The Lazarus War: Legion Read Online Free PDF

my right, and watched as the generator activated. The actual tech was encased somewhere in my backpack, powered by the same generator as my life-support package. An oily shimmer appeared in front of me. As it went up, the shield began to hum angrily – made my skull bones vibrate.
    “Get behind me, Professor,” I ordered.
    Three targets presented. Krell gun-grafts – technical designation “secondary-forms”. They were slower than the primary-form warrior caste but armed with larger and longer-ranged weapons. The nearest drone caught a decent image of the lead Krell: armed with a grafted bio-cannon – a boomer – complete with an ammunition sac that trailed between its stomach and gun-arms.
    The Krell group moved as a single entity. They poured through the door and fired. They looked vaguely confused – if they were capable of experiencing such an emotion – as their shots hit my null-shield.
    Upgrades, fucker! It felt good to get one up on them for a change, although I knew that it wouldn’t last. The null-shield generator was new tech – once the Krell had faced the gear a few times, they would devise a counter-measure. Individually, the Krell had limited tactical awareness, but the Collective was the best battlefield database in the universe.
    Incandescent pulses fired on both sides. The Krell advanced regardless. The lead xeno caught a round to the chest – leaking blood and ichor across the floor – and began to close the distance between us.
    Mason primed a grenade, scattered it towards the Krell. It breached her shield temporarily, bounced off the wall as the station axis shifted again. The secondary-forms had no mag-locks and grappled with whatever terrain features they could to stay fixed to the deck. The lucky distraction was enough to throw them off balance: the grenade exploded amid the trio of aliens. Suddenly body parts and gore covered the corridor. Two of the aliens went down, although the third was rallying for a further attack.
    This was a kill or be killed situation; no cover, nowhere to run. There was little point in stealth, little purpose in trying to effect a retreat. I rose up, cycled three micro-grenades into the underslung launcher of my plasma rifle. New tech is good, but sometimes the old ways are best: I launched the incendiary grenades at the Krell attackers.
    “Down!” I yelled to Saul, grinding my teeth in expectation.
    The professor rolled sideways, the deck listing beneath him like that of a ship at sea, and the incendiaries went off.
    The remaining secondary-form exploded. It fired its boomer as it went but every shot went wide.
    “More incoming,” Mason said.
    This time a primary-form darted through the smoke. It moved with an alien grace: a bio-form obviously adapted for life in or near water, a theory supplemented by the xeno’s sharkish features. The xeno didn’t pause and I caught its movements only in freeze frame. Despite their physical bulk, the primary-forms were seriously fast.
    Mason slammed the xeno aside with a volley of shots from her plasma rifle.
    The primary kept coming, tumbling to within a metre of our position – holes smoking in its chest and head. The body eventually collapsed.
    “Just follow me and stay safe,” I ordered, and was already up and moving.

I ALWAYS COME BACK
     
    A swarm of hostile signals – blazing hot on my HUD – followed us through the skewed corridors. Elsewhere, pestering my hindbrain like a hot needle, the drone army sent regular alerts: going off-line faster than I could follow, broadcasting a stream of unpalatable images.
    Far Eye Observatory was now filled with invaders. The whole pantheon of Krell xeno-forms was present: from primary-forms, through to secondary-forms, even a handful of the dedicated leader-forms.
    It was a pleasant surprise when friendlies appeared on my scanner – identifiable by their IFF beacons – and even more of a turn when I realised that the survivors weren’t Lazarus Legion.
    “Hold your