Shattered Dawn (The Eternal Frontier Book 3) Read online

  “What do you think, Captain?” Pradr’n was staring at Tag.

  “I’m sorry,” Tag said. “Lost in thought. What were you saying?”

  “We were just asking if there was any human technology analogous to the Mechanic conscience miner we could use to determine whether these Drone-Mechs still retain a sense of their old self,” Coren said. “Our hypothesis is that human technology has the capability of bypassing the nanites, since, of course, the nanites are based on old human tech.”

  Tag understood the insinuation behind what Coren had said. Pradr’n would never ask for help because it would imply that human tech might somehow be better than Mechanic tech. “I’m afraid I can’t give you a good answer on that,” Tag said. “Maybe it’s possible, but I don’t have any of the SRE’s mind-probing tech available. That’s all highly secured, highly controlled technology. They didn’t want it to get into the wrong hands.”

  “In case someone abused it, like they did the nanites,” Coren said.

  “Right,” Tag said. He let out a sigh, wondering if there was any tech in the galaxy that could help reverse the Drone-Mechs. But he feared there was very little that could be done.

  Their best hope was to find the culprits behind the nanites and force them to deconstruct the technology they had used to enslave an entire race.

  ***

  Tag walked toward the entrance of the Deep Origin dockyards with Coren. Sofia had joined them on their journey back to the Argo after having made her final rounds interviewing some of the Mechanic academics for her anthropological reports.

  As they approached the gateway leading into the dockyards, Tag stopped and then turned to look at the sprawling infrastructure of the city. He soaked in the sight of the buildings, but most of all, the freshwater rivers winding their ways alongside roadways and the extensive parks. Even the towering skyrisers were draped in greenery, with suspended gardens alive and growing between the tall buildings. Despite their proclivity toward all things mechanical, the Mechanics still seemed to admire the oldest of the universe’s technology: the natural engine of evolution and life.

  “It is beautiful, isn’t it?” Coren asked, catching Tag admiring the artificial landscape beneath the dome.

  “I hate to admit it, but yeah, it is,” Tag said. He took a deep breath. There was a hint of burning plastic, a reminder that the air had been recycled and purified. Still, the breeze carried scents of otherworldly flowers and vegetation, an aroma that Tag had almost forgotten during his service with the SRE. “I’m going to miss the semi-fresh air.”

  “Me, too.” Sofia gestured to Coren. “Beats the smell of wet dog every time this furry guy sweats.”

  Coren glowered at her. “At least I am not the one destroying the ship’s heads with the foul scents you humans generate.”

  “That’s mostly Alpha,” Sofia said.

  “Hey, no need to incriminate her when she’s not even here,” Tag said. “Besides, I think we all know the real culprits.”

  Sofia and Coren eyed the marines amassed outside the Argo. They were in good humor, almost as if they weren’t about to embark on a mission that would take them into the unknown, risking their lives and maybe even those of their respective species. Each step they took closer to the Argo was another addition to the already overbearing weight settling over Tag’s shoulders. The pressure of delving back into the frontiers of human exploration, back into territories that might still be rife with Drone-Mechs and Dreg and whoever the three hells the Drone-masters were, along with whatever else might be out there ready to tear them apart.

  Mechanics were milling next to the Stalwart, preparing it for flight, and a few of the Melarrey moved in a rolling walk as their gelatinous bodies circled their swan-shaped ship, the Crucible, making last minute checks. In an almost dream-like trance, Tag worked his way from the dockyard through the gangway into the cargo bay, finally settling into the captain’s station on the bridge of the Argo. His crew found their positions and, over the comms, sounded that they were ready for departure.

  The Argo, the Stalwart, and the Crucible hovered above their landing pads before rising into an enormous airlock. Huge panels and doors hissed shut behind them, and once they closed, water rushed in around the ships, letting the ocean replace the atmosphere. Soon the chamber’s door opened. The Stalwart was the first to drift upward, away from Deep Origin and toward the surface, with the Crucible close behind.

  “Follow ’em up,” Tag said.

