Shattered Dawn (The Eternal Frontier Book 3)

by Anthony J Melchiorri

  Instead of exploding outward, the cloud of particles was drawn back together. Instead of reforming themselves into their original shape, however, they coalesced into a humanoid figure. Long, spindly legs connected to a beastly torso. Thick arms sprouted off its side, and a tiny, faceless head sat atop it.

  “What in the—” Sumo never finished her question. One of the massive arms swung at her. A hammer-like fist connected with her chest plate, throwing her backward. Her arms cartwheeled until she slammed into a supply crate, crushing it beneath the weight of her armor.

  Gorenado swung his rifle up and fired at the creature. A burst of slugs tore gaping holes in its torso, exposing only more fluid-like black particles. There appeared to be no organs or blood vessels—no wires or servos, either.

  “Machines be damned!” Coren yelled. “This thing’s made of the same nanomaterials as the decks in the ship bay!”

  “They’re like some kind of...golems!” Sofia yelled.

  In response to Coren’s booming voice, the other eleven crates transfigured themselves into humanoid monstrosities. Their feet slammed against the ground in unison, sending tremors through the deck. Tag almost lost his footing as he aimed at one of them. He let loose a flurry of kinetic rounds that sliced through its shoulders and head, sending its arm crashing against the floor. The limb burst into thousands of tiny black globules like so many marbles scattering over the deck.

  The others unleashed a fusillade of kinetic rounds into the monstrous nano-golems, and the first few fell apart, forming black puddles.

  “Take that you pieces of robotic shit!” Sumo yelled, pushing herself up from where she had fallen. She unloaded a magazine into one of the golems. It stepped forward against the incoming rounds even as its limbs disintegrated. The monstrosity fell, face-planting against the deck, and exploded in a spray of particles.

  All around Tag the sound of gunfire and splattering golems swirled. His rifle shuddered against his shoulder as he unloaded round after round, desperate to stop the constructs before they hurt another crew member. Amid the sounds of the skirmish, he heard the faraway echoes of Jaroon’s and Bracken’s forces engaged in their own fights. Sweat poured down Tag’s forehead, and adrenaline surged through him as he dodged one of the monstrosities. It pummeled at the deck, chasing after him, and he felt an almost wild thrill as he fired on it, taking grim satisfaction each time one of his shots sent pieces of the golem splashing against the floor. With only one arm and half a leg left, the golem dragged itself at Tag. A small mouth formed in its cylindrical head, opening and closing like it was gasping. A shrill sound spilled out from its mouth until Tag tore it to shreds of fluid-like metallic slivers that spilled across the deck.

  Tag roved his rifle across the room, looking for his next target, the next golem dying for a taste of his mini-Gauss. His ears thundered with his pulse, churned on by the electricity exploding through his nerves. His finger itched next to the trigger guard, but all he saw were the other crew members standing over the remains of their vanquished enemies. He almost wanted to laugh. These Collectors were supposed to be extraordinarily advanced, and he had expected a more impressive defense.

  “Oh, gods, no,” Sofia said.

  Tag whipped his head around, following her gaze. His heart seemed to go still. A sound not unlike human shrieking came from a black puddle of particles. Something was growing from it. First came a head, then a torso. Then the arms and legs.

  The same shrieking exploded from the other puddles as the nanotech repaired the rest of the constructs.

  The one nearest him brought its arm back, an eerie whine sounding from its head, and then it punched a block-like fist straight at Tag’s chest.

  CHAPTER THIRTY-SEVEN

  Tag dove to the side, barely dodging the nano-golem’s fist. He rolled, already feeling the bruises forming in his elbows, and he sent the rest of his mini-Gauss’s magazine careening through the golem. The rounds tore a hole in the golem’s torso big enough for Tag to jump through, and still the monster came at him as though he had called the damn thing’s name. All around him he heard the yells of his crew entangled with their own regenerating adversaries. No matter how many rounds he pummeled the thing with, it kept coming back.

  “Bracken,” Tag managed to grind out. “How are you fighting these things?”

  Bracken sounded just as exhausted. “They keep...regenerating. Damn self-assembling particles.”

