The Lazarus War: Artefact (29 page)

There had been so much activity over the last day or so, I’d almost forgotten about using the comms rig in Operations. This was my opportunity to make contact with
Liberty Point
– to get the rest of my squad to safety. I was going to make sure that no one else died on Helios, not on my watch.

My squad languished back at the hab. I didn’t explain to the others that Tyler wanted a meeting, and as darkness fell I slipped out. With everyone wrapped in their own private sorrow it was easy enough to get away unnoticed.

Dressed in fatigues and a makeshift facemask, I braved the swirling winds and dropping temperatures. It was approaching twenty-two-hundred hours by the station sleep-cycle. A mixture of fear and excitement lurked in my gut. It finally felt like I was doing something right – for the first time since we had arrived on Helios.

The rest of the station was dark and deserted. I remembered the location of Module Eleven from my reconnaissance aboard the
Oregon
, and I headed straight there. The module security doors were open.
Is this part of Tyler’s plan, to get me through the station undetected?
I felt as though I was being guided. Or perhaps
lured
.

Just in case, my Smith & Wesson sidearm was strapped to my leg. The holster was reassuring, and I had already cycled off the safety. No chances out here. I trusted Tyler about as much as I trusted Kellerman.

Glow-globes installed in the walls led the way through a junction. Cabling and pipes lay strewn across the corridor, and the nearest bulkhead security panel had been torn open. It sparked violently for a few seconds, then went dark. I edged past the damaged unit but jumped with a start as it hissed to life again.

The temporary flash of light was enough to illuminate a corridor wall: LIFE-SUPPORT SECTION – T5 TO T8.

There was a muffled step behind me, and I twisted to face the attacker. I reacted as quickly as I could. Someone was on me. My ribs exploded with renewed pain. Rough hands from a second assailant grabbed my jaw. I smelt grease and oil. I brought up my right elbow and smashed it into something hard behind me. There was an encouraging crack as the blow connected with a ribcage or sternum, followed by a pained grunt. The attacker fell backwards. I arched my back, struggling with the second assailant. They fought to hold on, but seemed to pause as the first went down, as though shaken by my reaction.

I took immediate advantage of that. With a single motion, I grabbed the attacker by one arm with both hands. I reached over my right shoulder and pulled hard. The figure sailed over my shoulder – then slipped and crumpled in front of me.

I instantly went for my pistol, unholstering it and bringing it up to fire.

“Harris! Harris! Stop – it’s us!”

I looked down at the groaning figure on the floor, and realised that it was a male tech. He was sprawled across a pile of debris, at an entirely uncomfortable angle. He half-rose, rubbing his side with both hands. I turned to look behind me to find Tyler. She had her hands up, defensively, backed against a wall.

“Hell of a welcome. Don’t you people know how to just say hello?” I muttered, looking back to the tech.

The man was about the same age as Tyler, with a crop of sandy hair, dressed in a Helios Expedition jumpsuit. The name R FLYNN was printed on his lapel. He winced as he sat up. I reached out my hand to help him, and he slowly took it. Tyler seemed to relax, but only momentarily. She ran back the way that I’d come, and looked down the corridor.

“We’re clear,” she said, her tone hushed.

“I was trying to stop you from calling out,” Flynn said, still rubbing his ribs in an exaggerated fashion. “Tyler, will you be all right down here on your own? I should get back up to Operations.”

Tyler nodded. “I think I’ll be fine with this old tiger. A little late for introductions, but this is Flynn. He’s in on this – we can trust him.”

“Less of the old,” I said, but the nagging pain in my leg caused by the sudden bout of exertion told otherwise. “And what exactly is
this
? For the record, I’m not in on anything until I say so, and I don’t trust either of you.”

“I don’t blame you,” Tyler said. Then, to Flynn: “Go back up to Ops. You can do more for us there anyway. My shift doesn’t start for another few hours – cover for me.”

Flynn nodded and followed Tyler back up the corridor. She waved him off, then immediately came back.

“Follow me,” she said.

