Shattered Dawn (The Eternal Frontier Book 3) Read online

  CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

  Raktor lowered Tag and Sofia to the deck, and its vines slowly unraveled from around them. Tag stretched his fingers; his skin prickled as the blood flowed back into his limbs.

  “May the rest of our crew join us?” Tag asked. “They can help us fight the Dreg.”

  “No, no, that will not be possible,” Raktor said. “We do not trust them, and they are much too far away. We will only permit you two. Humans Tag and Sofia. You two. You two must do this, the kind thing.”

  “Where are the Dreg?” Tag asked.

  “This is the sad thing,” Raktor said. “They have closed themselves off in the life-support and power facilities. This is why we cannot get rid of them. They are smart in the way they do these unkind things, so you will need to root them out.”

  “The rest of the crew could help us, though,” Sofia said.

  Raktor’s beak lowered toward them, booming its single-word reply: “NO!”

  “Okay,” Tag said, holding up his hands defensively. “We’ll do it. Just Sofia and I. And when we do, you’ll tell us what happened to the humans here. You’ll answer all our questions, right?”

  “It would be our kind thing for your kind thing. That is pleasing math.”

  Raktor’s beak withdrew and disappeared into the shroud of vines draping through the atrium. More vines shifted, seeming to guide Sofia and Tag down a corridor.

  “Bull, Coren,” Tag said. “We encountered...an interesting alien. It promised to give us information.”

  “The way you say that makes it sound like there’s a very big ‘but’ at the end of that sentence,” Bull said.

  “Yeah, you could say that,” Tag said. “The alien wants us to get rid of the Dreg on the station. Sounds like there might be a hive or something.”

  “What can we do to assist you?” Coren asked.

  “If there’s any chance you can join us in the power plant,” Tag said. “But I have a feeling your routes here are going to be limited.”

  “Funny you say that,” Coren said. “Every time we’ve tried following a corridor to reach you, we end up running into a wall of vegetation.”

  “Yeah,” Sofia said. “The vine-monster that sent us on this little errand doesn’t want you all to help. He has some issues.”

  “And I bet you’d love to study him,” Tag said.

  Sofia gave him a noncommittal shrug. “Might be interesting. At least he’s more talkative than the Dreg.”

  They plodded on as the vines guided them to their destination. Soon the hum of distant motors reverberated through the bulkhead. Tag also heard the familiar scratch and flutter along with a persistent droning, like flies buzzing next to his ear. The droning grew louder as they entered a wide corridor three decks tall. The corridor was curved around a central facility. The air shimmered with heat.

  “The Dreg are overheating the system,” Sofia said.

  “Must be how they’re keeping Raktor out,” Tag said. “Too hot for his vines.”

  Sofia knelt on the deck and picked up a shriveled twig. More desiccated branches covered the deck.

  It didn’t take long for the intense heat emanating out of the central facility to overwhelm Tag’s EVA suit. Streams of sweat trickled down his forehead and stung his eyes.

  “Those damn Dreg can put up with a lot,” Sofia said. “Surviving near vacuum in temperatures that would freeze us solid to living in a place hotter than the three hells. I’m really beginning to dislike these little assholes.”

  “They do seem to get in our way at the most inopportune of moments,” Tag said.

  A faded sign, hanging off the wall by one rusted rivet, pointed toward the Fusion Reactor Containment facility. He figured that way would be as good as any to infiltrate the alleged hive. A Turbo-ball-sized Dreg suddenly popped out of a vent and started flying their direction. Tag looked for somewhere to hide, but it was already too late. The Dreg shrieked and made a beeline back for the vent. Tag reached for his pistol, but firing right now would alert the whole hive. Then again, letting that thing run shrieking back to its friends would be just as bad.

  “There goes the element of surprise,” Sofia lamented.

  Before Tag could pull the trigger, something shot from the shadows in a flurry of claws and hisses. It was the cat-thing again. It soared toward the Dreg and hit the slug-like alien with a solid thump. Their bodies rolled over the deck. Muscles rippled under the scaled cat-like creature’s skin and long claws jutted from its six legs, piercing the Dreg over and over until the alien’s wings stopped twitching.

