The Lost Voyager: A Carson March Space Opera

by A. C. Hadfield

  When they escaped Noven Beta’s gravity well and headed out to Alpha on cruise control, Mach ordered everyone into the mess hall. It had become the unofficial meeting place for the ship’s crew—probably because it had the coffee and booze.

  The room smelled rich with the rare beans and another scent: fried eggs. It reminded him that he hadn’t eaten for a while—at least a day and a half ago. The shot of stim he took before landing on Beta had worn off. He sat on his own at the table, knocking back a small cup of coffee followed by a shot of the best Fides single malt.

  The two liquids complemented each other perfectly, warming his throat and belly and giving him a jolt of motivation. He stood when the others entered the mess. They were all chatting to each other about one thing or another, but grew silent when they came to stand by the table. Mach moved to the head of it and indicated that they all sit.

  None did.

  Sanchez cocked an eyebrow in a silent inquiry.

  Babcock was the first to speak up. “What is this about, Mach?”

  “The truth,” Mach said.

  Adira leaned against the wall beside the door. She almost melted into the shadows, given her black body suit. Her green-tinged skin seemed to grow darker like some deadly chameleon. Tulula was in front of her, standing next to Sanchez, the latter looking increasingly tired.

  “About what?” Lassea asked as she rounded Sanchez and Tulula and stood by the table with Babcock. “Is it something we’ve done?”

  Mach knew that she meant herself. That was the one thing he needed to work on: give the girl the confidence to think she wasn’t always in trouble for something. Of all his crew, she was the one he trusted the most. She was far more capable than she could ever believe. And there was goodness inside of her.

  Which couldn’t be said for himself, nor Adira or Sanchez.

  Lassea was like a beacon of virtue compared to the rest of the crew. It was just a shame she didn’t have her twin brother with her to share the role. He would have helped her become stronger-willed a lot faster, but for now, Mach would take that role.

  “Firstly,” he said, “I wanted to thank Lassea and Tulula for their superb work in finding the signal. Without you two, we’d still be fighting off bugs on Beta. But that aside, I wanted to explain more about the mission.”

  “About time,” Sanchez said.

  Mach glared at his friend and replied with, “And in the spirit of sharing, Sanchez, you’re going to tell the truth once I’m done. That’s not an option either. You either tell us what’s going on with you, or I’ll give you an escape pod so you can leave the crew.”

  It wasn’t a pleasant experience to have to threaten his friend to speak up, but Mach had to do something, both as the captain of the ship with his responsibility for the crew, and as a friend. It was clear Sanchez was suffering and was too proud to speak up.

  Sanchez folded his arms across his considerable chest and glowered at Mach across the table. “You first,” he grumbled.

  “Fine,” Mach said. “So, the mission. As most of you realize, we’re getting paid way more than is usual for an F&R. The reason is because the cargo of Voyager is… sensitive.”

  “How sensitive exactly?” Adira said from the shadows.

  “Sensitive enough that if it’s not destroyed, then the entire Salus Sphere is under threat.”

  The atmosphere grew thick now. The coffee and scotch sloshed in his guts.

  Lassea seemed to go pale, but she still leaned forward to learn more. “What is it?” she asked. “What do we need to do?”

  Babcock remained silent throughout, scrutinizing Mach through his spectacles as Squid Two hovered silently over his shoulder, the little droid’s tentacle arms remaining still.

  “It’s a new kind of bomb,” Mach said, just wanting the truth to be out and the weight off his shoulders. “When OreCorp was originally hired by the CW hierarchy to mine for uranium, they found a new element. Over the years they experimented with it, testing its strange capabilities. Until one day they discovered what it actually could do.”

  The entire crew was staring at him now. He could feel Adira’s gaze on him even from her shadowed aspect at the rear of the room.

  Babcock was the first to speak. “Get to the point, Mach, what does this element do?”

  “It creates a black hole when the atoms are split.” There, it was out, though he didn’t feel much better for it. Just thinking of that kind of power getting into the wrong hands made his guts burn with nervous acid.

