Shattered Dawn (The Eternal Frontier Book 3)

by Anthony J Melchiorri

  Tag eyed the marker on the holomap that all the activity seemed centered on. “Is that a planet?”

  “All sensors indicate it is,” Alpha said. “There also seems to be a large station orbiting it.”

  “Then this is what we came for.” Tag took a deep breath. “Take us in closer so we can get a visual.”

  Sofia pushed the controls forward, and the Argo’s impellers roared to life, accelerating them toward the planet. As the marker grew closer on the holomap, Tag watched the viewscreen. He didn’t like going in without their energy shields, but ordering Alpha to raise them might make the Collectors suspicious. They needed to pretend like they belonged here for however long they could.

  Soon the telltale flare of impellers and thrusters tracing across the viewscreen cut white streaks through the otherwise black void. Ships flew in all directions like shrapnel from an explosion. Several of the drive signatures blossomed into a brilliant splash of white when the ships transitioned into hyperspace. At first, Tag wondered if there was an intense battle already underway. But there were no telltale explosions of torpedoes or pearly ropes of PDC fire jutting between ships.

  “Is this a trade colony?” Tag asked.

  “Certainly seems like it,” Sofia said. “I don’t know how else to explain this much activity.”

  “Unless they’re amassing forces for war,” Coren said drily.

  Tag tried to swallow but felt a lump in his throat. He coughed. “If that’s the case, it makes what we’re about to do all the more important.”

  Amid the frenetic movement of ships, now barely visible as specks of dust in the viewscreen, something colossal grew before them. It was a planet with a red tinge, illuminated by the distant star it orbited. The planet had the dusty appearance of Mars but was at least five times bigger according to the holomap’s estimates. A planet like that could host billions upon billions of humans—if it had been properly terraformed.

  Then the constant flux of ships made sense to Tag. This planet was being terraformed.

  As they approached, the viewscreen showed all manners of unfamiliar ships headed toward the planet’s surface–along with the massive space station floating in geosynchronous orbit.

  “Can we magnify the image any more?” Tag asked.

  “Yes, Captain,” Alpha said. She gestured over her terminal.

  The station consisted of an enormous honeycomb structure with long tendrils jutting off all sides like reaching tentacles. Several hundred of those tendrils snaked from the station and seemed to be rooted on the planet’s surface. Cylindrical ships—more appropriately, space elevator cars—zoomed up and down the structure.

  “Do we go in closer?” Sofia asked.

  “Not yet,” Tag said.

  Scores of ships rocketed into hyperspace, and Tag wondered if they were all leaving because of their arrival. A few more ships transitioned into normal space around the station, but most seemed to enter the station only briefly before taking off again.

  “Seems awfully busy,” Sofia said. “Maybe there’s a party we’re missing out on.”

  “If the Collectors are hosting a party, I’m okay with losing the invitation,” Coren said.

  “Do not worry. We never received an invitation,” Alpha said with a seriousness that made Tag question whether she was joking.

  “Now you can bring us in a bit closer,” Tag said.

  A rash of ships floated above the station like a cloud. They buzzed around the station like flies on carrion, swooping in and out of the open bays of the massive station. The Argo moved toward them, flanked by the Stalwart and the Crucible.

  “We’re detecting Mechanic ships,” Bracken said over the comms. “I’m assuming they are Drone-Mech.”

  “Likewise, we are seeing Melarrey,” Jaroon reported. “But a quick inquiry into our databases shows these ships were reportedly destroyed during the sacking of our planet.”

  Tag’s heart thumped, wild as pulsefire, as Alpha panned the magnified view of the assembled fleet. There were oblong, glassy ships and some that looked more like living creatures than manufactured technology. Many of the ships were similar to the ones that had formed the makeshift station around the Hope. Then his eyes fell on one of the ships that was all sharp corners and silver alloy. Seeing the ship felt like a punch in the gut, and he fought to catch his breath.

  It was human.

