Idris allowed a cold little smile to form on one corner of his lips. ‘Strange, Governor, but I seem to recall it being you who demanded that we flee the Legion rather than face open battle, and you who almost fainted on the bridge deck during the last engagement.’
Gredan’s florid features paled a little. ‘I am not conditioned to the command demands of a warship, captain.’
‘How true.’
‘We need make no apology for the fact that we are not people of war, captain,’ Meyanna said. ‘We are, however, of the people, the very thing that placed us on this governing board – the common vote. We speak for the last two thousand human beings known to be alive in the cosmos, and you’re not listening. How much longer do you plan to ignore the wishes of the people you purport to protect?’
‘For as long as it protects them,’ Idris growled back.
‘It isn’t protecting them!’ Governor Vaughn snapped. ‘They were almost overwhelmed less than two hours ago! And right now your command is actively interfering with the on–going trial of a Veng’en murderer, is collaborating with a computerized reincarnation of the man who created The Word, while leading a military contingent that is fifty per cent comprised of convicted felons! You’re also insisting that we should not attempt to enlist the help of the Galactic Council in eradicating The Word on the battlefield, based on the opinion of the one machine aboard this ship that we have considerable reasons not to trust!’
A deep silence followed the councillor’s outburst, and Idris could almost feel the watching eyes of the audience of civilians behind him as he attempted to gather his thoughts.
‘Kordaz is under protective custody because without it he would probably be murdered by our own crew,’ Idris replied. ‘As a Veng’en he is seen as an enemy, but I have seen what he is capable of and of what he has achieved in the name of our cause, and I will not allow him to be harmed ahead of a proper trial. Lazarus is our only hope of understanding The Word and perhaps finding a weakness within it, and we have it on his authority that the Galactic Council created the Icari Line to keep human beings in, not protect us from what was beyond. They cannot be seen either as allies or as a means to fight a war.’
‘So says Lazarus,’ Governor Ayek uttered. ‘And as for that woman thing you brought back from Endeavour – do you intend to put her in command soon, captain?’
Idris felt his blood boil and he was about to reply when Meyanna cut across him.
‘Her name is Emma,’ she growled at Ayek, ‘and she is as human as you or I.’
Idris raised an eyebrow in surprise at his wife’s sudden defensive stance. The ship’s chief physician, she had not taken kindly to Ayek’s tone.
‘Says who?’ Ayek retorted. ‘Emma and that other one, the former convict…’
‘Evelyn,’ Meyanna replied, ‘her sister.’
‘Sister,’ Governor Vaughn almost chuckled. ‘They’re a hundred years apart and yet genetically identical. They’re clones, not sisters. Can we agree that nobody here really knows what the hell is going on with those two?’ Vaughn looked at Idris. ‘And if you can consider the Galactic Council as a potential enemy based on the opinion of Lazarus, then is it not a logical progression based on the same evidence that we can consider both Emma and Evelyn potential foes based on their apparent origin with The Word?’
‘You could,’ Idris replied, ‘if you were idiot enough. Both of them have risked their lives on more than one occasion to protect us.’
‘And there we go again,’ Gredan snapped with a click of his podgy fingers. ‘Somebody throws themselves in the line of fire for you and suddenly their opinion matters more than ours, regardless of their questionable motives or history.’
‘Their opinion is irrelevant,’ Idris said. ‘Their acts are unquestionable.’
‘We can’t all be heroes in the line of fire, captain,’ Vaughn pointed out. ‘If we were we’d all have died long ago. There are two thousand humans known to be left alive, and yet you’re defending a Veng’en killer and a genetically cloned woman who may or not be something created by The Word. You understand our concern, do you not?’
Idris sighed. ‘I can only continue on the course that is safest for us, and the Galactic Council is not a safe haven for humanity. We have no representative there and we know for sure that they don’t trust us. If we travel there, the chances are they’ll blast us from existence on sight.’
