The Terminal War: A Carson Mach Space Opera

by A. C. Hadfield

  That suited Mach down to the ground, because right there was the original communication channel, telling him that he was right and that this was a comms system. Wasting no more time, he punched in his passphrase that he and Morgan had used to communicate securely back in the Century War, and sent a call request to the president.

  It took a minute or so, and all the while the sounds of baying protos grew louder as they were continuing to smash into the outer access panel, trying to get the tasty treats that hid inside.

  “Mach?” a voice said, the signal crackling but otherwise strong and clear.

  “Yeah, it’s me, Morgan. Listen, there’s very little time to explain, only that I know you sent us here with the knowledge we wouldn’t be coming back, but things have changed.”

  “Changed how?” he said, not even bothering to refute the allegation.

  “It’s seriously fucked up here. The Guardians are dead, and we’re trying to get the Saviors off the planet.” He continued telling Morgan everything that had happened and what a shitty situation they were in now.

  “I’m patching your coordinates through to Babcock,” Morgan said. “I’ll have them come and get you; they’re not far away. Things have escalated out here too.”

  “How so?” Mach asked.

  Adira was listening in and couldn’t hide the disgust on her face as though Morgan’s very voice was making the bile rise in her gut.

  “War, Mach, we’re going to war. The Axis is building up a big force. It’s not going to end well, but we can still get you lot off Terminus. Are the Saviors safe?”

  “For now,” Mach added. “Beringer, Adira, and me… that’s another matter. You fucking let us come here to die, you bastard,” Mach said, unable to hold it in any longer.

  “I know,” Morgan said, no hint of an apology. “We’ll talk about it when you’re safe. Do what you can to hold out for another few hours. The Intrepid is on its way. I need to go; the council is forming. Good luck, Bleach.”

  Mach swore at the dead air, hating the casual use of a nickname he never wanted. The outer access panel finally gave in to the onslaught, clanging like a church bell. The door to the comms room was the protos’ next target, the metal surface vibrating with each strike, making Mach feel like a fish trapped in a barrel.

  He and Adira shared a grim expression.

  “A few hours?” she asked.

  “A few hours,” Mach said and cringed every time the door buckled against the protos’ continued attack. He doubted it would hold for a few minutes. But at least his crew was on the way. That was something, some sliver of hope, albeit an incredibly thin sliver.

  Chapter 20

  Babcock filtered the encapsulated communications data again. Nothing unusual showed up in the payload or buffers. The only thing he could think of trying now was simulating the transmissions in the hope that something, anything, leaped from the screen to give them a clue about the mole.

  Sanchez, who refused to go to his bunk, slumped in his seat and snored. Nigel kept peering over at the big hunter as if he had some terminal condition. Vestans didn’t make a sound when they rested, and this was probably a new experience for the gunner.

  “Coming out of L-jump in five minutes,” Adira said from the front of the bridge.

  Babcock acknowledged her with a raised thumb and continued to configure two dummy endpoints in the emulation environment Squid Three created. He input all ingress and egress addresses, loaded the data and activated the simulation.

  Messages streamed across the console screen. Babcock slowed the rate to a readable level and watched the transmission layer.

  Nothing out of the ordinary happened at first. The round-trip times were all good. Occasional error correction messages went back and forth to correct the odd corrupted byte. It appeared this was another dead end.

  “She’s gonna make it,” Tulula said through the bridge speakers.

  Tulula was monitoring the fusion drive on the engineering deck. They were running hot after the Axis laser had hit the outer engine housing. The Intrepid remained at top speed, although she said another long jump was out of the question until they carried out repairs.

  “Never doubted it,” Babcock replied.

  Lassea glanced over her shoulder at him, looking less convinced. For the last two hours, the smooth whine had been punctuated by grinding roars.

  Squid Three chirped and extended its tentacles. Babcock stopped the simulation and reversed it to a point that showed an extra twenty bytes of data after the header of a message from the Chester. The Operations Center receiver dismissed it during the error correction phase.

