Frost Station Alpha 1-6: The Complete Series

by Ruby Lionsdrake

  “What guarantee do you want?” He didn’t want to give one at all, nor suggest anything. He wanted to be able to escape while he was out there. They wouldn’t easily capture him again. He knew it, but she knew it too.

  Tamryn watched them but said nothing, clearly letting this be their deal. He couldn’t tell if she wanted him along or not. She couldn’t deny that he could be useful in a fight, but she probably knew him well enough now to realize he would take any opportunity he could get to fulfill this mission. Even if Porter extracted his word from him, who knew what would happen? Events might favor him somehow, far more than they could if he remained in a cell. Or a refrigerator.

  “I don’t suppose you would be willing to wear a neuro collar?” Porter asked.

  “A what?” Makkon had imagined having to give his word, not wear some device.

  “We use them on the big predators.” She waved back toward the labs. “If we want to study them without tranquilizers, we put the collars on them to control their behavior via signals that run up the spine and into the brain. If they’re not being aggressive and trying to kill us, the collar is dormant on their necks, but if they try to lash out at or bite us, we can take over the basic functions and walk them away, keep them from attacking.”

  Makkon couldn’t help but sneer. Having the damned combat armor obeying someone else’s commands had been bad enough. Still, he wouldn’t be honor-bound not to try and escape if they were controlling him by some physical item. They would have been better off trying to extract his word. All he would have to do was surprise whoever held the remote control for the collar and take it.

  “Who’s we?” he asked. “Who gets to control the collar?”

  Porter frowned, then looked at Tamryn.

  Makkon thought Tamryn might volunteer, but instead, her expression grew dyspeptic. “You trusted me so little that you locked me in here with him, and now you want to give me this power?”

  “I don’t,” Porter said honestly. “But I’ll be too busy figuring out how to contain and dispose of whatever mess those people made. I could give the fob to Cox, but I suspect your big friend here would be much less likely to attack you to try and wrest control of it.”

  That might be true. Makkon could no longer imagine grabbing Tamryn by the neck.

  Tamryn grimaced at Porter’s words. She either didn’t want to control him or didn’t like the idea of letting him go at all. Makkon hoped for the former. He wanted Tamryn to value him enough that she would want to take him along, even if it might be difficult to restrain him again. He would help, at least until they dealt with the problem. He almost started to tell her that he wouldn’t mind if she had the control, but she spoke first.

  “I think if you made him give his word not to try and escape while we’re working with the hazard, then that would be more likely to keep him from attacking anyone.”

  Now, Porter grimaced. “Jason, go get a collar. We don’t have time to stand and debate this in a committee.”

  Makkon arched his eyebrows but said nothing. Tamryn had, indeed, come to know him. That made her an appealing ally and a tricky opponent.

  “Alert, alert,” came the computerized voice over the speakers. “Lab Charlie on Sub-Level Nine has been sealed for containment procedures. Sub-Levels Nine and Ten will be sealed in five minutes.”

  Porter cursed and pulled out a tablet. “We need to get down there before it’s too late. The automated system doesn’t know what it’s dealing with.”

  While he waited for the collar, Makkon put his borrowed combat armor back on. It did not chafe any less than before, but he would feel better facing some toxic substances if he wore a self-contained breathing system. Tamryn had already locked everything on, except her helmet.

  The scientist who had been dispatched returned soon with a metal collar that looked like it would be difficult to break, even with his strength. Perhaps the fastener would prove less sturdy.

  “Hurry up and put it on him,” Porter said, glancing toward the speakers, where the voice was repeating its warning.

  “Uh.” The scientist—Jason—took a step toward Makkon, eyed him up and down, then halted. He handed the collar to Tamryn. “Here.”

  “Gee, thanks.”

  Even Tamryn approached him warily, perhaps fearing he would knock her away. Even if he had a mind to, several rifles were still aimed at his chest.