Tyler led me into an unlit corridor. It looked like it had either been abandoned or otherwise was in a state of construction. She unholstered a torch from the tool harness around her waist, and periodically shone it into the gloom. We passed darkened, empty chambers, moved through rooms filled with noisy life-support facilities. The background hum of the complicated machinery was deafening at times and the place was unbearably hot. Sticky sweat formed on the back of my neck, made my fatigues cling to my chest.

Just as I felt that I couldn’t follow Tyler any longer without some sort of explanation, she stopped. Leaning against a wall, she eyed the section of corridor. Some emergency glow-globes had been installed in the walls and the ceiling was dominated by a series of air-recycling fans. As the enormous blades of each fan lazily turned, they caused the light from the globes to strobe. Tyler’s sweaty face glistened in the flashes of light. She looked out of breath and exhausted.

“This is the place,” she said. “He won’t be able to hear us in here.”

“Who won’t? Kellerman?”

“Of course – who else? He has the entire station wired. He watches and hears everything. I need to tell someone – to tell you – what has been happening here.”

“I’m listening.”

“There’s no one else I can turn to. Kellerman is a damned maniac.”

“All right – then tell me. Start at the beginning: why did the station stop reporting?”

“Kellerman just decided one day that we had to stop transmitting. It was entirely his decision. I run Ops, for Christo’s sake, and he’s never explained to me why we stopped. Whatever this planet is, whatever the Artefact and that Shard ship are here for: we’re messing with something that none of us understands, him least of all.”

“Take your time,” I said. I could tell that Tyler was finding this difficult, that she had a lot to tell me and couldn’t really decide how to do so.

“I was one of the two thousand and thirty-two original station staff.”

“What happened to the others? I asked Kellerman, but he wouldn’t give me an answer.”

“He threw them away. Spent them. Just like he spent Sara.”

She began to pace nervously, occasionally stealing a glance in my direction as if to evaluate my response. I listened to everything she was saying, considering whether I believed her.

“Kellerman is obsessed with the Artefact. He doesn’t know what he’s doing.”

“He told me that it was a beacon, that it can transmit a signal across the Maelstrom. The Shard ship might be a genuine breakthrough. I saw what the researchers uncovered.”

“
Everything
and
everyone
could use that beacon for a Q-space jump – Krell, human, maybe even the Shard if they are still out there. Do you want our first contact with another alien species to be fronted by Dr Kellerman? Not only that, but if the effect on the Krell is as Kellerman predicts, then whoever controls the Artefact will have a planet-killer: an instant red-button.”

I sighed to myself. Kellerman had shown me some of his research, sure, and his remit on Helios had been to study the Artefact. But his intention to take control of it, for his own purposes, wasn’t part of the plan. The idea of a single man, wielding power over the Krell species, terrified me.

“Tell me about the missing personnel,” I insisted.

“Kellerman is preoccupied with activating the Artefact. He ordered Sara and the rest of this damned outpost to their deaths.”

“Who’s Sara?”

“My sister,” Tyler said. Her voice was fraught, emotional. “We came to Helios together, when we were kids. Can you imagine? Sara was twenty-one years old and I was twenty-three. We both had degrees in Colonial Tech, and we were invited to apply for the posts by Alliance Command. This was going to be some big adventure – something to tell our children about. We signed official secrets declarations, the whole deal. This thing – the Artefact – was going to be the next big discovery.” Tyler let her words hang. “Sara died the year after our arrival.”

“I – I think I saw her picture,” I said, rubbing my temples. My head was throbbing so badly. “Back in the hab module. It was above one of the bunks.”

“That’d be right. Your squad is holed up in her old unit. The whole hab is gone now.”

Am I this person? Am I Tyler’s saviour?
I wasn’t sure. All I knew was that I wanted off Helios, and my team off too. Of course, I felt for Tyler – I’d lost Blake out here, just as she had lost Sara – but she wasn’t my problem. The tactical situation on Helios had changed dramatically with the crash of the
Oregon
, then again with Blake’s death. I had to focus on my own people. Could I leave Tyler out here though? She was in opposition to Kellerman. Maybe that was enough to make her an ally.

