Atlantia Series 1: Survivor (26 page)

Qayin lifted one giant arm and swung for Andaim’s neck, the jagged blade whistling through the air as the watching convicts roared in approval.

Andaim ducked and leaped to his left, the blade flashing by so close to his face that he felt a rush of air in its wake as he stepped in and swung his weapon back–handed, seeking to unzip Qayin’s flank.

The big man twisted aside, pivoting with surprising grace on the ball of one foot as he turned full circle out of Andaim’s reach. Andaim let his weapon flow upward and over as he brought it crashing down over his head toward Qayin’s broad chest.

The convict threw up his blade and the two weapons clanged loudly as they clashed. Andaim felt his blow arrested and pain shuddered through his wrists at the impact. Qayin’s immense strength overwhelmed him almost immediately as the convict drove him backwards and then turned his blade, trying to twist it from his grasp.

Andaim folded over sideways as he struggled to prevent his wrist from giving way. He turned and changed his grip as he whipped around to turn his back to Qayin and then drove an elbow backwards into the big man’s face. Qayin grunted and jerked backwards as he released Andaim’s blade from his own.

Andaim spun lightly and whipped the back of his serrated weapon up across the giant’s chest.

The jagged blade sliced into Qayin’s dense pectoral muscles and left a bright, glistening red gash as Qayin growled in pain and gave more ground, staggering backwards out of Andaim’s reach as a rush of cheers and shouts broke out among the convicts. Cutler’s face shone with mindless hate as he watched.

The convict’s eyes fixed upon Andaim’s as Qayin rushed in, his bulging muscles gleaming in the sunlight. Andaim feigned a left thrust and then jerked right and out of range of Qayin’s weapon as it plunged down toward his scalp.

Qayin staggered off–balance and Andaim whipped his blade upward once more, scything it across Qayin’s flank. The convict gasped and his hand flashed to his wounded side as he turned and struggled to stay on his feet.

Andaim leaped forward and jabbed at Qayin’s face, forcing him backwards as the big convict clumsily tried to swipe his weapon at Andaim. The convicts watched in earnest, cheers and gasps erupting from their ranks as they closed in.

Andaim saw the big man start to tire, his body sheened with sweat beneath the burning sun and his eyes drooping, his gold and blue braided hair hanging in thick, damp locks. The luminous tattoos on his face faded until they were almost invisible. Andaim jabbed once more at Qayin’s face and then spun on his heel, whipping his weapon around in a savage back–handed blow straight at Qayin’s face.

To his surprise Qayin made no attempt to avoid the flickering blade. His big hand released his cannibalised weapon, which dropped into the sand at his feet as he instead reached up and lunged in toward Andaim, all pretence of exhaustion vanished. His huge hand caught Andaim’s wrist in full flight as his other hand formed a fist that ploughed into Andaim’s kidney.

Andaim’s back arched as the blow crumpled him and he slammed onto his back in the sand, the bright sun flaring into his eyes. He rolled over, pain surging through his body as he struggled to his feet.

Qayin was watching him with a broad smile on his features. He picked up both of the hooked blades and brandished them, one in each hand. The watching crowd cheered the huge convict on.

Qayin rushed in toward Andaim, who kicked his foot across the sand at their feet and sent it spraying into Qayin’s face. The convict hesitated, swiping at the sand embedded in his eyes as Andaim rushed in and grabbed the big man’s head in his hands, twisting it sideways with all of his might and pulling downward.

Qayin was yanked off balance and flipped over to crash down onto the sand as Andaim landed on top of him, grabbing the convict’s hands and pulling them inward between them to cross the blades as he leaned down against the convict’s forerarms and pushed them toward Qayin’s throat.

Qayin’s thickly muscled arms bulged as he fought back against Andaim’s weight, his vast chest heaving as he sucked in air to fuel his strength. Andaim leaned further forward and pushed all of his weight across the blades as they sank toward Qayin’s neck.

‘You been looking forward to this?’ Andaim hissed, his voice hoarse with effort.

Qayin’s arms trembled beneath Andaim’s weight, the edges of the blades touching his skin, and Andaim saw his big dark eyes quiver with a brief flare of panic.

‘I ain’t afraid to die,’ Qayin snarled back with the last of his strength.

Andaim saw a red welt appear on Qayin’s neck beneath the blades as they sawed into his flesh. Andaim jerked back and rolled off Qayin, came up onto his feet and walked away from the fallen convict. He stared Cutler straight in the eye before spitting into the sand at his feet.

