‘I’m not entirely sure,’ she admitted, ‘but it seems that you have a set of killer T–cells that react to any foreign bodies that consume iron. Any hint of anaemia in you and
bang
, they move in to thwart it. The Infectors are sufficiently small that they can be swamped by the killer cells and contained. Their tiny size is normally their advantage but is now also a weakness.’
‘Have you inoculated the crew?’
‘It’s underway,’ Meyanna replied. ‘I’m culturing your cells as we speak and introducing them to crew members as a standard part of treatments and check–ups. The whole ship’s compliment will be immune to infection within a few weeks.’
Evelyn nodded, but she could not bring herself to smile.
‘What is it?’ Meyanna asked.
‘The drugs,’ Evelyn said, having decided that it was probably best to just come right out with it. ‘They got me my wings.’
‘No,’ Meyanna insisted, ‘you’d already earned them. The drugs merely sharpened you up at a time when you were exhausted and unable to function properly.’
‘And the next time I’m asked to fly when I’m exhausted?’ Evelyn pressed.
‘You’ll do fine. You’re being asked to handle a complex fighter craft on just a few months’ training, Eve. Anybody would find that hard.’
‘That’s what I mean,’ Evelyn said. ‘The others didn’t get that boost, just me.’
‘The others weren’t coming down here and giving me blood every day for four months. The captain knows the situation and so does Andaim. They’re both happy with what you’ve achieved, especially after the battle. Lighten up a bit.’
Evelyn tried to relax and she glanced at the containment chamber nearby. The Infectors were gone, replaced by a single device that hovered in mid–air inside the chamber.
‘The Hunter I captured,’ she said.
Meyanna glanced at the little device and nodded. ‘Nasty little thing, isn’t it?’
Evelyn moved closer to the chamber and peered in at it. The tiny machine swivelled its black eyes to look back at her and she shivered.
‘Figured anything out yet?’
‘I’m working on it,’ Meyanna said. ‘Mostly using X–Rays at the moment to understand how they work and figure out a weakness, but I’m not an engineer.’
‘How come they didn’t put the engineering team on it?’
‘They did,’ Meyanna replied, ‘but these things are more like biological specimens than machines. They’re made of metal, sure enough, but everything else seems more based on living species. I have a couple of guys from the engine rooms looking at this for me too, but right now we’re just starting out and besides they’re all busy with the repairs right now.’
‘Is it still dormant?’
‘It seems pliant but we’re keeping it locked down for safety’s sake. Enough about the machine. How are you feeling, despite the obvious self–doubt?’
‘I’m fine,’ Evelyn admitted. ‘I slept for twelve hours, near enough. How’s Qayin?’
‘Him?’ Meyanna asked. ‘The man’s a mountain. He’ll be back on duty before the day’s out. Andaim and the captain will want to see you on the bridge, but for now I’ll just put you back on full duty if you’re sure you’re okay.’
Evelyn smiled and nodded.
‘I’ll be fine,’ she replied. ‘I just don’t want to be dependent on you giving me a shot next time we come under attack.’
‘You won’t be,’ Meyanna replied with a smile, ‘because you never were. Get out of here, and in the nicest possible way, don’t come back.’
*
‘Hull status?’
Captain Idris Sansin stood with his hands behind his back as Lael read out a series of deck reports.
‘Hull breaches on all decks sealed and repaired captain. Crews are still repairing some power lines on the port hull but all weapons, environmental and communications systems are now one hundred per cent ready.’
The captain looked across at Andaim.
‘Flight status?’
‘Twenty two of twenty six remaining Raythons are serviceable and ready for duty,’ the CAG replied. ‘Two of those are on QRA right now. All pilots are coming out of R and R as we speak and should be reporting for duty over the next few hours.’
‘Don’t rush them,’ the captain said. ‘Let them turn up on their own terms, as long as the QRA fighters are ready.’ He turned to Mikhain. ‘Tactical status?’
‘We lost several Marines and two Raythons in the firefight, sir,’ Mikhain reported. ‘But Alpha and Bravo companies are at full readiness. Seven men in the sick bay, no terminal injuries. They should all be back in service within a few days. General Bra’hiv is on temporary leave, due to report back tomorrow.’