‘But they may not,’ Gredan countered, ‘whereas the Legion certainly will. Captain, this is no longer a decision that can be placed in the hands of Atlantia’s command crew and certainly not Lazarus. We put it to the people that the decision to avoid, or approach, the Galactic Council for assistance in our war should be put to a referendum. Our survival is a universal concern, not just something for military officers to determine.’ Before Idris could open his mouth to protest, Gredan addressed the gathered civilian onlookers seated behind him. ‘All those in favour?’
Idris did not turn to look as he heard a shuffling from the hundred or so civilians chosen to witness the governor’s meeting on behalf of Atlantia and Arcadia’ passengers. He watched as Meyanna counted the hands behind him, and then glanced across at Gredan.
‘Eighty five in favour,’ she said. ‘The decision will be put to a referendum of the ships’ company.’
Idris managed to somehow prevent himself from cursing out loud, and instead turned on his heel without another word and marched from the homestead into the cool air outside.
The sanctuary’s forested hills basked under a broad sky, a mock sun blazing brilliantly as it descended toward the horizon. The sanctuary’s rotational velocity perfectly replicated Ethera’s gravity, avoiding the need for the magnetic gravi–suits and boots worn by crews in the rest of the ship. Filled with negatively charged particles of iron that pulled them down toward the positively charged cylinders beneath the deck plating, the gravi–suits prevented muscle loss and preserved bone–density that long periods of zero–gravity would otherwise degrade.
Idris could see the rolling ocean in the distance, the sense of depth remarkable although entirely an illusion created by the ship’s powerful computers. In actual fact, although the sanctuary seemed to go on forever, it was only a thousand cubits long by some three hundred wide. But the air was cool and the sunshine felt warm on his face, and Idris closed his eyes and tried to relax and let the tension bleed from his pores in the wake of his grilling before the council.
‘They’re only thinking of the people.’
Meyanna’s voice reached out to him but he did not turn as he replied. ‘And you?’
‘Don’t be like that. The people voted me as their governor. You supported their choice to vote!’
Idris sighed as he looked out over the rolling ocean sparkling in the setting sun like a sheet of rippling copper, aware of his wife’s elegant features bathed in the coppery light beside him but unable to bring himself to look at her. ‘We have enough enemies out there, Meyanna. I don’t want to be dealing with them aboard ship too.’
‘Then stop viewing us as enemies. The people are as trapped aboard Atlantia and Arcadia as we are. If you choose to go into battle they are forced to come with us. Don’t they have a right to say whether the stakes are high enough to risk their lives, as you and the Marines and the pilots risk theirs?’
Idris knew that his wife was right, and he turned to look at her. Meyanna had always appeared more youthful than he but now, with the sunlight caressing her skin and her long dark hair, she looked decades younger. But her mind was as sharp as his, and he knew better than to underestimate her instinctive feeling for the mood of the governors.
‘Maybe you’re right,’ he said finally. ‘Maybe that’s what’s holding us back?’
‘What do you mean?’
Meyanna moved to slip one arm through his, and they turned together to look out over the stunning vista of a world that no longer existed.
‘Governor Vaughn was right,’ he said. ‘We’re running away, every thought of
offensive action tempered by the fear that failure will cost all of our lives. If we want to strike back, we need the civilians sent somewhere safe.’
Meyanna raised an eyebrow. ‘You mean a haven of some kind?’
‘They need a home, so that we can fight on their behalf without fear for their safety. We can’t keep running like this, or before we know it we’ll have run out of places to hide.’ Idris looked down at Meyanna as a fresh resolve began surging through his veins. ‘It’s time,’ he said softly. ‘No more running.’
Meyanna searched his eyes and he saw the concern etched into hers.
‘What are you going to do?’
***
IV
‘How they did they get so far out?’
Evelyn reached up and hung her flight suit on a hook beside the entrance to the tiny cabin she shared with Teera Milan, ready to grab again at a moment’s notice if the Reapers were scrambled once more.
‘I don’t know,’ Evelyn replied. ‘We’re right out on the Icari Line. The Legion shouldn’t have gotten this far and yet, there it was.’
