Atlantia Series 1: Survivor (27 page)

Evelyn hit the dusty earth and looked straight into the eyes of a carnivore, its teeth stained red and a ragged piece of a convict’s fatigues caught between them. It growled at her and coiled its legs to attack, but Evelyn aimed and fired a shot straight into the beast’s face.

The plasma round smashed into the animal and fused its face in a mass of cauterised tissue, blinding it in an instant. The animal howled in agony and staggered sideways before it collapsed dead on the ground.

Evelyn leaped past it and saw the armed convict running toward her, the pistol still in his hand.

‘Get up that hillside!’ she yelled. ‘Leave me the pistol!’

The convict made to run past her, holding the weapon out of her reach. Evelyn jumped left and brought her knee up into the man’s belly with a satisfying thump that blasted the wind from his lungs. The convict doubled up and slammed onto the ground in a cloud of dust as Evelyn stamped down on his wrist and wrenched the weapon from his grasp.

‘Don’t shoot!’ he pleaded, his eyes wide with panic and his hands raised.

Evelyn did not dignify him with a reply as she whirled and fired at the animals attacking the convicts. The blasts forced them back as the fleeing men charged past her and scrambled up the rocks. Evelyn retreated a few paces, and then she saw Cutler.

The old man was clutching his wounded chest where he had been stung, dust clouding his vision as he staggered into view. The beasts spotted him and turned to attack.

Cutler’s features collapsed into panic as he realised that he was cut off. She saw him shout, but the cacophony of the fusion core and the shuttle landing above them was too loud to hear what he was saying. Evelyn waved her arms in the air and Cutler saw her as she hurled her spare pistol toward him.

The pistol arced through the air over the creatures arrayed before Cutler and the old man reached up and caught it. He turned the weapon in his hand and fired at two of the beasts, the blasts sending them howling away as the pack scattered before him.

Cutler half–ran, half–limped toward Evelyn as she held the other pistol and fired two or three shots to keep the animals at bay. Cutler struggled past her and clambered up the hillside as Evelyn retreated from the animals and turned.

She saw the animal from the corner of her eye, huge and fast as it lunged from the treeline. Big, fearsome yellow eyes were framed by a smouldering mane of thick hair and huge yellowing fangs as it sprinted toward her, trailing blue smoke.

Evelyn aimed fired, and the pistol clicked.

‘Cutler, I’m out!’ she yelled as she looked back at the old man.

Cutler looked down at her, his grey eyes cold and without emotion, and then he turned and ran up the hillside with the pistol still in his grasp.

Evelyn whirled as the huge beast charged at her, and in desperation she hurled the weapon at its terrible face. The pistol bounced off its bloodied and scarred snouth as it leaped into the air toward her, its fearsome claws extended.

The plasma blasts hit it across the face and chest as Evelyn crouched down before it, smashing the huge creature aside. It slammed into the ground alongside Evelyn in a cloud of dust, and she turned to see Andaim and several marines standing on the edge of the plateau above, their rifles smouldering from their shots.

Evelyn jumped to her feet and ran at the hillside as more plasma shots kept the rest of the animals at bay, leaping up through the deep gulleys as she climbed toward the sound of the fusion core and the shuttle’s whining engines. The wind howled past her, her long hair rippling in front of her eyes as with the last reserves of her will she struggled to the plateau. Andaim reached down and grabbed her arm, helping her up the last few steps.

She staggered onto the plateau and saw a group of marines standing with their weapons aimed at the convicts, Cutler and Qayin at their head. Behind them, some thirty cubits away and enveloped in a terrific vortex of vapour and swirling cloud, was the fusion core.

The jagged outer shell of the core lay upon the rocky outcrop and was blasting a slim ray of tremendous fusion energy upward into the swirling vapour clouds. Evelyn figured that the core had fractured a tiny hairline crack in its shell, enough to blast off half of the slightly weaker outer shell but not enough for the core to explode completely. The ray of light, she knew, was many thousands of degrees in temperature. One false move in securing it and everybody would be incinerated.

‘Nice of you to join us again!’ Bra’hiv shouted above the noise. ‘I believe that this is yours?’

