The Lazarus War: Legion (3 page)

I turned to Mason. “Command doesn’t want the science team. They want Professor Saul. The others are a necessary inconvenience.”

“But the briefing from Command referred to retrieval of the entire staff…”

“Welcome to your first real lesson, Private. Never believe what Command tells you.”

That was something that I had learnt a long time ago.

“Did you read about Saul’s background?” I asked. “His expertise?”

Mason nodded. “He’s an expert in xenolinguistics.”

“Yeah, with a specialism in the Shard.”

Mason fell silent. From the expression on her face, she had clearly seen the evidence of the Helios mission: the knowledge that we’d brought back. It was supposed to be classified, but the
Point
was a closed community. Word got around, myth became fact.

“I bet that Command has a plan for Professor Saul,” I said.

And if it involved the Shard, then I wanted to know about it – wanted to be part of it.

I popped the laboratory door with a single pulse from my plasma rifle. The metalwork was heavy duty but no match for a phased plasma charge. I created a man-sized hole in the panels, smoking hot at the edges, and prised open the rest.

The drones darted inside and, rifle up, I stalked after them. Mason followed closely behind.

The primary laboratory was jammed with scientific equipment, the likes of which I couldn’t identify, and the lights were dimmed. One wall was claimed by ceiling-to-floor reinforced windows, as though this was an observation point. Outside, the rolling red sea of Maru Prime’s surface was visible: the view quivering uncertainly as the station shifted on its axis again.

“Professor Saul?” I called into the room.

A tall, lean figure was over one of the workbenches – a man wearing a civilian spacesuit, just like those worn by the rest of the crew.
He’s at least got that right,
I thought to myself. He was hurriedly collecting items from around the room: data-clips, slates, disassembled electronic components. An armoured black case sat open on the bench and he was packing the items away.

The drones swooped around the man’s head and shoulders. Without any apparent conscious thought, he swiped them away with a gloved hand.

I sighed.
Science types: all the same.

“Professor Ashan Saul?” I asked. This was nothing more than a nicety, as my suit had already positively identified him from onboard data.

Saul nodded and grumbled something in agreement, continuing to work without looking up. He wore a pair of thick-rimmed spectacles, which at first glance looked painfully archaic. As I got nearer, I saw that these were enhanced vision goggles: recording and playing back data onto the transparent lenses.

“Saul?” I barked, this time turning up my external speaker volume.

Saul jumped and turned to me.

“Yes,” he muttered. “Yes, yes. You must be the Simulant Operations team. They said that you were coming.”

He eyed me suspiciously; lingering on the Alliance battlegroup emblem on my shoulder.

“You are the rescue party, aren’t you? Ah, challenge: Chicago.”

“Response: claret,” I said. I hadn’t expected to need to use the safety protocol. “My name is Major Harris. Let’s go. There isn’t much time—”

“Yes, yes. I understand. The station is capsizing, and the Krell are invading.”

His blasé attitude irritated me – such apparent disregard for the efforts it had taken to retrieve him. He waved at the full-length window. The station axis shifted again and now the window showed the airspace above the facility. Krell and Alliance ships continued their assaults.

“I’m almost ready. Shouldn’t be much longer.”

I inspected Saul. He looked older than he had on his personnel file: beard a little greyer, skin tauter across his cheeks, far more worn out. He had a nasty scar on his left jaw, partially concealed by his beard. His left eye, beyond the coloured projections of the enhanced-vis glasses, was a milky white. His good eye twitched in my direction.

“The station is going down,” I said, definitively. “We need to leave.”

“Of course, of course,” Saul nodded.

A cold feeling gripped me as I looked down at the open case on the workbench. It was filled by printed sheets: star-maps. My vision swam uncomfortably as I took in the tight printed scripture, something so alien that it was impossibly familiar.

Saul moved in front of me, breaking the spell. He grabbed for the case and sealed the outer locks. Attached it to his left wrist with a handcuff.

