“Sofia, keep us under that missile. But, you know, not too close,” Tag said.
“Yeah, I got it,” she replied. “Suicide mission is a go.”
“Alpha, calculate how long we have until that missile is in range of the city,” Tag said.
“We have approximately twenty seconds,” was her prompt, dispassionate reply.
They plummeted faster, now accelerating at a stomach-flipping pace. Coren’s countermeasures lit up the sky. It reminded Tag of one of the first times he had engaged in direct combat with Drone-Mechs. Back then his crew had been able to knock out a bevy of incoming torpedoes. It hadn’t been easy, but they’d countered dozens of warheads in the time that it was taking to eliminate just one now.
With a jab of his fingers, Coren launched several counter-missiles from the Argo. They barreled away from the ship in a direct-intercept trajectory with the offending ordnance. One went wide as their target adjusted its own course. Another two were shredded by some kind of chaff hurled from the incoming Drone-Mech weapon.
“By the Machines,” Coren said. “These aren’t anything like normal Mechanic warheads. It’s fighting back!”
Tag knew he was right. Before, when they had faced Drone-Mechs, the enslaved aliens had been equipped only with weapons and ships developed by the Mechanics. But Tag feared the Collectors were behind these latest developments. Undoubtedly, they had merged weapons tech from one of the other species they had enslaved or destroyed. He would bet his life that this explanation accounted for the jamming signals, countermeasures, and apparent AI capabilities of the incoming missiles.
In fact, it seemed like betting his life was exactly what he had to do.
The last counter-missile launched from the Argo detonated harmlessly far from the Drone-Mech warhead. Then water exploded upward around the ship. There was no sky left; only ocean. Spirals of bubbles careened past them, and the Argo shuddered as it slammed against the drifting wreckage of downed ships.
“Captain, we’re seconds from reaching critical distance to Deep Origin,” Alpha said.
Once before, when they had encountered a stubborn batch of missiles and their weapon systems had failed, they had flashed the energy shields to simultaneously destroy the warhead and absorb the explosive aftermath. They hadn’t come away from the encounter unscathed, but at least they had come away alive.
“Alpha, remember how we escaped that attack on Eta-Five?” Tag asked.
“Yes, Captain.”
“Do that. Now.”
The major difference between then and now was the missile coming at them was far stronger than the one they had faced before. There wasn’t enough time to calculate whether he’d just saved or damned his crew. A blinding flash of green light burst around them as Alpha overloaded the energy shields. The resulting heat and noise of the exploding warhead hit Tag like a physical blow. Everything seemed to go red, then black. There was no time for pain or worry.
All Tag felt was an intense and relentless nothingness.
CHAPTER SIX
Tag wondered if this was what death was like. No touch or sight or sound. He felt as though he had been imprisoned in his mind with no idea how much time was passing, whether it had been milliseconds or hours since he and the Argo had succumbed to that blast.
A coppery taste danced across his tongue. Blood.
The odor of burning plastic wafted through his nostrils, and he could feel a strange coolness pooling around him. Slowly his senses seemed to be coming online, like a computer rebooting itself after a long slumber. He forced his eyes open. Red lights flashed across the deck, and the piercing wail of klaxons stabbed into his eardrums. He slammed a fist onto his terminal to silence them. The motion left his arm feeling like a hundred needles were stabbing his flesh until his EVA suit’s painkillers kicked in.
A pool of water was forming at the bases of his crews’ crash couches. There had been a hull breach. Undoubtedly a massive one.
“Coren! Sofia! Alpha!” he called. “Are you okay?”
“Gods be damned,” Sofia managed to say as she sat up from her station. “My head.”
“We...we’re alive,” Coren murmured. “That is unexpected.”
“The ship’s systems have detected a hull breach, Captain,” Alpha reported. “Previously repaired sites of damage have been compromised.”
“Bull,” Tag called. “Are you all okay down there?”
“Okay? Maybe not. But we’re alive.”
