by Natalie Grey
She looked angry enough that Talon could see she was telling the truth.
“That’s not nothing,” he said at last.
“It’s nothing to you. You’ll already have known where you might find him. You came to me to narrow the field.” She stared off into the distance, steepling her fingers. “D’you know this is the first time in my career I haven’t been able to find someone? I don’t like it.”
Talon sighed heavily. The realization was coming delayed, boiling through him with a spike of pain at his temples. He’d hung everything on this. He had never, even for a moment, believed that Lesedi would be unable to find the Warlord. He dropped his head into his hands.
“And what were the possibilities you gave the others?” He asked finally.
“Major, I have spent the past thirty-seven years learning who to trust and who not to trust. None of the people who have come forward with information know anything—or if they do, they cannot be trusted.”
“Give me names,” Talon said at once.
“No.” Lesedi did not bat an eye.
“Give them to me.”
“She’s right,” Nyx murmured. She had seen, as Talon had, the minutiae of Lesedi’s responses, from the tilt of her head to the faint flare in her pupils. Nyx was cautious, almost pathologically wary, but she was also open to facts—and she had clearly seen enough to show her that Lesedi was telling the truth. Now she reached out gently to Talon. “Boss—”
He batted her hand away, the first time he’d done such a thing, and he saw the surprise in her quick look at Loki. They stared at him, eyes wary, and he stared back for a moment before turning to look at Lesedi.
“Give me. The names.” His voice was quiet, deadly, and utterly implacable.
Lesedi measured his strength against her own
“These are people who seek the Warlord’s hunters,” she said quietly. “You know as well as I do that Soras sees your vengeance coming.”
“I know that,” Talon snapped.
“Do you? You are not behaving like yourself.”
“How would you have me behave?” Talon was on his feet, holding himself back with every ounce of self-control he possessed. “He sent me to kill innocents. He is responsible for the deaths of over a million, Lesedi, and he used my soldiers to do his dirty work. I swore to myself that there was nowhere he could run and nowhere he could hide to escape me. I swore that if it took my life, I would see him brought to justice. Give. Me. The names.”
“It is not only your life that hangs in the balance,” Lesedi told him, as resolute as he was. “What about that beautiful boy you’ve brought with you? What about Nyx? What about Sphinx and Jester and the rest? Would you sacrifice them all for this?”
It was Nyx who spoke.
“We volunteered.” Her voice was clear. “A Dragon always knows the path to justice may end in death. Lesedi, we go where we must, and do what we must, because no one else will, and no one else can. We were on Ymir—even Loki. He’s not a child. And everyone here with Talon has sworn the same as him.”
Talon looked over at her, grateful beyond words, and saw her tiny nod. A lump grew in his throat. Dragons were loyal to the end—and he was taking them to a very, very swift end. He was just opening his mouth to say that he would not take the bargain when Lesedi spoke.
“Then I will set up a meeting.” Her voice sounded sad.
From a distance, Talon heard his own voice. “What do I owe you?”
She paused. Then: “Nothing. We’ve been working on this together for too long.” When Talon opened his mouth, she shook her head. “I will not take payment for this, Talon. I did not want to tell you because I fear you go to your death now.”
Talon smiled at her, at last.
“Lesedi, I will fight tooth and nail to come back and tell you that you were right. And then I’ll buy you a nice dinner at Zenith.”
She laughed, but he saw the worry in her eyes.
“Go, then, Major. Stay at the station, and I will tell you when your contact arrives.”
Outside her offices, Talon paused.
“You don’t have to meet with this informant,” Nyx reminded him softly. “You know as well as she does that it’s a trap. She didn’t even remind you about the tutu plan.”
“I’ll have you demoted if you keep bringing that up.” Talon tried to smile, as she’d meant him to, but he couldn’t summon much will to do so. “We haven’t found anything else,” he added bleakly. He searched within himself until he found the spark of anger that had burned for the past two months, and he fanned the flames of it until he felt the warmth in his blood. “Let them set their trap. They’ll be caught in it with us.”
It was not a fate he would wish on anyone.
2
Tera heard the ship dock and her heartbeat kicked into high gear, adrenaline rushing through her veins. There were no alarms and no announcements, a sure sign of an attack. Someone had found them. Someone good. She armed herself quickly, heart thudding.
An attack had to be coming, after all—didn’t it? There was no other reason her father would have called her here, ordering her to travel in radio silence to meet the Blad at coordinates he’d had her memorize twenty-two years ago. No computers, no calls, no messages. I mean it, Tera. She’d read panic in the message, and even fancied that she felt it vibrating across the empty space between them. She understood that this was illogical—his panic was inferred in her mind and not felt in her body. There was no way for it to travel with the message signal.
Still, it thrummed through her as she began the journey back and she’d spent the next three days pondering whether there was, in fact, a difference between mind and body. There was nothing else to think about in the confines of her tiny ship, the vessel she’d named Alia for reasons that weren’t quite clear to her—was it to remind her of friendship, or betrayal, or both?
