The Terminal War: A Space Opera Novel (A Carson Mach Adventure) (30 page)

A weak orange glow crept across the platform, brightening the antennas and base unit. Ethan clipped the tool back on his belt and turned to view the light source.
 

Orange mist swirled in a huge circle about fifty klicks away from the station.
 

Ethan’s heart rate spiked. “What the hell is that?”

Static interference hissed through the comm speaker, masking the response. He switched to the command channel.
 

“This is Engineer Five on the comms platform—”

Frantic voices cut him off. They talked about a massive energy source and transmitted back to CW command on Fides Prime, asking for advice.
 

A brilliant white light engulfed the center of the swirling mass. The orange mist extended out, forming a huge, roiling tunnel. Ethan squinted and turned away from the eye-piercing glare.
 

He grabbed the maintenance rail and moved back down the station, wanting to get to safety, realizing this phenomenon was probably a wormhole; it certainly looked like one to him. But where the hell did it come from?

Nobody in the Commonwealth or Axis Combine empires had harnessed wormhole technology. They were still considered spontaneous occurrences, but it seemed too convenient that this phenomenon had appeared next to the station.
 

The bright light reflecting off the metallic walls of the habitation deck dulled to an orange glow. Ethan glanced over his shoulder.
 

An impossibly large light-gray trapezium-shaped ship, with myriad cannons mounted on the top and both sides of its hull, had blocked out the light at the end of the tunnel. It was bigger than anything in the CW or Axis fleets, with the width at least the size of two destroyers.
 

Could it be? He thought… could it be the… Atlantis Ship? But it was just a rumor, a myth from the Century War: a ship so powerful that it could appear and disappear at will, and take down the most powerful of destroyers, seemingly on a whim. No one knew if it was real or not, it had never been caught on camera. The only records were those from panicked captains and ensigns.

A command center operator sent repeated messages asking for identification. Nobody responded and the ship proceeded through the tunnel. The captain ordered the weapons to lock on. The QRF (Quick Response Force) drones immediately scrambled from Retsina.
 

“This is Engineer Five. I’m still—” Ethan said.
 

Two blue bolts zipped from the top cannons of the approaching ship. Ethan gripped the rail and tensed. A second later, both energy bolts slammed into the side of the station.
 

The structure shook violently, huge pieces of infrastructure splintering and spinning off into space.
 

Ethan lost his grip and floated away from the station. He gasped at the pair of ten-meter-wide smoldering holes in the superstructure. Mangled debris surrounded him. His comms feed cut to silence.
 

Cannons on either side of the attacking ship fired. Ethan thrust away, avoiding pieces of wreckage. Four blue bolts smashed the station, creating a blinding flash of light all around him, obscuring his vision.

The comms platform had been reduced to a twisted mess. The command center took a direct hit and lights flickered off around the top half of the cylindrical station. The alien ship cruised out of the side of the orange tunnel and headed away. Its cannons swiveled on their turrets, maintaining aim.
 

Ethan knew the damage was terminal and closed his eyes for a moment, thinking about the horror his colleagues must have suffered. They could’ve handled two hits away from the key infrastructure by shutting down the areas, but nothing like this. He let out a deep breath, activated his distress beacon, and checked the air supply readings on his HUD. His only chance of survival was if a CW ship came in response.
 

Small parts of debris floated to Ethan’s left. He glanced back at the wormhole. Its swirling orange wall continued to extend forward. Parts of the station that exploded were being sucked in.
 

The mouth of the tunnel widened. Ethan drifted toward it. He thrust against the force, but it had no effect. His velocity increased and a brilliant white light flashed at the far end of the tunnel again.
 

He screamed as he let out the full load of energy in his motors, but it was useless. He spun around and looked back. The wormhole had surrounded the station and it careered toward him, closing in and gathering momentum as it entered further into the swirling anomaly.
 

A large chunk of metal smashed against Ethan’s arm.
 

