The Lazarus War: Artefact (3 page)

I fired my plasma rifle. The first shot exploded the xeno’s chest, but it kept coming. The second shot connected with one of the bladed forearms, blowing the limb clean off. Then Blake and Kaminski were firing too – and the corridor was alight with brilliant plasma pulses. The creature collapsed into an incandescent mess.

“You like that much, Olsen?” Kaminski asked. “They’re pretty friendly for a species that we’re supposed to be at peace with.”

At some point during the attack, Olsen had collapsed to his knees. He sat there for a second, looking down at his gloved hands. His eyes were haunted, his jowls heavy and he was suddenly much older. He shook his head, stumbling to his feet. From the safety of a laboratory, it was easy to think of the Krell as another intelligent species, just made in the image of a different god. But seeing them up close, and witnessing their innate need to extinguish the human race, showed them for what they really were.

“This is a live situation now, troopers. Keep together and do this by the drill.
Haven
is awake.”

“Solid copy,” Kaminski muttered.

“We move to secondary objective. Once the generator has been tagged, we retreat down the primary corridor to the APS. Now double-time it and move out.”

There was no pause to relay our contact with Jenkins and Martinez. The Krell had a unique ability to sense radio transmissions, even encrypted communications like those we used on the suits, and now that the Collective had awoken all comms were locked down.

As I started off, I activated the wrist-mounted computer incorporated into my suit.
Ah, shit
. The starship corridors brimmed with motion and bio-signs. The place became swathed in shadow and death – every pool of blackness a possible Krell nest.

Mission timeline: twelve minutes.

We reached the quantum-drive chamber. The huge reinforced doors were emblazoned with warning signs and a red emergency light flashed overhead.

The floor exploded as three more Krell appeared – all chitin shells and claws. Blake went down first, the largest of the Krell dragging him into a service tunnel. He brought his rifle up to fire, but there was too little room for him to manoeuvre in a full combat-suit, and he couldn’t bring the weapon to bear.

“Hold on, Kid!” I hollered, firing at the advancing Krell, trying to get him free.

The other two xenos clambered over him in desperation to get to me. I kicked at several of them, reaching a hand into the mass of bodies to try to grapple Blake. He lost his rifle, and let rip an agonised shout as the creatures dragged him down. It was no good – he was either dead now, or he would be soon. Even in his reinforced ablative plate, those things would take him apart. I lost the grip on his hand, just as the other Krell broke free of the tunnel mouth.

“Blake’s down!” I yelled. “’Ski – grenade.”

“Solid copy – on it.”

Kaminski armed an incendiary grenade and tossed it into the nest. The grenade skittered down the tunnel, flashing an amber warning-strobe as it went. In the split second before it went off, as I brought my M95 up to fire, I saw that the tunnel was now filled with xenos. Many, many more than we could hope to kill with just our squad.

“Be careful – you could blow a hole in the hull with those explosives!” Olsen wailed.

Holing the hull was the least of my worries. The grenade went off, sending Krell in every direction. I turned away from the blast at the last moment, and felt hot shrapnel penetrate my combat-armour – frag lodging itself in my lower back. The suit compensated for the wall of white noise, momentarily dampening my audio.

The M95 auto-sighted prone Krell and I fired without even thinking. Pulse after pulse went into the tunnel, splitting armoured heads and tearing off clawed limbs. Blake was down there, somewhere among the tangle of bodies and debris; but it took a good few seconds before my suit informed me that his bio-signs had finally extinguished.

Good journey, Blake
.

Kaminski moved behind me. His technical kit was already hooked up to the drive chamber access terminal, running code-cracking algorithms to get us in.

The rest of the team jogged into view. More Krell were now clambering out of the hole in the floor. Martinez and Jenkins added their own rifles to the volley, and assembled outside the drive chamber.

“Glad you could finally make it. Not exactly going to plan down here.”

“Yeah, well, we met some friends on the way,” Jenkins muttered.

