Coalescence (Dragonfire Station Book 3)

by Zen DiPietro

  “And easier for someone to sneak a communication through,” Krazinski said. “We’re not taking any risks. Everyone is securely locked down, with all disaster protocols observed.”

  “Everyone but you, and those four other point-to-point stations,” Fallon noted.

  “Yes,” Krazinski agreed. “Not my first choice of duty station, but someone completely trustworthy had to do it. The clash on Jamestown forced us to neutralize everyone Colb had recruited. Most of them were good people who were duped into committing treason. But regardless of their delusions, I’m having a hard time with trust after seeing officers I’d had complete faith in killing their colleagues. That’s why I came myself, and assigned only my closest comrades to the other spots.”

  “What exactly happened on Jamestown?” Raptor asked.

  Krazinski’s heavy sigh said much about regret. “Colb’s people were planning an uprising to take over the station. We surprised them by attacking first. Our initial intent was to use nonlethal force, but that was a mistake. We suffered more casualties than we would have if I’d permitted lethal action at the outset. But that’s my burden to bear. There will be a lot of holes to fill once we get back to Jamestown, left by the traitors and loyal officers both.”

  A beep signaled the completion of the pressurization. Fallon removed her helmet, drawing in a deep breath of air. Across from her, Raptor did the same.

  Since putting a pressure suit on required at least fifteen minutes to properly attach and align the systems, she and Raptor only removed their gloves. Krazinski’s voice said, “Might as well remove all of it. We have a lot to talk about, and you’ll be more comfortable.”

  She looked at Raptor, but he only shrugged and reached behind his neck.

  “Here, I’ll get it.” She moved behind him and depressurized the suit, then began helping him peel it off. When she moved to face him, she saw his humor and a hint of wickedness. He wouldn’t say it out loud given their circumstances, but his expression said that he found the actions similar to a very different scenario.

  She rolled her eyes, but couldn’t help but smile. When they switched roles, he helped her out of her suit while giving her some enthusiastic leering. It was so incongruent with the situation she almost laughed out loud.

  Finally they stepped through the airlock into a short corridor. At the end of it Raptor opened a door, and they entered a tiny room that reminded Fallon of a crisis ops control center. Krazinski stood waiting for them. He looked paler and thinner than Fallon remembered him.

  He smiled. “I can’t tell you how good it is to see you two. I feel like finally, the end to all this is near.” He stepped closer and gave them a deep, deep bow of respect and gratitude.

  Whatever Fallon had expected, it hadn’t been that. Raptor’s startled expression no doubt mirrored her own.

  “I hope it is,” she said quickly, trying to cover her surprise.

  He nodded. “Let’s get to work and make sure of it.”

  Raptor and Fallon checked in with Avian Unit, then turned to making sure Krazinski’s story checked out on all points before doing anything more. Like Krazinski’s, their trust was in short supply lately.

  “When exactly did you realize Colb was doing illegal research?” Raptor asked. He sat on a small modular chair that was identical to the ones Fallon and Krazinski sat on. This little hideout was far from plush.

  “Not nearly soon enough.” Krazinski’s face was lined with regret. “We gave each other wide leeway to do our jobs. He handled his teams, I handled mine. But I’ve worked with him for over twenty years, and we’d run Blackout together seamlessly. I wish I could say that in retrospect, I could see the signs of his betrayal. But he seemed no less sincere, no less committed to the PAC.” He sipped from a packet of water. “When Andra died a few years back, he grieved, but privately. Her loss did not affect his work. Or so I thought.”

  Krazinski lapsed into silence, no doubt picking through the past, trying to see if hindsight could give him a new view of events. But he shook his head. “It wasn’t until I heard some whispers in the tech industry and followed one anomaly to the next that I noticed something bigger emerging. Even then I didn’t realize it was him.”

  “That was when you tried to blackmail Brak to create that kind of technology,” Fallon said.

