Galactic - Ten Book Space Opera Sci-Fi Boxset Page 22

  A bead of sweat tracked slowly down his forehead and dripped to the table.

  Seazza, 6160, and the Three waited with bated breath.

  Morgan closed his eyes and pressed his thumb against the treaty.

  “Good,” 6160 said. “We’ll handle the other business.”

  The Three stood and took it in turns to shake Morgan’s hand. “We’re happy to join the CW,” they said. “We’ll announce it to our people in a few hours. We’ll recall our ships from Axis command. You did the right thing, Admiral.”

  He wasn’t so sure… He trusted Mach implicitly, but if he couldn’t find the Atlantis ship now, the treaty would fail, and he’d have the blood of many on his hands.

  Chapter Twenty-Nine

  “We’re coming out of LD,” Mach said. He leaned forward in his chair, looking closer at the holoscreen in front of him, eager to see their prey.

  Hunting the Atlantis ship reminded him of the days he would go hunting for perillion with Morgan. Mach was just a teenager back then, but those days and nights, stalking the great perillion lizards through the jungle, remained with him forever—the thrill of the chase, the adrenaline rush when he caught sight of his quarry.

  The difference now, though, was that the Atlantis ship was infinitely more dangerous a target—and far more elusive.

  Babcock and Squid entered the bridge and took a position to Mach’s right. Adira and Sanchez were stationed either side, in control of their weapons. Danick was resting after a long shift during the L-jump. Lassea had taken over navigational duties.

  She yawned and looked up at the holoscreen. “… and we’re out of the L-jump,” she said. The ship groaned as its hull resettled after the high intensity of an FTL jump. “Engaging Gamma Drive,” Lassea said.

  The ship rocked once, twice, and settled on course with a low hum, the fusion crystals now perfectly aligned. “Your new friend did a fine job,” Mach said to Babcock.

  “She’s fascinating,” the old man said. “Really knows her way around a fusion array. I knew the vestans were advanced, but she really showed me things I never knew were possible with such a drive setup. We’re blessed to have someone like her onboard.”

  Sanchez looked up at Babcock with a lecherous smile. “She’s not a bad looker either, right, Babs?”

  “Trust you to go to that,” Mach said. “Leave ’em alone, and concentrate on your weapons. We should be coming in on the ship any minute.”

  Sanchez saluted him and returned his focus to his control station.

  “Any sign of its signature signal?” Adira said.

  “Yes,” Squid replied, hovering close to her. She lifted a hand to swat it away, but it anticipated her movement and drifted away with surprising agility. “I’ll forward it to the holoscreen.”

  “We tracked it all the way through the L-jump,” Babcock said. “The signal is interesting in that it changes frequency seemingly at random, but I’m sure there’s an algorithm there somewhere that dictates it.”

  Mach enlarged the view on the screen. Their cameras rotated toward the signal’s direction. It was a very narrow beam, so they got an accurate lock on their target. “Enlarge two hundred percent,” Mach said.

  The ship’s AI responded.

  Within the vast expanse of utter blackness, Mach could see a pinprick of orange light. “There,” he said, pointing. “That’s the damn ship. Lassea, full power to the Gamma Drive. We’re just two AUs from it. We might be able to catch up before it… wait, it’s—”

  “Preparing a wormhole,” Adira said, glancing up at the screen. “That orange light is not coming from its engines. It looks just like the wormholes it uses to travel. It’s jumping again already.”

  The two aliens stepped onto the bridge and considered the view on the holoscreen. “We’re too late,” the elder of the two said. “We should try to intercept.”

  “That’d be great in theory,” Mach snapped. “If we knew where the fucking thing was going. Do you two have ideas? What about the signal… Could you help figure that out?”

  “We could try.”

  They just stood there looking at Mach, their expressions impossible to determine.

  “We don’t have time,” Babcock added. “We’ll have to jump through the wormhole again and see if we can gain some distance on it. Lassea, could you L-jump us through it from here?”

  The JP ran some calculations and turned round to face Mach. “It’s theoretically possible, I suppose, but no one has L-jumped to a specific point this close. We could miss the wormhole altogether. I don’t like the chances of coming out of an L-jump that close to a gravitational anomaly. We could severely damage the ship.”