“We lost the Kid. Blake’s gone.”

“Ah, fuck it,” Jenkins said, shaking her head. She and Blake were close, but she didn’t dwell on his death.
No time for grieving
, the expression on her face said,
because we might be next
.

The access doors creaked open. There was another set of double-doors inside; endorsed QUANTUM-DRIVE CHAMBER – AUTHORISED PERSONNEL ONLY.

A calm electronic voice began a looped message: “Warning. Warning. Breach doors to drive chamber are now open. This presents an extreme radiation hazard. Warning. Warning.”

A second too late, my suit bio-sensors began to trill; detecting massive radiation levels. I couldn’t let it concern me. Radiation on an op like this was always a danger, but being killed by the Krell was a more immediate risk. I rattled off a few shots into the shadows, and heard the impact against hard chitin. The things screamed, their voices creating a discordant racket with the alarm system.

Kaminski cracked the inner door, and he and Martinez moved inside. I laid down suppressing fire with Jenkins, falling back slowly as the things tested our defences. It was difficult to make much out in the intermittent light: flashes of a claw, an alien head, then the explosion of plasma as another went down. My suit counted ten, twenty, thirty targets.

“Into the airlock!” Kaminski shouted, and we were all suddenly inside, drenched in sweat and blood.

The drive chamber housed the most complex piece of technology on the ship – the energy core. Once, this might’ve been called the engine room. Now, the device contained within the chamber was so far advanced that it was no longer mechanical. The drive energy core sat in the centre of the room – an ugly-looking metal box, so big that it filled the place, adorned with even more warning signs. This was our objective.

Olsen stole a glance at the chamber, but stuck close to me as we assembled around the machine. Kaminski paused at the control terminal near the door, and sealed the inner lock. Despite the reinforced metal doors, the squealing and shrieking of the Krell was still audible. I knew that they would be through those doors in less than a minute. Then there was the scuttling and scraping overhead. The chamber was supposed to be secure, but these things had probably been on-ship for long enough to know every access corridor and every room. They had the advantage.

They’ll find a way in here soon enough
, I thought. A mental image of the dead merchant captain – still strapped to his seat back on the bridge – suddenly came to mind.

The possibility that I would die out here abruptly dawned on me. The thought triggered a burst of anger – not directed at the Alliance military for sending us, nor at the idiot colonists who had flown their ship into the Quarantine Zone, but at the Krell.

My suit didn’t take any medical action to compensate for that emotion.
Anger is good
. It was pure and made me focused.

“Jenkins – set the charges.”

“Affirmative, Captain.”

Jenkins moved to the drive core and began unpacking her kit. She carried three demolition-packs. Each of the big metal discs had a separate control panel, and was packed with a low-yield nuclear charge.

“Wh-what are you doing?” Olsen stammered.

Jenkins kept working, but shook her head with a smile. “We’re going to destroy the generator. You should have read the mission briefing. That was your first mistake.”

“Forgetting to bring a gun was his second,” Kaminski added.

“We’re going to set these charges off,” Jenkins muttered, “and the resulting explosion will breach the Q-drive energy core. That’ll take out the main deck. The chain reaction will destroy the ship.”

“In short:
gran explosión
,” said Martinez.

Kaminski laughed. “There you go again. You know I hate it when you don’t speak Standard. Martinez always does this – he gets all excited and starts speaking funny.”

“
El no habla la lengua
,” I said. You don’t grow up in the Detroit Metro without picking up some of the lingo.

“It’s Spanish,” Martinez replied, shooting Kaminski a sideways glance.

“I thought that you were from Venus?” Kaminski said.

Olsen whimpered again. “How can you laugh at a time like this?”

“Because Kaminski is an asshole,” Martinez said, without missing a beat.

Kaminski shrugged. “It’s war.”

Thump. Thump
.

