Eternal Frontier (The Eternal Frontier Book 1)

by Anthony J Melchiorri

  And the SRE had certainly suffered its fair share of strife. Plenty of smaller colonies and corporations, especially those that thought they were safe at the outskirts of distant solar systems, had tried their hand at rebellion. Tag wondered if the pirates he’d encountered were part of some group determined to antagonize the SRE through guerilla warfare. They could just as easily be profiteering vagabonds, but their power armor suits and weapons seemed to indicate they were more advanced than that. Maybe they too had found some powerful alien technology. They might be gearing up for a war against the SRE.

  Tag’s eyes searched the distant gray horizon as the car pushed forward. A wind picked up, jostling the vehicle sideways. But it wasn’t a tenth as strong or frightening as earlier. He settled back into his seat and took a sip of coffee.

  Three hells, maybe those pirates had discovered something on Eta-Five. Something here that they didn’t want the SRE to have—or even know about. That might explain their ruthless determination to destroy anyone and anything SRE when they attacked the Argo. A sinking feeling threatened to overwhelm him. He prayed they hadn’t already gotten to Vasquez.

  His thoughts whirred between these theories cropping up in his mind. Why were they here? He still saw no evidence of anything remotely useful on this planet other than the anomalous atmospheric shielding. Maybe the planet itself could be used as a goddamned weapon. Lure travelers and explorers to its surface and let the unforgiving weather do its business.

  Tag laughed. In between the mixture of exhaustion and caffeine, he found the thought more humorous than he knew he should. But then a light glimmered in the distance.

  He squinted, leaning forward in his seat. Was that a star just above the horizon?

  No, no. It was too low for that. There, again! His heart leapt. Definitely a light. A bluish-purple light. It wavered and swayed. Maybe it was just the snow and moonlight playing tricks on his eyesight.

  He gave the car more power. He shouldn’t be racing so quickly through the dark, even with the aid of his headlights. But curiosity urged him on.

  The blue-purple light became larger as he approached. Excitement coursed through him. Then he cursed at himself and killed the headlights.

  Damn it, Brewer, he thought. Letting curiosity get the better of you.

  Maybe that light belonged to the pirates. To whatever they were hiding out here. And here he came, driving over the shadowy landscape with headlights glaring. He could see the blue-purple light easily enough, so there was no reason someone or something hadn’t already seen him. He slowed the air car on his approach. The eerie glow seemed to be emanating from between a couple of icy stalagmites. As he grew closer, he spotted what looked like steam rising from the glowing spot. Then he realized the glow wasn’t coming from a light source he could readily see.

  Rather, it was light flooding from an opening, like the front door of a house open in the middle of the night. He eyed the map. He should turn back. Give this strange spot a wide berth. He still had some ways to go to hit the rendezvous point.

  But what if the map was wrong? What if this was the rendezvous point? Maybe Vasquez had set up some kind of signal. Undoubtedly she knew how difficult it would be for a search crew to find her in the intermittent blizzards sweeping across Eta-Five.

  Tag decided caution would still be best. Instead of driving straight up to this tunnel, he paused farther away. He scrounged a pair of binoc lenses from his supplies and took a closer look.

  As he’d suspected, the tunnel jutted from deep underground. He had been surprised the snow didn’t simply clog the entrance to this glowing underworld, but the steam rising in wispy twists gave some possible explanation. Wherever that tunnel led, it was warm. Hot, even. Tag continued his path around the tunnel to see if he could find a good vantage point. Maybe if he found the right position, he could get a better idea of where it led.

  He started the hover car up the side of a large snow drift.

  A loud bang shook the vehicle. His head slammed forward into the wheel. His vision blurred, and the car smashed into the snowbank. White fluff exploded everywhere and rained down over the windshield. The car stalled. Tag unlatched his restraints, and he stood, wobbling, ready to figure out what had happened.

  Was this a storm picking back up? He hadn’t felt the winds.

