Atlantia Series 2: Retaliator Page 14

  ‘We shut down the temperature controls,’ Kordaz explained. ‘When the Legion, as you call it, reached our world it thrived due to the hot temperatures. The interior of a Veng’en cruiser is much like our home planet, dense foliage. It lives and breathes as we do. Our greatest threat is fire, so we could not use excess heat as a weapon against the Legion should it get aboard our ships. We decided that the best defence against it aboard the Sylph was cold. We started at the Sylph’s bridge and the bow, shut down the environmental systems and worked our way back down the ship toward the engine bays. We were almost there when two of my team showed signs of being infected: maybe they got unlucky, I don’t know.’

  ‘What happened to them?’

  ‘They were shot and killed by my superiors,’ Kordaz replied. ‘Who then assumed that my entire team were likewise infected and opened fire on us. I alone escaped, and they abandoned me here aboard the ship.’

  ‘What happened to the human crew of the Sylph?’

  ‘Most were taken prisoner,’ Kordaz replied, ‘and the ship abandoned.’

  ‘There are survivors?’ she gasped.

  ‘We are not all complete barbarians, no matter what you may have been taught,’ Kordaz snarled back. ‘They surrendered and were imprisoned.’

  Evelyn, the needle still in Kordaz’s arm, leaned closer to him.

  ‘Why did your superiors not destroy the Sylph before they left?’

  ‘I don’t know,’ Kordaz replied.

  ‘How did you avoid infection?’ she demanded. ‘Your species needs warmth. You cannot have survived aboard an unheated vessel for long.’

  Kordaz gritted his teeth.

  ‘The cold got them to flee aft to the engine bays,’ he explained. ‘But I noticed something else. They avoided microwave transmitters around the ship, flowed around them like water around rocks. I knew that if I set up a series of transmitters somewhere in the ship and created a small field of microwaves they would not be able to enter. I created the field in the holds, close to the food supplies, and then sent the distress signal in the hope that any passing Veng’en ship would investigate.’

  Evelyn nodded.

  ‘In the hope that they’d pick you up, right?’

  ‘I wasn’t infected,’ Kordaz snapped, ‘and I had found a way to protect myself, so I would have useful information and evidence to save myself from extermination. It was worth it, right up to the moment when you arrived. We thought that the Atlantia had been destroyed.’

  ‘Not by a long shot,’ Evelyn replied.

  Slowly, she withdrew the needle from Kordaz’s arm and re–sheathed it.

  ‘They could have infected me already,’ he hissed.

  ‘They could,’ Evelyn agreed, ‘if there were any Infectors in the fluid. But it’s sugar water with a dash of water–based black ink. Totally harmless.’

  Kordaz hissed at her in fury.

  ‘My solution was only temporary. It cannot save you from the Word once the Infectors are inside you, and the Hunters are too large for microwaves to have a rapid effect. Your friend is already dead and you’ll all be caught by the Legion eventually.’

  ‘We’ll be the judge of that,’ Evelyn uttered. ‘As for you, you’ll be staying here until we can figure out what to do with you.’

  A tannoy burst into life in the sick bay.

  ‘Battle stations!’

  Evelyn looked up at the tannoy in surprise as Lieutenant C’rairn burst into the sick bay, his features flushed with concern.

  ‘The Veng’en,’ he called to her. ‘They’re here!’

  Kordaz looked up at Evelyn and as much as he could he attempted to mimic a human smile.

  ‘Looks like it’s not just your friend who is about to die,’ he growled.

  ***

  XIX

  Meyanna worked fast.

  The thought of Andaim trapped aboard the Sylph, his brain slowly being hijacked by Infectors as a Veng’en warship bore down upon the stricken vessel was too horrific for her to bear. With so many of the ship’s best officers trapped aboard the Sylph, a fleet action against a powerful and well armed Veng’en warship was no action at all: the Atlantia would be crushed.

  She held in her hands a pair of vials, each containing blood taken that morning from crew members. Meyanna hurried across to her centrifuge and opened the first of the vials inside a sealed observation chamber. Placing all of her instruments needed to test blood inside the chamber ensured that there could be no cross–contamination.