The general handed her the pistol that she had thrown to Cutler. She took the weapon back and looked at the old convict, who stood once again with his wrists manacled and watched her with a nervous expression. The wind howled around them as above Evelyn heard a crackle of lightning. The sky seemed to shake around her as thunder rolled across the plains below.

‘If you want to finish him off,’ Bra’hiv said, ‘now would be a good time. I and my men would not blame you, and with all of this noise and cloud I doubt we’d even notice.’

Cutler’s face twisted with a sneer that she could tell veiled true fear. The wind howled past Evelyn, her hair whipping around her face, and the heat built up around her as the leaking energy from the core seared it. She paced toward Cutler until she was standing right in front of him, the light from the setting sun framing her wild hair with a fiery halo, and with one hand she pressed the muzzle of the pistol against his belly.

Cutler swallowed, his eyes fluttering and sheened with clear fluid.

‘You’re scum!’ Evelyn shouted. ‘The worst of the worst, barely a human being at all. There is nothing redeeming about you at all Cutler, not a single thing.’

Evelyn activated the pistol and felt the energy contained in the plasma magazine vibrate. Cutler’s legs buckled a little, his grey eyes fixed upon hers.

‘Tell me why I shouldn’t kill you here and now,’ she demanded.

Cutler’s jaw quivered, and he coughed his reply.

‘I can’t.’

Evelyn stared at Cutler for a long moment, and then she lowered the pistol and turned to Bra’hiv as she gestured at the core. ‘Can you get that thing secured and aboard?’

‘We brought the container, but we’ll have to let the robotic arm load the core!’ Bra’hiv shouted. ‘You’d better let us handle this!’

Evelyn looked at Cutler and a cold little grin formed on her features.

‘Maybe they should do the heavy lifting and earn their damned place!?’ she shouted, her voice almost drowned out by the roar.

The marines, working in a team of eight men, carefully rolled a container out of the shuttle, a massive box with sides lined with hull–plating. One of their headscarves was torn away by the force of the gale and flashed toward the pillar of energy, and Evelyn saw it flutter into the light and vanish in a flash of embers.

The convicts were organised into a team, and together they pushed the huge container on its rollers across the rocky ground toward the fusion core. Most of the men ducked their heads down to shield themselves from the tremendous heat. Those that didn’t saw their hair singe and smoulder in little puffs of blue smoke. Together, they pushed the container alongside the core and held position as from within it a pair of magnetic clamps extended under remote control and wrapped around the core. The searing beam of energy above them swung through the evening sky, the swirling cloud coiled around it, the vigorous wind shifting with the blaze and howling as it whistled across the plateau and tugged at their clothes.

The robotic arms retracted into the container and the core rolled on its cradle and slammed inside, the blazing beam of light slicing horizontally across the plateau and out across the deserts. Evelyn saw the beam sear the rocky earth, instantly turning it to molten liquid that ran in glowing rivers and spat bright sparks of magma.

‘Steady the container!’ Bra’hiv yelled. ‘Stay in place!’

The convicts obeyed, crouching down and shouldering their weight into the container as the lid slid automatically into shaped grooves along the side of the container. Evelyn saw the lid glow brightly as the beam of light was cut off in mid–stream. With nowhere else to go, it blasted out of the remaining gap in a wide horizontal shaft and hit one of the convicts straight in his chest.

Evelyn saw the man’s body evaporate as though it were a glowing liquid, his face twisting into a grotesque mask of agony before being blasted from his shoulders to arc across the plateau trailing flame and smoke. The rest of his body fell to its knees and collapsed in a smouldering heap on the soil, neatly severed in half, the flesh cauterised to the colour of charcoal.

The heavy lid slid the rest of the way across its grooves and with a final scream of energy it slammed shut.

The howling wind around them vanished, the gusting dust and swirling cloud above them shuddering with a last tortured crack of thunder that rattled out across the lonely plains and into the distance. From the thick mist the setting sun broke through to bathe the plateau in a gentle golden light that was reflected in magical hues by the container now sitting before them, heat haze trembling around it.

The convicts staggered back and away from the containment chamber, their hair trailing whorls of blue smoke.

Bra’hiv glanced down at the plain below smothered with convict’s corpses and dead carnivores nearby, and then at Evelyn.

‘Like death does she wander,’ he murmured. ‘What have you been up to down here?’

