The Lazarus War: Artefact (33 page)

“Patch us into the combat-suit camera feeds,” I said.

The direct feeds from Jenkins and Kaminski appeared on the crawler console. Martinez manipulated the controls and activated night-vision mode, improving the visual quality. This was exactly what Kellerman would be viewing back at Helios Station.

“Approaching tunnel entrance,” Kaminski said, his communicator channel open to the crawler.

The tunnel mouth was fifty metres ahead of them. Jenkins waved Kaminski up, and she dashed through rock pools to cover another few metres. Her footfalls echoed off into the distance. So loud: the noise made me flinch.

“Spooky as hell down here,” Jenkins panted.

“I’m getting possible movement,” Martinez said. “Maybe just water though. There’s a lot of it coming through this section.
Mucho movimiento
.”

Jenkins reached the tunnel mouth and unstrapped the charge from her back, holding her flamer one-handed. It was a big, clumsy weapon, but she handled it expertly. Kaminski came up behind her and hunkered down beside the rocky wall. The situation was impossibly tense. My eyes kept flitting to the crawler view-screens, to the deep darkness that surrounded us.

“Best place to seal the tunnel will be a few metres in,” Jenkins said. “If I set the charge for three minutes, we can roll out in the crawler before it hits. You sure that you want me to do this?”

I had a moment of indecision. I didn’t know about the structural viability of the caves, and I doubted that any expedition had ever performed a demo test. Kellerman would never have allowed it.

“Orders, Cap?” Jenkins asked again.

“Do it – ten metres inside, three-minute delay,” I decided.

Jenkins knelt down to ready the charge. Kaminski motioned her on, his rifle up to cover her.

There was a distant, high-pitched keening noise. Like a banshee howl, loud enough to be detected by suit receivers and relayed back to the crawler.

“Wait!” I called.

Jenkins paused.

“You hear that? Turn up your external audio receptors.”

I watched through Kaminski’s suit-camera: Jenkins frowned behind her face-plate.

“Sounds like the wind,” she said. “Maybe coming down through the rocks.”

It’s the Artefact. Not in my head, but sounding through the tunnels. Get a Christo-damned grip; these people depend on you
.

“Ignore it. Execute the order,” I said to Jenkins. But that confirmed it: none of the others could hear the signal like me.

Jenkins attached the charge to the tunnel wall. The rock was slick with water and algae. The charge slipped free the first time. She attached it again. The display panel illuminated.

“Done. Nuke is placed.”

“I’m getting readings all around us,” Martinez interrupted. “I don’t like this at all. Scanner is showing definite motion.”

“Get back inside the crawler,” I ordered. “Move now.”

They moved on at a brisk jog.

I stared down at the scanner. It showed a certain, solid build-up of hostiles. Flashing blips, moving swiftly all around the cavern.

“Clearing tunnel mouth!” Kaminski whispered.

He turned back towards the crawler – so distant on his camera-feed, rendered throbbing green by his helmet visuals.

In front of Kaminski, head so close that it almost touched his face-plate, was an enormous Krell primary-form. It was poised on a rock, powerful legs coiled underneath it; massive razor-claws raised and ready to strike. Maybe the image froze for a second, or perhaps it really was that still: like some twisted alien sculpture. Its mouth was open wide, exposing rows of teeth, and it screamed right into Kaminski’s face – spittle showering him, enough of it landing on the camera lens to cloud my view.

I visualised myself
there
, in the death-grip of the Krell primary-form: I instantly recognised the poise of the xeno, knew what it was about to do.

“Kaminski!” I roared.

My reactions were slow, human.

Kaminski’s were improved, superhuman.

He was already reacting. His rifle was up, firing. The Krell was caught off-guard, and two plasma pulses impacted its torso just under the ribcage. In a brilliant flash of light – bright enough to momentarily blind the vid-feed – the creature collapsed backwards. It thrashed violently, sending water and alien flora spraying into the air.

“I’m moving!” Kaminski called. “I’m moving!”

“They’re all around us!” Jenkins said, following Kaminski.

The cave was abruptly filled with the tell-tale squawking of Krell primary-forms. They were dropping from the ceiling, I realised, and using the stalactites to guide their descent.

