Atlantia Series 1: Survivor (28 page)

‘Weapons range?’

‘She’ll be able to destroy us from at least forty hull lengths,’ Aranna replied. ‘We’re outgunned by a factor of four, sir.’

Hevel nodded as he surveyed the huge vessel. Once, her hull had been painted a grey–blue and flashed with the insignia of the colonial fleet. Now, the hull was flecked with strange black striations as though she were entombed within a lattice of dark vines.

‘What’s happened to her?’ Keyen asked.

Hevel stood up as he replied.

‘She’s being consumed. The same process that happened to the human population. I suspect that the standard hull plating is being reconfigured, made tougher somehow using knowledge that we cannot possibly fathom.’

The Word, that all–consuming sponge of knowledge that had expanded and conquered all of mankind’s populated worlds and then spread its blackened tentacles across the cosmos, now consuming the very vessels upon which it travelled.

‘How long before we’re within communication range?’ he asked.

‘No more than an hour, sir,’ Lael replied. ‘What do we do now?’

Hevel tightened his uniform.

‘We wait,’ he replied. ‘We wait until we’re as close as we can possibly get before we open fire.’

Lael, manning her station across the bridge, stared at Hevel as though he were insane.

‘Sir, that ship will blast us into history long before our weapons will be within optimum range. If we wait, we die.’

Hevel nodded slowly. ‘That’s what I want them to think.’

‘What are we going to do?’ Lael pressed. ‘We need a cohesive plan of attack.’

Hevel turned to face the crew.

‘We’re going to let her come in close,’ he replied, ‘and then we’re going to move to an attack position and ram her. We’re big enough, and fast enough, to do sufficient damage to her that she will never be able to recover.’

‘That’s insane, sir,’ Lael replied. ‘The whole point of being here was to stand and fight, not commit suicide.’

‘You heard Bra’hiv’s report,’ Hevel replied. ‘The battle must be fought here and it must be over as quickly as possible. The only weapon we possess which may be powerful enough to destroy that battleship is our entire vessel. The Atlantia has enough mass to tear the Avenger in half, provided we can get close enough.’

‘And if we can’t?’

Hevel turned to the main screen and smiled.

‘We will,’ he replied. ‘The Word was made by humans, built by us to be like us. It has our insatiable curiosity. If we sit here and make no effort to run, show no sign of fear, it will be drawn in to us. Then, in the final moments, we will strike.’

Hevel turned to Dhalere, who nodded.

‘Atlantia’s mass is sufficient and the destruction of our fusion engines will likely cause permanent damage to the Avenger’s primary drives, disabling her and perhaps even destroying her. It will work.’

Hevel nodded and looked at the bridge crew.

‘We have a duty. We are not the last of our kind. There will be more, and as of this time they are uninfected, safe from the Word. If we do not stop the Word decisively, and prevent its spread to this planet, then surely they will be crushed as so many of us once were.’

The bridge crew’s gazes remained fixed on Hevel as he surveyed them and found them willing to do their duty.

‘It will be so,’ he said. ‘Prepare the ship for battle.’

An alert beeped on the tactical officer’s panel and Keyen called out to Hevel.

‘A shuttle is leaving the planet’s atmosphere sir,’ he reported.

‘What shuttle?!’ Hevel shot back. ‘I did not order a launch!’

Keyen peered down at his screen.

‘I’m picking up a huge energy concentration aboard the shuttle, sir.’

Hevel moved down off the command platform and across the bridge to look over the officer’s shoulder.

‘What kind of energy?’ he asked.

Keyen frowned, shook his head.

‘I can’t be sure sir, the shuttle’s hull plating is confusing the signal, but whatever it is it’s powerful enough to show up on our scanners.’

Hevel stared suspiciously at the screen.

‘Where is Bra’hiv?’

‘I thought that he was conducting a training exercise in the launch bay?’

‘On screen.’

The image of the Avenger vanished to be replaced by a broad canvass of blue oceans flecked with white cloud, and against it the tiny speck of the shuttle craft accelerating to orbital speed as it closed in on the Atlantia.

‘How many people are aboard?’ Hevel asked.

Keyen scanned his instruments. ‘I read at least eighty people, sir. That’s far too many.’

Hevel clenched his fists at his sides as he stared at the shuttle.

‘Contact them, find out what’s going on.’

Aranna keyed her microphone and spoke quickly and efficiently into it.

‘Ranger Six, report casualties, status and persons aboard?’

