by Zen DiPietro
“Nothing better than a meal with good company,” agreed the boatman. He really seemed quite nice. Normally that would make her suspicious, but on Sarkan, it just made the guy a local.
Instead of getting a taxi, they rented a rough-terrain buggy wheeler. People usually used them for recreation, but given their versatility and the fact that Fallon could drive it herself rather than hiring a driver, a buggy would do quite nicely.
After they’d gotten some distance from the marina, they stopped and Peregrine kitted Fallon out with the pale blonde wig and light-colored makeup. Finally, she poked pale contacts into Fallon’s eyes. After they stopped watering and Fallon got a look at herself, she had to admit she looked like a native Sarkavian. Even the shape of her eyes was different. Weird. But a Sarkavian woman and a man of uncertain origin would not stand out, and no one would see a Japanese and a Zerellian woman together at the transport hubs.
At the air tram station, they left the buggy in the return area, where the boatman would look for it later. Then they hopped on the first tram they could. It took them in the wrong direction, but that was fine. A somewhat circuitous route wouldn’t hurt. Especially if they changed their disguises partway through, which Fallon was sure Peregrine intended to do.
On that tram and the three that followed, they chatted about their nonexistent kids, the weather, and the rising cost of jujafruit. Mostly lies and fabrication, designed for anyone who might overhear, though the jujafruit conversation actually proved interesting. Peregrine told her how imported Earth trees, like coconut and pineapple, had grown rampantly over the last decade, and begun to choke off the local jujafruit trees. Conservation efforts were in progress, but it would take another decade to reverse the damage.
“A shame,” Fallon tsked. “I grew up having juja every morning with my toast and tea. I hate that transplanted species are causing such a problem.”
Fallon had to work hard at appearing benign and banal. Underneath, she vibrated with adrenaline and the urge to move, to do, to fight. Taking some punches, she could happily do. Sitting around when there was so much ahead of her proved exceedingly difficult. She wondered if Peregrine felt the same. Surely she must. How could she not?
Before they left the final tram station, they ducked into a necessary. In just a few minutes, Peregrine transformed herself into a woman with black hair, and then turned Fallon into a teen with soft brown curls.
They rode the elevator up to the docking station in near silence. Fallon fidgeted and drew imaginary shapes on the wall with her finger until Peregrine gently chided her.
Once on the docking station, they went straight to Dragonfire’s class-six cruiser. They were so close to escaping Sarkan, and Fallon felt like demons were nipping at her heels. She wouldn’t be able to relax until they got out of Sarkavian space. Well, she wouldn’t exactly relax then either, but her hypervigilance could ease down a notch or two to mere paranoia.
The docking security disregarded her wig, contacts, and juvenile dress. It cared only about her facial structure, voice print, retina scan, palm print, and security code. Docking security was no joke, for which Fallon was grateful.
She didn’t relax until they’d cleared the docking clamps and set off in the wrong direction. After they got a few light-years away, they’d adjust to their real course. Dineb. Where, hopefully, Hawk and Raptor would be waiting for them.
With privacy and nothing to do but wait, Peregrine, sitting in the other chair, turned and fixed her with a no-nonsense look. “Now. Tell me what the hell is going on.”
Peregrine paced around the cruiser’s narrow interior. Back and forth, back and forth. Fallon was glad she wasn’t prone to travel sickness. “So you’re saying you don’t remember me at all? Not school, or our missions or…anything?” Peregrine’s voice rang with bewilderment.
“No. Or Hawk or Raptor, either. Or my own wife. All of my memories are less than a couple weeks old.”
“But you can fly a cruiser? Pilot a boat? Take out a Blackout assassin?” Emotion crept into her eyes. Peregrine had known Granite, too.
“My core memories, as the doctors call them, are intact. That information is in my brain, and I can tap into it when it becomes relevant. I have my skills. It’s just my life I don’t remember.”
“Oh, is that all.” Peregrine sat and dropped her head into her hands, making a sound that was half-sigh, half-groan. “Why would you marry?”
