Sitting on a stool, he yawned and stretched his arms above his head. A bone clicked in his neck, reminding him of an old injury he had suffered while fighting alongside Sanchez on a barren ice planet.
If it wasn’t for his old friend, Mach would have frozen to death and his body would have been a chewy snack to that particular world’s carnivorous flying lizards. Great things they were, with feathered wings and pointed snouts that carried teeth sharp and strong enough to strip flesh and tendon clean off the bone with the barest of efforts.
Through each screen he watched the video feeds sending him back images of the crew going about their business. It no longer felt like spying on them since he had told him that all parts of the ship were observable from his operations room. They took that with good grace and no resistance.
They trusted him.
They were his friends first and crew second.
Which made keeping the truth from them that much harder to deal with. He knew it would eat him up inside, but it was for their own good. Once they had found the lost craft and recovered the cargo for OreCorp, they’d all have more money than they’d ever seen before in their lives. They would no longer have to do these kinds of jobs, working freelance as a group of renegades, willing and able to do almost any mission regardless of its legality and danger.
Adira was sitting at her console to the right of the bridge. Her responsibility was to keep weapons operational and ready for use. Mach thought back to an issue he and Adira had recently overcome: her contract to assassinate him. For years he wanted to know who had taken it out, but she refused to tell him.
He found out anyway, and truth be told, he wasn’t surprised, but he let it go. The fact Adira hadn’t actually completed the contract—the very first time she had done such a thing in her career—told him that he and Adira’s relationship went beyond captain and crewmember.
She was a hybrid human-fidesian, taking the best—and the worst—of each species. Though she looked human apart from her green tinged skin, her physiology was actually closer to fidesian, which was responsible for her deep emerald eyes.
Tulula was different. The vestans could grow and manipulate their limbs to suit their environment and job, making them highly prized engineers and spies. This was the prime reason why the lizard race of the horans, the main constituent of the CW’s enemy, the Axis Combine, had fought so hard to bring the vestans into their alliance with the lacterns—a minor race that did little more than weakly probe the southern edge of the Salus Sphere with their drone ships.
A ghost sensation of Adira’s warm body against Mach’s remained on his skin as he sat and watched her manipulate the controls. She was calibrating the laser batteries and ion cannon. Mach wondered if she were thinking about their time together the past few days. Was it more than just sex for her?
He told himself it was; otherwise she would have completed her contract long ago. But neither of them had openly spoken about their feelings to each other. He guessed it was due to the nature of their work. Always being the ones to go in and clean up other people’s highly dangerous screw-ups didn’t exactly give the sense of a secure future together.
With a sigh, Mach shifted his attention across the bridge. The young former junior pilot from the CW academy, Lassea, sat forward at her navigation console.
It wasn’t strictly needed; the Intrepid had some of the best AI programming in the known universe—especially since Kingsley Babcock and his drone assistant, Squid Two, had made ‘efficiencies and upgrades.’ What they actually were, Mach didn’t really want to know. Once Babcock got talking about his creations, there was no stopping him.
Mach guessed it was all those years the old guy spent in self-imposed exile on the planet of Minerva, where nothing but dust and mountains awaited any visitors—which of course, meant there were few visitors, making it the perfect place for someone like Babcock to run away to and live with his creations.
But the universe needed people like Babcock.
Mach needed him.
Without him, the CW would be in ashes by now, not that the hierarchy saw it that way. Due to Babcock’s insatiable curiosity, he had nearly lost the CW the Century War with the Axis Combine.
During one of the battles in the far reaches of the Salus Sphere, he had discovered an alien computer mind. Unable to resist, he hacked his way in to look at the programming and, by doing so, opened up the CW’s vast and intricate network to an alien virus that got into some key systems that ultimately led to the death of thousands.
Even today, Babcock hadn’t forgiven himself, despite being the one to ultimately win the Century War for the CW with his unique mind and coding skills.