‘Never mind that. What’s happening up there?’ she countered.

‘Is the captain all right?’ Andaim asked.

‘We need you, all of you,’ Bra’hiv replied. ‘Hevel’s mutinied and taken the bridge. He’s got to be removed and we’ll need men and muscle to do it. You think you can get Cutler and his people to help out?’

Evelyn glanced at the gathered convicts standing nearby.

‘
Cutler’s
people?’ Qayin rumbled from among the convicts. ‘And in return for what?’

‘A full amnesty,’ Bra’hiv replied, and then addressed the convicts as one. ‘This is no longer a
them–and–us
situation. You can’t afford to go it alone anymore and neither can we. The Word is almost here, and if we don’t work together we’ll all be dead. Captain Sansin has offered a full pardon, to each and every one of you, if you will take up arms alongside the rest of us against the Word.’

One of the convicts stood forward. ‘What chance do we have against the Word?’

Bra’hiv gestured to the fusion core in its shielded containment unit.

‘That’s a weapon,’ he replied, ‘and we have fighter craft that can be manned. Most of all, we have a reason to live. The Word is a machine, nothing more. We are not. Think about it. If you stay here you’ll be living in a desert eating dung, and if you think that you’ve got everything you need here then think again: how many women are there?’

The convicts looked at each other as though it was the first time that they had considered the lack of female company on the planet.

‘I know that’s a reason to
stay
here,’ Bra’hiv said, and got a low chuckle from the convicts, ‘but if you come with us, if you fight for us and we win, you’ll be free again.’

Another convict shouted out. ‘How can we trust the captain? He sold us out!’

Qayin shook his head.

‘Hevel sold us out,’ he growled back, ‘and took control of the ship. It was Sansin who tried to keep a hold of us. If we want to live we need to take back the Atlantia for ourselves and start fightin’. There’s no more running away.’

Qayin moved to one side and stood between Andaim and Bra’hiv as he spoke to the convicts. ‘I don’t know about all of you, but I done enough runnin’.’

The convicts watched Qayin for a long moment, and then one by one they walked toward the waiting shuttle. Cutler moved to follow them. Bra’hiv made to stop him but Evelyn gripped the soldier’s arm.

‘No,’ she said. ‘We need every pair of hands we can get.’

Bra’hiv stood back, suspicion writ deep upon his features. Evelyn looked at Cutler, who stared at her for a long moment as though he did not understand what he had witnessed.

‘Why?’ he asked.

Evelyn knew what he was asking, even though he did not articulate it.

‘Because every last human life is worth protecting now,’ she replied. ‘Even yours.’

Cutler scowled at her, but he marched past and up into the shuttle.

Evelyn turned to see that the fusion core had been transferred to the

And then she was running for the shuttle amid churned clouds of dust that shone in the sunlight, and the rear–doors closed as she strapped herself in and the shuttle lifted off and pitched up toward the sky.

‘You ready for this?’ Andaim asked.

Evelyn nodded. ‘I’ve been waiting a long time for it.’

Andaim cast a glance out of a viewing port and saw the desert sink away, scorched by a blackened stain of destruction cast by the ruptured fusion core.

‘Let’s get our ship back.’

***

‘On screen.’

The bridge was hushed as the main display switched from a view of the nearby planet to a star field.

Hevel sat in the captain’s chair, watching the screen as around him the bridge crew stared at the huge vessel cruising toward them. It seemed dwarfed by the vastness of space and the infinite number of stars glowing behind it, but a glance at the scaling register on one side of the screen belied the illusion.

Although superficially similar in appearance the vessel was almost twice the size of Atlantia, an Avenger–Class battleship that had once been the pride of the colonial fleet. It’s long, slender hull was flanked by two wings that allowed for the carriage of directed energy weapons far superior to Atlantia’s plasma guns, its hull huge enough to bear twin anti–matter engines to provide internal power as well as the energy for its weapons. The Avenger class were power–projection vessels, used to defend the borders of the colonies in time of military tension with other, less cooperative races.

‘Range?’ Hevel asked.

Aranna glanced down at her instruments, her voice monotone in reply. ‘Two planetary diameters, sir. She’ll be with us within an hour or two.’