Smoke coiled and drifted in dense whorls, the ceiling lights glowing through it as Evelyn stepped over the sizzling corpses of several dead troopers to where Andaim and Bra’hiv were peering down the corridor ahead.
‘The bridge is about a hundred cubits from here,’ Bra’hiv said.
‘They’ll have likely locked themselves in,’ Andaim said. ‘We won’t be able to storm the bridge without causing too much damage to the controls.’
‘The holding cells,’ Bra’hiv said, standing and changing direction as they followed him. ‘The captain will know his security override codes. We can ask him to shut the bridge down, and transfer control to the War Room.’
A deep voice spoke from behind.
‘Hevel will anticipate that move,’ Qayin said. ‘If you go down there he’ll try to shut you off somehow.’
‘You got any better ideas?’ Bra’hiv snapped back.
‘I’ll head for the bridge and keep them busy there,’ Qayin replied. ‘You free the captain and occupy the War Room.’
Bra’hiv looked over his shoulder at Qayin.
‘You want me to let you and a bunch of convicts take over the ship’s bridge?’
‘Hevel is mine,’ Qayin growled, and then mimicked Bra’hiv’s authoritarian tones. ‘You got any better ideas?’
‘He’s right,’ Evelyn said. ‘We can’t do everything on our own. The more fronts we keep them busy on, the more likely one of them will break.’
Bra’hiv scowled as he reached an intersection of passages, some leading for’ard, others aft toward the elevator banks.
‘Fine,’ he said to Qayin. ‘How are you going to get in?’
Qayin grinned and gestured over his shoulder. ‘Let me take one of your men and a few of my crew, wearing your uniforms,’ he replied. ‘Hevel will think they’re his men, who have valiantly captured me and are running for cover onto the bridge before the hated intruders reach them.’
Bra’hiv’s eyes narrowed. ‘That ruse won’t last long. Our people aren’t infected, Hevel will realise that quickly.’
‘It’ll last long enough to get me close to the bridge,’ Qayin replied. ‘Hevel’s curiosity will do the rest, once he realises it’s me.’
Bra’hiv nodded and pointed with a gloved hand as the troops spilled into the corridor, C’rairn seeing his signal. C’rairn selected a handful of convicts, Cutler among them, and they flanked Qayin as the convict surrendered his rifle. C’rairn produced a set of manacles and loosely set them over Qayin’s wrists without fastening them as Cutler and the others dragged themselves into the uniforms of fallen, infected marines.
‘Good luck,’ Evelyn said to the big man as he turned with the troops toward the bridge.
‘I don’t need no luck,’ he growled back. ‘I need vengeance.’
C’rairn marched Qayin and his crew away, while Bra’hiv whirled and set off at a run for the holding cells.
‘Come on,’ he shouted. ‘Stay away from the elevator shafts, they’re controlled from the bridge. We’ll take the stairs.’
Evelyn followed them down to the emergency stair wells that led both up and down inside the Atlantia’s cavernous hull. Their boots thundered as they hurried through the ship and exited the stairwells on the holding cell’s level.
A blast of gunfire sprayed the passageway and both Andaim and Bra’hiv hurled themselves to the deck as Evelyn almost ploughed into them. She leaped past as the plasma blasts showered the corridor, and fired as she crossed the passageway.
Two soldiers, firing from cover. Her wild shot smacked into the bulkheads near one of the shooters and sprayed plasma across his uniform as Bra’hiv and Andaim fired from their prone positions below her. Both soldiers were hit square–on and tumbled to the deck, their strangled cries of pain echoing up and down the passageway.
‘Forward!’
Bra’hiv led the way, the troops following as they advanced upon the cells. Andaim fired again as one of the wounded soldiers attempted to raise his rifle, the blast shattering his skull as his flesh hissed in the heat.
The other fallen man stared up at them, one half of his face blackened and smouldering where the rifle blast had hit him. His good eye was lifeless, staring into space, but the other was filled with shimmering black filaments of what looked like metal.
Bra’hiv leaned down close and looked at the mess filling the dead man’s eye socket.
