The Lazarus War: Artefact (24 page)

“This place safe?” Kaminski asked of no one in particular.

“We call the creators of this ship the Shard,” said Kellerman, “because that is all that is left of them – shards of their civilisation. Shards of a technically brilliant alien race. You have nothing to fear from them. Miss Dolan – please initiate the main console.”

“Yes, Doctor,” the other researcher replied.

“Kellerman – are you sure about this? Do you understand—?” I started.

“Just watch. Look at the walls.”

The walls were covered in the same insanity-inducing alien script that I had seen throughout the ship.

“Looks like a load of old chicken-scratch to me,” Kaminski piped up. “Same as every other …”

Kaminski’s words trailed off.

A bright, mercurial substance was flowing into the recessed patterns. Instead of beading on a flat surface, as real mercury did, the fluid poured into every groove and crenellation. Like a living, voracious thing – seeping, crawling up the wall, to the ceiling above, into the patterns on the floor.

“Don’t touch anything!” I shouted, my voice echoing through the chamber. I jumped aside, away from the grid as it moved beneath me.

Kaminski and Blake leapt back as well, but there was nowhere safe to move. It was everywhere now.

“It’s all right,” Kellerman said. “It isn’t harmful.”

It was like a tree, planting roots deep underfoot, throwing branches far overhead. A precisely detailed image covered every wall, the floor, the ceiling – filled the chamber. It glowed brightly, and I picked out thousands of tiny icons, each annotated in alien script. Every individual item swirled and shifted, moving with a life of its own.

“It’s a map,” I said.

Kellerman smiled fanatically. “It’s a map of the Maelstrom. Welcome to the planetarium.”

Soon I came to recognise the various stars and formations that made up the Maelstrom. They were cast indelibly into my memory, but standing in the midst of the flowing and swirling display I had momentarily been disoriented. I spent long moments just pacing the planetarium.

“The Shard knew the Maelstrom very well,” said Kellerman. “We’ve been able to recover map data of the entire region – better than any astrocartography I’ve ever seen. Even better, the Shard once knew of a number of stable Q-jump routes through, and into, the region.”

Flickering silver strands – like a spider’s web – sprang from some worlds, linking to others. I traced some, and my touch caused the mercurial matter to flow red like capillaries. Each seemed, impossibly, to avoid the morass of black holes and gravimetric storms that blighted the region.

Is this finally it?
I asked myself. An incredible prospect dawned on me. I turned to grab Blake by the shoulders, shaking him. My heart skipped a beat. The implications made me dizzy.

“Do you hear that, Blake? This thing can give us maps of the Maelstrom!”

Kellerman strode into the middle of the planetarium. Caressed some of the planets; the silver substance briefly changing colour in response to his touch. Blake just looked on in confusion, unable to understand my sudden enthusiasm.

“In theory,” Kellerman said, “it would be possible to use Q-space jump points – mapped out by the Shard – to travel right into the
heart
of the Krell Empire.”

“There’s the Quarantine Zone,” I said, pointing out the great rift at the edge of the chamber. “What is this star, in the middle?”

There sat a huge, pulsing star system – a sun surrounded by numerous bloated planets. A beating heart of mercury: actually shivering as though it was a living thing.

“I believe that is the Krell home system.”

I swallowed, trying to digest Kellerman’s words. My mouth was dry. I suddenly had a new purpose.
This is a second chance – a new beginning
. I let go of Blake. For the military, for the Alliance, the place had even greater implications. A fleet could strike at the home world – take the war to the Krell.

“Mr Peters, if you will,” Kellerman said with a wave of his hand. “Explain the rest.”

“I ran a code-breaker algorithm on one of the minor starship control units,” he said. I was only half-listening, still heady from what had just been revealed. “Then Dr Kellerman – the real mastermind here – was able to show that the scripture of this device matched one of the consoles over there.” He waved to a covered machine embedded in a nearby wall. “We really came across these by chance. We discovered that each acted as a key to activate certain functions of the ship.” He let out a long sigh. “There is still so much to be done here. Large portions of the vessel remain unknown to us. We’ve only managed to explore a tiny fraction of it.”

