The Lazarus War: Artefact (15 page)

There was no method to the fight. Combat discipline was gone. My body became a weapon.

I crashed down onto the
Oregon
’s hull, still holding the xeno. A warning icon on my HUD illuminated: mag-locks activated. Impossibly, I managed to remain upright.

Soundlessly, we grappled with each other. The monster’s shell felt slick and wet, even in this extreme cold. Its maw was open and slavering inside its helmet.

I balled a fist with one hand and continually pounded against the thing’s body. Its armour carapace busted in so many places. Still hanging on –
got to stay in one place
– I tore away a piece of bio-armour; felt pulpy organic material beneath—

The xeno persistently stabbed at me with its raptorial talons, using the smaller forearms to hold me down. Each blow sent crippling pain through my chest and torso. My suit responded with dose after dose of pain-suppressing meds, but there was only so much that the simulant could take.

“Fuck you!” I yelled, even though the bastard couldn’t hear me. “And the rest of them!”

A noisy alarm sounded in my head. My HUD began to warn me of impending atmospheric loss. Suit viability was failing. I prayed for another dose of combat-drugs, another hit of analgesics.

Keep going!

I prised something free from behind the alien’s head.

Although we fought in silence, the thing’s face contorted in agony. More plating came free: more alien flesh. I dug my fingers in, twisted.

The xeno butted its head against my face-plate, jabbed at me again with the talons.

Every heartbeat was a war. Being this close to one of them, face to face, filled me with revulsion. The reek of the thing was intense, not in my nose or my mouth: in my mind, in every molecule of my artificial body. I didn’t feel like a god any more.
Whatever the Alliance has given me – this tech, this new body – it isn’t enough
.

The alien rose over me. I saw my own whitening reflection in its sight-orbs. Blood flecked my lips, sprayed across the inside of my face-plate.

The communicator was suddenly awash with voices. Jenkins, Kaminski, panicking. “
Life support is online!
”

My HUD flashed with an updated message, indicating that the fault was fixed, with only seconds to spare. I couldn’t respond to my team, could barely focus on my HUD. I grunted, landing another open-handed blow on the leader-form’s carapace. My mag-locks gave way. The thing gained on me again and I slid backwards.

Another flash of an energy beam above – more alien gargoyles clambering over the hull, looming out of the dark.

Muscle fibre burst in my arms. I ground my teeth, ripping off a piece of the leader’s carapace—

The bastard abruptly stopped.

I felt a shift in the thing’s weight. I slammed another fist into its head, tore at the plating again and again. More armour came free. I realised that it was clawing at its own shoulder, clutching at a rent in the bio-armour. A fine white mist was spraying from the punctured armour, crystallising as the creature began to drift away from me. Its mouth moved silently behind the fractured helmet, shrieking a cry that no one would ever hear. The xeno thrashed futilely, floating off the ship. It began to cartwheel, spilling more and more frozen liquid from its suit. Had to be some sort of suit malfunction.

There was no time to dwell on my victory. I controlled my breathing, rapidly scanning the area around me. Leaderless, the Krell would be momentarily stunned – probably retreat from the position. I unholstered my PPG-13 plasma pistol, got ready to continue the fight—

There was a spike of activity around me. The primary-forms scuttled back into their hiding places.

They all looked up, past me, at space above.

Wait. Something is wrong here
.

They understood what was coming. The
Oregon
was doomed.

“Captain, providing covering fire for your retreat,” Jenkins insisted over the comms. “Get moving back to our position.”

I ignored Jenkins’ request and looked up, saw what the Krell concentrated on. I swallowed hard.

“Don’t bother, Jenkins. Stand by for updated orders.”

My comms bead whined with feedback, and I wasn’t sure whether Jenkins could even hear me. Maybe my communications rig had taken damage during the fight.

Helios Primary was just breaking from behind Helios, casting a crescent of pure white light across near-space.
Something
was moving beyond the arc of Helios, crossing the terminator. Just a silhouette, but perfectly illuminated from behind by Primary it was unmistakable.

A third Krell warship.

Great White
had simply been stalling, delaying for the arrival of the real threat.

