Shattered Dawn (The Eternal Frontier Book 3)

by Anthony J Melchiorri

  “Raktor was described by the Collectors as a weed-like species with a collective intelligence, not unlike the Dreg.”

  “Probably why Raktor was so competitive with the Dreg,” Sofia offered. “As different as they seem on the outside, their basic take-all attitude toward resources are similar.”

  Alpha nodded. The click of Lucky’s claws sounded louder, and the Rizzar appeared through the hatch. Alpha sent the bottle rocketing back out into the passageway, and Lucky dashed away.

  “Sofia’s assessment is accurate,” Alpha said. “Raktor are an adaptable, scavenging species. It appears that this particular one escaped a specimen chamber after the Collectors left the Hope. As the life-support systems failed, I hypothesize it used the warmth of the terminals in the computer core to stay alive, which simultaneously aided its efforts in understanding the ship’s layout, enabling it to tap into the station’s systems. In fact, the Raktor have evolved to directly tap into electronic systems in a unique adaptation enabled by the advent of space-faring species. Their vines are capable of confining and transmitting electromagnetic waves through the transport of energy down an organic dielectric material.”

  “In other words, Raktor and their vines act like an old-fashioned network cable,” Sofia said.

  “I see,” Tag said. “That explains how it’s able to interface with ship’s systems. I’m still wondering what all this has to do with the seedlings.”

  “A few things,” Sofia said. “The Raktor we know and love realizes that the Hope is a defunct station. It isn’t stupid, and it knows its life will end aboard the ship in isolation.” She held up a finger but waited as Lucky bounded noisily into the room. Alpha took care of the crumpled bottle once more. “If there’s one thing I have found in common with every lifeform I’ve studied, it’s the desire to survive and provide more resources for their progeny.”

  “That is self-evident,” Alpha said, “because if a race didn’t want to survive, it would go extinct.”

  Sofia rolled her eyes. “Thanks for the obvious.”

  “I thought what you were saying was rather obvious,” Alpha said, apparently confused.

  “Anyway,” Sofia continued, “my point is that Raktor’s seedlings might never have a chance to propagate. Its lineage will live and die on that station without a chance to spread.”

  Tag’s shoulders sagged as the realization of what Sofia wanted to offer Raktor settled over him. “You want to propose Raktor a trade. All the ID codes from the other ships in return for spreading its seedlings around the galaxy.”

  “I knew you wouldn’t like it,” Sofia said. “If Raktor is anything like other races I’ve studied—and everything Alpha showed me supports that—it will gladly give us the data we want in exchange for ensuring its offspring have a chance to thrive.”

  “I’m not a fan of spreading weeds,” Tag said.

  “But what if they could help us?”

  Tag stared back at Sofia. A wild look shone in her eyes. He found it odd that an ET anthropologist would suggest using a sentient race like this.

  “What if we could use them to take over a Collector ship?” she asked.

  “How does that make us any better than the aliens who enslaved the Drone-Mechs?” Tag asked. “I couldn’t possibly justify that, even if we’re talking about Raktor.”

  “Trust me,” Sofia said. “I understand that. We’d give Raktor and one of its seedlings a choice. I wouldn’t force them into anything.”

  “Why would it choose to help us?”

  “There is one more motivating factor besides propagation shared between many species,” Alpha said. “I have observed it in humans, as well as with the Mechanics and Melarrey. Sofia and I believe this factor may be shared by Raktor as well.”

  Tag looked at Sofia. “And that would be?”

  She leaned over his desk. “Revenge.”

  CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN

  Aboard the Hope station once more, Tag looked over the precipice from which he and Sofia had first fallen into Raktor’s waiting vines. Like before, darkness peered back up at him. He flicked on the forward lights from his EVA suit’s helmet to cut a swathe from the murky blackness, revealing the latticework of brown vines squirming up the side of the cylindrical chamber. The vines formed a living carpet over the bottom of the deep chasm.

  “I’m just glad we’re not jumping again,” Sofia said, sidling up beside him.

  “You’re both positive this thing won’t smash us against the walls?” Coren asked.

