The Terminal War: A Carson Mach Space Opera

by A. C. Hadfield

  Laser arrays in the small, white-walled technology suite scanned Babcock’s body, creating a virtual image of him sitting at a table to transmit. The holographic shape of Tralis appeared first, inches to his left, dressed in his crisp dark blue uniform. Steros appeared seconds after to his right, looking a lot more attentive than their first meeting. In a real environment, all of them would be conscious about the lack of space.

  “Thank you for joining,” Tralis said. “I’ll be brief. We’ve received reports of another attack on a border planet. I want the Chester and Intrepid to head for Erebus and intercept any enemy in the area.”

  “Any information about—“ Babcock said.

  “Do you have any information?” Steros interrupted. “What might we be facing, sir?”

  Tralis glanced between them, maintaining a neutral expression. “Two lactern frigates deployed orbital bombers. We need a win, gentlemen. The Axis will continue to attack vestan interests until we show them we’re serious about the treaty.”

  “Count on me to lead our mission,” Steros said. “If they’re in the vicinity, I’ll flush ‘em out.”

  “Nobody leads,” Tralis replied. “I want you to work together. Captain Babcock has the advantage of experience, speed, and firepower. It’s to our benefit that he’s here to help, and we need to be a cohesive unit.”

  Steros forced a smile and inclined his head. “Yes, sir.”

  The junior captain clenched his fist.

  Babcock didn’t completely blame Steros for appearing to have his nose put out of joint. Plenty of young guns wanted to make a reputation for themselves, and the Intrepid wasn’t an official part of the Fleet. In similar circumstances, a lifetime ago, he might have felt the same.

  “Any questions, Captain Babcock?” Tralis asked.

  “No questions. My crew will coordinate a travel plan with Captain Steros’ and head straight there.”

  “Excellent. Report any contact immediately, and good luck.”

  Tralis rose from his chair, and the laser arrays cut, ending the conference. Both holograms immediately vanished, returning the small room to its former plain white state.

  Babcock made his way back along the corridor, thinking about the mission’s potential risks. The lactern frigates were an obvious one, but so was a man desperate to make an impression or stamp his authority at the wrong time. Babcock’s smart-screen lit up as he reached for the authentication pad to enter the bridge.

  A message from Tralis:

  Kingsley: do not mind him. He’s an impetuous little sod, but he means well. Keep an eye on him, and you won’t have a problem.

  Babcock fully intended to do just that.

  He didn’t trust Steros to be a reliable partner in action, but a plan was already formulating in his mind.

  Chapter 7

  Mach’s mind rang with internal dialogue praising the lord of all that is merciful! For now, the nightmares were over. They’d been the worst Mach had ever experienced in an L-jump. And they just had to be during a weeklong jump. He thought they’d never end.

  “Anyone else lose their minds?” Mach asked the darkness before him. He could feel Beringer’s and Adira’s presences near him, tucked away in the stasis pods.

  The shuttle smelled of sweat and mildew, indicating the lids had opened—which also meant they were at their destination. Mach knew the shuttles would only open arrival to Vesta.

  A yawn sneaked up on him, making his jaw click with the violence of it. His body ached, desperately in need of movement and real air. Though he remembered they would not get that on Terminus and tried not to think about having to spend the entire mission breathing from a bottle.

  A light the color of freshly cut grass and the size of a fist blinked somewhere off to his right. It gave the small shuttle a weird effect, as though he were trapped in some ancient sonar screen.

  Over his head, the door to the shuttle hissed and popped, sliding back into the carcass of the craft. Light-gray smoke billowed out into the cold atmosphere outside. It caught in the back of Mach’s parched throat. He coughed and saw lights flash in front of his eyes.

  Heaving himself up from his semi-prone position made the lights angry. They morphed into nebulous blobs of reds and purples that reminded him of the intestines of the ginnell shark—a prized delicacy back on Fides Prime.

