Eternal Frontier (The Eternal Frontier Book 1) Read online

  A nearby explosion annihilated those thoughts, and his mind raced instinctively back to the task at hand. He braced himself against the table as the ship rocked and sent Morgan sprawling across the deck. Tag offered him a hand. The fellow medical officer accepted his grasp and stood, rubbing his head.

  “I’ve got a feeling they’re going to need us pretty damn soon,” Tag said. He turned to a humanoid silver droid tethered to its charging station. “M3, on duty.”

  The droid buzzed to life. Digital displays—its “eyes”—shone black and white, and it lurched forward.

  “With me, M3,” Tag commanded. The silent droid followed with a steady, mechanical gait.

  More protesting metal from the passageway accompanied the klaxons. It sounded like a hatch being forced open. Tag peeked into the corridor, and sure enough, someone or something fought to pry the hatch open from the other side as marines rushed to bolster the hatch with a blockade of loose crates.

  Another dozen marines formed a half-circle perimeter around the barricaded hatch. Tag felt their palpable anxiety as nervous fingers twitched near the trigger guards of their pulse rifles. The narrow passage prevented the lines of marines from stretching more than three or four across; they stood several rows deep. Another low rumble sounded from within the cargo bay, and the hatch door gave way, knocking over the wall of crates like so many tumbling toy blocks. Thick black tendrils of smoke billowed out, clogging the corridor, and the acrid scent of burning plastic stung Tag’s nostrils.

  An audible whir buzzed on behind the persistent alarms. The air filters had gone into overdrive, sucking at the smoke and desperately cleaning the pollutants out of the ship’s atmosphere.

  But smoke wasn’t the only thing pouring in from the cargo bay. Flashes of arcing blue light zipped through the dense black clouds. They looked like pulse rounds but shone more brilliantly and proved more devastating than any Tag had ever seen. A torrent of the incoming blue pulsefire burst against the bulkhead around the marines, leaving burns and fissured alloy. One round slammed into a marine’s chest armor. The polymeric chest plate cracked, and she flew back with splayed limbs. Her head snapped against the bulkhead as the others around her fired into the mushrooming fog.

  “I got her!” Tag yelled to Morgan. He ducked under the barrage of gunfire, ignoring each devastating round whistling past, and sprinted, dodging between the stanchions along the passage. Before he reached the marine’s limp body, another shrieking azure round pierced the visor of a nearby marine. The helmet—head still inside—flew off the man’s body and bounced along the deck like the most macabre kickball Tag had ever seen.

  Professional coldness and practiced medic instincts took over Tag’s mind, and he ignored the devastating fatality as he leaped over the now-headless body. He dodged under another fusillade, then dove to the first injured marine. Her fingers trembled in spastic clenching and unclenching motions as he grabbed her wrists. The busted power armor added an extra fifty pounds to her already-muscular frame, and he grunted, dragging her to the med bay as more rounds ricocheted through the passage, whining over his head.

  Unflinching marines returned a deluge of orange pulsefire to the attackers, who were still sheltered by the smokescreen. Their return fire did nothing to quell their unseen enemy. Another marine went down in a flurry of blue pulsefire, and Morgan dashed to help the man. Even while the marine’s blood pooled out from a massive hole in the glove over his right hand, he fired into the cargo bay, holding his kicking rifle with his good hand.

  “M3, help!” Tag shouted, lugging his charge past another motionless casualty.

  The droid rushed down the passage, past Morgan and the marine with the injured hand. Its metallic face was devoid of any outward signs of fear as it reached Tag and his patient, and it wrapped its thin, pearly fingers under the injured marine’s legs. Incoming pulse rounds singed an open hatch, barely missing the duo as they hauled the marine into the med bay. Tag gave the M3 droid a slight nod, and it let go of their patient. Hot crimson liquid pumped out of her chest plate. He unlatched the suit near her neck, and the hissing, automatic servos finished the job. Armor plates around her arms, torso, and legs split open and slid back, revealing the woman within the armor. The face shield retracted. Sweat coursed over his forehead, and his fingers trembled. He recognized the wounded staff sergeant.

  “Kaufman,” he said. “You there? I’m going to take care of you, okay? You’re going to be all right.”

