Frost Station Alpha 1-6: The Complete Series (26 page)

“Get ready.” He bent low, the shoulders of his suit scraping against beams and conduits, and tore the last bit of metal free so he could lift up the ceiling panel. It squeaked faintly as he worked it free.

He paused before lifting it, looking into the level and listening.

Tamryn tried to listen too. Makkon had been quiet, but the lance had made noise burning the panels, and if the scientists had heard him, they would be ready down there.

A soft clink sounded, followed by a second one. At first, Tamryn thought the scientists were doing something. Then Makkon pulled the panel free and maneuvered it out to lay it on the floor by the first one, and she glimpsed yellowish-green smoke wafting up from the floor below. He seemed calm about it.

“Did you do that?” she whispered.

He showed her a compact canister he held in one hand, and she recognized it immediately. A tear gas grenade. She hadn’t been the only one shopping for goodies in the armory. Damn, she hadn’t seen him grabbing those.

A cough came from somewhere below. Makkon disappeared from sight so quickly that she thought he had fallen. But he had jumped down of his own accord, landing in a crouch in the smoke, then disappearing from her sight.

Cursing to herself, Tamryn clambered down after him. She landed less agilely, almost toppling over, thanks to the unaccustomed weight of the suit. The stabilizers helped catch her and soften the landing. She almost didn’t realize that she was standing in several inches of straw. Had they landed in some animal pen? She couldn’t feel the cold through her suit, but the display showed a below-freezing temperature.

Smoke hazed the air all around her, but her sensors showed heat signatures. Numerous heat signatures. A laser rifle squealed.

Not certain whether Makkon had fired or if people were firing at him, Tamryn sucked in a deep breath and took her gamble. First, she ordered his suit to inject him with the painkillers, hoping that would dull his reflexes, and then she ordered the self-ambulation function to turn on, to walk him toward a wall.

More lasers fired, too many to be just from Makkon, and Tamryn ran forward. As she came to the edge of the smoke, she saw his suit, saw that he was struggling with it. He might have the strength to fight back the orders she had given it, but she didn’t think he would risk taking it off. Eight figures in bright red hazmat suits came into view, all shooting at him with rifles. The beams glanced off the suit, but if they sustained fire for long enough, even the armor wouldn’t save him indefinitely.

“Hold fire,” Tamryn yelled. “It’s Lieutenant Pavlenko and—” And what? Her ally? Surely not. “My prisoner,” she finished.

Hoping she wasn’t being suicidal, she leaped into the laser fire. Her displays lit up, warning her of the sources and giving an estimate of damage and how many more shots she could take. She gave Makkon’s suit one final command, to pop the helmet.

She heard the hiss-snap even over the commotion. The people in the hazmat suits had stopped firing their rifles—she thanked the Buddha for that—but they were yelling at her, or maybe at each other. She couldn’t make out individual voices over the clamor.

Tamryn rushed forward and grabbed Makkon’s helmet. As she pulled it off, he overpowered the command that was trying to get him to walk into a corner, and his arm struck her, flinging her a dozen feet away. She landed hard, hitting the deck and skidding through the straw, but she heard the clunk of his helmet hitting the floor.

Someone threw an electric net at him, the blue strands of energy crackling as they flew through the air. Normally, Makkon would have avoided it easily, but he was still fighting his armor, and the drugs Tamryn had pumped into him might have been having an effect. His heel slipped in the straw, and the net tangled around him. The net had a magnetic feature designed to snap the ends together to bag its target. Tamryn knew the scientists used them to contain dangerous animals when they had to close in to tranquilize or otherwise drug them. Several red-suited civilians darted toward Makkon now, injectors in their hands.

He still thrashed dangerously, and someone else went flying across the room, landing not far from Tamryn. She climbed to her feet and grabbed the injector from the dazed man. Not certain the scientists would be able to subdue him on their own, she jogged back in to help.

Before lunging in, she glanced at the injector. “This is a tranq, right?” She didn’t think the civilians would kill people, even those who had killed the station’s soldiers, but she couldn’t be sure.

“Yes,” came a familiar voice, a frazzled one. Anise was trying to slip in from behind Makkon, guarding the hand holding the injector with her other hand.