  “According to preliminary conversations we conducted with Raktor via the Hope’s laboratory computers and my own data analysis,” Alpha said, “I believe there is a sixty-five-point-four percent probability that Raktor will not immediately terminate us via that method.”

  Coren uncoiled a length of climbing rope from his pack. “What’s the probability it kills us with some other method?”

  “That probability is rather considerable.”

  “Let’s focus on the positive, please,” Tag said.

  “I believe a common human saying is appropriate in this environment,” Alpha said, helping Coren to secure one end of the climbing rope to a stanchion. “Hope for the best, prepare for the worst.”

  Sofia glanced over the edge again. “Yeah, that about sums it up.”

  “I still say we burn the damn plant,” Bull said. “Find all the codes ourselves.”

  The marines behind him bristled with their weapons. Knowing kinetic slugs and pulsefire would do minimal damage to Raktor’s forest of vines, they had brought flamethrowers not unlike the ones in Coren’s wrist-mounted weapons.

  “I’d prefer not to massacre every living thing the Collectors left here. Dealing with the Dreg and the scorpioids was enough for me,” Tag said. “Besides, Raktor isn’t the enemy.”

  “Ain’t exactly our friend, either,” Lonestar said.

  “You know what they say,” Tag began. “The enemy of my enemy—”

  “Is still a psychotic plant with violent tendencies,” Sumo finished.

  “All right,” Tag said. He motioned to Sofia and himself. “Let us do the talking when we get down there.” Then he nodded to Coren.

  Coren threw the unsecured end of the rope spooling over the side, and Tag watched it fall among the vines. He grabbed the rope, pulled on it to ensure it was holding tight, and then positioned himself over the edge.

  “I, for one, am looking forward to meeting Raktor,” Alpha said. “I believe Raktor and I share a common bond in that we are both lifeforms one would not normally believe to be sentient.”

  “Better hope you’re still sentient after we talk to it,” Bull said.

  Tag gave the sergeant an ironic salute as he rappelled down the rope and into the embrace of Raktor’s vines. The vines seemed to give way, making room for him as he descended. None reached out to him like they had when he and Sofia had fallen here the first time. He wasn’t sure if Raktor was being polite, or if it was avoiding so much as touching Tag because it was pissed off. Sofia came down next, landing lightly beside Tag. Rather than have the marines lead with weapons drawn, Tag and Sofia had decided to be the first to approach Raktor as a sign of goodwill.

  Not that Tag was foolish enough to think Raktor would be swayed by this small measure of trust. Bracken and Jaroon were watching from their ships, all weapons aimed at the life-support systems of the Hope as a final failsafe measure. He figured with Raktor’s vines in all the Hope’s computer systems and sensor arrays, the posturing by the two warships hadn’t gone unnoticed.

  The rest of the crew made it down, with Gorenado landing last. His boots hit the deck hard, splashing brown gunk over the others. Everyone seemed too distracted by the moving vines to give the massive marine so much as a fleeting glare. They traveled onward though the corridor, and the vines retreated from their path wherever they went like shadows forced backward by flashlight.

  Tag followed the now familiar passages to the huge chamber where the computational core resided, the synthetic
brain of the Hope. Raktor’s beak snaked out from the curtain of vines and slithered toward Tag, trailing behind it an entourage of gargantuan vines. There was no doubt in Tag’s mind that this was a show of force by the alien.

  The beak zeroed in on him, opening and closing, teeth grinding together. Bull and Sumo stepped forward, tension radiating off them, but Tag raised a hand to stay their weapons.

  Taking another step closer, Tag stared down Raktor’s beak. He found himself wishing Raktor had visible eyes rather than the nebulous pheromone sensor organs Alpha had told him about. The farce of trying to appear confident in the face of an aggressor worked a lot better when he knew which direction he should be looking. The beak would have to suffice as a proxy.

  “Raktor,” Tag said. “We just want the ID codes the Collectors assigned to all the other ships. You don’t even have to do the work for us. Let us use one of your terminals in here.”

