The Terminal War: A Space Opera Novel (A Carson Mach Adventure) (18 page)

“Both drones have locked on. I hope you’ve got a good reason for putting our lives at risk. We’re jumping in thirty seconds.”

“I need you to fire on their ships. Cause as much destruction and confusion as you can. After that, head straight for the coordinates you gave me.”

“Seriously? You’ve finally lost it. May I remind you we’re not officially—”

“Cut the crap and listen to me,” Morgan said. “Those coordinates are for Terminus. The Axis Combine is heading there to capture vestan intelligence. If you want to save Mach, Adira, and Beringer’s bacon, I suggest you follow my instructions and rescue your crew.”

“We can head there now without firing,” Babcock said. “They’ll blow us out of space.”

“We need to stall any moves before our ships arrive. Please, just do this one thing. I’ll double your fee.”

Babcock sighed down the link. “I’m sure Mach will be pleased if we live to collect.”

“Thanks, Babs. I knew I could rely on you.”

Morgan cut the ansible link before receiving a reply. He knew Babcock as a man of logic, and he would ultimately do the right thing. The Admiralty would also have to act. If they left the vestans to be destroyed, and their greatest minds taken by the Axis, the treaty would be destroyed, and the Salus Sphere would follow.
 

*

Babcock stared at the main viewscreen. Both fighter drones had circled around the back of the
Intrepid
and kept their weapons locked onto the bridge. A tracking beam registered on the scanner, transmitting from the center of the Axis defensive ring formation as a guide to follow in.

“Tulula, Nigel,” Babcock said, “can we fire and jump at the same time.”

The vestan engineer and gunner held a loud conversation in their native tongue. Nigel flailed his arms around whenever making a point.
 

Sanchez heaved himself from his chair and winced, still clearly suffering from his injuries sustained during their mission in the Noven system. “Just go. Tell Morgan we fired and split. He won’t know.”

“We’ve got Mach’s location too,” Lassea said. “The sooner we get there and pick him up, the less chance we’ll be around when the Axis show up.”

Babcock leaned back in his chair and drummed his fingers on his chin. Morgan’s attack suggestion made sense if they wanted to throw up a roadblock, enabling the Commonwealth forces to arrive. The grand fleet was definitely closer to Terminus’ coordinates. The
Intrepid
could comfortably beat any Axis ship with its faster fusion drive, but it all depended on the vestans’ technical conclusion. He wouldn’t fire if they couldn’t simultaneously jump. Anything else would be suicide, and none of the crew signed up for that.
 

“We’re being pinged by a horan ship again,” Lassea said.
 

Babcock jutted his chin toward the comms screen. They were less than seven klicks away, and the huge enemy formation stretched across a wide area of space directly in front of them. In a matter of moments, they would be in non-maneuverable range of the capital ship’s cannons.
 

An image of one of the scaly purple deviants appeared, in the cramped metallic cockpit of one of the drones. “Why have you slowed down?”

“My humble apologies,” Babcock said. “What would you like us to do?”

“Increase your speed and follow our beam. Be prepared for boarding.”

“Whatever you say,” Babcock said and cut the link.

Tulula and Nigel finished their heated debate. She turned to Babcock. “It’s possible to fire and jump. But it’s dangerous.”

“As soon as Lassea engages,” Nigel added, “we have one shot on the lasers and cannon. Anything more and the energy will be dragged along with us and rip apart the ship.”

“One shot’s all I need,” Sanchez said. The big hunter tweaked the orientation of the cannon toward the closest capital ship. “Just say the word.”

Two more drones left the Axis fleet and headed for the
Intrepid
. Babcock knew it was now or never if they wanted to escape. “Switch to fusion drives and set coordinates for Terminus,” he said to Lassea. “They’ll confuse the increased energy for us following their command.”

The young pilot configured the settings on the holocontrols and looked over her shoulder. The fusion engines wound up with a smooth roar.
 

Nigel sat back at the laser console and peered at his screen. The crosshairs were directly between the Axis fleet and the drone to port side.
 

