‘Secure the area in teams of three!’ he barked. ‘Bravo first, Alpha in support.’
The Marines moved out, covering each other in small groups as they surveyed the bay in orderly and logical sections. Bra’hiv felt a surge of pride as he saw the former jailbirds act like real soldiers, swift and without fear. Within a few minutes the bay was cleared as each team called in their segment and confirmed it devoid of life or evidence of the Word’s presence. Behind the general, Alpha Company maintained defensive positions around the shuttle, their rifles trained out into the shadowy distance.
‘Landing bay is clear,’ Bra’hiv reported back to the Atlantia’s bridge. ‘Are you detecting any signs of life elsewhere?’
‘Nothing yet,’ came Mikhain’s response. ‘But the ship’s too large for our scanners to confirm anything at this range.’
Boots on the ground, Bra’hiv thought ruefully. No matter how much technology mankind had created, no matter how fecund his imagination in developing new weapons, in the end it still always boiled down to the same thing:infantry and close combat. There was, never had been, and never would be any substitute.
‘Roger that,’ he intoned, unable to keep a tone of mild weariness from his voice. ‘We’ll start our sweep of the ‘tween decks.’
It was the captain’s voice that cut across the intercom in response.
‘Hold position, we’re sending Evelyn and Commander Ry’ere aboard to join you.’
Bra’hiv hesitated. ‘Why?’
‘Evelyn knows more about the Word than most,’
the captain replied,
‘especially after what happened aboard the Avenger. She’ll take point, understood?’
Bra’hiv was mildly baulked by having to follow the lead of a junior pilot and he suddenly had an idea of why Djimon was so annoyed, but he knew what Evelyn was capable of. Everybody did.
‘Understood, send them in.’
*
Evelyn climbed out of her Raython’s cockpit as soon as the Sylph’s landing bay doors closed and air was reintroduced into the bay. The vents belched clouds of vapour as the temperature was still close to freezing, and she kept her visor on as she climbed down onto the deck.
‘No heating,’ Bra’hiv reported as he strode to her side, still wearing his own visor to preserve precious warmth and his voice reaching her through her earpiece.
‘Suits us,’ Evelyn replied as Andaim joined them. ‘The cold slows the Word down. The Word’s bots don’t generate much of their own heat unless they’re packed in tight swarms.’
‘The distress signal is still broadcasting,’ Bra’hiv reported. ‘But it’s likely on some kind of loop. We’re guessing that whoever left it is dead.’
‘What the hell was a Veng’en doing aboard a colonial vessel anyway?’ Andaim asked. ‘It doesn’t make any sense.’
‘Not much does right now,’ Bra’hiv replied. ‘There are shuttles here that my men have checked over and reported as fully fuelled. No sign of conflict, no sign of the Word or its Legion. You remember what the Avenger looked like when it found us?’
‘Smothered,’ Evelyn replied, recalling the incredible and chilling sight of a large battle cruiser half–engulfed by a black sea of seething nanobots. ‘Maybe the crew weren’t infected and something else happened?’
‘Or maybe they Word did catch up with them and they abandoned ship before things got too hot?’ Andaim suggested.
‘No escape capsules have been fired,’ Bra’hiv reported. ‘But this bay could have held a lot more ships so it’s possible.’ He looked at Evelyn. ‘You sure you want to take point? My men are well trained and the area is secure so we…’
‘Nowhere is secure,’ Evelyn interrupted the general, ‘and I mean nowhere. You haven’t seen what the Word can do.’
‘Scanners are saying there’s nothing here, Evelyn,’ Bra’hiv reassured her. ‘Even if the Word is aboard it can’t be in many numbers or we’d have detected it.’
Evelyn shook her head.
‘They don’t need numbers to occupy a vessel, just time and sufficient resources,’ she replied. ‘The Word evolves and it can replicate faster than you would ever believe. This ship could go from having a handful of bots aboard to ten billion in a matter of hours. It’s not secure.’
Bra’hiv glanced at Andaim.
‘Let’s just take it steady and see what we find,’ the commander advised. ‘Are your men ready?’
‘They are,’ Bra’hiv replied, his expression stoic but his eyes twinkling with pride. ‘They’ll follow us anywhere.’
‘Let’s go then,’ Evelyn said as she drew her service pistol and activated it.
Alongside her, the Marines crowded to follow.
‘Alpha Company remain here,’ Bra’hiv ordered. ‘Bravo, on me!’