  As she opened the vial she saw the name she had written on the label stuck to one side.

  Cllr Dhalere Met’illan

  Meyanna drained the blood into the centrifuge, sealed it and then began spinning the device up, separating the plasma while at the same time sending any Infectors present in the blood to the outside of the petri dish.

  The Councillor’s role aboard the Atlantia was virtually a ceremonial one, especially after her superior, Hevel, had become infected many months before and almost taken the Atlantia for himself. Hevel’s presence aboard the Atlantia had been ordered by the Word shortly before the apocalypse, for reasons that now seemed abundantly clear: until his assignment political officers had rarely been seen upon military vessels.

  The Word had in effect replaced government on the planet Ethera some seventy orbits before the outbreak. Prior to its elevation to a species capable of travelling beyond its own planet, mankind had been in what had sometimes seemed like a permanent state of turmoil. Although mechanical and digital revolutions had seen mankind climb to dizzying heights of technological achievement, many of those advances had been the result of wars, the development of ever more advanced weaponry trickling down into everyday life. Ethera, populated by four billion humans in over ninety distinct territories of many differing cultures and histories, was in a constant state of flux. Mistrust between governments, military stand–offs, historical grievances and other conflicts both cultural and physical stained the world right up until new forms of life had been discovered on other planets using telescopes capable of directly imaging extra–terrestrial worlds in orbit around other suns.

  The revelations had sent shockwaves around Ethera and for the first time mankind had begun to genuinely reconsider its place in the universe.

  It had been shortly afterward that first contact had been made with the Icay, a species of intelligent life that communicated by light waves and was, to all intents and purposes, invisible to humans. Resident in the Ethera system for centuries and silently observing mankind’s birth pangs, the Icay were able to shield Ethera from the vast number of species communicating across the galaxy. However, there was little that the Icay could do to prevent direct observation of other planets, and as soon as mankind made that cognitive leap in understanding that theirs was not the only world on which life existed, that there was indeed a bigger universe waiting to be explored, so the Icay gradually intervened.

  But by that time humanity had already made the next great revolution in technology and developed the concept of the Word. Realising that human foibles to blame for mankind’s many wars, territorial or religious, the Word was created to make decisions based on the continuous input of information regarding the world around it. Essentially nothing more than an especially large quantum computer, the Word was plugged in to communications across Ethera, and to questions input into it could provide answers based on cold logic, devoid of the contamination of human bias. Thus were truces brokered between nations, grievances aired and resolved, new technologies discovered, solutions to hitherto impossible equations found and new physics revealed, and mankind’s journey to the stars and to other species’ homeworlds began.

  For seventy years mankind prospered despite conflicts with the Veng’en and other warlike species who opposed the Icay’s interference in galactic evolution. The Icays, for their part, ensured that new species evolved quickly enough not to be conquered and enslaved, or indeed crushed out of existence, by more dominant species such as the Veng’en.

&n
bsp; And then, finally, the Word had revealed itself as self–aware. It had been so for years, quietly evolving new technologies to conquer first mankind and then all other species that it encountered. Mankind, so recently introduced to the greater universe, had unleashed a force that could destroy it. As a great philosopher of Caneeron had once put it:

  “Mankind could be magnificent, were it not for mankind.”

  The Word’s Infectors started life inside a street drug known as Devlamine, and from there spread in utter silence from drug abusers into hospitals. Patients carried them home into their communities and from there across cities, countries and entire regions until some ninety per cent of all humans were unwittingly carrying the Infectors in their bloodstream. Then the Word had signalled its Infectors to replicate and control their hosts and the apocalypse began, mankind’s fall as rapid and brutal as any natural pandemic or plague.

