The Lazarus War: Legion (39 page)

“I’d cross the universe to be with you. Truthfully.”

I saw the UAS
Endeavour
, the starship Elena had used to travel into the Maelstrom, lurking within the Network. The ship was suspended in space, among the familiar constellations of the Maelstrom. That was how she was able to broadcast to the Artefact. She had used the Damascus Rift, somehow managed to maintain the neural-link with her simulant. I saw the data-thread of her consciousness, weaving through the Shard Network.

Is this it?
I asked myself.
Have I really found her?

Then the
Colossus
was moving again, onward through the Network, to whatever destination the Shard builders had programmed. I tried to lurch from my seat, to yell to Loeb that we had to stop – we had to save her! – but the Network had a life of its own.

Our final destination, our translation back into real-space, was not of our choosing.

Crewmen were everywhere. Some hadn’t been lucky enough to get buckled in before we made for the Gate: others had been thrown free of safety harnesses and webbing. Either the ship’s gravity well had given up, or the Shard Gate was causing disabling distortion.

The
Colossus
was dying. Her hull roared and her frame groaned in response to enormous tidal forces. Her instrument banks were going berserk. Every system bleated warnings, protested against the Gate’s violations of time-space. Striations of light flowed past at maddening speeds. Stars became white lines; galaxies multi-coloured waves. Space folded in on itself. Klaxons rang out all around – breach warnings, proximity alarms. A nearby console was aflame, and someone was fumbling with a fire extinguisher.

“Stay down!” I shouted. “You’ll be torn apart!”

I tried to lift my body from my seat but I was pinned. Every muscle and joint was frozen. In my own skin, I could only take so much. My senses were being overloaded. I closed my eyes, wanted the noise and colour and damned sensation to
just fucking stop!

When the blackness descended, I was grateful.

I lay there for a long time, in the quiet and the dark.

Recently those had become such rare commodities.

I wondered whether I might be dead. Not simulated dead; really dead. But I was cold. If Martinez’s sermons were anything to go by, my final destination would be a good deal warmer.

I exhaled, inhaled, felt the frozen atmosphere fill my lungs. I recognised the familiar tang at the back of my throat; the cloy of formaldehyde and cryogen. Images began to come into focus above me. An overhead light. A glass canopy. A safety label.

I was in a hypersleep suite. While that wasn’t where I’d expected to wake up, it was better than being dead.

The capsule lid hissed open, lifted slowly. I pulled my aching body upright.

“Watch your arm.”

Martinez stood next to my capsule. He was clean, dressed, in his own skin: a world away from when I’d last seen him.
Maybe even further
, I thought – remembering the Shard Gate, the sudden jump through the Network. Martinez rubbed his small goatee, put a hand through his hair. He had obviously been awake for a while.

I clambered out of my capsule and realised I was still aboard the
Colossus
. The walls were plastered with battlegroup insignia and deck numbering – but the capsules around me had been used recently. The crew had just been thawed.

“Where are we?” I asked.

“That would be a good question. Maybe approaching the
Liberty Point
.”

He tossed me some fatigues. I went to catch them with my lost hand, and almost missed.

“I…I saw Elena’s ship…” I started. “The
Endeavour
…”

Martinez gave an involuntary shiver and crossed himself. “We saw a lot of things when we went through the Shard Gate. Some that I would rather forget. You were in a pretty bad shape. The medtechs thought it would be best if you went straight into the freezer.”

“Where are Jenkins, Mason and…”

Martinez pulled a face. “Come with me,
jefe
.”

We walked the endless corridors of the
Colossus
, at my decrepit pace.

Everything still ached, churned and burnt. I couldn’t stop looking down at my missing hand. That was bandaged now and, Martinez had explained, I’d received the best medical treatment that the
Colossus
had available. Still, the techs hadn’t managed to save the real thing.

“We went through the Gate,” Martinez said. “Loeb thinks that we were gone for a second of ship’s time.” He shook his head. He obviously didn’t believe that explanation. “The AI says that we jumped the entire Maelstrom; made at least three stops before we finally became stable again.”

“And that was when I blacked out?”

Martinez nodded. “Yeah, Major.”

“Where did we end up?”

“Anyone’s guess. The telemetry module and the universal clock got fried when the Gate finally dumped us. I’d bet the science pukes would love to know, though.”

“The
Endeavour
is somewhere in the Network,” I said. “But not here.”

“Exactly,
jefe
.”

“Then where are we? You said that we were approaching the
Point
.”

