No, she lowered her weapon and turned around, heading toward the lift that Brax had already disappeared into. Makkon caught up with her. Though he didn’t know if she would appreciate the gesture, he patted her on the back before jogging past.
Someone had pulled the body out of the lift, but there must have been more people hiding inside. One dark-skinned pirate was tossed out as Makkon and Tamryn walked up. Makkon was about to step over the body and into the lift, when a faint tink noise came from somewhere down a corridor.
“Grenade,” he barked and pulled Tamryn inside at the same time as he leaned out, looking for the projectile to come sailing toward him. He spotted it in the air and fired. His beam caught it, but it still exploded, shooting shrapnel in every direction.
As he ducked back into the lift he glimpsed another projectile coming from the other direction. He fired, but the grenade came too close this time. When it exploded, countless shards of shrapnel clanged off the walls and flew into the lift.
“Look out,” Makkon yelled, but not before a piece slammed into his forearm.
Rebek hissed in pain. Makkon grimaced at himself, irritated he hadn’t been faster.
Brax slammed a button, and the doors shut. He growled, pulled out pieces of shrapnel, and dropped them on the floor. Since Tamryn had been at the front with him, Makkon looked at her, afraid she had been injured.
She stood absolutely still, a metal shard sticking out of her skin, just above her collarbone. Her eyes were wide as she probed the wound. Makkon was about to tell her to leave it until later, that they’d find sickbay either here or back on the station and take care of it, but she pulled it out, like the others had, and dropped it on the floor. It bled but not as heavily as it would have if it had hit a vein. She had to be alarmed by how close it had been to her throat, to her jugular, but she simply shut her mouth and leaned against the wall.
“Not bad shooting, Pavlenko,” Brax said.
The lift door opened. Brax waved to his men to get out, then stepped past her and into the corridor. He fired twice, and two thuds sounded as bodies dropped.
Makkon wondered if Tamryn would notice or care that Brax had used her name instead of calling her girl. Probably not. She probably wouldn’t care that his affection for her was growing, either, but he wrapped his arm around her and kissed her on the side of the head, nonetheless. He stepped out of the lift before she could glare at him, or reject him as he knew she must.
“Bridge is at the end of the corridor,” she said, joining them. “That way.”
Makkon waved for her to go ahead and took up the rear again. When Brax reached the door to the bridge, it would not open for him.
“We should have brought Dornic,” Makkon said. “Or grenades.”
Brax snarled and planted his hands on the door. Arms and shoulders flexing, he tried to push it sideways to open it. His fingers slipped slowly with a faint squeaking. The door did not budge. Makkon spotted a couple of cameras or perhaps sensors on the bulkhead above the door. He aimed his rifle slightly below them and fired, not a short and quick blast but a sustained low-power one. Slowly, the laser melted into the bulkhead, and smoke wafted upward.
Brax jumped away from the door, glancing up. “What are you doing?”
“Perhaps nothing,” Makkon said, but he kept firing. More smoke wafted toward those sensors.
“Then help me with the door. We—”
A new alarm sounded, an undulating series of tones that made Makkon want to cover his ears. The bridge door, along with every other door in the corridor, slid open.
“Smoke detected,” a computerized voice informed them. “Proceed to fire suppression stations.”
Brax grunted, then jumped through the doorway to the bridge, landing in a crouch, ready to shoot anyone who moved. Makkon did not hear any surprised grunts and gasps of alarm. He released the trigger on his rifle and walked inside with Tamryn and Rebek.
The bridge was empty.
Chapter 14
Tamryn stared around the vacated bridge, her gaze snagging on several bodies piled to one side. That pile had been out of the view of the video pickup when the captain had been addressing them via the comm. The fake captain. Though Tamryn did not want to look closer, she couldn’t help it. She walked toward the dead men, feeling numb. The puncture wound below her collarbone ached with every move of her shoulder, but she barely noticed it, too horrified by the carnage to feel pain of her own. They must have passed at least fifty bodies like this, Fleet soldiers shot down in the corridors of their own ship.
