Free Atlantia Series 2: Retaliator by Dean Crawford Page B

above flickered as something moved fast from right to left across the stairwell above her.
    ‘Enemy!’
    Evelyn jerked right as she aimed and she heard the Marines behind her drop to firing positions on the stairwell.
    ***

VIII
    Evelyn held her pistol steady, aiming up toward the light.
    She could feel the cold seeping through her flight suit, could hear her breathing in her ears and feel her heart thumping in her chest as she searched for the source of the movement.
    ‘I don’t see anything,’ Andaim whispered.
    ‘Up there,’ Evelyn insisted, ‘heading for’ard. I saw it.’
    Andaim reached out and she saw his gloved hand rest on her forearm and gently push her weapon down.
    ‘I don’t see anything,’ he repeated.
    The Marines around her relaxed as they watched, and she could sense a sudden and growing lack of faith in their expressions.
    ‘Let’s just keep moving, okay?’ Andaim urged her.
    Evelyn swallowed, her heart still racing as she turned and moved up the stairwell, her gaze fixed up toward the light. She emerged onto the upper deck entrance and looked down at the grated deck beneath her boots. The sparkling, icy surface betrayed no boot marks, no evidence of anybody having passed through.
    ‘There’s nothing here,’ Bra’hiv said.
    There was nothing dismissive about the general’s tone, nothing to hint that he was annoyed, but Evelyn knew damned well that the general did not like false alarms.
    ‘I saw something,’ she insisted.
    ‘Probably the light flickered,’ Bra’hiv replied. ‘The power’s low, there’s not much light in here. Easy enough to mistake it for motion.’
    Evelyn opened her mouth to protest but she caught herself. The general was offering her a way out, she realised.
    ‘Okay,’ she said, ‘let’s clear the bridge.’
    C’rairn moved forward and began freeing the seals of the pressure hatch to the deck level.
    ‘Anybody find it strange that there’s nobody aboard, but they managed to lock up shop so neatly?’ Qayin asked.
    ‘Yeah,’ Andaim nodded. ‘Why bother if they left in such a rush?’
    Evelyn racked her brains for an answer, but nothing presented itself. The Sylph was a civilian vessel, a merchant ship. It had no means of defence and there had presumably been no military personnel aboard who could have coordinated such an organised lock–down in a short time. And yet here she was, drifting in space, devoid of crew, sealed to perfection and bitterly cold.
    Lieutenant C’rairn cranked the pressure hatch open as Evelyn aimed down the corridor, Andaim’s and Bra’hiv’s rifles either side of her and humming with restrained plasma energy. The corridor ahead was as dark as those below, pools of dim white light amid immense blacknesses.
    ‘You want me to take point for a while?’ Bra’hiv asked.
    Evelyn tried to reply, but she couldn’t. Visions of the Avenger’s seething corridors raced through her mind again. She nodded before the silence drew out too long and let Bra’hiv and a few Marines file past her.
    ‘You okay?’ Andaim asked her in a whisper, one hand touching her shoulder.
    ‘I’m fine,’ she breathed. ‘Just taking a while to adjust.’
    Andaim nodded and offered her a smile before he turned and strode into the darkness.
    Evelyn waited a moment to let her breathing return to normal, and that’s when she saw it.
    The lights further up the stairwell were enshrouded in mist, and that mist was swirling in eddies and pools, vortexes of moving air where something had passed through. Evelyn remembered the prison ship, Atlantia Five, where she had first awoken months before. There the inmates had been kept in zero–gravity in order to allow their muscles to degenerate and make them easier for the guards to handle . Evelyn had not walked through the decks of the prison in the aftermath of the blast that had freed her: she had floated.
    She peered up into the shadows, aiming her pistol and flashlight. The beam cut through the darkness but it