by Jamie Sawyer
The Firebird made hard burn out of the band of rocks. Thane glared back at me. An electrical storm was developing on the surface—chain lightning coursing through the upper atmo, perhaps a reaction to the station’s demise. Visibility was very quickly deteriorating, the Firebird’s electronic eyes becoming less reliable.
“I got another signal incoming!” Lopez yelled. “Moving up fast on our six!”
“The Spiral aren’t done yet,” Captain Lestrade said, still hunched over his console. “They’re giving chase.”
“I’ve got an ID,” Zero said. “The Iron Knight. She’s unregistered, but her profile is marked as shoot on sight for Alliance forces.”
We hadn’t known her name then, but we had seen the Iron Knight before. Both at Daktar Outpost, when the Jackals had first crossed swords with Warlord, and then in the Gyre, when Warlord had attacked the Silver Talon ark-ship. She was a blunt, ugly vessel, in appearance resembling an older-pattern freighter. But I saw now, reading the data-stream from the Firebird’s advanced sensor-suite, that she was much more than that. Her chassis housed dozens of active weapons systems, and she was equipped with a fusion and Q-drive. Her null-shield ignited, repelling debris and asteroids, and she powered on through the mess that polluted Thane’s upper atmosphere.
At least I had no doubt that Warlord and Riggs had made it off Darkwater. They were unquestionably on that ship.
“She’s not alone,” Zero said. “I’m reading more hostiles incoming.”
Five hot targets appeared on our tail, keeping pace.
Missiles flickered across the tactical display. Something hit our null-shield, and the resultant storm of debris sent a shudder through the Firebird’s belly. A dozen warning alarms filled my console, and a siren sounded across the bridge.
“I can’t get a lock!” Lopez said.
“Me neither,” added Feng.
“They’re closing,” I yelled.
I locked a targeting solution into my console and fired off another railgun round. One of the ships suddenly banked, but the pilot obviously wasn’t as good as she thought she was. The small vessel slammed into an asteroid, exploded.
The other four ships kept coming. A wave of kinetics hit our null-shield, the Firebird’s AI broadcasting protests direct to my console.
Lestrade banked starboard. He was flying the ship like we were in an atmosphere, dipping and weaving between asteroids. The hull began to creak, and outside I saw that we were actually clipping atmo, the pure black of space giving way to a foul yellow …
“Got one!” Lopez hooted.
Another Spiral ship went down, became an incandescent ball. Still, that left the Iron Knight and three others, and they were tight on our ass.
“… drawing off fire, Firebird,” Gustav’s voice came, fluctuating between clarity and indistinct static. “… luck … Good sailing.”
The Paladin appeared on the tac-display. She nosed through the moving terrain, seeking a safe path. Took out another fighter with a missile, leaving only two. Dipped low, hull positively glowing white as it clung to the upper atmo.
“You know what you have to do, Captain Lestrade,” Elena said, her voice trembling with what I took to be G-force. “Execute your orders.”
“Understood,” Lestrade said.
The Firebird turned hard, trailing gunfire from the flak cannons. The Spiral ships peeled off, swooping, dodging, weaving. Paladin disappeared back into the asteroid field, chased by a swarm of smart missiles.
“Paladin!” I roared. “Come in, Paladin!”
There was no reply. Lopez scattered the Spiral fighters with the Firebird’s flak cannons, and Feng launched another volley of missiles.
“They’re attracting the Spiral’s fire,” Lestrade said. “This is our chance.”
There was obvious reluctance in the captain’s voice, and although I didn’t know him well, I knew that he wouldn’t leave the Paladin behind without reason. But we were damaged, and the Spiral fleet was still a force to be reckoned with.
“Hard burn, all hands,” Captain Lestrade said with resignation.
“Iron Knight is pulling back,” Lopez said. “She’s focusing fire on the Paladin.”
“Maybe …” Zero said, “maybe they think Lazarus is onboard.”
I didn’t know whether I wanted that to be true or not.
At what cost do you measure victory?
