by Jamie Sawyer
Martinez gave a deep laugh. “What did I tell you?” he said.
“It was closer than you think.”
“Check your wrist-comp. It wasn’t that close at all.”
He had beaten me by several seconds, pulled away into the lead somewhere along the mid-point of the Run.
I’m getting old and out of shape.
My wrist-comp flashed with run completion times. Williams still sat at the top of the leaderboard, swiftly followed by some of the space jockeys. There was the Buzzard: well up the leaderboard, run-time several seconds ahead of mine.
“That’s a fucking joke,” Martinez said. “The jockeys are using sims. I could do this run in half the time if I was skinned.”
“I reckon I could get used to that,” I said. “Being skinned up twenty-four hours a day.”
Martinez considered the idea. “I’m not sure. It might be too much.”
“You’d be okay; you can sleep in them.”
We stood together, walked to the nearest elevator. Another of the ubiquitous DNA and fingerprint scanners sat beside the door. I thumbed the well-worn panel and activated the elevator call.
The machine chirped an error. “User not recognised. Please retry.”
“Let me try,” Martinez said, and swiped the panel.
“User recognised: PFC Elliot Martinez.”
The elevator door slid open.
“Fuck you, too,” Martinez said, as we entered the waiting elevator. “You want to try again tomorrow?”
“Sure,” I absently answered.
CHAPTER NINETEEN
COMPROMISED
The following morning, the Warfighters and the Legion gathered in the SOC. I outlined my new plan.
“We’ll split up and go in alone,” I said. “If Professor Saul is right – and there is only a single Reaper – then we’ll stretch this bastard thin.”
“So it has to move around the structure…” Jenkins said. She was getting it, saw where this was going. “More targets means longer inside the Artefact?”
“Exactly,” I said.
I turned my back on the operators, activated one of the view-screens. The by-now familiar schematics of the Artefact appeared, indicating thirty or forty structures randomly spaced across the alien hull. They were the same formation as the portal we’d used the previous day: it was a reasonable assumption that each represented an airlock of the same design.
“We’re going to approach the Artefact separately. Based on yesterday’s experience, the airlocks will likely respond in the same way.” Glowing markers indicated the landing sites for each sim. “We go into the structure alone, carrying EMPs. When the Reaper hits, each of us holds it off for as long as possible.”
“So we’re buying time, then?” Williams asked. “With our lives?”
“Isn’t that what we always do?” Kaminski offered.
More simulants were loaded into the drop-capsules and we were in turn installed into our simulator-tanks.
“Are all operators ready for connection?” Dr West asked.
“All operators are engaged,” reported a technician.
“Establishing remote link with simulants.”
“Link is good.”
“Commence uplink when ready.”
“We are good to go. Commencing uplink in T-minus ten seconds…”
“See you on the other side,” Jenkins said.
That flash as I made transition: between bodies.
Then the sudden plunging sensation as the drop-capsule fired from the belly of the Colossus.
This time, my HUD showed a different drop-pattern. I made the same approach as I had on previous drops, but the other capsules diverted on alternative routes. I plotted the dispersal on my HUD, traced the nine capsules as they each made the approach.
“Lazarus Actual, transition confirmed. Making descent.”
The Legionnaires all called in as expected. Mason’s voice shook as she reported. Could be that was just the vibration of her capsule, causing vocal distortion; more likely it was fear. We were each going to be aboard the Artefact alone in the dark. Even I felt trepidation at that. Something like anxiety swept through my simulant body. Skinning up usually deprived me of such base reactions – it had been a long time since I’d felt that sort of emotion inside a sim. Yesterday’s experience with the Reaper had changed that.
“Warfighters confirmed,” Williams said. “On target.”
My capsule shed the outer layers and I made the LZ. In a replay of yesterday’s landing, I anchored myself to the Artefact’s hull and approached the airlock. On my own now, the sense of desolation was almost overwhelming. I focused on the small manual tasks – broke the approach down action by action.
The airlock opened in front of me. I wondered whether the structure would respond differently this time – whether the Artefact might deny us entry. But as I fired my thruster pack, and crossed over, the airlock hummed to life. The outer door contracted to allow entry.
“Is everyone getting the same response?” I asked over the comms.
“That’s an affirmative,” Jenkins said.
“Then double-time it to interior coordinates,” I ordered, “and stay in touch. Ready on the EMPs. On first appearance, I want complete coverage.”
“Copy that. You heard the man.”
Glowing blips appeared on my scanner, each representing a different bio-sign. All troopers had successfully crossed over.
My objective was the same as the previous day – a chamber a few hundred metres inside the Artefact.
I stalked down the corridor. The Reaper could be anywhere. There were so many shadows for it to move through. I pulled long-burning flares from my webbing. Activated, I dropped them to the ground. On a logical level, I knew that it was wasted effort – that, inside my sim, I was truly expendable – but I was motivated by some primal need to know my way back, to have an escape route.
I held the EMP grenade in my left hand, my rifle in my right. My thumb covered the grenade firing stud and I felt an unconscious twitch; an urge to use the device.
