***
II
‘Segei!’
Evelyn shouted his name at the top of her voice as her Raython streaked toward Segei’s fighter, the Raython lost in a dense cloud of misty white ice and something else that writhed and coiled around it.
Evelyn’s blood ran cold as she saw the roiling mass of the Legion’s Hunters consuming the Raython, sparks of energy flickering among them as they fed.
‘The Word is here!’ she cried out. ‘The Legion’s here!’
Evelyn activated her plasma cannons and opened fire, knowing that Segei was already nothing more than a memory. Blue–white pulses of fearsome plasma energy thundered from her Raython’s cannons to smash into the Hunters’ feeding frenzy and a brilliant explosion dazzled Evelyn as the stricken Raython’s engines exploded. The blast blossomed out in a terrific fireball that sent debris radiating away from it and out toward Evelyn’s Raython, and as she broke away she felt her guts plunge within her as from behind the expanding debris cloud she saw a vessel lumbering toward her.
In the fading light of the explosion she caught a glimpse of a cylindrical hull, a functional rather than aesthetic design, festooned with countless grappling arms and plasma cannons, but the craft was clearly not designed for war. A mining ship, she realized, that had most likely become infected while going about its business near the edge of the Icari Line collecting minerals for sale on Ethera and the core worlds.
‘All fighters, break off!’ Evelyn heard the tension in Captain Idris Sanin’s tone as he roared the command across all frequencies. ‘Return immediately for departure!’
Evelyn hauled her Raython around in a tight turn and accelerated away from the debris field, knowing that she could outrun the mining vessel, and then looked out to her left for Teera’s fighter.
‘Reaper Two, report in!’
‘I’m under attack!’
Evelyn’s eyes widened as she saw another craft emerging from the debris field in pursuit of Teera’s Raython, this one some kind of luxury yacht that looked oddly out of place amid the fighters and the darkened wastes of the lonely planet’s orbit. Faster than the mining craft, it was keeping pace with Teera’s fighter.
‘It’s an ambush!’ Idris snapped over the communications channel. ‘All craft prepare to depart!’
Evelyn saw Teera’s fighter being intercepted by the yacht, the pursuing vessel sleek and white like a paper dart but speckled with a black sheen where the Hunters infecting the craft were using the material of its hull to replicate.
Ahead, Evelyn could see both Atlantia and Arcadia moving toward them, but both frigates were out of firing range.
‘Teera, break right, now!’ Evelyn ordered.
‘I can’t, they’ll cut me off!’
‘I’m in–bound, do it!’
Evelyn broke hard left and advanced her throttles to maximum power as she rocketed toward Teera’s Raython, using her instruments to guide her. She spotted the yacht rushing across her bow, and then moments later Teera’s Raython curving toward her at maximum velocity as she tried to cross the yacht’s bow and make a run for Arcadia.
‘That’s it,’ Evelyn said as her thumb hovered over the trigger on her control column. ‘Now, break left!’
Evelyn’s Raython broke away from Evelyn’s fighter and the yacht turned to track it, presenting its hull broadside to Evelyn’s guns as it crossed her nose from left to right, its engines clearly visible.
Evelyn lined the yacht’s engines up in her sights and opened fire. A brilliant stream of plasma pulses rocketed out from her Raython and smashed in bright blue and white blasts against the yacht’s hull and engine bays. The yacht broke off its pursuit to defend against her attack, but then its starboard flank rippled with bright explosions as plasma lines were ruptured by Evelyn’s gunfire and the yacht began to veer to port and trail clouds of debris and unburned fuel.
‘Your tail’s clear!’ Evelyn yelled. ‘Let’s get out of here!’
Evelyn had barely gotten the call out when another was broadcast from Arcadia.
‘New contacts, bearing zero three eight, elevation minus two four!’
Evelyn craned her head over her right shoulder and saw a flotilla of vessels emerging from the depths of the debris field, all manner of craft illuminated by the savage flares of light from plasma cannons as Renegade Flight’s Raythons opened up on them.
