Atlantia Series 3: Aggressor

by Dean Crawford

  ‘How’s he doing?’

  Meyanna turned to see her husband entering the laboratory chamber, a series of transparent double-doors that sealed the laboratory’s atmosphere from that of the ward beyond.

  ‘Stable, but his seizures are getting worse.’

  Idris Sansin moved to stand beside the bed and looked down at the civilian caught in the throes of extreme withdrawal from Devlamine.

  ‘I’m going to need him to tell us where he got the drug from.’

  ‘I can’t do that,’ Meyanna said. ‘If he regains consciousness too early he’ll suffer untold agony. Even if he did mention a name, we wouldn’t be able to tell if he was telling a lie in order to be sedated again to avoid the pain. It would be a form of torture, and we both know that the results gained under duress are unreliable.’

  ‘There could be other addicts aboard.’

  ‘It’s not the addicts you need to worry about,’ Meyanna insisted. ‘They can be treated once we know who they are.’

  ‘They’re not going to just march forward.’

  ‘They will when the supply dries up and they enter withdrawal,’ Meyanna replied. ‘That’s where you need to focus your efforts – find the supplier and shut them down.’

  Idris nodded, and smiled. Meyanna was the rock in his life in so many ways, and despite working countless hours to keep the sick-bay running she still had enough wits about her to see problems clearly.

  ‘I haven’t figured out a good way of doing that yet,’ he admitted. ‘The toughest thing is figuring out who is definitely clean and getting them on the case.’

  ‘Andaim? General Bra’hiv? Both of them are as straight as an arrow.’

  ‘Yes,’ Idris agreed, ‘but it’s for that reason that nobody else aboard ship would open up to them and reveal who is supplying and growing the drug. It’s no good me sending the Marines in and rooting out the supplies of the drug if we don’t also isolate its source. They’ll just grow more of the damned stuff.’

  ‘You need somebody to get on the inside,’ Meyanna understood. ‘Somebody that the suppliers might believe would become an addict.’

  ‘Maybe one of the former convicts, one of the Marines?’

  Meyanna winced. ‘Chances are they’d do such a good job of infiltration that they’d become addicts, doubling the problem. Too risky.’

  ‘Which leaves Qayin.’

  ‘Qayin?!’ Meyanna gasped in surprise. ‘You’d let that rogue in on this? He was a gang-leader and a drug dealer, wasn’t he? You let him in there and he’ll end the supply all right, by taking over the operation!’

  ‘That’s my point though,’ Idris said. ‘He was a dealer, not a user. Qayin’s too smart to let a drop of Devalmine anywhere near his body. He’d know how the drug grows, how people might hide it because he’s likely done it himself.’

  ‘You realise that makes him sound like a possible suspect for being behind this?’

  ‘I do,’ Idris acknowledged, ‘but if he’s the source then he’ll have a hard time maintaining his operation while trying to be seen to stamp it out at the same time. It might also give him an out if he’s behind it all – he can heroically discover the supply and the mysterious owner can escape unpunished.’

  ‘Qayin’s not going to let a stash go if he’s got one. He’ll keep something back.’

  ‘But the current supply will end and we’ll know Qayin’s behind it. We win, both ways.’

  Meyanna sighed. ‘I guess Qayin’s the best shot we’ve got.’

  ‘I like the way you say “we”,’ Idris smiled, ‘makes this ship feel like a family business.’

  ‘Which reminds me,’ Meyanna said, ‘there are all kinds of rumours floating around right now among the crew and civilians. My nurses report them to me, because no patient ever says much to me directly as I’m your wife.’

  Idris nodded. The sick-bay was a valuable source of ship-board gossip, a gauge by which the captain could measure the mood of his crew via his wife’s regular updates. Her staff, it turned out, where inverterate gossips themselves and loved nothing more than to share what they heard on the wards with Meyanna.

  ‘What’s the latest?’ he asked.

  ‘They think that the command structure is becoming a dictatorship,’ she replied.

  ‘Seriously?’

  ‘There’s a lot of discord among the ordinary people who don’t feel as though they’re getting a say in things. Most believe that you’re not interested in them and that they’re regarded by the military as having an easy life and that they should just stop complaining.’

