by Natalie Grey
“Talon.” Tera’s voice crackled onto the group line. “You need to go. There’s a postal worker heading into the financial district. You have forty seconds max.”
“Got it.” He caught a faint set of noises at the other end of the line. “What’s going on?”
“We have contact.”
“What?”
“There are guards in the office.” Her voice was a breath.
“What? Get out.”
“You need to run the trace. Keep going as long as you can.”
“Tera. Tera.” He shot a look at Tersi, and an anguished look at the trace still running from the partial lock. Goddammit.
“She’s right,” Tersi told him. “Take the time.”
“What if she and Loki—”
“She’ll get him out.” Tersi’s voice was calm. “Five more seconds.”
Five… His heart was going to explode.
Four… He heard a flurry of activity on the comm, something that sounded like two people in full armor scrambling sideways.
Three. The light was still blinking yellow.
Two. Faint thuds sounded in his earpiece. He and Tersi exchanged a look.
One. Nothing. The light blinked yellow and Talon cursed.
Zero. “Tera, get out of there.”
Nothing.
“Tera.”
Nothing, and then a faint series of taps. Morse code?
Y…O…U…F…I…R—
“I get it, we’re going.” Green flashed in the corner of his vision. A lock. Thank God. Talon grabbed the devices, and he and Tersi sprinted for the exit, slipping out into the corridor and beginning to walk together, arguing loudly about pay codes and overtime as the postal worker came around the corner. They were still walking purposefully, neither of them betraying themselves by looking back, when they heard the gunfire.
14
“Stop!” The first shot was still echoing around the room as the pistol discharged again, and again.
Shit, shit, shit, shit…. This was what she got for letting people live. Tera took a running leap over one of the desks and rolled onto the floor beyond, pushing herself up sideways to sprint down one of the side corridors. The security guard, still inconveniently alive, pounded after her until the sound of impact announced at Loki had joined the fight. Tera skidded to a halt and looked back.
“Come on.” Loki left the guard’s body in his wake and made for the doorway. Tera lost a moment checking the guard’s body. He was still alive, but not getting up anytime soon. Tera looked back in time to see two guards come from opposite directions, trying to take Loki out between the two of them.
Shit. It was a miscalculation in many ways, the first being that neither of them could fire a weapon or bring out a knife without endangering the other, but even Tera did not expect it to go quite as spectacularly wrong as it did.
She watched, open mouthed, as Loki launched into action with brutal elegance, his strikes precise. Pressure points and head strikes did their work, and once the two guards had crumpled to the ground, Loki beckoned to Tera to follow him. So abrupt was the shift from uncertain young man to warrior that Tera paused a moment before following.
It was around the corner that he ran into trouble. This corner of the security offices might presently be unoccupied, but there was always someone on duty—and, on a station like this, a good many attempts to break in. Loki, running, missed the faint lines in the floor that showed where a cage lay hidden, and was trapped a second later, the bars humming with electricity—a nasty touch, Tera thought, frowning despite herself.
The tramp of boots nearby told her they were not going to be alone for long. Her gaze darted to the control panel on the far wall—too much distance to cross, too difficult to hack—and back to the cage. There would be no bending those bars far enough in time, either, even if she could get the current out of them.
Only one thing for it. Tera sprinted for the door, hearing Loki’s hiss of disbelief, and wrenched it open, looking for a panel that would hide the controls. There it was. As she heard the footsteps of the other two in the hallway, she braced one foot on the inside of the wall and hauled at the doorframe until it came away with a crack of metal and plastic.
“What are you doing?” Talon stopped, peering inside and pausing when he saw Loki.
“System reset.” Tera scrabbled at the floor tiles. One fingernail ripped and she hissed in pain. But she was so close… She yanked, and then gave up and slammed her fist down, scrabbling at the shattered chunks of ceramic. So close, so close. “Get out, we’ll follow.”
“What?”
“Get back to the ship. Someone needs to get out with the information.” She reached up to pull one of the devices from his pocket and thanked her past self for programming all of her normal codes onto it. For a moment, she thought he would argue. Then he was gone, Tersi at his heels. Thrusting the device down into the opening in the floor, she plugged it in and ran the code, hoping, hoping—
With a sad little noise, the cage powered off and sank down.
“Come on!” Tera pulled out the device and ran, hearing Loki’s footsteps behind her.