The captain nodded. Bra’hiv was never really on R and R, whatever he might claim, and would probably be watching events from the barracks.
‘So, where do we go from here, captain?’ Mikhain asked.
Idris looked at the now distant asteroid field, the dense clouds of rock and debris a faint, thin line against the flaring brightness of the young parent star.
‘Did we track the Veng’en cruiser from its gravitational wave signature?’
‘Aye sir,’ Mikhain confirmed. ‘They did not program a jump, as we suspected, but they did have a general trajectory. Analysis confirms that they’re heading for home.’
Idris saw Evelyn walk onto the bridge, resplendent in her dark blue uniform with the wings pinned to her chest. He glimpsed Commander Ry’ere staring at her for a moment.
‘CAG,’ he snapped, enjoying himself as Andaim whipped his head around and came to his senses. ‘What is your assessment of the Scythe forces deployed against us?’
Andaim performed a rapid calculation.
‘They were disorganised and without a strong tactical plan, sir,’ he replied. ‘My best guess is that the Veng’en are as short of experienced pilots as we are. Fortunately our Raythons are worth any two of their Scythes.’
Idris nodded as he looked at Evelyn. ‘And our pilots worth any five of theirs.’
Evelyn saluted as she stood below the command platform. ‘You wanted to seem me sir?’
‘I did,’ Idris replied. ‘You displayed some remarkable piloting skills out there yesterday, lieutenant. I’m only hoping that in the future you will likewise obey orders with the same customary vigour.’
‘Yes sir,’ Evelyn replied, slightly deflated.
The captain turned aside and looked at the viewing panel.
‘Yesterday, the Veng’en mutinied against one of their own commanders rather than face a suicidal battle plan, something that I never witnessed before in forty years of service. I suspect that due to the adversity faced by both of our species they are being forced to reconsider their tactics and that may play to our advantage.’
‘How so?’ Mikhain asked.
‘We have a common enemy,’ Idris replied, ‘and in such times, the enemy of our enemy is our friend.’
‘You’re suggesting allying ourselves to the Veng’en?’ Andaim uttered.
The captain turned and looked at Kordaz, who was standing nearby on the bridge and watching the exchange in silence.
‘I have come to realise that within all cultures there is the capacity for change,’ Idris replied. ‘If we’re willing to find it.’
Kordaz did not reply to the captain but he inclined his head fractionally in acknowledgement. Idris turned away and looked at Mikhain.
‘Lay in a pursuit course,’ he said. ‘We’ll follow the Veng’en home.’
‘That’s suicide.’
The voice came from Bra’hiv as the general walked onto the bridge.
‘It’s necessity,’ the captain replied. ‘Shouldn’t you be on leave?’
‘They will kill us as they find us,’ the general insisted, ignoring the captain’s question and glaring at Kordaz. ‘No ship that sought refuge with the Veng’en was ever seen again.’
Kordaz shook his head.
‘My people believed that yours were already infected and fleeing or were actively attacking us. They had no choice but to employ a zero–tolerance approach to foreign vessels entering our space after your apocalypse.’
‘Either way,’ Idris interjected, ‘we have little chance of standing on our own once we start getting close to the colonies. Alliances must be forged. General, did you not just assault a Veng’en vessel with a platoon of former convicts by your side, in order to save a man who was once a gangster but now wears your colours? Does that in itself not reflect your own considerable capacity for change?’
The general scowled but he did not reply. The captain looked down at Mikhain once more.
‘Follow her,’ he repeated. ‘Keep our distance but track her home. Maybe, this time, we can prove to the Veng’en that an alliance between our races is the only way we can even begin to think about defeating the Word. We must achieve unity with other species against it, and together perhaps we will be strong enough to prevail.’
Mikhain, a little reluctance remaining in his tones, began sending the tracking data to the helmsman.
‘Aye, sir.’
‘What if the Veng’en don’t destroy us but still refuse to help?’ Andaim asked.
The captain took a deep breath as he stood with his hands behind his back and looked out to the dense starfields awaiting them.
‘Then we must find other races who will,’ he replied. ‘And we must find them before the Word has a chance to spread further. We will become the harbinger of doom but also the last flame of hope. This is our mission, to make ourselves strong enough to take the battle home.’ He looked down at his bridge crew. ‘Dismissed.’