And finally, in the third seat on the left of the bridge, directly opposite Adira, sat Ernest Sanchez, Mach’s oldest friend. He was in charge of the plasma cannons as well as the ship’s armory.
The Intrepid had some of the best weapons in the Salus Sphere. It was an experimental vestan-designed ship with as much power and speed as a CW destroyer, despite being far more agile and better armed. Their ion cannon alone was the envy of the CW commanders.
They had even tried to take the ship from him—they failed.
Hence the huge fine Mach had to pay off. It wasn’t his fault one of Morgan’s best ships got in the way of a test firing of the ion cannon. Still, that was all settled, yet he still felt like a reckoning was coming.
If things went wrong, it wouldn’t be a summer vacation at the prison planet Summanus he’d have to deal with, it would be the wrath of his friends, and this was one crew that really should not be crossed.
With Adira and Sanchez’s skills at killing almost anything with the utmost efficiency, and Kingsley Babcock’s ruthlessness, he’d rather be in the safety of solitary confinement.
Putting the thought behind him, he continued to watch the screens. Sanchez had left his console and made his way through the narrow corridor that connects the bridge to the rest of the ship. There was something about his body language, the tightness in his shoulders, a hunched back that caught Mach’s eye.
“Track Ernest Sanchez,” Mach ordered the system.
The camera system obeyed his command. The screen on the left of the array of five panned in close to Sanchez. The images changed as the big hunter and ex-gunrunner entered the mess. The camera was located in the top right of the small room, giving Mach a wide, unobstructed field of view.
Sanchez approached the counter of the kitchen cubby and leaned over. Tulula, the vestan engineer, was standing behind the counter, her back to Sanchez. She was always in the kitchen when she wasn’t in the depths of the Intrepid’s experimental engine bay, tuning the fusion crystals with her spindly black fingers.
She could make the most amazing meals from even the dullest of ingredients. The vestans didn’t so much cook food as they conjured an impossible palette of tastes from a collection of food particles. It was more chemistry than cuisine.
The vestan turned to face Sanchez.
“Sound from screen one,” Mach ordered.
The system filtered the audio through to Mach’s ear bud.
“Human,” Tulula said in greeting, “come for a drink?”
“Is that such a bad thing, vestan?”
“Depends on the reasons,” she said, stepping back away from the counter, her body stiffening.
Sanchez ran a hand through his long dark hair. “It’s been three days,” Sanchez said. “You owe me at least one.”
Mach leaned closer to the screen, wondering what they were talking about.
“I owe you nothing. You think I’m going to help you destroy yourself? Eggs?”
“I don’t want any eggs,” Sanchez said. “You know what I want.”
“I do. But if you want to drink yourself to death, you can help yourself. I’m done. It’s not right, Ernie. I can’t do it anymore.”
“The pain’s getting worse,” he said, slouching against the counter. “The others will notice soon.”
Tulula sighed a
nd made to move toward him but then stopped herself and returned to the cooking station. “Then have some eggs; get your strength back.”
“You eat them, then,” Sanchez said with a sharp tone, then softer, “I’m sorry, I’m just not in the mood. Got a lot going on in my mind.”
“About the mission?” Tulula said, gathering the eggs from the griddle and placing them on a plate with practiced agility.
“It’s not what it looks, I’m sure of that much.”
“But that’s not what is bothering you,” Tulula responded, her back still turned to him.
Mach was detecting some odd friction between the two that went beyond just crewmates disagreeing about something. He wondered if the two hadn’t been a lot closer during their downtime on Fides Prime.
“What are you getting at?” Sanchez said, standing back, relaxing his shoulders—which Mach knew was a sign that he was really getting pissed.
“Nothing. I’m saying that you ought to have some eggs. Come, sit down, let’s talk and eat. We’ve got time to kill yet before we arrive at the Noven system.”
The hunter sighed and turned his back to the counter and stepped across to the long table, pulling out a chair and sitting his large frame down. He placed his elbows on the table and propped his chin in the palm of his hands. He briefly looked up into the corner of the room, staring directly into the camera.
