The general nodded. ‘Captain, we’re ready to go again but we’re down in number and need reinforcements and ammunition.’
Idris watched the three Marines for a long moment and saw even Qayin’s belligerent features glowing with bioluminescent fury, clearly eager to return to battle. But the captain’s shoulders sagged as he considered the weight of the threat facing them and he shook his head.
‘No, gentlemen,’ he replied finally. ‘There is no more that can be done here aboard Atlantia. Deploy to the aft launch bays and board the shuttles that are waiting there. All non–essential personnel are to be evacuated in the hope that they can continue the fight alongside the Oassians tomorrow. Atlantia will cover your retreat.’
The general stepped forward, shrugging off C’rairn and Qayin.
‘Mikhain sacrificed himself to buy us a chance,’ the Marine snapped. ‘That trick won’t work twice and it’s a senseless sacrifice anyway. Mikhain was a quitter at heart, captain, but you’re not. If we’re going down here, let’s do it together and take as many of them with us as we can.’
Idris looked at the Marines and then turned to his bridge crew. Lael, Emma, Lazarus and the others all held his gaze and none of them shrank away from it. Idris surveyed them all one last time and then he turned to the helmsman.
‘All ahead, attack speed.’
‘Aye, captain.’
Atlantia surged forward, and through the main viewing screen Idris saw both the Reapers and the Renegades squadrons lining up either side of the frigate in battle formations, ready to engage the enemy once more.
‘All fighters in position,’ Andaim called. ‘We’re ready.’
Idris saw more spacecraft soar into view, a mismatched flotilla of gunships, modified fighter craft and assorted freighters, most of them stained and battle scarred from countless violent encounters in quarters of the galaxy that not even he had seen before. At their head, the Phoenix sailed into position.
‘We’re here too,’ Taron Forge reported with a grimly cheerful tone. ‘We don’t want you uniformed stiffs taking all the glory.’
Idris lifted his chin as, despite the terrible loss they had endured, a sense of pride and belonging filled his chest and warmed him from within. Not since he had commanded a warship at the Battle of Tayran had he felt such a complete sense of humanity’s purpose, of its reason for existing, of its right to exist. He thought of Meyanna, down on Oassia in the hands of the council, and he knew that she would be watching, that everybody on the surface would have been watching the entire battle. His voice carried clearly to every craft and every person in what remained of the fleet.
‘The Galactic Council believes that the Legion has a right to exist,’ he said. ‘Shall we demonstrate our disagreement with that policy one last time?’
A ripple of affirmatives echoed across the communications channel and rose to a cheer as the Raythons accelerated as one toward the onrushing Colonial destroyers, the pirate ships racing in behind and Atlantia lumbering toward destruction as the destroyers split in order to pass either side of her and bring their guns to bear on both flanks at the same time. The cruisers pulled both high and low to bring the frigate into a crossfire that she could not possibly survive, and Idris yelled out.
‘For Ethera!’
A roar went up from the bridge crew and the pilots as they thundered toward the closing fleet and Idris opened his mouth to shout a single word.
‘Fire!’
Atlantia’s guns powered up on the tactical display, but before they could unleash their first barrage against the Colonial destroyers a terrific blaze of plasma fire rocketed past overhead Atlantia and smashed into the lead destroyer in a tremendous blast that ripped right through the massive ship’s shields and tore into her superstructure with a rapid series of explosions that split the ship right down its middle. The immense vessel separated into two flaming spears of wreckage as her fusion cores exploded with brilliant flares of light.
Idris barely got an alternative command out as he shielded his eyes against the blinding flare of destruction.
‘All craft, break off!!’
Atlantia dove downward as the helmsman took emergency evasive action, and Idris glimpsed the Raythons and the pirate flotilla zooming upward and away from the engagement as another blinding salvo of shots crashed into the Colonial vessels and a cruiser was engulfed within the blasts and exploded into a billowing fireball twice the size of Atlantia herself.
‘Tactical?!’ Idris yelled. ‘All shields to aft!’
