Endeavour (Atlantia Series Book 4) Read online

  ‘This is why you never became a spacer,’ Qayin said out loud to himself.

  Damn. Why the hell had that idiotic pirate tried to ram him instead of opening fire with its plasma cannons anyway? Sure, it had been a smaller and older vessel and maybe their weapons had not been sufficient to disable Qayin’s ship in one ambush attack, but then why the hell risk their own vessel in such a reckless manner? The gunship’s shields were no use against solid objects, same as any ship, but ramming would only be a valid tactic if somebody were wanting to…

  Qayin drew his pistol, stood and whirled to aim the weapon out of the cockpit and down the corridor behind him that led into the depths of the ship. The plasma magazine in the weapon hummed into life as with one hand Qayin reached down to the control panel and without looking he re–engaged the autopilot. The corridor remained silent, only the occasional hiss of air being bled into the corridor to maintain a suitable atmospheric pressure. Qayin kept the pistol aimed down the corridor as he accessed a panel and selected a ship–wide scan for intruders.

  If he were the captain of a weak vessel who had stumbled upon a much stronger gunship, he might have elected to ignore plasma weapons and instead ram the gunship directly and board her. That must have been their play, Qayin realised, the only sensible reason for deliberately wrecking their own ship: all or nothing, the kind of attacker with absolutely no sense of compromise.

  The most deadly of foes.

  The scanner beeped and Qayin looked down at it. He frowned in confusion. The display registered precisely one–point–five life forms aboard the ship: himself, and something in the hold.

  ‘What the hell?’ he uttered.

  How could there possibly be half a life form aboard the ship? Had somebody, or something, attempted to board the gunship and somehow been cut in half? Qayin gripped the pistol tighter and walked out of the cockpit and down toward the gunship’s main hull.

  Salim Phaeon’s obsession with luxury had not made it as far as his flagship. Qayin did not know what species had built her but the gunship appeared military in design and was also clearly constructed for human use, all of the interior signs and controls written in Etheran script and all cabins and controls designed for human hands. Bare walls, grey decks, metal everywhere and functional rather than aesthetic design completed the military picture. Qayin advanced toward a centrally located communal area that most likely had been a space designed for troops to congregate prior to being deployed on the surface of planets or other vessels, a role that the gunship’s configuration would likely have supported.

  Qayin advanced into the hexagonal interior of the ship, each wall containing a hatch that led to various locations: crew quarters, engine room, holds, armoury. Two of the bulkhead hatches were sealed, those that Qayin had closed via the cockpit when the hull had been breached. Access to the engine rooms and holds was impossible unless Qayin decided to open the hatches himself and take a look. Whatever was inside was most likely dead, only half of it having gotten aboard, but Qayin wasn’t about to go wandering in without taking precautions.

  He strode to the main control panel inside the troop compartment and accessed the ship’s computer. He then accessed the command screen and was about to flush the atmosphere from the damaged areas right off the ship, effectively killing anything inside, when he remembered the Devlamine supply. If the impacts has loosened the barrels of the drug, then flushing the atmosphere might also drag the barrels out of the hold altogether if the damage was bad enough. Without the Devlamine he had no currency with which to carry out repairs.

  Qayin cursed again and instead checked the atmosphere inside the hold: normal, but with a temperature of just six degrees above freezing. Qayin reasoned that the hull breach must have occurred further back from the entrance to the holds, and that his sealing of the bulkheads had stopped the leak of atmosphere from the holds for’ard of that point. The bulkhead hatches must have severed in half whatever was making its way forward through the ship when they closed, thus explaining the half a life–form diagnostic from the ship’s scanners.

  Qayin grinned as the mystery was explained, and he walked across to the hold hatch as he reached out for the manual release system. With a heave of his muscular arms the locking mechanism opened and a hiss of air whispered past the seals as he pulled back on the hatch and walked into the passageway, the air within cold and filled with a swirling mist.

