‘Are we done here?’ Qayin asked again.
The other convicts relaxed, their eyes off the woman and back onto Qayin. He turned to a convict manning the communications terminal.
‘Contact the bridge,’ he ordered. ‘It’s time to end this.’
Qayin turned to see Alpha standing on the edge of the platform, her back to the convicts lower down. She was either entirely fearless or psychologically adept: none of the convicts moved toward her, and the man she had injured was still whimpering as he bound his wound with strips of grubby clothing torn from his fatigues.
‘Bridge, this is cell block.’
The convicts listened and waited. They didn’t have to wait long.
‘Cell block, bridge.’
Angry. Uncompromising. Probably a senior officer, Qayin guessed, trying to maintain the hard line. The Word. Qayin pressed a button on the governor’s chair and the communications link opened up onto loudspeaker as he replied.
‘It’s time to negotiate,’ Qayin said.
‘There will be no negotiating. The Word does not…’
‘The Word is irrelevant here,’ Qayin interrupted. ‘You have a choice. Either you allow us access to the Atlantia or we pull you all down to certain death with us.’
‘You seem to have forgotten that we can send men out to cut you away at any time we choose.’
‘Then why haven’t you?’ Qayin asked. ‘Is it, perhaps, because you left a few people behind?’
A long silence echoed down the communications channel.
‘How many of our people do you have?’
Qayin’s grinned.
‘The only way you’ll find that out is if they walk across with us, or we finish sending all the pieces of them.’
‘How many?’
‘Several,’ Qayin said. ‘We will bring them with us provided you do exactly as I say.’
‘I want proof of life.’
‘You want?’ Qayin asked, smiling broadly. ‘You want. Do we have somebody here important to you?’
The channel clicked and a new voice appeared. Captain Idris Sansin’s brittle, rough tones were clearly audible over the link.
‘Now you listen to me, scum. We give the orders here. The Word will decide what happens.’
Qayin did not respond. He put his fingers to his lips as he looked around the control centre. Nobody made a sound.
‘Do you hear me?!’
Qayin made a cradle for his chin from his interlinked fingers and listened for a moment.
‘I’m talking to you, scum! Do you have any idea what will happen to you when the Word finds us and…’
‘If they find us, captain,’ Qayin replied, ‘which won’t happen before we’re all pulled down into the planet’s atmosphere. Do you want to live, or die?’
A long silence and then the gruff voice replied.
‘I’ll do whatever I have to do to ensure the safety of my passengers and crew.’
‘Including murder?’ Qayin asked. ‘Surely, that would make you no less criminal than us. I’m surprised we have so much in common, captain.’
A ripple of low chuckles wafted around the control centre.
‘We have nothing in common, Qayin,’ came the reply.
‘We are in danger,’ Qayin shot back. ‘We are in crisis. None of us wants to die. We have much in common and we must work together. We don’t like it. You don’t like it. Our hostages sure as hell don’t like it but it’s happening.’
Qayin stood up and strolled across to Governor Hayes’ grisly severed head. He picked it up by the hair and carried it across to one of the observation monitors, gesturing to one of the convicts as he went.
‘Open the feed,’ he said.
The monitor flickered into life and Qayin thrust the decapitated head into view. A gasp of disgust whispered down the channel.
‘You’re animals,’ came the captain’s response. ‘You don’t deserve to live.’
‘That’s what the governor thought when he cleansed the cell block,’ Qayin replied as he tossed the governor’s head aside and beckoned Alpha across to him. She walked across the platform to his side. ‘Got somebody for you to meet. You don’t give us what we want, we’ll put her to work on the hostages.’
Qayin stood to one side and Alpha moved to stand in front of the screen. Another gasp of disbelief.
‘Her? They were terminated!’
‘All but one,’ Qayin replied. ‘And she’s already killed four of my men. I’d like to say I control her, but in truth, she’s got her own agenda. You did fire plasma charges at her escape capsule, didn’t you captain, after the blast? We saw them.’