The massive ship was still a distance from our position, but she was moving fast. Even at this range, she bristled with hostility. She wasn’t alone either: a locust-like plague of fighter-ships poured from the warship’s flanks, and she was escorted by an armada of smaller attack vessels. Like an angry shoal, the great swarm of ships moved on through the black.

That has to be a category ten
, I decided.

“Jenkins!” I hollered. “Retreat back to the airlock – get inside the damned ship right now!”

There was no response over squad comms. I looked down at my wrist-comp – shattered and dead.

No one can hear me. This is it
.

I was powerless.

All of this – fending off the ambush, repairing the
Oregon
, fighting the Krell – had been for nothing. The Navy intel had been plain wrong. I knew in that instant that we had been fools to think that we could do this. This had been a terrible and precise trap. This was Krell space, and they had the numbers. The Collective had won.

My position on the outer hull suddenly felt like a very lonely place indeed. I stood there, watching the incoming enemy fleet. This was the moment of perfect calm before the storm.

I ran through my options: I was surrounded, and my suit viability was failing. I tried to open a channel back to Medical but that didn’t work either. My comms were completely down. I was cut off from my squad.

Even without this new attacker, I probably had a minute or so of operational time left inside my simulant. I was never going to make it back to the airlock. In any case, if I made it back inside the
Oregon
, I needed to get to Medical and properly extract. That was never going to happen.

There was only one logical choice that I could make, and there was no point in delaying it any longer.

After all, suicide runs in the family
.

The tip of the Krell spear was already poised to strike. A clutch of fighter-ships impacted the null-shield, breaching it and strafing the
Oregon
’s hull with bio-plasma. Several larger vessels were seconds away from engaging. The warship’s organic engines were firing.

“Captain, I can’t read you,” Jenkins said. “The Krell have fallen back—”

I didn’t know whether the squad could see the new attacker from their position, because of the curve of the
Oregon
’s hull. But more important than warning them, I had to warn the rest of the ship.

If you are going to die, then at least die a good death
.

I tossed my pistol away and grappled with my helmet, probing the external locking mechanisms with my fingers. Without pausing – not even to steady myself for the pain I was about to experience – I blew the safety catches on each side of the helmet. My suit streamed warning markers across the HUD and the shrill chirping of an alert siren sounded in my ears, until that too fell silent—

No time
.

I tore off my helmet and threw it, watching it spin away from me through already boiling eyes. Then I kicked off my mag-locks and bowled into the Krell.

It’s a myth that exposure to vacuum makes the human body explode – it only feels that way.

Intense cold filled me. I knew what came next: instant depressurisation. I screamed, but there was no noise and my vocal chords were already destroyed. My lungs ruptured. The pain in my ears and eyes was incredible – so much pressure building up so quickly. Not even a simulant could survive that.

But I didn’t want to survive.

I wanted to
extract
.

Death two hundred and nineteen: by vacuum.

The blackness was momentary.

For what it is worth, Sci-Div is divided over whether the speed of extraction is faster than light or instantaneous. For me, it couldn’t happen fast enough.

As soon as the simulant body deceased, the neural-link was severed.

One second I was screaming silently in the void.

The next I was screaming audibly in the simulator-tank.

It was the same process of transference in reverse. Except that now I was extracting back into a fallible, weak and human vessel. All of the pain that my simulant had experienced in death was poured into my real skin.

Pain is good
, I insisted to myself.
It means I’m alive
.

There was that same disorienting sense of two realities, that same sickening sense of unreality.

I was between worlds. The cold of space in my head, in my lungs; the ringing of sirens, the screaming of panicked crew, in my ears.

“
His biorhythms have flatlined!
”

“
Emergency extraction on squad leader
.”

“Cap, report. We’re taking heavy enemy fire again. The Krell are swarming our location. What’s happening?”

“
This is Captain Atkins of the UAS
Oregon.
All hands – prepare to abandon ship. Initialising emergency evacuation procedure
.”

The dream ended.

Reality commenced.

I was back in the
Oregon
.

I thrashed in the simulator-tank. Pain like no other seared through my head and for precious seconds I rode it. The tank began sloughing out, but far too slowly for me.
There’s no time for this
. I smashed a hand against the emergency release button inside the tank and the simulator door burst open. Like afterbirth, the blue fluid sloshed onto the floor of Medical. With hands still aching from simulated exposure to the cold of space, I fumbled with the cables connecting me to the simulator and unjacked myself.

