by Natalie Grey
Talon began to circle, his eyes narrowing faintly in surprise. Of all the things he would have expected from her right now, patience wasn’t one. Nyx ran hot, always had. She was already a dangerous opponent, both in sparring and in real combat—even by the standards of the Dragons.
More patience would only make her more lethal.
They circled and still she did not attack. Her eyes followed him, but she said nothing.
“So if we’re…” she began.
Talon closed fast, one foot punching out to shove her across the room. She got out of the way by a hairsbreadth, so close that he felt her breath as he went past her—and he saw the faint smile on her lips. She met his eyes as she took up position across the mats again and began to circle once more.
Talon narrowed his eyes at her. “You were saying?”
“Before you interrupted me, you mean?” She shot him an amused look. “If we’re going to Victus—”
He attacked again, hoping to spur her into committing, and this time she ducked and twisted, throwing him over her shoulder and depositing him on the mats with a thud before sliding away again to wait.
“—we can lock him in the loading bays,” she finished. “Their ramps swivel.”
Talon pushed himself up. She was crouching, watching him.
And she was correct about Victus. It was one of the smaller terminals, so its cargo ships docked at the same landing bays as the passenger ships. The ramps from the landing bays could swivel up, to bring people to and from the main part of the station, or down, to bring cargo to and from the loading bays on the lower levels.
Which still left one question.
“We’re doing this now?” Talon asked her. “We’re planning the op now?”
Now she did attack, and he barely managed to get out of the way in time. “Yes,” she said, uncompromising.
“Shouldn’t we have some diagrams to—goddammit.” He only barely got out of range of a kick and glared at her.
“You’ve looked over all that information, you don’t need to see it again.” She flexed her fingers and curled them into a fist. “And the last time we tried to do this, you lied to me. This time you get punched.”
“You haven’t landed one yet,” he shot back.
Her whole body jerked. It was subtle, but he saw the urge to come after him.
But again, she pushed the urge away and settled back to wait.
“Oh, come on, when did you get so patient?”
To his surprise, she shot a grin at Centurion. “I’ve been taking a masterclass.”
He took the opening of her looking away to rush her, but she stood her ground and tipped back on her standing leg to whip a kick up at his head. He only just managed to duck out of the way….
And caught her foot to the head as she spun and let her leg lash out a second time.
He took the hit and grabbed for her, hauling her up and into range, absorbing another blow from a punch and locking her arm. His hand shot out to hit her torso and her face tightened. A flurry of hands, elbows, and knees later, they broke apart to circle again.
Both of them were nursing injuries now, so both of them were cannier.
She was still being much too smart, Talon decided.
“I did what I did for your own good,” he told her.
He saw her take in the words, realize exactly what he was trying to do … and go for it anyway.
“You son of a bitch.” She closed and ducked at the last moment, driving up to tip him back over her shoulder. She turned and dropped before he could get onto his back, trying to get her arm under his chin. “Superior, idiotic, infuriating—”
“You were going to go in without us,” Talon choked out. He swept one leg out and used it to flip both of them over. He couldn’t break her grip, goddammit.
“Yeah, because they came after us—you didn’t call in another team every time someone tried to kill you, you stupid bastard.” She punctuated her words with a jerk of her arm.
“You’re one of my team,” Talon gritted back. His fingers worked their way under her forearms and slowly, ever so slowly, began to pry her grip loose.
With an oath, she released her arm in a rush and shoved him forward, trying to get away before he could grab at her.
She wasn’t quite quick enough. He caught her arm and dragged her back and they grappled, hands searching for elbow locks, arms sliding expertly out of the way of attack patterns they had learned about one another. Her eyes met his, furious and hurt—and scared.
When she got her opening, she took: a punch, and a hard one. Pain burst across his face and he stumbled back, cupping his nose.
She took full advantage. She was on him before his vision cleared, holding him on his back with his shoulder wrenched out of position. He heard her breath in his ear, more ragged than it should be for how long they’d sparred. She shouldn’t be close to tired yet.
But she was hurting, and she was scared.
“I don’t know who the fuck is doing this,” she told him, her voice low. “I don’t know who’s coming after me but I do know they’re messing with me. Do you think I’m stupid, Talon?”
“No.”
“I need you,” she said fiercely. “A Dragon team leader. My friend. Not a babysitter. When I was doing the command trial—”
“You were still on my team.” He felt her surprise at the words. She sat back, staring at him and he pushed himself up on his elbows. “I knew who had your back.”
She swallowed, looked down. When she looked back, he saw her hurt. “Never again,” she told him. Never treat me like that again.
“Never again.” He reached out a hand and smiled when she clasped it. “We go get Estabrook, lock him in the loading bays at Victus, and show him what two teams can do. Then we’ll go for whoever attacked you—if you want my help.”
She pulled him into a hug. “Of course I want it. We have each other’s backs.”
“Always,” he agreed.
She hauled him up and the teams clapped. They’d been talking, low and relaxed since they realized the fight was over, but they were still glad to see Talon and Nyx no longer at one another’s throats.
