He heard Captain Sansin’s voice over the intercom.
‘Good job, Andaim. Bring her home.’
The shuttle swooped in from out of the sunlight at the head of a flotilla of craft that had swarmed toward Evelyn’s capsule. Now, as the shuttle turned about and opened its rear ramp to allow troops in environmental suits to exit on tethers and bring the capsule to safety, the flotilla of craft formed an honour guard around the shuttle and followed it back to the Atlantia.
***
XLV
‘You’ve had a hell of a few days.’
Evelyn was sitting upright in a bed in the Atlantia’s sick–bay, watching as Meyanna Sansin tended to the innumerable bruises and abrasions scarring her body. The mask was no longer on her face, hanging instead on the wall near her bed. She had insisted on keeping it, despite the assertion of several physicians that the memory was something she was better off without. They had no reply when she told them that it was a memory that she would never be without.
Meyanna patched another wound as the sick bay doors hissed open and Qayin strode in, his thick blue and gold locks looking surprisingly natural over a dark blue colonial uniform.
‘You’re kidding?’ she uttered, her throat still a little dry from where the probes had scraped her vocal chords.
‘They’re only human,’ Qayin replied in his deep bass voice as he ran his hands down the pristine uniform. ‘They knew they’d be lost without me.’
Meyanna peered at Evelyn as she tilted her head in Qayin’s direction. ‘Despite everything, we have failed abysmally to protect ourselves from them.’
Evelyn looked at Qayin. ‘Cutler?’
Qayin shook his head. ‘We found what was left of him floating in the debris a few hours ago.’
‘He stood up,’ she said urgently. ‘Went on his own and…’
‘We know,’ Qayin said. ‘He turned the battle all on his own, and if he were now I’d thump the idiot. He didn’t have to die.’
‘He had nothing left to live for,’ Evelyn replied.
‘That’s why I’d have thumped him,’ Qayin snapped. ‘He had plenty to live for, but instead he went and played idiot hero. It looks like the bots got to him when he used the fusion core, and he decided to check out and take them with him.’
Evelyn looked down as Meyanna used a cauterising tool to neatly close a lesion on her left forearm, the wound sealing shut and leaving only a fine red line. The doctor applied a gel and then wrapped a dressing around the wound.
‘You’re good to go,’ Meyanna said. ‘You need to rest. Try not to get into trouble for a while, okay?’
‘Who do you think you’re talking to?’ Qayin asked rhetorically. ‘This girl can’t say good mornin’ without starting a war.’
Evelyn slid her legs off the bed, and was instantly lifted off the deck by Qayin’s giant arms and hugged so tightly she thought her chest would cave in.
‘Welcome back,’ the big man said as he set her back down. ‘Now, you’re wanted for debrief,’ Qayin reported. ‘So move yo’ ass.’
Evelyn walked out of the sick bay with Qayin as escort, her white civilian clothes feeling astonishingly clean against her skin and the ship’s air cool and reassuring upon her face.
The civilians were evidently being scanned for infection by the Atlantia’s medical staff, the sick bay corridors full of men, women and children watching her as she passed, whispers and cautious glances cast at her from all corners. But unlike the prison, this time there was admiration and awe in their expressions, the pointing fingers no longer accusing.
The trip up the elevator shafts to the bridge was brief, and she walked onto the bridge to see the captain once again occupying his favourite chair, his crew bustling over their duties overseeing the extensive repairs to the frigate’s hull.
Everybody stopped and a rattle of applause erupted through the bridge as the entire crew leaped to their feet. She spotted a couple of former convicts working alongside the officers, and she felt a heat in her cheeks and down her neck and realised that she did not know where to look.
Her eyes met Andaim’s, the lieutenant leaning with his arms folded against a pillar near the captain’s chair and watching her with a quiet smile.
The captain stood up and strode down to greet her, his grip warm and firm as he shook her hand and then pulled her close in a brief embrace.
‘I never thought I’d say this,’ he admitted, ‘but I’m glad to see you back aboard and safe.’
Evelyn smiled broadly, the warmth permeating her soul feeling like an old friend long lost.
‘It’s good to be back,’ she said, and was momentarily surprised at herself.
The captain stood back from her and glanced at Qayin. ‘My apologies for this,’ he said, gesturing to the former convict’s uniform.
‘Best thing that ever happened to him,’ she replied. ‘You wanted to debrief me?’
‘Nothing so formal,’ the captain said as he waved her to follow him onto the bridge. ‘Meyanna has cleared you?’
‘I’m not infected,’ Evelyn replied. ‘She gave me the all clear using the scanners. What about the rest of the crew and civilians?’