A hiss of static whistled across the link with the shuttle as Bra’hiv’s reply echoed through the bridge.

‘Ranger Six, three casualties, all despatched personnel accounted for, status green.’

Hevel peered at the approaching shuttle and keyed his personal microphone on the captain’s seat.

‘What the hell were you doing down there?’ he asked.

‘Retrieving the fusion core sir,’
came the response.
‘To fight the Word.’

‘We read eighty persons aboard,’ Hevel growled.

‘Negative,’
Bra’hiv replied,
‘our engine was damaged after take off by debris from the surface. It’s throwing all of our sensors out too. I’ll be approaching on manual control.’

Hevel peered at the shuttle craft. ‘I see no damage, and you were not ordered to leave this ship!’

The transmission crackled and popped with static, Bra’hiv’s response unreadable. Hevel switched off the microphone and turned to his bridge crew.

‘Tactical? Activate the port bow turrets.’

Keyen obeyed without question, but Lael’s eyes flew wide as she stared at Hevel. ‘What?’

‘They’ve been compromised,’ Hevel snapped. ‘We cannot trust them.’

‘Compromised by whom?’ Mikhain demanded.

Hevel ignored them both and pointed at Keyen. ‘Blast them, now!’

‘Yes sir, target acquired.’

‘No!’

Lael launched herself across the bridge and ploughed into Keyen, smashing him clear of his post as they crashed down onto the hard deck plating.

‘Security!’

Lael straddled Keyen and swung a punch with her bunched right fist as he tried to get up and throw her off. The blow smacked into his mouth with a loud crack and a stab of pain that bolted through her knuckles. Keyen’s eyes rolled up into their sockets as he slumped down, and Lael leaped to her feet and grabbed the microphone.

‘Ranger Six, evasive action, you’re compromised and…’

Security guards thundered up onto the tactical post and hauled Lael away from the microphone. She kicked and fought but the soldiers were too strong for her as they pulled her away and bound her wrists behind her back with steel manacles.

Mikhain punched one of them clear over a console before he too was overpowered and manacled.

Hevel, his hands behind his back, turned to Aranna.

‘If you will.’

Aranna stood without a word and strode to the tactical position. Her hands flew across the keys as though he had manned the station for a decade. Lael stared at him, her eyes wide as Aranna activated the turrets.

‘Aranna, what the hell are you doing?!’

Aranna did not reply, and then Lael saw Hevel approach her. A cold sliver of fear slithered deep inside her belly as Hevel, his hands behind his back and a smile on his face, walked up to her and stared unblinkingly into her eyes.

‘Don’t fear, Lael,’ he said. ‘You’ll understand, soon, that this is all for you, all for
us
.’

Hevel smiled and Lael gasped as she saw the whites of his eyes flicker as black flecks darted back and forth behind them. She craned her head back over her shoulder and saw the two guards holding her, their eyes filled with writhing black specks.

‘No,’ she gasped. ‘You’re going to kill us all!’

‘I’m going to save you all,’ Hevel grinned. ‘This, Lael, is your destiny. It is all mankind’s destiny and you cannot escape or avoid it. This is our future.’

‘He’s infected!’ Lael shouted at Mikhain, looking desperately at the bridge crew.

Mikhain was helpless as he saw the crew stare back at them, their features devoid of emotion as though they were waxworks carved by human hands and left standing at their posts. The light of life in their eyes had suddenly been extinguished by the infection surging through their bodies.

‘Take them both to the holding cells,’ Hevel ordered the guards. ‘I will deal with all of them shortly.’

As Lael and Mikhain were dragged away, Hevel turned to Aranna.

‘The shuttle,’ he ordered, ‘destroy it now!’

***

‘Ranger Six, evasive action, you’re compromised and…’

Bra’hiv looked up in surprise at the Atlantia as the sound of Lael’s voice was abruptly cut off.

‘What was that about?’ Andaim asked as he approached the cockpit, Evelyn beside him as Bra’hiv grabbed the controls.

‘Whatever it is it’s not good news. Strap in!’

Evelyn hauled herself into her seat just as the hull of the Atlantia flared brightly and a fearsome ball of flickering blue energy flashed toward the shuttle.

‘Evasive action!’ Bra’hiv yelled as he hauled the shuttle up, gas thrusters igniting on her lower bow as the computers sought to adjust the craft’s plane of motion.

