A star-chaser was a strong alcoholic drink made from fruit farmed on Fides Delta. For a seasoned drinker, it hit the spot. Carson smiled at the thought of Lassea and Danick being knocked sideways for an hour or so. It didn’t matter, he’d have hatched his plan by then, and they’d have time to recover. He placed the glasses down on the table.
Sanchez immediately grabbed one and took a large gulp. He exhaled in satisfaction and held the drink in front of his face. “I’ve been waiting weeks to have another one of these.”
Danick and Lassea pulled their glasses across the table. They looked at each other as if Carson had just asked them to down a cup of cold sick.
“It’ll put hairs on your chest,” Sanchez said.
Lassea narrowed her eyes and sipped from the top of the glass. She closed one eye and winced. Mach remembered his first drink and smiled. At least she didn’t pretend to enjoy it like he did, in a vain attempt to impress the old dogs at the fleet bar on Fides Prime.
Danick met Mach’s gaze, rolled his eyes and took a large mouthful. He covered his mouth, swallowed hard, and squeezed his eyes tightly shut.
“That’s the way to do it,” Mach said. He downed half of his chaser and enjoyed the burning sensation at the back of his throat.
One of the guards, a young human with sandy hair, looked over at the group. Carson gestured to the spare seat at the table. “You’re welcome to join us.”
The guard sighed, hopped off his stool, and brought over his drink. He sat next to Mach. “What are you doing on Summanus?”
Mach smiled. “Just came here to see the sights.”
“Yeah, right. You look the sort who buys crew.”
“You got me. I’ve just bought him out,” Mach said and nodded in Sanchez’s direction. “How long have you worked here?”
“Two years. I’m transferring out in a few months. Had enough of the place.”
“That’s what you all say,” Sanchez said. “I bet I’ll come back here in twenty years and still find you slumped at the bar.”
“Not a chance,” the guard said. “I’m out of here. This place has a way of bringing you down.”
“I can imagine,” Mach said, detecting a hint of a slur in the guard’s words. “Can I get you another drink?”
“Sure, I’ll have a nebula bomb.”
Mach returned to the bar and ordered. While the fidian mixed the orange-colored drink, he slipped the atomic blue capsule out of his breast pocket and pulled it apart. A small part of the white powder inside sprinkled onto the muddy footprint-stained brown plastic floor. He rubbed it with his boot and cupped the two sections in his hand.
The fidian handed Mach the drink. He briefly lowered it, emptied the contents of the capsule inside, and sloshed the drink around, ensuring it dissolved any traces of powder on the insides of the glass.
Sanchez watched him approach and gave a quick wink. They’d used this technique before. The guard downed his current drink and wrapped his fingers around the nebula bomb. “Thanks. Next one’s on me.”
“There’s no need. Enjoy it.”
Lassea and Danick eyed Mach suspiciously, but they didn’t need to know what was going on. He sat next to the guard and waited. The two horans ordered more drinks. They would provide the route into the prison after he got the pass.
“I’m not feeling so good,” Danick said. “Do you mind if we go back to the shuttle?”
“You haven’t finished your chaser,” Sanchez said. “Mind if I have the honor?”
“Sure,” Danick said. He stood and pressed a hand against the table to steady himself, clearly affected by only half of the drink. Lassea paused for a moment. Mach gestured his head toward the entrance. She downed her drink, grimaced, and left with her brother. That was another tick in the box for Lassea.
“Drink up,” Mach said to the guard. “I’ll get you another.”
“I’m happy if you’re paying.”
The guard got to the bottom of his nebula bomb and his eyelids drooped. He sat back in his chair and frowned at Mach. “Who are you?”
“He’s gone,” Sanchez said. “How many capsules did you put in?”
“Just the one. I think it’s time we gave him a breath of fresh air.”
They grabbed an arm each and propped the guard up. The fidian barman looked across and shook his head. Mach wrapped the guard’s thin arm around his shoulder. “Just taking him outside to clear his head.”
