“Initiate all long-range sensor arrays,” Tag said. “Full power. If anything’s out here, I want to see it.”
Bracken and Jaroon both appeared on Tag’s holoscreen in a joint comm link.
“Brewer, you did say your former captain was supposed to raze a whole planet,” Bracken said. “You don’t think those asteroids were what remained of it, do you?”
“Hard to tell,” Tag said. “Sofia and I figured the SRE would’ve sent a few different vessels to these coordinates in case Weber failed. They do like to plan for redundancies. Still, I don’t know what the SRE has that could obliterate a planet into crumbs like that.”
“True,” Bracken said. “I can’t imagine humans possess the weapons technology to cause such destruction.”
“And Mechanics do?” Tag asked with a raised brow.
“Not exactly,” Bracken said.
Her face remained as stoic as ever, but Tag took a slightly guilty pleasure in her admission of the Mechanics’ inadequacies.
“What about the Melarrey?” Tag asked. “That material phase transfer tech is pretty impressive. Could that destroy a whole planet?”
“Theoretically,” Jaroon said. “But it would take a concerted effort by an entire fleet, and I’m afraid we simply do not have the resources to do something like that after what the Drone-Mechs did to us.”
“Either way,” Alpha piped up, “that asteroid field is several hundred thousand klicks from our target destination. If the target was a planet, tremendous forces would’ve been involved to move it this far out of orbit.”
“It would be nice if our work was done for us,” Tag said, “but even if our target is destroyed, it wouldn’t give us any clues about the Drone-masters or if they’re actually gone. Let’s keep on our current trajectory.”
For several tense minutes they continued through the void until the speckles of red signifying the asteroid field disappeared from their holomap. They glided through the monotony of space with only the three ships’ impeller drive signatures pinging on their sensors.
Each second that passed without detecting anything worried Tag. What if he had misunderstood the coordinates Weber had written in his book? What if Grand Elector L’ndrant was right that they were wasting their time? This might all be a fool’s errand, a wonderful distraction, something to throw the SRE and Mechanics off the Drone-masters’ trail. Maybe Captain Weber had been duped just like Lonestar had.
All those anxieties crashed against the inside of Tag’s skull like gale-driven waves against a rocky cliff.
And then a ping broke the crew’s silence. A new red dot appeared on the holomap.
“Contact,” Alpha muttered. “Maybe a small planet...or a large space station.”
“Bracken? Jaroon? Are you reading this?” Tag asked.
They both responded in the affirmative, and Tag’s pulse quickened as they narrowed the distance between themselves and the mysterious object.
“Slow the approach,” Tag said. “Spool up the T-Drive.”
Alpha and Sofia both nodded, carrying out their respective orders.
“If things go south,” Tag said, “we’re jumping to coordinates B.”
“Copy,” Jaroon said.
“Understood,” Bracken replied.
As they got closer to the object, the red dot on the holomap split off into smaller fragments. There was still a central dot that loomed much larger than the others, but several dozen more swarmed around it like bees around a hive.
“Bring all weapons systems online,” Tag said.
“Yes, Captain,” Coren said as he tapped on his terminal. The hum of the Gauss cannons magnetizing their rails and the pulse cannon charging filled the bridge.
A speck appeared on their viewscreen, the source of the holomap indicators finally visible by outward cams. Sofia brought the Argo in closer until the speck became a larger blob. It became more and more clear that this wasn’t a small planet at all. Instead the object seemed to be a space station—but was like none Tag had ever seen.
Huge masts jutted from its central bulk, and there was very little geometric organization. It reminded him of an electromagnet that had been turned on and randomly attracted all the metal objects in its vicinity to it. Except instead of tacks and nails and screws, there were spaceships that had been secured together with a latticework of alloy frames and patchwork welds and tunnels made of sheet metal.
