‘I have to go,’ she repeated, and then looked at the captain. ‘Any chance of avoiding conflict is worth the effort.’
The captain’s voice was a harsh whisper.
‘It’ll kill you,’ he growled. ‘The Word does not do anything without good reason and it has no good reason to let any of us live.’
Evelyn smiled briefly but she shook her head.
‘Logic doesn’t matter, captain,’ she replied. ‘It’s a risk worth taking, agreed?’
The captain bit his lip, but she knew that he could not argue with her. She glanced at Qayin’s image up on the display screen. ‘I’ll take a shuttle and be over shortly,’ she said.
‘I’ll await your arrival,’ Qayin confirmed. ‘I’m cutting off all communications until you arrive.’ The channel cut off and the screen went blank.
‘This is a mistake,’ Andaim snapped. ‘You’re being sacrificed on Qayin’s say so.’
‘No,’ Evelyn said. ‘He’s got a plan.’
‘What plan?’ Idris asked. ‘He’s holding C’rairn hostage! It’s the damned prison ship situation all over again.’
‘No,’ she said. ‘If Hevel was infected then he could have placed bugs and monitoring devices all over the bridge when he mutinied. We have to assume Qayin’s compromised, and he said Hevel and his friends – that could mean there are more infected people aboard the Atlantia.’
The captain rubbed his forehead with his hand. ‘We don’t have time to scan the civilians in the sanctuary.’
‘Which is why I need to do what Qayin is asking,’ Evelyn pressed. ‘We need the Word to think that we’re playing along.’
‘You’re sure Qayin’s bluffing?’ Andaim asked.
‘Of coursed he is,’ she replied. ‘He hates the Word as much as any of us, especially if it killed his brother. He knows we can’t win and that it cannot be trusted. If Qayin really was in control of the bridge he’d have fired the engines and blasted us out of here as fast as he could and given us time to plan something.’
‘Cutler said something to you about the desert?’ Captain Sansin asked.
‘We were being hunted by an army,’ Andaim explained, ‘trapped between two kings, Golyath and Thutmose.’
The captain’s eyes narrowed thoughtfully. ‘So they’re trapped on the bridge somehow?’
‘Qayin must fear that he’s under observation from the Word. He can’t say what he wants to, but I’m thinking he wants me to travel over there,’ Evelyn explained, ‘and take the fusion core with me. Hevel could not have informed the Word about the fusion core until it was within communication range, which wasn’t until very recently and he’s .’
‘That’s a very risky assumption,’ Andaim pointed out. ‘He could have signalled the Avenger when we left the surface with Bra’hiv, and warned it of our plan.’
‘We won’t know for sure,’ Evelyn agreed. ‘But we don’t have much choice, do we? The only way to win this is to travel across to the Avenger.’
Captain Sansin’s features collapsed. ‘You’re going to go in there?’
‘There is no other option,’ Evelyn said. ‘We have to utterly destroy that vessel and then flee, and the only way we can properly do that is from the inside.’
‘I thought that we would mount the fusion core externally and open fire on the Avenger,’ Andaim said.
‘And have the Avenger blast it and take the Atlantia down with a single salvo?’ Evelyn challenged him. ‘It has to be aboard the Avenger and we don’t have much time. I go now or the Word gets suspicious and we’re vaporised anyway. What’s it going to be, captain?’
Idris stared up at the blank screen and then he sighed mightily.
‘Very well,’ he said, ‘but I’m not going to just sit here and let you go without getting ready for a fight.’
‘I wouldn’t expect anything less,’ Evelyn said. ‘I don’t know if the Word intends to double cross us, but I sure as hell don’t have a problem with trying to blow it to hell while we’re in the process.’
Idris thought for a moment. ‘How many Raython fighters does an Avenger class cruiser carry?’
Andaim smiled. ‘Eighteen,’ he replied. ‘And Tyraeus hasn’t launched them into a defensive screen either.’
‘Something that a commander of his standing would never have neglected to do,’ the captain replied. ‘Maybe the Word’s confidence in itself might also be a weakness. Do you think that you could go aboard with Evelyn and launch them?’
