Endeavour (Atlantia Series Book 4)

by Dean Crawford

  ‘Just because you have never encountered the Endeavour before does not mean that others of your species have not,’ Idris accused. ‘We have already discovered that human beings crossed the Icari Line long ago–there is no reason that the Morla’syn could not have also have done so.’

  ‘Do not dare to compare us to human beings,’ the Morla’syn captain snapped. ‘Your species’ inability to understand the importance of following orders is as alien to us as your willingness to destroy yourselves. The only species to defy the Icari is humanity.’

  ‘Have it your way,’ Idris growled as he turned his back to the camera and nodded to Lael. ‘Send the signal immediately on a priority frequency to the Galactic Council, emergency channel!’

  ‘Aye, captain.’

  Lael reached out to send the signal when the Morla’syn captain’s voice broke across the bridge.

  ‘Wait!’

  Idris, his hands behind his back, waited for a brief moment before he turned to face the camera once more, and he thought he saw the glimmer of doubt crossing the Morla’syn’s face.

  ‘What is it, captain?’ Idris asked. ‘I thought you had the Galactic Council behind you?’

  The Morla’syn captain’s eyes narrowed as he fought to contain his anger.

  ‘We do,’ he snapped back, but the venom in his voice seemed tempered by something that Idris had not noticed before. Hubris.

  Idris could still not tell for sure if the Morla’syn was deceiving him, but he had the instincts of a lifetime of military service to rely upon and his guts told him that the Morla’syn was hiding something.

  ‘You are not on a mission to destroy humanity at all, are you?’ Idris growled, determined to get to the bottom of why the Morla’syn would want to destroy them. ‘Why are you here? Tell us now!’

  The Morla’syn captain’s voice was a deep rumble, as though he was reluctant to spit every word that he spoke.

  ‘We are not here to destroy humanity in its entirety,’ he admitted. ‘We are here only to seek a few.’

  ‘Which few?’

  ‘A small team of soldiers was encountered operating illegally inside Morla’syn space some months ago and their vessel was pursued by a frigate, but it escaped into super luminal flight. I and my crew were tasked with pursuing them and bringing them to justice.’

  ‘Bringing them to justice for what?’

  The Morla’syn captain hesitated for a moment, and then finally spoke with a clenched fist of three fingers beside his head.

  ‘Mass murder,’ he snarled. ‘We followed them here, not you. They were discovered by a Morla’syn merchant vessel which was conducting mineral surveys close to the Icari Line. The vessel was not a military type, was not heavily armed and nor were its crew, yet upon discovery your soldiers deemed it necessary to slaughter every single one of the ship’s compliment and then to utterly destroy the vessel itself.’

  Captain Sansin took a pace closer to the screen. ‘You have evidence of this?’

  The Morla’syn captain nodded. ‘The captain of the merchant vessel was able to send a signal before his ship was destroyed, that contained data monitoring the destruction of the vessel and the murder of his crew. Although the data is broken it is clear that it was a team of human soldiers, possibly what you call special forces, was who were responsible for the slaughter.’

  Idris peered at the screen for a long moment but this time, somehow, he knew that the Morla’syn captain was not lying. Atlantia had never sailed particularly close to Morla’syn space and Idris had never been entirely convinced that the Morla’syn could have fortuitously picked up the frigate’s trail. But if the Special Forces team found upon Endeavour had indeed been in Morla’syn space on an ultra–secret mission of some kind for the Etheran government then it was possible that in order to preserve the classified nature of their mission they would have slaughtered anybody who encountered them, even if doing so could have provoked an interstellar incident. Such troops were not known for deliberation: their members were picked for their ability to make snap decisions and carry them out with absolute determination, regardless of the consequences.

  Idris looked over his shoulder at the Executive Officer’s chair and found himself ever more deeply in need of an XO with which to share ideas and deliberate courses of action. He glanced at Lael who was watching the exchange with interest, but she was grasping the sides of her communications console with both hands as though it were an anchor to keep her from becoming involved, and he realised that he could not yet ask her to stand up and shoulder the burden that was required of a true XO.

