Frost Station Alpha 1-6: The Complete Series (40 page)

Makkon picked up his pace until he was jogging. He would set Arkt’s body in the burial tunnel, as requested, but then he would find Tamryn’s tablet and record as many examples as he could find of the ancient ruins—and runes. Maybe if he sent those pictures up to the military ships in time, he could yet bargain for his people’s safety. After all, the Fleet wouldn’t want to utterly destroy something that could help them solve the mystery of faster-than-light travel, right?

With the hope that his reasonable argument proved correct, Makkon hurried on. He wouldn’t have much time. The soldiers on those ships must already be planning a method of destroying his world.

• • • • •

Tamryn sat in the briefing room on the
Marathon
, relaying her story, everything from the solar flare that had allowed the Glacians to catch Frost Station Alpha off guard to Makkon figuring out who she was related to and stealing her away to the moon. With the ship’s captain, her father, and Admiral Liao, who was in command of the fleet, frowning at her from the other side of the table, she left out all of the romantic details. Even if Makkon hadn’t been the enemy, she would have left them out, not wanting to be judged by three gray-haired men who probably didn’t remember what it was like to have hormones.

“Can you give us any intelligence on the Glacians who were left on the station?” Admiral Liao asked.

“What kind of intelligence, sir? When last I saw them, they were locked in vaults and had been knocked out by gas.”

“That’s no longer the case. They’ve retaken the station, and they’re not letting us talk to Captain Porter or any of the lead scientists. They’ve threatened to blow up the entire station if our ships come within spitting distance.”

So far, all of the information had been flowing from Tamryn and to the senior officers, so this was news to her. She wasn’t that surprised, given how tenacious the Glacians had proven to be from the beginning, but it was a complication that would not help anything. More bloodshed would only make negotiating a peace treaty more difficult.

“A man named Brax is in charge,” Tamryn said. “I was told that he was part of the system invasion force last century, but I don’t know what his rank was or what he was responsible for.”

“Well, isn’t that fantastic?” Liao asked. “Captain, have one of your people look him up, see what the history texts say.”

“Yes, Admiral.”

“The rest of the team were hunters, people who chose to stay home instead of starting a war,” Tamryn said, wanting to make that clear. “Apparently, desperation drove them to this attack. When they came out of their cryo chambers, their atmosphere and the surface of the moon were no longer toxic, but none of the animal life had survived the holocaust.”

Her father flinched slightly at her choice of words. Good. The only way she might keep Makkon’s people alive was if someone here looked at this as a morality decision and not simply a matter of ensuring Fleet and GalCon dominance by any means possible.

“They should have stayed in their cryo chambers,” the admiral grumbled. “Then this could have been someone else’s problem.” He looked at her father. “I’m due to retire in three months.”

“I’ve heard it’s nice,” her father said with a smile that didn’t last.

Tamryn hadn’t yet been told how he had come to be here, but she assumed he had requested that he be placed on active duty long enough to find her and bring her home safely. Not exactly standard Fleet procedures, but both her father and grandfather had many strings they could pull when they wanted to.

“In short, they were starving, sirs,” Tamryn said. “As hard as it may be to believe right now, I suspect they would be open to working with us and becoming peaceable neighbors and loyal citizens if we gave them the equipment to terraform their planet. If we gave them that—and food to last them until the terraforming kicks in—they would feel indebted to the government.” She saw the admirals—Liao
and
her father—shaking their heads. The captain probably would have been, too, but he was murmuring on his comm, telling some intelligence officer to research Brax. Tamryn pushed on. “A treaty could be created, something that would hold them to compliance.”

“Tam,” her father said. “You’re being idealistic. These people tried to take over the galaxy, and considering their minuscule numbers, they were terrifyingly effective. By your own words, those are the
same
people that we’re dealing with.”

“Only a handful of them are the same, sir. Most of those soldiers of old are long dead. As I said, it’s the people who chose
not
to go to war who were around and still on the moon when Fleet came in to annihilate Glaciem.”

