Eternal Frontier (The Eternal Frontier Book 1) Read online

  Seven hundred klicks to the rendezvous point, and the ground was rising up fast. Six hundred and he passed the first mountain peak. Five hundred and the horizon disappeared. All he saw was a wall of towering, icy mountains. Four hundred, and he knew he wouldn’t make it. At three hundred klicks, he no longer watched the holoprojection. He wrestled with the controls to avoid slamming into the mountainside. Blankets of snow and ice obscured the features of the already uniformly white landscape, making any contact with land potentially disastrous.

  He steered hard to port. The ship banked, and the keel scraped against a massive chunk of ice. From his periphery, he saw the chunk fall, carrying with it a small avalanche. The tumbling snow and ice built into a tidal wave as he tried to keep the prow up, urging the Argo to fly however far it could. Suddenly another face of ice and rock appeared through the curtain of snowfall—Tag yanked the controls hard to his right, avoiding the obstacle cleanly this time. But this was no time to gloat about a successful maneuver.

  More rock. More ice. More snow. Pressure built in Tag’s head. His nerves stirred with electricity, and his vision became tunneled. All senses became tuned to the route ahead. He heard no more alarms. Saw no more flashing lights. Just the rising mountainsides, dropping valleys, and perilous ice formations ahead.

  He careened through a deep crevice between the mountains while swirling snow obscured the viewport. Knowing he would hit the ground soon, he looked for a better place to crash-land. The rocks and boulders along the mountainside would tear into the Argo’s already-bleeding wounds, and as far as he knew, it was the only vessel capable of getting off this godforsaken planet. He couldn’t risk destroying it completely on landing.

  Suddenly he was blasting through clear sky again. He’d shot out over a cliff.

  Directly in front, several long spires of ice jutted from the snowbanks like the claws of some frozen devil.

  The Argo slammed into the first of the spires. Ice shards clinked against its hull, and it barreled through the next. Ice rained all around as the spires toppled. Others burst as the ship crashed through them. Between the chunks of flying ice, Tag saw another pillar protruding from the snow.

  This one wasn’t ice. It was hard, gray-and-brown-speckled rock.

  He pulled back hard on the controls and diverted all the power he could to the weakened impellers. The rock pillar grew closer, looming before the bridge viewport.

  “Come on, you can do it!” Tag screamed at the ship.

  The Argo’s belly scraped against the rocky formation as it curved to port just enough to avoid a direct hit. Screeching metal echoed through the ship, and Tag could tell the drastic turn had decimated his forward momentum. The ship plummeted.

  There was no use in attempting to adjust its trajectory any longer. A huge plain of snow met the ship’s keel, and a heavy jolt shuddered through the Argo. Puffs of white exploded outside the viewport, and Tag was thrown from his seat. He slammed spine first into the bulkhead, and his head hit after. Pain shot through his body as he blinked away his dizzied vision. But as rough a landing as it had been, it could’ve been worse if he had smashed into the rocky mountainside.

  Thank the gods for snow-covered planets, Tag thought glumly.

  Snow fell around the viewport in soft waves. Deceptively peaceful. He rubbed the back of his head then steadied himself, grabbing a terminal to bring himself to his feet. The rips in his biosafety suit had grown larger, so there was no point in wearing it any longer. He slowly stripped out of the shredded plastic and set it aside. The white glow of the ice and snow outside put him in awe. He approached the viewport in reverence and placed a palm against the polyglass, where he could almost feel the cold seeping through and into his flesh.

  His mind drifted back to Lt. Vasquez, stuck somewhere out there in the icy wilderness. In only about a week, the scheduled rendezvous with the extraterrestrial anthropologist would pass. He wasn’t sure how he’d find her or if venturing out of the ship would even be worthwhile. For all he knew, the snow and ice had already swallowed the anthropologist, just like it had the Argo.

  A thought trickled through his mind like a burgeoning ice melt: Who in the three hells would choose to spend almost half a decade studying alien species on this planet?

