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  The Final Dawn

  Final Dawn ✺ Book One

  T.W.M. Ashford

  Copyright © 2020 by T.W.M. Ashford

  All rights reserved.

  No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without written permission from the author, except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.

  Any characters in this publication are fictitious and any resemblance to real persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental.

  Cover design by Tom Ashford

  Images: sdecoret/Shutterstock.com

  freestyle images/Shutterstock.com

  Dark Star Panorama

  The Dark Star Panorama is a shared universe of sci-fi stories in which Final Dawn is the first series.

  To hear about new releases and receive an exclusive, free prequel story set in the Final Dawn series, sign up for T.W.M. Ashford’s mailing list at the website below.

  www.twmashford.com

  Contents

  1. In the Shadow of Dawn

  2. Amber

  3. Everett’s Experiment

  4. The Automata

  5. The Adeona

  6. Kapamentis

  7. The Way to Tortaiga Square

  8. Library of the Ancients

  9. Rakletts, Raiders & Rescue

  10. Stupid Coffee Machines

  11. Welcome to Haldeir-B

  12. Ode Vadasz, Bounty Hunter

  13. Showdown on Haldeir-B

  14. Surgery

  15. The Ceros Gate

  16. Under the Radar

  17. Journey Through the Cracked Planet

  18. Charon’s Ultimatum

  19. The Confession

  20. Is it Safe?

  21. The Crossroads

  22. Revolution

  23. Gaskan Troi

  24. Detri

  25. New Horizons

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  Books By T.W.M. Ashford

  1

  In the Shadow of Dawn

  Jack Bishop toiled in the long evening shadow of the Ark. Soon his work would be illuminated only by the floodlights that lined the pit and the flames that spat from his blow torch.

  It was better to work at night.

  Ever since the first solar flare hit Earth, the hours of daylight had become steadily less hospitable. But it wasn't just rising temperatures that made life difficult during the day. The radiation was worse. With each flare the Earth's atmosphere grew weaker, letting in ionised protons that first made you sick, and then… well, there wasn't much of a then after that. Your organs turned to slush and then you died.

  So yes, it was better to work at night… if you were lucky enough to have work, that is.

  Six solar flares had followed the first, increasing in regularity. The most recent two had been spread only four months apart. Each brought with it fresh challenges. Sickness and death on a pandemic scale. The temporary shutdown of every electronic system on the planet. The fall of authority and the rise of terrorist factions. And widespread panic, which only grew once the United Earth Government finally confirmed what everyone had long been thinking.

  The sun was dying, and it was taking the Earth with it.

  Jack wiped the sweat from his brow with the back of his hand and watched as the last yellow sliver of sun disappeared below the horizon. Good riddance to it. His thermals and tools would give him all the warmth he needed.

  He popped his mask down and went back to welding the panels and pipes along the drop ship's exterior. The metalwork glowed an angry red. Last week it had been a scientific research vessel. The week before that, a prototype jet. It made little difference to Jack. He fell in love with every ship he worked on… but he was never going to ride in one, let alone get the chance to sit in its pilot seat.

  An engineer. Huh. It was a far cry from the dream he once had for himself. But dreams had short shelf-lives those days. He made do, same as everyone else.

  He winced as sparks jumped out from behind the fuselage panels he was welding together. He gave them a second to cool, then carried on.

  It was hard and grubby work. Thankless, too. But it meant he could collect government-issued food rations each week as payment, and he supposed he ought to be grateful. Many didn't even get that.

  Morgan sidled up beside him, using a rivet gun to drill bolts into the panels Jack had just soldered. He mouthed something Jack couldn't hear. Jack dampened the flame on his blow torch and lifted up his mask again.

  "Sorry, what?"

  "I said, did you hear about Akeno?"

  Jack's blood turned cold. In the ship construction business, that sort of sentence rarely meant anything good.

  "No? What happened?"

  "Dumb sod got his finger torn off trying to fit a turbine onto a ship that had already been brought online for testing. He's lucky it wasn't a lot worse. They struck him off the payroll, though. The new guy coming to replace him seems all right."

  "What? How can they fire him for that? What's he going to do?"

  Morgan shrugged and punched another rivet into the panel beside them.

  "Poor guy," said Jack, shaking his head. "Should we send some rations round to his place?"

  Morgan barked a single dry laugh. "You telling me you and Amber have got some to spare?"

  Jack snapped his mouth shut. His colleague had a point. Engineers were given barely enough to get by each week as it was. If Akeno had any sense at all, he'd been setting aside a mouthful each week for emergencies like everyone else.

  "Didn't think so," said Morgan, smirking.

  The two of them snapped down their masks and got back to work.

  About half an hour later, Morgan nudged him in the ribs.

  "Watch out. Trouble's coming."