  CHAPTER THIRTY-THREE

  Tag squinted at the letters along the side of the ship. New Blood. It had no SRE designation, but it had a blue-and-green symbol beside its name that indicated it had been constructed within an Earthen shipyard. The ship was the length of a corvette, similar in size to the Argo, but the cannons bristling off its sides made it clear that this was more warship than exploratory science vessel. It was like nothing he had seen in the Montenegro’s fleet.

  “What is that doing out here?” Tag asked. “Sofia, you know what kind of ship this is?”

  “You’re asking the woman who spent the past half a decade in underground caves documenting the life and culture of tribal cephalopod-like aliens?” she replied.

  “‘No’ would’ve worked,” Tag said then pressed a button on his terminal that transferred the images on their viewscreen to the holoscreens where the marines were situated in their crash couches below deck. “Bull, any of you recognize this kind of ship?”

  “I don’t,” Bull responded through the comms. There was a brief pause. “Sumo says she does. It’s—are you serious? You’re positive?” Another stretch of silence. “Sumo said it’s an experimental vessel from Starinski Labs. Her uncle works there. The prototype wasn’t classified or anything, apparently, but she hasn’t actually seen a functioning vessel.”

  “Why would it be out here?” Tag said. Then the dread filling his stomach with a leaden feeling answered the question for him. “Maybe the Collectors already made it to Earth.”

  “Or—this is only slightly better—maybe it belongs to whoever infiltrated the SRE,” Sofia said. “Maybe this is further proof of the connections between the Drone-masters, the Collectors, and whoever got Lonestar to plant that transponder in the Argo.”

  “I can’t believe I’m saying that I hope you’re right,” Tag said. “But either way, this is not good.”

  “No, Captain,” Alpha said, “this is most definitely not good. Even Raktor agrees.”

  “You’re talking to Raktor right now?” Tag asked, searching the bridge. Raktor was supposed to be stowed safely within the lab during their transition.

  “Yes,” Alpha said. “I installed a wireless communicator within my chassis so that I can access Raktor’s transponder remotely. Raktor needed reassurance as this recent journey into hyperspace was the first time it had experienced a faster-than-light jump.”

  “You’re telling me our little Raktor got scared?” Sofia asked. “Because things are about to get way more frightening.”

  The motley fleet of ships around the huge space station began drifting in all directions, putting distance between them at an accelerating rate. Several appeared to be blasting in the direction of the Argo. Tag held his breath. Still no warning alarms, no weapons locks. One by one, the ships disappeared into the void, transitioning into hyperspace and disappearing from the holomap.

  “Shit,” Sofia said. “We’re going to lose our chance to grab a ship. Want me to follow one?”

  “Don’t pursue them,” Tag said. “Whatever’s going on, we’ve still got that station. I have a feeling that will be far more interesting, and I don’t want to attract their attention just yet.”

  The ships blinked away until the only things moving were the space elevators dumping their cargo onto the planet’s surface. Over the next half hour, even the elevators slowed before crawling to a stop. The long tendrils connecting the station to the planet retracted. The remnants of the fleet zipped into darkness, disappearing into hyperspace like the others until the only thing that moved was the space station as it continued its slow rotation with the planet.

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nbsp; “Captain,” Alpha said, “I am not detecting any more active spacefaring vessels. The only ships I see are those within the space station’s bays.”

  “What about the planet?” Tag asked.

  Alpha manipulated the outboard cam views to survey the planet’s surface near the space elevators. Ravines and mountains cut through the landscape surrounding a central plateau. There, the magnified images provided a glimpse at a host of vehicles and lumbering droid-like forms. Squares of gray alloy and skeletal support beams marked construction sites across the dry land. While there were plenty of vehicles and mechanical suits moving on the dusty surface, Tag struggled to find anything that looked remotely like a living being below. He assumed the atmosphere was hostile to whoever was trying to terraform this place. Still, he expected to see someone in EVA suits guiding traffic and construction. The scene looked more like something out of an automated factory rather than a colonization effort.

  “Don’t see any weapons down there,” Coren said. “Maybe it’s safer than we thought.”

