Origins (24 page)

“I… I know,” I said. I couldn't draw my eyes from Elena's face: her gently flickering eyelids. It took me a few seconds to drag myself out of it, to focus on the mission again. As I did so, as I ordered my emotions and began to process the implications, matters took on a whole new level of urgency. “Can the capsule be dismounted?”

Martinez nodded. “I guess so. It'll be heavy, but we can carry it between us. Maybe Jenkins can search for a mule down on the hangar decks.”

“No need,” I said. “I've been waiting to give this strength-aug a proper run.”

“
Sí
,” Martinez said.

There was a sudden chime over my comm-network. Martinez got it too; frowned at the result.

Bodies in cryogenic suspension were so far under that they didn't produce registrable vitals. I'm sure that Sci-Div has produced a scanner somewhere that can read the signs of a sleeper, but that sort of tech was too delicate for Sim Ops grunt work. I held my wrist-comp to my face, watched the read-out.

Elena's bio-sign had diminished again, dipped to undetectable, but I was still getting a signal. Not from inside the room, I realised, but from the corridors around us.

“Fuck…” Martinez whispered.

The ship was filling with moving, hot signals.

“Hull breach detected on Deck C-3,” the
Endeavour
's AI declared, suddenly – inexplicably – operational again. “Take all necessary safety precautions.”

Martinez snapped his helmet back into place. I did the same, and graphic warnings projected onto my HUD.

“Whoever's out there,” he said, “they're all around us, and closing fast.”

Exactly
what
was closing on us was mostly irrelevant. There were far too many signals for the Legion, and the Alliance Marines were stationed klicks away aboard the
Colossus
. Possibilities cascaded through my mind. I was already working on our escape route – considering our withdrawal through the belly of the ship: across Science, through Communications, and down the main corridor into the atrium.

“Let's get this capsule free,” I said.

“Copy that.”

We both fell to the base of the capsule, began to unhook the power conduits. It was a standard cryogenic module: would carry enough onboard preservative to keep Elena under for a couple of hours, at least.

My comm-net chimed.
Loeb.

“This is
Colossus
Command,” he blurted. “We have to pull out, now! We have a fast-approaching potential on the scanners!”

“Krell?”

“Can't tell, but whatever it is, it's big.” The line crackled and popped, the signal deteriorating rapidly. “The quantum is on fire out there.”

A ship making real-space conversion could cause quantum disturbance. It was a recognised side-effect of making a Q-jump too close to another ship. I'd seen the results, and they weren't pretty. Our scanners and comms would be fried by something coming in-system via Q-jump.
Unless
, I thought,
it's something worse than that.
The Arkonus Abyss was painfully close. There were a thousand variables at play out here.

“We're evac'ing a single survivor,” I said to Loeb. “Do not – repeat
do not
– close that boarding tube.”

“We have to pull out to safe distance—”

“Do not leave the
Endeavour
!” I barked. “Tell the Marines to keep the docking tube open until I order otherwise.”

“I can't do that!” Loeb argued. His voice quivered with interference. “There are hardcopy soldiers—”

“I have Elena!” I roared at him. “And I'm ordering you to keep that tube open!”

Before I could formally close the communication, Jenkins' emergency channel opened.

“Wha… fuck… ship?” she started, her voice chopping.

“Cannot read, Jenkins, but if you can hear me, get back to the boarding tube. We are conducting exfil on Elena's capsule—”

“Neg… Bay – open—”

“I don't copy!” I yelled. I recognised the hiss of a plasma weapon firing over Jenkins' end of the comm. “What's happening down there?”

More plasma fire sounded, and lots of it. That meant multiple hostiles. James was yelling in the background.

“Jenkins! Answer the damned comm!”

The capsule came free from the base with a hiss of pressurised gas. Elena bobbed serenely inside.

“Can you manage that?” Martinez said.

“It's fine,” I said. “I'll take her.”

The unit was bulky, but would fit under one arm in the battle-suit; its weight was negligible with the simulant's abilities and the suit's strength-aug. I was more concerned about its fragility: the glass canopy could be easily broken. Even a fracture could lead to fatal injury – the wrinkled corpses in the tubes around me were more than enough reminder of how things could end.

“Clear us a route,” I ordered.

Martinez reached the hatch. He jabbed a finger at the OPEN button. The lock began to peel apart with infuriating lethargy. Both hands on his rifle, he said, “Anything stands in our way, I'll take it.”

