“And that is what exactly?” Makkon murmured, glancing at Tamryn as he prodded the entry with his finger. Sometimes, he felt like an alien within the very system he had been born into. The missing years didn’t help, but even before then, his people had been forced to be so insular. The rest of the system and its history, dating back to Old Earth, seemed the stuff of stories and nothing more.
The entry informed him that there were fewer than one hundred finance lords—and ladies, though they apparently were called lords too—in the entire system, and that anyone who received the title was given a position in the Galactic Conglomeration High Council. Staggering wealth, with over eighty percent of it amassed in one’s lifetime rather than inherited, seemed to be the main requisite for the title, though there was also something about voting and positions having to be open. Apparently, there was a maximum of one hundred seats on the council, each with an equal vote in government happenings, with a supreme finance lord acting as an arbiter over it all. It slowly dawned on Makkon that he was reading the description for the ruling class for the entire system. He’d known there was a council—one had been in place during his era, even if the name of the government had been something else back then—but he hadn’t considered how people had been assigned to it.
“Huh,” he muttered, looking toward Tamryn again. So what did that make her?
Nobody with any power or future power, he supposed, as the entry said the merit-based—or rather wealth-based—positions were not passed down through the generations, but definitely someone who was, as the pirates had guessed, a potential hostage. Assuming she was in good standing with her family—and from her stories of hunting with her father and grandfather, that was likely the case—someone would pay a lot of money to make sure she was returned home safely.
His stomach twisted at the idea of using her as a hostage, but he couldn’t help but think that money would be almost as good for solving their problems as a deal with the government. With sufficiently exorbitant funds, they could purchase terraforming equipment and food enough to keep their people alive until the moon could once again be turned into something capable of supporting life on its own. Though his mind boggled at the idea of how much money that would take. Terraforming a planet, even a moon, was a long-term and ridiculously expensive proposition. It would take a fortune. But a finance lord apparently had a fortune. Would he offer it to get his granddaughter back? Could his influence be enough to keep the military from bombing Glaciem again once their hostage had been released? Could anyone? Money would be nice, but his people needed a treaty too.
Makkon closed the tablet and stuck it in his pocket. While he logically felt he should consider this option, he could no longer imagine holding a gun to Tamryn’s head, even in a bluff. Brax could do it without a second thought, but the idea of putting this decision in his hands made Makkon want to growl and punch things. Their people needed them to succeed here, and it seemed selfish of him not to consider all of the possible routes to that end, but...
His comm beeped.
“What is it?” he asked.
“There are pirates that made their way in,” Brax said. “There was a second ship. We were all busy boarding the military one and didn’t think that there might be an original pirate ship. We think they came in the same way we did, by cutting their own hatch.”
“How many?”
Tamryn’s head had lifted, and she was listening to the conversation. He knew that no matter how miserable she felt about her personal problems—about him—she would never stop being a soldier, ready to act when necessary.
“Not that many,” Brax said. “We stumbled across one team and killed them, but questioned them first and found out there are two more teams. We’re looking for them now.”
“And the civilians?”
“They’re on Sub-Level Five.”
“And?” Makkon expected a report of how they had been rounded up again.
“And the lift won’t stop there, no matter what we do. We’ve tried to gain access through the maintenance tunnels, but they’ve been blocked.”
“You can’t break through?”
“The oxygen got sucked out of our passage when we took the time to try. I’ve got Rebek looking for blowtorches, so we can cut in from the floor above, but the pirates are the priority right now.”
“How so?” Makkon thought a bunch of smart people could potentially be more trouble than a couple of teams with guns.
“We know exactly where the civilians are, and they can’t get out, not without risking running into us. They’re effectively locked in the lounge again, just a bigger one.”
“A lounge that has more tools and computers than this one.”
“So long as there isn’t a comm station in there,” Brax said. “We’ll get to them as soon as we flush these pirates out.”
The comm went dead before Makkon could object further. If those scientists had access to an entire level, he couldn’t believe they wouldn’t find a way to make trouble.
“What’s on Sub-Level Five?” Makkon looked at Tamryn.
She glanced at the soldier and said nothing. Makkon sighed. He wanted so much for her to be an ally—more than an ally—but he couldn’t forget that she worked for the other side. Kisses notwithstanding, she must be pleased that the scientists had escaped and might make trouble.
A soft clank came from a vent near the ceiling, then a draft of air blew out of it. Makkon almost dismissed it—the purifiers and circulators had gone on before. But a faint metallic odor drifted out on the draft.
“Gas,” he barked, his gaze locking onto the vent. Again. Had the scientists been watching feeds of what the pirates had been doing on their bridge?
The gas was colorless, and he couldn’t see it drifting out, but he had no doubt that it was there. He didn’t see any way to close the vent. Worse, it was one of eight in the room. Even if he could somehow block this one, he couldn’t stop the airflow through all of them.
Tamryn jumped to her feet.
“Do you know what it is?” Makkon assumed that whatever it was, he wouldn’t like it. It could be something designed to knock him out—but it could also be designed to kill everyone who smelled it. The scientists might have decided it was worth sacrificing a couple of their people in order to rid the station of invaders.
