Atlantia Series 1: Survivor (12 page)

Qayin grinned broadly and then walked away.

Alpha turned to Meyanna’s huddled, rocking form.

She grabbed the sheets and draped them across Meyanna’s shaking body and then turned to the cell door. The camera had tumbled out over the abyss of the cell block, spinning as it went, and collided with the corpse of a convict.

Alpha began stripping out of her uniform.

***

‘You cannot do that, captain!’

Hevel was standing on the bridge, his hands behind his back and his pallid skin glistening in the dim bridge lighting.

The captain leaned against the stanchion, dragged a weary hand across his face. ‘And why is that?’

Hevel paced toward the captain and dropped his voice.

‘Give them their escape and before you know it they’ll have the helm. It’s suicide to let them in here.’

‘And murder if I don’t,’ Idris snapped back. ‘They have my
wife
.’

‘You think that they’ll let her go once they’re aboard?’ Hevel challenged. ‘They won’t give her up. She’s their only leverage over us, her and the other hostages. Letting them aboard saves their lives but gives us nothing.’

‘Tell that to the hostages!’ Idris growled. ‘You would have me abandon them all to their deaths?’

‘Do you think that Qayin and his thugs won’t try to take control of the vessel once they’re aboard?’ Hevel pressed. ‘We have no means of housing them securely and not enough armed troops to contain them. There are murderers among them, thieves. Just what do you think’s going to happen when you open that hatch?’

‘Fourteen innocent people won’t die!’ Idris yelled back. ‘Tell me, Hevel, would you be so bold were it
your
wife held by those murderers and thieves?’

Hevel stepped back from the captain.

‘No,’ he replied. ‘I would be bolder. I would go in there and take them back.’

‘I don’t believe that for a moment,’ Andaim snapped. ‘You do have family in there, don’t you Hevel?’

‘I don’t care to think about it,’ Hevel uttered.

‘One son a politician, the other a convict,’ Andaim said. ‘Qayin and Hevel, cut from the same cloth.’

‘We are nothing to each other,’ Hevel snapped, ‘and we share no traits.’

‘Yet you murdered hundreds at the flick of a switch,’ Andaim pointed out. ‘Just the sort of callous act that Qayin was imprisoned for.’

Hevel did not reply, his features twisted in frustration. Jerren pointed up to the monitor nearby.

‘Sirs, you need to see this.’

The captain turned and saw the camera moving again on the screen. The mask of Alpha Zero Seven briefly appeared to fill it. Then the camera was turned and showed her naked flank as she glided away from the corpse of a convict floating high in the cell block.

‘What the hell is she doing?’ Hevel asked out loud.

Nobody answered, every man on the bridge enraptured as the video showed Alpha glide back into Meyanna’s cell. The camera swivelled over to point at Meyanna and then they saw Alpha approach her, the arc welder back in her hand, Meyanna staring wide eyed in horror at the naked, masked woman as she toward her.

‘Stop!’ the captain yelled.

They heard a shriek as Meyanna cringed away from the brightly flaring arc welder, and then silence as the fearsome device sliced through the wire joining Meyanna’s wrists to her ankles. Moments later, Meyanna gritted her teeth, her eyes squeezed shut and a muffled cry of agony reaching the camera’s microphone as Alpha used the welder to slice through the cuffs on her wrists.

They fell away, bright globules of molten metal tumbling through the air as Alpha tore them free, Meyanna’s wrists scorched by the blue–white flame of the welder. Alpha moved to her ankles and moments later they too were free.

‘She’s cutting her loose,’ somebody said.

Alpha turned and let go of the welder. Her masked face approached the camera and stared at it in silence for several long seconds.

Captain Sansin spoke, his voice clear on the bridge.

‘I can see you.’

Alpha turned and grabbed the captain’s wife, hauling her off the mattress and propelling them both out of the cell. Alpha grabbed the camera and carried it with her as they flew out over the cell block, Alpha pushing off the floating bodies of dead inmates and directing both her and Meyanna toward the opposite tier’s access door.

‘She’s heading for the prison hull’s stern,’ Idris said. ‘What’s back there?’

‘Storage units,’ Andaim replied, ‘alongside what’s left of the engine bays.’

