Edge of War (The Eternal Frontier Book 2)

by Anthony J Melchiorri

  But as he looked around the bridge, he couldn’t imagine Sofia, Alpha, or Coren doing something like this. And by the gods, he had seen the dedication of the marines. G had already paid the ultimate price, and that hadn’t stopped the others from devoting themselves to their missions on Nycho or Herandion.

  “Bracken,” Tag said in a low voice. “Do you have an alternate hypothesis?”

  Bracken’s face appeared stern on the holoscreen. There was no humor to be seen in it now. “Someone has crossed us. Aboard your ship or mine. There is another way we can determine whose ship—”

  The hatch to the bridge slammed open. Bull charged in wearing his power armor. His visor was peeled back to reveal his face, red with anger, and his words spit from his mouth like venom.

  “You!” he boomed, a finger outstretched toward Coren. “It’s you! Isn’t it? You’re the only one who could do this on the ship. The only one that knows how!”

  Tag undid his restraints and rushed down from the captain’s terminal. “Bull! You can’t just throw around accusations like that.”

  “No,” Bull said, “you’re right. I can’t. Not without evidence.”

  He chucked something at Tag, and Tag held his hands out instinctively, catching it. He opened his fingers. In his palm rested a disc-shaped device with several long wires flopping from it as if the thing were a dead, mechanical spider.

  “What is this?”

  “It’s not human,” Bull said. “I’ll tell you that much. Never seen human tech made from black alloy like that. But I do know where I’ve seen it. Found it in the cargo bay. I remembered that power leak Alpha mentioned before, so I did a bit of investigating. Figured if the repair bots hadn’t fixed it, maybe something funny was going on. And sure enough, it was.”

  Tag rotated the disc-shaped device in his hand. It hardly reflected the light, appearing more shadow than metal. Bull was right. It looked like it belonged on a Mechanic’s armor. “What is this?”

  Coren still held his hands up in a defensive gesture. His eyes traced from Bull to the object Tag held between his fingers. “It looks like a transponder.”

  “I told you,” Bull roared. “I told you it’s Mechanic tech!”

  Tag wanted Coren to deny it, to say it was all a misunderstanding.

  “He’s not wrong,” Coren said. “It’s no wonder we never saw its encrypted transmissions. We use these types of devices on our stealth ships.” He paused, looking introspective for a moment. “Somehow the camouflaging algorithm I wrote must’ve interfered with its signal. That’s the only explanation for why the Drone-Mechs didn’t find the Argo’s exact location on Eta-Five. Still, I have no idea where it could have come from.”

  Bull seemed only to hear the first statement. He rushed at Coren and threw his body into the Mechanic. Coren went down with a thud and tried to counter Bull’s attack. But Bull wrapped Coren’s arms behind his back in a way that would have shattered a human’s joints in a flurry of limbs and grunts.

  “Goddamned xeno!” Bull said. “Admit what you’ve done! Admit it!”

  “I have nothing to hide from you,” Coren said.

  Tag ran at Bull and Coren, but Bull dragged Coren into the corridor and through a maintenance hatch. He threw Coren into an airlock as Tag caught up with them. The footsteps of the other sounded behind them.

  “Don’t!” Tag yelled.

  Bull’s hand hovered above the command to open the airlock to space. Chest heaving, Coren stood in the middle of the airlock. His eyes never strayed from Bull’s.

  “I did not set that transponder.” Coren stomped toward the polyglass hatch between Bull and him.

  Tag’s heart beat faster, and he took a step toward Bull. “Take your hand away from the terminal. That’s an order.”

  Bull never took his eyes off Coren. “I can’t do that, Captain. My orders were to protect this ship. That’s what I’m doing now.”

  Tag took another tentative step. Alpha and Sofia rustled behind him.

  “Bull ...” Sumo said, joining the commotion with Lonestar at her side.

  “Not now,” Bull said. He faced Coren. “Tell them. This was Mechanic technology. You put it there.”

  “I’m not a Drone-Mech,” Coren said. His nostrils flared as he glared through the polyglass. His voice came out slightly tinny through the internal airlock speakers, but there was no mistaking the menace in it. “You can space me if you want, but that will not solve your problem.”