“They’re not human, Lieutenant,” Liao said. “Not fully. We can’t trust that they’ll feel
indebted
to us, as you say. Even if they do, gratitude is fleeting. You want us to give them the means to grow strong again, increase their numbers. And then what? A few generations pass, and they try to conquer us again.”

“With all due respect, sir, in my time being their prisoner, they seemed quite human, with all of the fallibility, arrogance, and potential to be an asshole that comes with that. Besides, there are billions of people in the system. Even if they breed like rabbits, it would be a long time before they’d have an invasion force capable of bothering the rest of the system.” Tamryn had no idea how many people had been involved in that invasion in the past, so she hoped she did not come across as naive. She tamped down any argument that might run toward idealism, toward issues of morality and the wrongness in dismissing them as some Other to be ostracized. “And what if we made them citizens and allowed them the freedom to come and go from their moon? Full integration. Some of them would leave, marry people outside of their own. In a few generations, you might find that their superior genes have been so diluted that nobody can tell anymore that their descendants are any different from the rest of us.”

Tamryn thought it sounded like a reasonable argument, but all of the men, her father included, wore dyspeptic expressions as they stared at her.

“Tamryn,” her father said softly, “if they hadn’t made the choice to attack the station, to
kill
a squadron of our soldiers, perhaps we could have considered some of what you’re talking about—” Admiral Liao frowned and shook his head, clearly not in agreement with her father “—but they chose to act as terrorists. Fleet doesn’t negotiate with terrorists.”

“Are they terrorists, sir? Or are they soldiers fighting a war that never ended for them?”

“They were terrorists then, and they’re terrorists now.” His tone was firm, and nothing in his expression said he was open to changing his mind.

Was she being foolish for trying? Tamryn massaged the back of her neck. Would she be fighting so hard for these people if she hadn’t come to care about Makkon? She thought of Captain Ram, Sergeant Wu, and the others, men killed without being given a chance to plead for mercy, without anyone informing them they were at war.

Still... she couldn’t help but also think of the children in the tunnels. They hadn’t been terrorists by any definition of the word. They’d just been hungry. Despite Admiral Liao’s words, the Glacians seemed as human as anyone else. Did the ability to run faster and lift more weight truly change a person’s humanity? In the end, Arkt had died no differently than any other person. When they didn’t see an attack coming, the Glacians fell as easily as the next man.

“There’s one more thing you should know, Da—sir,” Tamryn said, and she nodded to the captain and admiral too. “The tunnels that they’re living in down there. Have you scanned them?”

The captain shook his head. “They’re too deep under the rock and the ice. We had no idea they were there until a radio antennae poked up through a glacier, and that Glacian commed us about making a deal.”

“But we’ve found them now,” Admiral Liao added. “Whether that man meant to or not, he gave us what we needed to locate the entrance to their base. We’ll deal with the station first, but we do have weapons capable of caving in those tunnels, no matter how deep they are.”

Tamryn held back a grimace, sensing that if she appeared to be too much on the Glacians’ side, the men would be suspicious of her. They might think some brainwashing had gone on down there. No, sirs... just amazing sex.

“Yes, sir,” she said, “but I wanted to let you know that the tunnels were originally excavated by the alien civilization over ten thousand years ago. There are artifacts down there and possibly clues to the puzzle Captain Porter is trying to solve. You’re aware of her work?”

Her father nodded immediately, but the captain shook his head. Admiral Liao hesitated, then said, “Not entirely.”

“You might want to search those tunnels before collapsing them.”

“That would be difficult with the enemy down there,” Liao said dryly.

Tamryn turned her palm upward. “Perhaps a deal needs to be made, after all.”

He scowled at her. “I find it disconcerting that you’re fighting to keep these people alive, people who were responsible for your comrades’ deaths.”

Tamryn sighed. She had been afraid they had been thinking that, even if they hadn’t voiced it until now. “More deaths won’t bring back Wu and Ram and the others. But perhaps we can take the blood of the fallen and use it to fertilize soil so that something valuable can grow.”