“How did it happen?” I asked. I was sure that she was going to tell me anyway.

“Dr Kellerman started to conduct sand-crawler runs right into the Artefact. They began as automated ops – just gunbots or security-eyes on crawlers. None of them got anywhere near the Artefact. If you’ve seen it from space, you’ll know that it’s surrounded by fish heads.”

Tyler bit her lip, eyes growing distant. As if she was remembering something too painful to properly focus on.

“You’ve never seen so many of them. They stretch the desert floor like particles of sand. Primary-secondary-and tertiary-forms. Leaders, gun-grafts, and everything in between – all of them driven insane by the Artefact.

“He began to use manned sand-crawlers. Wanted to see how close he could get to the Artefact. Every time a team went out, they would be ordered to get a little closer. Every time they got closer, they would have to fight more and more Krell.”

“Why did they agree to go out there, if it was so dangerous? It’s obvious that anyone travelling through the desert is going to meet with severe resistance.”

“The Artefact doesn’t just send the Krell mad. Staff started losing it. Have you slept well since you came to Helios? I didn’t think so.”

Fuck. It’s happening to me
. I swallowed hard.
Don’t admit anything. Easier to bury it, pretend it isn’t happening
.

“Not everyone is affected. Some get hit by the signal worse than others. For many, it starts and stops with insomnia. For others, the signal means madness. There have been over a hundred suicides on this station. Probably more. Add to that the accidents, and the unexplained disappearances.”

This confirmed what Kellerman had told me. It explained why the rest of my team weren’t reporting the same symptoms as me. Through some misfortune, I was the only one touched by the madness.
Is this going to get worse? Am I going to descend into insanity, like Kellerman?
If his mania was fuelled by an alien transmission, what were the depths of his ambition? I’d recognised him as dangerous, but this was so much worse.

“Your sister died out in the desert?” I asked. “Like Blake?”

“No,” Tyler said, shaking her head. “Under the Artefact, the planet is a honeycomb of tunnels. Maybe natural, maybe created by the Shard. Does it even matter? The tunnels are big enough to drive a sand-crawler through, and they gave Kellerman an idea. He ordered teams into the tunnels, to approach the Artefact from underneath. Sara was on one of the teams. She went into the tunnels willingly. She
wanted
to go; wanted to do this thing for him.”

“What did she find?”

“Nothing. The nearer you get to the Artefact, the more powerful its song becomes. We traced her progress via a beacon on the sand-crawler, but we lost radio contact with her unit before they actually made it to the Artefact. By then, everyone on her team had gone mad. I – I stopped listening to their transmission—”

Tyler shook with rage and grief. She wouldn’t let herself cry. She just stood, looking at me with big, red-rimmed eyes. I awkwardly put an arm around her shoulder.

“Eventually, the sand-crawler ops stopped because Kellerman ran out of bodies,” she concluded.

“All I want is to take my squad back to
Liberty Point
. You can come with us. I just need access to the Operations centre, to send a message back to Command—”

“You think Kellerman will let you do that? He’ll never let you leave. Deacon is with him on this.”

“So what do you want me to do about it?”

“You and your squad could overthrow him.”

I mulled over the suggestion. Tyler stared intently at me as she waited for a response. I had the dread feeling that this would be another decision that I would have to justify back at the
Point
. It wasn’t to be taken lightly. Command would need more than the say of the Ops manager. I needed something concrete.

“Please, you have to help me,” she whispered. “The Artefact isn’t safe in Kellerman’s hands. I can give you proof. Kellerman keeps everything in Operations under constant surveillance. He will be watching for me. I don’t think he trusts me anyway, but at the moment he doesn’t suspect what we are trying to do. Flynn can fool him for a few hours.”

“All right,” I said. “Let’s go.”

Tyler was up and waving me to follow her. In the strobing, stop-start light effect created by the fans above, it looked as though she was making jumps in and out of reality. I felt as if I was out of synch with reality as well, but I followed her.