  Then the cat-thing arched its back, its tails whipping about behind it, and sauntered toward Tag and Sofia. Tag tightened the grip on his pistol.

  “Think it’s dangerous?” Tag asked.

  “Don’t know,” Sofia said. “The damn thing has been following us.” She kneeled before it and held out a hand. The creature rubbed its neck against her fingers. “You like that?”

  The cat-thing let out a sound halfway between a purr and growl.

  “Okay, little guy, you’re really lucky you popped out now, because things are about to get a lot more dangerous down here, you understand that?” Tag asked it.

  It cocked its head at him as its glinting green eyes surveyed him.

  “Seriously,” Tag said. “You’re not going to want to be around here in a few minutes. Things might get crazy.”

  The cat-thing rubbed against Tag’s legs, bounded through the corridor, jumped from wall to wall, and then disappeared into an open duct.

  They crept past maintenance bots covered in grime. Careful not to step on one of the dormant machines, they took each step slowly until they reached a hatch. Tag gingerly wrapped his fingers around the handle, half-expecting the superheated alloy to burn through his gloves and melt his fingers. The EVA suit managed to ward off most of the heat, however, and he gently pushed the hatch inward. The droning of the Dreg grew into a roar as he inched the door open, trying to make the gap just large enough for him and Sofia to slip inside.

  The hatch groaned on its hinges, and Tag froze. He locked eyes with Sofia as they waited for the Dreg to descend on them, latching their razor-sharp teeth onto their suits to dig into their flesh. But the sounds continued no louder than before. The Dreg hadn’t noticed them—yet.

  Tag slipped inside. Sofia followed, and they pressed themselves into the dark recesses of a new hallway. Heat rolled over them like a blast of air from the three hells. Tag looked around, almost expecting to see the orange light of a fire flickering against the bulkheads, but the huge room was bathed in shadows and darkness, with only a few red emergency lights glaring from overhead like the eyes of a demon.

  Tag spotted a bank of terminals at the edge of a catwalk which seemed to stretch the circumference of the enormous facility. Four huge drums stood in the center of the chamber, reaching from the deck to the ceiling. The reactors thrummed with life, still seeming fully functional, even after their abandonment.

  “I wish Coren was here,” Sofia said. “Human tech: still functional even when facing the goddamn Dreg.”

  All around them the droning ebbed and flowed. The Dreg had built their hive in the spaces between the reactors, and aliens crawled over them, disappearing into honeycomb-like tunnels and reappearing. Hundreds more flew through the chamber, jumping into ventilation shafts. Others came from the ducts and various passages carrying pieces of equipment. Tag watched twenty Dreg carrying a surgical bed from one of the Hope’s medical suites through one of several dozen holes that had been bored into the floor.

  He pointed at one, whispering to Sofia, “That must be where their ships docked. Chewed through the hull, straight into here.”

  “Brazen little suckers,” Sofia said. “Not sure I’d want to tunnel into a power plant.”

  A Dreg zoomed their direction, and Tag ducked behind the terminals, pulling Sofia down with him. The Dreg’s wings buzzed louder, and Tag held his breath, waiting for it to discover them. The Dreg careened into another co
rridor and disappeared into the darkness.

  “This would be a lot easier if we had the rest of the crew,” Sofia whispered.

  “And the Melarrey and Mechanics, too,” Tag said, “but I’m not sure even with all that extra firepower we’d be able to exterminate the hive.”

  “You’re probably right,” Sofia said, miming two pistols and pretending to fire into the Dreg. “Going all Lonestar on these guys ain’t going to cut it.”

  “Right,” Tag said. “We need to think of some way to wipe them out in one fell swoop. We’ve got one chance to do this, so I want to do it right.”

  Sofia looked around the facility, a crafty look on her face. “I’ve got an idea.”

  “I’m all ears.”

  “We’re all wearing EVA suits, but the Dreg aren’t. We don’t need the atmosphere in here. We could shut down the life-support systems. Turn this place into a freezer.”

  “I like where you’re headed,” Tag said. “It’s efficient. But our plant friend is fragile. He was trying to keep the life-support systems online, so if we shut them off and freeze his leafy ass, he’d probably count that as an unkind thing.”