The viewscreen at the front of the bridge was shattered. The panels that still worked showed the darkness of oceanic water around them, no sea creatures in sight. For their sake, Tag hoped they had been too frightened by the commotion to investigate. Wreckage drifted past. At first Tag feared those were pieces of the Argo’s innards until he saw a Mechanic corvette sinking past them.
“Can we rejoin the fight?” Tag asked.
“My arms still work, and all but one of the impellers seems okay,” Sofia said.
“Pulse cannon is down,” Coren said. “PDCs are stable.”
“Energy shields will need time to recharge,” Alpha said.
“Then let’s get back to it,” Tag said.
They rose from the ocean, lurching slightly without the aid of the nonfunctional impeller. All across the sky, the fireworks of incoming missiles and countermeasures continued, maintaining a heated rhythm of explosions both near and distant. And though the battle against their unseen foes still raged, he saw fewer contacts on the holomap. Maybe, just maybe, the salvos of missiles and torpedoes were dwindling. Maybe an end was in sight.
Something burned into the atmosphere. This time Tag could clearly see it was too large to be another missile. It fractured, leaving a wake of smaller pieces careening toward the planet’s surface. Another space station had been wrecked and was breaking apart as it tore through Meck’ara’s atmosphere.
Most of Meck’ara’s planetary defenses had been shredded, but when Tag looked up, he saw one object still in orbit. The Dawn of Glory was unharmed, hanging in the sky like a second moon above Meck’ara.
Tag realized what had sparked the violent attack on the planet. It wasn’t the fact that Meck’ara had been retaken by the free Mechanics. The Collectors likely couldn’t care less about them as long as they weren’t causing trouble.
No, they wanted their ship back.
By the gods, what have I done?
He had thought he had been handing the Mechanics a tremendous victory by bringing the Dawn back to Meck’ara. He may have unwittingly led to their destruction by drawing the Collectors there instead.
“Sofia, we need to get to the Dawn,” Tag said.
“Captain?” she asked.
“Now.”
They blasted past the ranks of Mechanics still desperately fending off the missile salvos. Pulsefire and other countermeasures seared the air around them. The soft blue of the sky gave way to the darkness of star-studded space. More crimson specks sparked across their holomap, indicating another wave of long-range missiles.
It was all a distraction.
At least, that’s what Tag hoped. Otherwise he would look like the worst of deserters, abandoning the Mechanics in this crucial moment.
“Everyone down there keep your EVA suits on,” Tag said. “We’re leaving the atmosphere.”
With the hull breached, the water still sloshing around the deck began boiling away in the vacuum of space. Autonomous repair bots had begun repairs, but the damage they had sustained still meant the ship couldn’t maintain proper atmospheric controls. A few of the viewscreen panels still fizzled on and off, crackling in black and white static. The others showed the expanse of space opening before them. At the center was the hulking mass of the Dawn of Glory.
Earlier that day, it had been surrounded by a host of Mechanic repair and science ships, along with several battlecruisers. Now only a few green dots showing friendly, viable vessels appeared on the holomap. The vessels those dots belonged to were streaming plasma and venting gases into s
pace. Remnants of other ships floated around the Dawn like so much space-bound flotsam. “Mechanic Enclave Dawn Escort group, this is Captain Tag Brewer of the SRES Argo. Do you read?”
Tag waited several silent moments.
“Dawn Escort group, Captain Tag Brewer,” he tried again. “Do you read?”
Again, they were met with nothing but silence.
“Maybe they were all destroyed by the incoming missiles,” Sofia offered. She sounded like she didn’t believe it.
“I calculate the probability of the escort group being destroyed while the Dawn remained undamaged to be exceedingly low,” Alpha said.
“There must be another explanation,” Tag said. “No hostile contacts?”
“That is correct, Captain.”
“This isn’t right,” Coren said. “This isn’t right at all. Those missiles are clearly beyond Mechanic technology, but I doubt they could take out the entire escort without leaving a scratch on the Dawn.”
“I agree with Coren’s assessment,” Alpha said.
“Then let’s bring her in closer,” Tag said, gesturing to Sofia.
