The ship was ginormous any way you looked at it. Before he could focus in on any detail, Bloom screamed and turned his head. For a split second, Mach saw the collapsing wormhole, a swirling ball of orange and black colors, sucking in anything close to it. The rear of the ship broke away from it and away from the field of view.
The recording became static as the mechanic’s scream was cut off by the radiation in the wormhole.
Mach stood in stunned silence.
Morgan reappeared in the hologram above his wrist. “Well?”
“Well… I think that’s all kinds of madness. That was no ship of the Axis.”
“Of course it wasn’t. It’s the Atlantis ship. You know it; I know it; that poor sod Ethan Bloom knew it. As quick as it arrived and destroyed the orbital, it was gone, vanished, like the damned stories of old. It’s real, Mach, the damned ship is real. And we want you to find it before it destroys anything else.”
“Why me? Why not send one of your CW destroyers after it?”
“I wish it were that simple. Dealings with the Axis have become difficult. The treaty is on the verge of collapse and they’re massing forces on three fronts: the horans to the north, vestans to the east, and lacterns to the south. All our resources are being geared up for a potential war. We cannot afford to go after this thing, and…”
He broke away, but Mach knew what he was going to say. “I’m the only one mad enough to do something so stupid? It’s essentially a suicide mission, isn’t it?”
“I don’t think the odds are good, let me put it that way. We want you to find the ship, board it, and disable it. It’d be a huge coup for the CW if we could capture it and reverse-engineer the tech. You’d be doing the Salus Sphere a huge favor, Mach. This is your way back into the fold. A way to clear your name.”
“How much?” he asked, not caring about clearing his name or doing the CW any favors. He was way beyond that now.
“What do you mean?” Morgan asked.
“How much will I be paid to do this? I’m only interested in cash. And seeing as your lot have forced my hand with this crazy fine, I want to make sure that I enjoy my last few months or years while I go after a myth.”
“We’re cleared to offer three million eros, a CW ship and crew.”
“No,” Mach. “I won’t work with a CW crew. If I’m doing this, I want my fine cleared, the three million on top, and a choice of my own crew. My terms are non-negotiable. I’d rather be sent to Summanus than do this for anything less.”
The shadowed ‘hold’ image replaced Morgan’s face as he was probably delivering Mach’s terms to his superiors. They must be desperate, Mach thought, if they had come to him. Just how big was the Axis threat if they couldn’t even spare one destroyer from their fleet of twenty thousand?
Morgan returned. “We agree to your terms. A CW ship will pick you up tomorrow. Your fine will be cleared, and half the funds will be deposited into an escrow account to pay for your crew. Who do you have in mind, and will it take you long to mobilize?”
“You leave the crew choice to me, Morgan and I’ll do this mission for you.”
“Fine, it’s probably better I don’t know anyway.”
This time Morgan gave Mach a genuine smile, reminding him of the old days when they had patrolled the NCZ together. They had some good times until the Situation.
“Okay, Morg, consider this my formal acceptance. One way or another, I’ll find that damned ship.”
Chapter Five
Mach had to stay in the prison cell for another full day as he waited for the CW-approved ship to arrive from one of the nearby orbitals. At least he had some good food and rest during that time to consider how the hell he was going to find a mythical ship. No, he thought. It’s no longer a myth.
94-12 personally escorted him from the prison and shut the gate behind him. It was chirping about something, but Mach wasn’t paying any attention, happy to be back outside in the bright sunshine on a new day.
The dumb robot refused to give him back his Stinger, though. Mach had thought about making more of a scene, but the funds in the escrow account would be plenty for him to get re-armed.
He checked his smart-screen for the time. The shuttle wasn’t due for another two standard hours, so he decided he should perhaps book into one of the local motels to freshen up and make a plan. And the walk would do him good.