  Tag’s mind sprinted even as he ran from another self-assembling golem. He fired at it, but as soon as the round cleared its torso, the particles reformed.

  An idea hit him with an almost palpable force as he slid across the deck, escaping another slicing blow. No physical round would tear these monsters apart...because they were barely put together to begin with. Bullets and slugs would do no more damage to them than they would do to a cloud of water vapor.

  But if these little nanomachines were reassembling when they were torn apart, there was a way to defeat them. Tag was certain he could figure it out, if only he had a few minutes to think. He crawled under a huge truck loaded down with colonization supplies. One of the golems pummeled the side of the vehicle, tearing the metal panels as it tried to reach Tag.

  Traditional firearms weren’t going to do anything to the golems. He needed to think on the nanoscale, to destroy the nanomachines that were actually responsible for the large forms. Another golem charged toward him. Tag fired on it, watching the particles spread then reassemble like a school of fish avoiding a barracuda. Not only were the kinetic rounds ineffective, but the nanomachines were quickly adapting to the physical blows, reforming faster than before.

  The mini-Gauss rifle was useless. Tag slung it over his back and pulled out his weaker pulse pistol. Orange bolts of pulsefire burned into the golem. This time, instead of the particles simply falling away, they glowed bright red, like molten metal, and then splattered on the deck and cooled in large globs of silver. To Tag’s happy surprise, they never reformed.

  “That’s it!” Tag said. “Overload them with energy. Short the nanomachines’ circuits. Melt ’em!”

  Another golem careened toward him. He fought back with a renewed vigor, knowing that these things did die. They might not bleed, but they weren’t invincible—and that was all that mattered. Pulsefire rang out from around the room as the crew switched from kinetic slugs to energy rounds. Each time a bolt from an energy weapon hit one of the golems, more slag burned off in sparks of red and orange, signifying millions of tiny nanomachines melting into an unfixable mess.

  A golem bore down on Coren. Its legs were practically sponge-like, full of so many holes that Tag couldn’t understand how it was still running. Before it reached Coren, a tongue of white-hot flames spat from the Mechanic’s wrist-mounted weapons. Fire consumed the beast, and the thing glowed in a chromatic symphony of white, then red, then orange as it finally cooled into an oozing pile of silver.

  “That’s the right idea!” Sumo said, switching her pulse pistol out for a flamethrower.

  Between the glow of pulsefire and flames spurting from the marines’ weapons, the room resembled the foundry. Golems wilted away, and Tag hooted in victory even as sweat matted the shirt under his suit to his skin.

  Any feeling of victory was short-lived.

  The telltale whir of more incoming trucks whispered down the hallway. Tag knew that whisper would soon turn to a shriek when more of the golems transformed and renewed the assault of their fallen comrades. Yes, they had proved the golems could be defeated. But this time, they faced only a dozen golems. Next time, only the gods knew.

  Their flamethrowers wouldn’t last forever, and neither would their stamina. Now, more than ever, they needed to move. They needed to find a goddamned computer to figure out what twisted plans the Collectors had for the galaxy.

  “We’re moving,” Tag called to Bracken and Jaroon. “More golems are incoming.”

  “Copy,” Bracken said. “On our way.”

  “As are we,” Jaroon s
aid.

  Tag called to his crew to move out. They sprinted down the passages, barely slowing to look into more chambers as they passed, all filled with the same smooth bulkheads and decks, no terminals in sight. There had to be some way to access the computers here, some way to turn off the shields surrounding all the ships back in the bay. There had to be.

  If not...

  Tag hated to think about the alternatives. If they never came across a living soul they could force to help them. If they never found a terminal. Never found a way to shut down those autogenerating shields or stop the flow of vehicles delivering more of the golems to pursue them.

  If they couldn’t do any of those things, then this place would turn into their prison. A lifeless, automated tomb. If the golems didn’t kill them, they would eventually succumb to starvation or dehydration.

  No, Tag said, that won’t happen.

  He would find a way off this ship, if only to save his crew.

  And there was still Lonestar to rescue. He couldn’t leave her on the Hope for an eternity with Raktor. The alien would be terrible company for spending an eternity.