The rest of the crippled station’s fragments were going to hit him in a matter of seconds. He covered his visor with his gloves and screamed as he, and the remnants of the station, headed into the oblivion created by the Atlantis ship.

And all the while, Ethan thought,
It’s not a myth! We’re doomed.

The Atlantis Ship Preview
 

Chapter Two

Admiral Morgan gazed out of his window at the new CW—Commonwealth—recruits being marched around the parade square in their crisp dark blue uniforms.
 

Running the command center and training wing meant he had the responsibility of ensuring Fides Prime produced humans, fidesians and the cross-breeds, fidians, that would continue to maintain order in the Salus Sphere—even during this prolonged twenty-year period of peace with the Axis Combine.
 

Morgan hated the increasingly ceremonial nature of his role. Captains were still patrolling space while he inspected gleaming buildings and accepted salutes from rookies.
 

The setting sun over the distant mountains told him it was time to go home, his shift was over for the day. He swept up his cap from the desk and turned to leave.
 

Three rapid knocks sounded on his sturdy wooden door. A breathless soldier burst in before Morgan could answer.
 

“What now?” Morgan said, irritated about the lack of courtesy.
 

“You need to come to operations right away, Admiral,” the soldier said. He swallowed hard. Panic was written all over face. “It’s Orbital Forty…”

Morgan frowned. “What about it?”

“It’s gone.”

“What do you mean,
gone
?”

The soldier gestured to the corridor. “This way, Admiral. You’ll want to see this for yourself.”

The CW Fleet hadn’t lost an orbital station in the thirty years since he joined. Eight were destroyed during the Century War with the Horan Empire, but that was different. Morgan knew the horans wouldn’t dare attack now. Despite the fact that they formed the Axis Combine with the vestans and lacterns and were building their capabilities, an all-out war risked too much for either side.
 

Morgan’s boots squeaked along the black rubber floor as he followed the soldier down the white-walled corridors. Pictures hung at regular intervals of former officers who served with distinction during the war.
 

They entered a glass elevator and the soldier depressed the button for the eighth floor—the location of the operations hall, where they tracked CW ships and communicated with every planet and station. Ops was the nerve center of the Salus Sphere, coordinating every mission.
 

The brown-haired fidian soldier fidgeted with his cuff and avoided eye contact. Concern built inside Morgan. This felt like more than a pirate raid on an outer rim planet.
 

“Well, Private, are you going to tell me any more?” Morgan said as they rode in the elevator.

“It was attacked and I was sent straight to your office after we lost contact. We redirected a scout ship to the area and it only found a few pieces of debris.”

“That’s impossible. Stations don’t just vanish.”
 

The elevator doors smoothly slid open. Morgan strode out and headed to the main area. Rows of Ops staff sat behind desks. He could hear them communicating to stations, ships, and planets about the status of Orbital Forty, telling them to activate black alert procedures. That meant prepare for an imminent attack.
 

It had been five years since CW activated a general black alert, when the horans feigned a probing assault on a mineral planet rich with uranium. Morgan guessed it was a bluff to test and monitor their reaction. The horans’ current empire had more than enough deposits to stop them taking such a risk. He was still on the command call, a communication sent to the heads of all operations when an event occurred. That provided a small crumb of comfort that he could at least keep his finger on the pulse of events around the Sphere.
 

Large high-definition screens were spread around the walls of the operations hall. The one directly in the center showed the seventy-five orbital stations spread around the frontier of the Salus Sphere circling moons and planets.
 

Morgan searched for Orbital Forty on the map amongst the light green globes that denoted them on the black screen. Like the soldier said, it was missing next to the faded outline of Retsina.
 

Five officers stood around a central desk, all dressed in the operations uniform of light blue shirts with a name-tag on the chest, rank insignia on both arms, and dark blue cargo pants. They turned to face him as he approached.

