by Natalie Grey
“No, really. To the victor go the spoils.” She bounced on her feet.
Choop grumbled, but it was good-natured. “When I’m dead, remember me fondly.”
“I will,” Maple assured him. “I’ll remember you very fondly as a sneaky bastard.”
“Put it on my gravestone,” Choop told her. He gave Nyx a smile and took his place on the mats.
The tank top he wore showed the tattoos all down one arm, and Nyx tilted her head to examine them as she bounced on the balls of her feet and waited for an attack. “Tell me about the tattoos.”
“Which one?” Choop gave a quick look at his arm, then looked back up as though he thought it had been a trap.
Nyx smiled, not making any effort to make him feel more at ease. She was absolutely not above hitting him when he was distracted.
“They all kind of bleed into one another, don’t they?” she asked. “Any of them, though.” She picked one at random. “The constellation.”
“The mermaid,” Choop said. “That’s what they called it. It’s from a book called Wild Earth—it was written on Terranova, way back at the start, when we first came out here. The mermaid was one of the new constellations the author saw in the sky, and she used it because of the legend of the mermaid, how it came to be, you know? The sailors and the manatees. She said Terranova was like that—an illusion. I liked it.”
Nyx nodded, absorbing this and keeping a careful eye on his movements.
“I didn’t know that,” Maple commented from the side of the room.
“You never asked,” Choop pointed out. He was still grinning at her when he came at Nyx in a rush.
She barely reacted in time, but she’d sparred with enough sneaky people over the years that she had been expecting something like this. So she did the one thing she knew he wouldn’t be expecting: stood her ground and planted a solid kick in his midsection.
Maple clapped her hand over her mouth with a yelp as Choop went over backwards. He stared up at the ceiling for a moment before giving a groan.
“Fucking….” He was laughing. “All right, that’s me taken care of. You’re up, Gero.” Dragons tended to call one another by their nicknames, but Choop was ex-Navy, and in the habit of using names and ranks.
Maple gave him a mock salute as she stepped onto the floor. She shrugged at Nyx. “Apparently I’m the next sacrifice, then.”
Nyx laughed. “Don’t run into my foot. As my first captain used to say, you have everywhere else in the world to be.”
“Ohhhh, I hate that.” Maple began to circle.
Nyx nodded sympathetically. She, too, had hated it. It had been maddening to hear after getting kicked in the stomach for the eighth time. “So. Gero. And remind me, because I’m afraid I’m terrible with names and I’ve already forgotten…. Elizabeth?”
“Ellia.” The name might have suited her features, but it was really too delicate to describe a woman Nyx had once seen throw a mercenary across a room … at another mercenary.
Maple, at any rate, fit her well, and it was easy to see how she’d been nicknamed. Maples were one of the few trees that had taken well to the soil on multiple planets, so the name was still synonymous with autumn colors—which Maple’s complexion had in abundance. Her thick hair was a beautiful russet color, her eyes were a warm brown flecked with gold and green, and her skin was covered in freckles. She was short and compact, compared to Choop’s lanky height—well, Nyx realized, compared to almost every other Dragon she knew. Most of them were absurdly tall, even though there were no official height restrictions.
“And that right there,” Maple said, nodding to Choop, “is Noah Hardy.”
“After being in the Dragons for a bit, it’s just weird to hear people’s given names.” Nyx shook her head. “Which is weird in itself, after so long in the Navy.”
“Agreed,” Choop said contemplatively. He’d slimed his way over to the mats and was propped up against them.
“Captain?” Centurion’s voice; he had the helm. “Lesedi is on the line for you.”
“All right, give me just a—” Nyx had made the mistake of taking her eyes off Maple, and she found herself flung sideways across the mats the next moment. She rolled to her feet with a laugh and a grin. “Oh, that was a mistake, Gero.”
Maple shot out of the way, but Nyx was faster than she was, and the two were down on the ground again the next moment, Nyx leaning back to avoid the quick, precise strikes Maple was directing at every pressure point she could reach.
