Carson Mach 1: The Atlantis Ship

by A. C. Hadfield

  “What she means,” Mach said, interrupting before Adira built herself into a frenzy that would make it much harder for them to talk their way out, “is can we do a deal with you? All we want is access to a vestan engineer, or someone familiar with their tech, and some parts. I’m sure you’d have them here given the number of ships that must come here to trade.”

  The Black Swan smiled and paced the room, her arms crossed over her chest. “Trade, indeed. It’s obvious to me that you two are deceiving scum, but that’s okay, we’re all two-faced here; it’s the way of the universe, is it not? So let’s get down to it, shall we?”

  She fixed her attention on Adira.

  “I know who you are and what you are. You will take someone out for me. In return I’ll give you the name of someone who might be able to help you. In the meantime, your ship stays where it is under my guard…. So basically, I’m not giving you a choice here. You take the deal or I’ll just have you killed along with the rest of your two-bit crew.”

  Adira stood up, letting the loose cuffs clink to the ground. She brought her hands casually to her sides. “Who’s the target?” she asked, gaining a genuinely entertained smile from Ms. Laverna, who just let out a satisfied laugh.

  “My girl, you’ll do fine here. Come with me, I’ll give you the briefing.” She opened the door and gestured to her guard. “Adekafka, release Mr. Mach, we’ve come to an agreement.”

  The giant human—clearly a product of advanced genetic modification and muscle-growth enhancers—stepped inside the cell, making it seem suddenly much smaller than it did a moment ago. The brute, wearing a set of ceramic-plated armor colored a dull green, leaned over Mach’s shoulders and with a wave of his hand unlocked the cuffs.

  The giant smelled of tobacco and linseed oil.

  Mach sighed with the relief of his release and rubbed at his wrists that were bright red. “God, that feels good,” he said. “While we’re on good terms, any chance I can use your bathroom? I seriously need to have a piss.”

  “Ade, would you show Mr. Mach to the facilities before the poor man spoils his fancy fatigues. Adira, come with me, we’ll get started on your target.”

  ***

  Mach stared at the image of the Black Swan’s target on his smart-screen and committed it to memory. The person she wanted to have killed was a young woman, no older than nineteen by the looks of her.

  With Adira by his side, they stalked down the deserted corridor of the orbital. Broken glass littered the metal floor. Rust accumulated in the corners, providing homes for vestan rust-spiders.

  “What did the Swan say this poor woman did for her to be killed?”

  “She’s the girlfriend of her son,” Adira replied, her voice cool and distant.

  “And that doesn’t bother you?”

  Adira shook her head and increased her pace.

  While Mach mulled over their plans, he observed the emptiness of the orbital. The place was huge, easily capable of housing twenty million souls comfortably, but with just a few thousand on it, there were hundreds of levels that remained empty.

  “Here,” Adira said, pointing to a transport tube.

  The once-transparent tube was now a dull yellow color as though the very orbital was sick. With the Black Swan running things, it probably was, Mach thought. They stepped inside and entered the floor where the Swan had said they could find the girl. “Stessoa,” Mach said, enjoying how her name sounded on his lips.

  The transport tube’s maglev mechanism activated and they shot up through the orbital. Adira read her mission brief again on her smart-screen before closing her eyes during the ride.

  “What are you thinking?” Mach said, sensing anxiety in her outwardly calm body language. Though to others she looked as though she were relaxed, Mach could tell from the minute tightness in her shoulders.

  “That the Black Swan is full of shit, and we ought to get back to the Intrepid as soon as we can. I wouldn’t put it past her to be setting us up.”

  “Well, one can never trust a Lavernan. But we do need the location of that vestan engineer if we’re to leave this damned place.”|

  “And you think if we kill this girl, the Swan will do as she suggested?”

  “Probably not,” Mach replied with a sigh of resignation in his voice. “But without comm access to the others and no way to find an engineer, what else can we do?”

  “Who said we have no way of finding the vestan?”

  “You have an idea, do you?”

