Atlantia Series 1: Survivor Read online

  1:17.

  She released the trigger and braced herself as the onrushing plasma charge zoomed to the edge of the debris field where she had been just moments before and detonated. The blast rocked her capsule and it tumbled end over end away from the shockwave as she heard shrapnel hammer on its surface like hail on glass. An alarm sounded and she saw her screen fill with cracks and splinters as she was catapulted forwards and a sloshing, sucking sound warned her that the hull of her capsule was breached and that her per–fluorocarbon was leaking into space.

  She saw the hull of the vessel looming before her, its darkened interior black and dangerous. She grabbed her controls as a terrible cold filled the capsule, the icy grip of space itself creeping in to freeze her to death. She fought to orientate the capsule as the last of her precious air supply was used up.

  0:32.

  The giant hull was bare metal, scratched and stained, its markings eroded away as though by relentless weather on an endless journey through the cosmos. She guided the capsule with the last of its fuel as it plunged toward the hull’s surface, and instinctively aimed for the coffin–shaped holes lining its side.

  As she closed in she spotted amid the darkened tangle of twisted metal a searing blue–white light, as though a star had become trapped in the web of wreckage nearby. She looked at her timer.

  0:12.

  The hum of the generator and pumps on her capsule faded away as the last of her fuel was expended and the oxygenation of her per–fluorocarbon ceased.

  The nearest blackened hole rushed toward her and she felt herself suddenly accelerate as something pulled it in. The screen gave a last ear–piercing screech of tortured glass and then it was torn outward by the intense vacuum and she felt the touch of absolute cold freeze her skin and yank at her eyeballs as in a terrifying rush all of the remaining warmth was sucked from the capsule as the screen failed and shot away from her.

  The protective amber fluid around her was sucked violently out in a rush that pulled her head toward the vacuum, the dense fluid freezing instantly as it exited the capsule and tumbled in frozen chunks to bounce off the cold metal hull.

  Her eyes clouded for an instant as though she was enveloped in fog as her eyeballs began to freeze and then a thud reverberated through the capsule as it slammed into the side of the hull, pulled in by powerful magnets that ringed the hull’s receptacle. Total darkness consumed her, and then a hiss of pressurisation filled her ears and air was pumped automatically into the capsule. Her lungs convulsed and she coughed out a thick bolus of per–fluorocarbon that spilled like syrup into the interior of her mask and drained slowly out across her chest.

  Raw, cold air filled her lungs for what felt like the first time and she coughed and wretched, barely any sound escaping past the mask as though she were still entombed in the fluid. Her eyes watered and she shivered in the cold air washing across her skin, as though she were a new born plucked from the womb of a damaged mother.

  The capsule’s surface clicked loudly as latches came undone under automatic guidance. More clicks as the lines into her arms were retrieved automatically and suddenly the capsule opened wide and the lid fell slowly away and hovered above a black–tiled floor slick with water and foam.

  She hung there for a moment, still strapped in and with blood dripping from the crooks of her arms. Her limbs twitched and her chest convulsed as she sucked in huge breaths of air and pressed the wounds on her arms closed to prevent the blood from pooling in the veins as she looked around.

  She was inside a containment unit, probably a storage depot of some kind alongside the engine bays. Magnetic trolleys were scattered across the floor and metal boxes of all kinds were strapped to racking that lined the walls. That there had been a raging fire was obvious, much of the plastic and metal scorched or even melted around her and the air thick with the smell of smoke and electrical fires. Automatic fire–retarding systems had come on–line sometime during the blaze, blasting the fire with chemicals that now floated in globules on the air in the zero–gravity conditions.