Atop the pile, a gray-haired man had been stripped of his uniform and boots and lay there in nothing except his underwear, with laser scorch burns across his chest. The bastard who had been speaking to them had been an impostor, a murderer, and a thief.
Her grip flexed on the rifle, fresh anger surging through her. She very much wanted a pirate to shoot. Many pirates to shoot. Including the one who had been impersonating the captain. But aside from Makkon and his team, the bridge was empty of the living.
“Did they all leave to storm the station?” Brax asked.
“You’d think some of them would have stayed here.” Makkon spun in a slow circle, taking in the damaged walls and the empty stations. “Weren’t they planning to leave again once they got their booty?”
Their booty. The artifacts and the information on the alien language. They had killed everyone on a Fleet ship just for those items? It seemed impossible. Tamryn could understand the value of faster-than-light travel, but it wasn’t as if the station had one of the engines. All it had was information and a few trinkets that might or might not be related to the engines. This was... She thumped her borrowed rifle onto the console hard enough that she cracked a button. The men looked at her, their eyebrows raised. She hardly cared. She just wanted—
“Greetings, new acquaintances,” a voice spoke from the front of the bridge, the words barely audible over the emergency siren wailing in the corridor. A holo display had appeared in the air ahead of the captain’s chair, and the gray-haired pirate pretending to be Captain Liakos smiled at them.
Tamryn wanted to shoot that smile off his face. She tried to guess from the background where he was contacting them from. She couldn’t see any equipment, but the white bulkhead behind him was the same as the rest of the bulkheads on the Felling Axe, not the grays of the station, so he had to be on the ship somewhere.
“What do you want?” Brax asked.
The fake captain shifted to face him. Tamryn wondered if she was in the view of the pirate’s pickup. “First off, I would appreciate it if you would stop killing my people.” The man’s smile remained, but his dark eyes grew cold.
Brax fired a laser at the man’s forehead, the beam, of course, streaking straight through the holo display to strike the bulkhead behind it. “Request denied. Next?”
Makkon snorted. He was standing in the doorway to the bridge, his back to the jamb, as he watched the way they had come for trouble. But he was watching the display too.
“I’m prepared to let you walk off the bridge,” the fake captain said, “and return to whatever you were doing to that station, if you give me the girl.”
“What girl?” Brax asked.
A chill went through Tamryn that had nothing to do with the sweat cooling on her body. Had the pirates had time to look her up? Find some picture of her on the network to confirm who she was related to? It hadn’t occurred to her to lie about her name during that communication, not when she had thought she was talking to a Fleet officer, but now she wished she had. Of course, then Makkon and Brax would have wondered why she was lying.
“Lieutenant Tamryn Pavlenko,” the fake captain said. “If you truss her up, leave her on the bridge, and walk off my ship, I’ll let you escape with your lives.”
Brax snorted. “That’s so generous of you, especially considering you’re probably the last of your people alive on the ship.”
The fake captain’s cold smile never wavered. “Do not assume
that.” He tilted his head, looking at Brax and also at Makkon. The other Glacian stood to the side of the bridge, likely out of the picture, like Tamryn. “I know that you have her with you, and I know she’s not a part of your raiding party. You have thirty seconds to make up your mind.”
“Or what?” Brax demanded.
“You don’t want to find out.”
If the pirate leader hadn’t been communicating with them from somewhere on the ship, Tamryn would have suspected that he had rigged the vessel to self-destruct.
“What do you want with her?” Makkon asked, stepping away from the doorway to glare at the display. The door shut behind him, but he didn’t seem to notice.
“We like nubile young Fleet officers.”
“Nubile?” Brax asked. “What kind of prick says nubile?”
Tamryn’s thoughts were similar. And the urge to shoot the fake captain was increasing.