  “I might do. Let me think on it.”

  The tube transporter stopped at level ninety-three. Mach and Adira exited and stepped out onto a brightly lit gantry that split the floor in two. It stretched out across the level in a shallow arc, connecting two transport towers. Below them, a few hundred mixed-species people went about their business, some looking shadier than others.

  Mach stopped for a moment and gripped the glass railing. He took a deep breath and turned to Adira, who remained upright, her face neutral, which always told Mach she was working something out.

  “Stessoa’s boutique is down there,” Adira finally said, inclining her head to the far right side of the level. A narrow doorway, illuminated by blue laser light and surrounded by tall green fanlike plants, stood out from the dozen or so other open-fronted kiosks.

  Some had signs offering various stim packages; others sold food and alcoholic beverages, while still others provided clothes and various weapons. Stessoa’s little place at the end of the row sold soaps and perfumes. Given that the orbital reeked of grease and pungent sweat, he doubted the girl was doing much of a trade.

  Adira made to move across the walkway toward a spiral staircase that led down the twenty meters to the level’s floor below. Mach grabbed her arm and pulled her close, wrapping his arms around her waist so she couldn’t pull away.

  Her body stiffened against his, but she didn’t struggle.

  Mach leaned in, his lips brushing against her neck. He whispered, “Act natural; we’ve got an interested party coming this way.”

  Adira ran her hand up his neck, her fingers gripping his thick hair. Mach looked up out of the corner of his eye to snatch a look at the two bulky-looking horans coming their way.

  The two aliens were jabbering and clucking away in their native language, only occasionally glancing at Adira and Mach. They eventually moved by and entered the tube transport Mach and Adira had used earlier. Satisfied they were alone, Mach released Adira and stepped back, but Adira held on, moving with him.

  She stared at him with those frustratingly passive eyes of hers. Like two small suns they burned into him, neither betraying what might be happening in their core, what was driving Adira’s thoughts.

  He wanted to ask her. Wanted to know so many things, but just when the words began to form on his lips, she released her hold on him and stepped back. Mach’s mouth remained open for a moment. He shut it, swallowed, and looked away, unable to stand Adira’s opaque scrutiny.

  It maddened him how they could be close in one instant, yet so very far apart, as if they were two entirely opposable species with little genetic coding in common. And yet, just for a few, occasional moments, she made him feel. Feel that there was something there between them… whatever it was. Fleeting, he thought. He knew that much. Whatever they had was always so fleeting.

  “What?” he finally said, looking back at her.

  “The vestan engineer,” Adira said. “I believe we can find her without killing Stessoa for the Swan.”

  “Oh? And how do you propose that?”

  “While you were freshening up in the facilities, I took the liberty of hacking the Swan’s smart-screen—they’re not even using two-fifty-six-bit encryption here. It’s like we’re living in the twentieth century again.”

  Mach snorted a nervous laugh. “That was quite the risk, given how we’re at her mercy. But regardless, what did you find out?”

  “Come look.” Adira grabbed his shoulder and led him across the gantry to stand by one of the
huge vertical windows that looked out on the vacuum of space.

  “Yeah, the stars are awe inspiring, and the debris indicates there was a battle recently, but what am I supposed to be looking at?”

  Adira pointed to a small pod hovering in a geosynchronous orbit to the station. “That’s where the engineer is, and where we’re going. We’re going for a little space walk, Mach. Romantic, eh?”

  Chapter Twenty-Two

  Mach and Adira slipped through a shaded access corridor behind Stessoa’s boutique. Mach rested against the steel door and watched Adira expertly clamber to the ceiling, remove a panel and disappear into the gloom above.

  A few seconds later, Adira’s face dropped out of the darkness. She wore a satisfied expression on her face and gave him a thumbs-up, indicating she’d cut the video feed. She fell from the ceiling, landing on her feet with barely a whisper. Her voice hushed, she said, “We’ll have about thirty seconds before they know the feed’s been tampered with.”

