‘He’s safer when you can keep an eye on him,’ Evelyn pointed out as she pulled the visor of her suit down. ‘Besides, I’m supposed to be a higher risk than he is, right?’
Andaim sealed his visor as he looked at her. ‘Yeah,’ he agreed. ‘But you’re…
‘A woman?’ she finished the sentence before he could.
‘Trustworthy,’ Andaim corrected her.
‘What makes you think that?’
‘Gut instinct.’
Evelyn smiled at him, and then a moment later Andaim hit a button on the control panel and the shuttle’s rear hatch opened. The air rushed from the interior in a gust of ghostly vapour and then the troops unclipped their harnesses and made their way out of the shuttle toward the looming mass of twisted metal and impenetrable darkness.
*
The sanctuary was filled with civilians, flooding back inside after the removal of the mysterious prisoner Alpha Zero Seven. Whispers and rumours gusted across their ranks as Hevel walked with Dhalere into the sanctuary and was immediately greeted by a throng of concerned citizens: mothers herding nervous children, fathers with faces twisted in outrage, lost souls and teenagers who had seen their families wiped out.
All were looking at him, their voices commingled into one outpouring of grief and fear. Hevel called out to them, but the din of their voices drowned him out.
‘Ladies, gentlemen, citizens, please listen to me!’
Hevel clambered up onto a grassy bank, his hands held aloft to catch the eye of people further away. Dhalere waited and watched among the throng as Hevel cried out over the heads of the crowd.
‘I know how you feel!’ he called, and the clamour of voices ceased as they strained to listen to him. ‘I know because I feel the same. The commander of this vessel has lost his mind and is considering placing the rights of convicted criminals above those of honest citizens!’
A wave of righteous outrage soared from among the gathered citizens and Hevel waved them down, appealing with his expression and body language for calm.
‘We cannot overpower them,’ he said. ‘We cannot start a war within a war and jeapodise our very survival at such a crucial moment in the history of our race! But I’m damned sure that we won’t allow Captain Idris Sansin the chance to do that either!’
More shouts, waved hands and eyes ablaze with conviction.
‘We should bring him down!’ shouted one tall, bearded man. ‘We’re not second–class citizens!’
More shouts of encouragement and Hevel looked at the man.
‘Indeed, but would you be willing to place yourself in harm’s way as he does?’
‘I’d give it my best shot!’ the bearded man hollered back. ‘So would we all!’
‘Against the armed soldiers guarding this ship?’ Hevel pressed.
‘Yes, against them all!’
‘Against the command crew who support him?’ Hevel yelled.
‘Yes, against them all!’ shouted more people.
Hevel watched the crowd for a moment. ‘Against the Word?’
The crowd fell silent and the bearded man spoke out. ‘We cannot fight the Word, we’re not strong enough.’
‘That’s right,’ Hevel replied. ‘We’re not. Only a military force could fight back, could make a stand. Not us, and certainly not a rabble of criminals. We cannot take the captain’s place, for we cannot do in his stead what he and his people can. We cannot take this ship by force, for it would be our own downfall. The captain and his crew are not our enemies, for they risk their lives to protect us all every day.’ Hevel let his gaze sweep the watching citizens, now listening in their hundreds.
‘Then what would you have us do?’ asked the bearded man.
Hevel smiled.
‘Walk with me,’ he replied, ‘to the bridge. What cannot be changed by force can be changed by guile and by the will of the people. We are the strongest force upon this vessel and our voice will be heard. Who will walk with me?’
The crowd shifted restlessly, citizens looking at each other for support and finding only anxiety and uncertainty.
Then, from the crowd, a woman called out.
‘I will walk with you,’ she said. ‘I will follow the captain, but not into the hands of convicts!’
Hevel looked down at Dhalere, who had infiltrated the crowd as he spoke, as another woman shouted out her support, then another, then men, and from further back into the crowd, and before he knew it Hevel heard the commingled voices of hundreds of citizens shouting their support for him.
