Endeavour (Atlantia Series Book 4) Read online

  ‘That was when there was a government and a colonial fleet to enforce those laws,’ Sansin reminded him. ‘Not to mention the fact that those other species do not necessarily see a need any longer to comply with Etheran laws. Besides, we are outclassed even with two frigates against the Morla’syn destroyer.’

  ‘What happened aboard Endeavour?’ Mikhain demanded, keen to find any avenue he could to further understand what was happening.

  They heard the general suck in a deep breath before he spoke. ‘We don’t have time to argue about this, we can debrief you another time. Right now, we need both Atlantia and Arcadia to position themselves between Endeavour and the Morla’syn destroyer.’

  ‘Why?’ Captain Sansin demanded. ‘Any such move will be interpreted by the Morla’syn as an act of aggression or defiance and could provoke them to open fire.’

  ‘It’s not me asking,’ the general admitted. ‘It’s the Word.’

  A long silence enveloped Arcadia’s bridge and that of Atlantia as the two captains digested this new piece of information.

  ‘The Word?’ Captain Sansin gasped. ‘You’re saying that the Word really is on board? We detected no evidence of the Legion.’

  ‘The Legion is not here,’ the general confirmed. ‘But it would appear that the Word managed to get aboard before Endeavour launched. We found in the centre of the ship’s holds a computer terminal that’s been rigged to contain the Word and was connected to the rest of the ship via power conduits that we have since disconnected. We were convinced to turn the Word back on in order to help us escape Endeavour, and the Word now seems to be wirelessly linked to many of Endeavour’s systems. It has managed to save our lives once already and appears to be an earlier incarnation that has not undergone the transformation that our governing Word went through on Ethera. Believe it or not, captain, this version is attempting to protect us but is not beyond also wishing to protect itself. It knows what’s out there and will not take us any further through the ship without us ensuring its safety.’

  Mikhain could almost hear in Sansin’s tone the sense of disbelief at what he had been told.

  ‘The Word is blackmailing you? That doesn’t sound like the act of a machine designed to protect humanity.’

  ‘No but it does sound like the act of an intelligent machine seeking to defend itself, and right now our survival is a mutually beneficial result of us working together. I don’t like it, but there’s not much else I can do. If we don’t get out this corridor and through this bulkhead within the next few moments we will all be dead.’

  As if in response to the general’s comments the sudden crash and whine of plasma fire shattered the silence of Arcadia’s bridge. Mikhain heard Marines calling fire commands and the sound of what seemed to be animals screeching in rage or pain.

  ‘We need to move now,’ Djimon whispered urgently into Mikhain’s ear. ‘This is our chance.’

  Mikhain spoke up. ‘We are ready, captain, and we’re closest to Endeavour’s landing bays. Give us the command and I shall place Arcadia directly in the line of fire.’

  For a long moment Sansin did not reply.

  ‘Captain, we need a decision made now!’ Bra’hiv shouted as the sound of plasma fire intensified.

  Mikhain and Djimon waited for a few tense moments, both of them uncertain what Sansin would do. When he replied, it was with a tone of bold decision.

  ‘Arcadia, move now! Position yourself as close as possible to Endeavour and ensure that your fighter screen is ready to protect any ships that launch from the vessel!’

  Mikhain stifled a tight grin as he whirled and relayed the order. ‘Helm, full ahead, shields at maximum and charge all plasma cannons!’

  Arcadia surged into motion as her ion engines engaged and she began to manoeuver toward the vast black bulk of Endeavour’s wreck. Mikhain heard Sansin’s voice as he called commands to his own bridge crew.

  ‘Helm, full ahead, attack position and cover Arcadia. All fighters redeployed as defensive screen: position against the Morla’syn destroyer but do not open fire.’

  Mikhain watched on the tactical display as the two frigates broke position, Atlantia heading directly for the Morla’syn destroyer as Arcadia began to close on Endeavour. Between the two frigates the Raython fighters split into two groups, both acting as defensive screens against any attempt by the Morla’syn to launch their own fighters.

  ‘Arcadia, divert maximum power to shields. Maintain cover on Endeavour in case they attempt to fire past us.’

