The Lazarus War: Legion (15 page)

The Simulant Operations Centre was the largest that I had ever seen on a starship, all clinical bleached walls and glowing holo-consoles. Most of the SOC was taken up by the simulator-tanks – twenty of those in all, although only nine had been activated. Each tank had been designated for a particular trooper; recently shipped in and sparkling under the bright med-bay lights. The bay was just for the combat-sim operations: the flyboys had their own facility somewhere else in Medical, running their own gear.

I ached to get back into the tanks.

A handful of medical staff milled between the simulators, jotting readings on data-slates.

“We need data-readings, proper prep, for the transition,” Dr West said, meekly.

“Death has to be properly logged and monitored,” Kaminski joked.

Let’s get on with it.

I proceeded to strip off, while West oversaw the connection to the simulator-tanks. Cables were jacked to my data-ports. My simulator powered up. I fixed the respirator over my mouth, attached the ear-bead communicator. Once all of that was done, I slid into my tank. The amniotic fluid inside had grown pleasantly warm. Just the scent of the stuff triggered potent chemical reactions in my brain – it was impossible to divorce the smell from the promise of making transition.

The rest of my team did the same. I noticed Williams eying Jenkins as she undressed: a little too interested.

Dr West checked each tank in turn, confirming with each of us that we were good to go. Jenkins, Kaminski, Martinez and Mason were all jacked in and ready.

“Do you read me, Major Harris?” she asked, tapping on the transparent canopy of my tank.

“I copy,” I said. Her voice was clear through my ear-bead.

“All vitals are good,” another tech remarked. “Establishing link to CIC.”

“This is Admiral Loeb,” the CIC declared. “We have a solid line.”

Locked inside my simulator, I realised that there was a bank of controls inside the tank. While some of the controls were familiar – EMERGENCY EVACUATION, REQUEST ASSISTANCE and so on – I saw that others were not. In particular, there was an easily accessible activator near my right hand, labelled COMMENCE TRANSITION.

“What’s with the new controls?” I asked. I’d seen virtually every type of simulator-tank, all kinds of modifications, but I’d never seen controls like this inside a tank.

“These are custom tanks,” Williams answered. “Real new shit. You can initiate your own transition.”

“No impediment to launch,” another voice confirmed.

“Establishing remote link with simulants. Link is good.”

“Commence uplink when you are ready.”

“We are good to go. Commencing uplink in T minus ten seconds…”

Do it! Do it now!

I couldn’t wait any longer and slammed the COMMENCE TRANSITION button with the palm of my hand before the countdown had even finished.

I could tell that I was going to like these new tanks.

There was a sudden jolt through my nervous system.

One mind, two bodies.

The brilliant clinical light of the med-bay.

The dimmed interior of the Wildcat.

The transition was almost instant.

A battery of senses awakened within me. My perceptions improved beyond the ken of a human body. Touch, smell, sight, hearing: all were super-alert. The texture of the insides of each combat-suit gauntlet. The smell of the brand-new tactical-helmet. Then the flood of fresh data, pouring into my mind as though it were an extra sense – unreadable in a human body, an additional faculty in my simulant body. A sense that I hadn’t been born with, but that I was by now so deeply acquainted with that it felt unnatural to be without it.

I growled – a deep, throaty animal expression – eager to try out this new body. I flexed my arms and legs.

“Transition confirmed. Sound off!”

My team were inside the Wildcat cabin and all confirmed successful transition.

“Williams, you copy?” I asked.

“Affirmative, sir,” Williams said. “All reads are nominal.”

Something about his tone made him sound more like a soldier; as though the transition had brought something alive in him as well. A simulant body does that to a man. I couldn’t see him or his team but knew that they were mounted in the second Wildcat, ready to launch alongside us.

“Lieutenant James, do you read?” I said, switching channels to the fighter squadron.

“This is Scorpio One,” James replied, “and I read loud and clear. Scorpio Squadron has green lights across the board.”

“Lazarus Actual,” a more distant voice chimed in on the communicator-network, “this is
Colossus
CIC. We have a confirm on your departure. Launching in five…”

The countdown ticked down rapidly.

Then I felt the Wildcat moving; the tug of G-force as the shuttle began to leave the mothership’s launching bay. I was pinned into my seat. Somewhere beside me, Kaminski crooned a line from a song that I didn’t recognise.

AUTO-PILOT ENGAGED, my suit declared.

The Wildcat hurtled out of the belly of the
Colossus
, streaking across Damascus Space. In zero-G now, I stayed buckled in. I followed our progress on the exterior cams, patched direct to my HUD. Our shuttle took point with the Warfighters following a safe distance behind.