“It has to be me that carries this. It is my research. Command will want it.”

“What is this stuff, Major?” Mason asked, prodding the workbench with the muzzle of her plasma rifle.

I recognised other components, up close. There were scattered hololithic plates pinned to the walls, backlit by light boxes.

Shard scripture.

Saul didn’t say anything but he didn’t need to. I was looking, I was absolutely sure, at data downloaded from the Key. There were even vid-captures of the Artefact on Helios – grainy, imprecise.

“I thought that this was an observatory?” Mason said.

She was smarter than we’d given her credit for.

Professor Saul nodded absently, almost glumly. “Far Eye Observatory isn’t what it seems.”

Mason glanced at me. I’d let her fill in the blanks, I decided. Whatever the crew of Far Eye had been working on – it was strictly a black op, established on a station out in the QZ because here it would be safe from prying eyes. It was all about plausible deniability.

Mason looked wounded by the revelation but I’d already decided that Command wanted the recovery of a substantial asset from Maru. Professor Saul, with his experience in such a specialised field, and his research: those were definitely worth risking a five billion-credit simulant team for. It was the sort of conceit I’d not only come to accept, but learnt to expect.

SIXTEEN MINUTES UNTIL TERMINAL DECLINE, my HUD insisted.

“We need to move,” I ordered. “Get your shit together, Professor. Stay with us as we move through the station.”

“Yes, yes.”

I thought-activated the drone swarm: sending them off across the station to monitor our path. At that moment, something deep within the station’s structure exploded, giving a reverberant metallic boom.

“And suit up, if you want to breathe.”

The professor scrabbled around beneath his workbench, producing a battered plastic safety helmet. He clasped it into place, looking uneasy inside the spacesuit. Then he strapped a solid-shot pistol to his leg.

I linked to Jenkins, moving as I talked.

“What’s your status, Jenkins?”

“Clearing the main mess hall now.”

The mess hall wasn’t far from Communications – the group hadn’t made much progress. Damned civvies.

“Not helped by the gravity and atmosphere leakage. Decks three through eleven are venting.”

“Just keep moving. You got a bead on Kaminski?”

“His signal is intermittent. I can’t get through to him.”

“Keep trying.”

“My scanner is malfunctioning as well. I can’t even pick you up on it.”

“Use your good old-fashioned mark one eyeballs.”

“Mark twos, actually.

“Stay frosty. Harris out.”

“Jenkins out.”

We moved through the damaged lab doorway and out into the corridor. The overhead lights gave up – casting an impenetrable gloom over the section. I used my helmet sensor array, a combination of infrared and night-vision, to manoeuvre onwards. I triggered my mag-locks to keep moving. Behind me, I saw that Saul had a similar system incorporated into his suit. He wasn’t used to walking with locks though, and stumbled like he was wading through drying concrete. Mason hustled him along, her rifle panning the dark. A shrill keening filled the air.

“That will be the primary drive malfunctioning,” Saul proclaimed. “The station was originally tethered into a geosynchronous orbit by the drivers in the lower decks. With those gone, we will reach terminal decline faster than anticipated.”

My AI updated almost immediately: TWELVE MINUTES UNTIL TERMINAL DECLINE.

“Damn. We’re losing time.”

I was using the updated intel from the Communications Centre. The path to the shuttle bay was now mapped by my HUD and the continuous visuals from the drone swarm. Roughly half of those had now gone off-line; either no longer broadcasting, or perhaps destroyed by the chaos erupting across the facility.

“What would cause such an occurrence?” Mason said, still moving on. “Didn’t your station AI predict that you had several minutes before safety parameters were breached?”

Saul gave a soft shrug. Through the plasglass helmet, his thin face was sweating profusely. A disabling layer of condensation had formed on the interior of his face-plate.

“Maybe the AI got it wrong. I’ve never really trusted her. Nothing that intelligent should be fully trusted. Or maybe some external force—”

Before he could finish the sentence, the bio-scanner illuminated with a wave of soft targets – potential organic life-forms in our vicinity.