  The blow came from the mist, something hard and heavy crashing into Qayin’s chest to lift him off his feet and hurl him through the air. Pain tore through Qayin’s ribcage as he tumbled backwards and slammed down onto the deck, and as he rolled he saw something rush toward him with terrifying speed out of the mist, claws and fangs bared.

  Qayin whipped his pistol up as he aimed at the towering creature that loomed over him, but the weapon was smashed from his grasp and spun through the air to clatter against a wall. Qayin, his arm numb and useless as he lay on his back on the deck, stared up into the fearsome eyes of a Veng’en, his creamy white fangs bared and his talons cold as they closed around Qayin’s throat. A warlike, reptilian species, the Veng’en were renowned for both their prowess and brutality in battle. Qayin stared into the eyes of the Veng’en, and then he realised the true reason why the sensors had only detected half of a life form.

  The Veng’en’s eyes were partially glazed with a metallic tint, as though made of chrome, but worse than that his entire chest was constructed from an exotic mixture of metal and flesh, like a tapestry of differing materials meshed together in a way that only the Word’s Legion could achieve.

  Qayin stared at the chimera of scales, flesh and metal that flexed like skin and tissue. It took him only a few moments to work out the identity of the Veng’en who now held his life in his hands. Although no Veng’en could ever smile, Qayin thought that he saw a glimmer of satisfaction in the warrior’s features.

  ‘Kordaz,’ Qayin said simply.

  ***

  VII

  ‘Reaper Two, battle flight – go!’

  The closely formating Raythons sped through the darkened void of space, their formation lights switched off to disguise their passage and only the glow from their cockpit instruments lighting the faces of the two pilots. Sleek, angular and well–armed, the two craft were virtually invisible against the dense star fields.

  Evelyn glimpsed from within her cockpit her wingman’s Raython tucked in close echelon–starboard formation beside her and then it turned away in a crisp break, the aggressively styled wings flashing in the dim illumination of starlight as it rocketed away.

  Evelyn, her head firmly enveloped in her flight helmet, kept her eyes fixed upon her holographic Situational Awareness Display, or SAD as the pilots liked to refer to an instrument that always seemed to bring bad news. The display portrayed her Raython as a tiny green speck in the centre of a larger, orange cube that represented a scaled–down version of the space in which she was flying. Evelyn could set the display to various ranges but at present she had selected one AU, or astronomical unit, a scale that included her fighter, her wingman Teera Milan, a half dozen other Raythons arranged in Combat Air Patrols around the two frigates far behind them, and a single target equally far out in front.

  Ahead, immense billowing clouds of hydrogen gas illuminated by the nuclear glow of countless infant stars filled the dead blackness of space with the promise of life and light, the veils alive with colours denoting chemicals heated by the furnace–like stars burning in their midst.

  ‘Do you think it’s Endeavour?’

  The voice of Reaper Two, Teera, spoke over the intercom. Evelyn glanced out to her right and saw Teera’s Raython, now a minute speck against the star fields.

  ‘I have no idea,’ Evelyn replied. ‘We’ll worry about that when we get there.’

  ‘I’ve seen documentaries on her,’ Teera went on. ‘She’s been missing for nearly a hundred years, right? And now she shows up again, like a ghost ship or something.’

  ‘You know that this i
s an open squadron channel?’

  ‘Roger,’ Teera replied, somewhat sheepishly.

  Truth was, Evelyn herself had felt a pulse of excitement when the CAG had briefed the squadron on the new radar contact, and not just because Andaim Ry’ere had watched her more closely than the other pilots as he spoke. Endeavour was a legend enshrouded in mystery and conspiracy theories, the staple diet of anti–government protesters and anarchists since the earliest days of civilisation. Rumours had abounded about her for years, from supposed sightings to claims that her entire launch was faked by the Etheran government to supposed evidence that she was shot down by the Colonial Fleet long before she left the solar system. Evelyn figured that at least two of those more radical theories had now been shot down in flames, although ironically few cared any more as most of humanity had been eradicated from existence.

