Atlantia Series 3: Aggressor (33 page)

‘All right,’ she relented. ‘Teera!’ Her blue-skinned wingman looked up at her. ‘Get to your fighter! You’ll do more damage that way!’

Teera whirled and ran for her Raython as Evelyn looked at the Marine’s new defensive line and the assault craft still spilling Hunters onto the planet’s surface all around them.

‘How long?’ she asked.

Bra’hiv did not have to ask what she meant.

‘Five minutes and they’ll have us surrounded, and this will all be over.’

*

‘Reaper One break right!’

Andaim heard the command even as his Raython blasted from Atlantia’s launch bay. He shoved the control column over to the right and hauled back hard on it as a blaze of bright red plasma shots flashed by his left wing with what felt like scant cubits to spare.

His fighter shot from beneath the Atlantia’s bow and straight into a cloud of spiralling, rolling and twisting fighters all trying to get a bead on each other and open fire. Plasma blasts zipped back and forth in a hail of blue and red light as Andaim flew straight through the heart of the dogfight and spotted a stray plasma shot hit a Raython on its left wing and almost tear it completely off.

Andaim blinked, got control of his breathing and almost immediately his instinct for flying took over.

‘All Raythons, cease fire immediately!’

‘Do
what
?!’ came a chorus of replies.

‘You’re in disarray!’ Andaim insisted. ‘You’re as likely to hit each other as the enemy! Renegades, cease fire and re-group in sector one! Form pairs and re-engage!’

Andaim rolled his Raython over, light from the flaring sun flashing through the cockpit as he slipped into a tight formation behind a Veng’en Scythe fighter and fired once. His port shot hit the Scythe a glancing blow and it wobbled. Andaim kicked in left rudder and fired again. Both shots slammed into the fighter’s rear quarter and it burst open like a metallic flower that blossomed a bright ball of orange flame.

Andaim broke off and saw a dozen Raythons stream away from the fight with a handful of Scythes in pursuit, forming pairs once more as they swung around the Atlantia’s bow and turned back toward the engagement.

‘Now the Reapers to sector one, re-form and re-engage!’

Andaim watched as the Renegades rushed back toward the pursuing Scythes, and in paired formations opened fire. The Scythes were smashed aside as the Raythons burst back into the fight, staying in tightly knit pairs for mutual cover and maximum firepower as they engaged the Veng’en fighters.

Andaim climbed out of the engagement, high above it as he joined the Reapers and selected a lone Raython. He slid into formation alongside it.

‘Reaper One, port echelon Reaper Five.’

The pilot looked out of his cockpit over his left shoulder and saw Andaim in position off his wing.

‘Roger that, sir!’

‘Reaper Flight, engage!’

The squadron wheeled over the top of a loop and plunged back down into the fight, each pair of Raythons veering off in pursuit of a target as Andaim faithfully hung on to Reaper Five’s wing as the pilot pulled out of his dive into line astern with a Scythe and opened fire. Andaim kicked in some rudder as Atlantia’s hull rushed past at terrific speed beneath them and fired alongside Five.

The four plasma blasts converged on the fleeing Scythe and smashed into it with enough force to blast the craft into five separate pieces amid a flickering fireball that flared light across Atlantia’s hull and then vanished as the two Raython’s rocketed away from the frigate’s stern.

‘Whoa, that got ‘im!’
Five reported gleefully.

‘Break left!’ Andaim snapped. ‘Re-engage!’

‘Yessir!’

The two Raythons swept around a hard left turn and raced back into the fray, Andaim this time seeing Scythe fighters spiralling in chaos, all of them damaged or in the process of being shot down as the Raythons began achieving air superiority over their foe.

‘Atlantia, this is the CAG! Prepare to launch the Corsair bombers!’

A blast of static interference hissed in Andaim’s ears as the frigate’s communication sensors struggled to overcome the jamming coming from the Veng’en cruiser.

‘Two Corsairs on the cats!’
came the response from Mikhain.
‘But they’ll never reach the surface in time to stop Arcadia from lifting off. Our sensors show that the majority of our people are still on the surface!’

‘I don’t want our bombers to attack the surface,’ Andaim replied as he watched Reaper Five blast a Scythe fighter into blazing fragments with an explosion that briefly illuminated Andaim’s cockpit in an orange glow. ‘I want them to hit the Veng’en cruiser and break the jamming!’