A rain of plasma fire crashed through the emerging flotilla, but Evelyn could see that the Raythons were heavily outnumbered already and that the Legion was emerging from the attacking vessels in writhing coils, the Hunters on the outside revolving around and then plunging back inside the coil to prevent themselves from being exposed to the frigid vacuum of space for too long.
From the flotilla erupted a barrage of plasma fire in return, and Evelyn saw one of the Raythons hit as it turned to flee the attack.
‘Renegade Five, I’m hit! I’m hit! Get me out of here before they…’
The cry abruptly mutated into a grotesque scream of agony as the wounded fighter smashed into one of the Hunter tentacles. It rocketed out of the other side, consumed by the tiny machines and broke up in mid–flight. Evelyn saw the fragments of the fighter continue on into space as they were torn apart by the frenzied cloud of machines, the pilot’s remains trapped among the torn metal plating of his Raython.
‘All fighters retreat immediately!’ Idris ordered once more.
Atlantia and Arcadia were turning already, crossing each other’s flight path with Atlantia higher than her sister ship as they reversed course while presenting the aft landing bays to the fleeing Raythons. An invitation for a tactical landing, Evelyn saw Renegade Flight break off from the flotilla of vessels and make a run for it as a hail of plasma fire rocketed in pursuit.
‘Renegade Flight, retreating under fire!’
Evelyn turned toward the fleeing Raythons. ‘Reaper Flight, covering fire!’
Reaper Flight’s eight Raythons rocketed toward the fleeing fighters, and Evelyn gasped as she saw the sheer number of craft emerging from the debris field.
‘I’m hit!’
Evelyn saw a Raython veer to one side as a lucky shot struck its aft starboard quarter and one of its engines exploded. A trail of sparkling energy spluttered from the wounded fighter as it turned violently, its pilot struggling to maintain control under the asymmetric thrust from its remaining engine.
Behind it, half a dozen infected craft broke off from the main group on an intercept course.
‘Renegade Four, hold position, we’re on our way.’
Evelyn accelerated toward the stricken Raython, Teera on her wing and four more Raythons pursuing her as she saw the mining craft swarm toward the Raython. Evelyn aimed for the gap between them and then lined her weapons up on the leading infected craft.
‘All fighters, line astern, hit them one at a time!’
Evelyn opened fire on the lead craft, a wedge–shaped vessel of a type she did not recognise. Her plasma blasts smashed through the hull’s armour plating and its cockpit erupted into flames as clouds of vaporised Hunters spilled away from it as though the craft were a comet trailing fire across a blackened sky.
She pulled up in time to see Teera’s Raython open up on the same craft, and it exploded into a brilliant fireball as the shockwave hit Evelyn’s Raython and shuddered through it.
‘That got ‘em!’ Teera yelled jubilantly as she pulled up and away from the blast.
Evelyn pulled up high, her Raython wheeling around for a second pass as she saw the remaining craft of Reaper Flight hammering the freighters below them. Immense clouds of Hunters burst like fireworks as they were melted and spat out from the blasts like embers from a raging fire, the spacecraft they occupied pitching and yawing out of control as their bridges and cockpits were blasted into oblivion.
‘Renegade Four clear, landing now!’
‘That’s it,’ Teera yelled. ‘Let’s get out of here!’
‘Reaper Flight, disengage and land immediately!’
The Raythons broke off their attack and swept past Evelyn’s fighter as she cast one last glance across the advancing flotilla of vessels. They had been concealed behind or within the larger asteroids and rocks, with the infecting Hunters likely hibernating around the crafts’ fusion cores to maintain their heat and emerging only when unwary travellers were detected closing in on their position. With so many humans likely fleeing the core systems into deep space and on the lookout for resources, Evelyn realized that the Legion had evolved its tactics once again, no longer actively hunting humans in individual ships but bedding down in wait to ambush them en masse. Yet despite the change in tactics she could not fathom how the Legion had managed to reach out so far into deep space.
‘Reaper One, retreat immediately!’
