The Terminal War: A Space Opera Novel (A Carson Mach Adventure)

by A. C. Hadfield

  Reactive nanosteel thread had more kinetic energy stored in it than most nukes when compared particle to particle.

  Only a single raised voice could be heard in the club. Sinju held the bookie by the throat in a two-handed grip and shouted in his face. Beringer edged away from the desk and slipped behind a thick black roof-supporting column. Sinju shoved the bookie to one side and focused on the cage.

  With only ten seconds left on the digital timer above, Adira threw a left-right combination connecting with Bardoom’s jaw. His arms dropped limply to his sides, and he sank to his knees. She raced around to his back, wrapped her arms around his neck and looked up at Mach.

  He gave her a single firm nod.

  Adira twisted.

  A dull crack echoed through the silent bar. Bardoom slumped face-first to the ground. His legs twitched three times then relaxed in death.

  An electronic buzzer signaled the end of the round, but this fight was already over. Mach walked between the tables, attempting to conceal any outward signs of pleasure, and grabbed Beringer by the arm. The older man trembled in his grip. “Confirm your winnings. Let’s move. We’re getting the hell out of this shit-hole.”

  Lights blinked on around the bar. Mach felt hundreds of eyes bearing down on him. Two off-duty CWDF marines glared at him as he dragged Beringer past their table to the bookie’s desk. It always amazed him that people had never learned only criminals and fixers got rich off gambling. The same principle had applied throughout the ages.

  Beringer held his smart-screen over the glass pad on the desk. The bookie wiped blood from his nose and confirmed the transfer of two point two million eros. Mach ended the recording on his screen and mailed it to Babcock, his technical expert on the Intrepid.

  Sinju stood to the bookie’s side and glared at Mach. “I want to inspect your fighter. Those punches weren’t natural.”

  “You inspected Adira before the fight,” Mach replied. Sinju had demanded Adira strip in the back room before entering his fighting cage. He patted down her clothes but was far too interested in staring at her breasts to notice the subtle variation in skin texture of the nanogloves.

  “I’ll find out, and when I do…” Sinju said.

  “I play by your rules in here. A bet’s a bet.”

  The big criminal’s four fists clenched and he moved from behind the desk. Mach knew it wasn’t wise being close to him when his blood boiled and edged back. Sinju had a reputation for delivering a devastating headbutt, powering forward on his stocky legs and using the Summanus jet skull-cap to flatten facial features.

  Adira appeared from a side door. Her left eye was swollen closed. She walked with a slight limp and held her ribs. The money would help ease the pain of her wounds. Beringer wrapped her arm around his shoulder, and they headed for the entrance.

  “Time to go,” Mach said. “It’s been a pleasure doing business.”

  “I don’t think so, Mach,” Sinju said, standing between him and the entrance. Two men, dressed in faded blue OreCorps uniforms and armed with laser pistols, ran to his side.

  Adira glanced back. Mach raised his chin, gesturing her and Beringer to climb the stairs and prepare their hover-bikes outside. He suspected something like this might happen. It didn’t take a quantum physicist to work out Sinju would be a sore loser.

  The club remained silent as the patrons watched on, getting extra value for their bets—a free fight, on the house.

  Mach raised his smart-screen. “I recorded the fight and the wager. If anything happens to me, it’ll be sent around the Sphere. How many people will visit your seedy operations if they wind up dead after winning a bet?”

  The smooth hum of hover-bike engines drifted down the stairs.

  Hatred burned in Sinju’s eyes. He turned to the DJ booth next to the bar and nodded. Loud music pumped through the speakers on the walls. He stepped closer to Mach. “This isn’t the end. I’ll be watching you. One false move, one sniff that you cheated me, and I’ll rip out your throat.”

  “Will that be all?” Mach asked.

  “Just fuck off and get out of my sight, you cockroach.”

  Sinju stood to one side and waved his two goons away. Mach tensed when he walked past the big criminal, half expecting a strike, but none came. A message from Adira pinged on his screen: the Intrepid’s hover-bikes were ready, and she was waiting outside.

