by Natalie Grey
There was a pause.
“You’re lying,” Ghost said quietly. “You lied because you already knew that I mistrusted Regina after what had happened before.” There was another shake of Dess’s shoulders, so that Dess’s head bumped hard into the gun. A little sound of pain and fear escaped her. “But even if she realized Rhea were here, she wouldn’t be foolish enough—”
The jolt of electricity came from everywhere and nowhere—as if all of Dess’s body had been punched, and then punched again, and punched a third time. Her mouth filled with blood and she clung to—
The legs of the table. Talon’s helmet lay nearby and he was leveling another blow at Ghost’s head. He had tackled Dess out of the way and onto the table—that would be the second and third hits, she guessed—and now was taking full advantage of the stream of energy in the ship to destroy the cybernetic body.
The body was putting up a fight, but not much of a one. Dess stared, her mouth open. She didn’t even notice that Tersi was there until he grabbed her off the table and ran for the exit. The rubber in the Dragons’ boots must be giving them protection against the current, she thought woozily, but she could not take her eyes from the image of Ghost’s body reeling under the impact of punches and kicks. As much as she hated Ghost now, it felt wrong to see what looked like a woman in a suit being hit over and over again as she put up no resistance. Dess’s fingers clutched at Tersi’s armor and she could not seem to find a single thought in her head.
And then the lights went out. An automated alert began and trailed away, the voice sliding down a register before cutting off. Tersi stopped in his tracks, his arms solid around Dess, and Talon paused.
The lights flickered back on a moment later, and Dess looked around herself.
“Run,” she heard herself say.
“What?” Talon looked at her, as did Tersi.
“Run,” Dess repeated.
“Hello,” the ship told them.
Talon’s face went white. “Everyone off the ship!”
Tersi didn’t even bother to put Dess down. He just ran, clutching her to his chest so hard she struggled to breathe, and they sprinted to the airlock to find Aegis and Jim struggling to hold the blast doors open as the ship fought them.
“Move!” Aegis yelled.
Tersi and Talon tumbled through and the other two let the doors go not a moment to soon. They had barely locked before the Ariane tore itself from the moorings of Tian Station. Out the windows, Dess could see the ship waver, like a small animal trying to find its legs. It turned, still awkward and uncertain, for its nose to point directly at the window. Dess felt it stare at them.
And then it banked sharply and was gone, accelerating into the darkness.
There was a single moment of silence before the alarms went off in an ear-splitting wail and there was the pound of many feet. To Dess’s surprise, Gianni Brown was at the head of the group that arrived.
“What happened?” he asked simply.
Talon looked at him. “Regina?”
“She … managed to avoid being taken.” Brown’s eyes flickered. “Alive, that is.”
Dess swallowed.
“What happened?” the security chief asked again.
They paused, Dess looking at Tersi and Talon as she tried to come up with an explanation that would encompass all of what had happened.
“Bitch took my ship,” Talon said finally. He sounded grumpy.
“We’ll get it back,” Tersi told him, like a man soothing a fractious horse. He let Dess down now and she slid down his front, unwilling to let him go. She thought he might push her away, but he looped an arm casually around her to hold her close. It was an unconscious gesture, automatic and comfortable. He realized it a moment later and smiled down at her in a way that made her heart flip over.
“Aww,” Talon said, and Dess saw he was looking at the two of them with something like a smile. “Aren’t you two cute? They have hotels here, you know.”
“What’s that supposed to mean?” Tersi asked.
Dess blushed. “I think he means—”
“I mean you have shore leave until Nyx gets here,” Talon said, “and then we are getting my ship back.”
Dess started laughing. Then she remembered the rest of it, and grabbed for a comm unit. “Nyx. Harry.”
“Right.” Talon searched on himself for a screen and looked over at Gianni Brown in frustration. “Could we have a comm room, please?”
CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE
THE DELIGHTFUL THING ABOUT A SIDEARM, in Nyx’s opinion, was that when you ran out of ammunition, you could use the thing as a blunt object. That was exactly what she did as the wave of soldiers converged on their location, throwing herself into the fray with a battlecry.
“Eleven!”
“Eleven!” her team called back.
Nyx slammed her foot forward into an oncoming soldier. The woman stumbled back with a cry and then went down in a heap as Nyx’s leg rose once more and slammed down in an axe kick, taking her across the shoulders with bone-cracking force. Another soldier tried to tackle her sideways and got Nyx’s sidearm in the small gap between his helmet and his chest piece.
We’re not locked in here with them, she thought to herself, sliding into a half-crouch to crack an opponent’s ribs with her elbow, they’re locked in here with us.
They were realizing it, too. She had seen the looks on their faces when they came around the corner. They thought there was no way the Dragons were going to survive this encounter, and they liked that. They’d intended to get drunk together tonight and tell the story of how they took down a Dragon team, not even caring that they’d have had odds of ten to one or more.
And now they were realizing that they’d miscalculated—badly. In a melee, only so many could fight at a time, and with this melee taking place in the narrow corridors of a space station, there was no way for them to circle around the Dragons and press in on them in an orderly maneuver.
It meant that instead of four or five of them ganging up on each Dragon, only one or two could manage to get into the fight—and, Nyx saw with contempt, they had never even trained to fight together.
What idiot had decided that throwing a bunch of soldiers at the Dragons was a good strategy?
She decided she didn’t care. They might be in the fray, in which case one of her team would take care of them, and if not, they’d have plenty more shots to take Ghost’s organization down piece by piece.
She wondered briefly, as she smashed her fist down onto a helmet, where Ghost was. “Not here” was all she needed to know for her current tactics, and after sending a brief message to the Ariane and the Io when she realized Ghost wasn’t on Station X, she’d put it out of her mind.
And then, as she whirled to lash out with one foot, she caught sight of something very strange through the airlock window.
“Maple.” She grabbed a soldier and threw him bodily into a group of his comrades.
“…Yes?” Maple sounded just a little too serene.
“Is that Choop floating around outside the station? Is that what I’m seeing?” She yanked her rifle off her back and directed a few bursts into the press of soldiers. It was good to keep them guessing—and, more importantly, it got them to stop pressing forward so eagerly.
“Ah….” Maple sounded uncertain. “Yes, why do you ask?”
“Do you want to—” Nyx yanked out her knife and jabbed it up into a soldier’s chin, then yanked it out again and threw the body down the hall “—maybe explain to me what’s going on?”
“Well, you seemed busy,” Maple explained.
“Sure, sure—one second?” She didn’t wait for a response before raising her voice. “As you may have noticed, your fellow soldiers are dying in very high numbers. While I don’t want to tell you all how to live your lives, it would save a lot of time if you could, for instance, throw yourselves out an airlock instead of expecting us to kill all of you. Thank you.” To Maple, she added, “So, what’s going on with Harry?
”
Maple was laughing too hard to answer at first.”Uh, well, so Ghost must have started venting the airlock a little bit at a time because Harry passed out, and then we saw the air escaping and realized there’d be no air pressure to help things along. So I sent Choop out. I’m also broadcasting a very strong blocking signal Foxtail devised. I’ve basically filled the entire section you’re in with computerized white noise, but you’re still going to want to get out shortly.”
“Because?”
“Because—how is he?”
Choop must have come back in, Nyx reasoned. Sure enough, a moment later his voice came over the line, panting slightly. “He’ll be fine. He had about a minute and a half of real bad oxygen deprivation, but nothing a body can’t cope with just fine.” A yell sounded over the line. “Hey—hey, man, you’re fine, you’re okay. I’m with the Dragons, you’re a-okay.” There was babbling in the background. “Afraid not, man. Appreciate the dedication, but Ghost is through and through on that station and we’re not going to put you back on it.” Muffled voices. “Yeah, I think the captain might actually go for that. Maple—”
“She’s on the line,” Maple said.
