Galaxy of Titans: An Epic Space Opera Series (The Augmented Book 3)

by Ben Hale

  A deafening shriek came from the field, and Reklin pushed himself until his legs pumped across the soft ground. He reached the base of the hill just as the felines burst into the harvested line and accelerated. Their vertical jaws clacked, the sound tinged with warning and anticipation. They quickly gained on Reklin.

  Across the rolling hills, however, he spotted the Midnight Star dropping out of orbit. He gauged the distance to the harvester hub and grimaced. It was going to be close. He pushed himself until every breath was raspy and his twin hearts thundered against his ribs. The tracker mechs drew closer and closer, their clawed legs digging into the earth, their spined tails whipping back and forth.

  The harvester hub drew close, and Reklin spotted a door at the back of an empty docking station. He veered to it, running flat out. As they entered the cavernous harvester bay, he lifted Mora free and tossed her towards the opening.

  “Open it!” he shouted.

  She scrambled to the doorway, a plain seracrete barrier that she shoved open. Reklin whirled and swung his hammer lance, striking the lead tracker in the head. He knocked it sideways, but the body spun independent from its head, so it landed on its feet. The second tracker lunged and locked its jaws on the hammer head. Reklin fired, his ion bolt burning down the beast’s throat. The tracker clamped its jaws and ripped the head from the staff. It went skidding away, sputtering and sparking.

  The third mech closed the gap and leapt for Reklin’s arm. A seracrete gear hit it in the side of the neck, knocking it sideways. Its body spun and it landed on a pile of spare parts. Reklin used the gap and dove through the door, where he found Mora with another gear in hand. She slammed the door shut and rammed the simple latch home. Just as she did, the entire plate trembled from the impact, and a large dent appeared in the middle.

  “Excellent throw,” Reklin praised.

  Mora stood proudly. “I fight.”

  Reklin grabbed her arm and pulled her into the facility, which brightened at their entrance as flickering lights came to life. Smelling of oil, harvested drey, and dust, it was obvious the hub had rarely seen a visitor. Engineers probably showed up only when something needed to be fixed.

  Harvester parts—gears, scoops, curved cutting blades, small cortexes, and other materials—were stacked in neat piles around the octagonal repair room. A variety of doors connected to the other bays, and Reklin pointed to one side.

  “Seal those doors,” he said. “I’ll get the ones on the left.”

  Mora rushed to the openings while he lunged for the opposite side of the room. The frenzied bashing on the door echoed inside the hub, accompanied by a series of shrieks. When the last door was shut, Mora joined him at the center of the room.

  “No Gate. We fight?”

  Her eyes were fierce, her jaw set in a grim line. Good girl. But as Reklin spotted the cortexes, he had a different idea. Perhaps they could not escape, but they might be able to send a beamcast.

  He plucked two cortexes from a nearby crate, then jumped to a workbench and searched it for tools. It was well stocked with hand lances, fusing rods, graviton testers, and illumination filaments.

  “Get the broken lance.” He pointed to where he’d dropped the staff of the hammer when he’d come through the door.

  Mora sprinted to the broken weapon and brought it to him. He pulled drawers until he located a hand lance and ignited the thin tongue of ion flame, which he used to cut into one of the cortexes.

  “What you do?” Mora asked.

  The door bent inward again, and a crack formed in the metal. Reklin accepted the staff and grabbed it at the center. With a twist, he opened the weapon handle. Pulling the two halves apart, he exposed the partially charged kinetic reservoir. It wasn’t a gravity drive, but it still had sufficient power it had stored during the fight. It might be enough, if he could figure out how to cobble it together with a harvester cortex.

  As a dakorian, he’d learned a great deal about how to repair his own weapons and basic mechs, but the larger understanding of how a krey cortex functioned was beyond him. Or it had been, before he’d become an augment. Through the eyes of krey he’d encountered, and in his own memories, he searched for any information that might help. He recalled how a krey pilot had separated one cortex and used it to write a code onto another. Then he analyzed another memory of a krey engineer repairing a projection Gate emitter. They’d been under fire with a damaged ship, so they’d used the kinetic reservoir to power a portable gravity generator. It had only had sufficient energy to power it for a few minutes, but it had been enough to lift the ship up and replace the emitter.