  “No, by the time I did that, I did suspect Colb. I just couldn’t find any proof. I hoped Brak would be a link to the people involved, but it was very clear that she knew nothing of any of it. Even then I hoped I was wrong about Colb. That I was overly suspicious. An old man seeing shadows and thinking they were monsters. I even thought it might be time to retire. I was no use to anyone if I’d lost my edge. But then I connected a supplier to a scientist. Once I investigated the scientist, I realized the nature of what was happening. Implants. Illegal technology. Treaty violations.”

  “And of course by that point, the team you normally would have sent out had already been sidelined.” Fallon frowned.

  “Avian Unit was the best Blackout team, in my opinion. I never understood why Colb seemed to favor Stone Unit over you. And I objected when he sent you out on individual deep-cover missions. I wanted you back, but he insisted he had you on critical assignments. He backed it up with details, but I still felt another team should be doing that work.”

  Fallon’s attention caught on the mention of Stone Unit. “Do you know that I killed Granite? I didn’t know who he was at the time. I intended to question him but I injured him too badly.”

  Krazinski winced. “Yes. I did know.”

  He said nothing more, but Fallon distinctly sensed that he blamed himself for not seeing it all much sooner.

  Disasters and betrayals were always like that. They seemed impossible right up until they happened.

  “Any idea why Fallon was singled out to get an implant?” Raptor asked. “Colb had a lot of BlackOps to choose from.”

  “I can only speculate. Either he wanted to separate your unit to keep you from being able to work against him, or he did it specifically to get access to Fallon. Maybe because of her extraordinary memory?”

  Fallon only nodded. She was disappointed he didn’t have more to add about what had happened to her, but clearly those answers could only come from Colb himself.

  Krazinski continued, “When he knew I suspected him, he began to squeeze me out. Tried to discredit me. Prove that I was unreliable. He connected some of his own dealings to me, making it seem I was the cause of it all. He managed to confuse the others in Blackout long enough to get his ass to Zerellus and make himself conspicuous.” Anger darkened his face. “Of course we could do nothing at that point but try to keep him isolated.”

  “Because a public death or apprehension would have brought all the treaty violations to light,” Fallon finished.

  “Yes. And it gets worse,” Krazinski said.

  “Oh good, I was hoping you’d say that.” Raptor sighed.

  Krazinski ignored him. “The Barony Coalition has begun strategic attacks on small outposts on the fringes of the PAC zone. Testing our strength and tolerance. They’re aware of at least some of the treaty violations—thanks to Colb, I’m guessing—and their goal will be to shift the balance of power so that they can take over the PAC.”

  “They’ll be strip-mining entire planets and raising prices to the point that less prosperous planets begin to starve.” Outrage flooded through Fallon. The Barony Coalition was barely contained under the best of circumstances. They followed the very letter of the law, but exploited any gray area. Fallon didn’t want to find out how far they’d go to take advantage of the PAC’s difficulties.

  “Do they know that command is under more stress than just a terrorist threat?” Raptor asked.

  “We have to assume they at least suspect so.” Krazinski seemed reluctant to admit it. “We’ve done remarkably well, all things considered, at selling that story, but I never expected the Coalition to buy it. Still, I’d hoped to keep them pacified and uncertain long enough to all
ow us to handle Colb and reassert ourselves.”

  “Which means we need to contain Colb so that he can’t do any further damage, shore up all of our treaties in good faith, and then soothe or scare the Barony Coalition back into compliance.” Fallon frowned. It was more than she’d bargained on.

  “I’d say that sums it up,” Krazinski said.

  Raptor stood. “Well, we’ve already started on a plan to get our hands on Colb. How do we handle the rest?”

  Krazinski sent a final message out to the point-to-point network before joining Fallon and Raptor on the Nefarious.

  They’d debated having Krazinski remain on the moon to maintain the communication relay, but ultimately decided that he could be put to better use in ensuring that Colb got snared in the web they were weaving. John Krazinski was a hell of an officer, and they needed all the help they could get.

  After a quick debriefing, Fallon got herself to the bridge and began the sequence to get them off this dark little moon.

