Atlantia Series 3: Aggressor (2 page)

Valiant reached as far as Caneeron before it became clear that they could go no further, the communication channels filled with the digital hymn of the Word’s complete control over humanity’s technology base. On the way in they had passed a handful of refugee vessels packed with terrified passengers, the last survivors of mankind fleeing their only home.

Ishira had guided Valiant into the docks at Caneeron and together the crew had loaded everything and anything they could aboard her before blasting out of the system with a handful of Colonial cruisers in hot pursuit, their crews entirely consumed or controlled by the Legion. It had taken all of Ishira’s skill as a helmsman and all of her wily father’s experience as a commander to outwit the Legion and escape into deep space. But with only a small mass-drive to propel
Valiant
toward other star systems, and with only enough supplies aboard to last perhaps a year, it had become a long and lonely journey through a hostile cosmos.

‘They’re closing on us!’

Erin’s panicked voice snapped Ishira out of her reverie and she scanned her instruments once more as she keyed the ship’s intercom system.

‘Transfer the power now!’ she called.

A series of gauges on the cockpit panel before her shifted colour as her father drained power from the shields and other systems, then redirected the supply toward the engines. One thing that Valiant had as an advantage over the lumbering Veng’en cruiser was speed: designed to run the trade routes for maximum profit against minimum time, Valiant’s sub-luminal acceleration far outstripped that of the big cruisers.

Her father’s voice replied over the intercom.

‘That’s it, you’ve got everything, now get us out of here!’

Ishira saw the engine displays register an excess of power and she threw the sub-luminal throttles fully forward. Valiant surged as she accelerated and Ishira felt herself pushed back into her seat as the freighter soared away from the big cruiser.

She scanned her instruments and constantly updated her position in her mind, a natural ability to calculate angles and velocities inherited it seemed from her brother, Carnoy, a recruit in the Colonial Fleet’s flight training program who was likely now dead along with several billion other human beings.

‘They’re falling back,’ Erin shouted with delight as she pointed at the rear-view display.

Not for long, Ishira knew. Although slower to accelerate due to their massive size, once fully underway the cruiser would soon begin to overhaul Valiant. And that was exactly what Ishira was counting on as a new plan formed in her mind.

Ishira keyed the intercom again, this time broadcasting to the entire ship.

‘All personnel, strap in immediately. Prepare for tactical manoeuvring.’

Stefan reappeared in the cockpit doorway and stared at his daughter. ‘What are you going to do?’

‘How many planets does this system have, pa?’ she asked as she scrolled through the ship’s data logs.

‘Chiron? I don’t know, it’s unpopulated because of the dying star. Maybe three or four, several moons I think but it’s not a good idea to…’

‘Four,’ Ishira said as she found the correct entry, ‘two of them with breathable atmospheres. One is too close to the parent star, but the other…’

Stefan moved to stand alongside her seat and he frowed heavily.

‘You don’t know what’s out there, Ishira,’ he said. ‘It won’t likely be any safer on one of those planets than it would be to turn back and welcome the Veng’en aboard.’

‘You got any better ideas?!’ Ishira shot back. ‘It’s either try to survive or fly this ship straight into the heart of that damned star and…’

Ishira cut herself off as she saw Erin staring at her wide eyed.

‘Rock, hard place,’ Stefan said. ‘How are you going to lose the Veng’en cruiser?’

‘I’m not,’ Ishira replied. ‘I’m going to force them into an overshoot, and then duck back toward the nearest habitable moon and hunker down. The Veng’en cruiser’s mass is sufficient enough that it will take them too long to reverse their course and keep track of us.’

Stefan bit his lip as he strapped himself into a seat. ‘They’ll flip her and fire their engines at maximum thrust to do that,’ he said. ‘It’s a military vessel. They’ll be back onto us too quickly.’

‘Not if we’re close enough to that star,’ Ishira said.

Stefan and Erin fell silent.

Ishira knew that the gravitational pull of the star, combined with the Veng’en cruiser’s mass, would produce enough force to prevent it from slowing easily, whereas Valiant’s nimble hull and powerful engines would quickly propel her on a new course and buy them the time they needed to hide.

