Edge of War (The Eternal Frontier Book 2)

by Anthony J Melchiorri

  “Twenty-two percent,” Alpha said.

  Tag clenched his jaw hard enough for his teeth to hurt. “Sofia, I need you to avoid more of the incoming fire.”

  “Getting difficult, Skipper,” she said, her voice terse and strained. “Not sure it’s possible.”

  “Make it possible,” Tag said. “We don’t have any other choice unless we want to abandon Bracken out here.”

  “I do not think she would be amenable to such a plan,” Alpha added.

  “No,” Coren said. “Most definitely not.”

  Tag’s mind drifted toward the lives of the Mechanics, the Forinths, and G. We’ve already left too many behind, he thought but didn’t say.

  Bracken’s voice cut over the comms. “Captain Brewer, what are you doing? The ground down here is—”

  An ice god thrust itself from the bowels of Eta-Five and rammed its head into the Stalwart.

  “I suppose they weren’t our friends after all,” Sofia said, not taking her eyes off the viewscreen showing the flash of pulsefire and kinetic rounds streaking toward them.

  “Nope, we’re not catching a goddamn break,” Tag said. “Should be used to it by now.” He chinned his comms. “Bracken, is that going to hamper your shields?”

  “As long as it doesn’t get into the ship, we should live. Might put a dent in the outer hull, but the Stalwart’s armor is better than that of the Death Walkers.”

  “Speaking of which...” Tag focused on the onslaught of ground troops moving their direction under the cover of the dropships. Ice gods began to sprout around the concentrated forces, but the Drone-Mech reinforcements proved too much for the monsters. Most of the huge beasts would grapple with a Walker or two and then be put down by a flurry of fire from their compatriots.

  “I’d offer to shake that one off for you,” Tag said, “but I don’t want to riddle your ship with any accidental friendly fire.”

  “We would appreciate that,” Bracken said, “given that your targeting systems are likely not as accurate as ours.”

  “Really, you don’t let up,” Tag said. “I mean, we are trying to save your asses.”

  Bracken didn’t seem to know how to take it and was silent for a moment. “It appears you can be relieved of ‘saving our asses’ duty, Captain. Our energy shields are fully functional.”

  “Great,” Tag said. “Then let’s get off this planet and make a jump.”

  The Stalwart rose from the snow like a waking giant. Tag had never seen the whole ship except in holos. All the work they had performed on it had always been done when the ship was half buried. It dwarfed the Argo, and the ice god’s insectile legs scratched against the moving ship, struggling for purchase. The huge beast fell away, crashing to the ground, and the Stalwart lashed out at the dropships and torpedoes flying toward it and the Argo. Its cannons thumped the air with blasts of pulsefire and a spray of flak to detonate the incoming warheads, illuminating the sky in violent flashes and resounding explosions that boomed even in the Argo’s bridge.

  “You said this was a research vessel, didn’t you?” Tag asked Coren.

  “It is.”

  “Hell of a science ship,” he muttered. “Bracken, Sofia, let’s get spaceside.”

  Together the ships wound through the air and burst into the grim clouds encasing the planet. Jagged sparks of electricity broke against their energy shields in a display of blinding energy. All the instruments and viewscreens went dark intermittently as alarms shrieked. The shaking bulkheads whined, the sound hammering against Tag’s eardrums.

  But this wasn’t Tag’s first rodeo, as Lonestar would say. None of it worried him too much. Rather, he was more eager to discover what was waiting for them on the other side. Soon the viewscreens stabilized, and the alarms quieted. A bejeweled darkness stretched before them, greeting their entry into space. One pinprick of light burned brighter than the rest. Eta. Then several more pinpricks lit up around it. More and more appeared. Red dots spread over their holomap.

  “Captain, we have thirty-four contacts incoming,” Alpha reported.

  “T-drive status?”

  “Spooled. Ready for a jump. Computers are finishing calculations,” Alpha said. Her metallic fingers tapped across her terminal. “And they are finished. Sharing the trajectories with the Stalwart now.”

  Coren looked at Tag expectantly. “We’ve got incoming fire. Swarms of fighters are assembling outside one of the Drone-Mech ships. Orders?”

