“You don’t look so good yourself,” I muttered.
The robot noisily rolled down the corridor. I stood in the doorway for a moment, turning over the envelope.
A new mission is a good thing
, I told myself. That ever-present urge to climb back into the simulator-tank – to make transition into my simulant – rose up inside of me.
But orders direct from General Cole? That was unusual. Cole was serious business. This had to be something big, something special.
Maybe Jenkins was right
. There was a first time for everything.
The pain in my head told me that now was not the time to think about it. I fell back onto my cot and allowed my pounding headache to subside a little.
I turned, took in my room. It was a small officer’s cube – nothing flash, not a larger state room. As a captain, I would’ve been entitled to that, but I didn’t want it. I wasn’t one for material possessions, and my cubicle reflected that: austere, somewhere to sleep and not much more. But I kept a random jumble of personal articles beside my cot – just enough to remind me that I was still a member of the human race.
A preserved Krell claw, taken from a combat-suit after a sim-op that ended with a live return to the
Point
.
A blasted scrap of plastic, recovered from a destroyed plasma rifle.
Some spent solid-shot shell cases.
My father’s old revolver: an ancient pistol passed down from my grandfather.
A pink-silver ring set with orange gems.
Her
picture.
The photo was faded with age: a picture from Azure. The backdrop of blue sky played to the red gloss of her lips, the deep almond of her eyes. Her long, dark hair; always thick with her scent. I touched the image and it sprang to life – mimicking the woman that she had been.
We had been happy, then
.
I closed my eyes. I had another mission. That was something, but it was a day away.
I needed another drink.
General Mohammed Cole was supreme officer in charge of policing the Quarantine Zone. Colonel O’Neil oversaw Sim Ops – was my real CO – but Cole was his direct superior. If I had a key operation, it was O’Neil that I’d expect to brief me, but it seemed that he had been entirely cut out of the loop. Technically an Army officer, Cole was in command of the combined military effort – not just Sim Ops, but the Alliance Army and Navy. He was answerable only to the joint chiefs-of-staff, back in the Core Systems.
I sat alone in the waiting room outside his office. It was appropriately plush, with a synthetic-leather couch and artwork on the walls. A flickering hologram of the Alliance flag filled one aspect – all stars and stripes, with a graphic representation of the worlds united under the Alliance government. Old Earth sat at the centre, although in truth that was only half ours. The rest belonged to the Asiatic Directorate – an empire incorporating the Chino Republic, Unified Korea, the Thai Confederate. The planets of the Solar System had long since been colonised and decimated, and instead the triumvirate of Alpha Centauri, Epsilon Ventris II and Proxima Alpha Prime were shown circling Earth. Those were all fittingly oversized orbs, to demonstrate their elevated importance to the Alliance. They were the Core Worlds – densely populated, industrialised, reasonable reproductions of Earth. A number of other planets were also illustrated, although I couldn’t identify them all. There were over three hundred worlds in the Alliance. I sometimes felt like I’d been on too many of them.
The secretary at the reception desk looked over at me, with a polite smile. Glossy dark hair piled atop a made-up face; fingernails dancing with LED-inlays. She had been watching a newscast on a wall-viewer: something about elections for the Martian government. I returned her smile. I had been waiting for a while.
A chime sounded. The secretary straightened her back.
“The general will see you now, Captain Harris. Please come this way.”
She led me through to the conference chamber. After so many years of fieldwork, my smart-uniform collar was itchy and my dress cap was uncomfortably tight. The techs had never quite managed to make the uniform fit properly: the collar of my shirt always rubbed awkwardly against the data-port at the top of my spine. I hadn’t worn this uniform in years. I felt out of place here. As I followed the
click-click
of the secretary’s heels, a brief sweat even broke on my brow. Security-drones flitted about us – picturing our faces, conducting body-scans and weapon checks – then darted off elsewhere into the base.
The conference room doors slid open with a low hum. Two MP guards stood either side of the entrance, armed with shock-rifles, dressed in light body-armour. More soldiers appeared, using a hand-scanner to search me. The secretary smiled politely again, enduring the same routine.
“You can’t be too sure,” she said. “The Directorate watches, after all.”
I nodded. The secretary briskly retreated, and the doors closed behind her.
The general’s room was dimly lit and cluttered. Four men sat at the end of a long dark-wood table. They studied a hologram, thrown up by a projector set into the table. I waited awkwardly as the brass bitched over something on the holo-viewer – a tri-dimensional graphic of a planet, caught in the orbit of two ugly-looking stars. After a few moments, I coughed to try to get someone’s attention.