  Sanchez shook his head with his eyes closed, as though what Mach was saying was impossible, but his old friend would know that Mach wasn’t lying.

  “This is crazy,” Tulula said. “To create a black hole would require enormous amounts of energy—and mass.”

  “Like a planet?” Mach said.

  “Oh…” Tulula said, catching on.

  “This is the situation,” Mach continued. “The CWDF had OreCorp develop a super weapon shortly before the Century War ended. At the time, it looked like the horan-led Axis Combine was going to win control of the Salus Sphere and ultimately the galaxy. This black-hole bomb was going to be the last throw of the dice if that happened, but luckily the CWDF won and it didn’t come to pass.”

  “So where’s it been all this time?” Lassea asked.

  “I don’t know, the guys at OreCorp wouldn’t share that with me. Top-secret status. But what we do know is that the CW wanted to get rid of it so it couldn’t fall into the wrong hands. A cell of vestan spies was caught last week infiltrating the CW hierarchy data stores.”

  Tulula bristled at this. Mach didn’t blame her. Her kind was a strange lot. On the one hand technically superior to any other race, but also inherently clandestine and untrusting. Despite the recent peace treaty that brought the vestans into the Commonwealth and out of the Axis Combine, there was still a hangover from the cold war days.

  “I don’t condone that,” Tulula said.

  “I know,” Mach responded as Sanchez wrapped an arm around her waist, giving her a squeeze of encouragement. “You have no worries while with us. You’re a valued member of the crew regardless of what other vestans do. But anyway, due to that breach, the hierarchy decided they could no longer keep such a weapon or its research in case it fell into the wrong hands.”

  “And not necessarily Axis hands,” Babcock added, showing his general disdain for the CWDF and the ‘idiots’ that run it.

  “True enough,” Mach said. “Either way, a weapon like that is too dangerous. The ability to destroy an entire planet and use the gravity to create a black hole in a system is way beyond any species’ power. It was loaded onto Voyager and sent out here to the Noven system.”

  “Because it’s an abandoned one?” Sanchez said, finally adding something to the conversation. “And they wouldn’t miss it if the weapon was… disposed of.”

  “Yeah, something like that. Voyager was sent on a suicide mission to activate the bomb and thus destroy any evidence, but when the ship went missing, naturally, OreCorp wanted to make sure it didn’t fall into the wrong hands. That’s where we come in. Due to the sensitive nature of the weapon technology, they couldn’t send a fleet of destroyers after it; they’d only cause suspicion, especially with the horans still keeping a close eye on movements around the borders.”

  Sanchez grabbed a seat and slumped to the table.

  This was the cue for the rest of the crew to follow. Mach saw a mixed range of emotions on their faces: fear, trepidation, horror, but above all, determination. Adira joined Mach at his end of the table and sat opposite. “We have to do this,” she said quietly.

  “It’s insane,” Tulula said. “Dangerous, reckless… but I suppose necessary. I just wish you could have told us from the start. My respect for you has diminished because of this.”

  Mach appreciated her candor and couldn’t blame her. It was a decision he’d struggled with, but given the situation, he couldn’t risk not having the help of his crew. None of them, including him,
had any family or loved ones waiting for them. If it did become a suicide mission, and that was looking likely since the bomb clearly hadn’t gone off as planned the previous week, then this was the best crew to send after it, find it, and detonate it before anyone else found it.

  “I understand,” Lassea said. “Why you didn’t tell us, I mean. I’d have done the same thing if I were in your shoes. But I’m prepared to do whatever it takes. You have my loyalty.”

  “Thanks, Lass,” Mach said. “That means a lot.”

  One by one, the crew told Mach what they thought of him and that they were prepared to complete the mission, but if they completed it, and survived, they would reconsider their position on the Intrepid.

  He could understand that, he’d let them down, but he needed them. The fate of the Salus Sphere and all who lived in it depended on them. Even if it meant that if they were successful and survived, he’d face losing his crew… and only friends.

  “So,” Mach said, bringing his attention to Sanchez, “I’ve come clean; now it’s your turn. You need to tell us what’s wrong with you.”

