by Jamie Sawyer
“Are you sure? I’d advise that you take it.”
“Forget it.” I looked back at the exit door to the infirmary. “That the only way out of here?”
“Yes,” Bailey said. “The SOC is on the other side of Medical, straight down the main corridor.”
“All right. Now I need to see Mason.”
Bailey nodded. “Of course. She’s over here.”
She pointed to a cube off the infirmary. Not the same cube Mason had been assigned last time I’d visited, I noticed. The curtain was pulled across, and I couldn’t see inside, but a light shone through the thin plastic material. Bailey went to the handle, fumbled with it inside her gloves, and turned to give me a half-smile.
There was a metal trolley beside the cube and for just a second I caught Williams’ reflection in the mirrored tray on top of it.
I had the shotgun over my right shoulder, cocked. My finger tightened on the trigger.
Suddenly, for no reason that I could really explain, everything in the room just felt wrong.
A dark realisation hit me. That awkward smile wasn’t scared: it was fake.
Bailey pulled back the curtain, all the way, and dodged sideways.
A body lay on the bed. Wearing a smock, but so heavily bloodstained that it was almost impossible to tell that the fabric had originally been white. Arms dangling freely from the side of the bed, eyes open, mouth smeared with even more crimson fluid.
“What have they done to you, Mason…?” I said.
Not Mason: Dr West. Her wild grey hair escaped into a frizzy mass, now slicked with her own blood.
“Now!” Bailey screamed. Her eyes flitted in Williams’ direction.
Williams and Bailey tried to take advantage of my surprise, to capitalise on my shock at seeing the body.
But I was already reacting. Before I’d properly registered the thing behind the curtain, I spun sideways. Gun up: aimed at Bailey.
Whoever or whatever she was, she was not a professional soldier. Instead of moving out of my kill zone – the shotgun only had a limited range – she froze, put her hands up to her face.
Williams slammed his bodyweight into the right of my ribcage – hard enough to disrupt my aim. I fired the gun once, just missing Bailey. Shotgun pellets sprayed the wall of the cube and peppered the ceiling.
“You useless old fuck!” Williams yelled.
We crashed against the far wall. Williams was much stronger than he looked. I dragged the shotgun around to face him with one hand, grabbed for the slide with the other. Damned thing needed to be reloaded before I could shoot again.
He punched me in the face: a full-on blow. I felt a cheekbone snap, hot blood gushing from somewhere.
“Get him on there!” Bailey shouted, with a determination that marked her as a long-term accomplice. “The auto-doc!”
I scrambled against Williams. Brought the gun up again. He slammed into me once more. My fingers fumbled with the slide and I lost my grip on the shotgun.
I was shaking, so weak.
Bailey glared back at me. Smirking.
The smart-meds, I realised, weren’t smart-meds at all.
Williams’ elbow rose up. Connected with my face. I stumbled back, now feeling even more sluggish.
Bailey and Williams appeared in triplicate—
Jesus Christo.
Couldn’t speak.
I collapsed against the side of the auto-doc, then into the waiting pod.
I felt the contoured plastic treatment table moulding around my shoulders, restraining me. There was no need for that: my body didn’t seem to want to respond to my orders any more. The auto-doc’s canopy whined as it descended over me – sealing me inside. It was an automatic reaction to snake my arms back, to avoid being caught as the pod sealed. The machine itself powered up with a nauseating purr.
An array of the auto-doc’s medical tools was mounted inside the canopy. Wicked bladed forearms hovered overhead; laser-tipped probes cycling through treatment functions. Like a twisted metal spider, suspended in a web.
“Just kill him!” Bailey commanded.
Williams shook his head. “It isn’t that easy. He’s been a pain since he got here, and I want my pound of flesh.”
“There’s no time for that!”
“Like I said, it’ll be the Warfighters that crack the Artefact. The Lazarus Legion is history.”
Everything was blurring, sickeningly so. The room lights above me flashed. Williams loomed closer, a blot over the sun – a grinning idiot.
The auto-doc began to stream audio warnings so quickly that I couldn’t keep up. Williams punched some keys on the control unit beside me. I pounded against the reinforced transparent plastic but it was useless. I was trapped inside.
“Shit out of luck this time, Lazarus,” Williams said.
He roared with laughter. The auto-doc is a revolution in medical treatment, capable of treating the most hideously injured military personnel. If not healing, then at least getting them back on their feet. Williams didn’t give a shit about those aspects of the machine. He wanted to inflict maximum damage. Bailey stood beside him, arms crossed over her chest, and they both looked down into my pod.
Inhumanly fast – machine fast – one of the super-sharp blades came down on my left arm. It was a clean, medical cut, but the location was random: piercing the mid-wrist, through muscle, through the ulna and radius bones. It missed the data-port in my forearm by mere centimetres.
The pain would’ve been unbearable, I’m quite sure, but at least Bailey’s poisoned drugs had taken the edge off. Even so, I screamed – a slurred, drunken sound. This was real pain in my real body. I thought of Carrie. Thought of the tired old veterans with their metal hands. I remembered in that instant how I had feared ending up like them. Now it was happening.
