Frost Station Alpha 1-6: The Complete Series (27 page)

“What you say makes sense,” Anise said, “and I’m sure it wouldn’t be a chore to play along with such a scheme.” She smiled briefly, glancing at Makkon, and Tamryn recalled that she had been ready to climb all over him when she had been under the influence of that drug. “We’ll get it all sorted out when Fleet arrives. For now, I’m going to have to insist that you also remain locked up.”

Anise extended a gloved hand toward the refrigerator vault.

Tamryn slumped. “With him? From his point of view, I betrayed him.” She would have much preferred to be anywhere except in the same cell—vault—as him when he woke up. She remembered that hurt look he had given her as he had fallen to the floor and didn’t want to have to try to explain. Besides... “He might kill me when he wakes up.”

“Somehow, I doubt he will,” Anise said, her eyes all too knowing. Maybe she knew that kiss had been real.

“I’m not so sure. He’ll either kill me because he’s furious, or he’ll try to use me as a hostage.” Tamryn wondered if the scientists would even respond to a hostage threat. Did they care if one more soldier was killed? Especially one whom they believed had started working with the enemy? Would Anise care?

“Perhaps you’ll have to kiss him to calm him down then.” Anise gestured again toward the vault, her meaning clear.

Tamryn shook her head. Makkon was so dedicated to his mission that he would do anything to make sure he accomplished it, including sacrificing his life. And Tamryn’s.

Still, she had no choice. The two civilians with the rifles remained in the corridor, and Anise was also armed. Tamryn walked inside. Before closing the vault, Anise followed her in to search her external pockets. She withdrew the pistol and grenades Tamryn had squirreled away. Would she make Tamryn get out of the armor? Inhale the gas and end up unconscious on the floor right next to Makkon?

“You should know,” Tamryn said, “that there are three other people walking around in combat armor.”

Anise stood with a start. “What? You helped other Glacians into them?”

“No. I don’t know who they are, but I assume it’s one of the groups of pirates.”

“Pirates?” Anise looked genuinely surprised. “We saw the video feeds from the outside of the Fleet ship. We thought the Glacians—and you—” there was that wary I-saw-you-help-them look again, “—had taken care of everyone on that ship.”

“You know everyone still alive on that ship when we boarded was a pirate, right? That they’d already killed all of the Fleet officers, left them shoved up against the walls...” The memory could still make Tamryn’s throat tighten with emotion. Also, the notion that Anise and the others thought she might have helped Makkon’s people against
Fleet
soldiers filled her with horror.

“I suspected it was something like that, but we couldn’t be certain. No cameras on the
Felling Axe
, of course, and the people who came out were all wearing Fleet combat armor. Also, we were escaping then and didn’t get to see any of the feed until later. Even then, afterward, we were busy putting together the gas attack. It’s been an eventful day.”

“Tell me about it.”

“All right,” Anise said, backing away. “We’ll watch out for the pirates when we’re collecting the rest of the Glacians.”

“Captain?” Tamryn no longer felt comfortable presuming a first-name basis with Anise. She reached out and touched the fire-retardant but flexible material of the hazmat suit. “Be careful. This isn’t rated for combat. A laser might cut right through that.”

“I know.”

“If you let me help, go out with you and Cox or whoever’s capable of fighting, I can probably override their suits, distract them so we can attack.”

Anise hesitated, but ultimately shook her head. “We’ll handle them.”

Before Tamryn could think up another argument, the door clanged shut. All the light had been provided from the corridor, and it disappeared, leaving her in darkness. She sighed and let her helmet clunk on the back of the door. Why couldn’t anything go right this week?

Chapter 18

When Makkon woke up, a headache throbbed behind his eyes, and his entire body hurt. He was in a dark, cold place, the side of his head numb from lying on an icy floor. He couldn’t guess where he was, not in the pitch-blackness, and it took him a moment to remember what he had been doing when he was knocked out. Then the memories came back with a lurch, his suit suddenly not cooperating, all those drugs injecting into his body, the net, and finally, Tamryn leaping onto him with a tranquilizer.

He sighed and rolled onto his back, the armor making the motion clunky. Maybe he would take it off in a moment, but his body hurt, and he needed to recover before examining his dark prison and seeing if escape might be possible. He couldn’t remember the last time he had slept—and being knocked unconscious hardly counted. Weariness dragged at him. Or maybe that was the feeling of defeat dragging at him.

