Above the hiss of burning corpses a rush of what sounded like water echoed through the generator room, and Evelyn felt terror crawl like lice on her skin as she saw patches of light emerge from the shadows like newborn stars. Her brain recalibrated itself to the motion as she realised that the depths of the generator room were not in darkness at all: the ceiling lights were merely obscured by countless millions of Hunters. As they moved, so shafts of light pierced the gloom and illuminated them rushing forth like black rivers.
‘Hunters!’ Bra’hiv yelled. ‘Fall back!’
***
XXVII
Evelyn grabbed Kordaz as the entire rear of the generator room shifted toward them as though a tsunami of black gravel was plunging into motion. The Veng’en staggered to his feet with a tight growl, one clawed hand grasping his injured thigh as he tried to make it to the hatchway.
‘Covering fire!’ Lieutenant C’rairn bellowed. ‘Get those flamethrowers running now!’
The Marines plunged in retreat through the hatchway as Evelyn dragged Kordaz forward, the shifting morass of hunters flooding toward them. The Marines with the flamethrowers stepped forward, blasting the sea of black bots with fluid that burned with bright blue and yellow flames. Evelyn saw the flood brought up short before the searing heat as though by magic.
‘Take Dhalere down!’ Bra’hiv yelled.
A hail of plasma fire erupted into the hunters from the Marines holding their position around the hatch, the blasts blazing past Evelyn and Kordaz and smashing into the hunters to explode in bright fireballs of orange embers.
Evelyn, one arm around Kordaz’s waist, aimed at Dhalere and fired.
In the last moments before the muzzle flash from her pistol, Evelyn saw Dhalere’s face contort and a flood of Infectors pour from her mouth and nose in a black stream like rats fleeing a sinking ship. The Councillor’s eyes were filled once again with horror, her features strained with disgust and confusion as her faculties returned to her once more in that last, terrifying instant.
The shot hit the councillor dead in the face, smashing her skull into fragments even as the hunters flooded past her. Her head flicked to one side, her lustrous black hair flailing, and then the Infectors flooded in and filled in her features. Her beautiful face became a hideous distortion, a charicature of the human being that had once belonged there, eyes red and teeth steel–grey.
Dhalere laughed, dead and yet now still alive, her arms still outstretched as the hunters flowed past her like thick waves, and then the flamethrowers drenched her in an inferno of fire and she shrieked in fury as her body burst into flames. Her clothes and flesh burned as the millions of Infectors inside her burning body spiralled up toward the ceiling like the embers of a fire snapping in the wind.
‘Fall back!’ Bra’hiv yelled.
Evelyn dragged herself past the flamethrowing Marines, Kordaz finding new reserves of willpower as he powered forward on his good leg. Evelyn released him, pushed him toward the hatch as she turned and aimed her pistol at the roiling hunters.
The lead flamethrower was overwhelmed as he turned to flee, the hunters plunging past his boots and swarming upon him in a black and silver cloud. Evelyn heard his screams above the gunfire as his legs seemed to dissolve before her and his torso sank down into the black mess, blood spilling in copious floods across the thick flood of machines. The Marine’s arms reached out for salvation and his stricken features, twisted in agony, vanished as the hunters swarmed upon him and consumed his flesh in a frenzy of destruction.
The flamethrower in his grasp sank toward the hunters.
‘Get back, now!’ Qayin boomed as he dashed across to Evelyn’s side.
The Marines fell back as Qayin dropped to one knee and took careful aim, then fired and hurled himself down onto the deck beside her.
The blast hit the flamethrower’s fuel–lines as they sprayed unburnt fuel across the hunters, and the plasma shot burst into flames and then the fuel canister exploded in a tremendous fireball that briefly illuminated the entire generator room in a blinding flash.
‘Go, now!’ Qayin roared as he pushed Evelyn away toward the hatch, where Kordaz was limping through with the Marines.
Evelyn dashed across to the exit and ducked her head down as she crouched near the hatch and then looked up to see the front of the hunter’s ranks decimated as they were engulfed within a flaming inferno of molten metal, as though instantaneously fossilized by the searing heat into a glossy black wall that spat hot blue smoke in clouds into the air.