“What’s the tac sit, people?” I asked over the general comm band. I desperately wanted – needed – to hear the chatter of friendlies.
“Nothing from me,” Kaminski said. “But I’m ready for it. I owe this motherfucker one…”
Watching Jenkins being ripped apart by a shadow had affected him, even if the death was only simulated. Couldn’t blame him: I could still remember the look on her face as the machine-thing had taken her.
“Drones away.”
My drone flight disappeared ahead. Sonar pinged chambers beyond my location. The interior was a jumble of ovoid corridors and caverns.
“I’m seeing machines,” Mason reported. “But everything is real old.”
The nature of the corridors was changing. Here and there, ancient machines grew out of the walls. My suit-lamps flashed over the decrepit interior – searching for some clue that the facility was occupied. But the devices were covered in an eternity of dust, unlit—
There was a whisper from somewhere ahead.
I paused, rifle up.
Nothing. Turned up the gain on my pick-ups.
A child’s voice.
“Anyone there?” I asked, using my suit-speakers.
Something answered me from the darkness: a young girl’s whispering.
I grabbed another flare, tossed it down the corridor. It scattered metres away. Sent fizzing shadows across the walls and floor.
The corridor was still empty.
Get a grip, man. There’s nothing there.
“I know what I heard…” I said to myself.
My helmet chimed.
One of Williams’ team had extracted. There were seven blips on my scanner, instead of eight.
No gunfire, no chance to fight back.
Just gone.
“I’ve got a man down,” Williams said. “Be on alert.”
My drones dropped off-line in sequence. I flashed through their feeds
on my HUD – eager to see the last frame before each was terminated – but there was no explanation.
Just like yesterday.
“Stay frosty, people…”
Ahead of me, the route became dark: the length of this section of tunnel unclear. Although I couldn’t see them, my suit sensors picked up shafts above me reaching deep into the structure. It would be impossible to cover every entrance. So many damned places to hide—
Then the girl’s voice came again. This time, I was sure that I’d heard it—
The communicator devolved into a babble of shouts and death-cries.
“Hold your positions!” Williams ordered. “All of you! I said hold positions—!”
Oh shit.
Two more Warfighters vanished from my HUD. Williams lasted a second longer, then he too flashed out of existence.
My team were faring only slightly better. Mason was moving. Her suit status indicated that she’d managed to get off a couple of the EMP grenades. Probable locations of the Reaper appeared as glowing red markers.
Then Mason’s vitals flatlined.
The Reaper was moving again, now towards—
Jenkins—
“Christo – get away from me—”
Her voice sounded wet and heavy, grew ragged. I cancelled her comm-link: she was gone. Her blip flashed – med-alert activated but for long seconds still reporting life-signs. What was the Reaper doing to her? A bead of sweat broke on my upper lip, and I licked it back—
Moving again—
—Kaminski—
“Stay in formation, Kaminski!” I ordered.
“Say again?” Kaminski said. I saw his blip moving fast, saw the explosion of grenades as he went. “Unclear – I don’t copy that—”
Of course Kaminski had heard. He was chasing Jenkins, unable to resist the bait. The Reaper knew exactly where to find him. It’s fucking enjoying this. Kaminski fired off an EMP. Went down almost immediately afterwards, in the same corridor section as Jenkins.
Martinez vanished shortly after that.
In less than ten seconds, it was all over.
Eight deaths.
Hundreds of metres apart.
Fast, bloody, pointless…
…and yet, there, on my bio-scanner was a signal.
Not in formation – nearer to my coordinates than any of the team had been when they were finished off.
“Are all troopers extracted?” I questioned, over the comm. “Is anyone left?”
No response. What had I expected? The silence of the alien structure was almost crushing.
I wondered for a moment whether the Reaper had left one of them alive. Perhaps Kaminski or Jenkins: bleeding out in one of those dark corridors, yearning release from their simulant. But a quick analysis of my HUD revealed that was impossible. All bio-signs were completely extinct, and extraction had been confirmed.
Whatever else was in here wasn’t from the Colossus expedition. It was something different.
I activated my suit-speakers. “What’s out there?”
The real Shard? Another example of their twisted engineering?
A whisper answered me in the dark.
Words, but indecipherable. Inside the sim, my hearing and vision were advanced to a suprahuman degree: and the combat-suit only further enhanced my abilities. It was a female voice – a young girl? – but it was maddeningly unclear.
Simultaneously, a blazing-hot bio-sign flashed across my HUD. Near enough now so that I could sense a heartbeat: the rapid throb of a bio-system. It moved off, away from my position – became a firefly, luring me into the darkness. The reading wasn’t moving fast but whatever it was it knew the terrain. The ghost didn’t hesitate, didn’t pause, and moved on from one junction to the next.
I gave chase immediately. If the Reaper was done with the rest of my team, then I would be next. Death was a certainty; it was how long I lasted that counted. If I learnt anything from this body, then that would be a victory.
