Frost Station Alpha 1-6: The Complete Series (31 page)

“One minute,” Anise murmured.

Tamryn was tempted to voice a similar suggestion. If Anise didn’t finish up in a few minutes, she would.

She headed back toward the video display, checking the floor carefully before each step. As she passed the corner of the table, she remembered the black device from the feed, the one she thought might be for hacking into computers. To her surprise, it was still on the table, nestled beside a stack of books.

Had the pirates acquired any information? She didn’t know how quickly the device worked. The man wielding it had not been at the console for long. If the device
was
full of important information, would he have left it? Granted, he had been distracted. She debated whether to pick it up. The fact that it remained intact probably meant that none of the sludge had been in contact with it, but she was hesitant to touch anything, especially anything on the table. She eyed the other side, where the dark substance had eaten through the metal.

Makkon stepped away from the door, glanced at the hacking device, and lifted a hand. “Someone’s coming.” He spoke quickly—the door had not shut again, not since he forced it open. “The captain expecting anyone?”

Tamryn looked to Anise. She hadn’t heard the captain call for backup, but maybe she had done it on her tablet. Maybe she’d felt she needed help.

“Anise?” she whispered.

“Eh?”

“You call anyone to come help?”

Anise turned, frowning at them. “No, not yet.”

“Could the pirates be coming back for this?” Tamryn pointed at the device. They might have gone all the way back to their ship before realizing they didn’t have it. If they’d actually managed to get Anise’s notes out of the computer, it could hold the very information they meant to sell.

Makkon returned to the doorway. He leaned out, the rifle ready to fire. Tamryn crept closer, but stopped a few feet behind him. She wanted to see into the corridor so she could help, but she didn’t want to get in his way. He could handle some pirates by himself.

An unexpected
clink-clink-clank
came from the corridor. Makkon hesitated, then fired. Metal screeched, and small bits of something clattered against the walls.

“Robot,” he said quietly, using the comm inside his armor to communicate. “It’s launching—” He fired again.

Something whistled through the corridor. He fired several more times, but whatever he hit exploded. Splinters of something hard enough to pierce metal flew from the explosion. Arm up, Makkon backed into the lab. Some of those slender pin-like splinters stuck out of his armor.

“Fragmentation grenades,” he finished.

“Watch out for the goo,” Tamryn barked, watching his boots come perilously close to the spot she had cordoned off.

She stepped forward, intending to stop him from backing into it physically if she had to, but a second explosion went off in the corridor. Smoke flowed through the doorway, the haze so thick that Tamryn could scarcely see three feet. Makkon became a vague shape in front of her. But
he
must have seen better than her, or maybe his other senses kicked in, telling him something over the dwindling roar of the bomb, because he fired at the doorway.

Lasers squealed, and someone yelled. It wasn’t a yell of pain; it was more of a battle roar. Four men charged in, but they did not charge far, and Tamryn immediately suspected they were the same pirates from the video. These men knew about the dangers of the room and did not blindly rush in. Yes, they had been here before, at least two of them. They had gained a friend—or perhaps two friends, if the one who had picked up the sludge hadn’t found a way to get it off. Three of them were wearing the station’s combat suits. Did that mean that contaminated, smoldering ones were now lying on the floor in the armory? A question for later.

Makkon’s laser fire bounced off their armor, so he threw the weapon aside and lunged to meet them, like knights on a jousting field. Tamryn had few illusions about coming out ahead in such a confrontation, so she stepped to the side, hugging the wall by the door and hoping not to be noticed. She fired, trying to find the weak spots in the suits. The smoke made it difficult to see. She managed a few hits to the back of one man’s helmet, but the laser beams did no damage. Cox, who had moved to stand in front of Anise’s back, was having similar difficulty.

Remembering that these were station suits, Tamryn mumbled commands to access the overrides.

Makkon had already downed the lead pirate, ripping the man’s helmet from his head with his great strength. Tamryn’s command injected drugs into the man closest to her, as she had done to Makkon. She trusted that a less genetically enhanced human would be affected more. Then she popped the helmets on the other two men’s suits.

