Origins (36 page)

“You killed them all!” came a scream, hissing with static: a voice broadcast over an amplified speaker rig, driven to distortion by extreme volume.

The shape was on Kaminski next. He fired a grenade at it – scored a direct hit – and the hi-ex round exploded against the null-shield.

It was neither Krell nor Shard, but instead an adapted Spider MMR, salvaged from Calico Base. Driven by someone we had all hoped was dead, even if none of us actually believed it.

“Get down!” I ordered. “Stay in cover!”

I was sure, now, that Kaminski had seen the Spider's pilot too, because he wouldn't listen to me. He fired one-handed with his plasma rifle, pulses lighting the null-shield again and again.

The machine stomped on through the onslaught, and Captain Williams came into full view. Hunched inside the driver cab of the Spider. A machine designed for mining, this example bristled with armaments: a couple of rocket pods on the shoulders, a grenade launcher mounted on one arm, a multi-barrelled kinetic cannon on the other. Seeing as how he had tossed Jenkins' body aside, I predicted that the man-amp had been over-charged as well.

“Sweet girl,” Williams said, gazing over at Jenkins' body, weathering the plasma storm. “She never could let go, though.”

Kaminski lost it. He closed the distance between Williams and him lightning fast, roaring a battle cry as he went.

Williams also moved fast, into the middle of the chamber. If Williams knew fear – if he suspected that he might die in here – he hardly showed it. He leapt across the room, onto Kaminski. The MMR was a multi-ton mech; a locomotive that would not be stopped. As the two collided – sim and Spider – I heard and saw Kaminski's armour splitting; his bio-signs plummeting. It was worse than a wasted gesture, and Kaminski was gone. Kaminski's body and rifle disappeared beneath the Spider's bulk. There was nothing the medi-suite could do to help him.

“Then there were three…” Williams said.

Williams was now so close that I could see his face through the canopy, and I realised that he was not simulated this time: he was the real deal. Identifiable by the tattoos over his cheeks, the jewellery dangling at his ear… and those
eyes
. Madness and rage dwelt there –

THREAT DETECTED, my suit AI warned. TAKE EVASIVE ACTION.

A high-pitched whine filled the chamber; the echo of a single round being fired from somewhere above us.
Sniper rifle.
My HUD suggested possible shooter locations on the gantries or walkways, hiding places all around the room. The anti-shield round – cutting edge by Alliance standards – scythed through my shield with ease. Hit my leg, the join between armoured plates. I stumbled forward. Even with my simulated body being flooded with analgesics and endorphins, it was hard to ignore the pain.

CRITICAL DAMAGE DETECTED, my HUD told me. Impossibly, the armour hadn't breached – for now, I was still protected from the Creep – but I couldn't take another shot like that.

Suddenly the rest of the chamber became filled with threat warnings. Multiple shooters, positioned around the chamber. Some above, nestled into the bizarre Shard architecture, others well-hidden behind awakening Shard machinery.

Williams paused in his MMR. The machine heaved up and down, never at rest: like it was breathing, ready to pounce again.

“Williams…” I said. “So good to see you.”

“This is the end of the line, Lazarus.”

“No, it isn't. Not until I say so.”

In hardcopy, he was leaner, wearing a black Directorate Sword uniform. Despite myself, despite the gunshot injury, that caused a stir of anger in me. An Alliance traitor, wearing the uniform of the Asiatic Directorate. His blond hair was shaved close to his scalp, which was pocked by two chemical-inducers: metal studs used to trigger drug inducements.

“You killed them,” Williams repeated. He cycled up the assault cannon attached to the Spider's body, multiple-barrels spinning in readiness to fire. “You killed the Warfighters on Calico.”

Directorate Sword commandos filtered into the chamber, crunching wreckage under booted feet. Ten mag-rifles were aimed at me: laser-dots dancing over my damaged armour. My suit tracked the group as they circled around behind me.

“Actually,” Martinez shouted, his voice echoing around the chamber, “that was me.”

Williams' face twitched. One side was claimed by a tattoo – a manic barcode that may or may not have had some purpose other than decoration.