‘Here we go,’ Ishira whispered as the first glowing tendrils and veils of ejected stellar material flashed past Valiant. ‘Brace for turbulen…’

The first wave of stellar radiation and billowing solar wind pummelled into Valiant like the blow of a giant hammer and shuddered through her. Giant hull braces groaned and the keel strained as she was flexed by the violent forces acting upon her.

‘Point oh-two-four luminal velocity,’ Ishira said, trying to keep her voice calm and avoid upsetting Erin.

‘Too fast,’ Stefan said, ‘we won’t be able to pull out!’

Ishira did not reply as she gripped the controls more tightly.

Valiant shuddered again as she was pummelled by wave after wave of stellar gases, many of them heated to thousands of degrees as the star cast of its atmosphere in a vast nebula, the solar core growing before them. The star’s surface was a blinding mass of boiling solar storms, massive plumes of hydrogen gas soaring billions of cubits above the solar plane and spiralling out into deep space.

Valiant’s systems began malfunctioning as the barrage of high-energy particles began breaching her hull plating.

‘We’re getting too close!’ Stefan insisted.

‘Stand by,’ Ishira said as she prepared to reverse course under maximum thrust.

It was Erin’s voice that broke through her concentration.

‘Mummy, they’re gone!’

Ishira glanced down at the rear view monitor and was shocked to see the Veng’en cruiser falling far behind, a silvery speck now that was already slowing hard as Ishira checked the tactical display.

‘They’re turning around,’ Stefan said in amazement.

Ishira slammed Valiant’s manoeuvering thrusters into full power and hauled back on her control column. The freighter gradually flipped over and her engines, still at maximum thrust, directed their energy in the opposite direction as Ishira reversed course. The deceleration once again thrust her back into her seat as she stared at the tactical display.

‘They’re not just turning around,’ she said, ‘they’re running away.’

The display flickered and distorted and then blinked out as the tremendous energies around the ship interfered with her instruments. Valiant slowed gradually to a stop amid the boiling veils of solar ejecta and then began accelerating back the way she had come. Stefan unstrapped himself from his seat and peered out into the swirling gas clouds. His experienced old eye tracked the diaphanous veils and detected something that Ishira had not.

‘There’s something out there,’ he whispered.

Ishira squinted through the viewing panel. ‘I don’t see anything.’

A silence descended in the cockpit as the freighter began to accelerate away from the flaring star, the thick veils of gas billowing past outside and shimmering with irridescent colour as though alive. Ishira changed course to avoid the Veng’en cruiser’s flightpath.

‘Temperature’s decreasing,’ Ishira reported as she scanned the instruments. ‘The hull’s holding up and the Veng’en are still fleeing. I’ll set a course to stay inside the stellar veil, maybe we can sneak out without being noticed.’

Stefan peered out into the turbulent vista. ‘I don’t like this. Why did they pull back so suddenly?’

‘Maybe they’ve just given up, got bigger fish to fry.’

Stefan shook his head.

‘The Veng’en don’t run away from anything and…’

Erin’s scream pierced the air as something vast loomed from the gas clouds, a blackness as deep as all eternity. Ishira did not have the chance to even react with the controls when the darkness enveloped the ship and the brilliant nebula surrounding them vanished from sight.

Ishira barely had time to think about the cold dread filling her belly when she felt herself losing consciousness as the cockpit lights around her began blinking out one after the other. Beside her, Erin slumped in her seat. Ishira reached out for her daughter but it was already too late.

As absolute darkness consumed her Ishira felt her hand fall across Erin’s shoulders as a fearsome chill enveloped the ship to a noise that reminded Ishira of thin ice cracking, and then she passed out.

***

The sunlight burned brightly on Ethera, the sea a sparkling blue and the sound of children’s laughter filling the air to compete with the cries of grandiose four-winged seabirds wheeling gracefully against a hard blue sky. Grandsons, grand-daughters, nephews, nieces, brothers and sisters. A vivid memory in motion, so close and yet so far, never to be seen again.

