The Lazarus War: Artefact (30 page)

The dark receded.

I wasn’t grateful when it did, because consciousness and pain returned together. Great waves, all over my body.

Then came the questioning, always the questioning.

“
How do we activate the simulants?
”

“
How long before Command sends a response team?
”

It was Deacon. I couldn’t see anything except vague shapes but I could sense him well enough. His face burning and full of anger, right in front of mine. I smelt his hot breath.

“My name is Captain Conrad Harris, of the Alliance Simulant Operations Programme, Alliance Army,” I said. “Serial code 93778.”

“
Give us answers!
”

I repeated my identification information again and again. The words became a mantra; sometimes mingled with shouted denials and screamed protestations. I was fully trained in counter-torture technique. They would not have the pleasure of breaking me. I was a prisoner of war now.

Then the beating started again and pain exploded across my ribs, back and limbs. Hard enough to hurt, but not hard enough to kill. They could have killed me immediately and easily, but I guessed that they wanted me alive.

I spat blood on more than one occasion. My injured leg had developed a deep numbness, beyond pain.
Damn you all. I can take this for ever. I’ve felt worse
. More ribs were cracked.

“
This isn’t a military base and you aren’t subject to military law. The Doctor can do what he wants with you
.”

I was dimly aware that others were screaming as well – probably from chambers nearby. I thought that I recognised Jenkins shouting something, although it could’ve been Martinez. I definitely heard Tyler: screaming so loud that the cries echoed off the walls. She was pleading for the pain to stop. I wished that I could help her.

For a moment, her voice sounded like Elena’s. Begging for help, for me to listen. Demanding that I stop her from going into the Maelstrom. I wished that I could help her too.

Blackness came again, and the cycle repeated.

One minute I was in a chair, buckled down by wrist and ankle restraints. The next I was sprawled across a cell floor. The detail might’ve just been in my head, maybe created by my subconscious to fill in the blanks. I couldn’t tell whether the torture lasted for hours or days: time became an irrelevance.

“
Stop it!
” someone finally called out. “
I told you – I want him alive!
”

Kellerman again. Sitting in his chair, at the cell door; a perfect rectangle of white light framing him, piercing the dark of the torture chamber.

Everything stopped when he arrived. Now I could make out Deacon’s sweaty face. There were two security men with him, stripped to the waist, bloated with anger and hate. Bare chests all scarred and pocked by their time on Helios.

I laughed but the noise ended with a wet, painful choking that wracked my body.
I’m so cold
. Wetness on my forehead, over my chest.
It’s blood. Just blood
.

“He’s had enough. Get him cleaned up and restrained. Bring him to my chambers.”

I wore a fabric hood over my head, fastened tightly at the neck. Not so harshly that I would suffocate, but tight enough for me to understand my captors meant business. The fabric carried an overpowering stink of fetid blood and dried sweat. The hood had been used lots of times before – others, maybe equally as disloyal to Kellerman, had been in this same position.

Perhaps Tyler got something wrong. Maybe not everyone who went into the tunnels did so of their own free will
.

“Take off the hood.”

Someone roughly removed the item, and I shook my head free.

We were in Kellerman’s room. He sat behind his desk and I sat in front of it – a perverse reconstruction of our meeting just days earlier, with Deacon at my back. This time my wrists were clamped to the arms of the chair. I tried to twist myself free, but cold metal bit into my flesh, and it didn’t do any good. One of my eyes was swollen, almost shut, and the other felt bruised. My vision wavered a little – I needed proper medical attention.

“You killed him, Kellerman,” I erupted. “You killed Blake!”

Kellerman regarded me coolly, and locked his gnarled fingers. His lack of reaction infuriated me. I growled across the room, tried again to free myself. The chair legs clattered on the floor. Kellerman watched on.

“You killed Blake!” I roared again.

I spat across the room.
See how you like that
. A gobbet of blood-tinged phlegm landed on Kellerman’s cheek. Finally, his façade broke, and his face crumpled into a frown. He wiped the spittle away, shaking his dirtied hand disdainfully. Behind me, I heard Deacon jumping into action, the rattle of his shock-rifle coming to aim.

