“Last chance. The comm.” Makkon raised his eyebrows.
His captive closed his eyes. Makkon tightened his grip around his throat. His shoulder was getting tired from holding the soldier aloft, but he would never show it. The man’s face started to turn purple. Would he truly die without answering the question? He looked like a combat specialist, not a comm officer, but Makkon dared not kill someone who might be the only one left alive who could send a message. If his team wasn’t able to open negotiations with the government, then all of this was for naught.
“No,” the soldier finally rasped, the word barely audible above the alarm still blaring in the corridor.
Makkon dropped him.
The woman. She had to be the one he needed.
Some faint sound reached his ears, or his instincts simply warned him, and he spun when he grew aware of someone approaching from behind.
“Just me, Makk,” Brax, his co-commander on this expedition, said. Blood spattered the burly graying man’s arms and darkened one side of his head, but he did not appear seriously injured. He still had all of his weapons. “This the place?” He jerked his chin toward the door near Makkon as he approached.
“Yes.”
“Not the comm officer?” Brax’s gaze shifted toward the soldier, who lay curled at Makkon’s feet, trying to hold his arm to the side of his body and still gasping for air.
“No.” Makkon gritted his teeth, hating to admit that he had likely let the comm officer go. “There was a woman who got away. We’ll see if we need someone to get in. If we do, I’ll hunt her down.”
Brax shot the downed soldier, startling Makkon. The blast took the man between the eyes, killing him instantly. The soldier might have died anyway, but Makkon bristled at the cold-blooded killing. There were actions that were acceptable in the heat of combat that were not tolerable in the aftermath. But Brax had battlefield command experience, and he would not appreciate a lecture from a mere hunt leader, even if the president had deemed them equals for this mission. Still, he could not keep his mouth shut.
“The more we kill, the harder time we’ll have getting them to agree to a deal.”
“As if you didn’t kill seven men yourself down in engineering. They’re soldiers. Soldiers are expendable. They always have been.” Brax’s mouth twisted with bitterness, the ice tiger tattoo on his face seeming to writhe with irritation that matched its owner’s. Yes, Brax knew all too well that soldiers were expendable. How ironic that he was among those who had survived.
Brax strode for the doorway to the communications room. Makkon caught his arm before he could pass.
“What are you about, Hunt Leader?” Brax scowled down at the grip. He’d said the words the same way he might have said private to a soldier in his command.
“It’s been ten minutes, twelve now, since we first attacked. If those soldiers were up here the whole time, they may have had time to set a trap. They were leaving when I walked in, almost crashed into me.” Brax waved at the bracer on his left arm; it was where Dornic, their engineer, had installed a sensor-scrambling device, one they hadn’t been certain would work against today’s technology. It had been a relief to find out that it did and that they’d managed to infiltrate the station completely undetected.
Brax glared through the open doorway, but said, “You’re right. Good thinking.”
He eased inside, but only went a step before crouching down and peering in all directions.
Makkon was tempted to go peek around, too, but he pressed his back to the wall by the door so he could watch both directions down the corridor. He tapped his right bracer, the one with the comm unit embedded. “Dornic, Zar, report.”
“Trying to fix the mess you made in engineering, sir,” came Dornic’s voice, glum and sour, as usual. “Apparently, it didn’t occur to anyone shooting that the equipment had to survive long enough for us to live here for a few days.”
“Do your best,” Makkon said. “We’ve got the ship if we need it.”
“That’s almost as much of a mess.”
“Zar here, sir,” spoke a second voice, a young excited one. “We believe we’ve found the scientists, but they’ve locked themselves in vaults. There are at least three of them that we’ve located. Want us to try blowing the doors open?”
“Absolutely.”
“Makkon,” Brax said from inside the room. “Got it.”
Makkon stepped inside and found his comrade holding a string of grenades in his hand. “Disarmed?”
“I certainly hope so.”