“Tracking multiple targets,” Martinez shouted.

Something heavy
thump-thumped
on the roof. I unconsciously grabbed for my pistol, cycling the safety off, even though I knew that it wouldn’t do me any good against these odds.

“Get ready to move out, Martinez,” I ordered. “Power up the engine. Soon as they are onboard, we’re gone. Activate the guns!”

The sand-crawler turrets sprang to life. There was a pair of guns on the roof – multi-barrelled, solid-shot assault cannons. Automated, they selected the most viable targets and opened fire. Equipped with camera-mounts as well; I watched as the muzzles of each gun glowed white-hot, churned through the attackers. More bodies collapsed from above, in various states of injury.

The noise was tremendous: the chatter of the guns, the screaming of the descending Krell, echoing off the vast cave walls. Overwhelming, even inside the crawler.

I feverishly looked back to Jenkins’ vid-feed. There was too much happening at once for me to keep track of, and once again I cursed my fallible body. She fired from the hip with her flamethrower. Kaminski was in front of her, blasting through bodies. Two huge xenos landed beside him, in another explosion of water. They advanced. With lightning reactions, he armed a grenade and threw it.

A fraction of a second later, the grenade exploded. Shards of alien blood and body tissue showered Kaminski and Jenkins. Everywhere, jagged shadows were cast by approaching Krell and weapons-fire.

In that instant of perfect light, I saw that the ceiling was lined with Krell. There were hundreds of them roosting above. Even as they made their way towards the transport, more were emerging from their hibernation.

“Flamethrower on the left,” Kaminski called.

Jenkins swung about-face, charging her flamer. A jet of combustible chemical fluid sprayed the area, ignited almost instantly. Another group of aliens descended and squawked commands to those above. I watched in morbid fascination as Jenkins activated her flamer again and again, as white-orange flame poured over the massed bodies.

Kaminski and Jenkins were finally at the hatch.

“Open up!” Jenkins said. She pounded her hand against the metal framework.

I dashed for the door controls, tripping over my increasingly-pained leg. The cavern rumbled with the weapons-discharge all around. I willed myself onwards, grabbing for the hatch and wrenching it open with all of my bodily strength. Another wave of stench hit me, but this was different: the tang of roasting alien flesh, the acrid burn of plastic from the damaged combat-suits. My eyes stung with the heavy smoke from Jenkins’ flamer, and I choked as I tried to breath.

Jenkins tumbled into the crawler. She was covered in xeno blood, still firing her flamer into the mass of aliens that had gathered at the hatch.

Eyes streaming, I looked at the chaos outside.
Something
emerged from the burning napalm laid down by Jenkins’ flamer – a ragged shadow, still aflame. It was already dead, but momentum kept the thing moving. Kaminski stumbled on another body—

I imagined what he was seeing inside his face-plate: painted with so many targets that his auto-sighting probably couldn’t even decide which needed to be killed first—

The burning xeno-form lurched forwards, raptorial forearms raised. It was a scarecrow of a thing; flesh melted by flamer-fuel, blackened and desiccated. Only then did Kaminski see it – the open mouth, the impossibly dangerous knife-tipped arms.

The alien was on top of him, and he stopped firing. One forearm pierced his torso, clean through the combat-suit. Four layers of reinforced, ablative plastic-steel compound – like it wasn’t even there. Another punctured the plastic of his face-plate. Kaminski instantly went limp, his simulated body held firm in the alien’s grip. His rifle clattered to the ground, trampled underfoot by the enormous attacker.

“He’s gone,” Jenkins stated flatly.

I stumbled backwards, in denial and horror. Such human reactions, such undermining emotions: strangers to me for so many years, now returned in force.

No sim to hide in out here. I’ll end up the same
.

Just like that, Kaminski was snubbed out. With his neural-link severed, he would awaken back at Helios Station – probably screaming in pain. I knew that experience too well. There was no time to grieve for him now.

“Get back!” Jenkins yelled at me, without turning.

I scrambled from the lock, and she laid down another carpet of flame. The xeno and Kaminski disappeared beneath it. Even then, two more Krell leapt from hiding places, charging through the flames to reach the crawler. One grappled with the doorframe, claws screeching against the metal. The other scrambled up into the crawler. I fumbled with my pistol.

