Gredan hesitated, desperate to speak but unable to find the diplomatic words he needed to extricate them from this sudden and unexpected setback.
‘We were infected by a small number of Hunters during an ambush at Akyron V,’ Meyanna replied. ‘The infection was cleaned but it is possible that the Legion may have somehow been able to send information on our presence there, and possibly even our trajectory when we made the jump to super–luminal.’
Rh’yll turned to General Veer. ‘Prepare the fleet for battle.’
Gredan raised an eyebrow. ‘What fleet?’
‘There was no treachery,’ Meyanna insisted as the General gestured for one of his lieutenants to pass the order on. ‘We came here for help, not to spread the Legion!’
General Veer shook his head solemnly. ‘It matters little now. The Legion that your people created now threatens all of us.’
Veer stalked away, leaving Meyanna to turn to Rhy’ll. ‘You cannot face this alone, councillor. You need our help, our experience in fighting this thing.’
‘Yes, we do,’ Rh’yll agreed. ‘It has been a part of our plan all along. Guards?’
The Morla’syn troops closed in around the governors, and Rh’yll seemed almost to sigh as he spoke.
‘Transport them to the holding cells, then prepare both Arcadia and Atlantia for battle. We shall lead with our weakest assets and attempt to draw the Legion in to them.’
The troops surrounded Meyanna and the governors, and with a deep chill Meyanna realized what was happening.
‘You’re using us as bait,’ she gasped in horror.
Rhy’ll did not look at her as he spoke to the Morla’syn troops.
‘Keep them out of sight and ensure that news of the Legion’s arrival does not reach the media or the public.’
Before Meyanna could protest, she was shoved out of the council room with Gredan and the others close behind her.
Rh’yll waited for a few moments until they were gone. The council chamber was silent, the glassy windows thick enough to block all sound from the bustling city far below and even the noise from the patrolling fighters and civilian air traffic.
Rh’yll turned to a small monitor set into his seat, and with one appendage he activated a secure communications channel. The signal was weak and the distortion heavy with distance, but he could make out the response and the warbling, digital vocabulary of something not quite human and a grotesque visage on his screen, demonic in its appearance through the distortion and shadowy lighting.
‘What news?’
‘Everything is proceeding as planned, commander,’ Rh’yll said. ‘What guarantee do I have of Oassia’s safety?’
‘You have my word,’ came the rippling, digitized reply. ‘That of The Word, that Oassia will remain a neutral territory in this conflict. Surrender the humans to us, and your planet will be untouched.’
Rh’yll shifted in his seat, his bioluminescence flickering weakly. ‘I risk much, commander. The humans claim that you seek conquest above all other considerations.’
‘Of humanity?’ came the reply. ‘Yes, we do. But of other species? Your right to exist remains as valid as our own, councillor. Conquest of your world serves us no purpose, but cooperation will provide us both with what we desire. You can trust us, councillor, far more than you can trust human beings.’
The transmission blinked out, leaving Rh’yll alone in the chamber with his thoughts.
***
XXVII
‘The Morla’syn are pulling back!’
Andaim whirled to the tactical display as he heard Lael’s call and watched as the three destroyers surrounding their position began withdrawing.
‘Where do they think they’re going?’
‘Sensor jamming is weakening,’ Lael reported further. ‘Communications link with Arcadia is now open.’
‘Signal them now, get them up on screen!’
Andaim saw one of the display screens flicker into life as an image of Lieutenant Scott appeared before him, the young XO looking flustered and nervous.
‘Commander, we’ve got a problem.’
‘We’ve got a lot of problems,’ Andaim replied. ‘Are you getting the readings we’re sending from the far orbit of Oassia, and the super–luminal bow shock?’
‘Both,’ Lieutenant Scott confirmed. ‘Looks like one major fleet behind us near Oassia and another approaching from the bow. The Legion must have been communicating with Kordaz, he must still be alive. How did you pick up the fleet’s presence?’
