Rebel World (The Eternal Frontier Book 4)

by Anthony J Melchiorri

  Rodrigo frowned. “I’m not sure where it is.” It seemed like he was losing his patience. Undoubtedly his own experiments were calling him. “I suppose I can look for it.”

  “Yes,” Tag said, pasting on the most obnoxiously cheery smile he could manage. “Thank you very much!”

  Rodrigo turned and marched toward one of the sample freezing bays. He undid the latch, and icy white mist poured out as he peered into it.

  “Alpha, we need that data,” Tag whispered. “Can you get it from their computer system?”

  “Yes, Captain, I can do that.” She stood still, making no move toward the terminal.

  “Retrieve the data,” Tag said, shaking his head. Alpha was such an advanced AI that sometimes he forgot she wasn’t human. She was constantly learning, but he still needed to be precise when issuing commands. “And be discreet about it.”

  “Yes, Captain.” Alpha backed up against a lab bench. On it was the terminal Rodrigo had used to access Hannah’s note. A data probe slipped out of her finger and into one of the access points on the terminal. “I wish to note that stealing is against the morals you imparted to me.”

  “Yeah, yeah, I get it,” Tag muttered. “I’ll explain later.”

  Rodrigo called over his shoulder, “I couldn’t find—”

  “Here,” Tag said. “Let me help.” He joined Rodrigo at the open bay. Making a show of it, he poked each of the plastic boxes with samples, counting them off and scanning the dates scrawled across them. He jabbed the one with today’s date. “It should be in this box here, right?”

  “Yes,” Rodrigo said with a slight roll of his eyes. “I did, of course, check that one, but—”

  “May I?” Tag asked.

  Tag started to reach for it, but Rodrigo stopped him. “Without thermal gloves, you’ll get frostbite.”

  The lab assistant handed him a pair of gloves. Tag put them on, pretending to have trouble getting his fingers in the right spot. He pulled out the box and started sifting through the plastic vials. As he did, he stole a sideways glance. Alpha was still positioned at the computer. Tag had no idea how much longer she needed, and he was almost at the last sample.

  “Oh, no!” Tag said, deliberately spilling the samples over the floor. “I’m so sorry. Were these organized a certain way? Here, I can put them back.”

  “Mr. Brewer,” Rodrigo said with evident restraint, “I can clean these up.” He took the plastic box from Tag.

  “You sure?”

  “Yes, yes, I’m absolutely positive.”

  Rodrigo bent to take care of the frozen vials rolling across the floor. Tag carefully stepped over them and joined Alpha.

  “Bought as much time as I could,” he said. “How’s it going?”

  “I have completed retrieval,” Alpha said. The data probe retracted, and she clenched her hands.

  Tag hurried out of the door and back into the street. He jogged with Alpha toward the Argo. The ship waited in the distance, its grav impellers already glowing blue, primed and ready to go.

  “What’s your analysis of the data?” Tag asked Alpha.

  “I don’t think you’ll be pleased,” she answered, not the least bit winded by their run. “Dr. Baker lied.”

  CHAPTER THIRTY-FIVE

  “She lied?” Tag asked as they approached the open cargo bay.

  “That is correct,” Alpha said. “She found a positive match from her results.”

  “Hold that thought, Alpha,” Tag said. He jogged toward the bridge, where Coren and Sofia were waiting. “I don’t know what’s going on, but it doesn’t look good. I need you all in tip-top shape, got it?”

  “And when aren’t we in tip-top shape?” Sofia asked.

  “Point taken,” Tag said. “Alpha, give them the coordinates for the weapons cache. Plot a trajectory from that point to the approximate location of the investors’ facilities that Burton gave us.”

  “Weapons cache?” Coren asked.

  “Keep countermeasures hot,” Tag said. “Let’s be prepared for anything. That includes shields, Alpha.”

  “Yes, Captain.”

  Tag hit a button on his terminal to call the marines. “Bull, how are you all holding up down there?”

  “Ready to roll out when you give us the word.”

  “Good,” Tag said. “We might need your boots on the ground for recon. Prep the others.”

