Edge of War (The Eternal Frontier Book 2)

by Anthony J Melchiorri

“Affirmative,” Sharick said.

  Maybe it was an antiquated notion from watching too many old holofilms, but Tag had been envisioning shelves of digital texts or datacubes—something more in line with the human definition of a library. Instead, the Mechanic library was a mazelike room full of pods. Each pod appeared as if it could fit a single person on an uncomfortable-looking flat cylinder Tag assumed was a seat. In front of each seat was a single holoscreen and terminal. The pods were stacked atop each other, accessible by ladders.

  The library wasn’t free from the horrors that had played out in the rest of the station. Several of the pods held the bodies of Mechanics who had apparently sought refuge here.

  Sharick started to lead the group between the pods and under the ladders. Tag forced himself to ignore the grisly images they passed, focusing instead on the hope that maybe there was actually someone alive here. Someone who had survived the massacre.

  “Fat chance we’re going to find the person who recorded the distress call,” Lonestar said, as if reading his mind and ready to squash the remnants of his fading optimism.

  They followed the winding paths into another half circle of pods. The squad bristled, their rifles pointed in every direction. Sharick walked toward a ladder and began climbing it.

  “This should be...it. There’s no one here. Just an abandoned wrist terminal.” Sharick paused at the third pod from the ground then turned and looked around at the others. “Does anyone see any bodies?”

  The words sent a chill through Tag, and he spun on his heels, looking for who could have left the terminal behind. But there were no Mechanics, dead or alive, anywhere in this section of the pods.

  “Gods be damned,” Tag said. His ears perked, waiting for the hiss of Drone-Mech troopers descending on them in power armor, the blare of pulsefire screaming past them, and the clatter of boots from all around. “We got what we came for. Let’s get back to the ships.”

  “Sumo, Gorenado, how’s it look out there?” Bull asked.

  “Clear as the sky on a sunny day,” Sumo replied. “Not so much as a peep out here.”

  Tag’s nerves started to fire, his vision growing narrow as they returned to the library’s exit. Something wasn’t right. He strained to hear footsteps or heavy breathing or something to let him know they were being watched, that the Drone-Mechs were here. The hatch appeared before them, still trying to close on itself and meeting with the same failure, over and over. Sumo, Gorenado, and one of the Mechanics waved at them from the other side, signaling that all was clear.

  One of the Mechanics reached the door first and started to slide through. The door’s clicking stopped. It slammed shut with a resonating thud and cleaved the Mechanic at his torso before he could so much as yelp. Lonestar bounded forward with another Mechanic at her side. The Mechanic tried activating the door terminal. When that failed, together they pried at the door using a discarded piece of singed bulkhead.

  “Can’t get it!” Lonestar said.

  “Can we override it?” Tag asked.

  The Mechanic at the hatch shook his head. “I already tried, but I’m completely locked out of the terminal.”

  “Son of a bitch!” Bull boomed. “Sharick, there’s got to be another way out.”

  “Yes,” Sharick said. “But it’s that direction.”

  Tag followed Sharick’s pointing finger. Something was floating in the air, bathed in the shadows. It let out a shriek then flew straight at them like a wraith come to collect its debt.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN

  Sharick’s rifle barked before he said another word. Blue pulsefire coursed through the library from the other Mechanics, joined swiftly by the kinetic slugs exploding from the marines’ rifles. Tag barely had time to shoulder his own weapon. The flying thing tried to dodge the fusillade, but it didn’t stand a chance against the pure quantity of rounds pouring in its direction. Energy rounds burned against its flesh, but to Tag’s surprise, they didn’t pierce it. The rounds must have done something to it, though, because the thing crashed into the ground, bounced, and rolled toward Tag’s feet.

  “What is that thing?” Tag asked. “Is this from one of the research projects?”

  “No,” Sharick said. He and the other Mechanics were still tense, their rifles searching the shadows and space around the pods. “We call them Dreg.”

  “Dreg?” Tag kicked the body of the alien. The Dreg was no larger than a human head. Its slimy skin glistened under the light from Tag’s helmet. The alien’s body appeared somewhat like a slug except it had six thin arms protruding from under its mouth. A long tongue lolled out of the creature’s mouth between rows of serrated white plates that approximated teeth. From the back of its fat neck sprouted a pair of fibrous, translucent wings, somewhere between those of a housefly and a bat.