“We have to move quickly. This sector isn’t bugged, and I’ve asked Flynn to knock out surveillance for the silo as well. If we move now, I can show you all the proof you need.”

Bent-double against the cold, dusty wind, we dashed across the compound. Tyler appeared to act at random, moving between buildings and taking cover behind battered vehicles. She crouched by a wall, poking only her head around the corner of a junction to evaluate the road ahead. Satisfied with whatever she saw, she waved me on. We stalked to the next intersection and repeated the procedure.

“He has security-eyes on some of the buildings,” Tyler said, pointing to the corner of a module ahead. A glossy-black globe dangled from a cable above. “Flynn’s temporarily deactivated them, just until we reach the lab.”

Tyler led me to an enormous silo. A single gun-bot was sprawled like a sleeping dog in front of a double bulkhead. The door was ajar just enough for us to squeeze through.

“Flynn again,” Tyler said.

Cautiously, we moved past the bot. I kept my eyes on it – the machine had more than enough firepower to kill us both – but it remained inert. I paused at the door, and had the sudden and very real feeling that this was the point of no return: that to step across the threshold into the room beyond would change everything. Tyler turned back to look at me, and gave a weak smile.

“This is what I wanted to show you.”

There was a huge laboratory inside. I tried to take in as much detail as I could, conscious that at a later time someone would want my account of this moment. Isolation booths, with robotic manipulators, patiently waited for new users. I walked the narrow space between benches dedicated to monitors and holographic displays. The interior of the silo was darkened, lit only by computer screens and sleeping machine terminals. Tyler manually slid the doors shut behind us.

“This is Kellerman’s main research facility.”

“What’s he doing here?”

“See for yourself.”

She hit the lights, and one corner of the lab was illuminated by a bank of overhead bulbs. I drifted over in that direction.

The smell hit me like a wall: musky, fishy, rotten. Unmistakable.

There were Krell carcasses everywhere. Pinned to tables, nailed to walls. Tyler moved to the back of the room, into an area filled by enormous Krell skeletons. These specimens had grown huge, with ridged, thorny skulls. Although dead, and even though I’d faced a legion of them in my lifetime, I felt an uncomfortable shiver down my spine.

Tyler activated a metal shutter on one of the lab walls. It smoothly lifted, revealing another chamber beyond. I peered into the shadowy depths.

Oh, fuck!

A Krell sprang from the dark. The creature was an evolved primary-form – body a sleek black, sprinkled with barbed protrusions. Its eyes fixed on me, and it swung its raptorial forearms. I involuntarily recoiled, wincing at the high-pitched squeal the creature made as it attacked.

“Easy, tiger,” Tyler said, catching me with an arm around my shoulder. “It’ll stop in a moment.”

“A little bit of warning next time,” I said, composing myself.

The xeno was held in a small plasglass cubicle, barely big enough to contain it, and it harmlessly slammed against the observation window. There were a series of caged cubicles beyond the shutter. Each was filled with a different Krell specimen.

Tyler punched buttons on a nearby control panel. Spotlights, one by one, fell on the cubicles. Several of them were empty.

“The room is shielded,” Tyler said. “They won’t attract any attention.”

“What is he doing with them?” I said, shaking my head. “This is a huge security threat. It’s insane.”

Kellerman must have risked the lives of his security men to capture these xeno-forms – and was risking the lives of the rest of the station staff by keeping them here.

“I’m honestly not sure,” Tyler said, shrugging. “He encrypts his research files. Initially, I think that he was running standard biological response tests. But I haven’t been able to get into his research for months, and now I don’t know what he is doing with them.”

The Krell thrashed in their cages. Most had been tethered with primitive chains. The things were in a killing rage: spitting, slathering, squealing masses of hate. Many had reacted angrily to the spotlights and were swiping ineffectually at the lights overhead.

I drew back from the wall of cages, and took in the rest of the lab. This part of the room was dedicated to a different sort of research. The dirty walls were plastered with images of the Shard starship. Relics lay disassembled on workbenches. When Kellerman – I had no doubt that he was responsible – had exhausted his supply of data-slates and paper, he had taken to scrawling his workings on the wall.