The group looked up as one.
Cole was the largest: a man-mountain, despite his years behind a desk at
Liberty Point
. His skin was light coffee colour and his hair had grown out to a curly fuzz. He was originally from Hawaii, or so they said. He wore a military smart-suit, holo-medals displayed on the chest.
Everyone on the
Point
knew who Cole was and what he did, and even before he had risen to the rank of general he had carved out quite a reputation as a decent commanding officer. Ruthless at times, but with a sound tactical mind. His nickname “Old Man Cole” had a dual meaning – a hangover of ancient military tradition, but also meant ironically. Cole wasn’t particularly old for a general – that had been one of the criticisms levelled at him on his appointment to the role. He was a good enough senior officer, as far as I was concerned – but I had little respect, in general, for his sort.
I moved into a salute, standing to attention. He waved me down.
“No formalities, trooper,” Cole said, voice gravelly. He gave a broad smile. “At ease. We’ve been expecting you. We’ve met before, I think – back in seventy-seven, during the evacuation of Sigma Base?”
I nodded. “Yes, sir.”
Using formal military address –
sir, general
and the rest – felt stilted and unreal to me. On most sim teams formality was actively discouraged, and my unit was no exception.
“You’ve met Mr Olsen already, I understand.”
Olsen was one of the figures seated at the table. He was a big, flabby man in real life; well into middle-age, marked by a life of lab-work. He wore a white smock, buttoned to his fat neck. His greyed hair was thinning, swept over a balding pate. Despite his age, he beamed a smile with child-like enthusiasm. While I had some regard for Cole, I had none for Olsen or the rest of the scientific contingent on the
Point
. It was others like him who had suggested the Treaty and led us to this impossible impasse.
“That was an illuminating experience out in the Quarantine Zone, Captain,” Olsen gushed. “I’ve never felt anything like it. Disconcerting, but interesting.”
I remembered his shaking body both aboard the
New Haven
, during the Krell attack, and back on the
Point
, after our extraction. Olsen certainly didn’t look as though he had enjoyed the experience on either of those occasions. Maybe hindsight, or the gathered company, had altered his perceptions. His observational role on the
Haven
had been an opportunity to prove me wrong – to displace my preconceptions – but Olsen had failed dismally.
“I’m glad you found it so,” I replied, and kept the rest to myself.
“You’re a problem-solver, aren’t you Harris? A real problem-solver,” Cole interrupted. He mulled over the words for a moment. “We’ve got a problem that we need solving.”
The third and fourth men at the table were both civilians. One of them was scanning a data-slate.
“I’m Mr Jostin – a civilian adviser working with the current military operation. I’ve perused your file extensively. Well-versed in the War, aren’t you, Captain? Involved in over two hundred operations out there so far, many of key tactical importance. You’ve been into the Maelstrom on three occasions, as I understand it.”
“I can neither confirm nor deny that,” I said. “If I have been involved in such operations, they would – strictly speaking – involve contravention of the Treaty. Any such operations would be classified.”
He looked up over the slate and raised an eyebrow at that. “If they existed, of course.”
“Would you prefer Captain Harris, or Lazarus?” said the fourth man, with a cultured but implacable accent. He didn’t wait for a reply; that was enough to let me know that these people weren’t just reading from my personnel file. “You’re becoming something of a legend on the
Point
. Of course, we all know about your personal link to the Treaty. Your views on the same have been made known to Command on a number of occasions. In any case, Colonel O’Neil speaks very highly of you. I understand that you know each other quite well.”
I hadn’t spoken with or seen O’Neil in months. Maybe that was why Cole was briefing me; because O’Neil knew that there was a fair chance I’d fail to attend, notwithstanding his post as my CO. We had a history together, one that I didn’t much want to share with civvies and brass.
“That’s right,” I said. I chose my next words deliberately, for their neutrality: “The colonel is an associate of mine.”
“This is my adviser Mr Evers,” Cole said, indicating to the speaker.
Evers and Jostin were identically dressed in dark business suits complete with neckties. Both were in their thirties, Earth-standard, and had the polished appearance of corporate men. Greased black hair, unnaturally tanned skin. I hadn’t seen folk like this on-station in a very long time – the perils of time-dilation caused by Q-jump technology and the sheer expense of carting civilian reps this far out of the Core Systems meant that communication by other means was preferred.
“I’m sorry, I didn’t catch where you two were from,” I said.
“We didn’t say,” Evers replied. “Doesn’t matter much to your operation, Captain, but we are representatives of an industrial corporation. Interested parties in the outcome of your next mission, shall we say.”
