Atlantia Series 1: Survivor (6 page)

‘You were dead the moment you cut off the governor’s head,’ Cutler pointed out.

‘He disrespected me,’ Qayin growled.

‘You overreacted.’

Qayin stormed down off the platform and loomed over Cutler, his fists clenched. ‘How ‘bout I overreact again?’

Cutler held his ground but did not reply. A voice cut across the confrontation. ‘She’s almost here.’

Qayin scowled at Cutler, then turned away and looked at the monitor.

‘You should kill her,’ Cutler said to him, ‘before she kills all of us.’

Qayin stared at the monitor and then shook his head. ‘No. We need to turn her. She might be our only way out of this.’

‘How the hell do you figure that?’ Cutler asked.

‘Fear,’ Qayin replied. ‘We’ve got to force the captain to bargain for the lives of the hostages.’

‘Because of her?’ Cutler asked. ‘How is she going to threaten them?’

Qayin unclipped the pistol holster he wore at his belt. He dropped the holster and weapon onto the governor’s seat.

‘Being here should be about enough,’ he replied.

‘I think you overestimate her.’

‘You know how many times the Word has used those masks on people?’ Qayin asked rhetorically. ‘Fifteen times in a hundred years.’

‘So? She’s a real bad dude. It’s just another reason for them to keep us pinned down in here.’

‘No, it’s a reason for them to keep her silenced,’ Qayin replied. ‘Those masks were used to stop people speaking. The Word doesn’t want people to hear what they have to say, that’s why they put them on.’

‘Why not just kill them?’

‘Too easy,’ Qayin said as he strode toward the security door. ‘You know what else the Word used to do before they put those masks on? They wiped their memories, so I’ve heard.’

Cutler turned as Qayin opened the security door.

‘So you’re just going to let her walk on in here, just like that?’

‘Just like that,’ Qayin said, ‘because it’s the last thing the captain would expect us to do.’

***

Captain Idris Sansin strode onto the Atlantia’s bridge and surveyed a scene of controlled chaos.

The bridge consisted of a raised platform that held the captain’s chair and control panel, all facing a viewing platform that looked out over the front of the Atlantia. All around the circular bridge were control stations manned by twelve sworn officers, the captain’s command crew who could, in principal, perform any action across the entire vessel without ever leaving the bridge. The Atlantia, his ship, his pride: now crippled by a blast that had freed hundreds of convicted criminals. The Atlantia, once a front–line frigate of the Colonial Fleet, now light years from home, barely able to support her military and civilian compliment and dragged down by the ugly grey hull being dragged along behind it.

The crew were fully engaged in an attempt to stem the tide of a series of tremendous calamities that had befallen the vessel. He surveyed them, his craggy features illuminated by the endless banks of lights and screens in the otherwise dark bridge.

‘Control status?’ he asked.

‘We’ve lost all command functions to the prison hull and what’s left of the high–security wing has been detatched to burn up in the atmosphere,’ came the desperate response from Lael, a woman barely out of her teens, her dark hair cropped short. ‘Still no communication from the prison hull.’

The captain strode up to his command chair and turned to look at several screens behind him, each relaying visual information from cameras mounted outside.

The Atlantia’s hull stretched away behind the bridge for almost half a mile. Behind that was the bulky, angular prison hull, enveloped in a cloud of debris and escaped gases frozen in the vacuum of space.

‘What about us?’ the captain asked.

‘The blast has severed fuel lines and power conduits across the stern,’ came a response from Jerren, the ship’s tactical officer and youngest member of the bridge crew. ‘The prison’s still got power but it’s coming from us via the tethering lines – her own fusion core is either ruptured or off line.’

The captain glanced across a bank of instruments before him on his own control panel that relayed vital information regarding the ship’s status. He didn’t like what he saw there.

‘Hull integrity?’

‘Ours is fine sir, but the prison hull is severely compromised in several quarters.’ Jerren turned to look at the captain. ‘She’s dragging us down toward the planet’s surface, sir.’

The captain turned to face the ship’s port cameras, and saw the looming surface of the planet and the bright star rising majestically across its horizon.

‘Can we cut them loose?’ he asked. A hush fell over the bridge as the crew stared at the captain. ‘Can we cut them loose?!’ he roared again.