There was no time to shout a warning.

In front of me, a six-inch-thick metal bulkhead suddenly exploded. Debris showered us – boomer-fire pouring through the destroyed door. Bright as plasma, just as deadly: multi-coloured laser lances, scorching the floor and ceiling.

“Brace!” I ordered, rolling aside as Krell flooded the corridor. “Shields up.”

Another piece of new kit: the personal null-shield generator – one of Research & Development’s more useful innovations. I locked my left arm in front of my face, plasma rifle aimed with my right, and watched as the generator activated. The actual tech was encased somewhere in my backpack, powered by the same generator as my life-support package. An oily shimmer appeared in front of me. As it went up, the shield began to hum angrily – made my skull bones vibrate.

“Get behind me, Professor,” I ordered.

Three targets presented. Krell gun-grafts – technical designation “secondary-forms”. They were slower than the primary-form warrior caste but armed with larger and longer-ranged weapons. The nearest drone caught a decent image of the lead Krell: armed with a grafted bio-cannon – a boomer – complete with an ammunition sac that trailed between its stomach and gun-arms.

The Krell group moved as a single entity. They poured through the door and fired. They looked vaguely confused – if they were capable of experiencing such an emotion – as their shots hit my null-shield.

Upgrades, fucker!
It felt good to get one up on them for a change, although I knew that it wouldn’t last. The null-shield generator was new tech – once the Krell had faced the gear a few times, they would devise a counter-measure. Individually, the Krell had limited tactical awareness, but the Collective was the best battlefield database in the universe.

Incandescent pulses fired on both sides. The Krell advanced regardless. The lead xeno caught a round to the chest – leaking blood and ichor across the floor – and began to close the distance between us.

Mason primed a grenade, scattered it towards the Krell. It breached her shield temporarily, bounced off the wall as the station axis shifted again. The secondary-forms had no mag-locks and grappled with whatever terrain features they could to stay fixed to the deck. The lucky distraction was enough to throw them off balance: the grenade exploded amid the trio of aliens. Suddenly body parts and gore covered the corridor. Two of the aliens went down, although the third was rallying for a further attack.

This was a kill or be killed situation; no cover, nowhere to run. There was little point in stealth, little purpose in trying to effect a retreat. I rose up, cycled three micro-grenades into the underslung launcher of my plasma rifle. New tech is good, but sometimes the old ways are best: I launched the incendiary grenades at the Krell attackers.

“Down!” I yelled to Saul, grinding my teeth in expectation.

The professor rolled sideways, the deck listing beneath him like that of a ship at sea, and the incendiaries went off.

The remaining secondary-form exploded. It fired its boomer as it went but every shot went wide.

“More incoming,” Mason said.

This time a primary-form darted through the smoke. It moved with an alien grace: a bio-form obviously adapted for life in or near water, a theory supplemented by the xeno’s sharkish features. The xeno didn’t pause and I caught its movements only in freeze frame. Despite their physical bulk, the primary-forms were seriously fast.

Mason slammed the xeno aside with a volley of shots from her plasma rifle.

The primary kept coming, tumbling to within a metre of our position – holes smoking in its chest and head. The body eventually collapsed.

“Just follow me and stay safe,” I ordered, and was already up and moving.

A swarm of hostile signals – blazing hot on my HUD – followed us through the skewed corridors. Elsewhere, pestering my hindbrain like a hot needle, the drone army sent regular alerts: going off-line faster than I could follow, broadcasting a stream of unpalatable images.

Far Eye Observatory was now filled with invaders. The whole pantheon of Krell xeno-forms was present: from primary-forms, through to secondary-forms, even a handful of the dedicated leader-forms.

It was a pleasant surprise when friendlies appeared on my scanner – identifiable by their IFF beacons – and even more of a turn when I realised that the survivors weren’t Lazarus Legion.