My current state of existence seemed to be running from one catastrophe to the next, but some catastrophes were worse than others. We’d scored a victory—obtaining the simulants—but they had come at a terrible cost.
I sat on the bridge for a long time. Listening to the gentle chime of the radar, the ping of the lidar. Other, more exotic sensors probed the dark, searching for any hint of a comms transmission, an energy signature, a distress beacon. Watching the tactical display and the view-ports, I almost wished that something would come after us. At least that would break the quiet, and give us a definitive answer.
But there was nothing. No sign at all of the farm, of the Spiral, of the Paladin.
Of Lazarus.
Pariah perched in one corner of the bridge, legs tucked beneath itself, still dripping ichor from the multiple injuries it had suffered back on the farm. The xeno’s bio-plating was ruptured in many places, although the flow of stinking black fluid that the creature called blood had been staunched by Zero’s handiwork with a medi-pack.
“Can you sense anything?” I asked.
The alien regarded me coolly. “Nothing. The same as the last time Jenkins-other posed the question.”
I sighed, turned back to my console. I was Army, not Navy, and I barely knew how to use this tech. But most of it was automated, thankfully, and Captain Lestrade had set the sensor-suite’s search parameters.
“I’m only asking,” I said.
“We understand,” said Pariah. “We merely observe. We will inform Jenkins-other if the situation changes.”
“You do that,” I said. “Captain, send another transmission. All frequencies.”
Captain Lestrade nodded. He hadn’t moved from his post in the two hours since we’d left Thane.
“Paladin Rouge,” Lestrade said, “this is UAS Firebird. Requesting response.”
The gentle pop and crackle of background radiation sounded across the communicator.
“Again,” I said.
Captain Lestrade repeated the broadcast another half-dozen times, but we both knew that there would be no result. He’d been sending the same transmission every few minutes since our retreat.
“They can’t be gone …” Zero whispered. “They made it out. Surely.”
“I wish I could believe that,” Lestrade muttered. He didn’t seem to want to make eye contact with anyone. “But there’s no reply to the hail.”
“Perhaps their communicator module is damaged,” Zero said, ever the optimist.
“Then why aren’t we seeing any evidence of their drive-trail?” Lopez asked.
“Their engine could be damaged,” Zero suggested, searching my face and then Lestrade’s, looking for some support for her theory. “Maybe they’re still in orbit around Thane. We could go back, search for survivors.”
This time Captain Lestrade shot her down. “The Spiral could still be out there, for all we know. We’re one ship, and a damaged one at that.”
Zero’s face danced with emotion. “We can’t let this happen.”
Feng and Lopez were quiet. There was little that they could say, but Feng put an arm round Zero in a decidedly non-military way.
“Doesn’t the Watch have resources?” Zero pushed. She wasn’t going to let Harris go, no matter what the objection. “Can’t you call in backup, Captain? There must be someone you can trust.”
Lestrade shook his head. “Sergeant, there is no one. This ship has a limited FTL transmitter, and the nearest Watch outpost is light-years away—”
“Bullshit!” Zero implored. “When I was a kid, Harris came back for me.” She turned to me, despe
ration plastered across her features. “You found me, Jenk. You saved me on Mau Tanis.”
“This isn’t the time for your war story, Zero,” I said.
“I’m not telling the story,” Zero said firmly. “I’m telling the truth. You, Harris, the Lazarus Legion: you saved a lost kid on a world destroyed by the Krell. And I joined up with Sim Ops because I wanted to give something back. Because I wanted to do something good with my life.” Her words were impassioned, and she’d become animated. “How many people has he saved? How many worlds, ships, stations? Now we have a chance to do something for him.”
“Enough,” Captain Lestrade said. “There’s no response from Thane. We have to assume that the Paladin is gone.” He looked at me. “We all left someone behind out there, but you have a mission to execute.” He tapped the console with one of his long fingers. “Dr. Marceau gave me an order before we left Thane.”
Zero made a distressed noise at the back of her throat. “We can’t let this happen. We can’t let it be.”