The guard continued to babble. His speech became unrecognizable and a line of saliva dangled from his bottom lip. Sanchez propped him up on the other side. The guard’s dangling feet scraped across the floor as they dragged him outside.
They carried the guard around the side of the tavern and leaned him against the side of its rough block wall. Mach patted down his pockets and felt a square object in the front left of his cargo pants. He fished his hand inside and produced a security swipe.
“Bingo,” Mach said. “Let’s get him back inside. We don’t want him to die of hypothermia out here.” Mach’s breath plumed in the frigid air.
“What’s our next move?” Sanchez said, showing no effect of the cold weather.
“We’ll just be kept overnight for a disturbance, right?”
“Yeah. They’ll search you, though.”
“No problem. Can you get your tools in?”
“Does a balto shit in the woods?”
Mach forced the swipe against his right forearm. It punctured through a section of artificial skin and he slipped the swipe between two of his cybernetic muscles. He didn’t bother asking Sanchez where he concealed his multipurpose tool.
They dragged the delirious guard back to the table and placed him on a chair. He slumped forward and rested his face in his hands. Mach had never seen an atomic blue have such a powerful effect, but he’d never tried after a skinful of booze.
“Ready to have a little fun with those two horans?” Mach said.
“I’ll take the left one, the ugly one.”
The horans placed their glasses on the table and watched as Mach and Sanchez approached.
Mach picked up the closest horan’s glass. “Mind if I finish your drink?”
“Give it back, you fool,” the horan croaked.
The other horan stood and hissed. Mach threw the contents of the glass into his face, knowing they couldn’t resist a challenge once somebody compromised their honor.
Liquid dribbled off the horan’s chin. The one seated to the left sprang up, knocking the metal table over. Glass shattered across the floor. The fidian behind the bar gestured at his smart-screen and ducked.
Sanchez, true to form, didn’t wait for a seven-foot-tall horan to get in the first strike. He leaped forward and thrust his shoulder into the horan’s chest, sending them both skidding to the floor.
The horan facing Mach swung its scaly, clawed hand. Mach ducked, the swipe glancing off the top of his head.
Mach balled his fist, gritted his teeth, and slammed an uppercut into the horan’s stomach. It roared and smashed an elbow against his left shoulder.
Pain shot through Mach’s joint. He jumped up and forced the top of his head against the horan’s snout. The alien staggered back and a trickle of purple blood poured from its nostril.
Sanchez sat on the other horan’s chest. It bucked underneath him as he rained down punches.
Mach’s opponent twisted off a metal chair leg and held the jagged part forward. “You won’t live to see your home world, human.”
The metal doors flung open. Two dark blue uniformed CWDF soldiers entered, lasers raised, shifting their aim between Mach, Sanchez, and the two horans.
Sanchez rolled free and held up his arms.
Mach raised his too, and with a panting breath said, “We don’t want any trouble.”
One of the soldiers, an unusually stocky fidesian, moved around to the back of Mach while keeping the laser pointed at his head. “You come to Summanus and start a bar fight, you’re gonna find it.”
The soldier pul
led a cuff block from his belt and stuffed Mach’s wrists through the gaps. The cuffs automatically tightened around his wrists.
“Where are you taking me?” Mach said.
“You can cool down in solitary for the night. I want you off the planet in the morning—when we’ve charged your account, of course.”
The other soldier cuffed Sanchez.
The two men were pushed out of the bar, back into the driving, freezing rain. Mach kept his head down as he was dragged into the blocky Summanus prison. He glanced at Sanchez and shared a miniscule nod of accomplishment.
Chapter 9
Kingsley Babcock lurched forward, spilling his cup of coffee all over the printouts that had continued to spew forth from his ancient system for the past thirty minutes.
He grabbed the pile of paper and dripped most of the liquid before mopping up the rest with a cloth.
