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

“You should,” Bull said with an edge. He marched past with a slew of mini-Gauss rifles slung over his shoulder. Tag glared at the back of the marine’s head but was unable to come up with the proper response, unsure whether he needed a good dressing down or simply a stern warning. The moment passed, however, as he struggled with the right move, and he cursed inwardly, reminding himself to review the Argo’s digital library of military leadership books and information.

  Sofia sidled up to him, seeming to read his thoughts. “Remember, we’re still eggheads to them. I’m behind you one hundred percent, but you’ve still got to show them what’s up.”

  Tag nodded. She was right, of course. Trying to study leadership as if he were memorizing biological theorems for a science lecture wouldn’t be enough to earn their respect. It was like attending virtual lectures and scouring texts and expecting to improve your Turbo game without ever playing the actual sport. He needed to prove his worth to them. For better or worse, he figured he would have ample opportunity soon.

  When the air car was filled with equipment and the crew found their places within it, Tag took his seat in the front. Sofia slipped into the driver’s seat and turned the engines on. The car rose from the deck and hovered before the cargo bay door. Tag punched a command on his wrist terminal, and the whoosh of air sounded all around them as the cargo bay depressurized slightly. A heavy metallic groan accompanied the slow march of the opening cargo bay doors. Harsh wind peppered the air car with the relentless ringing of hail against alloy, but between eddies of ice and snow came beams of filtered light glowing through the windshield.

  “Eta-Five, we’re ready for you,” Sofia said.

  The low electric whine of the car’s initialization motors grew into a steady roar with the activation of the thrusters, and they blasted forward from the Argo. It took Tag’s eyes a moment to adjust as his pupils contracted, shielding themselves from the harsh light reflecting off every snowflake and icy protrusion across the landscape. Gasps sounded behind him. Lonestar whistled, her eyes glued to a porthole. Gorenado pressed a large hand to a window as he leaned toward the glass, peering through his helmet at the stark world. Even Bull seemed less a hardened warrior and more like a kid visiting a space station sweets emporium. His eyes were wide, dancing back and forth, soaking in the planet.

  Tag recalled his first venture out of the Argo onto Eta-Five. He had been born on Earth, so he preferred the blue skies, moderate temperatures, sprawling megacities, and strips of vegetation that crawled over most of the planet he had once called home. But after a few years in space confined to metal tubes and artificial gravity, the white-washed iciness of Eta-Five was still a welcome sight to behold. Land and ground, no matter how foreign or exotic or dangerous, held a certain allure to Tag and, he supposed, the other members of his crew. True, the human soul could survive in cramped metal cans hurtling through space, but the soul thrived in the great wide open of wilderness and atmosphere.

  They traveled over what appeared to be a frozen riverbed winding through a valley formed in the snow. Severe winds buffeted and battered them at every twist and turn, dousing them with shards of ice. Tag remembered driving alone through these conditions before, his nerves wild with fright, but now Sofia guided them almost effortlessly.

  “This baby sure handles better than the Argo,” she said offhandedly as she skirted a pillar of ice and rock. “Makes me wish I was back flying fighters again.”

  “According to my map,” Alpha began, “it seems we are approaching the entrance to the Forest.”

  “Strange,” Tag said. Last time he had been here, the tunnel entrance had glowed a fluorescent blue, beckoning to him like a lighthouse. This time, there was nothing but the monotonous whites and grays of the forsaken planet. “I don’t see it.”

  “Mechanic defenses,” Coren said. “Visible-light–scattering apparatus.” He spoke into a terminal through his EVA suit. “Bracken, we’ve arrived.”

  In the distance, Tag saw a snowdrift shimmer slightly. Then it dissolved, almost as if it had evaporated all at once. Blue light pulsated from a cave where the snowdrift had been only moments before, and Tag knew they had found their way back to the world of the Forinths. The air car coasted through the tunnel, where the colorful lichens, mosses, and other plants lining craggy rock walls flew by them. The vegetation grew denser and shone more intensely with each meter they descended until they entered the enormous underground forest.