He whirled to look at Lael and was surprised to see a look of pure delight on her face.
‘Oassia is coming,’ she gasped. ‘Allied fleet to our stern, incoming!’
Idris looked across at the frigate’s rear–view optical sensors and saw a vast fleet of capital ships lumbering toward them. There were Oassian battleships, Morla’syn destroyers, Icarian–built frigates and troop carriers, vessels in their hundreds from which poured a dazzling, high speed hail of plasma fire that streaked past Atlantia like racing comets and ploughed into the Legion’s fleet with devastating blasts as they hammered the enemy vessels with a merciless barrage.
Idris turned as he heard a chorus of whoops and cheers from virtually everybody on the bridge and every allied craft, and he saw the Legion’s fleet turning about. The cruisers and destroyers formed up on their damaged flagship, Defiance, and then suddenly burst into super–luminal cruise, each vessel flaring with bright white light as the light from the star fields beyond were briefly warped by their mass–drives and then they vanished.
Idris stared at the now empty patch of space where only moments before certain death had stared them in the face, and to his right one of the viewing panels lit up and Rh’yll’s translucent features appeared upon it, the councillor aboard the bridge of the lead vessel.
‘Captain,’ he announced his presence, ‘I believe that you required our assistance in destroying the Legion?’
Idris let go of the guard rail and virtually fell back into his seat, his chest sagging as though he had not let out a breath for hours.
‘Yes,’ he replied, suddenly more tired than he could ever remember being.
‘Then I would like to recant on my previous statements,’ Rhy’ll said, ‘and offer your people the support of the Galactic Council in eradicating the Legion for once and for all. We are at your service, captain.’
***
XLIII
The Oassian Council sat before the crew of Atlantia in the Council Towers’s chamber, and beyond them through the transparent walls the city beyond bustled with life in the bright sunshine, the skies once more filled with craft and the walkways between the towering spires filled with pedestrians of all races and species.
As far as Idris Sansin could see there was only one difference from before the arrival of the Legion: above the city Morla’syn drones and Oassian Skyhawk fighters still patrolled in pairs, their sleek wings glinting against the bright blue sky. But alongside them now cruised Colonial Raythons, their paintwork considerably more worn than that of their Morla’syn compatriots. High above the city in low Oassian orbit, Atlantia caught the sunlight like a particularly bright star.
‘This is an alliance of necessity, not choice.’
Councillor Rhy’ll’s voice was sombre, as though he wished to forget the events of the previous day.
‘On both of our parts,’ Idris replied, not willing to grovel before either General Veer or the Oassian nor shower them with platitudes for the fleet’s intervention.
‘You are not grateful for our decision to assist humanity in the fight against the Legion?’
‘I am,’ Idris replied. ‘I only wish that the decision had been made before the loss of Arcadia and its captain. Our strength has been halved for no good reason, the indecision of this council condemning one man to death in the process.’
‘Mikhain was an untrustworthy commander,’ Rh’yll pointed out, and then his form sagged slightly. ‘However his sacrifice, along with your o
wn selfless defence of Oassia, was the motivation we needed to abandon a pacifist stance against The Word and join the battle.’
Beside Idris stood Commander Andaim, Evelyn, General Bra’hiv, Emma, and alongside them a computer terminal and projection unit from which flickered Doctor Ceyen Lazarus’s ephemeral form. Rhy’ll’s photo–receptors turned to the holographic entity and peered at it for a long time.
‘And you,’ he said finally, ‘you are the one to be held responsible for The Word?’
Lazarus smiled without taking offence. ‘I created The Word, but I am not responsible for what it has become. Nobody could have predicted its lust for power and destruction.’
‘Although with the benefit of hindsight, perhaps now we can predict yours,’ Rh’yll suggested.
Captain Sansin stepped forward.
‘Dr Lazarus has expressed a desire to be destroyed as soon as this war is over,’ he pointed out. ‘Not generally the act of a crazed despot intent on galactic domination. His desire to help us has been proven many times over, and we believe him to be a valuable asset in the war against The Word.’
