Atlantia Series 2: Retaliator (7 page)

‘Ten seconds.’

The captain glanced at a monitor that showed the Atlantia’s flight deck now packed with Raythons lined up on the catapults, heat haze billowing from their engines toward massive extractor vents high up on the bay walls. Still filled with breathable air, the atmosphere in the bay would evacuate naturally when the bay doors opened, helping to drag the first wave of fighters out into the face of whatever awaited them.

‘Five seconds!’

The officers manning the tactical stations leaned forward over their consoles as though preparing for a race, their hands poised to activate ray–sheilding and plasma turrets, radar sweeps and counter–measures: every technology aboard designed to thwart an ambush attack.

‘Two seconds! One second!
Power down!
’

The Atlantia surged and the captain felt his restraining belt press against his stomach as the frigate plunged out of super–luminal. The blackness ahead flared bright white and then a spectrum of colour rippled like a kaleidoscopic rainbow as the light spectrum realigned itself and a dense starfield leaped into view.

The captain’s practiced eye picked out the faint object near the centre of the viewing screen, one that moved a fraction against the stationary backdrop of the galaxy.

‘Tactical on–line!’ he bellowed. ‘Launch all fighters!’

*

Evelyn saw the launch bay doors drop away as a rush of air billowed in tumbling clouds of vapour out into the abyss of space. Her eyes barely registered the movement before she felt the Raython leap into motion and she was slammed back into her seat.

The launch bay lights flashed past in a blur as she threw her throttles to the firewall and the open landing bay entrance flashed past above her as her Raython was blasted out into space. She glimpsed through her canopy the underside of the Atlantia’s immense for’ard hull rushing past above her, and alongside she saw from the corner of her eye Andaim’s fighter flick right as it cleared the bay.

‘Reaper One and Two clear!’ he called out.

Evelyn heard Mikhain’s response coming from the Atlantia’s bridge.

‘Target, bearing right two–zero degrees, elevation negative one–five, range sixty thousand cubits.’

Evelyn rolled right and followed Andaim as he turned onto the new heading, and she saw instantly the distant shape of a vessel hanging in space. Far from the light of the nearest stars her hull was entombed in shadow, black against the blackness, barely visible but for the stars it silhouetted.

Lael’s voice echoed over the intercom.

‘It’s colonial!’
she yelped, unable to keep the excitement from her voice.
‘It’s not Veng’en.’

Evelyn maintained a battle–formation with Andaim, separated by several hundred cubits as they closed in on the vessel: close enough to remain in mutual sight, not so close that they could both be taken out with a single shot.

‘I’m not seeing any sign of life,’ Evelyn said as she scanned her instruments. ‘No running lights, no nothing.’

‘Scan is showing no signs of biological life either,’ Andaim replied. ‘Stay sharp. Activate weapons.’

Evelyn flipped up a clear–red plastic shield on her instrument console and set the switch beneath it to “
Live
” before closing the lid again. Her plasma cannons glowed into life, waiting to be fired.

The vessel ahead loomed closer and Evelyn began to pick out details on its surface, dimly illuminated by the distant light of billions of stars.

‘Looks like a merchant vessel after all,’ Andaim said.

The ship’s hull was stained a dirty grey brown, streaked with bright silvery threads where countless micro–meteorite impacts had scoured the paint and dirt off to reveal bare metal beneath. That she had travelled far was clear not just from her location but her condition, and she had likely done so under ion power for much of that time.

‘I’ve got the distress signal again,’ Evelyn said, ‘still transmitting.’

The signal remained the same, broken as though left in a hurry, indistinct and warbling as the computers translated the language. The hull loomed up as Evelyn and Andaim slowed their fighters down, other Raythons now joining them as in the distance she glimpsed bright, fast–moving pin–pricks of light as Renegade Flight rocketed out into deep space to form a protective perimeter.

The merchant vessel was simple in its construction, as so many of them had been. Built in space for use only in space, it was only loosely aerodynamic in shape and profile to reduce the damage from micro–meteorites. A long, smooth cylinder with tapered edges, the only obtrusions from its surface countless hydrogen scoops, like the blisters on the skin of an Etherean whale. At its stern the engine bay protruded from the tapered hull, fitted with a pair of ion engines that now trailed crystalised dust in sparkling clouds behind the vessel as it drifted slowly through the emptiness of space.