Another long silence and then Qayin spoke loudly.
‘You have one hour, captain, or I’ll broadcast what she does to the hostages live across the whole damned ship.’
***
VIII
Captain Idris Sansin sat in the commander’s chair on the bridge, watching the surveillance monitors arrayed before him. Two showed the tattered remnants of the tethers between the prison hull and the Atlantia, two more the only intact passage which was currently guarded by twenty of his best marines on permanent rotation under Bra’hiv’s command.
‘Status report?’ he asked his first officer.
Andaim, a young lieutenant and fighter pilot upon whom Idris had found himself relying in these troubled times, called out his reply from across the bridge. ‘All life–support systems active, repairs ongoing to the hull, but we can’t access the prison hull from here. The only way in would be via shuttle, maybe through the damaged stern section.’
The captain dragged his weary frame out of his chair and strode to the aft section of the bridge. There, a spiral staircase led up to a viewing platform, a smaller room surrounded by windows that afforded the captain a broad view of his vessel.
He climbed the stairs and stood inside the platform, examining the spectacular panorama arrayed before him.
Below him was the Atlantia’s main hull, a long and angular construction typical of ship–of–the–line frigates of Colonial design. Strictly speaking the Atlantia was an out of commission warship assigned to the prison service, stripped of many of her weapons and with a large portion of her hull given over to accommodation for the families of both military and correctional officers attached to her. Almost three hundred men, women and children lived in the sanctuary, protected by a hundred or so sworn military officers. Another hundred or so correctional staff carried out their duties in the prison – or rather, they had done until the blast that had caused such terrible carnage.
The Atlantia’s hull was almost half a mile in length. At its bow was a vast scoop that drew in the hydrogen that floated in immense yet tenuous quantities throughout the cosmos, obtaining fuel sufficient to provide light and heat for the entire vessel. Those scoops also fed the enormous ion engines attached to either flank of the Atlantia on vast wing–like structures, although the frigate was incapable of atmospheric flight.
Further, retractable scoops slung beneath the Atlantia’s keel were used to skim the atmospheres of planets or even the tails of comets to extract other essential elements such as oxygen, nitrogen and various ices. All of these valuable chemicals were then used to sustain life in the sanctuary as well as more general life support.
Once a large storage area for weapons, stores and maintenance, the Atlantia’s core hull was now a place of such beauty that far from having to be cajoled into joining the colonial prison service officers virtually fought each other for a place. Such were the rewards required for men to spend long months away from home. Forested, with an illuminated sky powered by the vessel’s central fuel core, the sanctuary represented a near–perfect copy of home, complete with isolated abodes for the crew and their families, all of it perfectly concealed and protected with the vast plated hull.
Idris lifted his head to peer beyond the Atlantia to where the angular, ugly black and grey mass of the prison hull trailed it. Apart from blinking anti–collision beacons there w
as little to see. Unadorned grey metal hull plating, all of it surrounded in a halo of debris from the blast. Atlantia 5 was his charge, his responsibility, and now likely his doom.
Behind the ship loomed the planet, filling the captain’s field of view and far too vast to take in at a single glance.
‘Captain?’
Andaim had ascended the staircase behind the captain and stood with his hands behind his back.
‘What is it, lieutenant?’
‘Sir, we have calculated that the vessel can only remain in a stable orbit for a couple of days before the prison hull drags us too close to the atmosphere. If we sink too deep into its gravitational well we will…’
‘I know,’ Idris replied, cutting his first officer off as he looked up at the colossal planet. ‘Our engines won’t have sufficient thrust to push us out of the planet’s gravitational field.’
For a frigate the Atlantia was enormously powerful, but she was designed for deep space operations. Her engines were designed not for bursts of immense thrust but for the gradual building of the tremendous velocities required to traverse the vast expanses of interstellar space in reasonable amounts of time. Once those velocities were reached the engines were shut down; the ship’s inertia and the negligible resistance in the vacuum of space meant that no further input was required until she reached her destination, upon which she would reverse her orientation and begin the deceleration to orbital velocities.