  “Yes, sir,” Bull replied.

  “Take us up, Sofia,” Tag said.

  The impellers rumbled to life. Dust plumed around them, curling into the nearby steam vents. The endless carpet of half-brown grass waved as they ascended. Then Sofia kicked the throttle forward, and they blasted toward the first point on the route Alpha had calculated.

  “So about Hannah,” Tag said as the ship leveled out. “Show me what you found, Alpha.”

  Alpha tapped a few commands on her terminal. Next to the holomap of Orthod, a three-dimensional molecular model of the stimmadd compound sparkled to life. “There appear to be two primary components of the stimmadd. The first is a chemical that was banned by the SRE. It is derived from a plantlike life-form at another colony that, like Orthod, appeared to be striving for independence. It was originally designated as a painkiller but was found to have neurodegenerative side effects when used extensively.”

  “Okay,” Tag said. “So it looks like this stuff was brought here by humans. Not good at all. What’s this second component?”

  “It is engineered from a virus analogue native to Orthod. This virus, according to the data logs, is known to infect the Imoogi. I estimate its effects to be roughly equivalent to those of the common cold. However, one side effect of the virus includes increased potency of the stimmadd, which reacts to a certain protein within Imoogi cytoplasm akin to a human enzyme. This enzyme-like molecule is what allows the stimmadd to affect the Imoogi neurotransmission process.”

  “Want to translate that for those of us without a medical degree?” Sofia asked.

  “Gods be damned,” Tag said as he realized the implications.

  “That doesn’t really help me,” Coren said. “I’m not sure it helped Sofia.”

  “What it means,” Tag began, “is that the stimmadd has been deliberately engineered to be addictive to the Imoogi. It’s not some naturally occurring substance that ended up in their beedle-gee supply. Someone—a human—put it there.”

  The force of all the pieces clicking together hit him in the gut. “Creating something like that would take a well-equipped lab. And not only that, but it would take a researcher who had intimate knowledge of Orthod’s biological systems.”

  “Hannah,” Sofia said. “Gods, you don’t think... No.”

  “She’s an intelligent researcher,” Tag said. “She didn’t want us to find out about the stimmadd. She knows something. Maybe she was trying to keep us from finding out the truth and putting ourselves in danger.”

  The night he’d spent with her had been a charade. He had felt guilty, thinking he was the one concealing secrets. But he hadn’t been alone in hiding the truth.

  “Or maybe she’s being coerced by someone out there. An Imoogi or another human with some kind of leverage over her.”

  “We’re here,” Sofia said. She brought the Argo low over the site of the weapons-cache discovery. Amid the winding treelike plants and leaves of grass, there was a freshly dug-up hole. “That must be it.”

  “Looks like it,” Tag said. “Scan the area for anything suspicious.”

  “On it,” Sofia said. She put the Argo into a slow, lazy path. “If Cho’s people were already here, you think we’ll find something?”

  “Not sure,” Tag said. “But they didn’t have the benefit of eyes in the sky.”

  They hovered over the forest for several minutes. Alpha stared at her holoscreen, analyzing the sensor readings as they came in. Tag watched the viewscreen, looking for anything out of place. He found his thoughts straying toward Hannah. Was this what she’d meant about facing fate like a dragon? Making her own
rules, operating outside the boundaries of civil society?

  He hadn’t known her that long, but he had wanted to believe she was one of the good guys. He had thought she was like him, carrying out a scientific mission for the good of humanity.

  “Captain,” Alpha said, “I found something.” She gestured over her terminal, and a new marker appeared on the holomap. Sofia directed the Argo over it. A thicket of trees concealed whatever it was she’d identified.

  “What exactly did you spot?” Tag asked.

  “The lidar picked up a strangely shaped object.” Another flick of her wrist, and a monochromatic line-drawing of the object appeared beside the holomap at the center of the bridge. “Unless plants grow in perfect rectangles on this planet, it’s almost certainly manmade.”

  “Take her down?” Sofia asked.

  “No,” Tag said. “I don’t want to waste more time than we have to.” He flicked over the comm channels. “Bull, I want you to rappel down. Check out the site highlighted on your wrist terminals. We’ll continue recon from above.”

