“Into the airlock!” Kaminski shouted, and we were all suddenly inside, drenched in sweat and blood.
The drive chamber housed the most complex piece of technology on the ship – the energy core. Once, this might’ve been called the engine room. Now, the device contained within the chamber was so far advanced that it was no longer mechanical. The drive energy core sat in the centre of the room – an ugly-looking metal box, so big that it filled the place, adorned with even more warning signs. This was our objective.
Olsen stole a glance at the chamber, but stuck close to me as we assembled around the machine. Kaminski paused at the control terminal near the door, and sealed the inner lock. Despite the reinforced metal doors, the squealing and shrieking of the Krell was still audible. I knew that they would be through those doors in less than a minute. Then there was the scuttling and scraping overhead. The chamber was supposed to be secure, but these things had probably been on-ship for long enough to know every access corridor and every room. They had the advantage.
They’ll find a way in here soon enough, I thought. A mental image of the dead merchant captain – still strapped to his seat back on the bridge – suddenly came to mind.
The possibility that I would die out here abruptly dawned on me. The thought triggered a burst of anger – not directed at the Alliance military for sending us, nor at the idiot colonists who had flown their ship into the Quarantine Zone, but at the Krell.
My suit didn’t take any medical action to compensate for that emotion. Anger is good. It was pure and made me focused.
“Jenkins – set the charges.”
“Affirmative, Captain.”
Jenkins moved to the drive core and began unpacking her kit. She carried three demolition-packs. Each of the big metal discs had a separate control panel, and was packed with a low-yield nuclear charge.
“Wh-what are you doing?” Olsen stammered.
Jenkins kept working, but shook her head with a smile. “We’re going to destroy the generator. You should have read the mission briefing. That was your first mistake.”
“Forgetting to bring a gun was his second,” Kaminski added.
“We’re going to set these charges off,” Jenkins muttered, “and the resulting explosion will breach the Q-drive energy core. That’ll take out the main deck. The chain reaction will destroy the ship.”
“In short: gran explosión,” said Martinez.
Kaminski laughed. “There you go again. You know I hate it when you don’t speak Standard. Martinez always does this – he gets all excited and starts speaking funny.”
“El no habla la lengua,” I said. You don’t grow up in the Detroit Metro without picking up some of the lingo.
“It’s Spanish,” Martinez replied, shooting Kaminski a sideways glance.
“I thought that you were from Venus?” Kaminski said.
Olsen whimpered again. “How can you laugh at a time like this?”
“Because Kaminski is an asshole,” Martinez said, without missing a beat.
Kaminski shrugged. “It’s war.”
Thump. Thump.
“Give us enough time to fall back to the APS,” I ordered. “Set the charges with a five-minute delay. The rest of you – cállate y trabaja.”
“Affirmative.”
Thump! Thump! Thump!
They were nearly through now. Welts appeared in the metal door panels.
Jenkins programmed each charge in turn, using magnetic locks to hold them in place on the core outer shielding. Two of the charges were already primed, and she was working on the third. She positioned the charges very deliberately, very carefully, to ensure that each would do maximum damage to the core. If one charge didn’t light, then the others would act as a failsafe. There was probably a more technical way of doing this – perhaps hacking the Q-drive directly – but that would take time, and right now that was the one thing that we didn’t have.
“Precise as ever,” I said to Jenkins.
“It’s what I do.”
“Feel free to cut some corners; we’re on a tight timescale,” Kaminski shouted.
“Fuck you, ’Ski.”
“Is five minutes going to be enough?” Olsen asked.
I shrugged. “It will have to be. Be prepared for heavy resistance en route, people.”
My suit indicated that the Krell were all over the main corridor. They would be in the APS by now, probably waiting for us to fall back.
THUMP! THUMP! THUMP!
“Once the charges are in place, I want a defensive perimeter around that door,” I ordered.
“This can’t be rushed.”