Bracken gasped over the comm line, and Tag quickly spotted the origin of her surprise. One of the ships attached to this gigantic relic was a sleekly contoured battlecruiser of ebon alloy. It was undoubtedly a Mechanic craft. As Tag’s eyes roved the structure, he identified other ships adhered to the framework. Some appeared to be made of glass so clear he could see the stars on the other side of the station. Others were boxy and pocked with rust, like the old Earthen container ships that had learned to fly through space. There were ships as small as an air car with wings for atmospheric flight, and others larger than even the Mechanic dreadnoughts, bristling with cannons and ports and torpedo bays that Tag hoped were as nonfunctional as they looked. One sapphire-colored craft, shaped vaguely like a bird of prey, reminded him of Melarrey tech.
“Is that...” Tag began.
“That’s one of ours,” Jaroon confirmed.
All told, there were hundreds of different ships joined together by a patchwork of tubes and wires and corridors.
“What is this?” Tag asked.
Judging by the silence coming from the Stalwart and the Crucible, his compatriots were just as mystified.
“Hostile contacts identified,” Alpha said. The holomap glared with the scarlet markings of the smaller ships they had detected earlier. Now those smaller ships blazed across the viewscreen. Tag immediately recognized them by their muddy, organic appearance.
“Dreg,” Tag said. A few dozen of the insectoid ships were headed toward the trio. Inside them were the ugly, flying slug-like creatures he had come to dread. Each was no larger than his head, but if they got aboard the ship and swarmed through the passages, their diminutive size would hardly matter. “Open fire.”
Pulse and PDC fire exploded from the Argo, cutting into the approaching Dreg. The parasitic little bastards loved scavenging other aliens’ scraps. Tag didn’t want to give the putrid aliens a chance to attach their ships to his hull and cut their way into the Argo. As the first few Dreg ships were battered and broke apart under the fusillade of combined Mechanic, Melarrey, and SRE efforts, something else caught Tag’s attention.
His heart stopped, and his blood froze for an instant. It wasn’t the impending interspecies conflict that frightened him. Rather, it was a strangely familiar sight, something he had never expected to see all the way out here, that caused his nerves to dance with violent electricity. As more Dreg ships unlatched from the station and sped toward the Argo, they revealed the shape of the hulking spaceship at the heart of the station.
Its bulbous shape had been transformed by the pylons and scaffolding extending from its hull, but Tag recognized it despite the additions. It had clusters of cannon batteries and torpedo ports, but the main purpose of this ship wasn’t war. It was an exploratory vessel, one meant to identify distant planets and initiate colonization efforts.
As the station slowly rotated, Tag saw huge white letters painted across the hull. He let out a sharp breath as he read what had been written there long ago.
It was an old script, but Tag knew how to read it. The ship was human: the UNS Hope.
CHAPTER NINE
“What is that doing out here?” Sofia exclaimed.
“I thought...the United Nations...we lost contact with it hundreds of years ago,” Tag said in disbelief. The Argo had originally been dispatched to follow the trail of the missing generation ship. Their primary mission had been to uncover the mystery of what had happened to the Hope and the thousands upon thousands of humans who had lived on it.
They didn’t have long to wonder why the giant ship had made this desolate pa
rt of space its home, nor how it had evolved into the monstrosity they saw now. The Dreg opened fire on the fleet, expelling organic spikes that trailed oozing lines of brown goo. Most of the spikes were intercepted by the PDC fire and chaff pluming from the Argo, but a few made it through the screen of countermeasures, piercing the Argo’s shields and crashing against its hull. The ship quivered with each impact.
“Take them out!” Tag shouted.
The pulse cannon charged and launched a spear of intense cobalt fire into the nearest Dreg ship. As the ship disintegrated, the Gauss cannons chugged away, levying kinetic slugs into the Dreg’s ranks. Each time a round passed through the carapace-like vessels, more goo streamed out in long tendrils along with wires that looked like blood vessels and the writhing bodies of the slug-like Dreg.
The Dreg didn’t stand a chance. Not in open space like this. Not when Tag, Bracken, and Jaroon had come prepared for much, much worse. Streams of pulsefire and PDC rounds spiraled through space, pounding the Dreg ranks as the Melarrey bubble weapons crushed the attackers. Soon all that remained of the attacking fleet were chunks of ships and corpses frozen in the vacuum. A few more Dreg ships were scattered across the station, but no others ventured out to repeat the ill-fated assault of their brethren.