  It didn’t take long for the vid-feed from the marines’ helmet-mounted cams to play across Tag’s holoscreen. He watched as they slid down the cables and into the tree cover. They burst through the stippled green and brown foliage. “All clear,” Bull called over the comms.

  “Copy,” Tag said.

  The cable retracted, and Sofia continued their circuitous route as Alpha probed the undergrowth with her sensors. All the while, Tag watched the marines approach the site that Alpha had marked on their maps.

  “Looks like this was freshly dug up,” Sumo said, picking up some of the dirt sprinkled over the roots and crumbling it between her fingers.

  Lonestar peered at something in the roots, and Tag switched to her cam view. “If that’s what they left behind, I’d hate to see what they took,” she said.

  “Must have been in a hurry,” Gorenado said.

  “Captain, you seeing this?” Bull asked.

  “I am,” Tag said. “Rocket launchers, grenades, rifles. Is there another marine platoon camped out on here that we don’t know about?”

  “I’m just praying you ain’t right,” Lonestar drawled.

  That makes two of us, Tag thought.

  CHAPTER THIRTY-SIX

  The Argo blew over the forested landscape. The land toward the south was far more lush and full of vegetation. A few steam vents wheezed plumes of vapor into the air that caught the golden light of the evening sun.

  Sofia leaned on the throttle, pushing the ship hard. “Some bad shit is going on here, Skip.”

  “Yes,” Alpha agreed. “This certainly appears to qualify as ‘bad shit.’”

  “Think this is the work of a collaborator or something?” Sofia asked.

  “If someone down here has been experimenting with brain-altering drugs on the Imoogi, I wouldn’t put human experimentation past them,” Tag said, praying Hannah was unharmed and far from this madness.

  “That could be how the marines we encountered on the Montenegro were brainwashed,” Alpha said. “If the drugs had imparted long-term residual effects, there would be no need to employ mind-altering nanites.”

  They blasted over a narrow strip of land. Sapphire-blue water lapped the shores on either side. The grass had been flattened in the middle, almost as if a path had been formed from someone or something frequently traveling over it. Perhaps it was just a game trail, but Tag suspected something much more sinister.

  Burton had given Tag a rough estimate of where the colony’s mysterious backers might have set up shop. Most of the region was restricted, in part because of the agreements with her financiers, but also because there were apparently large numbers of fist-sized insects with toxic bites in the area. That last tidbit had been supported by anecdotes from a couple colonists, along with research Hannah had performed. Tag wondered whether that was just another boogeyman to keep the colonists from traveling too far south.

  There were still so many questions circling his mind as they swung over the dense trees. The land here was greener than anything he had seen up north, and the viewscreen showed why. Black clouds rolled in toward them. Arcs of white lightning cut the sky. He could already imagine the sheets of rain pouring out of the storm front.

  “Perfect timing,” Sofia said.

  “It will not be a problem for me,” Alpha said. “Our sensors should not be affected by the storm.”

  It didn’t take long for the clouds to roll over them. They could have risen above the storm and used the ship’s sensors to scan the ground, but Tag wanted to see the landscape himself. In his mind’s eye, he pictured the New Blood. They hadn’t been able to see the Starinski Labs’ stealth ship on their lidar or radar. Rain smeared across the viewscreen, and the tinny ping of hail echoed through the hull.

  “Something else isn’t sitting right with me, Captain,” Sofia said. “If Hannah has been coming down here regularly, it’s a hell of a journey in just an air car.”

  “I’m not trying to sound arrogant,” Coren said, “but—”

  “Really, this time you’re not trying to sound arrogant?” Sofia asked.

  “Yes, well, I know of no human air-car technology that could make this journey in such a short amount of time,” Coren said.

  “Alpha?” Tag asked.

  Alpha ran the calculations in a nanosecond. “They are correct. Either Hannah did not come this far south or she had an alternative means of transport.”