  “Stand down. No need to waste anything,” Tag said, feeling confident in their odds for once. They wouldn’t stand a chance against the horde of Drone-Mechs floating around the Eta system. But that didn’t matter. “We’re about to get the hell out of here anyway.”

  “Yes, Captain,” Coren replied.

  “Bracken, ready to do this?” Tag asked.

  “Unfortunately, Captain Brewer, we have a slight problem.”

  Suddenly Tag no longer felt so confident.

  CHAPTER NINETEEN

  “Tell me it isn’t your coronal engines,” Tag said, referencing the Mechanic version of a T-drive.

  “It is precisely that,” Bracken said. “They are unable to charge. We will not be able to make a jump.”

  “Gods be damned.” Tag pounded his terminal. “Can they be fixed?”

  “It would take us a day to diagnose the problem and, presumably, fix it. Proceed without us.”

  Tag admired the absolute adherence to pragmatism in the Mechanic’s mindset, but it clashed with the more human notion to protect and defend even against the most perilous of odds. “Not going to happen. We’ll stay and fight if we have to. We came to Eta-Five to get you people off that planet, and that’s just what we’ll do.”

  “You have fulfilled that part of your promise,” Bracken said. “We are off the planet.”

  Coren’s face was wrought with determination. He was as ready for a fight as Tag. “Captain, countermeasures online. Weapons at the ready.”

  “It’s suicidal to stay here,” Bracken said. “Even with our aid, you will not survive the onslaught.”

  “Then we’ll die trying,” Tag said.

  Both ships were still moving away from Eta-Five. They were headed in the same direction they would have traveled had they been able to make the jump. Tag watched as the red dots on their holomap grew closer to the Argo and the Stalwart, his fingers trembling. Sweat stung his eyes, and he had to force himself to keep his breathing slow and steady.

  “Coren, fire countermeasures at will,” Tag said. He knew it was probably futile. Maybe even foolish. But what could he do? Abandon the Mechanics? Until he came up with a better plan, he resolved to stand beside them. There had to be a way out of this. There had to be. Maybe they would get lucky and outrun the Drone-Mechs. Stranger things had happened.

  “We have fifty-four incoming torpedoes,” Alpha reported. Several seconds later and a slew of countermeasures fired by Coren, she amended that to forty-five.

  The first torpedoes slid past their chaff screen. At least they had their energy shields. Maybe they could survive for a while. Then what? Help from the Montenegro, if he sent a courier drone now, would take days or weeks to arrive if it could come at all.

  No, help wasn’t coming. They were most definitely alone.

  Tag knew their next steps to prolong their survival: fire back at whatever the Drone-Mechs shot at them, prioritize any on-the-fly repairs with the bots waiting for his signal, and coordinate defensive and counterattack efforts with Bracken. It was all by-the-book strategies that he had learned in his ill-fated days in officer-of-the-bridge training before he had been passed over and sent to a new program.

  But nothing had quite prepared him for what to do when he was in a team of two science vessels against thirty-four well-armed hostiles. Was there even a page in their training manuals or a program in their sim software that dealt with odds like this? Or did it just say “tuck yourself into a ball and kiss your ass good-bye”?

  Tag felt an almost silly, impractical urge t
o ask his father what he should do. It was what he had always done before the SRE navy took him away from Sol System Prime, and he found himself missing his father now, wishing he could say another good-bye and tell him how he had saved Tag’s career. Given him a new purpose in life by advising Tag to pick himself up and find a different trajectory in the navy. The one that had led him to the seat he sat in now.

  His father couldn’t save him now if he were here.

  As Tag watched the Drone-Mech fleet approach, his heart sank. They had come so close to saving the Mechanics, so close to saving all that remained of their species. And even if they jumped without Bracken, Coren might suddenly become the sole free being of his race in existence. The desperation coursing through Tag’s mind was only a fraction of the worry he saw in Coren’s frantic motions. Tag needed a solution. They needed some way to fight back, to change the paradigm.

  “Remember how I said it was damn near impossible to dodge all that incoming fire on Eta-Five?” Sofia asked. “Well, what’s more impossible than impossible? Because that’s how hard it’s going to be for me to avoid everything coming at us now.”