Grappling had been a dubious proposition. Maple’s compact fame meant that she was easily able to stay inside Nyx’s range, but Nyx’s longer limbs were a complication when it came to locks and throws—and Nyx was stronger. Slowly, Maple began to flag, and it wasn’t too long before she gave a grumble and tapped out.
“Damn.” She was panting. “I thought I had you with that opener. This is not my day.”
“Get thrown across a room a few hundred times by Aegis and you, too, will learn the fine art of bouncing.” Nyx helped her up. “Sorry about that, Centurion.”
“It’s all right,” Lesedi’s voice said, sounding amused. Her face flickered up on one of the nearby screens; most rooms in the Conway were enabled for communications. “I gather I was hearing you beat the tar out of—ah, yes. Maple. Choop. Good to see you both again.”
Both of Nyx’s crewmates waved at Lesedi, looking surprised that she had remembered their names. Nyx wondered whether she should tell them that Lesedi had probably known who they were before Nyx did, herself. She wouldn’t be surprised if Lesedi had been aware of her team assignment almost as soon as it was decided.
They’d learn about Lesedi soon enough, though.
“What can I do for you?” she asked the information broker.
“Oh, I like that.” Lesedi did, indeed, sound pleased. “‘What can I do for you?’ It’s nice to have a team of Dragons acting on my information.”
“Uh-huh.” Nyx took a drink of water and gave her a look.
Lesedi laughed. “To answer your question, I’ve found an old set of shipyards that the Alliance sold to the Samuels family. Rather, they won the contract to clean them up.”
“And you’re thinking they might not have?”
“That would be my guess,” Lesedi said, with a smile. “Especially since a great deal of metal has been making its way over there in the interim. I checked the charts and you’re far closer than Talon is.”
“Talon needs not to get embroiled in anything,” Nyx said. “Wherever we end up needing Dess for the negotiations….” She shrugged, but caught a flicker of expression on Lesedi’s face. “What? What is it?”
“There might be an issue.” Lesedi’s voice was final. “All of the relevant people know what they need to know for now. I’ll tell you if I find confirmation.”
Nyx narrowed her eyes slightly in question, but Lesedi was implacable. When she decided someone didn’t need to know something, she almost never changed her mind. It would be ‘never,’ in fact, except that Talon was even more stubborn than she was and he had once been very determined to walk into a trap set by the Warlord.
That had been quite the mission. Nyx shrugged now and gave a rueful shake of her head. “Don’t keep us in the dark too long, eh?”
“I won’t. Pinky swear.” Lesedi’s almost-impish smile left Nyx wondering where she’d picked up that expression. Aryn, maybe? “I’ve transferred the coordinates to Centurion, along with the known specs of the shipyard and what sorts of ships they produced—notably, capital ships and the big cargo haulers.”
Nyx’s eyebrows went up.
“Yes,” Lesedi said blandly. “I thought so, too. Tell us what you find, would you? It seems the more we find, the more questions there are to ask.”
“As far as I can tell, there’s only one,” Nyx said bluntly, “and that’s whether she’s preparing for an all-out war.”
Out of the corner of her eye, she saw Maple and Choop exchange a worried look. On the screen, however, L
esedi gave a faint nod.
“Yes,” she said quietly. “That is a good question, and I think we both know she’s fully capable of doing so. So let’s hope you find a bunch of cargo ships, shall we?”
“I’ll let you know,” Nyx said. She cut the call. “Centurion?”
“Coordinates are laid in, and everyone’ll be in the war room by the time you get there.”
“Thanks.” Nyx jerked her head at Choop and Maple. “Come on, we got an op to plan.”
“Uh-huh.” Choop hobbled after her as she headed out into the corridor. “And, given that you broke us, I volunteer both of us for ship duty.”
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
THE SHIPYARDS at Qaryat were so far out of the way, and theoretically so broken down, that there wasn’t much in the way of security. The Conway banked through the outer atmosphere and headed down with a notable silence on the comms. If Choop and Maple were seeing anything on the screens, they weren’t mentioning it—and they didn’t have to swerve to avoid it, either.
