The Lazarus War: Legion (14 page)

A few years after we found the soldier in the storm drain, my father died.

Killed himself.

Committed suicide.

Dress it up however you like. Only in retrospect could I recognise that finding his body had been one of the most difficult things in my young life. He’d been on Mars for a long time, only back home a week.

What with my mother gone as well, it was rough on Carrie and me. At the time, being so young, the experience was difficult to process properly. Because it had hurt so much, I made sure not to let anyone else know. Carrie and I became insular; became guardians of each other’s pain. Outwardly, I was a street tough just like the youngers around me. Just another face on the street with too much time on my hands and a hungry stomach. Carrie was going down an even darker path. She hadn’t long turned fifteen when it happened. I was an adult eleven.

There was no money for a proper ceremony, so one of my father’s old squad mates arranged it. He was an ex-Army vet, settled somewhere out in the Michigan state, who called himself Nelson. He booked the local church – the old religious centre on the corner of Baker and Eighth – and although it was only a few minutes’ walk from our apartment, Aunt Beth insisted that she couldn’t attend.

“Not right, what he did,” she would regularly say, shaking her old head. “Leaving you two behind to fend for yourselves. Not right.”

Although she mostly kept her beliefs to herself, Beth was a devout Latter Day Catholic. The topic of my father was one of the few on which she would express very strong views.

“Suicide is wrong, all wrong. Not God’s way. He wouldn’t be pleased. It’d be wrong if I attended the ceremony. Make me a proper hypocrite. You wouldn’t want to make me into one of those, would you?”

“No, Aunt Beth,” Carrie muttered. “Of course not.”

I didn’t understand what hypocrite meant, and I doubted that Carrie did either. We were still only children.

The signpost outside the church declared that the place was THE HOUSE OF THE BELOVED BRETHREN. It felt like an impression of a church – nothing particularly denominational about the place, nothing particularly spiritual. Didn’t make me feel beloved or like brethren. Just a building dressed up as a church. Lifeless and drab; it would’ve disappointed Martinez. The LED board outside – dripping with half-thawed snow – showed a list of funerals being conducted that day. The name JONATHAN HARRIS (UA CITIZEN) was at the top.

“No one ever called him Jonathan,” I whispered. “Except for you.”

“That was his name,” Carrie bit back.

Inside, the centre was all white-washed walls now filled with cracks and plastic graffiti-scrawled pews. It smelled vaguely of urine.

Nelson and another man attended.

“Be brave, kids,” Nelson said, nudging me on the shoulder.

Nelson wore a khaki Army uniform with frayed fabric medals on the lapels. The outfit looked older than him, but had matured a deal more graciously. He clutched his service cap to his chest; as though it was a shield against the rest of the world. I vaguely recalled meeting him a few times before. He’d been drinking in our apartment.

The other man was also an Army veteran – about the same age, equally used up. He milled around nervously in the background.

“Thanks for coming,” I said to Nelson. It sounded like the right thing to say.

“Wouldn’t have had it any other way.”

Something had changed about Nelson, since the last time I’d seen him. From the cuff of his left shirt sleeve poked a prosthetic hand. Not a good prosthetic, either – not an organic graft, rather a metal and plastic hybrid. An ugly claw-hand: functional, made for anything but looks. Nelson’s silent colleague had the same affliction, except it was his right hand that had been replaced. When he noticed me looking, Nelson covered it with his good hand – smile becoming fixed, embarrassed. I smiled back; didn’t want to press him for an explanation.

“Sit down,” Carrie said to me, tugging on my arm. “Let’s get this over with.”

It wasn’t a long service. My family weren’t religious sorts in life and in death they were no better. The priest gave a brief eulogy about grief and loss, trying his best to avoid talking about God. Thin, haggard and tired: he wasn’t much of a public speaker.

The attendees for the next funeral were waiting in the foyer. That sounded to be a bigger and bolder affair; with much wailing and gnashing of teeth. I kept looking to the back of the room, glaring at the big woman who was crying uncontrollably.

Carrie just sat, eyes forward, emotionless.

“We commit this body to flame, in accordance with Michigan state law, and we remember the deceased for the man that he was…” the priest finished. He looked down at the terminal set into his pulpit. “Jonathan Harris. May his memory be everlasting.”

Then the casket disappeared into the furnace and Jon Harris was gone.

We slowly filtered out of the centre – not through any sign of respect, but because the Spanish family were so tightly crammed into the entrance hall.