  It was too clean to be corruption. Babcock filtered all messages from the Chester and found the anomaly five more times. He extracted the data from the mid-flow simulation and transferred it to his decryption tool.

  The bytes were encoded with second-generation horan cryptography, which would look like scrambled data if inserted into an allied stream. This had to be inserted post-transmission by a link tap on the ship. Somebody on board had deep technical knowledge and access to the comms cables running to the roof-mounted antennas.

  With satisfaction, Babcock smiled. Now that the mole was confirmed, it had to identify them.

  Second-gen horan crypto was fairly easy to crack, although Babcock admired the solution. All other forms of encoding used horan and lactern symbols and would’ve given the game away. This was old-school espionage and something the Commonwealth never expected.

  Six decrypted messages appeared on the screen. Three reported a vestan shuttle’s movements from a probe. The final coordinates were Terminus. The rest reported CW Fleet movements, including the patrol to Orbital Hibock and the name of the Intrepid.

  The perpetrator signed off on two messages. Steros.

  Babcock slammed his fist on the console. He should’ve known it. The young captain’s behavior was a classic double bluff. Steros drew attention to himself because it would lead any suspicion away from him.

  “Problem?” Lassea asked.

  “We’ve got our man,” Babcock said. He transferred the messages to a bridge screen above the young pilot.

  “What the hell?” she said. “Why?”

  “I suspect he’s got an axe to grind over his father. Looks like he took the nuclear option and sold us out.”

  “That’s some axe.” Lassea let out a deep breath and returned to the holocontrols. “Switching to gamma drive in one minute. I can’t believe that treacherous piece of shit.”

  Her words had the effect of an alarm clock on Sanchez. The big hunter bolted in his chair and blinked. “Who is?”

  “Steros,” Babcock said and jutted his chin toward the on-screen messages.

  Sanchez’s eyes slowly narrowed, and he bared his teeth. “That little shit. I want first shot if the Chester comes to Terminus.”

  The fusion drive decreased in tone and the low hum of the gamma drive kicked in. No other ships registered on the scanner. Babcock sat back in the captain’s chair and looked at the distant image of Terminus.

  The ice planet, highlighted by a distant weak sun, had a small dark square in its center. That was an obvious place to land and find Mach, Adira, and Beringer.

  Before that, Morgan had to be informed about the mole. Babcock activated the ansible channel and called the government headquarters on Fides Prime.

  This time, the receptionist and secretary were a lot more urgent, and within thirty seconds he was patched through to the president’s office.

  “Babs, do you have good news?” Morgan asked.

  “Depends on what you call good news. Your mole is none other than Captain Steros.”

  Morgan grunted. “Like father, like son. Tralis’ fleet is already on their way. I’ll let him deal with it.”

  “Sanchez wants first shot. That’ll be reward enough for our work.”

  “Sorry, it’s an internal matter, but you won’t be seeing Steros again,” Morgan coldly replied. The sound of tapping echoed down the link. �
��Mach’s established comms on Terminus and needs your help with a collection. I’ve sent over the frequency and code. Good luck.”

  “Do we need luck?”

  “You’d better speak to Mach. Out.”

  The bridge door hissed open. Tulula bounded in and moved straight toward the viewscreen. Nigel sprang from his chair at the laser controls and joined her.

  “First time you’ve seen it?” Lassea asked.

  “Yes,” Nigel replied. “My ancestors are here, along with generations of the finest vestan minds. It’s a special—”

  “Fuck this mumbo jumbo,” Sanchez interrupted. “Call Mach for a sitrep. Let’s collect and get the hell out of here before the Axis show up.”

  Babcock nodded in agreement. He usually gave deep consideration to alien cultural feelings, but it had its limits. With over a hundred enemy ships on the way and a potential war impending outside of Terminus’ atmosphere, he had no intention of hanging around.

  Tulula led Nigel back to the lasers.

  Squid Three had already transferred Morgan’s information to the comms system. Babcock hit the transmit symbol on the arm of his chair. “Mach, can you hear me?”

