Atlantia Series 3: Aggressor (13 page)

The trees he had seen on earlier patrols, densely packed on the hillsides, provided the ideal hiding place for small, portable stashes of Devlamine. Their height amid the branches would prevent easy detection either by sight or by sensors, yet also provide easy access for the dealer.

The man wore a sack over his shoulder, which he dropped to the ground beneath the trees and opened the drawstring. From within he hauled a length of rope attached to a metal grapple. The man stood beneath a large tree and looked up, swining the grapple in ever expanding loops beside him before letting it fly up into the canopy. The grapple looped itself over a thick tree limb some twenty feet above the ground and caught firmly.

The man tugged hard on the rope to test its strength, and then he climbed up with surprising agility and vanished into the canopy above.

‘So that’s where they’re hiding it,’ Soltin said.

Qayin nodded. Given the sanctuary’s nature there were actually few places that such things could be hidden without observation. The sanctuary was large, but not so large that it could not be thoroughly searched, the soil barely a cubit deep and the waters of the shoreline shallow enough to wade in.

Qayin crept forward, Soltin following as they moved silently out across the pathway between the dense trees and slowed alongside the dangling rope.

‘What do we do now?’ Soltin breathed.

Qayin grinned. ‘That’s easy.’

Qayin activated his pulse rifle and aimed up into the trees.

‘You’re going to kill him?!’ Soltin gasped.

‘He’s a drug dealer,’ Qayin replied. ‘No use in keeping him alive.’

‘But he might lead us to the suppliers!’ Soltin urged.

Qayin did not reply as he took aim. He breathed softly as he picked out the shape of a man huddled on a thick limb high in the canopy, and the held his breath as he squeezed the trigger.

The plasma rifle jolted down in his grip as the forest was shattered by the crack and whine of a plasma blast as Qayin’s shot rocketed up into the canopy and seared its way through the leaves. Qayin shot Soltin a dirty look as the younger Marine’s glove forced the rifle down at the last instant.

They heard a cry of shock and Soltin jumped back as the thick rope dropped from out of the trees and landed in a dense coil at Qayin’s feet.

‘What the hell did you do that for?’ Qayin hissed.

‘It’s not our place to kill civilians,’ Soltin shot back. ‘No matter what they’re doing.’

Qayin swallowed his anger and kept his rifle aimed up into the trees as he called out.

‘You’re under arrest, by the authority of Atlantia’s command crew,’ he bellowed. ‘Give up your weapons now or you’ll be blasted from that tree by my platoon!’

A long silence enveloped the tree, the wind rustling through the leaves, and then a plasma pistol dropped out of the canopy and hit the path nearby with a deep thud.

Qayin lowered his rifle as Soltin retrieved the pistol, and keyed a microphone.

‘Sergeant Qayin,’ he reported, ‘sector four. We got one.’

***

‘I can’t wait!’

Teera’s excitement was palpable as her Raython joined into close formation on Evelyn’s wing, the two fighters circling the Atlantia as it hove into position in high orbit above Chiron IV.

‘Stay sharp,’ Evelyn cautioned. ‘We don’t know what’s down there.’

The blue planet’s oceans glowed as the sunrise appeared, a dazzling burst of brilliant light that swept the clouds and coasts far below in a haze of pinks, reds and orange.

‘Roger that,’
Teera replied.
‘But really, I just want to breathe fresh air again.’

‘I know what you mean.’

Evelyn had, along with a handful of convicts and crew, been the last person to walk on a terrestrial planet with a breatheable atmosphere well over a year previously. Although the scrubbers aboard Atlantia did a remarkable job of cleaning the air supply, and the sanctuary provided a welcome relief from the rigours of ship-borne duty, neither could quite perfectly replicate the smell of a planetary atmosphere.

Evelyn looked down at the planet’s vast sphere beneath them, too huge to fit in a single glance, and saw writhing coils of aurora sweeping through the planet’s skies like beautiful kaleidoscopic ribbons of light that seemed to beckon her toward them. She knew that they were a gorgeous but deadly phenomena, a sign of the cosmic rays bombarding the planet’s weakening magnetic field, and suddenly she saw them reach out toward her. Like giant golden glowing hands with hooked fingers that seemed to wrap around her Raython, she saw them loom before her and pass through her field of vision. Evelyn blinked, and the illusion vanished. With a start she realised that she was coming off the Devlamine high, and would need another dose soon because in the same instant she realised that she was sweating lightly and felt strangely cold.