  “The T-drive is still spooled and ready to go,” Alpha said. Even she sounded nervous, urgent.

  Bracken had given them explicit permission to leave her. Tag could still make their sacrifices worth something. Maybe find out who was responsible for the mind-altering nanites and put a stop to it. Figure out who had been behind the Drone-Mech assault on the Montenegro and why. He would do it all in honor of Bracken and her crew. Alarms continued to remind him of the incoming onslaught, and it was in that moment he knew he couldn’t sacrifice the Argo in some noble but ultimately foolish pursuit of honor and fraternity.

  This decision would haunt him for the rest of his life. He would be responsible for singlehandedly giving the Mechanics hope and then letting that hope be dashed like icicles against the Argo’s hull.

  “Trajectory to hyperspace still clear?” Tag asked solemnly.

  “Awaiting your command,” Alpha responded.

  Coren gave Tag only a brief look over his shoulder before turning back to his weapons terminal. There was that Mechanic pragmatism again. Coren might already be mourning the loss of the crew he would be abandoning to die in a storm of streaming plasma and uncontrollable explosions, but he still had a job to do, and he would be damned if he didn’t do it well.

  And likewise, Tag had a job to do. He was captain of the Argo now, and he had to protect the ship and its crew. Finish their mission. A painful stab of regret tore through his gut as his finger hovered above the holoscreen to execute the hyperspace jump Alpha had prepared.

  Then he took his finger away. “No, no, we can’t leave them here.”

  “But Skipper, there’s no way we can win this battle,” Sofia said.

  “I know,” Tag said. He started scanning through the available commands on the terminal. His father had once told him he was a highwayman, always had an alternate exit, another choice. And by the gods, he had been so damn focused on fighting or fleeing without the Stalwart, he had forgotten the other alternatives. “Dad, I’m going to do things right now,” he said under his breath. Then, louder, “Alpha, recalculate the hyperspace jump using our T-drive. Instead of using only our ship’s mass, incorporate the Stalwart’s.”

  “Captain?” Alpha said. The rest of the crew, even Coren, shared her nonplussed expression.

  “Can our T-drive handle it or not?” Tag asked, his voice rising.

  Alpha’s fingers whirled through the holoscreen. “Yes, it can accommodate a load that large, but I don’t understand how that helps.” She paused, and her faux eyes seemed to widen. Comprehension shone through her droid features.

  “You see where I’m going with this?” Tag asked.

  Alpha nodded, working vehemently at her terminal again. “It’s a risky maneuver. According to the SRE fleet history guides, it has been attempted only once, and it failed then.”

  “Let’s prove history wrong.”

  CHAPTER TWENTY

  “Alpha, engage the grav tether,” Tag said. “Bracken, we’re going to make a modified docking attempt with the Stalwart.”

  Bracken’s face appeared on his holoscreen. Apparently using voice communications wasn’t good enough. She wanted to see him to ensure he was actually serious about this. “Do you really believe you can drag us through hyperspace?”

  “I don’t know, but I’m willing to try.”

  “Your T-drive is inferior to our coronal engines,” Bracken said, as if that alone explained her reluctance.

  “Did you run the tests, or are you just assuming?” Tag was a bit tired of the Mechanic’s superiority complex. “Because the way I see it, you stay here and get slaughtered like hopeless martyrs, or you try this jump with us. Worst-case scenario either way is we lose your ship. Best case, we all make the jump.”

  Bracken’s golden eyes narrowed. “We’ll clear our energy shields enough for you to secure the tether. I must advise you to take the jump slower than normal. I’m not sure the tether will hold during such abrupt acceleration.”

  “I’ve got the best mind on our ship working on that challenge,” Tag said. “Won’t be a problem. Right, Alpha?”

  “Technically I am relying on the Argo’s AI systems to incorporate these extra variables, so it is less my mind and more the ship’s,” she replied.

  “That makes me feel infinitely better,” Bracken said with a touch of sarcasm.