Invidia really was quite a pleasant-looking planet with its bright sunshine that wasn’t too warm or too cold, its sandy beaches that stretched for miles around its island landmasses, each one connected together via the maglev monorail system. Along each beach there were innumerable bars and eateries, all of which were owned by one crime family or another, but as long as you weren’t a dick, then you’d be fine.
Which was always Mach’s problem; sometimes he just had to be a dick for the fun of it. Life was just too dull to go about one’s business without causing a little bit of an uproar.
The traffic this morning was slow. Mach remembered it was a public holiday and sighed when he realized he’d be charge ten times the going rate for the motel room. He’d have to keep track of all these expenses if he was going to have enough for all the things he thought he might need for this mission, his crew being one of them. They would not be cheap. He had them in mind as soon as Morgan offered him the job. There were few people more daring and risk loving than him, and he knew all three of them.
He just had to find a way of getting them on side. One of them would be easy enough, but the other two… well, he’d cross that bridge when he came to it. The sidewalks were quiet with few pedestrians out doing business.
Looking over to his left and down the low cliff side, he saw where they all were: at the beach, under their graphene umbrellas, stripping off to get the famed Invidia tan. Drink and stim vendors wandered in sandals up and down the beach, doing a brisk trade.
The families would be happy; the vendors were usually the first lot of new recruits. Most of them were young kids from the ’burbs or neighboring planets looking to make their fortunes. Few ever did, really. It was one thing vending drinks and stims to the locals, it was another to deal arms and ships with unaffiliated factions. That’s where all the real money was—and bounty hunting, of course.
But then that took a special kind of stupid—the brand of stupid that Mach had made his own since leaving the stifling regulations of the CW.
Dart-shaped ships whizzed by overhead, their atmosphere fusion drives whining above a low almost subsonic bass thump. Street racers were at it again. He counted in his head, five, four, three, two, one…
The sirens of four sec-bot interceptors peeled out around him, echoing against the polymer-fronted buildings of the financial district. He smiled as the flat disks flew overhead in pursuit of the racers. They wouldn’t catch them; Mach knew those engines were non-regulation, he could tell by the smell of sulfur in the air. They would mix a potent range of powders into their fuel to max the KPH of their crafts.
A dozen or so passersby watched the proceedings before returning their gaze to their forearms, their smart-screens delivering them the news of the day. He ignored them and crossed a small bridge that arched over a bright blue stream. Below the bridge he saw the manic movements of a school of yellow piper fish frantically swimming against the tide, snapping at any smaller morsel that passed their hungry mouths.
Carlo had once used them to torture a rival.
They tasted great with fried Sol potatoes.
At the end of the bridge, he headed across a grassy area until he came to a glass building constructed to resemble a huge arc. The glass was tinted a metallic blue today, reflecting the rich tones of the cloudless sky above.
He waved his forearm across the door scanner, entering his credentials. The door opened and he walked inside, stopping at a telepresence concierge. The holographic fidesian wore a pink silk scarf around her head, covering her hairless pate. She smiled at him. “Welcome to the Invidigroup Motel, Mr. Kain, what can I do for you
today?”
Kain was his pseudonym that he used for his everyday work. An old friend of his, Kingsley, had created a hacked ID chip that allowed Mach to set up to twelve different names and identities. Perfect for staying off the grid and out of the CW’s watchful eye.
“I’d like a room for an hour,” Mach said.
“I’m afraid as it’s a holiday today, Mr. Kain, our rates have gone up. And I’ll have to charge a full day’s rate.”
“What? I’ve been here hundreds of times and booked rooms for a few hours at a time. So what, it’s a holiday, do loyal customers not get some preferential treatment?”
The downside of dealing with a telepresence meant that he couldn’t bribe it without the appropriate hacking software packages, none of which were currently available for this model of holographic concierge. It was an arms race these days between telepresence companies and hackers.
The concierge started to waffle on about rules and regulations when Mach’s attention was taken away from her by the sound of a ship landing right outside the motel on the grass. Most unusual.