“Hold your fire,” I barked at Mason, waving a hand behind me towards Saul.

Three troopers made their way through the smoke and dust. My suit flagged them as the team under Captain Baker, and as they approached I saw that he was still in command.

“Moving on objective, sir!” Baker rumbled. He saluted me.

I sighed, shook my head. “Ah, the fabulous Baker Boys. Is this all that’s left of your outfit?”

All three survivors were battered, covered in xeno gore and severely rattled. Behind his face-plate, Baker looked much like he did in real life: middle-aged, grizzled, a veteran soldier a little past his prime. He pulled back his thin lips and flashed a toothy grin.

“Yes, sir,” Baker said. He shook his head. “Fish heads got us on the way down. Lost two skins before we could get on-station.”

“Doesn’t look like the other teams even touched down, so you have that honour at least.”

Baker indicated towards Saul. “But it’s the Legion that claims the HVT.”

“Only the best need apply.”

He eyed Mason, saw her blank combat-suit. “So New Girl isn’t official yet?”

“Well, if she fucks up she can always apply to join your outfit.”

I clocked the two behind Baker, both in unmarked suits.

Baker flared his nostrils and sighed. “I’d have her any day of the week, but that’s another story. Ready to assist on the bounce when you are, sir.”

“That’s appreciated. We’re moving on the shuttle bay.” I uploaded my tactical plan to Baker’s suit. “Less than three hundred metres.”

“Solid copy.” He turned to the two fresh-faced simulants behind him. “You heard the man – move out!”

Visibility had improved, but only slightly. There were flashing blood-red emergency lamps in the walls and ceilings, but black smoke pumped from the air-recyclers.

“This station is experiencing a critical emergency,” the mainframe AI repeated, over the PA. “All hands evacuate.”

“Where’s your sergeant, Laz?” Baker asked me, as we picked our way through the corridor. “Has she gone and left—”

Before he could complete the sentence, another primary-form sprang up ahead. The Krell slammed into Baker, knocking him sideways. One of his squad opened fire but in the tight confines of the corridor lost his nerve. The Krell slashed its enormous bladed forelimbs through Baker’s body, ripping open his combat-suit. The station atmosphere had not yet fully drained, but was seriously depleted: Baker started gasping for air, clawing at his face-plate.

“Oh fuck!” one of the fresh-faces shouted.

The Krell whipped its head around, double-jointed jaw opening to expose row on row of shark teeth. I fired, sending bright lances across the corridor, but the xeno was too fast. It cleared the dead captain’s body, vaulted right into one of the privates. In less than a second, all of Baker’s squad had been reduced to bloody ribbons.

I put three more shots into the xeno’s armoured body. Carnage complete, the alien was dead.

I caught the panicked look in Saul’s eyes; the look that asked, “Am I actually going to make it out of this alive?” But he didn’t voice the question and I had no time to baby him.

I activated my comm. “Jenkins! You read me?”

The comm-link hissed: “Affirmative. Moving through Filtration.”

“Casualties?”

“Negative, but it’s been damned close.”

“We’re coming up on your six.”

“I read you on the scanner.”

Mason, Saul and I jogged into what was once a filtration plant. A tangled network of pipework sat under a heavy plasglass dome. I guessed that water on Maru Prime was a serious commodity, perhaps more so than it was elsewhere in space. This was a recycling centre that had now fallen into disrepair. Liquid gold, lost to the war, pumped from exposed plumbing. Between the sagging remains of two protective plastic tents, the survivors crouched. Jenkins half-stood on our arrival.

“You took your time, Major,” she said with a dark grin.

“Multiple kills en route.”

“Some men will use anything for an excuse.”

“We met Baker, too.”

“How is the old bastard?”

“Dead. Bought it with two rookies.”

“Figures.”

The staff huddled between Jenkins and Martinez. Professor Saul went to join them, patting Anders on the back and muttering something over the private comm. Anders had been crying; her face was streaked red.

“What’s the plan?” Jenkins asked.