But Makkon had gotten his feet under him, and he spun slowly, swatting anyone who came close. His swats, even when sluggish, were enough to break bones when they knocked people away. Anise took an elbow to the solar plexus and stumbled, her gasps audible even through her helmet.

“He’s not feeling the pain of the net’s electricity through the armor,” someone yelled.

“It’s on his head, too. He
has
to be feeling it.”

Makkon roared, and even with the electricity snapping all around him, he lunged for his fallen rifle. Afraid that he would forget his hostage plan and start shooting the civilians, Tamryn ran after him. She leaped, intending to land on his back and stick the injector in his neck. The fact that he’d been kind enough not to stick a needle in
her
neck flashed through her mind, along with a wave of guilt, but it was the only vein she could get to with the armor encasing most of his body.

He reached the rifle more quickly than she expected—damn him, the suit and the drugs were supposed to be slowing him more—and he started to turn as she flew through the air. She struck him first, wrapping an arm and her legs about his upper body, the armor clanking at their awkward crash. He raised an arm to fling her away, but not before she jabbed the tranquilizer into his neck.

As soon as he felt its bite, he lowered his arm. It should have taken a moment to kick in, but the fight bled out of him, and he just stared at her, that look of hurt and betrayal in his eyes. She couldn’t bring herself to say that he should have known all along not to put his back to her. Instead, what came out was a whisper of, “Sorry.”

She couldn’t say it loudly, not with the scientists all around them, and she didn’t know if he heard it or not. He said nothing. His eyes rolled back in his head, and he crumpled to the deck. Tamryn jumped away so she wouldn’t go down with him and be caught under his armored body.

Someone cursed from the floor a few meters away. “God, they’re dangerous. It’s like trying to bring down a Goran Dragon.”

“Get him into one of the fridges,” someone else said.

Tamryn turned to look for Anise and noticed that several rifles were pointed in her direction. They were loosely pointed, and some targeted Makkon, but still, fresh fear raced through her limbs.

“Uh?” she said. “It’s Lieutenant Pavlenko.”

The rifles did not lower, not until Anise came forward and spoke. “It’s all right.” She waved to the scientists. “I’ll talk to her. Just find the hover pallet and lock him up, please.”

A few people grumbled, and Tamryn shifted uneasily. Did they suspect her of colluding with the enemy? Because she’d been taken away from them for so long?

Several of the red-suited civilians strode away. Anise smiled at Tamryn through the faceplate of her helmet, and Tamryn allowed herself to relax an iota.

“This way, please, Tam. We’re collecting the Glacians and figuring out how to secure them so they won’t be able to escape until Fleet gets here to deal with them.”

“Refrigerators?” Tamryn imagined Makkon kicking open a door, even a thick metal one that was locked from the outside.

“They’re more like vaults,” Anise said as they walked out of the hay-filled pen and into a wide corridor lined with labs. “We keep compounds in them that have finicky temperature requirements, and because some of them are toxic or extremely valuable, they’re locked up. We cleared out three of them to store the Glacians.”

“Everyone’s in hazmat suits. Does that mean the gas is on this level too?”

“For now, yes. As soon as we’ve gathered everyone, we’ll turn it off. The sedative may have deleterious effects if it’s inhaled for an extended period, and I’m well aware that we had to leave Gruzinsky behind.”

Gruzinsky. The soldier who’d seen her kiss Makkon. She dreaded the moment when he had the opportunity to share that information with Anise.

“We’ve got four of the Glacians already though,” Anise said. “Five, including your big brute. It shouldn’t take long to find the last five.”

Tamryn bristled at hearing Makkon called a brute, but she did not defend him aloud. She couldn’t bring attention to her feelings for him, not if she wanted to remain trusted and on duty. But already, her heart was quailing at the idea of locking him up until Fleet showed up to deal with him. Fleet would “deal” with these men by executing them. Given their crimes here on the station, it would be impossible to argue on their behalf—on Makkon’s behalf—for some less fatal punishment. But could she stand there and watch him be killed? What choice did she have?

“Ah, there are two more.” Anise stopped at an intersection and waved for four red-suited women to go past.