It was a frustrating question, but it distracted her nicely from her ignorance. Aleksandr had named no threat. Normally, she would have tracked down the facts with a careful and exacting search. There was no one who could hide from her; money laid the trail if carelessness did not. But as she’d been forbidden from doing so, she had only her own thoughts and the surety that her father would tell her what this was about when she arrived. He often demanded strange things, after all—and there was always, if not a good reason, the counterbalance of his kindness.
Only he had not explained when she arrived, and after three long weeks on this ship with no missions and no information, Tera was ready for a fight. She had paced the exercise mats, trained with fanatical devotion, and spent hours shooting, disassembling various devices, and practicing languages—but she was still losing her edge. There was no test greater than the test between hunter and prey, and she knew it.
She welcomed, therefore, the sound of metal against metal, docking clamp on hull. She came alive to it. Her opponent would think she was prey, and there was the strange, topsy-turvy feeling she always felt at that realization. She had played the part before, but only to lure her targets into the open. She was not a guard. She had not trained for that. As she armed herself, her pulse was racing. She padded out into the hallways in the silence of a near-empty ship, grateful at last for the long hours she’d been able to spend learning every angled shadow and loose floor panel of the Blad.
Where would an attacker go? To the cargo hold, if they were pirates. If they were uninformed assassins, they would go to the heart of the ship, making their way by choosing the most heavily-armed doors. If they were well-informed, however—and as the odds never favored finding a ship by accident, it was wise to assume they were indeed well-informed—they would make their way to the aft of the ship, to Aleksandr’s private rooms.
That she was supposed to be guarding him, Tera did not doubt for a moment. She was the best of his assassins, the very best, and the dearest to him; she clung to that assurance jealously. Others might be hired or recruited, but only Tera had been given a home in his ships and mansions. O
nly Tera had been raised by him from childhood, every enhancement money and influence could buy sharpening her already prodigious strength, her cat-quick reflexes. Now, when he must flee some enemy of untold strength, she would be the one to protect him, with her life if necessary.
And then she saw the ship, and her blood froze.
Haemon.
No. No, it was not possible. Within a split-second she was running, her breath coming short and her eyes narrowed. Her father would never do this to her. She slowed just enough to slide to a stop as the corridor turned. She peered around the corner and pressed her temple against the metal of the wall, dialing her aural implants up to listen.
“Anything else?”
She closed her eyes. It was her father’s voice, quiet and composed. Oh, anger ran through it, to be sure, but the unique timbre of betrayal was absent—that tone, Tera had learned well. He had brought the Haemon here himself.
“No.” Apollo’s voice was smooth and light, radiating with the arrogance that Tera hated—hated—about the man. He was nothing but a hack, and second-rate assassin at best, and she despised everything about him from his flashy weapons to his ridiculous name. The man thought he was some ancient sun god? He was nothing of the sort, and there were a thousand more like him to be found on any outer station.
Now, she heard him sit, and fury coursed through her. Relaxing? Now? She prowled closer, desperate to hear and yet letting her body guide her slowly. Habit made her cautious. She missed Aleksandr’s reply as she swung herself up carefully into the pipes by the ceiling, but she knew neither of them had heard her. She calibrated her implants again, filtering out the noise of the air and water rushing through the pipes, and strained to listen.
“None of them know which way to jump.” Apollo said, amused. “A few politicians have condemned you, but the rest are too afraid to say anything. At least one of the admirals has been saying it’s impossible.”
“Who?”
“I have no names, only rumors.”
“I require more than rumors,” her father said sharply.
Tera smiled. Apollo should have known better than to come here with partial information. He would be sent away in disgrace, and her father would send her instead.
“Do you want me to stamp the rumors out?” Apollo asked idly.
“I have people for that.” Aleksandr was clearly irritated. “What I need you to do is what I hired you for. Kill Rift, kill his crew, and then come back. I don’t expect to see you again until it’s done.”
Tera stared incredulously at the closed door. He could not be sending Apollo back out, not when she was here and ready to fight.
“What if there are more of them?”
“Not your concern.” The voice was cold as death. “Go.”
There was a stammer of apologies and Apollo was gone, his face blank with worry as he hurried down the hallway. He did not look up, did not listen. He had drawn inside himself at the rebuke, and Tera only hated him more for that. How had he survived this long, if he let his guard down at the first little thing? She waited until she heard the doors of the kitchen open, and then she lowered herself down to the floor quietly and rapped on the study door.
There was a pause.
“Come,” Aleksandr said cautiously.
“I saw that the Haemon is here,” she said simply as she pushed the door open. She knew she did not have to say more. He would know the words held both question and hurt. Why him? Why him and not me? She let her eyes ask the question.
“How much did you hear?” He looked down at his desk, at the papers before him, and there was something she could not name in the set of his shoulders.
“That people are too afraid to say something about … something … and that an admiral says it’s not true.” Her voice took on an edge, but she could not stop herself. “And that you’ve sent Apollo to kill someone named Rift, and his crew.”
“Is that all?” His head came up.
“Yes.”
He was absolutely still, but there was no masking his relief. “And that is all you need to know,” he said.
“Why not me?” The words escaped her at last.
“Because Apollo is the one for this job.”
“He’s never the one for the job,” Tera said flatly.
