‘You okay?’ Meyanna asked.
‘I’ve been coughing a lot lately,’ Dhalere admitted. ‘Must be a bug or something.’
‘Are you taking anything for it?’
‘It’ll pass,’ Dhalere replied. ‘I’ll fight it off.’
‘I won’t take much blood and it won’t take long,’ Meyanna promised. ‘If you have any Infectors in your bloodstream they won’t have anywhere else to run and we’ll detect them. And if you’ve got anything else worse than just a cold, I’ll see that too.’
‘How long does it take?’ Dhalere asked. ‘The analysis, I mean?’
‘A couple of hours or so,’ Meyanna replied. ‘I’ll let you know as soon as I can what the results are.’
Dhalere lay back and stared up at the ceiling. She barely made a sound as Meyanna slipped the needle into a vein and then using a remote–control activated the X–Ray scanner. The device hummed as Meyanna extracted a small amount of blood, waited a few seconds, then drew a little more.
As Dhalere searched the ceiling above her, a movement caught her eye. She glanced sideways and saw the tiny sphere of Infectors trembling. The sphere changed shape into a teardrop, the narrow tip pointing toward her like a compass pointing toward the poles.
Dhalere looked away and saw Meyanna staring down at her.
‘Okay?’
‘Sure,’ Dhalere murmured. ‘Just distracting myself.’
‘It’s nearly done now.’
Dhalere remained still as her blood was drawn. Meyanna could see that the councillor did not enjoy being in the laboratory with a needle in her arm, and it was fair to say that most people did not relish the experience. The relief when they discovered that they were not infected far outweighed the discomfort, however.
‘What if they know?’ Dhalere asked.
‘Know what?’
‘What if they know how to hide?’
‘There is nowhere to hide,’ Meyanna promised. ‘The X–Rays watch for them and the blood flow means that they can’t disperse into the bloodstream without being detected. As soon as I’ve drawn this blood it will be placed in a magnetically sealed chamber and blasted with microwaves to destroy any bots inside. All I’ll see in the analysis is their little corpses, if there are any.’
Dhalere shivered again, her glowing skin seeming paler than usual as she coughed.
Meyanna withdrew the needle and let Dhalere apply pressure to the puncture wound as she crossed the laboratory and placed the needle in a microwave chamber. Moments later, the sample was being bombarded behind a sealed glass screen.
‘Is that it?’ Dhalere asked.
‘That’s it,’ Meyanna replied. ‘You’re good to go.’
Dhalere seemed visibly relieved. ‘Good, that means I can get to work. The Sylph has supplies that we need and I want the captain to let me go aboard her.’
‘The Sylph is not quarantined,’ Meyanna pointed out. ‘If you go aboard her I’ll have to run this test again when you get back.’
‘That’s fine,’ Dhalere said. ‘If it’s this easy, you can run it every day so we can both sleep better at night.’
The councillor pulled on her jacket and headed for the laboratory door. She was almost there when she noticed the teardrop shaped ball of Infector’s following her every move and Meyanna turning toward the chamber. Dhalere turned back sharply, standing in front of the magnetic chamber and blocking the doctor’s view of it.
‘Doctor? There is some discussion among the civilians, rumours mostly. They keep hearing that somebody, somewhere aboard this ship is infected, a carrier. Is this true?’
Meyanna’s expression slipped a little, hiding her uncertainty behind the veil of a bright smile.
‘I think that it’s a healthy paranoia,’ she replied.
‘So, you don’t know for sure whether there is or not?’
‘I would say that it’s unlikely,’ the doctor said. ‘But we can’t be too careful, right? Hence this second round of tests.’
‘They’re saying that it’s got something to do with Evelyn.’
Meyanna stared at Dhalere for a moment before she replied. ‘Medical records are a matter of confidentiality between myself and my patients.’
‘But she does come here,’ Dhalere pressed. ‘I’ve seen her, almost every other day. Is she a carrier?’
‘No,’ Meyanna said. ‘She is definitely not a carrier. Councillor, even if I did know that there was a carrier aboard I would not be able to share that information with you. You know this.’