“No need for concern,” Kellerman said, holding up a hand. “Captain Harris is angry. Tensions are running high.”

“Fuck you! You’re a traitor, Kellerman. A Christo-damned Directorate spy!”

“The Directorate presented me with an opportunity.”

“You lured us to Helios!”

“Not you specifically. I stopped reporting to Command in the hope that they would send a rescue team. I couldn’t afford to lose any more staff, although I still needed bodies – to go into the Artefact. I had no way of knowing that Command would send a simulant team.”

“Fuck you!” I raged again. I knew that I was losing what little energy I had left, but I couldn’t sit across from this shadow of a man – this traitor – without acting against him. “Blake was only a kid. He didn’t deserve to die. Neither did Sara, or any of the others—”

Or Elena, or our child—

“I had hoped to persuade you to help me. It was my intention to scare you with the encounter in the desert. The Krell we faced were experiments, and they were loose in that region at my request – their bio-tech communicators surgically removed. Private Blake’s death was unanticipated. Even so, I thought that it would solidify your animosity towards the Krell. Miss Tyler ruined all of that. She forced me to adopt a more direct approach.”

I knew, then, that when I next had the opportunity I would kill Kellerman.

“You’re mad. You don’t know what the Artefact is, or what it is capable of.”

“I suppose that was conveyed to you by Miss Tyler?” he said, smoothly. “I’ve already told you that the Artefact is a beacon, and that the Alliance has known about the Shard for a long time. Both of those things are true. If the Artefact is activated, it will yield access to an untold alien empire – stretched across the Maelstrom. With access to Q-jump points throughout the region, imagine the alien technology that could be salvaged. That is what the Directorate wants, and that is what I am giving them.”

“I’m going to fucking kill you! I’m going to take the star-data—”

“The main approach to the Artefact is guarded by an enormous Krell presence,” Kellerman said, ignoring my outburst. “I don’t think that even your simulants would be able to deal with that level of resistance. Thanks to Miss Tyler, you already know of the tunnels beneath the desert. I have been able to identify a possible path to the Artefact through those tunnels. The simulant team will be ideal to undertake this mission. You will, on my command, follow the identified route and activate the Artefact with the Key.”

“You’re a fool!” I shot back, grinning at him. “My squad would never help you. You don’t even know how to use the simulant technology.”

Kellerman’s mask of tranquillity did not drop at all. “You and your troopers might be difficult to crack, but Mr Olsen was less so. You are trained soldiers; he is not.”

Kellerman turned to a bank of monitors, switching several of them on. My smile faded as images appeared on the tri-D viewers. They showed cells, like that in which I had been held. My squad was detained in one cell, sprawled on the floor, battered and beaten. The images were monotone and grainy, but there were dark pools on the ground – those could only be bloodstains. I felt a burst of relief on seeing them. The team was in bad shape, but they were all alive at least.

The last holo showed Olsen, wringing his hands nervously, pacing like a caged animal. He looked up at the camera, with bloodshot eyes.

“Mr Olsen will be assisting me. He will ensure that your team makes transition.”

Damn Olsen!
He was a coward. I’d always known that. His life was a bargaining chip, and he’d sold the rest of us out. His choice didn’t surprise me. He was just a different breed to me: he would rather roll over than stand up and fight.

“You stupid fuck, Kellerman! Whatever Olsen told you, the team can’t make transition. My simulants were destroyed in the crash! You asked me about that yourself. I can’t do what you want me to do, no matter how much you torture or bully—”

Kellerman held up a finger for silence.

“I know that you cannot make transition,” he said, whisper-quiet. “But you are still going into the Artefact.”

I sat for a moment, considering the suggestion. Not suggestion: order. There was a man with a gun in his hands behind me, and the only authority in light-years of space in front of me.

“You will accompany your team into the Artefact. They will use their simulants, you will not. I will observe from Operations. Despite the close proximity to the Artefact, I anticipate that the simulants will be immune to its transmission. You will be a test subject. You will be escorted into the Artefact itself, by your squad, and you will activate it. We will see how it affects you.”

