Eternal Frontier (The Eternal Frontier Book 1) Read online

  Spinning on his heels, Tag saw tendrils of yellow smoke reach through grates along the bulkhead like the ghostly tentacles of some unseen beast. With the ship’s fusion reactor supplying power to all decks again, the life-support fans had reengaged, spreading purified air throughout the passages and chambers. But whatever that yellow smoke was made of hadn’t been filtered out yet. Tag didn’t know what it was, but he knew it wasn’t good. It curled out of the grates and twisted to the deck, drifting toward the regen chambers.

  Toward Kaufman.

  CHAPTER FOUR

  There was nowhere to go. Tag and Kaufman were stuck in the medical bay, doomed to suffocate and die in the throes of that ominous yellow fog just like the rest of the crew. He didn’t even bother trying the manual release on the hatch again. What was the point? All he would accomplish was letting in more of that toxic-looking gas. He ran to Kaufman and then dragged her body away from the menacing smog. He wouldn’t give up on his life—or hers—yet. Not while they still had inches to fight for and seconds to conjure a plan.

  He looked down at her closed eyes and the long blond hair soaked in blood. Sweat trickled across her forehead, washing away some flecks of dried blood, and her breath steamed up the inside of the oxygen mask.

  Tag’s heart thumped wildly. Maybe, just maybe, he could buy them some more time. He grabbed one of the emergency masks for himself and placed it over his face. Finally free of the acrid smell of burning plastic saturating the atmosphere, he sucked in a fresh breath of compressed oxygen.

  The yellow fog rolled in closer. He might have clean air, but he still didn’t know if the chemicals within the fog could be absorbed through the skin. A nerve agent or engineered volatile gas might soak straight through his flesh and into his bloodstream, even with the mask over his nose and mouth.

  He continued pulling Kaufman as the shut-down M3 droid disappeared under a carpet of yellow fog. It sucked up the regen chambers next, then the patient crash couches. Soon the fog would fill the med bay. Tag scanned the bay, desperately looking for another escape, another way to keep them alive just a bit longer.

  Finally, an idea struck him. He pulled Kaufman to the airlock of the laboratory attached to the bay then twisted the manual lock on the sterilization chamber’s hatch and squeezed Kaufman in. Holding it open with his foot, he reached and grabbed one of the medic kits Morgan had set out on the nearest table. His fingers wrapped around it right as the table succumbed to the yellow haze. A wisp of it rolled over his hand, and a sharp, biting sensation traveled up his flesh. He winced and bit his bottom lip to refrain from yelping in pain. Still grasping the medic kit, he drew his hand back.

  “Come on, Kaufman,” he said. “Stay with me. We’re almost safe.”

  He slammed shut the hatch to the sterilization chamber. It was only meant for one person, and he had to awkwardly stand over her as he activated the sterilizing washes. When the nozzles started spraying, he half expected yellow gas to pour over them. Instead, he was rewarded with clean, white sterilizing gases. The hissing sterilization process soon stopped, and the inner chamber door opened, releasing them into the interior of the cramped laboratory space.

  Normally, Tag wore a biosafety suit working in here. It felt unnatural, almost wrong, to be in here like this. But no matter; at least they were safe. He wasn't worried about contracting a dangerous pathogen from his research. Rather, he was afraid of passing a pathogen on to the subjects of his work.

  He snapped the door shut on an incubator that had fallen open during the attack. Within the roughly two-meter-high hot box lay a plethora of medical-grade, synthetic tissues. Organs and tissues modeled after the human body grew within that chamber. Each contained a mixture of cells grown in the lab experimentally combined with microcomputer components. Once again, Tag was reminded of the decades of work he’d put into that pet project, doubting it would ever stand a chance of seeing fruition now. Since the artificial organs had no working immune system, he was now risking all kinds of contamination by exposing them to the air he exhaled through his mask.

  But saving artificial organs didn’t matter now. Saving real ones did. Especially real ones belonging to Kaufman.