  ‘There’s some merit in that sentiment.’

  ‘They’re people,’ Meyanna insisted. ‘As long as they think that their needs are being considered, they’ll be happy. Right now, their requests for supplies are being ignored and their sanctuary guarded by armed Marines who have recently shot dead one of their own. You do understand how that might make them feel?’

  ‘Of course I do,’ Idris replied, ‘but right now I can’t deal with them and run the ship. They’ll just have to get through this.’

  ‘They have been getting through this, just as we have for three years now,’ Meyanna pointed out. ‘They need a break. We all do.’

  ‘Are you saying what I think you’re saying?’

  ‘Make planetfall,’ Meyanna replied. ‘Stand the ship down for a few days, give people a chance to get some real fresh air and a change of scenery. There’s a planet down there with a habitable atmosphere. If the parent star flares we can pull out long before anybody gets hurt. Believe me, it’ll do them good.’

  ‘We’re at war,’ Idris insisted. ‘We can’t just go take a break for a few weeks!’

  ‘We’ll be at war for a long time yet,’ Meyanna pointed out. ‘How long do you think the people will go before they take matters into their own hands? It happened once before under Counsellor Hevel, and before you say it – it doesn’t matter that he was infected. The people still followed him of their own free will and they almost took the ship from us.’

  Idris sighed and rubbed his temples. ‘I’ll think on it.’

  ‘Do that, before it’s too late.’

  *

  ‘Stay low.’

  Soltin responded without a word as he crouched down in the foliage. The leaves of the trees above them whispered in the breeze, the air cooler beneath the canopy as the sunlight dappled the forest floor nearby as they watched.

  The order had come discreetly directly from the captain via General Bra’hiv: two men were to infiltrate the sanctuary and maintain a watch. Qayin, as a former drug smuggler, was to lead the small team and use his expertise to obtain information on the drug operation within the sanctuary and attempt to disrupt or bring to an end the supply chain.

  Qayin, virtually invisible amid the dense vegetation, observed a lone man walked along the isolated path through the forest. Stocky, with thick arms and a bald head, the man moved almost silently and was casting his eyes up into the canopy above their heads.

  Qayin remained absolutely still, as he and Soltin had done for the past two hours. It took at least a quarter of an hour for the local wildlife to settle down after they had set up their observation post, mimicking the work that Colonial Special Forces had once done before they were wiped out during the apocalypse. Concealed in a low gulley in the woods, Qayin had chosen a spot that he would have used as a dealer hoping to conceal merchandise, and begun a watch cycle designed to pick out the man at the source of the Devlamine supply.

  ‘That was quick,’ Soltin breathed in a soft whisper.

  ‘Local knowledge,’ Qayin explained but said nothing more as the man approached closer.

  The trees he had seen on earlier patrols, densely packed on the hillsides, provided the ideal hiding place for small, portable stashes of Devlamine. Their height amid the branches would prevent easy detection either by sight or by sensors, yet also provide easy access for the dealer.

  The man wore a sack over his shoulder, which he dropped to the ground
beneath the trees and opened the drawstring. From within he hauled a length of rope attached to a metal grapple. The man stood beneath a large tree and looked up, swining the grapple in ever expanding loops beside him before letting it fly up into the canopy. The grapple looped itself over a thick tree limb some twenty feet above the ground and caught firmly.

  The man tugged hard on the rope to test its strength, and then he climbed up with surprising agility and vanished into the canopy above.

  ‘So that’s where they’re hiding it,’ Soltin said.

  Qayin nodded. Given the sanctuary’s nature there were actually few places that such things could be hidden without observation. The sanctuary was large, but not so large that it could not be thoroughly searched, the soil barely a cubit deep and the waters of the shoreline shallow enough to wade in.

  Qayin crept forward, Soltin following as they moved silently out across the pathway between the dense trees and slowed alongside the dangling rope.

  ‘What do we do now?’ Soltin breathed.

  Qayin grinned. ‘That’s easy.’

  Qayin activated his pulse rifle and aimed up into the trees.