‘If we can reach them, we can fly them, captain.’
‘Then do it,’ Idris ordered.
‘How will you get away?’ Andaim asked Evelyn. ‘If we’re busy trying to steal the fighters, how will you get the core to Tyraeus?’
‘I won’t,’ Evelyn said. ‘Leave the core on the shuttle when we land. It’ll shield your men from the Avenger’s scanners, and once you’ve got the fighters blow the core to hell.’
Andaim’s features tightened. ‘But if you’re still aboard…’
‘The Word will still be destroyed,’ Evelyn cut him off. ‘Agreed?’
Andaim swallowed thickly but nodded once. The captain looked at Evelyn.
‘You don’t know what’s in there,’ he warned her. ‘We saw things, back during the war, before we were forced to leave Ethera. Terrible things, Evelyn.’
She hesitated at the War Room door, and then opened it and hurried out.
***
XXXVII
Evelyn boarded the shuttle and sealed the ramp behind her as Andaim made his way into the cockpit. He began surveying the instruments as she walked past the fusion core in its magnetic containment unit and moved to sit alongside him.
‘Will it hold up? The shuttle, I mean?’ she asked.
‘It’s only a short hop between the ships,’ Andaim replied. ‘She’s good for that, but the hull’s very weak. If Tyraeus decides to hit us we’ll be vaporised.’
‘Comforting.’
Andaim looked at her as he ignited the engines, the whine from them humming through the hull.
‘You don’t have to do this,’ he said.
Evelyn sighed, looking out of the viewing screen at the cargo deck still littered with the corpses of marines infected with the madness that was the Word.
‘I don’t know who I am,’ she replied. ‘I don’t know anything but my own name, but that thing over there, Tyraeus, knows about me. I can’t just walk away.’
Andaim gripped the controls as the shuttle lifted off the deck of the landing bay, tilting awkwardly under the uneven thrust from its remaining engines. Ahead, they saw a rush of air billow out into space in clouds of vapour as the bay’s shield doors opened onto the yawning abyss of deep space, exposing the cavity where Bra’hiv had blasted through exterior doors. The shuttle drifted forward as Andaim guided it out of the bay and turned alongside the Atlantia.
The old frigate’s big hull gleamed in the sunlight, and not for the first time Evelyn marvelled at the sight of the planet beneath them, vast expanses of blue and green, of sandy deserts and billowing clouds.
‘We’ll never be able to come back here, will we?’ she said.
‘No,’ Andaim said. ‘Not as long as the Word exists anyway.’
Andaim guided the shuttle beneath the frigates’s massive hull, turning away from the planet as they passed beneath the Atlantia and out toward deep space.
There, opposite them, was the Avenger. Evelyn scanned the battleship’s enormous lines, the sleek hull bristling with plasma cannons that speckled its surface, the ghost–grey metal hull blackened in large areas as the Word slowly converted it into something entirely new, consumed by the powerful machines swarming through it.
‘I still don’t get it,’ Andaim said. ‘Why does it want you there? What possible purpose could it have for you?’
‘We’re going to find out real soon,’ she said. ‘Pick the landing bay closest to the bridge.’
Andaim guided the shuttle toward the Avenger’s for’ard bays, nestled close behind the bulge of
the bridge deck and surrounded by heavy armaments. Evelyn heard him whistle through his teeth as he noted that all of the guns were pointed directly at them and tracking their movements.
‘One shot,’ he said.
‘They’d have fired by now,’ Evelyn said. ‘They mistrust us, just as we mistrust them, but curiosity is what’s keeping us alive right now.’
Andaim nodded, and she looked over her shoulder to where the fusion core sat in its containment unit behind them, strapped to the deck. Their last defence, if they could get it close enough to strike the Avenger somewhere truly vulnerable.
The Avenger loomed vast in the viewing screen and then there was nothing but the open landing bay, a rectangle of bright yellow light against the blackness of the hull. Evelyn caught from the corner of her eye the shape of the Avenger’s hull shifting as though it were a black sea of oil, the waves catching the light as they rolled back and forth.
