Cutler threw his arms up to shield his view, and as he did so he saw the cloud of bots swarming over his environmental suit, rushing toward his visor. He heard their evil little legs scuttling over his helmet, saw glinting little incisors slicing into his visor, scratching it as they worked to penetrate it and kill him.
Cutler glimpsed the fires ripping through the Avenger’s hull as she was battered by the Atlantia’s powerful broadsides, and he realised that the cruiser’s retaliating fire was decreasing and becoming more sporadic and unguided as control of the battleship was lost.
Cutler focused on the little bots swarming across his suit as he clambered around the containment unit. He knew that he would not survive long enough to make it back in one piece to the Atlantia, and he knew likewise that the sooner it was over, the better. He would not be turned.
‘Suicide is better than surrender, you little bastards,’ he snarled.
Cutler gripped the side of the containment unit as its heat seared his body and took a huge breath before he thrust his head down into the beam in a blaze of light. He felt the briefest moment of unbearable agony and then his body was blasted out into the darkness in a cloud of flaming embers.
***
XLIII
Evelyn heard the multiple explosions swell behind her as she sprinted down the corridor. Around her the Avenger’s lights flickered and the hull shuddered as multiple blasts hammered the stern and the blazing fusion core sliced into the bridge.
She hurled herself to the deck as a blast ripped through the wall behind her, a hot wash of flames gusting overhead as the bridge melted behind her in a tumult of flames and oxygen was sucked past her in an inferno as the Avenger’s mighty hull was breached.
Evelyn hauled herself along the deck against the gale, dragged herself through a bulkhead and then hooked her boot around the open pressure hatch and pulled on it. The vortex of wind caught the door and it slammed shut. Evelyn dragged herself to her feet and heaved the locking bar down into place, but she knew it would not hold for long.
She turned and ran for the shuttle decks, hoping against hope that there would still be one of the pristine craft waiting for her and functional. The Avenger’s hull vibrated and the lights dulled again and then she realised that she could no longer feel the distant throb of the huge engines, as though the ship’s heartbeat had been stilled.
The main lighting flickered weakly and then plunged the corridor into absolute blackness. Evelyn skidded to a halt, reaching out for the walls around her to steady herself as the ship shifted under the blows from the Atlantia’s heavy cannons. Emergency lights flickered on, a dull red glow that banished the darkness but made her feel as though the ship was bleeding out around her.
Evelyn was about to start running again when she heard a new sound, as though a billion grains of sand were being poured into the corridor behind her. She turned and saw a thick black morass of bots surging like a wave down the corridor behind her from where they had eaten through the bulkhead door, and behind them a searing wall of roiling flame.
Evelyn turned and sprinted for the shuttle bay, leaping down a flight of steps ahead of her and hitting the deck hard. Pain flared in her ankle, but she clambered to her feet and looked behind her as she ran.
The bots flooded down the stairwell like a gigantic black snake, and the glow from the flames brightened on the deck above as air rushed toward her, cooling the sweat on her skin beneath her mask. Pain flared up and down her leg and she tore off her magnetic suit and stopped to yank off her boots. They dropped to the deck with a clang as she clambered out of her suit and grabbed the wall of the corridor as she floated off the ground. She pushed with her good foot and sailed away down the corridor as the giant wave of bots closed in on her and the flames burst into the passageway.
She reached out for bulkheads, gripping them as she sailed through and hauling herself ever faster down the corridor, but the wave of bots was closing on her, pursued by the explosions as section after section of the Avenger’s hull was consumed by flames.
Another bulkhead sped past and she briefly considered trying to close a hatch behind her but the bots were far too close now. One mistake, one moment too late, and they would flood through and consume her for nothing more than revenge.
She saw the final stairwell down to the landing bay deck and pushed off the ceiling. She sailed down into the lower level and pushed off the deck with her uninjured foot, sailing forwards and up toward the ceiling as she saw the landing bay doors ahead, wide open and beckoning her onward.
A rush of air began to howl past her toward the landing bays, and she realised in horror that they must have been breached. Then she realised that she would never be able to start a shuttle’s engines quickly enough to avoid being consumed by the bots. They would swallow her whole before she could even get the rear ramp closed. Panic consumed her as she looked behind and saw the bots swarming en masse, the flames reflecting off their glossy black mass as they roared in pursuit.
Evelyn burst out into the landing bay as she sought a handhold, and saw that Cutler must have left the bay doors open behind him after he flew the shuttle out. The air was being sucked in a howling wind from the entire ship, roaring through the landing bay and out into deep space.
Evelyn’s hand caught on the edge of a discarded vehicle and she was swung around to point feet–first toward the open bay doors as the flood of bots poured into the bay and were vacuumed toward oblivion past her.
To her left, she saw the ranks of escape capsules set into the wall of the bay.
One of them was open.
She felt warmth swell in her heart for the wily old criminal who had so unexpectedly become her saviour. She pulled her legs in and kicked off the side of the machine and propelled herself toward the open capsule as the bots poured through the bay, rolling and writhing as they tried to follow her.
