Frost Station Alpha 1-6: The Complete Series
Read Frost Station Alpha 1-6: The Complete Series Online
Authors: Ruby Lionsdrake
Tags: #General Fiction
Frost Station Alpha
by Ruby Lionsdrake
Copyright © 2015 Ruby Lionsdrake
Table of Contents
Acknowledgments
Thank you for checking out
Frost Station Alpha
, a serial science fiction romance adventure originally published in six parts. Before you start reading, please let me thank Sarah Engelke for beta reading and Shelley Holloway for editing and formatting. I’d also like to give a shout-out to Deranged Doctor Design for the cover art. We hope you enjoy the story!
Part I: Hunted
Chapter 1
The throwing knife thunked into the floating dummy, joining two others that protruded from a leering face holographically displayed on the front. The point had missed the eye by an inch and probably would not have stuck if it had struck a real person. An approving ding sounded, and the dummy stopped darting around the room and settled to the floor.
“You’ve got low standards, bot,” Lieutenant Tamryn Pavlenko muttered, walking to the dummy to retrieve her knives. “A real pirate would have lived to shoot back.”
A tendril of anxiety squirmed in her stomach, as it often did when she anticipated an attack on the station. She had been here three weeks, with nothing but space dust bothering the outpost, but she knew the place’s record. It was why she had requested the assignment.
“With real pirates,” a male voice said from the doorway, “I believe you’re allowed to use laser rifles with smart scopes, ma’am.”
Sergeant Wu quirked an eyebrow at the dummy as he walked into the communications room with just such a rifle slung across his back. He also wore mesh armor over his black fatigues, a helmet, and a TacVest with smoke and tear gas grenades dangling from clips. It was the typical patrol uniform for the infantry platoon charged with guarding the scientists and keeping criminals from harassing the station.
“Besides, if you come face to face with any pirates in here, it means me and my team didn’t do our job very well.” Wu waved at the communications, environmental, and sensor consoles, along with the holo displays showing camera feeds from around the station.
Or it could mean that she had gone out with the infantry soldiers to help with the attack.
Not wanting a lecture from a non-com, even if he had twenty years of experience, Tamryn did not mention that she could see herself doing this.
“Though I bet you wouldn’t mind some pirates barging in, would you, ma’am? You seem to be as happy snuggling with a gun as my infantry boys. You don’t see that real often from communications officers.”
Tamryn grinned. “I would have joined the infantry if my da had let me. He approves of his children getting military experience, but not in a way that’s likely to get them killed.”
“Then how’d you end up out here in pirate heaven?”
“Even my da doesn’t always get what he wants.” Her grin widened.
“Dear Buddha, you didn’t request this assignment, did you?”
“I want to make a name for myself that doesn’t have anything to do with the rest of my family.”
“Ma’am, that’s just... You know most of us are out here as
punishment
, right? Because we irritated a senior officer or got into some trouble just shy of requiring a dishonorable discharge.” His face grew bleak, making her wonder what
he
was being punished for.
“One man’s punishment is another man’s—or woman’s—opportunity. Is there something I can help you with, Sergeant?” Tamryn did not mind company, especially since the nightshift tended to be slow, but Wu was a consummate soldier and did not usually pause in his rounds to idly chat.
“Nah, just looking at something.” Wu walked to the sensor station as she plucked her knives out of the dummy. “There was a proximity button flashing down on the shuttle deck. The station seems to think something bumped into us. I checked it out on the cameras and didn’t see any sign of damage, and I didn’t feel anything hit, but I want to make sure we don’t have unwanted company sneaking up on us in the dark of night.”
The anxious flutters returned to Tamryn’s stomach. It was probably nothing, but the station
did
have a history of being targeted, and there had been three attacks in the month before she had arrived. Tamryn hadn’t known the reason for the interest in the station until recently, but word of Captain Porter’s secret research project must have gotten out to the underworld months ago.
Wu rapped a knuckle against the console. “Something wrong with the sensors?”
“There’s a solar storm going on tonight. Communications were squeaky when I checked them earlier. I wouldn’t be surprised if the sensors were affected too.”
“Solar storm? That’s bugging us way out here? On Frost Station Alpha?” Wu glanced toward the two portholes in the front of the room, though the bright yellow dot of the sun was not in view from their current angle.
“Solar flares wreak havoc on the entire system,” Tamryn said. “Well, maybe not Glaciem down there.” She waved toward the white sphere that
was
in view, the icy moon representing the farthest out body that had ever housed a human settlement, even if that settlement was long gone.
“So, you’re telling me a pirate could be dancing on the shuttle bay doors right now, and we couldn’t tell?” Wu ground his teeth back and forth and rubbed a scar on his cheek. He was a big, powerful man, and the irritation in his voice made him more intimidating. Woe to the pirate that danced into his sights.
“If this intruder had a space suit and some magnetic boots, I suppose that would be possible,” Tamryn said. “I told Captain Ram about the storm when I got on shift. He—”
A shudder shook the station.
Wu’s head jerked up, his gaze turning toward the portholes. “Attack.”
“It sounds more like we’re being hit by asteroids than that we’re being attacked.” Tamryn jogged to the security station. “External cameras.”
“That’s not very damned likely. We’re not anywhere near an asteroid belt.” Wu tapped his Fleet comm patch and checked the cartridge in his laser rifle. “Sir? Wu, here.”