  Rolling the stim-injector around in his hand, Carson Mach nodded and ran the plan through his mind once more: get in, jab the girl, remove her unconscious body and take a body scan with his smart-screen for insurance.

  “You sure that stuff will stop her heart for long enough?” Adira said, eyeing the chromed cylinder in his hand.

  “One BPM guaranteed. She’ll be fine; the readings will suggest she’s dead. Ready to bust the door?”

  Adira grunted an affirmative and bent over the nondescript door’s control panel, a small gray blister the size of a human thumb. Adira easily removed the casing with the tip of her knife and got to work on the wiring while Mach stood guard.

  The orbital must be reaching its evening, he thought, given the lack of traffic in and around the boulevard. That suited them just fine.

  “We’re in,” Adira said. A wire sparked and the sound of a servo whirring inside the door’s mechanism told Mach she’d done a fine job, but then given the age of the orbital, it wasn’t especially difficult; most of the security devices and protocols had long since been cracked, the data shared across the various Sphere networks so any two-bit crook would know how to bypass most of the things here.

  “Ready?” Mach said.

  “Let’s do it,” Adira replied, opening the door to expose a narrow and short hallway leading into the boutique. The scent of soaps and other fragrant gifts wafted out, making Mach choke on the cloying air.

  Wasting no time, he and Adira entered, closing the door quietly behind them. They passed a number of racks filled with stock until they came to an office that resembled a prison cell due to its stark whiteness and utilitarian furniture—a plastic table and a tall, gray locker with its door hanging open.

  The soft beats of some ambient electronic music were coming from the shop front. Mach returned his attention and caught up with Adira. She stood by an entrance that led into the shop. A glass-beaded curtain stood in their way.

  Peering between the strands, Mach watched Stessoa’s shadow move across the shop, replacing stock on the shelves. The front doors had since closed, giving the place a deserted feel.

  When he made sure her back was turned, Mach entered the shop. The glass beads clicked and clacked together. Stessoa spun round; her eyes grew wide. The human woman brought her hand up to her mouth then to her chest. She cocked her head like an inquisitive dog.

  A red silk wrap clung to her body and shimmered beneath the light of the boutique. Her eyes picked up the sparkle, making her shock and panic all the more visceral. For a brief heartbeat Mach stopped, wondering if all this would be a mistake; not that they had an option.

  Shaking himself out of it, Mach stepped forward, closing the distance between them. Adira sprinted out from behind Mach and grabbed the woman’s arm, pulling it behind her back and forcing her to the carpeted floor. Mach winced when her face struck the surface and she let out a sharp scream.

  “I’m sorry,” Mach said, leaning a knee onto her back.

  One quick jab to the back of the neck was all it took. Her body went limp when the stim entered her bloodstream. Mach read her pulse with two fingers against her neck. “It’s slowing already,” he said.

  “Take the readings, then.”

  The scan took just over thirty seconds, but it would be enough biometric data to ‘prove’ to the Black Swan they had killed her if the orbital owner had them intercepted before they headed off to retrieve Tulula, the vestan engineer.

  With Adira’s help, Mach dragged Stessoa back through the narrow corridor and placed her into the locker. “We should get going,” Adira said as she closed the locker door behind her. “Quicker we get the vestan, the quicker we can get out.”

  Back in the hallway to the rear of the shop, Mach and Adira stepped inside a pair of EVA suits that they had stolen off some guards on their way to the boutique. These two were from a couple of human engineers who had come in via an airlock after presumably carrying out some maintenance.

  Mach assumed the station had suffered some damage from the Atlantis ship if the horan destroyer debris was anything to go by. The EVA suits were of the latest CW design, no doubt smuggled out by people like Sanchez. The black form-fitting material fit snugly around Mach’s joints and muscles, the nanotechnology embedded into the fabric would keep the effects of space at bay, while the small helmet would provide comms and breathing.

  The thin backpack tanks, attached to a pair of micro-reactor motors, would provide enough air for at least an hour of space-walking; that would be plenty of time to reach Tulula’s pod.