“We should go, Makkon,” she said softly, trusting the fine Glacian hearing to catch the words, while hoping that the pirate would not. “Hunt him down while he’s talking to your leader.” Not that they could slip out the door without the fake captain noticing. Unless they went on hands and knees. That could be a possibility. Though a part of her wanted to talk all of the men into leaving. She didn’t want them listening to enough of the man’s prattle to find out that she might be worth a ransom.
Makkon glanced toward her, seemingly considering her suggestion.
“Last chance,” the fake captain said. “You have ten seconds to make your decision.”
Tamryn edged her way along the stations ringing the outside of the bridge, trying to stay out of the pirate’s view. Whatever was happening in ten seconds, she didn’t want to risk getting caught in crossfire. Makkon took a couple of steps back, whether to join her or to stop her, Tamryn wouldn’t guess. He did not look at her as he did it.
“We’re keeping all of our hostages, nubile and otherwise.” Brax folded his meaty arms over his chest. “You’re more than welcome to come try and take her.” He flashed a lupine smile.
Tamryn crouched low, using the back of the captain’s chair for cover. She pointed at the door, stirring a fresh wave of pain from her wound. She grimaced, but didn’t stop. The door should have sensed her approach, from however low a position, and opened. Makkon took one more step backward to stand in front of it. Blocking her. It didn’t matter. The door did not open, not when she waved and not when Makkon stood close to it.
“Prepare yourselves for death then,” the fake captain said. The display winked out.
Makkon turned toward the door, and Tamryn stood up. There was no point in hiding now. When it did not open, he grabbed the door as Brax had done earlier, trying to pull it aside. A deep clunk-thunk came from within the bulkhead next to it. Some emergency lock being activated?
Brax jogged up and joined him. “We’re locked in?”
“It appears that way.” Makkon glanced upward, but there weren’t any sensors above the door here.
Tamryn scanned the ceiling and the bulkheads around the bridge, figuring it would be illogical if there weren’t fire-detection sensors in here somewhere. But what caught her attention were vents, two of them, one on either side of the bridge. A yellowish smoke wafted out of them.
“What’s that smell?” Brax demanded. He’d had his hands on the door, trying to help Makkon open it, but now he spun around.
Tamryn pointed at the gas. She didn’t know whether it was a deadly concoction or not and suddenly wished she hadn’t hidden from the camera’s view. If the pirates wanted her as a hostage, they wouldn’t be pumping deadly gas into the bridge, but if they didn’t think she was in the room...
Makkon gripped her arm and pointed toward the floor. “Get down.”
He followed his own advice and crouched low beside the door, his rifle at the ready.
Tamryn hesitated, wanting to do more. They couldn’t simply sit there and hope they wouldn’t die. Brax seemed to be of the same mind. He leaped onto a console, tore a vent open, and angled a pistol so he could fire into the shaft.
“That won’t do anything,” Tamryn said. “Try to cover it.”
Brax snarled but looked around. “With what?”
Good question. “Maybe a shirt?”
She doubted mere fabric would stop the gas. Unless they stuffed a lot of shirts in there, enough to block the passage. Her gaze fell upon the pile of corpses, but she shied away from the idea of disrobing them. Wasn’t it bad enough that the captain had already been stripped of his dignity? Still, if it meant their survival, didn’t they have to try? She stood and pointed at the pile.
Brax dropped to the deck, but uncharacteristically, he stumbled. He shook his head, as if to clear it of cobwebs, then walked toward the dead officers. By the time he made it to them, he was stumbling again.
“Damn it,” he cursed, his voice slurred. “I breathed... too much...”
He collapsed next to the dead men.
“Makkon,” Tamryn said, shifting back toward him. But her own voice sounded slurred now, too, her movements slow. She wasn’t that close to the vent, but the gas must be spreading quickly.
Makkon still crouched low by the door, his eyes half closed. The third Glacian squatted behind him in a similar pose. They looked like statues, barely breathing. That wouldn’t help unless the pirates came in before they had all dropped unconscious—or dead. And after Makkon’s men had killed so many of their men, it was doubtful they would underestimate the Glacians.
