Frost Station Alpha 1-6: The Complete Series (2 page)

“Shit,” Wu said.

Though she did not want to, Tamryn made herself zoom in, trying to get a glimpse of whoever was doing the killing. She also tried to find enemy bodies among the fallen—surely pirates weren’t taking down her colleagues without suffering losses themselves. But all she saw were black uniforms and a few larger figures in white Fleet combat armor. At least a handful of men had found time to don the full-body suits, suits that should have protected them from bullets and laser fire. One soldier’s armor had been cut open, as if with an axe or sword, but neither weapon should have been able to do more than dent the sturdy suit.

“Has anything
other
than pirates ever attacked you?” Tamryn asked, her mouth dry. She wasn’t sure what
other
she suspected, but she had a hard time imagining scruffy thugs doing this kind of damage to a highly trained infantry platoon.

“Like what? Aliens?” Wu sounded like he’d meant to make it a joke, but it came out sarcastic. He must be worried and frustrated that he wasn’t down there helping his comrades.

Tamryn shook her head. The secret project here involved the study of ancient alien ruins and artifacts found down on Glaciem, but she’d never heard anything to suggest that there were any aliens left alive in the system—or anywhere in the galaxy. According to archaeologists, the most recent ruins had been occupied ten thousand years ago—eighty-five hundred years before humans had colonized the system.

“A mercenary outfit, maybe,” Tamryn answered the sergeant. “Or some finance lord’s private army?”

“The mob sent a private army last year, when word first leaked out about the artifacts, but we took care of them, the same as we take care of half-organized scum with stolen weapons.” Wu clenched his jaw and started pacing back and forth in front of the door. “It’s been pirates and small infiltration teams since—what’s that?” Wu pointed to the engineering video, at a dark figure moving at the edge of the video pickup.

Tamryn leaned in for a better look as the figure strode closer. It was a man with a dark green dragon tattoo covering the left side of his face. Framed by black hair that fell past his shoulders, his angular face carried a fierce expression, his strong jaw set, his blue eyes cold and determined. He was probably handsome under the tattoo and the blood spattering his face, but he looked too much like a walking deliverer of death for Tamryn to think of him as anything other than an enemy.

Unlike the fallen Fleet soldiers, the intruder was not wearing armor, neither a full suit of combat armor, nor the lightweight TacVests and helmets that many soldiers preferred. Instead, he wore only a threadbare black vest that looked like it had been picked from a salvage table at the flea market, along with wrist bracers not dissimilar to ones Tamryn had worn when she competed in archery tournaments as a kid. His arms and shoulders were bare, revealing thick, corded muscles so lean that the veins stood out, as did several old scars. The hilt of something that looked like a giant axe rose above one of his shoulders.

As he approached the camera—he was staring right at it, right at
Tamryn
—he lifted a laser rifle. It looked like the exact same model that the Fleet soldiers carried. With a sick feeling in the pit of her stomach, she realized it probably
was
one of their weapons. He pointed it at the camera and was about to fire when something moved on the floor behind him, just visible past his shoulder.

One of the fallen soldiers lifted his head. He had lost his helmet, and Tamryn recognized the bloodied face: Captain Ram. He was at least fifteen meters behind the intruder. His arm shaking, Ram raised his hand, a hand still holding a weapon.

With a surge of hope, Tamryn silently willed him to shoot the hairy savage in the back. Ram fired, and she was already pumping her fist when the intruder blurred into motion. He dodged so quickly, disappearing from the video pickup, that Tamryn didn’t know if he had ducked or dived to the side. Ram’s crimson laser fire screeched toward the feed, slamming into a wall below the camera, and the display jostled momentarily. Even with the shaking, she didn’t have any trouble seeing an orange laser blast slam into Ram’s eye. He shuddered and collapsed, smoke wafting from his ruined face.

A second later, the muzzle of a rifle filled the display. Orange flashed, and the feed turned black. A “lost signal” message replaced the view of the room, the same as the one from the station’s exterior.