  She reached up and placed the collar around his neck, her eyes locked to his as she did so. Had there not been an audience, he would have said something, that it was all right, even if it wasn’t. The collar lengthened of its own accord to fit around his neck, proving it wasn’t the straight metal device he had thought it might be. When the ends touched, the hum of electricity coursed through him, reminding him uncomfortably of that net the scientists had slung over him.

  “If you give me your word you won’t try to escape while we’re dealing with this and you won’t hurt any of the station personnel, I’ll stuff this in my pocket and forget about it,” Tamryn said, taking one hand from his neck and holding up the remote control. She spoke quietly enough that he wouldn’t have made out the words over the alarm if he hadn’t had keener than average hearing. Porter and the others shouldn’t have heard.

  “If our situations were reversed, would you give me your word?”

  She smiled briefly. “No, but I’m not that bright. Judging by Captain Porter’s lack of jokes and tense expression, we could all end up dead here. This is an extreme situation.”

  She stepped back, nodding her readiness to Porter.

  “You could let all of us go—” Makkon waved toward the vault door across the corridor, “—and we could all escape on our ship.”

  “As your hostages again?” Tamryn asked.

  “Your ship won’t be going anywhere with the containment procedures in effect,” Porter said.

  Makkon thought they had given the ship enough firepower that it could break away from any locks, but he kept the thought to himself. If chaos took over here, he would keep the plan as a backup. Though he couldn’t leave without Brax and the others. Even if this team had been sent out as a potential sacrifice, they were so short on people already that he had to do everything he could to keep them alive.

  “Is that collar on? Come on.” Porter jogged down the corridor, speaking into her tablet. “Cox? You ready?”

  Tamryn still had a hand on Makkon’s neck, though the collar had fastened. “Your word?” she asked again, tucking a lock of his hair behind his ear.

  A tingle went through him that had nothing to do with the crackling electricity from the collar. It reminded him of their interrupted moment.

  “You have my word that I won’t hurt you,” Makkon said, though she had probably known that already, “and that I’ll help as long as it looks like a solution can be found. I’m not following that woman to my death—or the death of my mission.”

  From the twist of Tamryn’s lips, he doubted she had received the answer she wanted, but she stepped back so he could walk out of the vault. They jogged after Porter, their boots clomping in unison on the deck. They might be going to their deaths, but Makkon smiled, glad to be working side by side toward a common goal with Tamryn once again.

  Chapter 19

  The alarm was blaring even more loudly in the corridor outside of Anise’s lab. Tamryn, Cox, and Makkon, all armed and clad in combat armor stood in front of the door, while Anise, wearing the red hazmat suit, fiddled with the controls. As the computer had warned, the lab had been sealed, and overriding the lock was proving difficult. Maybe that was a sign that they should seal off the level and keep it that way until Fleet arrived, but nothing about the message Makkon’s people had sent had warned Fleet that they needed to bring a team of containment specialists with them. The scientists here ought to be trained for this.

  Tamryn shifted her weight, looking up and down the corridor, wondering where the pirates who had caused this problem had gone. She trusted Makkon would sense them coming first and deal wi
th them, if they were foolish enough to return to their mess, but she remained alert. What else could she do? She knew nothing about containing biological hazards, or whatever this turned out to be.

  Anise flung up her hands, then kicked the door. “I need this opened.” She looked at Tamryn’s laser rifle, then at Makkon.

  They should have brought the thermite lance; that would have been a more appropriate tool for cutting through doors. Makkon stepped forward before Tamryn could try with her rifle. He planted his palms on the door, one atop the other, and turned sideways. Tamryn raised her eyebrows, recalling that this tactic hadn’t been effective for Brax on the bridge of the Felling Axe.

  Makkon spread his legs and tried to physically push it open. Tamryn knew he was strong, and could imagine the muscles in his shoulders and back rippling, even though the combat armor blocked the view, but she doubted this would work.

  “I’ll eat my boot if he gets that open like that,” Cox said.

  “The metal combat boot or the synth-leather uniform one?” Tamryn asked.