“Clearing
Colossus
null-shield,” James said. “Adopting escort formation.”

There was no sensation to indicate that we were moving beyond the perimeter of the protective sphere, but I felt the psychological burden. The Wildcat was a transport shuttle and had no shield of its own.

Scorpio Squadron – six Hornet space fighters – fell into a tight pattern around the two shuttles. The Hornets were short-winged and delicate; carrying a single pilot, encased within a mirrored canopy. A GE-908 Starcannon – a heavy-duty laser – sat at the nose of each vessel. Beneath the wings, they carried a restricted load of plasma warheads.

“Walk in the fucking park…” a voice whispered over the comm. It sounded like someone from Williams’ team.

“Keep the line clear, people,” I ordered.

“You heard the man,” Williams said. “Radio silence.”

As we moved into our designated approach path, I saw our target. This was why we were here: what we were going to crack.
The Artefact
. I manipulated the camera controls, magnifying the image. The picture was patchy, fuzzed with lines of interference, but I could make out the basics. The outside was rough-hewn and sand-blasted. As we moved closer, on inspection the entire hull was etched with scripture. The markings flickered erratically. That might’ve just been a trick of the light caused by the Damascus Rift; but the effect was strangely disconcerting, like the structure was alive—

WARNING, my suit insisted.

A marker flashed on my HUD. I frowned, examined the feed. We were still on target, moving on the Artefact at a good pace. The problem was with the fighters.

“One of the Hornets has fallen out of formation,” Jenkins said.

I patched into James’ frequency. “Scorpio One? What’s happening to your people?”

Another marker flashed on my HUD. Another ship was off course now.

“Lazarus Actual,” James said. His voice was unclear, whining with static. “We are experiencing some technical difficulties with Scorpio Four and Five.”

My skin prickled. The noise behind that interference: I recognised it. It was a ghostly whisper of the Artefact’s signal. I swallowed hard, fought back the urge to call this whole damned thing off.

Two of the fighters were dangerously off course. Their running lights flashed intermittently.
They’re losing power,
I concluded. Our attack party suddenly seemed painfully vulnerable and underarmed; insects to the enormous Shard device.

“Oh shit…” someone whispered.

Scorpio Four dropped into an uncontrolled spin, end over end towards the Artefact…

My cams were still magnified. I saw something that no one else had noticed.

The Artefact was changing.

Structures rose from the hull.

“Anyone else seeing this?” one of the fighters queried. “Looks like some kind of—”

Weapon mounts suddenly studded the Artefact. Concealed turrets peppered the hull. As we drew nearer – into the kill zone – the weapons sprang to life, tracking incoming signals. The cannons weren’t any weapon that I could identify but the muzzle calibre was big enough to throw out a decent energy output.

Which is exactly what they did.

“Oh, fuck!” said the same voice. “We’re taking fire out here!”

“Hostile is active. Repeat: hostile is active—”

“Evasive manoeuvre! Hot fire on your six.”

A brilliant beam whip-cracked across my vision; gone before I even recognised what it was. The beam licked Scorpio Four. Punched straight through the armoured undercarriage.

“James!” I said. “Evade!”

“We’re experiencing systems failure,” James said. “Not sure what—”

That meant no null-shields, no electronic countermeasures. No defences at all. No nothing.

Another flash of light: Scorpio Five was suddenly in two pieces. The pilot babbled like crazy over the comms, managing to loose a missile. The plasma warhead corkscrewed in the direction of the
Colossus
.

“Danger close!” Jenkins screamed. “Danger close!”

A tiny, short-lived explosion marked the death of Scorpio Five. Debris rained across the dark hull of the Artefact, more turrets tracking the larger remnants. Where the ship hit the structure, fire poured over it.

“It’s awake,” Martinez declared. “I’m getting readings…”

An energy beam scythed into the hull of our APS.

Cut through the triple-plated ablative armour.

Went right through Martinez’s combat-suit and torso.

Left a hole in him as big as my head: immediately cauterised. The beam proceeded through the cabin roof.

“Shit!” Jenkins yelled. “Martinez is out and we’re open.”

Warning alarms began to sound in my head. The shuttle lurched into a spin.

“Seal suits!” I ordered.

The exterior cams were fried but they suddenly weren’t necessary. Through the gaping puncture in the hull, I saw the scene develop with my own eyes. The turrets poured beams into the approaching Alliance expedition. The fighter squadron was in total disarray. There was debris everywhere, fighters spinning out of control. None of them had managed any meaningful return fire.

I mag-locked my boots, held myself at the edge of the hull breach. It was a long way down; a vertiginous drop. Anti-sickness drugs flooded my system and kept me from throwing up inside my suit.