“Where are
they
?” Blake asked of Kellerman. “Whatever xenos built this ship?”

Kellerman scowled at the interruption. He didn’t seem to like it when my team addressed him directly.

“They are long gone. Dust, all dust.”

“But how do you know that?” Blake persisted.

“Because, as I say, the ship crashed thousands of years ago.”

“You said that it was carbon-dated as being thousands of years old,” Blake said. “That’s different.”

“The distinction is, at best, fine,” Kellerman replied. “I believe that the crew died in the crash. The conclusion is supported by all available scientific evidence.”

“You better hope that the Shard don’t come back, looking for their ship,” Kaminski added. “Because I’ll bet they will be mighty pissed to find that primitives like us have been poking around in the wreckage.”

“I’m quite sure that will not happen,” Kellerman said, with an edge of finality.

Blake and Kaminski exchanged loaded glances. I shared their concerns, but right now I didn’t care. I continued pacing the room, trying to take in everything that I was seeing.

“I think that you should tell the captain the best part,” Peters said with a boyish grin, indicating to Kellerman.

“We found the Key in one of the lowest chambers of the ship,” Kellerman resumed. “We’ve been able to decipher some of the alien language – some of the scripture on the walls. This was certainly a battleship, and I suspect that the Shard were once at war with the Krell. The device – the Key – has quite specific instructions.”

“What did you discover?” I asked.

“It has the same markings as those found on the Artefact, on some of the more minor alien relics surrounding the site.” His arms moved as he spoke, motors whining. “We have examined the Artefact from space. We have even run unmanned drones over the region that it occupies. I can show you the proof. Those markings are exactly the same. We can do it – we can activate the Artefact.”

Kellerman’s revelation perhaps didn’t have the effect on me that he had planned. I wasn’t interested in activating the Artefact – only using the star-maps. I couldn’t draw my eyes away from the walls.

“Just imagine, Captain,” Kellerman went on, trying to engage me, “
harnessing
the Artefact, understanding the signal and the influence it holds over the Krell. The Key will activate the Artefact.”

“Even more reason that Command should be made aware of your findings.”

“Haven’t you worked this out yet, Captain? With what little scientific apparatus I have here, don’t you think it fairly impossible that I could have reached the conclusions that I have?” He searched the faces of my squad. “Command hasn’t told you the whole truth about your mission. They have known about the Shard for a long time. My research has been built on the shoulders of giants.”

I frowned, continuing to inspect the alien display. I wished that I could memorise the Q-jump routes – an insane navigational network, spreading throughout Krell space—

“Helios is one of several sites of significant scientific interest,” Kellerman declared, frustration in his voice. “It is but one of several locations left behind by the Shard.”

And there it is
, I finally realised.

Worst of all, for all of his insanity, I knew that it had to be true. There
was
no way that Kellerman could have done this on his own, no matter what other scientific support he had behind him. Alien devices, star-data intelligence, the discovery of the Krell home star system: it was too much.
Too many questions. Maybe not even Kellerman can answer these
.

“I’m telling you everything,” he went on. “All that I know. Ask yourselves this: would Command really have risked a Sim Ops team – really have sent you out here – if the site was of purely theoretical interest?”

Kaminski sighed. Blake just looked shell-shocked.
You’re young, Kid
.

I knew that I couldn’t trust Kellerman, but my intel on this planet had plainly been wrong. The Alliance knew of the worth of the Artefact. Knew of the worth of the station’s findings. Jostin’s words haunted me: “
Imagine if that could be harnessed. Weaponised
.” They had known, and they had sent us out here to bring Kellerman back. This was why he was so important. I was quite sure, then, that Command didn’t care at all about the two thousand staff, about the security team, about the credit value of Helios Station. They wanted Kellerman, and what he held in his head. My squad and I were just cogs in the machine, nothing more.