  “Aye, Skipper,” Sofia replied, pulling back on the controls and directing the Argo skyward.

  It wasn’t long before all three ships broke the water’s surface, accelerating toward the blackness of the star-speckled night sky. They followed the call of the stars. Tag watched through the viewscreen as Meck’ara shrank, becoming nothing more than a marble of blue and green. It reminded him of when he had left Earth, and he felt the longing to revisit his home planet creep back through his torso like a cold wind.

  With the reluctance of the Mechanics to support their mission and the threat of the Drone-masters looming ever larger, he wondered if there would be a Meck’ara to return to when their mission ended—especially if they didn’t succeed. It was beyond foolish for the Mechanics to ignore his warnings. This might be their only chance at quelling the Drone-master threat.

  His thoughts turned back toward the SRE and Earth. Would there be a human homeworld to return to when this was all over?

  That question echoed in his mind as he gave Alpha the signal to initiate their jump into hyperspace. Stars and planets blurred across their viewscreen as acceleration pressed his organs to his spine. Soon the inertial dampeners caught up, and the pressure eased. Emerald and violet plasma crackled over the viewscreen as they burst into hyperspace.

  CHAPTER FIVE

  The journey to the coordinates designated by Captain Weber’s journal would take weeks, even by way of hyperspace. That gave the crew plenty of time to train, take care of the ship, and pursue their independent projects. For Coren, that meant continuously upgrading the Argo’s systems to be compatible with Mechanic systems, enabling more precise visualization of hostile and friendly contacts, better power usage from the fusion reactors, and more efficient data transfers between the trio of ships that made up their tiny fleet. The marines made their second home in the gym and the VR sims, where they ran combat drills, while Alpha read everything she could on human psychology, yearning to understand herself as much as her crew by peppering them all with questions when not delving through the Argo’s digital libraries.

  Tag found himself drifting between crew members, looking for ways he could help. His work in the lab had largely been destroyed during his first run-in with the Drone-Mechs. The only physical evidence of his research on synth-bio AI was Alpha, and he couldn’t exactly spend all his time running laboratory experiments when there was nothing but her to experiment on. It was during one of his periods of checking up on the crew that he wandered into the cargo bay.

  Stretched between two towers of crates was a hammock. Curious, Tag scaled one of the towers to see who had made the place their home.

  His heart thrashed against his rib cage when found Sofia’s head—but not her body—nestled on one side of the hammock. A thousand thoughts whirred through his mind, his medical officer training kicking into overdrive, and adrenaline flooded his systems, narrowing his vision on Sofia’s strangely serene expression.

  Nothing he could think of, however, would help a head with no body.

  “What’s the matter, Skipper?” Sofia’s head asked.

  Tag almost fell backward, grasping for the top of the crate to prevent himself from tumbling to the alloy deck. “What...what’s...”

  “Oh,” Sofia’s hands appeared first, then the rest of her. She draped what looked like a huge white fur rug over the side of the hammock. “You look like you saw a ghost.”

  “Gods be damned, I might as well have.” Tag willed his racing pulse to settle. “Didn’t know you were going arou
nd pretending to be invisible.”

  Sofia laughed, squeezing the white spirit ox hide that the Forinth had given her back on Eta-Five. The hide came from a large, color-shifting mammal on the planet. Spirit oxen’s flesh had a unique set of exotic proteins enabling the animal to blend in with its environment like an oversized, furry chameleon.

  “I thought those things only worked when the oxen are alive,” Tag said.

  Sofia sat up, her hammock swinging precariously. “It definitely helps.” She pointed to something on her wrist terminal. “But I got to thinking, if the Forinth can practically turn invisible by ingesting their hides, there’s got to be some way I could use whatever’s in it to, more or less, turn the hide on.”

  “And you figured it out?”

  “Yeah, you could say that,” she said. “Very easy to do. I borrowed a couple of the protein preservative solutions from the lab.”

  “Those are dangerous.”

  “So is going after the Drone-masters, but you don’t see me complaining about that.”