Jenkins pushed me back into the crawler, hauling shut the hatch. She slammed the alien bodies aside. The xenos were left outside, pounding against the hatch in frustration.

“Move, move!” Jenkins called to Martinez. “Thirty seconds until that charge goes off!”

Jenkins had full battlefield intelligence. She knew exactly how long until the charge detonated, in real-time.

Overhead the turrets fired continuously, shaking the vehicle. Two, three, maybe more, xenos were on the roof now. The crawler rocked side to side violently.

“They’re trying to overturn the crawler. Get us out of here,” I said, grappling with an overhead support rail to steady myself.

“My pleasure,” said Martinez.

The crawler roared into action. The headlights doused the area in brilliant light. Everywhere, in impossible numbers, the aliens descended. The scanner trilled continuously.

I counted the seconds, erratically, in my head. There was a muted explosion behind us and a moment of uncertainty: the explosion could seal us within the cave with those things, or it could deter them from pursuit.

There was a second deep rumble of a different tone. The crawler rocked indecisively. Martinez fought with the controls, desperately trying to keep us upright.

“What’s happening?” I yelled.

“Looks like part of the ceiling is coming down,” Martinez said, consulting a tri-D topographic map of the area on the control console. “These tunnels aren’t going to hold—”

Something big hit the side of the crawler. Whether it was the Krell, or just rock, I couldn’t tell. Then something else hit us from above. The crawler roof deformed with the impact.

I fell sideways as the crawler lurched, hitting my head on a locker. As I went down, I stole a glance at the view-screen. There was no path any more, no visible route. Only a wall of falling rock, water and dust.

I was thrown sideways again, but this time Jenkins caught me. She held me tight against her huge armoured body, grappled with another locker to keep us both upright.

We were falling, falling—

“It’s all right,” she whispered to me as we went. “It’s going to be all right.”

If there were Krell outside, they were being buried just like us. The cave-in seemed to be all around, so loud that it blotted out all other sound. I couldn’t even tell if the gun-turrets were firing any more. Death by Krell, or crushed in a cave-in: it was all the same to me, and in my real body it could happen so quickly.

A fractured skull, a shattered spine
.

I closed my eyes.

I woke with a start, taking in my surroundings.

“There was a war in heaven. It was centuries ago, perhaps millennia. So long ago that it doesn’t matter any more. Time is difficult to express in human fractions when the stars glow for ever.”

The voice was so clouded by static that it was impossible to identify the speaker.

Martinez had stripped off much of his combat-armour. Wet, fresh sweat glistened on his back. From where I sat – propped up in a passenger seat – I heard his ragged, panting breath. Like a dog; feral, barely contained.

When he spoke, his voice was hoarse and ragged. “How do you know this? What are these things?”

The speaker, who could only have been Kellerman, continued with the monologue as though no question had been asked.

“The Krell and the Shard are all that is left of the war. The organic versus the mechanical. The war tore apart the galaxy, with those species strong enough to survive, scrabbling for what little resources remained. The Shard have a long memory, even if all they have left is wreckage and dust.”

“Is that why they insist on staying here?” Martinez asked, his tone bordering on aggressive insistence. “Answer me,
padre
!”

Kellerman laughed. “Perhaps what is left of the Shard is only a tiny fraction of the whole. A ghost of what the species once was, if you will. The Krell seem to be in much better shape. They must have won the war, I suppose.”

Martinez’s hands twisted into fists, and he pounded the control panel. The whole crawler rocked with each blow. I frowned, struggling to stand. I was pinned beneath a support strut, across the legs and torso.

Then I realised the inside of the crawler was in utter disarray. Equipment lay smashed on the floor. Crates were battered and dented. I struggled harder to get free.

—at the back of the med-bay, among shattered storage tubes and twisted metal, sprawled parodies of my real body—

Jenkins lay opposite me, her body in an odd position – legs buckled backwards, arms crushed beneath her torso. Her head was at an awkward and unusual angle, hair draped over her pale face. Blood dripped from the corner of her mouth in thick strands. Her chest had been pierced by a piece of wreckage – a beam emerging from her back.