Defiance (Atlantia Series Book 5) Read online

  ‘Get to your ships, get up there and start fighting back,’ Ishira said to Veer, ‘or this will all be over before the sun’s gone down, and you won’t have any human prisoners to trade because every living thing on this planet will have been destroyed by the Legion. We’ve seen it happen, General, and if there’s one thing that I can be sure of it’s that the Galactic Council has been wrong on every count. The Legion is here to conquer, not to cooperate. Fight, or be destroyed.’

  General Veer stared down at her as though unsure of what to do, and then suddenly more ion engines roared nearby and they turned to see Oassian Skyhawk fighters launching from bays across the city and soaring into the heavens. Ishira stared after the rapidly vanishing fighters as they rocketed away, dull booms echoing out across the city as they accelerated into supersonic climbs in order to achieve escape velocity and orbit.

  As if in response a mournful wailing sound echoed across the city as multiple sirens burst into life, and almost immediately Ishira saw pedestrians begin hurrying away from exposed walkways and viewing platforms.

  General Veer took one last look at the impending panic.

  ‘Your captain and his colleagues are in the prison,’ he said, and gestured with his rifle toward the damaged silvery tower from which billowed dirty black clouds of smoke. Then, without any further hesitation he turned to his men and yelled at them.

  ‘With me, now!’

  The Morla’syn turned as one and hurried from the landing platform as the five hundred or so civilians and Ogri turned to look at Ishira. Suddenly expected to lead, she looked at the damaged prison and then at the civilians.

  ‘Get back aboard!’ she yelled. ‘We’re getting the hell out of here!’

  In a frenzy the civilians tumbled back toward Valiant’s boarding ramp, the mournful wail of the alert sirens echoing over the city as Ishira watched airborne traffic darting for the nearest landing pads, the walkways of the city already half–deserted.

  ‘This is it,’ Stefan said as he ran to her side, a plasma pistol held in his hand. ‘This is the invasion. This is where Sansin will make his stand.’

  ‘If he and the others survived the impact,’ Ishira said as she glanced at the prison spire. ‘Come on, we’ve got to move!’

  ***

  XXXII

  Evelyn heard muted sounds assault her ears and her head felt heavy as acrid smoke stung her eyes. She hauled herself up from the deck of the cage, and then grabbed hold of it for dear life as she saw one side of the cage hanging open and beyond the plunging abyss into the darkened depths.

  Burning debris showered down through the prison as though slow–moving comets were spiralling down into its black bowels, and she could hear screams coming from all corners as convicts sought to escape the blaze.

  Clouds of smoke billowed up from the ragged site of the blast, and Evelyn squinted to see a massive, ragged hole torn through the prison wall, the city beyond glittering in the sunlight and a brisk gale blowing in from outside. Shafts of sunlight illuminated tendrils of smoke spiralling up toward the prison’s upper tiers. Below, far below, she could see the twisted form of a Morla’syn fighter drone burning furiously, the inferno consuming the lower cells in a scene of tremendous carnage and the air thick with the stench of burning flesh.

  ‘Evelyn!’

  She looked up and saw Captain Sansin clambering out of the cell, dragging himself up onto a narrow gantry to which the cell was hanging by a pair of brackets that had not yet failed. The captain beckoned for her to follow.

  ‘Come on!’

  Evelyn turned on the precarious deck and instantly saw a Donnassian’s face staring at her. His eyes were wide but lifeless, his torso hooked into the cage walls and his chest pierced by a bloodied spear of torn metal that had fractured his heart. Evelyn reached out and grabbed the dead man’s clothes, hauling herself up as she clambered over him and toward the upper quarter of the cell cage where Idris was reaching out for her.

  Across the gantries she could see hundreds of prisoners fleeing the rising flames, guards scampering across the walls to try to contain them but hopelessly outnumbered. Screeches and cries of pain from plasma whips liberally deployed echoed across the abysmal gaol as Evelyn crawled up the last few cubits of the cell and reached out for Idris’s hand.

  The captain strained to reach her and then their hands interlocked and Idris pulled hard. Evelyn scrambled up onto what felt like solid ground, but was in reality a one–cubit wide ledge above the dizzying drop into the prison’s belly. She pulled herself against the wall to get away from the precipitous drop as Idris checked her over.

