Origins (5 page)

If nothing else, it was new.

We extracted back to the
Independence
.

The starship's exact astronomical coordinates were unknown, at least to me, but we were somewhere beyond the reach of any orbital response that the Directorate ground forces could muster. We were somewhere safe. Had the fact been otherwise, we'd have been smeared across real-space by now.

And Kaminski?

Through ears that barely functioned – a second ago, that hadn't even existed – I heard a response over the comm-network.

“
That's a confirm on the evac. We have two birds in the roost.
”

“
Nice work, people. Another one for the Legion.
”

There were cheers of triumph, probably from somewhere on the bridge, but they were irrelevant to me. That Kaminski was safe and aboard the
Independence
: that was what mattered.

Back in my real body, I peeled open my eyes. It hurt – a
lot
. My skin was scalding hot. The marrow of my bones was boiling. The light was so Christo-damned intense that I knew when I looked down that the skin on my arms, chest and legs would be blistered black—

Except that when I did, through the sanitising haze of amniotic, there wasn't a mark on me. At least, nothing that hadn't been there before the operation on Capa V. Only scars, welted flesh: reminders of a lifetime of military service, and not all of it simulated. Once I would've rankled against the pain – screamed, yelled as I rode it like a wave, got it all out. Now, I let it ebb from me. Let the sensation sink through me, evaporate.

The same chamber beyond the glass. A different starship, different technicians. Even different squad members, but the same chamber. Another anonymous Simulant Operations Centre – aboard another anonymous starship. I ignored the voices over my comm-bead: knew the questions that were being asked, the responses that I should give. Maybe I was talking; maybe I gave the right answers.

This gets harder every time.
I clambered out of the simulator-tank. I knew that the pain of my simulated death would soon be gone. All I would be left with was the ache of not knowing; the cold void of indifference to real life.
This
was what was becoming harder: not dying, but coming back to reality.

The Legion each had their own post-extraction rituals.

Elliot Martinez: kneeling naked on the floor, crossing himself. Mumbling a prayer in pigeon Spanish; looking to the view-port to thank God Almighty for his resurrection.

“He's getting worse,” said Jenkins.

Keira Jenkins: the Californian lieutenant of my team. She'd been with me for longer than I cared to remember; had seen the evil that men do and the horror of the Krell Empire. She, too, was changed. Harder faced, leaner bodied, more muscled. Her own naked body was becoming cluttered with scars. The worst was the gunshot wound she'd acquired from the operation in the Damascus Rift; even stitched up, and months later, the healed scar on her stomach still looked vivid.

Martinez finished his prayer, then rose from the deck with an irritated expression on his face. “Fuck you, Jenkins.”

Jenkins stumbled across the SOC. Threw her arms around me, breathing ragged and emotional.

“We have him,” she said. “We have our man.”

Mason was still in shock from the last extraction.

“They nuked their own colony,” she said, shaking her head – her long blonde hair dripping with blue amniotic gel. Repeated: “Those bastards nuked their
own station
.”

Dejah Mason: I'd been with her during her early transitions, when she had joined the Legion as a probationer. That seemed such a long time ago – an impossible age. She was a machine now. Her eyes were the worst part: cold, hard, wonderless. She still kept a souvenir of the Damascus mission close to her tank – a mono-sword, recovered from a dead Directorate commando aboard the UAS
Colossus
– just in case.

“Only the Directorate,” Jenkins said. “'Ski's back; that's all I care about.”

“But what was the point?” Mason asked.

“Either to stop us, or the Krell, from getting off-world,” I said. “Plain and simple.”

“But we did it anyway,” Martinez said. “God's work is done, and Kaminski is back in the fold.”

“If you ask me,” Jenkins said, “those assholes got what they deserved.”

“Would you have shot that woman?” Mason said to Jenkins. She had started to fend off an army of medical technicians that had descended upon us; taking their readings and blood samples, logging the results of the transition.