“I don’t know. But I believe it was genuine.” She filled Peregrine in on her discoveries, as well as the basics of her relationship with Wren.
“That is so messed up.” Peregrine slouched in her chair. As they talked, she’d removed their disguises. Fallon felt much better not being dressed as a teenager. She now wore a sleek black bodysuit, which Raptor had given her. Peregrine had changed into the same thing, so it appeared to be their team uniform.
“You have no ideas who’s behind it all? It has to be at least one admiral. Maybe more. No one else could manage all this.” Peregrine nibbled at the pad of her thumb, deep in thought.
“One of the doctors I’ve been working with is a friend. A Briveen cyberneticist. She believes Krazinski is involved.”
“Krazinski? That doesn’t sound right. He’s always been one of our biggest backers.” Peregrine frowned. “Why does your friend suspect him?”
Fallon told her about the admiral’s request for neural implants.
“Why risk the PAC? Memory augmentation isn’t worth the peace and stability the PAC provides.” Peregrine continued to bite her thumb. Apparently it helped her think. Or maybe it just helped work off her nervous energy. Fallon got the feeling that Peregrine didn’t like to sit still. “The evidence is circumstantial, which means there could be another explanation. There’s got to be.”
Fallon started to wonder if Peregrine was going to draw blood from that thumb.
“You think they tried to implant you, don’t you?” Peregrine’s words were almost accusing, but her tone only conveyed bewilderment. “And maybe the accident caused something to happen?” Her eyes narrowed. “Or was there someone on that shuttle with you, who did the damage there and then?”
“I don’t know.” Fallon didn’t want to talk about herself anymore. She’d said most everything she could, and she’d wondered all these what-ifs too many times to count. Right now, she wanted to know about Peregrine.
Fallon asked, “So what happened to you? Why were you out on your island, already in disguise? Who were you watching for?”
“Someone tried to kill me last night. I handled it, but I thought they might try again when they realized they’d failed. I’d assumed it must be my target, having gotten wind of my search for him. I never would have thought it was Blackout.” Peregrine’s face showed her sense of betrayal and disillusionment.
“So you didn’t recognize the assassin?”
Peregrine shook her head, which caused her long ponytail to swing back and forth like a pendulum. “Might have been from a younger class. Newly brought in.”
“Or Blackout has agents even we don’t know of.”
Hell if that wasn’t an awful thought. That would be a whole new layer of trouble. She and Peregrine exchanged a grim look.
Peregrine checked their ETA. “Two hours down, twenty-five to go.”
“Too long,” Fallon muttered.
“Yeah. I need to hear that Hawk’s okay. My guess is that they put simultaneous hits out on all of us. Raptor ducked it because he wasn’t where he was supposed to be. But what about Hawk?”
Fallon said nothing because there was nothing to say. They could only wait until they arrived at the rendezvous point on Dineb. Fallon was back in the position of having so much she needed to do, but having no immediate means of doing anything. She wished she could be out there, running whatever gauntlet Raptor was going through to get to Hawk. Better to be in the thick of it than to be sitting helpless and waiting.
She decided to use the time to get reacquainted with Peregrine. At least that was someth
ing useful.
“So tell me about these tattoos.” She traced her finger over the black cloth covering her abs, where her ink was. She’d noticed Peregrine had her own on her left shoulder blade.
Peregrine’s face showed surprise. “Raptor didn’t tell you?”
“We had very limited time. We were trying to get the data we needed to find you and Hawk. I kept meaning to ask, but didn’t get the chance.”
“We got them when we got recruited for Blackout. When we knew we’d be a unit.”
“After OTS, or during security school?” Fallon asked.
More surprise from Peregrine. “Uh, no. During the academy. Near graduation.”
But that meant… “We were recruited to Blackout when we were teenagers?”
“That’s the way it works, most of the time. They want teams training together for years before their first field op. They use standardized testing to pick out the potentials, then cross-check the results against academic records and achievements. They locate the trailblazers early and bring them in. Some wash out, but most of the early-identified stick.”