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN

  Tag looked around the bridge as snow and ice continued to accumulate on the viewport. The warnings still flashed, telling him the cargo bay had sustained damage and was drastically underpressured. He punched a button on the terminal to silence the alarms. Red lights still pulsated across the deck, intermingling with the blue glow emanating from Eta-Five’s atmosphere. The cargo bay would have to be dealt with later, especially if he planned on getting off the planet. But he doubted he’d be able to make the repairs himself. He needed to bring the repair bots back online. He also needed to figure out what was going on with the ship’s AI and to send a warning to the Montenegro.

  He turned away from the viewport and studied the mess in the bridge. The two pirate bodies were lying still. Neither had moved since being tossed by the crash landing. But he didn’t want to take any chances. For all he knew, those high-tech suits of theirs might have simply put their injured bodies in stasis. He couldn’t risk letting them surprise him. His footsteps echoed in the vast bridge as he crossed the deck to the first pirate, and he bent over the man’s body. Tag could tell the pirate was exceptionally tall, even with his body crumpled on the deck.

  The orange visor stared back up at him, cracks and all. He listened for any sign of breathing. Maybe a respirator moving air in and out. But thankfully he heard nothing.

  Crouching over the pirate, he wrapped his gloves under the chin of the helmet and tried to pry it off, but the helmet wouldn’t separate from the rest of the armor. Maybe it was like the marines’ armor. There must be some way to release the pirate from the suit. He brushed his fingers along the chest piece. It was smooth, following the contours of the body within. There were no mechanisms to open it that he could find. With his boot, he rolled the body over. Besides the tubes and hoses connecting various segments, there was no obvious seam.

  “Fine. Stay in there,” Tag said. “I’m still making sure you’re dead.”

  The mini-Gauss glinted from where it still lay on the deck. Tag eyed the weapon. He could put another few slugs straight into the pirates’ heads. That would ensure they never bothered him again. But then another thought seeped through his mind, squeezing past the effects of adrenaline, finally settling and letting his rational, scientific mind resurface. Making sure these pirates were dead would protect him for the time being, sure. But on the other hand, he didn’t know where they’d come from, and the SRE could use whatever information they might have if the suits had indeed kept them in stasis. So if there was a chance they were alive, even just remotely, it might be worth his while to keep them that way. Even with an unconscious but alive pirate, the scientific staff aboard the Montenegro might be able to work their magic and salvage enough data from the pirate’s dying brain to prove helpful.

  “On second thought, I’m going to throw you in the damn brig.” He grabbed the mini-Gauss and strapped it over his back. “But if you do wake up and try something, I’ll make sure you’re down for good this time.”

  He wrapped his fingers around the pirate’s wrists and started dragging the body. To his surprise, he felt little resistance. The body and full armor were much lighter than he expected. In fact, the pirate in his full assault getup seemed to weigh less than Kaufman when he’d taken her from her armor. With that, his thoughts whirling to the woman still barely clinging to a shred of life, he picked up his pace. The pirate’s body bounced along the deck until he made it to the brig. Once through the hatch to the brig, a clear polyglass partition greeted him. He punched a command into the external terminal, and a small opening formed in the polyglass.

  With a grunt, Tag heaved the pirate through. He turned his back to leave then thought better of it. The pirate still had his wrist-mounted weapons. Sho
uld the pirate let those cannons loose on the polyglass, Tag wasn’t sure if the brig would be able to hold the man. He unstrapped his mini-Gauss and slammed the heavy stock into the small gun barrels on each of the pirate’s wrists. It took a couple of blows to bend the barrels and crack the mechanisms Tag assumed made the firearms work.

  Satisfied, he shut the brig behind him and left to retrieve the next pirate. Instead of returning to the bridge, he set off for the armory, which was closer. Again, he dragged the surprisingly light pirate into the brig and heaved him in. A brief sigh of relief escaped Tag when he saw the other hadn’t moved. The devastating cracks in their visors and armor should’ve been enough to assuage his anxiety. But so much had changed in the past day that he no longer knew what to expect.