Mach exited the motel and waited a second for his vision to adapt to the change of light. His prosthetic eye scanned the ship and delivered to him the recorded specifications from its public serial ID number.
Of course! A CW ship.
This one was a Phalanx-E—the E standing for executive. It measured twenty meters from bow to stern and five point five at its widest part: the two stub wings that flowed toward the stern with a slight bow curve.
It looked brand new to Mach, with its black curved windshield and spotless matte silver hull and wings. A tail fin rose ten meters into the air, the base of which held the two swollen pill-shape fusion motors. It was as dull to look at as it was to pilot. He’d used them before when he was an officer and had to escort CW dignitaries around various systems. It was barely faster than the broken ship 94-12 had sold.
With a depressed sigh, Mach walked over to the right side of the hull, knowing this was the ship Morgan had said he could use. The damnable ship didn’t even have a laser turret, let alone disruption emitters.
As he approached, the square door hissed and lowered to the ground, creating a ramp, at the top of which stood two young CW cadets, still wearing their blue training uniforms. Each one had a single white stripe attached to their left shoulder: junior pilots, otherwise known as JPs. They were the first step of the CW Defense Force ladder. This meant neither of them would have even been outside of the Salus Sphere. Their only flight-combat experience, if they even had that, would have come from the simulators at Fides Prime’s training center.
Mach shook his head in disbelief. How could Morgan have sent him two greenhorns and a glorified taxi and expect him to hunt down the biggest, baddest ship in the known universe. You wouldn’t give a hunter a blunt spoon to take down a Salusian saberdog.
The two JPs gave him a perfect salute and stepped down the ramp, their motions perfectly in sync. Mach just watched them approach, still in somewhat of a fog of disbelief.
He pondered that he could take the ship and leave the newbs behind. He’d get a decent amount of cash for a perfect condition Phalanx-E and could put that toward a decent-but-used warship that might actually have some luck at surviving the pirates in the outer rim, let alone take on the Atlantis ship.
On the exchange boards, he’d seen a fairly nice vestan Battle Budgie, named after the Axis Combine’s strategy of sending one into a battle zone to see if it died or not. They were small, tough craft that could take a beating. When put together in a squad, they could cause havoc to larger ships.
The best thing about the Budgies was their LightDrives. They could fly almost as fast as a CW destroyer, clocking in an impressive sixty-five HPL. And that was done on a modest fuel load, meaning one could get around the Salus Sphere and beyond without too much fear of a pirate interception.
“Sir, did you hear us?” the boy said, dragging Mach away from his thoughts.
“Yes, JP, I heard you. What’re your names?”
“I’m Danick, and this is Lassea, my sister.”
“It’s an honor to work with you, sir,” Lassea said, bowing slightly.
Mach hid his distaste for this formal bullshit and tried to remember that he too once was a greenhorn. “At ease, you two, this is no CW mission. I won’t need any of that formal stuff. Call me captain or Mach, your choice, it doesn’t matter to me. Now listen, the first thing we need to do is get this taxi off this grass. It belongs to one of the biggest crime families in the sector and wasn’t designed for landing ships on.”
Danick blushed and fidgeted.
Mach realized they were twins. They both stood at about five and a half feet tall and wore their dark brown hair closely cropped as per CWDF regulation. Neither featured what one would call an athletic physique. To Mach they looked malnourished with sunken cheeks and barely an ounce of fat on their bodies.
They both stared at him with blue eyes, waiting for further instructions.
“To get the ship off the grass, one has to actually fly the thing. You two are JPs, right?”
“Yes, sir, Mach, I mean Captain,” the girl said, turning on her heel and striding up the ramp. Her brother, Danick, followed. Mach shook his head and entered the craft, wondering why on the all the sins he had ever committed he had been lumbered with this pair.
Once inside the ship, Mach entered the bridge and took the central captain’s chair. The two twins sat either side of him at a pair of navigation consoles, their hands poised over the holographic haptic displays.