Makkon snorted and scanned the rest of the room, watching, listening, and smelling for further signs of traps. He caught the lingering scent of some floral perfume or perhaps shampoo. The woman’s? This was probably her station. He growled at himself, wishing he had gone after her right away. She could be anywhere now.
“Problem?” Brax asked.
“Yeah, that woman I let get away. Bet she’s the one who can operate the computer in here.”
“I’m sure I can operate a computer.” Brax sniffed and strode over to the one console that had lights and displays. The others were dark and silent. “Things don’t look that different.”
“I was more thinking that there would be a passcode or even another trap rather than that you couldn’t handle pushing some buttons.”
“Hm.” Brax waved his hand over a sensor and jabbed a couple of buttons. A holo display formed in the air, the front of an eyeball coalescing.
“Retina scan required for access,” the computer said.
Makkon pushed a few more buttons.
“Access denied.”
“Who’s allowed to access the computer?” Brax asked.
“Access denied,” was all it said.
Makkon sighed and tapped his bracer. “Dornic, come up to communications as soon as you can.”
“Before or after I’m certain the station won’t implode due to these smoking circuits?” came the prompt reply.
“Stop being melodramatic.”
“Is that an order?”
“Yes. Is Krakinnok with you? Tell him to grab some men and scour this place level by level. I want to make sure there aren’t any soldiers hiding in the ductwork. Oh, and Dornic? Find a way to turn that damned alarm off, too, will you?”
“Shall I also make you glacier tea and cookies in the copious free time you’re giving me?” Dornic asked.
“Just get up here.”
“You should punish him for that lip.” Brax growled and thumped a fist down onto the console hard enough to dent it.
“I’m going to find the woman,” Makkon said, ignoring his co-commander’s leadership advice. Dornic was the smartest man on the team, and Makkon didn’t know him that well, didn’t know what kind of revenge he might take if truly pissed off. All their leaders cared about was that this mission was accomplished, not whether anyone came back. “Don’t destroy the computer while I’m gone.”
“No promises.” Brax made a rude gesture at the floating eyeball.
Makkon jogged toward the intersection where the grenade had exploded. He didn’t have any tech or tools that would make tracking the woman easy, but he recalled that she had been hit by shrapnel. At the least, some injury had made her gasp. If there was blood, tracking her would be a simple matter.
He checked all of the corridors before stepping into the intersection. They lay empty, no sign of the soldier or anyone else.
Tiny shrapnel that had come from the grenade crunched under his boots. He eyed the floor and the walls, looking for—there.
Makkon crouched and swiped a finger through a drop of fresh blood. He rubbed it on his fingers and sniffed. His senses weren’t quite as keen as those of a hound, but they were more enhanced than typical for a human, even generations after his ancestors had been created in laboratories. The blood did not smell much different from other human blood, but he also caught a hint of the woman’s shampoo again, lingering in the air along with the smoky scent of the grenade. He spotted a torn piec
e of fabric on the floor. Ah, that would be even better for tracking than blood. He held it up and sniffed again, this time catching more of the scent of her under the shampoo, a mix of warm skin and sweat and the hormones produced by the human body that made a person unique.
Makkon found himself constructing an image of the woman, both from the scents and from the glimpses he’d had of her running and then shooting at him. The black fatigues had hidden specific details, but she had been tall and curvy with an attractive face and thick wavy auburn hair pulled back in a clip. Gray-green eyes, full lips.
To his surprise, he found himself aroused.
He rolled his eyes and lowered the fabric. “Yeah, this is the time for that, Makk.”
Maybe his body realized it had been a hundred and fifty years since he’d had sex, even if he had been sleeping during all of that time. Snorting, he jogged down the corridor.
With her scent fixed in his mind, he knew he would find her.
Chapter 3
Tamryn crawled under conduits in a narrow shaft that ran between levels, using the flashlight program on her tablet to brighten the way in the dark passage. She also had a map up, floating in the air above the device. She hoped the intruders didn’t have any such thing.