“What’s happening?” Olsen shouted. “Where is the rest of your squad? What the hell is going on?”

The
Oregon
deck shook violently and I tumbled out of the tank, dripping wet. I moved like I was unfamiliar with my own body – legs too weak, body too small. Panicked techs came to assist me but I threw them off. Grabbing some fatigues, I dashed to the wall-mounted communicator – the quickest and most direct way of contacting Atkins on the bridge. Olsen and his team were still harassing me, questioning me, as another explosion sounded inside the
Oregon
.

“Atkins!” I yelled into the comm. It was an emergency audio-only link. “This is Harris. I’ve extracted, but my team is still outside. Another warship is approaching from the asteroid belt.”

“We’ve detected her,” Atkins replied, resignation sounding in his voice. “We’re experiencing serious incoming fire.” He was silent for a second and I imagined him evaluating the holo-feeds and the damage already done to his ship. “For what it’s worth, you fixed that coolant leak, but the null-shield can’t take this sort of punishment. We’re going down, Harris. The
Oregon
is finished.”

I breathed deep and nodded. “Understood.”

“Just get your team out. The med-bay will detach – use it as an escape vessel and get down to Helios.”

“What about you?”

Atkins laughed, humourlessly. “I’m staying put and going down with my ship. I’ve sounded the evacuation and it’s every man for himself.”

“So be it.”

“Your promise – back at the
Point
,” Atkins said, solemnly. “I want you to know that you made good on it. There’s nothing else that could be done. Good hunting, Captain Harris.”

“Good journey, Atkins.”

I cut the link, and I knew that Atkins had signed his own death warrant. I had been wrong about him. I pounded a fist into the terminal. He was a good man after all. How many of his crew – all decent, all dedicated – were going to die on this damned mission?

Act now or it’s over for real
. The question suddenly wasn’t whether the
Oregon
’s crew was going to die but whether I wanted to join them. I looked to the simulator-tanks – still occupied by my squad. I had a duty to them.

“We’re leaving,” I declared.

I bashed my fist onto the big red button labelled EMERGENCY EVACUATION. The
Oregon
trembled and creaked. Metal was shrieking somewhere, followed by the boom of an explosion. My teeth chattered in my head and I tasted iron blood in my mouth.

Not simulant blood: my blood.

“Strap in, Olsen!” I shouted over the cacophony. “The ship is going down.”

Olsen realised what was happening; he had bumbled into a safety harness, screaming commands at his techs to do the same. Through shuddering vision, I saw that the other simulators were still operational. View-screens above each tank displayed the vital signs of the occupants. The simulators would be losing power, imminently, and the connection between the simulants and operators would be broken.

“Prepare for emergency evacuation,” came the ship’s computer, in a calm female voice. The machine had no right to sound so relaxed. “Medical bay will detach from the main vessel. All personnel to take appropriate safety measures.”

It happened so quickly, automated by the remains of the ship’s AI. The structure of the
Oregon
yawned. The main body of the starship was modular, made so that more important sections were detachable in an emergency. This clearly qualified. Dull metallic detonations sounded nearby. Explosive bolts holding the ship together activated, parting the major crew modules.

Then there was a sudden tug of acceleration as the bay was thrown clear of the main ship – built-in thrusters propelling us away from the battered vessel, to achieve safe distance. I staggered to a safety harness attached to the wall, grappling with anything nearby to remain upright. Medical equipment was thrown across the room; glass smashed against the walls. A technician sailed past me, hitting one of the tanks. Blood splashed the white walls. Anything not bolted down was in free fall. Consoles were smoking, sparking, on fire. It felt as though my world was shaking apart. My ears popped again, as the atmosphere equalised. I ground my teeth, riding out the artificial quake. Above it all, emergency sirens wailed and wailed.

“Christo – someone – help me!” a tech screamed.

“Get buckled in!” I shouted back.