“On your word, Tulula,” Babcock said.
 

The vestan engineer moved to Lassea’s side. “Guys, you’ve got two seconds to deploy our weapons. Ready?”

Sanchez nodded. Nigel responded in vestan.
 

“Engage,” Tulula said.
 

Lassea ramped the L-drive to full power. Sanchez and Nigel fired.
 

Babcock swallowed hard and peered up at the viewscreen. Four lasers stabbed from the underside of the
Intrepid
. The port-side fighter drone exploded into pieces.
 

A bolt of concentrated energy zipped across space and headed for the Axis fleet.
 

Multiple weapon systems locked onto the
Intrepid
.
 

Distant lights flashed from the formation as cannons and lasers fired.
 

The ship thrust to the left and bucked as a laser struck it. An alarm blasted from the bridge’s speaker, and a damage report streamed across the status screen. A moment later the distant stars turned to thin white lines.
 

Babcock took a deep breath and slumped back in his seat. Their next stop was Terminus, and he didn’t want to be around when the Axis showed up.

Mach shook his head, clearing the fogginess. A pain in his lower back stabbed at him, reminding him of what had just happened. He must have been knocked unconscious for a moment; his memories didn’t quite match up. A void lay between frames of a film, a key piece taken out that broke the narrative.
 

“What the fuck happened?” he said, croaking the words out. No response, from anyone. With slothful limbs, Mach eased himself up from his prone position, shifting the fragments of ice and metal infrastructure out of the way. He spun round, trying to remember where he was, then soon remembered when he saw the pile of debris in the middle of the room and the roof that splintered inwards as though it had taken a direct hit from a fusion rocket.
 

Through this gap, the increasingly bright blue light from the dome shone through, a piercing beam. At the end of the beam, the dome of ice above now featured a fragmented façade, the intricate network of cracks scoring across the surface of the ice like some giant doodle from a bored God.
 

The dome continued to fragment, the cracks spreading out, forking across from one side to the other, bellowing out its thunderous verse. Great chunks of ice splintered off and crashed down into the city below, natural bombs striking at the heart of history, demolishing all that had come before and had endured for millennia.
 

“Mach!” Adira screamed over the scratchy comms. Her panicked words dragged him out of his initial paralysis, his Century War shellshock hangover. He clambered forward to the pile of ice and debris, dragging lumps of rock and metal and other primordial building materials until, eventually, he found Adira buried up to her waist, a polymer joist of considerable mass pinning her in place.
 

“I see you,” he said. “Just hang in there, I’ll get you…” somehow.
 

“I’m not going anywhere, you take your time,” she said, the panic in her voice hiding beneath her scathing sarcasm. Not a good sign. He’d rather she be yelling at him and cursing at him in a dozen alien languages.
 

“Vitals,” Mach said as he searched around the piles of debris for something to use as a lever. “Give me the specs. Right now!”

“Heart rate through the roof,” Adira said. “Blood pressure dropping faster than a lactern whore’s panties, core temperature as cold as a wendigo’s snatch. What else do you want to know? My inside leg measurement? Just hurry the fuck up, Mach, and get me out of here before I beat the living hell out of you. Twice.”

Mach smiled, this is what he wanted. Angry Adira was Surviving Adira. He stumbled over a pile of rock and destroyed furniture and found a long section of roof beam that had collapsed beneath the great weight and velocity of the ice fragment. It must have been at least three meters long, and Mach had to use all his augmented strength to lift it and heave it over to Adira’s position.
 

“No time for remodeling,” Adira said, catching his eye. “Just get me out of here before I lose the use of my legs.”

“I’m right on track, darling,” Mach said, getting a scowl for his over-familiar term, even if he did mean it sincerely. He didn’t want to show her that he was afraid of losing her, so he’d get her back up with double-bluffed sentimentality. “Why don’t you use your arms and help me to help you,” Mach said, indicating the end of the beam, which he was trying to wedge beneath the joist that had her pinned.
 

“Some rescue this is,” she bemoaned, heaving the tip of the beam into place.
 