  ‘Aye, captain,’ Mikhain replied and pointed at the tactical officer. Lieutenant Scott nodded without needing further command as he diverted the power as ordered.

  *

  ‘This is outrageous!’

  Councillor Gredan glared at Idris from where he stood below the command platform on Atlantia’s bridge, his podgy face red in the glow of the lights.

  ‘This is necessary,’ Idris snapped back. ‘Your opinions have no weight here councillor.’

  ‘No weight?!’ Gredan gasped. ‘You’re engaging a Morla’syn vessel in contravention of Galactic Council Law with a thousand civilians aboard, to defend a ship contaminated by the Word!’

  ‘I haven’t engaged anything and I’m defending a Colonial vessel adrift beyond the Icari Line. The Morla’syn have no more legal right to be here than we do!’

  Gredan ground his teeth in his skull as he struggled to contain his anger. ‘Galactic Law, to which Ethera is a signatory civilisation, states that we may not fire in anger against a vessel of another signatory civilisation! To do so would be considered an act of war–you’ll be giving them yet another reason to blow us all to pieces!’

  ‘I am aware of the legal technicalities of conflict, councillor,’ Idris uttered. ‘I am also aware that many of our own people are trapped aboard Endeavour.’

  Gredan raised his chin. ‘The needs of the many, captain, outweigh the needs of the few.’

  Idris turned slowly to look at the councillor. ‘Are you advocating abandoning our own people to die at the hands of the Morla’syn?’

  The bridge fell silent as the command crew looked at the councillor.

  ‘If it is required to preserve the safety of the rest of the crew, then yes,’ Gredan replied.

  Idris nodded slowly as he regarded the fat man, his skin oiled with sweat in the heat.

  ‘Then should we be faced with such a decision, Gredan, I will be sure to call you here to the bridge so that you and your fellow councillors can give that order to my crew.’

  *

  Evelyn watched as the face on the screen of the computer terminal remained motionless. Behind them in the darkness she could see the advancing ranks of creatures illuminated amid brilliant flashes of plasma fire as the Marines attempted to hold them at bay, the stench of scorched flesh and the screams of unknown animals filling the corridor with a hideous din.

  ‘Are they moving yet?’ Andaim shouted above the noise. ‘Did the captain agree to the terms?’

  ‘I can’t tell,’ Bra’hiv yelled back as he fired down the corridor. ‘We’ve lost contact again.’

  Evelyn drew her pistol and moved in front of Emma and the computer terminal as she aimed down the corridor and fired twice at the bulky form of a muscular, hairy creature with bared fangs and wild eyes that scrambled over the bodies clogging the corridor and launched itself toward them with a frenzied howl.

  The two plasma shots smashed into its face in a cloud of boiling blue smoke as they melted flesh and bone into a sizzling mess. The creature’s body continued to tumble toward her in the corridor, its lifeless limbs dangling beneath it as it floated along only to be struck by a further barrage of plasma fire. The searing heat of the impacts ignited the flesh and fur of the animal and it suddenly burst into flames.

  ‘We need to get out of here right now!’ the general yelled at Emma.

  Emma turned and looked at the computer terminal, and as Evelyn glanced over her shoulder she saw the face talking again and could just about s
ense the sound of its warbling dialogue.

  ‘What is it saying?!’ Andaim asked.

  ‘Look out!’

  The tumbling, flaming corpse of the dead beast rolled through the air toward the Marines in a cloud of roiling smoke.

  Evelyn stood up as she holstered her pistol and jumped up to grab the ceiling grates of the corridor, and with a heave of effort she pulled her knees up to her chest and then propelled her boots outward at the burning carcass. Her boots thumped into the muscular body and propelled it with a dull thud back the way it had come, the flickering flames illuminating the corridor and the surging mass of bodies flooding toward them in a frenzy of fangs, talons and tails.

  The creatures fled from the flaming corpse, stricken by an instinctive fear of fire as they struggled to get away in the zero gravity. Evelyn dropped to the deck and turned to Emma.

  ‘Get us out of here!’

  Emma stared at the screen for a moment longer as she listened to the Word’s commands, and then she shouted out at the top of her voice.

  ‘Get hold of something! Hang on!’