  Blue lights pulsed outside and splashed against the car. The vehicle shook, and Tag fell, crashing to the floor. This wasn’t a storm. This was an attack.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE

  Tag dug through his pack and grabbed one of the mini-Gauss rifles. He strapped a few extra magazines to his EVA suit. Another volley of small-arms fire walloped the car, and a light flashed on the car’s HUD warning that the engines had died.

  “No shit,” Tag said, gritting his teeth. So much for the air car standing up to small-arms fire. He took shelter behind a few of his supply packs. The space was cramped, but without the normal ten-man crew the vehicle could accommodate, he still had room to maneuver around the cramped hold area. He peeked out of the rear window.

  The gunfire had ceased.

  No telltale muzzle flashes signaled the whereabouts of his attackers. He considered his options. Stay in the car: the vehicle might crumple under more fire, and he’d be a sitting duck. It wasn’t going anywhere now. But running on foot wouldn’t be great either; he'd be leaving most of his supplies behind, and trying to lose his ambushers in the snow would probably make him lose his own bearings.

  Screw it, Tag thought. I didn’t make it through everything else to die in a damn air car.

  He stormed out of the vehicle and pressed the mini-Gauss’s stock to his shoulder, scanning the horizon with his barrel as he tried to sight up his enemies. A flash of blue fire shuddered from near the base of a stalagmite. He squeezed the trigger and returned a volley.

  Slugs lanced into the spire. Sheets of ice fell and exploded on the ground. Shards flew, deadly as any manmade shrapnel. Tag rushed to the cover of another spire. He tried to peer through the darkness and sought any moving shapes or more gunfire but found nothing.

  Dashing across the tundra and continuing toward the rendezvous point would mean he’d have to run straight through patches with almost no cover. But what else could he do? Go into that tunnel?

  Streams of pulsefire peppered the stalagmite he hid behind. A slow groan grew louder, and the pillar started to topple sideways. He jumped and dove into the snow to avoid it. His grip loosened around his mini-Gauss, and it skidded away from him, burying itself in the snow. The spire hit the ground with a whoomph. Snow and ice sprayed up in a frosty cloud. Fragments of rock and ice pinged against his EVA suit. The ground trembled.

  Then he heard something else—footsteps crunching over the snow. He scrambled to recover his weapon, his gloved fingers stretching, desperate to reach the gun. Blue bursts melted the snow around him, and he ducked behind the fallen stalagmite. If he couldn’t grab the mini-Gauss, he was at least thankful he’d ransacked the Argo marine’s EVA suit. He pulled out a pulse pistol from his holster.

  Jumping up from cover, he wheeled the gun around on the first moving shape he spotted. He squeezed the trigger in rapid bursts, orange pulsefire cutting through the darkness. Most of the rounds sputtered uselessly into snow and ice. But one hit his target.

  The attacker fell, holding their leg, and Tag was aiming for a finishing blow when an incoming volley spattered the stalagmite. He crouched and crept to another point. These people wouldn’t finish him off without a fight. If they weren’t going to let him run, they would go down with him.

  He peeked around another broken chunk of ice, and he saw someone rushing to aid the fallen attacker. Sending a spray of pulsefire, he warded them off. A responding barrage hit his position.

  Then a sobering thought surged past his adrenaline-fueled anger: he’d cut down someone with pulsefire.

  The pirates’ armor had easily withstood such small-arms fire aboard the Argo, as his crew had found out with devastating results. So why had
he so easily sent that person sprawling with a weak pulse-pistol shot?

  It felt as though an icy arrow had stabbed through Tag’s heart. Who were these attackers? Did they belong to the group of pirates but have less advanced technology for some odd reason—or were they someone else entirely?

  He gasped in shallow breaths, confusion eating at his mind. It would be yet another ironic twist for his terrifying adventure if he’d actually attacked people who were going to help him. If Vasquez had been sent to this planet, there must have been some friendly groups somewhere.

  More gunfire cracked into the stalagmite. He crawled behind it, staying out of sight. The shots were wild, desperate. Things started to click together in his mind. Another possible explanation crept from amid the confusion even as more blue pulses screamed through the air. These people were trying desperately to keep him from something. Maybe, just maybe, they were on the lookout for those armored pirates just like him.