“I said that we were maybe approaching the
Point
,” Martinez said. “After we left the Network, we were in dead space. It was quiet: there was nothing on the other side of the Gate, no Krell or Directorate. We had no idea where we were,
jefe
. Loeb ordered a Q-jump back to Alliance space, back to
Liberty Point.
Everyone, including you, went into hypersleep.”

I let the news soak in. I’d been out for the decision to jump to Alliance space, but I remembered parts of the rest. My temples still ached with the touch of the Artefact’s signal. Subjectively, not counting the months I’d spent in hypersleep, my battle with Williams had only been a few minutes ago.

“So we beat the Directorate?” I asked.

Martinez stopped. We were outside the mess hall.

“I guess that we did, at least on the
Colossus
.”

“Did any of the other ships make it?”

“No,” Martinez answered, firmly. “They didn’t.”

I considered that. There had been sixteen other ships in the battlegroup. Likely thousands of crewmen: all dead. Either lost to the void, destroyed by the Krell, or captured by the Directorate. I wasn’t sure which fate was worse.

Martinez nodded towards the mess hall. “Jenkins is in there. Go easy on her.”

Martinez left me at the door.

There had been efforts to clean up the mess hall. New shutters were bolted over the observation windows – a makeshift repair job to keep the chamber pressurised. The fix gave the place a peculiarly claustrophobic feel.

Jenkins sat alone in the corner. Recently defrosted, she cut a haggard figure. An unsmoked cigarette – half-consumed by ash – was poised in one hand, and she stared at the shutters: like she was trying to see through them and into space outside.

“I’m surprised that you want to spend any time in here, after what happened,” I said.

Jenkins turned to look at me. She moved sluggishly, putting pressure on her left side. I remembered that the gunshot wound had been to her right.

“Morning, Major.”

“Morning, Keira,” I said. I was unsure of what to say, how to put it. “I didn’t think that any of us were going to make it out of Damascus Space.”

Jenkins gave a slow nod. “Some of us didn’t.”

“I…I’m sorry. About Kaminski. But it’s not over. We’re Legion. We’ll find him.”

“The universe is a big place. And like Martinez says, God doesn’t do coincidences. ’Ski is gone. No point in kidding myself.” She gave a dry laugh. “I have terrible taste in men.”

“You mean Williams?”

“Yeah. He was an asshole, but to think that he was Directorate? It’s just beyond me…”

“He had access to next-gen and combat sims, but it goes much deeper than just Williams. There were Directorate infiltrators among us from the start.”

“Of Operation Portent?”

“No. From the start of the Simulant Operations Programme.”

“Then when did they get to him?” she asked, frowning as though she’d been thinking about the question for a while.

“Who knows? Maybe they’ve had the technology for years. Maybe Williams was recently turned.”

“Military Intelligence is going to have a field day with this.”

“Are you wondering whether he was a turncoat when he was with you in Basic?”

Jenkins gave a blasé shrug, but I could tell that it was feigned. When she moved, it was obvious that the stomach injury hadn’t been resolved: there were creases of pain on her face.

“Maybe there’s no telling any more,” I said. “Sim Ops is changing. A long time ago, someone told me this would happen. That we would change the whole system.”

“Elena?”

“Yes.”

“And what about her?” Jenkins said. “Did you find the answers you were looking for?”

The unasked question: was Elena real? Whatever had happened on the Artefact, back in Damascus Space: it proved that Elena was still alive. I’d only seen a simulant, only a glimpse of the real Elena, but that was enough.

“She was operational,” I said. “I don’t know how she did it, but she was using a next-gen sim as well.” I sighed; wished that I’d learnt more from her.

“Didn’t Dr West say that the next-gen project was a recent development? The
Endeavour
left for the Maelstrom years ago…”

“Dr West is dead,” I said, “so I can hardly ask her. But when we get back to the
Point
, I want some answers. Someone knows about that project, and about what happened to the
Endeavour
.”

Jenkins nodded. After what we had been through – what we had uncovered – nothing seemed beyond possibility any more.

“I was searching through Kaminski’s stuff,” she said. “What he had left on the
Colossus
. I found this.”

Jenkins opened her hand. She held something out to me. “Kaminski wanted Mason to have it. Maybe you should go see her.”

I found Mason in the infirmary.

She looked a decade older than when I had last seen her. I wondered whether the
Point
’s facial recognition would even recognise the war-scarred veteran that she had become. A medtech fretted over her, offering her an injection to the forearm. She waved the man away with an angry scowl.

As I entered, she looked up, and her expression softened a little.

“I’m fine, Major,” she said. She glared at the retreating medic. “Really. They just want to keep me here for observations, until we get back to the
Point
.”

I nodded. “I understand.”

She didn’t look fine. She had that glaze to her eyes; a look that I knew too well. The look of a proper operator.

