Dark Side of the Moon: A Gritty Space Opera Adventure (Frontier's Reach Book 3) Read online

  Copyright © 2019 Robert C. James

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  This book is entirely a work of fiction. The names, characters and incidents portrayed in it are the work of the author's imagination. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events or localities is entirely coincidental.

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  Welcome

  Welcome to Frontier’s Reach. Dark Side of the Moon is the third book in a series following the exploits of the Cargo Ship Argo and a cast of recurring characters. The installments will be released as serials, with overriding arcs spanning several books.

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  Thank you and enjoy.

  Robert C. James

  DARK SIDE OF THE MOON

  FRONTIER’S REACH BOOK 3

  ROBERT C. JAMES

  Contents

  Welcome

  Contents

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Author’s Notes

  Connect with the Author

  Chapter 1

  October 25, 2213

  Seeker Vessel

  Kione stirred in his cell. Jason Cassidy stood and peered through the pale-yellow translucent barrier from his own holding at his incarcerated partner. The alien being’s eyes popped open.

  “Kione!”

  On the deck of his spartan accommodation, his head slowly turned to the sound of Jason’s voice. With the long leverage of his limbs, he pulled himself up and touched his nose at the dried blood around his nostrils.

  His eyes met Jason’s. “You…were on…Orion V?” he stammered, holding his skull as if a bell were ringing inside.

  Jason nodded. “That’s right.”

  Kione leaned on the doorframe of the cell to prop himself up. “How did you find me?”

  Ever since Jason had arrived and waited for Kione to wake, he’d tried to understand what lay opposite him. So unhuman. So alien. But from what he’d seen of Kione on Orion V, he had the same mannerisms any other human would, while speaking the English language. It was quite a contradiction.

  “When we got back to the Argo, we discovered a buildup of Iota particles. At its heart was a vortex which pulled us in and dragged us all the way to the Psi-Aion System. Three hundred light-years away from Orion V.”

  Kione’s focus narrowed. At that moment, Jason lost himself in the being’s eyes. It was almost hypnotic. Then, just as it began, it stopped. That was weird.

  “The Argo got caught in a trans-space corridor the Seekers had opened… That’s at least what Professor Petit theorized.”

  Jason furrowed his brow. “How could you know that? You weren’t there when he—”

  “I’m sorry. I—”

  “You were in my head.” That’s what that strange sensation was. “How—?”

  Kione raised a hand. “I apologize. I didn’t mean to—”

  “You’re telepathic?”

  “No.” Kione paused and considered before continuing. “Well, I never used to be.”

  “I don’t understand.”

  “Neither do I.” Kione winced in pain. “When the Seekers took me out of the cryogenic chamber and forced my contact with the sphere, something happened. It changed me. I’m not sure how, but it awakened something in me. I seem to be able to look at people and see the inside of them. Not what’s physically inside them. But their feelings and their memories.” His eyebrows raised. “You fear me?”

  “Did you take that from my mind as well?”

  A small smile formed on Kione’s face. “No, I was raised by humans. I’ve seen the reaction before many times.”

  Jason was ashamed. He wondered if it was an ancient prejudice that bubbled beneath the surface in all humans when they met something new or someone different.

  “It’s not fear,” he tried to explain. “It’s the unknown. If someone told me I’d be in this situation a few days ago, I wouldn’t have believed it. Since then, I’ve had to reevaluate everything I know about…well, everything. And to find out successive governments have covered this up for so long—”

  “My study of your history has many examples of governments covering up knowledge because they believe it to be in the public’s best interest.”

  “When in reality it’s in the government’s best interest so they can maintain a status quo and their grip on power.” Jason shook his head. “Have you ever wanted to escape the Institute?”

  Kione smirked. “Would I have liked my freedom? Yes. But where would I have gone?”

  Jason wondered if humanity was ready for Kione. Even if they weren’t, he shouldn’t have to sit in a lab. In reality it was a glorified prison. “Doctor Tyrell obviously wanted to reveal your identity.”

  “I believe Doctor Tyrell became distrustful of the current administration in office and wanted the project out in the open. He was no rebel.” There was a fondness in his voice for the doctor. “His fears never came to fruition, and ultimately—”

  “He may still be out there. All these years later, he’s never been found.”

  “Perhaps.”

  “And what about all of this?” Jason asked. “The sphere? The Seekers? What do they want with you?”

  “And what have they done to Nash?” Kione raised his eyebrows.

  It caught Jason off guard. “Are you still reading my mind?”

  “No. But I saw a lot in those few seconds earlier. You came investigating the dark side of the moon because of him. You didn’t come here with a grand plan to rescue me.”

  “I didn’t—”

  “Don’t apologize, I realize what his friendship means to you. I saw what happened that day on the Raptor and the guilt you’ve carried with you since.” He stopped, seemingly not wanting to embarrass Jason any further.

