Endeavour (Atlantia Series Book 4)

by Dean Crawford

  ENDEAVOUR

  © 2014 Dean Crawford

  Published: 28th November 2014

  ASIN: B00Q9L5JRI

  Publisher: Fictum Ltd

  The right of Dean Crawford to be identified as author of this Work has been asserted by him in accordance with sections 77 and 78 of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.

  All rights reserved.

  Dean Crawford Books

  Also by Dean Crawford:

  The Atlantia Series

  Survivor, Retaliator

  Aggressor, Endeavour

  The Ethan Warner Series

  Covenant, Immortal, Apocalypse

  The Chimera Secret, The Eternity Project

  Independent novels

  Eden, Holo Sapiens

  Revolution, Soul Seekers

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  We should have known better.

  We know that there are few survivors, few of our kind still clinging to life.

  They say that when the end came some embraced it willingly, shrugged off their lives like old skins and allowed the Legion to infiltrate their minds and their bodies and become one with the machine. Most, however, did not. Most fought, and died, trying only to remain who they were.

  The Legion, the instrument of the Word, our governing law, took life across all of the colonies. Worlds fell; Ethera, Caneeron, Titas; the mining settlements and the outlying systems and the uncharted clouds of asteroids and meteors beyond consumed by the monstrous and insatiable thirst for knowledge and power that is the currency of the Word. The greatest creation and achievement of our human race turned vengeful deity, the destroyer of worlds.

  We now know that there are several forces at work within the Legion, an immeasurable swarm of mechanical devices ranging in size from as big as insects to as small as biological cells. There are the Infectors, the smallest and most dangerous, for it is their mission to infiltrate the optical nerves, the brain stem and the spinal cord of human beings, turning them into mere instruments dancing to the macabre hymn of the Word’s destructive passion. Then there are the Swarms, the clouds of tiny but voracious feeders who break down all and any materials into the raw ingredients for more of their kind: metals, plastics, even human tissue, consumed en masse and regurgitated into further countless devices, all of which evolve with startling rapidity as though time were running for them at breakneck speed. Finally, there are the Hunters: bigger than the rest and with only a single purpose – to find and to kill intelligent biological life wherever it is found in the cosmos.

  We are the last of our kind, and despite the horrors that we witnessed when we fled the only star system we could call home, we now know that we must return. There is nowhere else to run to, nowhere else to hide, for if we do not make our stand now then we condemn our children or their children after them to face what we could not. We must fight back and step by step, system by system, we must take from the Word that which was ours and liberate ourselves from the living hell that we have created and endured.

  The Atlantia, a former fleet frigate turned prison ship, is the last home we have. Our crew is comprised of terrified civilians, dangerous former convicts and a small but fiercely patriotic force of soldiers and fighter pilots for whom there is no further purpose to life other than to fight for every last inch of space between here and home.

  Our lives may become the last that will ever be lived, and thus we tell our story in the hope that one day others will read of it and remember our names.

  Captain Idris Sansin

  Atlantia

  I

  ‘Hold position!’

  The whisper cracked like thin ice in Lieutenant Riaz’s ear, and came from a microphone surgically inserted into the throat of one of his troopers. Inaudible to human ears, the trooper’s skills as a ventriloquist worked well in their shared high–threat environment.

  Lieutenant Riaz crouched in the darkness, the cold seeping into his bones as he remained perfectly still and peered ahead into the gloom. Upon the transparent mask of his helmet was transposed a vector–based night–vision display, a series of lines in three–dimensional form that overlaid the view ahead and picked out the contours of a long corridor, bulkheads and doorways invisible in the pitch black. He preferred the non–intrusive, night–sight preserving geometric display to the glare of full night–vision just in case someone, or something, hit the lights and blinded himself and his men.

  The corridor was enveloped not just by darkness but also a freezing mist, the vacuum of space outside the hull chilling the interior of the aged vessel. The lieutenant squinted his right eye twice on purpose as he looked at a selector on his display and the image on his mask screen switched to an environmental read–out: the temperature was two degrees above freezing, oxygen at twenty one per cent, nitrogen at seventy one per cent, trace gases comprising the rest. Breathable, but not one of the seven men he shared the darkness with dared to remove their helmets.

  Up ahead, Riaz could just make out the form of his point man, a shadow against shadows, hugging one wall of the corridor and surveying the scene ahead. Nobody moved, other soldiers behind the lieutenant silent and still. He could hear the sound of fat drops of moisture dripping to splatter on the deck plating beneath his boots, tapping on his environmental suit as though fingers were playing across his shoulders. Upon the ceiling of the corridor were fat icicles that glistened in the faint green glow from the soldiers’ visor displays.

  ‘Advance.’

  Riaz nodded his head fractionally as a signal to the men behind him and the small knot of soldiers advanced, melting through the darkness like liquid shadow, silent and deadly. The confines of the corridor served to amplify any sounds, the dropping water like a symphony of tiny drumbeats that the lieutenant’s brain quickly tuned out, focusing entirely on the corridor ahead for any sign of danger.