“Give us enough time to fall back to the APS,” I ordered. “Set the charges with a five-minute delay. The rest of you –
cállate y trabaja
.”

“Affirmative.”

Thump! Thump! Thump!

They were nearly through now. Welts appeared in the metal door panels.

Jenkins programmed each charge in turn, using magnetic locks to hold them in place on the core outer shielding. Two of the charges were already primed, and she was working on the third. She positioned the charges very deliberately, very carefully, to ensure that each would do maximum damage to the core. If one charge didn’t light, then the others would act as a failsafe. There was probably a more technical way of doing this – perhaps hacking the Q-drive directly – but that would take time, and right now that was the one thing that we didn’t have.

“Precise as ever,” I said to Jenkins.

“It’s what I do.”

“Feel free to cut some corners; we’re on a tight timescale,” Kaminski shouted.

“Fuck you, ’Ski.”

“Is five minutes going to be enough?” Olsen asked.

I shrugged. “It will have to be. Be prepared for heavy resistance en route, people.”

My suit indicated that the Krell were all over the main corridor. They would be in the APS by now, probably waiting for us to fall back.

THUMP! THUMP! THUMP!

“Once the charges are in place, I want a defensive perimeter around that door,” I ordered.

“This can’t be rushed.”

The scraping of claws on metal, from above, was becoming intense. I wondered which defence would be the first to give: whether the Krell would come in through the ceiling or the door.

Kaminski looked back at Jenkins expectantly. Olsen just stood there, his breathing so hard that I could hear him over the communicator.

“And done!”

The third charge snapped into place. Jenkins was up, with Martinez, and Kaminski was ready at the data terminal. There was noise all around us now, signals swarming on our position. I had no time to dictate a proper strategy for our retreat.

“Jenkins – put down a barrier with your torch. Kaminski – on my mark.”

I dropped my hand, and the doors started to open. The mechanism buckled and groaned in protest. Immediately, the Krell grappled with the door, slamming into the metal frame to get through.

Stinger-spines – flechette rounds, the Krell equivalent of armour-piercing ammo – showered the room. Three of them punctured my suit; a neat line of black spines protruding from my chest, weeping streamers of blood.
Krell tech is so much more fucked-up than ours
. The spines were poison-tipped and my body was immediately pumped with enough toxins to kill a bull. My suit futilely attempted to compensate by issuing a cocktail of adrenaline and anti-venom.

Martinez flipped another grenade into the horde. The nearest creatures folded over it as it landed, shielding their kin from the explosion.
Mindless fuckers
.

We advanced in formation. Shot after shot poured into the things, but they kept coming. Wave after wave – how many were there on this ship? – thundered into the drive chamber. The doors were suddenly gone. The noise was unbearable – the klaxon, the warnings, a chorus of screams, shrieks and wails. The ringing in my ears didn’t stop, as more grenades exploded.

“We’re not going to make this!” Jenkins yelled.

“Stay on it! The APS is just ahead!”

Maybe Jenkins was right, but I wasn’t going down without a damned good fight. Somewhere in the chaos, Martinez was torn apart. His body disappeared underneath a mass of them. Jenkins poured on her flamethrower – avenging Martinez in some absurd way. Olsen was crying, his helmet now discarded just like the rest of us.

War is such an equaliser
.

I grabbed the nearest Krell with one hand, and snapped its neck. I fired my plasma rifle on full-auto with the other, just eager to take down as many of them as I could. My HUD suddenly issued another warning – a counter, interminably in decline.

Ten … Nine … Eight … Seven …

Then Jenkins was gone. Her flamer was a beacon and her own blood a fountain among the alien bodies. It was difficult to focus on much except for the pain in my chest. My suit reported catastrophic damage in too many places. My heart began a slower, staccato beat.

Six … Five … Four …

My rifle bucked in protest. Even through reinforced gloves, the barrel was burning hot.

Three … Two … One …

The demo-charges activated.

