Endeavour (Atlantia Series Book 4) Read online

  Evelyn changed direction. ‘Cover me!’

  Bra’hiv bellowed at Evelyn to hold her position but Evelyn ignored the general as she dashed across the hold and slipped and slid across the slippery deck toward the mysterious woman. The woman stared vacantly into the middle distance as she stood immobile inside the capsule, dripping per–fluorocarbon, and then she coughed and spat the fluid from her lungs.

  Evelyn slipped as she approached the capsule as two plasma rounds zipped by her and smashed into the writhing coils of a large serpent that was making its way toward her. Evelyn slammed into the capsule and fought to remain upright.

  The woman, her eyes wracked with discomfort and confusion behind the mask, stared blindly into the middle distance, her eyes a curious pearlescent blue. Evelyn sensed at once that the woman could not see a thing but that she could hear everything, each plasma blast shocking and scaring her.

  On impulse, Evelyn reached up and grasped her hand.

  The woman froze and then she looked down and seemed to stare straight into Evelyn’s eyes as though entranced.

  ‘Come with me if you want to live,’ Evelyn snapped.

  Evelyn stepped back and virtually forced the woman to blindly follow her. As she stepped down Evelyn saw that there were no intravenous lines in her arms, nothing to have kept her alive for so long inside the capsule but for the per–fluorocarbon.

  ‘Come on!’

  Evelyn yanked the woman toward the exit as the Marines laid down covering fire, the plasma rounds screeching past them with scant inches to spare as they hurried forward. The hellish, tortured cries and screams of unknown species filled the air around them as they rushed toward the exit, the strange woman finally finding her feet and running with Evelyn.

  ‘Get through, damn it!’ Bra’hiv snapped at Evelyn as she ducked through the hatch and dragged the woman behind her, dripping copious amounts of per–fluorocarbon as she went and her mask sparkling with the fluid.

  ‘We can’t seal it!’ Andaim snapped as he looked at the damaged hinges.

  ‘Fall back to the next bulkhead!’ Bra’hiv ordered.

  Evelyn glimpsed rifle fire from within the holds as she turned and saw the hideous shapes of creatures fighting and killing each other in the darkness.

  ‘Look!’ she pointed. ‘They’re coming out!’

  Amid the murderous frenzy the shapes of men formed, shadows against shadows as they moved in perfect concert, firing in all directions, the blasts smashing into species of all kinds as they tracked toward the exit.

  ‘Damn it,’ Bra’hiv growled. ‘Covering fire!’

  The Marines looked at their general as though he had gone mad and he roared at them in fury. ‘Would you want to be left in there?!’

  The Marines did not move but Evelyn caught Andaim’s eye. They moved together without words, Andaim following as Evelyn leaped back through the hatchway and opened fire on the creatures pouring in pursuit of the tight knot of soldiers moving toward her.

  The Marines poured back into the hatchway and formed up behind Evelyn, and suddenly a blaze of rifle fire illuminated the interior of the holds in a flickering blue light. Evelyn felt her guts twist in fear as she saw creatures racing through the holds toward the light, clambering up the walls and swarming through the cables and ventilation channels high above.

  She forced herself to focus on her firing as the troops moved closer, firing as they went.

  ‘Move it!’ Andaim yelled at them.

  The troops broke at the last moment, forming a single–file formation as they sprinted away and leaped through the open hatchway one at a time with astonishing speed. Evelyn fired two more shots into the tumult of animals thundering toward her, and then she turned and leaped through the hatch.

  ‘Get out of here!’ Bra’hiv yelled. ‘Past the next bulkhead!’

  Evelyn ran, saw Meyanna far ahead helping the strange woman she had freed to find her way along the corridor. Marines were already posted at regular intervals through the corridor, and the elite troops had taken up similar positions without orders, their weapons aimed at the entrance to the hold as Evelyn ran past.

  ‘Fire in the hole!’

  Bra’hiv tossed four plasma grenades just inside the hold entrance and then sprinted clear. The general made less than ten paces, the hatchway behind him filled with gruesome, fanged creatures all rushing for the exit when the grenades detonated.