  Mach stopped at the bottom of the stairs and turned back. Sinju headed toward the bookie, no doubt wanting to find out the extent of the hit he had taken.

  “Sinju,” Mach called.

  The big criminal stopped and looked over his broad shoulder. Mach smiled and raised his two middle fingers.

  Sinju roared, threw a table out of the way, and sprinted across the club. Mach clambered the steps, sucked in the alley’s glorious fresh air, and jumped onto the backseat of Adira’s bike. Beringer had already left. The pink rear light of his bike was already halfway to the port in the darkening sky.

  “Full speed ahead. An angry man’s about to fly out the door.”

  Adira punched the accelerator with her foot, and the bike thrust forward and gained altitude, away from the enclosed space of the stone buildings below. Sinju sprang out of the club’s entrance just in time to be blasted by a wake of dust. Mach laughed and waved, and decided the time was right for his backup plan, because why the hell not?

  He pressed the button on his small remote detonator and twenty kilos of X91, military-grade explosives boomed into the night sky, bringing down the rear wall of the cube-shaped building.

  It wasn’t enough to collapse it; Mach wasn’t that cruel, but it was enough to put Sinju out of business for a few months to make the repairs.

  A cloud of steelcrete dust billowed up around the raging figure of Gracious Sinju as the old bastard rushed to see the extent of the damage.

  “That was unnecessary,” Adira said.

  “Sure, but you’re not complaining, are you?”

  “Hell no. I hope he chokes on the dust.”

  *

  It didn’t take long to catch up with Beringer, who flew more cautiously toward the shaft of light radiating out of the Intrepid’s open fighter bay.

  Mach had instructed Lassea, a former junior pilot of the CWDFIntrepid and now a solid member of his crew, to put the ship down on the edge of the landing zone. It was easier to spot in the fading light, unlike the mess of hundreds of dark shapes in the center of the paved strip.

  “Nice hits back there,” Mach said and wrapped an arm around Adira’s waist.

  She shrugged off his grip. “By that big oaf or me?”

  “You did a great job. And, I’ve got some good news.” Mach switched his screen to the ship’s comm channel. “Lassea, prepare for an immediate takeoff. We’ve got a new mission.”

  “Roger, Captain. Do you have coordinates?” she replied.

  “The Vesta star port, we need to be there in forty-eight hours.”

  “Consider it done.”

  “Vesta?” Adira asked. “Beringer didn’t mention that.”

  Mach looked across to the archeologist powering through the air on the other bike. His gray hair and cream trouser suit flapped in the wind. “We’re taking a diversion. Morgan’s just given us one hell of a reason to put Beringer’s job on the back burner.”

  “I guess he doesn’t know that yet?”

  “We’ll explain when we get to Vesta. I’m sure he’ll understand.”

  Mach grinned with the satisfaction of a job done well, and with more rewards to come.

  Chapter Five

  Lassea counted down the moments of the Intrepid’s landing on the vestan star port. “Docking in T minus ten, nine, eight, seven…” A square of twenty open hangars surrounded sixty ships of various sizes, each parked in spaces of an illuminated grid system. This place was exceptionally tidy, Mach thought, watching the camera’s feed on the bridge screen.

  The young CWDF pilot handled the Intrepid as though it were her baby, bringing her down softly an
d with no mean skill. She turned from her console station and looked up at Mach sitting in his captain’s chair.

  “Landing complete, Captain,” she said, beaming a smile.

  “Good job, as ever, Lass,” Mach said. “That landing wouldn’t have even spilled my drink—if I had one.”

  “Thanks,” she said, her cheeks flushing red.

  On the station next to her, the vestan engineer, Tulula, made to leave her position.

  Mach held up his hand. “Sorry, Tulula, you’re staying here.”

  “What?” she asked, raising an arched eyebrow—an affectation she had got from spending so much time with Mach’s old war buddy, Sanchez.