  Mach and Adira set their comms to a rarely used frequency.

  “Can you hear me?” Adira said.

  Mach confirmed he could and added, “We go in, grab the vestan and get back to the hangar ASAP. Understand?”

  “What are we going to do about the Swan’s people guarding the Intrepid?” Adira asked.

  “I haven’t thought that far ahead; I’m sure something will present itself. In the meantime, let’s just go grab that vestan before the Swan’s goons realize what’s happened.”

  “Are you sending the biometrics first?”

  “Already done. Come on, let’s go.”

  ***

  It took Mach and Adira longer to get to the orbiting pod than he had first realized. It didn’t help that one of Swan’s goons had tried to accost them at the airlock. If it weren’t for Mach’s quick thinking, Adira would have killed the man.

  Mach had managed to convince him that they were the maintenance crew going back to finalize some repairs. With that little obstacle successfully hurdled, Mach and Adira entered the airlock and shut the bulkhead behind them.

  Mach hit the red depressurizing button, and with a loud, protracted hiss, the airlock equalized its pressure with the vacuum of space. The anti-g switched off. Mach and Adira floated toward the external hatch.

  “Give me a hand,” Mach said, gripping one side of the metal ring.

  Adira grabbed the other and nodded.

  It took an initial heave, but soon the ring was spinning and the hatch door opened, allowing them to float out into the great expanse. The suit around Mach’s body reacted instantly, expanding a few millimeters away from his skin to create a warm pocket of air. Controls for the thrusters were embedded into a small panel on his hip.

  “I see the pod,” Adira said as her lithe body floated away from the orbital, the station’s lights illuminating her in a stop-frame motion, its great bulk spinning behind them.

  Mach maneuvered his thrusters so he caught up with Adira. Together they headed for the pod that stayed within approximately two hundred meters of the orbital. It was only as they neared that Mach noticed the pod was tethered with a thin nanosteel cable.

  “Here,” he said, grabbing hold of it. “Use this to guide you to the pod.”

  “I’m quite capable,” Adira snorted back at him as she fired her thrusters. She flew away, head up and arms by her side as she sped toward the pod.

  “Show off,” Mach said. He continued to use
the cable as a guide, preferring to preserve the suit’s reactor fuel as much as possible. It took a few minutes, but eventually Mach joined Adira by the pod’s airlock. The pod was much larger up close than he had initially realized. It was at least ten meters in diameter. The dulled silver surface of its titanium shell glinted under the larger orbital’s light.

  “Are you expecting to just knock?” Mach said.

  “I never knock,” Adira said, reaching into a tool pouch around her thigh. She pulled out a long thin rod with a hexagonal-shaped socket at the end. “I’ve studied more airlock mechanisms than you’ve had hookers,” she said, pressing her body flat against the pod as she searched her hands across its surface.

  Mach pulled himself around the pod’s outer shell until he found a small porthole. He peered inside and saw no movement. There was a light on, though, casting angular shadows among the console desk and flight chair.

  “It’s a ship,” Mach said to Adira. “Not just a pod after all.”

  “Huh, clever disguise,” she said. “Ah, found it. Give me a hand here.”

  Adira had fitted the tool into a narrow slit.

  “Just keep turning,” Adira said. “It’s the manual airlock control.”

  “This isn’t exactly stealthy,” Mach said. “Whoever is in there is going to know what’s going on.”

  A burst of static exploded over their comm channel, making Mach wince with the unexpected blare of white noise. Adira yelled out but continued to turn the airlock release bolt. Mach stared back to the orbital, convinced the Black Swan or one of her many goons suspected what they were doing, but a small, almost digital voice spoke over the comm channel.

  “Who’s out there? I’m armed and not afraid to blast you into space.”

  “Is that you, Tulula?” Adira asked as both she and Mach continued to wind the airlock bolt. The hatch was starting to open, a few millimeters at a time.

  “Who’s asking? I’ve paid the Swan this week; I was promised I’d be left alone.”