Tamryn’s fingers felt cold and numb as she swiped them through the displays, trying to find more of the intruders in the corridors of the station. She had to collect intelligence to send off, even though it would take nearly a day for the information to be relayed back to the midway Fleet station, and it would be another three or four days before she could expect reinforcements.

She glimpsed two more brawny figures with tattoos and patched clothing jogging through a corridor before they disappeared from the feed. A few seconds later, one of the other internal cameras was shot out—that time, she didn’t see the culprit.

Tamryn recorded a report to go along with the images, her fingers flying over the holo keyboard faster than she could have spoken the words. While she worked, she grew aware of heavy breathing behind her, just audible over the alarm still wailing in the corridor beyond the door. Sergeant Wu had returned to pacing, but his face was livid, and he clenched his rifle like he might smash it against the wall at any moment. As much as seeing all of the carnage had disturbed Tamryn, Wu had been here a lot longer than she had, grown close to the men now dead on the floor in engineering. It had to be tearing him up that he couldn’t do anything about it.

“We
will
do something about it,” she said, her words as much for herself as for him.

“What?”

What, indeed. Tamryn eyed the environmental controls. If they knew all of their people were dead, they could remove the oxygen from select sections of the station. The idea of doing that when there might be survivors made her sick to her stomach, but she and every soldier here had sworn an oath to protect GalCon citizens, and she shuddered to think what would happen once those thugs found the scientists.

“If you’re thinking of gassing them or cutting off the air, you’d better do it now,” Wu said. “They would have taken engineering first for a reason. They’ll have access to all of the equipment and main computers down there and can override anything we do. Communications is the only equipment that’s headquartered up here.” He jerked his head toward the ceiling, as if to indicate the various dishes and antennae sending and receiving data from the top of the station.

“I’ll try.”

Tamryn hit the send button for her message, then switched to the environmental controls console. Before she could do more than wave the display to life, all of the lights on the panel winked out. The display followed, leaving empty air behind.

“Damn it.” She jabbed at the controls, even though she already knew what had happened. Exactly what Wu had said. They had overridden her controls.

He sighed. “You have any weapons besides your knives? Because they’re going to come up here eventually. They’ll want to blow up that console.” He pointed at the communications equipment, the only equipment still powered up in the room. “Keep us from sending messages. You
have
sent messages, right?”

She was about to say yes, but frowned because her report was still sitting in the outbox. “I
tried
.” She jabbed a couple of buttons and growled. “It’s the storm. I don’t think it’s going to send until the flare dies down.”

“When will
that
be?”

Tamryn pulled up the system meteorology report for Mysterium. “The prediction is thirty-seven minutes.”

Wu’s expression was bleak. He didn’t voice what they were both thinking, that those intruders would probably find their way up here by then, and that they might be able to delete the message before it went out.

“I’ll try to lock up the console,” Tamryn said, “make it so it only responds to me.”

If possible, Wu’s face grew even bleaker. Maybe he was imagining them torturing her to make her unlock the station. She gritted her teeth. They would have to
catch
her to do that.

She strode to the locker by the door and pushed past cleaning supplies to pull out her weapons belt. She buckled it on and checked the energy levels in the two pistols that hung from it and in the spare laser cartridges. Full. It also held a dagger, which she kept sharpened to a fine edge. She jammed her throwing knives into sheaths secreted about her body.

Another explosion erupted somewhere on the station, causing the deck to rattle again.

“Got any idea who these people are, Wu?” Tamryn couldn’t help but feel that the experienced sergeant must know more than she. “The way they moved...”

“No,” he said. “Some of them might be androids, but that dress? That’s nobody’s merc team. Pirates, for sure.”

“Androids with tattoos? I haven’t seen any that come out of the factory that way.”

“Could’ve been modified. Branded.”

Tamryn pulled out one more weapon, her Fleet issue anti-armor ballistic rifle with a sniper scope. The explosive rounds were rated to blow holes in combat armor. She looked around Comm and Control, not liking how little room there was to maneuver. There wasn’t anything to hide behind, either, other than the two chairs bolted to the deck.