The hunters flooding in from behind poured over their solidified brethren like a black wave breaching a dam.
‘Back, now!’ Bra’hiv ordered.
Djimon’s Marines set up firing positions around the exit hatch, plasma rounds screeching across the generator room to plough into the surging Hunters as Evelyn followed Kordaz. Bra’hiv withdrew behind her, firing as he went, and Evelyn hurled herself through the open hatch to see Kordaz limping hurriedly away in the distance before her.
Bra’hiv hopped through behind her and instantly stuck a timed plasma–charge to the wall beside the hatch and set the timer to thirty seconds as Djimon backed through into the corridor, firing shot after shot into the roiling hordes of vicious machines pursuing them.
‘Run, now!’ Djimon snapped as he grabbed the detonator. ‘We’ve got this!’
Evelyn and Bra’hiv dashed down the corridor, and Djimon turned and aimed his rifle out into the generator room. The Hunters were surging toward him now, and he could see Qayin firing as he backed toward the exit.
‘Pull back!’ he bellowed.
Alpha Company’s Marines ceased fire and rushed past Djimon as he placed one hand on the detonator’s timer. Qayin turned as the covering fire ceased, and in a brief instant he locked eyes with Djimon and his bioluminescent tattoos flared in anger.
‘Cover me!’ he yelled.
Djimon twisted the detonator’s timer from thirty seconds to ten and then turned and sprinted away as the black horde of Hunters bore down toward Qayin.
*
Evelyn broke into a sprint, Bra’hiv thundering after her as they ran down the corridor, the air bitterly cold now after the heat of the generator rooms and filled with thick mist as the vapour condensed out of it.
‘Fire in the hole!’
Djimon’s voice was broken as he shouted and ran at the same time, and seconds later a deafening blast ripped through the corridor. Evelyn kept running even as the shockwave ploughed into her and she stumbled forwards, hands flailing and reaching out for the walls to keep her upright.
She plunged out of the corridor into a stairwell and saw Kordaz dragging himself painfully upward two flights above her, the sound of other Marine’s boots hammering the metal steps further up. She glanced back over her shoulder to see several Marines and Djimon sprinting down the corridor as an inferno raged in the generator room behind them.
‘Where’s Qayin?!’ she yelled.
The Marines tumbled past her but did not respond as she gestured to the deck at the base of the stairwell.
‘Plasma charges here!’ Evelyn shouted and unclipped both of her charges from her flight suit and dropped them at the top of the first flight of steps as she ran up them. ‘Where’s Qayin?’ she repeated.
‘He told us to get out!’ Djimon bellowed back as he burst into the stairwell alongside her. ‘The Hunters got him, Evelyn! He’s gone!’
Evelyn stared at the big Marine and it seemed as though her heart momentarily stopped beating as she thought of Qayin, the seemingly indestructible force of nature, consumed by Hunters and burned alive in the blast from Bra’hiv’s charges.
Djimon leaped up the steps three at a time and dropped a pair of charges as he ran, and Bra’hiv matched him step for step just behind.
‘Evelyn, move, now!’ the general roared down at her.
Evelyn shook herself out of her torpor and climbed with them and then stopped to aim her pistol down at the charges. A rush of air billowed up to
ward her as the hunters flooded toward the stairwell and blasted like black water under high pressure out of the corridor. She fired, and the first plasma magazine shattered and exploded with a blinding white flare.
She aimed at the second, hitting it first time and blasting the hunters back, millions of them melting in a dense and smouldering black pile of glossy slag intersected by glowing red rivulets of molten metal.
Evelyn aimed at the third magazine, but before she could fire it was swamped by the hunters and vanished from sight. She fired anyway, two or three shots, and the swelling mass of hunters filling the stairwell like water surged as the last shot found its mark and the magazine exploded deep inside their ranks.
Molten metal burst from the hunters and splashed across the surface, but then the hunters found their momentum again and began swarming toward her, climbing the steps like black vines growing at an impossible speed.
‘Eve! That’s enough, let’s move!’
Bra’hiv’s deep voice reached her from what felt like a universe away. She reluctantly holstered her pistol and began running again, harder this time, driving herself up as the hunters swarmed en masse below her.