Sofia pushed the controls so they drifted nearer to the Dawn. Tag scanned the vessel, looking for any sign of something odd. All the heightened senses he had developed as a medical doctor to search for subtle clues of what might be wrong with a patient went into overdrive. In medicine, the first, simplest explanation was often the right one.
“The Drone-Mechs—three hells, maybe the Collectors—sent in a ship,” Tag said. “They want the Dawn back.”
“I’m not seeing anything on the holomap or the viewscreen,” Sofia said.
“They must still be here,” Tag replied. “They wouldn’t leave without the Dawn.”
His mind whirred back to when the Argo had first been attacked. Their aggressors had come out of nowhere, slipping past all of their sensors. It had taken them completely unaware.
“A stealth ship,” Tag said. “We’re looking for a stealth ship.”
“So we’re looking for something that can’t be seen,” Sofia said. “Great. That’ll be easy.”
“I am heightening the sensitivity of all our lidar and radar sensors,” Alpha said, “but I am still not detecting any new hostiles.”
“Knowing how advanced the Collectors are, I doubt we will detect them,” Coren said. “Not until they knock us out of the sky.”
Tag knew he was right. And it might be only a matter of time before whatever ship destroyed the Mechanics would reveal itself, blasting the already-injured Argo back into Meck’ara’s atmosphere. He peered into the darkness, searching for something he knew his eyes would never be able to see.
But it had to be here.
Had to.
The Collectors wouldn’t abandon the Dawn now. They wanted the ship back, and the best way to steal it would be to board the damn thing and fly the Dawn straight out of here. That was what he had done to get the Dawn here in the first place.
“Remember where the ship bay is on this thing?” Tag asked Sofia.
She nodded and pushed the controls forward, launching the Argo around the Dawn. They soon found themselves in the shadow of the giant ship.
“Still not reading anything?” Tag asked Alpha.
“Negative, Captain,” she said.
Tag searched the damaged viewscreens for any sign of movement near the ship bay.
“Maintain energy shields,” he said. “I don’t want to go down like those Mechanics.”
Surely if there was a stealth ship here, they had already noticed the Argo. With hull breaches leaking heat, they would be easily identified on all spectrums of lidar and radar. Maybe the stealth ship didn’t judge them to be much of a threat, or the infiltration crew figured they were about to succeed anyway and weren’t bothering to fire.
Tag would prove them wrong on both counts.
“Captain!” Alpha said, her eyes on a magnified view of the ship bay. “I’ve identified movement.”
The ship bay hatch began shuddering open, dilating to allow something in. Then he saw it.
“There!” Tag said, pointing at the viewscreen. A slight shimmer in the darkness. “That’s got to be our target.”
“Open fire?” Coren asked.
Thinking better of it, Tag held up a hand. “Hold on. Maybe I’ve got this wrong. This might be one of L’ndrant’s covert groups protecting the Dawn.”
“Doubtful,” Sofia said.
“I know,” Tag replied. “But we’re already in hot water with the Mechanics. Imagine if we opened fire on one of their ships.”
“Unknown ship boarding the Dawn, please identify yourselves.” Tag sent the message over all communication bands. When, as expected, he received no response, he tried again.
This time, he got an answer. Lancing blasts of pulsefire shredded the space between the stealth ship and the Argo, crackling against their energy shields.
“Shields are at six percent, Captain!” Alpha declared.
“Evasive maneuvers!” Tag yelled.
Sofia pulled the Argo away as another volley of fire careened toward them, nearly finishing the job. The ship was still invisible, their cloaks holding even under the intense energy output of their cannons.
But merely firing was enough to confirm their position.
“Coren,” Tag said. “Return fire!”
The Argo lashed out with Gauss and pulse cannons, following the time-honored strategy of spraying and praying. Tag didn’t worry too much about stray rounds cutting into the Dawn. It would be like a handful of pebbles being thrown at a boulder. A few lucky shots slammed into the stealth ship’s energy shields. The shields sparked with green lightning, outlining the shape of the ship, and Coren intensified his fire.