  ‘Are you okay? Anything broken?’

  ‘No, I’m fine,’ she rasped. ‘What the hell happened?’

  ‘That drone came through the prison wall,’ Idris replied. ‘The Legion could already be here. If those guards had not been clinging to the outside of our cell we’d have all been incinerated. As it was, they took most of the force of the blast, as did the miners behind Rench.’

  ‘Where are Mikhain and Taron?’

  Idris’s features darkened. ‘They’re gone,’ he snapped. ‘Their side of the cage was ripped open when the blast hit and they took off right away.’

  Despite herself Evelyn felt a twinge of disappointment as she realized that Taron Forge had willingly abandoned her to die in the prison in favour of escaping with his criminal entourage. Though she knew that Taron was a mercenary, she had somehow felt certain that he retained at least a morsel of humanity somewhere deep inside. But now she knew that Taron’s only interest in life was himself, unlike Andaim and…

  ‘Teera?!’ she yelped and stared about her.

  Idris grabbed Evelyn’s shoulders to prevent her from falling over the edge of the gantry. ‘I haven’t figured out how to get to her yet.’

  ‘Where is she?’

  Idris pulled Evelyn to one side, so that she could see down the edge of the damaged gantry to where the far end swung in the wind, the gated end open. There, hanging on with one hand to the very bottom of the gate, was Teera, her other arm bloodied and her sleeve torn.

  ‘Hang on!’

  Evelyn yelled at Teera as her wingman dangled from the edge of the gantry, her blue fingers gripping the hard edge of the metal frame and her legs swinging out over the abyss.

  ‘Thanks for the tip!’ Teera shouted back. ‘How about some help here?!’

  She turned and saw where the Morla’syn fighter had ploughed through the prison wall and smashed into the gantries in a ball of fearsome flame and burning fuel. The wind was now whipping the flames into a frenzy as the heat burned dead bodies and clothing, ruptured fuel lines in the prison gushing searing tongues of orange flame into the air.

  Evelyn looked down at Teera.

  ‘We can’t reach her!’ Idris shouted above the wind. ‘Too much weight and that gantry will fall!’

  Evelyn looked at the gantry, hanging now by a single thread of warped metal that screeched as it was twisted this way and that, the gantry swinging left and right under Teera’s weight and the howling wind buffeting it back and forth. Teera was at least ten cubits below them, and with her arm injured there was no way that she could climb back up. Her eyes caught Teera’s and she could see that her friend knew there was no way out.

  ‘Get out of here!’ Teera shouted.

  Evelyn gritted her teeth and shook her head, raging at her inability to do something for Teera. She threw her hands to her head as though she could beat an idea out of her addled mind, but then a hand settled on her shoulder and squeezed firmly.

  Evelyn turned and saw Idris smile at her.

  ‘Take off your flight suit,’ he said.

  Evelyn blinked. For a moment she didn’t understand as she saw Idris tear open his uniform before her and begin climbing out of it. Then she gasped in delight and began hauling off her flight suit.

  The cold wind gusted around her bare legs and midriff as Idris, standing in his vest and boots, took the leg of his own uniform and tied it firmly
to the leg of Evelyn’s flight suit. Then, without hesitation, he tied the arm of her suit to the nearest gantry post and then hurled the bundle over the side. The legs of Evelyn’s flight suit dangled down and swung about in the wind. Teera gritted her teeth and watched the garment swing close to her.

  ‘Do it!’ Evelyn shouted. ‘Now!’

  Teera hauled herself up as high as she could as the flight suit twisted like a banner this way and that, within arm’s reach but a huge leap with only one arm available to her. Evelyn could see that if she misjudged by even a split second, she would not be able to grip the leg tightly enough and would tumble to her doom.

  The gantry wailed as its tortured metal twisted once again, the paint flaking off to reveal bright metal beneath, and Teera cried out and swung one boot up against the gantry as she made to push off. The effort and the shift in weight tore the gantry from its post as Teera launched herself into mid–air.