‘Meyanna has developed a non–lethal test for the bots,’ the captain said. ‘We’re checking everybody right now.’ The captain sat back down in his chair and looked at her. ‘You saw him, Tyraeus?’
‘What was left of him.’
‘What did he tell you?’
‘He told me of what really happened to me,’ she replied, ‘to my family. I think he was trying to win me over to his side.’
‘Why?’
‘I don’t know.’
Evelyn had not had long to think about what had happened, about what she had learned, but her memory of nearly dying when the high–security prison wing had been sabotaged meant that she now wanted to reveal as little as possible about her condition. She carried an immunity to the Word. She could not imagine how that was possible, but that Tyraeus had been telling the truth was clear enough: she had seen what had happened to the bots he had put into her body. With his ship destroyed and the Atlantia far beyond communications range with the colonies, whoever else was infected aboard ship would have no way to report her presence back.
Hevel had not been the only agent of the Word aboard the Atlantia.
Evelyn was not about to give another of the Word’s minions the chance to remove her from play as Hevel and Governor Hayes had tried to do. She had decided to wait until she could communicate her immunity quietly to Meyanna Sansin, while identifying the infected crew members, and set about finding a way to inoculate the rest of the Atlantia’s crew. For now, silence was once again her friend and ally.
‘What did happen to your family?’ the captain asked.
Evelyn explained what Tyraeus had told her, the entire command crew listening to her story, and the captain exhaled heavily when she had finished.
‘I’m sorry,’ he said. ‘I had no idea that you were married, or a mother. We all just thought…’
‘It doesn’t matter,’ Evelyn replied. ‘All that matters is that the Word has failed to destroy us. This is where we must turn the battle.’
The captain rubbed his chin, the stubble rasping as he looked at her.
‘You’re thinking what I’m thinking,’ he said.
‘We don’t run anymore,’ she confirmed, and looked across the bridge at the crew watching her. ‘We can defeat the Word. We just did. If we run they will continue to follow us and people will continue to die, until eventually there really will be nobody left. We cannot condemn our children to a future of running and hiding across the cosmos.’
Evelyn looked about her at the bridge crew, and she realised that somebody had moved to stand alongside her. Andaim’s voice filled the bridge.
‘I say we fight back!’ he shouted.
A broadside of cheers filled the bridge, and Evelyn saw the lieutenant grinning down at her. ‘Welcome back,’ he said.
The captain stood up,
and made his decision.
‘I agree,’ he said. ‘Running has not served us any purpose other than to deplete our numbers even further. Helm, take us clear of the Avenger’s wreckage as soon as our engines are fully repaired. Tactical, I’ll need you to organise the salvage parties to recover what useful materials we can from her hull and debris before she is destroyed. Andaim, you will lead the scouting parties back down to the planet: we’ll need to complete our gathering of supplies, and ensure that we leave as little trace of our presence here as possible.’
‘Aye, captain,’ Andaim nodded.
***
XLVI
The valley at the heart of the Atlantia’s sanctuary was filled with crowds of civilians all waiting in lines to be checked by Meyanna Sansin and her medical team for infection by the Word: the men, women and children who represented the survivors of the calamity that had consumed the colonies. At their centre stood ranks of soldiers, pilots, military officers and former convicts now resplendent in their junior–grade uniforms that managed, mostly, to conceal the gang tattoos and scars that marked their bodies.
Behind them, on a raised dais, Captain Idris Sansin addressed the crowd, his voice rolling out over their heads and across the valley.
‘Citizens, it does not require me to elaborate on what has become of our people these past months and years. We have suffered, even as the memory of those we left behind still lingers in our minds, as we have been pursued across the cosmos by a force of our own creation, bent on turning us to its will or destroying us entirely.’ The captain paused for effect. ‘No more.’
A deafening cheer went up as the civilians and military contingent showed their anger and their appreciation, and as Evelyn watched she realised that a real corner had been turned, that this was the point where they would start fighting back, together.
‘We will run no longer,’ the captain went on. We shall turn and face our adversary, if not to protect ourselves then to protect those who have no defence at all against the Word.’
He looked across the heads of so many people who were now reliant upon his every decision; a lone leader controlling the fate of what little was left of humanity.
‘The wreck of Avenger has been fitted with the fractured fusion core that once powered the prison hull attached to the Atlantia,’ he said, ‘and her course set for the star that resides at the centre of this planetary system. In a few short days the Avenger will collide with the surface of that star and be melted into inorganic atoms. Captain Tyraeus, his infected crew and vessel will be no more.’
The captain clenched his fist beside his head.
‘We can defeat the Word, we have defeated the Word, and by everything that makes us who we are I proclaim that we shall search the cosmos for every last trace of the Word and blast it from existence until it becomes history!’
More cheers thundered from the crowds below as the captain turned and surveyed his military.
