by Natalie Grey
Nyx caught sight of Talon heading through the crowd toward her with Jim and Esu. For once, none of the three of them were wearing their helmets, and Nyx exchanged a quick glance with Loki.
“Did they get him drunk?” Loki asked her. “Mr. Always-keep-your-visor-down? Or did he think no one would realize it was him if it wasn’t on?”
Nyx choked back a laugh before nodding at Talon. “So? Oh, by the way—Talon, Esu, Jim, this is Maple. Maple, that’s Esu over there, Jim, and Talon Rift.”
“Nice to meet you.” Maple smiled at the others and gave a special nod to Jim. “Jim and I go way back, actually. He was on Team 2 when we were working together.”
“What did Eggie call him?” Talon asked in sudden interest. He’d been trying to give Jim a nickname for years, and Jim kept holding out.
“I swore to him I’d never tell,” Maple said serenely.
Talon grumbled and beckoned them all toward the station side of the landing bay.
“This way.” He led them off toward the ramps, presently leading up into the main terminal. “I’ve dropped a considerable amount of cash to make sure that they’ll flip back up as soon as Estabrook comes down here … and stay that way until I give the word.”
“Hugo’s dropped a considerable amount of cash, you mean.” She fell in beside him and the four others clustered behind them as they made their way through the crowd.
“Possibly just me.” Talon winced. “I couldn’t get ahold of him to clear it beforehand and I have no idea how he feels about bribes. So it’s a ‘submit the expense report and pray’ kind of situation.”
“How much was it?”
“Three times my annual salary.”
Nyx’s jaw dropped. Having recently become aware of just how much a new Dragon team leader made, she could only guess at how much extra Talon had, what with his rank and his tenure. No matter what his bonus for those things, three times his annual salary was more than a lot of people could expect to see in decades.
“They’re very principled, the people here,” Talon said. “Friendly. Absolutely friendly. You don’t get the sense they’re going to stab you in the back—once you’ve made a deal with them, you’re in. But damn, do they charge for that.”
“Loki mentioned they like the Alliance here.”
“If we all pay them this way, I’m not surprised.”
Nyx laughed and drew to a halt as klaxons went off to warn people that the ramps were shifting. Barred gates began to drop at both ends. People in shipping uniforms hurried to get off the platforms, but the native station workers didn’t seem worried at all. A few even ducked under the gates as they came down, unfazed by the idea of several tons of metal coming down on their heads.
Talon looked around them worriedly. “I don’t like how many people are here. I thought Victus would be less … inhabited.”
Nyx nodded. In many of the more remote stations, there were only enough people to work the equipment. The hallways were grimy, depressing, and empty. Nyx and Talon had both gone over the station read-outs for Victus, but those read-outs hadn’t told them much about the feel of the place.
For instance, the hundreds of civilians with little food carts and other stalls set up in the landing bays.
“Well, we’re hardly committed,” Nyx pointed out. “We can call it off and tail him to wherever he goes next. A little patience never hurt anyone.”
“All right, that’s it—if Centurion has made you this patient in three days, I’m stealing him off you.”
“Try it and die.” Nyx laughed. “And, you know, hey—so you lose three years’ salary.”
Talon groaned. “I’d forgotten that.”
“Let’s just scope the place,” Nyx suggested. “Right? We figure out what we’ve got, if there’s any way to close him off once we get here. And you know Hugo’s going to pay for it.”
Talon nodded, but his arms were crossed and his face was set. He clearly didn’t think much of their odds.
Once the ramp had pivoted—a surprisingly impressive operation—the gates stayed down. The cargo that flowed through this station was Victus’s lifeblood. Station management wasn’t going to let people steal it. Security guards had appeared at both sides, where small doors set into the barred grating led down into the cargo holds. Presumably, the larger gates wouldn’t open unless there was a scheduled pickup or delivery.
Talon spoke to one of the guards and their group was waved through.
