Coalescence (Dragonfire Station Book 3)

by Zen DiPietro

  “Right now I’m just taking things as they come. But I’m sure restructuring will require creating more oversight and accountability, even in the clandestine divisions.”

  “I’m not made to be a bureaucrat.” Peregrine’s customary frown was firmly in place.

  Fallon paused. Peregrine wouldn’t be mentioning that again right now without a reason. “Are you saying you wouldn’t take part in reorganizing Blackout?” It hadn’t occurred to her that Avian Unit wouldn’t do whatever came next as a team.

  “I’m saying that I’ll never be someone who sits in an office every day, giving orders. You and Raptor could do that. Hawk and I aren’t made that way.” Peregrine fixed Fallon with a steady gaze.

  “You’ve been worried about this.” Fallon wished she’d realized this was weighing on Per so much. Fallon hadn’t been thinking far enough ahead to worry about what came next. Per clearly had.

  “Yes. I’m not sure what my place would be in the new order of Blackout.”

  Fallon put a hand on her partner’s shoulder. “We’ll figure it out when we get there. No matter what, we’re a team, as always.”

  “Right.”

  Fallon wasn’t sure Peregrine sounded entirely convinced. Maybe more like eighty percent. But what else could Fallon say? She could only keep pushing forward.

  “I mean it. We’ve gotten through everything else. We’ll figure that out too. Blood and bone,” she reminded Peregrine.

  Peregrine nodded. “Blood and bone.” At least in that, she sounded one hundred percent confident.

  Fallon paused at the door to her quarters, then went past it to Raptor’s. He might still be sleeping, but he was due to be up soon anyway.

  The door opened immediately, and she was surprised to see Ross inside. Raptor waved her in.

  “Hey. Anything up?” She hoped she didn’t have more existential crises on her hands. Their team needed to be focused on the mission ahead, and nothing else.

  Ross looked up at her and smiled, but the hand he raked through his shaggy hair belied his attempt at reassurance. “Would you believe we were talking about the Terran pegball championships?”

  “No.”

  “Well, scrap. The truth is, I’m nervous about this mission. I don’t like going into a situation with so many unknowns.”

  “It’s not my favorite either.” She leaned against the wall. “But we work with what we’ve got. This is our best shot.”

  “I know. But I haven’t seen as much of this kind of op as the rest of you. Until recently, I’d spent the last decade teaching teenagers at the academy. It’s not exactly high-stakes stuff.”

  She glanced at Raptor, but he didn’t seem concerned. Ross was simply having some nerves, then. Fortunately, he’d gone to the right person to talk him through it. That let Fallon off the hook, though as the team leader she still had an obligation to be sure that they could count on Ross.

  “You’ll be staying on board the Nefarious, anyway. Someone needs to, and you’re the next-best pilot. If we’re lucky, you’ll only be minding the store while we’re gone.” And if they weren’t, he might have to engage in some tricky maneuvers to keep the ship safe. But she didn’t think saying so would do much to calm his nerves.

  “It’s too bad we couldn’t bring that engineer friend of yours. The one you want to recruit. Would have been comforting to know that if we take damage, someone could repair it.” Ross had relaxed some, so she judged that he was only thinking out loud.

  “Kellis. Yeah, I’d have liked to have her along for this one too. But she’s too green for something this intense. Just our quick pop into the Tokyo base had her white-faced and edgy. She needs training before she can be useful in high-stress situations.”

  “Hopefully in the future,” Raptor added.

  “I hope so.” She suspected that Raptor and Ross needed to do more talking, so she pulled away from the wall. “Well, I’m going to go check in on our dear admiral.”

  “Better you than me.” Raptor didn’t smile. “One of the perks of being our fearless leader.”

  “It’s not a bad job, all in all. I think I’ll keep it.”

  Fallon gave Colb the proper bow, not that he deserved it. She’d be glad when she could drop the charade. Showing respect to a man who might cause the PAC’s destruction made her grind her teeth. Never mind what she’d gone through when she’d lost her memory. But she was good at her job and let none of this show.