Evelyn blinked herself out of her reverie and shoved her throttles wide open as she accelerated away from the flotilla of captured and infected vessels, maintaining maximum velocity for as long as she dared, Atlantia and Arcadia looming before her until it seemed a collision was inevitable. She could see the last of Reaper Flight landing already, disappearing into the frigate’s stern.
She hauled back on her control column and flipped the Raython over, her blazing engines now directing their enormous thrust in the opposite direction as she simultaneously lowered the fighter’s magnetic undercarriage. Before her cockpit she saw the pursuing infected vessels closing in on her fighter and suddenly the Hunters reached out for her, writhing and twisting tentacles of machinery stretching out toward her Raython’s bow. A sudden dreadful realization poisoned her thoughts.
I’m not going to make it.
The Raython’s velocity slowed dramatically toward tactical landing speed, allowing the flotilla to catch up with her. She saw the billions of Hunters that made up the writhing arm reaching out to her from the mining craft, glistening like black scales in the white glow from her landing lights. She looked down at her velocity indicator: five more seconds.
A sharp crack hit her canopy and she flinched as she saw a Hunter land there, its metallic pincers scraping at the glass. Another joined it, and then another. Evelyn’s hand went to the service pistol at her waist as cold dread swilled through her belly.
A blinding flare of light smashed past the Raython’s nose, and in the glare Evelyn saw the Hunters on her canopy melted as they were seared by terrific heat. The flare of light vanished as it crashed into the nose of the pursuing mining craft and smashed the entire vessel’s bow clean off. A brilliant explosion of countless millions of Hunters blazed before Evelyn and then were shouldered aside with brazen courage as she saw Arcadia’s massive bow plunge past her Raython with scant cubits to spare.
Evelyn gaped in amazement as she watched the huge frigate lumber by, saw distant flashes over the hull from its massive plasma cannons as they opened up in tremendous broadsides upon the flotilla advancing upon Atlantia’s stern. Captain Mikhain’s voice rang out over the intercom.
‘What are you waiting for, a red carpet?! Get aboard, now!’
Evelyn grabbed the control column once more as she flipped her Raython over and saw Atlantia’s landing bays wide open, a warm and inviting orange light glowing within as she lined up for an arrested landing. The Raython soared in beneath the frigate’s enormous hull and then plunged into the landing bay. The magnetic clamps on her undercarriage were dragged to a halt by the deck’s opposing magnetic field and the fighter decelerated violently, Evelyn hauled forward in her harness as the Raython was brought to a dramatic halt.
‘Reaper Flight recovered, close the doors!’
Atlantia’s massive landing bay doors lumbered downward, and Evelyn craned her head around her seat to see Arcadia disappearing from view and the flotilla of infected craft looming toward her in the bay, many of them aflame and with a field of carnage behind them from Arcadia’s massive broadsides. Hunters writhed in glowing hot tentacles as they tried to reach out for the frigate, to infect it with as many machines as possible.
The massive doors thundered down and then the light in the bay became polarised as the frigate’s mass–drive engaged and Atlantia was hurled into super–luminal velocity.
***
III
‘It was a damned shambles!’
Captain Idris Sansin stood before the Board of Governors with his hands behind his back and his chin held a little higher than usual.
The Governor’s Chamber was a converted homestead within Atlantia’s sanctuary, a forested valley that emulated their home world of Ethera and was contained within a revolving cylinder inside Atlantia’s hull. Arcadia contained a similar sanctuary, built after the end of the frigates’ military service and designed to provide a hospitable living quarters for the correctional officers deployed to serve as prison warders. Both frigates had been prison ships prior to the appalling catastrophe that had befallen mankind.
‘It was an ambush,’ Idris replied. ‘All things considered our extraction and escape could hardly have gone better, despite the sad loss of two of our pilots.’
Governor Gredan was flanked by Governors Ayek and Vaughn, a prim woman and a young man respectively. On the ends of the table sat Governor Ishira Morle, a former ship captain herself and thus Idris’s only real ally on the board, while at the opposite end sat Governor Meyanna Sansin, his wife and, alarmingly, often his greatest foe.