  Kaufman’s eyes remained closed, and the color had already begun its slow march from her face. Charred fabric outlined a wound in her sternum; lifting it revealed a gory mess. All of Tag’s medical training still didn’t prevent the pang of squeamishness turning his stomach over at the sight. He grabbed a spray of coagulating agents and doused the wound in chemicals to staunch the profuse bleeding. Nearby open regen chambers hummed as they awaited their patients. Thank the gods he and Morgan had prepped all of them. Even so, he wasn’t sure if Kaufman would survive the short journey from her armor to an idling chamber. Still, he reached under her armpits, warm liquid oozing over his fingers from her wounds, and, with the droid’s help, hoisted her from her mechanical shell.

  “Stay with me, Kaufman. Please, stay with me.”

  Her breathing waned in increasingly shallow, staccato gasps. Three hells, he was surprised she was breathing at all. He and the droid slid her body into the regen chamber, and then his hands flew over the holoscreen next to it. With practiced ease, he selected the proper emergency treatment protocols and stood back while the chamber did the rest. He let a long breath escape his lungs and wiped his perspiring forehead with the back of his hand.

  She’s safe.

  If the gods had any mercy, the regen chamber might breathe life back into her.

  More agonized screams echoed from the passage. With his hands still covered in crimson, he hurried back to wade through the carnage once again. He was a meter from the hatch when he saw Morgan. The medical assistant was dragging an unconscious, maimed marine just outside the bay. Streaks of red marred the medical assistant’s clothes, but Tag couldn’t tell if the blood belonged to Morgan or the marine.

  “Help me out here!” Morgan cried.

  But before Tag reached the hatch, another robotic voice came over the ship’s comms, replacing the repeated warning of an “unauthorized boarding.” This one simply said, “Emergency containment activated.”

  The hatch slammed shut.

  CHAPTER THREE

  Tag Brewer hadn’t lost a single crew member during the ship’s decade of service. But that had all changed in several fiery seconds. The clamor in the passageway grew ever more tumultuous with shrieks of pulsefire, inhuman screams, and the incessant pounding on the hatch.

  And Morgan was trapped out there.

  Tag punched the buttons on the hatch release panel, but the hatch didn’t budge. Open! Tag silently willed. But the hatch did no such thing: instead, an error message pulsed across the panel. He pulled down a lever on the hatch marked Emergency Override and waited for the door to hiss open.

  “Come on, damn it!” he yelled, kicking the door in frustration. “M3, get this door open!”

  The droid walked to the hatch and attempted to pry it open. M3’s servos whined and its hinges squeaked, but its efforts proved no more fruitful than Tag’s. Then the droid stood straight, froze, and toppled sideways. Its eye screens went blank.

  “M3! Reboot!” Tag cried.

  The droid ignored him. It lay like a fallen statue across the med bay deck.

  “Damn it!”

  His jaw clenched, and heat crept into his cheeks as he yanked unsuccessfully on the hatch. In response to his vain efforts, a hollow pounding echoed through the reinforced steel. Morgan. The poor man, trapped in the passage, hammered a frantic rhythm. Tag tried to leverage the door open, desperate to let his assistant and his patient in. Screams of pain and defeat echoed through the metal and into the med bay, sending a tumult of frustration pummeling through Tag. The
heavy door muffled the dejected voices, but each agonized howl physically pained him. Each voice signified another casualty, another marine, another crew member he couldn’t help.

  He yanked the emergency release lever again and again until his muscles burned. Nothing. Tapping on a nearby terminal, he called up the ship’s AI management system.

  “Computer, release med bay hatch main,” he said, trying to keep the panic out of his voice. No robotic voices uttered an incorporeal “affirmative.” No hatches unlocked. Nothing happened. “Computer, release med bay hatch main,” he commanded again, more urgently.

  Again, the computer refused to respond.

  “What the hell?” He punched the door. Pain radiated through his knuckles, and he shook his fingers out. “Computer, release med bay hatch main!”

  The terminal flashed a dull red and returned to its stasis mode as if no buttons had been pressed and no commands uttered. He stamped in another code to access the ship’s comms.