“And what if my team turns on you? What if I refuse to go?” I said, defiantly.

“The real bodies of your squad will remain on Helios Station. I can execute them from here if necessary. If I understand the simulant technology correctly, this will lead to the loss of the reciprocal simulant. That would be one less simulant to protect you, Captain Harris, as you make your way through Krell-occupied territory.”

He swivelled his hover-chair again, turning to the bank of monitors.

“Miss Tyler will also remain in my custody. It won’t take much for me to kill her.”

A holo showed Tyler sprawled across another cell floor. She had been beaten badly. Bruises had already started to appear on her exposed arms. She was still, silent. At the very least unconscious, maybe dead. I looked from Tyler to Kellerman, and back again.

Just one more person I’ve let down – not just on Helios, but in life
.

No. I wasn’t going to let anyone down. Not any more.

“Damn you, Kellerman!” I screamed. “I want that star-data
now
! And if you won’t give it to me, I’ll damned well take it from you.”

Kellerman’s face was still. He was a husk of a man. Obsession had taken everything away from him. His half-lidded eyes were dark; like Krell eyes. He cheeks were sullen and hollow. He was nothing but an idea, and his fixation with that idea had become so overwhelming that it had stripped away his national allegiance, his personality, his soul.

“Why do you want the star-data? What is it that drives you?”

Elena’s memory burnt bright. At least he didn’t know about her. At least she was still
mine. I’m not telling you anything
.

I twisted in my restraints again. This time, the chair turned over and I pitched to the floor with it, hitting my right shoulder. I thrashed, riding out the pain all across my body. Blood filled one eye, but I didn’t care.

Kellerman leant over me, completely unimpressed by my display. There was no hint of fear or concern in his eyes.

“If you won’t tell me, then I can’t help you,” he concluded. “That is your choice, but we have more in common than you might think. We can both hear the Artefact’s signal. We’re both idealists, in our own way.” Kellerman righted himself in his chair: now the colonel addressing his troops, the priest attending his flock. “And so I will give you what you want.”

I paused in the midst of my rage, of my fury. What did he mean? A fleeting – impossible – hope filled me again.
Elena! I’m so sorry – but I can save you. I can follow you
.

“You will have the honour of carrying the Key. It will activate the Artefact, and it contains the star-data from the Shard wreck.”

I breathed hard – fighting to contain my emotions, trying to think of some rational way out of this mess. Was this supposed to make me feel better about doing his dirty work? Encourage me in some way to go through with this?

Kellerman ignored my indecision. “I understand from Mr Olsen that you have a nickname, among your peers: Lazarus. Maybe you will come back from this; perhaps you will be resurrected. Let us hope. I am sure that you are the man for this task.” He set his jaw and nodded over at Deacon. “Get him ready for insertion into the sand-crawler.”

Deacon pulled the hood back over my head.

She had been gone for two years.

A weaselly-eyed bartender sat at one end of the sticky serving counter, and I sat alone at the other. The lights were dimmed and most of the tables empty – awaiting the end of the mining shift. I reckoned that it would be rowdy in here once the time came; it wasn’t a place where military folk were welcome. Called “Yankee’s Rest”, it was a dive, real worn out, frequented by asteroid miners and civilian hauliers. The North American Union flag was draped above the optics on the bar. Seemed like no one had bothered to tell the proprietor that the Union was long gone.

I’d taken a civilian shuttle run from the
Point
to the next inhabited outpost – an asteroid mining station with the catchy title of XV-78. It was such an unpopular destination that no one had bothered to give it a proper name. Maybe no one stayed long enough to name the place: they either went Corewards, back to Alliance space, or took the next Q-jump to the
Point
. I hadn’t been here before, and I didn’t plan on returning. But O’Neil had suggested that we meet here, and that was enough for me.

Not just O’Neil – Colonel O’Neil. I had to remind myself that he was a colonel now. Head of the entire Sim Ops Programme, second only to Old Man Cole himself. It had taken all of my favours, all of our history together to arrange this meeting.