***
The lower keel–hull of the Atlantia was a place where the crew rarely ventured. Although pressurised and provided with an atmosphere for the rare occasions when engineers were required to travel down to inspect the ship’s immense hull, the long lonely passages were only dimly lit and provided little more than a home for the descendents of the scavenging animals that had somehow made it aboard when the Atlantia’s keel was laid down decades before.
The three men stepped off the bottom of the access ladder and looked down into the endless passage that ran the length of the lower hull, the widely spaced illumination panels in the ceiling vanishing into the distance.
The decks here were not magnetized unless power was specifically re–routed to the charging cables laid below the decks themselves. The men’s boots gently touched the deck and they pushed off, floating through the gloomy passage.
‘I don’t like this,’ muttered one of them, a small and wiry man with half of his teeth missing.
‘Shut up,’ snapped another, bulkier man with a thickly forested jaw and chunky arms. ‘This will be worth it.’
Most of the Atlantia’s civilians were the former prison support workers, their families and a scattering of travellers who had been fortunate enough to be aboard the prison ship when the apocalypse struck the homeworlds. Some were skilled workers: engineers, physicists and other scientists, doctors and nurses employed either by the Colonial Fleet or the prison service. Most others were labourers and steel–workers, tradesmen sub–contracted to the Colonial Fleet Service and stationed far from home. Now, confined deep in the sanctuary with no control over their future, many of the civilians were restless and even bored despite the sacntuary’s idyllic surroundings.
A dull crack echoed down the corridors and the wiry man stiffened. ‘What was that?’
All ships made sound even when they were drifting through the immense expanses of interstellar space. The huge size of the craft, temperature differences, combined with the subtle shifts and stresses of distant stars exerting their gravitational pull or micrometeorite impacts and the thrust of the enormous engines all combined to produce a rhythmic drumming that some spacemariners referred to as the ship’s
heartbeat
. Way down here, they could hear the creak and throb of the ship’s internal structure flexing, bending, expanding and contracting, the echoes rolling back and forth down the lonely passage around them as though distant warriors fought with steel swords, the blades clashing with each blow.
The three men let their momentum carry them for several minutes before, far ahead, they glimpsed a small light flash three times like a beacon. There was a long pause and then it flashed twice more. The bearded man retrieved from his jacket a small flashlight, and he responded with a twin double–flash of his own as he floated toward the source of the light.
A giant figure emerged from the shadows where it had crouched, silhouetted against the feeble lights in the distance. The three men reached out to slow themselves as they grasped the edge of a bulkhead, and one of them produced a portable lamp that illuminated their faces with a ghoulish glow.
‘‘Bout time,’ the giant figure uttered.
The bearded man let his boots touch the deck, keen to have something to push against should the meeting turn sour.
‘Ain’t easy to slip away unnoticed,’ he replied. ‘You got what we need?’
‘I got it.’ The giant figure handed the bearded man a small, sealed plastic bag.
The drug Devlamine was a crystal, a volatile mixture of chemicals that had been the staple of violent street gangs before the apocalypse. The same drug that the Legion had first used as a carrier to infect mankind, in its normal form it caused a sense of euphoria that was so powerful it literally caused users to lose hours or even days of their lives while comatose in a blissful Utopian dreamworld, far from the horrors of the world around them. Grieving relatives saw lost ones again, terminally ill patients ended their lives in serene delight, and reckless youths seeking the next illegal high sent themselves into an oblivion of ecstacy, sometimes never to return.
It was said, by some, that it was the Legion’s ability to manipulate the drug in which it had hidden that caused the infection to be so successful: the Legion did not initially directly control the host, the drug did, delivered precisely when and where it was needed to ensure compliance and withdrawn when that obedience was challenged.
‘You done good,’ the bearded man said. ‘Who’s in on it?’
‘It matter?’
‘It matters to me.’
‘You wanted your supply, you got it. Where’s my piece?’
The bearded man handed over a compact plasma pistol and two thirty–round magazines.
No unauthorised weapons were permitted aboard the Atlantia. Her former role as a prison ship forbade the carrying of weapons in the hands of civilians or convicts for obvious reasons, and now the armoury was reserved for the ship’s military staff only.