The Lazarus War: Legion (16 page)

I called a general assembly early the next morning.

“Let’s work on what we know,” Saul said, pacing the CIC.

The Warfighters and Legionnaires sat around the enormous tactical holo-display. Loeb, Dr West and James were in attendance as well. The Artefact’s response to our first approach had seriously altered the game.

Saul lapped the display, one hand poised beneath his bearded chin, the other used to punctuate every point he made.

“The Artefact has a defensive mechanism of some sort. Likely an automatic response.”

For likely, I heard possibly.

“Have you seen technology like this on any of the other Shard sites?” I asked.

“No, no. None of the other sites have yielded working xeno-tech.”

James tapped the display controls, rewound the feed. Each Hornet in his squadron had been recording and broadcasting as they went down. In tri-D, we watched the fighters being torn apart by the Artefact’s defences. Brilliant beams criss-crossed the sky, leaving destruction in their wake. James winced as the last of the fighters went down. He and his team had made immediate extraction. They were now back in new bodies; I hadn’t seen them in their real skins yet. His new skin was indistinguishable from the last.

“Probably some form of laser weapon,” he concluded. “Maybe plasma.”

James looked somewhat crestfallen by the turn of events. I got the distinct feeling that Scorpio Squadron hadn’t suffered a defeat like this before.

“Doesn’t much matter what it is,” I said. “We know that it kills us.”

James nodded. “Not only that. Immediately before we got hit, the Hornets suffered general systems failure. It wasn’t targeted; we were all hit.”

“That suggests a ‘dead zone’ around the Artefact,” Saul said, “which is consistent with existing research on Shard tech. Perhaps Shard tech is capable of producing an anti-electronic field.”

I watched the last few seconds of our demise. Scorpio Squadron now gone, the feed jumped to footage from the Wildcats. They had barely lasted longer than the Hornets.

“They took out everything,” Williams said, shaking his head.

“Not quite…” I said.

The last few seconds of the feed played. Burning wreckage showered the Artefact’s hull. The Artefact used more energy beams to break up the larger elements, until there was nothing left at all.

Not quite nothing.

I watched as my simulant sailed out of the Wildcat. I could still feel the muscle-memory reaction. Flash, flash. The remains of the Wildcat were annihilated. The feed jumped to my combat-suit – a jittery, poor-quality stream that I knew would imminently terminate. Another simulant – maybe Mason or Jenkins – flew past me, also thrown clear of the APS.

“There…” I said.

My body fell to the Artefact.

There was no response from the cannons.

I froze the display. An operating Shard turret sat within metres of where my body had fallen, but it did nothing. The video abruptly terminated in a wave of static as I smashed into the Artefact.

“It reacted to the incoming ships. But it didn’t react to me, or the other falling simulants.”

“So, what are you suggesting?” Williams asked. “We’re a long way from the Artefact, man. How the hell are we going to get down there? Jump?”

His team laughed, but nervously.

An idea had begun to form.

“The
Colossus
was a drop-troop ship, wasn’t it?” I said. “Admiral Loeb: does the
Colossus
still have drop-troop launch tubes?”

Although I’d seen the tubes when we’d first boarded the
Colossus
, I didn’t know whether the starship still had the necessary internal loading mechanisms.

Loeb frowned at me, as though the question was some insult to him personally. “Command doesn’t consider drop-troop assaults a good use of resources any more. We haven’t used the launch tubes in years. When the Simulant Operations Programme gained favour, Command more or less abandoned the drop-troop initiative.”

“But do the tubes work?”

“All of the original features of my ship are still functional.”

“What are you thinking?” Jenkins asked, a half-smile on her lips.

Kaminski leant over the table, grinning as well. “The Torus Seigel manoeuvre?”

“The very same,” I said.

Exactly an hour after the briefing, I clambered back into my tank and jacked myself in. Around me, through the watery prism of the tank, I saw the Legionnaires and the Warfighters jacking in as well.

“Are all simulant operators ready for transition?” Dr West called.

“Of course we’re ready,” I said, and activated the internal tank controls.

