‘Two minutes, but the docking bay doors are closed.’
‘Hevel,’ Qayin said from where he was strapped into a seat nearby. ‘He ain’t gonna let us in.’
The Atlantia loomed large before them, and as Evelyn peered at the huge vessel she suddenly felt a chill as she saw a particularly bright star hovering in sight just beneath it.
‘The Word,’ she said, ‘it’s here.’
She pointed to the star, a giant vessel bathed in bright sunlight that flared off its hull as it closed in on the planet.
‘Damn it,’ Andaim cursed, ‘we need to get aboard.’
Bra’hiv guided the shuttle toward the Atlantia’s stern as he replied. ‘If I can get close enough we’ll be inside the reach of the turrets and we can use the shuttle’s guns to blast the bay doors open.’
‘We’ll need to suit up,’ Andaim said. ‘You’ll blast the atmosphere from the loading bays if you do that.’
‘No choice,’ Bra’hiv said.
‘But if you get closer to the turrets,’ Evelyn said, ‘you won’t have enough time to…’
‘Evasive action!’ Bra’hiv cut her off as two bright plasma flares burst from the turrets lining the Atlantia’s hull.
The shuttle yawed violently as Bra’hiv pushed over into a steep dive, turning on three axis at once to avoid the aim of the turrets. The hull shuddered as the thrusters fired to guide the shuttle on a new course, but they were small and not designed to provide rapid changes of direction.
The shuttle plunged downward, the plasma flares flashing past overhead and detonating with a deep double blast. The shuttle’s hull shrieked as its plating was hammered by super–heated plasma and buckled under the weight and heat of the blows.
The shuttle tumbled over and a shower of sparks burst from interior panels to spray over the convicts strapped into the landing bay. Bra’hiv fought for control again as the planet’s surface flashed past the viewing panel, followed by the vast hull of Atlantia as two more plasma turrets fired at them.
‘Full power!’ Andaim yelled. ‘Aim straight for the hull and get us out of here!’
Bra’hiv slammed the throttles wide open as he wrested back control of the shuttle. Alarms blared in the cockpit and the lighting turned red as the little vessel accelerated toward the frigate.
The plasma charges flashed past on either side of the shuttle and detonated behind it, but the blasts were far enough away to escape further damage. Bra’hiv, his face set and his teeth gritted, aimed straight for the main docking bay nestled beneath the Atlantia’s stern as more plasma flashes rippled along the vessel’s hull.
‘The Word is here, but Hevel’s firing on us?’ Bra’hiv growled.
Andaim whirled to Qayin. ‘Is he really that insane for power?’
Qayin shook his head. ‘This ain’t right, not even for him.’
‘Suit up!’ Bra’hiv yelled. ‘We’re going in!’
Andaim and Evelyn lurched out of their seats and grabbed the nearest environment suits that were clipped to the hull walls. Evelyn clambered into hers as in the cargo hold the marines clicked their visors into place and charged their rifles.
‘What about us?!’ Qayin called, and gestured to the convicts.
‘Stay with the core,’ Andaim said as he pulled his visor down over his face, ‘and hope it doesn’t blow up!’
Qayin yanked off his straps and stood up.
‘I ain’t stayin’ behind,’ he growled.
‘This isn’t about staying behind,’ Evelyn said as she pulled a rifle from the nearest rack and handed it to Qayin. ‘This is where we need you, to protect that core. If it’s destroyed this is all over and so are we.’ She turned to the convicts. ‘You wanted your freedom? This is how you earn it.’
Evelyn pulled rifles down from the racks and hurled them through the cargo hold at the convicts, the weapons spinning lazily as they tumbled through the zero gravity and were caught by surprised inmates.
‘If we go down,’ Evelyn said, and gestured to Andaim and the marines, ‘the only thing standing between our survival and annihilation will be all of you.’ The convicts looked at her in silence. ‘You want to run, or fight?’
The convicts looked at each other, and then Cutler activated his rifle.
‘We’ve got this,’ the old convict replied.
Thirty more rifles hummed into life as the convicts activated them, and Evelyn turned to the cockpit. Bra’hiv was aiming straight for the main docking bay door, the shuttle’s weapons primed and ready.
