Mason asked. “I'm sure that we won't have to push our way through this mob.”

“No need,” Martinez said. “Someone leaked that we were coming.”

There was a welcome party gathered at the gate: four young officers in Army fatigues, and a clutch of Sci-Div personnel with a grav-stretcher.

“That'd be for you, 'Ski,” Martinez said.

Kaminski shook his head. “Fucking science pukes.”

“It is my pleasure to welcome you to Calico Base, sir,” said the lead Army officer, face beaming with pride. “
Independence
commed us with an update on the prisoner situation.”