‘Keep moving!’ Bra’hiv yelled.
Evelyn leaped up the steps two at a time, turning with each new flight, her legs throbbing and her breath sawing in her throat. She swung her arms hard, climbing ever upward, the air suddenly cold on her face and frost touching her eyelids as she powered past Djimon, who had stopped to drop another plasma magazine toward the hunters. She heard the rifle shot and saw the blast that flashed in the shadowy stairwell, and then she saw Kordaz slumped against the wall as she climbed.
‘Move!’ she yelled at him.
Kordaz’s chest was heaving, and thick purple blood soaked his thigh beneath his hand as his yellow eyes stared without emotion into hers.
‘My time is done,’ he rasped. ‘Go.’
Evelyn grabbed the big Veng’en’s arm and forcibly dragged him to his feet as Djimon rushed past and glared at Kordaz. ‘You going to tell me that a little human woman’s got more spark than a Veng’en soldier?!’
Djimon thundered by as Kordaz growled and struggled onward, Evelyn helping him as from above a terrific shower of bright plasma blasts rocketed down past her. She saw the Marines arrayed at the top of the stairwell, on the bridge deck, their rifles firing down and smashing thousands of hunters off the stairwells.
Evelyn glimpsed as she climbed clouds of bots falling like burning rain down into the darkness. She staggered up onto the bridge deck with Kordaz and they limped together past the Marines and into another corridor.
‘Seal it off!’ Bra’hiv yelled.
‘It won’t do any good,’ Evelyn shot back. ‘They’ll eat through it in no time!’
‘It’s better than leaving the damned door open!’ the general shouted back above the gunfire.
The Marines poured through the hatchway, Bra’hiv the last man through as he pulled the hatch shut behind him and the deafening gunfire finally ceased. Evelyn’s ears rang as she saw two Marines heave the hatch’s pressure seals shut, and then everybody was running again.
‘It’ll buy us a couple of minutes,’ Bra’hiv gasped, as breathless as she was and his skin sheened with sweat.
Evelyn and Kordaz limped in pursuit of the Marines as they entered the bridge.
‘Status?!’ Bra’hiv yelled.
‘Still no contact from the Atlantia or the Veng’en cruiser sir,’ a Marine replied. ‘If we leave, either one of them might still be forced to shoot us down.’
‘Better than staying here,’ the general growled. ‘We’re leaving!’
‘What about the Veng‘en?’ Djimon snapped, looking at Kordaz. ‘What do we do with him?’
Bra’hiv looked at Kordaz, who was leaning against a control panel and breathing heavily.
‘We use him as leverage,’ Bra’hiv replied. ‘Hail the Veng’en cruiser!’
‘You want to do what?’ C’rairn uttered.
‘Hail them!’ Bra’hiv ordered. ‘If we’ve got one of their own they might be willing to bargain and it might give the Atlantia a chance to break through the jamming. Do it, now!’
***
XXVIII
Captain Idris Sansin strode onto the Atlantia’s bridge and took his place upon the command platform, Mikhain nearby as he turned to face the main viewing screen.
‘Is your wife okay?’ Mikhain asked.
‘Any word from the Sylph?’ the captain responded, clearly not wishing to discuss Meyanna’s condition.
‘Nothing,’ Mikhain replied. ‘But tactical reports suggest a spreading heat source and gunfire aboard ship. The Veng’en cannot have failed to identify the same signatures.’
Idris exhaled noisily and nodded to Lael. ‘On screen.’
The image of the Sylph changed to that of the Veng’en cruiser’s commander. Ty’ek stared back at the captain. Idris did not speak, once again placing the onus on the Veng’en commander to speak.
‘Your time is up, captain.’
‘I did not agree to any deadlines.’
‘Regardless, you will move your ship or we will destroy it.’
Idris let a small smile curl from one corner of his lips. ‘Just like the last time, commander.’
Ty’ek’s eyes narrowed and his skin rippled with flushes of crimson. ‘We cannot play this game forever captain, and nor can your people aboard the Sylph. You would be doing your people a great service by destroying them before they are corrupted or consumed by your hideous creation.’
‘I will decide the fate of my people, not you,’ Idris replied.