What a fool he had been. Jumping into that room with Tamryn at his back, as if she could be expected to choose to help him over her own people. Why couldn’t he remember that she was the enemy? Maybe it was because they had fought side by side against the pirates, and because they worked so well together when they had a common goal. Somehow, he had let himself forget, let his feelings muddle everything. He should have pulled his people into the lift, taken them to the armory, and found suits to fit them. Or he could have simply carried the men, the ones he could find, to some closet somewhere and waited out the gas. He doubted those scientists had an inexhaustible supply. Eventually, the air would have cleared, his people would have woken up, and he would have had
true
allies with whom to assault the civilian stronghold.

As he lay there, berating himself, he gradually grew aware of something he should have noticed right off, had his senses not been muddied and as slow to recover as his mind. His nose and his ears told him that he wasn’t alone in this place. One other person sat in the dark with him, one who still smelled faintly of cleaning solution. Her armor must have been removed—or she had taken it off.

“Are you my guard?” His voice felt raspy from disuse, and he wondered how long he had been out.

Tamryn snorted. “I’m your fellow prisoner.”

“Oh? That’s unexpected.”

“Tell me about it. Apparently, the whole station knows that I kissed you, and my loyalty is now suspect.”

“Even though you were the one who jabbed me in the neck with an injector and knocked me out?”

Tamryn shifted, armor bumping against a wall. So, she hadn’t removed it after all. “Even though,” she said, her voice subdued. “I told Ani—Captain Porter that you’d probably kill me when you woke up, but she didn’t seem that concerned. I think they’ve already written me off,” she said, her voice turning bitter.

Makkon recalled his research into her family and found that unlikely, though perhaps her colleagues had never done similar research. If she didn’t tell people about her kin, maybe none of them knew. Or maybe Captain Porter believed that Tamryn was in no danger from Makkon. If so, she was right. Makkon could be angry with no one except himself for falling into that trap. Tamryn had been doing her duty, as she had been all along. He might find that fact frustrating, but he didn’t hate her for it or wish her ill. No, as always, he found her fighting spirit and her loyalty appealing. Not for the first time, he wished she were one of his people, so her uniform wouldn’t be such a wall between them.

“You don’t sound that worried.” Makkon pushed himself to his knees and patted his way to the wall she was sitting against. He found a door, instead of a wall, one that felt cold, metallic, and, when he knocked on it, extremely thick. Eventually, he would see if there might be a way to open it, but he sat beside Tamryn for now, his body needing a few minutes to recover. Besides, the thought crossed his mind that they were alone together in a dark room. There shouldn’t be any soldiers to witness their actions, if she decided she might be open to actions.

“I’m not entirely
un
worried,” she said. “I figure sooner or later, you’re going to get sick of dealing with me and break my neck.”

He grunted and pulled off the thin metal gloves protecting his hands. “Do you truly believe that?” He reached out, finding her face in the dark, brushing his palm along her cheek.

“I... can’t understand why you wouldn’t.”

“Can’t you?” Makkon murmured, using the feel of her face to guide him in the dark, to find her lips with his. They were cold—her skin was too. She wouldn’t be as accustomed to the frosty air as he was. If she hadn’t been wearing her full armor, aside from her helmet, he would have cradled her in his arms to warm her up. Of course, his armor would have laid between them too. Someday, he wanted to kiss her while neither of them wore any clothing.

At first, she didn’t respond to his kiss—indeed, she seemed startled, but he sucked gently at her lower lip while sliding his hand around to the back of her head. Earlier, she’d seemed to enjoy his massages. Even if he couldn’t get to the rest of her now, he could knead her scalp and rub her neck.

He was rewarded by the relaxation of her muscles—and her lips. She turned toward him, kissing him back now. The air in their prison was chilly, but his body soon heated. That heat did wonders to rejuvenate his battered muscles, and he suddenly felt as if he could do all manner of acrobatics if she crooked her finger and suggested there might be a reward for doing so.

Even as he had these thoughts, he knew he was smitten—and an idiot for falling for someone who could never be on his side. Brax would certainly tell him that. But he couldn’t help it. The more she fought him, the more he wanted her. The way she kept successfully evading him and coming so close to defeating him—in this case, she
had
defeated him—only made him want her more.