The scraping of claws on metal, from above, was becoming intense. I wondered which defence would be the first to give: whether the Krell would come in through the ceiling or the door.
Kaminski looked back at Jenkins expectantly. Olsen just stood there, his breathing so hard that I could hear him over the communicator.
“And done!”
The third charge snapped into place. Jenkins was up, with Martinez, and Kaminski was ready at the data terminal. There was noise all around us now, signals swarming on our position. I had no time to dictate a proper strategy for our retreat.
“Jenkins – put down a barrier with your torch. Kaminski – on my mark.”
I dropped my hand, and the doors started to open. The mechanism buckled and groaned in protest. Immediately, the Krell grappled with the door, slamming into the metal frame to get through.
Stinger-spines – flechette rounds, the Krell equivalent of armour-piercing ammo – showered the room. Three of them punctured my suit; a neat line of black spines protruding from my chest, weeping streamers of blood. Krell tech is so much more fucked-up than ours. The spines were poison-tipped and my body was immediately pumped with enough toxins to kill a bull. My suit futilely attempted to compensate by issuing a cocktail of adrenaline and anti-venom.
Martinez flipped another grenade into the horde. The nearest creatures folded over it as it landed, shielding their kin from the explosion. Mindless fuckers.
We advanced in formation. Shot after shot poured into the things, but they kept coming. Wave after wave – how many were there on this ship? – thundered into the drive chamber. The doors were suddenly gone. The noise was unbearable – the klaxon, the warnings, a chorus of screams, shrieks and wails. The ringing in my ears didn’t stop, as more grenades exploded.
“We’re not going to make this!” Jenkins yelled.
“Stay on it! The APS is just ahead!”
Maybe Jenkins was right, but I wasn’t going down without a damned good fight. Somewhere in the chaos, Martinez was torn apart. His body disappeared underneath a mass of them. Jenkins poured on her flamethrower – avenging Martinez in some absurd way. Olsen was crying, his helmet now discarded just like the rest of us.
War is such an equaliser.
I grabbed the nearest Krell with one hand, and snapped its neck. I fired my plasma rifle on full-auto with the other, just eager to take down as many of them as I could. My HUD suddenly issued another warning – a counter, interminably in decline.
Ten … Nine … Eight … Seven …
Then Jenkins was gone. Her flamer was a beacon and her own blood a fountain among the alien bodies. It was difficult to focus on much except for the pain in my chest. My suit reported catastrophic damage in too many places. My heart began a slower, staccato beat.
Six … Five … Four …
My rifle bucked in protest. Even through reinforced gloves, the barrel was burning hot.
Three … Two … One …
The demo-charges activated.
Breached, the anti-matter core destabilised. The reaction was instantaneous: uncontrolled white and blue energy spilled out. A series of explosions rippled along the ship’s spine. She became a white-hot smudge across the blackness of space.
Then she was gone, along with everything inside her.
The Krell did not pause.
They did not even comprehend
what had happened.
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Table of Contents
Cover
Welcome
Title Page
The Vital Abyss
Meet the Author
Also by James S. A. Corey
Bonus Material
About Orbit Short Fiction
Newsletter
Copyright
This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, or persons, living or dead, is coincidental.
This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, or persons, living or dead, is coincidental.
Copyright © 2015 by Daniel Abraham and Ty Franck
Excerpt from The Lazarus War: Artefact copyright © 2015 by Jamie Sawyer
Cover art and design by Kirk Benshoff
Cover copyright © 2015 by Hachette Book Group, Inc.
All rights reserved. In accordance with the U.S. Copyright Act of 1976, the scanning, uploading, and electronic sharing of any part of this book without the permission of the publisher is unlawful piracy and theft of the author’s intellectual property. If you would like to use material from the book (other than for review purposes), prior written permission must be obtained by contacting the publisher at
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First eBook edition: October 2015
ISBN: 978-0-316-21756-9
James S. A. Corey, The Vital Abyss
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