‘She must have expelled her fuel,’ Andaim said as he flew alongside her hull and past the lifeless engines. ‘That’s a hell of a mistake to make this far from home.’

Evelyn followed Andaim’s fighter around the stern, easing the Raython over as she passed through the cloud of fuel crystals and out onto the vessel’s starboard flank.

‘She’s only moving slowly though,’ Evelyn said. ‘So she could not have been running from anything when her fuel expired. She’d still have momentum.’

‘Doesn’t add up,’ Andaim agreed as he flew alongside the vessel’s darkened bridge.

There, beneath the bridge windows, Evelyn could see markings.

‘
Sylph
,’ she read out over the intercom. ‘She’s called the
Sylph
.’

*

‘The Sylph,’ Lael echoed, and tapped in a few commands.

Upon the bridge viewing screen, which now showed the shadowy vessel and the fighters cruising alongside her, the captain saw new data overlaid by Lael. A schematic of the Sylph appeared, data on her performance envelope beside it as Lael read from her screen.

‘The Sylph, named after a spirit or ghost of the air, a privately owned vessel, part of a mining fleet. Mostly accommodation and cargo purposes, her keel was laid down sixty orbits ago. She was working the Tyberium fields when the Word attacked.’

The captain sat back thoughtfully in his chair. The Tyberium fields were a vast spherical cloud of asteroids that enshrouded the Ethera system as such clouds did all stars. Almost a full light year from their parent star they represented the remnants of stellar formation, the objects in the cloud often billions of years old and harbouring pristine minerals and chemicals, some of which had been formed in the supernovae explosions of ancient giant stars and could be found nowhere else in nature. Tyberium, a supremely rare mineral, was one of those valuable commodities.

‘She may have been far enough from the apocalypse to have escaped infection,’ he said. ‘Forced to run, low on supplies, she got this far and no further.’

Andaim’s voice crackled over the bridge intercom from his Raython cockpit.

‘Doesn’t explain why she’s becalmed out here. If she ran out of fuel they could simply have shut down their engines and cruised indefinitely.’

‘Perhaps they did,’ the captain replied, ‘when something slowed them down or forced them to stop.’ He turned to the Executive Officer. ‘Any signs of life?’

‘No sir,’ Mikhain replied from his tactical station. ‘Only emergency systems are functional. Life support is active, the hull is not breached so her atmosphere should be fine. I’m not reading any alerts from her computer systems and they’re all broadcasting on normal colonial emergency channels. It’s like nobody was ever aboard her.’

Captain Sansin rubbed his chin thoughtfully as Dhalere’s voice reached him from nearby.

‘It is a civilian vessel,’ she said.

‘Merchant,’ the captain confirmed.

‘Then this is a civilian matter,’ Dhalere said. ‘I want to be aboard her as soon as she’s considered safe.’

The captain turned his craggy head and looked at Dhalere as though she were insane.

‘
You
want to board her?’ he echoed. ‘I thought that you wanted us to go nowhere near her?’

‘As a civilian vessel, the situation is different now. It is not just your pilots and Marines who wish to contribute to this effort of yours,’ Dhalere replied. ‘That vessel is not military and may represent a new opportunity for us to house our civilians. The least that I can do is assess the likelihood of that happening.’

The captain glanced at the screen for a moment longer and then turned to tactical.

‘Any sign of the Word or its Legion?’

‘No sir,’ Mikhain replied. ‘No sign of any movement or heat signatures aboard. If the Word is there it’s not visible to us, but that’s no reason to go wandering aboard without taking proper precautions.’

Sansin nodded slowly.

‘Keep the fighters up and send the Marines in. Let’s see if we can figure out what’s happened to her before any civilians are allowed aboard.’ The captain turned to Dhalere. ‘Once her bay’s been cleared, the first person I want aboard her is the one who knows most about the Word. Evelyn.’

‘You want to send a former convict and known killer aboard her before the civilians who actually have a right to be there?’

‘Evelyn was innocent of her crimes, only ever killed in self defence and is one of only a handful of people aboard this ship who have encountered the Word face to face. She goes first, agreed?’

Dhalere bowed her head courteously, but her disdain for the captain’s choice was clear.

‘Tell General Bra’hiv to launch and to maintain contact with Atlantia,’ the captain ordered.