Jenkins didn't answer for a moment, then called back, “If it would have helped us find Kaminski, then of course I would have done.”

An officer pushed his way through the circus of medtechs and approached me. It was Captain Ostrow: dressed in an immaculate khaki uniform, short-sleeved fatigues exposing his muscled arms. His normal eyewear – dark glasses, proper spook apparel – was missing, and his flinty grey eyes fixed on mine.

“Well done, Lazarus,” he said. “That was excellent work.”

The science team ignored Ostrow. If any of them had served with me before – and I genuinely couldn't differentiate one fresh-faced science puke from the next – then they would have seen the same show recently. It was nothing new. I righted myself. Let the crick in my back ease itself out. Because that was a real pain, it was somehow worse than the nuclear wind I'd just endured down on Rodonis Capa V.

“I seem to remember that you were unwilling to sanction that drop,” I said.

Jenkins let out a false laugh in support.

“It's more complicated than that—”

“I'll bet it is,” I said.

“I'm going to retrospectively sanction it. Command will buy that.”

“Like I give a shit,” I said. “We got our man back. That's all I care about.”

“And Professor Saul as well,” Ostrow said. “Sector Command will be very pleased with that.”

“I take it that your opinion has changed because the raid was a success?” Mason asked.

“It's not that straightforward, Private,” Ostrow said, defensively. “And please do not refer to it as a ‘raid': that was a dedicated exfiltration operation, based on a solid intelligence lead.”

Mason shook her head in feigned disbelief, and pushed past Ostrow into the corridor towards the showers. She was still naked from the tanks and he watched her go. She was a pretty girl; it was a response most men would've shown in the circumstances.

“How many did we get out?” I said.

“Eighty-three,” Ostrow said. “The infirmary is crammed with them. This is very good news. Psych Ops is going to be all over it.”

That was Psychological Operations: the propaganda limb of the Alliance military, responsible for feeding the masses news from the frontline. I didn't like them much.

“I'm sure that CNN will love it,” said Jenkins. “I just hope that those poor sons of bitches make it. It was cold down there.”

“They're getting the best medical attention that we can give them. For most of them, frostbite and hypothermia are the least of their worries.”

There was a hitch to Ostrow's response; one of his many tells. Ostrow had been assigned to the
Independence
as a sort of overseer – supposedly, as the final arbiter of whether an operation could or should be conducted in Directorate space – and we'd been working with him for several months. In that time, I'd learnt his tells. For an MI man, a spook, he had enough of those. The wobble in his voice? It meant that there was more to this.

“Go on,” I said.

A medtech was helping me get dressed into duty fatigues now. The simulated pain lingered on in my bones. I'd noticed that recently: how the pain seemed to last longer, would sometimes wake me in the night. It never really left me.

Ostrow tongued the inside of his mouth, crossed his arms over his chest. “The news isn't all good.”

“Is he…?” Jenkins asked.

“PFC Kaminski is fine,” Ostrow said. “He'll need some surgery for those nerve-staples, but he's going to pull through.”

“Then what is it?” I said.

“Ahh… Sector Command is requesting your immediate recall.”

“Where are we going?”

“We're going to Calico Base.”

Ostrow couldn't have known the effect that would have on me; surely didn't know
why
I hated Calico. I found it very hard to conceal my reaction though, and Ostrow swallowed hard – took an unconscious half-step away from me.

Anywhere but Calico…
I thought.

Ostrow regained his composure. “The orders just came through. Captain Qadr is plotting a course directly out of Rim space, and we'll be leaving Directorate territory within the next six hours.”

I couldn't actually remember having even spoke to Qadr. He, or she, was another interchangeable Navy captain; another face assigned to ferry around the Lazarus Legion. I recalled, with a pang of self-condemnation, what had happened to so many Navy staff under my command.

“Tell him to cancel the order.”

“I'm not going to do that. She has her orders.”

“And I'm ordering you.”