  “Ugliest goddamn butterfly I ever saw,” Lonestar said. She raised her boot above it, ready to stomp it, then stopped. “These things poisonous or anything? Like if we get splashed with that green stuff oozing out of its wounds, is that bad?”

  “In the wise words of Lieutenant Sofia Vasquez, it would smell like shit,” Coren said, “but no, the Dreg aren’t poisonous. They’re a menace but not poisonous.”

  The sounds of buzzing wings echoed throughout the library, but still they couldn’t see another Dreg. Instead of venturing into the unknown and risking an ambush, Sharick ordered two of the Mechanics to burn a hole through the hatch with their wrist-mounted plasma torches. Sparks bounced off the alloy as they cut through it, and the light wavered off the torches, casting flickering shadows all around the pods. It made trying to track down any Dreg even more challenging.

  “This isn’t your first time running into them?” Tag asked.

  “Not at all,” Coren said.

  “What in the hell are they?” Bull asked. “Damn things seem impenetrable to pulsefire. Almost as good as our energy shields.”

  “Don’t be fooled,” Coren said. “The skin does burn, but most importantly, the heat is transferred and cooks their insides. They die easy enough.”

  “Then why do we need to be scared of ’em?” Lonestar asked. “They look like bugs to me.”

  “Underestimating your enemy can be deadly,” Coren said. “They’re a sentient race. Parasitic, as if that’s a surprise. Their ships look and work worse than a human’s. What they lack in sophistication they make up for in sheer numbers. Where there’s one, there’s a hundred.”

  “Shit,” Bull said. “So they’re like bedbugs.”

  Lonestar visibly shivered. “Remember when we were headed to the Montenegro on the Condor? Whole ship got infested with bedbugs, and it took months to zap every last one from between the walls and air vents and...gods, it was terrible.”

  “That sounds about like a Dreg infestation,” Coren said. He never took his eyes off his rifle’s sights.

  “You think they set this trap? Not the Drone-Mechs?” Tag asked. The Dreg were disgusting, and he would take Coren’s advice by not discounting their danger, but he was glad they weren’t Drone-Mechs.

  “I told you they were decently intelligent,” Coren said. “Maybe not individually, but they possess a swarm intelligence.”

  “Smart or not, they’re still disgusting,” Lonestar said, “and by the gods, I grew up on a goddamn ranch.”

  “Don’t make me tell you how they breed,” Coren said.

  The buzzing of the Dreg intensified, and Tag thought he saw movement in the shadows. Every time he swept his light to disperse the darkness, he found nothing.

  “What’s the progress on the hatch?” Sharick asked.

  “Almost there,” a Mechanic said over the din of the unseen buzzing wings and the growl of the plasma torches.

  “What are these goddamn things waiting for?” Bull asked. “Come on, you ugly pieces of shit, you want something, you come and get it!”

  The buzzing became a boiling roar, and a cloud of Dreg rose above the pods. It was impossible to pick a single alien out of the amassing horde, so
Tag squeezed his trigger over and over, shooting into the storm of winged abominations. Pulsefire screamed all around him, drowning out the plasma torches, and Dreg bodies flopped against the deck with sickening thuds.

  But like a descending tornado, the flying creatures swirled toward Tag and the others. Adrenaline pumped through Tag faster than he could shoot as the aliens blurred together. He braced for the impact of the creatures as they slammed through the barrage of gunfire. Soon enough, the creatures would cover them in a flood of grimy bodies, and Tag feared their battle would be short lived. Maybe it would have been easier to face Drone-Mechs after all.

  “Captain!” Sofia’s voice cried out in alarm over the comms. “We’ve got incoming contacts. Dozens of air car–sized ships just started pouring from the wreckage of Nycho.”

  A two-armed assault. The Dreg were smart indeed. Divide and conquer while the ships were docked and the forces spread thin.

  “We’re through!” a Mechanic voice yelled over the unholy chorus of rushing, shrieking Dreg.

  Bull and Sharick covered the others as they hurtled through the freshly shorn hole in the hatch. Once everyone else had cleared the hatch, Bull came through first, and the Dreg overwhelmed Sharick, covering his suit.