  “I hope you’re well, Admiral.” She didn’t ask to enter his room and he didn’t invite her.

  “As well as can be expected. I have to admit, the stress of all this has taken its toll, and I’m spending a good deal of time resting, so I can be ready for what’s ahead.”

  “That’s good. We’ll need you.”

  “You’ll be able to count on me.” He smiled at her. “I never missed a single one of your competitions, did I?”

  She remembered him sitting with her parents, quietly cheering her on at the various combat tournaments she’d competed in as a youth. His face communicated only fondness and pride.

  “Never.” She smiled warmly. “Uncle Masumi was always there.”

  He chuckled, looking nostalgic. “I haven’t heard you call me that in many years. Funny what this uniform does to us.” He smoothed his hands down the front of his admiral’s uniform.

  “Yes. It is.” At least that statement she wholeheartedly meant. She stepped back. “I’ll leave you to rest.”

  “Thank you for checking in on me. I hope you know I’ve always been as proud of you as if you were my own daughter.”

  She bowed. “Thank you. I can’t tell you what that means to me.”

  As she returned to her own quarters, she burned with anger. She didn’t soothe it away. Anger wasn’t always a bad thing. She wanted it. She’d use it for what was to come.

  She tried to lie down and sleep, but her body wasn’t having it. Sighing, she sat up and began studying the schematics of Jamestown she had on her voicecom display. Not that the schematics were likely to help, because Krazinski would have altered things. And not that she didn’t already have every detail committed to memory. But she had nothing else to do with her time. She could think of only the job ahead, and she couldn’t afford to work out until exhaustion. She needed her body to be strong and ready.

  So she waited out the final hours alone. Ironic, maybe, for someone with two love interests, and one of them sleeping next door. But she would always be herself before she was someone’s lover. She was a soldier. A warrior. A person who got shit done.

  She rolled out of her bunk before it was time to relieve Hawk on the bridge. After putting on a clean jumpsuit, she took the long way through the ship.

  Long tradition held that a captain toured her ship before a major battle. Fallon was far from a traditional captain, but she felt like the Nefarious belonged to her. She’d crawled through every conduit and memorized every system. She always felt the bridge was hers, and only on loan to anyone else.

  She was proud of her ship and her team. Of her service record. Of her attempt to save the PAC. If this was the mission she didn’t come back from, she had no regrets, so long as they saved the PAC.

  When she arrived on the bridge, Hawk squinted at her. “Prelin’s ass, you look like you’re ready to chew straight through the hull of Jamestown.”

  She grinned. “I am.”

  He scowled at her, but she knew it was fake. “You’ve always been the scariest asshole I’ve ever known.”

  “And you’ve always been the biggest one I’ve ever known.”

  They glared at each other, then broke into laughter.

  “Ready?” he asked.

  “So ready.” She slid into the pilot’s chair, feeling instantly more powerful.

  “Mind if I keep you company?” He gestured toward the chair beside her.

  “Not at all. You don’t want to sleep?”

  “Who can sleep?” He leaned against the seat and she saw the mania in his eyes that she under
stood so well.

  An hour later, Peregrine arrived. An hour after that, Raptor sauntered onto the bridge. They sat together, telling old stories, insulting one another, and watching the distance between them and their target shrink.

  Fallon got her first glimpse of Jamestown on long-range sensors. “Here we go,” she intoned. “Hawk, call up Ross and Colb.”

  “Will do.” But before bringing up the others, he stepped forward and extended his fist. “Blood and bone, my friends. It’s been a pleasure serving with you.”

  Fallon smiled and touched her fist to his. Raptor and Peregrine followed. For one moment, they were together, united, and everything they’d ever intended to be.

  “Blood and bone.”

  Fallon’s first close-range look at Jamestown made her heart leap. Sure, it was a cold gray monster of a flying saucer with barely any stem section. It didn’t have Dragonfire’s elegance. It didn’t need it. Jamestown was strong, imposing, and huge—about four times the size of Dragonfire. Fallon always viewed it with a smidge of childish awe.

