Atlantia Series 2: Retaliator by Dean Crawford

ascended to reach the bridge and of the shadowy movement she had spotted there. If someone, or something, was still alive aboard the ship then it could have doubled back and moved below them. She stepped forward to Andaim’s side. ‘I’ll head down to the hold,’ she said.
    ‘I’ll need you to help pilot the shuttles back and forth,’ Andaim said as he pored over a map of the ship. ‘All hands on deck, I’m afraid.’
    ‘That’s easy enough, the rookies can do that,’ Evelyn shot back. ‘There’s something here and I want to know what it is.’
    Evelyn saw Bra’hiv and several of the Marines from the corner of her eye, all watching the exchange. Andaim stood upright again and looked down at her.
    ‘You’re still sure you saw something?’
    ‘One hundred per cent.’
    ‘I can’t spare the men. We’ve got our hands full as it is.’
    ‘Their hands will be a lot more full if the Word is aboard!’
    ‘The Word isn’t aboard, Evelyn!’ Andaim snapped. The bridge fell silent. ‘It would have attacked us by now!’
    Evelyn stood immobile for a moment and then her anger surged to the surface. She grabbed her pistol and checked its load.
    ‘Fine,’ she snapped. ‘I’ll go my damned self!’
    Evelyn whirled away and marched for the bridge exit.
    ‘You walk out that door and I’ll have you grounded!’
    Evelyn reached the bridge door and looked over her shoulder at him. ‘Better grounded than dead.’
    Bra’hiv reached out for her arm and held it gently. ‘No sense in rushing off on your own, Evelyn. Once we’re sorted here, I can spare a couple of guys.’
    ‘I’ll go,’ C’rairn added. ‘Many hands make light work and all that, and maybe while we’re down there we can take a look at the engineering panels in the generator room, find a way to re–start the engines.’
    ‘Me too,’ Qayin rumbled. ‘Last time you went wandering’ off on your own aboard a ship it got blown to pieces.’
    Evelyn smiled at the three of them, but it was Andaim’s voice that cut across the bridge.
    ‘You’ll all be staying here and that’s an order. The Word is not aboard this ship.’
    Evelyn opened her mouth to respond when a distant claxon sounded through the ship and a display panel showed a series of power conduits flickering out near the engine rooms.
    ‘What’s that?’ Lieutenant C’rairn asked.
    ‘You’re losing power,’ Lael warned them from the Atlantia.
    ‘The aft relay stations are being shut down,’ C’rairn said as he dashed to the engineering panel and surveyed the display. ‘The engine rooms are being isolated, temperature controls shut down again.’ He looked up. ‘It’s being done manually, on site.’
    Evelyn looked at Andaim, who covered his surprise as he pointed at them.
    ‘Go, now!’ he snapped. ‘And seal off the bridge and landing bays as you go!’
    Evelyn ran out of the bridge and down the corridor toward the stairwells, Bra’hiv, Qayin, C’rairn and several other Marines in hot pursuit. She burst out onto the stairwell and plunged down them, her flight–suit’s fifty percent gravity reducing some of the shock of each landing as she leapt down ten steps at a time. Behind her, Bra’hiv mimicked her rapid descent.
    The darkness in the stairwells deepened as they descended down toward the hold, the relay stations having shut off the power supply. Evelyn felt the cold deepen as the light faded away above them, touching her skin with the raw sensation of a deep freeze as she reached the bottom of the stairwell and landed cat–like on the deck to face a sealed hatch leading aft.
    Bra’hiv and C’rairn landed alongside her and approached the hatch as Evelyn and Qayin covered them. The Marines hauled the hatch open to reveal a long, silent corridor that led into the main hold.
    Bra’hiv gestured to Evelyn, who advanced into the corridor with Qayin at her side. The general posted two sentries by the hatch to prevent anything inside the hold from escaping, and then