  The bright purple fish-offal did nothing for him, personally, except to make his guts feel like someone had routinely punched them for half his life—much like how they felt now.

  The damned stasis muscle stimulator had clearly gotten carried away.

  “Hey,” Mach shouted. “Anyone hear me?”

  “Keep your voice down, will ya?” Adira said. “I’ve got a headache from hell.”

  “I’m glad to hear those dulcet tones once more,” Mach said. “I had the worst nightmares ever.”

  “You became celibate?”

  “That would have been preferable to the horrors I saw,” Mach replied, trying not to recall those dreadful images. And failing, because if someone says to you don’t think of an elephant, that is exactly what you think of. The imagination is a vindictive son-of-a-bitch like that.

  “Where are we?” a different voice said this time. Older, male: Beringer.

  For a while, Mach had forgotten they had brought him along. But it was the clarity he needed, the final nail in the subconscious coffin—they were there. They were at Terminus!

  Mach blinked the stasis-crud from his eyes and stood up, stepping outside of the shuttle into the cold dark of their surroundings.

  The sodden clothes he wore, dampened by the stasis fluid, dripped with water to the ground, tapping like tiny, soluble crystals against a stone surface.

  His bare feet transmitted the coldness up through his legs, chilling every muscle and tendon, bringing with it the tight pain of cramp in muscles previously starved of correct movement.

  Not even the hi-tech vestan stasis system could prevent that, much to Mach’s chagrin. He turned back and helped the other two out of the shuttle. The three of them began to unload the craft of their supplies, of which amounted to no more than a single case of clothes, atmospheric suits, and various stims and nutri-shots. They weren’t allowed to bring their weapons or smart-screens, naturally.

  “Someone’s coming,” Beringer said from Mach’s left. “I can hear footsteps.”

  The older man was shivering like he would fall dead any minute. The darkness of the room lightened by progressively lighter shades of gray until Mach noticed Adira to his right, peeling off her sodden clothes.

  The room they were in was completely devoid of any meaningful detail. Dark grey stone made up the surface of floor. And the walls, as far as he could tell. The place was at least large enough for five shuttles, and when he looked up, he saw a tiny sliver of white light between two long panels: a bay door, he thought. That’s how they must have come in.

  A brighter light flashed on, blinding Mach. He held up his hand to his squinted eyes. A dark, tall shape came toward him. It was much taller than he, and willowy so that it almost seemed to shimmer in the brilliant illumination.

  “Stand still,” the voice said in Salus Common. It resonated with more octaves and nuances than Mach could resolve. There was something almost musical about it, the way it seemed to phase in and out of keys and suggest more meaning than Mach could discern.

  The figure before them reached out a thin hand, taking Mach by his wrist.

  Mach tried to pull back, but the tall, lithe figure was much stronger than he had anticipated, and it snapped a cold, metal bracelet to Mach’s wrist.

  Then it did the same to Beringer and Adira.

  No one said anything for a moment. Mach tried to get his bearings, get his thoughts running smooth like the Intrepid’s engines again, but the cloud of stasis fog in his mind wouldn’t play fair.

  “I’m Kortas,” the figure said. “Your Terminus representative. I am to brief you on the task and be your point of contact for the Guardians. You will do
as we tell you. Come, we have limited time available to us. Afron’s mind has less than fifty standard hours before it’s no longer connective.”

  “Connective?” Adira asked. She had finished putting on her dry clothes and looked at Kortas with no sense of surprise or bewilderment. The stims, Mach thought. The medical procedures she had after her fight must have held back some of the effects of the weeklong stasis.

  “I’ll explain more shortly. For now, you three will require your protective suits. Terminus’ atmosphere is in its regression phase. It will be quite toxic for you, and our air supplies for this bay are finite: we don’t receive guests normally, you understand.”

  There was a sound of bitterness to those words, Mach thought. Although he couldn’t make out Kortas’ face in the silhouette, it didn’t take a genius to detect the underlying resentment for their presence.

