She slammed the key into the locking mechanism and turned it, the heavy security door swinging open as she pushed through and aimed the pulse rifle down the corridor ahead. Nobody was waiting for her so she pinned it open and then floated back to the bodies of the dead convicts and rifled through their belongings.
Knives. Prison ‘scrip. Ammunition.
Working fast, she stripped the stocky pirate of his uniform and boots, pulling them all on. She hauled herself to her feet, feeling as though she weighed a hundred tonnes, and in a laborious gait she ran to the security door and slammed it shut behind her. She turned the key in the lock and then turned and faced the corridor.
She checked the rifle over. Each could only carry around thirty rounds per magazine, and the two idiots at the security gates had loosed off at least fifteen between them. Each charge contained a dense, pressurised container of plasma, which was ruptured when the weapon fired: the released energy propelled the charge out of the rifle barrel at supersonic speed, the velocity turning it into a lethal ball of super–heated energy that spread with distance. She counted how many rounds she had left and then advanced as quickly as she could down the corridor.
As she moved, she saw for the first time a viewing port running along the wall to her left. She hurried to it and slowed as she looked out through the triple layers of polished glass.
The bright flare of the nearby star cast its light across the vast sweeping horizon of a planet. She looked down upon the expanses of ocean, endless forests and deserts, tundra and mountains cast by nature’s elegant hand and glowing in the warm light and for a moment her rage was forgotten.
Life goes on.
She gripped her rifle tighter, and moved on.
***
V
‘How many hostages do we got?’
Qayin’s voice rumbled like boulders from his massive chest, his body a dark–skinned cliff–face of muscle bursting from his prison fatigues, a physique cultivated using improvised resistance devices in prison: the rubber from clothes and flexible plastics. His hair, vivid locks of alternating blue and gold, dangled to his shoulders like the mane of some terrifying beast, and etched into his skin were spiral tattoos that glowed with rippling bioluminescence in the low light.
‘Enough,’ came the response from his companion.
Cutler was much older than Qayin, grey hair and a short beard framing icy grey eyes that darted from one sight to another like a bird of prey hunting for its next meal. Once the muscle in the prison block, Cutler was a spent force too old to maintain a crew on his own, and had allied himself to Qayin’s gang of tattoed killers. Qayin walked down the gangway toward the cell block with strides so long Cutler was forced almost to jog to keep up. The big convict filled over half the gangway, Cutler’s voice reaching him from over his right shoulder.
‘The prison hull’s not looking good. The cell block protected it from the worst of the blast, but I reckon we’re leaking fuel and atmosphere.’
Qayin sneered down at Cutler as he walked.
‘So you’re saying that as we’re facing death whichever hull we’re in, we may as well stay in prison?’
‘I ain’t saying that,’ Cutler protested. ‘But here we rule the roost, whereas over there we’ll be under armed guard. So what if they’ve got the sanctuary?’
‘They’ve also got the food, the water, the power supply and the only functioning engines as leverage,’ Qayin reminded him. ‘One flick of a switch and they could starve, freeze or drop us into that planet’s atmosphere. Apart from that, you’re a genius.’
‘Was just thinkin’ out loud.’
‘Don’t,’ Qayin advised ‘Thinkin’s not your job.’
Qayin slowed as he reached a small administration block. Four convicts were standing outside the block, their pulse rifles variously slung over their shoulders or propped against the walls. They took one look at Qayin and abruptly jerked to attention.
‘Did we get them all?’ Qayin asked.
‘All the survivors, right back to the engine room,’ Cutler confirmed. ‘There ain’t nobody else alive on the block but us and them.’
Qayin nodded and pushed open the door to the administration block.
Inside were several small offices and one larger, central office. In the centre of the larger office, sat in a circle with their backs to each other, bound and gagged, were fifteen uniformed correctional officers. They looked up at Qayin, the fear already etched into their features deepening as they took in the hulking convict’s immense size and uncompromising expression.