  He set to work on her wounds again, cauterizing bleeding vessels and constantly monitoring her breathing, heart rhythm, and blood pressure. Yellow haze continued to flow into the main section of the med bay. It rolled against the acrylic partition separating the bay and the lab like a slow-moving tidal wave. The lab not only provided a physical barrier from the fog, but it also used a separate oxygen supply and atmospheric life support independent from the rest of the ship to maintain the sensitive experiments within it. It was Tag’s only respite from the acidic fog until he figured out how in the three hells he was going to get out of here.

  He finished patching Kaufman’s wounds. There was nothing else he could do. It was up to the cardiac support system and her own body to continue living.

  A deep exhalation escaped him, and he stood, wondering what he should do next. There had to be someone else alive aboard the ship. Maybe someone still fighting the pirates. On one bulkhead, between snaking tubes and ports, there was a small terminal. He approached the terminal, all the while keeping an eye on Kaufman. Holding his breath in anticipation, he tapped on the terminal. It buzzed on, and its holoscreen lit up normally in a sea of greens and blues. A tingle of relief filtered through him.

  His finger hovered over the intraship comms system. He thought to call the bridge again but realized that might be a mistake. After everything he’d seen, the crew had probably lost control of the bridge. For all he knew, there might not be any crew left. Alerting his captors to his and Kaufman’s presence wouldn’t save anyone.

  Instead, he revisited the onboard camera display system. He was greeted with the familiar images of the passage and the bridge. The yellow haze had lessened. There was only a slightly opaque screen of fog instead of the dense, rolling barrier it had been before. The air scrubbers must’ve been back online and were catching up with the poisonous clouds. As the scrubbers worked, they revealed the remnants of the battle. Tag panned over the views of the casualties. A deep pit in his stomach threatened to swallow him whole, growing ever wider as he viewed each macabre scene. There were the broken and shattered power armor suits lying still across the passages. Singed and lifeless bodies of crew members, some in emergency EVA suits and others in their standard shipmen’s uniforms, were sprawled throughout.

  On the bridge, Tag viewed the carnage of Captain Weber’s last stand. Yet as Tag tallied the lives he hadn’t saved, the lives he couldn’t save, he paused. Where were the bodies—any bodies—belonging to their unidentified foe? Fear crept through his vessels like a late winter storm blasting any hopes of spring. Had these pirates already removed their injured and dead? Or had they so overpowered the SRE marines and crew that there simply were no casualties on their side? The thought of these space pirates with more advanced equipment than an SRE military science ship was almost unfathomable.

  He switched to the cargo bay view. The docking hatch, which had originally been forced open, was now closed. He could see severe scorching across the bulkhead and scattered bits of metal from destroyed cargo cases. Tag hadn’t spent much time in the hold, but even he could tell there were several cases missing. The hold was mostly empty, just like the rest of the ship. A small glimmer of hope flickered in Tag like a dying candle flame.

  Maybe the pirates had found what they’d come for and left. If they were gone, maybe he could make it safely around the ship and check for other survivors. There might be others he could help as soon as the yellow gas was fully scrubbed and filtered. He moved to the final cam view, looking down the passage from the med bay’s hatch. With a flick of his wrist, he adjusted the cam until he saw the area directly in front of the med bay. He couldn’t help himself from gasping.

  There was Morgan, his hand still reaching for the hatch as he lay sprawled over the deck. His other hand was locked in the collar of a downed marin
e. Morgan’s chest didn’t expand or deflate, and his skin was a sickly pale. His eyes were frozen open. He was gone.

  Tag looked away, steeling himself. That emerging bit of optimism wavered in him before crashing against the hard, rocky face of reality.

  “Kaufman,” he said, “I think we might be the only ones left on this damn ship.”

  She didn’t respond. Her cardiac support unit droned on quietly. Several seconds of silence passed as Tag mulled his next move. Then, as if in delayed response to his earlier statement, Kaufman’s cardiac support system emitted a wailing beep. She had stopped breathing.