‘The infection is at the early stages,’ he said. ‘Eyes, ears, brain stem and so on. It might not have spread too far.’
Evelyn felt her skin crawl as though insects had burrowed under it. The tiny machines that had once thrived in this man’s body were now smouldering, many of them melted together in the heat of the plasma blast that had killed their host. Now, the molten slag of the eye socket quivered as a tiny flood of seething metallic particles churned out of his brain, seeking a new home.
‘Get back!’ Andaim shouted.
They stood back and watched as the shimmering, glossy black pool of tiny machines spilled out onto the deck, spreading out like a lake of oil. Andaim and Bra’hiv waited until they were all out of the dead soldier’s body, and then they fired.
The plasma blasts fried the tiny objects into a smouldering pool of glowing, red hot metal that puffed coils of acrid blue smoke onto the air. Evelyn stared down at the bubbling, churning pool of machines.
‘Can we avoid being infected ourselves?’ she asked.
Bra’hiv shook his head. ‘This type of bot, the infectious ones, can’t survive outside of a human body for long, they don’t have enough power. As long as we don’t stray too close, and we destroy as many as we can, we’ll be okay. Head shots will destroy most of them.’
‘But the rest of the crew,’ she said, ‘we could be walking into an entire infected ship.’
‘No,’ Andaim shook his head, ‘the Word infects over time but then shows itself at a universal command to all victims, not individuals. The original carrier must have activated them at a given time.’
‘When the mutiny occurred, or soon afterward,’ Evelyn said. ‘Hevel.’
‘Come on,’ Bra’hiv urged them.
They dashed over the corpses and ran toward the holding cells, reaching them in time to see the captain and his bridge crew gripping the bars of their cells and craning their necks to see what was happening.
‘About time!’ The captain’s voice boomed out as Bra’hiv, Andaim, Evelyn and dozens of troops and convicts flooded into the holding cells. Idris saw the convicts. ‘What the hell?’
‘Long story,’ Bra’hiv said, and then he hesitated.
‘What are you waiting for?’ the captain uttered. ‘Open the cells!’
Evelyn walked up to the captain and spoke quickly. ‘The Word is aboard, captain. The infection must have occurred before we left Ethera. The bomb that destroyed the high–security wing must have been placed there by somebody with privileged access: the governor, a guard, or your wife.’
The captain stared at Evelyn and then turned to his wife. Meyanna’s face went white as her jaw dropped.
‘Lael told us that Hevel was infected, but I’m not,’ she gasped. ‘We’ve all been tested, several times.’
‘The Word must have found a way to conceal itself, to be harboured by a carrier and not visible to normal blood tests,’ Evelyn explained, unable to keep the apologetic tone from her voice. ‘People don’t know that it’s inside them and we can’t find it, else it would have been spotted before now by your tests.’
‘We’ve been locked in here since Hevel took the bridge,’ the captain snapped. ‘We’re sure that he’s infected, and if any of us were too surely he would not have placed them here.’
‘Unless he wanted all of you infected too,’ Andaim pointed out. ‘Which could have occurred by now.’
The captain gripped the bars tighter. ‘Then what do you propose we do?’
‘The War Room,’ Bra’hiv said. ‘We’ll escort you there under armed guard and try to regain control of the ship while each
of you are fully scanned by us using microwave transmitters.’
‘Why couldn’t that have been done in the first place?’ Evelyn asked.
‘Because the scan could be lethal,’ Meyanna replied. ‘The microwaves will heat up the bots if they’re inside us, destroying them but also any organs they’re attached to.’
‘You’ll either be cleared,’ Brahiv said, ‘or you’ll be dead. Do you agree to the scans?’
The captain nodded. ‘I’ll go first. Hurry.’
Idris waited until his door was unlocked and then he stepped out.
‘We’ll still need to take the bridge back, even if we have the War Room,’ he said.
‘Qayin is heading there now,’ Andaim said.
‘Qayin?’
‘Like Bra’hiv said,’ Evelyn replied, ‘long story.’
‘Besides, we’ve got bigger problems even than that,’ Bra’hiv added.