Breached, the anti-matter core destabilised. The reaction was instantaneous: uncontrolled white and blue energy spilled out. A series of explosions rippled along the ship’s spine. She became a white-hot smudge across the blackness of space.

Then she was gone, along with everything inside her.

The Krell did not pause.

They did not even comprehend what had happened.

This
was the part I disliked most.

Waking up again was always worse than dying.

I floated inside my simulator-tank – a respirator mask attached to my face – and blinked amniotic fluid from my eyes to read the screen more clearly. The soak stung like a bitch. The words scrolled across a monitor positioned above my tank. Everything was cast a clear, brilliant blue by the liquid filling my simulator.

The tank made a hydraulic hissing, and the fluid began to slough out. It was already cooling.

I was instantly smaller and yet heavier. Breathing was a labour. These lungs didn’t have the capacity of a simulant’s, and I knew that it would take a few minutes to get used to them again. I caught the reflection on the inside of the plasglass cover, and didn’t immediately recognise it as
my
reflection. That was the face I had been born with, and this was the body I had lived inside for forty years. I was naked, jacked directly into the simulator. Cables were plugged into the base of the device, allowing me to control my simulant out there in the depths of space. My biorhythms, and those of the rest of my squad, appeared on the same monitor.

All alive and accounted for. Everyone made safe transition
.

I had been operating a flesh-and-blood simulation of myself, manufactured from my body tissue. These were called simulants: simulated copies, genetically engineered to be stronger, bigger, faster. Based on the human genome, but accelerated and modified, the sims were the ultimate weapon – more human than human in every sense. Vat-grown, designed for purpose. Now, my simulant was dead.
It
had died on the
New Haven
. I was alive, safe aboard the
Liberty Point
.

I was a soldier in the Alliance military – more specifically in the Simulant Operations Programme. Technically, the Programme was a special operation conducted by the Army. In truth, this was warfare on such a different level to anything that had come before, that the Programme was something separate from the other branches of the Alliance military.

I settled on the floor of the tank, unjacking myself from the control cables. The neural-link had been severed when my simulant was killed by the Krell onslaught, but pulling the jack from the back of my neck still sent a brief stab of pain through me. My arms and legs felt baby-weak, ineffectual. Hard to believe that I was going to have to adjust to this all over again. I didn’t like this body much: the sim had been a much better fit.

Once the fluid had drained, the tank door slid open. I wrenched the respirator mask from my face and tossed it aside, slowly stepping out. I shook fluid from my limbs, shivering. A medic wrapped a heat-preserving aluminium blanket around me. Another reached for the biometric dog-tags from around my neck, scanning them.

“Successful extraction, Captain,” he said. “Well done.”

My arms and legs ached dully. There were three red abrasions across my chest – stigmatic wounds caused by the Krell assault. Inflamed welts and whip-like abrasions also marked my limbs, reminding me of the punishment my sim had suffered. I probed my chest with numb fingers – almost expecting to find stinger-spines stuck there. My ears still rang with the shrieks of the dying Krell.

All that had happened was a reality.

Just not a reality for me, at least not physically.

I was in the Simulant Operations Centre of the
Liberty Point
. As far as the eye could see, the chamber was crammed with identical bays – each housing a squad of troopers, operating simulants on missions out in the Quarantine Zone.

Around me, my squad were similarly mounted in simulator-tanks. Each trooper was undergoing the same disconnection protocol.

“Nice work, people,” I managed. I spoke with the slur of a day-long drunk; like my body wasn’t my own.

I took in my crew. They looked like paler imitations of their simulants, or maybe the simulants looked like improved versions of the squad. They were athletic-bodied but with determined, disciplined physiques rather than the over-muscled stature of bodybuilders.

They were all dedicated, honed troopers – mentally and physically. But we were not regular soldiers. There were important differences between a sim operator and a hardcopy soldier. Each of us was pocked with data-ports, around the base of the spine, the neck, the forearms, the thighs. Those allowed connection between the simulator and our physical bodies.