Deacon suddenly intruded on our conversation, tugging on Kellerman’s arm. His face was pale, respirator hanging round his neck, beard streaked with sand.

“I’ve lost communication with Farrell and Ray. We should get moving back to the surface.”

“It will likely be interference from the ship,” Kellerman said. “Don’t be unduly concerned. But you are right that we should be going.”

“We’re not going anywhere without the star-data,” I said, holding up a hand for calm. “Whatever Command has or hasn’t done, I need this.”

“We already have it, decoded and ready for onward transmission,” Kellerman said with a nod.

And with that, Peters deactivated the device. The humming sound ceased and the chamber darkened. The silver substance gradually drained from the cuneiform: shrinking rather than expanding. First the ceiling, then the floor, then finally the walls – retreating like a living organism, disappearing as quickly and as mysteriously as it had appeared. The intricate patterns were gone – the star-map impossible to divine from the random collection of marks on the wall.

But I couldn’t get it out of my head. It was a thing of beauty, but so much more. It had been such a long time since I’d felt it, that I barely recognised the emotion it stirred in me.

Hope
.

Deacon led the way, and we eventually ascended to the surface levels again.

“Ray!” he barked, into his communicator. “This is Chief Deacon! Respond!”

When that didn’t work, he tried the same with Farrell. Both channels were empty static.

“Probably just a transmission problem,” Kellerman insisted. He was panting, taking tortured and clumsy steps in his exo-suit. Still, he refused any help from his researchers.

The exit came into view ahead, and I picked my way through the broken terrain. Slashes of bright light fell through the breach in the starship hull. Inside the vessel, it had been so dark that it took a moment for my naked eyesight to adjust to the new conditions. The temperature gradually increased as we went: outside, it was approaching high noon now. The desert was deathly still – whatever life Helios harboured, as basic as it was, knew to avoid the extreme midday heat.

Ray and Farrell stood together, heads bobbed as though in conversation. Ray was consulting a data-slate. Farrell manipulated the device and pointed to something. We were virtually on top of them before either of them even noticed. They stood just outside the hole in the starship hull, within the shade of the tent. The enclosure outside was still open, and the overhead suns so bright that they shone right through the fabric.

Thank Christo for that
, I thought.
No Krell
.

“Hey, assholes!” Deacon yelled. “How about one of you answer the damned comm?”

Ray turned to face us, his back to the alien desert. He gave a weak grin.

“No problem, Chief. Just chewing the fat with Farrell.”

“Catching up on station news,” Farrell said in support.

“Anything to report?” Deacon barked. “At least tell me you’ve been on watch.”

“All fine out here,” Farrell said. “The gun-bot is guarding the crawler.”

Ray backed him up again: “Yeah, nothing to report whatsoever. Quiet as a tomb, in fact—”

Shree!

Ray’s head suddenly exploded in a mass of blood and bone and gore.

Then the world descended into confusion, shouting and fire.

Instinct took over.

I was on the ground, on my belly in the dirt. Moving fast, taking cover. Savage pain exploded in my leg and ribcage, but I had to ignore it. There was a sand ridge ahead, just beyond the entrance to the ruined starship and the tent. In the seconds it took me to reach the ridge, I worked out that the attack was coming from the general direction of the sand-crawler.

“Blake, Kaminski!” I yelled. “Sound off!”

I frantically looked back in the direction of the ship. Kaminski had followed me, and Blake wasn’t far behind.

“Affirmative,” they both chorused.

“What’s happening?” someone shouted.

I twisted to see Kellerman and Deacon further down the slope, still in the shadow of the starship. Both men were ashen faced. Deacon clung to the ground and panic dominated his eyes. Stinger-spines volleyed overhead. Percussive roars sounded the discharge of Krell boomers. Fire impacted the hull of the alien ship, punching holes in the outer shell.

“Stay down and stay quiet!” I ordered. “We’re under attack.”