  “Go!” Sharick boomed over the comms. His limbs were coated in Dreg as they sank their teeth into his armor. The scrape of their teeth-like protrusions against the alloy was jarring enough. Adding that to their wailing war cries, Tag was forced to reduce the volume on his environmental audio sensors. The Mechanics had already started off in a jog, following Sharick’s order with no hesitation.

  But Bull didn’t follow their lead, and Tag couldn’t fathom leaving Sharick behind either. Somewhere in the mass of squirming brown bodies, Sharick was being smothered. Bull reached an arm into them, grabbed Sharick, and yanked against the force of their beating wings as they pulled Sharick back through the hatch toward the rest of the swarm. Bull’s boots slid on the deck, and if he didn’t let go, it appeared he too would be tugged into the library with the Dreg. Tag ran to the hole in the hatch and forced a hand through the Dreg to get a handhold on Sharick. Several started to gnaw on his suit, and others who hadn’t landed on Sharick flew toward Tag and Bull.

  Tag’s muscles burned with an agonizing fire as he struggled against the creatures. The vessels in his neck bulged with the effort, and his mind was screaming to let go, that he was putting his life in too much danger and Sharick was already gone. Tag and Bull continued fighting against the Dreg, but their combined strength was quickly being overcome. They would have to give in, have to follow Sharick’s last command after all.

  Someone grabbed Tag from behind.

  “You’re not going anywhere, Captain,” Gorenado said.

  Sumo, Lonestar, and Coren soon joined them, with the Mechanics finally relenting to go against their leader’s orders and assist in a death-defying match of tug-of-war. Their belabored breathing and curses ringing over Tag’s comm, the combined Mechanic and human forces prevailed over the Dreg. Sharick popped through the hole in the hatch. Dreg still covered his suit, their teeth grinding and squealing against the alloy. The Mechanics and marines made short work of the grotesque slug-like beings, peeling the aliens off and firing at them point-blank or smashing them between their boots and the deck. Still the rest of the horde funneled through the hole in the hatch like so many angry hornets.

  “Fire!” Bull roared. The marines levied salvo after salvo into the Dreg. The Mechanics defaulted to taking combat orders from Bull and joined the marines’ efforts. Most of the disgusting creatures perished under the fire, impaled by slugs and pulsefire ripping through their ranks. By the power of sheer mass and quantity, they continued surging forward and pushed past the bottleneck.

  “We need to move!” Tag yelled over the heat of the battle. He started dragging Sharick away from the maelstrom of Dreg and gunfire. “Come on, Sharick, we got to get you out of here.”

  Gas vented from holes in the Mechanic’s armor. It froze almost as soon as it hit the air and fell over Sharick like a miniature snowfall. As Tag lugged Sharick away and the others provided cover fire, the holes slowly stopped geysering atmosphere as the self-regulating redundancies built into the suit clotted the compromised sections of the armor. With the holes closed off, Sharick used a hand to push himself to his feet. Tag could hear him gasping through the comms, trying to catch his breath after having lost so much breathable air. When he put weight on his right foot, he tumbled until Tag caught him. Black liquid had frozen along a laceration in the armor that stretched from the Mechanic’s knee to his ankle. The gap appeared much too large for the self-healing components of the suit to fix on their own. It seemed the blood and coagulating oil had clogged the hole by freezing, and the sheer amount of blood loss made Tag recoil, wondering how Sharick could even be alive.

  “Leg’s hurt,” Sharick said with a wheeze. “Think I’m still bleeding.”

  Bull paused from shooting and held out an open palm to Sharick. Sharick grasped at his hand feebly, and Bull helped the Mechanic stand.

  “Thank you,” Sharick said.

  “No problem, brother,” Bull said. “We’ve got a thing in the SRE. Never leave a man behind.”

  Tag marveled at Bull’s sudden compassion for the Mechanics. He didn’t have long to dwell on whether this was a permanent alteration in Bull’s attitude toward the aliens or just a temporary way of the marine showing his moral warrior superiority over the Mechanics.

  “You and you!” Tag yelled, pointing at two of the Mechanics. “Help Sharick. He’s injured. Get him back to your ship. We’ll cover!”

