The Terminal War: A Carson Mach Space Opera

by A. C. Hadfield

  “We’ll instruct you further when you’re there. But we’ll see what you see, and hear what you hear. Do not deviate from the task, and we won’t be forced to…” He trailed off, letting Mach get the gist of the warning.

  “What about weapons?” Mach said.

  “There’s a small cache in the transporter’s trunk—but let me say in no uncertain terms: they are for purely exceptional circumstances. Their misuse will result in us being forced to—“

  “I get it,” Mach said impatiently, holding up the bracelet. “You’ll zap us from your secret hideout. Now if there’s nothing else, can we get the hell out there and deal with this? I’d rather not be here for a minute longer than I have to.”

  Although not responding, Mach could tell from the twisted lips on Kortas’ face that he felt the same way.

  “As you wish,” the vestan said, stepping back.

  The doors to the transporter closed with a near-silent clunk. The docking bay opened to a dull Terminus morning: a picture of weak gray light from the distant sun blanketed the place in a monochromatic shawl. The transporter’s engines whined, they rose a meter off the ground, and then they were off, moving forward toward their destination.

  After about ten minutes of this, Beringer, sitting in the back of the transporter and watching the holographic film play from the small projector on his bracelet, looked up, his face pale.

  “What is it?” Adira said, from the copilot seat, staring back at the older man.

  Mach turned to face him too.

  “Beringer,” he said, “talk to us, what is it?”

  The archeologist freeze-framed the video on the moment Afron disappeared from the picture. He zoomed into the vestan’s blurred face. “There,” Beringer said, gesturing with his free hand to a dark shape around Afron’s neck.

  “Shit,” Mach said. “That’s no vine.”

  “What is it?” Adira said.

  “That,” Beringer said, “is an arm. A vestan arm.”

  Chapter 8

  The hover pod’s engines decreased in tone, and it bumped against the ground. Its gull-wing door smoothly rotated upward. Mach peered outside at a mausoleum bathed in weak light, matching the projection from Beringer’s bracelet. Other vine-strangled stone buildings surrounded it in a disorderly formation, but this was the only one with its door open.

  Beringer cut the holographic image and swallowed hard. “If the bodily dimensions are typical, we’re looking at…”

  “What?” Mach said.

  “A vestan bigger than any we’ve seen before. Twice our size.”

  Mach raised his bracelet. He wasn’t exactly sure how it worked, but knew the Guardians would be watching and listening. “Caught in vines, you said.”

  Nobody responded.

  “Screw this,” Adira said. “I’m grabbing the weapons.”

  She jumped out of the pod, moved toward the back of it, and returned moments later with three graphite laser pistols. Mach had used this type of weapon before, after scavenging a pair from a downed atmosphere fighter during the war. The lasers were good enough for twenty shots if fully charged.

  “I know you’re there,” Mach said. “Who took your colleague?”

  “The images are inconclusive,” Kortas said through Mach’s bracelet. A red holographic image of the guardian’s thin face appeared out of the pinhead light. “Your theory is wrong.”

  “Wrong how?” Beringer asked. “I know a vestan arm when I see one.”

  “None of our living species arrived by ship and have set foot on this planet. It’s physically impossible for the dead to rise, and we’ve picked up no extra mind signals.”

  Beringer frowned. “I don’t see how it could be anything else.”

  “Perhaps it’s a replicant? We’re the ones with Terminus knowledge and would know if it was a brother.”

  The only replicants Mach knew lived twenty light-years away and were a peaceful species that had never traveled beyond their system. When he first came across a group of them during a hunting trip with Sanchez, they invaded his thoughts and turned from transparent spheres into fidians he had once known—cocktail waitresses.

  “No offense,” Adira said, which usually meant she was about to be offensive. “But your knowledge can’t be that great on these matters, considering an unknown tunnel-digging maniac killed one of you right in front of your eyes.”

  Kortas’ head spun to face Adira. “Firing a laser inside our mausoleums is prohibited. Be careful where you use them—and only then as a last resort.”