‘What now?’ Hevel asked. ‘What the hell is she going to do?’

The captain shook his head.

‘I don’t know, but whatever it is we had better be ready. She wants an amnesty and by the Word I’ll give it to her if she gets those people out.’ He turned to the security detail. ‘Alert Bra’hiv’s men in the shuttles!’

The soldiers turned and dashed from their posts as Hevel spoke up.

‘She cannot be trusted,’ he insisted. ‘She is a convict.’

‘I know,’ the captain replied. ‘But we can handle one convict far better that we can control fifty of them, agreed?’

‘You were not so adamant about mounting an assault until your wife was presented with a means of escape, captain,’ Dhalere purred alongside Hevel. ‘Are we to understand that all other citizens aboard the Atlantia are second class when compared to…’

‘This is not the time, Dhalere,’ the captain snapped. ‘I have my hands full enough without accusations of favouritism clouding the waters further.’

‘Dhalere’s right,’ Hevel growled. ‘Your wife now has a chance of escape, but what about all of the others in Qayin’s hands? They are being taken to the bow, are they not?’

‘One thing at a time!’ the captain shouted. ‘I cannot control everything that happens aboard the prison, but I can remove the most powerful bargaining tool they have.’

‘And save yourself from the grief that others may suffer in your stead?’ Dhalere asked.

The captain scowled at her and turned to Andaim.

‘If Qayin and his thugs find out what Alpha’s doing they’ll tear her to shreds, and the other hostages with her.’

Andaim, his hands behind his back, tensed a little and raised his chin.

‘I can join Bra’hiv. Maybe we could use this to join forces with her and get all of the hostages out?’

The captain nodded. ‘Do it, right now.’

‘Alpha should be left behind with the rest of them,’ Hevel insisted. ‘She has no place on…’

‘Belay that,’ the captain said, and looked at Andaim. ‘Do not put my wife’s life at risk, but if you can liberate Alpha then please do so.’

Andaim nodded and without another word marched off the bridge.

Hevel, flushed with impotent rage, turned his back to the captain and stared at the monitors.

*

Alpha pulled Meyanna along behind her as they crossed to the aft cell block exit, the same blast door that Evelyn had entered through hours before. She swung her legs out in front of her, her bare feet bumping against the cold metal walls over the gantry

‘What are you doing?’

Meyanna’s voice was weak and she was shivering, her arms wrapped around her body and her wrists smeared with dry blood.

Alpha said nothing as she set the video camera in mid–air and gestured for Meyanna to go inside. Meyanna hesitated, her eyes wide with fear as she stared into the half–darkness, the lights flickering sporadically and illuminating a dangerous path.

‘I don’t want to go in there if…’

‘Hey!’

Alpha whirled and saw two convicts appear at the control tower entrance, both of them carrying pulse rifles.

Alpha grabbed the door with one hand and Meyanna with the other and propelled her through as she heard the convicts shout again and start running toward them. A salvo of shots blasted out and hit the doorframe near Alpha’s head, a shower of searing plasma sparks raining down painfully on her back as she hauled herself through the door and pulled it shut behind her.

The heavy door slammed shut with a deep thump that echoed through the gloomy passage behind her as she locked the door from her side. The faces of the convicts loomed up in the observation window and she heard them screaming at her through the dense glass.

‘What the hell are you doing?’

Alpha pulled her uniform from where she had wrapped it around her waist and tied it around the manual security lock, pulling it tight and then tying the legs around the nearest wall brace.

Alpha grabbed the camera and pointed it briefly at the two convicts, hoping that the signal from the device was strong enough to reach the Atlantia’s bridge, then turned and pushed herself off the door and sailed down the tunnel straight past Meyanna.

The captain’s wife, faced with no option but to follow her, pushed off in pursuit.

Alpha floated rapidly down the passageway, glancing over her shoulder to see Meyanna a few feet behind her. The security door receded into the flickering gloom behind them but Alpha could hear the convicts fighting to release the door from the far side, her uniform preventing them from opening the latches enough to get through.

The bangs echoed in pursuit of them as they floated through the chilly darkness.

‘Are you going to kill me?’