Back in the early days of the Alliance space forces, the drop-troop delivery method was considered the pinnacle of shock tactics. The Alliance had used the strategy on Epsilon Ultris, on Barnard’s Star, even during the Martian Rebellion. Tacticians had long regarded the orbital delivery of a large-scale infantry force to be an admirable but impossible goal.

The development of dependable anti-grav technology changed all of that. Imagine it: a thousand Alliance troops raining down from the sky, landing in precise formation and taking the fight to the Directorate’s front door. The mothership, the drop-troop base, remains in high orbit – lending fire support to the ground pounders. No need for costly dropship insertions any more.

That was the theory, at least.

Now the reality. The trooper is loaded into a drop-capsule: an armoured shell, not much bigger than the soldier encased inside. Wholly dependent on Naval intel to make sure he is fired at the right moment, to make sure he lands on target. The period between launch and landing in enemy territory? It lasts seconds but I can tell you, it’s hell. Anything could go wrong: your capsule might not fire, you might get hit on the way down, or you could land off-target. Coming out of the capsule, you’re likely to be under heavy enemy fire. You better hope that the Navy boys – safe in their warship, just visible on the horizon – have tracked you on the way down as well. You can just as easily end up being hit by friendly fire.

As I lay inside the capsule, I silently considered all of this. The capsule was Iron-Horse pattern, manufactured by some long-defunct Earth corporation – through some twist of coincidence, the same type that I had used on my last hardcopy mission. Torus Seigel had been a hellish drop-troop operation, a true meat grinder for the Alliance Army and, in particular, Special Forces. It had been a planet of strategic value to both the Krell and the Alliance, into which each species had poured millions of lives to achieve a bloody stalemate. The memories came flooding back. I remembered being trapped inside one of the flying caskets as it launched over Seigel. I hadn’t thought about that op in an age, but now I could recall every detail of the mission…

I snapped back to reality. I was in utter blackness, body held rigid by webbing across my arms, legs and torso. That was for my own safety. A crippling sense of anxiety overcame me, made me want to thrash out – to break the webbing, to be free from the drop-capsule.

Relax. You’ve done this a hundred times before. You know the drill.

And I did know the drill, too well. The only difference was that this time I was simulated.

At just that moment, my tactical-helmet came online. The HUD illuminated. Glowing graphics confirmed what I couldn’t physically see: successful transition for the rest of the operators.

“Sound off!”

There came a barrage of “affirmatives” from the rest of my team, as well as Williams’ Warfighters.

“Countdown initiated,” Dr West confirmed.

Nine steel coffins, in a tight grid formation. Several other dud capsules were being launched as well, filling out our numbers: extras in case the Artefact took offensive action.

“Stay together and stay cool,” I ordered.

My heart beat fractionally faster, containing an impossible fear that a simulant body could never know.

Five…

Four…

Three…

Two…

One…

“Yee haw!” someone shouted over the communicator, generating enough feedback that my ears ached.

Feet first, I was launched from the
Colossus
.

No sound, no visuals.

It made the hard-drop to Maru Prime feel like child’s play. The sudden rush of the launch, pushing down on every organ and bone of my body. Such that I felt it would squash me flat, for just a second, then—

Nothing.

My HUD indicated that I’d broken free of the
Colossus
’ gravity well. The other troopers were in staggered formation, some launching with me, others pausing for a second or so. The theory went that this would maximise the chances of a successful drop. But staggered launches meant nothing to an enemy with no tactical awareness, and where the Shard were concerned I was minded to abandon all tactical assumptions.

The outer shell started to slew away; metal plating flaking from the exterior. The safety webbing began to relax.

CLEARANCE ACHIEVED, my HUD stated. PREPARE FOR LANDING.

As fast as that: probably a few seconds of freefall.

I braced for the Artefact’s attack, but realised that we’d made it past the perimeter at which the Artefact had commenced the assault the previous expedition.

Now I had work to do. In a controlled planetary drop, the outer capsule protects you from damage caused by atmospheric re-entry. That can be lethal, even to a simulant. But when the drop is being conducted in a vacuum, when there is no atmosphere, it serves a different purpose. The capsule can withstand small-arms fire, can block your IR signature.

