The Lazarus War: Legion (17 page)

Eight heavy plasma rifles aimed into the darkness inside. Ready for what might be about to come out.

“How did it do that?” Williams whispered. His breathing was restrained. “Why did it do that?”

“Maybe it wants us to go inside,” Martinez said.

There was another sub-chamber, much bigger than a man: leading to a further ominous doorway. A fine mist of ice crystals floated into space, the remains of whatever atmosphere had been captured inside the chamber. I crouched at the lip of the portal and activated my rifle-lamp. Bright light flashed over the inside of the Artefact, probing the abandoned room.

“Looks empty,” I said. “And it has a gravity field.”

My body was being gently tugged into the Artefact; if I allowed myself to lean too far forward, I knew that I would be pulled inside. Williams knelt beside me. It was like we were both at the edge of a yawning black pit, a glimpse into the abyss.
Thousands of years, and this old crate is still working
. I briefly wondered whether anything that the human race had built or created would last so long. The gun turrets were one thing – possibly explainable as an automatic defence response. But a functioning airlock was something completely different.

“Maybe it isn’t as dead as Saul thinks,” Martinez offered.

“Still no bio-scanner returns,” Kaminski said. “And I’m getting a decent field inside the structure now.”

The darkness called out to me. A single toneless whistle sounded over my comm-link. My HUD fuzzed for a second; systems jumbling.

“Anyone else hear that?” I asked.

“Hear what?” Kaminski said.

That was answer enough. “Nothing. Just interference.”

And it’s only going to get worse…

“I should take point,” Williams said, readying himself to move inside. He turned to my helmet-mounted camera – pulled his best video-face: “This is a big step for the human race, contact with another alien species—”

I put a hand to his chest, to hold him back. “No. I want to be first in.”

I stepped over the boundary into the Artefact.

I’m finally here. I’m back again.

Felt the gut punch of a gravity shift. Down and up became confused. My brain tried to interpret otolith signals and I was temporarily paralysed with nausea. The sensation passed rapidly: before I could really appreciate it, my medi-suite had already administered the necessary drug combination. Down really was down, and my mag-locks automatically deactivated.

Behind me was an infinite star-field – the Alliance fleet just visible – and ahead of me was the interior of the Shard Artefact. I suddenly felt a very long way from the rest of the human race, let alone the Alliance.

“Watch the shift,” I warned the others. “Gravity approaching full-G in here.”

The sub-chamber was abandoned and crystallised dust lined the walls and floor.
Could this have been Elena’s route?
I asked myself. I searched for footprints – for some indication that someone had come before us – but there was nothing. The place was pristine in its desertion.

The others filed into the corridor beyond the portal, through the sub-chamber. I kept my eyes ahead: only saw the movements of the rest of my squad on my HUD scanner as blips.

“All troopers in formation,” Jenkins confirmed.

“I’m inside, but I’m not believing it,” Kaminski said. “Why’d it let us in?”

“Fuck knows. But this is definitely an airlock. Which suggests that – at some point – whoever built this structure needed an atmosphere.”

“But there are no controls…” Williams said. “Maybe the whole place is automated.”

As if in response to his comment, the airlock door slid shut behind us. With the access door shut, it was pitch-black inside. Not just dark: nothingness black. My tactical-helmet shifted into night-vision mode: drawing the corridor in filtered greens and greys.

There was movement up ahead.

Both squads were combat-ready, weapons trained in that direction.

The inner lock door slid open. I couldn’t hear it, through my closed tactical-helmet, but I could imagine the groan of the ancient mechanism – the
schtick!
as the panels retreated into the walls.

“Move up. By the numbers.”

Both squads darted through the inner door. The lock led into a tunnel – wide, ovoid. The walls and floors were lined with more cuneiform, just like the outer hull. The inside of the structure looked a lot like the tunnels under the desert on Helios, and I struggled to deal with those memories. My heartbeat increased; that sudden emotional response that not even a simulant could protect me from. My suit AI instantly noticed the shift in my presentation.

“You okay, sir?” Mason asked.