  “What if we corner it inside?” Adira replied.

  “You’re allegedly the best agents. I assume you’ll use ingenuity. We’ll be watching you.”

  The thinly veiled threats were becoming tiresome. Mach bit his lip and resisted the temptation to thrust his fist through the projection. He wanted this job over and done with, and the bracelet off. He was also conscious that whatever wrapped an arm around the guardian’s neck in the footage might burst out of the mausoleum at any moment.

  “Leave it with us,” Mach said. “We’ll be back in a few hours.”

  Kortas turned to Mach. “Your measurement of time—”

  Mach slapped his hand over the pinhead, cutting off the holographic image and muffling the guardian’s response. “Let’s get it over with. I already hate this place.”

  “You took the words out of my mouth,” Adira said. She tossed the other laser to Beringer. “Stay close, and shout if you see any signs of movement.”

  Beringer fumbled with the weapon and glanced up. Something caught his eye outside, and he rushed out of the pod.

  Mach immediately followed across the damp, weed-covered ground and grabbed the old archeologist’s shoulder. “Not so fast. We stick together.”

  “That statue,” Beringer replied, pointing to a moss-covered stone creature on top of a neighboring mausoleum. “I’ve only seen it in ancient fidian books.”

  “This ain’t a field trip until we complete our mission. Follow my lead.”

  Adira moved across to the mausoleum’s open door and pointed her laser through its gloomy entrance. Mach scanned the local area. Forty meters beyond the collection of buildings, a two-story-high metallic boundary, stretched into the distance in both directions. A wall of ice jutted against its outer side. From space, Terminus must’ve looked like a giant white marble with a small green square in the middle of it.

  Something rustled to Mach’s left. He turned to see Beringer swiping foliage away from the mausoleum wall. The archeologist ran his hand against alien images carved into the stone.

  “Beringer!” Mach shouted. “Get over here.”

  Mach joined Adira at the entrance. A thin red glow brightened the bottom of a stone staircase. Without wanting to waste any time, he extended his laser forward and descended, carefully treading down each step.

  The temperature in Mach’s prosthetic eye rose a notch. A quiet electric hum echoed along the walls. Adira’s and Beringer’s footsteps followed closely behind. He entered the main chamber and swept his laser across it.

  Data streamed across a screen on the wall, providing a soft ambient glow. A black thick cable ran from it into a translucent tube in the center of the room. The naked vestan, suspended by liquid inside, sent a shiver down Mach’s spine. The thought occurred to him that some of the aliens on Terminus might have met their end at his hand.

  “This place gives me the creeps,” Adira said.

  Beringer placed his hand on the tube. “Fascinating. He must have some stories to tell.”

  Adira shrugged. “Like how he had his brain kept alive while being trapped in a tube for centuries?”

  “You know what I mean,” Beringer replied. “He could clear up parts of the Sphere’s prehistory. Before fidians started documenting.”

  “And kill our myths? I’m sure the priests would love that.”

  Mach ignored the conversation, crept around the side of the floating corpse, and crouched by a small pile of rubble. He activated
his helmet light and flashed its blue light beam through the dark circular tunnel. His HUD sensors picked up a gentle breeze.

  The tunnel initially cut through dirt and headed down at a slight gradient, underneath the boundary wall, and split in two directions, confirming that something had burrowed its way to the mausoleum from outside the vestan complex.

  “Know anything that lives under ice and attacks above the ground?” Mach asked Beringer.

  “Only sea creatures. Nothing like this.”

  Adira raised her bracelet. “Kortas, what used to live here?”

  “We’ve managed the consecrated land since its establishment,” Kortas replied. “No vestan has intentionally gone beyond the walls.”

  “That doesn’t answer the question,” Mach said.

  “This is the first recorded occasion of unknown life.”

