Edge of War (The Eternal Frontier Book 2) Read online

  “You do that,” Tag said. He couldn’t help the slight grin crossing his face. “No heads duty, Sofia, but we do need to get our new additions to the crew caught up on everything.”

  CHAPTER THREE

  Tag led Sofia past the mess hall.

  “I thought we were meeting with the new marines,” she said, eyeing the hatch.

  “We will, but not yet,” he replied. Admiral Doran had initially told them she couldn’t spare much more than supplies. The Montenegro had lost far too many crew members from the Drone-Mech attack, and she needed all the surviving hands to take care of the maimed ship and other injured crew members. However, while the Argo was being repaired and undergoing preflight preparations, Doran had managed to scrounge up a squad of marines to help fill the ghostly corridors. Initially the ship had held a full crew of sixty-four, satisfying all the necessary redundancies to ensure that if an integral crew member was lost, their skills at least were not. There were others that could step into their place. Tag didn’t have that luxury now, but at least he had a few more guns in case things got ugly on Eta-Five or another run-in with the Drone-Mechs led to an unexpected boarding.

  “I really was joking about the heads, you know,” Sofia said. “You’re not making me do the cleaning, are you?”

  “No,” Tag said, opening the hatch to the med bay. He led her in. The familiar sterile smell greeted his nostrils. A tinge of burned plastic drifting in the recycled air served as a constant reminder of the working air scrubbers and filters. The buzz of laboratory equipment provided soft background noise as Tag leaned against one of the cylindrical regen chambers. He crossed his arms over his chest. “I want to talk about Coren.”

  “He’s a good fighter,” Sofia said with a wry smile. “You can’t win every match.”

  “I’m not after your sparring tips. I’m talking about what happens when we find out who made the nanites.”

  “You mean what happens if we find out the SRE is responsible.”

  “Yeah, that.”

  Sofia drummed her fingers on a silver examination table. “Let’s hope it doesn’t come to that.”

  “But if it does,” Tag started, “then what’s he going to do? We’re bringing a load of Mechanic ship parts back to the Stalwart. It’s bigger than us. It’s got better weapons than us. He’s got a crew that’s exponentially larger than ours sitting on Eta-Five and waiting to fly again.” Tag paced in front of the regen chambers. “I’ve known the guy for a matter of weeks now. And even though he’s about as emotional as a statue most of the time, I can still tell he goes through bouts of wondering whether he can trust us. He’s a part of the crew one moment then distant the next.”

  “Wouldn’t you be if you were him?” Sofia asked.

  “Without a doubt,” Tag replied. “I don’t find his behavior strange, but...you know him better than I do. What I want to know is what you think he’ll do if—and three hells, I hope this is a big if—if we find out the SRE is somehow involved with the nanites.”

  Sofia let out a long exhalation as if she was buying time before delivering bad news. “I want to say I think he’d spare us. That he’d spare the Argo. You know as well as I do that he’s true to his word to a fault. The Mechanics are bound by two things: logic and honor. And while he might honor our lives, honor the fact that we’re going back to help his people, logic might tell him we’re the enemy. That it’s more advantageous to stop his enemy whenever and wherever he can find them.”

  “That doesn’t bode well for us.”

  “Nope,” Sofia agreed. “But I’m with you. I can’t believe the SRE would be behind this. Maybe it’s some rebellious colony. Then we shouldn’t have to worry about the Mechanics at all.”

  “Maybe.” But Tag doubted it. The genetic integration technologies involved with the nanites were so advanced that they were practically magic to Tag’s scientifically trained mind. It would take a colony with exceptional access to the best scientific resources and brains. “Keep an eye on him for me, will you? He probably trusts you more than he does me. After all the skepticism I threw at him, I wouldn’t expect anything less.”

  “Will do,” Sofia said. “Anything else?”

  “Sure you don’t want to clean the heads?”

  “Positive.”

  “Then let’s go have that chat with our marine friends.”

  ***

  “Son of a bitch!” A grizzled voice boomed from the open hatch of the mess hall. Something slammed against the bulkhead, and the noise of the impact reverberating through metal brought back memories of the Drone-Mechs’ initial attack on the Argo. Tag’s heart immediately thrashed against his rib cage.