  Her hair hung damp and thickly bound in per–fluorocarbon, plastered across her mask as she parted it with her fingers and took in the scene around her. Emergency venting doors had been closed, probably after the blast that had destroyed the rear of the vessel: during fire, which was as lethal in zero–gravity as it was under planetary conditions, the usual practice was to evacuate the air from the affected sections of the ship, thus starving the fire of oxygen. Then sprinklers cooled any remaining electrical fires before the damaged hull was sealed off and air re–introduced to parts of the hull affected by the fire but still stable, allowing for repairs to begin.

  She could see that the fire had burned out quickly and the remains of any people caught in the blast would have been vacuumed out into oblivion as soon as the hull was breached or the air evacuated through the blast doors, which were now sealed shut.

  Now, scoured of life and all but emergency power, the interior of the hull was a mess of floating water and foam and shapeless tendrils of smoke. High on one wall a single red light blinked on and off, scarlet light interspersed with complete blackness.

  She coughed again, no sound breaking free from her dry lips. Her body shook from the cold, her skin raised in bumps as she reached down to her waist and loosened the straps holding her inside the capsule. They dropped slowly away and she held on to the capsule’s frame as she crouched down and pulled her ankles free from their restraints.

  She made to step out of the capsule but her legs failed her.

  But she did not fall. She floated free of the capsule, hanging limp in mid–air as she willed her legs to respond. Her thighs quivered, her ankles jerking spasmodically as she tried to control them. Her muscles began to twinge and tingle as the life began to flow back into them, her blood oxygenating them and long–neglected nerves and tendons twitching as they tried to convey messages from her brain.

  She floated amid the clouds of foam, swatted them aside from her mask as she tried to seek a source of warmth. The sound of creaking braces echoed through the superstructure around her as she drifted slowly through the storage unit, a few feet above the floor. Sealed off from the ship, the damaged section would have only minimal life support, enough to sustain anybody who was trapped inside for long enough to effect a rescue.

  She was about to move when a loud clang echoed through the hull around her. Moments later, she saw an automatic door hiss open on the opposite side of the unit, and then the cover of a survival capsule fall slowly down to thump onto the floor as per–fluorocarbon fluid spilled in amber spheres onto the air.

  A man floated free of the capsule, thick–set and with his torso smothered in webs of scars and tattoos that denoted both gang kills and prison slayings. His big, craggy bald head swivelled to look her naked body up and down as a grim smile spread like an infection across his face.

  She pushed herself against a broken computer terminal that was floating lazily amid the foam, sending it toward the rear of the storage unit and propelling herself toward the sealed access hatches. The man shoved himself free of his capsule and drifted toward her, flying through the air with his arms outstretched.

  Her body was shivering violently as she drifted through the debris. The bald convict floated toward her, both of them converging toward the hatches. She reached out to stop herself at the bulkheads. The metal was cold to the touch and slick with retardant foam, her hands numb with cold as they slid down its surface. She knew that within minutes she would succumb either to the bitter chill or her pursuer’s grip.

  A heavy looking bulkhead door, sealed from the other side, blocked her way as she dragged herself down to hover in front of it, her feet barely an inch off the floor. A small glowing red light told her that power was available to it and she searched for an input panel.

  She glanced over her shoulder to see the man almost upon her, a guttural laugh spitting from his twisted lips and his manhood already standing proud of his body like the rudde
r of some disgusting, pale–skinned ship.

  A small box on the wall alongside the door attracted her attention and she reached up for it. It opened and she saw a red lever fixed in the locked position.

  She grabbed hold of the lever, pinned her knees against the bulkhead and pulled hard.

  The lever snapped down and the bulkhead shuddered as its locking mechanism deactivated. She pulled herself down and turned the sealing valve anti–clockwise until it spun freely in her grasp. The bulkhead door hissed and she scrambled to gain purchase on the greasy floor as she leaned her shoulder into the heavy door and pushed against it.

  The door inched open and she reached out to grab the edge of the frame and haul herself through.

