by Jamie Sawyer
I rolled left. The bead whined in my ear—no comms!—and I grappled with the Directorate PDW. I felt like I’d lost control of my own body.
Riggs slammed a foot down on the gun. Its plastic casing cracked, split. The weapon was useless. I hadn’t even managed to get off a shot.
“Zero! Novak!” I screamed. My voice echoed through the empty storage depot, lost to the metal walls and hissing machinery.
“Just stop this,” said Riggs. “Things don’t have to be difficult.”
He stood over me, face awkwardly neutral, his boyish features failing to portray any remorse, any guilt. Maybe he’s sorry, a soft voice whispered in my ear. That was the weak me, the me who had listened to his carefully spun bullshit for the entire length of our deployment together. Maybe he wants to come back into the fold …
But that me didn’t answer. Armoured Jenkins took care of it.
“You’re a fucking asshole, Riggs,” I spat, snarling. I spun back, a cornered cat. “And I’m going to kill you.”
Riggs shook his head, smiling. Did he really think that I was that harmless?
“Don’t be silly, Jenk. You’re not going to do anything like that. I’m in a simulant, and you’re not. Might is right.”
I scrambled left, boots kicking at the floor as I tried to stand. The immediate flood of anger and hate threatened to overwhelm me, and I fought to keep it in check.
“Fuck you, Riggs.”
Riggs pounded after me. Grabbed my leg, yanked hard.
I slammed an armoured boot into his shin. He barely noticed.
“Warlord once tried to turn you,” he said. “Do you remember when he spoke to you on North Star Station, when we first picked up that stinking fish? I was disappointed when that didn’t work.”
I kicked out again. With both hands now, Riggs pulled me back.
“Get off me!” I screamed, struggling to get loose of his grip.
Riggs was stronger than me, by quite some margin.
“I thought that the Directorate would’ve finished you off on Jiog,” he said as he worked. “You’re Lazarus Legion. You were on their most-wanted list. I thought that it would’ve been a nice, clean execution.” He paused. “It’s a shame.”
“You sold me out. You sold us out!”
“The Jackals?” he asked as he dragged me to my feet. He pulled me so close that our faces almost touched. “They’re nothing, Jenk. A bunch of useless no-hopers, the worst of the worst. You know that, right?”
I thrashed my legs, pumping them hard, but Riggs got me airborne. Swung me across the aisle. I hit a bank of cryogenic capsules so hard that my teeth chattered, and I tasted blood at the back of my throat.
The capsule behind me broke, and something gaseous started venting from inside. Amber warning lamps flicker-flashed overhead, throwing Riggs into lighting from some bad horror-movie. An alarm began to sound in the distance, bouncing around the chamber.
All of that detail came to me in snippets, because the pain was all-consuming. I’d hit my back, and it felt an awful lot like something had broken in my rib cage. Could’ve been a new injury, could’ve been something not yet healed from Jiog: it didn’t much matter. The Ikarus suit wasn’t equipped with a medi-suite, but I rode it out, unwilling to give Riggs the satisfaction of seeing me hurt, and sprang back to my feet.
Riggs followed up with an overarm blow with his right fist.
At the last possible moment, I slipped free. Slid right. He hit the canopy of another capsule. From the yowl of pain he made as he connected, it sounded as though it was hard enough to hurt. More cryogen vented across the module, and glass fragments crunched noisily beneath my feet.
Revenge could wait, I decided. I had to get out of here.
I broke away from Riggs. He was bigger than me—faster in a sim—but size was my advantage.
“I’m supporting He Who Cares,” Riggs yelled. “I’m trying to help us all.”
I dodged another swipe, made off through the row of capsules. But I hadn’t managed more than a half-dozen paces before my right leg gave out. The Ikarus suit’s power attenuators—the hydraulic cabling in the leg that amplified speed, force—squealed in denial, and I barrelled left. Riggs bore down on me again.
“You’re a maniac, Riggs.”
“I hoped that you’d see this differently. Warlord said that you would.”
“Warlord is even worse than you!” I shouted. Could someone hear me, trapped in here? Where were the rest of my squad? Into the communicator again: “Zero! Nadi!”