***

The shuttle leaped from Atlantia’s launch bay catapults and raced away from the frigate, two Raython fighters swooping down to provide escort to them as they crossed the frigid, black void between the two ships.

Bra’hiv sat in the cockpit’s jump seat and watched as the Sylph emerged from the blackness, her mottled, scratched hull in worse shape than the Atlantia’s.

‘How long do you think she’s been sitting here?’ he asked the pilot.

‘Impossible to say,’ came the response, ‘but hull scarring like that takes months to build up, years even. She’s probably been cruising through space since the Word attacked.’

Bra’hiv got out of his seat and strode into the shuttle’s cargo compartment, where twenty of Bravo Company’s Marines sat waiting for him, their plasma rifles cradled in their laps and their faces shielded behind visors. The assorted motley gang ‘hoods and gangsters were positioned nearest the boarding ramp for deployment, and Bra’hiv noticed that Qayin was at their head, in a leader’s natural position. Whether by intention or just pure instinct, Qayin was a psychologically savvy manipulator. Ten men from Alpha Company were also aboard to act as support, led by Sergeant Djimon.

‘Com’any, sixty seconds to deployment!’ Bra’hiv snapped, his keen eye searching for any sign of the men seeking to avoid the deployment.

He saw none. Fact was, men who had been brought up in the brutal life of street gangs were in many ways just as tough as those who had seen combat with the Marines as career soldiers: the only difference was the cause for which they had stood and the shape of the enemy. Djimon had thus not been happy about his men being placed behind Bravo Company, embittered that such low–lifes should see more of the action than his own men. He glanced at the general and nodded once as he pulled his visor down and sealed his neck collar, his face grim as he tried to force the sulk from his features.

Bra’hiv donned his own visor and sealed it at the neck. To his side, Qayin unbuckled his restraints and stood up to check the general’s seal.

‘Would you tell me if it was breached?’ Bra’hiv asked.

‘You’re about to find out.’

Bra’hiv took his seat at the rear of the shuttle’s bay, close to the aft deployment ramp that would drop under the pilot’s command as soon as they were in position. The lights in the shuttle dimmed to red as the pilot swung the vessel around near the Sylph’s landing bay, Bra’hiv catching a glimpse of the underside of the merchant vessel’s hull through the for’ard hatch just as the pilot sealed it shut.

‘Ten seconds.’

The pilot’s voice was calm over the intercom, the mark of an experienced aviator. Bra’hiv held his pulse rifle at port arms and flicked the safety catch to
off
.

‘All arms,’ he murmured into his own microphone.

The troops activated their weapons, the pulse rifles humming as they heard a dull thump. Bra’hiv and the thirty Marines with him punched their harness release buckles and stood ready to charge from the rear of the shuttle.

All Colonial vessels carried transponders that recognised each other’s signals and allowed one vessel’s computers access to the others in case of emergency. Under the Atlantia’s control, the Sylph’s landing bay doors had been opened and the pilot had carefully reversed the shuttle in.

The shuttle vibrated as it landed on its magnetic clamps in the bay and with a hiss and a rush of escaping pressurised air the rear ramp thundered down under hydraulic pressure and Bra’hiv sprinted down the ramp as his rifle swung left and right, seeking a target. Behind him followed Qayin and Djimon, and the rest of the Marines poured like a flood out into the darkened bay, underslung flashlights casting multiple rays of white light out into the gloom.

The Marines fanned out, encircling the shuttle in defensive positions, weapons cast ready for any sign of an attack. A deep silence filled the bay as the shuttle’s engines whined down and Bra’hiv edged out into the darkness.

‘No sign of movement,’ he reported into his microphone. ‘Lael, scanners?’

Lael’s voice reached Bra’hiv’s from the Atlantia’s bridge.

‘No heat sources near you, general,’
she reported.
‘No electrical disturbances. The bay is clear.’

‘Roger that,’ Bra’hiv snapped. ‘Lighting’s out, can you re–route the power?’

‘Stand by.’

Bra’hiv waited for a few moments and then several emergency lights arrayed around the bay flickered weakly into life and cast dim pools of light down onto the deck. The general saw a pair of small, private shuttle craft parked nearby, fuel bowsers and cables coiled in tight loops along one wall. His practiced eye sought signs of conflict but found nothing, the bay utterly devoid of life but for the Marines.