Mach clambered forward of the pile of debris and placed a large rock under the beam about halfway. “Okay,” he said. “I’m going to lever this sonofabitch off you. When the pressure is eased enough, I want you to skid your ass back out of the way. If I drop it, I don’t want to take your legs with it; I can’t carry you and chase after Beringer.”

“Where is the idiot, anyway?” Adira said, gritting her teeth as some pain wrenched at her.
 

Mach didn’t answer; he didn’t know, and right now, his priority was Adira—it always had been, and would likely remain the case until he was finally a part of the universe’s great field of indifferent particles.

He heaved once on the end of the lever, pushing down with perhaps half his strength, eager not to be too hasty and break something—or someone. The joist groaned against the resistance, the low bass note complementing the high-pitched scream that came to Mach via his external microphones—a scream that belonged to Beringer. A scream that if Mach were not already in a hyper state of attention trying to get Adira free, would have chilled his blood to a frozen state right there in his veins.
 

“That was him,” Adira said, helpfully.
 

“I know,” Mach grunted. “As soon as you feel anything move, try to get free.”

“Get on with it, superman.”

This time she rewarded him with a smile that, had his veins froze, would have melted them again. She knew it too, knew it would help motivate him. Her beauty was only second to her cunning and complete knowledge of Mach’s psyche. If anyone else had this kind of insight into him, he would have likely made sure they weren’t in a position to take advantage of it, but Adira was different… so very different.
 

He heaved harder this time, willing every sinew of his musculature to work harder than it had ever worked, to do this one thing for him if they wouldn’t do anything like this again. Just this once, he said, bargaining with his body. You owe me, old buddy. I saved you so many times on pox-ridden planets that the CWDF felt they needed to defend. And what had that achieved? A short peaceful period to allow the Axis Combine to rebuild their fleets…

“Argh!” Mach grunted as his body gave him what he wanted.
 

Everything he had, every particle, quark, atom, and molecule coalesced into one thing: a lever-pushing device of immense motivation and force. Things within his body snapped, giving up the ghost, as they used to say, giving their lives to him in this one monumental effort.
 

Sweat dripped down his face, over his lips, tasting peppery on his tongue. The beam-lever bowed dramatically over the fulcrum rock, the joist continuing to moan its elemental bass line, soundtracking his efforts.
 

The joist shifted. Dust and rocks fell away, now freed from the tyranny of the joist’s weight. Mach tried to call out to Adira, to move, to shift, do anything to get out of there, but the tendons and muscles in his neck were too taut to allow his vocal chords to work.
 

His vision grew dark and eventually, with one final effort, he let out an animalistic yowl, pushing the lever down a few more centimeters until something gave, snapped.
 

The joist!

It had broken against the lever; the part that lay over Adira tumbled down the small pyramid of rocks and ice to crash against the floor. A small avalanche of sand-colored stone chased after it as though they already missed its dominance.
 

Adira, however, gave out a cry of freedom, using her arms to push herself up and out of the debris until she lay flat on her back on the top of a chunk of ice. Her chest heaved in sync with his own that flared with pain as each breath made his muscles work again despite their burning protest.
 

Mach fell backward, letting the lever go. It bounced up and then down, the center pivoting on the fulcrum, until it, too, made that journey down to the floor, where it lay next to the joist, as Mach lay next to Adira, both exhausted, but still alive.
 

Without turning to face her, due to the impossibly heavy amounts of lactic acid now drowning his muscles, he said, “Are you okay? Anything broken beyond repair?”

A pause, pregnant with emotion he knew Adira wouldn’t display. The silence was enough for him, though; a few seconds that he could fill with his version of what Adira might be feeling. It included gratitude, and something else that he already doubted before it fully formed in his mind.
 

“I’ve sprained my ankle; I think,” she said, with no emotion in her voice: just the facts, like a good journalist covering the skirmishes in the trenches. “It will be fine to walk on with the swelling. I’m dehydrated and suffering from low levels of shock. Nothing to worry about. No bones broken. You?”