It made Nyx nervous.
She sensed someone at her side and looked over to see Wraith. The woman’s pale hair gleamed as she looked up at Nyx.
“How you doing?” The question was neutral enough that it might mean nothing, and Nyx could not tell if her XO sensed her nerves or not.
“Eh.” She shrugged. “Can’t tell you how ready I am to be done with this.”
“This being…?”
“Ghost,” Nyx clarified. “Every second she’s out there, I feel like she might do anything. The kidnapping? Just more of the same, honestly.”
Wraith nodded.
“The weirdest thing is….” Nyx tilted her head to the side. “She had me in her sights. I’ve been waiting for a couple of weeks for her to be taunting me, sending me more messages, blowing up more civilians. And she’s just not doing it.”
Wraith opened her mouth to reply, then decided to say nothing. Nyx knew what she was thinking—some people might think better of their plans for revenge, and take a better path. But not Ghost. People like Ghost did not forgive and forget.
“She’s on the defensive,” Nyx said slowly. “And I just don’t know why.”
Wraith cocked her head to the side. She seemed to be trying not to laugh. When Nyx frowned, she said, “The woman is building a gigantic fleet, presumably to come after the Alliance. The Alliance. Only you would describe that as being ‘on the defensive.’”
Nyx snorted, but she didn’t back away from the assessment. She’d come to trust her instincts over the years, and in this case, they were telling her very specifically that something had changed. It wasn’t Ghost’s shift into a new body, but something more.
“Well, let’s see what we have to work with,” was all Nyx said.
“Approaching drop point,” said Maple over the comms, and the door at the end of the shuttle bay began to open. “First group stand by. 5, 4, 3, 2, 1.”
Nyx gave Wraith a nod and sprinted across the deck, hurling herself out into thin air with T, Widow, and Doc. She hadn’t had a chance to fight with any of them before, and she was looking forward to seeing what they were made of.
The four of them plummeted down, ground rising up far too fast for comfort, and then the fans in their suits kicked in and their pace slowed dramatically. Nyx flattened herself and spread her arms to direct her fall, and the others followed suit.
They were landing at the outer edge of the ship yards—which were, contrary to the contract, very much not demolished and also very much in use. The Conway was following the flight path for any ship that would land there, and hopefully no workers were going to look up at the wrong time and see several groups of Dragons parachuting down to say hello. In fact, Nyx hoped that with the several absolutely gigantic ships being built in the center of the yards, no one would be looking at the walls.
As Nyx got closer, however, and changed her trajectory to come in over the walls, she realized that they weren’t going to have much of a problem yet. The work at this shipyard seemed to be being done, at least for now, by robots—and as this part of Qaryat was pretty much deserted, there were no patrols on the walls.
This was all good news, but anything that went well when she dealt with Ghost just made her more nervous.
They landed and rolled, and the team split into two groups: T going with Doc, and Nyx with Widow. They hugged the edges of the open space as they advanced toward what they had deemed the “front” of the shipyards: the building that housed all the administrative staff.
“Cameras,” Nyx said, into the team-wide comm channel. There were cameras placed at regular intervals along the walls, though they didn’t seem to be moving.
“Are they actually going to be on?” Doc asked practically. “Their security is practically nonexistent.”
“Which means it’s more likely they’ll be watching everything from some central location,” Widow argued. Dana Vitorino was a former Naval officer who generally preferred to watch rather than speak up, her dark eyes flicking around the room during meetings to get the lay of the land. If someone else had made her point, she generally didn’t bother weighing in. She was a puzzle to Nyx, simply because she didn’t say enough to give a good picture of what was going on in her head.
Nyx made a mental note to get a few rounds of sparring in with Widow sometime soon.
In any case, the woman had a good point now. “Maple, any lock into their systems yet? Foxtail? Can we see what they’re seeing?”