  Sofia crouched, her hands on her knees. “True. Very true. I’m getting a little ahead of myself because I hate those damn Dreg so much.”

  “Harsh words for an ET anthropologist.”

  “They’re always trying to mess up my ship. Ever drove an air car down a flyway and have bugs splatter all over your windshield? I hate that. Hate it with a passion. When these guys stuck themselves to the Argo, it was like that but a thousand times worse.”

  “All right,” Tag said, holding his hands up in a placating gesture. “I get it. We’ve got to get rid of them for our own sake as much as Raktor’s. If those things break up this station, we lose the chance to learn what he knows. Raktor might have information leading to the crew of the Hope, the Collectors—maybe even the Drone-masters. I don’t want those flying slugs to ruin our chances of saving humanity.”

  “So you got a better idea?”

  Tag thought for a moment. Sofia was right; something quick, unexpected, and ambitious would be a surefire way of catching all the Dreg off guard. It was absolutely necessary to ensure they rid the power plant and life-support facilities of the slimy bastards, but they couldn’t do it at the sacrifice of the whole station, much less Raktor. Sofia’s plan evolved in his mind, taking shape into something new. Something risky. Something he hoped would be even more effective.

  With a grin on his face, he finally said, “I got it.”

  CHAPTER NINETEEN

  Tag motioned to one of the containment drums around a fusion reactor. “When those things go into overload, they’re jettisoned so they don’t explode on the ship.”

  “So what, you want to turn that into a bomb?” Sofia asked. “Doesn’t sound particularly safe.”

  “No,” Tag said. “I’m thinking we simulate an overload. At least on the Argo, there’s an override to jettison a fusion reactor in case the AI’s censors malfunction.”

  “And when we dump the reactor, we just keep the dump-hatch open to suck all these bastards out!”

  “Exactly,” Tag said.

  “Can we jettison the reactor from these terminals?” Sofia asked.

  “No,” Tag said, his grin fading. “It’s got to be a manual override.”

  “Don’t tell me the manual override is by the reactor.”

  “That’s exactly where it is.” He pointed to a lever shielded by a protective polyglass shell. The nearest manual override was next to one of the Dreg hives, and the slug-like aliens were crawling all over it and the reactor it controlled.

  “How do we get past them?” Sofia asked.

  “Hadn’t quite thought that far ahead.”

  For a few moments they both sat in silence, gazing about their surroundings as if some clue would appear telling them how to proceed. The heat was getting to Tag. His shirt clung to his chest and back, and sweat saturated his gloves. The rising temperatures were making him impatient, and he silently willed himself to ignore his extreme discomfort.

  Just focus on a solution, he thought.

  “How about I cause a distraction?” Sofia offered.

  “What are you thinking?”

  “Those repair bots we saw on the way here. I could manually program one to go clanging down a ventilation duct.”

  “Should be noisy enough to attract the Dreg.”

  “No doubt,” Sofia said. “Might give us a few seconds for you to reach the lever and activate it. And that’s it, right? It should be pretty instantaneous.”

  “Should be,” Tag agreed. “If we can actually make that happen that quickly, we should be home free.”

  Sofia gave him a look that seemed to say, Please don’t jinx this. Every time they had thought something was going to be easy, it usually proved to be anything but. He had no delusions that their plan was sure to succeed. But what choice did they have? If they wanted Raktor to help them, they had to help the leafy monster first.

  “Sooner we get this over with, the sooner we’re out of here,” Tag said.

  “That I can agree with.”

  “Ready?”

  “Ready.”

  “I’ll wait for your signal,” Tag said.

  Sofia crept back down the corridor and grabbed a slumbering repair bot, then disappeared into the shadows. Tag waited several minutes, listening to the cacophonous droning of the Dreg. His vision wavered as the intense heat and exhaustion took their toll. He shook his head and tried to stay alert behind the bank of terminals.

  Eventually, the comms in his suit buzzed on. “I’m in position,” Sofia said. “I’m going to set the bot loose.”

  “Go for it,” Tag said. He braced himself, ready to sprint to the manual jettison controls.