Liao shook his head and looked at her father. “I can’t talk to her, Tomas.” His dour expression said he was wondering if he needed to. After all, what was she but some junior officer barely out of the academy? Being her father’s daughter didn’t automatically make her someone worth listening to.

“The intelligence you’ve given is appreciated, Tam,” her father said, “and we should be able to use whatever information we find on Brax as a lever, but you are, I’m afraid, a newly minted lieutenant. You don’t have the experience necessary to be involved in these decisions.” He nodded at her, his expression gentle even if his words stuck in her heart like a dagger. “Dismissed.”

She wanted to argue, and maybe she would have if they had been alone, if they had been father and daughter instead of junior officer and commanding officer, but as long as she wore her uniform, no matter how grimy it was after days on the run, she had to interact with him in that latter capacity.

“Yes, sir,” she said tightly and walked out.

Chapter 28

The
Marathon
was a big ship, complete with guest quarters for transferring dignitaries and finance ministers around the system. Tamryn was given a room that was spacious by the standards of Frost Station Alpha, complete with a private lavatory and kitchenette. She suspected the assignment had more to do with her father’s influence than anything else. Had she been reporting solely to Admiral Liao, she might have ended up in the brig. Even if he hadn’t said as much, she was certain he suspected her loyalties. The only good thing about Brax’s men retaking the station was that it probably hadn’t come out that she had been seen kissing the enemy. She just hoped that nobody else had been killed over there. Every death would make it that much harder to find peace. If it wasn’t already impossible.

No, she mustn’t think that. She must not give up yet.

While she took a shower, she contemplated a plan of action, one that her father would resent her for, but if she didn’t try, she wouldn’t be able to forgive herself. Even if she was just a junior officer, as he had bluntly pointed out, and treaties and negotiations should be left in the hands of those qualified to do them, she had a reason to care. Nobody who was “qualified” did.

As soon as she had dried off and changed into a fresh uniform that someone had dropped off, she strode to the computer built into the room’s desk and sat down. With the network delay, it would take a while to receive a response, so she couldn’t waste any time in writing her letter. She thought of recording a video but decided she couldn’t be trusted to compose something polished and persuasive if she simply babbled to a camera.

When she logged into her mailbox, she was tempted to peruse the stack of messages that had come in while she had been offline, especially the ones with worried headings from her mother, but she had a mission to accomplish first. She spent over three hours writing a five-page proposal, then sent it off, hoping her computer usage wasn’t being monitored and also hoping that her grandfather wasn’t so busy that he wasn’t checking messages. A part of her was terrified as to what might happen if he
wasn’t
busy, if he read it and accepted the proposition. It would mean the end of the only career she had ever wanted.

She bit her lip and stared out the porthole, where the icy white rim of Glaciem was just visible in front of the stars. A frigid, barren moon. Even with terraforming, it would never be like her home world of Paradise. If the Glacians were lucky, they might manage to grow a few crops. If not for Makkon, this place would have no draw for her. But Makkon was there, and he was real, and she missed him more than she would have thought possible after the short time they had spent together.

And this went beyond him, and beyond her desires too. It was true that all she had ever wanted was to be an officer, to have a career independent of her family’s influence, but... if she could do more good here, in another capacity, didn’t she owe it to the galaxy to accept that?

Less than two minutes after Tamryn hit the send button, her door chime sounded. She flinched, afraid she was about to receive confirmation that her network usage was being monitored. Had some overly zealous intelligence officer on the bridge kept her message from going out? Had her father already been alerted?

“Come in.” Tamryn shut down the holo display and turned away from the desk.

Her father walked in, and the feeling of dread in her gut doubled. He couldn’t have already read it, but maybe just knowing she had sent it had been enough.

“Sir?” she asked warily.

He sighed as he walked to the bed and sat down. He looked like he wanted to
lie
down. Before, she had been too concerned about her own fate—and that of the Glacians—to notice the dark circles under his eyes. How long had he been awake, worrying about her? Worrying about what she had gotten herself involved with? She could tell herself that she hadn’t had any choice, but she had requested this duty station months ago, so she couldn’t blame anyone else for her involvement. She had never told her family it had been a request, but they probably knew.