“There are feeds,” Foxtail reported. “Whether anyone’s watching them, though, I couldn’t tell you. There have to be hundreds of cameras here and they’re mostly showing nothing. That gets monotonous.”
Nyx considered this. “Cut in, we’re going for that big capital ship they’re building. I want any specs we can find. Get inside it if you can.”
The teams slid between the buildings, moving quickly with only a few glances up at the cameras. None of them swiveled to follow, and they would appear on each for only a few seconds. Foxtail was correct: guarding was a monotonous job, and it was more than likely that the guards would miss their presence entirely, even if they were nominally paying attention.
The ship blotted out the sky as they got closer. Compared to the size of a human, or even a skyscraper, it seemed like something from another world. Nyx had docked with the big capital ships before in her days as a Naval officer, and even occasionally as a Dragon, but she never got over how big they were. They could hold tens of thousands of personnel, though the running of them was a fairly streamlined process.
The question was, what did the interior look like? Would this ship have the usual complement of fighters and scout ships, or would it be filled with bunks and cargo holds?
They found stairs in the scaffolding nearby and Nyx led the way up, drawn as much by curiosity as anything else. They advanced in a pattern, each advancing the group in turn and then holding position as the others moved past, but when it came time to pass the first builder robot, Nyx called T to a halt and went forward herself. She had no idea what this thing’s capabilities were, and she did not intend to have anyone else test it out.
The thing didn’t even look at her, though. It stayed focused on its work, a not-very-human shape aside from its viewing screens and multiple ‘hands’ that were laying electronics in place. Artificial fingers moved over the keys in a blur and reset pathways on the computer chips as the panel was integrated into the rest of the ship, sensors hooking into the main systems.
Nyx fought the urge to go bonk it on the head and see if it would pay attention to her then, and instead continued up the stairs.
They passed any number of robots who didn’t seem at all impressed with their presence, and Nyx had just begun to relax when she heard a round of stifled whistles and laughter on the comm channels.
“You close, Captain?” Wraith sounded almost awed—a tone Nyx had never heard from her before. “You’ll want to see this.”
“On my way.” Nyx scanned the path ahead and
took the stairs two at a time, running down a gangway until she reached an open place in the ship.
Over the threshold, she found Wraith’s group: Loki, Gambit, and Sunshine. Ahead of them, Wraith was leaning against a railing and peering down into the black. When Nyx joined her, she had the most intense vertigo of her life: the ship was partly hollow inside, and she could see so far down that it felt almost like jumping out of the Conway all over again. While she was used to that, something about seeing so far to fall inside just seemed wrong.
“Holy shit,” she managed.
Wraith nodded. “And see there? Those are definitely fighter bays.”
Nyx adjusted her suit’s vision and zoomed in. The suit’s scanners picked out the different metals in the struts, and she could see the bays Wraith was referring to. The woman was right, there was no mistaking them. Lifts in the wide, paneled floor would allow fighters to ascend and descend for storage and return, and the tubes would carry them out for launch.
“So, it’s a war.” Nyx’s heart sank. She’d known it was going to come to this, but she’d hoped, in some distant corner of her mind, that these were all cargo ships and she’d been horribly mistaken.
She’d hoped Ghost was going to take her people and just … leave.
Of course, there was the issue that all of the people on Eternas probably didn’t want to live under the rule of sadistic, undying, cybernetic mobster for the rest of their days. Nyx heaved a sigh.
It was hard to complain when saving people from this sort of thing was her whole job, but sometimes the sheer number of megalomaniacs just got tiring.
“Boss?” It was Choop on the line. “We’re getting a very weird signal. It’s coming in like a distress signal, but it’s on a different frequency than usual.”
“They can’t be trying to lure ships in,” Nyx said, thinking out loud. “Unless they are, and it’s just their plan to grow their fleet with stolen ships. But if so, you’d think they’d have measures in place to capture them, and we just sailed right through.”
Wraith nodded thoughtfully.