It was February and had been snowing. Just as the Detroit summer could be hot, the winter could be damned hard. Dirty white drizzle coated the buildings; had turned to a yellow frost in places. It looked like ash – grey powdered fallout, the remains of the New York bomb.
Maybe that’s what it really is,
I thought. The second bomb had only fallen a few months ago: a Christmas present from the Directorate that the people of NYC had never asked for, and certainly never wanted.

The four of us – Carrie, me, and the two Army vets – stood in a huddle, shivering in the cold. Nelson and his colleague looked particularly affected by the weather. They didn’t even have winter coats.

“He was a good man,” Nelson said. Nodded back into the church. “Shame he felt that he had to do that. He’ll be missed.”

“Sure,” Carrie said, with feigned indifference. She was getting so good at that. “We know.”

“Take these,” Nelson said. “You two look like you need them more than me. Least that I can do.”

He produced two yellowed ration vouchers from his jacket pocket, thrust them into my hand. I knew that Beth would be grateful for the slips and so I took them without comment.

“Sometimes,” Nelson said, shifting from foot to foot to ward off the cold, “life just happens like that. Your pa was on Mars with me. He saw things; real bad things.”

I found my sightline drifting unconsciously down to Nelson’s metal hand. He did nothing to hide it this time. I noticed, with mild repulsion, that the claw was polished and clean: like some perverse badge of honour, the marker of some great sacrifice to the Alliance and the military.

“We were the lucky ones,” he said. “The Directorate are unkind. They know the right buttons to push.”

“And I think that they will keep pushing them,” Nelson’s quiet colleague added. “They’ll be damned angry over what happened on Mars.”

Even at eleven, I knew about the Martian War. The Rebellion, I’d heard it called. It had been quelled the month after the NYC bombing.

“The Directorate sure do have their ways,” Nelson said. For a moment, I didn’t know whether he was referring to the Rebellion, or to the metal hand.

The Alliance and the Directorate had fought long and hard over that turf, both sides eager to prove that they could hold the objective. If you ignored Earth, Mars had been the last shared Alliance–Directorate holding. In a sense, it was the final possible bridge between the two super-pacts: the last demonstration that the power blocs could work together.

I already knew that my father had been there. Before my mother had died, late at night, I’d heard the word shouted through the tenement walls. Usually happened when they were arguing – when the shouting was at its worst.

“We don’t agree with the war,” Carrie said, definitively. “We’re pacifists.”

“That ain’t no way to be,” Nelson said. His voice sounded sad and his face contorted into a confused scowl. “Your father wouldn’t want to hear you talking like that.”

“He’s dead,” Carrie said. “He can’t do anything about it.”

Nelson looked on with that same expression, but said, “You two need anything, just let me know. I don’t live far out-state. Got a decent place in the hills. I’d be glad to help. There’s a veterans’ association. They might be able to get you two somewhere to stay.”

“We’ll be fine,” I said. “We already have somewhere.”

“Come on, Con,” Carrie said. “We have places to be.”

She turned to leave. I immediately followed.

The two old men walked off down the road, taking it slow and easy through the ice.

Icicles had formed on the roof of the religious centre. Some of those had started to thaw: drip-drip-dripping onto the ground below. The liquid looked like falling tears.

That reminded me that I had forgotten to cry at the ceremony.

We didn’t go straight home – or at least, we didn’t go straight back to Aunt Beth’s. That didn’t feel like home: nowhere did any more.

Instead, and without explanation, Carrie guided us to a street diner. She picked a table by the window and settled down. The close press of so many patrons made the diner warm inside.

The waitress eyed us cautiously but Carrie made clear that we had a means of payment.

“Let’s put those ration vouchers to good use,” she said, loud enough so that the old woman could hear.

The waitress gave a blunt nod.

Carrie ordered us two cups of black filter coffee and a minute later we both sat huddled over the potent sludge. I breathed in the fumes. The stuff smelled overpowering.

“What are we going to do?” I asked.

“Keep going. Stick together. Do what we always do.”

“Without Dad?”

“What difference will that make?” she said. Strands of steam played around her face, made her cheeks flush. She sighed, sipping at the scratched plastic cup. “Jonathan was out of your life more often than he was in it.”

She was right, of course, but that didn’t mean that I wanted to hear her say it. My father had been taking more and more distant tours of duty. I’d barely recognised the man who came home to Detroit on the last occasion. Not just emotionally, but physically.

“That’s what time-dilation does to a man,” Carrie added. “Someone has to pay the debt.”

I’d heard it called that before. “The debt”: that ever-increasing gap between objective and subjective time. That distance that serving soldiers put between themselves and their families. My father hadn’t aged right: had fallen out of kilter with those around him. Those were the combined and very real effects of relativity, of the Q-space drive and of protracted periods in hypersleep. I involuntarily shivered, despite the collective warmth of the diner.

