Carson Mach 1: The Atlantis Ship Read Online Free PDF Page A

single hard bed and a shit-pan in the corner decorated the two-meter-square room.  
    An electronic whir of servos grabbed his attention and reminded him in stark clarity of why his head and face hurt: the droid. “Was it you?” Mach groaned. He made out the bipedal form of the Invidian security droid—or sec-bot as most people called them—looking at him via a vid-screen on the east wall of the cell.
    This particular sec-bot had a snide attitude to it. Its singular orb of an eye, set within a narrow rectangular face, spun as it focused on Mach. Somewhere within its head lay a quantum chip running its AI program. It often surprised a lot of visitors to Invidia that these sec-bots had distinct personalities.
    Some people, mostly idiots, thought they were self-aware and conscious. Which Mach knew was utterly ridiculous. He had tested this theory so many times that he now knew most of the sec-bots by their serial number.  
    This one, no. 8094-12, known as just 94-12, had arrested Mach on at least fifteen occasions, mostly due to Mach shooting it, shutting it down with EMPs, or messing with its code for shits and giggles. At no time during all that did it display any kind of self-preservation.  
    It was just a big dumb robot.  
    Mach knew he was getting stale, lazy, if he could be so lax as to be sucker punched and arrested by 94-12—the dumbest of all big dumb robots on the security force.  
    “Carson Mach,” it said, with a strangely cheery male voice that wouldn’t be out of place in a church choir. “You’ve been arrested for…” It reeled off a long list of crimes for the next minute and a half, making Mach yawn.  
    “Just tell me the damage,” Mach said. “How big’s the fine this time?”
    Given his little bonus from the Syndicate, he wasn’t too bothered. His bar tab was probably higher than his fine. Usually he’d give the warden a little ‘gift’ of ten k eros and he’d be on his way, after having had a nice night’s sleep and a delicious prison breakfast.  
    It was a running joke on Invidia that if you wanted to take a date out for a nice meal you should get her arrested first.  
    “Your fine, Carson Mach,” 94-12 said, “has the remaining balance of two point three million eros.”
    Mach didn’t think he heard correctly at first and ordered the stupid sec-bot to repeat. But to his horror, the numbers didn’t change. And there was a troubling word in that sentence too— remaining .
    Leaning forward, now feeling very much awake, Mach said, “What the hell are you talking about? That’s outrageous! I only killed one person this time, and the security droids will be fine after a reboot. There wasn’t even that much damage to the bar, and what in god’s name do you mean ‘remaining balance’?”
    “We have seized your ship and all of its possessions, the value of which we have assessed to be seven hundred thousand eros, leaving a remaining balance of—”
    “Yes, I heard you the second time!” Mach said, standing and walking around in circles in the tiny two-meter-square cell. A three-million-eros fine! It was simply… “Bullshit,” Mach said, slapping his hand uselessly against the vid-screen. “I want to see the warden, right now.”
    “That won’t be possible.”
    “And why’s that, you waste of silicon?”  
    “Warden Farage has been indicted on charges of fraud and sent to Summanus to serve out the rest of his life.”
    Summanus—the prison planet!
    Mach reeled back and slumped onto the hard bed. This wasn’t right; no one on Invidia was charged with fraud—ever. It was just how things worked here. It was currency for laws and for the most part it worked well. Invidia wasn’t even an affiliated planet under the governance of the CW.  
    “Who even has the jurisdiction to do that?” Mach asked. Invidia didn’t even have its own government. The security force was privately funded by a treaty account set up by the various criminal families. As odd as it was, it