  Runner lights along the deck guided Tag to the bridge. He was almost there when an alarm beeped on his wrist terminal. One glance at the small holoscreen sent his heart pounding anew, and he forgot about the pirate’s corpse waiting for him by the chart table. Kaufman.

  His boots slapped against the deck as he sprinted to the med bay. He flung open the hatch then dashed to the lab where Kaufman’s body lay. The decon hatch opened agonizingly slowly, and the lab’s automatic safety mechanisms wouldn’t let Tag through without enduring the entirety of the sterilization process. Gas hissed over him then was sucked away. He waited for it to clear. The inner hatch finally opened and let him spill into the protected lab.

  There, on the deck, lay Kaufman’s crumpled body. She’d had little protection from the fierce changes in acceleration, and her restraints had come undone. A split in her scalp and bruises along her bare arms evidenced where she had collided with the bulkhead when Tag had been engaged in space battle with the pirates. The wounds worried him, but they were superficial compared to the message still blaring at him from his wrist terminal.

  The cardiac support system had come undone during the ship’s crash. It lay askew across Kaufman’s chest. The electrical signal still fired from it at fierce regularity, but without its probes in full contact with Kaufman’s flesh, the signal must be attenuating before it hit her cardiac muscles.

  Her heartbeat had ceased.

  “No!” Tag pressed the support system back over her skin and pushed the probes down. “Stay with me, Kaufman. It’s just you and me.” The support system chimed each time it delivered an electrical pulse. “You can do it. You’ve got this.”

  But her heart didn’t seem to hear him. Her EKG signal, delivered to his wrist terminal, maintained a flat line. No blood was pumping through her vessels. No oxygen was being delivered to her organs. She was dying.

  Tag pressed his palms in a triangle over her ribs. He pumped. One, two, three. “Come on. Come on.”

  Still, her heart didn’t respond. He continued pumping. His medical training told him it was long past time for him to declare her dead, but he couldn’t believe it, he couldn’t believe he was the last living soul aboard the Argo trapped on some frigid planet. That everything and everyone he’d known had been ripped from him by some damned pirates.

  He couldn’t—wouldn’t—accept that.

  He hoisted Kaufman’s limp body in his arms, her limbs hanging limply and her head cradled against the nook of his elbow. The cardiac support system whined, and his wrist terminal screeched she was already gone. But he ignored it and carried Kaufman through the decon chamber. The outer hatch hissed open and let them out into the med bay. His eyes grew watery and his vision blurred, but he ignored the harsh reality breathing down his neck. He ran, cradling Kaufman’s body, and deposited her into one of the regen chambers. He secured her in and slammed the chamber shut. His fingers tapped across the chamber’s terminal.

  But the regen chamber didn’t begin glowing, nor did it hum to life. Instead, the terminal’s holoscreen stared back at him with a singular message: Offline.

  He hurried to the neighboring terminals and checked them. None would respond to his commands. Panic swelled in him like he was a boiler fit to burst. The damn machines still wouldn’t work, and Kaufman was going to die.

  No, a voice in his head said. The one born of medical training and logic. She’s already dead. It doesn’t matter anymore.

  He pounded his fist against the chamber where Kaufman’s body lay drooping against the polyglass. Rage poured through him, directed at the pirates. At the carnage they’d caused. For no goddamn good reason. What had they wanted this badly? And why? What could possibly justify this massacre?

  Uncontrollable sobs wracked through him, and he fell to his knees in front of the chamber. He continued to pound the glass until the nerves in his fingers went numb, and he could barely breathe. Gods be damned, now the last person on this ship besides him was gone.

  He slumped, gasping for breath. He had to stay in control. It was the only way off this planet. Maybe the rest of the crew was gone, too, but there were so many more lives at stake. Any rescue crew sent by the Montenegro to the Eta system would almost certainly be decimated by the ruthless pirates. And if the pirates started seeking revenge for their downed cutter, would they mount an attack against the Montenegro?

  Either way, Tag needed to ensure he somehow got a message to the rest of the fleet. He would mourn later. Who knew how many other exploratory vessels might unknowingly venture into pirate-infested territory?

