Defiance (Atlantia Series Book 5) Read online

  At the head of the delegation was the Morla’syn General Veer, flanked by two of his lieutenants. Behind them were two Gaollian dignitaries, quadrupedal creatures with solemn, bulbous blue eyes that belied their ferocious nature. The only other species that Evelyn recognised among the twelve that greeted them was a Veng’en, his reptilian form covered in a thin one–piece jump suit of velvety purple material, the collars laced with a thin line of gold that seemed to represent perhaps a form of royalty from their homeworld, Wraiythe.

  Veer halted a few cubits away from Captain Sansin.

  ‘Greetings, captain. I apologise for the cautious nature of your transportation here, but as I’m sure you can appreciate there is much for us to fear.’

  ‘I understand,’ Idris replied. ‘There is much I wish to tell you and the council and I do not believe we have much time.’

  ‘The council is convening as we speak,’ Veer informed him. ‘They have agreed to hear your plea, although I feel it is unlikely that they will be willing to put much stock in the presence of two human frigates. Your ships are no match for The Legion, and nothing in comparison to the Galactic Fleet.’

  ‘Which is why we are here,’ Idris pointed out in reply. ‘We are stronger together.’

  If Veer agreed with the captain he showed no signs of doing so. Instead, he turned to one side and gestured for Sansin, Mikhain and the governors to follow him toward the bay entrance.

  The captain caught Evelyn’s eye with a meaningful gaze and she hurried to catch up as they began walking.

  ‘Keep your eyes open,’ he suggested in a whisper. ‘There’s something I don’t like about this.’

  ‘How come they haven’t searched our ships?’ Evelyn asked in a whisper. ‘The Legion could be aboard for all they know.’

  ‘I don’t know,’ Idris admitted. ‘This all seems incredibly hurried, like they wanted out us out of the way as soon as possible.’

  ‘Do you think they know about Lazarus?’

  ‘Not yet, but it’s only a matter of time until their deep scans of Atlantia figure out that there’s something aboard. What’s worse is that with you here and Emma aboard Arcadia, Lazarus has no power at all. At least if we came under attack there’s the chance that he might be able to act in our defence.’

  ‘So you’re finally coming round to Emma’s way of thinking then?’

  Idris kept looking ahead as they walked. ‘Let’s just say Lazarus is beginning to represent the closest thing to an ally we have in a galaxy filled with enemies.’

  Evelyn looked about her as they entered the reception bay. The interior was filled with transparent walkways of armoured glass, allowing the pedestrians a vertiginous view of the rolling oceans far below and an equally dizzying perspective of the soaring heights of the city spires that reached high into the cumulus clouds drifting through the blue above.

  ‘Oassia is a city built upon the belief that transparency is the key to noble leadership,’ General Veer said from where he walked alongside Idris, his strides slow to keep pace with the smaller humans. ‘The city is deliberately designed to hide nothing and promote trust in member species.’

  ‘Would have been nice for us to have been a part of it sooner,’ Idris pointed out with a touch of irony in his voice.

  ‘Your representative on the council was vocal in his support for human interaction with the greater cosmos, captain, but the General consensus was that humanity was a danger to other species, not yet mature enough to master and control its impulsive desire for domination, nor its paranoia and mistrust of strangers.’

  ‘You’re talking about traits that have evolved over millennia,’ Evelyn pointed out, her voice translated into a series of grunts and growls that the Morla’syn could understand. ‘They can’t be simply erased overnight. It takes time.’

  ‘Indeed,’ Veer agreed. ‘Time that you had not yet spent overcoming your shortfalls as a species. Too often your kind reaches too far over the cliff of endeavour, and falls to your doom in the pursuit of things that you cannot understand.’

  ‘And the Morla’syn didn’t before your species was taken on by the Galactic Council?’ Idris challenged.

  Veer did not reply except to glance at the captain as though somehow offended.

  The transparent walkway crossed the vast city, most of the buildings perhaps a hundred cubits below where Evelyn walked, the rest towering into the sky around them like gigantic steel spears. Streams of craft travelled between the towering spires, their sleek hulls gleaming in the sunlight as they moved this way and that. Across myriad transparent walkways Evelyn could see species of all kinds moving to and fro, and she for the first time realized the sheer extent of the Galactic Council’s reach into the galaxy, of the importance of Oassia as a galactic hub and a mixing place for species of types she could barely begin to imagine.

  ‘How big is the known galaxy beyond here?’ Evelyn asked Veer. ‘How much has been kept from us?’

  General Veer looked down at her and for the first time she saw something approaching humour sparkling in the towering Morla’syn eyes.

  ‘Far more than you can know,’ he replied, and then the humour faded slowly. ‘Which is why it must be protected without compromise. The Galactic Council on Oassia cannot be responsible for allowing the Legion to spread further than it already has. This is our corner of the universe and we must both defend and if necessary destroy it to protect species that we do not even know exist yet. That is the responsibility of all species under the governance of the Icari.’

  ‘And where are these Icari?’ Evelyn asked. ‘We’ve heard so much about them over the decades, but I’ve never known anybody who was ever met an Icari.’

