Atlantia Series 3: Aggressor (22 page)

Taron frowned.

‘And if any assault by Atlantia is successful? You’ll be trapped down there with Salim and blasted to hell.’

‘No gain without risk,’ Qayin countered. ‘Sansin won’t bombard the compound if there’s even the hint that he’ll hit his own people. Better than that, there are ships down there for the taking. If we can’t get off with Salim’s crowd, we’ll just take what we need ourselves.’

‘My ship’s not for the taking,’ Taron growled.

‘Yours is free,’ Qayin grinned. ‘We’re on the same side, remember?’

‘We’re all on our own side.’

Qayin smiled broadly. Taron was nobody’s fool, and he was clearly thinking much along the same lines of Qayin: look after Number One, and then worry about everybody else if you felt so inclined.

‘You know Salim personally,’ Qayin said. ‘I don’t. You’re the link we need to make this work, somebody Salim trusts and will listen to. I don’t doubt that he’ll be interested in a direct line to the drugs and having a few dozen trained Marines to add to his arsenal.’

‘You want to join his little clan?’ Taron asked.

‘Only for as long as it takes to cut Atlantia loose,’ Qayin replied. ‘The rest we’ll figure out from there on in.’

‘We’ll be leaving as soon as the dust settles,’ Taron said as he glanced again at Yo’Ki.

‘Then we’re clear,’ Qayin said finally. ‘We focus on getting free of this damned ship, and then after that we all decide where we want to go. I’m guessing anywhere but here is just about fine for the both of you?

Taron watched his co-pilot and Qayin saw her nod fractionally.

‘Done,’ Taron replied. ‘You get us out of here, we’ll get you and your men to the surface and help the trade with Salim. Then we’re even.’

‘I’ll be in touch,’ Qayin said.

The Marine turned and marched off the block, a satisfied grin on his face.

*

Corporal Djimon leaned over the computer console in the control room outside the cells and watched as Sergeant Qayin strode away, an expression of delight etched into his features and his glowing tattoos fluorescing brightly enough to be visible on the monitor.

The guard seated behind the monitor looked up at the corporal.

‘You want me to call it in?’ he asked. ‘Sergeant Qayin has every right to be here if his men are guarding the prisoner and I saw no evidence of suspect behaviour.’

Djimon shook his head. Both Qayin and Taron had spoken softly enough to not be heard by the camera’s microphones.

Alpha and Bravo company shared shifts on guard duties, each taking responsibility for the onerous task on an alternating basis. Both of the guards present were Bravo Company and likely loyal to Qayin, as were so many it seemed, and if questioned by would say nothing untoward had occurred. Likewise, General Bra’hiv would not see any cause for concern. He did not share Djimon’s dislike of Qayin, although he did still harbour a healthy mistrust of the former convict.

Djimon stood up and took a deep breath as he considered his options.

‘No, leave this with me.’

***

Meyanna Sansin stood before the magnetic confinement chamber in her laboratory and peered in at the Hunter hovering within, entrapped by intense magnetic fields. She shivered as she moved from side to side and saw the small machine’s photoreceptors follow her. It both recognised her presence and appeared self-aware, reacting to her.

Alive
.

And yet its circuitry was confined to too small a space for it to be truly intelligent, its reactions to her the programmed responses of an otherwise soulless machine.

Meyanna had spent many hours observing the Hunter. Captured by Evelyn from the merchant vessel
Sylph
many months before, it had been just one of countless millions aboard the ship. In her analysis, Meyanna had surmised that this Hunter had been constructed from the same metals and materials
Sylph
had been built from. Once aboard a foreign vessel, the tiny Infectors’ secondary role after infecting humans was to replicate both themselves and then larger machines like Hunters, drawing on whatever materials and resources surrounded them.

What interested Meyanna the most was not what the machines were built of, however. She was fascinated by what they all shared, the internal circuitry and architecture that they must all possess in order to work as one, as a cohesive force. The fact that it was she doing the research and not somebody from the engineering department was because although the Legion was chiefly constructed from metals and plastics and computer circuits, their internal organs were far more the work of biology and chemistry.