Hevel turned and strode down off the bank toward the sanctuary exits, the civilians following him en masse.
*
‘They’re inside.’
Captain Sansin watched as a viewing port displayed an image of the shuttle hanging in space alongside the shattered bulk of the prison hull, its rear ramp lowered.
‘The sooner we get them out of there the better,’ he said. ‘Do we know what the lifespan of that core is?’
‘It’s been jettisoning energy into space for some time sir,’ came the reply from Lael, ‘but it should be good for many months yet. If we can hook it up to a fuelling cable and control it it will prove a valuable weapon.’
Sansin nodded. A fusion weapon was not something that the Word would be able to predict being used as a weapon aboard the Atlantia, especially as they were not used by the military at all. Fusion bombs were far in the history of the colonies, the technology used only for power–generation now. Directed energy weapons were possible but plasma charges were far more stable. Having that core in his hands represented the one opportunity for surprise that the Atlantia had, the one avenue to possible victory that…
‘Sir, we’ve got a problem.’
The captain turned as Jerren called out. ‘What is it?’
‘Councillor Hevel sir, he’s on his way to the bridge.’
‘So?’
‘Sir, the entire ship’s compliment is behind him.’
The captain stood up and whirled to the bridge security team. ‘Seal the hatches, immediately!’
The marines whirled to the doors, but before they could touch them they burst open as Hevel strode onto the bridge, the corridors behind him packed with civilians. Dhalere, his assistant, was by his side. The marines levelled their weapons at the intruders, backing away from them, but none of the armed men opened fire.
‘What the hell is this?!’ Captain Sansin roared, glaring at Hevel.
The councillor walked up onto the bridge and confronted the captain.
‘This,’ he replied, ‘is the will of the people.’
‘The will of the people?’ Sansin echoed. ‘Or the will of one very greedy man?’
‘The prisoners,’ Hevel snapped. ‘They are still confined?’
The captain ground his teeth in his jaw but he did not reply. Hevel turned to the staff manning the bridge, to the marines aiming their weapons at him, and spoke loudly enough for all to hear.
‘We are unarmed,’ he said, ‘and we do not wish to cause any bloodshed. But none of us will stand by and see our safety and security compromised by either the release of convicted and bloodthirsty criminals who have already tortured and killed our own people, or by the incompetent command of a captain who would put the lives of those criminals above the citizens and servants of our race.’
Hevel turned, surveying the bridge.
‘You may shoot us if you wish,’ he said to the marines, ‘but you must shoot us all.’
The marines looked at the captain, who shook his head and gestured for them to lower their weapons.
‘This is a mistake, Hevel,’ he growled.
‘No, captain,’ Hevel snapped in reply. ‘This is a solution.’
Hevel turned and waved Dhalere and several other civilians into the bridge. ‘Take control of the command stations,’ he ordered.
‘This is a mutiny,’ Sansin uttered. ‘You’re taking control of the ship?’
‘You never had control, captain,’ Hevel replied. ‘We
have fled for years across the cosmos, and what has changed in that time, captain? What has become of us? What have we learned? What have we done to improve our situation, to fight back against the Word?’ Hevel shook his head. ‘Nothing.’
‘And what are you going to do, Hevel?’ the captain asked. ‘What can you do? We are helpless here.’
Hevel’s mouth fractured into a grim smile. ‘We have never been helpless, captain. You have merely been unable to help us to help ourselves, as is our right. Now, we shall take it. We shall fight back, right here.’
The captain’s face turned to stone. ‘We can’t fight back, we don’t have even nearly enough troops or fighters for a pitched battle against…’
‘We will stand!’ Hevel bellowed. ‘And we will fight! We will run no longer! This is the will of the people!’ Hevel turned to Dhalere. ‘Do it,’ he said. ‘Cut the prison hull loose.’
‘No!’ Sansin bellowed. ‘You do that and you’ll kill everybody on board, including our own people!’