  The sick bay lights had been turned down, a red beacon flashing in the corridor outside the main ward indicating that the ship was on high alert. Meyanna waited for the centrifuge to spin up to speed and watched as the plasma was separated out. As soon as she was sure that any Infectors were pinned to the side of the dish, she lowered a mechanically powered scoop into the dish and extracted the fluid. Then she shut off the centrifuge and activated a series of magnets to contain anything metallic inside the chamber. She retrieved the fluid, syphoning it into a thick glass tube and sealing the tube shut, suspended from metal callipers inside the chamber.

  Meyanna leaned across and pulled a lever, releasing a microscope on a set of rails hastily built into the interior of the chamber. The microscope rolled along the rails and came to a stop pointing right into the glass tube and the fluid contained within.

  ‘Okay, Councillor,’ she whispered to herself, ‘let’s get you off the list shall we?’

  Meyanna leaned in close to the microscope eyepiece and, without looking, tapped a series of keys on a display screen beside her to bring the image of Dhalere’s blood into focus. Through the blurry blackness she saw the plasma leap into view and with it a swarm of motionless metallic devices embedded within the viscous plasma, the magnetic field holding them in place.

  Meyanna gasped and stumbled back from the view finder, and then she turned and dashed for the laboratory door.

  *

  ‘Status?!’

  Captain Idris Sansin paced up and down the bridge as his staff rushed to and fro around him, tactical officers organising launch sequences for the Raython fighters, engineering officers diverting power to engines, weapons and ray shielding.

  ‘Ship will be ready for battle in less than two minutes,’ Lael called down from the communications console.

  ‘Tactical?’

  ‘Plasma turrets charging, fighters preparing for launch,’ Mikhain called back. ‘Defensive screen will be secure in five minutes. Renegade Squadron are repositioning to counter the Veng’en vessel’s approach.’

  ‘Engineering?’

  ‘Power is re–routed, engines are spun up but not engaged. We can accelerate to super–luminal in less than ten minutes or engage the enemy in less than two.’

  The captain nodded despite his consternation, quietly impressed at the speed with which his team were preparing the Atlantia to defend itself. Many of his people remained aboard the Sylph and bringing them home, despite the threat from the Veng’en vessel, was simply not an option until they knew who was infected.

  ‘XO, launch status?’

  Mikhain’s gravelly voice rattled out from the CAG console nearby.

  ‘Reapers are at battle readiness and our two Quick Reaction Alert fighters are on the launch catapult and ready to go. The Renegades are already on station around the Sylph.’

  ‘Good enough,’ Idris replied. ‘Launch the Alert Two fighters.’

  ‘Aye sir!’

  Idris watched as the main viewing panel showed the Atlantia’s bow. Moments later two fiery streaks of light accelerated away toward the starfields.

  ‘Scorcher Three and Four launched,’ Mikhain reported.

  ‘Launch another eight fighters,’ Idris ordered.

  ‘Eight?’ Mikhain asked. ‘We don’t want to let them know how many we’ve got too early sir, or we’ll have nothing in reserve to…’

  ‘I don’t want them thinking we’re defenceless either,’ Idris snapped. ‘Let them think we’ve got fighters and weapons galore. It might give them pause.’

  ‘Aye,’ Mikhain replied, and relayed the order.

  ‘We’ve got two Raythons aboard the Sylph,’ Idris thought out loud, ‘and a shuttle plus Bra’hiv’s Marines.’

  ‘Bravo Company are aboard too,’ Lael confirmed, ‘the former convicts.’

  ‘Good, they’ll fight dirty which is something the Veng’en are familiar with but might not expect from us,’ Idris said. ‘Let’s turn this around before it gets out of hand. The Veng’en will be on the attack because that’s their default stance in all engagements. They won’t ask questions and they won’t give quarter. We have to make sure that they’ll think twice before they press the loud buttons, okay?’

  Idris saw the personnel around him all nod as they replied in unison.

  ‘Aye, sir!’

  ‘Good. Tactical, all shields on full. I want a full salvo of shots across their bow the moment they arrive, understood?’

  ‘Yes sir!’

  ‘XO, all fighters into intercept positions, weapons armed!’

  ‘Aye sir.’