‘And a vulnerable one,’ General Veer pointed out from where he sat alongside the council. ‘Dr Lazarus is a machine, a computer generated entity and as such could be overcome and controlled by The Word, infected and used as have so many species been. His very existence concerns us greatly, especially when the recent infection of your ships is considered.’
‘The Legion was completely flushed from the ship during the battle,’ General Bra’hiv insisted, ‘and we are now in the final phases of completing microwave scans by hand across the entire frigate in case any last machines remain aboard. That task will be completed within hours. There is no longer a danger of infection to the crew or to the populace here, of that much I am sure.’
Both Evelyn and Emma stepped forward alongside the General.
‘Lazarus can only act through us,’ Emma said. ‘We are the human anchor that will prevent The Word from ever using Lazarus as a tool to undermine us from within. If Lazarus ever was infected, we would simply shut him down.’
‘As you tried to The Word so many years ago?’ Rh’yll pressed.
‘That was different,’ Evelyn explained. ‘The Word was a global force, connected to everything and everyone across Ethera in so many different ways. Lazarus is a single entity and intends to remain that way.’
‘How can we be sure?’ Rh’yll challenged. ‘How can we be certain that he will not simply transmit his presence to some other terminal, propagate indefinitely, become The Word he so claims to rally against?’
‘It’s called trust,’ Evelyn said, ‘and it’s the hardest thing to do after what happened on Ethera. Lazarus is not a machine made my man, but a man kept alive by a machine. There’s a difference, a big one. His humanity remains intact, his emotions, his cares and fears, everything that we have. The Word does not possess these attributes and is merely a machine built on logic that has developed a paranoia regarding any other species in the galaxy. You have said, repeatedly, that as a self–aware entity you believe that The Word has a right to exist. That would stand, were it not for The Word’s determination to deny all other species that same right. It must be crushed, destroyed, removed from existence so that other more lenient races can continue on. The Word is not a force for the good but an icon to our own ability to construct devices that can destroy us of their own free will.’
Evelyn was aware of the crew’s eyes on her as she fell silent, surprised by the force of her own statements and the tone of her voice as she expressed them. Rh’yll seemed momentarily silenced by her outburst and General Veer spoke instead.
‘Your race confuses us at every opportunity,’ he said as he looked at them. ‘You create weapons of mass destruction and then fight with an unremitting violence and courage to destroy them. You defend the indefensible with a passion that escapes me, and yet have conducted your campaigns against other such species as the Veng’en with barbaric ferocity.’
Idris opened his mouth to protest but Veer raised one hand to forestall him as he gathered his thoughts.
‘This is not an accusation or a judgement,’ he said, ‘merely a statement of fact. You humans are a warlike race, captain. Even in the throes of desperation you came here rife with internal conflict, warring among yourselves, lusting for power or revenge or countless other base desires that your species should have transcended long ago. No doubt you would have it that the Veng’en are just as guilty of bloodlust as you, and perhaps on occasion the accusation would be correct, but they sit upon this council with us for a reason and you do not.’
Idris ground his teeth in his skull. ‘And what reason would that be?’
‘Your unpredictability,’ Rh’yll answered for the General. ‘The reason we have not allowed a permanent human presence on this council, except for a single representative, is because nobody feels that they can work with humans. At least with the Veng’en it is clear who we’re dealing with, but we have a saying here on Oassia about why humans have just two hands: one to shake hands with an enemy, and the other to hold the weapon they’ll kill them with.’
‘I had no idea we were held in such high regard,’ Taron murmured, both he and Yo’Ki visibly uncomfortable in the chamber.
‘You are a paradox,’ Veer said finally. ‘A fearsome ally and yet a much feared enemy both at the same time. The council’s greatest fear is that we welcome you into our fleet with open arms and come to regret it later.’
‘We are barely two thousand souls,’ Meyanna Sansin protested. ‘What threat can we present to your battle fleet?’