  Getting information out of Kortas was as painful as catching fingers in a slamming door. Mach consoled himself that heading down the tunnel at least took them away from the boundary and the guardian’s rules. He could also shoot on sight without having to worry about his bracelet detonating. Mach activated the ice setting on his boots. Sixteen black crampon teeth lowered out of the bottom of his soles and bit into the ground. “Ready to do this?”

  “As I’ll ever be,” Adira said.

  “Great, you cover our rear. Beringer, keep your eyes peeled for any clues about what we might be facing.”

  “Seriously?” Beringer asked. “We’re going down there?”

  “If it’s a vestan, I’ve battled them a hundred times, killed hundreds of them before.” Mach smiled to himself, imagining Kortas listening from the control room. “The Guardians should thank me. I’ve been good for business.”

  “And I want off this planet as soon as we can,” Adira said. “You’re welcome to stay and chew the fat with Kortas if you like, Beringer.”

  “Look on the bright side,” Mach said to Beringer. “At least you’re seeing a place that none of your fellow nerd curators at the museum ever will.”

  Beringer peered down the tunnel with fear in his eyes. Mach felt a little sorry for him. What the old man originally thought was a trip to collect an artifact had turned into a hunt for a monster. Still, it’ll be character building for him, Mach thought.

  “Trust me,” Mach said. “Stick together, and we’ll keep you safe.”

  “You and safe go together like skin and broken glass,” Beringer said.

  Mach smiled at the response and entered the tunnel. The icy ground crunched beneath his boots. A smooth spiral indent ran along the walls and twisted into the darkness. It suggested whoever created the tunnel had mechanical assistance, and a wider space below to deposit the debris. It also meant they had intelligence—and motivation.

  Crazy aliens were usually easy prey.

  Crazy intelligent aliens were a completely different matter.

  Mach remembered a mission to catch a fidian with a God complex called Torace. The mad little alien lived alone on one of Fides Gamma’s moons and dedicated his life to building a giant laser fifty times bigger than anything the CWDF possessed. Torace planned to control the Sphere under threat of destruction if anyone defied him. When Mach went to capture him, the little bastard set up booby traps around his complex. One broken arm and a crushed foot later, Mach finally managed to complete the mission. Torace still sent spiteful messages from his cell on Summanus, although they were becoming less frequent.

  Thirty meters into the tunnel, solid dirt changed to frozen green and purple foliage. A drop of water hit the top of Mach’s visor and rolled down the surface. The temperature reading in his eye increased again. He continued forward and reached the split.

  One side led to a dead end of icy rubble, explaining the location of the material gouged out of the tunnel. The other direction led down at a steeper incline. Thin streams of water trickled down the walls and formed into a small flowing channel.

  “Are you seeing this, Kortas?” Mach asked and waited a few seconds for a response. “Don’t pretend you’re not there.”

  “You may be seeing the effects of the planet’s core,” Kortas said through the bracelet.

  “Bullshit,” Mach snapped. “We’d need to be far lower. I get the feeling there’s something you’re not telling us. Where’s this heat source coming from?”

  “I’m afraid I have no data on that. All this is beyond our realm of responsibility.”

  “We might be close to a magma chamber,” Beringer said. “Or an artificial power source…”

  “No artificial power sources exist,” Kortas said.

  “Oh no?” Mach replied. “What created the line in the tunnel?”

  “I have no scientific explanation,” Kortas said and paused for a moment. “It might be a natural phenomenon.”

  “Or a mining drill. I’ve seen similar patterns in the mountains of a Noven mining planet.”

  “Impossible. We don’t have that kind of machinery or your crude tools here; the Saviors built everything you see here many millennia ago. If there were drills or other tools from your kind, we would have long ago discovered them.”

  The contempt in the guardian’s voice was obvious. Mach traversed down the steeper path, digging his crampons into the increasingly softer ice. His helmet light beamed into a wider space below. He dropped to his ass and slid the last four meters into a cavity the size of a regular human house.

