‘Release them!’ Evelyn snapped. ‘They’re dead if we don’t take them with us!’
‘Take them where?’
‘I’ve got an idea,’ she said.
Evelyn sprinted away down the corridor toward the cell block, Andaim following her until they reached the block itself, the clamouring of the prisoners almost deafening as they burst out onto the gantry.
Eve ripped off her boots and her environmental suit as Andaim ran for the control tower, and then pushed off the gantry until she hit a corpse. She pushed it aside and raised her arms and hands, looking at the cells until she had the eye of every inmate and their anguished cries faded into expectant silence.
‘Listen to what I have to say,’ she called out. ‘Don’t interrupt, because we’ll be dead in a few minutes if you don’t do exactly as I say.’
The inmates watched her, none moving, Cutler’s eyes boring into hers from his cell as she spoke.
‘We’ve been cut loose,’ she said, fully expecting another broadside of rage, but the inmates remained silent and still. ‘The hull will not survive re–entry into the atmosphere intact and we have no idea what or whom might be awaiting for us down there. Our only chance is to hunker down in the engine bay and hope for the best. To do that, we must free you all.’
The inmates watched her silently and she went on.
‘We are enemies,’ she said. ‘We hate each other. But right now the only way we can survive this is if we work together. In a moment, Andaim is going to open the cell doors. I want all of you to make your way aft to the engine rooms that have not been breached, quickly but without panicking. The sooner we’re back there, the sooner we can protect ourselves. Any questions?’
Cutler stood forward, lifted his chin.
‘Why would you free us, just so we can kill you?’
Eve grinned without warmth.
‘If you’re stupid enough to kill the people who save your life, then likely every other inmate here will skin you alive right after, Cutler. So you go ahead and take your best shot. On the other hand we could open every cell door here, except yours…’
Cutler ground his teeth in his jaw but he said nothing. A soft but audible ripple of grim chuckles fluttered among the other inmates and Eve knew that she had them, at least for now. She turned and nodded at Andaim in the control tower.
Andaim adjusted the controls and with a mighty clatter the cell blocks opened as one. Eve rolled upside down alongside the nearest corpse and then pushed off it, back toward the gantry and her gravity suit and boots. She yanked them on just as the prisoners were floating over the tier balconies and moving toward her en masse.
She zipped up her suit but forced herself not to reach for her pistol as the inmates touched down all around, their eyes upon her.
‘How come the mask is gone?’ one of them asked her.
‘That way,’ she snapped back, jabbing a thumb over her shoulder at the exit. ‘Move, now!’
The inmates turned as one and glided with admirable smoothness toward the exit. Cutler drifted by her, his icy little eyes fixed upon hers as he floated past, and then Andaim appeared from the control tower.
‘That’s it,’ he said as he joined her. ‘What the hell are we going to do with them now?
Eve was about to answer when a deep voice rumbled like boulders toward them.
‘Leave that to me!’
They whirled to see Qayin appear on the gantry, his towering form stooping through the exit. A rush of hateful gasps rippled among the convicts and Qayin sneered at them.
‘Whine all you want,’ he growled, ‘but Hevel just mutinied and cut us off. If we’d been aboard the Atlantia he’d have had us all shot on sight instead. Only reason you’re all alive is ‘cause of me.’
‘What the hell are you doing here?!’ Eve asked.
‘Hevel,’ was all that Qayin said.
‘Where is the captain?’ Andaim asked.
‘Under guard,’ Qayin replied. ‘Hevel’s taken the ship, threatened to shoot Bra’hiv down if he did not abandon you here and return to the Atlantia. He didn’t have much choice but to leave.’
‘Damn,’ Andaim growled. ‘I knew it, Hevel will kill us all.’
‘You had a choice,’ Evelyn said to Qayin. ‘Why didn’t you go back too?’
‘Hevel would have me killed on sight,’ Qayin replied. ‘He’s lost his mind, what he had left of it anyways. I figured I’d be safer with you guys.’
Andaim blinked as he glanced at Cutler, who was clenching his fists by his sides and fuming in silence. ‘You sure got some strange ideas, Qayin.’