  Jack tightened the valve on his blow torch and glanced up at the walkway that overlooked both their construction pit and the next one along. Standing beside the supervisor was a young man in military uniform. They were deep in discussion. The supervisor didn't look pleased about whatever was being said.

  She caught Jack staring up at them and clicked her fingers in his direction.

  "Bishop. Clearly you don't have enough to do. Get up here."

  Morgan winced behind his welding mask.

  "Sorry, bud." He went back to punching rivets into the hull of the drop ship. "Good luck."

  Jack deposited his mask and blow torch on the workbench at the side of the pit and then hurried up the rusty metal steps to the walkway. A few of the other engineers looked up from their work as he passed. He felt his face turn red.

  "Yes, ma'am?"

  "They need an engineer over at Applied Research." She nodded at the soldier, not even trying to hide her frustration. "Don't ask me why they can't get their own guys to work on it. We're already thin on the ground here as it is."

  Jack jabbed his thumb over his shoulder.

  "Do I need to grab my stuff?"

  The soldier stiffened, but his face gave nothing away.

  "Everything you need will be provided at the facility," he said.

  Jack raised an eyebrow at his supervisor.

  "Go on," she said, starting to lose her patience. "They'll bring you back before the end of your shift."

  He followed the soldier across the walkway to the other side of the pit. A small buggy was waiting for them, its motor idling, black smoke puffing out its exhaust. Nobody cared all that much about burning through fossil fuels anymore.

  The soldier sat behind the driver's seat. Jack climbed into the back. They set off down the tarmac.

  "Don't suppose you can tell me what this job is about?"
r />   The soldier didn't reply. Jack sighed and leaned back in his seat. He supposed it didn't matter, so long as he still got paid at the end of it.

  The Applied Research facility was deep inside the Sandhurst base, and about as close to the Ark as one could get. Nobody knew what went on inside there but Jack had his suspicions, same as everyone else. It was no secret that the world's scientists were struggling to solve the problem of interstellar travel. Not the distances per se, but the time it would take to cross them. At the speed of light, it may only take a ship four years to reach the next solar system. But realistically, if they were hoping to arrive somewhere viable for human colonisation, the figure might be closer to a thousand.

  Either they were trying to get cryogenic chambers and other forms of stasis to work, or they were experimenting with another form of space travel altogether.

  That was Jack's guess, anyway.

  He stuck his head out the side of the buggy and felt the wind against his face. Ahead of them, the colossal iron bulk of the Ark grew even bigger. Floodlights as big as swimming pools cast their pale white gaze across the name painted down its flank in letters the size of tower blocks – Final Dawn UK-02. Helicopters vigilantly patrolled the night sky on the lookout for rogue factions hoping to disrupt production.

  The Arks were glorious. Ugly and industrial, yes… but glorious. Each was designed to the exact same specifications as every other – two kilometres long, almost a kilometre in diameter, and cylindrical like a barrel. Once in orbit, the barrel would rotate, giving the semblance of gravity. The idea was like a man swinging a bucket of water above his head – so long as he kept on swinging, centrifugal force would keep the water from falling out.

  The United Kingdom had three Arks – the proportionate number allocated to it by the United Earth Government according to its population. The United States had fifteen and China thirty, though each had lost one to terrorists since work on the project began. Nations too small to be allocated Arks of their own were partnered with larger ones. Just shy of two hundred ships were being built in total, with resources pooled from all around the world.

  While the Earth died, the Arks would take humanity to the stars.

  Or some of it, at least.

  Each Ark had been designed to carry approximately three hundred thousand people – passengers and crew. Even combining the capacity of all two hundred ships, that was still only sixty million.

  Sixty million humans would have a chance to start again. The overwhelming remainder would be left behind to die with their planet. A couple of generations more was the best anyone still on Earth could hope for. Maybe less than that.

  Tickets were promised to soldiers, physicists, biologists, zoologists, chemists, diplomats, pilots, doctors, artists, chefs, professors, accountants and plenty of engineers – though none at such a low level as Jack. They even had a few lawyers. These, plus many others from desirable professions, were the people humanity needed to survive on a new world. The rest of the spaces aboard the Arks would be awarded to the general public via a lottery... and even then, only to those who met the strict health criteria.

  Jack had come to terms with the fact he wouldn't get a ticket long before enlisting to work as an engineer. Neither would his wife, Amber. Neither would Morgan or anyone else they knew, most likely.

  There was nothing they could do but accept it, keep their heads down, and carry on.

  Jack wriggled about, trying to get comfortable on the buggy's hard plastic seats. It was a bumpy ride. Racing down the empty runways, they were already most of the way to the science facility. He had to crane his neck if he wanted to see the antenna standing triumphant at the top of the Ark.

  He could only imagine the worlds that ship would one day see, the secrets of the universe she might discover. Who knew what was out there waiting.