  “It’s really quite simple,” the hunter said, standing up from the table, his hand in Tulula’s. “I’m dying. I have maybe a few days left and there’s nothing that can be done about it.”

  Chapter 10

  Sanchez’s announcement sent a shockwave through Mach and the crew. His old friend had a few days to live and he’d kept it hidden. The secrecy cut deep, but not as much as the thought of losing him. The big hunter turned, with slumped shoulders, and walked away. The rest of the crew watched him leave the room in silence.

  Mach sprang from his chair and chased after Sanchez along a brightly lit corridor leading to the habitation quarter. He slammed his hand against the solid white wall, in front of Sanchez, halting his progress. “You’re not going a step further until you tell me what’s wrong.”

  “There’s nothing you can do,” Sanchez replied and swept Mach’s arm to the side. “I’ll help you complete the mission if you let me die in peace.”

  “You don’t get out of it that easily. Nobody dies unless I say so.” Mach paused, realizing his words sounded ridiculous. Finding the right thing to say in a delicate situation had never been one of his better skills.

  Sanchez trudged to his bunk and flopped down on the shiny blue mattress. He folded his arms behind his head and let out a deep breath. “I get where you’re coming from, but this is one battle we can’t win.”

  “How do you know for sure? I can pull a favor from Morgan. Get you in front of the best CWDF medical team.”

  “I picked up a symbiosite during a hunting trip on Feronia Gamma. The doc told me there’s nothing they can do.”

  Mach frowned. He wasn’t aware of a disease in the Sphere that couldn’t be treated. An alien bacterium from dark space was a different matter. “What the hell’s a symbiosite?”

  “A nasty little bugger. They live in Feronian swamps. Once they drill into you, it’s only a matter of time.”

  “Seriously? Why can’t the med-bots kill it?”

  Sanchez turned his head and looked Mach directly in the eye. “They grow around your organs and form a symbiotic relationship. Feed off the food you consume. I’ve been eating for two. Once they’re established, the host’s life depends on their survival.”

  The thought of a large worm or whatever the creature was inside Sanchez made Mach shudder. “What does it feel like?”

  “Nothing at first. That’s how they get you. One day I had a weird dream, seeing my own insides. It carried on for a few weeks and I had bad guts. Went to the doctor and he confirmed the damned thing had established itself.”

  “Are you saying the symbiosite is dying, or you don’t want to live with it?”

  Sanchez rolled on the bunk and faced the wall. “It’s a bit of both. I feel myself getting weaker and it’s invading my thoughts. I need rest before we reach Noven Alpha.”

  “Okay, but we haven’t finished this conversation yet.”

  “As far as I’m concerned we have.”

  Mach took a deep breath, turned, and left the quarters. There had to be a way of saving Sanchez. It seemed impossible to believe that a known type of parasite, especially with the Sphere’s constantly improving medical treatments, could defeat him.

  Lassea and Adira had returned to their positions on Intrepid’s flight deck. Babcock wasn’t around, so Mach descended in the transparent tube-shaped elevator to the engineering level. The door punched open and he headed for Babcock’s makeshift lab set up in a small office to the side of a stacked array of vestan servers.

  Babcock sat in front of a holoscreen, reading the green data displayed across it. Next to him, a small black machine beamed white light on the section of recovered shell from the quarry, analyzing its composition. Squid Two, hovering over the scientist’s shoulder, spun and raised a silver tentacle.

  “Interesting,” Babcock said.

  “What is?” Mach asked and moved to his side.

  “The shell is a completely new species.” Babcock pointed to a graph with a number of equations below it. “No records exist that match the structure, but there’s something else. Look at the dating information.”

  Mach squinted at the screen, but reading scientific information wasn’t his domain. He shook his head. “Sorry, Babs, you need to explain it.”

  “The hatched eggs are only a few days old. This species has a superfast reproduction rate.”