“Let’s get this wrapped up,” Jenkins hollered to the rest of the team. “Out of the tanks, disconnected. Double-time it.”

Although she tried hard not to show it, she looked good. She had a small, trim body; dark hair bobbed for ease inside the simulators. At thirty-odd standard years, Jenkins was a ten-year Army vet and gave no hint of embarrassment at standing naked among a group of male soldiers. They barely registered her appearance.

“Yes, ma’am,” Kaminski parroted.

“Fuck off, ’Ski. I’m a volunteer just like the rest of you.” Jenkins shook her hair dry. “Save that ‘ma’am’ shit until I get the promotion.”

“Yeah, Kaminski,” Blake said. “How many years are you going to do as a PFC?”

“I’m not listening,” Kaminski said.

He stumbled out of his tank. He ran a hand over his buzz-cut hair – he was only thirty-two standard years, but he wore it short because he was receding. He’d spent most of his military career as a private: had been busted back to the rank so many times I’d lost count.

Kaminski’s torso was covered in tattoos, from a stylised phoenix to a leering Grim Reaper. Resurrection imagery: death and rebirth, something that only sim operators got to experience. Across his shoulder blades, the newest addition to this flesh tapestry read FISH FOOD in cursive text. He had acquired that particular marking after a night of hard drinking and a dare from Jenkins, which Kaminski had evidently lost. He grinned inanely, pointing out a phantom injury on his head.

“Hey Jenkins,” he said, “would it kill you to set the charges faster next time? Could’ve saved me a whole lot of pain from the fish heads.”

“Whatever, ’Ski,” Jenkins said. “At least they went for your head. There’s not much in there you’d miss.”

Martinez laughed. “Corporal’s got your number.”

The sixth member of my team hadn’t taken it so well. Olsen was particularly shaken by the ordeal. The physical and mental disconnection between the simulant and operator wasn’t a pleasant experience, and he hadn’t been trained for it. That was why they only sent sim operators into the field: not everyone could do this. Olsen’s attachment to our squad had been an expensive experiment. The data-ports on his spine and forearms had only just taken; the flesh around them an angry red, out of place against his flabby white skin.

“You’ll find walking difficult at first,” a medic explained to Olsen. “The simulant that you have just been operating was considerably larger than you. The difference in eye-level might be disorienting. Try to breathe slowly and deeply. Focus on this light …”

Lieutenant Dyker appeared, consulting a data-slate. He was dressed in khaki fatigues, sleeves rolled up. Dyker was our handler; responsible for directing the op from the
Point
, feeding me intel.

“Welcome back to Alliance space, Captain Harris,” he said, looking up at me with a worn-out smile. Dyker never looked rested: his face was caught in a perpetual tired crumple. “Barring the sixteen million credits of military hardware that was destroyed in that explosion, I’d say that was a successful op.”

Dyker was referring to the loss of the simulants and the Wildcat APS. The rules of engagement were fluid, and the sims were expendable. That made them unique in modern military terms, because sims could undertake missions that would be suicide to regular troopers. Even so, our orders were to preserve the simulants if possible – every sim had a significant credit value attached to it.

“What can I say?” I asked, rhetorically. I had time for Dyker; he gave me latitude to do what I needed to in the field. “The ship was brimming with Krell. They didn’t leave us with much of a choice.”

Dyker shrugged. “No matter.” He threw a thumb in Olsen’s direction. “I don’t think that he will be trying that again.”

“Best leave it to the professionals.”

Dyker nodded. There was something sad in his expression. “I’ll report that back to Command. The op otherwise went well. The ship has been neutralised, all human cargo taken care of. We have the black box data.” He looked down at his slate. “That makes two hundred and eighteen trips out for you. You really are a stone-cold killer. Do you know what they are calling you down in the District?”

“No idea,” I said, concentrating on towelling myself dry. It was a lie – of course I knew. I might not like it, but I’d heard plenty of operators call me by the name.