Wu had probably already assessed the area and guessed her thoughts, for he said, “If they rush in, willing to sacrifice the ones in the lead, they’ll overpower us quickly.”

“Since this is locked down, it might make sense to remove the key.” She waved at the communications console, then flicked her hand at herself. “What if we head to Aux-Comm at the other end of the station? Make it harder for them to find us?”

“We have our orders,” Wu said sturdily.

“And the man who gave them is dead.” Tamryn regretted her bluntness when Wu winced. “Sorry,” she said, “but if we leave a trap and get out of here, it’ll help us buy time, right? That’s all we can do—make sure that message sends and then try to stay alive until reinforcements make it out.”

“We have to keep the scientists alive too. That’s why we’re here.”

They would be lucky to keep
themselves
alive. “Let’s start with the trap, all right?”

Tamryn poked back into the locker. In addition to her own gear and the cleaning supplies, there were water and food rations, along with a personal forcefield and grenades, all the tools one should need to defend the area indefinitely. She palmed a grenade and held it up so Wu could see.

He’d hesitated to answer, but now he nodded, his decision made. “I’ll do it. We’ll kill as many of those bastards as we can.”

She tossed him the personal forcefield, figuring he would insist on standing in front of her if trouble charged through the door. While Wu rigged the explosives to blow when someone bumped into his tripwire, Tamryn double-checked the communications station, making sure that only the combination of her retina scan and password would allow access. Knowing she might die despite her best intentions, she also ensured Captain Porter and the lead scientist could get in with their passwords too.

By the time she was done, sweat dribbled from her brow. She hadn’t even left the room yet, and her adrenaline-charged body already thought she had been fighting all day.

Wu stood up, waving at his booby trap. The grenades ought to have the power to rip even an android to pieces. That power might also rip the comm station to pieces, but that was what Aux-Comm was for. If all else failed, she had a program on her personal tablet that could tie in with the dish outside.

“That’ll do it,” Wu said. “Let’s go.”

“Forcefield,” she warned.

He thumbed the button on the simple device, creating a convex field of energy ahead of him, translucent except for blue lines that outlined the edges of the barrier. It would make walking without bumping into things difficult for him, but it could take three or four laser blasts before running out of juice.

Wu stepped toward the door, but paused before exiting.

“Do me a favor, LT?” he asked softly.

“Yes. What?”

“In case I don’t make it and you do, let my wife know... just let her know I love her. And that I died doing my duty, will you?”

His expression was nothing but professional and determined, but his request almost brought tears to her eyes. Until that moment, she’d been walling herself off from the reality that their entire platoon seemed to be dead, but the inevitability of the odds surged over her now. How could he think she would survive when he didn’t? They might keep her long enough to force her to access the comm, but after that? From what she’d seen so far, these people did not appear lenient.

“I will,” she managed to say around a lump in her throat.

“But don’t... if they capture you—and I aim to do my best to make sure they don’t, but if they do—don’t feel you gotta survive just for me though. Some things are worse than dying, and those pirates might—” He shook his head. “Never mind. We’re not going to get captured or killed. Check the sensors and let’s go, LT.”

She closed her eyes, gathering her courage—and also wishing he hadn’t brought any of that up. Now she knew why he thought the pirates might keep her alive, and she hadn’t wanted to know that. No, she wasn’t going to be captured. She was going to survive. They both were.

She glanced at the sensor display beside the door to make sure the corridor was empty, then nodded.

“Ready,” she said, steeling her nerves. Her voice came out calm, confident.

Wu waved at the sensor to open the door.

The pirate from the engineering video stood there.

Chapter 2

Though he was caught off guard, Hunt Leader Makkon Starson fired the instant the door opened. He had expected to have to blow his way into the communications station and had been in the process of pulling out explosives to plant. Still, his reflexes were quicker than those of the soldiers poised on the other side, and he fired first, aiming at the big man in the lead. He took a step at the same time, expecting to bowl over the man and gain access to the room, but his laser fire struck something before hitting the soldier. It splashed off an invisible barrier, the energy deflected in a dozen directions.