He hadn’t meant to do anything except kiss her, to pass a few pleasant moments before examining their prison, but he should have known better. How many times had far less than her kiss aroused him to painful measures, forcing him to crawl off into a corner to sate himself? Now that they were alone together, with little chance of being interrupted any time soon, might she consider a more satisfying ending? For them both?

He groaned, sliding his hand down her chest, only to be frustrated by the featureless armor there rather than the soft curves of her breasts.

Tamryn broke the kiss, drawing back. “Makk, I—we... You know I’m one of the reasons all of your men are locked up, right now? Right? I don’t understand how you can’t hate me.”

“All of them are locked up?”

“I think so. I saw Anise’s people pushing them into the vault across the corridor.”

Well, if he could get out of here, that would make a rescue fairly easy. But he couldn’t quite bring himself to stop kissing Tamryn. Even as she whispered her protests, his lips drifted down her throat, bringing their warmth to her cool skin.

“It should be obvious that I don’t hate you,” he murmured, following a tendon with his tongue, tasting her skin, inhaling the scent of her shampoo and her body. “I
do
wish you were on my side, that you were one of my people and that we could fight together always, instead of only sporadically when we have a common enemy.” He nibbled his way up to her earlobe and sucked it, teasing it with his teeth, and he was rewarded with a soft gasp.

Tamryn lifted a hand to the side of his head, pushing it through his hair. Her touch sent a surge of desire through him; he didn’t even care that she was still wearing the gauntlets of her armor. “I wish we weren’t enemies too,” she whispered, kissing him back for the first time. “What you told me... I feel for your people. I understand your passion to help them. But I can’t betray my own people.” She kissed him harder, eagerness guiding her lips, and her other hand found his shoulder.

“Even when they lock you in a vault with a madman?” he murmured.

“You’re not mad. You’re determined.”

“Very determined. Would you let me get you out of that armor? Determinedly?”

Her lips stilled, and she must have been looking at his face, though she would not have seen any more in their dark prison than he could. She continued to stroke her fingers through his hair, so he didn’t take the silence as an outright rejection, but as a consideration. Did she want to have sex with him? Would she freeze if she took off the armor with its self-regulating internal temperature? Would her people catch her doing something far worse than kissing the enemy?

Makkon could only address one of those concerns. “I promise to keep you warm,” he whispered, leaning his head into her fingers, trying not to feel like a hound begging its master for a scratch, though he would certainly jump through hoops now if she hinted that sex might be an option.

“Oh?” Tamryn asked. “How?”

“Vigorous rubbing.”

Her snort almost sounded like a laugh, so he dared to close the distance between them, find her lips again.

“Will you be taking your armor off too?” she asked, the words muffled by their kiss. She didn’t try to pull away again.

“Gladly.” The damned suit wasn’t built for him and had already chafed more than a few favorite parts raw. Makkon relished the idea of removing the armor, and not just because his cock wanted to escape confinement.

“Will I have to vigorously rub you to keep you warm?”

“I grew up in temperatures colder than this, and this feels pleasant to me. But I’m sure anything you rub will respond eagerly to your touch.”

“I bet.”

Eagerly was an understatement. He thought of her attempted seduction of him in her room. He’d been as hard and ready as a rocket before she had even looked at him.

“You take yours off, and I’ll take mine off,” Tamryn said.

“Gladly,” he repeated, already rolling away from her to see how quickly he could remove the cumbersome equipment in the dark. He’d barely managed to get it on under the armory’s full light. Apparently, dressing skills hadn’t been encoded into his ancestors’ superior genes.

Still, with some clanks, groans, and more than a few fumbles, he managed to drop the pieces into a pile. He also got a good feel for the tightness of their prison as he bashed his elbows, shoulders, and back against shelving units built into the walls. Nothing rattled or clanked, so he assumed those shelves had all been cleared. No useful chemicals he could use to escape. Oh, well. He would think of escaping later. Now, he was too busy feeling giddy that he was going to get to sleep with the woman who had been everything from prey to hunting partner to fantasy for the last two days. Or three days. He had no idea how long he had been unconscious and had lost track of time even before then.