  “Both.” Cox drummed his fingers on his rifle. “The metal one might take longer to digest.”

  A noise between a groan and a squeal came from the door. The alarm lights flashing in the corridor seemed to grow more agitated. Makkon grunted, and a gap appeared between the door and the jam. Tamryn stepped forward and stuck the tip of her rifle through, hoping the door wouldn’t snap shut again with something in the way. She needn’t have bothered. Makkon got his fingers around the edge, and then pulled the door the rest of the way open much more easily.

  “I suggest waiting to eat your boots until the contamination alert is over,” Tamryn said.

  “Yes, ma’am. They’re not any good without ketchup, anyway.”

  The way Cox still called her ma’am made her smile as much as the silly line did. He must not be among those who knew about the kiss and who thought she was siding with the enemy. She hoped he never found out.

  Anise stepped into the doorway of the lab warily, her helmet swiveling as she took everything in. “I was afraid of that.”

  “What?” Tamryn eased forward, trying to see around her shoulder.

  Anise held up a hand. “Don’t go in. My suit’s alarms are going off even more passionately than the station alarms. The air is contaminated.”

  No doubt. The entire laboratory looked like a hurricane had gone through, with equipment knocked to the floor, papers strewn everywhere, and broken vials leaking chemicals in a back corner. Though she had no idea what was in them, Tamryn’s first thought was that they might be responsible for the alarm. All of the artifacts that had been left out on the table in the center were gone. The vault door stood open, with the vault inside empty.

  Makkon noticed a laser rifle that lay on the floor by the wall, oddly abandoned. Nobody had given him a weapon when they let him out of the vault, and he swooped in to pick it up. Cox started to turn his own rifle toward Makkon.

  Makkon lifted a palm and kept the muzzle of his new acquisition toward the door. “Only if pirates show up.”

  Cox hesitated, so Tamryn put a hand on his forearm, gently pushing his rifle toward the floor too. She hoped she wouldn’t regret abetting Makkon later. But surely, he could have disarmed Cox—and her—at any point on the way down here if he had wanted to.

  Anise did not seem to notice the exchange. Wordlessly, she pointed toward the table. Papers and broken equipment were strewn across one side, but on the other, odd holes pitted the surface. Those hadn’t been there before. Broken ceramic shards littered the gray floor between the stools Tamryn and Anise had perched on earlier. Some dark sludgy material colored the shards, lay puddled on the floor, and had spattered the legs of the stools, the smoldering legs of the stools. Grayish-blue smoke wafted from the seats, and as they watched, one leg gave out. The stool toppled, landing at the edge of one of the puddles. The pieces that touched immediately started smoldering. The floor, too, had grown pitted, and Tamryn guessed that the sludge would eat through it eventually. She shuddered, imagining the acid-like material eating through level after level of the station until it reached the hull and ate a hole in it. That would definitely leave them in a bind. But no, surely Anise could find a way to contain it. Another ceramic jar, perhaps.

  “Is that biological in nature?” Makkon asked. He remained by the doorway to watch the corridor, but was scrutinizing the gunk at the moment.

  “I don’t know.” Anise had yet to step into the lab. “There weren’t many words on the outside, just a few warnings about opening the jar. Figuring out the substance inside wasn’t as important as translating the text on the artifacts related to the FTL engine. Or so my superiors told me in a message. I’d examined it, like I said, with X-rays and various measuring devices, but the most I’d figured out was that it would be a good idea to leave the lid on until I knew more.”

  “Apparently, the pirates didn’t get that message,” Tamryn said. “What do we do?”

  “Don’t touch it.”

  “I wasn’t planning to roll around in it. Trust me.”

  Anise finally stepped inside, skirting the table and heading to the back of the lab. She paused next to a ceramic disk. The lid from the amphora? It had fallen without breaking, rolling several feet from the sludge before coming to a stop near a cabinet. Dark symbols had been stamped into the underside.