“So you know my real name, then. The one I had before Blackout.”
Peregrine blinked. “No. Well, yes. I know the name that you went through the academy with. But it wasn’t the one you were born with.”
“What do you mean?”
“Early-identified intelligence candidates are the ones intended for clandestine ops, whether for central intelligence or Blackout. That means they don’t want those candidates to have pasts. So when you arrived for academy, at sixteen years old and fresh faced, they spoofed your name. Gave you an official record for people to track, but that was a ghost. The real you had a brand-new name and background that you presented from then on.”
Which made perfect sense. And meant that the family and personal information in her active file had all been fabricated. She could actually have family still alive, somewhere.
Fallon tucked that highly intriguing bit of information away, then prompted, “What do the tattoos mean?”
“Outwardly, they’re just a symbol of our devotion to one another. Just like our motto. Blood and bone. They’re a stylized version of ancient Atalan hieroglyphs that mean just that. Blood, and bone.”
Which meant the story she’d told Wren about her tattoo had been a lie. Not that some story about tattoos was worse than all of Fallon’s lies of omission, but knowing she’d looked Wren in the face and told her a fake story just sucked. All the better that she stayed away from her until she knew all of the facts.
“You said outwardly. What else are they?”
Peregrine smiled. “Trackers. A sort of transmitter. Raptor devised teeny little tracking modules. Microscopic, but tons of them, embedded in the skin. We got the tattoos to hide the trackers.”
Fallon had an urge to laugh. “How close do you have to be?”
“About the size of a small continent.”
“That means different things on different planets,” Fallon pointed out.
“About ten million square kilometers. Depending on the natural minerals in the area.”
“So if I’m within that distance, I could find the three of you?” That would have been nice to know when she’d been tracking Peregrine down.
“Easily, with a receiver. You just—”
But Fallon cut her off. Now that she knew to access that information, her brain resurrected the info. “Right. I got it.” She’d need the right equipment, but it was basic tech. The coding and the correct frequency were the tricky parts. But there the information was, just waiting for her to come looking for it. Another thing pulled from her core memory and into the active memory.
With the major bases covered, Fallon now had a chance to get a better idea of her personal history and her background with Avian Unit. At the moment, they had a lot of time to fill, and the more background she had, the more material she had to work with in figuring out what was happening to them.
“So,” she said. “Tell me everything you can about Avian Unit.”
“And when he woke up in the morning, all his chest hair was gone.” Peregrine managed to get the words out around the laughter that kept bubbling up. As soon as she finished talking, she erupted into a big hooting laugh that filled the entire cruiser.
Fallon laughed with her. “Well, he deserved it. But I’m sure he didn’t let that go without answer. What did he do back to me?” She cringed, waiting for whatever horrible thing Hawk had done for payback.
“Nothing yet. But it’s coming.” Peregrine snickered. “That’s the great thing about Hawk. He’s a slow-simmering sort.”
Silence descended on them as they both remembered that if Hawk’s would-be assassin had succeeded, that reprisal would never come.
“He’ll be fine,” Fallon said. “We both managed.”
“Barely, in my case. In truth, I got lucky. My antipersonnel devices were what saved me.”
“Doesn’t matter,” Fallon insisted. “You made it, and so will Hawk. He and Raptor will already be on Dineb, waiting for us. From the sound of it, they wouldn’t want to let us beat them there.”
A hint of Peregrine’s smile returned, though tinged with wistfulness. “No, they wouldn’t.”
The way Peregrine had described it, the four of them enjoyed competing with one another, as well as playing minor practical jokes. Well, maybe more than minor, but a Blackout unit was hardly a group of people designed to be reserved and placid. Too much ambition. Too much ego. Too much adrenaline left over after risking their lives doing this or that. It made sense that they played as hard as they worked.