‘Yes, but these are extraordinary times and the lives of our people depend on what we do. A democratic sharing of knowledge will almost always out–perform the secrecy that was the hallmark of the colonial military.’ Dhalere smiled. ‘I simply wish to reassure our people that they are safe aboard this ship, because if they’re not there’s another one right outside that we could transfer to.’
Meyanna stared at the councillor in shock.
‘The Sylph?’ she asked. ‘It’s a merchant vessel, unarmed. If the Word found it, everybody aboard would be defenceless.’
‘It is a civilian vessel,’ Dhalere replied, ‘and as such legally it falls under my command. It may prove beneficial to us to board and occupy her as a new home for the civilians.’
‘That’s crazy,’ Meyanna uttered. ‘The civilians have the sanctuary to themselves. They’re not going to abandon that for a rusty merchant ship.’
Dhalere coughed once more, then opened the laboratory door as she left.
‘You’d be amazed what people will do to be out from under the yoke of the military.’
Dhalere strode from the laboratory. Meyanna watched the councillor go, completely unable to fathom what she was attempting to do. Independence, for no gain.
She looked at the perfect sphere of Infectors in the chamber and thought of the Word. The same thing: independence, for no gain, even the loss of the humanity that created it.
***
X
Evelyn pulled off her visor and loosened her flight suit as the temperature on the Sylph’s bridge slowly began to climb. All around her personnel were manning the control stations as systems began coming back on–line one by one, reactivated by the Marines.
The main lighting flickered back on in the bridge, illuminating a sparse but efficient layout dominated as always by a viewing screen.
‘Ship’s logs?’ Andaim asked as Bra’hiv’s men scoured the controls.
‘All wiped,’ came the response from Lieutenant C’rairn, ‘half an orbit ago. Engines were manually shut down and all power re–routed to emergency life–support. Looks like most of it was done here at the bridge, which was then sealed, and then the engines disconnected in the generator rooms afterward.’
A reply came over the bridge tannoy, the voice of Idris Sansin beamed across from the Atlantia.
‘By whom?’
‘No record of who wiped the logs,’ said C’rairn, ‘not even any manifest left to figure out who was aboard her, who her command crew were, nothing.’
‘So they shut the ship down,’ Andaim said, ‘seal the bridge, seal all hatches, and then abandon her?’
‘Reminds me of the Avenger,’ Evelyn said. ‘The Word shut her down, keeping only basic life–support so that the infected crew could attack and repel boarders. Other than that she was dead.’
‘True,’ Sansin replied, ‘but then she was still being operated by her crew from the bridge. The Sylph is entirely abandoned.’
‘Are you not picking up any signs of life at all?’ Evelyn pressed. ‘Not even the slightest hint of survivors?’
Lael’s voice was lighter than the captain’s, but still inflected with the brisk, clipped tones of a colonial officer.
‘Scans remain inconclusive due to the Sylph’s hull mass. She’s too big to probe every corner. Bra’hiv’s men will have to check the hold, engine and generator rooms and the ventilation system.’
‘That could take months,’ Andaim said. ‘This is a smash and grab. We do
n’t need the ship, just what’s aboard.’
‘Agreed,’ Sansin replied. ‘But Councillor Dhalere is already claiming the ship as belonging to the civilians. As soon as she’s been scanned enough to satisfy General Bra’hiv, we’ll have more hands board her and start shipping supplies back to the Atlantia. Twelve hours and we’re gone – then Dhalere can do whatever she wants with the Sylph, understood?’
‘Aye captain,’ Andaim said, and clapped his gloved hands loudly as he called out. ‘Okay, let’s get to it!’
Evelyn thought of the stairwell they had ascended to reach the bridge and of the shadowy movement she had spotted there. If someone, or something, was still alive aboard the ship then it could have doubled back and moved below them. She stepped forward to Andaim’s side. ‘I’ll head down to the hold,’ she said.
‘I’ll need you to help pilot the shuttles back and forth,’ Andaim said as he pored over a map of the ship. ‘All hands on deck, I’m afraid.’
‘That’s easy enough, the rookies can do that,’ Evelyn shot back. ‘There’s something here and I want to know what it is.’