A charged pulse shot from the stealth ship exploded toward the Argo. Judging by the brilliant intensity of the blast, it would take the whole damn ship out, shields and all, leaving nothing but slag. Sofia reacted in time so the shot grazed the energy shields, but the impact was enough to send the Argo careening sideways.
“Shields are gone, Captain,” Alpha said.
Through the viewscreen, Tag saw the glow of another charging pulse cannon as it readied itself to unleash a follow-up attack.
“It’s up to you now, Sofia,” Tag said. “Remind me why you’re the best pilot in the galaxy.”
Coren battered the stealth ship with kinetic slugs. If the ship was taking damage, it was impossible to tell. The damn cloaking technology was near perfect, undoubtedly another piece of tech the Collectors had stolen.
“Incoming!” Alpha said, her robotic voice rising in pitch.
The stealth ship unleashed its devastating pulseshot. It exploded with a ferocity that would make a supernova jealous.
CHAPTER SEVEN
The Argo jerked right, and Tag thrashed in his crash couch. One of the repair bots that had been working on the hull was flung away, spinning into space. The beam of pulsefire burned through the viewscreen and tried to scorch Tag’s retinas.
But it didn’t hit the ship.
“Come on, Coren,” Sofia said. “I can’t do this all day!”
“It’s not exactly easy to hit an invisible ship, but you’re welcome to give it a try,” he snapped back.
Sweat slicked Tag’s palms inside his gloves. Sofia jockeyed the Argo, dodging the stealth ship’s blasts, and Alpha toiled over her terminal to bring the energy shields back online. They continued to trade volleys with the stealth ship. At least, Tag figured, as long as the ship was engaged with them, it couldn’t unload its crew into the Dawn to retake the Collector ship.
Tag gestured over his terminal to bring up a channel. “Bracken, do you read?”
Bracken’s helmeted visage appeared on his holoscreen. “Yes, I’m here. We’ve got reports that at least ten cities have been destroyed. The fleet’s taking heavy losses. Where are you?”
“At the Dawn,” Tag said. “The Collectors are trying to get the Dawn back. We’re engaged with a stealth ship right now. Cou
ld use some help.”
“Machines be damned,” Bracken said. “Things are still tense down here. I’m not sure we’ve ships to spare, but I’ll see what I can do.”
“Copy,” Tag said. He tapped on his terminal once again, calling Jaroon. The bulbous jellyfish-like alien replied promptly.
“Hello, Captain Brewer,” he said cheerfully.
“The Melarrey are always up for a fight, right? We could use some help up here.”
“I’m afraid my crew is defending one of the continental Mechanic cities,” Jaroon said. “The remaining Mechanic defensive forces have been wiped out. We’re all that’s left.”
“Damn.” Tag gritted his teeth as Sofia took the Argo into a wild dive to avoid the stealth ship’s fire. “If it lets up, you know where to find me.”
“Understood,” Jaroon said. The channel went dark.
“We’re on our own,” Tag said.
“Fine,” Sofia said, jerking the controls left, then right. “I think I’m getting better at this dance.”
A sudden hiss of blue plasma jetted from the stealth ship, marking its position clearly. Coren took advantage of the moment and blasted away at the spot. Emerald lightning coursed around the silhouette of the ship and then flickered out. Coren didn’t let up, firing more kinetic slugs at the enemy ship, and the cloaking abilities abruptly failed. The ship stood in stark nakedness before them. It was riddled with holes, and a few singe marks now showed where pulsefire had scorched its hull.
But underneath the scars of the ongoing battle, Tag recognized the ship. He had seen it before when they had first discovered the Dawn. This particular ship, despite the hundreds of other ships that had been there that day, was forever ingrained in his memory.
It was human.
“Shit,” Sofia said.
“Yeah,” Tag said. “That’s the Starinski prototype ship Sumo identified. The New Blood.”
“Didn’t know the human collaborators were that involved with the Collectors’ mission,” Coren said, still firing. “To come out here in our space and try to take this thing...awfully brazen.”
“Sofia, take us in closer,” Tag said. “Let’s finish them off.”
Rebel World (The Eternal Frontier Book 4) Page 4