Free The Terminal War: A Space Opera Novel (A Carson Mach Adventure) by A. C. Hadfield Page B

up. He stared at the hologram now playing on a loop.  
    Kortas reentered the room and announced that their transport was ready to take them to the mausoleum for a closer inspection. “I’ll show you to your vehicle,” the vestan said, gesturing for them to leave the room through the door from which he had come. “It’ll take a few hours, so the quicker we start…”
    Mach and the others followed him through a series of blank corridors that Mach had the impression were set up purely to confuse them so that they remembered nothing of their facilities’ true layout.  
    And all throughout this, Mach saw nothing of detail anywhere: no text, imagery, other Guardians—just a couple of blank rooms and the holographic film.  
    Their transport sat in a similar docking bay to the one they had first experienced. Only instead of a shuttle, there was a sleek hover-pod waiting for them, its gullwing doors open. The inside looked comfortable with its fabric seats and traditional cockpit dashboard lit up with internationally standard controls. Not that they could use them.  
    Kortas had informed them it was strictly on autopilot.  
    The vehicle was entirely vestan in its design: black, all curves and no sharp angles. It was like a pill with a slightly narrow nose. Mach, Adira, and Beringer got inside.  
    “When you reach the site,” Kortas said, leaning into the transporter, “take things slow. Investigate everything, and take nothing for granted. And above all: do not touch or interfere with the body.”
    “How will we send all this data back to you?” Mach said, glancing again at the bracelet.  
    “We’ll instruct you further when you’re there. But we’ll see what you see, and hear what you hear. Do not deviate from the task, and we won’t be forced to…” He trailed off, letting Mach get the gist of the warning.  
    “What about weapons?” Mach said.  
    “There’s a small cache in the transporter’s trunk—but let me say in no uncertain terms: they are for purely exceptional circumstances. Their misuse will result in us being forced to—“
    “I get it,” Mach said impatiently, holding up the bracelet. “You’ll zap us from your secret hideout. Now if there’s nothing else, can we get the hell out there and deal with this? I’d rather not be here for a minute longer than I have to.”
    Although not responding, Mach could tell from the twisted lips on Kortas’ face that he felt the same way.  
    “As you wish,” the vestan said, stepping back.
    The doors to the transporter closed with a near-silent clunk. The docking bay opened to a dull Terminus morning: a picture of weak gray light from the distant sun blanketed the place in a monochromatic shawl. The transporter’s engines whined, they rose a meter off the ground, and then they were off, moving forward toward their destination.  
    After about ten minutes of this, Beringer, sitting in the back of the transporter and watching the holographic film play from the small projector on his bracelet, looked up, his face pale.  
    “What is it?” Adira said, from the copilot seat, staring back at the older man.
    Mach turned to face him too.  
    “Beringer,” he said, “talk to us, what is it?”  
    The archeologist freeze-framed the video on the moment Afron disappeared from the picture. He zoomed into the vestan’s blurred face. “There,” Beringer said, gesturing with his free hand to a dark shape around Afron’s neck.  
    “Shit,” Mach said. “That’s no vine.”
    “What is it?” Adira said.  
    “That,” Beringer said, “is an arm. A vestan arm.”

Chapter Eight

    The hover pod’s engines decreased in tone, and it bumped against the ground. Its gull-wing door smoothly rotated upward. Mach peered outside at a mausoleum bathed in weak light, matching the projection from Beringer’s bracelet. Other vine-strangled stone buildings surrounded it in a disorderly formation, but this was the only one with its door open.  
    Beringer