  A blinding series of four plasma blasts flickered in unison like lightning and exploded out of the hatchway behind a shockwave that hammered into Evelyn’s back as she crouched and ducked her head away from the blast. She saw Bra’hiv hit the deck hard as he was hit by the blast, his hands covering his head as a cloud of blue smoke tumbled up the corridor and consumed them.

  ‘Keep moving!’ Andaim yelled, his voice sounding dull and muted in Evelyn’s ears. ‘Get past the next bulkhead!’

  A ripple of fresh shots crackled out as the Marines maintained a steady fire into the smoke clogging the hold entrance. Bra’hiv hauled himself to his feet and staggered forward, blood trickling from his left ear where the blast must have ruptured his eardrum, his face pinched with pain.

  Evelyn fell in alongside him as they ran to the next bulkhead and hopped through, the Marines and elite troops falling back with them until every last man was through. Lieutenant C’rairn slammed the bulkhead shut and spun the manual locking wheel until it was tight, rammed through all three locking pins and then slumped against the hatch, his chest heaving and his features pale with delayed shock.

  Evelyn looked at the young lieutenant, who spoke in a raspy, exhausted whisper.

  ‘That was fun. Can we go home now?’

  ‘Nobody’s going anywhere,’ a voice growled, and Evelyn looked up to see the elite troops encircling them as they emerged from the darkness. ‘And we thought you said that you had no home to go to?’

  Bra’hiv nodded from where he crouched, trying to regain his breath and one hand gingerly cupping his injured ear. ‘Ethera’s gone, or at least the home that you remember. You really think a general of my age would be charging around in combat zones if the military were still fully functional?’

  The soldier was still staring down the barrel of his rifle at Bra’hiv, but Evelyn could tell that his resistance was wavering. The rifle lowered slowly, and one of the other soldiers spoke instead.

  ‘Everything’s gone?’ he asked, his furtive tone strangely at odds with his heavily armed appearance.

  ‘Everything,’ Evelyn confirmed. ‘We’ve picked up the occasional survivor, run into fleeing pirates and other brigands around the outer systems, but that’s it. They’re all gone.’

  ‘How did you get here?’ Bra’hiv asked the troops. ‘We didn’t detect a ship.’

  The soldier gestured with a nod of his head over his shoulder. ‘She’s shielded, and we landed her in a smaller bay to help conceal her.’ He looked at Bra’hiv. ‘We haven’t received orders for over a year.’

  ‘You won’t be receiving any more orders,’ Bra’hiv confirmed. ‘What were you sent out here to do?’

  The soldier seemed to consider the question for what felt like a long time, and then he blinked himself out of his reverie and gestured to his men.

  ‘Lieutenant Jaysin Riaz,’ the commander of the platoon introduced himself. ‘Fourteenth STS unit.’

  ‘You were saying what you were sent here for?’ Bra’hiv said.

  ‘The mission was sanctioned at a very high level,’ Riaz began, ‘and my team selected from a number of branches across Special Forces. We all knew each other already and had all worked together before, given the small size of the force, and had a combined expertise that covered all aspects of operations: demolitions, infiltration, deep–space survival, close–quarters combat and surveillance.’

  The watching Marines listened with interest along with Evelyn as Riaz went on.

  ‘We were deployed in secret aboard an ordinary launch of a new Colonial cruiser, Defiant, and we parted company with
them a couple of months before they reached the limit of their cruise radius, close to the Icari Line. We’ve been operating alone ever since, picking up revised orders once every few months upon our return.’

  ‘Return from where?’ Evelyn asked.

  ‘From wherever we wanted to go,’ Riaz replied. ‘Our mission was to scour beyond the Icari Line and find out what was waiting for humanity there, to discover, master and deploy new technologies. The whole mission was designed as a combined fact–finding and weapons procurement exercise, designed to provide Etheran superiority in the event of another protracted war against the Veng’en.’

  Bra’hiv’s eyes narrowed as he thought for a moment.

  ‘That’s where you got those plasma shields of yours from. And you were deployed three years ago?’

  ‘Three and a half,’ Riaz confirmed.

  ‘Damn,’ Evelyn whispered. ‘The Word would have long been in indirect control of Ethera’s government by then, and a great deal of the military.’