“Tera, he’s one of the best.”
“That’s ridiculous, and you know it. You don’t need someone like him when you have me.” She saw him swallow and look away. “You know I’m right! And I’m stuck here with nothing to do. Why?”
“I need you to stay here,” he said finally. His face was pale.
“Who’s coming after you?” When he said nothing, Tera clenched her hands with the effort of not screaming. “Why can’t I help?”
“Because I am not going to lose you!” There was real fear in his voice. “The man Apollo is hunting is … relentless.”
“He’s not better than me.”
“Apollo or Rift?”
“Either,” Tera said flatly.
“How can you be sure?”
She clamped her mouth shut on the truth. He knew about some of her implants, but not all of them; he would hide her away if he did. He’d upgraded her himself when she was only a child, and since then she’d gotten more implants than he knew. She’d upgraded herself in ways she’d been too afraid to test in combat, and too wary to tell him about—society had rules, didn’t it? Rules made by people who couldn’t conceive of anything more than human. Tera had hidden what she was close to herself, unspoken; it was secret armor.
She could not tell him the truth, but even without it, her record should speak for itself. “Send me after Rift. I’ll take him out. I’ll get his crew. If you’re worried about him, you need me to do it, not Apollo.”
He did not even hesitate.
“You’re wrong. You’re rarely wrong, but this time, you are.”
“Why?”
“Enough questions.” He tried to bite off the words crisply and terrify her as he’d terrified Apollo, but there was too much fear in his eyes. “Tera, if you love me, you will let this be.”
“That’s why I can’t let it be!” She slammed the sides of her fists down on the desk. “You’ve protected me, you’ve sheltered me, you made me what I am. You’re my—”
“Tera.” It was a plea. He didn’t want her to speak the rest of it.
“You’re my father.” The words slipped out.
He closed his eyes.
“Why won’t you let me protect you?” Tera whispered. “When have I ever given you cause to doubt me?”
“Never,” he said instantly. His eyes opened to meet hers. “Not once. I have never doubted you, and you have never failed me. But this time….”
“I can infiltrate Rift’s crew,” Tera said softly. She wondered who he was, and her blood thrilled at the thought of an unknown enemy. “You know no one’s ever gotten a lock on me. I could turn their heads and kill them all with no one the wiser, and then it would be safe for you to go back, wouldn’t it?”
“No!” His shout rang around the room. When he got ahold of himself, it was only with an effort. “No. You will stay here. That is an order. I will not listen to another word about this.”
Why? Why, why, why— She left without a word, leaving the door open, striding away down the hallway with tears in her eyes. He was lying to her. She had failed him at something, she must have, and this was her punishment.
She had passed the airlock before the idea occurred to her, and then she turned and slipped down the corridor without conscious thought. There was no choice to make. If this target was dangerous enough for her father to fear that Tera would be defeated, Apollo would never manage to complete the mission. But she could. She would find out just what this target was saying, what rumors he was spreading, and she would wipe it all away with his death.
When the Haemon undocked seven minutes later, Tera was wedged in one of the cargo lockers, watching Apollo through slitted eyes as he set a course to Akintola Station.
3
Shadows cloaked this part of the station, and no one moved in the darkness. A freighter had left fifteen minutes before, loaded with supplies for the outer planets, and the dock workers were gone the second the airlock door closed, their long shift done at last.
Over the next few weeks supplies would arrive hourly from the planet’s surface to be stacked neatly against the back wall until the freighter arrived back, and the whole cargo bay itself slid forward to slide the cargo into the belly of the ship. But for now, it was the perfect place, entirely empty, and Talon’s team had—by Lesedi’s reckoning—approximately an hour before the next shipment arrived.
Talon leaned back against one of the support beams and tried not to fidget. It had been a maddening four days since Lesedi agreed to set up the mission. The Alliance brass were beginning to come out in support of their former comrade, and politicians, who had been on the fence for longer than Talon had ever known them to be, were agreeing with the military. They needed to be cautious, everyone said seriously, eyes grave as the cameras clustered around them, vying for the chance to hear a slip-up or a stray clue. It would be irresponsible, the politicians told them, to make accusations without proof.
He’d given them proof. Talon resisted the urge to slam his hand sideways into another of the columns. He’d spent more time sparring in the last few days than he had in the past month. He told them all he was toughening up Loki, but no one—not even the wide-eyed young man—believed it; for one thing, the gorgeous chaos of his combat was more than a match for Talon’s brutal efficiency. And that was good. With Nyx still recovering, Talon needed someone to keep him on his toes.
He heard a faint sound above him and resisted the urge to look up, clearing his throat instead, one of the signals Dragons used to communicate their position. A staccato beat answered him, the tap of fingers on steel, and he allowed himself to relax somewhat. Tersi and Nyx were in place to snipe. He did not check any of the others. He knew they would be in position; they didn’t have girders to climb, after all. In the shadows at the edge of the docking bay, he could faintly make out Loki’s shape, and he twitched his head sideways to tell the man to move slightly. Maybe that was why they tended to recruit Dragons older than Loki, Talon reflected: the oldest members of his team were far and away the best at lurking.