  He squinted his right eye twice again and the display switched to a three dimensional map of the vessel in which they moved. Vast, partially cylindrical and slowly rotating about its longitudinal axis to create gravity on the outer decks: an older means of keeping the crew’s feet on the deck before the more widely utilised technique of placing magnetically charged plates below decks to draw down on the iron inserts in the crew’s uniforms. Deeper inside the vessel, the gravity was barely at thirty per cent and the lieutenant’s movements were light and cautious.

  The point man led them further down the corridor, each of them moving with their gloved hands cradling powerful pulse rifles, fingers on triggers and plasma magazines activated. Heavy webbing was festooned with grenades, static charges, ammunition pouches and blades, every soldier laden with the weapons of war. At the vanguard, a similarly armed man carried a small Bergen bearing medical equipment and supplies, as well as a compact folding stretcher. The eight–man team was entirely self–sufficient.

  And had been so for over four years.

  The point man crept agonisingly slowly toward the end of the corridor, where the way was blocked by a sealed bulkhead. With unbreakable patience the team settled in again and waited for any sound of movement either beyond the bulkhead or behind them. Highly trained and disciplined, Lieutenant Riaz knew that the will of any foe would break before that of his team. Anger, fear or just plain old curiosity always forced an enemy to move and thus reveal themselves, and then the shooting would begin. Controlled bursts, accurate and withering fire closely and instinctively coordinated that had seen his team kill with overwhelmingly efficiency even when outnumbered ten to one.

  After several long minutes of silence the point man finally moved up to the bulkhead doors. They had been sealed from t
he inside and led into what the schematics of the lieutenant’s display suggested was nothing more than an ordinary storage area of the holds. So far, so normal, except that this vessel had proved itself to be anything but normal. The schematics barely matched the interior of the ship in ways that the lieutenant, though he would never admit it to his men, found truly frightening.

  Walls were no longer straight but rippled and pitted as though crumbling despite being made of metal as solid now as the day it had been forged. Some sections of the ship’s decks were entirely missing, leaving lethal plunging abysses filled with debris tumbling over and over silently at the ship’s centre. But even that could not compare to the horrors they had witnessed upon the ship’s bridge, things that not one of his men had mentioned since. The lieutenant found himself staring into the darkness, his mind filled with gruesome images of…

  ‘Stand by.’

  The point man eased his way back from the bulkhead and the lieutenant saw a tiny block of material attached to the locking mechanism. A cube–shaped package of chemicals suspended in a five–sided metal container, the open–ended side was attached facing the bulkhead door locks. A detonator released a small vial of a further chemical into the block, which would transform it from an inert package into a fearsome blaze as violent reactions occurred within.

  The point man checked the positions of the team behind him, and then he touched the detonator as the team of soldiers averted their eyes from the door.

  There was little sound, barely a faint hiss, but a tremendously bright blaze of energy illuminated the darkness as the lieutenant shielded his eyes from the light. He peered behind him and saw the corridor glow in the ghostly white light, a forest of icicles clogging the ceiling and sparkling as the bulkhead was melted at its locking points.

  The flare of light faded as rapidly as it had appeared and instantly the point man leaped up and grabbed the bulkhead release valves as the fire–team behind him took up positions in support. A second man shouldered his weapon and moved without command to assist the point man, and together they heaved the valves open and then slammed their shoulders into the bulkhead.

  The heavy door swung open as the two men dove out of sight to either side and cleared the way for the fire–team and their weapons. Lieutenant Riaz moved first and rushed forward with his rifle aimed ahead as he burst into a large storage facility. His eyes took everything in within moments, but it took his brain a moment to process was he was seeing as his heart skipped in his chest and he missed a breath.

  According to the schematics on his visor display the hold area had once been used for storing food for the large crew of the ship. At the time of its launch the vessel had been the largest hull ever constructed, over one hundred thousand tonnes and with a full compliment of one thousand souls. But the racks and shelves were long gone and in fact so was the massive food store. The hold was no longer recognisable as a hold at all, as though rebuilt by unknown hands and re–tasked to perform a far more sinister role.

  Ranks of vertically mounted escape capsules lined the decks and stretched away endlessly into the gloom, the aft bulkheads enveloped in the freezing mist that pervaded the entire vessel. Like giant black eggs in some nightmarish lair, they sat in glossy silence as the soldiers regrouped before them.

  ‘No life indicators, lieutenant,’ came the voice of the medic as he scanned his own visor display’s readout. ‘Minimal power and life support, normal atmosphere, but I’m detecting multiple biological readings inside all of the capsules.’

  Lieutenant Riaz nodded, not wanting to speak yet as he stood with his men and surveyed the scene. There were probably five hundred capsules, each with a cable that extended from the top and went up into the hold ceiling far above them. The lieutenant’s eyes traced the lines upward.

  ‘Power must have been re–routed from the fusion cores to here,’ he said.

  ‘Some kind of life preservation system?’ suggested one of the men. ‘Maybe the crew saw the writing on the wall and decided to settle in and hope for the best?’

  The lieutenant nodded but his eyes were drawn back down.

  ‘Only one way to find out,’ he replied as he moved toward the nearest capsule.