  But how could he know for sure? He peered through a crack in the ice and trained his pulse pistol on one of the dark shadows moving across the snow. With doubt weighing so heavily on his mind, he couldn’t squeeze the trigger. His conscience nagged at him, begged for him to confirm he wasn’t just shooting down people trying to defend themselves against the same foe the Argo had fought.

  He twisted and peered at the tundra behind him. Running was still an option. He might get lucky. They might not see him running over the tundra. They might not pursue him, and their shots might miss at such a range. But then what would he do for food and water? He could die of dehydration out there before ever even getting close to Vasquez’s rendezvous point. All of his supplies, all of his equipment were aboard the wrecked air car.

  Taking a deep breath, Tag puffed out his chest and holstered his pistol. Maybe he’d die like this, too. But if he was going to die anyway, at least he’d get some answers first. These people might turn out to be allies, and if not, there was always the possibility of negotiation.

  Tag clicked a button on his EVA suit so his voice boomed out of an external speaker. “This is Lieutenant Commander Tag Brewer of the SRES Argo. I want to talk.”

  Silence. No more gunfire. Could it be as he’d thought? It was time to face these people: friend, foe, or somewhere in between. With his hands raised, he slowly stood.

  “Let’s settle this peacefully. I am—”

  An arc of blue flashed. A wet pain struck through Tag’s shoulder, and he went down hard.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX

  Air whooshed out of the singed hole in Tag’s suit, and he desperately threw his gloved hand over the puncture. Atmosphere and steam bled out between his fingers, freezing in contact with the frigid air. It looked like a shower of icy sparks sputtering from his EVA suit. Blood seeped out over his shoulder, oozing out in dark, crimson streaks that trickled over his chest and upper arm, hardening like cooling lava with the frigid air.

  “I ... am ... not ...” He tried to yell into his mic again. But his voice was sucked out of him by the intense cold permeating his suit. It turned out he was going to die anyway. I failed you, Vasquez.

  Through the whistle of escaping air, he heard crunching footsteps. To finish me off, he thought. With one hand clenched over the injury, his fingers crept toward his holstered pistol. He curled his fingers around the pistol’s grip and pulled it unsteadily from the holster. It wavered in the air before him. Painful tremors shook his limb as he tried to hold the weapon straight. A slight pinch bit at his flesh as the EVA suit administered a low dose of painkillers. Enough to reduce the pain, but not enough to stop it. A dose of anticoagulants and regen-flesh stimulants flowed through the needle next, and he prayed they would work fast enough to stop the bleeding and begin the healing process. Let him at least fight off whoever dared take him down.

  The first person showed up at the end of the fallen icy spire. Tag leveled his pistol and squeezed the trigger. The bright pulse shot went high. The person continued their approach, aiming their own weapon. They barked something at him. Something incomprehensible. It sounded more like radio static than language.

  Tag crawled closer to the stalagmite so his back was against the ice. He pulled himself upright, and the additional bracing helped steady his arm. He aimed at the attacker once more.

  But a flash of pulsefire crashed into his pistol. The weapon rocketed from his hand, spinning through the air, and landed uselessly several meters away. His fingers trembled from the impact, but he held them in front of his face. All five were still there.

  A hand grabbed his uninjured shoulder, and someone thrust a pistol into his face. He turned to see two more individuals staring down at him over the barrels of their weapons.

  He looked upon the victors’ faces, and his whole body went weak before flushing with anger. He recognized those orange visors and the black armor. The leg pieces and arms weren’t as thin or sleek as those of the invaders on the Argo, but there was no doubt that the armor worn by these people had come from the same place. The pirates.

  A curse echoed through Tag’s mind. He’d taken mercy on these people because of his damned conscience. And what had that accomplished?

  His vision started to blur. His nose was numb, and he was losing feeling in his fingers. A mixture of sweat and tears from the cold froze along his face. Two of the pirates lifted him to his feet. Another stood in front, holding his leg, limping. The one he’d shot. There were three total. That was it. He could’ve taken them. He could’ve ended this.

