Atlantia Series 3: Aggressor (17 page)

‘Chiron IV is not registered as belonging to any nation or planetary system,’ Andaim informed the pirate king, ‘so we can come and go as we please. We need supplies, nothing more. You should have let
us
be.’

‘We believed you to be agents of the Word,’ Salim explained with a slow shrug. ‘We feared that you would attack us here and murder our people.’

‘Your people?’ Andaim asked with feigned interest. ‘Are they all your family?’

‘You could call them that,’ Salim supposed. ‘We all work toward the same cause.’

‘And what would that be?’

‘Freedom from oppression,’ Salim smiled.

‘We’re detecting upwards of thousand people down there, Salim,’ Andaim reported, ‘and considerable construction work, although you appear to be jamming our sensors.’

‘Professional caution,’ Salim explained demurely.

‘And now you have several of our people with you as well,’ Andaim went on. ‘I take it that they too are now working towards freedom from oppression?’

‘They are my guests,’ Salim said, ‘and my guarantee that your frigate will not attack my compound. They will remain here now until our work is done and we leave, upon which time you may collect them and go on your way and...’

‘Don’t have time for that, Salim,’ Andaim cut him off. ‘We’re on a mission and we’re in need of all hands to complete it. Either you hand over our Marines and pilots,or we’ll come down there and get them ourselves.’

Salim’s smile turned cold.

‘That would be most unfortunate,’ he purred, ‘for your crew I mean. They’ll be executed before your first shot lands.’

‘More of your professional caution?’

‘My resolve,’ Salim snapped back. ‘The lives of your people are under my control and you will do precisely as I say. I will allow you to collect supplies from the planet’s surface at a location geographically distant from my compound, and then you will leave. There will be no further negotiations.’

Salim looked as though he was about to draw his hand across his throat at somebody off screen to cut the transmission. Andaim took a step forward.

‘There is another way.’

Salim peered at Andaim. ‘Another way to what?’

‘To both resolve this crisis and find a way forward.’

Salim’s sneering smile returned. ‘A way forward?’ he echoed. ‘I’m intrigued, captain.’

Andaim took a short breath.

‘Our mission is to return to the core systems and retake Ethera from the Word,’ he explained. ‘We have already defeated the Legion in combat, twice, and have found weaknesses in its defences. The Word is neither infallible nor omnipotent. Together, we can defeat it.’

Salim stared out of the screen at Andaim, his round face devoid of emotion as though he were unable to digest what he had just heard. Then he almost coughed out a loud belly laugh that echoed loudly around the Atlantia’s bridge. Behind Salim, on the screen, Andaim could see and hear other pirates laughing along with their king.

‘Together,’ Salim echoed again as he recovered from his mirth. ‘My, captain, you are a bold and brave one. You are offering an alliance with us, against the Legion?’

‘We are an endangered species,’ Andaim replied. ‘There cannot be many free humans left in the cosmos. Finding them and urging them to join our cause is the only way we can confront and defeat the Legion.’

Salim slowly shook his head, the smile still winding its way across his face like a snake.

‘I don’t want to defeat the Legion,’ he replied. ‘The Legion destroyed the Colonial Fleet, for the most part, and the damned government on Ethera. The Legion did us a favour for which I am truly grateful, and I have absolutely no intention of marching back into the core systems to reinstall a bloated, self-congratualting government to hunt us down again.’

‘We’re not interested in retribution against anything or anyone but the Word,’ Andaim insisted.’

‘I’ll believe that when I see it.’

‘You can see it now,’ Andaim said. ‘It’s right in front of you. Half of the Marines you captured are former convicts, liberated and given the chance to fight alongside Colonial personnel in the war against the Word. All have been pardoned. Ask them.’

‘Ask them?’ Salim echoed. ‘You know what I’d like to ask them?’

Salim clicked his fingers and a huge humanoid figure lumbered into view with something in his massive hand. Andaim saw the shivering, sweating form of a Marine, his teeth chattering and his face lined with ugly purple lines.

‘What I’d like to ask them,’ Salim went on, ‘is where they got their Devlamine, because they’re going to give it all to us.’

Andaim bit his lip as he formulated a reply. There was little point in lying – pirates of all people would know what withdrawal symptoms from powerful drugs would look like. But an admission of no knowledge of the drug’s use aboard ship would weaken his own position and give Salim confidence that he could control the Atlantia via his hostages.