  Peregrine sat in the chair beside her, looking pensive. “Ever hear of the warrior’s dilemma? Realizing that what you’re fighting for isn’t the fight for right that you first thought it was?”

  Fallon had heard of it, but wondered why Peregrine would be asking about it at this moment.

  She lifted them off the moon’s surface before she answered. “You mean us, right? When Colb was trying to use us against the PAC. You’re wondering what would have happened if we’d blindly followed our orders. If Raptor hadn’t gotten our team back together so we could fight back.”

  “Yes.” Peregrine sounded thoughtful. More philosophical than Fallon had ever heard her. “Would we have been like Stone Unit? They were good people. Probably still are. They’re just on the wrong side of the fight.”

  Fallon understood what Peregrine was getting at. “In war, nobody ever thinks they’re the evil one.”

  “Yeah, and it could have been us. Colb thought we’d be his secret weapon, but we backfired on him.”

  Fallon turned sideways to face Peregrine directly. “Is that how you see it?”

  “Of course. Don’t you? It’s your head he carved into. Your life he wiped away. And here we are, about to be the ones to take him down.” Instead of sounding fired up, Peregrine sounded frustrated. The prospect of being used to do wrong had clearly been weighing on her.

  Fallon established a flight path, and engaged the autopilot for a moment. She moved to the edge of her seat, leaned way over, and kissed Peregrine on the forehead. “We did what we were born to do. We figured it out, and got to work on fixing it. If you think about it, we had to be the ones all this happened to. Who else could have gotten underneath it all so we could stop it?”

  Peregrine chewed on her thumb, thinking. “I guess you’re right. When you put it that way, of course it had to be us.” A tiny grin appeared on her face. “Nobody’s as good as Avian Unit.”

  Per’s rare grin let Fallon know that her partner had put things back into perspective.

  Fallon returned to the controls. “Not even close. We’re going to kick Colb’s ass harder than any other team could dream of doing.”

  “And Hawk will tell the story at all the bars, and we’ll get free drinks for life.”

  Obviously he couldn’t tell the real story, but he could probably cobble together enough of it to make that happen.

  “I could use a few drinks. Once we get Colb, let’s make Hawk buy us a few rounds.”

  Per’s mood had lightened, and she seemed like the Peregrine that Fallon knew, sure of herself and ready to take on anything. “You know, once all this is over our unlimited stolen funding from Blackout will end.”

  Fallon hadn’t yet thought of that. She’d have to go back to requesting funds the official way. Pisser. “Guess we’ll have to make sure we enjoy our drinks extra hard, then.”

  “A last hurrah?”

  “Or a first one, while we contemplate our future.”

  They both knew they had to survive their current endeavor to get to that point, so they fell into a companionable silence.

  The next two days of waiting on the Nefarious to make their rendezvous passed with surprising calm. Fallon felt an odd sense of normalcy leading up to something that would be anything but normal. The end of this ordeal was coming. She could feel it.

  She could only wonder how far-reaching the effects would be, once they’d captured Colb and ended his efforts.

  Fallon and the others spent a fair amount of time talking to Krazinski, both giving and receiving details of the past couple of years. It made Fallon think again about the strange trajectory she’d been on all this time. How none of it should have ever happened, and how if it hadn’t, she’d have continued her regularly scheduled life.

  As she listened to Raptor breathe in the darkness of her quarters, she knew she probably would have spent the occasional night with him, but that too would have been very different. They wouldn’t have an easy affection developing between them, or the open acknowledgement of the soul-deep connection they’d spent a decade denying. Yes, that had been her fault. She looked forward to spending the rest of her life making up for it.

  She’d never been one to want an adventure to end, but this time she did. She wanted the PAC to be secure, and she wanted Colb to never see the stars again. Whether that meant imprisonment or death, she didn’t care. She just wanted everyone to be safe.

  Only then could she lean in to Raptor’s sleepy warmth and not feel guilty to be glad for the way her life had been altered.

  Fallon woke alone and lay in Raptor’s bunk debating whether to work out or get some breakfast. Her rumbling stomach won out.

