by Natalie Grey
“Interestingly, that’s exactly what they reported.”
“Good God.” He swung his legs over the edge of the crates and frowned. And then, predictably: “Who’s the source?”
“I can’t say.”
“Huh.” If Tersi had put two and two together with Mala’s job and Nyx’s vague description of the fight, he said nothing about it. “I wonder where we’d even start looking for that sort of thing.”
“Precisely what I’m wondering,” Nyx agreed. “I’ll go do some research. You two decompress a bit. Tersi, make sure everyone knows they have until 1800 to get whatever they need done on the surface.”
“Aye aye.”
Nyx scooped up her comm and left without a backwards glance, clenching her hand as she felt the message alert vibrate through it. She would not look at it, she decided, until they were safely out of orbit. Until she was too far from Mala to go back and do something unwise.
8
Wind rustled through the palms, and somewhere a ways out into the surf, Tera gave a happy shriek as a wave broke over her. Cade shouted something, words lost in the wind, and Talon sat up curiously as Tera and Cade dove into the ocean and took off on what was clearly a race out to one of the floating platforms a few hundred yards out.
Talon looked over at Aryn. “Bets?”
“Tera.” Aryn did not look up from her studying, but she nodded definitively. “He’s actually terrible at swimming. Even I can beat him.” She flashed a smile at Talon.
“Huh. Would not have guessed that.”
“You never did any missions with swimming?”
“What do you think Dragons do?” Talon was laughing. “I’m going to get a drink, you want one?”
“Are you kidding? I’m enjoying these equations, but there’s no way I could figure them out drunk.” She wrote down an answer carefully, checked the back of the book, and gave a sound of satisfaction. “Ha. I’m getting better at this.”
Talon smiled as he made his way back through the palm trees and toward the villa. Though there were other guests at the resort, management went out of its way to make sure that everyone got their own private stretches of beach, their own bars and dining rooms and servers, and any number of other things that were both ridiculous and pleasantly luxurious.
Inside the villa, Talon cast a glance over his shoulder to see where Cade and Tera were—Aryn was right, Cade was losing badly—and padded down one of the hallways to a small reading room. Once there, he eased the door shut behind him and pulled one of his suitcases out from under a chair. He pulled a table into the patch of sunlight by the window and spread out the maps and notebooks he’d been carrying.
Almost every Dragon team Talon had checked with had had at least one member loyal to Soras—a member who knew the man’s secret identity, and served him anyway. Several commanders, Mase Fordham and Alina Kuznetsova included, had found the members of their team themselves and had taken care of the matter. A few others had been attacked, and had killed in self-defense.
Those Talon had not heard from, he had sent messages to, and yt had been five long days before Talon heard back from Team 11—Mallory’s team. When he finally got a message, his heart had dropped into his stomach when he saw that it came from her XO, Wraith, and not Mallory herself.
Mallory, who had made the choice to go dark rather than kill Talon, had been assassinated in retribution for that action. Wraith’s message only said tersely that the matter had been “taken care of,” but Talon could sense the raw, furious hurt in those words.
Nothing would bring Mallory back, and what had undoubtedly been the unforgivable sin, in Soras’s eyes, was not her refusal to kill Talon, but instead her choice to warn Talon about the orders.
He had sent back a brief message to Wraith, expressing his condolences. It wasn’t his fault, not really, but he was close to being the cause of Mallory’s death, and he knew both he and Wraith blamed him for it despite themselves.
Between guilt over Mallory, and worry about what remaining agents there might be, Talon knew he wasn’t going to be able to make this just a vacation.
The rogue Dragons, the ones they hadn’t caught yet, had no leader anymore. They had no one to report to—but he knew people like that. Someone who signed up to be a double agent, someone who willingly signed on with a person like the Warlord of Ymir….
Those people couldn’t be trusted.
He had to find them—before they found a new traitor to get behind. Before they took down anyone else. Losing Mallory had been too much. Losing Meph and Sphinx….