“Gun-grafts,” Kaminski added. “Must be a couple of hundred metres out from the wreck, give or take.”

“At least it isn’t the crew coming back for their ship,” Blake said. I knew that the comment wasn’t meant glibly. “We know the Krell.”

More shots came in overhead. I heard Peters moaning, complaining about the damage being caused to the Shard ship. We were using the open suit-to-suit comms network; I imagined our transmissions giving us away to the Krell like a bad smell, data-streams rising up from our position. The Krell couldn’t understand what we were saying, but they would detect the actual transmissions.

“Get over here and take cover,” I ordered Kellerman and the others in the group. “Keep the radio traffic down. They’re listening.”

With obvious trepidation, Kellerman, Deacon and the others slowly crawled away from the alien ship and settled against the sand ridge I was using as cover. Kellerman’s progress was especially slow, and his legs whirred angrily as he moved. The suit wasn’t made for this sort of mobility. Deacon cradled a rifle, with another long-arm strapped to his back. His beard was smeared with Ray’s blood.

“Ray’s dead!” Farrell said, shuffling along last in line. “He just
died
! He’s gone! Like that: completely snuffed out.”

Farrell’s voice was wracked with sobs and his words trailed off to a whimper. I motioned with a hand to stay low to the floor.
Got to stay hidden
.

From the corner of my eye, I glimpsed Ray’s tortured body. He lay like some bizarre marionette, caught in the metal bones of the ruptured Shard hull. His suit was slashed with bloody holes, stained black by boomer-fire.

“Don’t look back the way we came,” I ordered. “Just focus on getting out of here alive. Stay behind this ridge. We need to find how many of them there are and work on a plan to get back to the crawler.”

Farrell snivelled in response, but froze where he was, still several metres from the ridge. More boomers sounded overhead. Flecks of bio-matter pitted the ground nearby. Kellerman signalled for Farrell to follow him.

“You said that you checked the radio mast, Farrell!” he hissed. “You’re an idiot! You led them right to us!”

“I did check it! I checked it. I – I’m sure I checked it, on last rotation of that crawler. I ran diagnostics on the mast unit last time it went out.”

“Not last time it went out –
this
time!” Kellerman spat the words. “Last rotation was two weeks ago. That crawler should have been checked today.”

“It doesn’t need checking that often,” Farrell said. His voice was weak: he was having trouble convincing himself of the force of his argument, let alone Kellerman.

“You promised me that you had checked it!”

“Well I didn’t!” he wailed back.

“Leave it!” I ordered. “This isn’t the time for accusations.”

More shots hissed overhead. The boomer-fire left red and green trails of colour as it ignited the atmosphere. Kellerman riled beside me; he simply could not leave the issue.

“Christo-damn it!” he ranted, through clenched teeth. He was talking to Farrell. “You
deserve
to die out here. I lost my legs on Ultris due to the incompetence of people like you!”

No time for your shit now, Kellerman
, I thought. But there it was: he knew that he’d been on Epsilon Ultris. Why the contrived memory loss earlier in the day? It didn’t make sense, but this wasn’t the time to deal with that either. I glanced sideways at Kellerman’s prone, old body; his face flushed with barely contained rage, lips wet with spittle. He caught my eye, and looked away.
He knows that he has said too much already
.

“How many shooters we got, ’Ski?” I asked.

“Six shooters, tops,” Kaminski said.

“Maybe more primary xeno-forms,” Blake whispered.

I knew exactly what the Krell would do: pin us down here, outside the starship, where we had nowhere to run. They’d suppress us until they could call in reinforcements, and circle round our position. Outflank us, then take our small group apart.

“I’m not staying here!” Farrell suddenly declared.

He clambered up the sand ridge before I had a chance to react. His boots dug into the ground clumsily and he fumbled once, twice, as he attempted to climb the bank. I reached up to grab his boot.

“Get back here, Farrell!” I bellowed. “Never mind what caused this. Just get back here and stay down.”