“Oh, that’s convenient. Cap, how you feel about pumping these prototype ships full of missiles?”
“I think we could arrange that,” Nyx said. “Oh, look, they’re running away. Good stuff.” She dispatched one of the last ones in her direction and turned to survey the damage on the other side. Loki was hanging back, a hand over his side, but every other member of the team could be seen still up and moving quickly.
She smiled grimly. As she took out the first few, and then the ones after that, she had seen the look in their eyes: you might kill me, it said, but there are hundreds of us. How long can you last?
They didn’t have any idea what they were up against. This was why the Dragons trained each day until they were coated in sweat, why they took the upgrades and the new gear, why they worked obsessively to make their combat more efficient and deadly.
They were still standing. Ghost’s forces were not.
The lights flickered, and Maple’s voice came over the team comms. “Everybody brace—now!”
Nyx locked her boots in place and went down in a ball on the floor. She had a view of the rest of them doing the same thing—and then the airlocks burst open. The bodies of their opponents went hurtling towards the breach, knocking into the Dragons. Nyx heard grunts of annoyance, more than of pain, and a few names called out as the teammates grabbed for one another.
Around her, there was only silence—and a door now leading directly into the void.
The station shuddered.
“Aaaaand everybody get out. I’m getting the shuttle bay ready. Captain?”
“On it.” Nyx sprinted for the door and took careful aim with her vambrace while the Conway settled into place, shuttle doors open. Her laser sight danced on the wall of the bay and she shot a line out of her armor, where it lay coiled most of the time, to thunk against the wall and lock into place. It pinged a confirmation and she hooked the other end to the station, grabbed the line in a loose hold, and launched herself out into the lack.
One by one, her team launched behind her. They called out their numbers to let her know they were all accounted for. She heard two voices that sounded injured, and there were only two of them left to go when someone else chimed in.
“Yo, boss.” It was Loki, his voice still tinged with pain. “Little less dramatic than last time. I thought you were always supposed to go bigger and better on this sort of thing—”
“Get that line unhooked!” Maple’s voice broke in, taut. “Now, do it now!”
“On it,” Doc called back. “Just a sec, I’m—fuck!”
The line jerked sideways and went tight, and the dragons hung on as the Conway’s engines blazed above, trying to keep the ship stable.
“Doc, now would be good!”
“Just a sec, almost have it!” Doc’s voice was determinedly cheerful.
Nyx, who had swung sideways, had to curl her feet in so she could hit the side wall of the shuttle bay. Artificial gravity took over the next moment and she tumbled away, more concerned with leaving the landing spot clear than with staying upright. When she locked her boots and looked down at the station, her jaw dropped.
One wrong spark and the whole place could go up, Centurion had said—and he’d been right. Fire had consumed the decks that held the prototype ships and the robots below the station were flying out of control, slamming themselves into the hulls of the destroyers they’d been building as the ships’ engines blazed with sudden fury.
“I’ve got it!” Doc called. “Everyone hold on!” The last one out of the now-heaving station, she grabbed the line and jumped—while Centurion, now in the shuttle bay with them, slammed his hand down on the button to retract the cord. It yanked the Dragons through empty space faster than they had any right to be going, and their various landings on the deck of the ship were neither graceful nor gentle.
But that gave Maple the space to close the shuttle doors and press the ship into overdrive. There was a last flare in the windows, and they saw pieces of the station spiraling out of control behind them. There was one dizzying view of a destroyer consumed with light, and then it, too, burst into shards and nothingness.
“Sweet fancy Moses,” Centurion muttered, reminding Nyx of Aegis. “What in hell was all of that?”
“My aunt and I were both trying to take over the station,” announced a cheerful voice. “I won.”
There was a pause.
“Everyone, meet Harry.” Maple’s voice was drily amused.