Ostrow smiled. His skin was a deep olive, hair neatly slicked back. He'd once told me that he was from Mainfall, Proxima Centauri III; where apparently the sun-baked American ideal lived on.

“I'm Military Intelligence. Under the joint military charter, you can't give me orders. We're currently moving under FTL drive past the last world in the Rodonis Capa system.”

I stormed out of the SOC, through the
Independence
's narrow corridors. She was a littoral combat ship, made for operations close to the shore, and she had seen better days. Most of her belly had been torn out and refitted, to accommodate the multiple Sim Ops bays. The place stunk of amniotic and electrolyte fluids; of data-port lubricant and sweat. Operators were gradually drifting from their bays, stumbling about in a semi-daze: troopers from Baker's Boys, the Raiders, the Vipers. Although some deaths had probably been kinder or faster than others, every single one of them had just died on Capa V.

Ostrow followed after me, his boots tapping against the deck. “You want my advice?”

“No,” I said. “But I'll bet you're going to give it to me anyway.”

Ostrow did just that. “This has to stop. You've got to put what happened in the Damascus Rift behind you.”

I can't do that
, I thought,
because I don't want to put it behind me.
The Rift had changed everything. I'd been so close to finding Elena – so close that I had seen her damned
ship!
– but it had also cost me Kaminski. I'd spent the last few months trying to right that wrong.

“You should start leading,” Ostrow said. “You're a lieutenant colonel now. You have responsibilities. You should be back on Calico – taking your place on the security council—”

“Don't talk to me about Calico.”

Ostrow shrugged. “The Joint Chiefs are demanding your return. There aren't enough starships to keep policing the Zone.”

Since the Massacre at
Liberty Point
, as it had become known, that was too often the case. A good deal of the Alliance Navy's resources had been lost during the battle… And I hadn't been there to do a damned thing about it. The Massacre had been the worst atrocity in Alliance history. Given that we had been at war against both the Krell Empire – and in a more covert sense also the Asiatic Directorate – for the last generation, that was quite some laurel. The Massacre had claimed millions of lives.

“Don't talk to me about the Zone either,” I barked.

For all intents, there was no Quarantine Zone any more. The phrase was a misnomer, because the quarantine had been well and truly broken. There weren't enough ships, Army infantry or Sim Ops teams to police what was left: and week by week, month by month, we were being pushed back. If we'd had the resources invested in the
Point
at our disposal, maybe we would've had a fighting chance. Now, with all that lost? We were losing this damned war. The Krell were claiming more and more territory.

We reached the main bridge bulkhead. There were Marines and Navy officers standing ahead, and all parted as I approached. Conversation stopped: heads bowed. The face of every man and woman we passed was filled with irrational hope.

“You get us some payback, sir?” a particularly keen sailor asked. “We heard that you brought some of our boys back.”

“Lazarus Legion all the way…” another said.

Not this shit again.

They didn't want Conrad Harris, ageing colonel of the Alliance Army. They wanted Lazarus, legend of Sim Ops.

The
Independence
's bridge was small and cramped. A couple of dozen Navy staffers rose from their workstations; gave me brisk and prideful salutes. Most were young, fresh from the Ganymede Naval Academy. A slightly older female officer – with rank badge and shoulder epaulettes of a captain – jumped to attention as well.

“Lazarus on the deck!” she declared.

“Please,” I said, with barely disguised irritation, “as you were.”

As the bridge crew gently settled into the idea of working while I was present on the deck, I manipulated the main view-screen.

“Get me a visual on Capa V's surface,” I said, waving my right hand – my only hand – at the monitor.

“You heard the man!” Qadr said.

I watched the surface of Capa V – Cold Death – and focused on the location of the prison outpost. Where once it had been concealed by the snowdrifts and angry local weather, now it was painfully visible to anyone who cared to look.

To one of the Navy officers, I said: “Pull a closer magnification on that quadrant.”

“Yes, sir.”