  CHAPTER FIVE

  Tag huddled over Kaufman’s body. He readjusted her oxygen mask to ensure it was still working properly. When air hissed out of it, he put it back in place. He snaked a long tube down her airway, hoping to keep it open and force the oxygen into her lungs, but her lungs weren’t rising and falling anymore. The cardiac support system continued sending little jolts of electricity to her heart, urging it to pump.

  But Tag had been a medical officer long enough to recognize the subtle signs of approaching death. And these signs weren’t so subtle.

  He grabbed a handheld magnetic sensor array. It worked like a miniature MRI, and he’d often used it to gauge the neural activity of the synthetic brain he’d developed and stored in the lab’s incubator. Now he measured Kaufman’s neural activity with it. The handheld MRI sent an image to a nearby holoscreen. The dark, simulated projection that displayed across the screen sent a wave of despair over Tag.

  She was losing brain function.

  What should have been a vibrant image of colors flashing over the projected brain to show neural activity now appeared as dull shades of black and blue. There was almost no sign of energy, no sign of life beneath her skull. The cardiac support system would help pump blood through her vessels until its battery eventually died. But there would be no point if her brain didn’t survive this ordeal.

  Tag vowed not to let her die on his watch. No way in three hells would he let her die. If she did, he would be the owner of the last beating heart aboard the SRES Argo. And he couldn’t continue on this ship alone. Logic told him he was already alone, that she was destined for death, but a reluctant voice deep in his mind cried for him to hold on to hope. She might still make it. She had to make it.

  And he might not be alone in this battle to save a life.

  Surely Captain Weber had sent an SOS to the SRES Montenegro, the capital ship from which they’d originated. The huge ship, with its top-of-the-line medical facilities and ship repair bays, would be full of thousands upon thousands of crew members ready to help. No lone pirate ship could take out the Montenegro, even if they had overpowered the Argo. The Argo was only an Odyssey-class corvette meant for scientific expeditions, dwarfed when compared to the gargantuan capital ship.

  But the Montenegro was over ten light-years away. Tag’s heart sank. Any automated lightbeam relay message would take ten years for the Montenegro to receive. Definitely not good enough. Hopefully the captain had launched a courier drone before his defeat. The drones, with their miniature T-drives, could take advantage of hyperspace travel. That would be Tag’s only chance. A single courier drone, flying through hyperspace, rocketing toward the Montenegro. If the drone flew out without a hitch and the pirates hadn’t shot it to bits of alloy, then it might take four days or so to reach the Montenegro. And once the capital ship mustered and sent a rescue squad, it would be another four days before the rescue party reached the Argo.

  For now, he would have to sit in this floating metal tomb, alone in space.

  Kaufman’s cardiac support system continued to beep. Maybe, maybe, even if the sensors had said she’d experienced neurological damage, she wasn’t as doomed as he’d initially thought. The Montenegro might yet be able to restore neural function. Yes, they had to be able to do just that! Their synthetic tissue and organ replacement systems were far superior to the meager regen chambers aboard the Argo. Tag decided to leave her fully intubated, alive through the force of mechanical devices alone. But if she stood any chance of rescue, he needed to ensure Captain Weber’s SOS had been sent.

  His fingers tapped on the terminal. A few swipes and slides brought up the comm log, and he filtered out the intraship comms as he scanned to the most recent intership channel comms. Scrolling down the list, he looked for logs timestamped near the time when they’d been boarded. He reached the bottom of the list and found normal status update reports. Past those there were a few logged attempts of an automated SOS at 1500 ship standard time. But the log reported the messages couldn’t be sent.

  Tag recalled his own frustration at trying to call the bridge. He’d had no luck. Had both their intraship and intership comm channels been compromised by the pirates? Again, such technological skill surprised him. He recalled the massive quakes that had shaken the ship during the initial attack. Maybe the comm system arrays had been damaged by the physical impact of the boarding ship. That made more sense. The pirates’ ship seemed to have come out of nowhere, and such a feat meant it had likely been an expensive stealth ship. He’d thought such ships were relegated only to elite, covert military units, so the idea that a ship like that had found its way into pirates’ hands alarmed him. He definitely needed to ensure the Montenegro was aware of this situation.