Sergeant Djimon scowled as Bravo Company moved off. Evelyn saw Qayin gravitate toward her, and she could see his bioluminescent tattoos glowing behind his visor.
The Mark of Qayin
. She wondered briefly if the tattoos were tactically a disadvantage in the gloomy ship, something for an enemy to aim at. The big former convict directed a curt nod at her, along with a sly grin at Sergeant Djimon.
‘You’ve got the lead, ensign,’ Bra’hiv prompted her.
Evelyn led the way to the aft bay exit, saw Qayin and the Marines falling in behind her with Bra’hiv and Andaim.
The aft exit was sealed, and Evelyn stood with her pistol aimed at the door as two Marines jogged forward and accessed the entry pad. The codes were cracked swiftly by the Atlantia’s computers using a Colonial deciphering key, and with a rush of air the door hissed open.
A dark, cold corridor awaited, only a few of the ceiling lights working as Evelyn peered into the gloom. She was reminded of a very similar corridor she had been forced to walk down aboard the Avenger, seething with millions of Hunter bots, their countless tiny metallic legs sounding like a waterfall of sand grains falling on a metal deck.
‘Evelyn?’
Andaim’s voice snapped her out of her maudlin thoughts, and with an effort she put one boot in front of the other and advanced into the darkness.
‘Stay close,’ Bra’hiv advised, ‘they could be anywhere and…’
‘Belay that,’ Evelyn cut across the general. ‘Spread out, put distance between each other. We don’t want everybody risking being infected all at once. The Word doesn’t work like a plasma shot – it’s more like shrapnel.’
The Marines behind her obeyed, Bra’hiv’s troops spreading out in single file as they advanced through the corridor to put distance between themselves. The lights above were dim, running only under emergency power to cast pools of illumination every few cubits. Evelyn heard her own breath in her ears, rasping as the ventilators in her helmet sucked carbon dioxide out through scrubbers and injected oxygen and nitrogen in.
‘Advance force, Atlantia,’
Mikhain’s voice echoed in her ears,
‘you’re half–way to the elevator banks. Take the emergency stair wells to your right and ascend four decks. The bridge will be ahead of you upon the exit.’
‘Roger that,’ Evelyn replied.
The elevator banks emerged from the gloom, ceiling lights casting into thin white halos of mist around them as Evelyn emerged from the corridor and turned right toward a manual blast–door. Evelyn reached down and cranked the sealing valve, releasing the pressure on the door as two Marines moved in alongside her and grabbed the door’s handles. Lieutenant C’rairn nodded at her.
Evelyn stepped back and C’rairn hauled the door open to reveal the stairwells, the flashlights from their weapons reflecting off ice particles on the frosted walls.
‘The ship’s been cold for a long time,’ Andaim said. ‘Nobody could survive long under these conditions.’
Evelyn eased forward and swung her pistol into the stairwell, the white beam from her flashlight slicing through the gloom as she swept it up and down but found nothing.
‘I don’t like this,’ Evelyn murmured as she peered down into the bowels of the ship below. ‘If we go up the Word could ascend from below and cut us off.’
‘Same if we go down,’ Qayin rumbled from nearby. ‘Gotta go someways.’
‘We don’t have enough men to cover all angles,’ Bra’hiv added. ‘We either go in or we go home.’
Evelyn shook her head but she stepped into the stairwell and began climbing, resting her boots lightly with each step. The Marines followed her in, the rearguard walking backwards with their weapons pointing back down the stairwell in case of attack from the rear.
She looked up above to where the grated steps of the stairwell doubled back repeatedly on themselves as they climbed toward the upper levels. Dim light panels frosted with ice crystals glowed, shadows cast in a maze of black and white lines obscured by the misty air.
Evelyn felt the hairs on the back of her neck rise up, a tingling sensation rippling down her arms like tiny insects scuttling on her skin, and then the light from high above flickered as something moved fast from right to left across the stairwell above her.
‘Enemy!’
Evelyn jerked right as she aimed and she heard the Marines behind her drop to firing positions on the stairwell.
***
Evelyn held her pistol steady, aiming up toward the light.
She could feel the cold seeping through her flight suit, could hear her breathing in her ears and feel her heart thumping in her chest as she searched for the source of the movement.
‘I don’t see anything,’ Andaim whispered.
‘Up there,’ Evelyn insisted, ‘heading for’ard. I saw it.’