  Anise bent, a hand reaching toward it, but stopped well short of touching it. “I want to try and translate that, but there could be microscopic particles on there.” She took out her tablet and took a few pictures, then walked over to a counter.

  “Is there anything we can do to help?” Tamryn asked.

  “Stay out of the way and don’t touch anything.”

  Tamryn grunted. She thought about staying out in the corridor, but seeing Anise enlarging the pictures she had taken made her think of the camera feeds around the station. “Is there a security camera in here? Can we access the feed? See what happened?”

  “Isn’t it clear what happened?”

  “We may see something helpful.”

  Anise waved toward a computer console without looking away from her new project.

  Tamryn followed the outside wall toward the console. Cox shuffled after her, while Makkon remained in the doorway, facing the corridor. She doubted the pirates would return, especially if they had an inkling of what they had unleashed, but she felt better having him stand guard.

  Finding the file for the camera recording in the lab did not take long. Tamryn ran the video in reverse until she spotted people walking into the room, people wearing combat armor, very familiar combat armor. The backs of the helmets had identification numbers on them, the same as the rest of the suits on the station. Unfortunately, the camera angle and the faceplates made it hard to see who was wearing them.

  “Found our three missing suits,” Tamryn said. “It looks like someone else did have the same thought we had, Makkon.”

  “The same thought you had,” he said. “Are those the pirates? How would they have known where your armory was? And that it would have suits in it that would protect them from the gas?”

  “That I don’t know. Yet.” Tamryn backed it up a bit more to the moment the people first walked into the lab. The artifacts—and that amphora—were still on the table, exactly as they had been when Tamryn and Anise had left earlier.

  “Do you know anything about those pirate teams that I don’t know, Makkon?” Tamryn asked. “Like how they got aboard?”

  “Brax said there was a second ship and that they might have come in the same way we did, by making their own hatch. Since pirates were attempting to board from the military ship at the same time, your alarms were already going off.”

  “Hm.”

  On the video, the men pointed upward, then one took off his helmet. He had greasy long hair and didn’t look like he’d had a shave or a bath in weeks. He sniffed the air experimentally, then nodded to his comrades. Two more helmets came off. One man had a similar look
to the first, but the second had shorter hair with a clean-shaven face. None of them had the powerful builds of Makkon’s people.

  As the intruders walked around, opening drawers and cupboards and pulling things out, Tamryn fiddled with the volume, hoping to catch voices. She also pulled up another display and ran an identification program. She doubted she would get a match, since pirate clans often lived and died aboard their ships and never became GalCon citizens, but it was possible one might be notorious enough to have been captured and scanned by the police or military.

  To her surprise, the software beeped in recognition for one of the men right away, the fellow with the shorter hair. He had a stocky build and a chiseled jaw, and was examining the artifacts on the table while his comrades dumped items they apparently intended to loot next to him. The identification program displayed his name as Sergeant Raymond Charbonneau, along with discharge dates. Recent discharge dates.

  “Anise? You recognize this fellow?” Tamryn paused the playback and enlarged the man’s face, so it would be visible across the lab.

  Anise glanced back, her face pinched in irritation. She clearly didn’t want to be bothered, but Tamryn had a hunch.

  Anise’s expression changed to one of surprise, her eyebrows arching. “Sergeant Charbonneau? He was stationed here until about three months ago.”

  “He know about the FTL engine information? The artifacts?”

  “Not... a lot. At least he shouldn’t have, but I’m sure the men speak and overhear us talking.” Anise’s lips thinned. “That could explain how they got in without setting off alarms. There are external hatches on the station, in case people need to go out for maintenance. He and his buddies might have sidled right up to the door while everyone was distracted with the other ship. All of the security codes get changed every month, but maybe he created a backdoor in for himself. He was a techie and had been out there for repairs before. He also would have known about the suits in the armory.”

  “So he retired and decided to join forces with some pirates to make some money. I’m sure information on that technology could bring a million aurums on the black market, even without the artifacts.”