‘As you already have,’ Ty’ek snarled. ‘If you will not stand down then the Sylph’s crew will be executed and you shall all be destroyed and…’
A barked command in Veng’en distracted the commander and he looked to one side.
‘When?’ he asked another officer out of sight to his left.
Idris watched as Ty’ek’s fellow officer barked a few more unintelligible lines, and then Ty’ek glared back at Idris.
‘There is gunfire aboard the Sylph,’ he snarled.
‘There is?’ Idris asked.
‘It would appear that you have even less time than I gave you, captain.’
‘As does your soldier aboard,’ Idris replied. ‘It was you who left him and his companions there.’
‘They were infected!’
‘They were abandoned,’ Idris corrected the Ty’ek. ‘We found him and managed to help him. But now they are trapped aboard the Sylph and we can’t talk to them because you’ve been jamming us!’
‘Your time is up, as is the time for dialogue,’ Ty’ek snarled.
The Veng’en scowled and shut off the communication link. Idris turned to Lael. ‘Is the Sylph communicating with them?’
‘I can’t tell for sure sir,’ Lael replied, ‘but there are some signs of signals exchanges between the two vessels.’
‘Isolate the frequencies,’ Idris ordered her. ‘They’ll have to bridge the link separately because of the jamming. See if you can break into that link instead of their jammers. Bra’hiv’s men may have been compromised.’
‘Aye sir.’
Mikhain walked to the captain’s side. ‘You think that the Veng’en has killed Bra’hiv and his Marines and taken the ship?’
‘No,’ the captain replied, ‘not with that much gunfire aboard. He is not alone. Either the crew of the Sylph has been turned and Bra’hiv’s men are fighting back, or they’re all fighting together against the Legion. Either way, we need to get them all off as soon as possible.’
The captain turned to his crew and called out across the bridge.
‘Battle stations! All arms!’
*
‘They’re responding.’
C’rairn looked up at the viewing screen as it flickered into life and the face of a Veng’en officer glared back at them.
‘Commander Ty’ek!’ he announced himself. ‘Where is my soldier?’
/> Evelyn stepped forward, helping to support Kordaz as he limped, his right thigh wrapped in hastily applied medical dressings.
‘I am here, commander,’ he replied. ‘Kordaz Benen.’
Ty’ek looked at Kordaz for a long moment.
‘What happened?’ he demanded. ‘How did you survive?’
‘I deactivated the Sylph’s environmental controls, forcing the Legion to retreat to the engine bays for warmth. It held them off until recently, when the humans arrived and boarded the ship.’
‘They are infected?’
‘Only one of them,’ Kordaz replied. ‘They saved my life, commander. We should allow them to…’
‘You are injured,’ Ty’ek interrupted. ‘How did this happen?’
Kordaz breathed a reluctant sigh.
‘One of the infected humans,’ he replied. ‘They shot me when I tried to ensure the Legion could not escape from the engine bays and…’
‘How many of them are infected?’ Ty’ek snapped. ‘You said that there was only one!’
‘There is only one now,’ Kordaz replied, ‘and he is in stasis. We can help him if…’
‘You are injured and of no use to the commonspecies,’ Ty’ek growled. ‘Your treacherous friendship with the humans will be all of our undoing if we allow you back aboard. I will not have you serve with us!’
‘You are young and inexperienced,’ Kordaz said. ‘You don’t possess the maturity to command a battleship. If you do not learn to cooperate, our entire commonspecies is doomed.’
Ty’ek’s skin rippled a deep crimson and his eyes narrowed. ‘If ever we shall meet, Kordaz, I shall cut your throat myself.’
Evelyn shook her head. ‘We have information about the Legion that we can share and…’
‘Your kind has shared enough of your creations with our people!’ Ty’ek shouted. ‘Now I shall share some of ours with you and your traitorous new friend!’
The communication link snapped off as the Veng’en once again jammed all of the Sylph’s communications.
‘That’s it,’ Bra’hiv snapped. ‘We’re out of here. The Legion will try to reach us despite the cold, searching for new hosts or just to destroy us. It will head here first and try to reactivate the environmental controls. We leave, now.’
Atlantia Series 2: Retaliator Page 20