“It was his choice,” Carrie went on. “He decided to live his life that way.”

“So you have all the answers now?”

Carrie smiled. “Just some.”

“I don’t want to end up like that.”

“Like Jonathan?”

“Like those old men. The vets.”

The vision of the two old soldiers with their crippled hands had struck an unpleasant chord. Maybe affected me more than the funeral itself.

“Probably in our genes,” Carrie muttered, sipping at the coffee again. “Maybe war is a Harris family tradition.”

“Then I’ll break the tradition.”

“Yeah, just like Granddad? That didn’t end so well for him.”

My grandfather had been a veteran as well, had served in Cambodia and on Charon. He’d mustered out of the Army but civilian life hadn’t suited him. Last we’d heard, he’d been sectioned in a medical centre somewhere upstate. My father had forbidden any discussion about his condition and I suspected that there was more to his sudden incarceration than I knew.

“We’ll be okay,” Carrie said. She waved over the waitress, who begrudgingly refilled her cup. “Whatever happens, we have each other. Like I said, we’ll stick together. Just like before.”

“There has to be a way to change all of this,” I said, not really listening to her any more. “I don’t want to end up like them.”

Carrie nodded. “Me neither, little brother. Me neither.”

Two days after the meteor strike, the fleet assembled in Damascus Space.

Admiral Loeb summoned all command crew to the CIC. The Legion, the Warfighters and most of the Sci-Div staff attended.

I watched as the
Colossus
moved on the Rift. It was, I supposed, a significant achievement. Save for those poor souls who had fled here during the First Krell War, very few expeditions had made it this far. That it was now possible was the Key’s legacy; the result of the Helios operation. But more than that: I was retracing Elena’s journey – a route that her ship had taken years ago.

“Battlegroup adopting approach formation,” a lieutenant declared. “We have open comms throughout the fleet.”

“Good,” Loeb said, still ensconced in his command throne. “Keep it that way. Maintain battle readiness.”

“Aye, sir. Shields at maximum polarity.”

The fleet comprised starships of varying designation but all made the approach at the same ponderous speed. The battlegroup adopted a pattern – a perversion of the fighter squadron aero-acrobatics, played out in slow motion. Every vessel was running null-shields and the oily shimmer of their protective barriers was just visible against the blackness of space. The shields overlapped in places, creating a nighimpenetrable wall for any spaceborne attacker to overcome. Hornets and Dragonflies swarmed between the bigger starships.

One of the Dragonflies broke formation, conducted a brief series of zero-G manoeuvres.

“That’d be Lieutenant James, I guess,” I said. “He’s probably out there leading the charge…”

“Deploy buoys,” Loeb ordered.

“Aye, sir.”

Vacuum buoys floated in a wide cordon around the fleet, flashing amber warning lights.

Saul sat beside me. His anxiety prickled about him like an aura; more than once Loeb had told him to sit still and be quiet.

I felt the same nervous energy. Was Saul’s intel correct? All of this might be a terrible waste of time – something for Loeb to use against Sim Ops when he took his complaints back to Command.

“Any returns on the scanners yet?” Loeb asked.

“Just one, sir. A weak energy signal.”

Saul almost leapt from his seat.

“Easy, Professor,” Martinez said.

“Take us in,” Loeb said. “Nice and slow.”

Beyond the assembled flotilla, I could make out withered blue stars. They cast a muted, dying light over the ship hulls. Several planetoids hung in surrounding space. All of them looked dead: populated by swirls of grey desert and empty lunar plains. Those worlds seemed closer than they really were, but near-space was a tumble of rocks, shattered moonlets and jagged-edge asteroids. Beyond, dwarfing all, was the green glow of the Damascus Rift.

“I want eyes on that signature,” Loeb rumbled.

And suddenly, he had them.

The Artefact drifted almost serenely among the flotsam and jetsam.

I had expected it to look like the Artefact on Helios. Vast, angular; upturned like a knife to the sky. This was nothing like that, nothing at all. Although it had been hewn from the same material, the shape was all wrong. Broadly spherical, the outside was irregularly studded. At this range I couldn’t tell what those features were. It was bigger than any Alliance starship and cast from blackest obsidian – from something blacker than space itself. As it moved, the starlight flickered over cuneiform patterns all over the structure.

All gathered personnel fell silent for a long moment.
Shard machines tend to have that effect on people,
I thought. The Artefact emanated a sense of age; so strong that it was almost overpowering, the aeons pressing down on me and my tiny heritage as a member of the human race.