  “I’m game for this if anyone else is,” Adira said with a bored tone to her voice. “All this chasing around and not shooting anything is getting real old.”

  “Right on,” Sanchez said. “Let’s just do it. We can’t risk letting the Atlantis ship getting to a strategically dangerous area in the CW. We’re so close.”

  Mach thought about it. They’d taken a lot of risks up until now, but each time it had paid off. He had spent long enough gambling to know that kind of luck would run out sooner than later, and if it did… well, that could be final, for all of them.

  But it was also a gamble to let the Atlantis ship get too far from them.

  If they didn’t follow it, then they could lose another orbital, or worse.

  The crew was waiting for his decision.

  “Do it,” he said to Lassea. “We’re L-jumping through the wormhole.”

  She just swallowed and returned to her console to enter the commands. Babcock and the two aliens looked at the holoscreen with a tense gaze. Sanchez and Adira gave him a curt nod each, telling him he had made the right decision. He just hoped their confidence in him wasn’t misplaced.

  Lassea counted them down. “Engaging the LD in three… two… one…”

  The ship shuddered as the engines kicked in. The light around them twisted before the holoscreen faded to black. Lassea ran her hands across the holocontrols. “We’re heading for the wormhole, course is fine and…. Wait, it’s changed, the coordinates are different.” Lassea’s voice rose an octave with panic. Babcock dashed across the bridge to her. He bent his head to read the screen. “She’s right; the ship has changed course.”

  “What?” Mach said, standing out of his chair. “How? Where the hell is it going?”

  Babcock ran a hand over his face and locked eyes with Mach. “It’s set a course for… Larunda.”

  “No way,” Mach said. “How? Only a handful of people know the coordinates to there.”

  “It’s a close jump,” Lassea added. “What’s Larunda?”

  Adira answered for Mach. “It’s the heart of the CW intelligence. Fides Prime is the public capital, but Larunda is the real seat of power, and the place that the entire Salus Sphere’s safety hinges on. If that orbital is destroyed…” Adira turned to look at the aliens. Mach had noticed their interest and their silence too.

  “Change course, now,” Mach said.

  Both Lassea and Babcock tried, but the ship wouldn’t respond. “We’ve got no control; we’ve been locked out,” Lassea said. Mach tried to connect to the ship’s AI with his smart-screen, but his access was refused.

  NO ACCESS flashed on his screen.

  Lassea was correct; he and the rest of his crew were no longer in charge of the Intrepid. But neither was the AI. That had gone offline. There was something else, and it didn’t take a genius to work out who the likely culprit was.

  He turned to the two aliens, who had remained conspicuous by their silence.

  “It’s you two, isn’t it?”

  They just blinked at him, feigning ignorance, but they tensed and shifted, now looking far more menacing than they had before. They whispered something to each other in their own language.

  Mach felt disgusted that he’d let these creatures onto his ship, how they had so easily duped him. Danick and Tulula came rushing onto the bridge, blo
cking the main corridor. The two aliens spoke to each other with their weird, breathy language of theirs. The one on the right, named Kaskas, opened its third eye and glared at Danick, then Mach.

  Its friend, Daskell, launched toward Sanchez, reaching out with its huge, muscular arms. Sanchez, still sitting at his console, yelled with surprise as he received the full momentum of the alien. The two of them rolled over the console and wrestled on the floor to the far left of the bridge. They had fallen down to the perimeter walkway, the barrier obscuring Mach’s vision.

  Kaskas made a deep hissing noise to Mach’s right.

  Mach stood up and drew a laser pistol from his hip holster, but he wasn’t quite quick enough, Kaskas’ attack far quicker than he had anticipated.

  Danick didn’t know what to do. He barely had time to react when the tartarun grabbed him by the shoulders and flung him over its great rounded back. The force knocked Tulula against the bulkhead. Danick slammed to the floor in the middle of the bridge with a hard thud and a snapping sound. His back arched up, his mouth stretched in a breathless rictus of pain.