  ‘You’re going to kill him?!’ Soltin gasped.

  ‘He’s a drug dealer,’ Qayin replied. ‘No use in keeping him alive.’

  ‘But he might lead us to the suppliers!’ Soltin urged.

  Qayin did not reply as he took aim. He breathed softly as he picked out the shape of a man huddled on a thick limb high in the canopy, and the held his breath as he squeezed the trigger.

  The plasma rifle jolted down in his grip as the forest was shattered by the crack and whine of a plasma blast as Qayin’s shot rocketed up into the canopy and seared its way through the leaves. Qayin shot Soltin a dirty look as the younger Marine’s glove forced the rifle down at the last instant.

  They heard a cry of shock and Soltin jumped back as the thick rope dropped from out of the trees and landed in a dense coil at Qayin’s feet.

  ‘What the hell did you do that for?’ Qayin hissed.

  ‘It’s not our place to kill civilians,’ Soltin shot back. ‘No matter what they’re doing.’

  Qayin swallowed his anger and kept his rifle aimed up into the trees as he called out.

  ‘You’re under arrest, by the authority of Atlantia’s command crew,’ he bellowed. ‘Give up your weapons now or you’ll be blasted from that tree by my platoon!’

  A long silence enveloped the tree, the wind rustling through the leaves, and then a plasma pistol dropped out of the canopy and hit the path nearby with a deep thud.

  Qayin lowered his rifle as Soltin retrieved the pistol, and keyed a microphone.

  ‘Sergeant Qayin,’ he reported, ‘sector four. We got one.’

  ***

  XIV

  ‘I can’t wait!’

  Teera’s excitement was palpable as her Raython joined into close formation on Evelyn’s wing, the two fighters circling the Atlantia as it hove into position in high orbit above Chiron IV.

  ‘Stay sharp,’ Evelyn cautioned. ‘We don’t know what’s down there.’

  The blue planet’s oceans glowed as the sunrise appeared, a dazzling burst of brilliant light that swept the clouds and coasts far below in a haze of pinks, reds and orange.

  ‘Roger that,’ Teera replied. ‘But really, I just want to breathe fresh air again.’

  ‘I know what you mean.’

  Evelyn had, along with a handful of convicts and crew, been the last person to walk on a terrestrial planet with a breatheable atmosphere well over a year previously. Although the scrubbers aboard Atlantia did a remarkable job of cleaning the air supply, and the sanctuary provided a welcome relief from the rigours of ship-borne duty, neither could quite perfectly replicate the smell of a planetary atmosphere.

  Evelyn looked down at the planet’s vast sphere beneath them, too huge to fit in a single glance, and saw writhing coils of aurora sweeping through the planet’s skies like beautiful kaleidoscopic ribbons of light that seemed to beckon her toward them. She knew that they were a gorgeous but deadly phenomena, a sign of the cosmic rays bombarding the planet’s weakening magnetic field, and suddenly she saw them reach out toward her. Like giant golden glowing hands with hooked fingers that seemed to wrap around her Raython, she saw them loom before her and pass through her field of vision. Evelyn blinked, and the illusion vanished. With a start she realised that she was coming off the Devlamine high, and would need another dose soon because in the same instant she realised that she was sweating lightly and felt strangely cold.

  ‘Ranger One, aloft and joining.’

  ‘Copy that, Ranger One, you have the lead,’ Evelyn replied as she snapped herself out of her reverie and spotted the shuttle on her holographic display, closing in on them.

  ‘Reaper Two, guard formation, weapons cold.’

  ‘Roger.’

  Teera’s Raython broke out of close formation and the two fighters formed up on the shuttle as it turned toward the planet’s surface.

  ‘Lock onto any source of power you can find,’ Evelyn said. ‘It should be Taron Forge’s stash. We’ll pick that up first and then scout for supplies.’

  ‘I’ve got a good source of energy from the northern hemisphere, near the coast,’ came the Ranger pilot’s reply. ‘Elevation four-seven-oh, my mark. Atmospheric descent in ten seconds.’

  ‘Copy, your mark,’ Evelyn replied as she keyed in the location. ‘Let’s go.’