Kordaz, the Veng’en who had joined the crew after the encounter with the Sylph, had revealed that Veng’en research had discovered that the Legion used chemicals with which to communicate and operate as large formations in perfect harmony. The method, clearly inspired by swarms of insects, allowed the Legion to move in their millions almost like a single, gigantic organism and overwhelm any foe in their path.

Meyanna’s task was to unravel the complexities of their bio-mechanical circuity and the language of their chemical communications, and then come up with a suitable defence or weapon to be used against them. If somehow they could learn to disrupt the Legion’s ability to coordinate itself, or perhaps even completely prevent them from cooperating with each other, then the Word’s most powerful weapon would be neutralised and the chances of their success in retaking Ethera massively improved.

‘Sounds easy if you say it fast enough,’ she murmured to herself as she looked at the Hunter before her.

Some other means of technical wizardy had clearly also been employed by the Word to enhance the performance of these murderous little machines. It could be anything from neuronal networking to some super-advanced programming to quantum computing: all that Meyanna could be sure of was that it would have its origins in human endeavour, for the Word’s knowledge was all based on humanity’s own immense store of information. Although the Word could learn independently, Meyanna was not required to undergo the same laborious task: here, she could reverse-engineer the Hunter and…

The machine’s gaze switched position as Meyanna was examining it and turned to look over her shoulder. Meyanna whirled and saw a man’s arms smashing down toward her.

She screamed and hurled herself to one side as a metal specimen jar smashed against the magnetic confinement chamber and shattered it. The twisted face of the drug-addict glared at her, his eyes jaundiced and poisoned with delirium and rage as he staggered toward her, incoherent words and drool spilling from his lips as he screamed and ranted.

Meyanna whirled and hit an alarm switch on the wall that sent a blaring claxon screeching through the sick bay. Instantly, half a dozen nurses and orderlies dashed toward the laboratory, but the sick man was standing between Meyanna and her escape, one trembling arm pointing at her, ripped IV lines dangling from veins and trailing blood in slick red smears across the floor.

‘You’re killing me!’ the man gasped in agony.

Meyanna worked her jaw and tried to find her voice.

‘I’m trying to save you,’ she managed to reply. ‘You’re sick from the drugs! You overdosed! Who gave you the drugs?!’

‘I’ll kill him,’ the man growled. ‘I’ll kill him!’

‘Who gave you the drugs?!’ Meyanna demanded.

The man scowled and swung a fist at her.

Meyanna ducked and as the clumsy punch raced past she lunged forward and drove her shoulder into the man’s belly. His breath blasted out of his lungs beside her as she barged past him and dashed for the laboratory door, one hand slamming into the locking buttons and deactivating the pressure seal.

The doors hissed open and the nurses plunged into the laboratory, one of them carrying an anaesthetic gun that he immediately fired straight into the patient’s chest. The main wailed as the projectile buried itself in his flesh, one hand grasping blindly for it, and then within seconds his legs quivered beneath him and he plunged to the deck just in time for the other nurses to restrain him in a well-ordered, oft-practiced drill. Within moments he was back on his bed, his wrists and ankles restrained and IV lines re-inserted.

‘What happened?’ Captain Idris Sansin burst into the sick-bay, drawn from the bridge by the sudden alarms. ‘Are you okay?’

‘I’m fine,’ Meyanna replied, hugging herself as her husband’s hands gripped her shoulders. ‘He must have worked free of his restraints.’

Idris glanced at the now comatose patient. ‘This is getting out of control. Anybody on that drug who starts withdrawing is going to become dangerous.’

‘Have there been any more?’ Meyanna asked.

‘Not yet,’ Idris replied. ‘But it can only be a matter of time. Damn it, we need to know who’s behind this and recover their stash. It’s the only thing Salim Phaeon seems interested in.’

Idris held his wife close in an embrace, but then he felt her stiffen.

‘Don’t move,’ she whispered in his ear.

Slowly she took his shoulders and turned him around. Idris saw the entrance to the laboratory, and to his left the magnetic containment chamber that housed the…

‘It’s gone,’ he uttered in horror.

The chamber’s glass walls had been smashed by the patient’s attack on Meyanna, and the magnetic field had been disrupted by the impact. The Hunter, for so long lodged in the chamber, had escaped.