“Get out of here,” one of them cried as Makkon heaved the first pirate, heavy armor and all, over the table to smash into the wall next to the vault.

Cox pulled off one of the helmets Tamryn had unlocked, starting a wrestling match with the pirate. Another one turned toward the door, but Makkon leaped onto his back, taking him to the ground. Tamryn fired three bursts at the final pirate, her aim precise. Since she had unlocked the helmet, a millimeter-wide crack lay between it and the rest of the suit. It was enough. The laser blasts found the opening and bored into his neck. The man toppled halfway through the doorway.

Makkon helped Cox finish the last pirate. With his helmet now off, Tamryn recognized the face from the video, the ex-sergeant. She almost cried out to spare him, more for questioning than for any other reason, since Fleet would only execute him for this treasonous act. But Makkon was too quick. He grabbed the sergeant’s head between both hands and twisted so hard that the man’s neck broke.

“Everyone all right?” Tamryn asked.

“Yes,” Cox said, lowering his rifle and glancing back at Anise—she had barely stopped working. “What were they after? Why would they come back?”

“For the hacking device?” Tamryn suggested.

“Perhaps not.” Makkon pointed into the smoky corridor.

The grenades had made a mess, gouging holes in the wall and leaving char marks all over the floor and ceiling. But beyond that point lay the robot he had mentioned, its metal frame warped and melted. Shards of a pot or some other ceramic container had smashed to the floor at its wheels.

“They came back to get a sample?” Tamryn wondered.

“This could be turned into a weapon, as well as a tool,” Anise said with a sigh. “Step outside. I’m going to make some attempts to eradicate it based on what was written on the amphora, but I’m a linguist not a biologist. I’ll probably have to call down...” She trailed off, her mouth dropping open. She was staring at Makkon, who had started walking out. “Stop,” she ordered and pointed at his heel.

He looked down at the same time as Tamryn did. Dread curdled in her stomach before she spotted the small smudge near the sole of the boot.

“What do we do?” Tamryn asked, trying to sound calm. “Take off the boot?”

Makkon was already bending down to do so, but Anise said, “Stop,” again. “We can’t be positive that there aren’t airborne spores—my suit’s alarm went off because of more than goop on the deck. You’ll break the seal of your suit if you remove anything.”

“What then?” Tamryn squinted at Anise, suspicious that she might want Makkon to be infected with the organism and die. But she had thought him a fine specimen when she had been drugged. Would she truly want him dead now?

“My suit may already be compromised.” Makkon pointed at the slivers that stuck out, thanks to that fragmentation grenade. He didn’t sound as scared as Tamryn would be. The thought of being eaten alive—or
watching
someone being eaten alive—made her tremble.

“Then all the more reason to wash you from head to toe,” Anise said. “There’s a decontamination shower next door. The amphora mentioned radiation, so we’ll clean you, and I’ll program in a radiation burst.”

Makkon’s eyebrows rose. “Does that kill me, as well as the organism?”

Anise hesitated. “We’ll try low doses. That suit is rated for space walks, so it’s designed to protect its wearer against some radiation.”

“That suit that’s been compromised?” Tamryn did not like the sound of this at all.

“The quicker we get him into the shower, the less compromised it will be.” Anise pointed at the sludge on his heel, then jerked her thumb toward the doorway. “If you can, keep that from touching the deck. We don’t need to spread this thing all over the station.”

Makkon gave her a sour look, but walked on one foot and one set of tiptoes in the direction she had indicated.

“Cox,” Anise said. “Figure out how to shut and lock that door, will you? I’ll have to run a decontamination cycle in here too. If this works, I’ll know what to try.”

“You’re not using him as a lab rat, are you?” Tamryn asked quietly, walking beside Anise to the lab next door.

“Better him than us.”

“He’s been helping us. Those pirates—”

“Do not forget who and how many or our men he and his people killed when they invaded our station,” Anise said sharply, then raised her voice. “On the left. The shower is to the side.”

The door opened when Makkon turned toward it. He strode straight for the large glass-walled cubicle. Anise walked to a control panel, and lamps came on in the cubicle, looking like glowing suction cups lining the back side of the shower. Different wavy bulbs shone down from the top.