  The Mechanics slipped their arms around Sharick and helped him limp forward, back down the passages and past the bodies they had passed on the way here. As the Dreg wound out of the library in a tendril formation, their shrieks and droning wings roaring louder, Tag hoped he and his crew wouldn’t soon join the eternal slumbers of the Mechanics around them. Like a sledgehammer, the swarm of Dreg fell on them.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT

  Tag and the marines scrambled away from the swarming Dreg. The little flying aliens hit the deck where Tag had been moments ago, thudding and slapping against it in a cacophony that sounded like a fisherman unloading a catch large enough to keep him set for life. A few of the Dreg struggled to fly again, scrambling over each other and making sickening slurping noises. In a wave of muddy brown, they roiled toward Tag. His boot landed on one of the creatures, and he slipped, falling backward. His shoulder and hip slammed against the deck with a boom that echoed in his suit. Pain rocked through him as Coren stepped to his side.

  A few of the grotesque monsters latched onto Coren’s suit, but he paid them no heed as he aimed his wrist-mounted weapons at the swirling masses still flooding from the hatch. Blue-and-orange tongues of fire licked from Coren’s wrists and swallowed a swathe of Dreg. The monsters shrieked in high-pitched wails that felt like someone was hammering a nail into Tag’s eardrums. Their bodies shriveled and crisped, but still they pushed against the flames.

  “Little shits are tough as nails,” Sumo roared, firing into the slowed-down masses.

  “How do you think they survive in this atmosphere?” Coren asked, the glow of the flames flickering over the front of his suit.

  They retreated into a narrow tunnel, forcing the Dreg into another funnel. The fire allayed the assault somewhat, but it hadn’t turned the tide of their numbers.

  “They’re suicidal!” Sumo said. She jammed a fresh magazine into her rifle.

  “Their individual lives are nothing compared to the life of their colony,” Coren said matter-of-factly, as if he weren’t roasting a swarm of ugly flying slugs.

  A Dreg, still on fire, crawled forward using its insectile legs. Its wings burned, making it look like some kind of rejected demon banished from the three hells. Tag put four rounds into the Dreg, and it wheezed like a balloon deflating. Thick black-and-brown fluid oozed from its slack mouth. Tag kicked its leaking body back int
o the horde, and the little beasts flew out of its way, still churning into the wall of fire.

  “Alpha, Sofia, how are we holding up?” Tag asked.

  “I can’t do a damn thing until we’re no longer docked,” Sofia said. “Alpha and I are filling the air around us with PDC fire and chaff. But these ships are so damn small it’s hard, even up close, to get these assholes. Like trying to shoot a fly with a pulse rifle.”

  “What about the energy shields?”

  “We cannot engage the energy shields at full strength since we are docked,” Alpha said.

  “Right, right,” Tag said. “Dammit. We’re about halfway back to the ships. Hold them off as best you can.”

  “We will attempt to do our best, Captain,” Alpha replied.

  The flames spurting from Coren’s wrists started to sputter. “I’m almost out!”

  Another Mechanic took his place, and fire jutted from his wrists. Tag was relieved to have something to stymy the Dreg assault, but the barrier of fire wouldn’t protect them much longer. They appeared to be losing narrow passages to escape through and were approaching a much wider chamber. This chamber was filled with benches and had a river cutting through the middle. It was frozen solid, and all around protruded the husks of what once looked to be plant life. A park. The Mechanics actually had a park aboard the station. For some reason, even in the literal heat of battle, the notion that Mechanics would expend the resources to preserve a park in their station was strange to Tag.

  “When we hit the open field,” Bull said, “I don’t want any of us wasting our time trying to pick these things off. It’s too open to establish any worthwhile resistance. Charge straight for the opposite side. We need to make it to that passage. Mechanics, we’ll give you a head start. Marines, I want you on me. We’re going to hold them in the tunnel as long as we can. Set up a line of fire on the park’s perimeter.”

  But like all good plans, Bull’s didn’t stand up to reality.

  The buzzing of the Dreg echoed from all around, as if they had somehow passed the barricade of fire the Mechanics were laying down. Tag searched the bulkhead and the quarters they passed with open hatches. But he couldn’t see them.