  “Unfortunately, it’s a question I don’t have an answer to. Whenever I try to probe the mind of your friend or any of the other Seekers, I find them hard to penetrate. There’s a lot of conflict going on inside them. They may be blocking me. I’m not sure. You must understand I’m new at this.”

  “As to what they want with me, you probably know by now that Professor Petit had theorized a certain DNA code would be the key to opening the sphere. He was right. For a reason I can’t comprehend, I was that key. But there’s more to it than that. The Seekers are using me to ‘activate’ it.”

  “Activate it?” Jason didn’t like the sound of that. “For what purpose?”

  “When I’m in cont
act with it, I see images. Flashes of its memory.”

  “It’s alive?”

  Kione shook his head. “Not alive. At least not in the way we perceive life. But it holds stories.” He shrugged. “I can’t explain it any more than that.”

  “What do you see?”

  Kione’s voice lowered. “Stars. Dying stars.”

  Jason definitely didn’t like the sound of that.

  “In a blink of an eye, stars that were once ten times brighter than Sol’s go cold. The planets orbiting them become balls of ice. The voices of the people on them disappear as if they never existed.”

  A lump formed in Jason’s throat. “So, it’s a weapon?”

  Kione seemed unsure. “I think it’s a power source. A potent one.”

  “In my experience, most power sources are eventually used as weapons. Uranium, fusion, tritonium, just to name a few.”

  “Yes, and the power of the sphere is infinitely greater than anything mankind could ever fathom.”

  Jason gestured to his surroundings. “Then if the sphere is the arrow, perhaps this ship they’re building is the bow?”

  Kione nodded. “It seems likely.”

  Jason had already felt hopeless inside his cell. Now he was powerless. He was trapped aboard a ship of death.

  Stars? “The sphere is old. Very old. These flashes you’re seeing, can we assume these are memories the sphere has witnessed?”

  Kione shrugged. “Potentially.”

  “Frontier’s Reach.”

  The alien appeared confused.

  “Frontier’s Reach,” Jason continued, “has always been an aberration. Ever since our telescopes probed the region, it has appeared a void of dead stars, or stars so old they can’t support habitable worlds. It’s the main reason the commonwealth has had little interest in colonizing the area.”

  He paced behind his barrier. “What if Frontier’s Reach was once a battleground? And the sphere was once a weapon used in its annihilation?”

  Kione pondered the question. “If you’re right, it exemplifies its destructive power.”

  “And who built it and wielded it?” Jason stared at him. “Your connection would seem to indicate that—”

  “My people had something to do with it?”

  Jason didn’t want it to sound like he was accusing him. “You said yourself, you’ve never known your people, so you can’t know what they’d have been capable of.”

  “I suppose that’s right. And if this sphere is six million years old, my race may be long extinct.”

  “Which questions your existence. One has to also wonder what the sphere was doing buried on Orion V.”

  “All wars end,” Kione pondered. “On your planet at their conclusion, the old-world nations would put their weapons into mothballs, just in case a new enemy arose.”

  “Well, the Seekers now have this mothballed weapon. Who do they plan to use it on?”

  “Everyone has enemies.”

  Yes, they do.

  Chapter 2

  Psi-Aion

  A sizzling sensation burned around Susan Tai’s wrists as she attempted to break free of her ropes. The more she tried, the more the fibers seared her skin.

  The walk from the Maybelle had been an arduous one. At the dead of night, the mysterious Seekers had marched her, Nicolas, Tyler, and the Marines through the dark forest at arrow point. And high above in the trees, the planet’s nocturnal wildlife peered down on them. Probably laughing at us.

  Susan stumbled, tripping on a loose tree root. The Seeker guarding her grabbed her before she fell and nudged her onward with the butt of his wooden spear. The man glared at her. His deep-brown eyes were filled with resentment. A common expression shared by the other Seekers around him.

  She glanced over at Nicolas and Tyler beside her. Nicolas had regained consciousness a little earlier, after being knocked out for his ‘we come in peace’ routine. He was still groggy but had recouped most of his senses.

  Tyler Cassidy did his best to put on a brave face, but Susan knew better. She felt sorry for the young man. He was completely out of his element.

  “How are you, Nicolas?” she asked.

  He adjusted his jaw. “Like I’ve been hit by a sledgehammer.”

  “It hasn’t bruised too much,” Susan lied. It was quite blue.

  “If we could just loosen these ropes,” Higgs said behind them.

  “And go where, Corporal?” Nicolas was a realist. “Did you see our weapons?”

  Susan glanced over at the remains of the rifles and their commbands in a woven sack. The Seekers had smashed them to pieces with large rocks.

