A speaker down below beeped softly.
Taron turned and saw a small planet in the distance, a bright speck moving against the infinite stars. He descended back into the ship and made his way back to the cockpit as Yo’Ki worked the Phoenix’s controls, slowing her toward orbital velocity as the planet grew larger before them.
‘Sending identification signal,’ Taron said as he flipped a switch.
A pulsed light beam emitted a flickering signal toward the planet’s surface, which was in turn detected by receivers planet-side. A few moments passed and then a signal was picked up by the Phoenix’s sensors in reply. Taron scanned it and then took the controls from Yo’Ki.
‘Okay, let’s see how much they’ll take for her.’
Taron manoeuvered the Phoenix into position, the planet Chiron looming to fill the viewing panel as against its churning oceans a bright metallic speck appeared, rocketing up toward them.
It took several minutes for the advancing shuttle craft to reach orbital altitude and perform the delicate process of docking with the Phoenix, but Taron was waiting at the hull ports as the seals activated and the docking lights changed from red to green. Yo’Ki waited alongside him, both of them armed.
‘Stay sharp,’ Taron said as he hit the docking port access panel and the shield doors hissed open, a brief cloud of vapour tumbling from them as the two vessel’s internal atmospheres equalised.
Five figures emerged from the vapour through the narrow docking port, four of them lithe and well-armed, one in the centre portly and squat. Slick black hair, squinting eyes and oily skin reflected the ship’s internal lights as the man surveyed Taron and Yo’Ki.
‘Taron, my boy,’ the man greeted him. ‘Once again you exceed my expectations.’
‘Salim Phaeon,’ Taron replied coolly. ‘How much for the freighter?’
Salim chuckled, the laughs shaking his belly and rippling the jewels on his garishly coloured long coat.
‘Down to business already, Taron?’ Salim asked. ‘And how are you, my beauty?’ he asked Yo’Ki. ‘Have you thought any more about my proposal? We have wonderful living standards on Chiron and you will be well cared for, especially by me.’
Yo’Ki did not move as though her entire body were cast in stone. The silence drew out and Salim’s gracious smile withered.
‘How much?’ Taron repeated.
Salim sighed, as though finally accepting that they would not be sitting down to discuss old times over a drink and cakes.
‘Taron, you push too hard. You need to relax a little. Negotiations like this should not be rushed, they require delicacy and tact and…’
‘Fifty thousand,’ Taron said.
Salim’s eyes widened. ‘I’d have sold my own mother for less.’
‘That says more about your mother than the mining ship. Take it or leave it.’
‘For that piece of old junk?’ Salim growled. ‘How many bodies on board?’
‘Twelve, all alive,’ Taron replied. ‘They’re an additional thousand apiece.’
Salim’s eyes narrowed, a cruel gleam twinkling deep inside them.
‘Perhaps I should ask you to pay me sixty-two thousand in return for not blowing your ship to hell.’
The four men flanking Salim activated their plasma rifles, the magazines humming into life.
Taron grinned. ‘All talk, Salim, no action. Look behind you on the wall.’
Salim turned. Either side of the hatch were two plasma charges, each with a flashing red light. The oily man turned back to see Yo’Ki with a detonator in her hand, her expression still completely unreadable.
‘You think your boys will shoot us both and grab that detonator before they get sucked out of here with you, Salim?’ Taron asked.
Salim glared at Taron for a moment longer and then he burst out laughing, his great belly rippling as he shook his head.
‘I wouldn’t have expected anything less from you, Taron,’ he chuckled. ‘Forty thousand for the ship and its crew. No more.’
‘Fifty.’
‘Forty five and we’re done.’
Taron weighed up the price in his mind. ‘All in advance, all in minerals.’
Salim inclined his head. ‘Then we’re done. My men will present you with the minerals, then collect the vessel and transport her to the surface. Can I extend my hospitality to you and your beautiful consort?’
‘She’s not a consort,’ Taron replied. ‘Annoy her too much and she might blow that detonator just for the hell of it.’