Even one was too much, and how many more were there that he would never know about?
The only way to make this right—or as right as it could be—would be to find these people now, and taken them down.
“You’re terrible at relaxing,” said a voice from behind him.
Talon sighed. “How the hell does someone so big move so quietly?”
“Learned from Nyx,” Cade said succinctly. He circled around the table to examine the maps.
“I’m not going to do anything until we’re out of here and far away from Aryn,” Talon promised him.
“I know.” Cade, to Talon’s surprise, did not seem angry.
“You … know?”
“Tera told me about it.” Cade had picked up one of the dossiers. He gave it a cursory read-through, and then he set it down and went to one of the chairs to sit. He’d tracked sand into the room and he brushed it off the bottoms of his feet as he thought. When he saw Talon’s raised eyebrow, he explained: “It was the first night, after dinner. You’d fallen asleep. Aryn was off studying.”
“See? Aryn’s terrible at relaxing, too.”
Cade’s lips quirked. “No deflecting.” He settled back in the chair. “She told me that, in the interests of me making an informed decision about this trip, I should probably know that you were constitutionally incapable of going off duty. Which I knew, although I did appreciate the heads up.”
“So why are you here?” Talon asked him finally.
Cade sighed and dropped his head back to stare at the ceiling. “I get why you’re doing this.” Talon waited, and Cade rolled his head sideways to look at him. “You’re protecting your own. I’d do this for Aryn in a heartbeat. I did. She did it for me. And … I’d still do it for the team.”
“So….” Talon frowned. He propped himself on the table, arms crossed. He knew better than to be hopeful, but he was still starting to smile. “What are you saying?”
“I’m saying….” Cade sighed and pushed himself up, coming to hold out one hand. “Fuck it. Let’s find some traitors.”
Talon grinned and clasped his hand. “Damn straight.” He turned back to the table. “Let’s get you up to speed, then. I’ll go over what we know in ascending order. Team 1….”
“Where’s Cade?” Tera asked curiously. She came to drop into one of the lounging chairs. “Where’s Talon?”
“Talon went off to work on his super secret research that no one’s supposed to know about,” Aryn said absent-mindedly. “And Cade just went off to catch him at it.”
Tera looked over at the house, worried. Had she made a mistake by telling Cade about Talon? Any moment, she half expected to hear yelling and see the two men come crashing out one of the windows.
“That’s one possibility,” Aryn said.
Tera looked over and found the other woman watching her, smiling slightly. Aryn had clearly guessed what Tera was worrying about.
Tera raised an eyebrow. “What’s the other one?”
“Cade helps him … track down all the Dragons who were taking bribes? That’s my guess of what he’s working on.”
“Seems likely.” Tera settled back in her chair with a sigh.
“You don’t know?”
“I’ve decided to let him think he’s being sneaky.” She shrugged and smiled out at the waves. “He is who he is. I knew he’d be secretly working while he was here. I’ve been doing the same, so have you. How’s your stu
dying, by the way?”
“Good. A little too good, actually.” Aryn frowned down at the book. “Good enough to make me feel like I’m missing something.”
“Eh, Talon said it was like that for Jester—he just … gets it. All the piloting crap. Seems like you’re the same way.”
Aryn nodded contemplatively, and Tera let her eyes drift closed. There was the faint sound of birdsong. She could hear the wind in the trees and the breaking waves.
It should be a paradise, but no amount of relaxation was solving her dilemma, and Tera was absolutely obsessive about decisions. She could not rest until she had made them. When she opened her eyes, giving up on any sort of pleasant afternoon, she found Aryn watching her quietly.
The other woman flushed. “I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to—well, never mind. Are you all right?” When Tera said nothing immediately, Aryn swallowed. “I … look, I don’t mean to overstep, all right? I know I can’t understand what you’re going through. But if you just want to say it out loud, you can. I found the wine cellar the other day, we can get however drunk you want first.”