  ‘Let’s just focus on the sortie,’ Evelyn suggested gently to Teera, ‘establish a perimeter and ensure the troops can board her safely if that’s what the captain decides he wants to do.’

  ‘Wilco,’ Teera replied.

  Evelyn concentrated on her intercept vectors and watched as the enormous distance between their fighters and the target gradually began to reduce. Even travelling at luminal velocity, the distance to Endeavour would have taken six seconds. Captain Sansin had brought the frigates out of super–luminal cruise more than an AU from the target to give the fighters time to ensure they were not flying into some kind of trap. Evelyn felt certain that given the fleet’s proximity beyond the Icari Line there was also a concern about encountering something completely alien to human experience and not being able to get away fast enough again.

  The distance closed further over the next forty minutes as the Raythons streaked ahead of the frigates, and gradually more data began to stream in to Evelyn’s cockpit as her fighter’s sensors detected more information from Endeavour.

  ‘She’s drifting,’ Evelyn noted as she guided the Raython, reporting her findings to Atlantia and Arcadia, both of which had joined the frequency. ‘Barely making headway. No engine activity, communications or weapons systems detected. Too far out for life support signals.’

  Captain Sansin’s voice reached Evelyn from Atlantia.

  ‘Endeavour’s systems would not emit a life–signal like modern ships,’ he informed her. ‘We won’t know if there’s anybody aboard until we get there. General Bra’hiv’s Marines are launching in shuttle Ranger Two now with the CAG as escort. Establish a perimeter and wait for reinforcements.’

  ‘Roger that,’ Evelyn replied, and wondered again why a senior officer like Andaim was launching and not monitoring the mission from Atlantia’s bridge.

  A soft beep from her cockpit attracted her attention and she looked at a digital display projected onto the canopy before her to see a closed–channel communication from Teera, passed between their fighters and displayed as a stream of text.

  Looks like your beau’s coming to join you.

  Evelyn rolled her eyes as she vocalised her response, allowing the Raython’s computer to recognise her speech patterns and convert the message into text.

  ‘He’s not my beau, Teera.’

  She listened to the silence of her cockpit and watched the glistening stars until another beep interrupted her solitude.

  Poor Andaim, he just can’t stay away from you can he? Aren’t you flattered? He’s quite a catch.

  Evelyn wasn’t flattered. She hadn’t really thought about it all that much over the past few months, which wasn’t surprising given everything that had been happening both to her and the Atlantia. Part of her thought that maybe she was just avoiding any sense of embarrassment at Andaim’s interest in her, even though it wasn’t always that subtle, but another darker part of her memory that she rarely visited reminded her of a past that she could not forget, could not erase. A brief image of her long–deceased family flickered like a phantom through her mind and she forced herself not to growl as she replied.

  ‘So was my husband.’

  Evelyn managed to avoid visualising her young child, the son that they had only just started to raise when the Word intervened and everything went to hell. She forced the images from her mind along with the pain that they caused as she focused on the vast panorama outside instead. Teera got the hint and the comm’ channels fell silent.

  Her cockpit remained silent for the rest of the journey through the bitter vacuum of space, the distant veld glowing as a vast nebula of new–born stars flared amid sweeping veils of red hydrogen, the soil from which all life in the universe ultimately grew. Evelyn knew that within those gigantic foetal clouds the bright young stars would grow, drawing in more hydrogen through gravity and along with it heavy metals, the waste products of older, giant stars forged in supernova explosions. In an endless cycle, the young stars would form and around them discs of stellar debris, metals, rock and ices that would provide the raw materials for the planets, moon, oceans and eventually life that would populate their worlds. She wondered if somewhere, right now, the atoms and chemicals that had once been her beloved son were now a part of somebody or something else, the aeons–old cycle of regeneration that was the hallmark of life in the universe moving ever onward. Perhaps she was staring now toward atoms that would one day be in the body of a mother as she cared for her own son just as those hydrogen clouds cossetted the fierce young stars blazing amid their…

  ‘… contact, visual, dead ahead.’

