Shattered Dawn (The Eternal Frontier Book 3) Read online

  “Great,” Coren said. “Give the non-human the junk terminal.”

  “Aren’t all these terminals junk compared to your amazing Mechanic technology?” Sofia asked.

  “Good point,” Coren said, sidling into his open station.

  “So quit your bitching,” Sofia said.

  Coren shook his head as he began delving into the files. “What exactly should I be looking for?”

  “Anything to do with science projects,” Tag said. “Maybe we can find nanite research. If we’ve got Net access, ship’s logs would be helpful, too. I want to know what happened to the crew.”

  For a few moments, they each sifted through the data in silence punctuated only by the shrieks of the creatures outside. Sumo watched the barricade nervously, pacing back and forth between the terminals and the hatch. Tag soon lost himself in the search within the lab’s Net systems. A bevy of different projects scrolled over the holoscreen, ranging from basic cell biology experiments to more advanced tissue regeneration techniques, similar to those used in modern-day regen chambers. The pounding against the hatch reminded him they couldn’t peruse all this data now. Best to download as much as they could find and give it a more thorough investigation later. He used his wrist terminal’s connection to the Argo to begin transferring data packets from the Hope’s lab.

  They could easily take most of this data with them, but he still wanted to make sure they didn’t miss any physical clues to what had happened to the Hope’s crew—or any connections with the nanites.

  “Any luck?” Sumo asked, looking over Tag’s shoulder at the names of various data packets. “Oh, hey, I recognize that one!”

  She pointed to a list of packet names, and Tag began reading them aloud. “Organotherapeutics. Intuitive Nanotechnologies. Biorecog Technologies. Asimov Cybertech. General AI. Starinski Labs. Bonner-Spice Defense.”

  “Yeah, those last two,” Sumo said. “Weapons and warship manufacturers.”

  “Weird,” Tag said. “I thought we were just looking at bio research, but this is a whole list of companies that contracted work with the Hope. Some of them still exist.”

  Sofia looked up from her research. “Whether it’s the UN or the SRE, companies who know how to make money keep making money, right? They don’t care who’s running the solar system.”

  “True,” Tag said. While the SRE sponsored most of his synth-bio research projects on the Argo, there had been some internal debate within the government suggesting that the SRE take contractor-funded projects instead. Tag had vehemently disagreed. He preferred to maintain control over his work and ensure there were no conflicts of interest as he developed it into what later became Alpha. But he imagined that a generation ship like the Hope would’ve been an expensive proposition, so subsidizing government funding through corporation-directed research projects might have helped make possible what would have otherwise been an unaffordable endeavor.

  “Too bad none of these companies benefited from this research,” Tag said. “Must’ve lost a boatload of money.”

  “I wouldn’t be too sure about that,” Coren said. “Looks like the Hope sent a stream of courier drones back to Earth over the decades of its journey. I’m sure something in there was valuable.”

  “That’s strange,” Tag said, looking at what Coren had found. “Some of these courier drones date past when the Hope was considered lost. Supposedly, no one on Earth was receiving contact from them at that point.”

  “Might be true,” Sofia said. “Maybe they were sending the drones, but none of them were getting home.”

  “It is unfortunate that we do not know what happened to those drones,” Alpha said. “Captain, many of these corporate-funded projects are encrypted with high-priority security systems. I will be unable to breach them without considerable effort and time.”

  “Can you still transfer them back to our ship?” Tag asked.

  The banging and clawing on the hatch still hadn’t let up, and Alpha had to speak up to be heard over the din. “Yes, Captain. That is possible.”

  “Good,” Tag said. He recalled their earlier conversation and clarified, “Please transfer those files to the ship. Anyone find anything mentioning nanites?”

  “Nothing yet,” Coren said.

  “Afraid not,” Sofia added. “Would’ve expected the bio labs would be the right place to start looking for it, too.”

  “Hmm,” Tag mused, “I wouldn’t be surprised if that information was encrypted. Those kinds of weapons were still pretty controversial in UN times.” He thumbed through the classified projects again. “Start unlocking the Intuitive Nanotechnologies packets. See if we find something there.”