  The one limping hissed static at the other two. They in turn hissed their own static-like responses. It seemed like they were actually having a conversation. But Tag couldn’t hope to follow it. Maybe he was delirious, losing oxygen. The limping one holstered its weapon, and the trio began dragging Tag through the snow.

  Tag resisted and writhed in their grip. He pried at one of the pirates’ gloved fingers around his shoulder. But his strength was flagging. None of his struggling or twisting seemed to perturb them. He continued fighting, but his hope started to fade as he watched the trail his body left in the snow. The air car, crashed in the snowbank, was now bleeding slow tendrils of smoke and atmosphere.

  He’d failed. He’d never make it to the rendezvous point in time. Vasquez would be stuck out here, marooned like him. Left to wonder what had happened to her promised exit from this planet. If her years spent on Eta-Five were anything like Tag’s past couple of days, she’d be dying to leave—maybe even literally.

  His captors paused near the tunnel glowing blue and purple. The winds here died down. Sensors on Tag’s suit reported the temperature had already risen to a considerable -15 degrees Centigrade at the tunnel’s entrance. He forced himself to his knees, ready to sprint. One of the pirates let out another burst of static. The other two responded in kind, and one shoved Tag back to the ground. The one with the limp bent in front of Tag. The man held a small device, shaped like a pistol. He held it out and rotated it for Tag to examine.

  Tag cocked his head, unsure what the pirate was trying to demonstrate. “What do you want? If you’re going to kill me, just do it.”

  The pirate let out a burst of scratchy noises in response.

  “I can’t understand a damn thing you’re saying.”

  The pirate shook his head, then pressed the small pistol device to the hole in the shoulder of the suit. He pulled the trigger, and Tag cringed, ready for another pulse round at point-blank range. Instead, the device sprayed some kind of sticky polymer over the hole. The individual strands melded together and clotted the atmosphere-leaking hole. Pressure levels in the suit returned to normal, and the temperature stabilized.

  “Keeping me alive to torture me later?” Tag asked.

  The injured pirate made a barking sound that sounded like laughing. Tag was growing more and more nervous about the lack of communication between himself and his captors. Technologies existed to encrypt friendly voice comms so enemies couldn’t understand. He wondered if that was what they were using. Maybe they inten
ded to use him as a hostage or prisoner. A spark of hope shimmered somewhere in the dark recesses of Tag’s mind.

  It made sense. They probably did plan on letting him go—or at least bargaining for his life. They wouldn’t want him to run away with any secrets, which was why they were encrypting their comms now.

  They’d had the entire Argo and its crew at their disposal. And they’d been hell bent on destroying all SRE life aboard the ship.

  Tag didn’t have long to consider before he felt the jab of a pulse pistol in his back. One of the encrypted voices of the pirates uttered a command. He didn’t need to make sense of the words to understand the man wanted him to move. They marched him through the tunnel.

  But what use was he to them, really?

  “What do you want from me?” he demanded.

  Again, they ignored him as they trudged deeper underground.

  Small rocks glowed blue and purple on the wall. The more he studied them, the more he realized they weren’t rocks at all but rather, some kind of strange, puffy plant or mold. Each shone brightly and gave the tunnel the ephemeral appearance he had spotted from several klicks away.

  Larger glowing plants blocked segments of the tunnel like curtains. The pirates pushed past the multicolored fronds and continued. Tag felt his jaw go slack at the sight of each. If he hadn’t thought his life was in peril, he might’ve taken the time to admire the luminous flora guiding their path. His sensors reported increasing temperatures, until they’d surpassed the freezing point. Even the oxygen levels were rising the deeper they went. His shoulder throbbed in pain, more and more, as his adrenaline and shock wore off. After they’d been trudging for long enough that the novelty of the glowing plants had worn off, he felt ready to beg these pirates for some kind of painkiller. The EVA suit’s dosage was enough to jumpstart the healing process. But the suit was built to keep its user aware, carefully regulating what it administered so as not to render its user senseless and high. It wouldn’t administer any more painkillers unless he was allowed to override the controls.