  “Ah, you call them the Collectors?” Raktor said as if thinking aloud. It didn’t wait for a response from Tag or his crew. “You will spread our seedlings out into the universe. That is the deal?”

  “We will take one seedling,” Sofia said.

  Raktor emitted its grating, honking laugh. “One is hardly a kind thing. It is an enormous gamble. It is better to unleash a brood of seedlings. What if one cannot take root? What if one cannot find nourishment? No, no, the risk of failure is too great. It will not work!”

  “You have us,” Sofia said, placing a hand over her chest. “We’ll ensure it takes root.”

  “And why should Raktor believe you?” it asked.

  “Because we want what you want,” Tag said. The beak snapped in front of him, so close that if he moved forward a centimeter, the thing would chomp the front of his EVA suit and take his nose with it. “We want revenge on the Collectors. We want to stop them from enslaving other species and turning them into lab experiments.”

  The beak opened, and the serpentine tongue curled out, wrapping around Tag’s helmet and spreading green-tinged saliva over his visor. Tag willed his fingers to quit trembling and straightened his spine.

  “We can do two kind things for you,” Tag said. He saw Bull and Sumo take a step toward the beak, raising their flamethrowers slightly. Lonestar and Gorenado followed their lead, and the tongue tightened around Tag. “As we told you before we came down here, as you are well aware, you will die aboard this station. It won’t last forever. But one of your seedlings doesn’t have to share that fate. It can live free, and”—Tag gulped, both in reflex to the tightening grasp of Raktor’s tongue and at what he was about to suggest—“your progeny will command its own ship. It could even help you and the rest of your seedlings escape from this dying relic of a station.”

  The tongue began to loosen.

  “Two kind things,” Sofia said. “All you have to do is let us use these terminals.”

  “What can you do to assure us your word is good?” Raktor asked.

  “This deal serves both our interests,” Tag said. “You must realize what is at stake.”

  As the tongue let go of Tag and the beak drew away, Tag took in a deep breath, finally able to inhale normally again. Raktor seemed to be rummaging for something within the cavernous chamber. A vine extended toward them, carrying something in its coils. It unraveled and withdrew to leave behind something that looked vaguely like an acorn. Sofia stepped forward, crouching down to pick it up.

  “This is your seedling?” Sofia asked.

  “It is,” Raktor said. “We trust you will take good care of it.”

  Two vines extended from the top of the acorn and wrapped around Sofia’s arms. She held it close to her chest, and a small beak appeared at the top, letting out a coo.

  “It’s cuter than I thought it’d be,” Lonestar said.

  Raktor moved aside another wall of vines to reveal a set of terminals with fractured holoscreens. Coren and Alpha activated the terminals, and the holoscreens lit up in a shimmer of lights that refracted from the cracked holoscreens in ghostly waves. They gestured over the terminals and began typing, delving into the depths of the Hope station’s improvised network between ships that had never been designed to interface with each other. Tag wondered what technical prowess the Collectors must’ve had to weld such disparate ships together, not just physically, but digitally. Drawing as much data as they could to conceal themselves as a Collector ship would be absolutely crucial if they wanted to succeed.

  The marines paced uneasily around Coren and Alpha as the duo worked, but Sofia seemed intent on examining the seedling, rolling it over in her hands and caressing the bark-like flesh. The muscles in Tag’s shoulders slowly relaxed as Raktor made no moves to attack the group, nor did it try to sabotage their efforts in any way, instead seeming to relinquish its hold entirely on the computer systems in acknowledgment of their trade.

  “I think we’ve got all the ID codes,” Coren said, after several minutes.

  Tag took that as their cue, and the group began marching back toward the exit.

  Raktor seemed to be following them with its beak, and vines rippled along the ceiling. Once Tag reached the corridor that would take them back up and out of the ship, he thought Raktor’s vines would part, just as they had leading down to this chamber. But the vines didn’t move. Tag’s heart crept up into his throat, and he had to remind himself to breathe normally, to act as though nothing was wrong.

  “We’ll be leaving now,” Tag said to Raktor, “to ensure we can take your seedling to a new ship.”