  “You might be interested in what else I found in the drone records,” Coren said. “Apparently, the ship logs continue past the alleged disappearance of the Hope three hundred years ago. Here’s the final entry.”

  Coren gestured over the terminal to expand the text, and Tag peered at the slightly warped letters on Coren’s terminal. The log read:

  We have encountered a grave threat. Unlike any species we have come across, this poses perhaps the greatest danger to our mission, maybe our existence. We’ve—

  Tag tried to scroll to continue the log, but there was nothing else. “Does it really just cut off here?”

  “Unfortunately, I cannot find anything else,” Coren said.

  “Damn,” Tag said. “So close...”

  Coren tapped on the screen. “What’s even stranger is that there was a ship-wide evacuation ordered.”

  “Doesn’t sound so weird if they came across some kind of crazy dangerous threat,” Sofia said.

  “That would be true,” Coren said, “if the order to evacuate hadn’t come almost two hundred and fifty years after that last ship log.”

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN

  Sofia pointed to her holoscreen. “Found something else we might be interested in.”

  A long, skinny figure rotated on the screen with a snake-like face and serpentine limbs that Tag had grown all too familiar with.

  “That’s a Mechanic,” Coren said, sounding irritatingly unimpressed.

  “It is,” Sofia said. “They have an amazing amount of data on your species. Stuff here about the politics and customs of Meck’ara, along with individual bios on a few Mechanics.”

  Tag leaned over Sofia’s shoulder. “And all that biological data on the genetic transcription and translation processes.” An image appeared next to the rotating Mechanic showing a labyrinth of cells and tissues making up one of the alien’s organs. “They really did a full workup here.”

  “Enough reading material to keep us scientists and anthropologists occupied for a few months,” Sofia said.

  “I’m pleased that you’re so captivated by the clear exploitation of my species, but is there anything there to implicate these humans in the nanites?” Coren asked.

  “I’m not sure yet,” Sofia said. “But Mechanics weren’t the only subjects of interest to the Hope’s crew.”

  “What else did you find?” Tag asked.

  “In scientific terms: a shit ton.”

  As Tag stared at the holoscreen, the sounds of the creatures banging against the hatch seemed to fade away, as did the rest of the laboratory. All he saw were the lists of other alien races scrolling across the screen. The reports oozed with information documenting civilizations and physiologies of races Tag couldn’t have conjured in his wildest dreams.

  “Our other friends are in here, too,” Sofia said. She stopped at one point in the list.

  An amorphous creature with a translucent body and visible nerve and blood vessels spiderwebbing through it appeared.

  “The Melarrey,” Tag said. “This is insane. How did the crew of the Hope discover all this on their own?”

  “Maybe they did not, Captain,” Alpha said from her perch at her own station. “While much of this data is corrupted, I believe most of these files originated prior to the final ship’s log. However, these studies began after they reporte
d seeing something that frightened them all.”

  “Are you suggesting another species intervened here? Maybe took over the ship and uploaded all their data to the Hope?”

  “Probability analysis suggests that the dominant sentient species aboard the Hope in the years after the final ship log were indeed different from the original crew,” Alpha said. “In summary, yes, it is unlikely humans were responsible for these research reports.”

  “I don’t know,” Tag said. “Still seems odd a race with that much knowledge would want an old human ship like this.”

  “I could buy it,” Sumo said. “My aunt was one of those—what do you call ’em?” Her eyebrows scrunched together for a moment as she tapped her rifle. “Ah, a hoarder. She collected Star Frontier toys and holo cartoons. You know space station apartments are already cramped to begin with. Imagine what one looks like when you’ve got bundles of 3D fabricators printing out new action figures of Romulus Martin and his friends with all their gadgets and spaceships. I don’t know how she lived there, but she loved collecting that stuff. Maybe these aliens were collectors or something.”

  “I find this hypothesis reasonable,” Alpha said.

  “Me, too,” Coren added. “This whole space station is one big collection of various species ships.”