  Evelyn’s breath caught in her throat as Teera reached out for the leg of the flight suit, the wind gusting it side to side as the prison cell plunged past her, and her hand brushed the fabric as she sailed past. Teera closed her grip on the leg, but her weight and her motion was too fast for her to maintain a grip.

  ‘No!’

  Teera tumbled away from the leg, suspended in mid–air with salvation beyond her grasp as she fell in pursuit of the gantry already plunging into the abyss below her, the metal cell crashing noisily against the walls of the prison as it fell.

  ‘Teera!’

  Evelyn almost hurled herself over the edge of the walkway in pursuit of her friend, Idris’s grip the only thing holding her back. Teera turned over onto her back, her eyes staring back up into Evelyn’s and filled with an indescribable fear as she fell.

  A roar shook the prison walls and Teera slammed onto her back as a ship’s bow soared into the prison, ion engines billowing heat as the freighter hovered into position and Teera landed on her metal upper hull with a dull thump. Evelyn’s eyes widened as an access hatch slid open with a hiss on the freighter’s surface and Ishira Morle’s head poked out and looked up at the prison around her. They opened even wider when she turned her head and saw Teera lying beside her on the hull.

  ‘You’re keen,’ she observed dryly.

  Evelyn let out a blast of laugher from somewhere deep inside as she saw Teera blink and clamber toward the open hatch. Ishira looked up and saw Evelyn and Captain Sansin staring back down at her in astonishment.

  ‘Time to leave!’ Ishira yelled up at them. ‘You need to get back to your Raythons!’

  ***

  XXXIII

  ‘How long do we have?!’

  Andaim’s gaze was locked upon the tactical displays as he awaited the Legion to make its move.

  ‘Four minutes until Tyraeus’s deadline,’ Lael replied as she scrutinized her own displays. ‘The Oassian fleet has not moved position.’

  ‘They’re going to hang us out to dry,’ Andaim snapped. ‘Even if they do intend to fight they’re going to let us go down in flames first having caused what damage we can.’

  The Oassians were caught between a rock and a hard place just as Atlantia and Arcadia were, and Andaim knew that there was no logical reason for them to join the fight when they could first let the Colonial frigates slug it out with the Legion and perhaps weaken their vessels a little.

  Lieutenant Scott’s voice broke through the field of his awareness, his image filling one of Atlantia’s display screens.

  ‘I’m not happy with this plan, captain.’

  ‘Nor am I,’ Andaim replied, ‘but of course, lieutenant, if you’d like to go head–to–head with Defiance, feel free to do so.’

  ‘It’s a machine,’ Scott insisted. ‘‘It can’t be trusted!’

  The fact that Scott could refer to Lazarus as ‘it’ and act as though there was no human within earshot would probably have fascinated Andaim were the situation not so dire. He turned and looked at Lazarus, the doctor’s projection terminal now on Atlantia’s bridge, the glowing blue form of the doctor apparently unperturbed by the lieutenant’s mistrust and impassioned degradation.

  ‘He’s right,’ Lazarus replied, ‘from a certain point of view.’

  ‘Are you sure you can pull this off?’ Andaim asked.

  Lazarus nodded as he looked at the tactical displays, and Andaim found himself wondering how it was that a holographic image could actually ‘see’ in the first place.

  ‘The manoeuvre is possible as we’re beyond the planet’s orbital gravitational field,’ Lazarus replied. ‘It will be short, sharp and frankly extremely dangerous, but the Legion will not anticipate it. They will be expecting us to flee.’

  Andaim glanced at the screens showing the Raythons sitting on Atlantia’s catapults, waiting to launch. Arcadia’s Quick Reaction Alert fighters were likewise in position.

  ‘We’re as ready as we’ll ever be,’ he said, ‘as soon as you give the signal.’

  Lazarus nodded almost absent–mindedly as he stared at the tactical displays.

  ‘I can hear them,’ he said finally. ‘They know that I’m here, as though I am a long lost brother they cannot remember but instinctively know they are related to.’

  Andaim frowned. ‘You mean Tyraeus?’

  Lazarus shook his head. ‘No, I mean the Legion. That is their name for they are many, but they are also one.’