There was a portal ahead – the same iris-style manufacture as the outer airlocks. As I crossed over into the room, the door whispered shut behind me. I found myself inside a large circular chamber – bigger than anything I’d seen inside the Artefact so far. The cuneiform on the walls began to softly illuminate, throwing out a pale light. Consoles rose soundlessly from the floor. Had to be some sort of self-assembling technology, something that the Alliance hadn’t encountered before.
The bio-sign was somewhere inside the room with me – just beyond the reach of my suit-lamps – but had stopped moving.
“What are you?” I yelled.
My own voice taunted me; echoing into infinity, bouncing off the hard metal walls.
As it diminished to silence, another answered me.
“Turn off your feeds!”
I know that voice…I felt an ice-cold core forming in my chest: a black hole erupting inside my ribcage. I was paralysed. It was as though the speaker had commanded me to stop.
This isn’t possible, I insisted to myself.
It’s probably just another element of your fractured psyche, talking to you, the Point’s holo-psych dictated to me. But you’re about to die in a few seconds anyway: you have nothing to lose.
With that in mind, I cancelled everything via thought-command. No video, no audio, no scanner. I was truly isolated now: no connection at all with the Colossus.
“It follows your suit-feeds,” the voice responded. “You’re bleeding data like a stuck pig.”
There was a figure in the shadows.
That weakness inside of me leaked into my limbs, spread through me at a terrifying rate. Holy Mother Earth…It held me like a vice; I was gripped with sick fascination. I lowered my gun – it would do me no good any more.
You see what your imagination is doing to you now? the psych taunted. You’re torturing yourself. That’s how fucked-up you’ve become.
I dropped my EMP to the floor and I tore my helmet free. I had to see this with my own eyes – to judge for myself. Nothing else would satisfy me, because I knew how utterly impossible this was. The reconstructed visuals of the tactical-helmet HUD could be faked, could lie. I hoped that my own eyes were more dependable.
A familiar face looked back at me.
Sweet Christo.
“Conrad?” Elena asked.
I couldn’t speak. Couldn’t do anything but stare at Elena, at the woman I had lost. Whatever incredible physical feats the simulant was capable of, right now it was useless to me. Every drop of strength had been drained from me, like I was infected by the most deadly Krell bio-toxin. I wanted to speak to her, to tell her how I had missed her, of how sorry I was that I had let her go – but I could do none of those things. Could do nothing but watch this impossible creature as she emerged from the shadows: so fragile, so precariously vulnerable.
I froze, my fingers wrapped so tightly around the grip of my rifle that I could sense the plastic deforming: the powered mechanisms in the gauntlets activating. What I was seeing was beyond impossible, beyond credibility.
And yet, here she was. Here was Elena.
But something was wrong.
Her expression – her reaction to seeing me – was almost as surprising as finding her here. She stared intently and her brow was knitted. It was a pained, hurt expression: directed at me. She narrowed her eyes and evaluated me. The look pulled me from my trance, brought me back to reality.
“Is that really you?” she asked, in a hard voice.
Elena had been gone for eight objective years.
Not a day of those eight years – even in hypersleep – had passed without me thinking of her. I’d dreamt of our reunion for such a long time. Sometimes, the dreams had been so intricate – so real – that on waking I’d hated myself for daring to imagine something so visceral that its absence was sheer agony.
I’d never considered that our reunion could be in circumstances like this. Not aboard an alien Artefact, in the deeps of the Maelstrom.
Perhaps worse, in fla
shback and dream Elena had been as I’d remembered her. She was a pure memory construct. The Elena Marceau in my tri-D photos, in the worn-out vid-clips: she was a fixed point of reference.
The Elena that looked back at me, with those enormous brown eyes, wasn’t the woman I remembered at all. She was unkempt: exhausted, pallid-fleshed. Her long hair was clasped at her neck but lank strands escaped over her face. She wore a vacuum-suit; the yellow plastic grubby and tattered – torn at the elbows, shredded at the thigh. That won’t take exposure to vacuum, I immediately concluded. In the low light of the chamber, I saw the UAS Endeavour crew badge on her shoulder – scuffed and faded so that it was barely visible.
Elena watched me examining her, eyes never leaving mine. There was a rigidity to her posture – like a feral animal about to take flight. She stepped back from me.
“Are you really here?” she said. Her voice quivered. She added, more abruptly: “Are you real, Conrad? I need to know!”
“It’s me,” I said: again taken by the strength of her response, by her unexpected reaction. “I’m real.”
There was some irony there, I supposed. Here I was, finally seeing the woman that I had pursued in dream and thought for eight long years – and it was she who doubted my existence. If this Elena was a construct of my damaged psyche, then she certainly wasn’t reacting as I would have imagined.
“Are you alone?” she asked, sharply.
“I – I had a squad—”
She scowled at me, defiantly. Her body was so small compared to my enormous armoured frame, and she was shaking. Whether that was with anger, or some other emotion, it was hard to tell.
“Where are they now?”
“Gone. Dead.”
“Are you sure?”
“Yes.”
“Always keep your suit-feeds switched off when you come here,” Elena snapped in admonishment. “That will give you more time before it finds you. It senses the data; it’ll smell you – just like the Krell do.”
“All right,” I said, nodding. “I…I can’t believe that you’re still here.”