  “Maybe they don’t have any weapons,” Sofia said.

  “That’s hopeful thinking,” Tag said.

  Movement on the planet caught his eyes. The huge space elevator tendrils burrowed into the surfaced began to vibrate. Cracks formed in the dirt and rock at their base, fracturing outward. The vehicles and colonization droids didn’t seem to care about the earthquake. All continued their assigned tasks with no particular sense of urgency. Soon holes formed at the space elevators’ bases, and the tendrils rose from beneath the soil. They shed clouds of dust as they retracted from the planet and ascended back toward the station.

  “What’s going on?” Sofia asked, leaning over her controls.

  All across the space station, ports appeared, glowing an intense cobalt.

  “Are they about to fire on the planet?” Coren asked. “Why would they destroy it after just depositing all those machines there?”

  Tag began to wonder the same thing. What had they just wandered into? But then he saw the cannon batteries and guns poking off the strange station every which direction. None of these weapons seemed pointed at the planet. Maybe the ports weren’t weapons at all, but rather—

  His stomach flipped.

  “That’s not a space station,” Tag said. “That’s a goddamn spaceship.”

  “Good gods,” Sofia muttered.

  “It’s larger than any I’ve ever seen,” Coren said. “Larger than anything the Mechanics could even build.”

  Tag knew that Coren admitting inferiority like that was a sign that whatever they were looking at was beyond extraordinary. It made Mechanic dreadnoughts look like a child’s playthings, and a ship like the Argo might as well be a gnat compared to the monstrosity before them.

  Lurching away from the planet, its space elevators still retracting, the titanic ship’s impellers glowed a brighter blue. It was no wonder the rest of the fleet had already taken off. When this thing hit hyperspace, it was going to cause such an intense gravitational distortion that it would practically leave a black hole in its wake.

  Tag couldn’t believe what they were witnessing. He silently thanked Bracken for encouraging them to go back to Raktor, to find those codes rather than spend weeks sifting through the space station. They might’ve missed this opportunity to witness such an immense display of technical prowess if not for Lonestar’s insistence they leave her as Raktor’s hostage.

  But the chance to find the answers they’d been looking for was now shifting away from him like water between fingers.

  “We have to get on that ship!” Tag said. “Sofia, gun it!”

  The Argo jerked forward, and intense forces pressed Tag back into his crash couch, igniting pangs of nausea until the inertial dampeners kicked in. All the bays that Alpha had noted before were beginning to close as huge hatches spiraled together.

  “Jaroon, Bracken,” Tag said, “we’re going in!”

  The other two ships accelerated next to them in concert. Each aimed for one of the hatches near the base of the presumed Collector ship. Images of when the Argo had barely made it aboard the Drone-Mech dreadnought attacking the Montenegro resurfaced in Tag’s mind. Their ship had taken a beating; it had hardly been spaceworthy afterward. It wouldn’t have traveled between the stars again had the Montenegro not been nearby to repair them.

  Now they had no lifeline. Just three ships—one human, one Melarrey, and one Mechanic—against a monstrous, mobile space station. Tag prayed to all the gods that would listen for help.

  He still feared it wouldn’t be enough.

  CHAPTER THIRTY-FOUR

  A sickly yellow light shone a path into the bay. Tag ground his teeth tight enough together to feel the beginnings of a pressure headache, but he didn’t care. It was up to Sofia now, and if she failed, he would have a lot worse than a headache to contend with. The hatch continued closing, faster now as it cinched shut, and Tag resisted the urge to close his eyes and tried not to imagine the Argo erupting into tongues of wild plasma when it hit the closed hatch.

  They cleared the entrance.

  “Gods be damned!” Sofia hooted, immediately pushing forward on the controls to apply reverse thrust. They slowed in a cavernous bay that rivaled the magnitude of the Forest of Light.

  “Bracken, Jaroon?” Tag called over the comms. “Please tell me you made it.”

  “If your ship could,” Bracken said, “then of course ours did.”

  There was a beat of silence. Tag’s muscles tensed as he waited for the Melarrey captain’s response.