  Tag had been in the place only weeks before, but still a warm feeling of awe flooded through him with electric vigor. So many plants and trees illuminated the space that it was easy to forget they were underground. Above them, tendrils of foliage draped from the high ceilings, casting their light down, and beside them, vast trees stretching as high as Earthside skyrisers spread their warm glow across the ground in wide swathes. Creatures with all manner of strange bodies retreated into the forest at the arrival of the car, escaping and melding into the shadows or changing the hue of their skin to emulate the intense light around them. Birds took flight, their leathery wings shimmering with hypnotically shifting pigments as they fled. The only creatures that stood in their path contrasted sharply with the lush landscape. Each wore a suit of black armor and cradled a rifle.

  “How’s that for a welcome home?” Sofia asked.

  “My rudimentary knowledge on Mechanic body language suggests these individuals are adopting an aggressive stance,” Alpha said.

  Tag gulped. “That would be my assessment as well.”

  The clink of restraints being released sounded from the troop hold of the air car. Tag turned to see Bull staring straight through the windshield.

  “These are the people we came to help?” Bull’s fingers tightened around his mini-Gauss. “You’d think they’d show a little more appreciation.”

  Tag’s stomach twisted over itself. It couldn’t be possible. Could it? Had the nanites infected what might have been the last free Mechanics? If so, there would be no talking with them to put down their weapons. There was only one way to reason with Drone-Mechs. The mechanical rustle and hum of the marines’ power armor suits was punctuated by the click of magazines into rifles.

  Sofia looked between the Mechanics and Tag. “What now, Skipper?”

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  Coren was the only one in the vehicle whose posture remained relaxed as the air car slowed in front of the other Mechanics. “If I were to guess, they are reacting this way because the nanites have their origins in human technology, and you are in fact humans.”

  “Three hells, but we’ve gone over this,” Tag said. “The SRE banned weapons like that.”

  “A Mechanic’s trust is hard to earn,” Coren offered matter-of-factly. “There is little I can say to convince them otherwise.”

  “What do you mean? Did you not bother to tell them we aren’t the enemy?”

  “I sent them only the facts from our findings. But before I left with you, I did warn them to be cautious upon our return, in case we were compromised while away from Eta-Five.”

  “So you prepped them to think we might be the enemy? Not helpful, Coren.”

  Bull undid his restraints and moved toward the door. “Let me get them to put down their goddamn weapons.”

  “No,” Tag said. “Stand down. That’ll only make things worse.” The Mechanics outside inched closer, their weapons trained on the air car. Tag looked at Coren. “You want to let them know we’re all good here?”

  Coren pressed something on his EVA suit and talked into it. Tag hated it that the alien still had a private channel to the other Mechanics he couldn’t patch into. Nonetheless, he watched the Mechanics outside lower their weapons and back away.

  “We’re all clear,” Coren said.

  “Good,” Tag said. “Remind me to kill you for that later, Coren, okay?”

  “Do you want me to set a reminder?” Alpha asked. “Although that is a rather unorthodox thing to say to a crew member.”

  “Sarcasm,” Tag said. “Mostly.”
/>   Alpha’s silver mouth made an O shape as she nodded.

  “Bull, let me and Coren out first,” Tag said.

  “Don’t like it, Captain,” Bull said, still peering out the window in the door. His hands wrapped tighter around his rifle.

  “Trust me,” Tag said. “I’ve dealt with these people before.”

  “Before we go out there, there are some conditions from Bracken,” Coren said. “They don’t want you to come out armed.”

  Bull scoffed. “You kidding?”

  Lonestar glowered at Coren. “I didn’t go through three years of training to confront the enemy with my willy hanging out.”

  “You don’t have a willy to worry about,” G said. Then, thinking, he added, “Do you?”

  “First off, the Mechanics are not our enemy,” Tag said. “We need them; they need us. If they wanted us dead, we’d be dust already.”

  “That’s not the way marines do things,” Bull said. “We would’ve cut them down before they had a chance to lay a finger on us.”

  “According to Captain Brewer,” Coren said, “the marines on the Argo had no such success.”