‘Here we go,’ she said, crouching down and braced herself behind one of the vacant cockpit seats.
Bra’hiv pulled the trigger on his controls and a salvo of plasma charges blasted from the shuttle’s hull and zipped toward the bay doors even as the Atlantia’s vast stern loomed over them and plunged the shuttle into deep shadow. Evelyn peeked out and saw the charges smash into the immense doors, flares of bright plasma splashing in electric blue halos as they battered the doors.
As the blasts cleared the doors held firm, scorched but solid.
Bra’hiv fired again, more plasma charges blazing out in front of the shuttle and smashing into the doors. Evelyn saw bright blasts of colour and molten metal blossom from the impacts and then a rush of vapour from a jagged hole in the doors as the atmosphere was vacuumed from the landing bay.
Amid the vapour she saw bodies tumbling out into space, black suited marines.
‘Hevel’s turned the marines against us,’ Andaim gasped in horror.
‘Brace for impact!’ Bra’hiv yelled as he aimed for the hole.
The huge cargo doors loomed up and then flashed past as the shuttle plunged into the landing bay. Instantly a galaxy of rifle fire showered down toward the shuttle from marines upon the gantries that encircled the landing bay, the blasts hammering the viewing shield.
Bra’hiv fired his pulse cannons again, the blasts smashing into the marines firing at them and hurling them in flaming arcs across the bay as several gantries collapsed in tangled piles of metal. A blast of rifle fire caught the shuttle’s starboard bow and the thrusters failed as Bra’hiv fought to keep the vessel under control. Bra’hiv yanked the controls and the shuttle lurched as Bra’hiv fired the engines again to slow her down and activated the magnetic clamps all at once.
The shuttle crashed down, spraying sparks as its landing clamps gouged into the metal deck and it shuddered to a halt in the centre of the landing bay.
‘Deploy now!’
Bra’hiv opened the rear doors of the shuttle and the air was sucked from the vessel as the troops plunged out into the landing bay into a hail of rifle fire that soared down from the gantries above them. Evelyn dashed past the convicts as they sat in their seats and out into the landing bay.
Bra’hiv’s men fired up at the gantries as they dashed from the cover of the rear of the shuttle, spreading out as Evelyn hit the deck and turned to fire at a trooper high above her. She heard Bra’hiv dash onto the ramp nearby and then hit the controls for the shuttle’s ramp. The ramp hissed closed, the blasts from the trooper’s rifles crashing against it as the interior of the shuttle was refilled with air and heat.
‘Advance by sections and stay close or we could get confused about who’s who real fast!’ Bra’hiv yelled. ‘Take the high ground back!’
The marines dashed in organised groups toward the gantry steps, staying in motion to spoil the aim of their former comrades high above raining fire down around them. Evelyn sprinted for the nearest set of steps, following Andaim as ahead two marines were cut down by the rifle fire, their suits emptying of air in an instant as the blasts melted the seals.
Andaim vaulted over the first of them and fired up the gantry steps, his shots gouging a wide hole in the guts of a trooper descending toward them. Evelyn slid to her knees and aimed up the steps, firing and catching a second trooper high on his leg, blasting the limb from his body as he toppled over the gantry rail and plunged down beside her.
Evelyn followed Andaim as he ra
n up the steps, fighting the weight of his environmental suit and the magnetic gravity as he fired, clearing the steps one at a time.
Evelyn risked a glanced over her shoulder and saw Bra’hiv leading more marines up a second gantry, covering fire from men using the shuttle as cover down in the landing bay hitting troopers higher up and clearing the way.
‘Enemy, flank!’
Evelyn turned and saw dozens of men plunge into the landing bay from both sides, and with a chill she realised that they had been drawn into a trap.
‘They’re flanking us!’ she shouted.
Bra’hiv’s men on the landing bay deck switched their fire, but the rush of men was too large and they began falling back toward the cover of the shuttle as plasma charges flashed back and forth in a violent miasma of blue and white fire. Evelyn dashed back down the gantry steps and hurled herself in behind a metal support pillar as a flash of blasts sent sprays of molten metal spiralling through the air around her.
