“In taking a portion of the system for ourselves,” Arkt said.
“The Glacians we’ve been dealing with,” Tamryn said, “came out of a cryo-freeze last year. That’s how they survived the last hundred and fifty years.”
Arkt’s hand remained around her neck, but he did not tighten it or threaten her if she didn’t shut up. He must not care if the information came out.
Her father stirred, and one of his gloved hands curled into a fist.
“But not all of them are the warriors our ancestors fought,” Tamryn said. “My understanding is that very few of those people survived, and that most of the ones who remain wanted nothing to do with that war.”
“Your understanding,” her father said slowly.
Tamryn imagined him thinking of reports he might have had of her relationship with Makkon.
“They—” she started, but he held up a hand and cut her off.
“We’ll discuss it back on the ship. You there, let her go. Then follow. A deal was struck, and I’ll honor it no matter who you are, but you better believe I’ll make the system aware of your presence. You won’t skulk about and make trouble. If you do, a sniper will find you.”
Arkt grunted dismissively at the threat. Finally, he released Tamryn. She took a step toward her father, and that step might have turned into a sprint to reach his side, but a startled grunt came from behind her, this one pained instead of condescending.
“Attack,” one of the soldiers yelled.
“From where?” someone else barked, glancing toward the top of the ravine.
Tamryn spun toward Arkt. An arrow stuck out of the side of his throat. The squeal of a laser bolt he might have heard, but the arrow had flown silently, catching him unaware.
He wasn’t dead though. He glared at Tamryn and yanked the arrow from his throat. Blood surged out of the wound. He lunged toward her, but something slammed into him from the side. Another fur-clad figure smothered him, forcing him to the ground. They grappled briefly, Arkt roaring with pain and rage, but before the soldiers could race across the twenty meters to grab Tamryn, Makkon leaped to his feet. Even with his mask covering most of his face, and even without seeing the small swath of skin that revealed the dragon tattoo, she knew it was him. Arkt lay unmoving at his feet, his throat cut.
Makkon wrapped an arm around Tamryn’s waist and stood beside her, the dagger dripping blood in his other hand.
“Stop,” her father cried, and the soldiers who had been racing to grab her skidded to a halt so quickly that some of them had to flail their arms to keep from falling. They looked like they wanted to point their rifles at Makkon, but none of them did, not with him standing so close to Tamryn. Instead, their helmets swiveled as they glanced back toward their commander again.
“Tam,” her father groaned. “Why didn’t you run?”
Makkon was standing beside Tamryn, not behind her, as Arkt had done. Not using her as a shield. Though he gripped his dagger, and also had a laser rifle and the bow slung across his back, he didn’t turn any of his weapons toward her. That surprised her. She had expected him to keep bluffing, to pretend she was an object to negotiate with, an object he was prepared to kill if need be.
“Because she has no reason to fear me,” Makkon said when she didn’t answer the question.
He took a step to the side, tossed the dagger to the ground where blood droplets spattered on the ice, and spread his arms. Several of the soldiers lifted their rifles.
“No,” Tamryn ordered and lunged to put herself in front of Makkon. Even though the act was one of sheer instinct, she realized the ramifications immediately, and terror lurched into her throat as she moved. If one of those men had a twitchy trigger finger, she could take a laser blast in the gut.
But nobody fired. Once again, they looked to her father for orders.
Tamryn swallowed, her mouth dry. She ought to be relieved to now have the opportunity to walk into the arms of her fellow soldiers—of her father—but she was more nervous than ever. There was so much to lose now. And even if she won all she wanted, could she ever have a life with Makkon?
“Admiral Pavlenko,” she heard herself say, almost as if the voice belonged to someone else and she hovered outside of her body, looking on. “We need to talk.”
Her father sighed. “Of that I have no doubt.”
He waved for her to approach.
Makkon started to walk forward, but Tamryn stopped him with a hand to the chest.
“You belong here,” she said, not daring to say more with all of the soldiers looking on. She wished she could see his eyes through the furs and mask. She hoped he understood that she wanted to protect him, that he would only be shot if he came up to a ship with her, where the fact that he had killed soldiers on the station would come to light.