  “You good, boss?” Sofia asked, giving him a curious glance.

  “Peachy.” Tag recomposed himself.

  They entered the mess and were greeted by the raucous yells of marines. A game of Turbo was playing on the viewscreen showing the Weir City Mars Razors playing against the Rome New Union Juggernauts. The 40–20 score showed a clear lead by the Razors. Tag watched a player sail over another’s head to launch what appeared to be a game-clinching hammer-down, though he wasn’t sure which team the player belonged to until the viewscreen pulsated with “Razors WIN.” While the voices of the five marines watching echoed in a mix of celebration and disappointment, a hollow feeling crept into Tag’s chest. The mess normally fit forty crew members. Scientists to run experiments. Marines for security. Engineers to keep the ship in pristine shape. All of them were gone. The sense of loneliness Tag had first experienced at finding himself alone on the Argo still haunted him, fueled by the memories of his former crewmates, including Staff Sergeant Kaufman. A vague memory of her proudly declaring her loyalty to the Razors cropped up in his mind.

  “Commander!” The olive-skinned, mustachioed Giovanni ‘G’ Mezo snapped to attention. Tag had spent enough time mingling with the crew of the Montenegro while the Argo was being repaired that he recognized most of the new additions to his command. Giovanni had boyish looks that underscored his nascent career within the SRE and belied the typical genetically enhanced athletic frame so characteristic of the navy’s foot soldiers.

  Rebecca “Lonestar” Hudson, blond hair shaved razor short and dyed with a shocking line of blue, yanked on Giovanni’s sleeve. “Give it a break, G,” she said with a drawl that made Tag think of all the Texas stereotypes people had ascribed to him when they found out he was born in Old Houston. Unlike him, Rebecca had never been to the SRE province that now encompassed Texas, instead hailing from a homestead on a colony planet.

  Giovanni paused, unsure what to do until Tag said, “At ease.”

  A woman with braided hair black as the space between stars shook her head at Giovanni. Fatima “Sumo” Kajimi. “Commander says we’re not an uptight ship, then we’re not an uptight ship. Relax, G.”

  Marvin “Gorenado” Goreham turned off the viewscreen with a simple hand gesture. The movement, despite its subtlety, made the nano-ink dragon and fire tattoos on his dark skin pulsate with color.

  “Thanks,” Tag said.

  The fifth and final marine strode over from a corner, where he had been studying something on his wrist terminal.

  “Briefing time, Commander Brewer?” Sergeant Ryan “Bull” Buhlman asked.

  He brushed a hand over his short red hair, and his green eyes narrowed. The self-described station rat had spent his life growing up in SRE navy-controlled space stations with intermittent gravity, never so much as traveling down the gravity well toward a planet. He was a full head shorter than Tag, which made him an unusual physical anomaly in the otherwise genetically enhanced and bulky people that composed the majority of the marine population.

  “That’s right, Bull,” Tag said. The call sign came out awkwardly when he said it. The marines had insisted he use the nicknames. They hadn’t let him in on any of their origin stories, so every time he talked with them, it felt like he was a stranger trying to make sense of an inside joke. “Sofia’s got a presentation on the x
enos you’re going to see on Eta-Five—and some that I hope you don’t see.”

  “Oh, we got some scary monsters there, huh?” Fatima—Sumo, Tag corrected himself internally—asked.

  “Monsters or not,” Lonestar said, “I reckon it’ll be nice to set foot on an actual planet. Been too long since my boots touched solid ground.”

  Gorenado simply huffed in agreement.

  “Let’s get on with it,” Bull said, his eyes never wavering in intensity.

  “All right then,” Sofia said, sauntering to the mess’s main viewscreen. She rubbed her hands together like a professor starting class, and a wide smile crossed her face. “This is the first real presentation I get to give on Eta-Five and the Forinths. Studied these suckers for the past five years, so you have no idea how much I’ve been waiting for this moment.” Her smile faded. “Only problem is I didn’t think I’d be giving it to a bunch of jarheads, so if I go too fast for you all, feel free to stop me and ask questions.”