  “Gods, do you think that’s the threat the ship log mentioned?” Tag asked. The ramifications of an entire alien race who abused their superior technologies merely to “collect” information and ships from other races staggered him. “These Collectors, or whatever you want to call them, capture anything that comes their way and add it to this space station.”

  “So what, we’re some of Aunt Sumo’s collectibles now?” Sofia asked. “Let me guess, your aunt was a bit crazy, too.”

  “Yeah, that’s definitely fair,” Sumo said.

  “Wonder how crazy these Collectors are,” Sofia asked.

  “I just hope they’re not around anymore,” Tag said. “We can’t let the Argo become a permanent fixture in this collection. Download all that data. We’ll sift through the corrupted stuff and repair it later if we can.” He turned to Alpha. “Have you found anything related to nanites?”

  “No, I am afraid my answer remains unchanged.”

  “Damn,” Tag said. Once again, he found himself facing more questions than answers. Maybe Grand Elector L’ndrant had been right.

  A wave of anger flushed those doubts from his mind. No, Captain Weber must have been ordered to take out these coordinates for a reason. Maybe it was the Collectors that Weber had been after, not the source of the nanites. Either way, something evil was going on here.

  Sofia was frowning. “Maybe the Collectors are actually more like me. They employ a bunch of anthropologists to study the worlds around them.”

  “That’s an awfully optimistic way of looking at it,” Coren said. “Why do you say that?”

  Before Coren could answer, the sound of footsteps pounding along a corridor drew their attention. Sumo raised her rifle slightly, settling in front of the others in a defensive position. She lowered her weapon when Bull stormed from the shadows with Lonestar and Gorenado behind him. The dim light glimmered over long streams of sweat beneath his visor. Tag thought the marine seemed even paler than usual.

  “Captain, you’re going to want to see this,” Bull said gruffly. The banging on the hatch continued, and he eyed the barricade. “Maybe it’s best everyone comes along.”

  “Alpha, how’s the data coming along?” Tag asked.

  “I believe I have all the data I can access from these terminals.”

  “Good,” Tag said. “Bull, lead the way.”

  Leaving the wan yellow lights of the laboratory behind, they followed another corridor swallowed by dark shadows. A glimmer of light blinked at the end of the corridor. It led them into another chamber, cavernous as the belly of an ice god. Fluid of some sort dripped from the high ceiling and pinged against brown puddles covering the deck. The emergency lights didn’t seem to work as well here. Some of the banks provided an unenthusiastic glow over a few bulkheads, while other light banks switched on and off, the cause of the blinking they had seen before. Most remained dark. A putrid, rotten smell like a spaceship trash compactor that hadn’t been emptied in decades wafted through the air, piercing the filters in Tag’s suit. His eyes watered at the stench as they slowly adjusted to the poor lighting.

  His stomach churned as he gazed around, nausea twisting it into an agonizing knot. “Good gods,” Tag said. “This is how the Collectors knew so much about these species.”

  CHAPTER FOURTEEN

  It was like a zoo. The most revolting, twisted zoo Tag had ever seen.

  Jutting from the ground were rows of cages and tanks, all of various sizes. Many sat in disrepair, cracks leaking fluid or merely rings of broken polyglass demarcating where a tank had once been. Suspended from the ceiling were other enclosures, equally abused or neglected as those lining the deck.

  Tag stepped forward slowly, cautiously. His nerves tingled, telling him to be prepared to run, to fight. To do something. But the pull of curiosity was too great. He was an iron filing to the magnetism of the unknown, and he couldn’t stop the urge—the need—to investigate this place.

  Pressing a palm to the nearest tank, he peered inside. The fluid in it was a murky green. Something bobbed at the surface. A creature. It had long trailing fins, feathered like a bird’s wing, that attached to a decayed torso with protruding bones. Dozens of what appeared to be empty eye sockets dotted the creature’s skull.

  “What is it?” Sofia asked, sidling next to him.

  The marines kept their rifles trained on the shadows, ever watchful, but even they were stealing the occasional glances at the atrocities around them.

  “I...I don’t know,” Tag said. “Coren? Alpha?”

  Coren shook his head. Even his scarred, white eye seemed to fill with sorrow as he gazed at the rows of tanks.