Novak turned to Zero and said, “Am sorry about what happened to your Lazarus. Man is not to me what he is to you, but he saved us from Jiog. He is okay by me.” Novak’s eyes were hooded with what could’ve been sadness. “He did not deserve to get ghosted.”
Lopez sighed. “The Spiral are going to pay. We have to make them.”
Zero said nothing to that, only pursed her lips. In the space of a few days, she’d been hit by the double-revelation that her idol—the legend Lazarus—was alive, and also that he was probably dead. The kid deserved better. My Jackals hadn’t known Harris, hadn’t really fought with him, but they knew how important he was. Lopez, Feng, even Novak dropped their heads in respect. That Riggs had a hand in his condition made it that much worse.
“What’s the Firebird’s situation?” I asked of Lestrade.
“We’re moving out-system,” he said. “The coolant system is fried, and we’ve got possible hull damage on E-deck.” He flipped through some data on his terminal screen. “The flak cannon array needs some maintenance as well. But most importantly, the quantum-drive is still operational. From the look of things, the Firebird has a very fast drive.”
“That was some good flying back there,” I said with a weary sigh.
“I did ten years as a combat pilot,” he muttered. “They might change the systems, make things easier for the pilot, but the controls more or less work the same.”
“If things had been different, none of us would’ve made it out,” I said. I took one final glance at the scanner-suite. Nothing had changed. “Take us to the system’s edge,” I ordered Lestrade.
“Aye, ma’am.”
“What did the Spiral want out here, anyway?” Feng asked. “Why were they on Thane in the first place?”
I told the Jackals what we had found on Darkwater. Of the Shard Reapers, in the dark module. Novak had been the only one with me when we’d entered the module. I described as best I could Warlord’s behaviour, his inexplicable abilities. But even as I did so, they began to sound unreal—as though whatever I had seen him do hadn’t actually happened. Of course, none of the Jackals had faced the Shard. They’d heard the rumours, seen the after-action reports—such that Alliance Command had declassified—but never witnessed the horror. I hoped that they never would.
“Christo …” Lopez said. “But what did the Spiral want with the Shard?”
Novak sneered and sucked his teeth noisily. “Is easy. We can just ask them.”
The bridge went quiet at that. I’d almost forgotten about Novak’s prisoner—the man he had insisted on dragging aboard the ship. So much had happened in the last few hours that it was unsurprising, I suppose.
“Is in cell,” Novak said. “Brig is word, yes? We have prisoner. He is Russian, like me.”
“We have prisoner,” I repeated, thinking on this.
“He’s a potential mine of intel,” Feng commented.
No one wanted to hear it, to move on to the next stage of our mission, but the reality was that we had no choice. Whether Lazarus lived or died, the Spiral were still out there.
“I will do three degree,” Novak said.
“Three degree?” Lopez asked. “What’s that?”
“Asking of the questions,” Novak explained. “Is the three degree, yes?”
“Third degree,” I said. “You mean give the prisoner the third degree.”
Despite the situation, Lopez and Feng laughed. Novak didn’t see the funny side of it, just shrugged his enormous shoulders.
“I speak Russian,” he added. “You do not. I ask the questions.”
“All right,” I said, seeing a possible lead here.
“Good, good,” Novak muttered. There was an eagerness in his tone that I wasn’t quite comfortable with; his bruised and battered face suddenly brightened, as though the promise of violence was bringing him alive.
“Let’s take a look at our friend and see what he can tell us.”
CHAPTER TWENTY
THIS IS THE ENEMY
The Firebird’s brig was basically an open cell with an observation field covering one wall. That was currently tuned so that we could see in, but the prisoner couldn’t see out: a one-way mirror. The cell’s lights were extinguished, save for a single glow-globe that had been turned up to maximum brightness, shining down on the prisoner like a spotlight.
The Jackals were gathered on the other side of the obs field, evaluating the prisoner and considering what he meant. Only Pariah was absent, because I didn’t think the fish would help in this situation. Whatever the Spiral really was, it was clear that the organisation hated the fishes.
