by Zen DiPietro
Fallon nodded. “I’ll make sure of it.” She gave Hawk a hard, warning look.
He showed her his palms in a gesture of surrender, then gave Jerin a deep bow of respect, in the way of PAC officers and officials. “I’ll do my best to be a good patient.”
A spark of surprise lit Jerin’s eyes. “You needn’t bow to me. Or anyone here, really. We don’t stand on much formality. But thank you for the honor.” She returned the bow, making the gesture look smooth and elegant. The woman had style.
“Now can I go shower?” Hawk asked, sounding like an anxious schoolboy. His eyes flicked from Jerin to Fallon.
Jerin nodded assent.
“Yes,” Fallon agreed. She gave him directions to his quarters, which were only a few steps from hers. Such proximity would be convenient in keeping an eye on him. She liked the setup for more than just its convenience, though. Fallon and Raptor had worked hard to get the team back together, and now that they were, she planned to keep it that way.
“Thank you,” she said to Jerin as Hawk left. “We were worried about him.”
“I bet.” Jerin had the tone of someone who was holding a lot of questions back. No doubt she’d have to get used to that. There were too many things that she shouldn’t know. Bad enough she knew that they were BlackOps. Fallon didn’t want to put her or the Onari in danger any more than they had to, but she felt confident in Avian Unit’s ability to protect the ship and its crew. Plus, the massive transfer Raptor had put into Jerin’s accounts would help Jerin take care of a lot of people. Which made Fallon feel doubly good about her plan.
There was one thing, though, she needed to take care of before she could truly be comfortable. Once she got back to her quarters, she would send a message asking Endra to meet with her. Fallon needed to clear the air about a few things with her sort-of-former-wife’s best friend, and hopefully knock those daggers out of her eyes. That kind of hostility would be tough to travel with for months on end.
“Well,” Fallon said. She and Jerin had been staring at each other wordlessly for officially a few seconds too long now. “I don’t want to keep you from your work.” She turned to go.
“Why don’t you and your friends join me for dinner? I’ll invite some people you know, and some people you ought to get to know.” Jerin watched her with intent green eyes.
“We’d love to.” At least she would. If the others had a problem with it, then too bad. She didn’t think they would, though.
That gave her several hours to kill before dinnertime. What would she do with all the hours between now and four months in the future? She’d need to find things to keep her busy. Maybe upgrade the Onari’s security system? That was an idea, if Jerin would go for it. She’d need to find ways to exercise, too. Not having a gym would be an obstacle.
Back in her quarters, she sent the message to Endra, asking to meet after dinner. The sooner she got that confrontation over with, the better. She wasn’t eager to hear all the names Endra was likely to call her for marrying her best friend under false pretenses, though.
Fallon prowled around her small quarters restlessly. Since her team had only just escaped the confines of the scow, she wanted to give them some time to themselves. So then, what?
She contacted Brak on the voicecom, expecting to leave a message, but the cyberneticist actually answered. Her face filled the screen.
“Are you settling in well?” Brak asked.
“Too well. I’m bored already. Any chance there’s anything at your lab I could do to help out?”
Brak tilted her head to one side. “There are always things to do here. How are you at wiring?”
“Excellent.” She didn’t have any memory of wiring anything, but her mind filled with diagrams on doing so. She was satisfied that she’d have no issues with such a basic task.
Maybe she could apprentice with Brak for a while. Help Brak to help others and learn some basics about cybernetics along the way. It seemed a good use of her time.
Fallon rubbed her eyes, then took a drink of her iced tea. Hours of staring at microcircuits had made her nearly cross-eyed. She’d have to get better at that. But she’d learned a lot, and the time had passed quickly.
She sat with Jerin, Kellis, Trin, and Raptor. Hawk and Peregrine sat with Ops Commander Demitri Belinsky and Brak, plus a couple others she didn’t know. She recognized the faces, since she’d already memorized the entire ship’s crew. Getting to know the ship’s systems would take longer, due to their complexity, but the task promised to chew up plenty of hours, which worked for her. She’d prefer anything over sitting around and being idle.
