Carson Mach 1: The Atlantis Ship (32 page)

Mach shot up twenty meters into an open space. A thick glass dome spread around the top half of the area. An oversized dark gray console stretched around the front half of the room. Hundreds of pink and orange lights winked on it.
 

Twenty screens flickered against the back wall, strobing the area. Small rods and buttons spread across a smaller console below it.
 

“Recognize anything that’s weapon or navigation related?” Adira asked.
 

Mach frowned and surveyed both consoles. “Navigation at the front and weapons at the back… probably. We’ll have a small window if Babcock fails to stop the Atlantis booting.”

“So we just wait?”
 

“We can try now, but it might not do any good. Let’s just pray Babcock and Squid do the business.”

The ship groaned and spun. Larunda came into view and they were heading directly for it.
 

***

Babcock followed Sanchez into a cavernous space. Four tall light green blocks, three stories high, sat in a row in the center of the room, casting an eerie glow. To the left, red symbols streamed across two large screens.
 

“That might be the restart sequence,” Babcock said and glanced at his smart-screen. They had two minutes. He thrust immediately toward a glowing control pad below the screens.
 

A dark figure shot across the ceiling. Thirty small marble-sized blue orbs sprayed in their direction. One struck Babcock’s leg. He looked down and screamed. His suit had instantly melted at the impact spot and the orb burned into his thigh.
 

Sanchez clutched the right side of his stomach and gasped through the intercom. “Leave this to me, Babcock. You do your thing.”

Babcock winced and drifted across the console. A red light flashed against the wall above him. Sanchez’s laser firing. He tried to ignore the searing pain and focused ahead.
 

The controls had symbols he’d seen somewhere before. Beringer’s ancient cave painting of the Atlantis ship. They had attempted to decrypt it years ago, but didn’t have enough data to complete a translation.

A bar was rising on the left side of the screen, over three-quarters of the way to the top. Babcock guessed it measured the progress of the system restart. He captured the streaming data and controls on his smart-screen and ran them through his recognition software. This had all known universal code and would hopefully translate enough to enable him to stop the ship becoming operational again.
 

“I’m hit,” Sanchez’s voice crackled. “I’m heading to the other side of the core to draw the damned thing away.”

A blue orb shot over Babcock’s head and hit the edge of the left screen, creating a smoldering hole. He instinctively ducked and raised his trembling wrist. The timer he’d started on the
Intrepid
had reduced to fifty-nine seconds.
 

The Atlantis ship’s superstructure let out a metallic scream. A laser blast shot across the ceiling. Babcock’s smart-screen worked on the code but hadn’t produced a response. He pressed the controls, hoping something would happen.
 

Lights thumped on across the ceiling, bathing the area in bright light. The bar reached the top and the four tall blocks behind him whirred.
 

“I think I’ve taken it out,” Sanchez said. “How are you getting on?”

Babcock pushed away from the controls and felt a sinking feeling in the pit of his stomach. “It’s too late. I can’t stop it.”

***

The screens on the bridge flickered to solid, displaying outside images of Larunda, the ship’s tartarun-built cannon pivoting around, and a three-dimensional radar display. Mach forced his eyes open, refusing to lose consciousness. Deep blue holocontrols rose from the front console. Green ones rose from the panel at the back of the bridge.
 

“You try the weapons,” Mach said. “I’ll try the navigation.”

Adira thrust below the screens and floated above the controls. Mach turned and headed for the oversized console at the front. There had to be some recognizable logic to their operation.
 

Through the glass dome, Larunda was less than a klick away, and they were closing fast. Mach placed his gloves around the large sphere in front of him and spun it. Nothing looked obvious, but they had to try something.
 

“Oh shit,” Adira said. “I don’t know what I’ve done, but the cannon’s gonna fire.”

Mach glanced over his shoulder. On the central screen above Adira, a bright light glared from the cannon’s mouth. He’d seen this before on smaller ion cannons. It only meant one thing. The weapon was primed and would fire at any moment.
 