Captain Idris Sansin leaned back in the tired leather chair that he had brought with him from Ethera to his final command and stared at the image on the wall of his quarters. One of several dozen arrayed around him, they only moved when he looked at them, sensors embedded within the images detecting the direction of his gaze. The memories of times long past drew his eye away from the cabin’s dull grey walls and bulky fittings, the hallmark of a military command, and transported him back to happier times. A bitter-sweet melancholy enveloped him in its sombre embrace, reminding him that even when times were good he had rarely been there to enjoy them, too busy on deployments with the Colonial Fleet. He himself appeared in none of the moving images, separated from his family then as now.

The Atlantia’s hull hummed softly around him, the huge frigate’s mass-drive in full flow and propelling the vessel at super-luminal velocity across the cosmos. A small data screen embedded in the wall over his desk displayed data on velocity, bearing and crucial status updates such as fuel-remaining, fighter-wing readiness and ordnance available. Position, also a key issue, was only ever calculated based on the frigate’s last-known location: travelling at velocities beyond that of light stripped away all visual information from around the ship, meaning that no vessel actually knew
for sure
if the course they had laid out prior to leaping would result in them reaching their destination until the mass-drive was disengaged. That said, no vessel had been more than a couple of plantary diameters off course in decades…

Idris stood from his chair and crossed the cabin, examining the images more closely, listening to the sounds of the past and trying to let them carry him away, however briefly, from the cold comfort of his command.

Since fleeing Ethera some two and a half years ago, free time had become a scarce commodity aboard the Atlantia. Over a thousand personnel were crammed aboard the former prison ship, many of them civilians housed in the sanctuary, a natural-gravity chamber in the heart of the ship filled with forested hills and idyllic valleys that provided a respite from the ship’s cramped corridors. Two fighter-wings, several hundred marines and numerous drones, Corsair bombers and all of their combined crews and maintenance teams completed the nightmare of logistics involved in just keeping Atlantia functional.

Only during super-luminal cruise was the ship’s compliment stood-down, a brief respite and a preparation for whatever lay ahead when the Atlantia emerged into conventional travel. Yet even in the absence of normal combat operations there was little rest for a captain, especially the last one alive.

Idris glanced down at his desk. A single sheet of slim, clear plastic glowed with administrative tasks that flashed for his attention, a new one added to the list every few minutes. Requests for repairs, promotions, demotions, shortages of materials alerts regarding fuel, food and water, training clearances for the Marines to practice boarding and defending the ship, concerned officers watching over the increasingly restless and fearful civilians in the sanctuary who were being kept in the dark about their destination and disliked everything that they were being forced to endure. Sick-bay was short of medicines, maintenance short of manpower and the Marines short of NCO’s and officers to help shoulder the burden of General Bra’hiv’s command.

Idris looked up at a steel mirror bolted to one wall. His reflection stared back at him, grey hair and tired eyes, his back still straight and his shoudlers broad but his posture gradually folding beneath the weight of his duties and the fatigue of his years.

A spent force.

Idris would have laid down on his bunk for respite but embedded into the ceiling above it was another data screen identical to the one on his desk, there to update the captain of a military vessel during every single waking hour, minute and second. In time of combat patrols it had been known for some captains to develop the ability to literally sleep with one eye open, certain threatening patterns in the data displays such as flashing red alerts waking them up at a moment’s notice, ready for immediate action.

He perched instead on the corner of his desk and pinched the corners of his eyes between finger and thumb. He was deep in thought when a soft, insistent beep infiltrated the privacy of his misery.

‘Go ahead,’ he said in reply to the beep. The intercom opened a channel and a voice carried through the cabin.

‘Cap’n to the bridge.’

‘On my way.’

Idris inhaled a deep breath and then walked out of his cabin, the door opening automatically.

The corridor outside bustled with ensigns and officers, all of whom immediately froze and saluted.

‘As you were,’ Idris snapped as he saluted sharply and strode a few cubits down the corridor to where it opened out onto the bridge entrance and the elevator banks.

He strode toward the bridge doors, the two marine sentries posted there snapping to attention as he passed by and the doors opened.