Eve looked up as the lights in the cell block began to flicker sporadically.
‘Come on, we don’t have time for this.’
Qayin followed her and Andaim as they jogged toward the aft exits.
‘What the hell you gonna do now?’ Qayin asked as they moved.
‘The engine room,’ Eve said. ‘It’s the strongest part of the ship.’
‘It’s also the part where the engines and fusion core are,’ Qayin muttered. ‘Case you didn’t know.’
‘You got any better ideas?’ she challenged.
‘If we can tuck in there somewhere, we might just make it down,’ Andaim said for Qayin. ‘It’s about all we’ve got.’
Qayin shook his head, his gold and blue braids swinging.
‘Gotta hope the Atlantia can hold out against the Word.’
‘What?’ Andaim asked.
‘Hevel’s all for stayin’ put and fightin’ it out, so he said over the intercom.’
‘That doesn’t sound like him,’ Andaim said.
‘It ain’t like him,’ Qayin replied. ‘He’s got ‘bout as much hero in him as I got lawman.’
Eve shook her head.
‘It doesn’t make sense. Standing and fighting here is the last thing we should be doing. The Atlantia won’t stand a chance without the fusion core to fight back with.’
Neither Andaim nor Qayin replied as they reached the engine compartments. The prisoners had already opened the shield doors and were amassed inside as Eve led Andaim and Qayin inside with them. The sight of the giant convict sent a further surge of anger through the amassed inmates, but Evelyn raised her hands as she called out.
‘He’s been trapped here with us,’ she said. ‘We’re all betrayed here, so let’s get over it and get to work.’
Cutler stood forward, acting as self–imposed spokesperson for the inmates.
‘He’s the one who put us here,’ he said, pointing at Qayin. ‘What makes you think any one of us would trust him?’
Eve was about to reply when a voice among the inmates did it for her.
‘What makes you think that we want you speaking for us, Cutler?’
A murmur of agreement rippled through the crowd, and was silenced by a deep and reverberating rumble that shuddered through the entire hull.
‘No time to argue now,’ Evelyn said. ‘Do you all want to live or die?’
All of the prisoners watched her without responding, and Eve turned to Qayin and Andaim.
‘Seal all of the hatches behind us,’ she said. ‘The more hull we have between us and the heat, the better off we’ll be.’
Qayin and Andaim turned and began sealing the shield doors as Evelyn walked directly toward the wall of inmates. They split before her in silence, her diminutive form carving through them like a knife as she headed toward the engine room doors proper.
The floor vibrated beneath her boots, humming with the contained energy locked into the fusion core in the damaged section of the hull nearby. Enough to fry Eve and everybody else on board too, she knew, but right now the core represented the lesser of two evils: a fast death by searing fusion heat, or a slower death by friction heat if the hull ruptured during entry into the atmosphere below.
Eve reached the doors and accessed their simple controls, opening them. A waft of dense heat billowed out from the engine rooms as the doors opened and the inmates hurried in without waiting f
or a command.
Qayin and Andaim joined her as she set the doors to close.
‘Looks like you’ve got them under your little finger,’ Qayin murmured with a wry smile. ‘Maybe I shoulda thought ‘bout signing you up to the gang before now?’
‘You think that this lot will hold up?’ she asked Andaim as she looked at the huge tubes and vents surrounding them.
‘They’re old,’ he replied, looking at the long, tubular engine cores and the spherical titanium containment chambers at the far end of the engine rooms. ‘But the hull’s rotated now so we’re at the back, and they’re built the old way too.’
‘If they don’t,’ Qayin said, ‘then I don’t hold out much hope for us either.’
‘Easiest way out,’ Eve replied as she walked through the engine room doors and then set about closing them behind her. ‘It’ll be so fast, by the time you realise it you’ll already be dead.’
‘That’s a great comfort,’ Andaim rolled his eyes.
The heavy doors rumbled shut and the deep red emergency lighting glistened on Andaim’s face as the sweat built up on his skin.