  A hand grasped her ankle like a vice and she turned to see the man gripping her as he dragged himself along the slippery floor, his other hand reaching up instinctively between her legs. She twisted her body as she held onto the edge of the door and raised one foot to smash it down toward the man’s face. Her heel smacked across his nose and crushed it in a spray of blood that splattered across his face and flew upward in shimmering globules between them. The man growled in pain, his thick fist still gripping her ankle as she hauled herself through the doorway, her leg stretched out behind her.

  She turned and pushed her free foot against the door as she hauled her other leg through the bulkhead, dragging the bulky man’s arm with her. He reached out for the door to pull himself through, his eyes fixated upon her naked body.

  She braced herself, grabbed the side of the bulkhead frame and then pulled his arm through after her and slammed the bulkhead door with all of her might. She heard the man growl in pain as the heavy door crushed his wrist between the door and the jam and his grip on her loosened.

  She slammed the door again, the bulky man unable to find purchase on the slippery floor to oppose her. Her ankle, still drenched in per–flourocarbon, slipped free of his grasp as his hand shot out of sight. She heaved the door closed and slammed her arms down on the manual security locks and held them in place with one hand to prevent the convict from opening them again.

  The man’s bloodied face appeared at the observation window, poisoned with rage as he slammed his big fists against the glass. She spun the sealing valve back into place and then looked to her right. There, an active computer terminal set into the wall flashed warnings at her:

  HULL BREACH: EVACUATION PROCEDURE?

  She looked at the man’s twisted, screaming face, and then she reached out and pressed the evacuation button.

  A distant alarm sounded as she watched and then the blast door seals inside the storage unit were automatically released. The blast doors hissed open, a whirling cloud of vapour rippling around their edges as the atmosphere was vacuumed from the storage unit.

  The man screamed again as he was dragged away from the door, his legs pointed toward the widening vacuum and his eyes wide with horror.

  Evelyn watched in silence as the man’s face turned even paler, his eyeballs frosting over and blood spilling from every orifice in his body until he was yanked out of sight by the vacuum.

  ***

  III

  She drifted down onto the floor of the gangway, her legs folding without resistance beneath her as she listened to the sirens fade away and felt warmth slowly creep back into her exhausted limbs. Clearly, this section of the ship had not been breached and the temperature was relatively comfortable. Her breathing echoed against her metal mask, heaving through her throat and rattling in her chest as the last of the per–fluorocarbon was ejected from her lungs.

  She pushed her long, damp hair away from her mask once more and peered down the empty gangway. Bare metal walls, no markings, ceiling lights evenly spaced leading into the distance that flickered erratically. The floor felt cold against her skin and she dragged herself up onto her feet once more, her body feeling as light as air and yet still as heavy as all eternity.

  She tried to call out, but the mask was preventing her from speaking. She coughed, a tiny sound that seemed to echo away down the gangway into the distance.

  And then it drifted back to her, as though the sounds had reached her from afar on an errant wind. A whispering, like voices but too faint to understand. She stared into the distant reaches of the gangway, both afraid and hopeful. The soft whispering haunted the air and then faded like a ghost.

  She shivered and hugged her arms about her body.

  She was already covered in bruises, and a little blood had trickled down her arms and smeared her skin. Conscious of hurting herself further, she aimed herself down the gangway and pushed off the bulkhead door. She drifted silently along in the zero–gravity, listening intently for the sound of voices but hearing nothing except the low rumbling and creaking of the vessel’s hull around her.

  The gangway continued through bulkhead after bulkhead, all of which were open. She recalled the shape of the hull of the vessel that she had seen from the outside when she had first awoken, a bulky cylinder of ugly grey metal, and surmised that she was travelling along the port flank.

  The lights continued to flicker and blink erratically around her as the power surged in and out. She sailed on through the groaning, empty vessel, a wake of per–fluorocarbon globules trailing behind her. Her ears twitched of their own accord as she heard again the faint whispering, as though the vessel were haunted. Her skin tingled and a shiver rippled down her spine as she drifted through the silence and looked behind her.