Evers smiled now as well. His teeth were perfectly spaced and frighteningly white.
I immediately disliked these men, even more than Olsen. It was a sign of the times, I supposed, that corporate interests were making their presence known out here again. The Krell War wasn’t hot any more; the vultures would start moving in now, eager to make their credits from the carcass before it had completely cooled.
“We’re all aware of your service record,” Cole said, waving his hand dismissively at Evers and Jostin. “You’ll be glad to know that we’re not here to talk about that, anyway. I’m satisfied that you and your team are the right people for this job.”
“And what is the job?” I asked, apprehensively. I had sat through hundreds of briefings – restricted, high profile and otherwise – but none of this felt normal.
Cole pointed at the graphic on the holo-viewer.
“Welcome to Operation Keystone. This is the Helios Star System. Eleven worlds orbiting two stars, one of which is dying. Of interest to us is Helios III – the only planet within that system that harbours any form of life.”
The planet was brown and white. A band of space debris lazily circled it, not quite densely packed enough to make a proper orbital ring. Through the debris, Helios was swathed in heavy cloud cover and pocked by dark rifts. It slowly turned on its axis and the display showed technical data as it went.
“A fascinating place,” Olsen chipped in. “Really unique. Almost entirely desert, but supporting a complex weather system. It has extensive underground lakes and rivers. Basic insect life—”
Cole interrupted again: “Mr Olsen is correct, but none of that is why we are interested in it.”
The holo-display shifted to show grainy deep-space survey images of the planet. Great weather-beaten expanses. Craggy mountains, battered by constant winds. Death Valley on a grand scale. The sort of planet that the Alliance and Krell had fought over innumerable times in the history of the War—
There’s something else there
.
I leant in a little, an image stirring my curiosity.
A vast angular structure jutted from the desert. It was positioned atop one of the mountains, elevated above the desert. A ruin of some sort. It was difficult to obtain any sense of scale from the image, but I got the impression that it was
big
. The feed was poor quality and low-colour, but the ruin appeared to be a matte black.
No, not black: deeper than that
. It was a yawning absence; absorbing light.
“This is from a spy-probe. We’ve only managed to obtain a handful of images of the site, as the weather patterns on Helios III are so unpredictable.”
The image stuttered and then disappeared.
It doesn’t want to be recorded
, I thought to myself. I wasn’t quite sure where the thought had come from.
It doesn’t want to be remembered
.
“The visuals are less interesting than the audio,” Cole went on. “Whatever that thing is, it’s broadcasting a signal of immense significance. The signal is repeated constantly, and does not vary.”
Jostin tapped his data-slate. “We’ve heard it from several star systems away. A very strong signal.”
“Something not Krell, you understand,” Evers added. “And not human, either.”
“This is a scientific find of immense consequence,” Olsen said. “Something
else
in the universe. We are calling it the Artefact. From the limited evidence we have available it appears that it is constructed from non-biological materials.”
“Ergo, the Krell could not have made it,” Evers said.
I watched as the image played back again. The Krell were the undisputed masters of bio-technology, and had taken that art to an absurd degree. Whereas we manufactured our technology, they grew it. From a knife to a starship, they could develop a biological reproduction – a species capable of infinite development, infinite mutation. They would have no need for an enormous deep-space transmitter.
“Even more interesting is the effect that it has on the Krell,” Cole said. He leant forward now, into the holo-image. His face was suddenly painted with light, with numbers and data-flows, from the projector. “Do you think of the Krell as a religious species, Captain? Do you think that they worship, that they aspire, like us?”
“Not from what I have seen,” I answered, without pause.
“Perhaps this will change your mind.”
The image appeared again and I watched as it looped. The desert around the structure seemed to be moving. Then I realised that it wasn’t the desert moving: those were Krell xeno-types, clawing and scratching at the sand dunes to reach the ruin. Millions of them. Irregular encampments of Krell starships pocked the mountainside; twisted biomechanical structures littered the desert.
“This site is a pilgrimage for the Krell. They appear hopelessly drawn to the Artefact. We’ve never seen behaviour like this before. This could prove instrumental to the war effort.”
“Imagine if that could be harnessed,” Jostin muttered, absently tapping a finger on the console. “
Weaponised
.”
Maybe they had a point here. I had seen – and killed – thousands of Krell, on over a hundred worlds. I’d never seen them drawn to something like this before.
Moths to the flame
.
The military applications of such a device were obvious.
Jostin and Evers exchanged smiles; pleased that a grunt like me was impressed with their findings.