‘Damn, it’s hot already,’ Qayin said.
The hull vibrated again but this time the motion did not stop and a deafening, screeching sound of tortured metal echoed through the engine room from somewhere far for’ard.
‘This is it!’ Eve shouted at the inmates. ‘Find something to brace yourself against and hold on as tight as you can!’
The engine room began to shudder and shake as she made her way as far aft as she could, seeing inmates propped behind bulkheads and even the exhaust channels themselves, the cylindrical behemoths rattling in their mounts.
Eve spotted a cross–hatched series of support braces buried deep in one corner of the engine room, too small for most of the inmates to crawl into. She crouched down, turned to face aft to keep her back to the deceleration and then levered herself into the tiny space. The entire hull was vibrating against her skin, numbing it within seconds. She tucked her boots against the back of her thighs, and crossed her arms across her chest as she rested her forehead against her knees, then looked across the engine room.
Qayin and Andaim were sitting much as she was, facing aft, their backs to the biggest support braces that they could find, those that attached to the hull’s keel deep beneath them. Qayin was staring into space, his features calm and controlled as though he were just riding a transport to work. Andaim was looking right back at her, his face wracked with barely contained fear. Yet despite it he smiled at her and gave her a thumbs–up as though it would all be just fine.
He had guts, guts enough to push through his fear, guts enough to try to calm her wildly churning stomach. Even as she said a tiny prayer of hope in her mind that they might somehow survive this, she heard a sudden roar that seemed to fill the entire universe around them and the entire prison hull jolted violently enough that she banged her head on the metal brace above her.
She heard screams, saw a convict’s body hurled through the air toward the shield doors as his grip was broken. He slammed into them with a sickening crunch as what sounded like a thousand howling hurricanes roared outside the hull and the heat began to increase all around her.
***
XXII
‘Put it on screen.’
Hevel barked the order out across the bridge, and the view of the for’ard hull was replaced by that of the prison hull as it drifted away behind them, a shower of glistening metallic fragments clouding the view.
‘How long before they burn up?’ Hevel demanded.
‘Four minutes until they hit the atmosphere,’ replied Dhalere, manning the communications post on the bridge.
Hevel nodded slowly, his gaze fixed upon the ugly prison hull as it rolled over, the flare of multiple orientation rockets firing visible as it turned its strongest side to the planet below and angled itself for re–entry. The process was automated but it was only an emergency procedure, not one that was ever designed to be used. The prison hull was constructed in space for use in deep space only, not ever for planetary descents. It had no inherent aerodynamics, no planetary thrusters and the fusion core was for internal power only. Built to house convicts for whom the general populace held little sympathy or empathy, nobody really cared if the safety measures worked or not. To Hevel’s knowledge, they had never even been tested.
‘She’s about to strike,’ said Keyen, the bearded civilian who had joined Hevel's mutinous crew.
‘Maintain watch,’ Hevel replied. ‘I want to see that thing burn.’
‘This is murder,’ said the captain, standing amid a ring of marines with his command crew. ‘Worse than that, it’s genocide.’
‘It’s necessary,’ Hevel snapped back. ‘Without that damned hull and its equally damned occupants to slow us down, we’ll be better able to defend ourselves.’
‘We can’t fight,’ Idris said again wearily. ‘We can’t make our stand here, Hevel.’
‘That’s the spirit that saw our race annihilated,’ Hevel snapped.
‘We’ll be the ones who are annihilated,’ the captain replied. ‘Our last chance for survival was on that hull!’
Hevel smiled ruefully. ‘I think that you give Andaim more credit that he’s due, captain, and besides…’
‘Not Andaim, you idiot!’ the captain roared. ‘The fusion core! We were planning to use it as a weapon against the Word. Now, it’s lost to us!’
‘That would have likely killed us as the Word!’ Hevel sneered at the captain, pointing an accusing finger across the bridge. ‘You’re desperate and you don’t know what to do!’
‘No,’ the captain replied, ‘you’re desperate, and now we and any living thing down on that planet beneath us will die because of us.’