Finally, Loeb spoke up. “Looks as though you have your wish, Major.”

I nodded. “Let’s get this thing secure.”

Over the next few hours, Loeb painstakingly deployed his fleet in a wide net around the Artefact.

Several warships were tasked with the unglamorous job of detonating rogue asteroids, to ensure that the immediate vicinity was safe for the fleet. Meanwhile, Saul and Dr West conducted scans on near-space and the Artefact itself. As far as they could ascertain, Damascus Space was deserted: no Krell presence, no other immediate hazards.
Being this close to the Rift is bad enough,
I reminded myself.

“This is where our work starts,” I declared to the Legion and the Warfighters. “Assemble for briefing in one hour.”

The
Colossus
was well equipped for war. Not just a small directed expedition like this, but proper old-fashioned and man-heavy military operations. The briefing room was huge; an amphitheatre with four hundred or so seats arranged in a horseshoe formation and a full audio-visual set-up in the well of the chamber.

My team arrived on time and shortly thereafter Loeb filed in: damned dog sniffing and mewling as he tagged at Loeb’s heels. A small cadre of
Colossus
officers had also been summoned and they arrived together with the Sci-Div contingent. The flyboys, led by James, assembled at the back of the room. Back from their recent foray off-ship, the jockeys were exuberant but disciplined. They had obviously enjoyed the opportunity to do a recon run.

Williams and his team were late. They noisily burst into the chamber, laughing and joking, barely reacting to the glares of disapproval from the Naval staff.

As mission commander, I started the briefing.

“Simmer down, people,” I said, and the chamber fell quiet. “Welcome to Operation Portent.”

I ran through General Cole’s mission objectives: that the expedition was to explore the Artefact, find out how it activated, without doing so until it was deemed safe.

I turned to Saul. “What does Sci-Div know so far?”

“It isn’t transmitting,” Saul said. “At this range, we’re detecting an energy signature but not much else. I’m not sure whether it’s operational. We’ll need to board it to make any real progress.”

“Which is where we come in,” Kaminski said. “As always.”

“Given the likely age of the structure,” Saul said, “the fact that it is still operating at all is miraculous.”

“How old exactly is this thing?” Mason asked. She was the only member of my team taking notes, with a data-slate on her lap.

“Carbon-dating from the material found on Helios suggests thousands of years. We are working on the assumption that the Damascus Artefact is of a similar age.”

“But we don’t actually know?” Mason followed up.

“As Major Harris says, the overall objective is to insert a science team. Once we have people aboard the structure, I’ll be able to provide a more accurate picture. The area needs to be secured first.”

“Do we know what the structure looks like inside?” I asked.

Saul manipulated the tri-D. Now it showed the honeycombed interior of the Artefact.

“These maps were produced by long-distance scans on our approach. They might, or might not, be reliable. I’m especially eager that we investigate these locations.” Saul tapped a number of sites; left flags on the display. “They represent possible energy signatures. The Artefact is probably in a dormant mode; sleeping perhaps. These sites are possible activators – that would be consistent with research on the Helios Artefact.” He marked the very centre of the Artefact – through a labyrinth of twisted corridors and apparently empty chambers. “This is our final objective: likely to be a control chamber of some sort. The Hub, perhaps.”

“All this is fascinating,” Williams suddenly chirped up, “but what is this thing? I’ve read the debrief from Helios. This,” he waved a hand at the display, “doesn’t look anything like what the Legionnaires found.”

Dr West gave another of her trademark apologetic smiles. “We’re dealing with the unknown, Captain. It is undeniably of the same construction, of the same material, as the Helios Artefact. But the nature and purpose is different.”

Saul slid his glasses along the bridge of his nose. “My best guess is that this is a space station, or an outpost of some sort.”

“So we might find survivors?” Williams said. “We might find some Shard?”

“Do we get to kill them?” the big Martian roared. He thumped a hand on the table in front of him. The Warfighters dissolved into whistling catcalls.

“The Warfighters will abide by first contact protocols,” I said, cutting through the noise. “As will the Legionnaires.” Back to the science team: “Do we anticipate that there will be anything alive in there?”

“That’s unclear,” Saul said. “Biological scans have returned indeterminate results, but life can take many forms.”

“Care to explain that?” I asked.

Saul gave an uncomfortable half-smile. That simple gesture informed me that he knew more about the Shard than he was willing to let on: that even though Command expected us to carry out this mission, to die in the process, they were still unwilling to show their hand of cards.