Nyx, curious, led the way down into the relative darkness. With much of the cargo loading handled via automation, there wasn’t much need for light down here, and this bay was empty. Red lights, energy-efficient but somewhat creepy, marked some of the exits and a control booth along one wall.
On the opposite wall, very new, was a large airlock. Nyx caught Talon’s eye and jerked her head at it.
“That explains the landing bays, then.” It appeared that Victus, once designed solely for cargo storage, had made a way for cargo ships to dock directly with the bays, and now used the landing bays solely for people.
Talon blew out a breath and sighed. “Okay, none of this works, then.” He ran a hand over his bare head and squeezed his eyes shut. “Fuck. Seriously.”
“Oh, come on.” Nyx gave him a look. “We’re tracking a Dragon. This should be fun, right? We have a capable opponent, we need to be sneaky….”
“He got away once and he has a hostage,” Talon said bluntly.
Nyx’s smile died and she swallowed. “Yeah. Yeah, I suppose he does.” She walked, staring up at the ceilings. One never knew when a certain aspect of architecture or technology would help a plan come together. “And he hasn’t been in contact with the rest of them.”
“What can you expect?” Talon called back. He had gone the other way to examine the floor tiling. The rest of the team was spreading out to do similar checks of the rest of the room. “The man’s a traitor. All he knows how to do is screw people over.”
Nyx was smiling back when the blast walls came down. It was almost instantaneous—one moment, she was staring at Talon’s smiling face, and the next, there was a thick glass wall between her team and his. Similar walls had come down at the ends of the room, shielding the station for the eventuality of the airlock opening.
She had her visor down and her rifle off her back before she even thought. It was instinctive. Rustles and clicks told her that her team had done the same. They backed into a tight circle, each scanning their third of the area.
Nothing like this happened by accident.
Over the speaker system, she heard laughter … and then the light in the control booth switched on. Two men stood there. One was Estabrook, his sharp features set an inscrutable expression.
The other was the man who had infiltrated the Dragon docks on Seneca, laughing delightedly as he saw Nyx standing there.
14
“Hello, Nyx.” The man was smiling at her in the dim light. She hadn’t been sure, from her single glimpse of him at the docks, that he was the same man from Foxtail’s report.
Now she was sure. From his close-cropped, dark brown hair to the peaked brows and dark eyes, this was Tristan Mandekar. Before Ghost had hired him years ago, he had been nothing. Whatever she had seen in him, it didn’t show up in his reports. His bio was unremarkable. Now, however….
Now there was no way to know what he might be.
Nyx said nothing. She did not move. She fixed her eyes on him and waited.
His smile broadened. “Can you really be the same person who attacked us a few weeks back? You were so impetuous then. So reckless. You sent a civilian in to do your dirty work for you—oh, yes, I know. I’ve seen the tapes.”
He knew about Mala. Nyx felt a chill run down her spine and she pressed her finger over the trigger.
Mala had been declared dead in every Alliance database. It had been suggested by John Hugo in the wake of Mala’s work on the smuggling ring. He suspected that there were many of Ghost’s agents still left at various levels of the go
vernment, and did not want Mala hurt by them.
But anyone who looked closely at it, who knew about the mission, would suspect that it was a lie. It was simply too convenient for her to be dead.
In reality, Hugo had only made Mala slightly more difficult to find, and if Nyx allowed herself to give anything away here, Mala would be found and she would be killed—brutally.
“She was special to you, wasn’t she?” Tristan asked her. He tilted his head to watch Nyx. “You know, most people would hide someone like that away, bring them someplace safe. You brought her on a mission. And she died for you to take a shot at Ghost. How does that feel … Nyx?”
She could not respond. She could not give anything away. At his side, Estabrook shifted restlessly. His eyes were focused past Nyx and before she could help herself, she looked over her shoulder at Talon.