  Reklin closed his eyes and pictured the code the krey had written to merge the two disparate mechs. He picked up the opened cortex and lifted the code into a holo. Like all cortexes, it possessed a basic functional ability to show a dim holo, a skeleton upon which a krey could build a code. This cortex was basic and largely empty, but he manipulated it into a hacking code he’d seen in the memory of a Ghost he’d encountered weeks ago. With that code, the second cortex brightened, and the crystalline substrates began to alter.

  Amidst the shrieks of the trackers and the groan of twisting metal, he struggled to blend three different memories into a single line of coding that would alter the basic cortex into one that could create a micro-Gate for a beamcast. The harvester crystal already had the basic functionality because it had to communicate with the hub, but Reklin needed it to connect to the general vid network. The symbols brightened as he worked, and the cortex grew warm. He finished the code and tested it, and a holo flashed green.

  “Quickly.” He pointed to one of the crates. “I need an illumination filament.”

  Mora darted to it and returned with a long strand of metal embedded with phosphorous. Reklin threaded it to the crystal and attached it to the node at the end. Then he reached for the charged kinetic reservoir. But before he could connect it, the door gave way to the onslaught with the sound of grinding metal. Dropping the reservoir, he picked up a harvesting arm from a stack and turned on the tracker squeezing through the rent in the door.

  “Mora,” he called without taking his eyes off the tracker, “I need you to connect the power source and send the beamcast.”

  “I fight,” she said grimly.

  Reklin smiled and spared her a look. “One of us needs to send that beamcast. I’ll protect you.”

  She glowered at him. “I fight next time?”

  He nodded. “Yes.”

  She accepted his answer and jumped onto the workbench. Reklin sprinted to the door, calling instructions over his shoulder so she could attach the filament to the kinetic reservoir. He reached the door when the first tracker had its hind legs struggling to come through.

  The harvester blade was six feet long, sharp, and curved, with the cutting edge on the inside. At the end, a seracrete rod extended where it would be attached to a harvester leg. Reklin raised it over the tracker’s head and brought it down, severing the mech’s seracrete plating and fibrous metallic sinews.

  It collapsed in a dying shriek. Instead of following the first, its two companions attacked the door with their claws, digging the opening wider until they could jump through in a single bound.

  Reklin swung, cutting through a mech’s jaws and slicing a line down its flank. It landed in pieces and shards, its mouth split wide open. But the attack allowed the last tracker to get past, and it landed inside the hub. It spun and attacked Reklin’s flank, forcing him to retreat.

  “Done!” Mora cried.

  Reklin spun the makeshift blade, narrowly missing the tracker as it leapt and lunged. It began circling for an opening.

  “Is the crystal operational?” Reklin called.

  “Yes!”

  The tracker swerved and darted for Mora, slipping around Reklin’s side and leaping high. Reklin reached out and snagged its tail, dragging it to the floor. But its sheer weight dropped Reklin as well, and he hit the floor hard.

  “Send exactly what I say.”

/>   He struggled to hold the tail of the tracker as he gave Mora the simple message. The tracker whirled and its jaws came for Reklin’s leg. They clamped around his ankle, tightening until both the outer bone and inner bone cracked. Reklin bellowed and swung his makeshift weapon, and the tracker released his leg to retreat.

  “Ready,” Mora cried.

  “Send it,” Reklin hissed.

  Limping to the right, Reklin kept the harvester blade pointed at the mech as it paced back and forth. Reklin feinted left, and the metallic feline took the bait by darting right. Reklin twisted and hurled the curved blade. It spun end over end, cleaving through the tracker in a burst of sparks. It hurtled the length of the room and came to a trembling halt.

  In Visika’s hand.

  The five-horned dakorian’s eyes burned with anger as she lowered the curving blade and tossed it aside. She began to advance towards Reklin, who limped back to join Mora. He put the table at his back.