Farrell half turned to face me but continued to pull himself up the bank.

“What, and stay out here in this heat? We’ll all boil to death faster than you can kill those things. I’m making a run for the crawler.”

With an unexpected burst of strength, he twisted his ankle free from my grip. I tried to grab him again, but he was already up the side of the crest. He hauled himself over the edge and grunted with exertion. Then his legs disappeared as he reached the top.

“Get back here!” I yelled, trying to follow him up.

I only saw the region over the bank for a split second.

Farrell was up on his feet, and took a step out of cover. He was panting hard, hauling his old environment suit. The extra weight made him slow and vulnerable. He turned to face the crawler – so distant, still so far from where we were trapped – and took another step, head lowered in determination.

“
Get the fuck down!
” I shouted.

Stinger fire came from the area behind the crawler – an elevated position that overlooked the entire crater. There were at least six – Kaminski had been right. Three or four shots tore into Farrell.

I’d studied Krell weapons in detail. Seen all manner of bio-weaponry; from flamers grown on limbs to living ammunition designed to hollow a man out from the inside. The stinger was the most common Krell weapon – a simple biological projectile thrower, loaded with hollow flechette rounds. Those stinger-spines carried an explosive charge, but were also poison-filled. Designed to disable, to debilitate.

The first stinger pierced his abdomen; the others were aimed at his legs. He collapsed, managing a stifled cry. His suit burst open and spilled precious blood. He spun sideways, away from the ridge, and tumbled to a stop several metres from our position: cleanly pinned to the floor by stinger-spines.

The other shooters aimed for us. Boomer-fire whistled past me, and I ducked back. Kaminski and Blake did the same, hugging the ridge.

But Farrell wasn’t dead. He screamed, clearly enough that I could understand he was in excruciating pain. He literally wailed. The sound was barely human, but it was just possible to make out words.

“Christo – please no! I – have – had a
son
! Please – not like this. S-someone, please – s-s-s-someone help me. F-fuck! So – hurt – so bad.”

I didn’t know Farrell, but as a fellow member of the human race, it was impossible not to be affected by his pleading. He might well have doomed the whole expedition, but it didn’t mean that he deserved to die like this.
No one
deserved to die like this.

“We – didn’t mean to …” He choked. “Sh-shouldn’t have – please, help m-m-me!”

I felt the sand against my gloves: hot, unforgiving.

“Should we help him?” Kellerman asked.

I wanted to. I really wanted to – even if only to put a round in his head, to stop his pain. That would be a mercy. But the crater was covered by Krell snipers, and to get into range would expose the rest of the expedition to the same fate.

I shook my head. “He’s finished.”

We waited for a few minutes. The Krell sounded one or two warning shots, to keep us down. After what had happened to Farrell none of Kellerman’s men tried to move from the position.

Farrell’s screaming went on and began to sound wet. The pleading became more desperate. He was shouting a name, I think, but I couldn’t hear him properly any more. I set my jaw, tried to filter out the noise.

“They didn’t want to kill him,” Deacon said, to no one in particular. “They wanted to hurt him.”

I nodded.

I didn’t know what biological atrocity was loaded into the stinger ammunition. I never knew: it always seemed to be something different. Sometimes the stingers burnt – corrosives, acid in the blood. Other times they carried slowing agents, complex venomous compounds. Always painful, rarely fast acting. I’d felt that same sensation in my own body, too many times.
My simulated body
, I reminded myself. Farrell eventually gasped for breath. The stinger poison was spreading all over his body now. Organs, skin, heart. I forced my eyes shut, felt a cold sweat forming on my brow. His screams were horrifying.

“Farrell was right about one thing,” I said. “We need to get back to the crawler. It will get hot out here. Then when dusk falls, it’ll be cold – real cold. When those suns set, the temperature is going to plummet.”

“If we’re exposed for more than a couple of hours after sunset, hypothermia is inevitable,” Kellerman said.