  Bull’s face lit up redder than any volcanic pit in the Forest, and he lunged at Coren. Tag reacted by instinct, throwing himself between the Mechanic and the marine. He braced himself for Bull to slam into him like his namesake, but the heavy impact never came. Gorenado, his huge arms wrapped around Bull’s narrower chest, grunted, holding the marine back.

  Sumo stepped beside them with a decidedly calm expression, as if she were impermeable to the heat of emotion. “Best to ignore the xeno. Don’t want to start any more wars than we have to.”

  “Let me go,” Bull said, his face the color of autumn leaves. When Gorenado hesitated, he said, “That’s a goddamn order.” Gorenado loosened his grip, and Bull stood, staring at Coren and still fuming. “That was uncalled for.”

  “Agreed,” Tag said. His own internal wounds at the slight throbbed. “I know you’re all about facts and reality, but try to have a bit of human sympathy, all right?”

  Coren’s face belied no emotion. “Apologies, Captain. I didn’t mean it as an insult, only as an unfortunate fact.”

  Tag watched Bull, waiting for him to come at Coren in a flurry again, but the marine didn’t take another step forward. Instead, he glared with a furious intensity that rivaled the burn of the sun Eta.

  “Screw the xenos,” Bull spat, full of spark and vitriol. The marines clung to their weapons even more fiercely than before. This mission was already off to a wonderful start, and they hadn’t even encountered their real enemy yet.

  “Sarge is right,” Lonestar said. “Foolish thing to do, walk into the arms of an armed stranger with no gun of your own.”

  “Look, they aren’t strangers. They are frightened for their lives, though. We’re here to show them they can trust us,” Tag said. A couple of weeks ago, he hardly would have believed he would be defending the Mechanics. “You’re getting off and leaving your weapons behind.”

  “Bullshit,” Bull said. “Look at those monsters out there. And what about the Forinths? You’re telling me they aren’t dangerous either? We should just trust them because you and Sofia are still alive?”

  “That’s exactly what I’m saying,” Tag said. “Now drop your weapons and move out.”

  G looked nervously between Tag and Bull as if he wasn’t sure whose orders to follow.

  Tag felt like he was dangerously close to losing control of the marines. Once, there had been a time in officer training where he had felt confident in his ability to run a ship and its crew, when he had known he would one day be commanding at least a destroyer. His failure during bridge officer training had put an end to those plans—and that self-assuredness—and now he looked back at his naiveté with a hint of guilt and shame. His career in science and medicine had at least allowed him a newfound passion, and leading teams in the lab and med bay had come to him naturally, granting him some semblance of achievement. Fate and circumstance had had different plans for him, and once again, he found himself trying to force a misfit team together. This wasn’t how he had pictured his career decades ago. Three hells, this wasn’t how he had pictured it last week.

  “Look,” Tag began, trying to feign a confidence he wasn’t sure he felt. Entreating Bull to his side with any pleading, calls to reason, or well-intended discussions wasn't going to work. The man saw things in black and white, and he had to give him black and white. “I’m losing my patience. I am the goddamn captain. I hold rank in this mission, and I am ordering you to leave your weapons here and follow me. You are not to provoke any conflict with either the Mechanics or the native species of this planet. Is that understood?”

  G’s head bobbed first, and one by one the other marines gave a “Yes, sir.” Only Bull, nostrils flared and a vessel in his forehead bulging, did nothing. Tag stared the shorter man down for what seemed like minutes before the grizzled marine finally muttered a “Yes, sir.”

  “Good,” Tag said. “Follow me.”

  Tag punched the release to the air car’s hatch and undid his EVA helmet as the warm, humid air blasted into the vehicle. The succulent atmosphere carried with it the taste of fresh fruit, clean water, and lush vegetation. With Coren by his side, he stepped out of the car and onto the soft ground, where the creeping moss and leaves under his feet gave way to loamy earth. He strode to the tallest Mechanic of the bunch with her visor peeled back, and he recognized Bracken. Her narrow face and prominent cheekbones gave her a slightly more human look than Coren. As he approached, she slung her rifle over her back and raised a hand to signal the other Mechanics to lower their weapons.