Jerren nodded, struggling to speak. ‘Yes sir, we can, but… we still have at least fifteen staff unaccounted for.’

A man ran onto the bridge, bearing the shoulder epaulettes of a senior officer. Bra’hiv was a soldier, the commander of a company of marines who had found himself aboard the Atlantia with a contingent of less than two hundred men when everything had gone to hell in the colonies. His shaved head was sheened a gun metal grey, the lines of his face hewn by years of military service, his jaw square and expression always severe.

The captain turned to him. ‘I want to know everything.’

Bra’hiv gave his report as though he were a computer spewing data in orderly lines.

‘There was a blast of some kind between the security wing and the main prison, captain,’ he replied. ‘Not sure of the cause yet: maybe power lines, maybe sabotage. The security wing is lost to us, with all aboard presumed dead.’ He drew a deep breath. ‘The blast started a fire in the aft wing of the prison cell block and damaged many of the cell gate controls. The prisoners got out. As far as we can tell they’ve taken control of the block, the tower and the governor’s command centre, and are moving forward through the prison hull right now.’

The captain turned away from Bra’hiv and stared at the screens behind him.

‘Casualties?’

‘Unknown sir, but the fire protocol engaged when the temperature exceeded two hundred units.’

The captain turned back to the general. ‘The block was evacuated?’

Bra’hiv shook his head. ‘Not of people, sir. The riot prevented any coordinated action. The prisoners were still in their cells or fighting on the tiers when the air was evacuated to choke the fire.’

A ripple of murmurs drifted across the bridge as the captain realised just how awful the tragedy had become.

‘There were over a thousand men incarcerated in there,’ he gasped. ‘Who gave the order?’

‘Hevel,’ Bra’hiv replied, ‘Councillor Hevel.’

The ship’s political officer. Hevel was responsible for the ship’s prison and its governor, Oculin Hayes. As a military captain Idris could not intervene in civil matters, even those that threatened the safety of the Atlantia and the hundreds of people aboard her.

‘How many survivors?’ he asked.

‘Estimates are that less than a hundred convicts have survived.’ Bra’hiv hesitated as he looked at the captain. ‘Your wife is also unaccounted for, sir.’

The captain turned away from Bra’hiv and his hands wrapped around the metal guard rail that ringed the centre of the bridge. His wife Meyanna was the ship’s chief physician, charged with the care of both the crew and the prisoners. She had been performing her duties aboard the prison hull when the blast had occurred.

‘The shuttle?’ he asked.

‘Not an option while the prisoners are in control of the hull,’ Bra’hiv replied. ‘If they were to get aboard here…’

Before the captain could even consider what would happen if a hundred lethally dangerous convicts with nothing but their lives to lose got aboard the Atlantia, a voice called out from across the bridge.

‘Sir?’

‘What is it, Jerren?’ he asked.

‘Our main propulsion units have been damaged by debris from the blast,’ Jerren replied, ‘multiple power lines fractured, several exhaust ports blocked and…’

‘Conclusion!’ the captain demanded.

‘We’re sixty per cent down on power,’ Jerren replied. ‘It could take days to repair the damage and we’re in low planetary orbit.’

It did not take a student of physics to explain to the captain what that meant.

‘How long?’ Bra’hiv asked before the captain could.

‘No more than a few days, sir,’ Jerren replied. ‘Our orbit will decay to the point where we will strike the planetary atmosphere and burn up.’

‘And if we jettison the prison hull?’ Bra’hiv pressed.

‘It won’t save us,’ Jerren replied, ‘but it might give us enough time to repair the damage and escape the planet’s gravitational pull under our own power.’

The captain sucked in a deep breath of air and stood up straight again, reasserting control over both his own wildly swaying emotions and his crew.

‘Focus on re–establishing communication with the prison hull. The more we can find out about the situation there, the better. Make a full account of everything that is known about what happened. If we’re ever found it will prevent a repeat occurrence.’

Bra’hiv nodded. ‘And the prison hull?’

The captain glanced at the screens showing the ugly grey hull behind them, many of the immensely strong tethering lines torn and frayed.

‘We wait,’ he said. ‘As long as we can.’

‘Understood,’ Bra’hiv replied, and turned to leave.