‘Ranger One, aloft and joining.’

‘Copy that, Ranger One, you have the lead,’ Evelyn replied as she snapped herself out of her reverie and spotted the shuttle on her holographic display, closing in on them.

‘Reaper Two, guard formation, weapons cold.’

‘Roger.’

Teera’s Raython broke out of close formation and the two fighters formed up on the shuttle as it turned toward the planet’s surface.

‘Lock onto any source of power you can find,’ Evelyn said. ‘It should be Taron Forge’s stash. We’ll pick that up first and then scout for supplies.’

‘I’ve got a good source of energy from the northern hemisphere, near the coast,’
came the Ranger pilot’s reply.
‘Elevation four-seven-oh, my mark. Atmospheric descent in ten seconds.’

‘Copy, your mark,’ Evelyn replied as she keyed in the location. ‘Let’s go.’

The three craft nosed down toward Chiron’s surface, all three of them also turning into a de-orbit position and firing their retro-thrusters forward as they spread out to avoid collisions. At Chiron’s orbital speed of twelve thousand kilometres per hour, it took almost sixty seconds of burn before they really began descending at speed.

Evelyn tilted her Raython’s nose up a little as she saw the temperature rise on her instruments and noted the flare of orange light around the fighter’s nose as it hit the upper atmosphere at close to five thousand kilometres per hour. The fearsome flames of re-entry fluttered and glowed around the three craft for several minutes as they descended, slowing rapidly. Evelyn’s cockpit shuddered around her and the little fighter’s wings rocked but she held the craft steady until the turbulence passed.

The immense horizon gradually flattened out around her and the inky blackness of space was slowly replaced by a powder blue sky in front and a sweeping sunrise behind as they raced the aurora across the sky, veils of light flashing past like luminous clouds.

‘I’ve got lethal levels of radiation up here,’
Teera reported as she scanned her instruments.
‘This planet doesn’t have much time left.’

The shuttle descended into a broken cloud layer, Evelyn formating on its left wing as Teera took up position on the far side. The clouds raced past and the Raython shook with turbulence, enough so that Evelyn found herself smiling. In space there was minimal sensation of flight, but down here in an atmosphere she could feel every bump in the air, every thermal and every cloud as they raced down through them.

‘I’ve got a lock on the energy source,’
Ranger One called.

Evelyn glanced at her displays and frowned. A large, powerful source of energy appeared before her as well as signs of large constructions.

‘What the hell has he got down here?’
Teera asked across the radio as she too saw the energy source ahead of them.

Evelyn felt a pulse of alarm as she got a handle on just how much energy she was looking at.

‘He’s not alone,’ she called. ‘Reaper Two, weapons hot, now! Ranger One, abort!’

The shuttle pulled back up, climbing toward the cloud layer, but Evelyn realised that it was already too late. The blue sky twinkled as multiple metallic objects caught the dawn sunlight, the objects travelling fast on a direct intercept course. A series of alarms burst into life in Evelyn’s cockpit and made her jump as warning sensors flashed bright red at her.

‘What the hell?’ she uttered, and then she realised.

‘Multiple contacts, stern quarter, all armed!’
Teera yelled.
‘It’s a trap!’

‘Damn him,’ Evelyn cursed as she thought of Taron Forge. ‘He set us up!’

*

‘How many?’

Captain Idris Sansin paced the Atlantia’s bridge like a caged lion as he watched the trap unfold in the skies above Chiron IV and listened to the XO’s reply.

‘Fourteen, maybe more, but the signal’s weak. It seems like they’re running some kind of electronic interference. Our sensors did not detect them.’

The captain turned and looked straight into the eyes of Taron Forge, who was leaning against a support post on the bridge alongside Yo’Ki with his arms casually folded across his chest.

‘You planned this,’ he snarled at the pirate.

‘You forced me into it.’

‘How many are there?’

‘Too many,’ Taron replied, ‘far too many.’

Idris whirled away and pointed at the XO.

‘Launch the support fighters immediately and prepare an extraction force.’