Those same engines were no match for the gravity of a planet, even a small one such as that which they orbited.
‘We’re already accelerating and sinking fast, sir,’ Andaim added.
The captain eyed the planet’s sweeping horizon for a moment, his practiced eye calculating angles.
‘There’s a fair chance we could use the increased velocity to skim the planet’s atmosphere and break orbit across her horizon.’
‘Calculations suggest the risk is too great,’ Andaim countered. ‘Once we’re that close, there’s no escape if you’re wrong.’
Idris pinched the corners of his eyes between finger and thumb. ‘How did this happen?’
‘We still don’t know sir. All we’re certain of is that the blast came from within the high–security wing and that it was deliberate. The fires that came after and destroyed the prison wing were secondary features, not a planned…’
‘I get the picture, Andaim,’ Idris snapped. ‘Do we have any idea who did this?’
‘Not yet sir.’
‘What about the survivor?’ Idris asked.
‘We have no idea how that was possible, sir. All of the convicts incarcerated in the high–security wing perished either in the blast or immediately afterward when their escape capsules were….’
‘Destroyed,’ the captain finished the sentence for his officer. ‘Councillor Hevel has much to answer for. And yet, despite everything, there she is.’
He pointed to a monitor, one of several that lined the observation platform to relay imagery from the bridge to those above it. The monitor was filled with a still–image of the masked convict, Alpha–Zero–Seven, her metal face staring into the camera.
Andaim shivered. ‘Who is she?’
‘Her file is almost non–existent. No criminal record until five precessions ago, when she apparently murdered her family,a crime serious enough to silence her and send her out to Atlantia Five to permanent isolation and biological stasis.’
‘Castaway protocol,’ Andaim nodded. ‘Only heard of one other case in the history of the Word.’
‘My guess is that she’s somehow behind all of this,’ Idris said. ‘I don’t pretend to know how, but she got herself out and she’s on the rampage. You saw what happened. Qayin and his thugs didn’t have a clue what to do until she showed up, probably didn’t have the guts to start torturing hostages. But this one, she’s capable of anything and they know it.’
Andaim swallowed, and the captain could see the fear leeching from his pores as he spoke.
‘I don’t suppose…’
‘We’re on our own out here and we need to think out of the box,’ Idris replied, wondering whether the lieutenant would suggest what Hevel had.
Andaim tensed, then lifted his chin and with it his resolve. ‘What would you have me do, sir?’
Idris offered his first officer a warm smile. Fact was, Andaim was afraid and Idris could see it as clear as the bright star flaring in the heavens directly above them. Yet he was ready to do his duty, or at the very least willing to give it a try.
‘The convicts want out of the prison and into the Atlantia, specifically the sanctuary. I think that it’s fair to say we cannot allow that to happen.’
‘Then we must liberate our people by force,’ Andaim said.
‘Oh, how I wish we could,’ Idris said. ‘But the risks of a close–quarters fight against an armed and numerically superior enemy turn the odds against us. The warders in the prison could not hold out against a small portion of the convict population. How would we fare?’
It was not Andaim who replied, but Hevel as he mounted the stairs to the observation platform, Dhalere alongside him.
‘Then we have no choice, captain.’
‘No choice?’
‘We must prioritise those that we can protect at the expense of those we cannot.’
Idris turned to face the councillor. ‘Are you again advocating abandoning the hostages?’
‘I’m not advocating anything,’ Hevel insisted. ‘If we do not act soon we shall sit here and watch Qayin and his thugs start slicing our people into chunks. Do you have any idea how much panic that will cause here, among the crew, among the passengers?’
Andaim jabbed a finger at Hevel’s chest.
‘Do you think being seen to walk away from our own officers, at a time of great need, will shed us in any better a light?’