Anise spent so long typing at the control panel that Tamryn worried the sludge would eat through Makkon’s suit as they watched. He looked down at his foot more than once, probably thinking of tearing off the boot, but then he glanced at the bulbs. Better to face the radiation fully suited up.

“Here.” Anise pointed at the options on the panel. “Press that, then when the cycle is done, press that, and then that. I’ll be back to check on him, but I have to get back to the lab, see about securing that door and trying to destroy that organism before it eats through the entire station.”

“I understand,” Tamryn said. “I will.”

The shower door closed, sealing Makkon inside. He had been regarding his infected foot, but he turned to face her now, his hands pressed against the thick glass panels on either side.

“Ready?” Tamryn pressed the button Anise had indicated. “Decon One.”

Water sprayed from nozzles in the corners, striking his suit and spattering off him and onto the walls. Perhaps not straight water, Tamryn amended, as the grayish liquid dribbled down the glass.

“This isn’t how I imagined it when I pictured us showering,” Makkon said, his voice coming over their private channel. Between the helmet, the glass walls, and the water spraying him, she would not have heard him otherwise.

“When were you doing that?” Tamryn was watching the control panel, hoping something would beep an indication that the process was proving effective.

“On my ship. When we left the station to talk to the Fleet ship that turned out to be infested with pirates. I took the time to shave and shower.”

Yes, she remembered that he’d been spattered with dried blood before then and had come back cleaner. “Were you doing anything naughty? When you were imagining us showering?”

“Just cleaning myself. Vigorously.”

She could barely see his face through the glass and water, but she felt confident he was smiling. She smiled back. “I feel remiss. I haven’t had a chance to do that yet. Shower, that is.”

“You could join me in here.”

“Someone has to push the buttons.” Tamryn tapped another one, and a warning flashed, telling her to step out of the room. That hardly seemed fair, since
Makkon
couldn’t step out of the room. “All right. I’m not sure, but I think this is whatever radiation blast she programmed in. I’ll be right back.”

“Understood.” His voice sounded grim.

The water turned off, and intense light blazed down onto Makkon as Tamryn stepped into the hallway. The door shut behind her, and she dropped her chin to her fist, hoping Anise hadn’t held anything back. If she walked in and found Makkon crumpled on the floor of the cubicle, or incinerated like a body at a funeral pyre... She gulped, blinking back tears.

Not certain how long she was supposed to wait outside, she turned and tried to go back in. The door did not open. Frowning, she waved at the sensor.

“Decontamination is not complete,” a computerized voice informed her.

“Open up anyway.” Tamryn thumped the side of her fist on the door, then backed up, dropping a hand to her pistol. “I’ll melt my way in if I have to.”

“Decontamination is not complete,” the computer repeated blandly.

Tamryn yanked the pistol out, but before she could do something foolish, the door beeped and slid aside. She ran into the room, almost skidding on the floor as she turned to look at the cubicle. The light had faded, leaving Makkon inside in the dark. He was still standing, but he had slumped against the corner, his chin drooping to his chest. He did not move.

“Makkon?” Tamryn ran to the glass door, pressing her hand against it. “Makkon?”

She tried to open the door, but there was no handle, no way to push her way in except via the control panel. She punched at it, not able to find the commands she wanted, probably because moisture was making her eyes bleary.

“Tamryn,” Makkon whispered over the comm. A patch of static came over it, too, but she hardly cared.

She spun toward him. “Makkon, are you all right?”

His helmet came up, and he met her eyes. “I... think a medical device will have to tell me that.”

Right, radiation wouldn’t necessarily kill him instantly. Tamryn stared at the control panel, wondering if it was equipped to check him.

Anise returned before she figured anything out. She went straight to the panel and punched at the keys. Displays flashed past too quickly for Tamryn to follow.

“It appears to have been effective,” Anise said. “The organism reads as dead.”

“And Makkon?” Tamryn was more worried about
him
.

“He appears to be fine. The suit protected him, and the blast wasn’t designed to kill humans, regardless.” Anise glanced toward him, but Makkon had slumped against the wall again, his helmet sagging toward his chest. He did not look
fine
.