Qayin walked into the office, slowly circling the captive officers like a giant black shark watching terrified minnows. He glared at them, making eye contact with them one at a time, sensing their fear like blood in water.
Amid the group, one captive stood out. Her long, auburn hair was distinctive enough for Qayin to recognise her instantly and he turned and looked over his shoulder at Cutler. The old man smirked in delight.
‘Thought you might like that,’ Cutler said.
Qayin turned back to the woman and squatted down in front of her.
‘Meyanna Sansin,’ he said. ‘Welcome to the new order, doctor.’
The woman tried to speak through her gag. Qayin reached up with one giant hand and pulled the gag free.
‘This isn’t going to work, Qayin,’ she said. ‘They’ll drop you all into orbit and let you burn.’
Qayin raised an eyebrow, his thick gold and blue braided hair swaying as he shook his head.
‘And you with us?’ he mocked her.
‘I’d happily go to hell if I could drag you with me,’ she spat.
‘Now that’s no way for a doctor to speak,’ Qayin chided her. ‘You got the whole crew to think of now, because what the good captain does will affect what happens to you, right?’
Meyanna smiled grimly. ‘He’s got the stones to stand up to you, Qayin, because win, lose or draw, he’s the captain and you’re not.’
Qayin grinned broadly and shoved her gag back into place before he stood and surveyed the hostages. Four of them wore not the uniforms of correctional officers but the black fatigues of marines, assigned as back–up in the event of prison riots. Heavily armed and well trained, a number of them had died when the block had been evacuated of air. The rest had been captured by Qayin and his men, hopelessly outnumbered and unable to retreat to the Atlantia when the governor had followed procedure and sealed the hatches.
Qayin moved to face the soldiers.
‘Names?’
All four of the men refused to make eye contact with him, following their training and staring instead at the floor or their boots.
‘No matter,’ Qayin said. ‘The captain will know your faces when we slice them off and send them to him, one at a time.’ He turned to Cutler. ‘We’ll start with them, as soon as communication is established.’
‘What about the wife?’ Cutler asked.
Qayin looked at Meyanna Sansin for a moment.
‘Save her for now,’ he replied. ‘If the good captain has the stomach to watch his troops tortured and killed, we’ll need to step up to the next level.’
A convict’s running boots echoed down the corridor outside and a young, tanned face laced with purple tattoos poked his head into the office.
‘Qayin, you’ve gotta see this.’
*
The prison hull’s control centre was clouded with a swirling miasma of blue smoke curling from the tip of a thick cigar clasped between Qayin’s teeth. He strode in behind the tattoed kid and sprawled in a command chair that had once been occupied by the prison governor, Oculin Hayes. Hayes’ severed head was now propped against a console like a discarded toy, fat purple tongue hanging from fat purple lips against fat purple jowls.
‘What is it?’
‘She’s out,’ came the reply. ‘She’s killed them all.’
Qayin pulled the cigar from his teeth and his bioluminescent tattoos flared and shimmered on his face. He stood up as the contro
l centre fell utterly silent. Dozens of convicts, all sat at control stations around the dimly lit centre with their faces glowing in the light of their monitors, watched as Qayin strode down off the command platform and peered over the shoulder of one of his men.
A screen showed a corridor deep in the prison complex, and through it strode a uniformed and armed person wearing a metallic mask. Qayin smiled, his teeth bright white against his dark skin.
‘Like death does she wander,’ he whispered as though quoting a verse.
The control centre was hexagonal, computer terminals occupying each wall except for a single access door, currently sealed shut. Dark and filled with glowing lights and control panels, it served as a secondary nerve centre for Atlantia Five, the prison hull. The primary control centre was the frigate’s bridge, currently sealed off from the prison hull. For the purpose of security the prison hull was tethered to the Atlantia rather than directly connected, preventing any form of access by the prisoners in the event of an outbreak. Four temporary passages were available to transfer personnel coming on and off duty from the prison hull, and at any time only one was connected and heavily guarded.
