Atlantia Series 3: Aggressor (12 page)

‘That’s what I’m counting on,’ Idris Sansin replied.

‘What are you thinking?’ Andaim asked.

‘I’m thinking,’ Idris said, ‘that perhaps a change of plan might be in order.’

Idris had spent a lifetime serving the Colonial Forces, and during those long decades he and his fellow officers had seen countless things that they could not explain. Spacecraft whose performance defied even human experience that vanished as soon as they appeared. Terrifying but beautiful species whose existence seemed to be on a plane different to that of the human experience, much like the Icari. Fearsome black holes, blazing supernovae, super-dense neutron stars spinning six hundred times per second and bizzare life forms that lived upon the precarious edges of all three natural phenomena, places where humans would be vaporised in an instant were it not for the protection afforded by their spacecraft.

Occasionally, artifacts or even entire craft were found drifting in the deep void, light years from the nearest systems and pitted with the impacts of tens of thousands of years’ of micrometeorites – the relics of advanced species long extinct. Carefully concealed by the Colonial government for fear of alarming the general public, the study of these relics had often advanced human knowledge and technology by decades in a single bound.

But brigands like Taron Forge were under no obligation to hand over such items.

‘The Word’s knowledge is all built upon
human
knowledge,’ Idris mused. ‘Its experiences are bounded by our own, right up to the holocaust. It is now learning on its own but until its field of exploration exceeds our own…’

‘… it knows only what we know,’ Andaim finished the captain’s sentence.

Evelyn caught on a moment later.

‘If we could find a weapon against which the Word has no defence, we could strike back, hard.’

Idris nodded as he peered at Taron.

‘Have you seen anything else like that shroud before?’ he asked.

For once, the pirate captain seemed interested in the conversation.

‘You hear things from time to time,’ he admitted. ‘Rumours, pilots being confronted by things they can’t explain or escaping with their lives from some bizarre threat. Some of it is just bar-room bragging, but not all. That said, if you believed some pilots you’d think they all had a stash of planet-destroying weapons tucked away somewhere.’

Captain Idris Sansin nodded as he regarded the pirate. ‘You got a stash down there on Chiron?’

‘There’s no stash,’ Taron replied. ‘We don’t carry enough stores to need one.’

Idris smiled.

‘You’re a smart guy, Taron,’ he observed, ‘smart enough not to carry all your weapons in one holster. Your ship’s holds are not that large, so you’d likely be trading in valuable minerals rather than parts and materials. I wonder what’ll happen if I send a troop of Marines aboard her and let them see what they can find?’

Taron’s casual air vanished in an instant. ‘Over my dead body.’

‘I can arrange that.’

Taron’s hand flashed to his plasma pistol and the watching Marine’s plasma magazines hummed into life again as they took aim at Taron and Yo’Ki.

‘How do you want to play this?’ Idris asked. ‘A shooting match here, followed by your deaths and our searching of your ship anyway? Or some cooperation from you, and we let you go on your merry way?’

‘Why the hell should I trust you?’ Taron snapped.

‘You can’t,’ Idris admitted, ‘but then again, I don’t have any real reason to detain you here either. Yet.’

Idris let the word hang in the air for a long moment. Taron glared at the captain and his hand remained on his pistol, but his shoulders sagged.

‘Chiron IV,’ he replied, ‘northern hemisphere. You’ll probably pick up a faint energy signal. I have weapons there.’

‘Weapons?’

‘I don’t know how they work,’ Taron replied. ‘But it’s my guess they’ll go off with a hell of a bang. You’ll need a shuttle and a tech-crew to move them. You find the weapons, then you let us off this damned ship.’

‘Agreed,’ Idris nodded and glanced at Evelyn. ‘Lead a shuttle down there as escort. If you find anything, report back immediately.’

‘Yes sir,’ Evelyn replied and spun on her heel to march out of the room.

‘Andaim,’ Idris said, ‘back her up with the alert flight, just in case.’

The CAG nodded and hurried off in pursuit of Evelyn.

‘Guard,’ the captain snapped. ‘Escort Captain Forge and his co-pilot back to their ship, but do not allow them to take off without my permission.’

Taron joined his co-pilot and cast Idris a last glance. ‘You’re playing a very dangerous game, captain,’ he observed.