“These are star-maps,” I realised, examining the drawings. The more I looked at them, the more familiar they became. “I’ve seen these before. These are drawings of the planetarium – of the star-data from the Key.”

Tyler just shrugged. “I don’t know where it came from, but he has lots of data on the Maelstrom—”

“Can you copy the data?”

“I guess so.”

That impossible hope filled me again.

“I need you to download Kellerman’s research for me –
everything
. I
need
that star-data.” I smiled at Tyler, broadly. “I can follow her!”

This is a second chance
.

Tyler scowled at me, reminding me of Blake’s reaction back in the Shard starship. She didn’t know the reason for my excitement, but I would tell her when I could. Maybe she was questioning whether she should trust me – whether I was just as mad as Kellerman.

“Slow down. Downloading Kellerman’s research will have to wait. As soon as I start the process, he’ll know that we’re moving against him. That’ll blow everything. Like I said, he has Deacon and security on his side. And anyway, I haven’t shown you everything yet.”

“It has to be now – I can’t wait. I’ll explain everything when I can, but that star-data is crucial—”

Ignoring me, Tyler walked over to one of the consoles and hit another button. More lights flashed on, illuminating the rest of the darkened silo. I was still giddy from the prospect of finding Elena—

There was a starship at the back of the silo.

I circled the craft, inspecting it. The ship was small and squat, sitting on landing supports like an insect waiting to take flight. Just the outline of the craft implied menace. She was a highly advanced model and looked to be in almost pristine condition – she certainly hadn’t been operated on the surface of Helios for long, if at all, and the metalwork gleamed under the silo lighting.

“Fucking Directorate …” I whispered.

The name
Pride of Ultris
was stencilled in American Standard on the nose, beneath the bridge module, along with some Chinese characters. Those were so fresh that it looked as though the paint might still be wet. An icon had been printed beneath the ship’s name; a multi-headed hydra, coiled around a sword.

My blood ran cold. I’d seen it on the train on Azure. The memory was indelible. I’d seen it many times since. Now the Directorate were here, following me across time and space.

“Directorate Special Operations,” I muttered. “Deacon told me that he fought on Epsilon Ultris. Kellerman was there as well – that was where he lost his legs.”

What’s the relevance there?
I wondered.
Is that where the Directorate got to Kellerman? Or did he turn because of what happened on Ultris?

And in that instant, I found myself again. I wasn’t empty any more: I was driven, motivated, flooded with anger. I hated Kellerman more than ever. I wanted to destroy him, not just kill him. The memory of Elena sobbing in pain, in the Rockwell Infirmary, threatened to overwhelm me for a moment, and I bit my knuckles to hold back my wrath. I felt, briefly, the Artefact’s signal in my head – that pitched whining.

Everything fell into place.

That
was the sound I heard, wrapped in the alien static. A sound within a sound – the ringing in my ears after the terrorist attack on the train. That was the sound I heard when the Artefact called to me. The signal was taunting me; reminding me of my failure.

Tyler followed me around the craft.

“You okay?” she asked. “You don’t look so well.”

I didn’t want to explain to her, so I just shook my head. Now I knew that I would help Tyler: now I knew that I
had
to remove Kellerman. I had justification for lethal force. He was an enemy agent, and anyone with him was just as bad.

“I’ll do what you’re asking, Tyler,” I said. “I’ll take Kellerman down. But I need the star-data, and we’ll need weapons. How many civvies have sided with you?”

“Maybe four.”

“We’ll need to think this through. We need to plan our escape off-world. My people are soldiers, not pilots. I’m not sure that we could get this starship airborne, let alone off-world. Do you know anyone with flight experience?”

“I’m a trained aerospace pilot,” Tyler said, proudly. “Got a Class Eleven flight licence. I learnt at the academy – I’ve flown commercial tugs.”

I nodded and pointed to the engines – a quad of oversized thrusters. “Tugs are different to military ships. She’s a T-89 Interceptor. Made for short cross-system jumps, and close ship-to-ship fighting. She has a quantum-space drive, but she’ll be slow flying faster than light.”