  The constant buzz of other trucks delivering the regenerating golems chased them on, accompanied by the clamor of the heavy machines that sent tremors through the deck. It felt as if the entire ship was falling part. The forces amassed like a tidal wave, building and gaining on them.

  Bull slid to a stop and removed the rocket launcher from his back. He flicked a switch on the launcher, and a rocket flew from the tube, spiraling to meet the oncoming horde. It collided with the first golem and exploded in a spray of white sparks that danced over the rest of the advance guard. Fire consumed the nanomachines before they had a chance to reassemble. Sofia whistled appreciatively as half a dozen of the golems melted.

  “Thermite rounds,” Bull said with a grin.

  Tag tried to grin back, but it turned into a grimace. Pain stitched through the muscles in his side. His recent workouts had certainly helped, but he couldn’t sustain their current pace. Golems swarmed over the melted forms of their fallen comrades, unwavering in their dogged pursuit, and Tag pushed his reluctant body into a jog.

  Suddenly, Alpha sprinted ahead of the group and darted into a side chamber. She emerged a moment later, grunting as she pushed a stack of metal crates, each the size of an air car. The others ran to join her. The crates leaned precariously before tumbling across the deck and clotting the entrance of the hatch.

  “This should afford us approximately four extra minutes in which to escape,” Alpha said.

  The cacophony of the oncoming stampede roared beyond the barricade of crates. Tag stole a glance behind them as they continued to run. Echoing clangs burst through the chamber when the golems slammed into the crates. The jarring high-pitched squeal of metal scraping against metal impaled Tag’s eardrums. He watched, one hand around his pulse pistol, the other still pumping madly as he ran. At any moment, he expected the crates to explode outward, broken to jagged shards by the golems’ relentless assault.

  Instead, something more disturbing happened. Black liquid seemed to ooze between the cracks of the makeshift barricade. It pooled on the floor, and Tag watched in horror as golems began to form from the puddle of nanomachines. Rockets and rounds flew from the marines as the group pushed forward, churning deeper into the ship.

  Their surroundings seemed to be a constant repetition of sterile passages, storage rooms, then strange foundries and factories. As they littered the ship with globs of melted nanomachines, he wondered if there would ever be an end to the flow of attackers. A shiver snuck through him as the effects of adrenaline wore off and exhaustion took its place. What if all the factories and foundries they’d seen were endlessly pumping these golems out?

  “What do we do now?” Sumo yelled over the comms.

  She had stopped, pointing at something ahead. The others slowed, raising their weapons. Beyond the next chamber, with its rows of conveyer belts and robotic assembly machines, a line of golems was advancing toward them, their raised arms transformed into a variety of anachronistic weapons ranging from scythes to lances and axes.

  “What in the three hells?” Sofia said under her breath.

  Tag could only stare at the constructs. Some of the ensigns back in Tag’s training days used to play a game, hypothetically pitting an SRE soldier against a medieval army or a legion of ancient Roman soldiers to predict who would win. They had always laughed at the scenario, mocking the crudeness of ancient warfare tactics. The SRE soldier, armed with the best military science and technology had to offer, would invariably come out victorious.

  Faced against the brutal weapons now, Tag felt none of the certainty he had back then. The hypothetical had become frighteningly real.

  “Captain, what do we do?” Sumo repeated.

  CHAPTER THIRTY-EIGHT

  There was only one order Tag could give under the circumstances. “Fire!”

  Thermite rounds exploded against the newcomers’ ranks, accompanied by the whistle and blaze of pulsefire. Between blasts of their weapons, Tag heard the labored breaths of his crew echoing over the comms, each of them scrabbling to take down another golem, desperate to ensure their survival. There were fewer golems ahead than behind, so Tag signaled their advance against the enemy, occasionally taking cover behind one of the robotic assembly machines still dutifully doing its job while it absorbed damage from the Argo’s crew and the golems alike.

  “We can’t hold out much longer!” Sofia said. She dove away from a half-melted golem. Globs of molten metal dripped from where her pulsefire had hit, but it lumbered after her like a zombie driven by a single-minded hunger.

  “We need to regroup!” Tag yelled over the comms to Jaroon and Bracken.

  “On it!” Jaroon said.