Tera laughed. “I might take you up on that. This isn’t that, though. I assume you were talking about my father.”
Aryn nodded.
“Yeah. That’s … I have no idea. It’s not bothering me very much right now. I know it’s coming, someday. I’ll deal with it then, I guess. No sense trying to feel things I’m not feeling just yet, right?”
“I suppose,” Aryn said cautiously.
Tera considered. She looked over at Aryn. “You remember what Cade said, about being a Dragon?”
Aryn closed the book now. “Yeah.”
“I don’t want to try out,” Tera said bluntly.
Aryn tilted her head to the side. She did not speak, for which Tera was grateful.
“I’m sure Talon would like me to be,” Tera said. “I could be on his team, fill one of those spots…. It answers all the questions at once, right? Where he goes, where I go, when we see each other.” She gestured and then blew out a breath.
“But you don’t want to,” Aryn said quietly.
“No.” Tera shook her head. “I work alone, I always have. I like that. Me trying to fit onto a team—one he’s leading?” She blew out a breath.
Aryn, unexpectedly, smiled.
“What?”
“I mean … the fights would be epic,” Aryn said, with a bit of a laugh. “You have to admit. Legend-type stuff.”
Tera laughed before she could help herself. “That’s true. I hadn’t thought of it that way.” She shrugged. “But I feel like if I tell him that, I have to have something I do want to do.”
“Has it occurred to you,” Aryn asked tartly, “that maybe he’s in there with Cade saying, ‘I can’t possibly work with Tera, it would be a total disaster’?”
“I hadn’t thought of that.”
“He’s not dumb,” Aryn pointed out.
“No.” Tera smiled. “No, he’s not.”
“And anyway,” Aryn continued, opening her book back up again, “it’s not like you have to decide soon. You can come with us for a while.” She paused and looked up, chewing one lip awkwardly. “If you want, I mean. I don’t want to assume. I just thought maybe—”
Tera smiled wryly. “I told Talon you seemed like the type to take in strays. Of course, when I said that, I didn’t think that’d be me.” She leaned her head back and sighed. “I don’t take….”
Charity. Except that, for years, she’d lived off her father. Lived on gorgeous estates, surrounded by servants and anything she could desire. Even when she’d picked her own little apartment on Seneca, mostly to have somewhere she could be entirely alone, she’d never worried about money. When she looked over, Aryn was smiling wryly, and Tera realized that, of all people, Aryn might understand this idea.
“It wouldn’t be charity,” Aryn said. “Any more than this trip is charity. Any more than it was charity that Talon looked out for Cade all those years. It’s what you do for your people.”
And, mercifully, she looked back to her book so that Tera had the privacy to blink the tears away. For your people. She might not fight with them, but she did have a team now. She had never realized you could want to smile and cry at the same time.
9
Nyx gave a groan and let her head thump forward onto the desk. She was fairly sure she should be enjoying the extra-large captain’s cabin, but instead she had spent the past few hours failing at the very first thing she needed to do.
“Boss?”
She looked up to see Tersi leaning against the doorframe. Over the past few weeks, he’d managed to add a certain debonair quality to his weakness, crossing his arms jauntily and leaning as if he were too cool to be bothered with standing upright. If she had not known he was recovering from a near-fatal injury, she would never have guessed it. She frowned at him.
“Are you going to call me that for the whole mission?”
“And beyond.” He smiled. “How are you doing?”
“I…don’t know. That’s a lie. Yes, I do know. I’m doing horribly. I can’t pick a mission.”
“What about the smuggling ring? Anyone who’s managed to pull that off is well-worth stopping. Also, dangerous.” His grin widened. “Enter the Dragons.”
Nyx laughed despite herself. “Maybe you should be running this.”
“Me? Good Lord, no.” He shuddered.
“What?”
“I’ve never wanted to command.” He shrugged. Intelligence had apparently tried to give him a promotion after the mission against Soras, going so far as to come to his hospital room while he was recovering. Talon, who had been there, refused to say exactly what had happened—beyond a cryptic I warned them—but he had laughed himself sick.
