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

variation in skin texture of the nanogloves.  
    “I’ll find out, and when I do…” Sinju said.
    “I play by your rules in here. A bet’s a bet.”  
    The big criminal’s four fists clenched and he moved from behind the desk. Mach knew it wasn’t wise being close to him when his blood boiled and edged back. Sinju had a reputation for delivering a devastating headbutt, powering forward on his stocky legs and using the Summanus jet skull-cap to flatten facial features.  
    Adira appeared from a side door. Her left eye was swollen closed. She walked with a slight limp and held her ribs. The money would help ease the pain of her wounds. Beringer wrapped her arm around his shoulder, and they headed for the entrance.  
    “Time to go,” Mach said. “It’s been a pleasure doing business.”
    “I don’t think so, Mach,” Sinju said, standing between him and the entrance. Two men, dressed in faded blue OreCorps uniforms and armed with laser pistols, ran to his side.
    Adira glanced back. Mach raised his chin, gesturing her and Beringer to climb the stairs and prepare their hover-bikes outside. He suspected something like this might happen. It didn’t take a quantum physicist to work out Sinju would be a sore loser.  
    The club remained silent as the patrons watched on, getting extra value for their bets—a free fight, on the house.
    Mach raised his smart-screen. “I recorded the fight and the wager. If anything happens to me, it’ll be sent around the Sphere. How many people will visit your seedy operations if they wind up dead after winning a bet?”
    The smooth hum of hover-bike engines drifted down the stairs.  
    Hatred burned in Sinju’s eyes. He turned to the DJ booth next to the bar and nodded. Loud music pumped through the speakers on the walls. He stepped closer to Mach. “This isn’t the end. I’ll be watching you. One false move, one sniff that you cheated me, and I’ll rip out your throat.”
    “Will that be all?” Mach asked.  
    “Just fuck off and get out of my sight, you cockroach.”
    Sinju stood to one side and waved his two goons away. Mach tensed when he walked past the big criminal, half expecting a strike, but none came. A message from Adira pinged on his screen: the Intrepid ’s hover-bikes were ready, and she was waiting outside.  
    Mach stopped at the bottom of the stairs and turned back. Sinju headed toward the bookie, no doubt wanting to find out the extent of the hit he had taken.
    “Sinju,” Mach called.  
    The big criminal stopped and looked over his broad shoulder. Mach smiled and raised his two middle fingers.  
    Sinju roared, threw a table out of the way, and sprinted across the club. Mach clambered the steps, sucked in the alley’s glorious fresh air, and jumped onto the backseat of Adira’s bike. Beringer had already left. The pink rear light of his bike was already halfway to the port in the darkening sky.  
    “Full speed ahead. An angry man’s about to fly out the door.”
    Adira punched the accelerator with her foot, and the bike thrust forward and gained altitude, away from the enclosed space of the stone buildings below. Sinju sprang out of the club’s entrance just in time to be blasted by a wake of dust. Mach laughed and waved, and decided the time was right for his backup plan, because why the hell not?  
    He pressed the button on his small remote detonator and twenty kilos of X91, military-grade explosives boomed into the night sky, bringing down the rear wall of the cube-shaped building.  
    It wasn’t enough to collapse it; Mach wasn’t that cruel, but it was enough to put Sinju out of business for a few months to make the repairs.  
    A cloud of steelcrete dust billowed up around the raging figure of Gracious Sinju as the old bastard rushed to see the extent of the damage.  
    “That was unnecessary,” Adira said.  
    “Sure, but you’re not complaining, are you?”
    “Hell no. I hope he chokes on the dust.”

    *

    It didn’t take long to