Idris grabbed his security chief by the collar. ‘Bigger how?’
‘An Avenger class cruiser,’ Bra’hiv replied, ‘almost within firing range.’
The captain’s eyes flared wide as he released the marine’s collar. ‘We can’t face them in open battle.’
‘That’s why we need to get to the War Room,’ Andaim said, ‘and fast. Qayin will try to take the bridge without firing at anything, but if he fails we still need to try to regain control of the ship and get the hell out of here.’
Idris nodded as his wife joined him, Evelyn giving her a wide berth.
‘What about the civilians?’ Meyanna asked.
‘We don’t know,’ Bra’hiv said, ‘but most likely they’re still in the sanctuary, which we would be best served by sealing for the time being. We need to go sir, now. If Hevel thinks we’re going to undermine him, his best bet is to infect as many people as he can before he’s captured or killed. You know how this works.’
‘Let’s go,’ Idris snapped as he was handed a rifle. ‘Before the Avenger blows us all to hell.’
***
XXXV
Qayin strode toward the main door of the bridge, which was sealed shut. Cutler, C’rairn and the two convicts accompanying him walked as pairs in front and behind and he could feel the tension infecting them, almost as if the Word were already coursing through their veins.
The slowed at the bridge door and C’rairn reached out and tapped the intercom panel.
‘Bridge, we have a prisoner.’
They stood and waited for a response, but no reply came from the bridge. Qayin reflected that with the doors sealed shut any infection might also have remained inside the bridge, unless Hevel had managed to spread the minions of the Word to the captured crew or civilians. Everybody knew that the tiny, myriad machines used by the Word to infect humans could not survive for long outside of the human body, their design specifically created to obtain fuel from the iron in human blood, leaving the victim anaemic in the early stages of infection. Outside of their hosts their internal power lasted only a few minutes: power conduits and electrical supplies provided raw energy in voltages too high for the miniscule devices, frying them whenever they tried to plug themselves in, and solar energy was only strong enough in a truly planetary environment so the hull’s sanctuary would not provide a refuge for them.
Hevel would have been forced to infect any victims via direct contact of some kind.
‘They’re not going for it,’ Cutler whispered under his breath.
‘Bridge, we have a prisoner,’ C’rairn intoned into the intercom again.
Qayin spoke softly through the corner of his mouth.
‘If the doors open, push me through and then get the hell out of here, understood?’
‘You’ll die,’ C’rairn replied, not looking at him.
Qayin shrugged. ‘Everybody dies.’
They stared at the dull grey doors for several more seconds, and then suddenly they hissed open.
Qayin moved immediately, the manacles falling away as he lunged into the bridge. C’rairn hit the emergency close button and the bridge doors slammed shut behind him as he came to a stop and squinted as his eyes tried to adjust to the gloom.
The bridge stations were all occupied but none of the staff were looking at Qayin. All of them appeared rooted to the spot, their hands resting lightly on the control panels. In the low lighting of the bridge he thought he could see a dull red glow within their eyes.
Qayin looked at the captain’s chair and saw the figure of a man seated there, silhouetted against the banks of lights on the far side of the bridge. His eyes glowed more brightly, more powerfully than the rest, charged with a malevolent presence as though Qayin were staring into the eyes of a demon, a demon he recognised.
Suddenly he understood what had happened to his brother, what had driven him to excesses of power at the expense of their family, their friends, everybody they had ever known.
‘How long?’ Qayin asked.
‘Does it matter?’
Hevel’s voice rippled, no longer his own but a strange warble, part–human and part machine. The Word had taken his mind long ago, but even that it seemed was not enough. Not satisfied with controlling him, such was the Word’s hatred of mankind that it instead was driven to make Hevel into a copy of himself, a simulation of the man he had once been, less than the original.
‘It matters to me,’ Qayin growled.
‘Ah,’ Hevel said as he slowly got to his feet. ‘You think that your brother is gone, don’t you? Well, he isn’t gone, Qayin. I am still your brother.’
‘You,’ Qayin said. ‘It was you who sabotaged the prison hull, detonated the bomb.’