“It’s a natural career progression,” Nyx pointed out acidly.
“Not exactly. One in twenty Dragons gets to command. And come on, just being a Dragon is sort of the pinnacle of career progression, isn’t it?”
“Good point.” Nyx raised her eyebrows. “I….” Always thought I wanted this, and now it terrifies me. How can I leave all of you? But she could hardly say that to one of the people she was commanding.
“Way I see it, you were the Major’s right hand.” Tersi shrugged. “You know everything you need to know. Maybe we’ll get to the end of this and you’ll decide you don’t want to do it, but it’s not like you can’t. Everyone knows this mission is just a formality.”
“Everyone?”
“We all talked about it.” Tersi raised an eyebrow. “Don’t tell me you’ve forgotten how we used to talk about Major Love Muffin.”
Nyx spat tea onto the desk. Talon’s affair with an imprisoned assassin had been viewed with less derision—and a good deal more humor—than he might guess. She shook her head. “Come with me to get some food?”
“An excellent plan.”
Nyx walked slowly, careful to make sure the other Dragon didn’t exhaust himself. It had taken three rounds of paperwork to get Tersi off medical leave, though the Director had signed off on the final forms promptly.
“I wonder if I’m picking this mission for the right reasons,” Nyx said finally.
“Are there wrong reasons?” Tersi asked.
“What if there’s a bigger threat out there and I’m focusing on this just because it’s … I don’t know.” she finished lamely. She still hadn’t told them where she got the idea for this mission. She was too embarrassed.
“There’s always a bigger threat,” Tersi said promptly. “And not every mission can be to free a planet. The Major got lucky with that one. But this isn’t small.”
“True.” As they reached the Ariane’s small, spare kitchen, Nyx gestured for Tersi to sit. She pulled out a few packets of dehydrated noodles, and couple more of beef. “I assume you’re eating.”
“Have you ever known me not to?” Even turned away to the stove, she could hear the smile in his voice. Tersi had a stomach like a black hole. “So tell me about the mi
ssion.”
“If we go, we’ll be starting somewhere over near Ragnarok. Everything seems to point there.”
“You don’t think small, do you?” Tersi sounded more impressed than upset, but there was still a warning note in his voice. “We managed Ragnarok once, but we don’t have Tera this time, and it isn’t the same house.”
“I know, believe me.” Nyx dumped the beef into the water and shook her head. Ragnarok was home to the luxury estates of some of the galaxy’s richest business people, senators, and celebrities—as well as murderers, crime bosses, and other unsavory elements. It was also one of the coldest planets yet terraformed, and its advertised safety stemmed mostly from the fact that no one could figure out how to break into the houses before freezing to death.
Though the crew of the Ariane had once successfully gotten into a house there, they’d been accompanied by a woman who knew its quirks intimately. They could not count on such an advantage again.
“I still can’t believe it’s going through the senate.” Tersi shook his head. “What are the chances that your source is jumping at shadows?”
“I suppose it’s possible, but it actually seems likely to me that there’s something going on.” Nyx looked over at him as she went for a strainer. “That one senator’s been making noises for years about corruption.”
“What, Samuels?”
“Yeah. And everyone pointedly ignores her. Kind of suspicious, don’t you think? We might want to talk to her. She must know something. Or at least suspect.”
“I mean, sure, she might know something. But she’s trying to solve it with a senate subcommittee?” Tersi shook his head. “Civilians. It’s like … like….”
“Like using a bunny instead of a bloodhound?” Nyx dumped the food into bowls, grinning, and brought them to the table.
“That, yes.” Tersi took the bowl of food with a nod of thanks and dug in, chopsticks moving lightning-fast. All soldiers ate quickly, but Tersi was an outlier even amongst them.
“And we’re the bloodhound,” Nyx said finally. She was staring off into space, food untouched.