The Lazarus War: Legion by Jamie Sawyer Read Free Book Online Page A

he sounded resigned to his fate.
    Another Krell weapon hit me, dragging me back to precision of thought. My medi-suite complained that safe drug administration levels had been exceeded. I overrode those warnings, fed more endorphin and adrenaline into my system. I was going to shut down soon – crash and burn. The world had started to take on a dreamlike quality: edges blurred, everything moving in slow motion around me.
    Mason lurched over Saul, protecting him from more bio-weapons fire. Her shield suddenly gave out and she disappeared under a wave of flechettes. A secondary-form, attached to the ceiling – now parallel to my position – streamed a shrieker down on her. Even in the low atmosphere, through my helmet, I could hear the weapon’s distinctive sonics: a pitched scream. A jet of super-heated flame scoured over Mason and coated her armour. The flechettes opened her up, the flame cooked her: the perfect combination of weapons.
    Mason’s vitals flatlined on my HUD – no doubt, she was dead. Even so, she stood upright in her baking suit for a second or two. Her face boiled through the melted plate of her helmet; skin and bone and plastic. I was quite sure that it was a death that she would remember and the image of her standing there was something I would struggle to forget as well.
    This isn’t a dream, I contemplated. It’s a nightmare.
    Mason’s body had acted as a shield for Saul. I finally reached him and grabbed him by the arm. I hauled him alongside me. Through the door, back the way we had come.
    It was dark inside the station and even emergency power had failed. My suit-lamps flickered on, threw out bright pools of light. I vaguely registered that I wasn’t carrying an active weapon, and unholstered my PPG-13 plasma pistol.
    Keep going. Keep going. Command sent you here for a reason. You saw Shard material in that room! Saul might be a step nearer…
    Krell were dropping into my path, through the murk and debris. I slaughtered them all: my plasma pistol laying down a precise curtain of death.
    At the end of the main lounge, the objective loomed. There was writing on the wall but it was at the wrong angle. In my impaired condition, it took me a second to recognise the words.
    EMERGENCY EVACUATION POD.
    “Holy Gaia,” Saul cried, “please protect us through the cold voyage to the stars—”
    “Shut up!” I slurred. “I’m all that’s left.”
    Another round impacted my shoulder. Stingers pitted the wall around the evac-pod entrance and ricocheted around the chamber.
    I reached for the pod activation controls. Bashed again and again on the door stud. The machine wasn’t made for careful or considered operation, didn’t require much to operate. With painful slowness, the doors began to open.
    My lamps lit the inside of the pod and I conducted a cursory examination. It was a one-man unit with a tightly padded interior. Not exactly luxurious: no navigational controls, the aim was to evacuate the passenger from a station emergency, and to keep him or her alive long enough for a rescue party to pick them up.
    “Get inside,” I said.
    Saul scrambled up the deck, tossing his spent pistol into the pod. The gun hadn’t done him any good anyway. Angrily, I grabbed him by the legs and pushed him in. The case was still attached to his arm. He turned back to look at me; through his scratched and battered helmet. The comm-line had been cut between us, maybe at that moment or maybe somewhere else along the way. His mouth moved silently – forming words that looked like “thank you”.
    I slammed the ACTIVATE POD control. The doors rapidly sealed.
    TERMINAL DECLINE, my AI repeated.
    “The station or me?” I laughed.
    A stinger caught me in the leg, knocking me over a dead Krell. My lamps flashed over more bodies in the dark. There was another primary-form beside me and a gun-graft was poised on the ceiling.
    From my prone position, I grinned up at them.
    “Filthy xenos!” I shouted.
    The primary