Origins (30 page)

It took seconds for them to find their prey. One engine went first, exploding flare-bright, and the Needler went into a spin. I watched in fascination as the gunship was hit by another missile; pouring black smoke, whining loudly like an injured animal. Then the ship clipped the jungle, and another bright explosion marked its demise.

But this was far from a victory.

The ravines around us were closing in, becoming tighter: more Krell coral blocking our route like the strands of a spider's web. We hit something, wobbling as James fought to control our flight. The Dragonfly lurched, dipping lower so that it hugged the jungle canopy. There were rapid thuds and bumps as stray branches impacted the hull.

The Needler alongside Jenkins' open door steadied, and mimicked James' course. The Krell were not giving up.

“That low enough for you?” James shouted, leaning into the flight controls. “Hold the fuck on back there!”

The upper jungle canopy thrashed against the Dragonfly's cockpit viewer—

Another shadow, now whale-big, darkened the jungle. It was coming from behind the Dragonfly, but also above us.

James' altimeter was beeping persistently, warning of a loss of altitude. Chimes and warning sirens overlapped so as to become indecipherable, save for one repeated phrase: “BRACE, BRACE, BRACE!”

The horizon shifted arbitrarily, and I was thrown back and forth inside the cabin. My simulated stomach lurched as though I was caught in zero-G. Martinez smashed into Jenkins, and she hit a wall – unconscious.

“BRACE, BRACE, BRACE!”

More Krell bio-fire raked the ship. Rounds impacted the main viewer, cracking the reinforced armour-glass canopy.

“BRACE, BRACE, BRACE!”

The engine's throb became a high-pitched wail. I hit the roof of the gunship and felt an explosion of pain in my skull as the ship banked again.

“I can outrun you, bastard!” James was shouting over and over, above the din of warnings and sirens. “I can outrun you, bastard!”

Not this time, James.

“BRACE, BRACE, BRACE!” the gunship's AI argued back.

Tree branches and trunks were hitting the hull harder now, shaking the gunship frame. And always the chatter of bio-weapons, and new shards of light appearing in the armoured roof above.

“BRACE!”

“BRACE!”

“BRACE…!”

The hungry jungle waited.

It swallowed us whole.

Where the fuck am I?

I woke up with a killer hangover, ten times worse than the worst ever night out in the District.

There was blue light above me, but I wasn't in a simulator-tank. It was sky, splintered through a patchwork of broken tree branches. I was on my back. I didn't know whether I'd been thrown clear of the wreckage, scrambled free, or even jumped: all were equally possible.

“Diagnostic,” I barked.

Error-code and scrap messages flooded my HUD, but the thought-connection was still active.

OPERATIONAL, the suit AI insisted in my head.

Is that all you can manage?

I suddenly became alert. That had to be my suit, pumping me with adrenaline and combat-drugs – ensuring that I didn't do the natural thing and lapse back into unconsciousness. A report of my injuries flashed onto my HUD. Just bruises and sprains, luckily, but in combination enough to make me feel like hell.
Get up, trooper!
The simple act of getting to my feet sent a ripple of aches through my limbs and chest. My battle-suit was covered in numerous dinks, scrapes and deformations.

Stock taken of my condition, I took in our tac-sit. The Dragonfly had ploughed a furrow in the jungle half a kilometre long: driven a flaming, churned-up trail of destruction through the forest. Blackened branches and still-burning bushes marked the gunship's descent-path, and the scar in the landscape was testament to the speed at which the aircraft had hit the jungle floor. James would no doubt want to believe that he was responsible for fending off the assailants, but I thought that it was more likely luck. The patchwork of light threading the thick thatch above: it was probably enough to provide some cover. That, and we'd brought down at least one of the Krell ships.

“Legion!” I barked. “Sound off!”

The drugs were pumping through my system now. Our situation was precarious and the Krell were probably just behind us. We had to get moving.

“Alive!” Jenkins drawled, struggling to her feet from somewhere nearby. “Fucking hell. We got hit?”

“I'd say so,” I concluded. “And we're about to get hit again.”

Jenkins had Kaminski under her arm. They had fared well enough. 'Ski managed a nod at me. Behind them Martinez and Mason, covered in dirt and burn-marks, and scrapes to bodies and armour, emerged from the jungle.

“Where's James?” I asked.