Fallon cast a look over her shoulder as the other group broke into laughter. The little restaurant was cozy and pleasant, and apparently doubled as a bar. No fine dining here, just a place to relax. Which suited Fallon perfectly. She’d ordered comfort foods and enjoyed them immensely. She’d felt like she hadn’t eaten in days, but now, with a comfortable fullness in her stomach, that was just a memory.
Jerin and Trin were telling Peregrine about their next stop, another vaccination run, and Fallon let her thoughts drift. It felt nice to have the time to do so, without the weight of an imminent problem pinning her down.
Too soon, the get-together ended. Everyone had finished eating hours ago, and eventually the crew had to excuse themselves. Their shifts would come early the next day, and they couldn’t afford to be exhausted. Fallon had started feeling tired herself, but she still had something to do.
After saying her goodbyes and promising to see Brak in her lab the next day, Fallon reported to Endra’s quarters.
The doors opened, revealing a hostile-looking Endra. The woman halfheartedly waved her in. Fallon braced herself and walked into the fray.
“What do you want?” Endra didn’t sit. She paced the room with her arms folded.
Fallon chose an armchair next to a side table and affected a position of earnest sincerity. At least she hoped it struck Endra that way.
“I don’t know exactly what you think of me, or what I’ve done, but clearly it isn’t good.” Fallon hadn’t prepared a speech, and paused to consider her next words. “First, and most importantly, I want you to know that I sincerely care about Wren. Someday, if and when I figure out who I really am and what’s going on, I hope to be able to reunite with her. Maybe we can’t put things back together, but it’s a top priority for me to make sure that she’s okay in the long run. As important as anything else I’m doing.” She let her genuine feelings display themselves on her face, feeling naked and exposed, but wanting Endra to understand.
Endra leaned on the arm of the couch, half-sitting. Well, at least it was an improvement over the stiff-legged stance from before. “You’re PAC intelligence, right? Are you on the run? Have you done something wrong? Is Wren in danger?”
Fallon took it one question at a time. “I am with intelligence. But I can’t give you details, for your own good. I couldn’t give Wren details for the same reason. It’s not what she thinks, but I can’t tell her what it really is. For one thing, I’m not entirely certain, and for another, it might paint a target on her back.” She paused, considering how to answer the next questions. “I don’t believe I’ve done anything wrong but be in the way of someone who wants to do something bad. That’s an oversimplification but it’s the best I can do. I am on the run, in a manner of speaking, because it’s up to me and my team to figure things out. Set things right.”
Endra’s brows pulled down, and her mouth tightened into a pout of deep thought.
“I know it’s a lot to consider. It might even be hard to believe. But my unit and I are the good guys. We want to keep the PAC working like it’s supposed to, and not let some corrupt official hurt innocent people. We’d even like to remain among the living, if we can work it out that way,” she finished dryly.
“Is this ship in danger because of you being here?”
“I don’t think so. If anything, you’re currently the most protected ship in this sector of the gal
axy.”
“Is that woman your lover?”
A stab of surprise lit Fallon’s chest. “Who, Peregrine?”
A hard look from Endra indicated a yes.
“No. So very no.”
Endra’s eyes softened, then her posture loosened, like frozen custard left melting in the sun. She slid over and sat on the couch with her legs folded under her. She let out a huge sigh.
“This sucks,” Endra decided.
“Agreed.”
“How could you marry her when you had all of this stuff right behind you?” When Fallon opened her mouth to answer, Endra held up a hand and cut her off. “No, I know. You have no memory, so you don’t know, right?” She sounded more frustrated than accusatory now.
“Yes. My memory loss is real. I wish I knew what led up to my marrying Wren. I wish I knew what happened on that shuttle when I lost my memories. And I wish to Prelin I knew that when I get all of this figured out—and I will—that things with Wren will tie up into some tidy package. But I don’t know any of that.”
