Atlantia Series 3: Aggressor

by Dean Crawford

  ‘The prisoners could not have arranged all of this on their own,’ Teera said as they were led beneath Arcadia’s hull, the wind brisk as it was channelled beneath the bow of the ship high above them. ‘It’s too big a task.’

  ‘It must have been planned,’ Eveyln agreed, ‘maybe after the apocalypse.’

  Despite the extreme level of security that had surrounded the orbital prisons, the inmates always somehow found a way to communicate with the outside world. Corrupt guards, blackmail and the near-permanent threat of physical violence had often resulted in major criminals running their operations from inside high-security prisons. In a weakened and panicked state after the apocalypse it was not unthinkable that the crew of Arcadia, perhaps divided and in disarray, could have been overwhelmed by a concerted pirate attack alongside an internal insurrection.

  The prisoners were led in a long line down to the base of a low cliff, dominated by what Evelyn assumed was the equivalent of a pirate’s headquarters, elaborate banners fluttering in the wind. But there were no brigands visible, only a single hulking Ogrin whose dull, deep tones carried over each of the Marines and crew as he recited what had clearly been dictated by his piratical owners.

  ‘You will be assigned tasks,’ the Ogrin growled. ‘Undertake them or you will be punished. If punishment does not stiffen your resolve, you will be killed.’

  ‘Not exactly a worker’s union then,’ Teera muttered under her breath.

  Then, the Ogrin spoke again. ‘The women will be separated and tasked with serving the gentlefolk.’

  Evelyn’s eyes widened as she was yanked from the line along with Teera.

  ‘Serving the gentlefolk?’ Teera almost laughed. ‘Boy, they’re gonna get a shock when they meet us.’

  Evelyn said nothing, watching instead as the Marines were sectioned off into groups of six, each under the watchful eye of an Ogrin, and led toward the Arcadia’s towering hull. From her viewpoint Evelyn could see literally hundreds of workers labouring across the hull, and who knew how many more were inside, working to repair the ship’s systems?

  ‘This way!’

  Evelyn was grabbed by an Ogrin’s giant hand and shoved toward the pirate’s palace, which in reality was little more than a tower of scaffolding affixed to the cliffs and panelled with old hull plating. A couple of mounted plasma guns sat in unmanned turrets, ready to quell any uprising or attack on the makeshift fortress.

  The Ogrin prodded them up a flight of steps and into the pirate’s lair. The rush of the ocean and the rumbling wind became a muted backdrop as Evelyn walked into what looked like some kind of lounge. The air, so fresh outside, was pungent with the sickly odour of countless types of tobacco and alcohol, the light dim and lethargic.

  A pair of brigands slumped against sagging couches, their eyes watching Evelyn and Teera with interest but not a single muscle in their bodies moving. Likely doped to the eyeballs, Evelyn figured as she was led past toward another, larger room.

  The second room opened out and was ringed with ornate banners hanging from the walls, some of them the captured planetary colours of plundered vessels, others the garish flags of pirate captains themselves, personalised designs depicting fiery beasts of the air or hellish skulls as though the owners believed themselves some kind of cult leaders.

  Salim sat in a large bejewelled throne glittering in the low light that looked as though it had been yanked from the capital ship of a mining tycoon with far more money than sense or taste. He sat slumped there, his shining black eyes fixed on Evelyn and Teera as they were led to stand before him.

  Salim was surrounded by a harem of women of all ages, some probably reaching their fifties, some not yet into their teens. Some were not even quite human but examples of rare Hybrids, the result of illegal breeding programs run by pirate clans over the years in an attempt to create the perfect “companion” species. Selectively mated for their personalities, sexuality and obedience, hybrids were typically exotic looking in nature and although Evelyn had never laid eyes on one before she knew what they were the moment she saw them.

  There were four in all, all of them with dark, slanted eyes and deeply sun-burnished skin. Long, luscious hair was either glossy jet-black or sparkling blonde, and their limbs were rippling with bioluminescent tattoos reminiscent of Qayin’s gang-colours. Evelyn knew however that their greatest assets remained internal, not external: genetic enhancements that allowed for improved sexual performance and diminished self-awareness.

  Hybrids were banned for good reason: they were slaves bred deliberately to be too dim to understand what they were. The Ogrin, Evelyn had no doubt, had suffered the same fate.

  ‘Welcome,’ Salim said, ‘to our house of peace and mutual respect. You will be well cared for here, my lovelies.’

  Evelyn looked down and into the eyes of a young girl who was watching her with an alert, curious gaze. A new arrival Evelyn guessed, and not yet even a teenager.

  ‘I doubt that you’ve got any idea what mutual respect is, Salim,’ Evelyn replied. ‘I like to treat as I find.’

  ‘Is that so?’ Salim asked.

  ‘Sure it is,’ Evelyn said. ‘Which is why I’m going to make sure that you spend the rest of your life in a prison serving other people instead of being here using human beings as slaves.’

  ‘My people are content,’ Salim replied. ‘You will be too.’

  ‘Like hell,’ Teera spat. ‘First chance I get, I’ll shove my pistol up your ass and pull the trigger.’