  “It’ll solve your problem just fine!” Bull said.

  “Stop it!” Tag yelled. He lunged for Bull and grabbed the man’s arm. Bull’s muscles tensed as Tag tried to drag him back from the airlock. Alpha threw herself at Bull, aiming for his feet. He crashed forward, but as he fell, his free hand hit the terminal, initiating the depressurization process. Even through the polyglass, Tag could hear the rush of air escaping the chamber before the exterior hatch would release.

  Pain coursed through the back of his head as he struggled with Bull. Alpha secured his legs, but it didn’t stop the marine from flailing as the counter continued to tick down until the exterior hatch would be released.

  A shape flew by the tangled mess of Bull, Alpha, and Coren, lunging over them and slamming a fist on the terminal. The countdown stopped, and the crew member hit another command that repressurized the chamber and opened the inner hatch. At first Tag thought it was Sofia. As Bull realized his gambit was over and ceased struggling against Tag and Alpha, Tag saw Lonestar wincing in pain over her temporary overexertion. One hand was bracing her back, the other keeping her upright by holding onto a stanchion.

  The hatch soon opened, and Coren spilled inside, coughing and gasping for air. He was doubled over, still glaring at Bull.

  “I didn’t do it,” he managed.

  Bull grunted under Alpha and Tag’s grip. His face burned a brilliant shade of scarlet. “You can fool them, xeno. But you can’t fool me.”

  “He’s not lying,” Lonestar said.

  Bull looked at her. An expression of betrayal seared through his fury. “How do you know that?”

  “Because I did it. I placed the transponder.”

  CHAPTER FORTY-THREE

  Tag brushed himself off as he stood, signaling for Alpha to keep Bull secured. “What did you say?”

  “I did it,” Lonestar said. “If you’re going to space someone, space me.” She gestured toward Coren. “This has nothing to do with him.”

  “Why? Why would you do that?” Tag couldn’t decide whether to be more angry or confused. His emotions clashed in his head like two stars pulling each other into their gravity wells. He fingered his holstered sidearm instinctively as he wondered what other treacherous surprises she held in store for him.

  “Because of him,” Lonestar said, indicating Coren, “and you.”

  Bull had ceased resisting Alpha. The vessel in his forehead still throbbed, but his face appeared drained of its normal red hue. “To think that I personally recommended you to Admiral Doran.”

  “I know,” Lonestar said. She slumped against the bulkhead. A wet sheen formed over her eyes, and her voice wavered. “I thought I was doing the right thing. I was told...I was told that Captain Brewer and Coren had been compromised. That there might be others compromised by them. And after seeing evidence of the Drone-Mechs, after seeing what happened to the Mechanics, it was too easy to believe.”

  “Who told you this?” Tag asked.

  “An SRE intelligence official. Gave me his credentials, but of course they were time sensitive,” she said. “Gods, I’m stupid. I thought I was helping. Thought I was doing the right thing.” Her fists balled up, shaking, and her fingers turned white. “It was a guy named Ken Morris. Told me that this would allow the SRE to track the Argo to make sure bad shit wasn’t happening. To make sure everyone here was actually loyal.”

  “He was a human?” Bull asked.

  “Yes, of course he was a human,” Lonestar said. “He even told me not to trust you. Not to believe you. That every
goddamn person aboard this ship might be infected with those nanites.” She placed a hand on her chest. “And I knew, I knew it might be true because, three hells, I knew I wasn’t infected. I was the sane one. The one in control. I knew I wanted to save the SRE. To save these Mechanic people if I could.”

  She collapsed to the deck, drawing herself against the bulkhead and putting her head on her knees. “Space me, if you have to. Space me if that’s what it takes.” Between the strands of her matted hair, she caught Tag’s eyes. “After our talks, after the way you acted around the Mechanics, around us. Saving Gorenado. I could tell you weren’t compromised. You wanted the same thing I did. To find out what is going on and to protect the SRE at all costs.”

  “You’re damn right that’s what he wanted,” Sofia said. “What all of us wanted. For gods’ sake, how could you believe a random spook?”