‘They will evacuate using the shuttle,’ Hevel snapped back. ‘No convicts allowed!’
Sansin looked at his marines. ‘Arrest this man, before it’s too late.’
The soldiers wavered, looking back and forth between the captain and Hevel. Idris realised that Hevel’s timing was perfect: Bra’hiv was absent, as was Andaim, and all of the convicts were back aboard the prison hull.
‘Do it,’ Hevel told the marines, ‘if you must, but if you arrest me you must also arrest hundreds of citizens, for I act on their behalf and they will only replace me with another of their own.’
The soldiers glanced at the citizens packed into the corridors outside the bridge, and then back at the captain. Hevel looked at the bridge command crew, his voice carrying clearly to all of them.
‘All of you are welcome to stay or to go,’ he said. ‘But you must choose whom you serve: your captain, or the civilians who depend upon your continued protection.’
The bridge crew looked at each other. Slowly, Jerren and several other officers walked away from their posts. Lael, a stocky senior tactical officer with short cropped–dark hair named Mikhain, and Aranna remained. In response, the four marines lowered their weapons.
Hevel watched as they were disarmed by the civilians accompanying him, and then he turned to Dhalere. She looked down for a moment, studied the control panel before her, and then she flipped a series of switches.
‘Order Bra’hiv and his men to evacuate immediately,’ Hevel ordered.
Dhalere looked at him. ‘If we bring them back here they may act against us.’
Hevel frowned, staring at the prison hull.
‘If they refuse, shoot them down.’
‘They’re our troops!’ the captain shouted. ‘You’re not saving lives, you’re taking them!’
‘They have the shuttle and they have a choice!’ Hevel snapped back. ‘I won’t be extending the same courtesy to murderers, especially not Alpha Zero Seven.’
‘You call them murderers,’ Captain Sansin said softly, ‘even as you murder them.’
Hevel ignored the captain and watched through the viewing ports as the tethers connecting the prison hull to the Atlantia were blasted free with explosive charges.
***
XXI
‘Easy now.’
The engine room of the prison hull was not a large compartment like those aboard the Atlantia. It did not, in reality, have much of a propulsion unit, relying instead on whatever vessel it was tethered to for motion: another safety feature built in to its design that prevented prisoners from hijacking it as a means of travel.
The room was instead a series of huge pipes, tubes, transformers and pressure units, all of which had once channelled the immense power of the fusion core through the hull or converted its energy into electricity. The entire space was now enshrouded in darkness but for the fearsome flickering light ahead of them, reflecting off mangled beams and silently spiralling debris in the bitter vacuum.
The core was still buried deep inside the engine room, its blue–white beam having scythed a channel through its fractured core and then solid metal and hull plating to blast out into deep space. Evelyn glanced over her shoulder and saw two remote drones following Andaim toward the core. Both were equipped with mandibles and drills, able to operate closer to the core than any human would dare, although they too would be vaporised if they strayed into the beam of energy blazing from it.
‘That’s close enough,’ Andaim said.
There was no noise in the vacuum of space and the core’s blue–white light seemed almost calming and hypnotic to Evelyn as she stopped near the cover of a large, twisted beam of solid metal. Ahead, near the fusion beam, she could see endless ranks of hull braces illuminated in the glow, their tips glowing with molten metal where the beam had severed them.
‘Okay,’ Andaim said, his voice distorted over the intercom. ‘Now the hard part. You ready?’
‘Let’s just get this over with,’ she replied.
Andaim used a small hand unit to guide the drones past them and toward the blazing core, its light as bright as a burning star. Evelyn watched as the drones drifted toward the device, and then she felt rather than heard a series of deep, rolling booms echo through the hull from somewhere for’ard and the entire prison shuddered.
The core shifted and the blazing beam of energy seared through fresh metal high above them, globules of molten metal spilling like galaxies and spiralling through the engine room in all directions.
‘Cover!’ Andaim yelled.