Martinez had begun to climb among the Shard machinery, using the battle-suit's strength-aug to his advantage, his camo-field activated so that he was more difficult to track. Despite his armour, he moved fast. He fired off a volley of grenades into the room, sharp frag littering the area.

“Aim for the cabin!” I yelled.

“On it,” Mason called back.

We moved as a team, plasma fire pattering against the heavy null-shield. Whatever tech the machine was carrying, it was impressive: the shield was capable of dispersing a direct plasma round, absorbing the charge.

The Spider swivelled at the waist, its heavy assault cannon indiscriminately spraying the walls. Dust and debris were thrown up into the air. The Swords' gunfire slowed, became even more erratic: panicked—

Martinez's body slid down the wall. Chewed up by assault-cannon rounds, his life-signs extinguished.

And then there were two.

Without warning, the Spider twisted about-face and lurched towards Mason. She rolled aside, flung her rifle behind her.

“Get out of its path!” I shouted, as the machine bore down on her.

“I've been saving a special something for you, Mason,” he yelled. “Payback for the
Colossus
.”

He fired at Mason. Her armour was taking hits at a terrifying rate.

Despite my order, she stood ground and unsheathed the mono-sword at her belt. The blade lit, blue-white lightning playing across the cutting edge, and she tested the weight.

I kept firing, moving up on the Spider. Williams seemed almost absorbed in the moment. His every attention was focused on Mason—

“Fuck you and your payback!” she shouted, running forward.

Then she was under the shield, within killing range of Williams.

He grunted in surprise as Mason's armoured body collided with his. Her blade swiped back and forth, in a frenzied arc—

The Swords closed around us. More anti-shield rounds rained down on the chamber, forced me back into cover. Something
pranged
off my armour plating.

“That's harder than it looks, isn't it?” Williams yelled at Mason.

Still beneath Williams' null-shield, dodging the Spider's many legs, she ran at him again. The blade swiped up, mono-filament edge leaving a trail of sparks. Sliced against Williams' outer canopy—

And bounced off.

The armour-glass breached, fractured, but held.

Mason dropped the sword, collapsed into the waiting claws of the Spider MMR. She struggled against the machine. Williams split her face with a blow from the Spider's claw, then deployed a laser mandible from the machine's main body.

What was left of Mason, sans head, collapsed to the middle of the room.

Then there was one.

I dashed back into cover. Gunfire was everywhere: more and more of the temple collapsing around me.

Williams saw me move. I rolled aside, just a little too slowly…

He slammed an enormous mechanical foot down on my right hand. The walker was several tons of solid metal and weaponry; not even my battle-suit could withstand that sort of weight. The armour crunched as it took the stress. My right hand exploded with pain, my med-suite struggling to control the agony that erupted there.

“I got the other hand on the
Colossus
,” Williams said, leering at me.

I was pinned to the ground.

The missile pods on my shoulders swivelled to face him, but ERROR flashed across my HUD. Something must've been damaged during the fight; the weapons wouldn't respond.

“What are you waiting for, Lazarus?” he snarled. “Aren't you going to fight back? I expected more from an old war hero.”

“You're not looking so young yourself, these days,” I said.

Williams' loomed over the machine's controls, bobbing inside the cabin. “I can give you their names. Every one of them a good man and woman. And you killed them, in their fucking tanks!”

“You're a lackey,” I said. “Nothing more.”

Williams' face was flushed red with utter, utter rage. “You've really fucked things up for me,” he said. He shook his head, the machine's legs dancing restlessly like he was trying to dispel that anger. It wasn't working. “You are one big fucking pain in the ass, Harris. The op in Damascus? I was going to make out like a bandit!”

“It was your deal with the devil.”

“They wanted the simulant technology, and they wanted the
Endeavour
. I could've given them both!”

Another figure advanced through the dark.

Director-Admiral Kyung stood at the head of the chamber. Shorter than the other soldiers, wearing vac-rated ghost-plate: a type of Special Operations armour that hadn't been in service for a long time. The plating was equipped with an active camo-field that swirled as she moved, reflecting the Shard glyphs around her.