  “We’re through,” Jaroon said, “although we had to perform the matter transmutation process again.”

  Tag took a moment to survey the immense chamber as Sofia kept the Argo at a thrumming hover. While most of the deck space was clear, though marred by black splotches where thrusters had scorched it taking off, there were still dozens of ships inside. Huge bulkheads delineated this bay from the next two where Bracken and Jaroon were now.

  “This definitely looks like the Collectors’ kind of place,” Sofia said, her eyes tracing the images on the viewscreen.

  “So many ships, so many races,” Coren said. “It is truly frightening to think they may have subjugated so many species.”

  “I have relayed these images to the lab,” Alpha reported, “and Raktor reports feeling truly frightened now.”

  “What did I tell you, Alpha?” Sofia asked.

  “You told me, ‘Things are about to get way more frightening,’” Alpha responded.

  “Yeah, I did. But that’s just an expression.”

  Alpha continued to look expectantly at her, and after a moment, Sofia muttered, “Never mind.”

  The bridge returned to silence once more as they studied the ships within the bay. Tag was looking for any sign of life, certain that at any moment hostile forces would appear, weapons blazing. But nothing changed, and no one appeared. Just shadows and ships.

  “I guess spoofing those ID codes worked even better than we thought,” Sofia said.

  Tag undid his restraints and stood. Although they were in what appeared to be the heart of the enemy’s forces, there was a certain comfort in knowing they had at last made it partway to their objective. He had thought that boarding a Collector vessel would be the hard part; now he realized that had been easy.

  A shiver crept through his spine as he stared into the vacant bay.

  “Alpha, go grab Raktor,” Tag said. “Everyone else, get geared up.”

  Alpha split off from the group, heading to the lab, and the others filed down to the armory. Tag grabbed a mini-Gauss rifle. As usual the marines strapped enough firepower to their armor to outfit a small army. All they had to do was find a single computer connected to the ship’s intranet and plug in Raktor. If that failed, Alpha and Coren would try their hand at it. Three hells, half of Bracken’s forces were also engineers and scientists. They would gladly assist. Maybe loading themselves with this many weapons was overkill.

  But Tag prefe
rred overkill to overdead. He shook his head as he jammed a fresh magazine into his rifle.

  “Something wrong, Captain?” Sumo asked, clicking her visor down.

  “Ever make a pun so bad you cringe just thinking about it?” Tag asked.

  He strapped the rifle over his shoulder and waited at the cargo bay’s exit hatch until Coren and Sofia joined him. Alpha came last with a rifle in her hands.

  “Raktor?” Tag asked.

  Alpha tapped her chest plate. “I stowed it in here for protection.”

  “If you say so,” Tag said. Gorenado and Sumo stood at the front of the group with Bull taking rearguard. “First sign of a computer, we secure the area and go to work. We clear?”

  His crew nodded, and Tag once again felt the weight of leading them into the unknown. A quick punch of the terminal, and the cargo bay airlock opened. His sensors reported that the atmosphere possessed similar oxygen, nitrogen, and carbon dioxide concentrations as the Argo, along with pressures that were only off by a couple of kilopascals. It didn’t take long for the airlock to let them spill out into the cavernous bay.

  With the Argo’s outboard lights shut off, the light banks overhead illuminated the space with a murky glow that caused every ship within the bay to cast long, twisted shadows. Tag signaled the crew forward. No matter how carefully he tried to walk, his footsteps and those of his crew seemed to crash against the deck, echoing madly in the wide, open space. Long groans reverberated through the towering bulkheads, but otherwise, nothing else made a sound. Tag couldn’t even hear the usual whistle of air through ventilation shafts or the roar of the impellers pushing the massive ship through space.

  “Hate to state the obvious,” Sumo said, “but can we try one of these ships? Maybe they have a connection to the Collector ship.”

  “Not a bad idea,” Coren said. “They may be synced with this mothership.”

  “Alpha, what do you think?” Tag asked.

  “I estimate that it is at least worth the effort to try,” she replied.