  “He had evidence. Documents. Looking back, I should’ve realized they were forgeries. There was even a fake holo of Captain Brewer’s brain that made it look like he had been infected with nanites.”

  “We have to send a courier drone and alert the SRE,” Bull said. “We have to tell Admiral Doran.”

  Tag was furious at Lonestar. Furious at being betrayed. But he was even more furious at whoever had convinced Lonestar of his fake insurrection against the SRE and furious at how far that could have spread. He wanted to tell Admiral Doran everything Lonestar had told them. He wanted answers. He wanted the Montenegro to know a traitor was in their midst.

  But now with someone on his own ship unknowingly betraying him, who could he trust on another distant ship filled with thousands of potential suspects?

  “We can’t send a courier drone,” Tag said. “We can’t let them know what we found yet. We don’t know who we can trust there, and we have no way of ensuring Admiral Doran gets the message without someone intercepting it.”

  “Then what do we do?” Bull asked. “Turn around and give up?”

  Tag signaled for Alpha to release the marine. Bull didn’t say thank you or apologize to Coren, but he stood still. Tag could tell the man wasn’t going in for another attack. His confidence had been ripped out from under him.

  “We won’t give up,” Tag said. “We continue as normal. Coren, can you deactivate the transponder?”

  “Certainly,” Coren said. “And if he wants to watch”—he gestured toward Bull—”he is more than welcome to ensure I’m not simply reprogramming it.”

  “Why not destroy it altogether?” Sumo asked.

  “I want Coren and Alpha to dissect it,” Tag said. “To see, first off, how it works, and, second, if they can use any intel we grab on it to figure out who might’ve been responsible for it. Why, for example, Mechanic technology fell into human hands when the SRE officially has no record of even knowing Mechanics existed until Sofia and I encountered them.”

  “What should we do in the meantime, Captain?” Alpha asked.

  “Carry on as usual. We’ll debrief and apprise Bracken of the developments. Then continue on our mission to our next stop. Probably need to skip Chronamede, but we’ll discuss that later.”

  “And me?” Lonestar said. She stepped in front of the airlock hatch as if she was about to space herself.

  Tag considered her question. Their strange interactions now made sense. Looking back, he saw her caution around him, her skepticism. He didn’t doubt that she had acted in what she thought was the SRE’s best interests. The layers of the nanite mystery were so thick he wasn’t sure yet what he could do with her.

  “I don’t really have any other choice but to send you to the brig,” Tag said. “Sofia, Sumo, can you take her?”

  The duo nodded, and Lonestar went with them. She put up no resistance, made no expression of disagreement.

  Bull waited for his sentencing in silence. For the first time, he looked strangely at ease. As if whatever came next he would accept. It was just part of life. No longer a battle for him. The man had all but declared a temporary mutiny, resisting Tag’s orders. It would be a clear case if Tag had been a traditional captain, brought up on rank-and-file organization and discipline as a bridge officer. But Tag wasn’t a traditional bridge officer, nor was this a traditional mission.

  Bull expected stern punishment; he expected to be reprimanded or demoted or worse.

  Tag wouldn’t give him the satisfaction. “Next time you have a theory like that, you come to me first. I’m not putting you in the brig. Damn shame, but I need your help for our next transition. There can be no more misunderstandings of how this is going to work. Got it, Sergeant?”

  “Understood, Captain.” Bull’s jaw clenched, and he was silent for a beat. “I apologize for my actions.”

  “It’s not me who you were about to space, Sergeant.”

  Bull turned to Coren. “Coren, I was an asshole. It’s probably no consolation, but I feel pretty goddamned stupid. I do—” He swallowed hard, his face flaring crimson. ”I do apologize.”

  To Tag’s surprise, Coren held out his hand. Bull met it in a firm handshake. “Apology accepted.”

  Bull left Coren and Alpha in the maintenance corridor. The man walked with a sullen gait, his head lowered and his shoulders drawn forward.

  “You really just forgive him like that?” Tag asked Coren when they were alone.