Tamryn took a step toward the door, then paused and looked at Gruzinsky for a long minute. He still had his back to them and hadn’t stirred at the warning of gas.
“No time now. Maybe we can come back for him,” she muttered, then sprinted for the door.
Makkon lunged to cut her off, but paused. Fleeing wouldn’t do her any good if the gas was being pumped throughout the station, and she wouldn’t be able to get to Sub-Level Five any more easily than Brax’s team had. She must have something else in mind.
Instead of grabbing her, Makkon raced after her. If he needed to, he could overtake her and stop her. Already, the metallic scent was stronger. He could taste it on his tongue. He didn’t know yet what it would do, but he doubted it would be anything good. He coughed as it tickled the back of his throat, seeming to coat it.
Tamryn headed for the lift, but caught herself at an intersection, flailing and almost caroming off a corner as she seemed to change her mind mid-step. She veered left, opened a hatch, and practically dove into a ladder well. Makkon followed right after her, sliding down the outside instead of using the rungs. It occurred to him that she might have prior knowledge of this attack and be leading him into a trap. Despite the thought, he continued after her, onto the next level, around a corner, and to gray double doors. She waved at a sensor beside them, and they opened.
An armory lay before them. Rifles and pistols lined one wall, many missing since they’d been grabbed by the soldiers defending the station. A vault labeled explosives was in the back, and along the other wall, a long line of white suits of combat armor gleamed, reflecting the overhead lights that had flipped on as soon as Tamryn entered.
Even
before she lunged for one of the smaller suits, Makkon realized why she had come. The combat armor, suitable for short missions into space, would be self-contained with tanks of air built in.
As she hurried to don a suit that had probably already been fitted for her, he searched the rest of the options and tried to find one that would suit his big frame. The metallic scent had intensified, and his movements were starting to feel sluggish. His lungs ached, as if he had inhaled cold air on the surface of the moon without a mask. Worried he didn’t have much time, he grabbed the biggest suit. But he fumbled with the pieces. While Tamryn had clearly been trained on how to put on the armor, he struggled to figure out how to wedge his body inside of it. It didn’t help that it had been designed for someone as tall as he was, but lacking his thickness of torso and limb.
Tamryn finished dressing, pulling the helmet over her head and sealing herself in with a snap-hiss. Makkon coughed, feeling the effects of the gas creeping through him. He felt inept in front of Tamryn. Worse, she stood there watching him. As a long moment passed, he thought he wouldn’t be able to get the cursed suit on and that he would pass out at her feet.
“There’s a button inside there,” she said, pointing. “It adjusts the girth.” Her voice sounded hollow and strange through the helmet. That did not stop him from rushing to follow her instructions.
A wave of dizziness washed over him when he stood straight to don the helmet. He wobbled and placed his hand on the wall for support, knocking two rifles off the rack. Tamryn, her hands now ensconced in white metallic gloves, fiddled with something at his neck, and the helmet snapped into place. A faint hum started up, and clean air whispered past his nostrils. He inhaled gratefully. Several displays popped up before his eyes, his own body readings, sensors of the surrounding area, and a camera feed from the back of the helmet. There were also built-in weapons in the arms that read fully charged.
Makkon found it all daunting, but he reminded himself that he didn’t intend to fight in the suit. He just needed to be able to breathe. With relief, he saw that he had two hours of air.
“There’s a neural reader that would be fitted to the usual wearer of the suit,” came Tamryn’s voice over an inter-suit comm channel. “But you can use voice commands for basic functions. If you start talking, the options will come up.” She stood beside him, looking at him through the faceplate of her helmet. Or maybe she was looking at his suit, because in a more subdued voice, she added, “I think that was Sergeant Wu’s armor.”
Had that been the man who had charged out of the comm station with her when they’d first met? The name sounded familiar, like she had mentioned it before.
“Thank you,” Makkon said quietly. The commands she had mentioned did indeed pop up, one more display to hover confusingly in the air before his eyes. “You didn’t have to help me.”
He couldn’t see her face well through the two faceplates separating them and didn’t know if regret lurked in her eyes.
“I’m hoping it’s just a knockout gas, since I couldn’t bring Gruzinsky with me, but I wasn’t positive it wouldn’t kill,” she said, her voice grim.
“I’ll take it as encouraging that you don’t seem to want me dead anymore,” Makkon said, hoping to lighten her thoughts, since she sounded distressed over the man she’d left behind. If he had known what she had intended, he could have carried the soldier. Why hadn’t she asked for his help? Because she still didn’t trust him?
She stepped out of the armory without answering.
Should he offer to lead her back to check on the man now? No, he had to stop this gas, because it was a threat to all of his people, and he couldn’t risk letting her out of his sight. She might join with the scientists and cause even more trouble.
He joined her in the corridor, his belly roiling from the effects of the gas. Brax might have prioritized the pirates, but Makkon would not. It was time to find his way to the civilians and apprehend them again. A bleak thought came to him, one helped along by the lingering ache in his lungs. What if that gas out there was toxic? What if he became the last of his people on the station? Could he complete this mission by himself?