The captain hesitated as a large figure strode onto the bridge. The tall, bulky frame of Hevel barged his way onto the command platform. His size was not intimidating to the captain, consisting more of slack fat and tissue, Hevel’s dark skin sagging beneath his chin and his stomach. His sharp little eyes scanned the bridge without blinking, his skin lightly sheened with sweat in the heat.

‘You should cut them loose, right now,’ he insisted, moving to stand before the captain.

Behind him followed a diminutive, exotically dark skinned woman named Dhalere, Hevel’s legal secretary.

‘Noted,’ Idris replied without looking at Hevel and then nodded to Bra’hiv. ‘As you were, general.’

Bra’hiv left the bridge.

‘That could be costly,’ Hevel said. ‘The longer we stay attached to it the less time we’ll have even once we cut it loose.’

‘I’m aware of that, Hevel,’ the captain said and turned to Jerran. ‘Assuming we lose the prison hull and we manage to repair the damage to our own hull and engines, what are the chances of us standing up to an attack with our current compliment of weapons and Raython fighters?’

Jerren’s features paled as he apparently considered this for the first time. He scanned his instruments intently and then his jaw sagged as he turned back to face the captain.

He shook his head slowly. ‘None, sir.’

The captain managed to prevent his shoulders from sagging. He turned to look at the planet far below, ribbons of cloud glowing orange in the sunrise above endless blue oceans.

‘What about that planet?’ he asked. ‘Could we acquire what we need from down there, use the shuttle to transport materials back up here?’

Dhalere spoke for the first time, her voice silky smooth and calm in contrast to Hevel’s.

‘There are protocols to observe when entering the atmosphere of a foreign planet, both for its indiginant species and for our own safety.’

Hevel nodded in agreement.

‘Polluting a foreign world with our presence would violate the Word’s instructions on contamination of…’

‘Do you want to live or die, Hevel?’ the captain snapped.

Hevel fell silent as the communications officer, a young blonde haired woman named Aranna, replied to the captain.

‘The planet has everything we need,’ she said. ‘Mostly we need water sir, for consumption and for hydrogen fuel. We’re leaking both at an alarming rate.’

The captain nodded, and peered at the screen showing the planet below them.

‘First things first,’ he said. ‘We control the prison situation. Then we seek to repair the engine and pull us out of low orbit before we end up becoming permanent residents here.’

Hevel leaned closer to the captain.

‘The prison hull is a scourge,’ he snapped, ‘a stain on our populace. We should cut them loose now, before it’s too late.’

‘Is that why you gave the order to evacuate the air from the cell block?’ the captain asked outright. ‘To give you a reason to run away even faster?’

Hevel sneered at the captain. ‘They were as much a hinderance then as they are now. We should never have brought them with us, thieves, liars and criminals that they are.’

The captain nodded. ‘I feel the same about politicians, Hevel.’

The councillor smiled without warmth. ‘The people follow me, captain. They need me, and they don’t appreciate being ignored while you and your crew bend over backwards to protect a group of savages who have rejected the lives that we hold dear. How long, do you think, before they reject you as their leader?’

‘I am not their leader,’ Idris snapped. ‘I am their protector.’

‘Then protect them, captain, and forget about the damned convicts.’

A voice cut across them from nearby.

‘Captain, you need to see this.’

‘What is it?’ Idris asked.

‘The maximum–security wing,’ came Jerren’s response, ‘one of the prisoners survived.’

***

Alpha slowed as a door ahead shuddered and the locking mechanisms were released.

The corridor in which she stood was painted white, the aged paint crumbling and flaking to reveal patches of dull grey metal, but the panel lighting was working normally overhead and the air was warm. Her hair still felt thick and cold on the skin on the back of her neck, drenched in per–fluorocarbon that had stained the shoulders of her uniform, and her stomach was rumbling with hunger.

She brought her rifle up, aimed it at the door as it swung open and an enormous man stepped into the corridor, stooping to fit through the hatchway. Gold and blue hair fell in dense braids to his shoulders, his skin the colour of burned wood and flecked with shimmering tattoos, his borrowed uniform stretched to its limits to contain his bulky frame.

The man locked eyes with her and slowly held his hands out to his sides, showing her that he was unarmed. He was so large that he could not fully extend his arms without touching the opposing walls of the corridor.