“You think that the Spiral will come looking for their guy?” Lopez asked.
“I doubt it,” I said.
“They couldn’t track him, even if they wanted to,” Zero added. She clutched a data-slate to her chest, monitoring the conditions in the room. “He’s been scanned for covert tech, and he’s not carrying anything.”
“We’ll keep an eye on the situation,” I decided. “Not all concealed tech is easy to detect.”
The metal in Feng’s head being a prime example. I still wasn’t quite sure why I hadn’t told the others about that yet.
“So this is the enemy, huh?” Lopez said.
“He doesn’t look like much,” Feng muttered.
The prisoner was underwhelming, to say the least. A man of maybe thirty years standard, with a bald scalp stitched with tattoos and nerve-plugs. A hard, pale face, a nose that had been broken so many times that it had lost all shape. A scattering of whiskers over a pointed chin. None of it spoke of a good or decent life.
The tango had been strapped to a chair, lashed at the ankles and wrists with steel cable. He wore a survival suit, stained with blood and soot. That, like the asshole’s face and head, was literally covered in iconography. Black Spiral symbols, kill-slogans, clan markings. A language that I couldn’t read.
“He’s a member of the Cult of the Singularity,” Zero said. She had called up a series of images on her slate, and was cross-referencing some of the tattoos with those on the Firebird’s mainframe. “The Cult is a known affiliate organisation of the Spiral.”
Everyone had heard of the Cult of the Singularity. It had been around for a while, causing trouble on and off since the discovery of the Shard. They were a prohibited organisation, one of several that worked with, or sometimes for, the Black Spiral. A proto-religious movement, the Cult had actually appeared before the emergence of the Spiral. They worshipped the Singularity, sought to bring about convergence of organic and machine. Exactly how they were going to do this, or why it was necessary, wasn’t clear to many believers. But what better example of such a convergence, so the Cult preachers insisted, than the Shard: a species that represented the superiority of the machine. The Cult had been responsible for several terrorist atrocities in the Outer Colonies, all said to be in the name of the Machine.
Zero continued reading. “Many Cultists have been inducted into the Spir
al. The primary Singularity Cult texts are said to have been endorsed by Warlord. That’s what this intelligence bulletin says.”
“We had a problem with the Cult on Proxima Colony,” Lopez said. “They’re almost as bad as the Spiral.”
Zero swallowed, looking peakier that usual. “Do you think that the Cult and the Spiral were on Darkwater looking for the Shard? It seems more than a coincidence.”
“How did they know the Shard were there?” Lopez questioned. “Wasn’t it a black op? Nadi couldn’t even break the security protocol.”
“And if she couldn’t do it,” Feng said with a shake of his head and a laugh, “then I doubt anyone could.”
There were Shard Reapers in the dark module. They had attacked the Spiral, but not Warlord. He seemed to have some control over them, something that I had never heard of or seen before. How did he do that? There was only one way to find out. I opened the comms channel into the containment cell.
“You can proceed, Novak,” I said.
The Russian was already inside the cell. He turned to look at the obs field and gave a slow nod. I could sense the rest of my squad tensing up around me, Lopez already looking to the floor. This was about to get nasty.
“Speak Standard,” I ordered. “I want to hear what this bastard has to say.”
Novak grunted, and directed his attention to the prisoner. The Russian’s footfalls were heavy and slow, sending vibrations through the deck as he circled the captive.
“This can be easy, yes?” Novak said to him. “What is name? Tell me now.”
“I am nobody,” the captive answered. His accent was sharp, Slavic.
Who were you? I wondered. A nobody with an axe to grind and a galaxy that had forgotten all about him. That was what the Black Spiral offered: a chance of transcendence, for the nothing to become something. It was a powerful incentive, and not one to be underestimated. Unsurprising, really, that people like this would unite under the Spiral’s banner …
Novak rumbled a laugh. The sound was malicious, and sent a shiver up my spine. “That’s how you started,” he said. “But now you are somebody.”