A long silence stretched between them.
“What do you know?” Endra finally asked.
“I know that I’ll do whatever it takes to make things right. I know that I’m a good person. That my team are good people, too.”
Fallon took a breath, thinking further back. “I know that I woke up with people telling me who I was, and that from the start, I thought they might be wrong. I know I can trust my instincts. I know my feelings for Wren are not just some figment of my imagination. I also know that staying away from her is the best thing I can do for her. But I already said that.”
She fell silent for several long moments, then thought of something she hadn’t yet said. “I know that I’m with the right people, moving in the right direction. Someone’s tried to kill my team, and I won’t let that go unanswered.”
She felt like she’d just let loose her entire identity and left it, exposed, dangling between them.
Endra’s jaw set, as if she’d made a decision. “I guess it’s a start.”
A grudging acceptance, but Endra was right. Fallon had managed to hit the reset button on the events that Krazinski, presumably, had started. She and her team now had a chance to make things right. She didn’t yet know Raptor, Hawk, and Peregrine as well as she wanted to, but she would. Avian Unit would get there, wherever there was, together. Eventually. She had a lot of time to wait out on the Onari beforehand. She knew that their adversary in Blackout would be working in the meantime, but there was nothing she could do about that. Yet.
At least she had the Onari and its crew, and people like Nevitt and Cabot, who’d proven to be more than they seemed. Most of all, she had her team. She was anything but alone in the universe, and that was a long way from where she’d been on the day she’d woken up in the infirmary with a hole in her head.
She said goodnight to Endra and left the quarters. Once in the corridor, she allowed herself a small, hard smile. Explaining things to Endra had clarified the situation to her, as well.
This is what I’m meant to be doing, she thought. Blood and bone don’t quit.
Part II
Fragments (Book 2)
6
Fragments Chapter 1
Four months’ worth of days stretched out across the starlit expanse, yawning away from Fallon in a disheartening oblivion of time and space. She stared out the porthole of her quarters, watching the darkness mock her.
In the amount of time it would take the Onari to reach Earth, she could have upgraded Dragonfire Station’s entire surveillance grid, or instituted new security protocols. But then, Dragonfire wasn’t her responsibility at the moment.
She turned away from the non-view that made the Onari seem like the only dot of life in the universe. No sense in looking out at an illusion. Not when a powder keg of reality needed her attention.
She paced a tight circle around the small two-seater couch, her arms crossed tightly. The trouble was, every time she thought about what had been done to her, it infuriated her. That was no good. Excessive emotion led to mistakes. She needed to crush her anger under the weight of her duty and loyalties, then hone it into a tiny, laser-sharp blade. Once she’d done that, she could use that edge to excise the rotten flesh from Blackout. She had no idea how far the disease went, but she and her team would remove every bit.
So much to be done, yet for now, she could only wait. She let her arms drop to her sides and blew out a slow breath. At the moment, she needed to check on Hawk. Jerin—as both the ship’s captain and chief medical officer—had released him from the infirmary only because she’d known that keeping him there would have been nearly impossible. That meant that it fell to Fallon, as the leader of their team, to keep an eye on him.
Fallon strode out into the corridor, running her hands down her torso to smooth her fitted black jumpsuit as she went. Her fingers brushed over her comport and stinger. Although the Onari wasn’t a Planetary Alliance Cooperative ship, it operated primarily within PAC space and complied fully with all the cooperative’s protocols. As such, the crew was accustomed to armed security officers, which worked well for Fallon. She always felt better with a weapon or two on her person. Better yet, five or six, since she liked to keep her throwing knives handy.
Hawk’s guest quarters were conveniently located two doors down from her own. She rang the chime, but got no answer. She tried again. Sighing, she turned on her heel, following a hunch.
She found Hawk in the bar, palming a huge green drink of something-or-other and chatting up the server, who looked all too pleased about it.