  “Hell of a way to say hello,” Tag said. “I thought bringing parts to repair the Stalwart would be a welcome gesture. Is it not?”

  Bracken’s golden eyes flitted between Coren and Tag. Her lips remained straight, and she offered no sign of emotion, relief or otherwise. “It is welcome.” She gestured at the marines. “Those are not.”

  Sofia and Alpha sauntered ahead of the marines. Alpha scanned everything around her, mesmerized like a child at a zoo. The Mechanics seemed to relax at the sight of Alpha’s innocence and Sofia’s familiar presence.

  “They aren’t here for you,” Tag said, referring to the marines. “We weren’t sure what kind of resistance we’d face getting here or further along in our mission.”

  Bracken said nothing, letting the uncomfortable silence between them stretch.

  “Look,” Tag said, stepping forward. Out of the corner of his eye, he saw one of the Mechanics raise his pulse rifle. “I made it off Eta-Five with more luck than skill before. I don’t want to rely on chance this time.”

  “Your race is responsible for the nanites,” Bracken said. If the words had come from a human, Tag would’ve expected them to be dripping with poisonous malice. Instead, they came out flat and calm. His skin prickled at the cold delivery of the accusation. As much time as he spent with them, he doubted he would ever get used to the Mechanics’ demeanor. They were more emotionless than Alpha. “Pardon me for not welcoming you and your armed party with open arms. Coren’s words mean little to us when, for all we know, you may have infected him with the very nanites your people created.”

  Tag could sense the tension between his crew and the Mechanics with an almost palpable thickness. A stab of panic pierced his gut, with a fear that this was all about to go south in a fusillade of pulsefire. He couldn’t let that happen for the sake of humanity’s—and the Mechanics’—future. “It’s in our best interest to find out who is behind the nanites. If they are human, they’re operating outside SRE law with technology more frightening than we could’ve ever anticipated. If they’re not human, then that means they’ve somehow stolen tech from us. All without us knowing. Either way, it doesn’t look good for us. So I’m not going to pretend we’re coming to help you out of the goodness of our hearts. We share a mutual interest in stopping the Drone-masters responsible for enslaving your people.”
/>
  Bracken seemed to consider his argument. Her eyes never left his, and he halfway wondered if the Mechanics had some kind of mind-reading tech she was using to scan his brain. It was probably paranoia, but then again, with everything else that had happened around him, it wouldn’t be entirely surprising.

  With one arm outstretched as if she was going in for a handshake, she finally stepped forward. “Take them in.”

  It took Tag a second to comprehend the meaning of her words. Then they fell over him like shards of icy pillars collapsing on Eta-Five’s surface. The Mechanics surged forward, surrounding him, Alpha, Sofia, and the marines. Bull charged one of the Mechanics, knocking the lithe alien away with a hammering fist. Gorenado punched another in the gut, and the alien reeled over, absorbing most of the impact through its suit. The Mechanics swarmed them, unintimidated by the marines’ show of force, and slapped metal bands around each of their wrists, dodging the rest of the powerful blows and furious assault with relative ease. Each time one of the bands wrapped around a marine’s wrist, the marine’s suit seemed to power down, standing still and straight with the marine trapped within it. The Mechanics yanked Tag’s arms behind his back and secured his wrists together with a similar metal band that sent shivers through his flesh.

  “What are you doing?” Tag yelled.

  Bracken ignored him, signaling the Mechanics to take their prisoners deeper into the forest. Tag wrenched his head around enough to see the marines struggling in their power armor suits. Coren, too, was taken prisoner and gave Tag a sorrowful look, as if he truly felt regret for what had just transpired. The look lasted only a second before more Mechanics churned between them, and Tag lost sight of Coren.

  “Bracken!” Tag yelled, a hot ball of rage growing in his stomach at Bracken and at himself for trusting her. He lashed against his restraints and struggled against his captors’ grip. “I demand you tell us what’s going on!”

  The Mechanic looked at him with her cool eyes, conveying no sympathy or anger. She gave a slight nod to a Mechanic next to Tag, and a heavy pain shuddered through his skull. Red snowflakes danced in his blurred vision, then his world went black.