Someone had turned off the alarm, and she crawled in silence. Occasionally, a bang or a clank echoed through the floor from above her. When she had chosen this route, she’d thought to check engineering to see if any of her people had survived, any who might be rescued. But someone was still up there, walking around and doing something to the machinery. She dared not veer up one of the access tubes, not if the intruders were still there. Too bad. In addition to desiring to help her people, she wanted company for selfish reasons too. She didn’t want to be in this alone. As noble as Wu had been for facing that thug so she could escape, she would have strangled him if he had been next to her. He shouldn’t have sacrificed himself; they could have both gotten away.
Maybe. She grimaced, remembering the speed of the man with the dragon tattoo. How was she supposed to shoot someone who dodged like that? She had never seen anybody so fast. Maybe an android, but he had fluid grace that she had yet to see a machine possess. And he had been bleeding. Androids did not bleed.
“Cyborg,” she muttered, that being the only thing she could imagine. He must be human with some machine parts in there somewhere. She had never heard of cyborg pirates—cybernetic enhancements were usually reserved for the wealthy and for elite soldiers—but that didn’t mean much.
When she reached an intersection with six options, including up and down, she paused to consult the map and wipe sweat from her brow. Most of the station was kept cool, especially the decks with the animals, but the tunnels were hot and stuffy.
While she studied the map, her tablet chimed. Startled, she almost dropped it before scrambling to answer it. The soldiers would have commed her on her patch, so this had to be one of the scientists.
“Pavlenko here,” she whispered. It had been at least fifteen minutes since she had run from Comm and Control, and she hadn’t heard anyone chasing after her, but she didn’t feel safe, not at all. She kept crawling as she spoke.
“Tamryn?” a woman asked.
“Captain Porter? Why are you using my private comm?”
“I kept trying to raise Ram, Harold, Cheng, and the others, but nobody was answering. What’s going on?”
“Didn’t you hear the alarm? The order to get to a safe room?” Tamryn hoped Porter didn’t realize she had avoided answering her question about the other soldiers. She didn’t want to be the one to tell her everyone was dead. Wu hadn’t been dead when Tamryn had run, but she doubted those tattooed thugs would prove merciful. She and Porter may very well be the only two Fleet people left alive on the station.
“I hear the alarm now; that’s why I called.”
“Just now? Ma’am, where have you been? The alarms sound in every room in the station.” Tamryn crawled into a shaft with a ladder heading into the sub levels. Porter’s lab was in that direction, and so was the auxiliary communications station.
“I was working. I had my music on. I didn’t hear anything.”
Tamryn doubted that any music would block out the sound of that wailing, but she didn’t doubt that Porter hadn’t heard the alarm. Tamryn had walked up on her in her lab before, saying her name numerous times, and finally touching her before the woman knew she was there. To say she became absorbed in her research was an understatement.
“Are you in your lab now?” Tamryn asked.
“Yes. With the door locked.”
A door that could easily be blown open by an assault rifle. Tamryn did not say this, since Porter was her superior officer, even if she seemed more civilian than soldier most of the time. “I’ll come get you. Stay there. There are pirates all over the station, and... Porter, they took out Ram’s whole platoon, I think. I saw at least fifteen dead in engineering. It was a bloodbath. I’ve never seen anything like it.” She almost snorted at herself. Of course she hadn’t. She was barely out of the academy. “I don’t think our people took down any of them. It’s crazy. They move like cyborgs or something.” Realizing she was speaking rapidly, Tamryn forced herself to take a breath and wait for an answer. Even though Porter was a linguist and a historian, she might know something about these people. She was older and more experienced.
“You say these were pirates?” Porter asked slowly.
“That’s what Wu thought, and they do look scruffy. Fit but scruffy.” Tamryn thought of the one with the dragon tattoo, the only one she’d gotten a good look at so far. “Very fit. Oh, and all the ones I’ve seen have big tattoos on their faces.”