  “Babs? Is that you?”

  “It’s me all right, old friend. Listen, things are heating up here. Are you three okay down there?”

  Static interrupted by Babcock got the gist. It sounded like Mach had got himself into a kind of hell—again. “Listen, we’re about two hours away. You get yourself somewhere safe and don’t do anything stupid.”

  “Stupid is what I do best, Babs, now get your asses in gear. Two hours might not be soon enough.”

  With that, the line went dead, and Babcock turned his attention back to the ship’s controls. He felt useless at that moment, unable to do anything but wait until they arrived. He would remain calm and keep the crew focused. He didn’t need anyone getting overly excited and making some fool mistake.

  “Keep her steady and keep her fast,” Babcock said. “We’ve got crew to save.”

  He sat back and brooded over what was coming next and waited out each long minute of their journey to Terminus.

  “Coming out of the L-jump,” Lassea said, but Babcock was already ahead of her, watching their trajectory tick down on the main screen ahead of him. Every nerve and muscle pulled taut as he messaged Mach a few times to ensure he was still alive. The sounds Babcock heard from somewhere beyond Mach’s position sent a chill through his bones.

  The next stage was a blur to him. He brought up the view on the screen as the Intrepid’s engines defied the odds and brought them to Terminus ahead of the Axis fleet without blowing up along the way.

  The small ice planet hung there in the middle of the dark space, it’s tiny, dying sun barely giving it any warmth. “Bring us down to the surface,” Babcock said.

  Using a set of security protocols he had received from the vestan council, Babcock programmed a radio transmission to allow their safe passage through the planet’s outer security system.

  The ship roared down toward the planet, the crew busy around their consoles, maintaining their rapid approach. “The entry’s going to be rough,” Tulula said, consulting her scanning results.

  “So be it,” Babcock said.

  And Tulula was right.

  The entry sounded as if the Axis fleet had arrived and were bombarding them with cannons, yet the incredible engineering of the experimental vestan ship held together and even defied all attempts at stopping it.

  They flew through the sky like the mythical Garuda, the wings of the Intrepid now coming in to slice through the atmosphere and bring them down to Mach’s coordinates.

  “There it is,” Tulula said, her voice hushed. She stood for a moment just staring at the video screen, taking in the pinnacle of her species’ culture and technological wisdom. Nigel too stood transfixed.

  Babcock, however, had no such reverie. He’d seen dozens of alien home worlds and for him they were all alike—a repository of times past, of lessons gone unlearned. For all the beauty of the Garden of Remembrance and the central building that held Mach hostage, there was the dark, swarming evidence of the vestans’ hubris: monsters.

  “What the hell are they?” Lassea asked.

  Their shapes resolved as the Intrepid came closer and eventually landed on a crest of a hill a quarter of a klick from Mach’s position.

  The debris and squat, rectangular crypts made it impossible for them to get closer.

  “They’re… us,” Tulula said, horror etched on her face. “Us before we were…”

  She turned away and shared a look and an expression with Nigel that Babcock couldn’t begin to understand. The two of them slumped their shoulders and made a kind of whimpering noise.

  For some reason, it annoyed Babcock. Sentimentality was not on the agenda right now. “Tulula,” he snapped. “I know this is difficult for you and Nigel, but right now there are your Saviors waiting to be saved. I want you to pilot the drone fighters and get Beringer and the Saviors’ shuttle into the cargo bay. Now.”

  “Right away, Captain,” she said with no malice in her words.

  “Lassea,” Babcock said, “I want you to keep the engines running. As soon as we’ve arranged an away party and got the drones in the air, I want you to hover fifty meters off the ground. We don’t want them things out there swarming all over us like fleas on a dead dog.”

  “On it, Captain,” Lassea said, snapping a curt salute and turning back to her controls with eagerness.

  Babcock then turned his attention to Sanchez, to tell him to stay put, that he hadn’t yet recovered from his recent medical attention, but he’d already gone. By the time Babcock had decided what to do, he had heard Sanchez’s voice booming over the ship’s communication channel.