  Sofia’s eyes widened as she looked at the dense wall of vines before them. “We’ll take good care of it, I promise.”

  Tag pressed a hand against the vines, trying to force them apart. But more whipped in front of his face, beating him back from the wall, not allowing him to escape.

  “Jaroon, Bracken,” Tag said. “Stand by with weapons hot.”

  The pilot lights on the marines’ flamethrowers flickered on, and they roved the weapons over the vines twisting and winding all around the group, narrowing in on them like a swarm of angry boa constrictors.

  “Captain,” Alpha said, her head swiveling as she took in the impending assault, “the current situation appears to support my earlier predictions that Raktor would display an act of aggressive violence.”

  “We made a deal,” Sofia said softly.

  The vines careened from every direction, too fast for the marines to even pull their triggers. Flamethrowers fell apart as they were crumpled by huge vines. Tag leapt to the side, avoiding a tree-trunk-sized vine charging past him. In the blur of green and brown, he saw Sofia and Alpha still standing with Coren beside them. Sumo was trying to draw her pulse pistol, but her weapon was batted away. Gorenado and Bull stood back-to-back using knives to slice through the oncoming vines.

  Then all at once, the vines retreated, leaving behind only the stalks that the marines had cut off. Tag surveyed his crew for injuries. Everyone was still standing, seemingly unhurt. Everyone except for—

  “Lonestar!” he yelled, his heart thrashing against his rib cage.

  Lonestar dangled above him, several meters out of reach. Her hands were secured tight against her sides, cocooned by vines that stretched in every direction, and her eyes were closed.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT

  Tag wanted to rip every goddamned vine from the wall and set them on fire. But making a Raktor bonfire wouldn’t bring Lonestar back.

  “Why did you kill her?” Tag asked, his voice shaking with anger.

  The beak slid down from its perch again, and the remaining crew members circled up, holding whatever weapons they had left. Raktor let out its jarring laugh.

  “She is not dead,” Raktor said. Her biosigns shone across Tag’s HUD. Raktor wasn’t lying; she still had a pulse. One of the vines snaked into her wrist terminal, and a jolt of adrenaline spiked through the readings. Lonestar’s eyes shot open.

  “She is still very much alive. But this is no kind thing yet. And it is no unkind thing, either
. This is, I believe, what you humans would call insurance. You bring us back our seedling with its very own ship, and we will return your human. That is a deal.”

  Bull looked between Tag and Raktor. His face burned a bright crimson.

  “No,” Tag said. “We’re not leaving without her.”

  “Give her back!” Bull roared, shaking his fist in the air.

  “We have been betrayed by humans too many times to pretend our seedling is safe with you.”

  Sofia, still holding the seedling in her hands, turned to Tag. “Should we give it back? It’s not worth—”

  “No, you will not give it back!” Raktor bellowed. “You will do as promised or this human dies!”

  Bull slipped his pulse pistol out of his holster and aimed it toward Raktor’s beak. “We’ve got two warships bearing down on this place. If you hurt her, you and your seedlings will never make it out of this station alive.”

  Raktor’s vines tremored. “Then neither will you.”

  “Bull, let me handle this,” Tag said.

  The sergeant seemed about to protest, but Tag stared him down. He didn’t want this situation to escalate any more than it already had.

  “Raktor,” Tag began, “this wasn’t what we agreed to.”

  “We are amending the agreement.”

  Tag watched the vines coursing around Lonestar. She grimaced and her face turned pale. Tag took a step backward, and the vines relented. The marine’s face lost some of its tension.

  “You’re wasting your time talking to this overgrown tumbleweed,” Lonestar said. “Leave without me. Go find those Collectors.”

  “I judge Lonestar’s statement to be accurate,” Alpha said. “Proceeding with the amended deal would be the most prudent course of action.”

  The vines parted, showing Tag and the others the exit as if inviting them to leave the marine behind. Another captain might have. Another captain might have considered how Lonestar had betrayed them, how she had been duped not long ago into thinking Tag and his crew had been the enemy. After all, she had planted a stealth transponder that broadcasted their location to the Drone-Mechs and almost gotten them all killed.