Qayin spoke, his voice heavy and deep enough that it seemed to reverberate through the room.
‘How many of you want to live?’
The silence grew heavy in the room until one of the convicts, a spiky–haired youth with eyes sunken from substance abuse replied. ‘She’s only one person, one woman. What’s she going to do to us?’
Qayin turned his head. Slowly, he strode across the control centre to where the youth sat at his station. The kid’s bravado vanished like an errant thought as Qayin loomed above him, the muscles in his neck sheened with sweat in the heat. He glanced around him at the watching convicts.
‘You want to know why you should fear her?’ he asked, looking each of them in the eye.
Silence replied, the convicts watching and waiting.
Qayin swung back to the seated youth, the blade in his hand appearing as though by magic as it flashed in the light. It slammed into the kid’s head behind the ear with a dull crunch, the metal sunk to the hilt as it punctured the kid’s brain. His eyes flared wide and then the life vanished from them and he slumped in his seat, the weapon poking from his head.
Qayin stood up to his full height. ‘You should fear her because I do.’
The convicts watched Qayin for a long moment and then one of them raised a furtive hand.
‘Who is she?’
Qayin turned away from the dead youth and strode back to slump into the governor’s chair. He put the cigar back between his lips and drew deeply upon it, exhaled a billowing cloud of smoke onto the air as he replied.
‘She is death,’ he said. ‘Wherever she goes, chaos follows. There were over a thousand convicts upon this vessel. Only four of them were forced to wear those masks. Three of those had killed over a hundred men between them, and they wouldn’t come within a hundred cubits of that woman.’
‘What’s her name?’
Qayin turned to the man who had spoken and then he laughed loud enough to make several men closer to him flinch.
‘Her name?’ he echoed. ‘She is by far the most dangerous person aboard this vessel and you give a damn about her name?’
A long silence followed until a convict asked: ‘What shall we do about her?’
Qayin removed the cigar from his mouth again and rubbed his temples. ‘How long since last contact with the bridge?’
‘Two hours,’ came a quick response. ‘They’re calling us every sixty seconds.’
Qayin looked up at a series of monitors, several of which had been attuned to cameras outside the vessel. They looked for’ard, beyond the prison hull’s ugly surface to where a giant frigate was illuminated by the glow from the nearby star. Huge engines were mounted vertically on strakes either side of a long, slender hull burnished by long exposure to deep space radiation and countless micrometeorite impacts. Qayin could see her name emblazoned upon her stern.
ATLANTIA
‘Put them on loudspeaker,’ Qayin said.
The sound of a man’s voice echoed through the control centre, the transmission broken and scratchy.
‘… we cannot submit to your demands… too many lives at risk and we… … no time left… please respond...’
‘It will be some time before the Word arrives,’ Qayin said over the transmission, ‘if at all. Right now all we have to worry about is the power supply and Alpha Zero Seven.’
‘Or the captain dropping us into the planetary atmosphere,’ said an accusing voice. ‘In which case we’ll all be toasted and none of this will matter.’
A weariness infected Cutler’s expression.
‘I didn’t ask you,’ Qayin snapped back.
‘That’s the problem,’ Cutler replied. ‘You’ve got yourself backed into a corner and there’s no way out.’
‘Says who?’ Qayin shouted as he stood and pointed one huge, muscular arm at Cutler. ‘You?’
‘Me,’ Cutler replied without anger. ‘We’ve already lost half the rear of the hull, a thousand or so souls and now we’re hanging on to the main section’s hull by nothing more than the tethers and a single pressure hatch. Threatening them with annihilation by dragging them down with us toward that planet isn’t exactly a great bargaining chip, Qayin.’
‘They’re sweatin’ on it,’ Qayin snarled back.
‘So are we,’ Cutler countered. ‘If the Word arrives while we’re all stuck here, then we’re all dead.’