“They’re calling you Lazarus,” Dyker said. “Because you always come back. Whatever happens, you always come back.” He sighed. An absent rub of the back of his neck. “Report to the medical station for psych-eval and a check-up. After that, you’ve earned yourselves seven days of station-leave. Enjoy it.”

“I’ll try to.”

“I mean it, Harris.”

He continued rubbing his neck, and I caught the flash of the tattoo on his wrist – the number fifty-seven.

He left the bay, and I stood shivering and trying to forget what it was like to die. Hoping that I would never end up like Dyker: drummed out and dried up.

The medteam checked me out. I had the usual tests and the usual results.

No cerebral feedback.

The physical pain would fade.

The stigmata would eventually disappear.

Lasting brain damage was unlikely.

They went through the motions. The medtechs had stopped really bothering with the checks. They were cursory and brief; I had proven that I was a stable platform for a bio-engineered killing machine.

Of course, there were real and practical dangers to operational soldiers like me. An operator might suffer a cardiac arrest, or some extreme sensory overload while jacked into a simulant. Such an eventuality was often fatal, but it was also incredibly rare. Far more likely was a slow psychological breakdown, brought on by the inability to tell reality from a simulation. That happened more often than the Alliance military cared to admit, but such operators were usually identified early in their induction. In my case, after so many transitions, there was nothing more to be said. Unless I crashed and burnt, I would stay on the Programme.

I showered and dressed in Sim Ops shipside fatigues. I was used to the disorientation caused by transition back into my real body, and the effects faded fast. Olsen would probably find the whole experience disabling, but twenty or so minutes after I had made extraction I felt recovered.

I left medical and headed down to the inner ring of the station. Kaminski ran to catch up with me.

“Wait up, Cap,” he called. “You planning on some rest and relaxation? We could head into the District, maybe hook up with some company? Blake, Jenkins and Martinez are coming.”

“I’ll join you for a drink. Nothing more.”

Kaminski laughed. “You always get more in the District.”

A siren sounded nearby. We didn’t flinch – it was a familiar occurrence on-station.

“This is an emergency,” said a female operator over the
Point
’s PA system. “All available military police units attend Sector Five. Terrorist attack in progress.”

We casually made our way through the crowd of civilians and soldiers, heading away from Sector Five. A unit of troopers in black military police uniforms, carbines shouldered, passed back towards the affected sector.

“Looks like more trouble,” Kaminski said. “If we’re not fighting the Krell, we’re fighting each other.”

“The Directorate will never learn,” I said.

The monorail station was quiet; a handful of off-duty soldiers and Navy boys milling around.

“Are you taking the monorail?” Kaminski asked. He seemed to realise his mistake immediately.

“I’ll walk,” I said.

Kaminski just nodded.

I left Kaminski at the monorail stop and took an elevator further up the hub to Sector Three. This was my ritual, after every simulant operation, and I had to do it alone.

Sector Three was virtually abandoned. Except for the occasional bereaved parent, it saw little traffic.
Mom and Pop spending their life savings on a Q-space ticket, desperate for a last chance to say goodbye to Jonny or Joanne
. The place gave me room to think.

I walked the empty corridors, heading towards the Memorial Hall. I passed view-screens showing the exterior of
Liberty Point
. It was the largest Alliance forward operating base on the boundary of the Quarantine Zone; housing several thousand troopers, and just as many Aerospace Force and Naval personnel. Not as big as the Venusian cloud habitats, but still a remarkable feat of human engineering.

Near-space bustled with combat ships and assorted shuttles embarking or disembarking the
Point
, like little flies flitting about a carcass.
More ships seem to leave than ever come back
, I thought. All manner of vessels were assembled; from small military cutters, to enormous warships, through to sleek experimental craft. This was the Alliance Navy – the combined efforts of the remainder of the United Americas, Europe, and much of the Western world.