The cheering crowd of convicts soldiers fell silent and stared in disbelief at Andaim, stunned by his defiance. Cutler’s eyes widened with indignation and he seemed to tremble, his arm quivering with rage as he pointed at Qayin.

‘Kill him!’

Qayin lumbered to his feet, the blades still in his hands as he loomed before Andaim, his face stormy with pain and anger. The lieutenant turned to face Qayin and for a brief moment the huge convict glared down at Andaim. Then, he raised the two blades high above his head.

‘Now!’ Cutler shrieked.

Qayin blinked as something flashed through the air in front of him, an amorphous blob that trailed a sprinkle of sparkling water as it raced past and slapped across Cutler’s bare torso.

Cutler looked down in surprise and then his face collapsed in upon itself in unbearable agony as he screamed, one hand flashing to the curious blob on his skin and hurling it aside as he doubled over in pain.

Andaim lunged at Cutler and grabbed his pistol hand, then wrenched the wrist up and over. The convict spun over as he shrieked and writhed, the pistol dropping out of his hand and into Andaim’s.

Andaim turned and fired the pistol, hitting the convict holding Qayin’s pistol square in the chest. The blast hurled the convict onto his back, a smouldering charred hole gaping in his chest as one of the other men leaped at the fallen pistol and grabbed it.

‘Don’t move!’ Andaim yelled.

The convict whirled and fired at Andaim. The lieutenant hurled himself across the dusty ground and the plasma shot blasted past him to smash into the foliage along the edge of the treeline.

The convicts fled into cover as Andaim aimed at Qayin.

‘Move an inch and I’ll blow you away!’

Qayin remained crouched behind a trunk, and shot a look not at Andaim but past him. Andaim turned saw a bizarre creature standing on the edge of the oasis. He only recognised Evelyn’s face after a moment, partially concealed as it was beneath a dense mess of tangled foliage that likewise concealed her near–naked body beneath. In her hand was a long, twisted wooden staff of some kind.

Another plasma shot zipped from out of the treeline and Andaim hurled himself into cover behind a tree trunk as he looked across at Evelyn, the surprise on her face as evident as his own.

‘Evil Lynn,’ Qayin called out. ‘I had a feeling I hadn’t seen the last of you.’

‘Let Qayin go,’ Evelyn shouted above Cutler’s strained screams, her voice hoarse from dehydration.

‘Why do you keep protecting him?’ Andaim asked, but kept the pistol pointing at the convict.

‘I’ve got my reasons.’

‘What the hell is that thing?’ Andaim asked as he pointed at the strange blob now sprawled on the desert floor nearby. ‘And what happened to your clothes?’

‘I had a few problems,’ Evelyn said as she ducked out of sight as a plasma round blasted the tree beside her.

‘I’ll keep hanging with you,’ Qayin called to her with a bright smile, ‘just as long as you keep running into problems.’

Evelyn stared up the steep hillside to where the pillar of smoke and cloud was writhing as flashes of light shimmered violently within it.

‘The core is intact?’ she asked.

‘We don’t know,’ Andaim said as he glanced at Cutler writhing on the ground nearby. ‘We haven’t been up there yet.’

‘The fusion core represents power,’ Evelyn said. ‘If Cutler or the convicts get hold of that thing first, they’ll use it against us instead of against the Word.’

Andaim turned to look at Cutler again in time to see the old man hobbling away out of sight through the oasis, clutching his wounded chest. Andaim gestured to the corpse of the convict he had shot.

‘You’d better put on his fatigues,’ he said to Evelyn. ‘And then we have a mountain to climb.’

Evelyn heard the faint drone of turbine engines somewhere high above her in the sky. The haze and scattered cloud hid the source of the noise enough that she could not pick out where the craft was, but her first thought was that it sounded remarkably like a shuttle. Small engines, not those of a fighter aircraft. She craned her neck up to the sky, searching for the shuttle. If it was heading down to the surface and was nearby then there was a chance, however slim, of making it back to the ship.

‘Bra’hiv!’ she shouted with clairvoyant certainty.

From the dense foliage came a terse shout as Cutler found his voice again.

‘You go up there, you’re all dead!’

***

‘Damn it!’ Andaim snapped.

Cutler’s men were recovering from the shock of Evelyn’s surprise attack and were re–grouping. As Andaim moved to climb the hill, a shot cracked out and crashed into the rocky hillside above him and forced him back into cover.