“Things are over between us,” Riggs suddenly said. He dragged me upright. I continued flailing, balling fists and landing blows all across his chest and shoulders. He winced with each, but it was pointless. “I mean it. After everything that the Krell have done to us—to me, to you, to humanity—we’re selling out to the damned fish heads! Why can’t you see this?”
“I know about your father,” I said. “I know why you turned.”
“And you think, somehow, that gives you power over me? That’s a low blow, Jenk.”
“I never said that it gave me power. But I know how your mind works, and I know weakness when I see it.”
“There is no weakness in the Black Spiral. There will only be a pure, dark dawn.”
“So you gave in,” I said, buying time. “You gave in to whatever lies Warlord and the Spiral are spinning. I know about Tau Ceti, about your family—”
“It wasn’t like that!” Riggs implored. His words were at odds with his actions as he dragged me in front of the next bank of sims. “Warlord knows what’s best for all of us! He was once like you, like me. He’s seen the One Truth!”
“He’s been into the Deep, Riggs. That’s all this is: the Krell’s intelligence pool—”
“He’s seen the other side!”
“You’re spreading the virus,” I said, because to keep talking gave me something to grasp, something to which I could anchor this nightmare. “The Black Spiral is starting a war between the Alliance and the Krell!”
Around me, copies of simulants stared back. So much power here, so much force, and yet I could use none of it. I kicked out, hit Riggs in the leg somewhere. He scowled this time. Lifted me off the floor again. Hands locked around my neck.
“It’s not that simple,” Riggs said. “We’re finishing the Krell. They’ll be gone: the Maelstrom will be empty. You really have no idea. It’ll be so fucking glorious!”
A light ignited behind Riggs’ simulated eyes. I’d seen that sort of expression—beatific, dogmatic, fanatical—on the faces of street-preachers and religios. This version of Riggs was so far from the one I’d known that I barely even recognised him. He had become radicalised, so indoctrinated that nothing I said could’ve changed his mind.
“He Who Cares is all that matters,” Riggs shouted. “The Dominion will be born again!”
“This is madness!” I screamed. “You’re insane!”
“I’m finishing this now. I’m tying loose ends. I should’ve never left you on Jiog, Jenk. I was weak. I’m going to make up for my mistake.”
“Zero!” I yelled again.
My communicator dangled loose from my neck. With sim-fast reactions, Riggs grabbed the comm and tore it from my head. Tossed it away, put both hands back to my neck.
I gasped. Choked. Hands grappling at Riggs’ shoulders, gloved fingers digging into his neoprene suit. Feet off the floor now.
“I really did care for you,” he said. “I want you to know that. What happened between us wasn’t right. It didn’t go down how I wanted it to, and I’m sorry.”
I heaved. Choked some more. Felt my kicks connect with Riggs’ body somewhere. Slammed a foot into his groin, watched the pleasing look that spread across his features. He relaxed his grip just fractionally—enough for me to take a gasp of cold, cryogen-laced air, but not enough to get free—
“Shhhh,” Riggs said, his voice just a whisper, carrying the intimacy of lovers. “Shhhh. Quiet now. Quiet.”
Riggs slammed my head into the
canopy again and again and again. The malice on his features was so alien that he almost looked demonic, possessed. He was murdering me, and quite successfully at that.
“It’s okay,” he said. Some reassurance, huh? “It’s going to be okay. You always did have a death wish, Jenk. This is fine. It’s what you always wanted. This is a good day to die. Once you’re gone, there’ll be nothing left to stop us.”
I lashed out senselessly, without purpose. This was survival, pure and simple.
“Fu … ck,” I managed, “yo … u …”
“You’ve said that already,” Riggs said. “You could’ve joined us. It didn’t have to be like this.”
“Tr … ai … tor,” I said, my larynx collapsing.
Everything started to feel numb. Not like cold numb, but dissociated numb. There was pain, but it was distant. As though this wasn’t really happening to me. My heart rumbled, throbbed. My data-ports cried out for the simulants around me, each inert and useless and beyond the reach of my dying fingers.