“Yes, yes,” he said. “But it is complicated. The Shard sites suggest that they might have been mechanical – inorganic – in composition. Where machine ends and life begins is not always clear.”

“Do we have any idea what the Shard looked – or look – like?” Mason probed. “Even a hypothetical would be useful.”

“Yeah, because then I know what I’m supposed to kill,” Williams yelled.

“Quiet,” I shouted back. “Don’t take this lightly, people. If the Shard are aboard the Artefact, they might not appreciate us making contact.”

No one answered back this time.

“To answer your question, Private,” Saul said, “we have no idea what the Shard look like. We’ve never found any viable remains.”

Saul let the line hang and the debate was over. I pressed on with the briefing.

“This is our approach plan.” I called up some tactical overlays and flight plans. “It’s simple: we drop down to the Artefact in Wildcat shuttles. The Wildcats will be automated; we won’t be using flight crew. But Lieutenant James’ fighter squadron will escort us.”

James nodded. “With two Wildcats, six fighters should be sufficient. We’ll keep the rest in reserve, as a contingency. Fire support will be available if you need it.”

“We land here and here,” I said, pointing to locations on the hull of the Artefact. “Overlapping arcs of fire, in case we meet hostiles.”

“How are we going to get inside?” Jenkins asked. There was a flash of interest behind her eyes. “Demolitions?”

I smiled. “You get to do your thing, Jenkins.”

“The structure on Helios responded to plasma warheads,” Saul added. “A well-placed nuclear charge should be sufficient to breach the outer hull.”

“Once inside, the two teams establish a beachhead in these chambers,” I said, pointing to two larger caverns inside the Artefact. “Williams’ Warfighters takes this location; the Lazarus Legion takes the other. Environmental pressurisation will be a priority. We can deploy drones to map out the structure. After the threat level has been assessed, and if necessary contained, we can consider moving hardcopy personnel aboard. Until then the combat-suits will be broadcasting video-, audio-and scanner-feeds directly back to the
Colossus
. I want eyes everywhere: anything of interest, record it with your suit.”

“Are we confident that we can broadcast out?” Martinez asked. “On Helios, that didn’t work so well…”

“The Helios Artefact was transmitting,” Saul replied. “Its signal blocked local comms traffic. Until this Artefact becomes active, I am hopeful that we can remain in contact.”

“Hopeful?” Jenkins said.

Saul shrugged. “It’s an unknown.”

“And that about sums it up,” I said. “Any more questions?”

“Not until we get out there,” Kaminski replied.

“All right. Are equipment and weapon checks complete?”

“Affirmative,” Jenkins said. “Simulants are loaded into the Wildcats, ready for deployment. The Legion will go down in the first, Warfighters in the second.”

Loeb suddenly stood from his seat, turning to face the gathered personnel.

“Be advised that you are all here at my leisure,” the Buzzard said. “And that I have ultimate sanction on this operation. If anything you do presents a risk to this fleet, I will take immediate action. In particular, do not even attempt to activate that Artefact.” He jabbed a finger at the screen behind him. “Based on Major Harris’ previous experience, I have strong reason to believe that operational Shard machines pose a threat to the security of this battlegroup.” He scanned the faces of every man and woman in the room, drilling home his message. “That Artefact is alien technology. If it starts to broadcast, it’ll call every Krell ship within light-years to our position. I can’t allow that. The
Colossus
’ weapons officers have a standing order to open fire in the event that the Artefact becomes operational.”

Saul stood again. “Dr Kellerman’s findings on Helios indicate a potential—”

Just then, Lincoln scrambled down from the upper auditorium, snarling at Saul. Teeth bared, eyes wide, the old dog looked quite ferocious. Before Saul could retreat, the dog bowled into him. Two massive paws landed on his shoulders, and the dog’s head reared back to bite the professor.

I went to assist, but Loeb made a high-pitched whistle. Lincoln retreated from Saul. The scientist was left on his back, dishevelled, glasses skewed, but otherwise uninjured.

“You okay, Professor?” I asked.

“Yes, yes. I – I’m not good with animals.”

I helped him to his feet.

“I would have thought that you had an affinity for all Earth’s creatures,” Martinez said. He had a self-satisfied look on his face. “Gaia and all that shit.”

“Maybe just not a dog man,” James said. “But hey, it’s nice for us to have a break from the damned thing. Now he has a new best friend.”

The flyboys laughed among themselves.

Loeb grabbed the dog’s collar and the moment passed. Lincoln went back into the upper auditorium.

“Let’s wrap this up,” I ordered, bringing the meeting back on point. “Sim operators to the SOC.”