Evelyn saw the capsule rush up before her, her body moving ever faster sideways as it was dragged toward the open bay doors, and then she slammed into the capsule and turned herself around, hanging by her fingertips in the howling gale as she looked over her shoulder and saw the bots forming a writhing black snake that coiled toward her, undulating in the wind.
Evelyn breathed deeply and pulled herself into the capsule as the bots reached out for her. She hauled herself in and pulled her legs in, turning over into a standing position in the capsule and hitting the switches to close the lid. The panel hissed painfully slowly as it swung over her and closed, and then it clicked as the safety latches locked into place.
The bots slammed into the capsule, their writhing black masses blocking out the light and their tiny mandibles scratching the clear viewing port as they fought to get inside. Evelyn heard a rush of deafening flame and saw the bots seared and swept from the capsule by the ferocity of the blast as the explosions ripped through the landing bay. Heat swelled inside the capsule and a warning alarm blared as words flashed before her on the control panel.
SURVIVAL PROTOCOL: ENGAGE?
Evelyn hit the button and suddenly the capsule sank back from the flames, several of the bots still glowing in the heat as they clung to the glass, and then the capsule filled with fluid and Evelyn felt it flow warm and thick up to her neck. She closed her eyes, knowing that with the mask on she could not prevent it from flooding her lungs.
She writhed and choked as it spilled into her body, the warmth both comforting and frightening her until her body got its first rush of oxygen from the fluid. Before she could even process the thought, the capsule jerked and she was slammed against the viewing port as the capsule was ejected from the Avenger’s hull and blasted out into space.
She saw the hull of the Avenger retreating rapidly away, the entire for’ard section consumed by fires and the bridge a smouldering mess of melted metal and shattered hull plating. Clouds of spinning debris sparkled in the harsh sunlight as her capsule flew away from the hull, and she saw the remaining bots clinging to the outside of her capsule vanish as their grip
was lost and their internal circuitry froze solid.
The amber per–flurocarbon fluid blurred her vision but she could see the Atlantia turning away from the crippled battleship, her own hull glowing with multiple fires, and she could see fighters zipping back and forth through the debris field, some of them shooting at the Avenger even as the last of her lights flickered out.
Evelyn hung suspended in the fluid, her body overcome with an overwhelming sense of exhaustion as she felt her eyelids drooping. A weariness as heavy as all the universe seemed to weigh in upon her, and with the last vestiges of her awareness she realised that she was being automatically anaesthetised by the fluid to preserve her for as long as possible.
She tried to stay awake long enough to activate her homing beacon, but she no longer had the strength to move her arms. In the distance, through the slits of her mask, she saw a beam of energy blazing away into deep space and a pair of shuttles cruising toward it. Her last thought was for Cutler’s remarkable courage, and of whether he or Andaim had survived the battle that had raged around her.
And then all was darkness.
*
‘We’ve got the fusion core in sight, calling in the shuttles now!’
Bra’hiv’s voice was calm over the intercom as Andaim guided his Raython fighter alongside the crippled hulk of the Avenger.
‘Any sign of Evelyn?’ he asked.
A long silence ensued as he cruised slowly through the debris field.
‘Negative,’ came the reply from Qayin. ‘The bridge took one hell of a beating. Looks like Cutler decided to take matters into his own hands, heroic son of a bitch.’
Andaim saw Qayin’s fighter rounding the darkened bow of the Avenger, and he followed it around and saw the shattered remnants of the bridge, a cavernous hole filled with twisted metal hanging like grey vines where they had melted before the core’s raging energy and then frozen in the bitter cold of space.
‘She could have made it to the shuttle bay,’ Andaim suggested.
‘Yeah,’ Qayin agreed, ‘but I ain’t seein’ no other shuttles out here, and that part of the ship is a mess and on fire. All the oxygen aboard the ship is burning up.’
‘We need to go aboard and find her.’
The reply came not from Qayin but from Captain Idris Sansin.
‘There will be no personnel entering that vessel. We’re still registering massive movements aboard her. The bots are flocking for warmth and will likely attack and infect anybody who boards her. She must be quarantined and destroyed.’
‘Evelyn might still be aboard!’ Andaim shouted into his microphone.
There was another pause and then Sansin’s voice, heavy with regret.
‘I’m sorry, Andaim,’ he said, ‘but we’re detecting no signs of biological life aboard the ship. If Evelyn was aboard she did not survive.’
Andaim stared at the bulk of the Avenger’s hull, the captain’s orders reaching him as though from a great distance.
‘All fighters recover immediately to the Atlantia’s landing bay, slowly. I don’t want any of you nutcracker convicts crashing into my ship. We’ve lost enough people for one day.’
The Avenger hung dark and silent, surrounded by a cloud of debris and escaping atmospheric gases that entombed it. Andaim gave it a long, last glance and then he turned his fighter toward the Atlantia.
***
XLIV
The cold awoke her.
Light flared into her eyes and she squinted, as though a star had ignited right before her. She moved an arm to shield her eyes and felt it drag heavily through the per–fluorocarbon.
Memories flashed through her awareness.
Tyraeus. The battle. Cutler’s courage. Her escape.