Makkon stopped. He lifted his chin, like he meant to say something, but his mask tilted toward the soldiers, and he remained silent. Tamryn walked toward her father’s people and forced herself not to look back, afraid they had already said far too much. But she wished she could have looked at him once more, seen his face, his eyes, because she did not know what would happen to her and feared she would never be able to see him again.
Chapter 27
Makkon stood in the ravine until the combat shuttles disappeared from view, arrowing up toward the atmosphere, taking Tamryn with them. His heart was heavy, his soul empty. He believed she had told him to stay because he would be in danger, if not executed outright if he went with her, but he couldn’t keep from feeling that he had been rejected. The last memory he would have of Tamryn was her planting her hand on his chest and walking away.
He lowered his chin, aware of the icy clutches of twilight descending and also aware of Arkt’s corpse hardening on the ice. A part of him worried that he would be punished, if not executed outright, here for the choice he had made, but a part of him couldn’t manage the passion to care. Makkon had killed Arkt because he had been using Tamryn for a shield, but also because he’d been overwhelmed with fury when he realized what the man had done, that he’d made a selfish deal and that because of it, the military now knew where the entrance to the Glacian compound was.
Though tempted to leave Arkt’s body to the elements, he hefted it over his shoulder and trudged back to the cavern that held the elevator. There would be questions, and he didn’t have it in his heart to lie.
Even though it was too soon to expect an attack, such as bombs raining from the heavens, he couldn’t help but glance toward the darkening sky as he walked. With Tamryn gone, what could he do to protect his people? To barter with the military? He wished he knew if his comrades on the station were still detained. Had those vaults been enough to keep them secured those last hours before the Fleet ships had arrived? Or might Brax and the others have escaped and commandeered the station again? Even if something like that had happened, wouldn’t those ships have simply swarmed the station from multiple entrances, sending in soldiers in numbers too great for even his people to handle?
When the elevator reached the entrance to the tunnel complex, Makkon found President Shenta and two assistants waiting with her. She didn’t look surprised to see him—or Arkt’s body over his shoulder. Their people did not have cameras on the surface of the moon, so she couldn’t have seen what happened, but perhaps someone had glimpsed Arkt leaving with Tamryn and had reported it.
“What happened?” she asked.
“He made a deal with those ships up there,” Makkon said. “He tried to buy his way into a pile of gold and a ride to a better world with my prisoner.” The last two words came out as a growl, and he reminded himself that using Tamryn wasn’t the most grievous thing Arkt had done, at least not from the perspective of his leaders. “They came to get her. They know how to find us now.” He tilted his head upward.
“They killed him?” Shenta looked toward Arkt.
Makkon could have lied. It would have been easy. But with Tamryn gone and his home in a shambles, he hardly cared what fate wo
uld wait him for killing the highest-ranking military man they had left.
“I killed him,” he said.
Again, the president did not appear surprised. Maybe she had already known somehow.
“Put his body in the burial tunnel,” she said, her voice hard. “We’ll discuss your choice later. In the meantime, we need to prepare for evacuation.”
“Evacuation?” he asked slowly. “We’ll never get all of our people in the mining ship, and it’s the only transportation we have that can take us off the moon.”
“Hard choices will have to be made. Again.” Shaking her head, she turned her back on him and strode down the corridor.
Makkon stared after her, appalled at the idea of losing even more of their people. Could they even be considered a people anymore, if they left three quarters of their population here to die? A population that had already been diminished to such small numbers that the moon barely knew they were there? Soon, they would be nothing more than a band of scavengers on an old ship, trying to make a living in a system that wanted them all dead.
It occurred to him that Shenta hadn’t said anything to imply that he would be among those chosen. And why would he be? He’d just proven himself a murderer, killing one of their own people. And besides, what use would that band of scavengers have for a hunter, going forward? His skills would be useless in space, as useless as they had been in the last few days.
Perhaps it was for the best. His home was here. He would stand and accept his fate when the military came, sending bombs with the power to destroy even their tunnels this time.
Makkon had started walking down the corridor, but he halted abruptly. The tunnels. The tunnels that had been excavated millennia ago by an ancient civilization, an ancient civilization that had written in a language the system-wide government was, even now, trying to decipher.
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 cons
idered 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.
Frost Station Alpha 1-6: The Complete Series Page 31