‘Too little, too late,’ Taron murmured from behind the captain.

‘Broadcast a warning on all frequencies, battle fleet in the vicinity code,’ Idris ordered Lael.

The communcations officer sent the signal immediately as Idris turned back to Taron Forge.

‘If even one of my people are hurt or killed, I’ll have your corpse impaled on a post outside Atlantia’s bridge as a warning to the others.’

Taron smiled back at the captain.

‘Do as you will, but it won’t change a thing. Your pilots down there are totally outnumbered and outgunned. They won’t last a moment if they try to fight.’

Idris clenched his fists and turned to watch the tactical display as the Raythons rushed headlong into the teeth of the attack, Teera’s alert call coming through broken and distorted by interference.

‘Multiple contacts… bearing ten-zero-elevation… minus oh-four!’

‘Identity?’ Idris demanded.

Mikhain scanned his tactical display as he replied.

‘No identification squawks on any frequency, no registration codes or known colours broadcast.’

Sansin took his seat on the bridge and his practiced old eye scanned the charts, tactical displays and the radar tracks of the incoming vessels.

‘Launch the CAG with the alert-five aircraft,’ he ordered. ‘I want support for Reaper Flight out there right now.’

‘Aye, sir,’ Mikhain responded.

The captain surveyed the displays. ‘How many contacts now, exactly?’

The Atlantia’s communications specialist, Lael, replied moments later.

‘Twenty seven individual craft,’ she said. ‘Various exhaust readings from all of them suggesting varied types.’

Idris looked at Mikhain, whose expression had darkened to a scowl. ‘Brigands.’

The captain nodded.

‘No distinguishable formation,’ he observed of the onrushing craft, ‘no apparent colours or planetary flag, multiple craft types liberally deployed. They must have been here for quite a while.’

Brigands, buccaneers, corsairs, privateers and pirates were as much a part of Etherean legend as many other planets, first on terrestrial oceans and then upon the far greater canvass of the cosmos. By their very nature they were marginalised, their crews often comprised of escaped convicts and wanted felons, those who did not wish to conform but instead to disrupt, to profit from the suffering of others. Despised and despising, pirates had naturally migrated to the furthest known, least hospitable and generally uninhabited systems. Only the most pioneering of exploratory vessels had regularly encountered pirates in the farthest reaches of explored space, such as the mineral-rich Tyberium Fields, and they had generally been required to carry heavy weaponry to deter attacks from such marauders.

Three decades previously Idris Sansin had been the commander of a smaller vessel, the
Ventura
, a well-armed Colonial vessel manned by three hundred personnel and equipped with two full squadrons of Phantom fighters and the rather aptly-named Corsair bombers. The Ventura had been tasked by the admiralty with sweeping the shipping lanes of the Tyberium Fields, actively seeking out pirates after they had conducted several daring raids on massive but lumbering corporate merchant vessels.

During the course of the six-month cruise the Ventura had captured or destroyed seventeen pirate craft, many of them stolen years before from law-abiding crews who had then been set adrift in escape capsules in deep space. Not all had been found before their survival systems had exhausted their fuel.

There had been no quarter given to those pirates found guilty of causing the deaths of employees of the mining companies or of killing owner-operators. Vetoing the normal Etheran laws, the high court had deemed that as the killings had occurred outside of Etherean space, so the normal rights afforded convicted criminals did not apply. Thus were some forty eight pirates put to death for their crimes. Interestingly, given Etherea’s liberal society, there was minimal outcry at the sentences – one of the most feared ways to die in modern society was to be cast adrift in space, to tumble endlessly into the void and slowly freeze to death. By contrast, as it was noted in the media, a swift death by controlled plasma charge administered to the guilty pirates was virtually painless.

‘What the hell are they doing here?’ Mikhain asked out loud. ‘That star could destroy Chiron any moment if the planet’s magnetic field is overwhelmed.’

‘That,’ Idris said, ‘is a very good question. Lael, what’s the history of pirate activity in this system?’

Lael scanned the records.

‘The instability of the star and its distance from the core systems put it out of the range of almost all but military vessels, making it something of a haven for criminal enterprise. There are some charts based on a visit by a mining company that operated out here some decades ago, but they cleared out when the star became too volatile and their operating profits too low to justify this far out.’