“Here,” the pilot growled.

James was speared, gladiator-style, with the spar of the Dragonfly cockpit: cleanly, more or less, through his stomach. Pinned, face-up, to the jungle floor. His aviator-helmet was shattered, the lower portion of his face covered in blood. That he was still alive was something.

“I'm not going anywhere,” he said, struggling with gloved hands against the metal holding him in place. “But you should get out of here. Investigate the signal.”

Martinez slid his plasma pistol from the holster on his thigh. Slammed a power cell into the grip, and handed it to James. The flyboy took it.

“Better to make it fast,” Martinez said.

James shook his head. “There's a distress beacon in the cockpit,” he said. “Activate it.”

“Why?” Mason asked. “No one is coming. Loeb is under orders not to respond—”

But I understood. It wasn't about calling for help: it was about creating a diversion. Setting it off at full broadcast spectrum would call every fish head within the sector to James' position. Meanwhile, we'd be gone.

“Do it,” I ordered. “Now.”

“I've got twenty shots,” James said, looking down at the digital read-out on the plasma pistol. He gave a weak smile: his teeth bright red. “I might even get a couple of kills before they get to me.”

“It's not as easy as it looks,” Jenkins said.

Martinez and Mason hauled the door of the gunship free, and were already working on the damaged control console.

“Done!” Martinez shouted from the wreck.

“The signal was a klick north of here,” James said. “The position should be stored in your combat-suit.”

My suit was gradually coming online again, and the wrist-comp showed local directions.

James held out his fist, and we bumped knuckles. “Good hunting, Lazarus.”

We fell into a forced march.

It was hard going, but we were always alert, moving as rapidly as possible. Mason had a mono-knife, smaller than her trophy sword, and hacked at the undergrowth as she went, and Kaminski prodded aside enormous tree branches with his plasma rifle. The ground underfoot was sodden, swampy, and we were often knee-deep in fetid water. Stuff that looked like brilliant red reed-grass poked from mud banks. On closer inspection, those plants writhed and swarmed as though they were alive. There was mist everywhere, coiling around enormous tree boles. It was noisy too – full of chirping, burping and whistling things, animals that had vague analogues with Earth-born counterparts: disconcertingly alien.

“This place stinks,” Mason moaned.

“No shower is going to get rid of that fish-stink,” Jenkins agreed, “and the pollen is a killer.”

“I hope,” Kaminski said, “not in the literal sense.”

“Use your suit's internal filters,” I said.

“I am,” said Mason, “but that's not helping.”

Coupled with the intense heat, the smell was a double gut-punch. The deep, headache-inducing scent often defined an encounter with the Krell, but this was so much more potent. Back at the crash site, burning fuel propellant and roasting simulant flesh had cloaked the smell of the jungle. Now, there was no such perfume to the place. It smelt of rotted fish and salt – the Krell's natural odour, multiplied by ten. Not for the first time, I was intensely grateful for my battle-suit's medi-suite, pumping me with anti-sickness drugs and a regular supply of antihistamines.

“Hold!” I barked.

Hundreds of metres above us – so distant that it was barely visible – the sky shimmered.
Krell ships.
They screamed overhead, in loose formation. Less than a second later, a series of thunderclaps sounded:
boom, boom, boom
. There was a flash on the horizon, from the direction in which we'd been marching.

“What was that?” Mason whispered.

“I'd say that they found the crash site,” I said. “Stay down.”

The Legionnaires were utterly still. Our reactive camo-fields mimicked the forest floor: while we were not quite invisible – outlines flickering – at range, we were close enough. That, and the thick canopy of branches and leaves, provided good enough protection, and the bombers moved on.

“At least James got a quick death,” Martinez said. There was no humour to his voice. “God willing.”

“God willing…” Mason said.

“Signal is ahead,” I said. “We're almost out of the Maze.” I pointed between the boles of two mutant trees, growing out of the swamp. The signal was stronger now, throbbing like a red cyst on my suit-scanner. “Half a click that way.”

Visibility was still poor, but the sky was brightening, and the canyons had widened to a more open expanse of jungle. While the scenery was no more appealing, it was slightly less creepy than the network of black rock.

“Stay in cover,” I ordered, “and move up by pairs.”