The pirate walked out of the room, and General Bra’hiv confronted Idris.

‘We can’t trust him,’ Bra’hiv said. ‘He’ll do anything he can to get control of the situation.’

‘In time of war,’ Idris replied, ‘you can’t be too choosy about your allies.’

‘You can be a bit more bloody selective than this,’ Bra’hiv hissed. ‘Veng’en warriors first and now him? You any idea how this looks to the crew and the civilians, captain?’

Idris glared at the general.

‘If you have any better ideas of how to move forward, general, I’d love to hear them.’

‘I’m not saying that we don’t need to take chances but…’

‘Yes you are,’ Idris snapped back. ‘Right now we need to get every human being we come across on our side, one way or the other. We don’t have many friends out there, general. I’m not about to throw away any opportunity to make new ones.’

‘Pirates don’t give a damn about us,’ Bra’hiv insisted. ‘You heard what Forge said.’

‘Then we won’t give a damn about them. But I’m not going to miss the chance to try and make allies, is that clear?’

Bra’hiv ground his teeth in his jaw. ‘Aye, cap’ain.’

‘Prepare a Marine landing party to join the techs in the shuttle crew,’ Idris ordered. ‘I want weapons and boots on the ground in case anything goes wrong.’

Bra’hiv saluted crisply and whirled away, leaving the captain to wrestle over the dilemma of whether his course of action really was the best one.

***

‘Easy now.’

Dr Meyanna Sansin lifted a saline line and injected a painkiller into the feed. Slowly, the writhing, incoherent man strapped to the bed began to relax, his breathing becoming more regular. His skin was mottled with dark purple lines and slick with sweat despite his skin being cold to the touch.

Meyanna sealed the line once more and tapped the time and date onto a display screen beside the bed. She could see that the patient’s seizures were becoming more regular and more acute, and the required dosage of medicine higher to combat them. Much more, and she feared she would end up killing the patient herself.

‘How’s he doing?’

Meyanna turned to see her husband entering the laboratory chamber, a series of transparent double-doors that sealed the laboratory’s atmosphere from that of the ward beyond.

‘Stable, but his seizures are getting worse.’

Idris Sansin moved to stand beside the bed and looked down at the civilian caught in the throes of extreme withdrawal from Devlamine.

‘I’m going to need him to tell us where he got the drug from.’

‘I can’t do that,’ Meyanna said. ‘If he regains consciousness too early he’ll suffer untold agony. Even if he did mention a name, we wouldn’t be able to tell if he was telling a lie in order to be sedated again to avoid the pain. It would be a form of torture, and we both know that the results gained under duress are unreliable.’

‘There could be other addicts aboard.’

‘It’s not the addicts you need to worry about,’ Meyanna insisted. ‘They can be treated once we know who they are.’

‘They’re not going to just march forward.’

‘They will when the supply dries up and they enter withdrawal,’ Meyanna replied. ‘That’s where you need to focus your efforts – find the supplier and shut them down.’

Idris nodded, and smiled. Meyanna was the rock in his life in so many ways, and despite working countless hours to keep the sick-bay running she still had enough wits about her to see problems clearly.

‘I haven’t figured out a good way of doing that yet,’ he admitted. ‘The toughest thing is figuring out who is definitely clean and getting them on the case.’

‘Andaim? General Bra’hiv? Both of them are as straight as an arrow.’

‘Yes,’ Idris agreed, ‘but it’s for that reason that nobody else aboard ship would open up to them and reveal who is supplying and growing the drug. It’s no good me sending the Marines in and rooting out the supplies of the drug if we don’t also isolate its source. They’ll just grow more of the damned stuff.’

‘You need somebody to get on the inside,’ Meyanna understood. ‘Somebody that the suppliers might believe would become an addict.’

‘Maybe one of the former convicts, one of the Marines?’

Meyanna winced. ‘Chances are they’d do such a good job of infiltration that they’d
become
addicts, doubling the problem. Too risky.’

‘Which leaves Qayin.’

‘Qayin?!’ Meyanna gasped in surprise. ‘You’d let that rogue in on this? He was a gang-leader and a drug dealer, wasn’t he? You let him in there and he’ll end the supply all right, by taking over the operation!’