“None of this will hold me back,” Mason said. “I’m eager to get into the tanks again, as soon as I’m certified.”

“If you’re sure that’s what you want.”

“Never been more certain.”

We walked to the end of the infirmary. Mason did her best to hide the obvious: that even the short distance was hurting.

“I have something for you,” I said. “From Kaminski.”

I held out my hand.

A fabric badge, like that sown onto all of our duty fatigues: a stylised pyramid with an eye atop it, the name LAZARUS LEGION printed beneath.

“Jenkins figured that you deserve to wear the badge. If you still want it, that is.”

“I’d like that.” She took the badge from me, held it tightly. “I’d like that a lot.”

Admiral Loeb had asked to see me in his room, and I thought how different the circumstances of my last visit had been. The stately corridor outside his chamber had been almost destroyed in the attack, his chamber doors replaced. His room had no doubt been one of the first targets for the Directorate attackers.

An officer let me in; not the same lieutenant as the one I’d previously been dealing with. Loeb sat on his own by the view-port, a glass of liquor in his hand, dog at his heel. Both looked impossibly tired.

“Please, sit,” he insisted. “Lieutenant Toms, pour the major a drink.”

“What happened to your old assistant?” I asked, inspecting the new officer.

“A little problem of loyalty. He was one of the Directorate sleeper agents and I executed him myself.” He sighed; a long, drawn-out expression. “And as you know, they killed Dr West. She’ll be missed.”

Loeb looked away, ran a hand through the fur on Lincoln’s neck.

“You don’t need to talk about it if you don’t want to,” I said.

“Whatever I want, I’m going to have to talk about it a lot. I guess you already know what that’s like. Questions are going to be asked as to why an admiral – with over forty years of fleet experience – didn’t realise that the Directorate had compromised his ship.”

“It happens.”

“Not to me, it doesn’t. Not to me. Command will want to know how Captain Williams – if that was his real name – managed to infiltrate an Army Sim Ops mission, right under my nose.”

It had been a large and well-planned operation, albeit one that had ultimately failed.
But had it?
I wondered.
Where is Williams? Where are the simulator-tanks that he and the Warfighters used?
The thought sent a chill through me. The new lieutenant returned with my drink, and I eyed her warily. The Directorate could be anywhere, now.

Loeb said: “Not a single enemy agent was taken alive. Even sleepers; they’d rather die than be taken prisoner.”

I sipped the drink. It was an aged Scotch: a pleasant reminder of what I could expect back on the
Point
.

“I’m a fossil, Harris. A goddamn dinosaur. I’m being left behind. I don’t understand this war any more. We went out there to investigate an alien Artefact with seventeen combat-ready ships. I thought there was nothing in this galaxy that could stand in our way.”

“It’s an easy mistake to make.”

“You’re too forgiving.” He swallowed down the remainder of his drink; rolled the ice around in the bottom of his glass. “Listen: I’m sorry about your man. I’m sorry about what happened to Private Kaminski. And Saul too. I – we – couldn’t stay there.”

If Loeb had stayed in Damascus Space, we’d sure as shit all be dead. But even so, it was a decision that I wouldn’t have been able to make. We hadn’t just left Kaminski behind, but also a good deal of the Alliance fleet. Loeb’s logic was faultless, but it still made no sense to me.

“We’re at war, Loeb,” I said. “It’s going to happen to us all, sooner or later.”

“I suppose so.”

“All we can ask for is a good death.”

Loeb motioned to his new lieutenant to pour me another drink. I accepted it, and we both sat in silence for a long while – watching the distant stars, worlds and systems tumbling past.

“When we jumped through the Shard Gate,” I said, my voice barely a whisper, “I felt something in there with us. Something else, in Shard Space.”

“We barely have any data on the jump,” Loeb said. “The sensor-suite was FUBAR. Whatever tech the Shard had, it isn’t like anything I’ve ever seen before.”

“Whatever tech the Shard
have
,” I corrected. “And that’s my point: it felt like something alive, functional.”

Loeb was quiet for a moment. “I felt it too. Sci-Div will shit themselves when they see the data.”

I hoped that I’d done the right thing; that activating the Artefact – the Shard Gate – hadn’t doomed us all. Not just a few thousand personnel – terrible as that was – but the entire human race.

“Martinez told me that we’re approaching
Liberty Point
,” I said.

“It’s a bit more complicated than that. The journey through the Shard Gate caused a malfunction in the
Colossus
’ telemetry module.” He waved at the stars. “Astrocartography isn’t a manual art any more.”

“So where are we?”

“We should be approaching the
Point
, any day now.”