A cloud of molten metal sprayed across one of the drones, melting its surface and severing control and power lines. The tiny drone spun out of control and hit the beam of light, vanishing instantly into a cloud of superheated particles.
Evelyn hauled herself tight behind the nearest beam as molten metal sprayed past her, just missing her environmental suit as Andaim crouched beneath a collapsed wall as glowing metal fragments showered around him and faded out as the brutal cold of space extinguished them.
‘What was that?’
Andaim stared into empty space, listening rather than watching as the walls of the engine room stopped vibrating. He keyed his microphone.
‘Bridge, Andaim, status?’
A hiss of static clouded the response. Evelyn felt a chill shudder down her spine as she watched Andaim try to contact the bridge twice again with no luck. She turned and pushed off the floor, gliding through the engine room to the aft hatches that led back toward the storage units and the cell block.
She sailed down the passage with Andaim in pursuit to where the three large windows stared out over the abyss of space between the ship and the planet, and her heart flipped in her chest as she saw that the planet was filling the windows, moving past them as the entire prison hull rotated in freefall.
Eve whirled to Andaim. ‘We’ve been cut loose!’ she yelled.
Andaim stared at her in disbelief. ‘That’s not possible! They wouldn’t have done that!’
‘We’re loose,’ Evelyn insisted. ‘How long before we hit the atmosphere?’
Andaim grasped for his forehead with one hand as he tried to think straight, his gloved hand hitting his face visor.
‘They would have ejected the prison hull using forced charges, to clear it from collision with the main hull. That would have slowed our orbit and be pulling us down faster and…’
‘How long?’ she interrupted.
‘No more than a few minutes,’ he replied. ‘We’ve got to move, now!’
Evelyn followed Andaim back through the shattered remnants of the engine room and through a darkened corridor toward the storage units. Ahead, she saw a flare of light that faded out rapidly, and as they emerged from the tangled mess of the hull they saw the shuttle accelerate away toward the Atlantia, narrowly avoiding being hit by the giant rotating hull.
‘No!’ Andaim yelled.
Evelyn floated in space behind him as the shuttle shrank away to a tiny speck of light agains
t the blackness, shining as the nearby star rose over the planet’s horizon in a brilliant flare of light. Evelyn glanced down at the planet below, saw the light creeping across vast oceans and deserts below.
‘They’re gone,’ she said. ‘There’s nothing that they could have done. We need to get back aboard the prison hull, right now.’
Andaim turned and drifted toward the prison hull again, this time accessing the vents into the storage units. Evelyn closed the vents behind them and followed Andaim down to the security door. Together they managed to push the door open enough to let a tiny trickle of air into the storage unit, which became a blast as the low–pressure vacuum sucked air from the corridor into the storage unit in ever increasing volumes.
The door swung open easily and Andaim yanked off his visor as he turned to Evelyn.
‘Bra’hiv abandoned us!’ she said as she pulled off her own visor.
‘Something must have happened aboard Atlantia,’ Andaim replied. ‘Hevel, most likely.’
‘Why?’ Evely gasped.
‘I don’t know,’ Andaim replied, and then fell silent as a new noise reached them from afar.
The sound of voices and clanging bars rang out as the incarcerated prisoners, realising what had happened, began battering at their cell doors, their commingled voices a hymn of human panic.
Eve pictured the prison hull from the outside and its shape, size and mass.
‘How much of the hull will survive re–entry?’ she asked Andaim.
He looked at her quizzically.
‘Not much. She’ll mostly burn up in the atmosphere, break up into smaller pieces. There won’t be much that will hit the ground intact.’
‘But some will,’ Eve replied, and looked up at the cells. ‘The hull will self–orientate for re–entry, right?’
‘Standard procedure,’ Andaim agreed. ‘She’ll still have enough fuel and power to right herself. That’s probably what’s already happening if she’s rotating.’
‘We’ve got to move, fast,’ she said. ‘Release the prisoners.’
‘Do what?’
Atlantia Series 1: Survivor Page 14