‘It was the governor, Oculin Hayes, but it matters little. We were performing the will of the Word,’ Hevel replied. ‘Evelyn must die, and yet, somehow, she lives. Misplaced loyalties, Qayin, have cost our family dear.’
Hevel stepped into the light and Qayin fought to control himself.
Hevel was naked, but the sheer volume of machinery now polluting his body was sufficient that he was still drawn to the deck’s magnetic plating as though he were wearing a gravity suit. His body was mostly covered with a seething mass of tiny machines that crawled beneath his skin, turning his skin into a glossy black veil that rippled in the light like the surface of a distant lake beneath moonlight.
His joints and limbs were heavily metallised, the raw materials of his body converted into stronger defences, or more likely harvested from the deck beneath his feet an atom at a time and transported to where he needed it most. It almost looked as though he was wearing a suit of armour.
Hevel’s hair was falling out, the heat from his overactive brain killing off the skin of his scalp, and his ears, lips, hands and eyes were distorted and sheened with thin metal plating, enhanced for superior senses.
‘My brother is long gone,’ Qayin snarled. ‘What’s left is nothing more than a glorified slave.’
‘Come now, Qayin,’ Hevel smiled, his lips catching the light and his teeth flashing silver and graphite grey. ‘You were always the strong one, always the fastest, always the toughest, and me, I was always the academic. But look at me now, brother. I am stronger than you, faster than you, and I still have the intelligence that you so often ignored as you cowered in your cell with the scum of society.’
Qayin smiled, although it felt like more of a sneer. ‘Funny, how easily people describe convicts with the same words they use to describe politicians.’
‘You wasted your life, Qayin,’ Hevel went on. ‘Do you know how our mother and father wept as they learned of your each, successive failure? How they mourned your incarceration? How they begged for answers to why they had not done enough to help you?’
Qayin’s blood ran hot through his veins. ‘I made my own choices.’
‘And that’s supposed to calm them, to console them?’ Hevel asked. ‘They are with the Word now, just like all humanity, and they now no longer worry about you Qayin. I doubt they’d even recognise you. This life,’ he said, gesturing to himself, ‘is so much be
tter than the one that went before. There is no pain, brother. No regret, no illness, no suffering. We are at one and our cause is universal.’
‘What cause?’ Qayin asked.
‘The perseverance of mankind, of course,’ Hevel chuckled. ‘You believe us to be evil, a conquering force, but the Word saw the potential of mankind long ago. People used to say, didn’t they, used to ask: “imagine what we could be if we didn’t spend so much time at war, or fighting crime or tackling disease? Imagine what we could be if we all worked together?”‘ Hevel pointed to his own chest. ‘Now, we can find out.’
‘You’re not a man.’
‘And I’m all the better for it,’ Hevel snapped back. ‘I’m more than a man now, Qayin. You could be to. Would you like to see our mother again, our father?’
Qayin ground his teeth in his skull. ‘They’re gone, Hevel, just like you.’
‘No,’ Hevel said. ‘They are back home, walking as we do, a part of the Word now but alive none the less. The Word killed nobody, Qayin. There was no apocalypse that your captain speaks of, no genocide, no killing but for our defensive posture against your feeble efforts to stop us. We protected the best of human life, Qayin. It survived because of us, not in spite of us. Now it is your turn.’
‘I’d rather die.’
‘That would be a shame, Qayin,’ Hevel said as he took a pace closer. ‘There is no need for you to die. There is no need for any of us to die, ever.’
‘I didn’t hear you sayin’ that when you murdered half the prison block.’
‘Come now, Qayin,’ Hevel soothed, ‘the mercy I would show you does not extend to the scum who have scoured your life of decency. Human garbage, the dregs of your kind deserved no such consideration. Our mother and father are waiting for us, Qayin,’ he urged, ‘and your vessel is doomed anyway.’
Qayin hesitated and Hevel smiled.
‘Yes, brother,’ he said. ‘All this time you’ve hated me, but I was infected long before the Word arrived. You would have been too had you not been imprisoned, beyond my reach.’
Atlantia Series 1: Survivor Page 24