An old holo-viewer sat above the bar, playing a fresh newscast – the words DIRECT FROM LIBERTY POINT FOB scrolled across the flickering screen. The
Point
was close enough that there was barely any time delay on the broadcast.

A civilian newscaster presented a segment on the nightly feed.

“
It has been almost eighteen months since the agreement of the Treaty with the Krell Empire. In what President Underwood is calling the most momentous achievement in human history, the Krell Empire is finally at peace with the Alliance
.”

Of course, that wasn’t quite true: the peace wasn’t complete. There had been the occasional border-skirmish between simulant teams and Krell raiders, but all-out war seemed to have been suspended. I buckled down and did my duty; going where I was told, when I was told.

“
Although Alliance Command has declared the mission a success, it also remains a tremendous human tragedy that the crew of the expedition have not been recovered. Viewers will no doubt recall that there were sixteen starships involved in the extensive operation, including the flagship UAS
Endeavour.
That ship, along with a crew of over five hundred personnel, continued to transmit for a year following arrival within the Maelstrom, but since then nothing has been heard from that fated vessel. The search for the
Endeavour
has officially, as of today, been called off. The crew will be declared MIA – missing in action
.”

None of the crew came back. No one knew why, or at least Command weren’t willing to explain the disappearance. I had my own, personal theory: that Elena and her crew were expendable and that the Alliance had simply sold them out to the Krell.

I hunkered down at the bar, taking a mouthful of foul-tasting beer from a dirty bottle. I had dressed as inconspicuously as I could – for the first time in months, not in military fatigues, but civilian clothes.

“You like drinking alone?” came a voice from behind me. At the same time, a meaty hand slammed onto my back.

I slowly roused and looked around. My instant reaction was to salute, but O’Neil shot me a glare that told me not to bother.

“Glad that you made it,” he said solemnly.

Colonel Patrick O’Neil sat down beside me. He was bigger than me, a few years older too. His face was cratered with scars from decades of active service, and his short greying hair was receding. He too was dressed in a civilian outfit – a worn leather flight jacket and denim slacks. He looked far more comfortable in civvies than I did; almost like he had a life outside of the military. O’Neil waved at the bartender, flashing a bank note and ordering a beer. The disinterested barman slid a bottle across the bar.

“Tastes like shit, doesn’t it?” O’Neil said to me. “You know, the further out from Earth that you get, the worse the beer tastes.”

“That a fact? Then I guess that
Liberty Point
has the worst beer of all.”

“And XV-78 is a close second,” he replied. “How have you been, Conrad?”

“Could be better,” I said. I waved up at the holo. “You picked one hell of a day to meet me. Was it deliberate?”

“With all the fanfare at the
Point
, it seemed as good a time as any to get away. Some anonymity, you know? Go somewhere where nobody knows your name.”

“I guess you’ll be busy, or whatever, with all the interviews and shit. How is the new job working out?”

O’Neil swigged his beer, unwilling to take the bait. He had been in command of Simulant Operations, responsible for sending a dedicated team into the Maelstrom as an escort.

“I know that you authorised the
Endeavour
’s mission,” I said. “I imagine Command wants the public onside, after all, and your maverick approach to striking peace with the Krell has paid off.”

For everyone, except me
.

“Listen,” he started, exhaling through his nose, “I provided a military presence.”

“And I know that without such a presence, there was no way that Command would’ve sanctioned the op.”

“It wasn’t – isn’t – that simple.”

I nodded. “Never is.” I had to rein in my resentment, try not to wear it so blatantly. I didn’t want to alienate O’Neil completely. “Thanks for agreeing to see me.”

“Christo, you pestered me enough times. How many transitions have you made now?”

I shrugged. “I don’t know. Hundred and fifty?”

He guzzled down some more of the beer. “That’s more than anyone else on Sim Ops. You’re starting to get quite the reputation, Conrad.”

“I don’t want a reputation,” I said, as finally as I could. “I want a favour.”

“That so?”

“You know what I want.”

O’Neil smiled and laughed, but neither action held any humour. He shook his head and slouched onto the bar, like he was playing the part of an exhausted asteroid miner – back from a long day in the shafts – rather than a colonel in the Alliance Army.