  The gangway was empty.

  Finally she reached another bulkhead, this one turning right. She reached out to stop herself from banging into the metal wall as she sailed through the bulkhead, and looked to her right.

  A narrow passage opened out before her onto what looked like some kind of vast chamber. She edged forward and reached a gantry that looked down upon a broad hall lined with tiered ranks of heavily barred cells, all of which were open. All were filled with debris and slick with foam and water where fire had ripped through them.

  The prison had been scoured of life, left filled with a silently floating miasma of debris like dirty clouds drifting in a metal sky, and amid the debris floated the bodies of the condemned men who had once suffered here.

  She could see that few of them had burned. Most, judging by the colour of their lips and the grotesque expressions on their faces, had suffocated. They drifted like ghosts through the prison, many of them surrounded by a halo of their own stomach contents that had voided in undignified clouds around their corpses.

  She saw one body floating nearby and she moved forward to the edge of the gantry and reached out for it. Her fingers brushed against the sleeve of the convict’s orange prison overalls and she pinched the fabric and pulled him in to her.

  He was about her height, shorter and stockier than her and probably no more than twenty five years of age when he had died. His eyes were rolled up in their sockets and his cheeks were scarred where somebody had driven a horizontal blade backwards into his mouth, slicing through the flesh of his face and leaving him with a gruesome, bloodied and permanent grin.

  She unzipped the one–piece uniform from his corpse and slipped into it, then removed his prison–issue socks and boots and pulled them on. They provided a little extra warmth and covered her nakedness.

  She pushed the dead convict’s corpse away from her through the cloud of debris, high over the tiers below. She turned and looked into the nearest cell on the gantry. Amid the mess she could see a bed with restraining straps to prevent sleeping convicts from floating about in the zero–gravity conditions, along with a sink and toilet likewise adapted for the conditions.

  On one wall was bolted a steel mirror.

  She stepped into the cell, only then seeing the corpse of its former occupant floating against the ceiling, eyes white and his swollen purple tongue hanging loosely from an open mouth. She gently eased her way past beneath him and then stopped in front of the grubby mirror.

  Her heart skipped a beat in her chest.


  The mask completely covered her face, its surface covered in slits that allowed her to see and to breathe more easily. Made of plain, unadorned metal, her eyes peered back at her from within the dark, narrow slits. Atop her head, the full–face mask became two metal plates that extended down the back of her head and connected to a metal collar around her neck. Her hair, thick with the syrupy per–fluorocarbon, hung lank across her shoulders or floated upward in tangled tresses.

  But that which scared her most was the metal probe that protruded from the upper lip of her mask and into her mouth, hugging the roof of her mouth and extending down into her throat. She coughed and her eyes watered as he saw for the first time what was preventing her from speaking. She reached up and pulled at the mask, but it would not budge and the pressure caused her throat to spasm. She gagged and coughed again, managed to swallow and bring her breathing under control as she stood up and looked at herself again.

  She remembered the man in the storage unit. He had not worn a mask and nor had the other men in the capsules who had died, and they hadn’t as far as she knew been wired in with intravenous lines. She realised that she must have had them to provide her with nutrients of some kind, and wondered how long she had been incarcerated inside that tiny capsule.

  She turned in the cell to look up at the dead convict floating above her. He wore no mask, had no tubes in his arms. She looked down at the rubbish floating around her in the cell and saw morsels of food among it. She reached out and grabbed some, throwing them into her mouth.

  The food tasted stale and dry, and she struggled to swallow any of it. What she did manage to get down immediately made her thirsty. She moved across to the sink, reached down for the tube floating from the sink edge and put it in her mouth before twisting the tap.

  A feeble trickle of cold water spluttered into her mouth and she swallowed it gratefully until the flow vanished. She made her way out of the cell and froze as she heard voices drifting again through the cell block. Distant, vague, ebbing and flowing as though heard from the last recalled remnants of a dream.