  “According to the downloaded files from the laboratory, I believe it is a Dullaquetzl,” Alpha offered. “But it appears to be long dead.”

  There were no smart replies from any of the crew members telling Alpha she was stating something that was painfully obvious to all of them, scientific training or no. This was not a place for humor.

  When no one spoke, she continued. “The Dullaquetzl are an aquatic species from the planet Quetzlaquenta. They are a space-faring species that only just—”

  “They’re sentient?” Sofia asked, turning to Alpha. There was a wet sheen in her eyes.

  “Yes,” Alpha said. “Very much so.”

  Several more Dullaquetzl floated in various stages of decay in the nearby tanks. Scratches marred the inside of one, and another had been cracked, emptied of all fluid, with the alien lying desiccated on the bottom.

  “Were they prisoners?” Tag asked. Not that it would justify their treatment, but at least it would be a more palatable explanation than what he feared.

  “No,” Alpha said. “Nothing in the ship’s records indicates the taking of prisoners. I believe I have located a reference to this room in the databases. It was labeled Specimen Storage.”

  The twisting in Tag’s guts tightened painfully. “This is terrible.”

  They walked to another set of cages that barely gave the alien inside room to stand. Long-dead brown skin was stretched over a skeletal structure that resembled a three-legged, humanoid bird. The alien’s stubby fingers were wrapped around the cage’s bars in rigor mortis. What was left of the being’s face looked like it had been frozen in a perpetual state of anguish, its features pulled downward as if it had been resigned to defeat.

  Next to the three-legged bird alien was an enclosure whose inhabitants had been packed in like popcorn, each of them roughly the size of Tag’s hand. They looked almost plant-like, their skin bark and their feet roots. But they had no soil to take root in, nor any sun to offer their dried-up, leafy appendages light. Another cage contained a puddle of gelatinous goo with cartilaginous spike
s poking through a sheer membrane.

  As they passed other enclosures, Tag’s senses grew numb, his thoughts clouded by a dark smog of sadness and anger. All of these sentient beings imprisoned for no other purpose than to serve as experimental subjects to the Collectors. Yanked from their homes, their ships, their friends, their families, and kept here in this room, each distraught and angry and horrified and depressed and...

  Tag pounded his fist against one of the broken polyglass tanks. There were no creatures in this one. Missing shards spoke of a possible escape. Other cages and enclosures showed signs of distress, sitting empty between those habitats in which their mummified inhabitants had languished. Maybe some of these beings had found freedom. Maybe they had wreaked havoc on the Collectors, seeking their revenge. Tag could imagine a punishment no more fitting or just.

  Coren seemed entranced by one cage in particular. He approached it slowly, almost reverently, his hands held in front of him with fingers splayed. When his fingers touched the polyglass reinforced by alloy bars, he pressed his palms against it and muttered softly, “The machine remembers. The machine remembers.”

  Tag joined the Mechanic. Huddled in a tangled mass at the floor of the enclosure was a corpse with leathery black skin and obsidian fur that had fallen out in large patches. It took no leap of imagination for Tag to imagine the snake-like face and golden eyes the alien had once possessed.

  “Bastards,” Coren said, his six-fingered hands curling into shaking fists. His nostrils flared as he swiveled, taking in the whole specimen complex. “I cannot imagine the suffering these poor people endured.”

  “If there are still Collectors on this ship, we will bring them to justice,” Tag said.

  “Count me in on that,” Bull added, patting the side of his rifle.

  Sofia knelt beside another cage. An alien no taller than her knee had perished there, one of its arms stretched out from between the bars, eternally reaching for help that had come far, far too late. “Why would they do this? There are so many better ways to learn ...”

  Something began to tingle down Tag’s neck as his crew explored the chamber. Something was wrong here—besides the obvious—but he couldn’t quite place where this feeling was coming from. It was as if they were missing a piece of the greater puzzle, and once he figured out what it was, everything would become clear. It felt like it should have been obvious... He looked around at the cages one more time, trying to catalogue all the inhabitants. He would have holo recordings from his suit along with the memories that would forever be scorched into his mind.