‘Most of those ships were mining vessels,’ Teera said. ‘Andaim said the techs had identified them in debrief – the Legion must have had control of them long before Ethera fell.’
Evelyn nodded. The Word’s Legion, the innumerable army of tiny machines that had overwhelmed mankind, had been dispersed among the populace initially through the use of dangerous street drugs, most notably Devlamine, the Devil’s Drink. Tiny Infectors contaminating the drug entered the human body and gradually colonised the spinal column and then the brain stem, multiplying using the human body’s own resources until they took control of the victim. Alive but unable to control their own bodies, the victims then passed on the Infectors to others, spreading the mechanical contagion like a virus.
Nobody knew when the Legion first began dispersing among humankind, but what was now certain was that it all began long before The Word issued its command to annihilate human beings wherever they were to be found. By that time, more than eighty per cent of mankind had already been infected, tiny machines coursing unnoticed through their bloodstream or hiding away in their brain stem, waiting to strike.
‘Mining companies used to spend years on a single voyage, hunting out minerals in the asteroid belts,’ Evelyn said thoughtfully. ‘Those ships might have been infected decades ago and lain in wait ever since. It could even have been part of The Word’s long–term plan, to organise a series of ambushes on distant worlds to capture any fleeing humans. Who knows?’
‘Lazarus knows,’ Teera replied. ‘Maybe we should have him wired up to something, get him to talk, y’know?’
Evelyn couldn’t help the smile that crept from her lips as she zipped up her uniform jacket and looked at Teera. ‘We’re not a dictatorship, remember? Lazarus may be a machine, but it’s pretty clear that there’s a human being in there, no matter how odd it seems.’
‘And what about…?’
Teera cut herself off, but Evelyn smiled again. ‘You mean: what about Emma?’
Teera shrugged. ‘I don’t get how she can be your sister when she’s supposedly a hundred or more years old.’
‘Believe me, I don’t either,’ Evelyn replied. ‘But she’s a human being too, and treating her any differently isn’t going to make things easier.’
‘But, she can hear The Word, can’t she? That’s what everybody’s saying, that the Marines with her aboard Endeavour said that she talked to the machine.’
Evelyn nodded. When the fabled, long–missing exploratory vessel Endeavour had been found by Atlantia, adrift beyond the Icari Line, they had found aboard her Lazarus. The great inventor, realizing the horror that he had created in The Word as he neared the end of his days, committed suicide after uploading his consciousness into a computer and sent himself to Endeavour, already far beyond the Core Systems and beyond the reach of The Word. Lazarus had then taken control of Endeavour and silenced her communications suite to prevent The Word from pursuing him, thus starting the mysterious legend of what happened to the enormous vessel.
‘Emma is special somehow,’ Evelyn replied. ‘And we all have our immunity to the Infectors because I too have some connection to The Word. You don’t see me as any less human, do you?’
Teera shrugged. ‘That all depends on your damned mood in the mornings.’
Evelyn grabbed a pillow and tossed it at Teera, who ducked and feigned drawing her pistol. A buzzer sounded in the cabin and Evelyn hit a switch on the wall. The cabin door hissed aside and Commander Andaim peered inside.
‘Captain’s orders,’ he said, briefly glancing at the pillow now hovering in mid–air in the cabin and at Teera’s hand on the butt of her pistol, ‘we’re to assemble below decks.’
‘Below decks? Any idea what it’s about?’ Evelyn asked.
‘No, but Emma’s been called in too along with most of the senior personnel.’
‘So it’s a fashionable party,’ Teera quipped.
‘Ten minutes, Deck H, aft quadrant,’ Andaim said, and then turned and marched away.
‘Soul of the party,’ Teera observed as Evelyn closed the cabin door. ‘He still got the hots for you?’
‘Give it up,’ Evelyn smiled to herself.
‘Come on, you know he likes you,’ Teera nudged her friend. ‘How come you two haven’t got it together and…’
‘I said enough,’ Evelyn snapped, and then softened her voice. ‘I think Emma’s appearance has made him nervous. Can’t blame him, really.’