‘The Devlamine was brought aboard ship after she deployed, probably by convicts smuggling the drug through to the prison. The man you’re holding is suffering from withdrawal because there is no Devlamine left. What little we found we destroyed. We have another man in our sick bay suffering in the same way, and we don’t know if he’ll make it through the night.’

‘A tragedy,’ Salim purred. ‘We were looking forward to growing Devlamine down here. Tremendous sunlight right now, perfect conditions. But, you know what bothers me captain? Devlamine withdrawal occurs under two conditions: prolonged abstinence, or in the wake of an overdose. In the case of abstinence, the user develops seizures as the body reacts to the lack of the drug. But in an overdose, the user’s veins swell and their heart rate doubles as the body is overcome by the amount of Devlamine in their bodies.’ Salim gestured down at the shaking Marine. ‘This is not abstinence, captain. This is the result of an overdose, and an overdose means that there is an excess of supply aboard your ship.’

Andaim cursed himself silently but he maintained an impassive expression.

‘That would be for our chief physician to decide,’ he replied. ‘Overdose, abstinence, it doesn’t make much difference, we destroyed what we found. Any Devlamine aboard the Atlantia is in small quantities and not worth the effort of tracking down. Frankly, I think that anybody dumb enough to use drugs doesn’t deserve our effort in supporting them.’

Salim grinned.

‘So do I,’ he replied and drew a thick, stubby pistol from his belt. ‘Much better to make a profit from them instead!’

Salim leaned down and shoved the pistol against the Marine’s head as he spoke to him.

‘You tell me where you got your supply and I’ll not just let you live, I’ll keep your supply moving and you can join us.’

‘You’re making him promises with a gun to his head,’ Andaim cut in, hoping that the soldier would hear him. ‘Good luck with that.’

The Marine peered up at Salim through the veil of his suffering. Andaim knew that Devlamine, once entrenched in a victim, required truly hellish agony to remove. Few had lived to describe their ordeal, and those that had painted a canvass of agony so awful that most were unable to coherently describe it without breaking down, even years after beating their addiction.

The Marine shuddered again as he spoke.

‘Give me a fix,’ he gasped, ‘and I’ll tell you all you need to know.’

Salim glowered down at the Marine. ‘Tell me now, or your suffering will end real fast!’

The Marine smiled back through gritted teeth. ‘Go ahead. Either way, I’ll feel better.’

Salim cursed and drove a boot into the Marine’s stomach as he turned and aimed his pistol at the screen.

‘If you’re not gone within twenty four hours, I’ll start executing hostages!’ he screamed. ‘Devlamine is the only currency that will save their lives!’

Salim fired and the plasma shot blasted the viewing screen and cut the transmission off. Andaim’s shoulders sank as the tension lifted from them, and he glanced over his shoulder to where Captain Sansin was standing with Mikhain well out of sight in the shadows of the bridge.

‘The drug’s use is more widespread than we feared,’ Andaim said. ‘Even the Marines are using it.’

Sansin strode to the command platform, his hands behind his back. Mikhain emerged also, his face swollen with anger.

‘You should have let me handle this,’ the XO uttered to Sansin. ‘Now they’re after a Devlamine supply too.’

‘It’s something to bargain with,’ Idris replied. ‘We didn’t have that before.’

‘You’re actually thinking of going along with it?’ Mikhain gasped.

‘We need our people back.’

‘You’ll be condemning countless hundreds of other hostages to drug addiction,’ Mikhain snapped back. ‘You know damned well that there are slaves down there, lorded over by that pig Salim! It’ll give him that bit more control over those people, keep them enslaved to their drug supply and…’

‘I know what he’ll do with it!’ Idris shouted. ‘Be quiet!’

The XO stared at the captain as he paced up and down on the bridge for several long moments, the crew watching him.

‘Salim allowed us the chance to gather supplies,’ he said to Andaim.

‘An olive branch of sorts,’ the CAG replied. ‘He wants to give us what we need and see us leave as soon as possible.’

‘Do we have any idea what he’s building down there?’ Idris asked Mikhain, all the anger suddenly gone from his voice.

Andaim was always impressed by how Idris conducted himself. His rage at Mikhain’s playing constant Devil’s advocate was only ever in the moment, and he always returned to his normal calm self as he sought a solution to the many problems that he faced.