“Kingsley, you need to be more careful,” he said to himself as he always had since he came to Minerva, a barren rock on the far northern edge of the Salus Sphere, over twenty years ago in exile. Though these days he could barely remember his life before coming here and setting up his HAB on the rocky planet.
The lights of his fabricated home, made from the modified fuselage of his destroyed ship, dimmed as the old computer system drew more energy and continued to spit out reports. Along with the paper copies, the solid-state drives were quickly filling with recordings of communications.
“Squid, what do you make of this, eh?”
The little hovering hexagon with eight articulated tentacles was half the size of Kingsley’s head and floated near his shoulder. It chirped a quizzical response.
“Don’t chirp at me like that, you infernal little machine, I’m asking you a question. Why is there so much Axis chatter? Why now? And what’s all this about an Atlantis ship sighting?”
Two red lights, Squid’s eyes, blinked on and off and its small voice spoke. “It’s quite the coincidence, don’t you think, sir? The Atlantis ship appearance has rumors flying around the CW communications channels. I’ve filtered the least redundant phrases and saved them to your smart-screen. It appears that Orbital Forty was destroyed, and not by the Axis Combine.”
Kingsley nodded and checked his smart-screen. His devices had taken a beating during his years on the planet. Despite being sixty-five years old, his cybernetic heart kept him ticking along as well as someone a third his age.
The screen on his left forearm, however, was crazed with scratches, mostly from clambering about on the planet’s surface, looking for resources. Although it was never habited, it had been the grounds for a battle during the Century War. Kingsley had, over the years, found enough debris and parts to build out his HAB.
The computers that he used to listen in on the Salus Sphere’s communications were actually vestan quantum units. He had cracked the encryption and reprogrammed them for his own uses. They would surely be ancient artifacts these days compared to what the CW and the Axis Combine had developed, but for him, and his experiments, they were all he needed.
With those he had created a brand new kind of self-learning AI, the code of which now ran his coterie of companions, of which Squid was one, and although he never said so, in order to avoid any tensions between his creations, Squid was his favorite. It was as close to the loyalty of a dog as he would get.
Sure, it didn’t play fetch with as much enthusiasm or lick his face, but with its articulated tentacles, it could play a mean game of skillion and was helpful in maintaining the HAB. The harsh conditions of Minerva, including its dry, frigid winters, meant there was always something that needed fixing, and to better use his talents elsewhere, Kingsley had delegated those tasks to his mechanical crew members.
Kingsley slouched into his favorite chair in front of his single screen salvaged from his old human-made attack ship. It was so old it didn’t even have holographic capacities, meaning he had to squint at the printed display. He synced the smart-screen on his forearm to the larger display and read through some of the CW chatter.
As he scanned the rumors and surprise, he thought back to his friend Beringer. Back in the day, before Kingsley exiled himself, he and Beringer used to talk and dream about the Atlantis ship. “What if it was real?” Beringer had posited. “Imagine what we could learn from it, what cultures and technology it would hold.”
They had guessed, based on the few snippets of sightings and reports, that the ship was likely thousands of ST years old. Which meant its creators were likely ancient, given the reported technical abilities of it.
In the intervening twenty years of peace, there’d been fewer and fewer sightings and reports, making Kingsley less excited about the prospect of it being real. He had resigned himself to rationalizing it as a folktale, a space legend.
But now there was this sudden explosion of communications and the destruction of Orbital Forty.
“It’s not the damned horans, is it, Squid?” Kingsley said, rubbing his bony hand across the stubble on his chin. “Perhaps they’ve developed some kind of stealth technology.”
“The odds aren’t likely, sir,” Squid said. “Besides, we’ve been tracking Axis movements and none were in the vicinity of Orbital Forty. Even if they had somehow developed wormhole technology, we would have noticed a sizeable ship on the move.”
“Indeed. But Atlantis ship rumors aside, I don’t like how the Axis Combine forces are massing around the Sphere. It seems to me that war is imminent once again.”