‘Most people were nervous around you anyway, so it figures,’ Teera replied as she hid behind the pillow still hanging in the air.
‘Something’s up with the command crew and I want to know what,’ Evelyn said as she checked her uniform in the steel mirror bolted to one wall of the cabin. ‘C’mon, let’s move.’
Evelyn led the way out of the cabin and aft toward the deck elevators. Since the fleet had doubled in size with the addition of Arcadia, when Salim Phaeon’s pirate fleet had been defeated on Chiron IV, Atlantia’s decks had become less packed with officers and civilians. Evelyn and Teera made quick progress through the ship on the shuttle system toward the stern, just aft of the sanctuary’s gigantic revolving cylinder.
Deck H was a storage deck and held most of the ship’s supplies along with the plasma armoury, itself further for’ard and with a specially armoured containment system that ensured any un–commanded detonation would expel plasma out of specialized vents in the hull rather than allow it to expand into the ship.
Evelyn and Teera walked along an access corridor between storage depots, the corridor passing through bulkheads that ran the length of Atlantia’s keel. Their boots echoed down the immensely long passage and Evelyn noticed something as they moved.
‘The crew’s been dismissed,’ she said as she realized that none of the storage personnel were at their stations.
On a vessel like Atlantia, with a compliment of a thousand souls, there were always supplies being moved by man and machines alike. But now, the depots were silent.
‘They cleared the deck,’ Teera agreed. ‘Must be something big going down. Got any ideas?’
Evelyn shook her head as she saw two Marines standing guard outside one of the storage depots. She slowed as the soldiers moved to meet them, checking their identity badges before waving them inside the depot.
The depot was roughly fifty cubits on all sides, used to store dry goods and foods for the crew and compliment. It was a measure of how short of supplies the fleet had become that this particular depot was virtually empty. Evelyn’s boots echoed as much as they had in the access corridor as she walked toward a small group of officers gathered in a loose circle in the centre of the depot.
Captain Sansin stood with the commander of the Marines, General Bra’hiv, and the CAG, Andaim Ry’ere. Alongside them were Arcadia’s captain, Mikhain, who had evidently travelled across from his ship via shuttle, and Lael, Atlantia’s communications officer and a woman whom
Evelyn recognised as becoming something of a surrogate first officer for Captain Sansin. Her metallically–tinted hair, a fashion during the last days of Ethera, twinkled like chrome in the low light. Finally, standing to one side, Evelyn saw Emma waiting patiently with her hands clasped before her.
‘Lieutenants,’ Captain Sansin greeted them.
Both Evelyn and Teera saluted. ‘Where’s the fire?’ Teera asked.
‘Where isn’t there one?’ the captain replied, and then looked at the officers before him. ‘Now we’re all here I’d like to point out that this meeting is between us and us alone. It is not to be shared or discussed with anybody else aboard. Anybody, is that clear?’
A murmur of yessirs fluttered across the group. Idris slid his hands into his pockets in an uncharacteristically casual manner. ‘We got ambushed this morning on a planet far from the home worlds. The Legion is spreading, or has already spread, far beyond our expectations and will continue to do so. Given that we have encountered the Legion this far out, and assuming that The Word attempted to extend its reach in all directions, the infection that destroyed Ethera might now cover a sphere some one hundred lights years across, with the core systems at its centre.’
Evelyn heard a soft breath of distress from the gathered officers as they considered the extent to which The Word and its Legion might have infected and colonized other worlds.
‘We cannot allow this to continue,’ Idris went on. ‘Already, the Legion’s advance represents a battle–front that is far too vast to contain or effectively combat. If we stem the tide in one area, it will simply continue to expand in another. We are but two vessels and a very small tactical force, and we have to face the fact that we are doing ourselves no good by running any further. Wherever we flee, the Legion will eventually reach and we will be forced to fight anyway.’
Defiance (Atlantia Series Book 5) Page 3