“I know what you want,” he said. “I’ve seen your request for an operation. I’ve seen your
repeated
mission projections. Your petitions to not just the Army, but the Navy as well.”

“I want to go after the UAS
Endeavour
. I want to go after her.”

“Dr Elena Marceau was a good woman. A damned good woman. But she fully knew what she was getting herself into when she signed up for that mission.”

“Did she? And what did she get herself into, then?” I said, my voice rising involuntarily. Anger made my face flush, and I turned to bore my eyes into O’Neil.

“Dr Elena Marceau will be declared MIA as of this evening. You’ve seen the broadcasts. Nothing you say or do is going to change that.”

“Then why did you agree to meet me?” I asked, standing now, jabbing my finger into his shoulder.

“Because, hard as it may be to accept, I care about you as a friend and as a military colleague. You’ve been part of Sim Ops from the start, and I value your contribution. But you need to move on. She’s gone.”

“You could authorise another mission – allow me to insert into the Maelstrom, to properly search for her!”

“I could do no such thing. Old Man Cole himself doesn’t have that sort of authority. I know that you won’t stop until you have the answer that you want, but it isn’t going to happen. Even if we wanted to go after her, we can’t.”

“What do you mean, we can’t? There has to be a way. Those people gave their lives to achieve peace with the Krell, and all Command has done is sell them out.”

“Command has done nothing of the sort. Elena knew the risks when she signed up. We have no star-data. Even if we had something reliable, the Q-jump points are a mystery to us. Her ship went further than any other human vessel has ever gone—”

“We can just follow the
Endeavour
to the rendezvous coordinates,” I insisted.

“The
Endeavour
isn’t there any more,” he countered. “I’m telling you more than I should, but if it will get you off my back then it’s worth it.
Endeavour
has gone off the grid. It went somewhere else inside the Maelstrom, but we don’t know where.”

“Then the crew might still be alive! You know as well as I do that the Krell take prisoners.”

“The answer is
no
,” O’Neil said. “She’s gone. We don’t have the ability to track the
Endeavour
. If we had star-data, proper astrocartography, of the Maelstrom, then things might be different. But, quite frankly, I don’t see that happening in your lifetime.”

“Thanks for nothing, O’Neil.”

“You knew my response before you even attended this meeting.”

“I’ll resign.”

“We both know that won’t happen. You won’t do that, because you can’t do that. You’re addicted.”

I shrank back onto the barstool. O’Neil was right. Elena had been right as well, and now she was gone for ever.

“Go see a psychosurgeon,” O’Neil muttered. “I can recommend a good one, non-military, if it helps. Maybe get a mind-wipe – they can do wonders these days, remove selective memories, whatever works. She’s ex-Directorate, but helped me out a couple of years back after Sandra left me. Now drink your beer, and we’ll catch the next shuttle to the
Point
.”

“Fuck that. I’m sure as shit not going to see any Directorate headshrink, and I’m not going anywhere. I don’t want to forget!”

“All right, have it your way.” He fumbled with something inside his worn leather jacket. “Maybe this will ease your pain.” He removed a crumpled envelope and gave it to me, without opening it. “I shouldn’t be doing this. But, like I say, you’re a friend and a colleague. Maybe this will give you some closure, some peace, for what it’s worth.”

Then he finished his beer, patted me on the back like we were old buddies, and left the bar.

I stared down at the envelope for a long time before I finally gathered the mental strength to open it. My fingers trembled as I peeled back the plastic sheath.

There was a single sheet inside. It had a military transmission heading, printed with numerous security warnings, restrictions and non-disclosure cautions.

I turned the sheet over in my hands.

Three words, printed. A communication from the UAS
Endeavour
. Now months old, sent from the original co-ordinates of the ship – the original rendezvous site.

The message had been keyed with Elena’s biometric imprint. I had no doubt that it was genuine. It was addressed specifically to me, although she must’ve known that the communication wasn’t private.

I sat there for hours afterwards, and read the message again and again.