  Evelyn blinked as Teera’s call broke her from her maudlin thoughts and she saw ahead, silhouetted against the vast red clouds, a tiny black speck.

  ‘Got it,’ Evelyn replied. ‘Maintain Battle Flight, weapons hot, go.’

  Evelyn activated her plasma cannons and kept her gaze fixed upon the speck as it moved ever–so–slightly against the immense backdrop of gas clouds. Data streamed in, and Evelyn scanned it as she flew.

  ‘Minimal power readings, but the atmosphere remains stable in about half of the ship.’

  ‘I’ve got the fusion core,’ Teera said as her instruments detected the ship’s heart, ‘but it’s bleeding energy into space. I’ve got a trail here extending beyond sensor range.’

  ‘That’ll explain why she’s drifting,’ Evelyn said. ‘Not enough power to engage her main engines. Damn, she could have been like this for decades.’

  ‘There could be people aboard her,’ Teera said, ‘even after all of this time. She was carrying enough stores when she launched to feed her crew for years.’

  ‘Not hundreds of years,’ Evelyn pointed out. ‘Let’s just focus on our job for now. The Marines can go look inside and find out what happened to her.’

  Evelyn gripped her control column tighter. Although she was forcing herself to be a leader to Teera, the model officer, in reality she too was itching to get aboard Endeavour and find out what had happened to the iconic ship and her crew. The speck ahead grew larger and began to form a recognisable shape, that of Endeavour’s cylindrical central hull and ventral strakes.

  ‘I don’t believe it,’ Teera said as she was finally able to see the ship in some detail with her own eyes. ‘It’s really her.’

  Endeavour was bow–on to the approaching fighters, her for’ard hull little more than a flat panel the size of Atlantia all on its own. The engineers who had built her had only gone as far as fitting a shallow wedge–shaped panel to her bow, designed to deflect some of the energy from countless billions of micrometeorite impacts as she cruised through deep space. Endeavour’s huge size was a testimony to the skill required by her builders in an age where deep–space travel was still in its infancy. Although bulky and in many respects ugly in her construction, the fact that she was still intact a century after her launch said much about the care taken in laying down her keel and the robustness of her design. Her long hull contained a bulbous bridge and living quarters for her thousand–strong crew, while her engine bays were a cylindrical construction that had once ended in a giant, stubby exhaust shielded only by a teardrop shaped cover. A p
air of slim delta–shaped ‘wings’ protruded from either side of the hull.

  ‘Easy now,’ Evelyn called to her wingman. ‘Maintain attack speed, stay clear and don’t present an easy target. You take the port side, I’ll take starboard.’

  ‘Wilco,’ Teera replied, still with an edge of excitement in her voice but tinged now with a sense of awe.

  The two Raythons moved to pass either side of the ship’s gigantic hull, Evelyn pulling out wide just in case the ship was now occupied by pirates or unknown species intent on attacking any intruders. Endeavour was not a warship but she had been large enough to be fitted with countless early–design laser cannons designed to super–heat their targets and blow them apart, a defence against whatever the crew may have encountered far out in the unknown universe beyond Ethera and the core systems.

  The immense bow drifted past Evelyn’s Raython, the surface like a metallic ocean, rippled by the endless impacts that had marred its surface. The vast construction glowed a dull red in the illumination offered by the distant gas clouds.

  ‘Damn, I had no idea she was so big.’

  Endeavour was at least four times longer than Atlantia and twice as high and wide. Evelyn’s Raython passed into deep shadow as she flew down the ship’s starboard side, only the occasional glint of metal betraying the presence of Endeavour’s hull alongside her. Gantries, viewing panels, massive vents, ducts and hull plates the size of large freighters panelled her flanks as Evelyn slowed, aware that her systems were detecting no weapons active aboard the ship.