“Jenkins!” I shouted again, over the comm. “What's happening?”

“We've got—”

The outer lock door opened, and I finally saw for myself.

A Krell primary-form stood in front of me.

Clad in a full bio-suit, and evolved for space-combat, the alien warrior was bathed in red light, ice crystals from recent exposure to vacuum still glinting off its weathered hide. The bio-helmet that the xeno wore was scarred and battered, marking this particular primary as what passed for a veteran among the Krell warrior elite. As the hatch opened, it swivelled its head in response, eyes and nostrils flaring behind the mirrored face-plate, gills open. It lurched towards us, both pairs of arms up and ready to attack.

I took a step back into the bay. Elena's capsule under my left arm, I brought up my right: fired one-handed.

Commencing combat trial.

The Krell disintegrated under the hail of fire. Pulses illuminated the xeno's insides – light spilling from the exo-skeleton, revealing the tracery of veins and internal organs. The mass of writhing tendrils and bio-communication devices grafted to the Krell's back went limp, and the creature collapsed at my feet.

“How did Loeb miss this?” Martinez said in exasperation.

The question was largely rhetorical, and unanswerable in the circumstances. The Krell were here, and I needed to get Elena off the ship. Those were the facts.

I stomped the body underfoot and moved out. Martinez's suit-lamps lit beside me, catching the corridor ahead. Flashing amber security lamps had activated, and a klaxon rang out through the sector. My olfactory senses were choked with the smell of scorched Krell flesh and burning plastic: I thought-commanded my suit to switch to my internal atmosphere supply.

The
Endeavour
's AI continued: “Hull breach on Decks C-3, B-9, A-1 through 15.”

The Krell were probably using breacher-pods. They were almost invisible in the cold of space – a living, cuttlefish-like organism with a singular purpose: to propel invaders across the void of space. That would explain how Loeb had missed them.

I suddenly realised that Jenkins was back on the com-network. She was yelling incessantly, repeating the same words over and over.

“I'm here, Jenkins,” I said, cutting her off.

“We've got Krell across Engineering! Lots of them!”

“There are more boarding the ship,” I said, breathing hard. “Something's incoming.”

This was just the advance boarding party, meant to secure the objective. Confirming my suspicions, I felt something hit the
Endeavour
, her space frame shuddering violently. That could be more boarders, maybe a Krell shuttle.

“Where the fuck did they come from?” Jenkins asked.

“How should I know?” I barked back.

Martinez started firing again – a harsh triple-volley from his plasma rifle. Krell-shaped shadows were suddenly all over the corridor.

“Where're Mason and 'Ski?”

“Fuck knows. I'll try to reach them.”

“Fall back to the docking tube,” I ordered. “We can't let them get aboard the
Colossus
.”

If they haven't already…

“Affirm—”

The link went dead. Whether it was a technical difficulty, or Jenkins had extracted, it didn't matter.

A clawed hand reached from a rent in the deck tiling, wrapped around my boot. Another Krell. It closed its claws, and despite the improved armour I felt the plating in my boot crunch. I put the target down with two shots from my rifle. More baleful alien eyes stared at me in the dark. Shrieking – Krell battle-cant – filled the chamber.

“Missiles free, Martinez,” I ordered. “Collateral damage irrelevant.”

“Fuck yeah!” Martinez roared.

The shoulder-mounted missile pods extended on his back. The horde of Krell at the end of the corridor were met by a ripple of detonations. Bodies were mounting up, the kill-tally increasing.

But still it wasn't enough.

They were
everywhere
.

Clambering out of airshafts, erupting from the deck tiles, lurching down the corridor. Each weapon discharge illuminated the corridor in a flush of orange light, threw up the shadows of more inbound attackers. We were still hundreds of metres from the docking tube, and there were just as many Krell bodies between me and the way off the ship—

A Krell secondary-form stomped down the corridor, waving a rifle in my direction. A flurry of gloss-black spines slit the air.
Damned stingers.
I reflexively dodged aside –
got to protect the pod!
– moved before I'd even concluded that I was being shot at, and avoided the attack. My null-shield lit in response. Martinez put the bastard down with a volley of cluster missiles.