Riggs looked back at me with those naive (filled with secrets: dark secrets) eyes. His body glistening with sweat (cryogen) from another session in bed.
“You’re beautiful,” he said. “You do know that, right?”
“You know that was the last time,” I said firmly.
“You said that last time …”
“Well this time I mean it, kemo sabe.”
Riggs nodded, but that idiot grin (filled with malice) remained plastered across his (twisted) face. “See you down there, Jenkins,” he said.
I was fading, fading, fading …
I stood on the very brink of an abyss.
My Jackals were with me, but not just them. General Draven, Captain Heinrich, the crew of the Paladin. My mom and dad: disapproving faces glaring back at me from the edge of the crowd. Would they ever actually forgive me for joining the Simulant Operations Programme? Probably not. But what I’d done on Darkwater overshadowed that decision by a long way. There were others there too. Captain Carmine—dear old Carmine, now dead, her remains consigned to Jiog, lost to Directorate space. Even Senator Lopez, dressed in a dark jacket and slacks that screamed that he was a serious politician, but he could still be trusted.
“Fuck,” I said. “So this is how it ends, huh?”
“Maybe,” said another voice. Not just one, I realised, but all of those gathered.
“I always thought that it would be less colourful.”
The abyss was filled with light. Swirling, incandescent streamers, like distant star-nebulae but moving. It was kind of beautiful, and the glow filled me.
“This is the Maelstrom,” said the voices.
I was looking into Krell space, and it was looking back at me.
“It’s changing, right?” I asked, frowning. Which was quite difficult, as I realised that I had no actual body. I was just a thought, a reflection. “What’s happening?”
“Exodus,” said the voices. “We are leaving.”
The lights were disappearing. Only blackness remained. A great, gnawing darkness appeared beneath me.
“There will be nothing,” answered the collective chorus. Many voices at once, but no longer speaking in unity. Instead, they formed a discordant chorus that hurt to listen to. “There will be nothing to stop them.”
“To stop whom?” I cried out.
“Don’t let this happen,” said the voices, now crumbling, speaking out of rhythm. “Stop the Great Dark. Stop the Dominion.”
And then I was teetering on the edge of it. The Great Dark: the abyss itself.
There was nothing left anymore.
For an eternity, I wasn’t sure whether I’d fallen into the abyss or simply become it.
Fade, fade, fading …
… back, back, back!
“Get back!”
The voice scythed through the mists of my failing consciousness and pulled me back from the edge. Things went from dark, to monochrome, to something approaching colour. The experience was far from nice, and far from exhilarating, but I realised something. I was alive. And sometimes, just being alive is good enough. This was one of those times.
Riggs glared sideways, something attracting his attention.
“Wh—what?” he stammered.
His eyes widened in what I took to be disbelief, and his face dropped. I couldn’t make out what he’d seen—who he’d spoken to—but whether I lived or died, it was a reaction I was glad to see on the bastard’s face.
“I said, get back!” the voice yelled again.
Riggs’ grip on my neck loosened further. Not by much, but enough so that I managed to gulp down some air. There was a sudden rush of oxygen into my lungs, and that was enough to kick-start my body. I reacted instantly. I flexed, wriggled free. Slipped through Riggs’ hands.
“You’re not supposed to be here,” Riggs opined. His voice had taken on an unpleasant whining tone, a child whose Alliance Day party had been spoiled. “You’re dead!”
Cryogen filled the aisle, creating a bank of white mist, and Harris emerged from the gas. Wearing his Ikarus suit, his AUG-30 PDW trained on Riggs.
“You’d be surprised how often I hear that,” Harris snarled. “But I’m Lazarus.”
Riggs stepped back. The floor was now covered in wet fluid, a chemical mixture caused by the capsules that had been damaged during the fight. The sprinkler system had initiated overhead, showering the damaged aisle with water.
“That’s—” Riggs said, his body tensing, regaining just a modicum of his threat-aura.
“Enough talk,” Harris replied.