They operated two hover pallets laden with familiar faces. Dornic and the man who had been with him on the level above. When Makkon woke up, he would be regretting that he had listened to her and not taken them to the armory to look for combat suits that would fit. If he’d had backup—less treacherous backup than her—when he had jumped through that hole, he would have overpowered the scientists. He might have overpowered them all by himself if she hadn’t been working against him.

Tamryn watched as the pallets floated past carrying the unconscious men, her thoughts grim. She should have been pleased—even jubilant—that the civilians had triumphed over the invaders, but all she could think about was that Fleet would execute Makkon. And that his people, people who had been spat upon by the rest of the system since their creation, would die down on that barren moon.

“We’ll follow them,” Anise said, waving for Tamryn to tag along.

They headed down the corridor, with thick vault doors to either side, all with control panels showing room conditions inside. Some of the temperatures were set to freezing and others to refrigeration. Some of the larger vaults also had cameras showing the racks and shelves inside.

Tamryn did not miss that a pair of red-suited scientists carrying rifles was following the pallets. They were taking no chances, even though the Glacians appeared fully unconscious.

Anise stopped in front of two vaults near the end of the corridor. Dornic and the other man were taken inside one with an open door, then dumped on the floor next to four of their unconscious comrades. The porters hurried outside, as if they were worried the men would wake at any moment and grab them and kill them. The thick vault door thudded shut. Not even an irritated, genetically engineered super human should be able to kick open that door. It had probably been designed to withstand pirates with blowtorches and explosives. A camera display on the control panel showed the unmoving men inside.

Anise opened the door on the opposite side of the corridor, a smaller vault with shelves and racks that had been cleared of whatever the usual contents were. “Put him in there,” she said to the two men approaching with Makkon on a hover pallet.

Nobody had bothered to remove his combat armor, though the helmet had been left behind. They were probably worried he would wake up and wanted to get him locked up as quickly as possible.

“Thank you,” Anise said as the men pushed the pallet inside. “Now... Tam... Lieutenant Pavlenko...”

“Yes?” Tamryn asked, not sure what to think of the return to formal titles.

“I feel bad about doing this, and fully acknowledge that it’s probably not necessary, but I’m being pressured by the civilians who saw the camera.”

“The camera?” Tamryn glanced at the display on the opposite vault.

“The feed from the lounge.”

Numbness crept through Tamryn’s body as she realized what Anise must mean. Apparently, Gruzinsky hadn’t been the only witness to that kiss.

“You’ve been separated from us a lot,” Anise said, “and we don’t know what they might have done to you to... win your allegiance, but we saw you with that one.” She pointed toward Makkon, who had been dumped onto the floor. The civilians were backing out with the pallet.

“They don’t have my allegiance,” Tamryn said, keeping her voice calm though she wanted to shout her denial. Anise was a scientist; reason was the way to appeal to her senses. Logic. “Didn’t I just help you bring him down? Without me fiddling with his suit, he might have taken down all of your people.”

“We do appreciate your help, but how did he get into that armory in the first place? The idea was for everyone to be knocked unconscious. Then we could capture the enemy and sort out our people later.”

“He followed me down to the armory. We—
I
—had no idea what kind of gas you were pushing out of the vents. For all I knew it was deadly. Also, it wasn’t as if he was going to let me run off without following me. I couldn’t stop him from getting into his own armor.” No need to mention that Tamryn had
helped
him put on his own set...

“And the rest?” Anise raised her eyebrows.

The rest? Was that supposed to be a reference to the kiss?

“Look, I had to get him to trust me enough to let me run around with my hands free. You saw that I managed to get a weapon. I’m not proud that I had to resort to trickery, but it’s not as if I could overpower him.”

“Hm.” Anise nodded, and Tamryn thought her explanation might have been logical enough.

It
was
logical, wasn’t it? If she told that story to her superiors when Fleet arrived, would they believe it? Would she have a chance of keeping her career? Tamryn looked toward Makkon’s crumpled form on the icy floor of the refrigerator. If Fleet shot him, would she care about her career? Would she still want to be an officer in the organization that would destroy the last of a civilization of people?