  “Med bay to bridge, med bay to bridge, this is Lieutenant Commander Brewer. Do you read?”

  He waited with bated breath. No response.

  “Med bay to bridge, do you read?”

  Again, nothing. The pounding on the hatch ceased.

  “Morgan, you okay?” Tag yelled through the door.

  It was a stupid question. He knew it. And he feared he knew the answer, but he didn’t know what else to say or do. Instead, he turned back to the terminal and punched in a few commands until the ship’s internal cam views fizzled to life on the nearby holoscreen. The first view showed the passage outside the med bay. A yellow haze had replaced the dark smoke. Ominous shapes swam through the vapor like shadowy sea monsters lurking under the water’s surface. The pirates? A shiver crept through his spine. He switched to the view of the cargo bay. The same yellow fog blanketed the entire chamber, where more humanoid silhouettes flitted through the smog between stacks of crates.

  Next, he looked at the bridge. Captain Weber and a few of his officers stood near the chart table. Flecks of crimson spray speckled one officer’s uniform, and another limped backward, aiming a pistol at an unseen enemy. Clouds of yellow fog encroached upon Weber as he leveled his pistol, shooting into the smoke and shadows. For a brief moment, Tag thought, That should be me. He should be the one making a last stand on the bridge and going down with the ship. If it weren’t for his time at Atlantis Station, it would’ve been him commanding the SRES Argo. He wondered if things would have gone any differently. If he’d have been able to avoid the pirates attacking them now. But regret and bitterness wouldn’t do anything to save his life or anyone else’s now.

  Captain Weber and the bridge officers fired pulse rounds into the shapes wading through the fog. Several rounds splashed against the shadowy figures. But the figures didn’t crumple and die. Instead, the pulsefire crackled and sputtered against what looked like ... energy shields? The attackers simply absorbed the incoming fire and then cut down Weber and the other bridge officers with disciplined ease then faded back into the fog.

  Tag took a step back from the holoscreen. He shook his head slowly, hardly able to believe the horrific tableau. It wasn’t just the ignoble deaths that shocked him. Energy shields were a standard defense for ships, but as far as he knew, the SRE hadn’t figured out how to miniaturize the tech or integrate it with power suits for ground troops or marines. These pirates possessed technology he hadn’t even known existed.

  He flipped to the galley view and was met with the same ethereal image of masked shadows pushing through the yellow miasma. He returned to the view outside the med bay, but the image flickered.

  “Focus, focus,” he said, tapping the buttons. The image stabilized then went dark. The entire ship shuddered for a second, and he flew forward, carried by momentum as the ship bucked and abruptly decelerated. The whine of the impellers resonated through the bulkhead as something threw the Argo into reverse thrust and the inertial dampeners fought to keep up with the sudden change. One of the regen chambers creaked, straining against the bolts holding it against the bulkhead. Then the ship’s reactors went quiet. All the wall holoscreens crackled off, and the lights sputtered before going black. An eerie silence, punctuated only by distant creaking, took over.

  No more gunfire. No more churning engines. No more alarms. No more flashing lights. No more screams.

  Complete darkness enfolded Tag, as if his senses had all simultaneously failed. Cold snaked through his flesh. He wondered if this was what being flung into space felt like. The sudden chill, the nothingness of vacuum. But then he sucked in a breath of clean, pressurized atmosphere, which provided mild reassurance that he still lived, for now.

  Ghostly red emergency lights emanated from the floor panels and along the steel bulwarks ribbing the bulkhead. One red light flashed softly, catching Tag’s attention. This one blinked from one of the regen chambers. Kaufman’s regen chamber. A single message glinted across the red panel: “Nonfunctional.”

  “No, no, no!” Tag yelled.

  The biomonitors reported the patient within had no pulse, and the automated healing of the marine’s torn blood vessels and shredded organs had completely stopped. Tag ran to the malfunctioning chamber. Morgan’s assistance, anyone’s assistance, would be immensely helpful right now. He had no idea what had happened to the rest of the crew or if any were even left. A persistent thought gnawed at the back of his mind as he reached Kaufman’s regen chamber. Some pirate might reactivate the computer systems and access the med bay hatch at any time. And if that happened, he would be as good as dead, just like everyone else.