Seeing this construct up close: it triggered the deep hurt.

“What are you doing here?” Kyung asked me. “You were warned to leave.”

“That's what I've been asking him,” Williams said. “Bastard got no right…”

“Shut up,” Kyung said, never taking her eyes off mine.

“Of course, Admiral,” Williams said. “It's your show.”

The chamber began to shudder around me, but Kyung's face betrayed no emotion. Even inside the ghost-plate, she was much smaller than the surrounding troopers.

“How's the
Shanghai
doing?” I asked, as glibly as I could.

“Well enough,” she said, but her words didn't match her reaction: she visibly winced.

“It wasn't last time I looked, and I think you know that, Assassin.”

“You keep calling me that,” Kyung said. “Did you lose someone, I wonder, on Thebe? A brother, a sister, a parent?”

I am going to kill this woman
, I reassured myself.
If not in this life, then the next.

“I take no pleasure in the name, Colonel Harris. Jupiter Outpost – Thebe – means nothing compared to what we can achieve out here. This place: this is where real change will be made. We know what the
Revenant
is. We know what it is capable of.”

“None of this is going to matter,” I said, “because you're going to die out here.”

She snapped her head around in Williams' direction; made a sudden decision. “Hold him.”

“Of course,” Williams said, raising the Spider's forelimbs. “Do I get to kill him yet? I've been dreaming about this, man. And let me tell you: since Damascus, I've been having some seriously
bad
dreams…”

He turned his attention on me again. Scooped my armour up with a manipulator; the two-pronged metal claw clasped around my neck guard. The Ares armour was heavy, but even that squealed and deformed under the pressure. The claw began to close on my neck…

Head down, Kyung marched across the chamber. Two of her troopers carried a black armoured case, the lid open. Something all too familiar sat inside: the Shard Key. It blazed with energy, glowing and pulsing and offering a universe of destruction. The Swords set it down in front of the effigy, moved back from the box as though frightened of the contents. Kyung looked up at the statue that towered over her, hands clasped behind her back.

“So this is the Shard?” she asked. “They went by many names. Some species referred to them as the ‘Dwellers in the Dark', others the ‘Machine-Mind'. I am quite partial to the name that Species 134 referred to them as: ‘the Ones who do not Care'.” More sparkling across her face: more damage to the
Shanghai
in high orbit? Or were the Shard, somehow, trying to communicate with her crippled bio-machine of a mind? “The Shard is a species that knows only war; that can claim responsibility for the extinction of hundreds of sentient races.”

Williams' claw tightened some more.

Kyung inspected the control consoles. “Dr Kellerman's research was quite specific on the activation protocols,” Kyung said. The room around us was buzzing with activity. “His death was a loss to the Directorate scientific mission, but the activation of the Shard technology is surprisingly simple.” She lifted the Key from its case, held it up.

“You'll doom us all!” I managed.

“Just shut the fuck up,” Williams said, “and let the lady work, then we can all get out of here.”

Kyung stood with her back to me. “It's almost as if the machine wants to be activated…”

Very carefully and precisely, she inserted the Key into a throbbing portal on one of the consoles.

Time seemed to stop.

Kyung stood in front of the machine. I dangled on the end of Williams' claw, eyes darting to the control console, mere metres from my position. The Directorate troops had emerged from their hiding places and were frozen, watching the shadows around us.

“Did it work—?” Williams started.

Then the signal exploded in my mind, and an enormous wave of blue light poured from the Shard statue: the cries of a million machine-minds freed at last.

Still holding me tight around the neck, Williams' mech locked. He frowned as he tried to deliver the final twist of his claw, but the Spider did not respond.

The air was filled with data – with crackling streams of information that coursed through my mind and soul. Shard glyphs spiralled all around me, igniting the air. Machines that had not spoken for millennia, that had forgotten that they even had a voice, screamed into the void. As a human, even a simulated one, I could hear only a fraction of their cry. That was more than enough: to be in the heart of that deluge of machine-code was almost crippling.