Tristan laughed again. “Ah, yes. The Major and his XO, Talon and Nyx, so well-respected, so lethal … when working together.”
Contempt and smug hatred laced his voice. Nyx turned back to him slowly.
If he thought he could turn them against one another, he was very mistaken.
“You know, since I started hunting you, I wondered if you were as cold as he was.” Tristan looked between the two of them. “Very soon, I’m going to know. I’m going to enjoy watching that.”
Nyx swallowed. There was one mission Talon was famous for—taking down a ship full of slaves to get to the people who ran the slaving syndicate. Now, in a station full of innocent civilians, she had an idea of just how Tristan expected to test her.
“You know someone has to pay for what happened,” Tristan told her. “Someone always has to pay. And you’re lucky—you get to choose. You can save your friends if you want. Just look at them: the Dragons you served with. Look at them, Nyx.”
He stared her down and his hand hovered, very obviously, over the airlock button.
Hating him, hating that he could make her do this, Nyx looked over her shoulder at the others. She met Talon’s eyes, and forced herself to look at Jim and Esu as well. She knew all three of them better than their own families did, from the foods they liked to the way they folded their clothes … and how they killed.
She knew just how each one of them was feeling now, locked in a chamber with an airlock at one end, knowing that she was being forced through some pantomime before this man tried to kill them all.
Talon was doing everything in his power not to let fear or anger into his expression, but she knew him too well not to see it.
She looked back at Tristan.
“You can save them,” Tristan said again. “All you have to do is let the civilians die instead.”
Nyx went cold. If it came to it, it had to be the civilians who survived. No Dragon would ever forgive themselves for living in that situation. But if there were a way out of it—
“There are two bombs on the station,” Tristan told her softly. “One is on the docking clamps of the Ariane. The other is hidden in the electrical system at the heart of Victus Terminal. And you can choose who lives and who dies. You see that button there? It opens the airlock on Talon’s side of the bay.”
Beside him, Estabrook leaned forward. Nyx could see the fierce hunger in his gaze. If he had been making this test, she knew there would not have been any option—Talon would simply be dead. Talon had taken down Aleksandr Soras and JD was now an outcast from his team, hunted, knowing that not one of the people he’d counted as friends would step up to save him.
But Estabrook wasn’t in control here. Nyx frowned.
“Either you go over there and you press the button,” Tristan said, “or both those bombs go off, Nyx. Both of them. So choose. You have one minute.”
Nyx let her rifle drop at last. She walked to the glass and raised her right hand to press against it and after a moment, Talon came to press his against it. His eyes met hers. He looked at Esu and Jim and they came to stand with him.
Nyx felt the tears in her eyes and flipped her visor up so they could see her. They couldn’t think she was doing this lightly. They couldn’t.
They didn’t. They knew. Each one of them nodded at her. Talon gave her a lopsided smile and Nyx saw his lips move: Do it. Get it over with. It had always been his way of doing things: if you had to do something, you might as well just do it quickly.
Behind her, Maple and Loki had drawn together in horrified silence.
Nyx nodded back to them and slung her rifle over her back. She made for the button at the other end of the room, not meeting Loki’s eyes, not looking at Tristan. He was laughing quietly.
“So determined,” he taunted her. “But when it comes to it, will you really press the button, Nyx? Will you?”
“Watch me,” Nyx muttered. She had never hated someone so much in her life. He had known what choice she would make and he was forcing her to make it anyway.
And it didn’t matter that she had to make it. It didn’t matter that Talon understood and that either of them would have given their life to save a civilian in a heartbeat. It didn’t matter that Team 9 would take this man down and make him suffer. None of it mattered. None of it could undo what he was doing.
She hated him.
She looked over her shoulder at the three of them one last time … and slammed her hand down on the button before she could think better of it.
She couldn’t watch, though. She heard the door open, she heard Loki’s cry, and she stood with her face turned away and her eyes squeezed shut as Tristan gave a full-throated laugh.