  Mach aimed for the alien and fired. The laser bolt flew wide of Kaskas, the beast spinning and ducking out of the way. A flash of blue light came from the hull, but the laser wasn’t powerful enough to punch a hole. If it did, while they were in an L-jump, they’d all be liquidized in a moment.

  With a leap, Mach jumped from his elevated central position to the main floor of the bridge. He brought his gun up and aimed for the creature’s back. He fired. The laser struck an armored section near its shoulder blade.

  The shot had little effect; it leapt forward toward Danick’s prone, writhing form. Adira, to the right of it, spun out of her chair, drawing her knife, but the tartarun’s right arm flew out, striking her in the ribs.

  Adira collapsed against her chair with a scream.

  Before Mach could off another shot, Kaskas slammed its great bony fists down onto Danick’s head, crushing the poor kid’s skull with a terrible squelching sound.

  Lassea screamed a terrible wail as she watched on. She fell to her knees, her arms out to Kaskas as though begging for it to take back what it had just done, but the alien just looked up at her and spoke in its gusting voice. Standing tall, it swatted Squid from the air and lurched toward Babcock, who had backed away.

  “Adira, you okay?” Mach said, lifting her to her feet.

  Her face was screwed up in a mask of anguish and pure hatred. She and Mach turned their attentions to Kaskas. Lassea had fallen onto her back and was scrabbling back away from it as it stalked her.

  Mach emptied the laser pistol into the alien’s back. Only one of the four shots seemed to have any effect. A patch of dark gray skin bubbled and popped. A yellow-green puss-like substance oozed out.

  Kaskas roared and turned to face Mach. It flung out its fists, the knuckles of which were extended into sharpened daggers of bone. Mach leaned back away from the strike, the air of the swiping fist blowing against his bare neck.

  Adira was already on the move when Mach rebalanced and prepared to attack.

  Someone to the left of the bridge, another alien voice, yelled out. Mach looked over and saw Sanchez stagger up to his feet, his face covered in human blood and the yellow-green substance. He had ripped a piece of the railing away and raised the sharpened pole high before slamming it down into Daskell’s chest.

  Kaskas spun when it heard its ally scream its final breath.

  That was the opportunity Mach and Adira needed. Adira tackled it around its thick legs, driving her dagger deep into the rear where its thick tendons connected its muscles.

  Under the attack, Kaskas collapsed to one knee. It grabbed Adira by the back of her neck and flung her away. Her back struck the corner of her console. Mach drew his old blade from his GraphTech fatigues and launched a kick that connected with Kaskas’ head. His boot rammed into its right eye.

  He felt the squishy organ pop under the heel of his boot. The force knocked Kaskas back, its arms flailing. Lassea got to her feet. Sanchez approached, ready to join the fight, but the young JP grabbed the jagged pole from his hands and while Mach wrestled with Kaskas, Lassea rammed the pole down, right into the ridged forehead of the alien.

  The beast gasped once, its lips pulled back over its thick, powerful teeth. Its chest no longer rose or fell. Mach’s heart, however, continued to bang against his chest. He slumped off the creature and grabbed Adira. The two of them held each other for a moment to catch their breath.

  Sanchez stood over Mach and held out his hand. Mach took it and was pulled up to his feet. He surveyed the wreckage of the fight. Tulula was still crumpled and unconscious. The two aliens were dead… as was the poor kid, Danick.

  Adira rubbed her ribs. Mach helped her to her feet.

  “Everyone else okay?” he asked and got stunned nods in return. Babcock leaned against Lassea’s console. Although he hadn’t been in the struggle, the shock must have taken its toll on his old body.

  “Lassea,” Mach said, approaching her and removing her hands from the pole now firmly embedded into the dead alien. “It’s over. It’s dead. You’re okay.”

  The girl let out a whimper and the tears flowed. She stepped away from the alien and knelt by the side of Danick’s body. Huddling over him, she cradled his head and wept. Mach knelt beside her and put his arm around her shoulder. She turned to him, burying her head into the crook of his shoulder.

  “It’s okay,” Mach said. “Let it all out. You’re safe now.”