Talon staunched the flow of blood from his nose and waved at the two command crews. “We’ve got details to hammer out for this one. Jester?”
“Yep.” Jester gave a salute and headed for the cockpit to get underway.
“Come on.” Talon headed for the war room and beckoned Centurion over to walk with him. “Now, this masterclass. You teach people from other teams, too?”
Centurion laughed and clapped him on the shoulder. “Only mine, man, only mine. Captain’s a quick learner, too.”
“Nyx,” Nyx called at him.
Talon looked over his shoulder to grin at her. “Get used to the titles, boss. You’re a team leader now.”
12
“It’s a risk.” The voice hung uncannily between human and machine. “Two Dragon crews? One alone is difficult to fight.”
“We have the trap set.” Tristan Mandekar settled back in his seat and gave an unfriendly look at the comm unit. Then, remembering who he was talking to, he schooled his features to show nothing.
He wouldn’t put it past Ghost to have secondary recording devices in every ship she owned—and she held grudges.
That was why he was out here, after all. He chose his words carefully before reminding her of that. “They’re sticking close to one another right now. If we try to separate them, we run the risk of Team 9 showing up unexpectedly in the middle of the operation—and the risk is significant. Besides….” He smiled coldly. “You said to make her hurt. What would hurt her more than this?”
“Finding her family. Finding her girlfriend.”
“I’ll be able to find more on the family soon.” He would soon have a source who would help him with that. “The girlfriend’s off the grid, though. No way to know what they did with her. She might be on the Conway, for all I know. Or there’s another possibility—the Alliance rep
orted her missing, presumed dead. She might actually be dead.”
“No.” Ghost was uncompromising. “She’s not dead, and Nyx would never take the risk of having her on the ship. She’s too devoted to her work.” The words were low and furious. “Nothing gets between her and a mission.”
Tristan wanted to sigh. They should not be focusing on this right now. They needed to recover from the loss of the ore smuggling operation and come up with something new. Their position now was weak, and weakness could get them all killed.
Instead of any of that, though, Ghost was focusing on this: taking down one Dragon team and making them pay. And when Tristan found them allies, such as Estabroo, she didn’t think much of that, either.
Look what happened to Aleksandr Soras, Tristan wanted to say. He said it to himself all the time these days. It reminded him to be careful. Soras had bet that the Dragons wouldn’t find out who he was and that they wouldn’t be able to get to him. That was the wrong way to go about it.
You had to put aside your ego and ask what was the best way to take them out.
Of course, the best way was ‘quick and clean.’ Tristan didn’t like the idea of keeping Nyx alive while they destroyed her life piece by piece. A Dragon who was alive, was a Dragon who was a threat.
Tristan told himself that he would kill Nyx if he had to, and suffer the consequences. Ghost would understand.
He hoped.
And for now, he would follow Ghost’s plan. “You said to make her hurt,” Tristan said again, “and I will. She’ll pay.”
For God’s sake, why was Ghost giving him this mission if she was going to doubt him every step of the way? He wasn’t fool enough to disappoint her. He’d told her the angle he was going for and she’d agreed to it then. Now she was behaving like it wasn’t enough.
Then he saw the truth: it wasn’t enough. No amount of pain would ever be enough to sate Ghost.
Son of a bitch. Now he had two angry Dragon teams on the one hand, and a vengeful boss who was never going to be happy on the other.
And was it just him, or had Ghost’s temper gotten worse since she had lost her human body? He gave a full-body shudder at the thought. Numerous doctors had come and gone over the years, first saying they could transfer her consciousness into a machine, and then conceding defeat months or years later.
She had killed them. Painfully.
And then one of the doctors had succeeded. The schedule had been sharply accelerated when Nyx attacked the secret base, but they had managed to pull it off. Maryam Samuels’ consciousness had been transferred into a body that was entirely mechanical.
She had the same memories. In some ways, she seemed to be the same person.
Except something was … off.
Tristan decided not to think about that for now,
“She’ll pay,” he told Ghost again. “I’ll get her at Victus. I’ll make sure you can see it all happen. Then I’ll bring her back to you.”
“Good,” Ghost said, and ended the call. The words For your sake hung, implicit, in the air.
Tristan shuddered and set his course for Victus—with one stop beforehand. He needed to rendezvous with his source, after all.
Comfortably ensconced on a secure shuttle to Calabria, JD settled into his seat and tried to let go of the last, lingering traces of fear.
Even the Dragons had never tried to take on the mob. He would be safe there. It was unlikely they would even figure out where had gone, and if they did, they would not be able to get to him.
He looked at his comm unit again and shook his head slightly at the message inviting him to rendezvous with the other agents. He knew it was from them, it had the signatures they’d been taught to recognize, little code words sprinkled in.
And JD had heard about what happened at Akintola—he knew this was probably Estabrook. He hadn’t known the man’s identity until now, but he’d heard that Grunt’s team was one down and it was easy enough to put it all together.
Estabrook wanted to meet up for safety, to have a team.
JD reclined his seat and let his eyes drift closed. Estabrook wasn’t his problem anymore. JD had all the safety he could need, and he wasn’t prepared to stick his neck out for anyone. Soras was gone, and no matter what the zealots said, he wasn’t getting out of prison. There were a hundred people lined up to kill him even if he did.