‘Stand by!’

Andaim followed Reaper Five as they raced beneath the Atlantia’s massive hull and came up on the other side. The vast grey bulk of the Veng’en cruiser lay opposite, bathed in the fearsome glow of the dying star.

‘Corsairs launched!’
Mikhain called.
‘Sensors report massive electro-magnetic emissions from the cruiser’s mid-section.’

‘Copy that,’ Andaim replied. ‘Reaper Flight, on me!’

Andaim aimed his Raython at the Veng’en cruiser even as he spotted Raythons breaking away from the fight to join him and the two Corsairs race out of Atlantia’s launch bay.

***

‘I’m detecting ion exhaust from Arcadia, increasing by the second,’ Lael reported from her station aboard Atlantia’s bridge. ‘She’ll lift off within a few minutes.’

Mikhain stood beside the captain’s chair, his eyes flicking from one display to another. Atlantia shuddered as salvos from the Veng’en cruiser impacted her massive hull and the deck lights flickered and hummed as power surged through her electrical systems, the ship’s shields struggling to absorb the blows.

Two displays showed the scene on the surface, and it wasn’t good. Sensors with massive optical resolution showed the Arcadia’s form, and the shapes of three Raider assault craft nearby. Flickers of light betrayed the fierce battle on-going between the Veng’en and those on the ground, probably Bra’hiv’s Marines, while a dense mass of humanity swarming around the frigate likely denoted the slaves belonging to Salim Phaeon as they tried to board the frigate.

Mikhain turned to the tactical display and saw the Veng’en cruiser manoeuvring to avoid Atlantia’s guns while trying to bring her own to bear. Her lumbering size was no match for Atlantia’s manoeuverablity at close range, but the cruiser’s massive guns were a lethal threat to the frigate. If Mikhain missed a beat or was deceived by a feint on the Veng’en commander’s behalf, then a single broadside could smash Atlantia into instant submission and perhaps even complete destruction.

‘Helm, two degrees up and five left,’ he snapped. ‘Keep those guns at bay.’

‘Aye sir.’

Mikhain glanced at a third display, a holographic image of the Raythons engaging the Scythe fighters as they swarmed around the Atlantia’s hull. Roughly even in number, the Raythons were now inflicting a terrible toll on the Scythes, wave after wave being blasted as they launched from the Veng’en cruiser.

And then a thought crossed his mind: even despite their combat experience, the Raythons should not be so easily dominating the Veng’en Scythes.

‘Communications,’ he asked, ‘are you receiving any transmissions at all from the cruiser?’

‘Nothing sir,’ Lael replied. ‘No broadcasts, no transponder codes, nothing.’

‘What about the Scythes?’ he asked.

Lael frowned as she scanned her instruments. ‘Nothing that I can see but we’re being jammed.’

‘I don’t want to know what they’re saying,’ Mikhain urged, ‘just whether they’re communicating verbally at all?’

Lal spent a moment adjusting her controls and then she looked up again. ‘Negative sir, ther are no broadcasts at all between the enemy fighters, coded or not. What does that mean?’

Mikhain listened to the low-volume broadcasts coming from the Raython fighter pilots as they engaged the Scythes, constant calls of warnings, victories, damage reports and new contacts being shared by the pilots in their fast-moving, high intensity environment. He felt his blood run cold as he realised why the Veng’en were attacking them, why they would be engaging in a ferocious battle without speaking a single word to each other.

‘They’re infected,’ he said finally. ‘They’re under the control of the Legion.’

‘That’s not possible,’ Lael replied. ‘I thought that the Veng’en were immune to infection.’ ‘We must have been wrong,’ Mikhain snapped as he whirled to the tactical support officer. ‘Enhance the optical sensor arrays, I want maximum resolution right now!’

‘Aye sir!’

Mikhain watched as the optical images zoomed in dramatically to the scene on the planet below, to the point where he could pick out individuals running, could see the light from plasma shots zipping between black-fatigued Marines and the scaly brown figures of Veng’en. And there, behind the Veng’en, a roiling black sheet as though a sea of oil was spreading toward Arcadia.

‘Zoom out, two per cent,’ Mikhain ordered.

The display view widened, and around the docked frigate Mikhain saw a thick ring of black contracting toward Arcadia and the humans trapped beside her.