  He stood, clenching and unclenching his fists. A brief memory of his early career, when he was back at Atlantis Station, returned to him. It had been shortly after he was taken out of the flight deck officer training program. He’d locked himself in his quarters with nothing but a bottle of station-distilled gutfire. The drink had been aptly named, and Tag had drunk himself to the point that his body felt as sick and tortured as his mind had been. For the duration of his training, he’d been so focused on studying manuals on bridge etiquette and procedure, star charts and navigation, ship AI systems, and weapons operations, he’d ignored all the calls from his parents and friends. He’d devoted his time so fanatically to officer training that everything else seemed to be of no importance and at best a mere distraction from achieving his deserved success at the bridge.

  But in the middle of his gutfire bender, he had finally capitulated to his flashing terminal and accepted a call from his father. His father, a scientist at an SRE-sponsored research institution, listened with patience as Tag unleashed a fiery tirade. He had taken it for granted at the time, but almost a decade and a half later, he admired how the man had listened to Tag lambaste the flight officer training program, blaming the officers and his classmates first. It took some time before he finally realized that maybe it was his own shortcomings that had led to the disastrous flight. His father had merely listened, waiting for Tag to come to this realization on his own. But once Tag had admitted his hotheadedness had risked the lives of his crew and earned the ire of his superior officers, his father spoke for the first time.

  “Is your career with the SRE navy finished?” he’d asked.

  “No,” Tag said. “But there’s no chance they’ll let me on the bridge again. They might as well have me discharged.”

  “But there is a chance you’ll be reassigned.”

  “There is. But what does it matter? It’s over for me.”

  “What does it matter?” his father had asked with incredulity. “You have a choice. You always have a choice. And as long as they don’t take that away from you, it isn’t ever over.”

  “Sure,” Tag had said.

  “I mean it. You’re on a highway, son. You’ve got so many exits in front of you. And if you don’t like ‘em when you get off the highway, you can just get back on until the next exit.” It was just like his father to use an outdated, land-based analogy. “Each exit is there because of all your interests and talents. You’re not a one-trick pony. No alley boy like most of these SRE junkies. Too many men and women join the navy and are only good at one thing. That’s all they’ve got. A single alley, a single road. An unavoidable dead end. But not you. No, Tag, you’re on a highway. Ther
e’s always another exit, another choice.”

  Tag had lost the will to debate with his father, an Earthbound scientist who’d never known what it was like to stare in awe at the marble of blue and green from a ship headed for distant solar systems or travel at speeds faster than light through hyperspace as tendrils of blue and purple plasma swirled outside the ship, knowing the delicate balance of physics and technology that had come together in such elegant precision to make such a moment attainable.

  There was no chance Tag would ever command his own starship.

  But he couldn’t leave the stars behind. And with time, he’d realized his father was right. He did have other skills, other choices. He’d chosen to train as a navy medic instead. His devotion to his education and his previous studies in the officer training program had turned out to be a boon, propelling him along a medical officer training path. He had picked up an MD and a PhD, specializing in advanced bio-AI interfaces, and he had never taken his eyes off the stars, finally finding his place among the SRE’s exploratory division of the navy.

  It had all led to this moment.

  Alone on the Argo, his father’s words resonated with him now more than ever. You always have a choice. And as long as they don’t take that away from you, it isn’t over.

  Wiping a tear from his eye, he left the lab, headed for the bridge to take the final pirate’s body to the brig. As he reached the hatch to the bridge, a loud roar shook the passage. The Argo shuddered, and he grabbed a stanchion to prevent himself from falling. What in the three hells?

  It sounded as though the fusion reactor was powering up, ready to supply the damaged impellers with an influx of power.

  He ran onto the bridge and gaped, looking for the reason the ship’s engines were rearing to go. He soon discovered it. The third pirate’s body was nowhere to be found.

  It turned out his father had been right. And Tag wasn’t the only one to take his old man’s advice. The last pirate he’d assumed was dead had choices too, and he’d chosen to keep fighting.