‘It’s as if the whole ship is alive,’ she said as the sight made her shiver.
The shuttle was swallowed by the landing bay doors and Evelyn craned her neck around to look out of the window behind her. Sure enough, as the shuttle sailed in the doors began closing behind them.
‘They’re just sealing the bay so the air can be released into it,’ Andaim said, sounding as though he was trying to comfort himself as much as her.
‘You didn’t have to be here,’ she said. ‘I could have come alone.’
Andaim smiled tightly as he guided the shuttle down and it settled onto the deck, the engines winding down.
‘There was no way I was going to do that,’ he replied. ‘And you know it.’
For the first time since she had been released from the bitter and claustrophobic chill of the escape capsule days before Evelyn felt a small but growing patch of warmth flood her chest, a foreign sensation that she realised she had forgotten about. Andaim did not meet her gaze, focusing instead on shutting the engines down.
It was Qayin’s voice that broke the silence.
‘Seriously, you two are making me feel all warm and fluffy inside.’
Evelyn looked over her shoulder at him. ‘Shut it, creep.’
Qayin grinned, his white teeth bright in the darkness.
‘I can’t tell if we’ve been scanned or not,’ Andaim said, ‘but the interference run by Atlantia might not be enough to have blocked the Avenger’s instruments. The Word might know that Evelyn is not alone and that the core is aboard.’
There were thirty convicts in the rear of the shuttle, and to her surprise one of the first volunteers had been Cutler. It was the old man who replied to Andaim.
‘So? This is the best chance we have, so I say let’s take it.’
‘You’ve changed your tune,’ Andaim said as he got up out of his seat.
‘I got my reasons,’ Cutler replied, casting a quick glance at Evelyn.
The convicts were all armed with plasma rifles and blast charges, and all of them had a singular mission.
‘You know what to do,’ Andaim said.
The convicts held their rifles tightly to their chests, each bearing an expression of determination which provoked in Evelyn a brief and slightly odd sense of pride.
Andaim opened the shuttle’s boarding ramp and then turned to Evelyn.
‘This is it,’ he said.
Evelyn sucked in a deep breath as she stepped out onto the ramp. Andaim’s hand grasped her arm briefly.
‘Come back,’ he said.
Evelyn managed a faint smile, and then she walked down the ramp and out across the landing bay.
A number of identical shuttles were parked on the far side of the bay, looking as pristine as they had when they had first been built. On the opposite side were some small vehicles, machinery and a series of escape capsules set into the walls: standard procedure in any landing bay that was periodically exposed to the vacuum of space. She could see various pieces of equipment scattered about, left where they had fallen when the ship had first been overrun. Some of the walls bore scorch marks where plasma rounds had battered them, as the last surviving members of the crew fought for their lives.
Evelyn strode to an access door and it opened before her without prompting. She slowed and then eased her way inside.
Her breath caught in her throat as she saw the interior of the passageway. It was lined with a seething mass of black bots, billions of them scuttling like glossy black insects in layers so thick that she could no longer see the walls of the passageway. She hesitated, realising that she was utterly exposing herself to the Word.
She looked over her shoulder at the shuttle, knowing that Andaim and the convicts were inside and waiting for her to move. If she faltered, then they would be destroyed. She turned back to the passageway, and as loathing filled her guts she stepped inside.
The bots swarmed away from her as she walked in, scattering in black clouds up the walls and along the deck, as though she were a candle flame parting the darkness before her. Shocked, she stepped fully into the passageway and the door hissed shut behind her.
*
‘They’re inside.’
Captain Idris Sansin watched as the shuttle craft cruised into the Avenger’s landing bay and the doors slowly closed behind it.
‘This had better work,’ he said as he turned to his tactical officer.‘How many of our own Raythons are operational?’
‘Twelve are ready to fly sir,’ Jerren said. ‘The other six are currently inoperative and awaiting repair.’