  “Yes, ma’am,” G said attentively.

  Sumo rolled her eyes.

  “You’re already familiar with the Mechanics,” she began. “You’ve met Coren, and he’s told you more about them then I ever could. I don’t have too much to add other than to say watch your tongue around them. They pride themselves on their mechanical aptitude and their honor. They’re a pragmatic species, so don’t go insulting them or questioning their intelligence.”

  “Why are y’all looking at me?” Lonestar said, looking shocked.

  “Doesn’t take a scientist like her to pick out which one of us always starts the bar fights,” Sumo said.

  Lonestar raised her hands in mock innocence, but Bull shot them both a serious look, and the duo quieted, their attention returning to Sofia.

  “Anyway, you might accidentally insult a Mechanic, but they aren’t the dangerous ones. It’s the Forinths you need to look out for. They’re the indigenous race,” Sofia said, gesturing across the viewscreen. A 3-D projection of one of the octopus-like aliens floated in the air, rotating slowly for all of them to see. “They don’t communicate in normal phonetic patterns like you and me. Instead, they use melody, rhythm, and pitch. So don’t even bother trying to start a conversation. Anything you say will sound like nails on a chalkboard to them. Most importantly, they’re going to introduce each one of you to the Forest of Light—”

  “Forest of Light?” Bull said with a smirk hinting at condescension. “What the hell kind of place is this? Chippyville?” he asked, referencing the popular kids’ holoshow-turned-theme-park space stations.

  “Doesn’t sound near as scary as y’all make it out to be,” Lonestar added.

  “We’ll see what you think when a Forinth is dangling you over the mouth of a live volcano knowing that if you scream, they’ll drop you,” Tag said. The marines shifted, eyeing him nervously. “Been there, done that. And it’s not as fun as it sounds.”

  Sofia continued as they listened with now rapt attention to an overview of the Forinths’ camouflage abilities and the scything, bony claws that could extend from the end of each of their tentacles. She explained their fanatical devotion to the balance of life within the underground Forest of Light and their efforts to keep the ice gods from entering their paradise-like domain.

  “Ice gods, ma’am?” G asked. “Pardon me, but these things are real?”

  Sofia laughed. “A little bit too real.”

  “We barely survived an encounter with one,” Tag added.

  “Did you kill it?”

  Now Tag laughed. “Gods, no. We threw everything we had at the damn beast, and all we really did was piss it off.”

  Sofia gestured, and the viewscreen displayed a rough sketch she had drawn of the creature. Despite her talent, Tag wasn’t sure she had fully captured the horror of the menacing teeth, each large enough to grind an air car, or the dozens of beady black eyes gracing its sharp-lined face and contrasting starkly with its white fur. Tag could almost hear the creature’s roar blasting his eardrums and feel the plume of hot air exploding from its mouth as it chased him.

  “Looks like a snake got frisky with a spider and this was their bastard child,” Lonestar said.

  Gorenado’s brow creased into a series of deep gorges. “Weaknesses?”

  Sofia looked at the creature as it rotated on the holoscreen. “Only thing that’s weak when it comes to an ice god is us.”

  CHAPTER FOUR

  Tag watched Sofia brief the marines on the Forinths and Eta-Five for a while longer. Once she had finished imparting the necessary tactical knowledge of the aliens and environment they would soon encounter, the marines’ questions became increasingly more esoteric.

  Sofia seemed positively delighted. “Yes, the Forinths have family units. But they’re not anything like you or I would ever expect.”

  Tag took that as his cue to check on Alpha and Coren’s progress, eager to dig into the nanite lab work after he finished with them. His mind whirred through all the experiments to run: more chemical analyses, biochemical profiles, electromagnetic stimuli responses, and most importantly, theoretical simulations to see if the nanites could be deactivated without killing their Mechanic hosts. All of the computational simulations and studies that he and Alpha had performed had resulted in activating the built-in genetic modifications of the nanites that triggered organ-wide cell suicide. That meant anything they tried to do to the Drone-Mechs would result in their deaths, causing a virtual genocide without a chance of reverting the Drone-Mechs to their uninfected Mechanic selves. Not exactly the results they had hoped to achieve.