  Evelyn jumped to one side of the corridor and grabbed hold of the bulkhead as the Marines all shouldered their rifles and attempted to bury themselves in tight corners. Evelyn saw Emma grab the computer terminal and shove it against the wall of the corridor as she leaned in behind it and hung on grimly.

  The creatures advancing upon their position slid cautiously past the burning corpse and scrambled and slid for purchase as they closed in on Evelyn. To her horror she saw writhing tentacles reach out for her, laden with broad suckers each of which was filled with tiny teeth that opened and closed as they sought some purchase or the taste of flesh. Evelyn tucked herself even tighter against the bulkhead and attempted to hide from the grotesque appendage as it writhed alongside her.

  A thin, skeletal creature that emitted high–pitched clicking sounds, its bony structure visible under pale white skin that seemed almost translucent, skittered across the ceiling of the corridor, baleful white eyes peering down at the crouching Marines as with a fearsome screech it propelled itself downward and landed on a soldier’s back. Before the marine could react the creature’s limbs and tail wrapped around him and its slender mouth suddenly opened wide as the jaw unhinged and exposed ranks of fearsome teeth that clamped down into the soldier’s neck and thrashed this way and that through his flesh.

  The Marine screamed and reach behind him for the animal’s head as he attempted to rip it free from his body, and he hurled himself from his hiding place and slammed back–first into the opposite wall. Evelyn heard the backbone of the creature crunch as its skeleton was shattered by the blow and the weight of the soldier’s body, but its jaws did not break their grip and blood spilled from the wound to fill the air with deep scarlet globules.

  ‘Get down!’ Bra’hiv yelled at the injured soldier as he thrashed.

  Suddenly the soldier’s screams were overwhelmed by the howl of moving air and Evelyn clenched her body tight against the bulkhead as the air rushed from the corridor in a bitterly cold gale. The creatures swarming upon their position were suddenly hauled away as though by unseen hands, snatched with brutal violence as the atmosphere was sucked away. Evelyn squinted her eyes as the moisture in the air was frozen into ice crystals that sparkled and billowed down the corridor as she realised with horror that the Word had opened a series of bulkheads leading all the way to the outer hull and the deep vacuum of space in order to scour the corridor of life.

  The temperature plummeted to a cold like nothing Evelyn had felt before and she realised with terror that her hands were stuck to the bulkhead she was gripping with all of her strength. The howling of the creatures vanished into silence as did everything else as the atmosphere was sucked completely from the corridor. Far away, Evelyn glimpsed a distant bulkhead slamming shut under automatic pressure as the Word sealed them inside a corridor now devoid of oxygen.

  For a moment of lonely terror Evelyn believed that the Word would abandon them to their fate, that it had doomed them to suffocate and freeze deep in the bowels of the long abandoned spaceship.

  A blast of warm air flooded past Evelyn as the bulkhead hatch that they had been seeking to pass through suddenly opened of its own accord, the automatic latches releasing as the Word accessed the hatch and allowed the atmosphere from the corridor beyond to blast in along with a placid wave of what felt like heat but was in fact probably nothing more than near–zero temperature, tropical compared to the vacuum’s bitter embrace.

  Evelyn gasped and sucked down a lungful of the air as all around the Marines slumped, some of them waiting for their hands to unfreeze from the cold metal surface of the corridor.

  General Bra’hiv stood up and looked at Emma, his face pale from the bitter cold of the vacuum, particles of frost white on his eyebrows and his eyes blinking from where they had dried out.

  ‘That was too damned close,’ he snapped, his voice hoarse. ‘You tell that box of short–circuits that the next time I need something doing it gets done right away, or I’ll blow it to hell.’

  Emma glanced at the machine, her lips touched with that strangely enigmatic smile as she raised an eyebrow.

  ‘It may not be able to communicate in our language,’ she replied. ‘But it knows full well what you’re saying.’

  Lieutenant Riaz strode up to the screen and looked directly at the digital face.

  ‘Then you’ll know I will be right behind the general should he miss.’

  Andaim stood up from his hiding place, brushed himself down and gestured to the now open corridor behind them.

  ‘Shall we?’