“We have to...” Tamryn shook her head slowly. Her mind and her chest felt as if they were stuffed with cotton. She dropped to her knees, partially because she remembered Makkon’s warning to stay low, but mostly because her legs were no longer working correctly.
“Makkon.” On all fours now, she met his eyes. Whatever she had meant to say, and she wasn’t entirely certain herself, it did not come out.
She slumped to the deck, all awareness of the world and herself disappearing.
• • • • •
When the door to the bridge whispered open, Makkon was almost too far gone to react. He had slowed his breathing and his heart rate, meditating to still the needs of his body in the hope that the gas would not affect him so quickly. It had taken all of his willpower not to rush forward to help Tamryn when she had toppled to the deck, but there wouldn’t have been anything he could do.
Several sets of footsteps sounded in the corridor behind the open door. Four. The air still stank of chemicals, of whatever that gas was, and the owners of those footsteps were waiting to come in.
“How do we suck it back out?” someone asked.
“Just let it dissipate,” came the response, the voice familiar. That was the pirate impersonating the Fleet captain.
A rifle poked through the doorway, right in front of Makkon’s eyes. A surge of adrenaline rushed through him, driving away the meditation. He took a breath, and his lungs, which he had denied air for the last couple of minutes, sucked it in greedily. Hoping it wasn’t still tainted enough to slow his reflexes, Makkon leaped for the holder of that rifle.
He crashed into the pirate as the man had been leaning in to check the bridge. Makkon tore the rifle from his grip and slammed the back of his arm into the man’s head. His movements felt slow, but they were still faster than the pirate’s. His target’s head struck the wall with a heavy thud.
Aware of other men in the corridor, men who were taking aim at him, Makkon gripped the dazed pirate like a shield. The others hesitated to fire at their comrade. Makkon hurled the startled and squawking man toward his foes, then charged after the flying body. Three of his enemies went down in a pile, one of them the gray-haired pirate who had been talking to them. The fourth man skittered back, evading the mess, and fired. Makkon ducked as he shot his own rifle. The enemy’s laser blast zipped just above his head. His own aim proved true. His laser burned into his target’s unarmored chest.
Someone stomped out of the bridge behind him. Makkon didn’t
have to look to know it was Rebek, the other hunter who had been smart enough to try and outwit the gas. As one, they descended on the remaining three pirates, crushing them with all the mercy of an avalanche. Makkon didn’t know why the pirates wanted Tamryn, but the fact that they did left cold fury burning in him. He slew all three men, leaving little for Rebek to do.
With a rifle in each hand, Makkon stared down the corridor toward the lift, wondering if more men were on their way.
Rebek grunted, looking at the carnage. “I see you haven’t forgotten how to hunt in close quarters.”
“Just like the tunnels back home,” Makkon said, slowly lowering the weapons. Nobody else was coming forward to challenge them.
“Should have kept that one alive.” Rebek prodded the gray-haired pirate with his rifle. “Questioned him. What’s he want with your girl? She’s just some lieutenant, isn’t she?”
It was a valid point, but Makkon refused to feel bad about some pirate’s death. “I don’t know, but I’ll find out another way.”
He strode back into the bridge. Neither Brax nor Tamryn had stirred yet. They had inhaled far more of the gas.
Makkon picked up Tamryn, concerned by the blood smears on the deck under her. Though she hadn’t complained, that puncture wound of hers was deep; she needed medical attention.
She did not stir as he lifted her, but he felt her shallow breaths as she lay in his arms. He imagined kissing her to awaken her, then having her smile up and him, hook her arms over his shoulders, and return the kiss.
“Guess I get to carry Brax, huh?” Rebek made a sour expression.
His comment dashed Makkon’s fantasies, which was a good thing. He doubted Tamryn’s reaction, if she woke up with his lips pressed to hers, would be quite as he had imagined.
“That’s what you get for being slow.”
Frost Station Alpha 1-6: The Complete Series Page 16