“She did! And you said she wouldn’t.”
Estabrook’s response was unintelligible. He sounded, if anything, annoyed.
“He died knowing it was Nyx who killed him,” Tristan said serenely. “Actually, he’s probably not dead yet. He’s probably still alive out there, dying slowly, thinking about all the people he loves … like the one who pressed that button.”
Loki gave a choked sound and Nyx found herself shaking through and through. She had done the only thing she could think of, the only thing, and—
“There’s only one thing left to do, Captain Alvarez.” Tristan’s voice was low and sweet now. “Just one little thing. Someone always has to pay, don’t they. I said you could choose between the civilians and Talon, but really, there was a cost I didn’t mention—there always is, isn’t there? A little hidden condition? And that’s your life. So just take your sidearm, right there, that’s the one—just take it and put it up to your head, and fire. It’s just as easy as pressing that button. Just one little thing to do, and then you never have to do anything else again.”
Nyx looked at the window.
“Don’t you understand?” Loki’s voice was raw. “It’s not just going to be you, it’s going to be all of us! It wasn’t just going to be Talon, it was—”
Maple grabbed his arm and jerked it hard. “Shut up.” When he opened his mouth she gave him a fierce look. “Shut up, Loki.”
“No! She’s playing into it! He lied to her and she can’t see it and she’s going to—Nyx!”
Nyx had picked the sidearm out of its holster and was drawing it up to her head. Her eyes met Estabrook’s. He looked hungry again. Talon’s death had been too quick. He’d realized that revenge was never as sweet as you thought it was going to be.
And then she looked at Tristan and her blood ran cold.
He wasn’t here for revenge. He was here because she was in his way. He was eliminating her and Talon quickly and cleanly so he could run Ghost’s organization.
That must be it. It was the only thing that made sense.
Nyx looked down at the floor for a moment.
“You’re drawing this out, Captain, and you really shouldn’t. Other people might get hurt. I’ll give you until the count of ten.” Tristan spoke in the sing-song voice and Nyx hid her smile.
Because Estabrook, a Dragon through and through, was clearly annoyed with the taunting. And as Tristan began to count down, his voice still sing-song and smug, Estabrook
looked away in annoyance.
Estabrook, who would have been quick enough to stop her from pulling anything.
Nyx pulled the gun away from her head and fired at the glass that enclosed the booth. The shot sent her reeling backwards and the glass shattered. It was meant to take a bullet … but that hadn’t been a bullet and the gun in Nyx’s hand wasn’t any ordinary sidearm.
She’d spent years only using her rifle, knowing that a weapon like this would create stories. As far as almost anyone knew, it was just a top-of-the-line pistol, and now that trick had finally saved her ass.
They might easily have ended this by venting the bay—and now she had made sure that if they did that, they would die, too.
She whipped her rifle back over her head and began firing as Estabrook ran. There was a back way out of the booth and he pushed his way through it, putting his weight behind it to swing it closed so fast that Tristan only just managed to get through it before it slammed shut.
Nyx hurled herself against the outer door of the booth and beat at it with the butt of her rifle, and then punches and kicks. Her armor activated and clicked into place, delivering targeted blows.
But she wasn’t getting anywhere.
Shit. “Foxtail, can you get the—” The blast barrier leading to the ram slid open. “Thank you!” Nyx waved a hand at Loki and Maple and sprinted for the ramp. “And the airlock—”
“I’ve got it locked.” Foxtail’s voice was tight. “I wasn’t able to get the other one in time. I’m so sorry. I didn’t know what you wanted me to do.”
“You did the right thing. Now get the ship undocked and have the Ariane undock as well, I wouldn’t put it past him to have a bomb on our ship, too, and blow everything anyway.”
“Already on it. We’re both undocking and station security has been alerted.”
“I’m on my way.” What she hoped to accomplish, Nyx couldn’t be sure, but if there was a bomb on the Conway….