The energy pulse flared in the viewing screen and flashed past beneath them. The shuttle rocked violently and then tumbled as a blast hit it from behind. A shower of plasma flashed past the screen and an alarm sounded inside the cockpit as Bra’hiv fought for control.

‘Shrapnel damage,’ he yelled. ‘We’ve lost two aft thrusters!’

Evelyn’s hair swayed back and forth as though she were underwater in a storm as the turbulence from the blast shuddered through the shuttle’s hull. She looked over her shoulder, to where the eighty or so marines and convicts were strapped in with the ark magnetically attached to the deck in between them. The fusion core crackled with restrained energy inside its containment unit, sending expressions of deep concern across the faces of the watching men.

‘How long until we dock?’ Andaim asked.

Bra’hiv regained control of the shuttle, grimly hanging on to the controls as he looked at his instruments.

‘Two minutes, but the docking bay doors are closed.’

‘Hevel,’ Qayin said from where he was strapped into a seat nearby. ‘He ain’t gonna let us in.’

The Atlantia loomed large before them, and as Evelyn peered at the huge vessel she suddenly felt a chill as she saw a particularly bright star hovering in sight just beneath it.

‘The Word,’ she said, ‘it’s here.’

She pointed to the star, a giant vessel bathed in bright sunlight that flared off its hull as it closed in on the planet.

‘Damn it,’ Andaim cursed, ‘we need to get aboard.’

Bra’hiv guided the shuttle toward the Atlantia’s stern as he replied. ‘If I can get close enough we’ll be inside the reach of the turrets and we can use the shuttle’s guns to blast the bay doors open.’

‘We’ll need to suit up,’ Andaim said. ‘You’ll blast the atmosphere from the loading bays if you do that.’

‘No choice,’ Bra’hiv said.

‘But if you get closer to the turrets,’ Evelyn said, ‘you won’t have enough time to…’

‘Evasive action!’ Bra’hiv cut her off as two bright plasma flares burst from the turrets lining the Atlantia’s hull.

The shuttle yawed violently as Bra’hiv pushed over into a steep dive, turning on three axis at once to avoid the aim of the turrets. The hull shuddered as the thrusters fired to guide the shuttle on a new course, but they were small and not designed to provide rapid changes of direction.

The shuttle plunged downward, the plasma flares flashing past overhead and detonating with a deep double blast. The shuttle’s hull shrieked as its plating was hammered by super–heated plasma and buckled under the weight and heat of the blows.

The shuttle tumbled over and a shower of sparks burst from interior panels to spray over the convicts strapped into the landing bay. Bra’hiv fought for control again as the planet’s surface flashed past the viewing panel, followed by the vast hull of Atlantia as two more plasma turrets fired at them.

‘Full power!’ Andaim yelled. ‘Aim straight for the hull and get us out of here!’

Bra’hiv slammed the throttles wide open as he wrested back control of the shuttle. Alarms blared in the cockpit and the lighting turned red as the little vessel accelerated toward the frigate.

The plasma charges flashed past on either side of the shuttle and detonated behind it, but the blasts were far enough away to escape further damage. Bra’hiv, his face set and his teeth gritted, aimed straight for the main docking bay nestled beneath the Atlantia’s stern as more plasma flashes rippled along the vessel’s hull.

‘The Word is here, but Hevel’s firing on
us
?’ Bra’hiv growled.

Andaim whirled to Qayin. ‘Is he really that insane for power?’

Qayin shook his head. ‘This ain’t right, not even for him.’

‘Suit up!’ Bra’hiv yelled. ‘We’re going in!’

Andaim and Evelyn lurched out of their seats and grabbed the nearest environment suits that were clipped to the hull walls. Evelyn clambered into hers as in the cargo hold the marines clicked their visors into place and charged their rifles.

‘What about us?!’ Qayin called, and gestured to the convicts.

‘Stay with the core,’ Andaim said as he pulled his visor down over his face, ‘and hope it doesn’t blow up!’

Qayin yanked off his straps and stood up.

‘I ain’t stayin’ behind,’ he growled.

‘This isn’t about staying behind,’ Evelyn said as she pulled a rifle from the nearest rack and handed it to Qayin. ‘This is where we need you, to protect that core. If it’s destroyed this is all over and so are we.’ She turned to the convicts. ‘You wanted your freedom? This is how you earn it.’

Evelyn pulled rifles down from the racks and hurled them through the cargo hold at the convicts, the weapons spinning lazily as they tumbled through the zero gravity and were caught by surprised inmates.