  Kortas disappeared back into the light, leaving the others to do as he suggested. Mach glanced down at the bracelet wrapped round his wrist and for a brief moment couldn’t remember how it got there. It was heavier than it looked: a centimeter-wide band of polished chrome with a single pinhead dot of red light blinking in the middle.

  “You can see us, can’t you?” Mach said as though he were a madman.

  “Who are you talking to?” Adira said as she opened the case of supplies and pulled out the atmospheric suits.

  “They’re watching us,” Mach replied.

  “A bit early for paranoia, isn’t it?” Beringer grumbled. The older man had removed the last of his wet clothes and started to dry himself off.

  “It’s never too early when vestans are concerned,” Mach responded.

  For the next ten minutes, they all got themselves dried and suited up.

  Without having to tell anyone they were ready, a sliding door at the end of the shuttle bay opened up. Kortas’ long frame stood there and gestured for them to follow.

  Mach stepped forward, glancing at his bracelet, wondering just what it was capable of doing. He doubted it was just a listening or tracking device. He had fought these people in the War; he knew of what they were capable

  And then he thought of Morgan, and the feelings Mach had had before leaving.

  None of this felt right, he thought. Not right at all.

  A few hours, and a few liters of coffee later, Mach and the others felt more human. At least for Mach, he was happy that the stasis-fog had gone. He wasn’t quite thinking as clearly as he would like, but at least he could manage more than a few weak thoughts.

  They were sitting in another spectacularly dull room. Nothing more than an off-white cube with a table in the middle, around which they all sat. Mach, Beringer, and Adira were wearing their suits, but with the masks down—the air supplied to this room, Kortas had assured them, was plentiful.

  The vestan sat at the head of the table in his cream robes. They contrasted against his dark, almost glossy skin. Completely hairless, his head was elongated and narrower than the regular vestans; he was thinner and taller too.

  Although the vestans had an innate ability to shape-shift their appearance and limbs to suit their situation, they still held a core appearance, which to Mach’s eyes was markedly different to Kortas—a so-called Guardian.

  “So,” Beringer said, his face attentive as he soaked in all the details and making Mach confident he had made the right choice bringing the archeologist and historian along with them. “You were talking about the Guardians’ role here. How is that affected by Afron’s disappearance?”

  Kortas leaned his bony elbows onto the edge of the white table. “Your minds couldn’t comprehend the change,” he said, but without malice. “It is our task to ensure the minds of the Saviors and all those that came after them remain with us. With fewer Guardians to hold this mental network together, the harder it is for us to retain this information.”

  “Fascinating!” Beringer said. His hand twitched as though it were grasping a pen or gesturing over a holoscreen. The bracelet on his wrist clanked against the tabletop, prompting Adira to hold her wrist up to Kortas.

  “And what is the purpose behind these? You were quick to take advantage of our confused post-stasis condition, weren’t you?”

  Whether Kortas took offense to this, Mach couldn’t tell. The vestan remained still, impassive, and simply responded, “It is as much for your protection as it is ours.”

  “Explain that further,” Adira said, squinting her eyes at him.

  Kortas clasped his long fingers together and leaned a little closer. “We need to see and hear what you see and hear,” he said as if that explained everything. “We also need to ensure the safety of our Saviors and the dead.”

  Mach realized then exactly what they were: remote weapons. “So you can terminate us if needed?” Mach said.

  “If you wish to see it that way, then yes,” Kortas said. “You have to understand, Terminus is the most important aspect of vestan civilization. I don’t expect you to grasp the full consequences of its role, but know this: without Terminus, the Commonwealth will fall. The Salus Sphere has greatly benefitted from the minds of the Saviors. From culture to technology, philosophy—”

  “And war,” Mach added. “Let’s not be coy here. Your so-called Saviors’ technology and weapons killed billions.”

  “And so did your kind,” he said.