Evelyn saw Bra’hiv and several of the Marines from the corner of her eye, all watching the exchange. Andaim stood upright again and looked down at her.
‘You’re still sure you saw something?’
‘One hundred per cent.’
‘I can’t spare the men. We’ve got our hands full as it is.’
‘Their hands will be a lot more full if the Word is aboard!’
‘The Word isn’t aboard, Evelyn!’ Andaim snapped. The bridge fell silent. ‘It would have attacked us by now!’
Evelyn stood immobile for a moment and then her anger surged to the surface. She grabbed her pistol and checked its load.
‘Fine,’ she snapped. ‘I’ll go my damned self!’
Evelyn whirled away and marched for the bridge exit.
‘You walk out that door and I’ll have you grounded!’
Evelyn reached the bridge door and looked over her shoulder at him. ‘Better grounded than dead.’
Bra’hiv reached out for her arm and held it gently. ‘No sense in rushing off on your own, Evelyn. Once we’re sorted here, I can spare a couple of guys.’
‘I’ll go,’ C’rairn added. ‘Many hands make light work and all that, and maybe while we’re down there we can take a look at the engineering panels in the generator room, find a way to re–start the engines.’
‘Me too,’ Qayin rumbled. ‘Last time you went wandering’ off on your own aboard a ship it got blown to pieces.’
Evelyn smiled at the three of them, but it was Andaim’s voice that cut across the bridge.
‘You’ll all be staying here and that’s an order. The Word is not aboard this ship.’
Evelyn opened her mouth to respond when a distant claxon sounded through the ship and a display panel showed a series of power conduits flickering out near the engine rooms.
‘What’s that?’ Lieutenant C’rairn asked.
‘You’re losing power,’ Lael warned them from the Atlantia.
‘The aft relay stations are being shut down,’ C’rairn said as he dashed to the engineering panel and surveyed the display. ‘The engine rooms are being isolated, temperature controls shut down again.’ He looked up. ‘It’s being done manually, on site.’
Evelyn looked at Andaim, who covered his surprise as he pointed at them.
‘Go, now!’ he snapped. ‘And seal off the bridge and landing bays as you go!’
Evelyn ran out of the bridge and down the corridor toward the stairwells, Bra’hiv, Qayin, C’rairn and several other Marines in hot pursuit. She burst out onto the stairwell and plunged down them, her flight–suit’s fifty percent gravity reducing some of the shock of each landing as she leapt down ten steps at a time. Behind her, Bra’hiv mimicked her rapid descent.
The darkness in the stairwells deepened as they descended down toward the hold, the relay stations having shut off the power supply. Evelyn felt the cold deepen as the light faded away above them, touching her skin with the raw sensation of a deep freeze as she reached the bottom of the stairwell and landed cat–like on the deck to face a sealed hatch leading aft.
Bra’hiv and C’rairn landed alongside her and approached the hatch as Evelyn and Qayin covered them. The Marines hauled the hatch open to reveal a long, silent corridor that led into the main hold.
Bra’hiv gestured to Evelyn, who advanced into the corridor with Qayin at her side. The general posted two sentries by the hatch to prevent anything inside the hold from escaping, and then followed Evelyn in with C’rairn at his side.
Evelyn advanced slowly through the gloom, one careful step after another until she reached the end of the corridor and saw the vast expanses of the Sylph’s hold open up before her. Like a cavern, sectioned off by massive bulkheads that had huge open doors set into them, the hold was stacked with myriad crates, boxes, pallets and drums lashed high above their heads, like a deep valley with cliffs of wood and steel. Dim overhead lights cast shafts of illumination that barely reached the deck, the air here still misty with the cold.
Cleared paths weaved in orderly lines like highways between the mountainous stores, their edges marked with bright yellow lines. Bra’hiv pointed down each of them, and in silence the Marines split up into pairs. Evelyn advanced down the central aisle, Qayin close behind her.
She moved quietly, gently setting each boot down to avoid the sound of her footfalls betraying her presence. She could see various machines used to move stock below decks, all abandoned. But as she moved through the towering store room, Bra’hiv and C’rairn moving alongside her in the next aisle, so she spotted a crate that had been split open, the contents scattered across the deck before her.