I took point, the others moving in twos, and advanced on the objective. The jungle grew quieter – more sullen. Large ferns and thorny plants bristled, stirred by a low wind. Ahead, the trees thinned.

“This is the place,” I said.

The Legion immediately assembled around me, eyes focused on the clearing.

Something cracked loudly overhead.

“Eyes up!”

An enormous piece of fabric was snagged among broken tree branches above us.

“An Alliance flag…?” Mason started.

Not just a flag: a parachute. It was torn and ragged, flapping in the light wind. Producing a rhythmic snapping – a sound so out of place in the chittering Krell jungle that it was instantly detectable. Snared to something much bigger, connected by a network of safety ropes and creeper vines.

“An evacuation pod,” Martinez said. “It's a damned pod!”

The large spherical craft lay on the forest floor, on its side. The structure was immediately foreign to the surroundings, light playing off the soft curves of the armour plating. Much bigger than a man, emblazoned with very familiar words and logos: American and Alliance flags beneath an ID serial tag. As I got nearer, I made out words on the hull.

UAS ENDEAVOUR EXPEDITIONARY FORCE.

I traced the route that the pod had taken, recreated it in my head.
Probably came through the forest canopy at a low angle
, I decided,
and made planetfall somewhere near the equator to reduce the odds of not burning up.
The decision, driven by man or AI, had also reduced the prospects of discovery by a Krell search party.

But this pod had fallen years ago.

“Elena!” I shouted.

I was surprised that anyone had survived the crash in a real skin. The pod had suffered a hell of a lot of damage on the drop. The lower half had sunk into the jungle floor, but what little I could see was crushed and deformed – crumpled like a used paper cup. Algae and barnacles had grown over the hull, and the exposed heat-shielding was stained green and black. Creeper vines, voracious and inquisitive, probed every aspect of the module. I clambered over a nearby tree root that had been severed in the crash; found the exit hatch.

The door was open, and the explosive bolts holding it in place had been blown. That almost provoked a false hope; but I knew that once the atmospheric probes had done their work, the door would automatically fire.
It's routine, nothing more.
The remains of the door came free with a creak from rusted hinges. I braced myself, ready for the worst, and peered inside.

It was a mess. There were two crash couches with loose safety harnesses – used, but now unoccupied. The controls were damaged; the single holo-console blackened, screen shattered. My suit-lamps popped on, flickering over the battered walls. A locker, labelled FIRST AID, was open: the contents missing. Bloodstains marked the crash couches, and a handprint was smeared on one wall.
When did that happen?
I wondered. The hairs on my neck stood up and I felt a sudden rush of anger. Elena had told me, in Damascus, about the
Endeavour
's mission becoming compromised. Had the Directorate done this? Or had the pod been shot down by the Krell? SEDATIVE, I ordered my suit. The cold rush that hit my bloodstream did little to alleviate the burn in my heart.

“You find anything, Colonel?” Jenkins asked.

“She isn't here,” I said. “There's nothing here.”

“No bodies?” Jenkins said.

“No nothing.”

There was a clatter outside the pod. Martinez.

“
Jefe!
” he said, excitedly. “Now!”

I pulled out of the pod.

“
Aquí rápidamente!
” he babbled.

“Calm down, Martinez. What have you got—?”

“Listen!” he insisted.

Whatever he'd heard, it had sufficiently frightened Mason. She was on one knee, her rifle panning the jungle.

“Fuck me, Venus,” Kaminski said, “is all this green spooking you or something?”

“
Shut up!
” Martinez insisted, and 'Ski fell silent.

The jungle burped and rustled; a tapestry of individual, tiny noises that were almost inseparable. Something buzzed nearby – a clutch of those alien insects that called this place home. In the distance, some unknown xeno specimen hollered…

“The ropes…” Martinez whispered, his voice barely audible.

It was such a small tell.

The ropes mooring the parachute and pod to the jungle
moved
. Vibrated just ever so softly; thrumming. Moving not with the motion of the wind, but rhythmically.

My intuition was screaming.

“Get sharp, people!” I barked.

Rifles were raised, all eyes on the jungle, back-to-back so that we formed a makeshift perimeter around the pod. My bio-scanner was chiming – a steady, resolute
beep, beep, beep
– but that was nothing new. The device was next to useless given the dense vegetation and flood of indig life-forms that populated the jungle. The jungle offered no answers. Visibility was virtually non-existent down here. The enemy would be on us before we knew it.