  ‘How long ago did this happen?’ he asked instead.

  ‘Just over nine months,’ the Morla’syn captain replied. ‘They have proven very difficult to track, but given the nature of their crimes we have deemed it essential to never give up until we find them. Their trail ends here at Endeavour and we will not leave until they are in our custody or dead.’ The Morla’syn captain hung his head for a moment as though in regret before he continued. ‘There is nothing that you can do to stop us. The Etheran government is no more and the destruction of your vessels would no longer be an interstellar incident. The massacre of my people was a key reason for the decision by the Galactic Council to vote for humanity’s destruction. I am sorry, captain, but we are ordered to destroy both of your vessels and Endeavour with you. I would ask that you surrender the criminals under your protection to stand trial upon our homeworld for their crimes. You have five minutes to make a decision.’

  The communication signal blinked out and the image of the Morla’syn captain vanished as Idris stood in silence on the command platform.

  *

  ‘We’re almost there!’

  Evelyn followed the Marines pushing the computer terminal as Lieutenant C’rairn’s delighted cry rang out down the corridor.

  Ahead, she could see past the Marines to where the Special Forces soldiers were making their way toward a set of double bulkhead doors, the massive hatch clearly indicative of the type typically leading to landing bays on major colonial vessels. Larger than most, they were designed to withstand the dramatic loss of pressure when a landing bay was open to the vacuum of space during the launch and recovery of vessels, and above the hatches were the warning lights revealing the atmospheric conditions within the landing bay itself.

  ‘Good,’ Bra’hiv said. ‘The sooner we get off this damned derelict the better!’

  Evelyn saw Lieutenant Riaz and his troopers race to the hatches and then to her alarm she saw the soldiers of his platoon engage their plasma shielding as a rippling glow flickered briefly into life around their bodies.

  ‘What the hell are they doing?’ Andaim called.

  The Special Forces troops gathered before the hatches and as one they turned, four of them kneeling down to aim at the Marines as four more stood behind them with their weapons likewise trained deliberately on Bra’hiv’s men. Evelyn saw their plasma shielding ripple as they linked up to form a wide defensive screen impenetrable to plasma fire.

  The Marines stopped in mid stride and stared as Riaz called out to them.

  ‘That’s as far as you go, boys,’ he warned. ‘Weapons on the deck, hands behind your heads and on your knees, now!’

  The Marines did not move as Bra’hiv stepped to stand before them. ‘You’ve got to be kidding me?’

  Riaz shook his head. ‘End of the line for you I’m afraid,’ he snapped. ‘Hand over the machine and that abomination you call Emma. We’re leaving.’

  Evelyn stepped forward a pace and placed herself protectively in front of Emma, one hand resting on the butt of a pistol. To her amazement, Andaim moved also to stand alongside Evelyn with his own pistol already drawn.

  ‘That’s not going to happen, Riaz,’ Bra’hiv snapped back. ‘I don’t know what your real mission was, but it’s over now. There is no need for any of this–you can come with us.’

  ‘Sorry, no can do,’ Riaz replied. ‘It’s a long story and not one were about to sha
re, but we’re out of here. Now either hand over the terminal and that woman or you become permanent residents here.’

  ***

  XXXIII

  Evelyn and the Marines stared at Riaz and his men as they aimed their weapons at them down the corridor. All of the Special Forces troops were wearing stern expressions, none of them showing any signs of uncertainty about their leader’s course of action.

  ‘This is insane,’ Andaim snapped. ‘There’s nowhere else to go, nowhere else for you to run. We’re all that’s left of humanity, why would you choose to betray us?’

  ‘It’s not open for discussion,’ Riaz snapped as he nodded towards the computer terminal. ‘We’ll be taking that with us.’

  Evelyn glanced at the computer terminal as she saw Emma move instinctively closer and place both hands upon it as though it were the only thing keeping her alive.

  ‘It’s not yours for the taking,’ Evelyn replied.