  “I gave you a home,” Visika seethed. “I protected you. I offered you trust. And this is my reward?”

  “Destroy it,” he hissed to Mora.

  Visika leveled an accusing finger at Mora. “Don’t you dare.”

  Enraged and trembling, the queen of the Burning Ghosts looked terrifying, yet Mora sneered in response and stomped on the crystal, shattering it into pieces. Another stomp and the depleted kinetic reservoir cracked, burning a black line across the workbench.

  Mora glared defiantly at Visika. “I listen my Reklin,” she growled.

  Visika’s gaze tightened on Reklin, and she clenched a fist. “Disobedience has a price, Reklin. I hope it was worth it.”

  Reklin didn’t respond, and Visika’s fist moved so quickly it seemed a blur. It struck him in the side of the skull, knocking him to the floor. The pain was sharp, and his vision clouded. Dazed, he was helpless to act as a pair of dakorians dragged a screaming Mora from the room. Then Gellow grabbed his wounded ankle and dragged him across the floor.

  As unconsciousness claimed him, he almost smiled. Before Mora had destroyed it, he’d seen the holo above the cortex. The beamcast had gone through. He didn’t doubt for a second the recipient would come. He could have called dakorian friends or krey allies, but he’d risked everything to call a human.

  A friend named Siena.

  Chapter Thirty-Two

  The transport took Siena deeper into the crumbling city. It sped through grime-covered streets, sending loose stones and dust billowing. Throughout the ride, Kolas kept his attention on the holo of the city.

  The rear of the transport was cut in half by a shield. Siena was locked on the interferer, with her shackles wrapped around a bar extending from the floor and fused to the ceiling. She tested the metal, and surreptitiously pushed her augment, but it did not bend.

  On the opposite side of the barrier, Kolas eyed the holo, occasionally issuing orders through an open beamcast to the escort blinkers. Siena had never seen official soldiers or Rangers on a real operation, but got the impression they were efficient and cautious.

  The heavy transport swerved around an empty square, the repulsors kicking up garbage and dust before the vehicle accelerated north. A handful of krey and humans languished on the sides of the road, and they watched the transport pass with surprise mingled with curiosity. Then the transport reached the end of the street and passed under a shadowed overhang to enter a large, square structure.

  “We’re inside,” someone said through the krey’s holoview.

  “Set up a perimeter,” Kolas said, “and activate the building’s defenses.”

  “Why?” a krey asked. “We’ll be through the Gate in ten minutes.”

  A large ship flickered on the edge of the holo, and Kolas frowned. “Every minute counts.”

  “Is that the Kildor?” Siena asked from behind the shield.

  The captain met her gaze. “Do you always speak so openly?”

  Siena found no hint of irritation or disgust in the krey’s eyes. Emboldened, she shrugged. “Ero prefers humans that speak freely.”

  “A dangerous level of freedom for an augment,” Kolas said.

  “Maybe it’s just respect between two races.”

  “A noble sentiment, but not one that exists in the Empire.” Kolas then spoke to the holoview. “Malikin is here. Have the advance team disable any other Gates. I don’t want him trying to get inside the building.”

  “How did you know Malikin would follow you instead of your partner?”

  “Because I have you, and you’re the evidence.”

  “You intend to use me as bait,” Siena guessed.

  The krey actually smiled. “Very clever, human. Is intelligence one of your augmentations?”

  She bristled. “I was always smart. And I have a name, you know.”

  He glanced through the forward window of the vehicle as they slowed. “Your name is Siena. You were previously owned by Secondous Laurik of Verdigris, House Zeltil’Dor. They sold you at the Cages of Thendigor, a black-market vendor on the outer rim, where you were bought by House Bright’Lor. A few months later, a vid of a blonde girl in a red mask was retrieved from the debris on the Korgith Station. And at the most recent theft of a slave cargo ship, the witness described the slaves being led by a blonde human girl of the same age.”