“Clearest route to the shuttle bay is through the maintenance deck. You got ears on Kaminski?”

Jenkins shook her head. “Negative.”

Looking back at the terrified civvies, and at the flashing warning on my HUD – SEVEN MINUTES UNTIL TERMINAL DECLINE – made me decide to break protocol.

I switched comm channels. My combat-suit was a command model; I could order a protocol override to boost my signal.

“Kaminski, you still alive?”

“Affirmative, Major, but only just. Hangar is seeing some action, but I’m lying low.”

Jenkins shook her head, laughed to herself. “That’ll be the day.”

“You’re hiding?”

“Affirmative. That’s one way of putting it.”

“Is the shuttle prepped?”

“Primed and ready for evac.”

“Then stay alive, whatever way you can. We’re less than a minute from your position.”

“Solid copy. Kaminski out.”

The staff began shouting and hollering.

“Stay calm, people!” Martinez insisted. “God will protect you. You’re all going to be all right—”

I wasn’t sure that the Almighty was listening. Martinez meant well, but his words were no counter for what the group had witnessed.

The ceiling of the filtration plant was domed – made of reinforced plastic-glass, gridded with metal supports. It presented a good vantage point to observe the developing space battle in low orbit. Some of the survivors had been watching the sky – the multi-coloured explosions, the bright streams of flak, the plasma pulses – but suddenly all faces, in unison, were turned to the spectacle above.

Something enormous exploded.

A brilliant, eye-scorching light filled the blackness. It sent numerous miniature sub-detonations through space. The dying vessel couldn’t have been far from our location, because very rapidly we were being showered with burning debris. Chunks of starship slammed into the plastic dome, assaulted the rest of the station.

“
Gracia de Dios
…” Martinez whispered.

The pattern of the explosion could only mean that it was an Alliance vessel. Not a fighter: had to be one of the assault cruisers. I took some minor reassurance from the fact that it wasn’t the
Mallard
, or we’d all be dead right now. But it did mean that the war in heaven wasn’t going as well as planned and that we had even less time to make the retrieval.

“Everyone up!” I declared, shouting over my loudspeaker and indicating with my hands. “Mag-locks on! Follow us. Squad, combat formation—”

The dome above began to crack. Very noisily, very dramatically. Escaping atmosphere began to hiss, then shriek.

“Mason, you take the rear!” Jenkins ordered, locking her boots and helping some of the civvies up. “Martinez, you take left flank. We’ve got to get these people out of here now! Go, go, go!”

The dome suddenly exploded outwards. Glass, metal and frozen liquid were sucked out. I braced, grabbed Saul. His civilian-issue mag-locks were torn off the deck and he flapped around like a child’s doll. Anders sailed past me. Mason reached out a hand to catch her. Too late: the female doctor’s arms windmilled as she flew by. Mason fumbled with her rifle, maybe thought about discarding it to go after Anders, but I warned her against it.

“Don’t, Mason. She’s already gone.”

The hurricane of escaping atmosphere cost us most of the survivors – bodies spinning out, catching on the remains of the dome, slamming into assorted debris raining from the sky above. I barely gave them a thought. Saul was all that mattered.

I might be expendable, but right now I had to survive. If I died, then Saul had no chance of survival. Certain tactical and operational considerations become far more relevant once a human, non-expendable asset is present in the theatre of war.

I have to get Saul out,
I repeated. The safest way to do that was to ensure that I remained viable for as long as possible. With the station collapsing around me, that was becoming an increasingly difficult objective to achieve.

I thought of all this as I cajoled the remaining survivors through the ruined facility.

FOUR MINUTES UNTIL TERMINAL DECLINE.

The station’s AI gave up with the warning – probably shut off, maybe diverting what little power remained to the essentials of trying to keep Far Eye Observatory upright. If that was the plan, it wasn’t working.