Idris nodded and turned back to the viewing screen on the bridge.
As soon as Qayin had shut off communications with the War Room and Evelyn had made her announcement that she would be travelling to the Avenger, she had instead dashed with Andaim and the captain to the Atlantia’s bridge. There, Qayin had willingly let them in. Concerned about the Word monitoring communications channels through bots that may have survived the raid on the bridge, Qayin had wanted a face–to–face meeting.
There, he had explained to the captain his reasoning and to Idris’s surprise relinquished control of the bridge back to the captain. It was as much of a deception as he could have managed given his limited time and resources, but it was something more than they had had before.
Quietly, without fuss, the bridge and surrounding areas had been scanned and cleaned of all remaining bots, including several pockets tapping into the communications channels aboard the ship that would likely have relayed Qayin’s demands to the Avenger, thus bolstering the deception. A tiny handful had been isolated and purposefully allowed to remain, and now those channels were being used to send false signals proclaiming that there was nothing that could be done, that there were no operable defensive fighters available, little plasma for weapons and a great number of sick and injured aboard.
Thus, the game was in motion.
But now the entire venture was in Evelyn’s hands. As she had said, the Word had revealed a weakness: her. Quite why it wanted her alive, or indeed wanted her at all, was beyond the captain, but the fact that Hevel and Governor Hayes had in their infected state tried to kill her by blasting the high–security wing into oblivion meant that there was something going on. The Word had wanted Evelyn dead, yet now it apparently wanted her alive.
‘Has there been any signal from Tyraeus?’
‘Nothing sir,’ came the response, ‘all channels are silent.’
The plan was simple enough, albeit that it might require Evelyn to sacrifice herself, but that had been her decision. She had wanted to go despite Andaim’s loudly voiced protests, which had in the captain’s opinion been expressed without due consideration for his standing as an officer. Meyanna had suggested letting the indiscretion go by, for reasons that Idris wasn’t sure of.
‘How far from the Avenger’s landing bay to the fighter wing?’ he asked Jerren.
‘Seven floors, four hundred cubits,’ came the response.
The captain looked at the viewing screen, at the cruiser’s huge hull laden with heavy weapons, and
visualised the path that Andaim and his men would be forced to take. Their route had been chosen based on the amount of bots smothering the Avenger’s hull. There were large areas so far left untouched, and it was assumed that the interior sections of the ship beneath these areas of hull were also uninfected. The Avenger was a large vessel, and even the voracious nature of the Word would take a while to spread to all of her corners, if indeed it even intended to.
Thus it had been determined that the fighter hangars, where the Avenger’s four wings of top–rated offensive Raython spacecraft were stored, were also likely untouched. Manned fighters were of less use to a mechanical foe, and it had been surmised that as the Avenger had not deigned to launch a defensive screen of fighters when it had arrived alongside the Atlantia, they were thus not yet under its control.
‘How long, do you think?’ he asked Jerren.
‘If they’re unopposed in their path? Ten minutes, maybe twelve.’
Idris nodded and put his hands behind his back.
‘Prepare all armouries for battle,’ he said, ‘but pass the word verbally, not through the communications channels. Charge the plasma banks, but do it slowly.’
As his officers dashed to perform their duties and the bridge lights were dimmed to a dull red, Captain Idris Sansin felt his wife’s hand squeeze his arm.
‘This is it,’ he said softly to her.
***
XXXVIII
Evelyn walked slowly, her arms tucked in by her sides and her head slightly ducked down.
She could hear the hiss of countless spindly metallic legs clicking on the metal walls and bulkheads as she walked, swarming around her but always at least a few inches from her boots, a similar sized patch of bare metal above her on the ceiling as she walked.
She tried to keep her head level as she walked, almost as if pretending that the bots were not there, but her eyes swivelled left and right and up and down as she strode toward the bridge, seeking any sign that these horrendous little things were preparing to swarm upon her and consume her body in a frenzy of gnashing pincers and burrowing tools.
Atlantia Series 1: Survivor Page 26