  The three craft nosed down toward Chiron’s surface, all three of them also turning into a de-orbit position and firing their retro-thrusters forward as they spread out to avoid collisions. At Chiron’s orbital speed of twelve thousand kilometres per hour, it took almost sixty seconds of burn before they really began descending at speed.

  Evelyn tilted her Raython’s nose up a little as she saw the temperature rise on her instruments and noted the flare of orange light around the fighter’s nose as it hit the upper atmosphere at close to five thousand kilometres per hour. The fearsome flames of re-entry fluttered and glowed around the three craft for several minutes as they descended, slowing rapidly. Evelyn’s cockpit shuddered around her and the little fighter’s wings rocked but she held the craft steady until the turbulence passed.

  The immense horizon gradually flattened out around her and the inky blackness of space was slowly replaced by a powder blue sky in front and a sweeping sunrise behind as they raced the aurora across the sky, veils of light flashing past like luminous clouds.

  ‘I’ve got lethal levels of radiation up here,’ Teera reported as she scanned her instruments. ‘This planet doesn’t have much time left.’

  The shuttle descended into a broken cloud layer, Evelyn formating on its left wing as Teera took up position on the far side. The clouds raced past and the Raython shook with turbulence, enough so that Evelyn found herself smiling. In space there was minimal sensation of flight, but down here in an atmosphere she could feel every bump in the air, every thermal and every cloud as they raced down through them.

  ‘I’ve got a lock on the energy source,’ Ranger One called.

  Evelyn glanced at her displays and frowned. A large, powerful source of energy appeared before her as well as signs of large constructions.

  ‘What the hell has he got down here?’ Teera asked across the radio as she too saw the energy source ahead of them.

  Evelyn felt a pulse of alarm as she got a handle on just how much energy she was looking at.

  ‘He’s not alone,’ she called. ‘Reaper Two, weapons hot, now! Ranger One, abort!’

  The shuttle pulled back up, climbing toward the cloud layer, but Evelyn realised that it was already too late. The blue sky twinkled as multiple metallic objects caught the dawn sunlight, the objects travelling fast on a direct intercept course. A series of alarms burst into life in Evelyn’s cockpit and made her jump as warning sensors flashed bright red at her.

  ‘What the hell?’ she uttered, and then she realised.

  ‘Multiple contacts, stern qu
arter, all armed!’ Teera yelled. ‘It’s a trap!’

  ‘Damn him,’ Evelyn cursed as she thought of Taron Forge. ‘He set us up!’

  *

  ‘How many?’

  Captain Idris Sansin paced the Atlantia’s bridge like a caged lion as he watched the trap unfold in the skies above Chiron IV and listened to the XO’s reply.

  ‘Fourteen, maybe more, but the signal’s weak. It seems like they’re running some kind of electronic interference. Our sensors did not detect them.’

  The captain turned and looked straight into the eyes of Taron Forge, who was leaning against a support post on the bridge alongside Yo’Ki with his arms casually folded across his chest.

  ‘You planned this,’ he snarled at the pirate.

  ‘You forced me into it.’

  ‘How many are there?’

  ‘Too many,’ Taron replied, ‘far too many.’

  Idris whirled away and pointed at the XO.

  ‘Launch the support fighters immediately and prepare an extraction force.’

  ‘Too little, too late,’ Taron murmured from behind the captain.

  ‘Broadcast a warning on all frequencies, battle fleet in the vicinity code,’ Idris ordered Lael.

  The communcations officer sent the signal immediately as Idris turned back to Taron Forge.

  ‘If even one of my people are hurt or killed, I’ll have your corpse impaled on a post outside Atlantia’s bridge as a warning to the others.’

  Taron smiled back at the captain.

  ‘Do as you will, but it won’t change a thing. Your pilots down there are totally outnumbered and outgunned. They won’t last a moment if they try to fight.’

  Idris clenched his fists and turned to watch the tactical display as the Raythons rushed headlong into the teeth of the attack, Teera’s alert call coming through broken and distorted by interference.

  ‘Multiple contacts… bearing ten-zero-elevation… minus oh-four!’