  “A nest of poisonous bugs is the least of my worries at the moment—”

  “Apologies for the interruption, but let me join up a few dots for clarity. If the creatures that speared the two people outside the transport door grew from the eggs, we’re talking about a colonizing force that can overwhelm a planet. It’s not a stretch to imagine that they came from the ship that caused the roof damage.”

  Mach thought about the implications. They had a signal for Voyager, and destroying the super weapon remained priority number one. Taking on a new species was never part of the agenda. Avoiding them, completing the mission, and reporting Babcock’s findings to President Morgan seemed like the sensible option.

  “It doesn’t change our plan. If they’ve infested parts of Noven Alpha, we might kill two birds with one stone.”

  “I’ll run some extrapolations against the genetic code,” Babcock said. “Squid Two and I might be able to produce models and estimations about the species.”

  “Thanks. I’d like you to look into something else for me too. Have you heard of a symbiosite?”

  Babcock’s eyes widened. “Sanchez has one?”

  “If it dies, he dies.”

  “Good grief. I’ll start work on it in parallel. They’re horrible creatures, but I wouldn’t say it’s beyond the realm of possibility to find a solution.”

  “The doctors don’t think so.”

  Squid Two chirped. Babcock nodded. “Exploration is the engine that drives innovation. Yours is the galaxy, Carson, mine is science. Leave it with me.”

  Mach smiled and gently slapped Babcock’s back. If anyone could find a cure, it was him.

  Mach gazed at the screen above Intrepid’s controls. Noven Alpha loomed large. Deep blue oceans covered three-quarters of the surface. A single continent, shaped like a badly drawn figure eight, stretched across the middle. The report passed to him from OreCorp said a few million people used to live here, but the population diminished after mining work stopped and the CWDF designated the planet as outside the Salus Sphere.

  The predators in the forest areas were also considered highly dangerous—aggressive four-legged reptiles that hunted in small packs. Mach thought this type of world would be the place to get Sanchez’s pulse racing, but as Lassea guided them toward the atmosphere, the big man slumped next to the cannon controls, showing none of his usual pre-hunt excitement.

  Tulula, sitting next to Lassea, turned in her chair. “The signal’s coming from the western edge of the continent. Want me to prepare a drone?”

>   “Are you picking up any other traffic besides Voyager’s signal?” Mach asked. He glanced at the empty tracking screen. With no potential threats within one AU, the quickest way would be to descend and get a visual. Any aggression from the ground could be met with lasers or the ion cannon.

  “Nothing,” Tulula replied. “Just the usual static.”

  “Take her down and we’ll launch a drone,” Mach said. “Adira, be ready with the lasers.”

  Lassea manipulated the holocontrols and the Intrepid’s engines whined.

  They vibrated through the heavy atmosphere toward wispy high cirrus clouds. Mach kept his eye on the screen, watching the continent below grow in size. Sunlit thick green areas of vegetation surrounded the edges of the land. A brown rugged mountainous spine ran over two hundred klicks across its center.

  The ship smoothed. Lassea engaged the retro-thrusters to slow their descent. Readings showed the planet to have a breathable atmosphere, which matched OreCorp’s report, although the thin levels of oxygen meant degradation in physical and mental awareness until properly acclimatized.

  Mach raised his smart-screen. “Babs, how’s your extra task coming along?”

  “I might have something, but it’s going to take time.”

  “Something’s better than nothing.”

  A red triangle flashed over a dark ravine, showing the position of Voyager’s signal. Tulula zoomed the underside camera. Smooth rock plateaus sloped away from either side of it to dense forest thirty meters below. She leaned across to the drone’s remote control pad and launched one from the rear end of the Intrepid.

  The drone circled around the front of the ship and hovered over the top of the fifty-meter-wide ravine. Its feed focused on the murky gap below. Tulula activated its searchlight. A yellow beam speared into the darkness.

  Large rock overhangs, protruding from either side of the sand-colored ravine walls, blocked the view to the bottom. Mach searched for signs of debris or scrapes. Crashing into a place like this was enough to cripple most corporate ships. He wondered if the crew made it to the surface and had the ability to activate a distress beacon, they might have also placed the weapon in the mine and blown the entrance.