The holo vids floating over the security console switched from displaying internal feeds to showing six views of the exterior of the station. Six fuzzy and static-filled views. Tamryn could barely make out what should have been clear, sharp views of Glaciem and the edge of the gas giant Mysterium that lumbered beyond it. She could tell that the shuttle bay doors had not been opened in the curving gray hull of the station, nor did she see any ships in that feed or any of the others. But one of the cameras was completely black, a white “signal lost” flashing at the top of the display.
“That’s the one closest to engineering, isn’t it?” Tamryn asked, a shiver going through her belly. Was she about to get the action she craved? The chance to put down a pirate attack and keep the station and its top-secret work safe? Even if they hadn’t heard a blaster yet or seen a ship, Wu was right in that it was unlikely
asteroids
would have chosen the night of the solar storm to attack. It was even more unlikely that one would have smashed into that camera to keep it from displaying.
The sergeant opened his mouth to answer, but Captain Ram’s voice came over the comm first.
“Wu, where are you?”
“Comm and Control, sir. With Lieutenant Pavlenko.”
“Good. Stay there, keep the door locked, and
don’t
let her wander anywhere.”
Tamryn kept her mouth shut, but she bristled at the implication that if she left to help, she would simply be
wandering
. As if she couldn’t do some good. She also bristled at the idea of hiding here while the rest of the station engaged in battle.
“She gets herself shot, and my career is shit,” Ram added, frustration and aggravation mingling in his voice.
Tamryn gritted her teeth, annoyed at the suggestion that she needed to be coddled, but suddenly understanding why Ram had been aloof and cold to her since she arrived. He thought her family would have him punished if anything happened to her. Great.
“I’m not planning to get shot, sir,” Tamryn said, “but nobody’s going to blame you if it happens.”
“The hell they aren’t. Wu, got that door locked?”
“Yes, sir. What’s going on?”
“Got nothing positive yet, but I can smell trouble like farts in a closet.”
“A handy skill, sir,” Tamryn said. Ram had risen through the non-com ranks before switching to the officer track, and sometimes it showed.
“Shut up, Pavlenko. Get those camera feeds back online and get ready to flash the day’s recordings to Fleet as soon as we have confirmation of trouble. I’m on my way to engineering with a team.”
“Can I get Yakimov?” Tamryn did not want to admit that the communications computers were the only thing she had any expertise with, but this wasn’t the time to pretend she could dance her way through the security system when she couldn’t. She was only three months out of the academy, and Ram knew that.
“I woke up Lieutenant Yakimov. He’s on his way. Now get me my—”
A crash sounded over the comm, then a distant shout. The faint shriek of laser fire sent a chill through Tamryn.
“Sir? Is someone on the station?”
Ram didn’t answer.
Sergeant Wu’s face had grown grim. He put his back to the environmental controls console and faced the door, as if he expected death to march through it any second.
More lasers fired, sounding close to Captain Ram, then a boom drowned out everything. She heard it over the comm link but also felt the deck shudder. An alarm light flashed on the console behind Wu. If someone was hurling about explosives that weren’t rated for ship and station use, then getting shot wasn’t going to be the only thing they needed to worry about.
A scream sounded over the comm, so close to the pickup that Tamryn worried it had been Ram. There should have been a whole team of non-coms in front of him. If whoever was attacking had already reached him... that did not bode well.
A thump sounded and the comm cut out. The quietness of space filled Comm and Control. All she was doing was standing in a room, a throwing knife still in her hand, but Tamryn could feel her heart slamming against her ribs in the stillness. A siren wailed, emanating from the walls, and she nearly jumped out of her boots.
“Intruder alert,” a computerized voice announced, echoing through the corridors of the station. “Intruder alert: all military personnel to battle stations. All civilian personnel to safety stations.”
“Can you figure out where our people are?” Wu waved to the security controls while he kept his face toward the door. “Did they make it to engineering? Is anyone at their designated station?”
Tamryn shook herself into action, annoyed that she hadn’t thought of that earlier. “Yes, of course.”
She quieted the alarm, at least in Comm and Control, so she could hear herself think, then prodded at the holo keys. The Fleet comm patches all had tracking IDs, and the internal sensors weren’t as scrambled as the exterior ones. A map of Frost Station Alpha floated into the air before her, its massive spinning wheel ringing the cylindrical core that housed twenty levels of research stations, living quarters, and two weapons platforms protruding from the top and bottom. Small blips indicated that a soldier was stationed in each of the platforms, though she hadn’t heard anything to suggest they were firing at anything outside. Most of the blips were located in the center of the station, the double-level that indicated engineering. Some of them were moving, moving quickly, but others were still.
“Get the video feed for engineering,” Wu said, watching over her shoulder. “Send it off to Fleet.”
Tamryn almost yes-sirred him. Four years at the university and two years in the academy said she was an officer and the one in charge, but for all her eagerness for a pirate fight, she wasn’t the one with the experience here. She was silently glad that she wasn’t alone.
She left the external displays up, especially that dark one in case it flickered back to life, and she brought up the feed that covered the engineering level. The last time she had glanced at that camera, the cavernous, equipment-filled chamber had been lit. Now, darkness smothered it, though she did spot a couple of flashlight beams in the distance. She also spotted bodies on the floor, bodies in black Fleet uniforms. Their weapons had fallen about them, and some still gripped them in their hands. They had died fighting.