‘They don’t want to go home,’ Qayin called. ‘They’d kill themselves sooner than be put back in chains.’

‘Maybe,’ Evelyn replied. ‘But this place isn’t friendly and we have no resources. We won’t survive here.’

Qayin frowned. ‘You want to make it back aboard too?’

‘It’ll be the only chance we have to board a shuttle. Why, you think it’s going to be better for you down here with the new natives?’

‘I ain’t a prisoner down here. Not right now, anyways.’

‘And what happens when the Word arrives and finds humans populating this planet?’ Andaim challenged. ‘You think that it won’t seek to destroy each and every one of you too?’

‘Ain’t my problem,’ Qayin muttered. ‘I’ll be long gone.’

‘You sure will be if the Word finds you.’

‘We don’t have time for this,’ Evelyn said as she searched the turbulent sky overhead for the shuttle. ‘If that’s Bra’hiv, his men will set down on the plateau above us, secure the fusion core and be gone as fast as they can. If we don’t move now we’re going to become permanent residents.’

Andaim checked his pistol and nodded.

‘Go, I’ll cover you. Now!’

Evelyn leaped to her feet and ran up a steep gulley, probably carved over millennia by the run off from heavy rains that may once have fallen upon the parched deserts. Qayin lurched in pursuit as they heard Andaim open fire on the treeline, searing plasma blasts hitting trees and foliage and starting small fires amid the bush.

‘He’ll start smoking them out!’ Qayin warned.

Evelyn kept moving but glanced over her shoulder to see Andaim firing as he retreated up the hillside behind them. Shots zipped out from the trees in reply, shattering rocks around Andaim as he turned and fled in pursuit of her.

The swirling mists were being drawn up the hillside past Evelyn, a gusting breeze that broke over the ridge and swirled upwards in a spiralling vortex of vapour that enveloped the top of the plateau above her.

The whine of ion engines howled above the infernal thunder of the fusion core as she clambered up the hillside, her breath sawing in her throat and her legs throbbing with exhaustion.

And then she heard the screams.

She turned and saw a man burst from the dense foliage of the oasis and run for the hillside, and behind him lunged a huge carnivore. Evelyn felt a pulse of alarm as she recognised one of the big animals that she had escaped by the shore, its fearsome jaws and yellow eyes blazing as it loped after the fleeing convict and hurled itself upon his back.

The creature’s jaws closed around the convict’s head as he screamed and with a sickening crunch they crushed his skull like an eggshell. The convict plunged face–down into the dust, the animal dwarfing him as it crashed down upon him with its jaws still clamped around his shattered skull.

A chorus of panic erupted from the treeline and dozens of convicts sprinted into view as from behind them lunged several more predators, their silky flanks shimmering in the light and their eyes wild as they took down two more victims to hellish screams of pain and fear.

‘What the hell are they?’ Qayin murmured, apparently immune to the bloodshed but curious about the beasts.

‘They’re the problem I had,’ Evelyn replied with a curse. ‘They must have tracked me.’

Evelyn saw Andaim shift his aim and fire upon one of the creatures. The plasma blast hit it square in the side and it roared loudly enough to be heard over the din of the fractured fusion core. The animal rolled over in the dust as it released its victim, who began crawling toward the hillside as the beast, its flanks charred with a smouldering wound, scrambled to its feet and roared in outrage.

‘We can’t leave them down there,’ Evelyn said.

‘Andaim thinks otherwise,’ Qayin replied.

Andaim scrambled up the hillside as he shouted to Evelyn. ‘I’ve only got three rounds left! They’re on their own!’

The convicts streamed to the hillside as the huge beasts ran among them. Evelyn saw one of them sprinting toward the hillside with a pistol in his hand. The convict fired at the nearest creature, catching it a glancing blow as he ran and setting the thick shaggy hair around its head aflame.

Evelyn looked up and spotted the shuttle as it descended in a wide turn to land above them on the plateau, it’s metallic surface flashing against the apocalyptic sky above.

‘Go!’ Evelyn shouted to Qayin.

‘What are you going to do?’ the big man challenged. ‘They’re not worth the risk!’

‘We need every man we can get!’ Evelyn shot back. ‘Good or bad, the more people we have to fight the Word, the better!’

Evelyn shot past Andaim as he reached her, the lieutenant staring at her in amazement as she snatched the pistol from his hand and hurried down the hillside, leaping from rock to rock as convicts flooded in the opposite direction past her.