He spun the sphere and pressed the symbols. The ship powered forward and Larunda loomed larger ahead. They were seconds from impact.
 

“Do something, Mach,” Adira shouted. “Nothing I’m doing is working.”

Mach took a deep breath. He spun the sphere and hit another group of symbols, hoping it wouldn’t trigger the cannon or thrust faster toward the orbital.
 

The view outside twisted as the ship went into a roll. They headed to the right of Larunda but were still in danger of a collision.
 

A blue light flashed above the glass dome and zipped toward the edge of Larunda. It smashed into a defense platform on the edge, sending debris in all directions. At least it hadn’t hit the main target, but they were still on course.
 

Mach hit the symbols again and took a deep breath. He raised his gloved hand over his visor as they drifted within meters of Larunda.
 

The Atlantis ship’s superstructure screamed as it scraped along the side of the orbital. Mach and Adira were both thrown to the side of the bridge and smashed against the wall. He couldn’t keep his eyes open any longer and felt himself bump against the ceiling as a distant alarm pulsed.
 

A voice echoed through Mach’s intercom, but he couldn’t respond.
 

***

Babcock regained his composure after being forced away from the controls after the force of the impact. Two of the core towers died, their block structures turning from light green to gray. CWDF and private contacts appeared on his smart-screen. They had comms back and he hoped it wasn’t too late.
 

Sanchez appeared at his side. Blood spattered the internal left-hand side of his helmet and his left arm hung limply by his side. “What the hell was that?”

“No idea,” Babcock said. “But I’ve got contact with the space relays and I’m sending the information to Beringer. If there’s one man who can crack this, it’s him.”

“Sanchez, Babcock,” Adira said through the intercom. “How’s it going down there?”

“Haven’t cracked it yet,” Babcock said. “Do we still have Larunda?”

“Yep. We’re drifting at the moment. I’m trying to work out the controls.”

“What about the cannon?” Sanchez asked.

“It’s not priming at the moment. We’re heading away from the orbital, so I’m not trying anything stupid.”

“Is Mach there?”

No immediate reply came. Babcock swallowed hard and bowed his head.
 

“He’s out cold,” Adira replied. “His screen shows a weak pulse, but he’s still with us. We need to gain control and find medical assistance.”

Sanchez groaned. “He’s not the only one.”

Babcock’s smart-screen vibrated. A message from Beringer. He knew his old friend would be online and this was the subject that Beringer had studied for years. With the pressure off and a code to crack, together they would reel this thing in. For Squid, Mach, Sanchez, Adira and the Commonwealth.

Mach exhaled a long slow breath, misting the window of his gloss-white medical room. A bed took up most of the space, with a cabinet and a dresser sitting opposite. A smart-screen attached to the wall showed graphs and charts of his condition.
 

He looked up at it, pleased to see his heart beat in the normal range. For the previous four days as he recovered, his pulse had been erratic. He shifted his gaze back to the viewport and watched hundreds of engineers and drones inspect the docked Atlantis ship. It had taken two full days for them to drag it into Larunda’s outboard hangar bay, and even then the ship’s colossal size required an EM-tether, its bulk too large to reside within the bay completely.
 

Fragments of the LDP still drifted by like an asteroid belt. He was glad the CW had changed it to an unmanned defense platform the year before; a thousand individuals usually populated them.
 

Images of the alien ship still flashed in his mind, as did the screams of his crew during the fight. But they’d done it. They’d finally captured the Atlantis ship, proved it wasn’t a myth. It was nothing more than an extremely powerful ancient warship belonging to a long-lost alien race.
 

He had wondered about them over the last two days it took for his body to heal. Where were they? What happened to them? The CW would no doubt have the best minds crawling all over it, picking together the story of its origins and makers. Theo Beringer would no doubt make this his life’s work.
 

Below the frenzied activity surrounding the prize sat his ship, the
Intrepid
. Even with the damage it had sustained, it still evoked a sense of pride and passion within him. Without that ship, and ironically, the sabotaged weapon the tartaruns had installed, there was no way they could have stopped the Atlantis ship.