‘Don’t move,’ Meyanna repeated.

She eased past her husband, slowly, carefully. The laboratory doors were still open, the nurses having rushed in without realising that the chamber was breached. Right now, Meyanna did not care about the doors. Her eyes were fixed upon the blood stains smearing the laboratory deck.

There, on the tiles, was the Hunter.

‘What’s it doing?’ Idris asked as he spotted the machine.

The nurses behind them were silent and still now, aware of the escaped Hunter and likely pertified of what the tiny machine might do. Meyanna herself, however, had no real fear of the machine. Too large to self-replicate at the molecular level like the Infectors, and not small enough to infect humans itself, it was unable to cause much disruption aboard Atlantia on its own. What transfixed her attention now was the machine’s activities on the deck.

The Hunter was crouched over the blood the patient had trailed and it had extended a small proboscis from its nose that was visibly sucking up the blood before it. Meyanna approached silently, moving behind the Hunter as she reached behind her and picked up a plastic container from a desk, ready to trap the Hunter inside it.

The machine appeared unaware of her advance, and as she watched she saw it increase its consumption of the spilled blood. To her amazement, within a few moments the blood was dripping from its tail as though it had passed through the machine’s internals and been excreted.

Meyanna crouched down behind the Hunter and dropped the plastic box over it. The Hunter ignored her completely.

Slowly, the captain and the other nurses edged forward until they were all staring at the trapped machine as it sucked blood from the laboratory floor.

‘I thought that it would have run away,’ Idris said, ‘tried to hide and start messing with the ship’s electrical systems.’

‘Me too,’ Meyanna replied. ‘I don’t know what this means. I need that chamber fixed, and fast. The Hunter can chew straight through that box if it decides that it wants to.’

‘Get on it,’ the captain snapped at the nearby nurses. ‘Contact engineering and tell them I said to give you whatever you need.’

The nurses stumbled over themselves to carry out the captain’s orders as fast as they could, and Idris watched as his wife examined the Hunter.

‘It looks as though it’s extracting something from the blood,’ she said.

Idris looked at the Hunter, and then at his wife.

‘The Devlamine?’ he ventured.

Meyanna stared at the Hunter for a long moment as she recalled how the Legion had taken control of the human race back on Ethera years before.

It had been the Infectors that had replicated in silence through some eighty per cent of humanity before being commanded by the Word to attack, decimating humankind in a single, cruel blow. But the very start of the infection, the common vector that had gotten those first Infectors into society, had been Devlamine.

‘They recognise the drug,’ she murmured.

Devlamine, a street drug of unrivalled potency, had been the perfect vector because its crystalline nature had allowed Infectors to bury themselves and survive outside of their human hosts until the drug was consumed. They then, having gained access to the spinal cord and the brain of their host, were able to both control the flow of Devlamine in the body and also enhance its effects, turning the host into a virtual robot that they alone could control.

‘It’s stocking up,’ Idris confirmed, clearly thinking the same as her. ‘The Hunters must have carried Devlamine at one point too.’

Meyanna got to her feet as two engineers hurried with a sheet of plated glass and a pair of magnetic plates, giving the Hunter at her feet a wide berth as they moved to repair the damaged containment unit.

‘Hunters sometimes carried Infectors aboard and would deliver them hypodermically to victims,’ Meyanna recalled. ‘The Infectors would carry Devlamine into the victim with them and use it to control them regardless of whether they were already addicts or not. Our little friend here does not possess any Infectors, but it would still probably pick up the Devlamine as a matter of course if it detects any.’

Meyanna turned and looked at the patient now laying silently on the nearby bed.

‘We need that Devlamine,’ she said to her husband. ‘Not to give to the pirates down there, but to use as a draw for the Legion.’

‘What do you have in mind?’ Idris asked.

Meyanna almost smiled as a plan formed in her mind.

‘What if we could load an accelerant with enough Devlamine to draw in Hunters and Infectors?’ she asked rhetorically. ‘Then we could fire on them and incinerate them a million at a time.’

Idris thought about it for a moment, and as always he then thought bigger.