  “Tasu masla caram!” The Seeker guarding Higgs pushed him to the ground and grabbed at his hands, noticing Higgs had tried to loosen his ropes.

  “Okay! Okay!” The corporal surrendered.

  With a single heave, the Seeker pulled him up and stared him down. After a forceful push, they were back on their way.

  Nicolas regarded them all. “Let’s keep calm. We’re not going to get anywhere by provoking them.”

  Everyone nodded, and Susan turned to Tyler. “What about you, Mister Cassidy?”

  “I’m okay.”

  “It can’t be too long before your crew wonder where we are,” she said to him.

  He nodded, though it didn’t assure him as much as she’d hoped.

  After what seemed an eternity, being led through the dark confines of the alien world, they reached an outcropping in the forest. Beyond it lay a towering cliff, at least a hundred meters high. Before it was a village. Primitive wooden huts were spread throughout. Smoke billowed from the center of the township, and the stench of cooked animal meat wafted in the air.

  As they marched through the village, hundreds of the inhabitants stopped what they were doing and gawked at them as if they were new exhibits in a zoo.

  At the heart of the village, a large wooden stump from a fallen tree was the focal point. Surrounding it were unusual rocks and various animal bones.

  Susan thought back to what Tyler had said earlier. How could these people build spaceships and travel through interstellar space? It was apparent they hadn’t even invented the wheel yet.

  And the Seekers themselves, they reminded her of long-extinct Neanderthals. Larger than the standard human and muscularly more superior but at a developmental level well below that of the modern man.

  Her captor pushed Susan to her knees. The others joined her in front of the tree stump. Every Seeker in the village milled around them.

  “What are they going to do with us?” Private Utkin asked.

  The butt of a spear to the back of his head answered his question. His face plowed into the mud. He dragged himself back to his knees, wincing while a mighty bruise revealed itself.

  There was a quiet hush, and the Seekers parted. The Seeker responsible for knocking Nicolas out walked between them, along with another figure. He was the oldest Seeker they’d seen. He was wrapped in an animal skin, and a skull similar to that of a tiger with long, sharp fangs sat on top of his head.

  “Must be their leader?” Nicolas assumed. “Some kind of elder.”

  The old man was helped up onto the stump. He stood high above his six captives and held his hands in the air. “Verash, tolar bolor temar daran Vokar!”

  “Verash! Verash! Verash!” the other Seekers chanted, punching the air with their fists.

  The elder’s stare silenced his people. “Verash, tolar daris fakir, moros!” He was handed the woven sack of smashed weapons. He pulled out the remains of a gun barrel and held it in front of Nicolas. “Terch?”

  Susan turned to Nicolas. “What do you think he means?”

  “Terch?” the elder said again, pacing along the stand and pointing at each of them.

  “Perhaps he wants to know which one of us is the leader,” Tyler said. The cargo captain gallantly stood.

  Nicolas pushed him back to his knees and stood himself. “I’m the leader.”

  There was a gasp around
the village.

  The elder kneeled the best he could, considering his advanced age. He grabbed Nicolas by the jaw and gazed into his eyes. “Terch?”

  “I’m Captain Marquez. Commander of the—”

  The elder drew his hand back and threw the gun barrel to the ground. “Geri Vokar!” he boomed.

  Nicolas jumped backward.

  “Geri Vokar!” The elder pointed at the sky and waved his hand around in a motion a two-year-old would, as if he were flying a pretend spaceship.

  “They understand we’re from the sky?” Susan said.

  The elder tilted his head curiously at her.

  “Geri Vokar?” He indicated to the sky again and gestured to a pair of his men.

  They produced their spears and pointed them at Susan. One prodded her chest, the other her forehead.

  “Did I say something wrong?”

  “Me terch!” Nicolas yelled.

  The old Seeker’s gaze returned to him. “Geri Vokar?”

  The spears jabbed at Susan. She did her best not to appear weak.

  “Geri Vokar? People from the sky?” Tyler wondered out loud. “They want to know if we’re from the sky.”

  Nicolas glanced worryingly over at Susan. “Geri Vokar!” he said, thumping his chest. “We come from the sky!” He pointed upward.

  Murmurs rang out amongst the Seekers.

  The elder smiled and returned to his feet, but the spears stayed trained on Susan.

  “We mean you no harm,” Nicolas continued. “We came here responding to a distress call.”

  The elder snarled at him. “Verash da la Geri Vokar!”

  “Verash! Verash! Verash!” the Seekers chanted.

  The spears were yanked away from Susan, and she breathed a sigh of relief. But it was short-lived. All of them were hauled to their feet with force. Their captors dragged them through the mob while they continued their hostile chanting. At the foot of the cliff, a cave entrance greeted them surrounded by strong wooden bars.