  Of course Jack was jealous of those with tickets. Of course he was. Angry, even. They had a future, and he didn't. But it wasn't jealousy that kept him lying awake at the end of his shifts.

  It was regret. Regret for the potential he squandered back when he'd been barely more than a kid, when each new sunrise brought only opportunity, when graduating from Pilot Academy had seemed a far scarier dream than backpacking the world with his girlfriend.

  Regret for the future he'd left behind.

  Jack wasn't surprised the boffins in Applied Science had needed to send for an outside engineer. For all their expertise in quantum computers and theoretical superluminal transportation, none of them could wrap their heads around the complexity of a standard-issue blow torch.

  There had been some sort of accident in the lab. Jack wasn't privy to the specifics of the experiment, nor to the nature of the technology he was expected to fix. Need to know basis, and all that. That was fine by him – the tech guys only needed Jack to do the sort of grunt work they were too smart to learn how to do themselves anyway. Punching panels back into shape. Swapping out the broken ones and welding new ones into place.

  Nobody spoke to him except to bark instructions. On the rare occasion anybody bothered to look in his direction, they did so as if he were a snotty kid dragged into the office by his parent. There weren't many smiles going around. Whatever their project was, it didn't appear to be going well.

  Jack hammered an electrically charred piece of metal loose from the back of the strange machine he'd been brought in to fix. He tossed it aside, then sighed.

  "This doesn't happen every time you run your experiment, right?"

  One of the impatient technicians shooed him out of the way and bent down to inspect the machine's wiring. Jack stepped back, shrugged his eyebrows and tried to look as invisible as he felt.

  He may have had no idea what the machine was for, but there was no mistaking the damage it had suffered, even for an engineer as amateur as Jack. Electrical overload from a power surge. Its innards had still been smoking when Jack arrived.

  It sure was a peculiar device. He could see why it would need a lot of juice. While the base consisted mostly of power nodes and electrical panels, the bulk of the machine was a giant sphere, sitting atop the base like a snow globe. Hundreds of black, interlocking hexagons formed a shield around it. A few had buckled from the accident.

  There was a door open in its side. Jack tried to peer in. He couldn't see much, but he thought he could make out a woman in a hazmat suit. She was spraying a white mist—

  "Hey. Hey!"

  Somebody was clicking their fingers in front of his face. He slowly turned to look at the technicians.

  "Punch that last panel shut," said one of them, scowling. "Then get out of here."

  Jack crouched down beside the open panel as the technicians hurried back to their computer stations. Nothing looked particularly fire-damaged. Nothing that was his business, at any rate. He grabbed the fresh panel, positioned it accordingly, then reached for the power drill.

  Two people marched through the set of double doors opposite him. Jack almost dropped his screws.

  He would have recognised the woman even if she hadn't been wearing her military uniform. Her name was Captain Blatch. Everybody on base knew who she was. When the time came for the Final Dawn UK-02 to leave Earth, she would be the one at the helm. Officially, one of the three most accomplished pilots in the country. In Jack's opinion, one of the most accomplished in the entire world.

  He couldn't begin to imagine the pressure she had to be feeling – the responsibility not just for the survival of all three hundred thousand individuals who would be on board her ship, but the future of humanity as well.

  She was in heated discussion with a wiry man in a lab coat. His black hair was floppy and unkempt. Dark bags hung under his eyes. Jack had never seen him before, but that was hardly surprising. He doubted the scientists had much time to socialise with anyone, and besides – Jack didn't recognise half the engineers in his own pit.

  They came to an abrupt stop only a few metres from the corner where he was crouched. Jack kept his head down and pretend
ed to be working.

  "Absolutely not." Captain Blatch pointed up at the machine. "Look at the state of this thing. It's been eighteen months, Reeves. What progress have you actually made?"

  "We’re so close," said the man called Reeves, pinching his fingers together. "The technology is almost there. You saw it work this evening! Well, sort of. All that's left is to figure out how to get the telemetry right. I need to run more tests."

  "Not with my pilots, you won't. There's no point building an armada of ships if we haven't got anyone left to fly them. Find your own test subjects if you must. Better still, use goats."

  Jack's heart skipped a beat. Were they in need of volunteers?

  "No, it has to be a pilot," said Reeves, stepping in front of Captain Blatch as she went to leave. She stiffened. "The g-force, the blood pressure – anyone without proper training would black out the moment we began. The data we'd pull off them would be useless."

  "Then make your machine better," was Captain Blatch's stern reply. She marched past him. "The Final Dawn will be carrying hundreds of thousands of civilians, none of whom will have flight experience. There's no use in us taking off at all if your technology is going to give everyone on board a brain haemorrhage."

  Jack's hands were so sweaty he could barely keep a grip on his power drill. This was his chance to get a ticket on one of the Arks. If they were struggling to fill their quota of pilots, maybe they'd take a chance on an unqualified one.