  “I mean it,” Mach said. “You lot are staying put until I know what the vestans’ defense council want with us. Morgan has declined the opportunity to elucidate on the particulars.”

  “But this is my home,” Tulula said. “My people.”

  “She’s got a point,” Sanchez, the big hunter said. His tanned skin the results of spending a month recovering from an operation on the tropical paradise of Jeeroniva. It gave him the appearance of a leather shoe sole.

  “No,” Mach said. “She doesn’t have a point. I do—as captain of this vessel, and the payer of your wages, especially as I’m going to discuss the details of the next job.”

  Beringer sighed like a petulant student.

  “Problem, Beringer?” Mach asked as though he didn’t know the man’s issue: pissed that he’d have to wait a few more weeks before he could get his hands on his artifact.

  “This isn’t what I signed up for,” he said. “Hell, I paid you, and here we are, on bloody Vesta.”

  “Don’t worry, old man, you’ll get your ball to play with soon enough. It won’t take long, I’m sure.”

  “Mach, this is President Morgan. Are you coming out, or do I need to come in there and get you myself?” the president’s voice garbled through Mach’s smart-screen. He rolled his eyes and engaged the microphone. “I’ll be right there, Morgan. Keep your panties dry.”

  He shut off the audio segment of his smart-screen and turned to leave the bridge. “Babcock, you’re the new captain of the ship while I’m gone. I’d like you to oversee post-L-jump maintenance on the fusion crystals and have this bird ready to fly again at a moment’s notice. I don’t know how quickly we might have to leave.”

  “Watch your back,” Adira said from her laser control station to the right of the bridge. She stood between Babcock and Tulula and disappeared between the pair of shadows.

  She had healed well during the weeklong L-jump to Vesta.

  Babcock’s floating fist-sized octopodal drone, named Squid for its appearance, had worked night and day while she was knocked out with powerful sedatives, working at the cellular level to increase her recovery rate.

  Squid was in its third incarnation—the other two having come to a decidedly premature end. Still, Squid Three hovered about, wiggling its short limbs, being useful all over the ship from engineering and maintenance tasks to healthcare.

  It even helped fix Adira’s ribs.

  Bardoom had broken a few bones, but they had knitted back without any deformity using the latest in Babcock’s nanobone material, applied judiciously by Squid Three.

  “Don’t get up to any mischief while I’m gone, kiddos,” Mach said, ducking through the bulkhead that separated the bridge from the central passageway. He eventually left the ship, climbing the ladders to the base of the vestan hangar.

  Morgan stood waiting, wearing his presidential colors, various medals hanging off his left shoulder. Unlike the last few presidents, Mach knew full well that Morgan had indeed earned these decorations in service to the Commonwealth military.

  Morgan was not for show.

  There was nothing ceremonial about him—just business.

  Two vestan guards, bulked out like baby Bardooms, accompanied Morgan, their weapons angled to the ground, but only a few inches from a firing position. The vestans wore dark gray fatigues, the color almost matching their skin.

  The way they moved, as though their feet were never really in touch with the planet’s surface, unnerved Mach.

  “Carson, my dear friend,” Morgan said. The older man clapped his hand on Mach’s shoulder. “So good to see you again.”

  “Cut the crap, Morgan. What’s the deal this time? What ridiculous situation have you got yourself into and need me to clean up?”

  The two vestans gave Mach an intense look, the kind of look that made him feel like shit on their shoes.

  They escorted him across the hangar, through a door, and into a small security room, where they unceremoniously removed all potential weapons.

  This shedding necessitated him wearing a vestan robe, the shoulders of which were too narrow, and the fabric too clingy.

  “This is frankly bullshit,” Mach grumbled.

  “It’ll be worth it, old pal,” Morgan said. “Just hear what the two councilors have got to say and you’ll be on your way again.”

  The two guards, still not saying anything and giving off their acrid, burnt scent, led them through a series of nondescript corridors and elevators until they came to a circular building the width of an old football pitch.