“That all they got?” Sofia asked.
“This is too easy,” Tag said. “I don’t like it.”
Again Jaroon and Bracken joined Tag on the comms.
“That ship—the UNS Hope—that’s the one you told us about,” Bracken said.
“It is,” Tag said. “I had no idea this was our target. It doesn’t make sense. Alpha, we are at the correct coordinates, right?”
“We are, Captain,” Alpha said. “There is a small margin for error, but other than the asteroid belt, I do not detect any other significant masses that would indicate an alternative target.”
“Strange,” Tag said as much to himself as to the others. “Maybe you were right. Maybe the Hope had discovered something out here—something the SRE wanted to disappear. Maybe that debris field really was the planet.”
He wanted to believe that their mission had already been done for them. Perhaps this war had ended without their realizing it. The lump in the back of his throat told him it couldn’t be true.
Still...
“The presence of the Dreg would indicate that this station has likely been abandoned,” Bracken said. “Whether there were Drone-masters or humans or something else here, the fact that so many Dreg have tried to establish residence makes me think whoever was here before is gone.”
Sofia stared at Tag, her gaze burning through his visor. He knew what she wanted. This was an archaeological mystery. Whether this structure had started with the humans aboard the UNS Hope or the Hope had simply been the seed of a station assembled by another species, this was a curiosity far too intriguing to pass up.
“We have to investigate, of course,” Tag said. “I want to know what happened to the Hope’s crew and who created this station. If this was Captain Weber’s target, if he was supposed to destroy this...this thing...then I want to know why.”
“I agree,” Bracken said. “I didn’t come all the way out here to torpedo this mess and leave. I’d like to know why you dragged us out here, too.”
Tag sensed a bit of good humor in her statement amid the dripping derision.
“We are agreed as well,” Jaroon said. “This is far too curious. I would very much like to join any boarding crew investigating the station.”
“Excellent,” Tag said. He studied the huge relic rotating in front of them. It would take days, even weeks to walk through the maze-like structure if they explored each ship and corridor. There would no doubt be enough to keep them occupied for months if they dug deep into the data stored in the individual computer systems. The vast knowledge and technology they might uncover was tempting.
But if the Drone-masters were still out there, if this was just the first breadcrumb on their trail, they couldn’t afford that luxury. They needed to find out what they were supposed to do here—or where they were supposed to go next.
“We should split up,” Tag said. “Jaroon, start at the Melarrey ship we spotted. Bracken, investigate the Mechanic battlecruiser. Find out why those ships are here. We’ll start out at the Hope.”
“Sounds logical,” Bracken said.
“Very good,” Jaroon said.
The two alien ships took off, heading toward the nested vessels respective to each species. Sofia eased the Argo forward, past the floating remains of the Dreg ships, and skirted between the tentacles of other spaceships-turned-space-station chambers. The UNS Hope filled the viewscreen as they approached. It was larger than Tag had even imagined. Generation ships like this had been built to support entire human cities, civilizations shooting into the stars without the support of resupply ships or trade networks. That meant they had everything from squadrons of fighters to agricultural sectors and manufacturing facilities. In essence, the generation ship could maintain and repair itself like a living, breathing creature.
Docking ports appeared on the viewscreen, lining the one side of the UNS Hope not covered by the makeshift add-ons. The luer lock docking apparatus of the Hope was antiquated compared to the more advanced grav tether connections favored by the SRE now, but Alpha assured them they would be able to make do.
“Bull, better make ready down there,” Tag said.
“’Bout time,” he said. “I hate missing out on all the fun.”
“Well if this expedition is like our others,” Sofia said, “there will be plenty for you to enjoy.”
The Argo connected to the Hope with a jolt that rattled through the bridge.
“Connection secure,” Alpha said.