The blade scythed right through my limb: powering down as it completed the amputation. Arterial spray coated the inside of the canopy and, seen through it, the two faces above me. I shouted some more through gritted teeth, tried to move inside the cramped confines of the pod. The procedure took seconds to complete. The auto-doc probably didn’t like doing this sort of work: the continuous warning chime was evidence of that.
“By the way: that run up there?” Williams said. “It doesn’t count. You used zero-G to finish it. So looks like you come second again.”
He took another long drag on his cigarette. He had stopped smiling, was now just looking down at the pod—
Then, for the second time that day, something completely unexpected happened.
CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT
I’M LAZARUS
Bailey’s head exploded.
At first, I thought that the blood was mine. But in my drug-induced, pain-wracked fervour, I realised that the blood now spraying the auto-doc canopy was from outside the pod.
In my debilitated state, I registered the sound of the gunshot a second later.
Bailey’s blonde hair was a wash of brain and bone and blood. She slumped against the canopy.
Williams appeared as surprised as I was. He had no weapon – had been so sure of himself that he hadn’t bothered to pick up my Remington – and turned on the spot, face contorted in angry disbelief.
Another gunshot.
It hit him in the upper chest, reducing his fatigues to a black pulp. He managed to remain standing – mouth open to yell something that he never had the chance to voice. The barrel of the Remington was suddenly jammed into his face: point-blank range.
Dealing with unruly crewmen. Exactly what it’s for.
The shotgun barked again.
Williams’ head exploded with a single well-placed shot.
I lay still in the pod, trying to evaluate what had just happened. The auto-doc’s savage blades powered down. Like an insect drawing its legs up before flight, the medical tools adopted a relaxed position.
A friendly face appeared over me.
Tired, sallow; but friendly.
Private Dejah Mason.
“Jesus fuck, sir,�
�� she shouted, loud enough that I could hear her from inside the pod. “What’s happening?”
I was weak – haemorrhaging from the open stump of my left arm – and didn’t have the strength to explain. “Activate the cauterisation protocol,” I said. “Now. Before I bleed out.”
Mason nodded, and the machine began that stomach-turning buzzing – started its work again.
Uneducated Army grunts aren’t typically trained in the use of the auto-doc. It’s a precision device: carrying a significant price-tag. That said, trauma-models like that in the infirmary were often programmed with automated routines. Some commands are a matter of pressing the right keys and issuing the correct commands. That was exactly what Mason did.
It took about five minutes to seal the wound with a medical laser, then less than a minute to pump me with real smart-meds to deal with the pain. I felt like I was floating: either the result of the blood loss or because I was in severe shock. The machine ended the treatment programme by sealing the stump with a thick layer of transparent plasti-skin.
“Treatment is now complete,” the auto-doc said. “Have a nice day.”
Mason stood over the control console. Dressed in a tank top and shorts, barefoot; the salvaged Remington shotgun was still in her hand.
“Good work,” I croaked. “Never let your gun out of your sight.”
“You okay, sir?”
“I’ll live. And you?”
“I’ve felt better,” she said. She rolled her head around against her shoulders. “But I guess I don’t really have grounds to complain.”
She stared down at the stump of my left arm. It had been severed completely at the wrist. Under the water-proofed false skin, nanos were working away inside my body to coagulate my blood, making sure that I wouldn’t bleed out. I was drenched in more than enough of that.
My severed hand lay on the treatment couch – fingers curled in a death-claw, already turning a sickening white.
“That’s going to hurt when the drugs wear off,” was all Mason could say.
“I’ll worry about that when it happens.” Perhaps it was a result of the smart-meds, but my dead hand was bizarrely hypnotic. It took some serious willpower to pull my eyes from it. “There’s work to be done.”
“I was in the cube, when I heard shouting,” Mason said. “How long have I been asleep for? And since when was Captain Williams trying to kill you?”
“Since the whole world went to shit.” I swivelled my legs out of the auto-doc and off the treatment couch, winced as I sat in my own blood. “It’s a long story, but all you need to know right now is that the Directorate are here. On the Colossus.”
“Where and how?”
“Unknown to both. We need to scramble the Legion, get them operational. Listen Mason, I’m so sorry. I should never have pushed you like that.”
Mason gave a nod. “Forget it.”
“I’m going to make sure that this is done right. Make sure everyone gets out of this in one piece.”
She gave a guilty smile at that. “Except for you.”
“This is nothing that can’t be fixed. A week in a regeneration tank and I’ll be good as new.”
That wasn’t quite true; I was grossly oversimplifying things. Regrowing a hand in a regen tank wasn’t easy and I’d heard that it was also an extremely painful experience. But I didn’t want to think about that, and especially didn’t want Mason thinking about it.
“I’m Lazarus. I always come back.”
“For the Legion,” Mason said.
“Let’s get the comms station over in the SOC working. You take the shotgun.”
“Affirmative.”
I stepped over the corpses of Bailey and Williams. There was a lot of blood; pooled around the bodies, leaking out onto the white floor tiles. Among the remains of Williams’ head, still on his lips but badly crumpled during the fall, was his cigarette.