Salim gave Yo’Ki a nervous glance and then forced a smile through it. ‘Of course, although I’m surprised at you Taron. I thought you liked my girls and their… offerings. Come down, stay a while. You might find you like it.’
‘People to see, places to go, Salim,’ Taron replied. ‘I’ll see you next time we pick up anything of interest, agreed?’
Salim attempted to hide the scowl that shadowed his features as he cast a longing glance at Yo’Ki, barely managing to keep the awkward grin on his face.
‘As you wish, captain,’ he purred and then clicked his fingers. ‘The merchandise, now!’
His men deactivated their weapons and scurried back through the docking port to carry out his orders.
‘You can put the detonator away now, my dear,’ Salim said to Yo’Ki. ‘Our business is done and we can be civil with each other.’
Yo’Ki did not move.
‘She doesn’t like slavers,’ Taron informed Salim. ‘You know that.’
‘I am not a slaver,’ Salim replied as his lips formed a smile, ‘more a humble foreman.’
Salim’s men returned, each with a bulky metallic chest that had no magnetic alignment, enabling them to push them through the air before them. They positioned the chests well inside the Phoenix and then backed away, their hands back on their weapons.
Taron pulled a scanner from his pocket and passed it over the two chests. A long silence drew out until he was satisfied that both chests were filled with minerals and neither contained explosive devices.
‘Normal procedure,’ Taron said. ‘Seal the port, and then we’ll un-dock and release the freighter to you.’
Salim bowed graciously as he backed away but his eyes never left theirs.
‘Of course, and I extend my thanks to you for this new acquisition and its unexpected bonus aboard.’
Taron frowned. ‘What bonus?’
‘The crew,’ Salim smiled. ‘You did not know that there is a woman and a young girl aboard?’
Taron felt a pulse of shame as beside him Yo’Ki raised the detonator in her hand. Salim’s men’s weapons snapped up to point at her.
But Salim simply grinned.
‘Destroy us and you’ll doom the woman and child too,’ he replied. ‘You’ll have sixty seconds to leave before I have my men blow the Phoenix into ashes.’
Salim slipped through the docking hatch, and moments later the hatch hissed shut. Yo’Ki lowered the detonator in her hand as Taron deactivated the charges. He turned as he heard a dull thud and saw Yo’Ki thump the wall of the corridor.
‘There’s nothing we can do,’ Taron said. ‘Our scanners aren’t powerful enough to determine everything about the people aboard that ship.’
Yo’Ki glared sideways at Taron.
‘What the hell do you want me to do about it? Cut them loose? Salim will have his gunners tracking our every move, we wouldn’t even get a shot off. I’m sure they’ll be just fine, okay?’
Yo’Ki stared at him for a moment longer and then she whirled and stormed away in disgust.
‘Women,’ Taron uttered under his breath as he followed her. ‘Can’t live with ‘em, can’t shoot ‘em. What can you do?’
***
V
‘How the hell did this happen?’
Idris Sansin stood on the command platform of Atlantia’s bridge as General Bra’hiv completed his report, the Marine standing erect and with his chin held high as he spoke.
‘There was nothing that Sergeant
Qayin could have done, sir,’ the general explained. ‘The civilian opened fire and the sergeant’s subordinate returned that fire in the heat of the moment in self-defence. I would be extremely reluctant to reprimand him considering the circumstances.’
Idris nodded, his brow deeply furrowed.
‘The civilian should never have been armed in the first place,’ he replied. ‘Do we have any idea where he got his rifle from?’
‘It was an older design, obsolete by military standards. It’s likely he smuggled it aboard when we abandoned our prison orbit two years ago. There could be others, captain. I’d recommend a thorough search of the entire sanctuary to root out any contraband weapons.’
‘I’d concur with that,’ Mikhain, the Executive Officer, added. ‘The civilians are restless, especially now that one of their own has been gunned down by our Marines, and men of Bravo Company for that matter.’