She squinted as the fluid stung her eyes, saw nothing but immense star fields spreading before her, their light distorted slightly by the frost encrusting the viewing shield.
A red flashing light blinked in the darkness and she looked down.
FUEL CRITICAL: ENGAGE BEACON?
Evelyn heaved her arm up and hit the button, and she glimpsed in the darkness a dim flashing reflected off the ice before her, the homing beacon switching on with the last of the power contained in the escape capsule.
The per–fluorocarbon was cold, its heat–retaining qualities no match for a long duration exposure to deep space. Her body was not yet shivering but it could only be a matter of time before the fluid began to crystalize, ice chunks forming within it and deep freezing her body to float into eternity, wandering the lonely darkness of space.
Evelyn tried to call out, but the fluid and her mask prevented her from making even the smallest recognisable sounds.
The capsule was slowly rotating, the star field moving achingly slowly around as a brightness appeared, the brilliant glow of a yellow star flashing into view across the shoulder of the planet. Evelyn stared at the sunrise, saw the distant cloud tops and a debris field scattered across the void before her, chunks of metal and sparkling fragments of glass and plastic spinning in a silent ballet through the bitter vacuum.
The scene was beautiful, tranquil and yet achingly lonely as she felt herself slipping away. The life support systems were all flashing red and she knew that she must have already exhausted the oxygen content of the per–fluorocarbon. The light of the sun cast a brief warmth across the viewing shield, bathed her in a gentle light as she floated in the fluid and finally let herself go.
In the light flaring across the debris field she saw the bulk of the Avenger in the distance, its hull darkened and lifeless as it drifted, the relic of a once proud and powerful nation of mankind lost forever.
Evelyn’s eyes closed slowly as the memory of her husband and her young son drifted through her mind, and she smiled as she slipped away into darkness.
*
Andaim nudged his Raython around a tumbling block of metallic debris that flashed in the sunlight as it descended toward the vast planet below. He could see flares and streaks of light as debris burned up in the atmosphere, his sharp young eyes seeking any sign of a shuttle craft or escape pod among the endless clouds of debris.
‘Scorcher One, you’re low on fuel, return to Atlantia immediately.’
Andaim swung his head around, scanning the debris field as he replied.
‘Just a little longer.’
The Raython climbed out of the debris cloud as Andaim spotted the shuttles and fighters all streaming back toward the Atlantia, some of them trailing plumes of gas from damaged pipework.
‘The Atlantia’s sensors will detect any survivors,’ came Lael’s response over the intercom.
‘You’re too far out,’ Andaim insisted.
‘The captain has given his orders and…’
‘The captain can shove his orders!’ Andaim snapped.
The radio chatter went dead as Andaim swung his Raython angrily around and swept back through the debris field, keeping one eye on his holographic orientation display for any signals from within the clouds of wreckage.
The cockpit alternated between bright light and deep blackness as the sun was silhouetted by junk flashing past Andaim’s cockpit. He squinted as he dove beneath a massive generator rolling gracefully by on his right, and then something flickered on his holographic display.
Andaim’s eyes locked onto it even as it vanished from sight. A tiny signal from far out beyond the debris field. Andaim’s pulse quickened and he focused the Raython’s tiny radar more closely in on the quadrant to get a better fix.
‘I’ve got something,’ he said. ‘Very faint signal, coming from the edge of the debris field. It looks like one of ours.’
Andaim squinted at the display as it scanned the distant object. It only took his mind a moment to register what he was seeing, the scan results denoting a colonial escape capsule, low on reserves, containing the weak signal of a human occupant: a female.
‘Launch everything!’ Andaim yelled. ‘All available craft, survivor located, quadrant five–seven–nine–oh–four.’
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br /> Andaim’s left hand moved without conscious thought, slamming the throttle to the firewall as he hurled the Raython over, centrifugal force crushing him into his seat as the fighter leaped forward.
Debris from around the Avenger flashed past his cockpit as he weaved the fighter through the fields of wreckage, past the bow of the crippled cruiser and out into empty space, bearing down upon the tiny signal flashing on his holographic display.
He saw other shuttles and Raythons turning to follow him but he raced out in front, the throttle still wide open and the fighter accelerating wildly as he soared with the racing sunlight toward the escape capsule.
Ahead, against a billion glistening stars, he saw a tiny beacon flash and he flipped the fighter over, facing back the way he had come but leaving his throttles wide open. The immense thrust of the engines now slowed him dramatically as he closed in on the signal, and he flipped the fighter over once more as he eased off the power.
The capsule emerged from the blackness ahead and he could see immediately that it was coated in frost and ice.
‘Shuttle to my quadrant, now!’ he snapped down the intercom.
‘Ranger Four inbound,’ came the reply. ‘Sixty seconds.’
Andaim guided the fighter gently in alongside the slowly rotating capsule, and in the brilliant light from the flaring sun he saw a metal mask behind the frosted viewing shield, the rough surface of the mask glinting cold and hard in the light.
Andaim’s guts plunged as he realised that Evelyn was back where she started, encased in an escape capsule with the mask silencing and hiding her from the rest of humanity.
Atlantia Series 1: Survivor Page 30