JD was a free agent, and he was sure as hell going to take care of himself first.
“Glass of wine for you, sir?”
JD opened his eyes. An attendant had arrived with two crystal glasses of wine, one a creamy gold, the other glittering deep red.
“Thank you, yes.” He took the white and smiled as he sipped it. It was good. It was the sort of luxury his knowledge would buy on Calabria. He was useful to them.
It was just business, really. Nothing personal. He was simply making the smartest decision he could.
Estabrook watched the other craft approach and blew out his breath in a long sigh.
He didn’t like this. When you found temporary allies, you should all have the same goal. That was just common sense. There was nothing else holding the team together, after all. No loyalty. No training.
I have two teams at my back and you? You have the dregs. Centurion’s voice echoed in his head and Estabrook clenched his hand. No one was at his back now, no one was watching out for him. Grunt knew. They all knew. They weren’t going to kill him, but they wouldn’t lift a finger when Talon came for him.
And when he had sent a query to the other three agents still alive … none had responded.
He checked his comm again and tipped his head back against the headrest when he saw the blank screen. He would have heard if a message had come in. He was resorting to illogical behavior.
If he only had one potential ally, that was what he would have to use. Whoever this person was, they didn’t want Talon as much as Nyx … but as long as Talon died in the bargain, Estabrook told himself he didn’t care.
He made preparations to dock and cleared everything from his mind but the mission.
He just had to see it through.
13
Victus Terminal melded the shabby look of a space station that no one important cared about, with the comfortable, lived-in feeling of a place people loved and called home.
Originally, Victus had only been intended to serve as a fueling station for ships heading out to the mining systems of Valentine, Mazer, and Petra. A few decades later, Crius had been found and terraformed, and now Yee was taking to terraforming as well.
Two farming planets and multiple mining colonies weren’t enough to make Victus big, but they were enough to provide constant traffic, and Victus had, over the years, developed its own culture. The station inhabitants had also added onto the structure with anything that could be made airtight: shuttles, ships, shipping containers, and more. Victus was now a hodgepodge of compartments with a hacked-together electrical system that had somehow managed not to fry its inhabitants even once.
The cavernous lower portion of the station dwarfed the inhabited piece. Huge cargo bays held container upon container of fuel, crops, and basic supplies. The cargo bays could be rotated to provide access to the ships that came either to drop off goods, or pick them up, and the walkways that led from the landing bays could pivot up into the station’s inhabited portion, or down into the cargo bays.
The Ariane and Conway docked at separate ends of the landing bay and Nyx headed off the ship into an area redolent with the smells of frying food and filled with people calling back and forth in dialects she hardly understood.
“Mbote,” the dock workers called as Nyx, Loki, and Maple headed down the gangway. She lifted her hand in a greeting, a smile firmly planted on her face. She was wearing armor, but she didn’t want to look like she was going to cause trouble.
They hardly needed skittish civilians to contend with.
“That was a greeting, right?” she asked Loki.
“Yes. It’s Lingala, an Earth
language. A lot of people in the cities spoke it.” To Maple, Loki added, “I was born on Crius.”
“No kidding?” She looked over at him in surprise. Like Foxtail, Maple seemed to have gotten her name from her coloring: she was all russet and amber and brown, and what would have been imposing good looks were softened a bit by a generous helping of freckles. “You know Eggie?”
“Sorry?” Loki looked lost.
“Egbele Gola—he leads Team 2. We ran a few missions with them a while back. They all called him Eggie. Anyway, he’s from Crius, too. Didn’t think many people from there ever came to Seneca.”
“We don’t much,” Loki admitted. “I just didn’t really want to be a farmer, and even in the cities….”
“Eh, I get it. I was raised in the boonies, too—Elantra. Not like Crius, but not exactly somewhere you go for a good time.” She ducked under a strand of paper flowers and smiled up at the ceiling, where similar decorations were looped and hung all over the place. “I like Victus, though. Has a nice feel to it. Also, no one’s glaring at us.”
“The Alliance has a good reputation out here,” Loki explained. “The mining colonies are so big that they’d be a target if there wasn’t a good presence out here, so there are a lot of ships patrolling. Then there’s the terraforming—pretty much around the time they finished with Crius, Yee started up. So the Alliance is always here. They have a big base on Crius and an official district here, I think—and then stuff out in the other systems. People here get the sense that the Alliance cares for them.”
“That’s a nice surprise,” Maple murmured, and Nyx caught her eye with a grin and a nod.
It was much more common for remote systems to think that the Alliance didn’t care about them at all, except when it came to tax time. To a lot of planets and stations, the Alliance was just a group of rich people on inner planets who liked to make up rules—and that reputation wasn’t entirely without merit.
The unusual good will found on Victus wasn’t just pleasant, it was useful. Because the people here liked the Alliance, Dragons were likely to have a warmer reception. Somewhere else, they might find themselves looking over their shoulder not only for their enemies, but for any random person on the station who had a grudge and a gun.