  “We saw no sign of her air car on your sensors,” Tag said, thinking aloud. That could mean many things. Maybe the air car had been parked at a secured location. Three hells, she might be exploring some cave somewhere. His stomach plummeted. Maybe she had been picked up by whoever was using those weapon caches. Abducted by the people at the heart of the stimmadd conspiracy. Tag tried to reason through these other options.

  They continued sweeping the forests, the storm their constant companion. Tag still struggled with what he would say when and if he did find Hannah. He hoped it was all a misunderstanding, that they would find the abandoned Lorris Industries facilities and clear her name. Maybe there were no more collaborators on this planet. Maybe after they’d infiltrated or recruited the marines that had tried to assassinate Doran, the collaborators had abandoned this planet. Surely the Collectors had no interest in such a trivial place when all the rest of the SRE was out there, ripe for the picking.

  Although they’d yet to find more evidence of human activity in the area, the sensors reported a multitude of holes pockmarking the forest floor. The holes became more common as they approached the southernmost tip of the coastline. Each appeared anywhere from a few centimeters to several meters wide. Tag guessed there was an underground cave network in the area. Trawling through all those caves could take days.

  “Anyone else think those caves would be a damn good place to hide a weapons-smuggling operation?” Sofia asked. “Or, say, a collaborator recruitment camp?”

  “That’s what I was thinking,” Tag said, “but we’re practically at sea level here. You can see the rain just filling those tunnels, even from up here. They probably just empty into the ocean. You couldn’t—”

  He stopped, a thought hitting him. One he should have already pieced together. “Gods, Munmu said Lorris had an underwater facility. All this time, we’d been looking for someone on land. What if they’re underwater?”

  “That is a valid hypothesis, Captain,” Alpha said.

  “Patch me in to Munmu,” Tag said.

  “Yes, Captain.”

  A few moments later, Munmu’s scaly face appeared on Tag’s holoscreen.

  “I had not expected you to call so soon,” Munmu said. “Do you have news?”

  Tag caught Munmu up on the origins of the stimmadd additives. He didn’t bother trying to explain the tenuous connections between the collaborator-recruitment efforts on Orthod and the Collector threat. There wasn’t time for that. “We need to locate these people, and we have reason to believe they may be somew
here around the old underwater human facilities.”

  “Ah, I see,” Munmu said. “When do you plan to visit them?”

  “Now.”

  “I’ll alert a local squad of guardians,” Munmu said. “One moment.”

  “Captain, we’re getting an incoming call,” Alpha said.

  “Patch it through.”

  Another Imoogi guardian appeared onscreen. The scales across its face were mottled and scarred, and a chunk of flesh was missing from one of its lips. “Munmu told me of your request. We’ll be happy to escort you to the location of the human facility.”

  In a matter of minutes, Tag was back in the water with the marines and Coren. The Argo remained above, with Alpha and Sofia manning it. Rain churned up the surface of the ocean, and harsh waves kicked up silt and seaweed. The Imoogi navigated through the turbulent waters with ease, plunging deeper into the darkness. Tag followed, his propulsion system leaving a trail of streaming bubbles.

  “Captain,” Alpha’s voice chimed over the comms. “Sensors are struggling to pick you up amid all the signal noise.”

  “Understood,” Tag said. “Keep in touch. Let me know if you see anything on the surface.”

  Yet another reason the fission-weapon-smuggling operations could have been tucked away down here, another layer of secrecy and natural protection to keep it away from prying eyes, SRE or otherwise.

  But it hadn’t escaped the eyes of the Imoogi, and for that, he was thankful.

  Bull jetted through the water beside Tag, cradling a mini-Gauss rifle constructed specifically for harsh environments like the ocean. Sumo and Lonestar swam after him with Coren and Gorenado bringing up the rear. The squad of Imoogi speared through the water, cutting through the seaweed like aquatic scythes. Fishlike creatures swam out of their way, and giant things roughly the size of an air car scuttled across the ocean floor like gargantuan crabs. Tag thanked the gods these creatures seemed to be afraid of them, rather than the other way around.

  Then the noise of Imoogi chatter broke over his comms. They slowed, letting themselves sink to the ocean floor.