‘We now have a full complement of fighter aircraft,’ he said, ‘soldiers are being trained, pilots, scouts and officers. We all have a part to play, and we shall fulfil our roles to the very best of our ability. We are the last human beings, the last survivors of our kind.’ He surveyed the crowds one more time. ‘But this is not the end of our story. This is the beginning!’
The crowds applauded and let out thunderous cheers.
Andaim leaned in as the captain walked down off the raised dais.
‘We have no idea whether anybody else aboard ship is infected as Hevel was,’ he said.
The captain sighed and nodded.
‘That is something that we will have to live with,’ Idris replied, ‘for now at least. With the Avenger destroyed, any carrier aboard will be unable to do much without alerting others to their infection. We must be patient, and bring any enemy aboard to us by their own mistakes, not start a witch–hunt among the crew, especially not now.’
He turned to Evelyn, who stood beside Qayin and his uniformed cohorts, all of whom were either beaming with pride or shuffling nervously, clearly uncomfortable with the sudden attention they were being subject to.
‘And you, Evelyn?’ he asked. ‘You have the gratitude of the entire ship’s compliment and the respect of her crew. The amnesty is extended to all convicts who were incarcerated aboard Atlantia Five. We could use another good fighter aboard this ship, be it with Bra’hiv’s soldiers or Andaim’s pilots.’
Evelyn looked at Bra’hiv and then at Andaim, before she replied.
‘I think that Bra’hiv knows how to look after himself,’ she said. ‘But Andaim…’
The lieutenant grinned.
‘I’ll feel safer with her around,’ he said to the captain. ‘I’ll schedule her flight training to begin as soon as she’s ready.’
The captain nodded and then turned as a section of the sanctuary’s vast sky faded away to reveal the vast panorama of the star fields surrounding them, specked with a handful of brighter points of light, other planets in orbit around the blinding flare of their parent star.
The entire ship’s compliment fell silent and watched as the colourful blue and green planet receded slowly behind them. Against the vast panorama a thin streak of blue–white energy behind the Avenger’s crippled hull drifted toward the star as it rose over the planet’s horizon, heading on its course for destruction amid unimaginable heat.
From the Atlantia’s hull a flotilla of dozens of drones launched out into the blackened void and turned toward the nearby planet. Metallic and shaped like discs, with a central bulge that contained their ion drives and internal circuitry, the unmanned drones were capable of both inter–stellar and atmospheric flight, of tremendous velocities and manoeuvrability and of functioning almost indefinitely.
Evelyn watched them depart, knowing that the drones would patrol the planet for aeons to come, silent guardians against the return of the Word. If ever an intelligent species evolved there, the population of the planet below would probably see them in the skies from time to time, but would likely never understand why they were there or what their purpose was.
*
Dhalere watched the spectacular scene across the heavens of the sanctuary, the Avenger departing toward its doom in the heart of the fearsome star and the wave of drones vanishing toward the distant planet, to act as guardians for perhaps millennia into the future. The planet below them had seemed so inviting, somewhere that she could have fled, but now she knew that she never could. There was no right thing to do, no wrong thing to do.
She knew that she would have to do something, though.
Her mind seemed confused, as though her thoughts were not her own as she slipped away from the throng watching the wreckage of the Avenger vanish toward the huge star. She hurried through the ship, seeking the solace of her tiny cabin and shutting the door behind her and locking it firmly.
She walked slowly into her bathroom and stood in front of the steel mirror on the wall.
She was still young, still beautiful with her dark skin and exotic almond eyes, and yet she felt somehow as though everything was slipping away from her for reasons that she could not exactly describe.
A lone tear fell from her cheek and dropped onto the sink. She looked down at it and her heart sank as she watched it drain slowly away. A few tiny black specks lined its wake, and as she leaned closer to the sink she saw them shift position, climbing back toward her.
Dhalere looked closely at her reflection in the mirror and saw the tiny shapes drifting across the whites of her eyes, scuttling back and forth like minuscule demons flocking away from the light.
Her face smiled cruelly back at her, using muscles that she could not herself control as a lance of bright pain briefly sheared her vision and then faded to be replaced with a wonderful warmth and comfort.
Dhalere understood the warning, despite the fear that coursed through her veins. There was little time. She would be tested for infection by Meyanna Sansin: somehow, she had to avoid detection.
***
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Dean Crawford is the author of the internationally published series of thrillers featuring Ethan Warner, a former United States Marine now employed by a government agency tasked with investigating unusual scientific phenomena. The novels have been Sunday Times paperback best-sellers and have gained the interest of major Hollywood production studios. He is also the enthusiastic author of many independently published Science Fiction novels.
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Atlantia Series 1: Survivor Page 31