  “We’re facing heavy opposition,” Bracken said, “but we’ll be at your position in a few minutes.”

  “We won’t be at this position in a few minutes,” Tag said. “But the golems will be.”

  “Understood,” Bracken said. “We’ll try to regroup in the next set of chambers.”

  One of the golems in front of Tag’s group charged, swinging a punch at his head. Just before the blow landed, the fist transformed into a spike. Tag barely dodged the lancing strike and peppered the golem with pulsefire as it swung its fist around again, this time as a blade. Ducking and weaving, Tag engaged in a deadly dance with his opponent where any mistake would leave him short an arm or, worse, his head. He turned to the side as the golem hoisted an arm into the air, preparing to slam it down on Tag like a hammer. But when he tried to dive, his left foot didn’t move.

  His boot was caught in a puddle of cooled slag, essentially welded to the floor.

  Then a swathe of orange flames curled around the golem, and Tag had to put an arm up to shield his visor from the bits of molten metal flecking off his attacker. The construct crumpled in the inferno, sinking to the deck.

  As it fell, Tag saw who had saved him. Sumo stood with her flamethrower still growling and spurting fire.

  “I got your back, Captain,” Sumo said. “Always.”

  Tag’s gaze slid past her. “Look out!”

  A huge form raised a single arm—the only arm it had left. Half of its body was burning bright orange as thermite ate through it, but it was still determined to attack. Tag leveled his pistol at the thing’s shoulder, firing. Sumo’s eyes went wide for an instant and then she twisted out of his line of fire. She wasn’t quick enough to avoid the golem’s wreckage. It fell over her already damaged power armor, and her head slammed against the deck with a wrenching thud.

  Tag fired at the slag cementing his foot until it sprayed and melted away. He sprinted to Sumo. Behind her visor, her eyes were closed. The helmet had protected her from external injury, but it could do nothing to prevent her brain from rattling around inside her skull.

  “Sumo!” Tag said over the sound of the battle raging on all around him. “Sumo, can you hear me?”

  Blood
trickled from one her ears, a dark rivulet dripping over her hair. That was not a good sign. At the very least she had suffered a concussion.

  Another golem lumbered toward him, and Tag cut it down with pulsefire. Gorenado covered him with his flamethrower while Coren and Sofia held off others with salvo after salvo of pulse rounds scorching the air around them.

  Tag tried to shove the remains of the golem off of Sumo, but it wouldn’t move. “Alpha! Help me out here!”

  Alpha leapt over the head of a golem while simultaneously riddling it with pulsefire. The golem fell away in melting globs before Alpha landed. If Tag weren’t so worried about Sumo, he might’ve admired the synth-bio droid’s acrobatics. She had come a long way from the struggling, nonverbal creation she had been when he’d first brought her to life—which was lucky, since he needed her help now more than ever.

  “We need to move this thing,” Tag said. He supposed he could burn the golem away, but he didn’t want to risk injuring Sumo any worse than she already was. Melting globs of nanomachines over her armor could be just as devastating.

  Alpha positioned herself on the other side of the golem, and together they lifted it enough to move it off Sumo.

  “She’s hurt,” Tag said. “I can’t carry her.”

  “Do not worry, Captain,” Alpha said. She scooped her arms under Sumo and lifted her form with ease.

  Thank the gods I chose a medical droid chassis for her, Tag thought. M3 droids were especially suited for moving injured patients.

  Another golem hurled itself toward him, and he fired on its shoulders, rendering its arms useless before taking potshots at the torso. Bull launched another thermite round into the golems catching up from behind, but Tag could see they would be overwhelmed soon. It didn’t help that one marine was incapacitated, and Alpha was encumbered by carrying Sumo.

  “We’ve got to go,” Tag said. “Jaroon, where are you?”

  “Here,” Jaroon said simply.

  Tag looked around and spied the cobalt glimmer of the Melarreys’ power armor. Huge swathes of green light exploded from their weapons, disintegrating the golems they touched. When the golems came too close the Melarrey, the aliens swung their weapons like axes. The blades on them glowed red, slicing easily through nanomachine particles. Each strike sent orange lightning coursing through the golems’ bodies.