‘They do not need to know,’ Hevel said in a whisper, glancing down into the bridge to ensure that they were not overheard. ‘The hostages will succumb far faster if we cut them loose than if they were left to Qayin.’
‘And if you were there?’ Idris challenged. ‘Would you be so ruthless?’
‘I would do what had to be done.’
‘Would you?’ Idris uttered. ‘Somehow I doubt that. Those men over there are not just correctional officers. They are husbands, sons, fathers and brothers.’
‘We know well who they are, captain,’ Dhalere purred smoothly. ‘This is not an action that anybody would choose lightly.’
The captain ground his teeth in his jaw.
‘Every person aboard this vessel will know well the kind of man you are, Hevel, if word of this conversation ever got out.’
‘I will deal with that when the time comes.’
‘How?’
Hevel appeared uncertain, and Dhalere spoke for him.
‘I don’t know,’ she said. ‘What we do know is that the prisoners are ruthless, cruel and self–serving – it’s why they’re imprisoned in the first place. They won’t bend to our will. The choice is not ours captain, it’s yours, but act we must.’
Idris scowled and turned, his old eyes scanning the monitors. ‘We don’t have much time here.’
Hevel stepped forward, his gaze firm. ‘Then we must begin, now, before they start hurting people. What are we going to do, captain?’
Idris stared at the image of Alpha Zero Seven, and made his decision.
*
‘Open a channel to the prison.’
Idris took his seat in the centre of the bridge, heard Lael open the link. A wash of static filled the bridge as the link was put on open speaker, and then Qayin’s voice boomed through the speakers.
‘Captain, you have decided to open the passageway to the Atlantia,’ he announced, as though it were ordained.
Idris gripped his seat tighter as he spoke. ‘No, Qayin, I have not.’
A long silence followed. Hevel leaned in close to the captain. ‘You’re doing the right thing.’
The captain did not rep
ly. Qayin’s voice, brooding and cruel, reached them from the speakers.
‘Then your people shall pay with their blood.’
A screen in the bridge flickered into life as the prisoners reattached the camera links, and Idris flinched as he saw a young marine strapped tightly into a chair that was floating inverted in the prison block amid the corpses, his body naked and shivering, his eyes darting left and right, poisoned with fear.
‘No!’
Idris turned as Bra’hiv, standing at the entrance to the bridge, recognised the face of one of his marines.
‘That’s C’rairn!’ he yelled. ‘Let him go!’
Qayin grinned into the monitor.
‘Your captain doesn’t want me to let Officer C’rairn go,’ Qayin sneered at Bra’hiv. ‘He wants to leave him to die.’
‘There will be no bloodshed,’ Idris insisted. ‘There are other ways.’
Another monitor flickered into life, Qayin’s dark features filling it. ‘How so, captain?’
Idris kept his features impassive as he spoke. ‘We shall organise a rota for your men to travel to the Atlantia. Two days a piece, four men at a time and…’
‘Shut up!’ Qayin bellowed into the camera. ‘You will open the passage to the Atlantia or I will send small pieces of C’rairn over one at a time until you do!’
Idris closed his eyes and shook his head.
‘That can never happen, Qayin,’ he replied. ‘If you do not release our people in the next hour then we will be forced to follow the Word.’
Qayin frowned on the screen. ‘You don’t have the guts.’
‘We will forcibly detach the prison wing from the hull,’ Idris said, ‘and save those whom we can.’
Qayin’s dark features rippled with suppressed rage and then he suddenly laughed into the camera, spittle flying as he pointed at then captain.
‘I take it back, you got the stones for this game,’ he laughed, and then that laugh died away and Qayin’s eyes burned into the camera, his tattoos shimmering like rivers of magma coursing down his cheeks. ‘But so do I. You condemn us, I’ll broadcast my people tearing yours apart, all the way down.’
Atlantia Series 1: Survivor Page 6