  A hand grabbed his shoulder, breaking his thoughts. “Commander.”

  Tag spun to face Bull. “Something wrong?”

  “I want a moment to speak to you.” From the mess’s open hatch, Tag heard Sofia answering a question about what caused the plants in the Forest of Light to glow. “Alone.”

  “Maybe it’s best we use the officers’ conference room?” Tag asked.

  “Maybe,” Bull said.

  Tag led him up the ladders to a hatch outside Captain Weber’s quarters. “Through here.” They entered an anteroom with a view into an open hatch of the private quarters as well as the conference room. While the SRE had emptied the quarters of Captain Weber’s possessions, the space remained uninhabited.

  Bull eyed the quarters. “You haven’t moved in there?”

  “No, it felt a little strange to claim Captain Weber’s quarters.”

  “But you’re the captain now,” Bull said, looking both nonplussed and slightly perturbed. “Why wouldn’t you assume the proper quarters?’

  “Is that what you wanted to talk to me about? Where I’m sleeping?” Tag asked, motioning to the conference room. It hadn’t taken long for Tag to realize Bull had a thing about order and rules. Tag wondered if Bull was the kind of guy who might see the Forest of Light as just unimpressive trees and rocks instead of the exotic and colorful array of plant and animal life it really was.

  “No,” Bull said, following Tag to the six-person oblong table within the otherwise empty conference room. He stood beside a seat until Tag motioned for him to sit. “Of course not. If I may speak freely.”

  “It’s a standing order to do just that,” Tag said. “We’re an unorthodox crew, and as such, I don’t want to waste time with too many formalities.”

  “That’s just it,” Bull said, sitting straight in the conference chair. “This isn’t a goddamn joyride. We’re flying back into enemy territory. I’m supposed to trust a green captain with my life—and those of my men—and half your crew is alien.”

  “The only alien on this ship is Coren, and it’s because of him you and I are both still alive. Without him, the Montenegro wouldn’t be anything more than flotsam and frozen bodies floating in vacuum.”

  “His alleged actions don’t make me any more confident in his allegiances,” Bull said. A burning, cantankerous red crept into his cheeks, highlighting his subtle freckles. The marine seemed to sense the heat of his
own anger and was silent for a moment. He began again with a calmer tone, but his eyes glowed no less fiercely. “We have no formal alliance with his species, no military relationships. All I’ve seen of them is an attack on the Montenegro, and you want me to believe he’s on our side.”

  “Of course,” Tag said. It took everything in him not to explode in frustration. He had been over this with so many people in the SRE. He knew the science; he had performed the experiments himself. Still, they seemed skeptical of the nanite explanation for the Drone-Mechs’ actions. He could appreciate their skepticism, but it made the task of explaining the Drone-Mechs’ enslavement over and over no less enjoyable. “Their actions were not their own.”

  “I know, Captain. I’ve heard the story. I’ve seen the briefings. But Admiral Doran gave me one mission. She said I’m to support your efforts by whatever means necessary. And while I’ll follow my orders, I want to be honest with you.” He paused. “It’s not often that I get those orders from a medical officer rather than a—”

  “A real commander?” Tag finished. “Is that what you’re looking for? I get your concerns, Bull. But I’ve served in the SRE longer than you have. I know how things work.”

  Bull looked ready to fight, his chest puffing up. “But frankly, you don’t—”

  Tag cut him off again. “I’m not a marine. Never was. But if you’ll trust my judgment on the ship, I’ll trust yours on the ground. I’m not the type to micromanage squad tactics and firefights. I’ll gladly leave that to you. Admiral Doran tells me you’re more than capable.”

  Bull’s expression remained fixed somewhere between a frown and a scowl. Over the few days Tag had known him, the marine’s mood seemed to run the canyon-wide gamut of pissed to slightly less pissed.

  “Thank you, sir,” Bull said. “That’s the least I can ask for.”

  “Anything else?”

  “No, sir.”

  Tag waited a beat. If this were a conversation with Coren or Sofia—even Alpha had started to pick up on social cues—then he would expect them to saunter off at this point. Bull didn’t move until Tag said, “Dismissed.”