  The Icari were known to be tenuous beings, consisting mostly of light information, that had forged an existence in the atmospheres of giant stars. Nobody in all of human endeavour had yet discovered how intelligence could have developed in such a hostile environment, so devoid of the normal processes that had led to the evolution of intelligent species across the rest of the universe. But the Icari, virtually invulnerable to any kind of weapon, had evolved during immensely ancient times, perhaps even since the evolution of the very first stars. Their invulnerability had made them devoid of the need to conquer, for they had spread as simply as had the chemicals of life throughout the universe since time immemorial: the Icari were ubiquitous to the universe, as common as stars and yet rarely seen.

  ‘Direct communication and observation of the Icari is generally considered to be impossible for most species,’ Veer explained. ‘It is more the case that they communicate on occasion with the Galactic Council with generalised direction, in the sense that they give an impression of where the council’s governance should lead the species under its command. The rest they leave to us, and observe from a distance. The Icari do not wish to directly control the evolution of our species, merely to adjudicate and advise. Their wisdom is unquestionable.’

  ‘And do they condone the destruction of the human race?’ Idris challenged Veer.

  The Morla’syn shook his head. ‘On this they have made no comment. As I said, they advise when necessary but do not directly interfere unless it is absolutely required.’

  ‘It’s absolutely required by us,’ Evelyn snapped.

  Veer slowed as he approached a large, transparent vessel that was shaped like an elongated teardrop and carried the blue triangular markings of the Galactic Council.

  ‘This vessel will carry us to the Galactic Council chamber,’ he informed them. ‘No weapons are allowed in the chamber.’

  Veer waited expectantly, and with some reluctance Evelyn pulled her plasma pistol from its holster and handed it over to one of the Morla’syn guards.

  ‘I hope they’re being as transparent as they claim to be about everything,’ she murmured to the captain as she watched her pistol being taken away.

  ‘You and me both.’

  ***

  XX

  ‘What range are they at?’

  Andaim
Ry’ere sat in the captain’s seat on Atlantia’s bridge and looked at the tactical displays. Atlantia was portrayed as a green icon in the centre display, Arcadia close alongside and their escorting fleet of Morla’syn destroyers portrayed in red and located further out in a loose ring.

  ‘Fifteen thousand cubits,’ Lael reported. ‘They’re holding station, weapons hot, and the scanning is continuous. I’m detecting multiple frequencies, some of which are in the ultra–high range. Some I can’t identify at all.’

  Andaim dragged a hand across his chin as he looked at the Morla’syn destroyers and tried to figure out what they were doing. None of them were close enough to fire immediately upon the two frigates, and he could tell that they would have time to raise shields, power the plasma cannons and begin defensive manoeuvring in order to attempt an escape from Oassia. In short, they were not being penned in as before.

  ‘Do we have any records of Oassia possessing large bore surface to orbit plasma cannons?’

  Lael shook her head. ‘Nothing that I’m aware of, but Colonial records regarding Oassia are scant. No Etheran fleet ever was granted permission to enter the system.’

  Andaim scanned the instruments for a moment longer and then he made a decision. ‘Divert all available power to long–range passive sensors. I want to know what’s out there beyond our patch of space.’

  ‘Stand by,’ Lael replied.

  Andaim watched the scanners flicker as the range altered and they began detecting signals from further out, fleeting glimmers of other spacecraft and of orbiting stations many times larger than even than the Morla’syn destroyers. Andaim slowly got out of his seat and walked toward the viewing screen, and as he did so he captured a brief glimpse of a shimmering object orbiting on the far side of the planet.

  ‘What was that?’

  He pointed at the fleeting return, and it vanished almost as instantly as he had seen it.

  ‘Analysing the data,’ Lael reported. ‘Stand by.’

  Andaim waited and watched the viewing panel but the strange signal did not return.

  ‘There’s not much to go on,’ Lael replied finally as she scrutinised the display. ‘The sensors detected a very large object, almost continental in size, possibly a metallic emission on the spectrometer. It appears to be concealed on the far side of the planet in an orbital position the mirror image of our own.’

  Andaim glanced again at the position of the Morla’syn destroyers. ‘What’s our orbital velocity?’

  ‘We are matching Oassia,’ the helmsman reported, ‘ in geo–stationary orbit.’

  ‘Damn,’ Andaim murmured. ‘They’re hiding something there.’

  ‘It could just be another orbiting station,’ Lael suggested. ‘Atmospheric disturbances sometimes distort signals, stretching them out and giving them an appearance much larger than they actually are.’

  ‘True, but they don’t become the size of continents,’ Andaim pointed out. ‘The Morla’syn are keeping us here in exactly the opposite position to whatever is on the other side of that planet.’

  ‘What are you thinking?’ the helmsman asked.

  ‘I want to know what they’re hiding, fast.’

  Andaim thought back to the encounter with the Morla’syn in deep space, when they had been forced to abandon the wreck of Endeavour. General Veer had said then that the Galactic Council was amassing a fleet, one of the biggest ever created, in order to fight The Word and its Legion. They had said that they intended to destroy Ethera if it was required, and with it every last trace of humanity.