  ‘It’ll know about your mission,’ Bra’hiv confirmed to Riaz. ‘It may even have sent you itself.’

  ‘What do you mean?’ Riaz asked.

  ‘We should have thought of it ourselves,’ Evelyn explained. ‘We came out here beyond the Icari Line in the hopes of finding technology that could be used to defeat the Word, but it looks as though the Word might have thought of this long before we did.’

  ‘The bodies, in the capsules,’ Bra’hiv said as he gestured back into the holds. ‘This ship was designed as an exploratory vessel decades ago, but now it’s holding many different species and looks as though it may have been overcome by the Word. You saw the face embedded into the ship’s bridge?’

  ‘Yeah,’ Riaz replied, visibly uncomfortable with the memory. ‘We haven’t seen anything like that before out here, and believe me, we’ve seen some things.’

  Bra’hiv turned to Evelyn.

  ‘We need to get off this ship,’ he said finally. ‘We don’t know what happened here, but the best thing we can do is blow Endeavour into history and forget we ever found her.’

  Evelyn glanced at the woman they had liberated, her face still concealed behind her mask. ‘What about the rest of the crew?’ she asked. ‘They could still be trapped in the holds.’

  ‘And we could learn something here,’ Meyanna insisted, ‘something crucial about how the Word evolved. It might even lead to a way to defeat it.’

  ‘We can’t rescue everybody,’ Bra’hiv pointed out, ‘and we’re certainly not going back inside that hold without massive reinforcements.’

  ‘We can’t just obliterate the entire ship and walk away!’ Meyanna gasped.

  ‘Watch me,’ Bra’hiv snapped. ‘Let’s go!’

  ***

  XXI

  General Bra’hiv’s command was accepted by Riaz’s troopers, who despite their unique status had decided to defer for the time being to the general’s authority until they knew more about the situation back on Ethera.

  ‘We should make for our own ship,’ Lieutenant Riaz insisted. ‘It’s better armed than your shuttle.’

  ‘We can pick up your gunship when we’ve launched safely,’ Bra’hiv replied. ‘Right now it’s imperative that we get back aboard Atlantia and fill them in on everything we know. Our shuttles are waiting close by and besides, not all of us have atmospheric suits that will allow us to board your ship. I take it she is in zero–zero conditions, to hinder boarding attempts?’

  Riaz nodded as he walked, his eyes never still as he surveyed the way ahead, seeking areas of weakness, potential ambush choke–points and cover locations.

  ‘Standard operating procedure,’ he confirmed. ‘We pull around back as soon as your shuttle lifts off and you’ve confirmed our identities with your captain, understood? Only reason we’re following your orders right now is because we choose to. By rights, you have no authority over my unit.’

  ‘Understood,’ Bra’hiv replied without rancour. ‘Let’s just get off this wreck first. We can worry about pissing contests afterward.’

  Evelyn followed the two soldiers, one hand on her pistol as she sought any sign ahead of impending attack. Endeavour gave her the creeps, more so than the Sylph they had boarded months before. The sight of the bodies in the capsules had sent a chill down her spine as she thought of what these people, these species, might have gone through. Her own mask had been sealed over her face for three years or more, a period of time that had felt like aeons. The probes deep in her throat had left bloodied lesions after they had been removed, her once gentle voice now gravelly and alien to her own ears.

  ‘We’re coming up on the launch bays,’ Bra’hiv reported to the men behind him. ‘Signal friend or foe.’

  Lieutenant C’rairn activated a small device on his webbing, the small black box flashing a brief green light. Moments later, the box flashed a double–green light and C’rairn nodded at the general.

  ‘All clear, they know we’re coming.’

  The Marines marched onward toward the landing bay, and ahead a hatch opened to reveal a Marine who peeked out at them before relaxing and stepping out into the corridor.

  ‘All clear general,’ he called, and then he spotted the additional soldiers accompanying the Marines. ‘Who called the cavalry?’

  ‘We have some new friends,’ Bra’hiv replied, ‘STS soldiers, and they’d like their gunship back. Call the shuttle pilot and arrange an extraction, we’re getting out of here.’

