Read Online Atlantia Series 1: Survivor by Dean Crawford - Free Book Online Page B

staff carried out their duties in the prison – or rather, they had done until the blast that had caused such terrible carnage.
    The Atlantia’s hull was almost half a mile in length. At its bow was a vast scoop that drew in the hydrogen that floated in immense yet tenuous quantities throughout the cosmos, obtaining fuel sufficient to provide light and heat for the entire vessel. Those scoops also fed the enormous ion engines attached to either flank of the Atlantia on vast wing–like structures, although the frigate was incapable of atmospheric flight.
    Further, retractable scoops slung beneath the Atlantia’s keel were used to skim the atmospheres of planets or even the tails of comets to extract other essential elements such as oxygen, nitrogen and various ices. All of these valuable chemicals were then used to sustain life in the sanctuary as well as more general life support.
    Once a large storage area for weapons, stores and maintenance, the Atlantia’s core hull was now a place of such beauty that far from having to be cajoled into joining the colonial prison service officers virtually fought each other for a place. Such were the rewards required for men to spend long months away from home. Forested, with an illuminated sky powered by the vessel’s central fuel core, the sanctuary represented a near–perfect copy of home, complete with isolated abodes for the crew and their families, all of it perfectly concealed and protected with the vast plated hull.
    Idris lifted his head to peer beyond the Atlantia to where the angular, ugly black and grey mass of the prison hull trailed it. Apart from blinking anti–collision beacons there was little to see. Unadorned grey metal hull plating, all of it surrounded in a halo of debris from the blast. Atlantia 5 was his charge, his responsibility, and now likely his doom.
    Behind the ship loomed the planet, filling the captain’s field of view and far too vast to take in at a single glance.
    ‘Captain?’
    Andaim had ascended the staircase behind the captain and stood with his hands behind his back.
    ‘What is it, lieutenant?’
    ‘Sir, we have calculated that the vessel can only remain in a stable orbit for a couple of days before the prison hull drags us too close to the atmosphere. If we sink too deep into its gravitational well we will…’
    ‘I know,’ Idris replied, cutting his first officer off as he looked up at the colossal planet. ‘Our engines won’t have sufficient thrust to push us out of the planet’s gravitational field.’
    For a frigate the Atlantia was enormously powerful, but she was designed for deep space operations. Her engines were designed not for bursts of immense thrust but for the gradual building of the tremendous velocities required to traverse the vast expanses of interstellar space in reasonable amounts of time. Once those velocities were reached the engines were shut down; the ship’s inertia and the negligible resistance in the vacuum of space meant that no further input was required until she reached her destination, upon which she would reverse her orientation and begin the deceleration to orbital velocities.
    Those same engines were no match for the gravity of a planet, even a small one such as that which they orbited.
    ‘We’re already accelerating and sinking fast, sir,’ Andaim added.
    The captain eyed the planet’s sweeping horizon for a moment, his practiced eye calculating angles.
    ‘There’s a fair chance we could use the increased velocity to skim the planet’s atmosphere and break orbit across her horizon.’
    ‘Calculations suggest the risk is too great,’ Andaim countered. ‘Once we’re that close, there’s no escape if you’re wrong.’
    Idris pinched the corners of his eyes between finger and thumb. ‘How did this happen?’
    ‘We still don’t know sir. All we’re certain of is that the blast came from within the high–security wing and that it was deliberate. The fires that came after and destroyed