  “He was a good kid,” Sanchez said. “Brave.”

  Adira added, “I had grown to like him. I will miss him.”

  Babcock just shook his head and ran a hand over his sweat-drenched face. “I should have known,” he croaked. “I should have seen this coming, how could I let these… things, get this far without me suspecting something?”

  No one said anything in response; there was nothing to say. They had all been duped. It was clear to Mach now what the tartaruns had planned to do: control the now-upgraded Intrepid to take out the Larunda Orbital while the Atlantis ship was on its way to god knows where to carry out more of their attacks.

  Lassea’s body became still, her sobs quieting to deep breaths. Mach stood and lifted her to her feet. He held her away from him and lowered his head to get eye contact. “You can’t blame yourself for this,” he said. “I know what it’s like to lose someone so close to you. You’ll grieve for him, blame yourself, then blame others, but ultimately, you’ll come to the realization that nothing could have stopped this and that for your brother’s memory, you’ll need to go on, make him proud, but for now, you don’t need to do anything. We’re here for you, okay? Whatever you want, we’ll take care of you.”

  “He’s right,” Sanchez said, stepping toward the girl and wrapping his big arm around her small shoulders. “You’ve got us, for whatever you want to do.”

  Lassea dipped her head and stared at her brother for a moment, then looked up to Mach then Sanchez, then Babcock, grabbing each person’s attention. “I want to go on,” she said, her voice warbling with shock and a million other emotions that no doubt ran through her. “I want to stop the Atlantis ship. I’ll grieve for Danick later. He would want me to complete the mission. He was always like that—duty before anything else. It’s what makes him… made him who he was.”

  “Okay,” Mach said, “let’s get organized, then. Adira, can you check on Tulula, make sure she’s not hurt.”

  “Sure,” Adira said with a quick salute, bringing a sense of order to things. She quickly stepped over to Tulula and carefully lifted her head and brought her round. While Adira was talking with her, bringing her up to speed, Mach turned to Babcock.

  “Kingsley, I want you and Squid to find a way of getting control of the ship.”

  “We’re on it,” the old engineer said.

  Sanchez let Lassea go and lowered to his haunches. He picked over Kaskas’ dead body, rifling through its many pockets and items attached about it. Using
his old hunting knife, Sanchez cut open the fabric of the dark gray uniform, splitting the pockets so that varied objects fell out.

  Mach joined Sanchez’s search. There was nothing of much interest to begin with, the creature only having a few trinkets and coins from its home world, but then as Sanchez emptied a pocket attached to its pants leg, Mach saw something interesting: a five-centimeter-long obsidian black rectangle. It was no more than a few millimeters thick. It was cool to the touch and seemed to be made of some kind of metal. On one edge were two square holes that looked like ports.

  “Kingsley, what do you make of this?” Mach said.

  The engineer and Squid approached and looked down at the object in Mach’s hand. “Could be some kind of storage device,” Babcock said. “I can wire it up and see if we can get anything off it.”

  “Good,” Mach said. “Do that.”

  “I’ll check the other bastard.” Sanchez grunted as he stood up and approached Daskell’s body.

  “Squid,” Babcock ordered. “Can you try to find out what kind of software patch is keeping us out of the system while I figure out an interface for this thing?”

  “Of course, sir,” Squid chirped, rising to head height and flying out of the bridge, presumably to the main computer core of the ship.

  “I can help with that,” Tulula said from the corridor entrance. Adira had helped her to her feet, and apart from looking dizzy, she seemed okay. “I worked on interfaces and interconnects back on Vesta.”

  “The priority must be the ship’s control,” Mach said. “Can you all work together on that first before we start getting into the alien tech? We can’t afford to delay. The longer we wait, the closer we’re getting to Larunda.”

  Lassea turned to her console and punched in a few commands. “I’m getting no response, but the logs say we’re due to reach our destination in less than an hour.”

  “That’s the deadline, then, everyone,” Mach said. “Sanchez, Adira, take the bodies to the stasis bay. We can inspect them further another time. Kingsley, can you still track the Atlantis ship’s signals without use of the Intrepid’s radios?