She slid onto a stool next to Hawk, glancing at his menuboard. “Zerellian ale. On his board,” she said to the server, effectively dismissing him. The guy moved off, looking disappointed. He probably assumed she and Hawk were together. Hah.
She sized her partner up. His color was good, his breathing even. Good posture, no apparent balance issues.
“Here to send me to my room?” He lifted an eyebrow that said he wished her luck with that.
“Maybe. We’ll see.” She followed his sweeping gaze around the bar, taking time to note the precise position of the single entryway in relation to her seat. Business in the bar was light so far, but the Onari’s day shift hadn’t ended, and more people would soon fill the empty seats. “You were supposed to be resting. Get bored?”
Hawk shrugged his bulky shoulders and scratched at his beard. “Not really. I just felt twitchy about being on a ship without mapping it out. I like to know where I am.”
She knew what he meant, as she always felt the same about unfamiliar surroundings. “And the schematics on the voicecom weren’t enough for you?”
He grinned, reminding her, as always, of a cherubic lumberjack. “You got me. Yeah, I checked out the schematics. But I like to see it all with my own eyes, too.”
“Especially the bar,” she concluded dryly. Her drink arrived and she accepted it with a nod of thanks, but didn’t invite the server to remain to take part in their conversation. He slid away, sneaking occasional looks back at Hawk.
Hawk’s blue-gray eyes twinkled at her. “Of course.” He raised his glass to hers and barked, “Blood and bone!”
Apparently their team motto also worked as a toast. She touched her glass to his. “Blood and bone.”
He tossed back a hearty drink, half draining the glass. His gaze roved past her again, eyeing up the other patrons of the bar. She noticed Dr. Yomalu, talking and making big waving gestures at a Trallian lab tech.
“Don’t even think about it,” she warned. “The only person you’re taking back to your room tonight is me.”
He leered at her, almost convincingly. “If you think you’re up to it.”
She snorted. “You’re lucky you’re not in the infirmary right now. I’m the one keeping an eye on your sorry ass.”
He let out a loud half-sigh, half-groan. “Fine. Tonight only.”
“As many nights as it takes until Jerin gives you a clean bi
ll of health.”
“Argh.” He shifted in his seat. “You’re killing me.”
She had to laugh. “You’ll survive. We’ll be here for four months. That’s plenty of time for you to make the rounds of the Onari crew. At least I’m letting you have a few drinks, right?”
That seemed to mollify him somewhat, though he did mutter, “I bet Peregrine’s already found someone.”
“It’s not a competition.” Fallon wrapped her fingers around her glass and peered into it. She’d downed more ale than she’d thought. Oh, well. Her purchase of another drink would only further improve the Onari’s financial standing. She felt a twinge of satisfaction, knowing how many cubics Raptor had already transferred to Jerin as payment for their passage. A staggering number, and none of it their own. As Avian Unit’s hacker extraordinaire, Raptor had ensured that their team would have all the currency they needed to get their job done, courtesy of the very people forcing them to do it. Poetic, as far as Fallon was concerned.
Yes, another drink could only help everyone. She didn’t need to be on high alert right now. She never let herself get stone-cold drunk in any situation, but she could afford a pleasant buzz tonight. She drained her glass, caught the barkeep’s eye, and pointed to it.
Hawk shoved his glass against hers, causing them to clink, and indicated another drink for himself as well. “Like old times.”
“What, Peregrine off with someone and you and me having drinks in the bar?” Fallon had no idea where Raptor was. She needed to have a long conversation with him about things they hadn’t had time to discuss before. But that would wait until tomorrow.
“Believe it or not, you and I are old drinking buddies.” He grinned at her, and his odd combination of massive size and impish, twinkling eyes made her laugh.
“I do believe it, actually. This feels…comfortable.” She still hadn’t recovered any memories from before her shuttle accident, but she had certain instincts that felt almost like memory.