I stared over at the view-port, looking out into space. The
Great White
and the new warship both concentrated fire on the
Oregon
– crossing plasma beams, disgorging more fighter-ships. Atkins was right: the
Oregon
was finished. The null-shield flared one last time, then its oily shimmer vanished. The shield had collapsed.

Something heavy hit my leg and a sharp –
real
– pain erupted in my right thigh. Blood gushed up from the wound, droplets spraying in zero-G. Disengaged from the
Oregon
, Medical had no gravity of its own any more.

“Umbilical with
Oregon
is disconnecting,” the computer voice came again, only now it pitch-shifted and warbled as though the main computer was developing a fault. Finally, the machine was feeling the pain along with the rest of us.

Something struck the medical bay and the techs around me shouted out in terror. Our vehicle suddenly skewed, shifting angle so that I could see part of space beyond Helios. Perhaps whatever was left of the navigational AI had decided that this approach vector was too dangerous.

I looked back at the
Oregon
. Brilliant plasma and laser beams tore into the ravaged hull – without the null-shield, every impact causing an explosion. Although I saw other parts of the ship breaking away, so much was caught by enemy fire and I held no hope that there would be survivors. Evacuation pods flew past us, streaming their contents to the void. I saw some of those being chased by fighter-ships, yielding short-lived explosions as they were torn open.

If one of the fighters chose to pursue us, then we would be equally defenceless. The medical bay was inelegant and unguided – spinning end over end towards the surface. It wasn’t a ship in and of itself; it had simply detached and started accelerating towards Helios’ surface. We were lucky, I guess, but it didn’t feel that way from where I was sitting.

As the view spun again, away from the
Oregon
, I saw my squad – still clinging to the hull, surrounded by Krell. The once-proud Naval vessel had been knocked from her orbit; was being pulled down to Helios as well, striking asteroids as she performed an uncontrolled descent to the planet’s surface.

I yelled until my voice was hoarse. I was so incredibly angry: with the world, with the universe, with any deity that cared to listen.

We’ve lost
.

The
Oregon
grazed Helios’ atmosphere. Her back broke. A tremendous explosion bloomed from the bridge, filling the view-port with white light. Then it just caved in on itself, breaking apart. Several components offered their own detonations. The Krell ships gave no quarter and relentlessly fired on whatever was left of the ship.

I had been in fleet actions before, but never anything like this. It was a massacre; pure and simple. There was a reason that troopers didn’t experience such battles: because no one ever lived through them.

Inside their simulator-tanks, Kaminski, Jenkins, Martinez and Blake began to thrash, eyes wide open. Hands pressed against the insides of the glass shells. In their own bodies, they were as panicked as everyone else.

I tried to raise a hand, to signal that we were evacuating – to tell them something, anything – but the med-bay shifted again and I was forced back into my harness. We were moving at a gut-wrenching speed. Up and down held no meaning. My body ached with the immense gravitational force. I wanted more than anything to tell my people that we were going to get through this, that we were going to survive—

Conscious thought became so hard to undertake, so difficult to achieve. There was no time to fear death. We were at the mercy of chance; nothing more. There was no preordained, divine plan for our survival.

And what was one more death, anyway? I’d lived through enough of those. This felt unreal, impossible. Surely I wasn’t really going to die out here, orbiting some Christo-forsaken dust-ball on the fringes of the Krell Empire—

Then the view through the view-port changed. Helios spiralled, so enormous that it filled the entire portal. The planet was rapidly approaching, the cloud cover coming up to meet us. We were breaching Helios’ atmosphere, drawn to Helios’ gravity and plummeting comet-like through the sky.

And just for a moment, everything was still.

Nothing mattered.

On Helios’ surface, the storm clouds eddied and churned around a single point of focus: the Artefact. So black that it absorbed the light from its surroundings. A perfect anchor to this madness.

I heard its malevolent, dark signal; piercing the shroud of white noise that existed aboard the med-bay.

You’re imagining it
, I promised myself.
There’s no way that you can hear it from here
.

Then the moment was gone, and all I could hear was the screaming of the dying and the howling atmospherics against the med-bay hull.

“Emergency warning. Brace for impact,” trilled the Medical AI. “All hands: brace for impact.”

I closed my eyes. Someone nearby was sick, then with a wet crunching sound abruptly went silent.

Fade to black.