‘We sneaked a sensor on the civilian transport, Valiant. Whatever’s left of Kordaz is irrelevant now,’ Andaim shot back. ‘They’re here and there’s nothing much we can do about it except prepare for battle. The Morla’syn are pulling out.’
‘They’re running,’ Lieutenant Scott confirmed. ‘Why the hell are they running away when they’ve got an entire battle fleet waiting?’
Andaim shook his head, not able himself to fathom what the Galactic Council was doing. They had welcomed the civilians down to the planet’s surface virtually with open arms and a commitment to protect them as they would all life in the universe, or so they claimed, but now they were falling back and leaving just a handful of humans to…
Andaim felt something cold drop like a stone though his guts as a sudden, terrible new realization crept into his thoughts.
‘The Legion was created by us,’ he whispered, almost to himself. ‘What if the Council is trying to remove two obstacles with a single blow?’
‘What do you mean?’ Emma asked as she appeared on the screen alongside Lieutenant Scott.
Andaim looked at her, briefly forgetting that it was Emma at all and instead seeing only Evelyn, recalling her fearsome temper and rugged courage under fire.
‘They want humanity gone and they want the Legion gone,’ he said. ‘Best way to do that would be to…’
‘Use one to attract the other, and then attack both,’ Emma finished the sentence for him as though it really were Evelyn standing on the bridge. ‘They’re bait! They’re using Eve and the others as bait!’
Andiam whirled and saw that Atlantia’s shields were at full capacity and her plasma cannons were fully charged. A glance across at the next screen revealed the fighter pilots of both Reaper and Renegade squadrons mounting their fighters and strapping in, ready to scramble at a moment’s notice.
‘We’ve got to get them out of there!’ Emma snapped, gaining Andaim’s complete attention with a surprisingly determined tone.
Andaim took one last look at the retreating Morla’syn destroyers and then he made his decision.
‘We’ll need your help,’ he said finally. ‘Get on a shuttle over here as fast as you can and meet me in the Lazarus Chamber,’ Andaim dashed off the command platform and yelled over his shoulder at Lael. ‘You have the bridge! Order Valiant not to land on Oassia!’
‘She’s already down!’ Lael replied.
‘Damn!’
Andaim hurried down through Atlantia’s decks and leaped aboard the nearest transport pod heading aft. The frigate’s corridors now seemed bizarrely empty and hollow, sound travelling further in lonely echoes now that the civilians had been transported to the surface. A frightening portent entered his mind: an image of Atlantia in the near–future, devoid of life, a ghost ship drifting powerless and disabled like Endeavour through the frigid expanses of the cosmos, abandoned for centuries or perhaps even millennia.
The pod slowed and Andaim shook off his maudlin thoughts as he leaped out and hurried to the storage depots. The two Marines sentries were still standing guard, and they stood aside with crisp salutes as the commander accessed the storage depot and walked inside.
The interior was dark, but as he walked in the blue glow returned as Lazarus responded to his presence and powered up. Almost immediately the old man sensed the anxiety etched into Andaim’s features.
‘What is it?’
‘The Legion is here,’ Andaim replied.
Lazarus closed his eye
s and for a long moment he seemed fixated on something just beyond his reach, like a word on the tip of one’s tongue and yet forever lost.
‘I can sense them,’ he said, his eyes still tightly closed, ‘but they are distant.’
‘Not for long,’ Andaim replied. ‘The Galactic Council is holding our civilians prisoner.’
Lazarus opened his eyes and stared down at Andaim. ‘They did not accept the terms of our asylum here at Oassia?’
‘They never intended to,’ Andaim replied. ‘They have a battle fleet in waiting and they’re using the captured human as bait. They’re luring the Legion in and preparing to strike.’
Lazarus stared at the opposite wall for a long moment and then sighed. ‘So they have chosen treachery over solace, enmity over alliance. The Councillors fear us as much as they fear the Legion, and seek to destroy both with the same blow.’
‘Captain Sansin is on the surface, as is Mikhain and Evelyn. We need them here as soon as possible.’
‘I cannot help you,’ Lazarus said. ‘With the jamming in progress and both Evelyn and Emma absent I can’t gain access to the ship’s systems.’