  Tag raised an eyebrow.

  “Anyway, I think I captured the proteins that let this thing change colors. It just needed an electrical current and chromatic input to tell them what to do. Borrowed a couple other parts from the lab, some advice from Alpha, and—voila!” She showed a small button she had clipped to the hide. With a press, the hide turned invisible. With another press, it reappeared.

  “Better hope you don’t turn that thing on and then forget where you put it.”

  “Already thought of that,” Sofia said. She tapped the button again. “I installed a transponder. This thing is synced to my wrist terminal, so even if it’s invisible and for some reason stays that way, I can find it.”

  “That’s all very ingenious,” Tag said.

  “I know. My intellect is vastly superior,” she said, impersonating Coren’s accent. She set the hide to dangle off the edge of the hammock again and shifted toward him. “So did you need something?”

  “Honestly, I was more curious about what a hammock was doing in the cargo bay,” Tag said. “Right now I’m in between experiments, and the ship’s damn near as clean and well-maintained as it’s going to get.”

  “You looking to start a game of Turbo up in here or something?” Sofia asked.

  “Gods,” Tag said with a laugh. “That’s the last thing I’d need. I’m terrible at sports.” He brushed a hand through his hair. “No, no games. I’ve had some time to think.”

  “Ah, really? Congratulations,” Sofia said with a smirk. “I’m proud to hear you can do that, Skipper!”

  Tag shook his head. “The Drone-masters. I’ve been considering your theory about why we haven’t seen them, and something else strikes me as odd.”

  “What’s that?”

  “Not only did they enslave the Drone-Mechs and massacre the Melarrey, doing who knows what the hell else to our jellyfish friends, but they left no trace of themselves behind. I had a bit of time to go through the ship’s libraries. I mean, Alexander the Great made sure to install some kind of governmental control over every place he conquered. So why didn’t the Drone-masters do that?”

  Sofia rolled back into her hammock. “I mean, enslaving the Drone-Mechs and using them as an army was kind of installing a defensive network, wouldn’t you say?”

  “Sure,” Tag said. “It looks like that at first glance. But even around Meck’ara, as formidable as their defenses were, that wasn’t the whole population of Drone-Mechs from the planet. Plenty of ships and people were gone. Missing.” His brow furrowed as thoughts flurried through his brain. “Plus, every space station, every trade or research outpost, even the Mechanic colonies we saw were destroyed or abandoned. We’re talking about abundant economic resources lying completely neglected. Undefended. Why?”

  Now Sofia’s grin faded. Tag could practically see her mind grinding through the implications. “Yeah, you’ve got a point. I mean, if the Drone-masters were so goddamned smart, they would surely set up a fail-safe to defend Meck’ara, right? There’s no way they would rely on a single layer of defense. If they really, really wanted that planet, they would have stationed some of their own ships there or maybe used another species they were allied with or something.”

  “Exactly,” Tag said. “I don’t think the Drone-masters are just killing and enslaving for fun. I suspect you were right before. There’s a reason they’re acting so different from our expectations.” He picked up the spirit ox hide, rubbing the coarse fur between his fingers. “You told me the Forinth treat all life as sacred, but they also appreciate the delicate balance of their ecosystem, that overburdening it would mean death to all of them.”

  “Which is why they sacrifice one of the elderly Forinth when a new one is born,” Sofia said. “You think the Drone-masters are performing some kind of culling to keep the balance in this part of the universe?”

  “I don’t know, but it seems just as plausible a theory as any.” Tag studied Sofia for a moment. Since they had escaped Eta-Five together, he had found it easier and easier to trust her. His thoughts lingered to how one of their marines, Rebecca “Lonestar” Hudson, had been duped into planting a transponder on the Argo, alerting Drone-Mechs to the ship’s location. Someone in the SRE had tricked Lonestar—someone with evident ties to the Drone-Mechs or Drone-masters. “What still bugs me is why this genocidal species would take the effort to infiltrate SRE military intelligence. Why use an MI official to track the Argo down?”