“Admiral Morgan,” a young officer said, “at 18:30 Salus Time, we received communications from Orbital Forty about a sudden burst of energy. We have a video feed of the events shortly afterward. A ship exited a wormhole and fired what we think are large ion cannons.”

“A ship out of a wormhole? Are you sure?” Morgan asked.

“I’ve made you a copy, sir,” the captain replied and handed him a memory chip.

“Your soldier told me a scout ship only found a few pieces of debris. What other measures have you taken?”

“We’ve sent orders to the nearest destroyer. It’s a light-year away and heading straight for Retsina in a hunting pattern.”

Morgan glanced down at the desk at the orange blur in the middle of the flat screen. “Is that the feed?”

The captain tapped the pressure keyboard and a light green timer ran in the top corner of the screen, displaying Retsina time. “This is the feed from Orbital Forty’s observation deck. I’ve sped it up to give you a better impression.”

An orange swirl transformed into a tunnel and a bright light flashed at the end of it. A ship cruised through the wormhole. The description matched the myth. An imposing dull gray giant, although it had been reported to have a graphite sheen, cannons on the top and sides, four times bigger than the common CW standard. They only had ion cannons that size for ground defense.
 

It fired at the station and uneven lines of static interference cut across the feed. Blue bolts of concentrated energy shot from both sides of the ship and pounded the station. The wormhole extended toward it and the feed stopped.

Morgan took a deep breath. It looked like the myth that had become a joke amongst the ranks. During the Century War, a ship would appear from nowhere and attack both the horans and CW. It had no pattern, never communicated and had devastating weaponry.
 

Eventually the story changed to blaming every disaster and crash, every missing person or just about anything that couldn’t be explained on the supposedly mythical Atlantis ship.
 

“Do you have a fix on the ship?”
 

“No, sir,” a tall thin female fidesian lieutenant said. “Do you think the wormhole swallowed the station?”

Morgan replayed the images in his mind. He’d even stopped believing the Atlantis ship existed. Nobody had that kind of tech in the known universe. The rumors were that this ghost ship of destruction had trawled space for centuries, appearing in solar systems that were light-years apart in a matter of minutes, arbitrarily targeting anything it could find.
 

The myth was the reason that people didn’t believe it existed. If CW and Axis technology wasn’t even close to accomplishing wormhole travel, how could a centuries-old ship?

“It’s possible in theory,” Morgan said. “I need to report this to the Space Marshal. Stay on black alert, and if you find its location, I want every available ship in the area to bring hell down upon it.”

Members of the ops team had stopped working and peered at Morgan. This was the first time as admiral he’d been tested. Twenty years of peace, punctuated with minor skirmishes against inferior forces, had left everybody in a comfort zone.
 

The Atlantis ship had destroyed it with a single cruel blow.
 

*

Morgan climbed into a two-seater transport pod outside the command center building and sat on the purple leather chair. The clear plastic door slid shut with an electric whine. He needed to come up with a realistic plan before speaking to Marshal Kenwright.
 

The gruff old man was a fighter pilot during the Century War and the soldiers loved him. The senior officers under his command had a less favorable view because he didn’t suffer fools and wasn’t scared to speak his mind when he suspected they were taking the easy option.

Morgan leaned toward the voice-recognition system’s speaker in front of him. “Area five. The marshal’s residence.”

It set off along the magnetic track and whirred past the air base. Three black arrow-shaped drones took to the air, joining others outside the atmosphere as part of the black alert proactive defense shield. At the side of the airstrip, a crew of the fidesian artillery peered out of the windows of a hundred-meter-tall orbital cannon. The setting sun radiated off its white barrel and support rods.
 

Without a firm location or a trackable path for the Atlantis ship, Kenwright wouldn’t commit a destroyer group to a search mission. It would leave sections of the Salus Sphere wide open. The old dog was cautious about this for a reason. The horan always looked for signs of weakness. If the Atlantis ship continued attacking CW stations, it would expose parts of the frontier and would require a destroyer presence to plug the gap.