He didn’t know it was there, of course, he was just gazing about the room, but Mach could see there was something bothering his old friend. He had a cold, distant look, which was entirely unlike him. Sanchez was one of the warmest, most effervescent people Mach knew. From the moment Mach had got Sanchez out of the Summanus prison and back into his crew, Lassea, the JP was besotted with him.
Not in a sexual way, but in the way a young person is when they meet a legend of the arts or music, or in Sanchez’s case: a legendary rogue. For all of his combat and hunting prowess, Ernesto Sanchez had run one of the biggest gunrunning and smuggling rings in the Salus Sphere before the CW eventually caught up with him.
The difference with Sanchez, though, was that he wasn’t running guns to the enemy, the Axis Combine. Quite the opposite—his criminal activities were entirely noble. He managed to get some contacts within the Combine and smuggled out some of their experimental vestan weapons. This enabled the CW to reverse engineer them and build suitable defenses. But those gray-hairs in the government still felt the need to punish him as an example to the citizens of the Commonwealth that gunrunning wasn’t tolerated.
Mach wondered if it was this activity that had caused some friction between Sanchez and Tulula. She joined the hunter at the table, sitting opposite him. She placed two plates of food down and slid one across to him
“I’m not hungry,” he said. “It’s not the right time.”
“Shame, the eggs will be spoiled,” Tulula said, stabbing a fork into the rich yellow yoke of a large egg. The insides ran out over a piece of grilled meat. She cut a slice off with a knife and took a large bite, nodding her head with satisfaction.
She spoke after she had swallowed her food. “I thought about what we spoke about yesterday,” she said, letting her thought drop away as she looked up at Sanchez, locking eyes.
Sanchez looked down at the table, breaking the contact. “It’s not the right time,” he repeated. “Especially now that Mach’s got us on the F&R.” F&R meant find and rescue, a fairly common task for Mach’s crew.
Job boards all around the Salus Sphere’s planets were filled with jobs from private companies, citizens, and various other organizations for someone to go out into the far reaches and find out what happened to a ship.
In almost all situations the answer was either horan rebels or pirates. Still, the people offering the reward often wanted whatever the ship was carrying, whether it was an important person, object, or data.
“You don’t believe it’s a routine rescue,” Tulula said, cutting more of her meat and dabbing it into the viscous egg. She said it as a statement rather than a question, as was her, and the vestans’, way of communicating. “So if we’re not just on a task to get a mining explorer, then what are we doing?”
Sanchez shrugged his shoulders and grunted. “Who the hell knows?”
“Weren’t you at the job agency when Mach took the work?”
“No, I had to run an errand in the capital. Once we got paid for bringing in Ripper, I left Mach to negotiate the next contract.”
At this Tulula placed her cutlery onto the plate and sat up straight, staring right at Sanchez. The will of her stature seemed to penetrate through Sanchez’s defenses, and he too looked up and gazed into her eyes.
Mach increased the volume. He hadn’t realized until now just how hard he was gripping the edge of the stool on which he sat. He was just a few centimeters away from the screen. He zoomed it in to Sanchez’s face and increased the brightness until he could see Tulula’s reflection in the hunter’s eyes.
“Where did you go?” Tulula said, then answering her own question with that same statement voice, “You went to the clinic.”
The atmosphere of the mess hall seemed to thicken around Sanchez. His body shrank and he ran his two large hands down his face as he sighed. “I did,” he said, almost whispering now. “You can’t tell anyone about this. Not now, not when we’re about to go into hell knows what.”
Tulula’s right hand reached out for him, her lithe fingers wrapping gently around his wrist. “I won’t say a word, but you need to tell me, is it what I thought it was?”
“It is,” Sanchez said, dropping his hands to the table and covering Tulula’s.
“How long?” she asked.