He sprayed Riggs’ body with a volley from the AUG-30. The weapon’s report was loud and brash in the closed environ, and at this range it was as deadly as it sounded. Riggs had no room to evade, and took the storm of gunfire full-on. He crumpled beside me, eyes empty. Extracted.
Harris evaluated the simulant coolly, then reached out an open hand in my direction. He helped me up.
“Are you okay?” he asked.
“I’m fine,” I said.
“You’re lying, but we’ll worry about that later. Can you walk?”
I nodded. I put a hand to the collar of my suit. The armour section was badly deformed by Riggs’ attack, but my neck was in an even worse condition. Just swallowing was agony. I felt as though I’d been run over by a juggernaut.
I wasn’t going to let Harris see that, though. “I can walk,” I confirmed. “How did you find me?”
“Sprinkler system,” Harris said, water running down his face already. “When it was set off, I heard the alert.”
“What the hell’s happening?”
“I don’t know,” said Harris, shaking his head. “No comms. Did you shuttle the sims to Alpha Dock?”
“I—I think so,” I said. The robotic loader mechanism was still now, most of the Jackals’ simulants having been transported from storage through to—I hoped—the docking bay, where the Paladin waited. “Zero was trying to contact me, when—”
The capsule loader began to operate. Above the din of the emergency siren, new simulants were being prepped for use. And not just any simulants.
Riggs’ simulants.
Riggs had just extracted, and was remotely initiating transition. Starting this whole process again. A new version of Riggs loaded from above, right in front of the one Harris had just killed.
TRANSITION INITIATED, the capsule readout said.
There were ten—twenty, a hundred—copies of the asshole above this one, each racked and ready for deployment.
ARMOUR AND WEAPON ORDER CONFIRMED, the same panel flashed. STAND BY FOR DELIVERY.
Riggs’ eyes opened inside the capsule. He was already tearing the respirator from his face, the canopy rising with the hiss of escaping atmosphere—
“Come,” Harris commanded. “We’re leaving.”
He dragged me along the aisle. At first my legs refused to work, partly because the Ikarus suit had taken damage during the attack. The Directorate obviously didn’t make su
its as durable as the Alliance’s combat-armour. We fell into a loping rhythm through gas-banks and puddles of smoking chemical fluid, the arch of the exit flickering with amber security lamps.
Riggs’ capsule opened. He slid out, not even bothering to disconnect himself from the life-support cables. Immediately, he began to give chase. Legs pumping, feet splashing through the pools of fluid as he picked up speed.
“Keep moving,” said Harris. He half turned back the way we’d come and sprayed the aisle with carbine-fire.
Riggs ducked. Sim-senses and all that. His jaw was set, grim determination painted across those boyish features.
I slammed a hand onto the exit hatch control panel. The hatch started to peel open, so fucking slowly.
Riggs saw what was happening, and he didn’t like it one bit. He picked up pace. Arms cycling as he broke into a proper run.
Harris paused, fired another volley. A round clipped Riggs’ shoulder, probably bit bone, but he barely flinched. He was a goddamned monster.
Meanwhile more machinery had activated. Another robotic loader slid by overhead, revealing itself in the rafters of the warehouse. A giant metal claw delivered a cargo container to the corner of the room. Armour and weaponry. Riggs was going to suit up, equip himself for war. He’d have access to plasma, explosives, whatever else Darkwater Farm had in its armoury stockpile. As the place was in the business of war, it would have a proper arsenal.
The hatch ground open just enough that we could get beneath it.
“Get through!” I shouted to Harris.
We ducked under the plate in unison. Riggs’ footfalls seemed to make the deck quake as he moved—faster and faster and faster.
“Shut the hatch,” Harris said. “Now.”
As soon as I was through, I moved on the control panel on the other side. I had to get the hatch sealed.
“It’s already too late!” Riggs roared. “We’re all part of Warlord’s plan!”
The hatch reversed, began to close. Riggs was a second too slow, even in a sim, but I wasn’t taking any chances. I ripped a red-tipped grenade from my suit harness, thumbed the activator. Flung it under the hatch, just as it slid shut. Although my view of him was restricted by the closing door, I saw that Riggs paused, retreating from the grenade.