I was a few hundred metres from the Artefact.

INITIATING DESCENT PROCEDURE, my HUD stated.

Although the Artefact had no significant gravitational pull of its own, the
Colossus
had fired me at speed. The momentum generated by the launch meant that I’d have to slow my descent if I was going to actually land on the structure, as opposed to being splattered across it. I fired a burst from my thruster unit, mounted on my back. Twisted in zero-G and began to decelerate.

“Mason, you clear?” I asked. I remembered too well what had happened back at Maru Prime.

She breathed hard but answered: “Affirmative, Major. I’m in formation.”

Practice makes perfect,
I thought.

“Kaminski, Jenkins, Martinez?”

“All in formation,” Jenkins answered. “Coming up on the Artefact now.”

My backpack thruster activated again and I landed gently on the hull. My mag-locks kicked in: anchoring me to the metallic plating underfoot. In zero-G, I barely felt a thing.

Still, I wasn’t taking any chances.

“Weapons free,” I said.

We were all carrying the same standard-issue plasma rifles. I fluidly unlocked my M95. The battle-rifle camera system activated but there were no targets to be identified.

“Sweet Christo!” Kaminski chuckled. “That was something.”

We had landed in a dispersed formation, within a square kilometre of each other. My HUD illuminated with the locations of the rest of my team.

“This is Captain Williams, sounding off. We’re all down safely.”

I tuned my communicator to the
Colossus
.

“This is Lazarus Actual, do you read?”

“We copy,” Saul replied. “Fascinating, fascinating.”

“We’re down. Do you have audio and video?”

“Patchy, but the feeds are holding.”

That would have to be good enough. “Keep comms contact to a minimum,” I directed. “If there are Krell in there, I don’t want them homing in on us.”

“Understood.”

“Moving to breach point. Lazarus out.”

“
Colossus
out.”

I moved along the hull, towards the rest of my squad.

“Check those cannons,” Jenkins ordered.

Although I was cautious, the Shard weapons sat inert.

“Just keep a safe distance from them,” I said.

Nothing about this structure felt predictable.

Williams’ Warfighters fell into position alongside my team. This was the first time that I’d seen them skinned up. Their camo-fields were deactivated and I took in the personal modifications that each of them had made to their gear. They had their own squad badge: a surfboard, riding a blue wave. Maybe some reference to California.

The suggested breach location was flagged on my map. Both squads slowly converged on it. Dr West and Saul had selected a circular structure of unknown design, simply because the scanner returns had suggested that this was a weaker point in the hull.

“Permission to deploy demolitions,” Jenkins asked.

She was especially loaded up and must’ve been crammed into her drop-capsule. Two large demo-charges were strapped to her back, together with a heavy breaching tool and other explosives kit. Saul could give his best guess, but since no one had been aboard the Artefact yet, we didn’t know what tech would be necessary to breach it.

“Set a charge,” I nodded. “Warfighters, fall into covering position.”

Just as we didn’t know how easy it would be to breach the Artefact, we didn’t know what would be waiting for us inside.

“Warfighters!” Williams barked. “Form up! On the man’s mark!”

Kaminski was crouched beside me, panning a bio-scanner unit over the hull, searching for signals.

“Any movement inside?” I asked him.

“Hull’s too thick to penetrate with handheld kit,” he said. “But I’ll keep trying.”

Jenkins moved towards the circular structure set into the hull. The diameter was twice, three times my size: obviously made for something far larger than a simulant. There were no obvious controls or other mechanisms.

“I’ll blow the central seam,” she explained. “That should weaken the panel—”

“Hold position!” Kaminski suddenly said.

Jenkins paused over her demo pack.

I stepped back, battle-rifle up and ready to fire. Only now could I see what it really was: a portal. An enormous airlock, with panels made from overlapping metal leaves, as black as the rest of the structure. Those had been contracted tight, sealing the entrance. Along with the rest of the Artefact, it was difficult to scan – had probably been hidden from the
Colossus
’ sensor-suite. Up close, the purpose was obvious. The portal began to open. Each individual metal panel rotated, relaxing: retreating into the hull.