  The blows came from behind, like giant hammers that drove Evelyn to her knees as she heard Teera cry out in pain and thump to the ground alongside her. Behind them, the Ogrin stood with clenched fists held in mid-air where they had struck across Evelyn’s shoulders.

  ‘I like to see spirit in my girls,’ Salim said as he stood and descended toward them. ‘It gives me more pleasure as I break them.’

  ‘Only thing broken here is your head,’ Evelyn managed to cough in response. ‘Let us go and the Atlantia might not pummel this place into the ground.’

  ‘Your ship will not fire upon us,’ Salim replied without concern. ‘There are too many innocent victims for their bleeding liberal hearts to fear over. They will be forced to negotiate with us and they will be unsuccessful. We will hold on to you and the other prisoners as a guarantee that the ship will not return here, ever. Then, they will leave.’

  ‘I think you underestimate them.’

  ‘I think you over-rate them,’ Salim countered. ‘There is no colony any more, no Colonial forces, no government, no nothing. There is no cohesion and without that there is no law and no reason for them to try to get any of you back. Cutting your losses, it’s known as.’

  ‘We’ll never serve you,’ Teera spat.

  ‘That’s what they all say,’ Salim shrugged. ‘But then they see what happens to those who oppose me.’

  As if on cue an Ogrin appeared, dragging something behind him on the ground. Evelyn felt a pulse of alarm as she recognised the body of a woman, the limbs bouncing loose on the ground and the eyes rolled up in their sockets. The Ogrin dragged the body by its long brown hair in front of Salim and let it drop with a thud to the ground.

  Evelyn stared in shock at the woman’s body, laced with deep lacerations from a plasma whip.

  ‘Mom!’

  The young girl near Salim’s throne leaped down and tears sprung from her eyes as she dashed to the fallen body and threw herself upon it. Salim watched the girl for a moment and then looked at Evelyn.

  ‘You can either live like the lovely girls behind me, in comfort,’ he said, ‘or you can end up like Ishira here.’

  Evelyn was about to answer when an Ogrin burst into the throne room. Salim’s features twisted with rage at the intrusion and he opened his mouth to protest, and then he fell silent.

  Evelyn turned to see a Marine pushed onto his knees in front of Salim, and she felt her heart skip a beat as she looked at him. He was shivering, his face sheened with a cold sweat and his hands
quivering like leaves in a gale. His eyes darted left and right as though he was some kind of cornered animal seeking an escape, but it was as though he could not see anything, a blind man surveying the darkness.

  But what chilled Evelyn to the core were the jagged purple lines lacing his skin, faint but visible.

  Salim walked toward the man, who was held in place by the Ogrin’s giant hand.

  ‘Well, well, well,’ Salim purred, ‘what have we here?’

  He looked down at the Marine and turned his face left and right with one podgy hand, examining his prize. He glanced at one of the nearby watching pirates, who grinned slowly as he looked the Marine over.

  ‘That’s cutting out,’ the pirate drawled. ‘He’s in withdrawal, probably Feykon Ice, maybe even Devlamine.’

  Salim looked at the stricken soldier for a moment longer and then peered curiously at Evelyn.

  ‘You have Devlamine on board your ship?’

  ‘What’s Devlamine?’ Teera asked.

  ‘Some kind of drug I think,’ Evelyn replied, playing her part smoothly even as her blood ran cold in her veins and she tried to ignore the cold shivers rippling beneath her skin. ‘No, I don’t think so.’

  Another pirate entered the throne room, strolled casually up to Salim and murmured something in his ear. Salim’s grin spread to cover his face as he nodded and turned back to Evelyn.

  ‘The negotiations are to begin,’ he said. ‘Your people are not coming down here for you in force I’m afraid, just as I said.’

  Evelyn bit her lip as she tried not to reveal her consternation to Salim. The oily pirate gestured down to Ishira’s comatose body.

  ‘If you disrupt the negotiations, or otherwise displease me in any way, I shall have her killed and her body hanged by the cliffs as a warning to everybody else, understood?’

  Evelyn said nothing and beside her Teera remained silent also. Salim nodded, taking their silence as a tacit agreement, and then gestured to a viewing panel mounted up on one wall of the throne room.

  The panel glowed into life and then a face appeared.

  ‘Greetings,’ Salim said, spreading his arms as he stood before the panel. ‘My name is Salim Phaeon, and you are?’

  A young, handsome face with a square jaw and hard eyes stared back at Salim.

  ‘My name is Captain Andaim Ry’ere of the Colonial frigate, Atlantia.’

  ***

  XVIII

  ‘Captain Ry’ere,’ Salim’s voice poured into the Atlantia’s bridge like honey laced with poison. ‘Such a pleasure to hear a new human voice, even if it does belong to a Colonial Officer.’

  Andaim stood on the command platform in front of the captain’s chair, and for a moment he realised that this was how it felt to command a frigate. Everything was on his shoulders and there was nobody to take the fall for him if he got things wrong. He could feel the eyes of the command crew upon him as he spoke.

  ‘I’m afraid it takes more than a global apocalypse to stop the Colonial Fleet,’ he replied.

  ‘A shame,’ Salim murmured. ‘And now you have come here to destroy everything that I have created. Why, captain? Why could you not have simply passed us by and continued on your way?’

  ‘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 lit
tle 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.’