  Siena stared at him, fighting to keep the fear from showing on her face. She risked opening her mind augment, hoping to see his thoughts. The krey was highly disciplined, preventing her from seeing much, but she caught a glimpse of the vid he’d seen from the Korgith Station. That was where the investigation into Bright’Lor had been expanded, and Kolas had traced her life backwards to Laurik.

  The officer smiled faintly at her silence. “As Ero said, Malikin isn’t very good at cleaning up his messes.”

  Siena didn’t speak as the transport ship came to a stop at an underground docking station. The vehicle was backed directly against a seracrete door, and she was unloaded into what resembled a processing area for criminals. Holodesks and archive cubes were located behind starship-rated glass panels. But aside from a few scattered lights, everything was dark, and dust layered much of the floor. The air had the scent of mold.

  A second team of Rangers, wearing armored exo suits emblazoned with the hammer symbol of the Ranger Corps, were waiting. The leader, a dakorian with a lieutenant’s badge on his chest, approached Kolas.

  “Quent,” Kolas greeted, “is the building secure?”

  “As you ordered,” he replied, and pointed to Siena. “This the augment?”

  “We won’t know for sure until we get her to Ragnor-4,” Kolas said. “Is the building secure?”

  “The outer lances were still operational,” the krey said with a nod. “Our codes worked and they are now standing by. If anyone breaches the perimeter, they won’t make it to the building.” He eyed Siena. “She doesn’t look like much.”

  Kolas brought up his holoview and connected to the building’s outer defenses. Twelve lances appeared around a holo of the building, all glowing operational green.

  Kolas nodded in satisfaction. “I have four teams on blinkers outside the building, each watching a potential approach. Another two teams with me.” He motioned to the two krey and two dakorians that had accompanied Siena inside. “How soon until we have a secure Gate to Ragnor-4?”

  “Not soon enough,” Quent said. “But there’s a new protocol from the chief. Ten-minute delay required for authentication.”

  Kolas frowned. “Why wasn’t I notified?”

  Quent shrugged. “The order came this morning. You were already undercover as the Broker.”

  Kolas nodded. “Let’s get her to the Gate room. The sooner we are gone, the better.”

  Siena didn’t like the trace of doubt in his eyes, or the tension in the room. Quent’s soldiers were all in combat exo suits. They had hammer lances on their backs as well as plasma pistols on their right thighs. A serrated seracrete dagger was in a sheath on Quent’s chest. The four with Kolas were all from the u
ndercover team, their clothing more conducive to deception than combat. And the way Quent’s soldiers were standing set her on edge. One of Quent’s team grabbed Siena by the arm and pulled her towards a door.

  “No,” Kolas said. “She stays with me.”

  “I hardly think that’s necessary,” the dakorian protested.

  “If she is what I think she is, she’s the biggest piece of evidence in a thousand years,” Kolas said. “She’s not leaving my sight.”

  Tellingly, the Ranger holding Siena glanced to Quent, who shrugged. “It doesn’t matter. I have Sergeant Hoggin prepping the Gate.”

  Kolas dismissed his holoview and joined Siena, motioning his four companions to follow. Quent pointed two dakorians to the opening, and the remaining four joined the group as they exited the processing area and worked their way through the building.

  Siena’s worry mounted as they walked. She’d never been arrested, but something felt off. Quent stayed slightly behind Kolas and to the right, his attention on the dim hallways of the former Ranger base. But Siena got the impression he was always aware of his proximity to Kolas.

  They passed through gloomy rooms and offices, some with desks, others just littered in debris. Some of the ceilings had caved in, while others were simply empty. Hallways wound their way in every direction, giving the feeling of a labyrinth. She wondered if that was intentional, to prevent escaping criminals from finding a way out.

  They ascended a wide set of stairs to a platform. At the top, the opposite stairs dropped away, while the two side stairs ascended to upper levels. The one to the right looked precarious, with the stone crumbling on one side, leaving a gaping hole to a lower room. Metal bars that had once reinforced the stone extended across the gap.

  At the center of the platform stood the large Gate. Two krey worked next to the arch, their holoviews buzzing as they connected a portable gravity generator to the World Gate.

  “Four minutes until authentication,” one said.