Over the hours, their conversation followed that pattern. Enthusiasm and amusement punctuated by withdrawn periods of deflated energy. It was such an in-between place they existed in. Either a whole team still, or only half of it. Or three-quarters might be an option, if only Raptor or Hawk showed up. Fallon decided she didn’t like fractions.
The cabin seemed too small to hold their combined energy and worries, and when Dineb came into view, they both breathed a sigh of relief. Judging from Peregrine’s face, she felt the same stab of dread that Fallon did.
The Dinebians offered both excellent security and anonymity. Since it was a party planet, it provided privacy for those who didn’t wish to be tracked down while having a good time.
They took the elevator down into the atmosphere. Peregrine had brought a receiver to monitor for Raptor and Hawk’s trackers. Fallon wished she could wear her stinger, but she wasn’t going to Dineb as a PAC security officer. She was going as a private citizen, off to dance the night away. Or whatever people did here. Which was their own business, as far as she was concerned.
They didn’t bother with disguises, since Dineb didn’t allow recording devices except for in marked security areas. They did wear light jackets over their black outfits, which made them look less like what they were and more like important people enjoying an opportunity to go incognito. All the better for them, as people would be eager to help them, in the hopes of earning a gratuity. Fallon was prepared to tip or bribe anyone she needed to, equipped as she was with her stolen funds.
Fallon paid close attention to her surroundings as they made their way toward the place Raptor had decreed as the meet point. Dineb was a planetary oddity. Once you got off the elevator you were stuck with ground travel only. Plus, only licensed cabbies could operate groundcars. It was safer, from a crazy-partiers-don’t-use-good-sense perspective, and the planet had an excellent safety rating to show for it.
As Fallon and Peregrine approached the coordinates, the receiver stayed stubbornly quiet. They knew long before they arrived that Hawk and Raptor had not beaten them to the rendezvous.
“Doesn’t mean anything,” Fallon said as she dropped her gear and sank onto a too-squishy couch in their rented suite of rooms. “They had farther to travel, and who knows what kind of ship they managed to grab to get off that moon. Could be a busted-down cargo ship with barely any engine power.”
“They’ll be here,” Peregrine agreed, kicking off her shoes and sprawling onto the couch with a groan.
It had taken them nearly a full, sleepless day—or perhaps more than one, depending on the planet—to make it from Sarkan to Dineb. Their suite, decorated in bright pinks, greens, and oranges, had only three bedrooms. They’d been lucky to snag it on such short notice, but once they were four again, someone would have to sleep on the couch. Fallon didn’t plan on it being her, never mind that she was the smallest of them. The thing folded out. Any one of them could be just as comfortable as the next on it. But Fallon valued her privacy.
“I can’t decide if I’m more hungry or more tired,” Peregrine sighed. “I’ve been on alert for two days straight now.”
Fallon hadn’t had much sleep lately either, with her late nights with Raptor. She heaved herself to her feet and crossed the room to rummage in the minibar, which had both a mini-cooler and a heat-ex. She found a sleeve of cookies, a container of some sort of yogurt, several packets of mixed nuts, some protein-supplement packs, and various drinks. Not a lot to choose from.
She shoved all the food, along with a couple fruit juices, into a punch bowl and carried it over to Peregrine. Because what party room would be complete without a punch bowl? She snorted.
While Peregrine went first for the protein supplements, Fallon grabbed the yogurt and detached the disposable spoon from its side. She ate it quickly, barely tasting it, then moved on to some of the nuts. They were salty, so she drank the fruit juice. She was sure she needed the hydration and electrolytes, anyway. Finally she took a protein pack, ignoring the cookies as a junk food her body didn’t need. She chewed the protein, combined too loosely to be called a bar and too tightly to be called a cereal. It had a faint taste of oatmeal and sweetness, but little else. She didn’t care for it, but she wasn’t in a position to be picky.
After she finished off her juice, she stood. “Now I can sleep without being woken up by hunger pains. I’ll see you in ten or twelve hours, unless Raptor and Hawk arrive.”