‘Get off the gantries!’ she yelled.
She leaned out and fired off two shots into the charging troopers, hitting one man straight in the neck and blasting his visor off and most of his face with it. A second trooper collapsed as his knee was smashed out by a plasma round and his boot skittered away from him across the deck.
Evelyn crouched and shielded her face as dozens of shots zipped toward and past her in return, and then she heard the shuttle’s turbines fire up. A blast of heat hit her as the shuttle rocked sideways and then jerked upward into the air, spinning around as jet wash hammered the decks, the few remaining operational thrusters firing blasts of gas in spluttering bursts. Through the shuttle’s screen she saw Qayin’s distinctive gold and blue locks as he turned the shuttle to face the incoming troops.
‘Cover!’ Evelyn yelled.
Qayin fired the shuttle’s cannons into the mass of approaching troops, blasting them like flaming skittles across the deck as the plasma charges detonated in brilliant blue–white balls of energy that seared the men from existence.
Evelyn almost cheered as Qayin struggled with the controls to turn the shuttle around and cover their left flank, letting a blast of plasma fire rip into the charging troops flooding into the cargo hold and decimating them in a fiery halo of plasma and burning bodies.
Andaim, crouched on the gantries, resumed his climb and burst out onto the upper levels as Evelyn fired from the landing bay deck at the remaining troopers high above them. She fired over their heads, keeping them down as Andaim bore down upon them and opened fire, cutting them down.
Bra’hiv’s men rushed up onto the gantries from the opposite side and moments later the firing stopped as behind Evelyn the shuttle slammed awkwardly back down onto the deck and the engines whined down, smoke spiralling from the damaged thrusters.
‘Seal the landing bay!’ Bra’hiv shouted into his microphone.
Evelyn heard the command and dashed across the landing bay to the control office and blasted the door open with a single shot from her rifle. A rush of air billowed out of the empty office as she plunged inside and reached for the controls, activating the emergency doors.
At the far end of the bay a second set of shield doors rumbled into place to seal off the jagged, gaping hole. She heard sirens and then the hiss of air being vented back into the bay.
She strode back out of the office to see Bra’hiv and Andaim examining the corpse of one of Hevel’s fallen marines. As Bra’hiv removed his visor, she could see the pain in his features.
‘Lavere,’ he identified the fallen marine. ‘A good man. What was he thinking?’
As Evelyn joined them, they looked down and saw from Lavere’s ear a thin trickle of what looked like black oil draining onto the deck.
‘I don’t think he was thinking,’ Andaim said. ‘He’s infected.’
Bra’hiv stood back and fired a single blast that melted the pool of nanobots into a molten slag that hissed as it cooled.
‘The entire ship could have been overrun,’ Evelyn said. ‘The captain…’
‘There’s only one way to find out,’ Andaim said. ‘Let’s get moving.’
Bra’hiv’s voice echoed through the landing bay as Qayin, the convicts and the remaining marines joined them.
‘Impressive work,’ he said. ‘That includes you, Qayin. You and the rest of the convicts fall in with us on the gantries. Stay tight, we’re the only people we can be sure are not yet infected, understood?’
The convicts and marines nodded as one, their faces grim.
***
XXXIV
‘The landing bay has been breached, sir.’
Hevel turned slowly in the captain’s chair, his eyes scanning the bridge.
His limbs were moving more slowly now, and his vision was blurred by red clouds that seemed to allow him to see through things, as though he were watching the world through an Infra–Red lens. Ever since he had decided to unleash the Word upon the crew the nanobots in his body and theirs had been replicating, surging through his body. At first he had experienced pangs of doubt, the natural and human fear of the unknown, but every time his hubris had emerged it had been drowned out by pulses of unimaginable pleasure, of dreamlike euphoria far stronger than any drug. With each pulse, his fear and his hesitance had faded away like long forgotten memories.
The rest of his crew on the bridge glowed back at him, their eyes like pin–points of fiery orange light, candle flames glowing in a blue–black world. None of them blinked. None of them needed to any more.
‘How many men do we have left?’ he asked.
Keyen glanced down mechanically at his instruments.
