Galactic - Ten Book Space Opera Sci-Fi Boxset Page 4

  “Sentencing will begin this afternoon in lieu of payment.”

  “This is madness! No one on Invidia has ever faced charges. We can work something out, I’m sure. A payment plan perhaps? Let me talk with the new warden.”

  Mach could have sworn that 94-12 smiled as he said so very cheerily, “I am the new warden. I’ll return in one hour to see if you have found the funds required for your fine. Good day, Carson Mach.”

  The vid-screen switched off just as Mach ripped the bed plank from the wall and threw it against the screen. The plank bounced off without harming the surface and clattered to the floor, knocking over the shit-pan.

  “Just great,” he yelled, slapping his palm against the wall.

  This was not what he had expected at all.

  He tried to call someone, but his smart-screen wouldn’t connect. They’d updated the security protocols, closing the loophole in the system he had often used to get in touch with Carlo or other heads of families.

  He’d need to find a new way out, hack into the system, but that would take far longer than the one hour that 94-12 had given him. There was no way he could cover the fine. In his off-planet account, he had just over nine hundred grand, and that was the sum of everything now that his ship had been reprocessed and sold on.

  A slight comfort came to him as he thought about the ship’s various problems that he’d managed to hide from the dock inspection during his last authentication. Whoever had bought it would soon realize the fusion motors were shot and the LightDrive barely functioned below two hundred HPL—hours per light-year—making it possibly the slowest FTL ship in the Salus Sphere and a prime target for raiders and pirates.

  He considered himself lucky 94-12 had gotten as much as he did for it.

  But it still didn’t help him out of this particular hole.

  There were few options left open to him. In time he may be able to hack some comms to Carlo and get a loan, or there was the option of breaking out, though that seemed as likely as busting someone out of Summanus, which to his knowledge had never been done.

  Perhaps if he could convince 94-12 to come and see him personally, he could try to override its functions… As that idea started to coalesce, his smart-screen around his forearm buzzed with an incoming notification.

  “Whoa…” he said, whistling as he looked at his screen and saw who it was calling him—Admiral Morgan.

  They hadn’t spoken in at least three or four years. At one time, Mach and Morgan were like father and son, the latter was his commanding officer during Mach’s entire career. Their unit had the highest kill and success rate of any CW military unit.

  Until the Situation happened and Mach was thrown out of the force.

  Morgan was then promoted to the admiralty and oversaw the naval fleet. Easy job these days, though, considering the peacetime. Mach always viewed it as a way for the CW hierarchy to keep Morgan out of trouble.

  He was a hero to the home Sol System for his efforts during the war when Earth and Mars were on the precipice of horan control. If it wasn’t for Morgan, the system would have fallen and humanity’s first home would be no more than a slave world.

  Mach, however, didn’t have such heroics to keep him nice and safe in a cushy role upstairs, so why, after all this time, would Morgan be calling him now? Given the changes to the warden and the fine system, it didn’t take a genius to realize these events were linked.

  The notification bleeped again. Mach tapped his finger on the screen, accepting the call. A hologram image of Admiral Morgan appeared above his screen.

  “Well, well,” Mach said. “It’s the old man. How are you doing?”

  He looked old, Mach thought. Not just regular old, but tired, worn out… as though lacking in vitality. It appeared a life in the pen-pushing admiralty wasn’t his kind of thing after all. The wrinkles around his eyes were deeper, craggy. His eyes were deeper set and shadowed by a low brow.

  “You look like you’ve had an interesting day,” Morgan said, an uneasy smile on his face that reminded Mach of those days when his lovers inevitably delivered their speech about how much they loved him and that’s why they had to leave.

  “It’s something bad, ain’t it, Morg?”

  The older man nodded his head.

  “We didn’t want to have to do this, but we had little choice. You wouldn’t have agreed otherwise, I’m sure of it. I know your feelings toward the CW Defense Force, and if we just came to you asking for help, you would quite rightly tell us to go ram our heads up our collective asses.”