‘We got this far,’ Qayin said.
‘Only because somebody blew up the damned cell block!’ Cutler wailed. ‘You didn’t have anything to do with that, so it must have been arranged by somebody aboard Atlantia. It’s only dumb luck that any of us got this far. Much longer and they’ll cut us off themselves.’
Qayin shot the old man a dirty look but did not respond.
‘How long will our own power last?’ asked a convict.
Cutler shrugged. ‘Who knows? The fusion core must have been damaged from the blast. If it shorts or blows then we either freeze to death up here or burn to death down there.’ Cutler gestured to the monitors trained on the planet far below them. ‘Either way, we’re dead.’
‘We were dead before this happened!’ Qayin snarled as he paced up and down in front of the governor’s chair.
‘You were dead the moment you cut off the governor’s head,’ Cutler pointed out.
‘He disrespected me,’ Qayin growled.
‘You overreacted.’
Qayin stormed down off the platform and loomed over Cutler, his fists clenched. ‘How ‘bout I overreact again?’
Cutler held his ground but did not reply. A voice cut across the confrontation. ‘She’s almost here.’
Qayin scowled at Cutler, then turned away and looked at the monitor.
‘You should kill her,’ Cutler said to him, ‘before she kills all of us.’
Qayin stared at the monitor and then shook his head. ‘No. We need to turn her. She might be our only way out of this.’
‘How the hell do you figure that?’ Cutler asked.
‘Fear,’ Qayin replied. ‘We’ve got to force the captain to bargain for the lives of the hostages.’
‘Because of her?’ Cutler asked. ‘How is she going to threaten them?’
Qayin unclipped the pistol holster he wore at his belt. He dropped the holster and weapon onto the governor’s seat.
‘Being here should be about enough,’ he replied.
‘I think you overestimate her.’
‘You know how many times the Word has used those masks on people?’ Qayin asked rhetorically. ‘Fifteen times in a hundred years.’
‘So? She’s a real bad dude. It’s just another reason for them to keep us pinned down in here.’
‘No, it’s a reason for them to keep her silenced,’ Qayin replied. ‘Those masks were used to stop people speaking. The Word doesn’t want people to hear what they have to say, that’s
why they put them on.’
‘Why not just kill them?’
‘Too easy,’ Qayin said as he strode toward the security door. ‘You know what else the Word used to do before they put those masks on? They wiped their memories, so I’ve heard.’
Cutler turned as Qayin opened the security door.
‘So you’re just going to let her walk on in here, just like that?’
‘Just like that,’ Qayin said, ‘because it’s the last thing the captain would expect us to do.’
***
VI
Captain Idris Sansin strode onto the Atlantia’s bridge and surveyed a scene of controlled chaos.
The bridge consisted of a raised platform that held the captain’s chair and control panel, all facing a viewing platform that looked out over the front of the Atlantia. All around the circular bridge were control stations manned by twelve sworn officers, the captain’s command crew who could, in principal, perform any action across the entire vessel without ever leaving the bridge. The Atlantia, his ship, his pride: now crippled by a blast that had freed hundreds of convicted criminals. The Atlantia, once a front–line frigate of the Colonial Fleet, now light years from home, barely able to support her military and civilian compliment and dragged down by the ugly grey hull being dragged along behind it.
The crew were fully engaged in an attempt to stem the tide of a series of tremendous calamities that had befallen the vessel. He surveyed them, his craggy features illuminated by the endless banks of lights and screens in the otherwise dark bridge.
‘Control status?’ he asked.
‘We’ve lost all command functions to the prison hull and what’s left of the high–security wing has been detatched to burn up in the atmosphere,’ came the desperate response from Lael, a woman barely out of her teens, her dark hair cropped short. ‘Still no communication from the prison hull.’
The captain strode up to his command chair and turned to look at several screens behind him, each relaying visual information from cameras mounted outside.
Atlantia Series 1: Survivor Page 4