“Then how long until sunset?” I asked.

“Six hours,” Deacon said. “Give or take.”

“That’ll be plenty of time. Give me the rifles.”

Deacon unquestioningly shuffled across to where I lay and offered me the rifle from his back. I took the gun and turned it over in my gloved hands. The environment suit I wore was not for combat – the gloves were old and heavily padded – and neither was the gun modified for use in a suit. I was going to be clumsy and slow.
And even slower in your own body
, a voice persisted in my head. I checked the digital display – one hundred rounds.
This gun will jam in a pinch – I would’ve underfilled the clip
, I thought. It was an older civilian security model, a carbine made for defence forces. I briefly inspected the weapon mechanism and satisfied myself that the rifle worked. Heavy-duty tape was wrapped around the stock, and the trigger unit was worn.

“You carrying ammo?”

Deacon paused. “There’s a whole box of clips back at the crawler.”

That isn’t going to do us any good out here
.

“And the other rifle?”

Deacon passed the second rifle to me. I checked that one as well. It was an ancient Alliance ground-infantry pattern, much older than the first, but in better condition. An antiquated sniper rifle; with a scope and a range-finder device attached to the stock. Longer barrelled than the first rifle, likely better range. Both were solid-shot projectile weapons – inferior to energy weapons like our plasma rifles – but they would have to do.

I looked to Blake and Kaminski. They were both good, fast shots, but this was not a firefight we were trained to undertake. Blake had the marksman award: he’d be the better sniper. I waved him nearer to me and passed him the rifle with the scope.

“I can do this, Cap,” he volunteered. “This is a good old rifle. Ruversco 950. A real family heirloom.”

He took the gun and ran his hands along the barrel, then looked down the scope back towards the alien ship. I felt a moment of indecision – had Blake actually ever fired a weapon in anger, inside his own body? I swallowed. He had never been to war for real.

“Nice for such an old gun,” he said. “Reasonable scope, decent range.”

“Make every shot count, Kid. I know that I can trust you.” No point in voicing my doubts; I needed Blake to know that I believed in him. I turned to Deacon: “Any grenades, other weapons?”

He shook his head mutely.

“We didn’t think we would need any,” Kellerman said.

“We’ll talk about that later. Blake, suppress the shooters. Flush them out. I’ll cover the ridge, then we’ll take them out one at a time. They are beyond the crawler, elevated above the crater rim.”

Blake nodded. “I can do this, Cap.”

He gave me a brittle smile: he was scared shitless. I just nodded. He was a good kid.

I slipped my elbows onto the edge of the sand bank and used a piece of rock as further cover. I propped the rifle in place, just over the lip of the bank. Scanning the crater edges, I took in as much detail as I could. Blake found a post and did the same. Kaminski took up a position between us, acting as spotter.

“We see it, we kill it,” I whispered.

“Fuck yeah,” Kaminski said.

“The xenos are going to move fast,” I continued. “And don’t expect them to stop if you hit one.” The rifles weren’t anti-Krell tech – I hadn’t checked the ammo type, but I doubted that it was armour-piercing. I’d have preferred proper AP rounds, explosive-tipped; with the suns creating heat hazing. Even some tracer ammunition. “They might rush us. If they do that, take out as many of them as you can.”

“Affirmative,” Blake said.

“And when I say they’ll move fast, I really
mean
it. Inside the sims, we’re evenly matched. Out here, they have the edge.”

Nothing stirred across the endless desert. I flagged available cover. Rock formations provided low and hard concealment for the xenos; there was plenty of shadow for any raiding party to move—

“Left flank, three hundred metres!” Kaminski shouted.

I swivelled left, carbine muzzle aimed into the desert. Just a flash of carapace – camouflaged against the alien sand – moving fast between one rocky outcropping and another. It was a primary xeno-form, long-legged and spindly, tail swinging for balance. It built up speed as it covered the distance between the two areas of cover. Became a blur, legs moving so fast.