“Will they come for you, sir?” Squid said as it hovered to the pile of papers and used its tentacles to arrange them in neat piles for later reading and filing.
“Who?”
“The Commonwealth, of course. If war breaks out, won’t they need your help? It is your combat-AI protocols their destroyers use, is it not?”
Kingsley shrugged and downed the rest of his bitter coffee. The beans were freeze-dried Alurian beans that he had found on some lactern wreckage. It was a trading ship and loaded with varied foodstuffs and drinks. Without that find, Kingsley, along with his mechanical companions, would have had to fix the destroyed ship and return to civilization.
Which was not a good idea considering his reputation and wanted status.
“I imagine they would have updated the protocols by now, Squid, especially after my screwup.”
Squid finished sorting the piles of papers and brought Kingsley a tray of mashed potato. Using some parts from his crashed ship, he built a rudimentary microwave oven so that he could cook some of the crops he had managed to grow from his six eco-domes.
“Your wanted status expired three years ago,” Squid said.
Kingsley, of course, knew this, but it didn’t matter. He still had a bounty on his head, even if it wasn’t official anymore. One doesn’t do what he did and get away with it just because a few years had passed.
“I’m sorry Squid, I’m not hungry. Please can you take it to the recycle bay and let Dozer deal with it. Thanks.”
Kingsley got up and exited the computer station that had once been the bridge of his ship. He ducked below the bulkhead and entered the main corridor. Moving down the length of it, he moved through the plastic sheeting and out into one of the domes he had connected to the HAB.
Two of his smaller creations, named T-Pod and Q-Pod on account of their respective number of limbs, busied themselves around the rows of corn and wheat. Kingsley had salvaged the seeds from the lactern trade ship and with some chemical know-how had turned the usually inert Minerva soil into nutrient-rich mulch with which to grow vegetables.
T-Pod’s three-inch-diameter chromed spherical head twisted around to regard him. Its single camera eye focused on him. It approached on its three legs and looked up with the single eye. “Good evening, sir,” it said. Kingsley had given T-Pod and Q-Pod female voices to remind him of a certain fidesian he had once fallen in love with.
“Evening, T-Pod. The farm all okay, is it?”
“Affirmative. Q-Pod and I have been monitoring ni
trogen and pest levels and we’re currently growing at one hundred and thirty percent efficiency. You’ll have enough crops to freeze and survive for at least another two ST years.”
Two more years, he thought. How many more could he last for?
His physical health wasn’t in question and he could easily expand food growth into another eco-dome to build up more reserves if he needed. The solar cells and wind turbines provided all the power he would need, and in his mechanical companions, he effectively had company.
But it still wasn’t quite the same.
Q-Pod noticed T-Pod talking with Kingsley and approached slowly, being careful to place its four spindly legs between the rows of vegetables. Kingsley noted that its gyros would need recalibrating as it walked with an almost drunken sway that reminded him of Carson Mach.
Good old Mach was inebriated more than he was sober, but he could still pilot a ship and captain a squad as well as anyone Kingsley had worked with.
“I sense you’re feeling sad about something,” Q-Pod said, folding its legs beneath its boxy frame as though it were a miniature horse. Kingsley had built this one out of an old gun locker and some droid servos. It was his first attempt at creating a companion and he modeled it on a real pony he had once owned.
“All this news about the Axis and the Atlantis ship has brought up some old memories, Q-Pod. I miss my old friends.”
“That’s what we’re here for,” Q-Pod said, raising its two ear-like antennae.
Kingsley wanted to say they weren’t enough, but didn’t want to introduce any glitches into the AI algorithms. The self-learning protocols could be influenced by negative input and he didn’t have the mental energy to recalibrate.
He walked to the edge of the dome and stared out at Minerva.
It was the perfect planet for living in exile. So desolate and offering nothing of value in terms of minerals or resources meant that not even pirates would come here.
The Atlantis Ship: A Carson Mach Space Opera Page 7
