Carson Mach Adventures 1-3 Box Set by A. C. Hadfield

Author:A. C. Hadfield [Hadfield, A. C.]
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi
Tags: Science Fiction & Fantasy, Science Fiction, Adventure, Alien Invasion, Colonization, First Contact, Galactic Empire, Military, Space Fleet, Space Marine, Space Opera, Exploration, Space Exploration
Amazon: B01ATHW9FC
Publisher: Vast Frontiers
Published: 2016-01-18T00:00:00+00:00

Chapter Thirteen

Mach needed a shot of stim. A shot of anything to numb the anxiety that ate away at him like ancient wood lice chewing on the dead husk of a tree. His body vibrated with tiredness that often came after an intense bout of adrenalized fighting.

He was slumped with his back against the cool wall of his captain’s quarters as he rested on his bed. His breathing was deep, rhythmic, and followed old hard-wired neural networks generated from years of training in the CW infantry. The room was cool, set exactly to how he liked it. Shadows tinted cobalt blue gathered thickly around his bed and the corners, conspirators shrouding him from Adira’s gaze. Her silhouette hovered at the end of his bed, her back against the wall, arms crossed around her chest.

She wore just a tight-fitting bodysuit, both of them having stripped from their layers of protective suit as soon as they were hauled up from the planet’s surface. Sanchez had made his excuses and retired to his berth to recover.

Mach picked up the squeeze bottle of nutrient-rich liquid, and swallowed half in one deep gulp. It tasted of limes, the flavor created by the combination of replacement electrolytes, salts, and his special mix of painkillers and stimulants.

He held up the bottle to Adira and raised an eyebrow.

Adira, as ever, stood calm, a statue of elegance. Her lithe limbs moved with grace as she approached Mach, taking the bottle from him, her fingers brushing, lingering against his. She drank slowly, noiselessly, before placing the bottle on a shelf that contained a digital image of Mach as a young CWDF officer in the days before he had known Adira. He looked so naïve then, smiling with the excitement of an impending battle for which he had no frame of reference or prior experience to realize that the CWDF’s propaganda recruitment drive was completely incongruous to the horrors of war. There was no glory, excitement, or victory; there was just unending loss and tragedy for all concerned.

Even now, after all these years, Mach wondered just how important stopping this weapon was. What if it did fall into the wrong hands? What if trillions of people were wiped out? That was still a small insignificance to the chaos of the universe.

“You fought well out there,” Adira said as she crawled onto his bed, on her hands and knees, a predator stalking its prey with slow, deliberate movements. Through his prosthetic eye, he could see her body temperature remain consistent, barely changing despite their proximity. His, on the other hand… it always rose a few degrees when he and Adira were this close.

They were like magnets, he thought, a powerful force that repelled as much as attracted. Although these days, there were fewer incidences of repulsion. It would be too crude to say danger made him horny, or even that Adira made him horny, that was for teenage boys. No, with her, it was something else entirely, something primal, something that defied a natural, logical explanation.

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