‘Perhaps,’ Hevel snapped, ‘but at least we will die fighting on our feet and not quivering on our knees.’
‘Is that how you see it?’ Idris asked. ‘It is the fool who goes to his grave a failed hero.’
Hevel turned to look over his shoulder at the captain.
‘How apt for my brother, Qayin.’
The captain glared at Hevel. ‘And my best fighter pilot, Andaim? He was aboard that ship.’
Hevel turned back to the big screen. ‘What will be, will be.’
As they watched, the metallic grey bulk of the prison hull suddenly flared with a brilliant orange and white light as it slammed into the planet’s atmosphere. Even on the screen the light was brilliant enough to force the watching crew to squint, and the darkened corners of the bridge were illuminated as though by daylight as the prison hull began to burn up.
‘Say goodbye to the prisoners,’ Hevel said, ‘and good riddance to them too.’
*
The blast of heat that seared through the prison hull seemed to thicken the air around Eve until it was no longer breathable. Sweat drenched her skin and her hair and dripped from her nose and chin as the hull shook violently around her and she buried her face into her knees.
The hull screeched and howled and the sound of rending metal filled the air as the entire hull was consumed by the savage inferno raging outside. Eve felt the metal beneath her heat up, heard men gasp and swear as they scalded themselves on deck plates.
The exhaust cylinders were rattling wildly, chunks of metal bracing and huge rivets popping out and tumbling to the deck as though it were raining steel. Eve turned her head and saw that the exhaust’s seals were glowing red hot. In horror, she realised that the inferno outside was seeping into the hull’s hydrogen scoops and blasting through the exhausts as though the ship were underway.
‘The exhausts!’ she screamed. ‘Get away from the exhausts!’
The prisoners could not hear her above the cacophony of noise and suddenly a huge chunk of plating peeled away as though it were nothing more than silvery paper and a blast of white hot flame screeched down the gangway alongside the exhaust.
Eve saw half a dozen convicts instantly burst aflame, their features vanishing a
s they were scorched to the colour of flaming charcoal and they tumbled aft, consumed by fire and their flesh blasted away like burning leaves from their bodies.
The flames cut through thick metal stanchions and braces as though they were of no more substance than thin air, the entire starboard exhaust chamber collapsing onto the deck and crushing another handful of men sheltering beneath it. Eve heard their agonised screams as the super–heated metal scorched their still living bodies, cooking them alive.
Several inmates staggered away from the unbearable heat of the flames and were lifted off their feet as the gravity in the vessel shifted wildly as the hull began to lose orientation. Eve saw one of them fly upward and straight through the fearsome tongue of flaming roaring from the ruptured exhaust, unable to break her gaze as she searched for his body to re–emerge above the flames and saw only a cloud of vaporised and burning fragments blasted aft toward the stern bulkheads.
Eve could feel the heat from the flames but she forced herself not to move, her tiny pocket of safety the only thing preventing her from being hurled around the interior of the hull. She searched for Andaim, but the trembling heat haze from the flame and the heat scalding her eyeballs hid him from view.
She looked for’ard and saw that the shield doors were already glowing red around the edges, bright globules of metal shimmering like lava as they dripped from handles and pressure locks. The entire for’ard bulkhead seemed to bulge inward as though melting, straining the shield doors even further, and she heard massive impacts outside the hull as components were torn off by the fearsome inferno and turbulence outside to tumble in the hull’s wake.
‘The doors!’
The scream came from what sounded like miles away, so loud was the roaring of the flames and the rending of the tortured hull. Eve looked for’ard and saw the shield doors bulging outward, the rivets popping under the tremendous pressure. A flash of sparks and globules of molten metal sprayed out around the edges of the doors, and then they burst inward at the head of savage tongues of flame.
The main shield door blasted past Eve’s shelter and crashed into the aft bulkhead somewhere behind her, burying itself deep into the hull plating. It was followed by a screaming vortex of glowing flames, ashes and a horizontal rain of molten metal that showered across the engine room like a lethal hail of burning bullets.
Atlantia Series 1: Survivor Page 15