Nyx groaned and sank down onto the deck. She wrapped her arms around her knees and hung her head. Now that the battle was over, she could feel exhaustion dragging at her.
“Loki.”
“…Yes?”
“Did you fucking jinx us?”
There was a burst of laughter and Loki helped her to her feet with a laugh. His eyes were dancing.
“I’ll be more careful next time,” he promised. “Next time we’re on one of Ghost’s stations—”
“Oh, shit,” Nyx interrupted. “Talon didn’t manage to fucking kill her, did he? Here I was, hoping she was on Tian Station to get dealt with.” There was a flash of fear. “Maple—”
“Oh, he’s been in touch.” Maple cleared her throat. “You should probably call him. He’s … not in a good mood.”
“Everyone present and accounted for?”
“Oh, the team’s fine. The ship, though….”
“Oh, no,” Nyx said. That ship was Talon’s baby, from the mugs in the kitchen to the table in the war room. He’d been involved in every aspect of the planning, and he hadn’t stopped upgrading it in all the years she’d known him. Even Nyx, Navy-trained and much stricter than the rest of them in most respects, had been secretly relieved to get off the Ariane and away from Talon’s absolutely insane standards of cleanliness.
“Wherever he is,” Loki said, “we should stop on the way and pick up a lot of whiskey.”
“You’re onto something, Morel.” Nyx grinned at him as she left. “All right, Maple, I’m heading to my quarters. Patch me through.”
CHAPTER THIRTY
IT HAD BEEN several hours and several bottles of whiskey, and even between the combined command crews of the Ariane, Conway, and Io, that was a lot of whiskey. Tersi lay very still on one of the long couches in their hotel room on Tian Station and concentrated very hard on making the room stop spinning.
He was glad Dess wasn’t here to see him like this, though she’d probably find it hilarious. She and Harry had flown their parents out to the station and were out having a dignified dinner somewhere.
“She took my fucking ship,” Talon said, his voice slightly slurred. It had been a frequent refrain over the course of the night, but repetition didn’t seem to have come with acceptance.
Loki had reached the stage of drunkenness where he found this pronouncement hilarious
. He lay with his head draped over the side of one of the beds and shook with laughter.
“Hey.” Talon sounded disgruntled. “Stop it. Not funny.”
Loki only laughed harder, and it wasn’t long before Tera was laughing as well. Cade joined in next, having managed to prop himself up against the side of a bed while he tried and failed to open the latest bottle of whiskey.
“Stop laughing, all of you! Especially you.” Talon gave a glare in Tera’s direction. “Mocking my pain. She took my goddamned ship.”
Nyx gave a peal of laughter and sank her face into one hand, shoulders shaking as she leaned on Wraith’s shoulder. Wraith, now that Talon’s teammates had started to laugh, was allowing herself to get in on the amusement. She pushed her glass over to Aegis when he held up a bottle of tequila—no one else on the team seemed to enjoy it, which left the two of them rather the worse for wear at this point—and chuckled at Talon.
“We’ll help you get it back, stop whining.”
“She’s going to break it,” Talon said mournfully. “I’ll get it back and it’ll be all covered with scratches.”
“You’ll have to fill the team in quick, then, won’t you?” Aegis asked. “I’m not fixing a ship up with two thirds of a crew. And newbies do the hull painting.”
“Good call,” Tersi said. The words came out a lot less crisply than he’d intended.
“How you doing over there?” Tera called.
“‘M good. Happy.” He rolled his head to look at her.
“He’s sickening since he fell in love,” Talon confided to Tera in a stage whisper. “He whistles all the time.”
Aegis nodded contemplatively, but Tersi noticed that the older man seemed pleased by the situation. Aegis, he’d been realizing, was all show when it came to gruffness.
He closed his eyes and settled back on the couch, then opened them hastily. The world spun much faster when he wasn’t looking at something. He gripped the sides of the couch and prayed that everything would stop spinning soon—and that Dess wouldn’t be back until he was in at least fair shape.