  ‘Yes sir!’

  The Marine turned and jogged down the corridor ahead toward the landing bay as Evelyn caught up with Bra’hiv. She was about to ask him something when the general’s communicator lit up with a priority signal. The general reached down and opened a channel.

  ‘Bra’hiv?’

  ‘Captain Sansin?’

  ‘We’ve got a situation here! Kordaz and Qayin’s ship is heading your way at high speed and is out of contact. We don’t know what the hell they’re doing! Get off Endeavour immediately!’

  Bra’hiv did not waste time replying to the captain.

  ‘Double time!’ he roared. ‘Move, now!’

  The Marines began sprinting down the corridor, the Special Forces troops accelerating ahead of them as their immense physical fitness outstripped that of the Marines. Evelyn ran hard to try to keep up with Riaz’s men, but she was no match for them as they burst out of the corridor and into the landing bay.

  *

  ‘Her shields are up!’

  Teera saw Salim Phaeon’s gunship shields light up on her tactical display as she flew her Raython clear of the ship’s weapons, angling for a clear shot. The huge, X–shaped vessel roared by as it accelerated away toward Endeavour and left a trail of glistening debris and frozen gases in its wake.

  ‘She’s heading for the wreck!’

  Teera’s Raython rolled over as she turned the fighter in an attempt to lay in a pursuit course and switched her weapons to active.

  ‘Reaper Two, weapons hot!’

  The gunship’s ion engines flared with white heat as she raced toward Endeavour. To Teera’s port side Arcadia was already moving to intercept, the frigate attempting to cut the gunship off while also bringing her huge batteries to bear upon the much smaller gunship.

  ‘Arcadia, I’ve got her!’ Teera called.

  ‘Warning shots only!’ came Captain Sansin’s orders. ‘Try to disable her if you can but do not destroy her!’

  Teera’s Raython accelerated quickly and gained on the more massive gunship as her targeting reticule suddenly zipped into the gunship’s stern as her plasma cannons locked on. She hesitated only for a moment before her trigger finger squeezed her control column.

  A pair of brilliant blue–white halos of plasma fire rocketed away from her Raython and smashed into the gunship’s stern hull with a blinding flare of light. Teera saw the blasts absorbed by the gunship’s shields and suddenly a salvo of return fire zoomed toward her as the gunship’s aft cannons opened up.

  Teera shoved her
control column forward with the speed of instinct and the Raython dove down beneath the lethal hail of gunfire, the flaring plasma charges bathing her cockpit in flickering red light as she raced beneath them.

  ‘Reaper Two, under fire!’ she called.

  ‘Maintain fire!’ Idris replied, ‘but do not destroy her!’

  ‘I don’t think that I can,’ Teera replied, ‘her shields are too strong!’

  The gunship continued to accelerate as Teera followed it and Arcadia moved further across her field of vision. Even as she watched, the frigate’s starboard batteries flickered with light and Teera cursed as she hurled the Raython to port in an attempt to avoid the lethal barrage as it rocketed toward both her and the fleeing gunship.

  *

  ‘What the hell does he think he’s doing?!’

  Idris paced the command platform on Atlantia’s bridge like a caged beast as he saw Arcadia’s cannons light up and narrowly miss both the gunship and the pursuing Raythons. The blasts detonated nearby, bright flashes of blue–white light that briefly illuminated the tiny spacecraft as they rushed by.

  ‘Proximity charges,’ Lael identified the rounds blazing from Arcadia’s batteries. ‘Mikhain’s trying to destroy the gunship without harming the Raythons.’

  ‘Damn him,’ Idris snarled, his fists clenched as he bashed them against the guard rail. ‘Helm, hard to starboard! Cut Arcadia off as soon as the gunship passes us by!’

  ‘Aye, cap’ain.’

  ‘You’re not going to try to cut Kordaz off instead?’ Lael asked.

  ‘We don’t know what’s happening aboard the ship,’ Idris replied, ‘and we can’t do much about it without killing everybody on board. We have no choice but to let the craft through and see what it intends. If it lands aboard Endeavour, at least Bra’hiv’s Marines can apprehend everybody aboard.’