  Tag thought he heard a snigger from Coren as the Mechanic sent a fresh wave of chaff into the oncoming torpedoes. The explosions looked brighter, closer in their viewscreen. Pulsefire pounded the energy shields, increasing now that Sofia had taken the ship in closer and slower to the Stalwart. A loud clunk reverberated through the bulkheads, and a voice chirped over Tag’s terminal, “Tether connection engaged.”

  The energy shields shimmered as a fresh round of pulsefire crashed against them.

  “Are we secure enough for a jump?” Tag asked.

  Alpha gestured over a holoscreen, and a three-dimensional holo of the Argo and the Stalwart appeared. Between them was a beam of light representing the grav tether. Alpha expanded the holo to examine the connection between the two vessels. “Computers are reporting a ninety-five percent attachment efficiency.”

  “Is that going to be enough?” Tag asked.

  “Better be enough!” Coren yelled. “Because I don’t think that I can hold this up for much longer.”

  “Second that,” Sofia said. “I’m as cornered as a mouse in a station apartment with a broom in my face.”

  “Alpha?” Tag asked. “Got a prediction for me?”

  “I’m sorry, sir, but we don’t have any computational models for this. The AI needs some kind of data to run off of.”

  “Then I suppose it’s time we give it some,” Tag said. “Bracken, we’re about to initiate the jump. Are you ready?”

  “I am not sure how to prepare for anything of the sort,” Bracken said. “Let’s get it over with.”

  “That’s the spirit,” Tag said. “Alpha, initiate!”

  The Argo jolted forward, and Tag was forced into his crash couch. Rapid acceleration pulled at his flesh and organs, making everything seem as if it were pressing against his spine. The inertial dampeners caught up before nausea got the better of him and he passed out. His stomach found its rightful place in his gut again as the purple and green waves of plasma began coursing over the ship in a hypnotic dance.

  “Jump completion is at forty percent captain,” Alpha said, “but the tether is—it’s gone!”

  The Stalwart disappeared from Tag’s viewscreen, and his hand sprang out at the Abort Jump command. This time his body was thrown forward against the couch’s restraints, and he heard groans from all over the bridge. He watched Coren’s hands fly out, but at least this time the Mechanic finally had a couch that fit him properly from their time on the Montenegro. In an abort maneuver like that without the couch, the Mechanic would have been dead
, no matter how well the inertial dampeners tried to compensate for the sudden change in acceleration.

  “What in the three hells are you all doing up there?” Bull asked over the comms. “We’re being tossed around like shots of gutfire down here.”

  “Flying is tricky,” Sofia offered. “Why don’t you guys just sit back and enjoy the ride?”

  Tag ignored the crew’s banter. “Bracken, do you read? Stalwart, anyone there?”

  The attempted jump had propelled the Argo hundreds of thousands of klicks away from the Drone-Mech fleet. Still, they weren’t out of danger. It wouldn’t take long for the ships to identify and track them down now that they were in normal space again.

  “Argo, we read,” Bracken responded. “It appears your ninety-five percent tether attachment efficiency was inadequate.”

  “I would support that assertion,” Alpha said in her most helpful voice.

  “Then let’s make it one hundred and try again,” Tag said. His fingers tapped along the armrests. He was unable to keep them from remaining still with the electricity and adrenaline coursing through him.

  “Captain, I just got a lock on their position,” Alpha said. “They’re about a hundred thousand klicks behind us. It appears the Drone-Mech fleet is also moving in their direction.”

  “Then let’s get there first,” Tag said. He wasn’t sure whether the Drone-Mechs were actually interested in the Stalwart or the Argo instead. The Stalwart simply was between the fleet and him. Either way, he didn’t think they would go any easier on the Stalwart.

  “Can do, will do,” Sofia said.

  The impellers roared, and the resulting vibrations resonated through the crash couch and into Tag’s bones as they rocketed toward the Stalwart.

  “We have a problem,” Bracken said.

  Each time Tag heard those words, they sounded like nails scratching across an alloy bulkhead. “Don’t tell me an ice god is hitching a ride or something.”

  “That would be preposterous,” Bracken said, evidently missing the joke. Maybe she thought humans were so dull that he was serious. “But the force of the grav tether ripping from our portside damaged our attitude control thrusters. We’re rolling and have difficulties course correcting.”