  Two metal crates bulged out of the ice on the opposite side of the cavity. Both had jagged rips along their centers. Mach wasn’t an expert in alien text, but he recognized black vestan symbols stamped on both of them.

  Beringer slid down the tunnel and landed in a heap. He brushed slush off his suit and stared at the two crates.

  “What do you make of that?” Mach asked.

  “It’s their old style of writing. I can’t translate it.”

  “Luckily we’ve got a voyeur who can.”

  Mach swept his manacle—bracelet didn’t seem the right term anymore—across the crates, ensuring Kortas got a perfect view of the symbols. Mach edged forward and aimed his laser through the dark crack in the closest crate. The jagged rent edges of metal had been forced out to create a large gap. Nothing lay inside. He moved across to the second one. This one had been forced inwards.

  A single black muscular arm, the length of Mach’s body, lay propped against a solid bench. It looked exactly like the limb that had wrapped around the guardian’s neck in the holographic footage. A pool of frozen yellow blood surrounded the stump; more of it had spattered against the interior walls.

  “Are you still there, Kortas?” Mach asked. “Something’s been ripped to pieces down here.”

  “Reception isn’t possible.”

  Mach rolled his eyes. “An opinion would be helpful. What does it say on the crates?”

  “The text says nothing. It’s a standard shipping container.”

  “There’s nothing standard about it,” Adira said. “It must say something.”

  “You also said no vestan had intentionally gone beyond the walls,” Beringer added. “It seems there’s a lot of things that have happened here that you don’t know about.”

  “Millions of containers have the same code,” Kortas replied. “They’ve been used for hundreds of your generations to transport goods. Please investigate further.”

  Beringer focused his helmet light on the severed limb. “Are you sure you know the history of Terminus? That arm’s one hundred percent vestan, and it might have been down here a very long time.”

  “Retrieve the arm after you’ve found Afron,” Kortas replied in a neutral tone. “We’ll conduct tests on it to establish its origin.”

  “Are you blind?” Adira said with more than a hint of irritation. “Look at the evidence. Here’re two vestan containers. Something has broken out of one and probably murdered the occupant of the other. The arm clearly matches your form.”

  “Don’t lecture me on our sacred land. I’ve been here since before humans left
their home world.”

  Mach shook his head. “What dirty little secrets are you hiding?”

  Kortas didn’t reply.

  The tunnel descended further past the containers. Its melting walls widened and brightened in the distance. Mach knew if they wanted to complete their mission, the only option was to continue down, find the dead vestan and kill the alien responsible for the attack. Their beliefs blinded the Guardians, but that was irrelevant.

  A deep roar echoed up the tunnel.

  Mach and Adira crouched and aimed their weapons. Beringer staggered, his back slamming with a thud against the cavity wall.

  “You need to start talking,” Mach shouted into his manacle.

  The pinhead light flashed in rapid succession. The manacle tightened around Mach’s wrist, making him wince with pain. It vibrated and whistled a high-pitched tone.

  “Proceed with your mission,” Kortas said. “This is your final warning.”

  “Final warning for what?” Mach replied through gritted teeth. “We’re here to sort out your shit, at you request, remember? Why don’t you ask your supposed Saviors about the containers?”

  “Beyond the walls, vestans don’t have influence. Your theories are unsubstantiated and blasphemy. This discord will not be tolerated.”

  “Tolerated?” Mach asked. “Open your eyes, Kortas. Whatever came out of this container was put here by one of you lot, whether in the distant past or more recently.”

  “Your statement is dangerous. We can’t permit that. How dare you accuse us!” Kortas snapped.

  The manacle’s blinking light changed to solid green. Adira winced and dropped her laser. Her light had also changed. She screamed, grabbing her wrist with her other hand, her eyes shut tight against the gripping pain.

  “Stop!” Beringer called before he too collapsed to the ground, holding his wrist.

  Mach’s manacle continued to tighten. He thought it would crush his bone. Pain shot up his arm and into his shoulder, and for a brief moment he thought he might pass out.

  Chapter 9