As we scrambled towards the shuttle, two more Krell appeared ahead – this time, firing stinger-spines. Poisoned flechette rounds, propelled by organic rail shooters. About as powerful as an Alliance-issue armour-piercing round.

“Repressing fire. Move on the shuttle bay – next junction. We don’t have time to get into a firefight.”

“Affirmative,” Jenkins said.

The volley of fire hit our activated null-shields. We fired back with plasma rifles, from the hip, always advancing. One of the secondaries went down. Despite being riddled with plasma wounds the remaining xeno was still combat-effective.

“More hostiles incoming!” Jenkins roared.

More primary-forms swarmed us from the same direction. Two big bastards slipped through the shimmering protective shields without pause – made for firearms and energy weapons only, these did nothing to stop them. I dropped one of the two with a volley from my rifle but the other descended on the group.

“By Gaia!” Saul shouted. He fired his pistol into the approaching alien.

Great: an Earth worshipper. That’s all I need.

Whatever ammo he was packing, the rounds bounced off the armoured head of the nearest Krell. The xeno turned in his direction, mouth split with rage—

“I’ve got this one,” Martinez said.

He grabbed at the target, jamming his rifle into the creature’s underside. The xeno moved faster than him, bladed forelimbs punching right through his torso. He managed a yelp in surprise – it’s always surprising when they get you – and was lifted straight off the ground.

Martinez’s biometrics leapt into overdrive. Even if he didn’t know it yet, he was already dead.

“Good journey,” I whispered.

I used the momentary pause in the assault to fire through Martinez’s body: a full auto stream of plasma pulses. His armoured suit ran like water, super-heated by the impacts, and he stopped trembling. The Krell on the other side of his body exploded.

“Martinez is out,” I said, to anyone who cared.

The shuttle-bay doors were ahead. I dispensed another xeno with a quick blast from my M95, waved on Jenkins with the remaining civvies. Saul was among them.

I caught a glimpse of the interior of the shuttle bay. It was a large, mainly empty hangar. The blast-shutters were ahead, promising escape from the dying station – embossed with hazard warnings, suggestions not to open without prior approval. The shuttle sat on the apron. It was a basic runabout – probably the oldest piece of technology on the station. Snub-nosed and worn-out, the name MARY-SUE was stamped on the hull. The model was a not-too-distant relative of our own Wildcat APS, but a strictly civilian version. Although a quad of thruster engines sat at the rear, the shuttle had no quantum-drive capability at all – it wouldn’t be capable of fleeing into Q-space. I just hoped it would be enough to get us off the station.

Kaminski had set up shop at the aft access ramp. His rifle was up in a braced crouch.

“Keep moving, people!” he shouted. “Not much further—!”

The shuttle creaked with the see-sawing motion of the rest of the station. It was moored into place by fuel feedlines. One of those burst under the renewed motion, spilling pressurised fluid across the hangar bay floor. The fuel was highly flammable, meant to be handled under restricted circumstances.

A pool had already formed on the deck.

I froze, detected that something bad – very bad – was about to happen.

The base tilted further on its axis. It had done that already – had been doing that for several minutes – but this was more extreme.

This time, the tilt didn’t correct.

A metal cargo crate slid past me, moving fast enough to send a trail of orange sparks as it went. The crate smashed into the shuttle, another feedline disconnecting.

The fuel ignited.

Violet flame licked the air. In low atmosphere, fire was usually a limited concern; but the shuttle fuel was super-combustible. Fire poured over the deck almost immediately.

Then everything that wasn’t bolted down began to slide towards the exterior bay doors. Those were still sealed shut – would require something big and heavy to cause significant damage.

Oh fuck. The shuttle.

Seemingly in slow motion, it slid towards the bay doors. The noise was deafening: that nerve-jangling shriek of metal grinding against metal. I watched as it capsized.

“Get anchored – now!” I ordered.

The station continued that interminable tilting, almost vertical now.

The shuttle hit the bay doors with an enormous boom.

It settled there for a long second, collected with other detritus from the bay.