  “Do they see us?” Raptor edged closer, looking at the display.

  “If they do, they’re not letting on, but it’s entirely possible they have the technology to see through our disguise.”

  “Proceed as planned,” Colb ordered, as if he had an actual say in how events would unfold from here on out.

  But Fallon played along. “Aye, sir. Establishing a brute docking attitude.”

  Ahh, brute force. It was her favorite kind.

  She came in faster than a ship normally would, but any jarring she caused only worked in her favor. So she hit Jamestown with as much force as the Nefarious could tolerate without structural damage.

  She interfaced with the dock, ignoring the usual safety protocols. She latched onto it, then blasted Jamestown with a program Raptor had devised to keep it from rejecting them. In seconds, they’d rewritten the docking system’s protocols. Raptor’s subroutines would keep the mainframe computer from overriding his code. The man was a genius. She shot him a grin.

  He grinned back, and she returned her attention to the controls. “Pressurizing the airlock.”

  The people inside would now scramble a security team, then send them to the breached dock. Fallon was ready for the fight.

  “Go!” she ordered.

  Avian Unit bolted, with Ross escorting Admiral Colb. Fallon was the last to leave the bridge. She patted her chair.

  She ran through the airlock with a stinger in each hand. Then she stopped. No security team had come. Emergency lighting dimly lit the airlock, but beyond it, she saw no light at all.

  “Did you already kill everyone?” she joked in confusion.

  “No one came.” Peregrine’s frown seemed etched into her face.

  “What does that mean?” Colb asked, sounding baffled.

  Like you don’t know, Fallon thought grimly at him. But she wasn’t ready to show her hand. “I don’t know. Maybe they’ve set up an ambush somewhere?”

  It didn’t make sense, because no security protocol would fail to respond to a breached dock and an incursion. But she had no other suggestions.

  “No,” Raptor said, frowning at a voicecom terminal. “Most of the station’s been depressurized. Something is very, very wrong here.”

  Depressurized? She sensed that everything was about to take a big left turn. “Put on pressure suits and continue as planned,” she ordered. Though “as planned” meant one thing to Colb, and another to the rest of them.

  Once suited up, Hawk and Peregrine edged forward, leading them into the depressurized corridor. They all turned on the light sources in their suits to provide adequate illumination in what would otherwise be pitch black. Raptor assisted Colb, and Fallon brought up the rear. She was poised for the slightest sound, for the sense of a presence.

  But they made their way through the corridor unimpeded.

  “I’m getting a bad feeling about this,” Hawk’s voice transmitted to the receiver in her helmet. His light, like hers, penetrated several feet into the gloom, creating a small zone of bright light surrounded by utter darkness. It was creepy as hell.

  Finally, they made it to ops control. The immensity of it didn’t fail to impress Fallon, even as she and Raptor rushed to consoles. She refused to think about how eerie it felt to see it abandoned. The others covered the entrances, just in case.

  She quickly assessed the situation, which sucked the recirculated air from her lungs and the feeling from her gloved fingertips. But she rechecked. And examined all auxiliary systems that might prove that the other systems were lying.

  But it was true. The camera feeds were genuine.

  “We’re alone here,” Raptor said.

  Dead silence filled the channel.

  Finally, Hawk turned away from the door. “What do you mean, ‘alone’?”

  Fallon answered, “He means that the only people on the station are dead ones. About three hundred of them, from the look of it.”

  She felt sick. Hollow. This was the headquarters of the entire PAC, not just Blackout. The identities of the dead became a critical concern.

  “Split up and begin identifying the dead.” Scanning their IDs wouldn’t take long. She added, “I’ll escort Admiral Colb.” She had to fight to keep bitterness from twisting her mouth as she spoke the words. He knew what had happened here, though it clearly wasn’t what he’d expected.