‘Hunters,’ Mikhain whispered as he watched the wave of nanites advancing across the compound. He could see that the wave was cutting off the survivors from the ranks of ships parked to the north of their position, pinning them in place around the Arcadia.

‘If she launches with those damned pirates aboard, we’ll lose the best chance we have of defeating the Veng’en,’ he said. ‘They might even attack us.’

‘We don’t know that,’ Lael pointed out. ‘Likely they’ll just run like hell out of the system and jump to super-luminal the first chance they get.’

Mikhain turned away from the screen, his mind racing. There had been no contact from the captain and it was clear that the unexpected Veng’en attack had caused chaos on the planet below. No longer in control of the situation and with the pirates clearly in control of Arcadia, Sansin had exhausted his options. Worse, the Arcadia might not escape the Legion entirely. If even a handful of Infectors managed to get aboard before she launched then she would be a plague ship, lethal to any human vessel she encountered until her entire hull had been swept clean by microwave scanners.

Mikhain looked one last time at the Veng’en cruiser and then at the Arcadia. Salim Phaeon was almost certainly aboard…

‘CAG, how long until those sensors are down?’

Andaim’s reply came back distorted and broken.

‘… inbound… heavy fire… stan.. –by…’

Mikhain turned to the tactical officer, Ensign Scott. ‘Power up the starboard batteries for a ground bomnbardment,’ he ordered.

Ensign Scott stared back at Mikhain for a long beat. ‘The captain said that was a last resort and…’

‘That was before the Veng’en attacked us!’ Mikhain snapped. ‘We’re fighting the Legion now and we can’t afford to take any chances. Charge the batteries now or I’ll find somebody else to do it in your ‘stead!’

Ensign Scott turned back to his instruments. ‘Aye, cap’ain!’

Mikhain turned back to the image of the Veng’en cruiser, saw the tiny specks of the Raythons racing toward her, and hoped to hell that they got to her before he was forced to destroy Arcadia.

*

Idris Sansin hurried through the pitch-black darkness, one hand running along the surface of a massive heat-exchange pipe that he knew traversed the length of Arcadia’s hull. From his memory of the Atlantia he knew that the corridor alongside the pipe ran for a similar length and was unobstructed but for bulkheads spaced at precisely eighty six cubits, roughly a hundred paces for an old man. He smiled at his own imagining of himself in the darkness. Truth was he was only fifty five and probably had a good few years in him yet, but in the mirror the stresses and strains of command had aged him, his hair greyer and his skin more deeply lined that he deserved.

The thump and whine of plasma fire from the battle raging outside the hull faded into the distance as he hurried along, and then found what he was looking for. A bulkhead of different dimensions to the others, bulkier and with double instead of single doors. Built into a crossmember of the ship’s architecture, the heavy frames denoted to Idris a position directly beneath the launch bay. Many times in the past, as part of his duties, he and other officers had been required to survey these deep and lonely sections of Atlantia and had been able to hear the roar of the old Phantom fighters as they launched during normal operational cycles just a couple of decks above.

Idris reached up, searching for manual access panels that lined the ceiling. Designed for emergency access from a burning launch bay in the event of fire, they were designed to normally be used by deck crew escaping downward but were equally able to be opened from below. Idris found one, strained against the handles until they began to turn, and then carefully lowered the panel down. He took a few deep breaths and then used the same handle to haul himself up, managed to get a hand up into the access chute and then a boot onto the door handle, and with a final push climbed up into the chute.

Idris took a few more moments to catch his breath and then he hauled the panel closed beneath him and reached out into the darkness above his head. He found the panel to the deck above fairly quickly, off-set from the one he had just used to prevent crew members from jumping down through two decks at a time and injuring themselves. Idris cranked the handle and the hatch opened, a faint glow of light and a cool breeze drifting toward him.

He climbed up and peeked over the edge of the deck to see Arcadia’s massive launch bay, the doors wide open. He heard a loud rumble and saw the bay doors beginning to close. Around the bay, lights flickered on as power was engaged somewhere within the ship.

‘Damn it.’

Salim was already preparing Arcadia for launch, and time was running out. Idris hauled himself out of the deck panel and left it open as he stood up to survey the bay. And then his breath seemed to clog in his throat.