Andaim did not reply in time to beat the voice that came from the entry hatch to the storage depot.
‘Who said I wasn’t here?’
Emma walked into the depot and Lazarus smiled brightly. ‘Emma? How did you get here?’
‘The Morla’syn have retreated,’ Andaim explained. ‘They’re leaving it all up to us to draw the Legion into combat.’
Emma walked up to Lazarus and Andaim realized that were the great doctor not now a hologram the two would likely have embraced. Emma looked up respectfully at Lazarus, and then at Andaim.
‘What would you have us do?’
Andaim gathered his thoughts as he turned to Lazarus.
‘The Morla’syn, they have signals connections from here to Oassia, correct?’ Andaim asked.
Lazarus looked at Emma who nodded once, and with his access granted Lazarus focused his attention on incoming signals from Atlantia’s now active arrays.
‘Yes, multiple channels on secure modulating frequencies controlling sensors, ground–based weapons and drones.’
‘And you can access them, if I give you complete control?’
Lazarus watched Andaim for a long moment before he replied. ‘The governing council and Captain Sansin may have something to say about you handing me complete control of both frigates at such a crucial…’
‘The governing council have already made themselves ineffectual by insisting on travelling to the surface, and for all we know Captain Sansin is under arrest along with the rest of the delegation. We either act now or we’re fish–bait for the Legion when it arrives. The council is not going to protect us, Lazarus, and we both know it.’
Lazarus sighed again, and nodded. ‘If I have complete access, then yes, I can control the drones and turn them to our purpose.’
‘Good,’ Andaim replied. ‘Here’s what we’re going to do. Ishira recently landed on Oassia with an escort of four Morla’syn drones. First, I need you to access Oassian systems and find out precisely where Captain Sansin and the others are being held…’
*
‘Stand by, do not proceed past this point.’
Ishira Morle stood at the foot of Valiant’s ramp as it touched down on the landing pad and watched as the Morla’syn guard stood back, one arm cradling a plasma rifle as with the other he pointed at Ishira’s boots.
‘Nice to meet you too,’ she snipped back at the soldier as he turned to the ramp and began waving the civilians down.
Ishira stood back and watched as they filed out of the freighter, smiles on their faces and many of them with their eyes closed as they inhaled truly fresh air for the first time in years. She herself delighted in the warm glow of the sunshine and the ocean breeze – it had been pure good fortune that they had arrived at Oassia in early summer, the city state located close to the planet’s equator and receiving a healthy dose of early season warmth and…
Ishira heard a commotion to one side of the landing pad and turned to see more platoons of Morla’syn soldiers jogging up an access ramp toward the freighter, their plasma rifles activated and grim expressions on their lean, angular features.
‘Halt!’
The command rang out in the fresh air and Ishira’s hand moved instinctively toward her side–arm as she saw the troops fan out and encircle the five hundred or so civilians crowding the landing pad.
‘Stay where you are! Nobody move!’
Stefan stepped toward the nearest Morla’syn soldier. ‘What’s going on?’
The soldier whirled and drove the butt of his rifle into the old man’s chest, slamming him onto the deck as Ishira leaped forward.
‘What the hell do you think you’re doing?!’
‘You’re all under arrest!’ the soldier bellowed back and fired a single shot into the air that sent a rush of alarmed cries out from the civilians. ‘Everybody on your knees, hands behind your heads, now!’
Ishira, one hand on her pistol, saw two of the soldiers turn and aim their rifles at her. Stefan whispered harshly at his daughter from where he lay on the deck.
‘Don’t do it!’
‘They’ve got Erin!’ Ishira hissed.
‘And you’re no good to her dead,’ Stefan snapped back. ‘Stand down!’
Ishira glared at the soldiers but she released the handle of her pistol, and moments later the Morla’syn surrounded her and drove her down onto her knees on the hard deck.
***
XXVIII
‘What the hell do you mean we’re the bait?’