Andaim reached out and she saw his gloved hand rest on her forearm and gently push her weapon down.
‘I don’t see anything,’ he repeated.
The Marines around her relaxed as they watched, and she could sense a sudden and growing lack of faith in their expressions.
‘Let’s just keep moving, okay?’ Andaim urged her.
Evelyn swallowed, her heart still racing as she turned and moved up the stairwell, her gaze fixed up toward the light. She emerged onto the upper deck entrance and looked down at the grated deck beneath her boots. The sparkling, icy surface betrayed no boot marks, no evidence of anybody having passed through.
‘There’s nothing here,’ Bra’hiv said.
There was nothing dismissive about the general’s tone, nothing to hint that he was annoyed, but Evelyn knew damned well that the general did not like false alarms.
‘I saw something,’ she insisted.
‘Probably the light flickered,’ Bra’hiv replied. ‘The power’s low, there’s not much light in here. Easy enough to mistake it for motion.’
Evelyn opened her mouth to protest but she caught herself. The general was offering her a way out, she realised.
‘Okay,’ she said, ‘let’s clear the bridge.’
C’rairn moved forward and began freeing the seals of the pressure hatch to the deck level.
‘Anybody find it strange that there’s nobody aboard, but they managed to lock up shop so neatly?’ Qayin asked.
‘Yeah,’ Andaim nodded. ‘Why bother if they left in such a rush?’
Evelyn racked her brains for an answer, but nothing presented itself. The Sylph was a civilian vessel, a merchant ship. It had no means of defence and there had presumably been no military personnel aboard who could have coordinated such an organised lock–down in a short time. And yet here she was, drifting in space, devoid of crew, sealed to perfection and bitterly cold.
Lieutenant C’rairn cranked the pressure hatch open as Evelyn aimed down the corridor, Andaim’s and Bra’hiv’s rifles either side of her and humming with restrained plasma energy. The corridor ahead was as dark as those below, pools of dim white light amid immense blacknesses.
‘You want me to take point for a while?’ Bra’hiv asked.
Evelyn tried to reply, but she couldn’t. Visions of the Avenger’s seething corridors raced through her mind again. She nodded before the silence drew out too long and let Bra’hiv and a few Marines file past her.
‘You okay?’ Andaim asked her in a whisper, one hand touching her shoulder.
‘I’m fine,’ she breathed. ‘Just taking a while to adjust.’
Andaim nodded and offered her a smile before he turned and strode into the darkness.
Evelyn waited a moment to let her breathing return to normal, and that’s when she saw it.
The lights further up the stairwell were enshrouded in mist, and that mist was swirling in eddies and pools, vortexes of moving air where something had passed through. Evelyn remembered the prison ship, Atlantia Five, where she had first awoken months before. There the inmates had been kept in zero–gravity in order to allow their muscles to degenerate and make them easier for the guards to handle . Evelyn had not walked through the decks of the prison in the aftermath of the blast that had freed her: she had floated.
She peered up into the shadows, aiming her pistol and flashlight. The beam cut through the darkness but it only reached so far, the very upper decks entombed in shadows that she could not penetrate. She turned to call to Bra’hiv, but the Marines had all filed into the corridor and were marching away from her.
She looked up again, but could pick out nothing. Evelyn sighed and lowered her pistol. Maybe the air had been disturbed by the Marines climbing the stairwell. She wanted desperately to fire a plasma round up into the darkness to illuminate whatever might be hiding up there, but if the Word was waiting for them then she knew it would be alerted by the noise of the blast, the narrow confines of the stairwells amplifying the sound.
‘You comin’?’
Qayin’s glowing tattoos shimmered in the darkened corridor as he peered out at her.
Evelyn turned and followed the big man as he strode through the darkness.
‘You gotta stop jumpin’ at shadows,’ he murmured. ‘You’re making the guys nervous.’
‘I saw something,’ Evelyn insisted. ‘I’m just not sure what.’
The corridor opened out onto the bridge deck, two stairwells on either side descending back down into the ship alongside elevator doors that were sealed shut. Likewise, the bridge doors were also sealed.
‘Whoever sealed the ship up may have done so from in there,’ Bra’hiv said as his men prepared to open the hatches. ‘The Word historically always took the bridges of vessels first, or so the reports went before we lost contact with the rest of the fleet, so let’s stay sharp, okay? Fire teams in place?’