  She heard no sound as she approached the mess, making her think it must be empty. But when she entered, she saw Krazinski sitting at a small table, staring out a porthole.

  “Good evening, Fallon. Though I guess for you it’s morning. I always find it difficult to keep track of the time of day when I’m on a ship. Strange, since a station isn’t so different.”

  She grabbed two protein packs and a fresh tango fruit before sitting across from him. “It feels different though, doesn’t it? A large station is like a tiny planet. It has its own community, its own culture. Even between Dragonfire and Blackthorn, there are differences. And Jamestown is its own thing altogether.” She left off there, hoping to draw Krazinski out. He seemed melancholy, which was a bad mindset to have right before a battle.

  “I’m an old man. I thought I’d managed to live my entire life without experiencing a major disaster. I flattered myself, thinking I’d had a part in that. And now look at us. Command in hiding, Jamestown critically disabled. The PAC in jeopardy. I didn’t do such a good job, after all, did I?”

  Self-pity did not look good on him. “Old man, my ass. You’re as fit as my father, and he can throw down like a member of my team.”

  He smiled sadly. “I failed in recruiting Hiro into Blackout. I tried for years. He’d have none of it. Didn’t even want to know it existed.”

  “And then I joined up. Ironic.”

  “He couldn’t have been prouder of you. Worried, sure. But he knew you’d never be happy doing anything else.”

  That made her wonder about his own daughter. “How’s Hollinare?”

  “Just before we evacuated it, she came to Jamestown to discuss a proposed new process for streamlining the admission of new planets into the cooperative. I didn’t like her being there during the battle with Colb’s people, but no part of that was what I would have wanted, even though we ultimately succeeded. Anyway, she’s with command, and at the moment there’s no safer place for her to be. It’s a great relief to me, but I feel guilty thinking about all the parents out there who can’t protect their children the same way.”

  “The universe is an unfair place,” she observed.

  “It is. The PAC is supposed to level the playing field, to help ensure a future for everyone’s children. And it may fall. On my watch.”

  “Which part hurts more? The po
ssible fall, or your part in it?”

  “Depends on whether it happens or not. Even if it doesn’t, I’ll go to my grave knowing how close we came.” He ran a hand through his steely but thick hair. He claimed to be an old man but Fallon didn’t see it. He was fit and strong, albeit jaded.

  “I’m not in the habit of comforting admirals.” She crumpled the wrapper of a protein pack between her palms. “Shouldn’t you be the voice of experience, telling me it will be all right?”

  “That’d be nice. The PAC has certainly overcome many obstacles. But nothing like this. So unfortunately I don’t have any experience to offer on this one.”

  She leaned back in her chair and crossed one leg over the other, feigning a nonchalance she didn’t feel. “Your pep talk sucks.”

  His startled look gave way to a sudden laugh. “I guess it does. Sorry.”

  She spread her arms expansively, then let them drop. “Here’s how I see it. You’ve been out of the field for a long time now. Tucked away at headquarters, pushing buttons behind the scenes. It’s been too long since you knew how it felt to be the tip of the sword.”

  His forehead creased, as if he was unsure what to think.

  She continued, “Your chance is coming up. Be the sword. Remember what it feels like to win. And use that to lead us the hell out of this mess.”

  His mouth curved into a real smile. “You might be right. I’ll give it my best.”

  “Screw that defeatist talk. You’ve forgotten how to ego-trip yourself into a false sense of immortality. A critical skill in this occupation.” Her voice rose as she talked, becoming louder and more forceful.

  “Uh, right. So…we’ll win! We’ll kick Colb’s ass, then kick the asses of anyone who thinks they can threaten the PAC.” His back straightened and he made a fist, and Fallon perceived a glimmer of the young officer he had once been.

  “That’s right!” she barked. “Those pieces of shit are nothing compared to the PAC. They’ll be sorry they even thought about taking us on.”

  Krazinski stood and said in a stage whisper, “I think this is working.” He continued loudly, “We’ll smash those bastards and send their ashes home in envelopes!”