Mach breathed in the smell of new ship. It still had that stringent smell about it of drying glue and welded polymers. His seat was upholstered in the softest of Bora leather. He sank into its cushions and felt himself relax for a moment.
The sparse light-gray design of the CW shipbuilders brought it all back to him: his days in the force, rising up the ranks until he became an officer of his cruiser. If he hadn’t fucked things up, he would have been navigating his own destroyer by now. But then who needed a destroyer when one was going to get the Atlantis ship.
“Okay, kids, let’s get on with this, shall we? We’ll get to know each other on the two-day journey.”
Lassea turned to face him. “What is our destination, Captain?”
Mach grinned as he delivered the coordinates.
Both Lassea and Danick balked, speaking at the same time. “What? The prison planet via the Vekron Valley? But, Captain, that’s certain death through there. The horans are supplying the freedom fighters.”
“Indeed, my young charges. Is there a problem with that?”
Danick added, “The AI won’t let us plot a course that close to the NCZ.”
“He’s right, Captain,” Lassea added. “It’s too dangerous.”
“Is it now? Tell me, do you two also let your mother wipe your ass?”
The twins opened their mouths and closed them, reminding him of those yellow piper fish. “This is our ship, and now, despite my reservations, you are my crew—for now—so let me show you how to fly this waste of metal. Someone pass me a laser blaster.”
Danick reached under the console and brought out a plastic box with a yellow caution sticker on the front. He entered a code and opened the box, retrieving the laser blaster. He handed it to Mach, thankfully not barrel-first.
“You keep guns in safety cases now?” he said, raising an eyebrow.
“Protocol, Captain,” Lassea said.
“Peacetime… goddamned peacetime has turned everyone into a bunch of scared pups.”
Mach took the gun and approached Danick’s console. He rested a hand on the boy’s bony shoulder. “Is this the AI-Nav?”
The boy nodded.
Mach shot it twice. Smoke billowed from the black box, sending sirens and lights wailing in the bridge.
“Turn all that crap off,” he shouted to Lassea. The girl frantically looked for the override codes. Mach just sat back and waited.
Eventually, she
found the correct button and brought the ship back to an oasis of calm. “Right, Danick, tell me, how old are you two?”
“Nineteen, Captain.”
“Well, let’s see if you two can see twenty. Enter the coordinates for the Vekron Valley.”
“We don’t have any outboard weapons, Captain,” Lassea said, her face becoming pinched with fear and panic.
“Well, I guess we’ll have to improvise, won’t we? Now hit that launch button and let’s get going. I’ve got a crew to get and the quicker we get to Summanus, the quicker we can go after the Atlantis ship.”
“Um…” Danick said, his hand hovering over the manual flight controls.
“What is it?” Mach said.
“We don’t have credentials to enter Summanus space.”
“That thing I said about improvisation? That extends to breaking into a prison. Now launch this bird. That’s an order, boy.”
Mach grinned as Danick touched a trembling hand to the manual launch controls and set the coordinates for the Vekron Valley. One way or another, these JPs would find out if they were good enough to be on Carson Mach’s crew.
Chapter Six
With Carson Mach agreeing to take the Atlantis ship assignment, Morgan knew he had the Commonwealth’s best man on the job, not that he’d admit it to Mach’s face. The Atlantis ship’s weapons could wipe the smile away in a heartbeat.
Successful completion would achieve Morgan’s dream of captaining the flagship, returning to active service and shedding the boredom of his ceremonial position. Some people dreamed of being an admiral, for him it took away his purpose. With the Axis massing on the edge of their empire, the CW didn’t have enough combat-experienced officers on active duty.
In order to assist Mach’s mission, Morgan decided to visit the man that most people on Salus Prime considered a fruitcake. Theo Beringer worked in the Fidesian Remembrance Center, a museum dedicated to the history of the twelve planets in the Fides solar system. Beringer was obsessed with the Atlantis ship.
Carson Mach 1: The Atlantis Ship Page 4