  Idris Sansin watched as more fiery streaks of light raced away from the Atlantia’s bow, the Raython fighters launching off the magnetic catapults at tremendous velocity and roaring out into the blackened void.

  ‘The best form of defence,’ he murmured to himself, ‘is offence. Range?!’

  ‘Point oh–two orbital radii,’ Mikhain replied. ‘They’re within signalling range.’

  ‘Don’t hail them,’ Idris ordered. ‘I don’t want them thinking we’re willing to talk about anything.’

  ‘They might just open fire and call our bluff,’ Mikhain pointed out.

  ‘We’re ready,’ Idris replied and then gritted his teeth as he gave one final order. ‘Keep us between the Sylph and the Veng’en vessel,’ he said.

  Mikhain looked up at the captain. ‘You want to protect the plague ship? We’d be better off bringing everybody back aboard and risking the infection than defending that wreck.’

  ‘The Sylph isn’t my concern,’ Idris replied. ‘We need to give Bra’hiv and Evelyn as long as possible to clear everybody and get them off that ship.’

  The starfield visible in the main viewing screen began to move slowly as the Atlantia’s thrusters fired and she began to drift toward the Sylph, the helmsman guiding her down to dive beneath the merchant vessel and come up on the other side, pointing toward the oncoming Veng’en vessel.

  ‘Becalm her with the port hull toward the Veng’en ship,’ Idris commanded as the frigate descended below the Sylph. ‘I want our guns staring at them when they get here.’

  As the Atlantia moved beneath the Sylph and began climbing again toward her protective position, Idris heard a voice calling out to him.

  He turned as his wife dashed onto the bridge, two Marines escorting her.

  ‘It’s Dhalere!’ Idris felt a chill in his bones as Meyanna rushed to his side. ‘Evelyn was right all along. Dhalere is infected. I just tested her blood!’

  Idris whirled to the communications officer.

  ‘Lael, hail the Sylph and warn them, right now!’

  Lael keyed a microphone but even as she opened her mouth to speak a deafening, high–pitched whine seared the Atlantia’s bridge. Idris threw his hands to his ears as Lael scrambled to shut off the bridge speakers.

  The whine was abruptly silenced.

  ‘We’re being jammed,’ Lael reported as she scrambled to activate her counter–measures. ‘The Veng’en ship has cut off our communications.’

  Idris lowered his hands, thinking fast. ‘Send them a light sho
w, right now!’

  ‘Aye, sir!’

  Lael began activating the Atlantia’s running lights, which could be used as a signalling system when the coms channels were shut down or jammed in battle.

  ‘We don’t know if they’re looking for signals from us,’ Mikhain pointed out. ‘They’ve probably got their hands full over there too.’

  ‘Damn!’ the captain punched a fist into the arm of his command chair, venting his frustration as he turned to his wife. ‘How long has she been infected?’

  ‘I don’t know,’ Meyanna admitted. ‘The concentration of the devices in her blood is quite low, but it must have been her who infected Kyarl. It’s possible that she’s been a carrier for some months now, since she was working for Hevel.’

  The Atlantia’s former councillor, Hevel, had been a career politician seconded to the prison service and posted to the Atlantia. Dhalere had been his assistant and had been elevated to her new role as councillor shortly after Hevel had died, his body riddled with the Legion.

  ‘We should have known,’ Idris growled. ‘She worked with Hevel for months.’

  ‘She passed all the scans,’ Meyanna countered. ‘The Word is getting more adept at hiding. It’s evolving faster than we can keep up with.’

  The captain looked at the viewing screen, which showed the Sylph looming above them.

  ‘And now Dhalere’s across there, and if they’re not monitoring us for signals we can’t warn them.’

  ***

  XX

  ‘This is it!’

  General Bra’hiv marched up and down before the Marines, their faces like stone as they listened to his voice booming across the cold landing bay.

  ‘This is what you’ve trained for! It is likely that within the next few minutes we will be boarded by the Veng’en, who will attempt to take the ship and kill us. Your job will be to repel those borders, to hold the line here and at other key points around the ship, until we can figure out a way to escape or defeat our enemy.’