  “Ready...here we go!”

  A loud clanging sounded from one of the ventilation ducts, and green and blue lights flashed from within it. The buzzing of the Dreg crescendoed into a high-pitched fit, and the little beasts descended on the duct like a living cyclone. They funneled into it, leaving only a few scrambling around the hives.

  Tag heaved himself forward, opting for speed over stealth. His footsteps clanked down a stairway to the bottom of the reactor facility. A lingering Dreg fluttered after him, trying to land on his suit, but Tag backhanded it away. The alien smacked against a bulkhead, its wings crumpling, and it plopped onto the deck.

  The manual release was within reach now. Drawn by the commotion, more Dreg threw themselves at him, and he unholstered his pistol. Orange pulsefire scorched their skin, and they flew like they were drunk on gutfire until they crashed into a jumble of broken insectile limbs. Tag holstered his pistol again as a tsunami of Dreg filtered out of one of the hives. Their beady eyes searched the room for the disturbance. Spotting him, they took off like a living cloud of smog.

  Digging his fingers under the edge of the polyglass cover, Tag tried to pry the shield loose from over the manual jettison control. The damn thing wouldn’t budge. It was adhered to its pedestal by the same sludge that covered the rest of the facility. The first few Dreg slammed into Tag, and several attached to the back of his suit. He reached around to peel them off, but he only managed to remove two. The sounds of the others grinding their teeth into his suit reverberated up into his ears. There was no time to waste trying to stop the Dreg. He battered the polyglass shield, hammering it with the grip of his pulse pistol.

  “Tag!” Sofia yelled. “The swarm is coming back!”

  Dreg poured out of the ventilation ducts. As if they were a single entity, the swarm was headed straight at Tag.

  The polyglass fractured at last, and Tag brought his pistol back down, summoning all the strength he could muster. Shards of polyglass flew. He grabbed the lever, then yanked it back.

  Nothing happened.

  His heart thrashed against his ribs. Panic flooded his chest, rising up into his throat. Then he saw it. The key.

  He twisted the little key
beside the lever—the failsafe mechanism to confirm he actually wanted to jettison the reactor.

  A computer-generated voice boomed across the facility. “Thirty seconds until complete core ejection.”

  Thirty seconds to escape the imminent depressurization before he would be sucked into a vacuum. Thirty seconds to survive against the flood of Dreg. Thirty seconds seemed simultaneously much too short and much too long.

  Tag sprinted toward the stairs, took them three at a time. He rounded the catwalk and he spotted Sofia further down from where they’d entered. Pulsefire exploded from her gun, shredding the Dreg who ventured too close to Tag. It wasn’t enough to defeat the swarm, but it gave him a few extra seconds.

  It would have to be enough.

  “Fifteen seconds remaining,” the voice boomed, much too calmly for Tag’s liking.

  Together, he and Sofia tried to outrun the Dreg. One of them latched onto his shoulder, and another clung to his leg. The smack of their grotesquely soft, slimy bodies flopping against him and Sofia accompanied the pounding of their feet against the deck.

  Sofia gestured to a corridor that offered them an escape. “There!”

  They were close. Meters away. A Dreg wrapped its twig-like limbs around Sofia’s foot, and she tripped, falling face-first to the deck. The other Dreg took advantage of her spill, and they fell over her like a crashing wave.

  “Sofia!” Tag yelled, sliding to a stop. He scrambled over the gunk threatening to slip him up and fought through the torrent of Dreg. Their bodies hit him like a flurry of punches, but he persevered. He’d come too far, seen too much, to be defeated here by a bunch of ugly flying slugs. He reached down, straining to grasp Sofia’s outstretched fingers.

  Dreg covered her body. She looked like a monster ascending from the swamp.

  “Five seconds,” the voice said.

  They had to make it to the hatch at the end of the corridor. Outside that hatch, and they would be fine. The weight of the Dreg dragged on him, and he staggered as he ran. It was like trying to march up a mountain with a boulder tied to his back. More and more Dreg joined the pile on his back, and their weight pushed him onto his knees. He tried to crawl forward, pulling himself across the deck.