“Can anyone hear us while we’re talking on this comm channel?” Makkon asked.
He slung his ice axe over his back, though the strap almost didn’t fit over his armored shoulder, and found a holster built into the leg of the suit for his pistol. He kept his rifle in his hands. He felt perfectly capable of combat like that, but he peered into the armory, wondering if he might find one more tool. Brax had mentioned cutting his way through the floor and into Sub-Level Five. Maybe the well-equipped armory would have... There. That looked like a thermite lance, or perhaps something more sophisticated. He grabbed it, in the hope that it was what he needed.
“Someone in Comm and Control could plug in, but I doubt there’s anybody there, and...” A moment passed, her gaze flickering about behind the faceplate as she read some display. “We’re the only ones with active suits of armor.”
“In that case—” He stopped when Tamryn reached back into the armory and pulled a laser rifle out of the rack.
She faced him, a challenge in her eyes. She didn’t say, “I helped you get into the suit; now let me arm myself,” but she might as well have.
“The armor protects you but doesn’t change much else,” Makkon said. “You’ll still have trouble hitting my people.” At least, that had been true for the soldiers in suits that they had fought in engineering. She had uncanny accuracy that almost made him wonder if she shared some genes with his people. “I’ll have to stop you if you try.”
“Ditto.” She gave him an edged smile. “We’ve got pirates we can both shoot, right?”
Makkon hesitated. He had no intention of focusing on the pirates, who were probably already unconscious—or dead—somewhere, affected by the gas. Still, he patted her on the shoulder, the sentiment clumsy with the armor between them, and nodded toward the lift. “Yes, we do.”
They walked side by side down the corridor, the broad suits almost making them knock each other into walls. It was clunky and awkward, but Makkon liked the idea of going into battle with her again.
“What were you going to say?” Tamryn asked as they stepped inside the lift. “Before I grabbed the gun.”
“Oh. That I enjoyed kissing you very much and that we should find a way to do it again, perhaps without soldiers looking on.” He decided not to mention that the time they had spent in her room kept coming to his mind at inappropriate moments, and that he would enjoy doing more than kissing too.
The sound of her soft sigh came through the comm clearly. “That’s not a good idea.”
Makkon couldn’t have expected her to say anything else, but the rejection stung, nonetheless. No, he decided. It wasn’t a rejection, just an acknowledgment that she couldn’t see a future where it would ever be acceptable for them to be together. He could think of all manner of scenarios, including one that involved his people putting that faster-than-light technology to use on a colony ship to another system, but they would all involve her abandoning her duty and leaving her family, perhaps forever. With his stomach upset from more than the whiffs of gas he’d inhaled, he knew he couldn’t ask her to do any of those things.
Chapter 17
As the lift descended toward the level Makkon had selected, the one directly above the level where the scientists had cordoned themselves off, Tamryn considered the options offered to her by the suit’s HUD and controls. He intended to stop the scientists from gassing the station, and he surely wanted to stop them from whatever else they had planned to take back control. She could not allow that.
He had seen her grab the rifle in the armory. She didn’t think he had noticed her stuffing flex cuffs and a couple of grenades into the exterior sling. He had still been donning his suit then. Judging by the way he had struggled with that, he had never used combat armor before. He probably didn’t know that there were differences between their suits, that hers had more applications a
nd options because it had been modified for an officer’s use. It had more power too.
She could raise the statistics for all of the soldiers on the station who were wearing suits, including him, and she could take over control of his suit at any time. Those overrides were there so commanders could walk injured or unconscious men out of battle if they couldn’t do it themselves. As long as gas filled the corridors, Makkon couldn’t simply remove his suit, though she worried that with his superhuman strength, he might be able to fight the mechanized power. She could also activate the meds built into the suit, a collection that ranged from adrenaline-based concoctions to give an injured man the wherewithal to finish a mission to painkillers to keep him from noticing those injuries.
If there had been a pure sedative, she would have already tried to inject him with it. There were enough painkillers that they might affect his reaction time, but she had no idea if he had a normal metabolism or if it might be faster or enhanced somehow. Hadn’t he said something about certain drugs not working effectively on his people? On her display, his heart rate was at the low end of normal currently, and his blood pressure was normal. None of the vital statistics gave her any clues. Tamryn didn’t want to randomly try things, not when they might not work. She would only get one chance before he realized what she was up to and turned from ally to enemy again. At that point, she had no delusions about the armor protecting her from him. It hadn’t protected the rest of her men or any of the pirates on that ship.
Makkon stepped out as soon as the doors opened on Sub-Level Four. Two men lay sprawled in the corridor, as if they had been racing for the lift but hadn’t made it before the gas overcame them. The brawny bare arms suggested they were Makkon’s men rather than pirates. The back of one’s head looked like it belonged to the engineer. Dornic was his name.
Makkon crouched next to him and turned him over. He frowned down at his gloved hand. The metal barrier would make it impossible to test for a pulse.
Frost Station Alpha 1-6: The Complete Series Page 19