  ‘What was your real mission, Riaz?’ Bra’hiv growled. ‘Why were you sent out here?’

  ‘That’s classified,’ Riaz shot back. ‘And I’m not buying your story of a global apocalypse wrecking Ethera and the surrounding planets. As soon as we get that thing aboard our ship we’ll be plotting a course for home.’

  ‘There is no home!’ Andaim shouted in frustration. ‘Do you really think we would be out here facing who–knows–what dangers every day if we all had homes and family’s to go to?’

  ‘If you were deserters you wouldn’t have a problem with it,’ Riaz snapped back.

  ‘Deserters,’ Bra’hiv echoed flatly. ‘You’re going with that?’

  ‘Our priority is to complete our mission,’ Riaz insisted. ‘Frankly I don’t give a damn why you’re out here, only that you’ve seen us when you should not have. There’s a destroyer out there determined to hunt us down. If our presence is identified by the Galactic Council they will almost certainly kill us and the repercussions on Ethera could be devastating.’

  Evelyn blinked, suddenly uncertain of how stable the lieutenant’s mental state was. She knew that Special Forces troopers were trained to almost insane levels of devotion and determination, but the sheer amount of time that the troops had spent away from home and out of contact with human beings may have pushed the lieutenant’s reserves further than his training had ever intended. Nothing could prepare even such a highly trained soldier for the knowledge that the five years he had spent away from family and friends performing the duties he had been assigned were for nothing, and that the people he had left behind were no longer alive: that he didn’t even have a home to go to.

  Denial.

  ‘Lieutenant,’ she said as she moved to stand beside Bra’hiv. ‘There is no home left for us but here. I’m not even a colonial officer, but a former convict who proved my worth aboard Atlantia. Half the Marines behind me are also former convicts given the chance to prove themselves and serve what’s left of our colonial forces in an attempt to take back Ethera from the Word. This is the reality of our lives now. If you plot a course home, as soon as you arrive you will either be infected or consumed by the Word’s hunters. This is not a ploy or a deception–I wish it was. We can’t let you have this computer terminal as it’s too important to our mission to understand the Word and attempt to identify weaknesses in it that we can exploit in our mission to return home safely. If you really want to leave without us, then you’ll have to go ahead on your own.’

  The soldiers around Riaz did not move an inch, their weapons still aimed at the Marines, but Evelyn could see their eyes swivel to glance at their leader as they awaited his decision. Riaz seemed to struggle as he tried to understand any possible deception behind the Marine’s insistence on remaining together.

  ‘The hell with this,’ Riaz said finally as he stepped back towards the landing bay hatch. ‘Keep the damn computer, we’re out of here. You make any attempt to stop us, we’ll blow you to hell!’

  The lieutenant backed up to the hatch and Evelyn realised that his soldiers had already placed a device over the locking mechanism, sealing it until they were ready to return. Riaz entered a code into the mechanism and the device beeped as two metallic clamps released with a hiss.

  Riaz’s men began backing up as the lieutenant reached across and hit a button. The hatch rumbled and squealed as it began to open on hinges and rotors rusty with age. Evelyn saw through the opening gap an aggressive looking craft painted in a matte black and bristling with countermeasure defences and plasma weapons.

  ‘You’re leaving us here to die!’ Andaim shouted.

  ‘So that we can live and continue our mission!’ Riaz shot back.

  The tightly–knit bunch of soldiers retreated back through the hatch, the rippling plasma shield around them impenetrable to the Marine’s weapons and the troops unable to attack anyway without dooming themselves to certain death under the barrage of fire that the Special Forces troops would return. Evelyn watched as Riaz stood beside his men as they fell back into the landing bay and he reached up to shut the doors once more.

  Evelyn thought she saw the ghost of a smile touched the lieutenant’s face.

  Something dropped from above the Special Forces troops, two black spheres that caused the plasma shield to ripple as they passed through it and landed with a thump on the deck amid the soldiers’ boots. The troopers all turned to look at the two objects that plummeted into their midst and instantly a cry went up from them.