She must’ve seen my biorhythms too. It took a second for some corrective chemical concoction to hit my bloodstream, administered by my onboard medi-suite.

“I’m fine,” I said.

Martinez was tapping his wrist-comp, taking readings from his external suit sensors. “This place has atmospherics.”

Kaminski verified his findings. “Jesus. Crusader’s right. Decent oxygenation, low nitrogen levels.”

“Everyone stay buttoned up until I say otherwise. Move on to objectives.”

But Kaminski and Martinez were right. There had to be some sort of concealed life-support system in place, but I couldn’t see any evidence of it. However the atmosphere was being maintained, it was optimal, approaching Earth-standard.

“How’d it know what we breathe, man?” Williams asked.

There was no answer to that. There was no way that the Artefact could know. The structure itself offered no answer: the interior was horrendously quiet.

I separated from the group, moved up on the next junction. Tapped the suit-camera mounted on the side of my helmet: broadcasting in real-time back to the
Colossus
. I knew that the Sci-Div complement would be eager to see what was happening.

“This is Lazarus Actual. Are you reading me, Saul?”

“Loud and clear,” Saul replied. “I’m getting everything. Can you pan around left and take in that wall?”

I did as he asked. My camera recorded whatever I was seeing. Although the cuneiform all looked the same to me, I hoped that Saul could understand some of it.

“That good enough?”

“Yes, yes. The vid-feeds are being analysed by the xenolinguistics AIs. Can you commence mapping of that corridor section?”

“Fine. Lazarus out.”

I broke the connection.

“Deploying drones,” I said. “All troopers copy.”

My combat-suit carried a full complement of surveillance drones, and on my mark they deployed around me. The swarm scattered immediately. The others did the same; soon the area was flooded with electronic eyes.

“Execute mission plan. Legion move on the primary objective, Warfighters take the secondary objective.”

“That’s an affirmative,” Williams said, and moved off with his squad.

Our designated coordinates were a few hundred metres inside the Artefact.

“Drones report no biological or mechanical activity,” I recorded. “Anyone else getting any readings?”

“Nothing here,” Mason said.

“Same here,” Jenkins said.

“Same,” Martinez reported.

“Nothing,” Kaminski said. “But this place is heavily shielded. I’d like to know what the hull’s made of. There’s hardly any background radiation.”

That was surprising enough: we were so close to the Rift, the place should’ve be bathed in cosmic rays. Outside, my suit had detected a significant rem reading.

“Moving into surrounding corridors,” Jenkins said. “Provide covering fire to the major, people.”

Williams and his Warfighters were behind us now.

A soft chime sounded in my head.

MICRO CHANGE IN AIR DENSITY, my HUD warned.

What the fuck is that supposed to mean?

“Combat formation!” Williams roared over the comm.

The urgency in his voice, that edge that couldn’t be faked, made me drop to one knee. I scanned the corridor.

“Speak to me, Williams!”

He was only a couple of corridors away, almost on the Warfighters’ objective. The glowing blips representing his squad abruptly fell into a tight perimeter at a junction, trying to cover every opening.

“Williams, fall back down the main corridor,” I ordered. “You’ve got too many approaches to cover there—”

“Drones are down!” Martinez called.

One by one, each of my drones went off-line. In the course of maybe three seconds, their feeds were terminated.
That’s impossible!
I argued. They had been spread across the structure, several hundred metres apart. But it was much worse than that. My drones weren’t the only units affected.
All
of the drones were gone. The implications were clear: there was something else inside the Artefact with us. Hostiles fast enough to take out the drones before they could even be registered.

Even so, save for picking up the rest of my team, my bio-scanner was completely dead.

The enemy doesn’t show up on scans.

“Watch those corners!” Williams called. “Executing your order. Tight formation, people…”

The Legion did the same. Formed a defensive perimeter, back to back, covering the wide corridor. It was dark, the walls pressing in on us—

“One of Williams’ team is down,” Kaminski said.

There was a nervous, pregnant pause as the others consulted their suit systems.

“Jesus, he’s just gone!” said Mason. “My diagnostics report that his signal has vanished.”