  The fire–team spread out around him, covering all points as the lieutenant moved closer to the capsule and examined its surface. He wiped a layer of frost off with his gloved hand and to his surprise the surface of the capsule was perfectly smooth, as though mirror polished. But the surface was also not of one material, the appearance layered and marred as though many different types of metal had been interwoven in a complex image like marble but with straighter lines, almost geometric in appearance.

  ‘Damn,’ one of the troops whispered, ‘it’s made from the ship itself. That’s where those missing decks went.’

  Lieutenant Riaz nodded, fascinated and yet unnerved. He looked up at the front of the capsule, the device standing a full cubit taller than he was and covered in frost. He reached up with his free hand and brushed the frost off. The crystals fell away in a sparkling shower and revealed a transparent panel to a rush of expletives from the soldiers around him as their flashlights illuminated the contents.

  The interior was filled with a pale fluid, and suspended within was a form of life that the lieutenant had not yet encountered, frozen in a rictus as though screaming for release. Fangs were bared, fearsome eyes wide and filled with rage, thick hair punctuated by tiny bubbles trapped within their layers that caught the light from the soldiers’ weapons and flickered like tiny chrome spheres. Both of the creature’s heads were pierced by tubes that seemed to burrow deep into the back of their skulls, and its multiple limbs were manacled in place.

  ‘What the hell is that?’ one of the troopers asked.

  The lieutenant looked around him at the hold. ‘Question is, what the hell is it doing here?’

  ‘This ain’t right,’ said another. ‘It just ain’t right.’

  Lieutenant Riaz overcame his shock and swept the frost from another capsule, revealing a different species likewise confined within. The troops began examining other capsules and in each they found something new and frightening.

  ‘Different one in each,’ said one of them.

  The lieutenant was able to recognise aquatic features in some species, terrestrial in others, and in some there was no way to tell if whatever was suspended in the fluid had ever been alive in any real sense at all, their appearance so bizarre. Riaz examined a cloud of what looked like milk suspended in the fluid inside one capsule, filaments of fibrous material clearly cohesive and yet unlike anything he had ever seen.

  ‘Lieutenant? We’ve got something over here.’

  Riaz turned and saw three of his troopers standing in front of a capsule deeper inside the holds. He strode across to them as they brushed down the surface of the capsule, glistening showers of frost falling slowly toward the deck in the low gravity. The men parted as the lieutenant moved to stand among them and looked up into the transparent panel.

  The fluid within held in suspension a human form, that of a woman. Short, brown hair was curled delicately back around small ears, the woman’s slight frame floating in the void as though hovering in mid–air.

  ‘One of the crew?’

  Lieutenant Riaz, unable to believe what he was seeing, move closer to the capsule. What horrified him the most was that the woman’s features were covered by a featureless metal mask, her eyes and mouth visible only through slim gaps in the metal illuminated by the soldier’s flashlights. Two slim probes poked between her lips and vanished into her mouth, the gruesome mask hiding her true features and making her look far more intimidating than someone so petite had any right to be.

  He reached up and brushed more frost off the viewing panel, and there upon the woman’s uniform he could see an identity badge and an image of the woman’s face. There was a grace about her that captivated the lieutenant, what little he could see of her elfin features both attractive and somehow worrisome at the same time, as th
ough she could bring joy into life as well as pain depending on her mood. Small, sculptured lips were set in a faint smile, and the lieutenant realised that he could place upon that expression emotions of both happiness and cruelty in equal measure.

  ‘Who the hell is she?’ asked another of the men.

  ‘I don’t know,’ Riaz replied. ‘This ship has been missing for almost a hundred years.’

  ***

  II

  The viewing platform of Atlantia was normally a place where a man could view the cosmos surrounding the frigate in all of its glory, a stunning observation post atop the bridge where Captain Idris Sansin had spent much of his time when off duty in the past. Now, he stood with his hands behind his back and stared out into an immense blackness devoid of even the slightest hint of light, and enjoyed only the silence that surrounded him. Nobody else came up here when there was nothing to see.

  The sense of vertigo provoked by the void was frightening to those who had never before witnessed it. The perfect, non–reflecting blackness had the depth of a universe and yet no visual marker to attach scale from a human perspective: the most common reaction was for an observer to believe that they were falling in all directions at once on an endless plunge toward infinity. For Idris, the deep blackness was a place into which he could deliver all of his hopes and fears, a faceless and nameless oblivion that cared little for human woes.

  Atlantia was travelling at super–luminal cruise, exceeding the speed of light several times over. At such tremendous velocity, light information was stripped from the surrounding cosmos: there was quite literally nothing to see, although Idris knew that reasonably close by their sister ship, Arcadia, was travelling alongside them. Communication was also impossible when travelling at such velocity, so if either ship had a problem and was forced to drop into sub–luminal cruise, there was no way to let the other vessel know about it. Idris and his fellow captain, Mikhain, got around this by combining the power of their respective frigates’ mass–drives to form a single ‘cell’: although they could not see or talk to each other, if one ship’s mass–drive disengaged the other would automatically do likewise. The technique had been used to great effect back in the Veng’en wars, Colonial warships emerging simultaneously from super–luminal cruise into ambush attacks against enemy vessels with frightening efficiency.