‘Bravo Company are well trained soldiers,’ Bra’hiv snapped back at the XO, ‘as much Marines as Alpha Company.’
‘That’s not how the civilians see it,’ Mikhain retorted. ‘They see murderers and thugs dressed up as soldiers and let loose to wander the ship.’
‘The civilians can see what they damned well like! As long as they’re opening fire on my men they’ll get what they deserve and…’
‘The civilians are ruffled enough without door-to-door searches,’ Idris cut across the two officers. ‘They already feel abandoned and alienated. I’m not about to turn their homes over because one farmer decided his right to privacy overruled our right to patrol this ship.’
Mikhain inclined his head but his tone was not conciliatory.
‘So you would advocate us letting them self-rule, or carry concealed weapons, ready to use the moment they decide our security personnel have crossed a line?’
‘I would advocate earning their trust back,’ Idris replied. ‘Force has already been shown, lethal force. Right now, asking questions will get us further than tearing down doors.’
‘Such as what the hell were they hiding in that homestead?’ Mikhain suggested. ‘Why haven’t we been informed of what the general’s Marines found in there? Why keep us in the dark?’
The XO’s accusing glare was directed at General Bra’hiv, but it was the captain who replied.
‘I’ll inform everybody, once I have all the facts.’ A soft beep alerted the captain and he strode across to his chair where a flashing light called for his attention. He pressed the light. ‘Sansin.’
‘Idris, it’s Meyanna. Can you come down to sick-bay for a moment? There’s something here I want you to see.’
Idris deactivated the console and turned to Mikhain. ‘XO, you have the bridge. Alert me as soon as we’re ready to drop out of super-luminal into the Chiron system. General Bra’hiv, keep your men on watch outside the sanctuary only for now. It’ll give the civilians time to adjust to what’s happened.’
‘And formulate further discord?’ the general pressed. ‘We should be watching them at all times, remind them of who’s in control here before they take up arms against us!’
‘Yeah,’ Mikhain snorted, ‘a bunch of farmers with pitch forks against your Marines. That’d suit you just right, eh general?’
Bra’hiv scowled at the XO, his fists clenched like balls of rock by his sides.
‘That’s enough,’ the captain snapped. ‘General, if you will?
With a last glare at the XO, Bra’hiv spun on his heel and stormed off the bridge. The captain turned and peered at Mikhain as he passed by.
‘Tow the line,’ he growled.
Mikhain nodded as Idris walked past him and off the bridge.
The journey down to the sick bay took only a couple of minutes, the bay located conveniently close to the bridge where most of the senior officers’ quarters and stations could be found. Idris walked into the sick-bay where two dozen beds lined dull grey walls to see Meyanna Sansin, his wife, treating numerous patients for sickness and injuries sustained during the ordinary working life of the ship. Although they had not seen combat for many weeks, Atlantia’s compliment of well over a thousand passengers, service personnel and maintenance crew ensured that somebody, somewhere aboard always needed attention.
Meyanna turned to him as he walked in, and although her long brown hair and bright smile looked perfect to a bystander he could immediately sense in her expression that something was wrong.
‘Thanks for coming down,’ she said as she stood from treating a burn on the arm of a crew chief from down in the landing bays.
‘For you, anything but I don’t have long,’ Idris said, playing along with her attempt at concealing the import of whatever it was she was hiding. ‘What’s up?’
‘This way,’ she beckoned for him to follow.
The sick-bay was arranged into four wards separated by thin, portable panels, and beyond the wards was Meyanna’s laboratory, a sealed section of the bay behind fixed transparent walls where she could work as ship’s physician without fear of contaminating the nearby wards.
Idris followed her inside the laboratory which she sealed behind them. Meyanna touched a control on a wall-panel and the transparent walls turned opaque.