“What’s happening, Williams?”

This is fucking stupid
, I insisted to myself.
There’s nothing in here—

“Do we fall back to the exit?” Mason asked.

“That’s a negative,” I whispered. “Null-shields up. There’s nowhere to run.”

There really wasn’t. If we did fall back, would the Artefact let us retreat? I didn’t think so. We were trapped.

Martinez tore a flare from his combat-suit, and lit it. The area was dowsed in angry light – jittery spider-web shadows thrown over the walls. The others copied him: soon the corridor was full of unpleasant, blood-red luminescence. Our null-shields were visible as overlapping red spheres.

The floor was softly vibrating, filtering through the soles of my combat-suit. A humming began to fill the air, barely perceivable, but quickly building. It felt – impossibly – like the structure was breathing.

“Welcome to the war!” Williams declared, his voice now crackling with static. “Incoming!”

Then the communication network descended into screaming, and the calm was well and truly broken.

There was weapons fire – lots of weapons fire.

The sound of heavy plasma weapons discharging bounced off the walls. The structure acted as an amplifier, creating nightmarish echoes. Something began to shriek in the distance: something not Krell, not human. It tore into my subconscious, was almost disabling.

The Shard are still here.

“What’s happening in there?” Saul insisted. “We’re getting some massive energy readings.”

“Get off the line,
Colossus
!” I roared. I didn’t have time to deal with technical queries. “Now!”

Another of Williams’ team died. No explanation. The corresponding blip disappeared from my tactical display.

“Trooper down!” someone shouted over the comm.

Impossible to tell who it was.

Then Williams’ whole team was gone.

Just gone: extracted. Their respective life-signs vanished from my scanner.

They will be coming for us next…

I panned my rifle over the walls, the floor.

“I see it!” Martinez yelled. “It’s above us!”

He fired into the ceiling, into shadow.

Whatever it was, the thing was only a metre or so away from me. But even with the multi-vision cameras in my tactical-helmet, even with the targeting-AI of my battle-rifle, it was still too fast for me to capture.

“They’re all around us!” Mason managed. “I can’t get a fix—!”

Then the thing was suddenly inside Mason’s null-shield. It lifted her body with ease. She struggled, her armoured limbs thrashing.

“Stay still!” I ordered.

I brought my rifle up, trying to get a clean shot at the blur of motion that had her. But before I could fire, before Mason could get free, she was slammed against the wall. Again and again, so fast that she had almost become invisible. Her neck, chest and arms snapped. The force was sickening – enough to rupture her suit and pulverise the body inside.

Jenkins put two shots into Mason; either accidentally or as some small act of mercy. Didn’t much matter, because we were all about to die in the tunnel. Of that I was certain.

It tossed Mason aside. Her body landed with arms and legs at the wrong angle, combat-suit crushed beyond recognition. I’d never seen armour suffer that much damage.

By the time I managed to loose a shot, the shadow had already moved on. My pulses scorched the walls and ceiling.

“I have it—!” Jenkins said.

Then Jenkins was off her feet as well.

Kaminski twisted about, and perfectly illuminated her with his suit-lamps.

Jenkins brought her rifle up to fire at something that was breaking from the dark. And for just a split second, I saw what was hunting us through the Artefact’s dead tunnels.

A sculpture of living metal.

A thing of black chrome.

A shadow within a shadow, glistening like oil.

Whatever it was, it grabbed Jenkins.

For a moment, the construct was rippling, amorphous dark. Then, without warning, it became precise – so fucking defined – and punched a limb right through Jenkins’ shoulder. Her armour did nothing to protect her: the shadow sliced into it with ease.

“No!” Kaminski roared.

Jenkins’ face exploded as the construct put a tendril through her helmet. The face-plate shattered noisily and bloodily.

Kaminski and I fell back, desperately trying to get a bead on the thing. It never seemed to stay still.

In a perverted lover’s embrace, Jenkins’ arms and legs shook in the ecstasy of death. She was wrapped in viscous strands: ensnared by a poisoned web of mercury. The dark spewed ten twisting pseudopods, needle-tipped limbs.