The Terminal War: A Space Opera Novel (A Carson Mach Adventure) Read Online Free Page B

he said, the single word dropping like a bum note in a minor key.
    “I’m sorry,” Mach said. And he was. He had known so many of the Earth people to succumb to it before the medical revolution in the Sphere eliminated such diseases. “So this artifact that you’ve discovered… it’s related?”
    Beringer’s eyes widened, pupils dilating due to the Whisper and the gloominess of the room, but there was a fierce hunger there, twitching at the corner of his eyelids.  
    “It’s from Earth,” Beringer said, hushing his words so that Mach could barely hear him. He continued, “Before our species evolved to who we are now on Earth, there are some schools of thought that we were the results of not just evolution, but of a helping hand, some grand conductor easing things into place.”
    Mach snorted. Evolution had been proven time and time and again. “I don’t believe in all that mumbo jumbo,” Mach said. “And frankly, I’m surprised you do.”
    Without moving even a scintilla, Beringer said, “I know it to be true. I found a similar item on an expedition back to Earth when I was twenty-three years old and studying for my Ph.D. It was a small object, round. Perfectly round. Unnaturally so. Under high magnification, it displayed no flaw in its surface. Do you realize how impossible that is? A material that even under the most powerful microscopes we have today shows perfect spherical form in every possible essence?”
    “And you think you’ve found another?”
    Beringer sat back for a moment and smiled up at the barwoman, who had brought another couple of drinks over. No Whisper this time, but something a little more potent: Gasmulch.  
    “Courtesy of the gracious one,” the fang-toothed woman said, running a fingertip across Mach’s hand, making him shiver with delight—and no little fear. “He asked me to pass on his best wishes to Adira against her opponent tonight.”
    “And that is?” Mach prompted.  
    “You’ll see, darling, in good time.”
    She swung away, laughing. Mach didn’t like that one bit. The back of his head burned. He could tell Gracious was staring at him. But fuck him, Mach thought; he wasn’t going to give the manipulative old swine the satisfaction.  
    Instead, he grabbed both glasses and shot them one after the other, slamming them down on the table so hard most of the patrons in the bar looked over at him.  
    “Do we have to do this?” Beringer asked. Mach noticed the poor man’s hands were shaking worse. But this was good. He needed to be scared. That was the only way this plan would work.  
    The last fight played out in the cage over the course of a bitter ten minutes. The two combatants—vestans armed with wooden staffs—beat the living crap out of each other. The larger of the two took a shot to the balls. Vestan balls were even more sensitive and painful than humans’ if played with wrongly.  
    A chorus of, “Oooh,” rang around the bar.  
    The vestan slumped to his knees and gave the three-finger gesture—fingers close together, palm up. He had quit—and would likely never sire children in his lifetime.
    The bar erupted in cheers as the winner was announced, and the onlookers who had backed the right fighter buzzed around the bookmaker’s desk to collect their winnings. It was no surprise to see that the number of losers far outweighed the winners.  
    “Adira’s up,” Mach said. “But before they start, tell me: you found another of these spheres on some distant planet?”
    Beringer simply nodded. “And it predates the one I found on Earth by at least two millennia.”
    “Excuse me if I’m missing something here, but how do you know it’s there, and if you do, why could you not retrieve it with whatever was sending you the data.”
    “No device told me of it,” he said.  
    “Then what?”
    “I found reference to it in a data-store—an ancient digital drive from a race long since extinct. It’s taken me fifteen years to break the encryption