  “I’m going in,” Sanchez said. “Be ready to clear as soon as I’ve got Mach out.”

  “Sanchez, you fool, you’ll get yourself killed!” Babcock replied, but it was too late, the old hunter was already off. Babcock turned to order Squid to keep a camera drone on him, but he realized that it too was gone.

  He slapped his hand down on the side of the chair and struggled with the smart-screen controls to bring the video feed around to Sanchez’s position. As he did so, Tulula looked up and gasped.

  There, standing on the ridge of a hill, was Sanchez armed with two twin-plasma chain guns mounted either side of him on an experimental combat exoskeleton. Squid hovered over the top of the hunter, no doubt providing targeting metrics.

  “That fool’s gonna get himself killed!” Tulula said. “Nigel, you take over for me. Someone needs to go out there and help him.”

  “No,” Babcock said… then, thinking about it and realizing that he had lost command and that it didn’t matter anymore, said, “Go, and be quick!”

  The time wasn’t to argue anymore. The time was to act before that swarm of creatures destroyed everything the vestans knew and, worse, destroyed the few people Babcock considered friends in this fragile, painful existence.

  Chapter 21

  With a war cry that was drowned out by the Intrepid’s engines, Sanchez engaged the exo-suit into high-speed combat mode. The motors aided his muscles weakened by months of prior surgery so that he felt like his old bad eighteen-year-old self again.

  To his left lay the pyramid structure Mach and Adira were trapped within. To his right, and straight ahead, sweeping around in a swarming arc, were hundreds of proto-vestans, the enemy: the ones that would devour everything if they had a chance.

  The old hunter checked his distance with the automatic rangefinder. A green reticule glowed on his HUD. He lifted the meter-long twin plasma chain guns and spun up the rotors. The swarm didn’t care; they continued to rush on, not knowing what was coming.

  Sanchez grinned as the stim shot he’d taken earlier coursed through his veins and the adrenaline pumped his heart, slowed time, and brought him back his soldiering days, the days he loved the most. Fighting and hunting was what he was good at, not sit
ting inside a ship dealing with the white-collar assholes.

  Here, now, fighting for life, that’s what he was about, and he had his friends to save.

  Time to be me, he thought. He stepped forward with purpose, fear long gone, receding in the past as he channeled the fighter that lived within him, always waiting to be let out, to do what it did best.

  “Sanchez!” Tulula screamed from somewhere behind him. He ignored her, making sure he stood between her and the onrushing swarm.

  When the chain guns reached their optimal spin rate, Sanchez loped forward and let loose the chain fury of encapsulated, super-heated plasma. The rounds struck the icy ground in front of the swarm. Then as he got a few meters closer, the heavy weaponry hit the target, blasting on impact, covering dozens of creatures with each round.

  A plume of purple plasma covered the battleground, mixed with the blue of the fields of ice to give the planet an even weirder atmosphere. Sanchez didn’t care, though. With Squid Three hovering above him, working on targeting, all he had to do was make sure he overwhelmed the enemy and got to the pyramids.

  Tulula joined him by his side. She grabbed a rocket launcher from his back, hooked into Squid Three’s targeting protocol and laid down a carpet of micro bombs, carving a path through the swarm toward the pyramid.

  Over in the distance, a huge explosion roared up, sending a million fragments of ice shattering into the sky.

  “My God,” Sanchez said. “There’s more of them, look.”

  Tulula stopped firing for a brief moment, taking in the scene. “I can’t comprehend all this,” she said.

  “Then don’t. Just keep firing. We need to get Mach and the Saviors out of here.”

  With that, he plunged forward, sending another twin volley of chain fire into a battalion of proto-vestans who were trying to flank him.

  The rounds ripped into them, sending long, glossy black limbs flying around them, swathes of sod clumps and ice fragments bursting up in a cone of destruction. The protos screamed and scattered, yet they still came.