  “You’re quite the mind reader these days, old friend. So you’re telling me that you arranged all this? The removal of the warden, the ridiculous fine?”

  “I’m afraid so.”

  “You know,” Mach said, shaking his head with disappointment. “Would it have killed you to have put our friendship, our history first, and give me a heads-up? At least have given me a choice. You know I can’t afford that fine.”

  “Yeah, I know. We know.”

  “And who exactly is we?” Mach asked. He leaned against the wall and dropped his arm for a moment. He was still hurting from his beating the night before.

  “Are you still there, Mach?”

  “Yeah, I’m still here. My arm hurts is all. So you better just get on with it. What do your bastard superiors want with me this time? Some crime they want to pin on me? A suicide mission into the NCZ?” The NCZ—Non-Combat Zone—was the ring around the Salus Sphere that the treaty between the Commonwealth and the Axis Combine listed as a safety zone.

  In truth, it had become a freeway for lawlessness. Occasionally, the CW would send out a number of scientific ships to scan some sector of space for the Hoffberg Protocol, the project to identify habitable planets outside of the Salus Sphere and the areas under the control of the Axis Combine.

  “None of that,” Morgan said, with what Mach thought was a slight tremble in his voice. Mach couldn’t tell if it was fear, nerves, or something else. He raised his arm to stare into the holographic eyes of his old friend.

  “So what is it? What do you want me for?”

  Morgan looked away for a moment, appeared to give someone a nod and returned to Mach. “Orbital Station Forty is no more.”

  Mach racked his brains. It had been quite a while since he had memorized all the CW orbitals and various stations. “Is that the one above Retsina?”

  “It was,” Morgan said.

  The two words echoed in Mach’s mind, birthing a hundred ideas and consequences. “War?” he uttered. “An Axis attack?” It made sense, really. Retsina was a small planet on the very edge of the Salus Sphere. The orbital provided secure communications and defensive network systems. These stations created a first line of defense against any potential attack from the Axis and covered the entire collection of CW planets.

  “Not an Axis attack, no, something far more troubling.”

  “Just spit it out, old man. I’m running out of time here. Just tell me, what the hell’s happened and what do I need to do in order to get out of here.”

  “Just one thing,” Morgan said, looking at Mach directly so their eyes locked. “You must find, and disable… the Atlantis Ship.”

  At first Mach laughed, thinking Morgan was yanking his chain, but the seriousness with which the words were spoken told Mach he was deadly serious. The Atlantis ship was just a myth; everyone knew that. It was like the ghost ships of old. Tired, drunk, scared sailors would often see things in the fog and attribute it to a dread ship sailed by ghosts. The Atlantis ship was just the same thing.

  Mach had been in deep space enough to know the human mind often saw all kinds of weird shit out there. When the CW pushed its crew hard, especially during the conflicts with the Axis, people got stressed, saw things that weren’t there.

  The idea of this Atlantis ship just appearing and disappearing while leaving a wake of destruction behind was just the fever dreams of the scared or the insane. The myth had been around ever since humanity first settled
a colony on Mars.

  “Did you hear me, Mach?”

  “Yeah, I heard you. I was just wondering what you’ve been drinking recently. Or have you taken to enjoying the benefits of stims in your old age?”

  “Dammit, Mach, I’m serious. We received a distress signal earlier just before the ship arrived and obliterated the station. We have a snippet of video too, if you don’t believe. An Ethan Bloom, one of the mechanics, managed to record a few seconds before he, along with most of the orbital, was sucked into the Atlantis ship’s closing wormhole.”

  Mach wanted to dispute it, say it was all a load of crap, but Morgan’s hologram changed to a 3D video of the recording. All Mach could see was floating debris passing over the head of Bloom’s helmet cam. When the mechanic looked up, the great looming shape of a dark ship completely filled the view. The thing looked… ancient was the only word Mach could come up with. It was of a design the likes of which he’d never seen before.

  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 returni
ng 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.