The sensation passed but suddenly the opposite became a reality: the Artefact spiralled beneath me, coming up far too fast. A crash-landing on the hull would be fatal.

“We’re taking heavy fire out here!” Williams reported.

“What exactly are we supposed to do about it?” Kaminski said.

To shut up and die.

The second Wildcat was lit up by a beam. It hit the engine. The fuel reserve must’ve been breached because the entire shuttle exploded.

My HUD flashed with confirmations that the Warfighters had made extraction.

Then Scorpio Squadron were all gone.

We were all that was left.

Our shuttle banked again – the AI making an irrelevant and futile attempt to avoid enemy fire. We were thrown towards the cabin ceiling. I slammed into a support strut, felt intense pain blossom in my back.
Broken spine?
It was agonising.

“Prepare for emergency landing!” I managed.

Another turn; another blistering impact against the cabin wall. Mason’s suit was breached and she clutched at a rent in her stomach.

I was almost glad when an energy beam caught our flank.

Moving at speed, firing thrusters and jinking, the superstructure fractured. There was a brief wave of heat over my combat-suit – I saw components exploding as the innards of the shuttle broke apart. Something heavy slammed into my chest. I grappled for purchase, tried to stay standing, but my mag-locks failed.

Mason was screaming, then she abruptly went silent.

Jenkins was still shouting orders. It was all pointless. I wasn’t even sure when Kaminski had bought it.

My body was flung clear of the wreckage, towards the Artefact. This could only go one way. I picked out flashes of light as the Artefact’s defences fired: again and again.

Either because I wasn’t a threat, or because I was a spent force, the Shard weapons completely ignored me.

The hull came up fast to meet me—

I was back in my simulator, screaming so loud that my vocal chords burnt.

Above me, floating on a viewer-screen, scrolled text:

All dead. All gone.

The tank canopy popped open.

A team of medtechs reached over, wrapping an aluminium blanket around me, whispering soothing words. I shoved them away, collapsed out of the tank. My vision was spinning and I clung to consciousness: if I passed out I didn’t think that I would come back.

Williams stood beside me, out of his tank and holding a blanket around his naked body. He grimaced – his face full of red lacerations, the reminders of how his simulant had just died.

Debrief was short and to the point.

No one knew what had happened. Saul had detected some internal energy signatures but couldn’t tell us anything else.

“No shit,” Williams said. “Those were some big ass lasers, Professor.”

It was hard to disagree with him on that.

The atmosphere aboard the
Colossus
felt subdued. News of the disaster spread through the ship like wildfire – with the rumour that the Shard were maybe not as dead as we’d expected. Not even the
Colossus
, with all her massed firepower, could stand up to such an enemy. The Hornet space fighters, absent from the hangar bay, were evidence of that.

Everyone avoided the mess hall that night. Warfighters, Legion, even Scorpio Squadron.

I wanted to check on the Legion but they had gone to ground. It wasn’t an official visit, so I didn’t bother comming them. I just took for granted that they were all wrapped up in their own private hells: reliving the sudden and brutal dispatch we’d just experienced.

Almost as an afterthought, I went up to the Vulture’s Row. The Row was a tower-block construction, and by elevator it took almost a minute to reach the top. The deck itself was empty, save for a lone figure standing at the end of the observatory.

Mason started as I approached, wiped her face.

“Good evening, sir,” she said.

“Is it?”

“Well, the view is okay.” She leant against the safety rail. “I’ve never been on a ship like this before.”

“The others will think that you’re a tourist, if they catch you up here.”

“Maybe I am. I like watching the fighter-ships taking off, coming in to land. Scorpio Squadron has been running security patrols.”

It was so easy to forget that not everyone was like me. Not everyone had seen this all before; not everyone was so tired, jaded and bitter. Maybe it was even a little refreshing to meet a trooper who was still impressed by such simple things.

“There will be a good deal fewer of those ships,” I said, “given what happened today. The simulants – next-gen or otherwise – are expendable. The ships are not.”

Mason laughed. “Did today go as you expected?”

The Artefact lingered at the corner of my eye. I didn’t want to look out at it, didn’t want to face it tonight.

“Of course it didn’t. I think that you can guess that.”

I’d expected it to be easy. I’d expected this Artefact to be just like the one that I had known on Helios. But this Artefact was different.

Unconsciously Mason rubbed her stomach with the palm of her hand. I had no doubt that the pressure still dwelt there – the pain that had killed her just hours ago.

I found myself choking at the memory – because that was all it was – and struggling for breath.

“Is it always like this?” she asked.

“Not always,” I said. “Sometimes it’s worse.”