‘Forty at the most, sir,’ Keyen replied, his voice strangely monotone. ‘They’re fighting back, but they’re also retreating away from the landing bay. The shuttle’s weapons took most of them out.’
Hevel swivelled again in his seat and looked at the main screen.
‘Where is the Avenger?’ he asked.
Without waiting for a command, Keyen switched the view on the main screen from the fighting in the corridors of the ship to the star field outside. The Avenger was much closer now, looming large and her hull glistening with black striations that caught the bright glow of the sun as though aflame, the other side of her hull lost in deep shadow.
‘She’s within firing range, sir,’ Keyen added.
Hevel stood up, his joints clicking strangely as the metallic elements within his body began to overwhelm the biological tendons and muscles. He felt both weak and immensely strong, like a mountain: immovable, yet still able to weather aeons of storms.
‘Send a signal,’ he said. ‘We will deactivate all weapons and be ready for boarding.’
‘Yes sir,’ came the reply from Aranna, now manning the communication station, her blonde hair falling out in clumps as her body temperature increased.
Hevel, still retaining some of his former human instinct, felt compelled to straighten his uniform and his hair with one hand. Then, he hesitated. That was no longer necessary. He was no longer enslaved by human emotions such as pride: actions, based on knowledge, were all that was required to command and to conquer.
Hevel stood with his hands behind his back, and with his bridge crew awaited the arrival of the Word.
*
‘Forward!’
Bra’hiv fired his plasma rifle, two shots zipping down the corridor and exploding against a bulkhead behind which crouched two enemy troopers, their eyes glowing red through the smoke. Smouldering plasma sprayed across the passage, some of it igniting a trooper’s sleeve.
The soldier glanced without haste at his burning arm, and slowly began trying to pat the flames out. A second shot from Andaim blew his scalp off of his head and sent it tumbling down the passage in a trail of blue smoke.
Evelyn saw Andaim dash forward to the next bulkhead and hurl himself into cover as a salvo of blasts screamed back at them and hammered the bulkheads and ceiling. She hugged the cold metal wall for a moment before leaning out and firing
, the rounds deafeningly loud in the confined corridor as they shot down the passageway at terrific speed and kept the soldiers’ heads down.
Behind her, the convicts and allied soldiers fired carefully timed salvos, one after the other, dashing past each other and keeping the enemy occupied as they advanced.
Evelyn’s ears rang with the infernal noise of prolonged gunfire and her eyes stung as the smoke from repeated impacts of searing plasma energy filled the corridor.
‘Go, now!’
Bra’hiv fired again and then dashed forward to crouch behind another bulkhead as Evelyn fired covering shots down the corridor.
‘They’re falling back!’ Andaim yelled.
‘Not fast enough,’ Bra’hiv shouted back above the din of the rifle fire. ‘We’ll never get to the bridge at this rate!’
Evelyn squinted through the smoke and the darkness and saw the enemy troopers congregating toward a larger, inter–segmental bulkhead with a large pressure hatch.
‘They’ll cut us off!’ Bra’hiv called as he fired down the corridor.
Evelyn shouted at Bra’hiv as she broke into a run.
‘Cover me!’
She dashed past them, running low as she pulled a spare plasma cartridge from her uniform and slid it down the corridor in front of her. The plasma blasts from the enemy troops zipped over her head as she ran and she smelled her hair being singed by the heat of the passing shots. The magazine spun lazily as it slid along the deck and Evelyn hurled herself into cover and took aim as the magazine came to a stop a few feet from where the troops were retreating through the pressure bulkhead.
Evelyn held her breath for a moment and then squeezed her trigger.
The plasma round hit the magazine and it exploded with a blinding flash and a blossoming cloud of plasma fragments that showered the corridor to the sound of screams of agony as the enemy troops tumbled over each other, their uniforms aflame.
‘Forward!’ Bra’hiv shouted.
Evelyn kept firing through the bulkhead until Bra’hiv and Andaim thundered past her, firing as they went. They burst through the bulkhead and for the first time in several minutes the tremendous din of gunfire was silenced.
Atlantia Series 1: Survivor Page 23