“Tattoos? Interesting.”
“It’s not interesting; it’s deadly. They’re deadly. I tried to send the footage to Fleet before getting driven out of Comm and Control, but the solar storm was wreaking havoc with the computers. I don’t know if it’s gone out. We’ve got to get to Aux-Comm, make sure the message is sent. And then make sure the scientists are safe.”
“It sounds like our best bet is to hide until Fleet arrives,” Porter said. “Especially if...”
Tamryn paused, clinging to the rungs of the ladder in the darkness. “Especially if what?” she demanded when Porter did not continue. “Porter?”
“Ssh.”
Tamryn almost barked for Porter to talk, but there had been a note of fear, almost panic in that ssh. She lowered her voice to the barest whisper. “What is it?”
“Someone just banged at the door. I have to go.”
“Wait!”
A blast sounded, but was cut off in the middle.
“Captain?” Tamryn asked, dread curdling in her stomach.
The comm cut out. She tried pinging Porter back, but there was no answer.
Alone in the dark ladder well, Tamryn stared at her tablet, hoping the captain would comm her back. She had been in Porter’s lab; she knew there wasn’t a back door. She also didn’t think there were any access panels to maintenance shafts.
“Damn,” she whispered and thumped her forehead against the rungs.
A distant squeal drifted through the serpentine maintenance passages. Tamryn lifted her head, even more dread assaulting her stomach. She recognized that squeal. The hatch she’d used to gain access to these passages had made that horrendous noise. She remembered cursing vividly, knowing the squeal would be heard. Had she known the old hinges hadn’t been oiled in years—or decades—she never would have opened the hatch. But she’d thought she had made her way in and closed it before anyone could have located the source of the noise.
“Yeah, you thought wrong,” she breathed and continued down the ladder.
Quiet terror filled her at the realization that she wasn’t alone in these tunnels anymore, but she kept going. She checked her map to keep herself from thinking about how she could be shot in here and that it might be years before someone found her body. The glow of her tablet seemed like it must be a beacon, shining for me
ters in every direction. If someone looked down the shaft and saw her, she would be an easy target.
She took a second to memorize the route, then forced herself to fold her tablet shut and stick it in her pocket. The darkness that swallowed her was so complete that she might have been sealed in a coffin, deep underground, with no hope of escape.
Stop it, she told herself. She resumed descending, taking the time to place each boot carefully. Noise could guide an enemy to her as quickly as light.
The shaft ended and she patted her way into another horizontal tube. In the darkness, her progress was slow. She hoped whoever was hunting her would be slow, too, that he would have to check multiple passages, not certain of where she had gone. But she wasn’t entirely positive that was the case. Whoever was after her might have a personal sensor device, something that would be able to track her body heat. She remembered the computer she had used that had shown her where all of the comm patches in the station were and almost tore hers off, but stopped herself. Only station personnel would have access to that computer—she had seen to that. Besides, would random intruders even think to look in such a way?
With her thoughts racing through her mind, she came to the next ladder well sooner than she expected. Her hand dropped into it, and she caught herself with a lurch. A small gasp escaped her lips, and she frowned at the slip. Even if she hadn’t heard any sounds to indicate her pursuer was close, and couldn’t be certain someone had entered through that hatch, making noise seemed like a bad idea.
Careful not to bump anything with her weapons, she lowered herself onto the ladder. Six floors to Aux-Comm. Once she got there, she would send her message, then consult the map again and find a place to hide. She wanted to go by Porter’s lab, as she had first planned, but she worried she was far too late. If she managed to evade the intruders for long enough, maybe they would grow less alert, and she could plan a rescue. Or maybe they’d simply take the alien artifacts or whatever they had come for and go away. She would hate to let them have anything, since her mission was to protect the station, but when so many experienced soldiers had died, how could she thwart these people?
Frost Station Alpha 1-6: The Complete Series Page 3