“At best, I’ve got—”
A set of footsteps outside of Mach’s door snapped him away from the conversation. A rap on the door made him jump. He quickly gestured across his smart-screen to shut off the video and audio from the mess.
“Come in,” he said, standing up from the stool and straightening his waistcoat.
Lassea entered the room. “Sir, just wanted to let you know that we’ve made extra time and will be prepared to exit the L-jump in approximately three hours.”
“Thank you,” Mach said. “I’ll be on the bridge shortly.”
The girl just stood there for a moment, staring at him. “Sir, is everything okay?”
He didn’t know. What he had seen between Sanchez and Tulula had left him confused and anxious. Was his old friend okay? What were they talking about? But the thing that got him the most was that if Sanchez was in trouble of some kind, why hadn’t he come to Mach?
“I’ll be right there,” he said, more firmly this time. “That’s all, Lassea.”
The girl blushed and stepped back out of the room as the door slid closed behind her. Mach sat down on the edge of his bed and pondered on whether he should tell the crew, or at the very least Sanchez, what it was they were really going to rescue.
Chapter 4
The two dwarf planets of the Noven system lay directly ahead in close proximity. Mach thought what he would do if he were on Voyager. The obvious choice would be to get the easy part out of way and visit Noven Beta, the location of the main mining facility, to destroy the data. Beta was a small cold planet on the outside of the system, which also meant it was the closest to their position as they came out of the L-jump.
“Head for the Beta facility,” Mach said to Lassea. “If we’re lucky we’ll find the Voyager there.”
Sanchez groaned. “Great, the cold one first.”
Mach noticed a pained expression on his face.
“Don’t worry, old friend, you’ll get some R&R after we complete the mission,” Mach said, putting slight emphasis on the rest and recuperation part.
Sanchez just nodded before turning back to his console.
“We’ll find nothing but snow and ice is my guess,” Adira said. “I doubt any of their systems survived a decade of sub-zero temperatures.”
Mach frowned but quickly relaxed his brow. Adira gave h
im one of her disarming smiles. She never liked to make his life easy and adding to Sanchez’s grumble was her way of giving Mach a little kick.
Lassea entered the coordinates onto the holoscreen and brought the Intrepid into an orbital course to the white dwarf planet. The former Commonwealth Defense Force junior pilot had adapted quickly to being part of the team, and seamlessly manipulated the holocontrols. Mach liked to get his crew young if they came from the CWDF. Far less chance that they’d be institutionalized with the rigid thinking that ran through the organization. It was good for discipline in big space battles, but not the type of skill he needed.
“What have we got down there, Babcock?” Mach asked.
Babcock twisted around in his seat. “If the facility still has power, we can use the planet-wide mining scanners to search for Voyager. They’ll display any recent anomalies. A lump of metal as large as that should show as an ore deposit.”
“You think it’ll be working after ten standard years?” Lassea asked.
“The proton cell powering the facility lasts a thousand years. OreCorp wouldn’t have bothered recycling it. If it’s not running, I’m sure we can reactivate it.”
“How confident are you?” Mach asked.
Squid Two extended its silver tentacles and chirped something to Babcock. He nodded and turned back to Mach. “Only sabotage would stop the reactor working. Worst-case scenario, I replicate their configuration and we remotely power the outer network. Might take a couple of days. Best-case scenario is minutes.”
Mach nodded. “Good enough for me. And the data?”
Babcock smiled. “That’s the easy part.”
Tulula sat next to Sanchez, placed her hand on his arm, and whispered something into his ear. Mach wasn’t one for secrets amongst his crew, but held his tongue. He would get the truth out of Sanchez soon enough regarding his health. Besides that, he didn’t want to press, as he was hiding his own secret about the cargo.
Mach left the crew to it, to get some rest for the two standard hours it would take to reach the planet’s atmosphere. His smart-screen chirped when they were close, and he rejoined the crew on the bridge.
The Lost Voyager: A Carson March Space Opera Page 3