‘That’s my point though,’ Idris said. ‘He was a dealer, not a user. Qayin’s too smart to let a drop of Devalmine anywhere near his body. He’d know how the drug grows, how people might hide it because he’s likely done it himself.’

‘You realise that makes him sound like a possible suspect for being behind this?’

‘I do,’ Idris acknowledged, ‘but if he’s the source then he’ll have a hard time maintaining his operation while trying to be seen to stamp it out at the same time. It might also give him an out if he’s behind it all – he can heroically discover the supply and the mysterious owner can escape unpunished.’

‘Qayin’s not going to let a stash go if he’s got one. He’ll keep something back.’

‘But the current supply will end and we’ll know Qayin’s behind it. We win, both ways.’

Meyanna sighed. ‘I guess Qayin’s the best shot we’ve got.’

‘I like the way you say “
we
”,’ Idris smiled, ‘makes this ship feel like a family business.’

‘Which reminds me,’ Meyanna said, ‘there are all kinds of rumours floating around right now among the crew and civilians. My nurses report them to me, because no patient ever says much to me directly as I’m your wife.’

Idris nodded. The sick-bay was a valuable source of ship-board gossip, a gauge by which the captain could measure the mood of his crew via his wife’s regular updates. Her staff, it turned out, where inverterate gossips themselves and loved nothing more than to share what they heard on the wards with Meyanna.

‘What’s the latest?’ he asked.

‘They think that the command structure is becoming a dictatorship,’ she replied.

‘Seriously?’

‘There’s a lot of discord among the ordinary people who don’t feel as though they’re getting a say in things. Most believe that you’re not interested in them and that they’re regarded by the military as having an easy life and that they should just stop complaining.’

‘There’s some merit in that sentiment.’

‘They’re people,’ Meyanna insisted. ‘As long as they think that their needs are being considered, they’ll be happy. Right now, their requests for supplies are being ignored and their sanctuary guarded by armed Marines who have recently shot dead one of their own. You do understand how that might make them feel?’

‘Of course I do,’ Idris replied, ‘but right now I can’t deal with them and run the ship. They’ll just have to get through this.’

‘They
have
been getting through this, just as we have for three years now,’ Meyanna pointed out. ‘They need a break. We all do.’

‘Are you saying what I think you’re saying?’

‘Make planetfall,’ Meyanna replied. ‘Stand the ship down for a few days, give people a chance to get some real fresh air and a change of scenery. There’s a planet down there with a habitable atmosphere. If the parent star flares we can pull out long before anybody gets hurt. Believe me, it’ll do them good.’

‘We’re at
war
,’ Idris insisted. ‘We can’t just go take a break for a few weeks!’

‘We’ll be at war for a long time yet,’ Meyanna pointed out. ‘How long do you think the people will go before they take matters into their own hands? It happened once before under Counsellor Hevel, and before you say it – it doesn’t matter that he was infected. The people still followed him of their own free will and they almost took the ship from us.’

Idris sighed and rubbed his temples. ‘I’ll think on it.’

‘Do that, before it’s too late.’

*

‘Stay low.’

Soltin responded without a word as he crouched down in the foliage. The leaves of the trees above them whispered in the breeze, the air cooler beneath the canopy as the sunlight dappled the forest floor nearby as they watched.

The order had come discreetly directly from the captain via General Bra’hiv: two men were to infiltrate the sanctuary and maintain a watch. Qayin, as a former drug smuggler, was to lead the small team and use his expertise to obtain information on the drug operation within the sanctuary and attempt to disrupt or bring to an end the supply chain.

Qayin, virtually invisible amid the dense vegetation, observed a lone man walked along the isolated path through the forest. Stocky, with thick arms and a bald head, the man moved almost silently and was casting his eyes up into the canopy above their heads.

Qayin remained absolutely still, as he and Soltin had done for the past two hours. It took at least a quarter of an hour for the local wildlife to settle down after they had set up their observation post, mimicking the work that Colonial Special Forces had once done before they were wiped out during the apocalypse. Concealed in a low gulley in the woods, Qayin had chosen a spot that he would have used as a dealer hoping to conceal merchandise, and begun a watch cycle designed to pick out the man at the source of the Devlamine supply.

‘That was quick,’ Soltin breathed in a soft whisper.

‘Local knowledge,’ Qayin explained but said nothing more as the man approached closer.