The laboratory had taken on a new role in the aftermath of humanity’s fall, chiefly that of studying their most implacable foe, the Legion. In the wake of a battle aboard the merchant vessel Sylph one of Atlantia’s most trusted officers, Evelyn, had recovered a single Hunter, one of several types of tiny robotic machines employed in their billions by the Word in order to kill or convert humans to its cause.
He glanced across the laboratory to where a magnetic chamber contained a black metallic device the size of a human eyeball. Like a writhing insect suspended helpless in the web of some unseen spider, the Hunter was entrapped within magnetic fields generated by the chamber, forced to hover in mid-air where it could not attack anything. Equipped with razor-sharp mandibles and programmed to destroy anything human, Hunters were lethal if allowed to propagate.
‘What’s up?’ Idris asked. ‘Have you learned anything about the victim found in the sanctuary?’
‘Yes,’ Meyanna said, ‘he’s presenting entirely new symptoms.’
‘The Legion?’ Idris asked.
‘No,’ Meyanna said. ‘There has been no new outbreak. This is something else.’
‘Disease then?’
‘Worse, I’m afraid,’ Meyanna said as she stepped across to a privacy rail and pulled back the curtain.
Idris turned and saw a man strapped to a bed and wearing only his underclothes. His wrists and his ankles were restrained by leather straps, his torso likewise pinned in place to minimize his movements as he writhed. His skin was sheened with sweat, his hair matted and his eyes wide with a volatile mixture of pain, anger and desperation. Worse, his veins were discoloured across his entire body as though his skin were laced with dark vines.
Idris stepped closer to the man and saw white foam frothing from his mouth, a plastic wedge gripped between his teeth.
‘What happened to him?’ he asked.
‘It’s not what happened to him that’s the problem,’ Meyanna replied. ‘It’s what he did to himself. I tested his blood, and he’s full of Devlamine.’
Idris felt as though his heart missed a beat. Devlamine, the Devil’s Drink.
The drug Devlamine was a crystal, a volatile mixture of chemicals that had been the staple of violent street gangs since long before the apocalypse. The spawn of an exotic carnivorous flower found in the deep tropical forests of Ethera’s equatorial belt, the crystals formed over many years and then were deposited by the flower to draw in prey, usually insectoids and small mammals, by essentially making addicts of them over time, the animal trails they created moving to and from the flower drawing in yet more creatures that then also became addicts. Eventually, one after the other, their addiction became so acute that they climbed up into the flower and were thus consumed.
Cultivated by organised criminal gangs and exported across Ethera
and the core systems, Devlamine had become the scourge of society and ultimately the drug that the Legion had first used as a carrier to infect mankind. In its normal form it provoked a sense of euphoria that was so powerful it literally caused users to lose hours or even days of their lives while comatose in a blissful Utopian dreamworld, far from the horrors of reality around them. Grieving relatives saw lost ones again, terminally ill patients ended their lives in serene delight, and reckless youths seeking the next illegal high sent themselves into an oblivion of ecstacy, often never to return.
It was said, by some, that it was the Legion’s ability to manipulate the drug in which it had hidden that caused the destruction of mankind to be so complete: the Infectors that infiltrated the minds of addicts did not initially directly control their host: the supply of the drug did, hijacked by the tiny Infectors infesting their brain stems to deliver the Devlamine precisely when and where it was needed to ensure compliance, and withdrawn when that obedience was challenged.
‘How far gone is he?’ Idris asked.
‘Hard to say,’ Meyanna replied. ‘But I’d say he’s at least a couple of months in, maybe a little more. Maybe he lost his supply or it was stolen, but he crashed real quick. My response team got him out quickly and quietly, but word of the shooting spread fast.’
‘Too fast,’ the captain agreed. ‘The people with whom this man shared his home kept his affliction quiet while they tried to treat him, so nobody in the sanctuary actually knows why that farmer was shot. An outbreak of Devlamine withdrawal will be seen as a weakness on our part for allowing the drug aboard ship and a threat to the civilians themselves. The last thing I want is them marching on the bridge again.’
Atlantia Series 3: Aggressor Page 4