Evelyn quickened her pace and knelt down alongside the debris.
‘Food,’ she whispered to Qayin.
The big man nodded, his tattoos glowing like thin trails of magma against black rocks as his eyes swivelled up to look around the hold.
‘Andaim was right,’ he said. ‘It ain’t the Word aboard.’
‘Then what the hell is it if…?’
A plasma blast crackled as Evelyn felt herself lifted off the deck and hurled across the hold to crash into a stack of boxes. A plasma charge smashed into the deck where she had been crouching as Qayin crashed down alongside her, one huge hand beneath her shoulder where he had lifted her and propelled them clear of the shot. A spray of bright blue–white plasma hissed as it melted plastic cases nearby as Evelyn scrambled for cover.
‘Enemy front!’ Bra’hiv yelled as he returned fire.
She saw several more plasma rounds smash into metal stanchions further down the hold, the general’s shots illuminating the darkness in flickering spheres of harsh white light. Evelyn saw a shadowy form dash out of sight as it fled the lethal hail of fire.
‘I’ll be damned,’ Qayin growled as he got to his feet and surged forward, hugging the cover of the stacked supplies as he advanced.
Evelyn got to her feet and followed him, as Bra’hiv and C’rairn emerged from the neighbouring aisle and the general gestured with a pointed finger toward the starboard wall of the hold. Evelyn and Qayin crouched in the shadows as Bra’hiv and C’rairn moved across to the cover of the far side of their aisle. Then, as a group, they advanced in pursuit of their quarry.
A pin point of fiery light flashed and Evelyn dove onto the deck as a plasma round crackled and shot across the hold. It flashed by above her head and crashed into stacked boxes behind her. Qayin leaped out of the way of the spray of super–heated plasma and Evelyn rolled across the deck as it splattered down where she had been moments before.
‘Return fire!’
Bra’hiv, C’rairn, Qayin and Evelyn all opened fire at once, multiple plasma rounds zipping across the darkened hold and smashing across the starboard hull wall in a blaze of fiery light. Starbursts of plasma sprayed down into the gloom and she heard amid the din of the rifle fire a deep cry of pain.
Evelyn looked across at Bra’hiv and signalled where the enemy was. Bra’hiv nodded and with C’rairn he headed aft, hoping to catch their quarry in a cross–fire. Evelyn fired her pistol again, two rounds in the vicinity of where she had heard the cry.
‘It’s hunkered down,’ Qayin snarled, ‘nowhere to run.’
Evelyn moved forward and approached the hull wall as to her far left she saw Bra’hiv and C’rairn advancing one at a time, covering each other as they closed in.
A blast of plasma rounds raced up at Evelyn and she whirled aside into cover as the shots howled by and sailed off to hit high on the port wall of the hull. The spray of plasma was already becoming a fire hazard and she could smell smouldering plastics, a haze of blue smoke hovering in the air.
Bra’hiv settled into position, his rifle’s barrel resting across a steel drum as C’rairn covered him from behind. Qayin positioned himself alongside Evelyn as the general’s voice called out.
‘We have you surrounded!’ he boomed. ‘There’s no use in fighting. Come out with your hands in the air and we’ll take you into custody. You will not be harmed, is that understood?’
A deep growl reverberated across the hold and Evelyn realised that they were not being understood. The growl was neither animal nor human, and the sound of it sent a pulse of concern twisting through her belly. They were facing something that would fight to the death like a wounded animal, yet had the intelligence of a human being.
‘It’s gotta be a Veng’en,’ she yelled.
Lieutenant C’rairn glanced across at her. ‘Great. Now what do we do?’
Evelyn knew that the Veng’en were sufficiently war–like that their quarry would be likely to shoot itself rather than admit defeat or surrender to humans. She watched for a moment and then made a decision.
‘Qayin,’ she whispered, ‘give me your medi–pack.’
The big man looked at her and frowned. ‘You injured?’
Atlantia Series 2: Retaliator Page 8