I needed a better vantage point. I nodded at the nearest tree.

“I'm going up there,” I said. “Give me a leg up.”

I picked one of the taller trees and began to climb the lower branches. The battle-suit, combined with the body-mass of my simulant, was a considerable weight, but the tree was strong enough to take it. The bark was scaled, almost reptilian, and it was like I was climbing a twenty-metre-long snake.
That wouldn't
, I decided,
be out of place among the bizarre wildlife of Devonia.
Hand over hand, I clambered up the limbs, the sense of impending danger growing with every hand-pass. The tree branches above me had started to shiver.

The Legion crowded around the base of the tree.

“I still don't see anything down here,” Kaminski said. “Just jungle.”

“Infrared is fucked,” Jenkins said. “Everything looks the same.”

“Just keep eyes on the trees,” I said. “Don't let anything surprise you.”

I approached the halfway point and sunlight began filtering through the broken shade of trees. A deep, basso vibration of something enormous rolling this way. A ship? I panted hard, almost at the top. Some sort of Krell vehicle? I finally broke the tree covering. The sun was low, throwing amber light across the basin, and I shaded my face-plate to look over the sector.

“What've you got, sir?” Mason called.

Just more trees. An endless carpet of green—

In the extreme distance, only perceptible because my simulant-senses were so sharp, was a ripple of movement. A shift in the treeline, moving like the waves of a sea, but in every direction.

It was a damned trick.

The Krell had been funnelling us all along.

Tsunami.

When the Krell had numbers on their side, as they often did, they reached a kind of critical mass. They became unstoppable.

“One of the many advantages of having no sense of self,” a Science Division officer once told me, “is that such a creature has no parameters defining self-preservation.”

I remember sitting in that hall, learning basic Krell behavioural patterns as though they were set in stone. I was barely out of Basic, only a private in the Alliance Army, stationed at Olympus Mons, Mars. Like most of the recruits, I thought that the Krell Psychology & Tactics classes were a waste of time. Most weeks they'd wheel in the same crusty old Sci-Div lecturer to bore us with diagrams and schematics: a break to a training regime that involved big guns, armoured suits and starships.

“Individually, the Krell primary-forms have little or no sense of purpose,” he droned on. “They are physically imposing, but they have no tactical acumen.”

“‘Acu' what, sir?” someone yelled at the little man.

The intervention was met with yells of derision, aimed at the science officer.

“Tactical awareness, if you'd prefer. They follow the Collective. They follow the leader-form's directions.”

“Sounds like the perfect soldier,” someone else yelled.

Again, more hoots, more derision. I was still young myself; I probably joined in with the crowd. This – the theory behind it all – was surely irrelevant.

“Maybe,” the officer said.

There was a holo-projector behind the science officer. He sighed, shook his head: probably pissed off that his lecture wasn't generating the interest that he felt it deserved.

“This is footage from the frontline,” he said. “A video-feed recorded from Torus Siegel, where there is every chance you will shortly be deployed.”

The room simmered down a little at that. Actual footage: this was far more interesting, much better than listening to the little man rambling on about Krell psychology. When he activated those files, the lecture hall had fallen into an awed silence for the first time ever.

“This,” the man had said, with a grin that split his face in two, “is a practical application of the lack of self-preservation.”

We watched as the Krell attacked an Alliance Army patrol.

They moved at a frightening speed, tore ten or so soldiers apart in an assault that took barely seconds. The holo was projected all around us – fully immersive, to increase the training value, and so clear that I could almost imagine myself
there
– and the Krell crashed into us, as well as the unidentified troopers. The Sci-Div officer played the footage again and again, and every time it ended I flinched emphatically. It had come from a circling aerospace fighter, he explained: a lucky witness to the slaughter on the ground. The dead soldiers: they hadn't been so lucky.

“What is the tactic called?” someone asked, on the fifth replay.

The scientist's eyes collapsed to slits, but that smile never left his face.

“It is called the tsunami,” he said. “And let us hope that none of you ever have the misfortune to experience it.”

I moved down the tree in a controlled drop. Hitting every other branch to slow my fall, managing to close the distance to the ground in a fraction of the time that it had taken me to climb it.