“At least Williams is down,” I said. “That’s one less traitor to worry about…”
I paused, looked at his corpse. Maybe it was the blood loss. Maybe it was some deep intuition. Either way, something about his bone structure – about the underlying muscle tissue – bothered me.
I saw him with a split lip. I know that I did.
I reached down and scooped up the cigarette. It had absorbed a lot of blood: gone completely red.
“Mason, activate the chemical-analyser on the auto-doc.”
She did as ordered, without hesitation, although she couldn’t possibly have understood why I needed the analysis done. Only I’d been on the Artefact that night, and only I had seen Williams’ bizarre behaviour with the cigarette.
It was just a hunch, nothing more. But as I considered the idea, it became less and less fanciful: more plausible.
The auto-doc sucked the remains of the bloodstained cigarette into its analyser. It took a few seconds to work. Then a read-out appeared on the monitor.
We both stood, looking at the results.
I wasn’t sure what to say; wasn’t sure what could be said.
“Does that mean what I think it does?” Mason eventually asked.
“I think so.”
The chemical breakdown of the cigarette was concerning enough. The same analysis as that night on the Artefact. Extreme narcotic content, not just grown in Hydroponics but combined with other chems: no doubt provided by Bailey, in the perfect position to lift supplies from the infirmary and medical, right under Dr West’s nose.
More worrying was the sub-analysis of the blood content.
Three words glowed on the screen:
SIMULANT BLOOD DETECTED
SUBJECT: CAPTAIN LANCE WILLIAMS
“Williams,” I said, “or at least that Williams, was a simulant.”
“I guess that explains why it took two shots to put him down,” Mason whispered. “But how is that possible?”
“When we first arrived here, Dr West bragged that the next-generation simulants were for more than direct combat. She even said that you could live in one indefinitely. That the sims were becoming second skins.”
“Holy shit…”
“Williams isn’t dead – not really dead, anyway.” The cut on his lip: gone the next morning. It suddenly made sense. I nudged the body on the floor with my foot. “This body is a next-gen simulant.”
It was the perfect cover. A traitor right under our noses, using next-gen simulants to minimise the risk to himself.
“I met him on the Run,” I whispered. “He didn’t come to save me. He came to make sure that I was dead…”
“Then where is the real Williams? Where’s his real skin?”
“Who knows?” I said, thinking it through. “He could be hidden somewhere else on the Colossus. Hell, there are more than enough hiding places on this ship. Or maybe he’s on one of the other Alliance warships; there are sixteen others in this fleet.”
“We’ll never find him,” Mason said. “What about the other Warfighters? You think they’re in on it too?”
“You ask a lot of questions,” I said. I mustered the best smile that I could in the circumstances. “And I’m all out of answers. We need to get to the SOC, and we can investigate from there. One more thing before we go.”
I reached down, and dragged Williams’ body to the auto-doc. Given I only had one hand, that wasn’t as easy as it should’ve been: Mason helped me get him into place. Then I activated the vibro-scalpel and sliced off his hand. You took my hand, now I’ll take yours. Not that he noticed or cared. This version of him just looked back at me with half a face, eyes vacant and confused.
“I think that we might need this.”
Mason cautiously covered every aspect of the deck as we moved, but we found the SOC as deserted as the rest of Medical.
“At least we’ve got power,” she said. “But someone has already been here.”
The simulators usually sat in two rows, facing each other like pieces on a holo-chess board. The Legion tanks were impassive, in sleep mode: a welcoming blue. All of
the Warfighters’ tanks were missing. The outlines of their simulators were imprinted on the floor, connecting cables strewn nearby.
“You think our tanks are safe?” Mason asked.
I quickly inspected them. They appeared intact, no obvious damage. I activated each in turn. Checked the diagnostics panels on the outer canopy.
“They look to be operational. They haven’t been obviously sabotaged.” I shook my head. “Williams was too damned sloppy for that.”
“What would you have done?” Mason asked, as she powered up the communications station. Although the room was still cast in darkness, it seemed that most of the terminals were capable of running on emergency power.
“I’d have taken these tanks out the first opportunity I got.”
“What about the sims?” Mason said. “Maybe they’ve been sabotaged.”
“Only one way to find that out.”
My missing hand throbbed, but my data-ports ached even more. I’d never felt the urge to climb into the tanks so strongly. Just by clambering in, by making transition to the waiting sim in the belly of the Colossus, I could end the pain in my arm, in my head, everywhere in my body. The idea of living in a sim – combat or next-gen – seemed more than appealing.
“Communications off-line,” the AI chirped over the SOC speakers. “This starship is in a dark cycle. Authorisation required. User not recognised.”
Mason swiped her thumb over the DNA reader attached to the comms station. Cursed as she received the same response.
“Williams must’ve locked me out.”
“Let me,” I said, nudging my way to the terminal.
I used Williams’ dead hand. Swiped his cold thumb over the reader. It left a print in blood. “I knew it’d come in handy,” I said.
Mason gave me an unimpressed stare.
“What?” I asked. “I’m facing certain death on a Directorate-infested starship, and I can’t make a joke?”
“I thought you said that we were going to make it.”
“I don’t remember saying that at all.”
“Maybe it was the meds talking.”