  “Damn,” Sofia said. “My Alexander the Great metaphor really runs deep, doesn’t it? Gods, they already have spies in the SRE sowing confusion.”

  The icy pinpricks of fear needled Tag’s skin. “Which means an attack on humanity is imminent.”

  CHAPTER SIX

  Tag lay in his bunk, listening to the mechanical whoosh of air pushing through the air recyclers, tasting the subtle plastic flavor of it as it blew over him from the vents in his cabin. Darkness flooded his quarters, and his eyelids sagged, heavy under the weight of anticipation and exhaustion. The longer he spent on the Argo, the more capricious and unreliable a companion sleep had become. Sleep continued to evade him, its escape fueled by his conversations with Sofia.

  It seemed every time they found an answer to one question, the mystery of the nanites and the Drone-masters gave them two more questions. They were in a never-ending race to solve a conspiracy fast spiraling out of his control. He hoped Captain Weber’s journal held the answers he sought, and that when they finally reached the coordinates they’d at last come face-to-face with their enigmatic enemy. Tag was ready for an end to the mysteries, an end the massacres and subterfuge once and for all.

  A seed of worry planted itself in his mind, ensnaring his brain like a weed. He feared there was far more to the nanites, far more to the Drone-masters than he could ever hope to understand from one bombing run his former captain never had the chance to complete.

  He turned in his berth, trying to find a more comfortable position. Soon he gave up and swung his legs over the side. Donning his uniform, he treaded into the corridors with their lights dimmed to simulate night. Long shadows loomed from the stanchions, accompanying his walk to the mess. His footsteps clanged noisily along the passageway, and he worried about disturbing his crew until he heard the growling murmurs of voices.

  Expecting to have the ship to himself, he was surprised when he nudged open the hatch to the mess, greeted by the boom of cheering voices hitting with an unforgiving force, shattering the quiet of the simulated late night.

  “Damn, that was a textbook powerplay!” Marvin “Gorenado” Goreham said, slamming his palms against a table.

  “Told you my Bucs are smarter than they look,” Lonestar said, jabbing Bull playfully with an elbow to his ribs.

  Bull let out a long sigh, his face flaming crimson and his arms folded over his chest.

  “Captain!” Fatima “Sumo” Kajimi said, the first to notice him. “Come to watch the game?”

  Instead of the normal v
iew of space, a game of Turbo filled the mess’s viewscreen. Players from two teams rushed each other at the start of a new round as flashes of lasers and holos played across the field. Tag tried to make sense of what was going on but quickly gave up.

  “Want to sit?” Sumo asked, motioning to an open seat near her. “You’re from Old Houston, right? The Texas Ridgewings are playing. You a fan?”

  “Should I be?” Tag asked, settling into the seat.

  “They’re from your hometown,” Lonestar said. She leaned across the table. “What’s Texas like nowadays? My great-grandpop always told me about the cowboy ranch franchises everywhere.”

  Tag laughed. “When I was last there, Texas was as much as an urban sprawl as any other SRE state. You’re from an actual frontier colony. You lived the real thing, so why are you so concerned about a fake experience at a franchise?”

  Lonestar shrugged. “Fake or not, Texas is where my ancestors came from. Would be nice to visit the motherland someday.”

  “When this is all over, I’ll gladly visit it with you,” Tag said, “but don’t blame me when your romantic view of your ancestral lands is tarnished.”

  Lonestar shrugged and knocked back her drink. The odor stung his eyes, reminiscent of homebrewed gutfire. When Lonestar caught Tag eyeing the glass, she wrapped her fingers around it and gave him a sheepish smile.

  Again, Tag laughed. “Go ahead and enjoy yourselves now. I don’t blame you. Might as well live it up these last few days in hyperspace before the real work begins.” He looked at Bull, the only marine without a cup of the contraband alcoholic drink. “You already finish yours?”

  Bull’s forehead furrowed in gorges of wrinkles. “Promised these jarheads we’re getting up at 0500 for calisthenics. I’m not hankering for a hangover like them.”