  But he was alive now. And he’d be damned if he would let Kaufman die. If he could just save one life, any life, her life, he’d do it. He might not be captain, but he hadn’t joined the Solar Republic of Earth’s Navy to let others die on his watch. And if Kaufman perished...

  Gods, he had never felt like such a failure.

  A quick punch on the emergency release sent the door of the glass chamber sliding back. He thanked the gods that whatever had affected the main comp systems hadn’t locked the regen chamber—or maybe the ship’s power outage had done the trick. Either way, how it happened wasn’t his concern at the moment. Kaufman was.

  With a hiss, the second, inner acrylic shield retracted. Tag released the harnesses on Kaufman’s arms and legs, and her body slumped forward. Catching her, he lowered her gently to the deck. It seemed as if she weighed less than before. Maybe it was just the adrenaline pumping through his vessels. But all the strength he had once seen in her seemed like a distant memory now. She seemed fragile and weak.

  He swallowed hard as he catalogued her injuries and triaged them: a torn artery, a network of internal bleeding, a shredded stomach, broken ribs, and undoubtedly a greatly increased risk of infection thanks to the gaping wound. The chamber had barely started its automated diagnostics and healing procedures. He tried to push aside emotion so he could focus on helping her rather than mourning her. His medical officer training took over once again, and he set to work on her body like an engineer repairing the Argo’s fusion reactor power plant, emotionless and professional.

  The air in the med bay grew humid and suffocating as he toiled. He figured the induced power outage had caused the change in atmosphere and prayed that their attackers hadn’t shut down the ship’s life support completely or else all his efforts to save Kaufman would be in vain.

  Ignoring their potentially impending doom, he ran to a meter-tall silver door by one of the dormant coolers and took out a syringe filled with a cell-based therapy. He returned to Kaufman, injected the therapy into a vessel in her arm, and gave her manual chest compressions to keep her blood flowing. The lack of help from the lifesaving regen chambers standing uselessly next to him forced him to resort to surgical methods only slightly better than battlefield medic tactics. He glanced at the supplies Morgan had gathered earlier while he pumped. A circular black battery-powered cardiac support device jumped out at him, and he rushed to retrieve it, le
aving Kaufman’s side for only a moment. He placed the small device over her chest. Its electric pulse maintained a slow, steady rhythm. Yet even as her heart beat, her breathing grew shallower. Judging by her strained breathing, Tag guessed she’d suffered a punctured lung.

  From an emergency supply cabinet, he snagged an oxygen supply mask and situated it over Kaufman’s face. Then he grabbed a synth blood bag and a saline IV. He inserted the needles running from each into her veins. As he struggled to keep the bags up and cauterize another bleeding wound, he eyed the body of the crumpled M3 droid. He wished the damn thing was up and working, if only to hold the IV bags.

  But he’d have to do this on his own. He hung the bags on a neighboring exam table then snatched a tube and large-bore needle, preparing to drain the excess air from her punctured lung. A loud grinding reverberated through the bulkhead and made him jump. The ship groaned, and the strong pull of acceleration grasped at him again. It felt like the ship pushed almost two-g before the inertial dampeners kicked in. Overhead lights flickered back on along the wall holoscreens, but Tag had no time to rejoice in the restored power. He plunged a large-bore needle through Kaufman’s chest and into her lung. Red liquid flowed out, and after several agonizingly long seconds, her breathing stabilized.

  She would live. For now.

  Tag couldn’t guess how long either of them would survive if the pirates investigated the med bay. Help must be out there. Someone else must still be alive on the ship with some idea of what was going on. He dashed to the hatch. The red error message still shone on its panel. A quick survey of the room revealed the regen chambers flashed the same warning lights as before, and the M3 droid remained a limp pile of metal limbs and inactive servos.

  What in the gods’ names had these pirates done to the ship? Tag turned on the intraship cams again to see if the passages were any safer than before. With a couple of button taps, the holoscreen near the hatch panel revealed views of the passageway again. The yellow haze still hung thick in the air, obscuring the huddled shapes beside the ribbed bulkhead that Tag guessed were bodies. He prepared to check the bridge view when a low hissing sounded near the regen chambers.