by Zen DiPietro
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 understood 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.
21
Coalescence Chapter 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 airlo
ck,” 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.”
“Actually, there are a few things in my compartment we could use, too,” Raptor said.
“Same here,” Peregrine said.
Not surprising that they’d all put some things away for a rainy day. And it was raining like hell now.
“I imagine Hawk does as well. Okay. We’ll take the time to grab our stuff. But let’s be quick. Change of plans. Peregrine, you can come with me, then relieve Hawk in the brig so he can get his stuff. Raptor, finish up here, get your stuff, and get to the ship as soon as possible. Twenty minutes with regular check-ins. No longer.”
As she and Peregrine made their way to the lift, she felt empty. Their pivotal moment hadn’t gone like she’d expected. She had no resolution. No answers. Just another crisis and a lot more questions that made her worry for the people of the PAC.
At least the lifts still worked. They ran on self-contained power with backups. Knocking them out would have required an EMP.
She and Peregrine didn’t talk as they descended into the lower decks of Jamestown. When the lift doors opened, Fallon ignored how eerie it felt to walk through corridors that should have been bustling with activity. The light source from the pressure suits centered them in an illuminated bubble, surrounded by a massive, shadowy ghost station. She ignored the four bodies that appeared in the sphere of light, and disappeared again once she and Per walked past.
At least the open voicecom link in her helmet distracted her from the silence. Stations weren’t supposed to be silent. Panels on the walls should have been lit and ready for access. The whole place should have been bursting with life. She was walking in a tin can full of dead bodies.
She focused on the task at hand—getting to the storage bays. She and Peregrine shared space in the same one, as did Raptor and Hawk. They found their units and as soon as Fallon used her code and retina scan for access, she grabbed a large rucksack inside, dumped out the survival supplies, and loaded it with the items that would be of use. Ammunition. Weapons. Covert operations gadgets.
Finally she put the rucksack on and hauled out the cases with her heavy artillery as well as an anti-grav cart. She loaded it with three personal laser cannons. One RPG launcher. One anti-aircraft weapon for use within planetary atmospheres. She debated bringing that last item, but figured better safe than sorry and stacked it with the rest.
She secured her storage space and turned to see Peregrine weighed down with various bags and cases. She hadn’t even bothered with a cart. Show-off.
“I like that we’ve all stockpiled for doomsday.” Peregrine almost smiled.
“We’ve got to have hobbies, right? Let’s go.”
Back on the Nefarious they stored the heavy gear in weapons lockers, then Fallon headed to the bridge. Peregrine went to keep an eye on Colb while Hawk returned to Jamestown to grab his own belongings.
Fallon dropped into the pilot’s chair and stabbed the initialization sequence. Ross had scooted over to the adjacent seat when he’d seen her, without saying a word. She wondered what it had been like for him, listening to events unfold while he remained here. She wouldn’t have handled it well.
As soon as everyone returned, Fallon launched the ship. She burned the engines hard just long enough to get a good distance from the station, then continued at a more reasonable pace.
Raptor and Peregrine joined her and Ross on the bridge. Hawk had returned to keeping an eye on Colb. She wished she could turn Colb in to PAC command, but even if she could have trusted them, she didn’t know where the remaining members and support staff of PAC command were now.
And where was the noise about that? The datastreams should have been alive with the story of Jamestown going dark. So it must have happened very recently.
She wanted to bury her face in her hands and wallow in frustration for a minute or two, but had no time for that. She had a team to lead.
“Here.” Raptor held something out to her and she extended her palm. He dropped a tiny chip into it.
“What is it?” She turned it over with her fingertip, but it revealed no distinguishing characteristics.
“I was doing an encryption algorithm search. It didn’t yield any data, but it told me that PAC files had been downloaded and encrypted. That means they took with them the data that they wiped. I also found what’s on that chip.”
“What is it?”
“A message, I think. I didn’t take the time to look at it. I almost didn’t find it, but I noticed an odd pattern in the sequence of the systems had been deleted. It was a code.”
“What was the message?”
“Not really a message. It was the date of our first day at the academy. Not a series of numbers that would be significant to anyone else. When I followed it back, I found this little file tucked away in a location that matched our graduation year.”
“Wow. Nice work, Raptor.” Fallon was already sliding the chip into a slot, but she paused. “And you’re sure it’s not a virus or something that’s going to blow up in our faces.”
“Positive.”
She inserted the chip and an image of Krazinski appeared on her panel, apparently seated at a voicecom and staring into it. He looked rough. He had dark circles under his eyes, and his uniform had a small tear in the fabric at his sho
ulder. He began speaking gibberish.
She looked to Raptor, who rushed forward and leaned over her to fiddle with the display. She opened a channel to Hawk. “Hawk, we need you up here for a minute.”
After a few minutes Raptor said, “There. The admiral sure didn’t want this being seen by the wrong person.”
“Just play it.”
“Fallon,” Krazinski said. “By now you know that Blackout has been corrupted. I realized too late, and wasn’t able to protect you and the rest of Avian Unit. I’m sorry for that, and for your headache. I can only hope we can reverse what’s been done to you. And now I’m forced to leave my own station.” His gaze tracked to the left, away from the voicecom, then flicked back. “I don’t have time to tell you everything I need to, and I couldn’t risk that information falling into the wrong hands, anyway. What I can tell you right now is that Masumi Colb is the one behind all this. I’ve known this for over a year, and have been working to quietly take care of the problem. I don’t have to tell you that if certain facts become publicly known, the entire Planetary Alliance Cooperative will be at risk.”
His eyes flicked to the side and back again. “Colb was bringing you here to get you to attack the command. He intended to take over Jamestown in order to complete his plans. I had no choice but to make the place useless to him and to purge the people who were about to stage an uprising to assist him. Unfortunately Jamestown is now also useless to us, without months’ worth of repairs. I can’t tell you where we are now, as this file could become compromised. But if you put your head to the ground, you’ll figure it out.” His gaze jerked to the left.
“I have to go. I hope to see you soon. Whatever you do, don’t trust Colb.”
The image disappeared, but Fallon kept staring at the screen.
Hawk arrived, and they replayed the message. Fallon didn’t get anything more the second time around, but it gave her time to think.
“Hang on,” Hawk said. “Krazinski isn’t the bad guy here?”