  Marble-like stone made up the structure. Cream colored with veins of gold and titanium, the material twisted upward in a cone shape. Following around the inner surface was a glass tube running on the vestans’ anti-gravity technology, taking various robed dignitaries to varied levels.

  “Wait,” the first guard garbled when they approached the fancy tube elevation system. The guard whispered into his collar, the words in a language Mach had never been able to pick up: Vestan Minor—a purposely difficult language with untold metaphors layered one upon another until the original meaning had been abstracted to the ass-end of the Sphere and back.

  “Going all the way up?” Mach said as they waited.

  “Something like that,” Morgan said. “Defense.”

  The guard stopped mumbling and stepped back. The door to the glass tube opened.

  “In,” the guard said.

  Mach shook his head and smiled. “You guys seriously need to work on your concierge skills.”

  Their rifles twitched.

  Mach quickly hopped inside. Morgan chuckled and followed.

  “Later, fellas,” Mach said.

  The door closed, and they were off, flying up the transtube to the defense department with surprising speed. Mach realized then that not only did the system have anti-gravity propulsion, but also the carriages themselves had localized gravity to equalize the g-force.

  “Takes some fun out of things,” Morgan said.

  “What does?”

  “The lack of G-force.”

  “I’m not sure about that. I can happily do without it; it reminds me too much of planet entry during the war. My guts developed an aversion to that.”

  “I remember,” Morgan said. “I was often the one who had your vomit on my shoes.”

  The carriage stopped just shy of the very top of the twisting marble tower.

  They got out and walked down a short corridor, also made of marble. The whole place looked as if carved from of a single piece. The veins of gold and titanium matched from the outside wall surface to the inner contours of the corridor.

  “The clever little buggers built this out of a single piece, didn’t they?” Mach said.

  “Probably.” Morgan stopped outside of a set of double doors. They were made opaque, smoky. Morgan’s body language stiffened, and he leaned into Mach.

  “Listen,” Morgan said, his voice hushed. “There’s no room for negotiation here, okay? Consider this an orientation, or a briefing—from a superior. In other words, Mach, keep that cakehole of yours shut.”

  Mach held up his hands in mock surrender. “Hey, whenever have I been known to be insensitive? It’s cool. I never have a problem with accepting a mission from an old friend—and now the CW president—on shady terms, with a price that’s conveniently th
e same as my fines, and with so little detail it could be anything. Why would that make me inquisitive?”

  “I mean it,” Morgan said. “These guys are vestan thoroughbreds. We fought against them and their kind in the war. Those tensions run deep. But on this, we need each other. Just hear them out, be respectful, and you’ll soon be on your way. Just trust me, okay?”

  “You know,” Mach said, “the last time you told me to trust you, I nearly died—as did the rest of my crew.”

  “The emphasis on nearly. It’s because of the nearly-ness about you that you’re here. Now do me a favor, for old times’ sake, and just shut the hell up and listen for once.”

  Mach indicated closing a zip across his lips.

  Morgan sighed and shook his head before opening the two double doors and leading Mach inside.

  “Beautiful place you’ve got here,” Mach said as soon as he stepped inside. “I like what you’ve done with the drapes.”

  There were no drapes.

  Morgan elbowed him in the ribs. “You couldn’t even be silent for one fucking minute, could you?”

  Two vestans sat at the base of a phallic table. Mach smiled to himself, unable to resist the schoolchild humor. The vestans didn’t have that kind of anatomy, so to them it was just a practical shape. To humans—and Mach especially—it appeared as though they were sitting around a pair of particularly bulbous testicles. Probably better there than at the other end, he thought.

  “Don’t you dare mention it,” Morgan said out the side of his mouth.

  Mach could see the beginning of a smile on the old man’s face. Even being a war veteran and the president of a massive empire didn’t make one immune to a good dick joke. But for the sake of brevity, Mach kept quiet.

  “Is this the agent?” The first vestan said. Morgan introduced him as Desolt. He was the younger and shorter of the two aliens and wore a cream robe that contrasted brilliantly against his dark skin.