The prison echoed with the cries and screeches of the hundreds of species entrapped within its damp, cold walls. Like a rotten boil festering within a glittering crystal, Evelyn could tell that Oassia’s prison system was a dark secret it would have preferred remain hidden.
Taron Forge leaned against the barred wall of the cell, apparently unconcerned by the precipitous drop into the prison’s bowels and the proximity of a tentacled species in an adjacent cell that seemed to be trying to reach out for him. Taron’s co–pilot, the ever silent Yo’Ki, smouldered in silence alongside him, her dark eyes even more menacing in the gloom and her black hair pinned in a pony–tail behind her head.
‘Look around you,’ Taron gestured to the rest of the prison with a lazy tilt of his head. ‘The Oassians have been gathering human ammunition for their dirty little campaign against the Legion.’
Evelyn could see that many of the cells contained humans of all ages and races, most of them cowering beneath the threat of violence from other, less civilized species or the criminals and pirates incarcerated alongside them.
‘Human ammunition?’ Idris asked.
‘Their plan is to draw the Legion in by positioning humans at natural choke points in planetary systems, especially those with active dwarf stars,’ Taron explained. ‘The Legion seems to prefer hunting us humans down than other species, presumably because it reserves a special kind of hate for us. The Legion moves in on the humans and then the Oassian fleet ambushes the Legion’s craft and annihilates them.’
Idris looked at Mikhain, who shrugged. ‘Not a bad plan.’
Evelyn knew that dwarf stars, although extremely long–lived and stable, were often prone to bouts of violent solar flares which expelled huge amounts of energy into space – just the kind of energy that fried circuitry that was not properly shielded.
‘The atmospheres of flaring dwarf stars would prevent the Legion from deploying outside of their spacecraft, reducing the chance of infection,’ Idris surmised. ‘And a battle fleet of sufficient size, especially with the Morla’syn’s destroyers, would be able to shatter even a sizeable Colonial fleet.’
‘That’s about the size of it,’ Taron agreed. ‘The Oassians have been hoovering up fleeing humans for years under the pretence of providing a safe haven somewhere in the system, most likely Veyrin, a blue planet in orbit around the same star as Oass
ia. It’s only natural that they’d flee here, the most powerful of all known galactic districts, despite the supposed risk to them of crossing the Icari Line. Once landed, they’re arrested and imprisoned.’
‘And how did you end up here?’ Evelyn asked the pirate captain.
Taron smiled and offered her a vague shrug.
‘I’d gotten myself a hefty cargo of Avarian spice and knew of a few traders out this way. What I didn’t know was that the Morla’syn were amassing their fleet here too. Yo’Ki and I got picked up the moment we entered the system and have been here over a week.’
‘We saw your ship when we came here,’ Idris acknowledged.
‘Is she okay?’ Taron asked, pushing off the cell wall, his face pinched with concern. ‘Have they done anything to her?’
Idris regarded the captain for a moment. ‘Well, we only knew it was the Phoenix because they hadn’t finished stripping down the cockpit yet.’
‘They’ve done what?!’ Taron’s face flushed red and he looked as though he were about to spontaneously combust.
‘Relax,’ Evelyn murmured as she fought to conceal a smile. ‘Your ship’s fine.’
Taron blustered for a moment, his face glowing red as Idris turned to Evelyn. ‘Rh’yll never intended to assist us. He’s had this planned for some time if the Morla’syn have assembled their fleet already.’
‘The Oassians don’t want conflict,’ Evelyn pointed out, ‘but the Morla’syn are much more willing to fight. If we could somehow divide them, give the Morla’syn a reason to split away from the Oassians…’
‘That presumes they’d even consider fighting for us,’ Idris pointed out. ‘If anything, they dislike humans even more than the Oassians.’
‘They don’t have to like us to fight for us,’ Evelyn pointed out, ‘and besides, this isn’t just about us anyway. The Morla’syn are as much under threat from the Legion as any other species out there. This is about convincing them that if they don’t fight then eventually they’ll be under threat. Do they want their last stand to be here, or wait until the Legion’s in orbit around their homeworld?’
Defiance (Atlantia Series Book 5) Page 19