  “Fine,” Mach added, shaking his head. “I guess this won’t get us anywhere. I get it, you can kill us whenever you please, but you still need us more than we need you. You wouldn’t have shipped us out here if that weren’t the case. Our so-called unevolved minds cannot communicate with your dead. Without us, you cannot recover Afron’s mind. So let’s just put all our cards on the table, as it were, and get down to business. What happened to your fellow Guardian, and what do we need to do to get him so we can leave you lot in peace?”

  “I’m glad we understand each other,” Kortas said. He stood and placed a small cube in the middle of the table. With a single press on its surface, a three-dimensional hologram flickered into life.

  “Here’s our recording of the incident,” Kortas said. “Afron was sent out to a fault in the structure between zones one and two. It’s situated a few hundred meters from one of the fusion generators.”

  Beringer’s interest picked up here. “That’s how you keep the sacred grounds from being frozen like the rest of the planet, right?”

  “Indeed,” the vestan replied. “As well as provide power for our facilities and well-being for the remaining nineteen Guardians—including myself.”

  The group watched the video play out in three dimensions.

  Afron made his way through an old mausoleum that was crawling with vines and moss over the stone brickwork. In the middle of the dank room stood a translucent tube with a body inside.

  “Who’s that?” Adira said. “Inside the tube?”

  “A minor figure in our rich history,” Kortas said. “It’s not important to this task. Please, continue to watch. You’ll see how poor Afron got caught in amongst the vines.”

  They followed the instructions and saw, in high-definition, Afron peer through a tunnel in the rubble of the structural fault—and then mayhem. The poor vestan tried to flee… something, but couldn’t manage to save himself. His neck was trapped, around which coiled a thick green vine-like limb.

  Afron disappeared down the tunnel.

  The video flickered and faded to black.

  “And that’s all you have?” Mach said.

  “It is. We’ve provided you each a copy on your bracelets. You’ll find that it works as a small hologram projector as well as… well, you understand.”

  Adira requested the video be replayed, and as she watched, Kortas left the room to prepare their transport to the facility. With him out of the room, the group began to suggest what might have happened to Afron.

  “To me,” Mach said. “It looks like he fell into the tunnel.”

  Adira shook her head. “The physics is all wrong. I’d say something dragged him
.

  “Which,” Beringer added, “brings us to the question of by what?”

  “You’re not buying the idea that it’s a vine?” Mach said. “It wouldn’t be the first time for the existence of a predatory vine. I’ve cut my way through them on Gasetta. Strong damned things when they get a scent of you.”

  Beringer stroked his chin and twisted the corner of his mouth up. He stared at the hologram now playing on a loop.

  Kortas reentered the room and announced that their transport was ready to take them to the mausoleum for a closer inspection. “I’ll show you to your vehicle,” the vestan said, gesturing for them to leave the room through the door from which he had come. “It’ll take a few hours, so the quicker we start…”

  Mach and the others followed him through a series of blank corridors that Mach had the impression were set up purely to confuse them so that they remembered nothing of their facilities’ true layout.

  And all throughout this, Mach saw nothing of detail anywhere: no text, imagery, other Guardians—just a couple of blank rooms and the holographic film.

  Their transport sat in a similar docking bay to the one they had first experienced. Only instead of a shuttle, there was a sleek hover-pod waiting for them, its gullwing doors open. The inside looked comfortable with its fabric seats and traditional cockpit dashboard lit up with internationally standard controls. Not that they could use them.

  Kortas had informed them it was strictly on autopilot.

  The vehicle was entirely vestan in its design: black, all curves and no sharp angles. It was like a pill with a slightly narrow nose. Mach, Adira, and Beringer got inside.

  “When you reach the site,” Kortas said, leaning into the transporter, “take things slow. Investigate everything, and take nothing for granted. And above all: do not touch or interfere with the body.”

  “How will we send all this data back to you?” Mach said, glancing again at the bracelet.