We reached a stretch of corridor with a view-port stretching its length. Involuntarily, I paused as I looked on space outside. A Krell bio-ship lingered on the edges of my visual, moving fast on our position. She was only a mid-sized vessel – a scoutship, designed for stealth and speed – but her hull was studded with bio-cannons, bright spines elevated along her back generating blue light. Even in the split second I had to take in the details, she had begun discharging those living weapons across near-space—

Not just one ship, either. Space warped and smeared as more vessels popped into existence: translating from the Q. Almost all scouts like the original arrival, but in numbers enough to take down the
Colossus
.

Worry about that when you need to. Stay in the now!

The missile pods mounted on my back-plate began to pop. The smart rounds ploughed through the Krell. I pumped a grenade into my carbine underslung launcher, wishing for just
more damned firepower!
A Krell tertiary-form – massive, over-armoured – exploded as it caught an incendiary round. Shards of smoking carapace and body matter scattered across the corridor, flecked Elena's capsule.

“Keep moving!” I ordered over the general channel, to anyone left alive who could take an order.

As I started onwards again, my ear-bead chimed.

“Lazarus Actual, this is
Colossus
Command,” came Loeb's voice.

“I'm busy!”

“We can't stay here any longer! That ship is firing on us!”

“Then return fire!”

Something inside the
Endeavour
exploded. I felt the deck violently shudder, felt the entire corridor shift sideways. My stomach lurched for a second as the gravity well malfunctioned. Light bloomed across the outer aspect of the ship, through the passage view-port. I had no time to check, but that had to be one of the modules cooking off; some power-bearing component going critical.

“The
Endeavour
won't be able to take much more of this,” Loeb said. “From what we can see several decks are already beyond recovery—”

“I don't give a fuck about this ship any more!”

“What about
this
ship?” Loeb asked. “The
Endeavour
is going down, and when she does she's going to take surrounding space with her.” I remembered what Loeb had said about the
Endeavour
's energy core: the bluster about having fire in her belly. “The Krell are trying to board the
Colossus
too. We need to break the tether, kill any stragglers at our end, then get the hell—”

“No! Hold the position! That's an order! We're moving on the umbilical. We'll be gone before the ship goes down.”

“We're detect—” Loeb started, but his voice was terminated by a crackle of interference.

The pipework around me started to hiss. Steam and cryogen were being vented into the corridor; the immediate predecessor to the energy core overheating. Clouds of white gas reduced visibility. The Krell made the most of the conditions, using the venting gas as cover, all six limbs moving in the tight confines. One would often leapfrog another to reach me, but my plasma rifle was always hot. I waded through the sea of corpses – the floor made slick with the blood of the fallen.

A warning appeared on my HUD: MISSILE AMMO DEPLETED.
Damn it.
I wasn't carrying reserves. Martinez's pods were pouring black smoke, the firing tubes glowing orange. Maybe the tech wasn't made for such heavy use.
Like that's going to be a complaint I'll ever get to lodge with R & D
, I thought.

A hail of plasma pulses tore up the corridor. The wave of Krell didn't exactly retreat, but were slowed by the onslaught.

Jenkins appeared at my back, James with her. They were literally bathed in Krell blood, Jenkins' camo-field flickering erratically. I nodded at them both.

“The Legion doesn't extract until I give the order,” I said. “And that includes you, James.”

Lieutenant James clutched the plasma pistol in both hands, the power cell indicator flashing LOW CHARGE. He could muster neither a smile nor a witty comeback.

“Got it.”

“If I do go down,” I nodded at the capsule under my arm, “this is the absolute priority. Elena has to get off this ship. Have the others reported in?”

“I can't reach 'Ski,” Jenkins said. “Last we heard, he was pinned down with Mason in Data Processing.”

“He knows what to do,” Martinez said.

There was no time to worry about them; my HUD flashed with error messages, and I couldn't tell whether they were alive or not. Another, closer explosion sounded through the decks. The entire ship was now shaking, and would not stop. Around us, the shriek of encroaching Krell continued.

“Roll out,” I said over the comm.

The Legion moved as one, laying down suppressing fire with plasma rifles. Another of the bulkheads began to shut on us, sliding down to seal the corridor. It was a heavy industrial hatch, made to seal the interior modules in case of catastrophic failure; a rolling vertical blast door. It would require something even heavier than a plasma rifle if we were trapped behind it.

“Get that door open!” I shouted. The alternative route would be much longer, and involve doubling back through the Communications Deck.