  If what she suspected was true…their situation was even worse than she’d thought. So much worse.

  6

  “About half of the department heads are dead, along with a variety of other officers and enlisted. A few civilians.” Hawk’s expression was blank as he relayed the information to Fallon. She was aware of Colb’s presence, even as she processed her own horror.

  “How did they die?” she asked, toneless. Professional.

  “Close-range energy weapons for some. Stingers, most likely. Others appear to have suffocated under depressurization.”

  “What happened here?” Raptor wondered.

  “I don’t know,” Peregrine said. “But it’s messy. Not a precision strike.”

  Fallon had a lot to take in and little time to do it. She kept Colb in her peripheral vision. He’d proven entirely useless on this trip. He hadn’t led them into a trap, whether he’d intended to or not.

  “You seem surprised, Admiral.” She turned her full attention on him.

  “Of course I am. This violence, all these people…my friends. Aren’t you surprised?”

  She frowned, watching him closely. “Very. But still not nearly as much as you.”

  His brow furrowed. “I guess I’m not as accustomed to bloodshed and death as you are.”

  “Bullshit. Enough lies.” She stared at him hard.

  His mouth gaped. “What?”

  “You heard me. You were expecting something specific, and this wasn’t it. I think you need to explain yourself.”

  His eyes widened and he struggled to compose himself. “I don’t have to explain myself to anyone,” he declared. “Not even you, regardless of how fond I am of you. I’m an admiral. You five are by far my subordinates.”

  “And yet, since you seem to have outlived your usefulness, you’re the one faced with a first-person view of the cosmos as you fly out of an airlock,” she observed calmly.

  “How can you—” He swallowed and began again. “How can you say that? You’re like a daughter to me.”

  “Maybe I was, once. But you led me here, along with my team, to see us killed. We knew that all along.” And that was everything there was to say.

  Colb only stared at her. She could see in his eyes that he wouldn’t tell them anything. They’d have to figure it out on their own. She dropped into the chair at a science station. “Take him to the brig on the Nefarious. Search him thoroughly.”

  Hawk clamped a meaty hand on the back of Colb’s neck. “Do me a favor and resist, will ya?” he snarled. “I’ve always wanted to see how fast I could rip a pressure suit
off.”

  Colb’s face twisted. Transformed. One second he was a befuddled, kindly uncle, and the next he was a dragon. “Fine, lock me up. But there are things in play you haven’t even begun to guess at.” He gave Fallon a sly look. “You think it was happenstance that you met that wife of yours?”

  Fallon was on her feet and across ops control without even being aware of it. “You do not want to talk about her.” She kept her voice calm, but with an icy razor edge.

  “Kill me and you’ll never know the truth.” He smiled smugly and pressed his lips closed.

  As much as she wanted to tear his lungs out through his nose, she refrained. Sat. Turned her attention back to the science station. “Take him,” she ordered. She didn’t look as they went.

  Raptor put a hand on her shoulder. “You okay?” he murmured.

  “No. We need to find out what happened here. That means you’re on point.” She gestured to another science station. “First of all, some lights would really help.”

  “I’m on it.” And he got to work without another word, thank Prelin.

  They found the databanks wiped and destroyed. The station lacked life support to all areas but the docking bays and the parts of the station that ran on a separate system. Even Raptor couldn’t retrieve any data. The man had a nearly magical talent but even he couldn’t combat what he called an “Armageddon wipe.”

  What had happened here? Why kill some people and evacuate the rest? Were the survivors her allies or her enemies, and why had they crippled Jamestown, then locked it up tight?

  “I want to do one more thing before we go. Ten minutes,” Raptor said. His instinct, like hers, must have been telling him this was not a good place to be.

  Fallon had no reason to think their presence on the station had gone undetected. Ships should be on the way. Patrolling ships needn’t be more than a few hours away. If that was the case, she wanted to be long gone by the time they arrived.

  “Fine. Peregrine, stay with him. I’m going to go to my storage compartment and get some things.”