  “To borrow a human phrase, three hells no. I can never forgive his actions or his ignorance. He’s a stubborn, narrow-sighted man, as good a warrior as he might be. Trying to kill me when the problem was with one of his own people? That is something a Mechanic cannot forget.” Coren’s expression softened a moment, his fur wrinkling. “But I don’t care at all for that man’s life and how my forgiveness affects him. What I care about is our mission and crew. Resentment and constant fighting between myself and Bull will not save the Argo. It will not save the Stalwart, and it will not save the free Mechanics. As much as I dislike that man, we must get along if we stand any chance of accomplishing what we set out to do in the first place.”

  With all the chaos erupting around him, Tag had never been happier to have the Mechanic by his side. For all the times Tag or someone in his crew had doubted Coren’s intentions, the alien had continuously proven his pragmatism and devotion to the Argo and their directives.

  Tag placed a hand on Coren’s shoulder. “I can’t tell you enough how much I appreciate that kind of support, because the gods only know we’re going to need it through everything coming ahead.”

  CHAPTER FORTY-FOUR

  Running the experiments to demonstrate that the air recycler particles triggered Mechanic immunity to the nanites was easy. Turning those particles into a vaccine and distributing it to the Mechanics hadn’t been difficult either. Carrying on with the typical ship maintenance and briefings with Bracken was no harder. But traveling between stations and colonies where the Drone-Mechs had left little but flotsam and corpses proved immensely draining. Tag could see the depression and hopelessness mounting in his crew with every routine mission. Sofia’s humor had lost its spark. Alpha seemed more robotic than ever, hardly venturing into emotional exchanges or conversations beyond rote duties. Bull trained in solitude with Sumo. Tag checked on Lonestar every once in a while in the brig, but there seemed to be no change in her mood. She appeared to have accepted her position there, understanding what she had done and why she couldn’t yet be trusted.

  They continued to encounter pockets of the Dreg salvaging defunct stations and ships, but there were no signs of the sapphire ship or any free Mechanics. Even reminding the crew that at least the Drone-Mechs were apparently no longer following did little to boost morale. Not being chased by their enemy did nothing to stop the images of bodies floating in space or decaying in colonies. Homes and stations turned to rubble. Other spaceships drifting into the void trailing a wake of debris. Each macabre tableau of a ravaged alien civilization burgeoned the prevailing gloom leaching into everyone aboard the Argo. It became easier and easier to believe that all that remained of the Mechanic species no
w lived on the Stalwart and the Argo.

  Tag had wondered if the Mechanics, with their more logical and emotionless nature, were more inured to the sights they encountered with each normal-space transition. When he had asked Bracken, she had assured him that they weren’t, that seeing the utter annihilation of the space network they had once held as a cornerstone to the success of their species was undoing her crew’s morale. In a private conference, she even admitted to wondering whether continuing this mission would be wise. If maybe returning to the protection of the Montenegro would prove more beneficial to the survival of her species.

  From the captain’s station, Tag once again signaled to Alpha to make a transition into normal space. His restraints dug into his shoulders, and he felt the familiar embrace of the inertial dampeners kick in. The impellers lit up with a throaty hum as Sofia took the controls, and a flash of light washed over the viewscreen as the Stalwart came into normal space beside them.

  A huge planet, Garndon-Three, loomed before them. Swirls of white clouds draped over brown-and-green landscapes that were cut through with veins of blue water. Although it was mostly landmass, the planet evoked a nostalgia for Earth within Tag. An unexpected yearning for his home world filled him. It had been so long since he had touched ground there, so long since he had seen his family. Breathed the air he had grown up in. And in distant space, his sense of discovery and adventure had endured blow after blow from seeing the destruction of the Mechanics’ attempts to make new homes for themselves. He had started to wonder if there really was anything out here for him or if returning to Earth would be the wiser choice in his career.

  Dwarfed by Garndon-Three, a lone space station orbited into view. Tag’s heart began beating faster as he magnified the image of the station on his holoscreen. It appeared mostly intact. But as the station circled closer, that hopeful curiosity soon morphed into the all-too-familiar melancholy pervading their mission. A trail of wreckage drifted from a massive gouge in one section of the station.