The whispering of the jungle had now grown to a low roar. The trees were shaking, dropping leaf matter and moisture as though it was raining at the lower levels of the jungle.

“Damned Venusian intuition,” I said. “You're right.”

“How many have we got?” Martinez asked.

I almost laughed at that. “Too many. Probably hundreds.”

“Holy fucking shit…” Jenkins said. “How close?”

“A few hundred metres, and closing—”

Something fast, green and deadly erupted from the jungle: a bolt of motion, a ball of carapace and talon and fang. The Krell primary-form lurched between the branches of the nearest tree, using every limb to propel itself forward. It was well-suited to this environ: those taloned limbs on its back latching on to overhead branches, its clawed feet gaining purchase as it moved from one tree to the next.

I fired a volley of shots into the xeno and it exploded.

“Forerunner,” I said. “Scouting out the best route to us.”

“More will come,” Martinez said, already falling back from the clearing.

“Use whatever firepower you've got,” I ordered.

Make this death count
, I almost added.

Plasma pulses filled the air, criss-crossing to cut the Krell to bloody ribbons. Missiles spiralled all around – smart guidance thrown off by the number of potential targets. The stink of burning flesh, of incinerated bone, was heavy in the air. Still, I kept firing on full automatic – planting my feet on the trembling ground, feeling the ebb and flow of the battle all around me.

I barely saw what the rest of the Legion were doing. It was all that I could do to concentrate on my own targets.

Primary-forms climbed through the trees, dashed over the swampland with alien agility. When we'd cut down the first rank – bodies smoking and piled in the jungle – the xenos simply clambered over the fallen. They were their own momentum, their own drive: a titanic wave of motion. Leader-forms – discernible even at this range, much bigger and more heavily armoured than their lesser counterparts – topped the tsunami, directing it onwards through the jungle.

They came from every direction.

A noose: closing on us.

The combined noise of the Krell attack wave was overawing – a piercing, ragged blast of white noise. They were screaming as a Collective, a horde of beings combined into a single entity. The sound alone was almost disabling. Perhaps it was an intended side-effect to the attack, another method to disarm a target.

When the direct frontal assault failed, the Krell started dropping from the trees above us. One landed among the Legion, talons reaching for Mason. She shouted a warning, tossed it back into the mass of alien bodies. I put it down with a volley from my plasma rifle. The weapon flashed a LOW AMMO warning, thought-linked via my suit. I had no time to replace the power cell: could only pump the underslung launcher and send grenades out into the dark. Explosions flashed all around.

The Krell began to fire bio-weapons into the fray. Through the fallen and the living: saturating the area with rounds. My null-shield caught a pulse from a boomer in a shower of incandescent sparks. Although I couldn't see them – I couldn't see anything, beyond the immediate press of Krell bodies – there must've been secondary-forms out there too.

And then they broke through and the enemy was too close for the null-shield to be of any use. I felt Krell claws and teeth and talons against my battle-suit. Every appendage a weapon, every ounce of their being weighed against us. I smashed one attacker aside, into the bark of a nearby tree, but another was on me before I could shake the first free.

These Krell were different. Bigger, faster; their carapaces harder and thicker, covered in thorny protrusions.
Evolved.
Their bodies were up-muscled, and some were striped like enormous wasps. When before one shot would have done, now it took multiple pulses to put them down. Among the tide, there were numerous tertiary-forms: twice the size of a battle-suit. Jesus, they were
living
battle-suits.

I fell back – battered aside by a Krell claw. The blackness fended off only by another shot of combat-drugs. More of the tertiary-forms were pouring into the clearing, tossing aside Mason and Martinez now.

Jenkins was firing her incinerator, dowsing the Krell in flame; back-to-back with Kaminski.

The mission was over.

Whatever secret was down here – whatever secret the
Endeavour
had been hiding here – would be lost, and Elena with it.

Something pierced my armour – hit a spot between two armour plates at my leg – and the pain was immediate. Swearing to any god that would listen, I collapsed to my knees. My medical-alert chimed in my head, warning of mission-impairment, and I felt warm blood pooling inside my armour.
They might make it good, but it's never good enough.

Bigger, more alien bio-forms were passing overhead. Things that not even I had seen before, that Science Division had never even considered classifying…
Quaternary-forms?
I wondered. Enormous, shadowy bio-constructions that were more tank than humanoid.