  Without any further word the Marines grabbed the computer terminal and pushed it in front of them as they set off down the corridor.

  ***

  XXXII

  ‘Battle stations!’

  Captain Idris Sansin paced up and down Atlantia’s command platform as he watched the Morla’syn destroyer begin to turn. A new stream of data spilled down the main display panel as the tactical officer called out a warning.

  ‘They are reacting and diverting internal power to weapon systems!’

  The huge destroyer turned hard to starboard, no longer directing her bow at the two frigates but coming to bear so that her port guns could open fire upon any target of their choice. The captain’s practised old eye observed the destroyer’s movement and gauged their fields of fire as he called to the helm.

  ‘All ahead one quarter, starboard shields to maximum, bow elevation four–zero–five. Ensure that if she fires at Endeavour from there she will be blocked by our sheilds.’

  ‘Aye, captain.’

  Atlantia cruised forwards through deep space, keeping herself between the Morla’syn destroyer and Endeavour.

  ‘We should withdraw immediately,’ Councillor Gredan insisted. ‘We cannot possibly hope to win an engagement against such a superior vessel.’

  ‘That is the attitude upon which battles are lost,’ Idris muttered in response, not looking at Gredan but focusing instead on his tactical displays.

  ‘Reaper two, Atlantia: we’re in position, orders?’

  Idris glanced at his Raython fighters on the tactical display. ‘Hold station, prepare to intercept Morla’syn fighters should they launch. Do not fire until fired upon.’

  ‘Wilco, Reaper two.’

  ‘I speak on behalf of a thousand civilians,’ Gredan protested, ‘and you agreed to listen to me. You’re putting their lives at risk by engaging the Morla’syn!’

  ‘I’d be putting their lives at reach if I withdrew,’ Idris replied. ‘They would not hesitate to pursue and destroy us and all chance of dialogue would be lost. Is that what you would prefer, councillor?’

  Gredan huffed and puffed but he said nothing, and Idris got out of the captain’s chair and gestured to it. ‘Perhaps you would care to take over, if you think that you have an easy solution to this confrontation?’

  Lael’s voice reached the captain from the communicati
ons console. ‘They are signalling us captain.’

  Idris kept his gaze on Gredan, and raised an expectant eyebrow. Gredan’s shoulders sank although his gaze was fixed upon the proffered chair.

  ‘I do not,’ he replied.

  ‘Open a channel,’ the captain ordered Lael as he re–took his seat.

  One of Atlantia’s display screens flickered into life and showed an image of the Morla’syn captain, his normally dour expression now glowing with malevolence as he pointed with one of three fingers on his left hand at the captain.

  ‘Captain, this is ridiculous. You are outgunned and outclassed and there is nothing to gain by protecting that old wreck. Is it really your intention to provoke an interstellar incident by opposing our mission?’

  ‘You call this ridiculous? Do you really think we’ll just roll over and let you blow us all to pieces?’

  ‘It is for the benefit of all other nations in the galaxy.’

  ‘And this is for the benefit of ours,’ Idris snarled back. ‘I don’t care if we are outgunned, outclassed and outmanoeuvred all in one go: I and my comrades will fight to the death before allowing you to take a single human life.’

  ‘We are sanctioned by the Galactic Council to….’

  ‘We have evidence that you have no such sanction and that you are responsible for destroying Endeavour in the first place. They have records showing that their vessel was attacked by a Morla’syn cruiser and we have copies of those records which we will have no hesitation in signalling to the Galactic Council if you and your people do not stand down immediately!’

  The Morla’syn captain stared at Idris as though he was insane. ‘That is preposterous. We have no records of any such attack in this sector by any of our vessels.’

  Captain Sansin peered curiously at the Morla’syn captain. Idris had never been the best judge of character when it came to foreign species, largely because no human being was good at it. The subtleties of human emotion that played out across every human face, the tiniest muscular twitches and the simplest expressions, were not present on many of the species that humanity had encountered since breaking free of its terrestrial bounds. The Morla’syn demonstrated their emotion physically, through their actions and words, with a far greater vigour than human beings. Now, Idris attempted to determine whether the captain of a foreign vessel from a star system rarely visited by human beings was lying to him or telling the truth.