Meyanna’s voice reached Alpha’s ears. The tone suggested that Meyanna was more than aware that Alpha did not intend to kill her, the question born more of nerves than doubt. Alpha did not respond, floating through the flickering darkness and feeling the air grow colder as she reached the security door that entered the storage unit.

The glass was frosted with ice particles on the far side, still chilled to the temperature of deep space from when she had evacuated the chamber of air and killed the murderous convict who had pursued her inside it. Alpha swung her feet to arrest her glide as she reached the door, then moved aside as Meyanna slammed awkwardly into the wall alongside her.

Alpha turned to the external control panel and opened the air–bleed vents into the storage unit. A humming sound reverberated through the darkened corridor as air was re–introduced into the storage section.

A dull, distant blast echoed through the tunnel, and Alpha knew that the convicts had broken through the security door and were heading her way. They had probably blasted it open by shooting one of their plasma magazines wedged into the door. She looked at the security door viewing panel, saw the frosting gradually starting to melt, angular pieces of ice fracturing off the glass and floating away.

Voices echoed down the passageway and in the flickering lights she saw figures running toward them, shouts as they were spotted.

‘They’re coming!’ Meyanna shrieked.

Alpha turned and grabbed the door’s manual release, braced herself against the wall and then yanked the mechanism into the open position. The higher air pressure of the corridor prevented her from pulling it open. Meyanna pushed herself off the wall opposite and grabbed the handle with Alpha, bracing herself against the wall and pulling hard.

A rush of air was sucked into the storage unit as the door’s seal was broken and it suddenly swung open as the near–vacuum inside the storage unit sucked in a great rush of air from the passageway. Alpha shot through the doorway and tried to maintain her grip on the handle, but she was dragged with too much force and felt her hand wrenched away as she was hurled through the darkness and slammed into the rear of the unit.

Meyanna was sucked through the doorway and tumbled toward Alpha, who pushed herself clear just as Meyanna thumped into the wall alongside her. Alpha pushed off the wall as the last of the vacuum was replaced with air from the passageway and saw the dead convict’s body floating high in the unit, his muscular body frosted with ice and surrounded by a grim halo of blood that had leaked from his corpse in the low pressure vacuum.

She pushed off the deck and floated up to the grisly remains, grabbed them as she rotated her body and then pushed off the ceiling toward the open security door.

Two pulses of plasma energy crackled as they zipped through the open door and exploded against the wall near Meyanna as shouts echoed loudly into the storage unit.

‘Give it up Alpha, there’s nowhere to hide!’

Alpha slammed onto the deck with the convict’s body, then reached up and pulled the security door closed. The latches clicked loudly as the manual locks shot into place. Then she lifted the dead convict’s body and pushed both of his arms through the locking wheel, jamming them in place as the convicts outside in the passage slammed into the far side of the door.

She saw the grimacing faces of several inmates leering at her and Meyanna’s naked bodies as they fought for a glimpse.

‘Let us in and we’ll be gentle with you bitches!’ one of them sneered.

Another, stronger voice broke through.

‘I say let’s send them out into space.’

Alpha heard Meyanna gasp in horror as an older, heavily scarred convict appeared to sneer at them through the window, his bioluminescent tattoos pulsing weakly.

‘You open up,’ he said, ‘or we’ll blow the vents again from here.’ He smiled, his teeth stained yellow and black. ‘You got one minute.’

***

‘We’re out of here!’

Qayin strode into the control centre and reached out for Governor Hayes’ bloodied head, lifting the bloated and grisly trophy by its thin grey hair and hoisting it aloft to the convicts amassed around him.

‘The governor is dead!’ he roared. ‘Long live the governor!’

The convicts let out a blustering crescendo of ragged cheers as Qayin slung the severed head over his shoulder to hit a wall with a wet thud somewhere behind him.

‘I want every single man armed,’ he boomed as he lifted a pulse rifle and the uniform filled with plasma magazines. ‘If the captain tries anything the hostages get blasted into oblivion, understood?’

Qayin unwrapped the uniform filled with ammunition magazines. More cheers as the men swarmed upon the ammunition and began arming themselves.

‘They’ll try to herd us in,’ Cutler snapped at Qayin. ‘Chances are they’ll keep closed all but one of the access passages. We’ll be funnelled into a holding area and shot like rats in a barrel.’