‘How?’ Governor Vaughn asked with a tight smile. ‘How could this be an ambush? We’re on the edge of the Icari Line, far from Ethera. How could the Legion have penetrated this far out into deep space and lain in wait for us?’
‘The Word was in control of our people long before we knew it,’ Idris replied. ‘And we now know that our own government sent Special Operations teams beyond the Icari Line to find out what lay there, after our last encounter with the Morla’syn. It is entirely possible that The Word could have despatched small groups of Hunters or Infectors out with them, to begin its conquering not just of Ethera but of the known cosmos. We must assume from this point onward that The Word is not just intent on destroying what’s left of the human race, but of expanding its reach indefinitely.’
Idris knew that The Word, a creation of quantum physics, was in effect a computer. It had evolved out of a major milestone in human engineering, The Field: a digital record of all information that had been accessible to all humans. The growth of human knowledge had accelerated wildly in the years following the creation of The Field, reaching all corners of the colonies through the sharing of information, and technology had likewise grown and expanded at a phenomenal rate. This massive database of information had been fused with quantum computing to create The Word, a depository of knowledge designed to be able to make decisions based on pure logic and an understanding of myriad complexities that were beyond the human capacity to assimilate and form cohesive responses. Tasked with finding solutions to the most complex problems in history, ranging from space exploration to crime to medicine, The Word eventually became the founder of laws, the arbitrator of justice and the icon of mankind’s prolific creativity.
The one thing that nobody could have predicted was that The Word, through its sheer volume of thought and understanding, would have concluded that mankind, its very creator, was a greater threat to itself than any other species and thus must be either controlled or eradicated. Thus had been born the Legion, and mankind silently infected with nanobots capable of controlling the brain stem long before anybody realized what was about to happen.
‘Then we must re–think our strategy, don’t you agree, captain?’ Governor Ayek snapped primly. ‘Our path of traversing the cosmos from supply source to supply source without a common goal in mind has run its course entirely, don’t you think?’
Idris ground his teeth in his jaw and clenched his hands behind his back as he formulated his reply.
‘It has served us well up to this point,’ he replied.
‘Indeed,’ Governor Vaughn agreed, ‘right up to the point where we were ambushed by the Legion on Akryan V having be
en sent there by Lazarus, the very man who created The Word! Has it not crossed your mind that whatever is left of the man inside that machine might have led us there on purpose, captain?’
‘I doubt that very much.’
‘You doubt it?’ Governor Gredan chimed in. ‘But you do not deny it, either?’
‘These are hardly ordinary matters we’re talking about here,’ Governor Morle said finally, coming to the captain’s aid before even his wife, Idris noted. ‘Lazarus is an unknown quantity, but he got our people off Endeavour and helped us win in battle against a much more heavily armoured Morla’syn battleship. There has to be some credit in there for his intentions.’
‘There is,’ Governor Sansin replied finally, hiding from her husband behind a veil of her long dark hair that had fallen across one side of her face. ‘But that credit can only carry us so far. The Word is known to be a cunning and duplicitous foe, and Lazarus’s assistance in battle against the Morla’syn could easily have been a sleight of hand to win our trust.’
Idris snorted and shook his head. ‘Even if that were true there is no way for Lazarus to communicate with the Legion, especially not in super–luminal cruise, which I should add we’ve been in for at least forty per cent of the time we’ve been running from…’
Idris cut himself off, appalled at his choice of words. Governor Gredan did not miss the slip up.
‘Running,’ he echoed as he folded his thick fingers beneath his bloated chin. ‘That’s what we’ve been doing for the vast majority of the time since the apocalypse, captain. When is it that you’re going to admit that we’re unable to face this challenge alone, that we cannot take the fight to the Legion and to The Word on Ethera? With every passing month we find ourselves further from our homes, further from any hope of enlisting help in fighting the scourge that decimated our home world. Sooner or later, captain, we’re going to be too far away to ever hope to return and fight your promised battle against The Word.’
Defiance (Atlantia Series Book 5) Page 2