‘It’s big,’ Mikhain replied, somewhat deflated. ‘Probably as large as Atlantia, but he’s doing a good job of blocking our sensors so we can’t get a good look at it. Even the optical scopes are seeing nothing but distortions, so Salim’s directing his shielding directly at us.’

It was a common tactic to use lasers with randomly changing frequencies and wavelengths to distort the light from ground-based installations when viewed from orbit, twisting the images into meaningless ripples of light that took powerful computers many days to unravel.

Idris nodded. ‘We need somebody to go down there and take a look.’

‘Only way to be sure,’ Andaim said. ‘I could maybe take a Raython and try to get below the aurora without being detected.’

‘Too risky,’ Idris said. ‘Salim will cheerfully cut the throats of a hostage or two if you’re spotted.’

‘It needs boots on the ground,’ Mikhain said. ‘Bra’hiv might be able to figure out a way to get somebody down there.’

‘Do it,’ Idris agreed. ‘Send a signal to Salim that we’ll be sending shuttles down to the opposite side of the planet to gather supplies. Make sure it has a flight path that gets reasonably close to Salim’s compound.’

Mikhain whirled away as Andaim approached the captain.

‘We’re going to have to launch an assault, eventually,’ the CAG insisted. ‘Salim’s not going to give up without a fight.’

‘I know,’ Idris replied. ‘But right now we need to keep him thinking that he’s got us over a barrel. Military options are what we use when every other possible course of action has been rejected or has failed.’

Andaim nodded. ‘We still have the Devlamine angle. If we can find the source we might be able to barter a deal out of them.’

‘And we have Taron Forge,’ Idris added.

‘I wouldn’t trust him as far as I could throw him,’ Andaim muttered.

‘That’s what I’m counting on.’

The captain drew Andaim close and spoke to him so that nobody else aboard the bridge could hear.

***

The cell was small, no more than ten feet by eight, with bare walls of steel grey metal devoid of seams or edges. A small seat occupied one corner of the cell, the door barred and the access panel closed, a lone man, stocky and bald, trapped within.

‘How long has he been in there?’ Idris asked as he watched a monitor in the observation room that showed the interior of the nearby cell.

‘A few hours,’ General Bra’hiv replied, ‘and I can tell that he’s sweating about something.’

‘Has he had any visitors?’

‘Two,’ Bra’hiv confirmed, ‘one from his wife and another from his lawyer, or a civilian who’s playing the role at least.’

The Atlantia’s brig was small, capable of holding no more than twenty prisoners aboard ship under high security conditions and armed guard. Most all military vessels had them, but it had always been exceedingly rare for the cells to be occupied by anyone from the ship’s compliment – most captives were enemy combatants or captured criminals. Idris had watched many a Veng’en trapped like a caged animal in such cells via the concealed cameras that monitored the unfortunate occupants, but now he was looking at an ordinary man very much out of his depth.

‘Bring him out,’ Idris ordered. ‘And make him feel like he’s the most wanted man on the planet. I want him to fold and fast.’

General Bra’hiv left the observation room, and moments later Idris watched on the viewing screen as two Marines burst into the cell. The captive startled as the soldiers rushed in screaming
down down down
and roughly manacled the man. They hauled him out of the cell, his legs virtually dragging on the ground behind him as the hefted his body down the corridor outside.

Idris remained silent and still as the man was dragged past the observation room and into an interrogation room just down the corridor. He waited for a few moments until the soldiers would have strapped the captive into a seat, and then he opened the observation room door and walked down the corridor outside. General Bra’hiv emerged from the interrogation room and waited for the captain.

‘He’s ready,’ Bra’hiv announced, speaking loudly enough to ensure that he was being heard by the man in the room behind him. ‘How rough do you want this to be?’

‘As rough as it needs,’ Idris replied. ‘If he doesn’t talk, he doesn’t survive. I take it that your men will dispose of him without fuss?’

‘Nobody will even know he was here,’ Bra’hiv replied. ‘We’ll make sure it looks like a suicide.’

A voice cried for help from within the room and was instantly muffled. Idris strode with Bra’hiv into the interrogation room to see the captive strapped into a steel seat, a Marine on one side of him holding a rifle and a Marine on the other with one gloved hand shoved over the captive’s face.