  Tag checked the status of the courier drones next. The drone logs were kept in a separate AI operations folder. Tag selected the drones’ folder and saw a command had indeed been issued with an SOS reporting the Argo’s status and the boarding. The command had been executed at the moment of attack.

  His fist pumped in victory. “They sent for help, Kaufman!” He wanted to hug her in joy, but her diminishing state shattered his elation at once. The sight of her body struggling to maintain any semblance of life was an all-too-somber reminder of what the entire Argo was like. A vessel barely clinging to life.

  He pressed his hand against the lab’s clear acrylic partition. The air was looking remarkably clearer. Soon, he hoped, it would be fresh and clean again, wiped of whatever toxins had floated through it. It would be back to the slightly plastic smell of the scrubbed and filtered atmosphere.

  But even at the sight of this progress, something else bothered him, tickling the corners of his mind. When the ship had restarted, there had been an undeniable change in direction. The acceleration had thrown him off balance. And judging by the state of the bridge, it hadn’t been Captain Weber executing any kind of course-correct. It must’ve been the pirates. They’d altered the ship’s trajectory. But to where and why?

  His heart beat in his chest like rapid pulsefire. If they sent the ship careening into space, there was the distinct possibility that the Montenegro’s rescue mission might not find them. He couldn’t risk adding days or weeks to their rescue. While he might survive, Kaufman wouldn’t stand a chance. Any semblance of neurological recovery relied on getting her to the Montenegro within a few days—if she even had that long. He scrolled through the ship’s navigation reports. The last log simply showed their original trajectory. It was a path that took them on the historic path of the lost generation ship, the UNS Hope. The ship had sailed out almost three hundred years ago, before the Solar Republic of Earth existed. They’d never received any colonization reports from the massive ship, and the SRE had decided the Argo would relive the UNS Hope’s journey while completing years-long missions started by other research vessels in this galaxy. But thanks to the ferocity of the acceleration change, he doubted the ship was actually headed along its original course.

  “Computer, calculate current trajectory.”

  The terminal was silent.

  “Computer, calculate current trajectory.”

  Again, he was met with no response. Another computer system mysteriously down. His apprehension levels began to creep up again. He scrolled across the terminal and manually selected a map. A glimmering blue holoprojection of a solar system appeared before him with a central star burning bright
in the center of this celestial oasis: Eta.

  It was two-thirds through its core’s hydrogen-fusion lifespan. The star was older than Earth’s sun but was still capable of supporting life for billions of years on several of its orbiting planets. This was the reason the UNS Hope had been sent to Eta centuries ago and why the SRE had followed up with another ship, the SRES Hanno. In fact, one of Argo’s missions was to pick up an extraterrestrial anthropologist on one of Eta’s planets, Eta-Five, who’d been left there five years ago by the Hanno. The anthropologist, Lieutenant Sofia Vasquez, had been studying the planet’s native biological lifeforms and whatever sentient species might be found there. In typical anthropologist form, she’d insisted on doing the mission solo to better immerse herself in the local population. Contact with her had been sparse because Eta-Five’s atmosphere apparently blocked all normal lightbeam and radio comms, along with lidar and radar from probing the planet’s surface. She’d only been able to contact the fleet via a few courier drones to provide updates and confirm the five-year anniversary rendezvous with the Argo. A blip on the holoscreen showed the anthropologist’s last known location in the Eta system on Eta-Five.

  Another little blip appeared on the holoscreen. It was labeled SRES Argo. The computer couldn’t respond to Tag’s commands, but the holoscreen at least provided the current speed and direction of the Argo. A small dashed line projected straight from the bow of the ship, showing where it was headed. Tag felt the tight grip of nausea around his stomach.

  The dashed line cut straight through the fiery core of Eta.