Carson Mach 1: The Atlantis Ship Read Online Free PDF

worked out okay; even the families knew there had to be some kind of order, even if the punishment was financial.  
    “Do you have sufficient funds to pay your fine?” the sec-bot asked.
    “No, you know I don’t; you stole all my gear. I’ve nothing else to give.” He didn’t mention his off-planet account. They’d have wiped out his CW account and pension, along with anything else they had found in his ship. He didn’t want to give the buggers his last remaining funds.  
    “Sentencing will begin this afternoon in lieu of payment.”
    “This is madness! No one on Invidia has ever faced charges. We can work something out, I’m sure. A payment plan perhaps? Let me talk with the new warden.”
    Mach could have sworn that 94-12 smiled as he said so very cheerily, “I am the new warden. I’ll return in one hour to see if you have found the funds required for your fine. Good day, Carson Mach.”
    The vid-screen switched off just as Mach ripped the bed plank from the wall and threw it against the screen. The plank bounced off without harming the surface and clattered to the floor, knocking over the shit-pan.
    “Just great,” he yelled, slapping his palm against the wall.
    This was not what he had expected at all.  
    He tried to call someone, but his smart-screen wouldn’t connect. They’d updated the security protocols, closing the loophole in the system he had often used to get in touch with Carlo or other heads of families.  
    He’d need to find a new way out, hack into the system, but that would take far longer than the one hour that 94-12 had given him. There was no way he could cover the fine. In his off-planet account, he had just over nine hundred grand, and that was the sum of everything now that his ship had been reprocessed and sold on.
    A slight comfort came to him as he thought about the ship’s various problems that he’d managed to hide from the dock inspection during his last authentication. Whoever had bought it would soon realize the fusion motors were shot and the LightDrive barely functioned below two hundred HPL—hours per light-year—making it possibly the slowest FTL ship in the Salus Sphere and a prime target for raiders and pirates.
    He considered himself lucky 94-12 had gotten as much as he did for it.
    But it still didn’t help him out of this particular hole.  
    There were few options left open to him. In time he may be able to hack some comms to Carlo and get a loan, or there was the option of breaking out, though that seemed as likely as busting someone out of Summanus, which to his knowledge had never been done.
    Perhaps if he could convince 94-12 to come and see him personally, he could try to override its functions… As that idea started to coalesce, his smart-screen around his forearm buzzed with an incoming notification.
    “Whoa…” he said, whistling as he looked at his screen and saw who it was calling him— Admiral Morgan .
    They hadn’t spoken in at least three or four years. At one time, Mach and Morgan were like father and son, the latter was his commanding officer during Mach’s entire career. Their unit had the highest kill and success rate of any CW military unit.
    Until the Situation happened and Mach was thrown out of the force.  
    Morgan was then promoted to the admiralty and oversaw the naval fleet. Easy job these days, though, considering the peacetime. Mach always viewed it as a way for the CW hierarchy to keep Morgan out of trouble.  
    He was a hero to the home Sol System for his efforts during the war when Earth and Mars were on the precipice of horan control. If it wasn’t for Morgan, the system would have fallen and humanity’s first home would be no more than a slave world.  
    Mach, however, didn’t have such heroics to keep him nice and safe in a cushy role upstairs, so why, after all this time, would Morgan be calling him now? Given the changes to the warden and the fine system, it didn’t take a genius to realize these events were