“I just know what buttons to push. And I’m pretty sure that I can fly it off-world.”

I raised an eyebrow at her. “Pretty sure, or
sure
?”

“Sure enough.” She waved at a bank of missiles racked under one of the stubby wings. “I can take care of the flight, but you and your people will need to do the rest. The weapon systems will be down to you.”

I laughed out loud. “They don’t make them like this in the Alliance. Those are plasma warheads – twelve of them. That gun under the nose is an H-28 laser cannon.”

“Which means?”

“That this ship could take out most of Helios.” That was an exaggeration, but the warheads were serious military hardware. “We’re talking multi-kilotonne detonations. Real heavy ordnance. The chin gun is an anti-infantry laser – it’ll cut men, or Krell, to ribbons.”

“Oh, right,” Tyler said absently. She obviously wasn’t into guns.

“Why does Kellerman need a ship like this?”

“Maybe to get off the planet if things got really bad? Maybe to make sure that the Directorate gets their pound of flesh out of him? It has probably been here since Helios Station was established. I found it a few months ago, but there hasn’t been any air traffic like this since we arrived here.”

“If Kellerman is so damned obsessed with the Artefact, then why doesn’t he just fly over to it and activate the thing? Surely he’d try.”

“Kellerman might be mad but he isn’t stupid. He has a strong sense of self-preservation. The Artefact is the great unknown. If he uses his own ship to get there, and he’s on the away party, then it’s his neck on the line. If he sends another party over there, and he stays on Helios Station, he’s risking his ride off Helios.”

“I suppose so.” I took a final lap around the ship. There was a large crew hatch on the starboard side of the Interceptor, made for ground troops to deploy directly from the belly. “Have you been inside?”

“Once, when I first found it. There are hypersleep capsules, and berths for about twenty crew.”

“Then it’s definitely our ticket off Helios. There won’t be any need to send a signal from Operations – we can use this to escape.”

I patted the wing. The metallic compound used in the construction of the ship had a low profile and had been treated with stealth tech. The body of the ship felt reassuringly solid. I was sure that this was the right thing to do, and part of me even longed to confront Kellerman. Was this Martinez’s righteous vengeance, filling me? Polluting my blood, making me firm in the face of adversity?

Tyler grimaced. “But you’ll still need to take out Kellerman. He has the sky covered. He could shoot us down, as soon as we clear station airspace.”

I rounded the curve of the hull. “I promise that I will take care of him—”

“
Shut the fuck up and get down on your knees!
”

The words were shouted with extreme hostility, echoing all around us.

The lights overhead fizzled.

I vaulted towards the lab area – moving before I had properly registered what had happened.
Tyler has set me up
, I instantly decided.
She’s double-crossed me
. But then Tyler was screaming, and I heard a punch connect from somewhere behind me. She fell silent.

Security troops were flooding the lab.

“
Show me your hands or I will shoot!
”

It was Deacon, a shock-rifle jammed into my chest. I brought my gun up, trying to get clearance for a shot.

Deacon was a faster shot than me. He fired his rifle. White lightning lit the room and I collapsed to the floor, juddering and wailing. The rifle had only been set to stun but that was bad enough – 55,00 volts coursed through me. I was paralysed, convulsing uncontrollably. Shock-rifles were security-issue weapons, largely designed to cause non-lethal incapacitation, but that didn’t mean being hit by one was a pleasant experience. My pistol dropped from my hand and clattered away from me. I tried to reach for it, tried to override my body’s natural reaction to the discharge of the shock-rifle.

“Make sure that he stays down!” someone else barked. Kellerman. Just his voice infuriated me, gave me a new surge of strength—

Deacon was over me again, rifle raised. He snarled – a look of pure determination on his face. I willed my limbs to move, but my pistol was still just out of reach. Deacon lifted his rifle up, and slammed the butt into my temple.

In the space of ten minutes, so much had been promised to me, and yet it had been taken away just as quickly.