Although Rh’yll could not smile, Idris thought that he heard a tinge of grim humour in the Oassian’s reply.
‘Dr Lazarus is but one old man, but look at what his ingenuity unleashed.’
Rhy’ll surveyed them all for a moment longer and then spoke with a tone of finality.
‘As you all by now know, it was the intention of the council to use escaped criminal humans to lure the Legion and the Colonial Fleet into a vulnerable position so that we could launch a major assault and decimate the Legion and its ability to traverse the cosmos. I agree that this course of action was despicable in its conception, but then we like you were facing potential annihilation should the Legion attempt to assault Oassia and therefore the cost was worth the benefits.’ Rhy’ll hesitated. ‘It was our own policy of transparency that we broke from, and that same policy that allowed the entire population of this planet to witness the courageous stand you made against the Legion’s fleet. With the loss of Arcadia it was the will of the council to come to your aid, and the Legion’s force has been fully repelled. Although we cannot by any means call such a close–run battle a victory, it has shown us that given sufficient will it is possible to defeat The Word and its Legion in battle and thus worthwhile turning the war here.’
Rhy’ll turned to General Veer, who stood up as he spoke.
‘The Oassian fleet will deploy with Atlantia as its guide, and one system at a time we will endeavour to take back territory from The Word.’ Veer looked at Idris. ‘All the way to the core systems and Ethera.’
Idris lifted his chin and forced himself to speak clearly although he could feel something abrasive deep in his throat.
‘We welcome your alliance.’
‘There is, however, a clause,’ Rhy’ll added. ‘Given your mercurial nature, we require a guarantee of your reliability in battle and your willingness to follow the commands of this council and of the Morla’syn, who are currently the species in command of the Galactic Fleet.’
‘What guarantee?’ Idris asked.
‘The civilians now housed on Oassia,’ Veer said. ‘They will remain here for as long as this war continues.’
Idris narrowed his eyes at the Morla’syn. ‘You’re keeping them prisoner?’
‘You wanted asylum for them,’ Rh’yll pointed out. ‘They now have it, but they may not leave this planet and Governor Gredan and his colleagues shall b
e responsible for their representation on this council. This issue will not be debated, captain. You will either comply with the terms of the agreement or we shall be forced to return the civilians to you and bid you farewell.’
Idris knew that he had no choice in the matter, not at such a crucial juncture, but a wry grin spread across his features as he looked at Rhy’ll.
‘And you judge us for our supposedly mercurial nature and our mercenary attitude?’
‘This is different,’ Rh’yll snapped. ‘Lives are at stake, innocent lives. If you want our assistance then we demand your compliance and the futures of your civilians, of your families, as guarantee. The choice is yours, captain.’
‘It’s not a choice,’ Idris pointed out.
‘No,’ Rh’yll agreed with surprising regret in his tones, ‘it is not.’
***
XLIV
The skies above Oassia were a perfect blue, the fresh air invigorating as it swept across a landing platform elevated high above the city. The platform extended from the side of one of the towering spires, and from its heights Idris Sansin could see for countless thousands of cubits toward the milky white line of the horizon where the distant ocean met the endless sky.
‘Almost too good to be true, isn’t it?’ Meyanna said beside him.
‘And almost too good to leave.’ He turned to look at her. ‘Have you decided what you will do yet? You’re still a Governor, and the people will remain here.’
‘I don’t know yet,’ she replied, a shadow of uncertainty clouding her eyes as she looked up at him.
Arrayed before them were the crews of Atlantia and Arcadia, barely five hundred individuals all resplendent in their Colonial uniforms. Idris stood alongside the senior officers and the Board of Governors on a raised dais, and in front of them was Rh’yll and General Veer.
The Galactic Council had convened in the aftermath of what was already being called the Battle of Oassia by media teams broadcasting across the system, and had discussed what had already become global news. The tremendous sacrifice of Arcadia in the defence of Oassia had turned the opinion of the vast majority of the population, and now that sacrifice was about to be honoured.
Defiance (Atlantia Series Book 5) Page 29