Someone coughed behind him. Mach turned round, wincing only slightly, the pain in his hips and back tweaking a damaged nerve.
 

“Morgan,” Mach said, smiling. “Nice of you to drop by. I wasn’t expecting you for a while yet, considering your new position. Shame what happened to Orloza and Steros. Any luck on finding their killer?”

Morgan stood up straight and pulled his presidential jacket down with a sharp jerk. “It’s currently undergoing investigation,” he said. “But we’ve currently got no leads.”

For the briefest of moments Mach almost believed him. It seemed he had learned the art of the diplomatic bluff after all. It certainly took him long enough. “And what of the marshal?”

“That’s what I’m here for, actually. Listen, Carson, you did amazing out there with limited resources. I tried to give you more, but my hands were tied.” Morgan looked over his shoulder, turned, and closed the door, clicking the lock into place. He joined Mach by the viewport and stared out at the ship. “I need a new marshal. Someone capable. These tartaruns, they’re planning a full-scale invasion.”

“And you know this for sure?” Mach said, although it didn’t exactly come as a shock considering what they had done with the
Intrepid
.

“Our intelligence officers have been busy over the last few days inspecting the materials gathered from the Atlantis ship and that memory stick you recovered.” He waved his hand at the viewport. “All this was just a trial run. They are a vast people, nomadic and scattered throughout vast regions of space. My reports suggest that they have achieved advanced wormhole technology reverse-engineered from the Atlantis ship. We need to be ready.”

Mach started to feel weak. He stepped over to the bed and sat down. “I’m tired, Morgan. Tired of the CW, tired of rules and regulations. I was better off freelance, working the way I want to. I can’t do the job of marshal—you know that. Think about it logically. Would you really want someone like me in a position like that? I’d be a liability. I take too many risks. I’m not calm and considered. I’d put too many people’s lives in danger.”

“You do yourself a discredit, Mach. You’d be the best damned marshal this Commonwealth would ever see.”

“That’s very kind of you, but flattery isn’t going to change my mind. I’m out, Morgan, for good. I only did this as a favor to you, and because you and your CW buddies screwed me over with an excessive fine.”

“I’m sorry about that, but I did what I thought was best.”

There was something about Morgan’s steel and justification of his decisions that flipped a switch in his brain. He thought of Adira, what she had said to him, the years she had spent locked away because she thought it was for the best.
 

“It was you, wasn’t it?” Mach said. “You took the contract out on me. It was you who hired Adira.”

Morgan tried to smile, brush it away as something ludicrous, impossible, but Mach was too quick; he saw it in the older man’s eyes, the guilt, the shame, the deceit. Given he thought nothing of killing the people who stood in his way, even if it was ultimately the right thing for the CW, it told Mach everything he needed to know.

“Why, Morgan? Just tell me that at least.”

“Damn it, Mach, don’t you think I had valid reasons? You’re my oldest friend, it wasn’t easy for me, why do you think Adira spent so long in solitary?”

“What, you got cold feet?”

“No, I realized I couldn’t imagine the Salus Sphere without you in it, even with all the chaos and trouble that you create behind you. I took the contract because you would have suffered far worse. You don’t realize the enemies you made in the CW. You would have been tortured, beaten, buried alive on some godforsaken rim world. At the time I couldn’t let that happen. I couldn’t find you.”

“That’s because I was hiding. I was happy out there on my own, minding my own business. I could handle my enemies myself.”

“Not these ones you couldn’t. But see, after I took the contract, I worked hard to reach the people who wanted you dead. I struck a deal with them, paid them off. But Adira… well, you know what she’s like. She refused to cancel the contract, didn’t want to ruin her record or reputation, so I had her locked up.”

“I bet you nearly had an aneurism when you heard I busted her out.”

“Something like that, but listen to me, I did what I thought was best at the time. I was looking out for you, but you don’t make it easy for me.”

“So who were the people who wanted me dead, and what did you do to get them off my trail?”