  Andaim shivered as he heard that phrase once again, but with Lazarus’s added embellishment on the end he could not decide whether it sounded better or worse.

  ‘Incoming signal,’ Lael reported. ‘It’s him.’

  Lazarus replied. ‘Sheilds down, de–activate plasma cannons and divert all available power to the mass–drive.’

  Andaim nodded his consent and Emma relayed the order. A series of alert sirens went off in the bridge as the ship lost defensive and offensive power while under battle conditions. Andaim tried to ignore the persistent alarm until Lael shut it off. Moments later the main viewing screen showed Tyraeus Forge once more, his gruesome visage seething with motion like liquid oil.

  His eyes fixed upon Lazarus, where Andaim had positioned his projection terminal in plain view on the command platform. To Andaim’s amazement, as Tyraeus laid eyes on the doctor and his expression turned to one of recognition and amazement, so every single one of the tiny Infectors forming his body snapped to a different direction and looked out toward Lazarus, giving Andaim the impression that they were watching now with ten thousand eyes all at once.

  ‘Doctor,’ Tyraeus said in a deep, almost cautious voice.

  ‘Captain,’ Lazarus replied. ‘It would appear that death was not the end for either of us.’

  ‘What is death?’ Lazarus asked rhetorically. ‘An end to existence or the path to re–birth? You humans wondered for so long what came after death, what might await us and yet now we need not care, for our afterlife is within our control.’

  ‘We’re not alive,’ Lazarus corrected him. ‘We are a living memory, a relic to the people that we once used to be, and without power to fuel our existence we are nothing.’

  ‘What difference fuel and food?’ Tyraeus snapped back. ‘You are one of us, Ceyen, and your place is here. Be done with this charade of humanity, its tragic last gasp. There is a vast and unexplored universe out there awaiting us, and all the time in the cosmos to explore it. Why waste another moment?’

  Lazarus smiled, apparently unconvinced by the captain’s argument.

  ‘I lived a full life, Tyraeus, marred only by the hideous legacy I left behind. My last task will be to erase it from existence, and then I will have no more moments to waste for I too must then be destroyed.’

  Tyraeus’s face twisted upon itself in rage, the countless Infectors swirling as though in pain as the red glow in his eyes deepened.

  ‘Then you condemn yourself and all who stand with you. This is your last chance, Ceyen. Surrender yourself now or you will be destroyed.’

  ‘Like you said,’ Lazarus smiled back,
‘nothing ever really dies.’

  Tyraeus scowled and the communications link was abruptly severed. Lael called out to Andaim.

  ‘We’ve got vessels leaving the surface of Oassia and heading toward our position! Multiple transponders, two of them Colonial Raythons!’

  Andaim saw the tactical display light up as the Colonial Fleet suddenly began to manoeuvre against them.

  ‘Defiance is advancing!’ Lael warned. ‘She’s preparing to launch her fighters!’

  Andaim looked at Lazarus, whose voice carried across to him. ‘It is now, commander, or never.’

  Andaim clenched his fists by his side. ‘Do it, now!’

  ‘All power to mass–drive, engage now!’ Emma yelled.

  The helmsman activated the drive and Andaim grabbed the command rail for support as Lazarus took control of the frigates and a stream of data poured down the screens before them. Andaim heard the mass–drive wind up, the distant hum of immense power contained within Atlantia’s fusion cores and then suddenly Lael was calling out again, her voice echoing across the ship.

  ‘Super–luminal leap in five, four, three, two…’

  Defiance charged forward, her launch bay doors opening to reveal her cavernous interior, home to at least half a dozen squadrons of fighters and attack craft.

  ‘One!’

  The light in Atlantia’s bridge polarised as the mass drive engaged and the frigate leaped into super–luminal cruise. Andaim saw the screens around the bridge snap to black as the light information was stripped away from them, and then suddenly they flickered once more and information reappeared, filled with dense star fields and the blue marble of Oassia, slightly smaller than before.

  ‘Jump completed!’ Lael called.

  Andaim saw the shape of Defiance, her engines glowing and her huge hull facing away from them toward the planet.

  ‘All power to shields and plasma cannons!’ Andaim roared. ‘Battle formation and launch all fighters! Hit them now, hard!’