  ‘Lael, set passive scanners to detect ion traces instead. Direct everything we have at where the anomalous trace appeared.’

  ‘Stand by,’ Lael replied.

  Almost all modern spacecraft of suitable size possessed antigravity devices that allowed them to travel through atmospheric conditions, and also allowed them to maintain steady orbits without the use of constant fuel. However, no planet’s gravitational field was entirely uniform: there were fluctuations, patches of higher and lower gravity, the effects of magnetic energy in planetary fields and even the negligible effects of constant micrometeorite impacts that would affect over time the orbit of any craft no matter how large. To counter these effects, all spacecraft would periodically fire either retro rockets or ion engines in order to maintain a perfect orbit and sustain the required velocity and trajectory.

  ‘I’ve got it,’ Lael reported and then looked up at him. ‘You were right. There’s a very large area with trace signatures of ion exhaust comparable to the anomalous signature we detected moments ago.’

  Andaim grinned, but his triumph of deduction was tempered by an anxiety that he could not conceal from his voice. ‘It’s a fleet, a big one. And they’re not telling us about it.’

  ‘General Veer did mention just such a fleet when we last encountered the Morla’syn,’ Lael said. ‘Maybe they’ve got further with it than we thought.’

  ‘Then why the hell aren’t they out there and engaging the Legion wherever they find it?’ Andaim demanded. ‘What are they waiting for?’

  Nobody on the bridge crew answered him, and perhaps for the first time Andaim began to feel the true burden of command, the price of obtaining the captaincy of a major frigate in a war situation. There was nobody else to turn to, no Admiralty to ask for help, nobody to take responsibility for what to do next but himself. Unless…

  Andaim drew himself up to his full height as he considered the implications of what he was thinking. No doubt the Board of Governors would be appalled that he would even consider it, but right now he could not think of any other way of analysing the situation better, and he was completely unable to take action on his own. The moment the frigates lifted their shields or charged their plasma cannons, the Morla’syn would be on them.

  ‘Lael, you have the bridge.’

  ‘Where are you going?’ Lael asked, a touch nervous.

  ‘Down to the pilot’s crew room,’ he lied. ‘I want to brief them quietly on what we discovered.’

  Andaim stepped off the command platform before Lael could reply and walked out of the bridge, but instead of turning towards the crew room he turned instead aft and began travelling down through the ship. He boarded a shuttle pod and allowed it to transport him across the vessel and down towards the storage depots. Within two minutes, he was standing outside a heavily guarded depot deep within the bowels of the ship.

  The Marine guards standing outside the depot moved aside as he approached, both of them saluting.

  ‘At ease,’ Andaim saluted back. ‘I need access. The situation is changing rapidly, and without Captain Sansin here I need all the assets I can get on my side.’

  The Marines stepped forward without question and tapped in their access codes, and the depot door opened with a hiss. Andaim strode in, blinking as his eyes adjusted to the blue glow of the holographic projection unit within. Dr Ceyen Lazarus turned to face Andaim, a look of some surprise on his face.

  ‘Lieutenant, what brings you down to my humble prison?’

  Andaim waited for the depot doors to hiss shut behind him, and then he approached Lazarus.

  ‘How much do you know about where we are?’

  Lazarus shrugged. ‘I know that we were required to head for the Galactic Council and I can tell that the mass–drive is now disengaged, so I assume we are in orbit around Oassia, but I know nothing more than that.’

  Andaim nodded.

  ‘We’re at ten planetary diameters, escorted by Morla’syn destroyers and being constantly scanned. Despite the measures we’ve put in place to prevent your access to Atlantia’s systems, which will also help block their scans, it’s likely only a matter of time before they discover your presence here.’

  ‘Where is captain Sansin?’ Lazarus asked.

  ‘On Oassia, with Captain Mikhain and the Governors. They’re preparing to plead our case to the Council Chamber.’

  ‘And if I am discovered..,’ Lazarus said.

  ‘Then we could find ou
rselves accused of infiltrating The Word into the Galactic Council, or similar,’ Andaim finished the sentence for Lazarus. ‘Whatever trust we may foster within the council will be lost if we are found to be deceiving them.’

  Lazarus offered Andaim a kindly smile. ‘You wish me to be handed over to the Council?’

  ‘No,’ Andaim replied, ‘because they’re not being entirely honest with us either.’

  ‘How so?’

  ‘We’ve detected a large fleet in geo–synchronous orbit on the far side of Oassia, the biggest I’ve ever seen. Analysis of what data we can uncover is still coming in, but at first glance I’d say maybe five hundred large vessels.’

  Lazarus’s eyes widened as he stared down at Andaim. ‘That’s a serious force, do you know if they’re military?’

  ‘Can’t say from this range and we’re on passive sensors only under orders from the Council. If we start active scanning it may be seen as an act of war.’

  ‘They don’t want you to detect the fleet,’ Lazarus said. ‘But why bother? You already know that the council has been considering a war–footing against the Legion. There’s no reason to hide the fleet.’

  ‘That’s what’s bothering me,’ Andaim said. ‘They base their criticisms of the human race on our lack of transparency and supposed tendency to deceive – that’ll be demolished if we can prove they’re hiding something from us also.’