Tag undid his restraints and stepped out of his crash couch. “Everyone to the docking port. Alpha, put the ship on lockdown. Coren, maintain remote weapons controls just in case any Dreg decide to board while we’re gone.”
The group rushed down the ladders to gear up in the armory and then join the marines already waiting at the docking port. They were armed with a menagerie of weapons. Tag had ensured Coren, Sofia, and Alpha were also equipped with all manner of sample and data collection equipment, too, as they prepared to embark on what Tag hoped would be a fruitful treasure hunt. The marines marched into the airlock first, and the others followed. The crew was unusually silent, wrought with anticipation.
Tag clicked on the terminal, and the airlock began pressurizing to the atmosphere on the other side of the Hope’s docking hatch. It didn’t take long for the air to hiss out. Tag’s HUD indicated that the pressure was not off by much—less than a tenth of an atmosphere difference between the Argo and the station. The Argo’s computer systems overrode the Hope’s dormant airlock and forced the hatch to open. Dim red lights wavered along the interior as Bull led them in, his rifle pressed firmly against his shoulder. Grime covered the bulkhead, and a few loose wires hung haphazardly from rusted-out holes in the ceiling. Metallic groans resonated through the alloy like the howls of distant, mechanical wolves.
By all signs, it appeared this was the first instance in a very long time that a human had set foot inside the Hope.
Tag planned to find out exactly why that was by the time they were off this gods-forsaken ghost ship.
CHAPTER TEN
The emergency lights glowing along the empty corridors cast eerie pools of red over the stanchions and deck, giving the place a decidedly blood-soaked appearance. Bull signaled the marines to fan out, securing both directions of the corridor. Each marine bristled with weapons and battle-hardened stares, determined to bring down any threat that dared challenge their entrance. Tag bent to examine the deck and wiped a glove in a centimeters-thick layer of dust. His finger came away coated in a substance that he couldn’t be sure was organic or something else entirely. He shivered before standing straight.
“This mission is one of science and research first and foremost,” he said to the crew. He fought against t
he urge to whisper. Their voices were mostly contained within their suits, anyway. Though his HUD reported the atmosphere had appropriate oxygen levels, pressure, and even bearable temperatures, he didn’t want to risk encountering some kind of toxin or contaminant. If the Drone-masters had been here and found the humans, they might have left some present behind—perhaps even a human version of the mind-enslaving nanites.
“Any active terminals we find, Alpha and Coren will tap into them. Sofia and I will take care of any biological samples.”
The group affirmed the orders with a flurry of nods.
“Alpha, call up our schematics of the Hope,” Tag said. “I don’t know how much of this thing has changed since it was built, but they might still be helpful. We’ve got two main targets. First, the Hope’s labs. Second, the bridge. Got to be something in those places to clue us in to whatever happened here. Any questions?”
Lonestar raised a hand. “When do I get to shoot something?”
“Hopefully never,” Tag said. He tapped on his wrist terminal to transfer a three-dimensional map of the Hope to each of the crewmembers’ wrist terminals. On his helmet’s HUD, the map loaded and showed their current position in the docking station. He used his wrist terminal again to mark a waypoint to the labs, which were closer than the bridge. With a hand signal, he directed Bull to lead them out of the docking bay and into the rest of the gargantuan ship.
Gorenado and Sumo dropped into rearguard behind Tag. Sumo gave him a wink. “I won’t let any boogeymen get to you, Captain.”
“It’s not the boogeymen I’m afraid of,” Tag replied.
Their steps resounded through the metal corridors. Streaks of grime dripped along the bulkhead and covered the debris on the deck. Each step they took left a clear footprint. Tag scanned the floor, looking to see if any other lifeforms had left a trail through this corridor, but other than the tracks of his crew, he didn’t see anything.
Creaks moaned through the bulkheads as they arrived at a large chamber where wire-framed scaffolding led to three additional decks above their position. Each level was marked by a bevy of other corridors. A pungent odor reminiscent of decay permeated the place, even through the suit’s air filters. Tag’s hand moved toward his holstered pulse pistol.
Shattered Dawn (The Eternal Frontier Book 3) Page 5