  ‘Grenades, scatter!’

  Evelyn barely had time to shield her eyes and duck down as the two grenades detonated in the heart of Riaz’s soldier’s formation. She glimpsed the brilliant flare of brutal plasma light and the blasts radiating outwards with enough force to hurl the elite troops off their feet amid an expanding cloud of superheated plasma that struck them not from the outside but from the inside, their shields no defence against solid objects.

  Riaz was thrown aside out of sight into the bay as his men were torn to pieces by the blasts. General Bra’hiv wasted no time in taking advantage of the sudden change of fortunes.

  ‘All arms, advance by sections, go!’

  The Marines thundered down the corridor and plunged into the landing bay as they fired into the enemy formation, sweeping their rifles left and right as they passed through a gruesome wasteland of injured men and severed limbs smouldering in the landing bay. Evelyn rushed in behind them and saw two soldiers, both of them with their legs missing and their eyes staring wide and empty of life toward the ceiling of the bay. Others groaned in agony from the injuries sustained by the blasts, flames licking their uniforms amid glowing globules of plasma.

  Riaz was pinned against a wall of the landing bay, his rifle discarded and floating in the air before him and his back awkwardly slumped over a storage box, bent at an impossible angle. Evelyn realised instantly that his back was broken, snapped by the force of the blast, his eyes open and his face twisted with pain.

  General Bra’hiv approached the soldier, his rifle pulled tightly into his shoulder to guard against any possible chance that Riaz would still attempt to take life.

  ‘You should have stayed with us,’ the general snapped. ‘We weren’t lying. We are the only home left–Ethera is gone.’

  The lieutenant managed a grim smile and shook his head. ‘I’ll believe that when I see it,’ he snarled, ‘but I’ll never have any faith in colonial soldiers who are allied to the Veng’en!’

  For a moment Evelyn struggled to understand what Riaz meant, and then directly behind her she heard a dull thud as something heavy landed on the deck. Evelyn whirled and in a moment of horror she saw that behind the Marines and the computer terminal being pushed by Emma a Veng’en warrior had dropped down from the ceiling of the landing bay.

  With a pulse of horror Evelyn knew without any shadow of a doubt that it was Kordaz, just as she knew that he must have bypassed the holds via the original route from which they had intended to escape Endeavour. The huge warrior grabbed one of the fallen soldier’s plasma shields and t
ucked it under his arm, and lunged for a blade sheathed at the soldier’s waist. Kordaz whirled and loomed over Emma, and Evelyn realised that Kordaz, intent on his revenge, was aiming for the wrong target.

  ‘Kordaz, no!’

  Two plasma shots roared out and smashed into Kordaz but were dispersed by the plasma shield. Emma staggered back in horror as Kordaz swung the lethal blade and it plunged into her chest with a dull thud. Emma clasped the handle of the blade and sank to her knees as Kordaz turned and grabbed Meyanna Sansin and lifted her off her feet. He turned her around, his massive arms encircling her and pinning her body against his as he glared at the Marines.

  ‘Hold your fire!’ Evelyn yelled. ‘Don’t shoot!’

  The Marines, their rifles all pointed at Kordaz, held their ground as the Veng’en turned and revealed in his free hand another plasma grenade. Kordaz held the weapon up, the soldiers close enough to be decimated by the blasts. Evelyn stared in shock at the metallic sheen on the warrior’s chest, the seamless blend of metal and flesh and the dull red glow deep in his eyes.

  ‘Release the Word to me,’ Kordaz growled at the Marines.

  Evelyn stepped forward, her pistol in her hand as she spoke. ‘Kordaz.’

  The warrior turned his head and for the first time Evelyn was able to detect an expression of surprise in the warrior’s features, his eyes widening as patches of his skin flickered with flares of orange and red. Kordaz looked down at Emma where she lay on the deck with the blade in her chest, her breathing fast and her eyes wide with fear of death, and then he looked back at Evelyn as though suddenly realising what he had done.