“I thought you were leaving me.” Even sprinting, his voice was steady.
“Never,” Tera said seriously. She flashed a smile at him and he smiled back. They put on a burst of speed, coming around a corner into the plaza and seeing their teammates running ahead.
So close to freedom.
The guards materialized out of nowhere, tasers and nightsticks clutched in their hands. As Talon and Tersi launched themselves into the fray, Tera scanned the plaza for a good jumping off point.
“You flank them,” she called to Loki. She didn’t look to see if he obeyed. She pulled herself up the side of one of the financial offices, grimacing at the feel of her torn nails and bruised fingers, and then made her way quickly along a ledge at the top of the first floor.
The guards didn’t think to look up. No one ever thought to look up. Even Talon gave a yell of surprise when Tera came hurtling down to slam his attacker sideways onto the ground. The nightstick clattered away as Tera turned the man’s arm back and pressed his finger onto the taser’s trigger. She released his hands and rolled away just in time, driving an elbow into another guard’s solar plexus as she came up. The woman lost her breath and Tera sent her stumbling back with a kick. Another guard hesitated just a moment too long before choosing the gun instead of the taser, and went down with a shriek, unconscious before they hit the ground.
She heard the yell a moment too late and turned to see the taser leveled at her. Time went liquid-slow as she saw his finger squeeze around the trigger and she tried to force her sluggish muscles to move, get out of the way. She wasn’t going to make it—
Talon tackled her sideways, the barbs shooting harmlessly over their heads as Loki took the guard down. He and Tersi hauled the other two up, and then they were running, laughing like children as the guards stirred and moaned slightly.
“Thank God bankers don’t come to work early.”
Tera gave a gurgle of laughter. “Oh, they do, but around 6:30, not 4.”
“That’s why we had to get up so early?”
“You were already up.” She’d heard him going to one of the lower decks, and a full scan of her audio implants, one ear pressed directly onto the air duct at the edge of the brig, had caught the faint sounds of impact from a punching bag.
To her surprise, he colored and looked away. He swallowed hard before speaking.
“Io? Get the ship ready.”
“Did you get caught?” Cade’s voice was accusing.
“In a way.” They slowed as they made their way into the bustle of the main corridors, following the exact path back that they had taken in. Tera kept her hands curled loosely to hide the marks, and she saw Loki brush a splatter of blood from his cheek; at least it wasn’t his nose that had been broken.
They were almost to the ship when the shout went up behind them.
“Stop! Halt
!”
Tera looked around herself in evident curiosity, meeting the stares of other interested parties—she, the look said, had not the faintest idea what this was about. Their attention was fleeting; anyone here was accustomed to this sort of thing, and easily half of the people kept moving. Tera felt the prickle between her shoulder blades and fought the urge, as she always must, to run as far and as fast as she could. That would make her prey, and she was not prey.
They only ran when they made it to the docking bay itself. Their footsteps skidded on the slick metal of the gangway and they leapt into the Io as their pursuers came around the corner behind them.
“Stop!”
The door slammed closed and they were running through the decontamination spray, sputtering and laughing until they collapsed in the second airlock and felt the ship undock with a shudder. The Io banked away, its passengers rolling until the artificial gravity came on, and the first airlock door opened to reveal Cade, arms crossed.
“I hope it was worth it.”
“It was.” Talon grinned up at him, almost cheekily. “Full lock. I doubt he’s there anymore, but we’ve got a couple of days before he hears about this, I should think.”
“No one is going to mistake what happened in there for anything but Dragons,” Cade said curtly.
“I’m not a Dragon,” Tera pointed out. She smiled as she pushed herself up and reached down to pull Talon up after her. “Good fight, everyone.”
“Good fight,” they echoed back. Loki clapped her on the shoulder and Tersi nodded to her, both of them making their way down toward the back of the ship, and Cade was gone with a superhuman speed. Tera looked down at her hands, suddenly unable to meet Talon’s eyes.
“Thank you.” His voice was deep.
“What for?”
“Loki. Again.”
“It’s what you do. He helped me out in there, too.”
“Good to hear.”
They stared at one another, brown eyes meeting green, and her heart seemed to have forgotten how to beat.
“I should—”
“Right.” Talon looked around himself with a start as Tera held out her wrists for the cuffs. “But…” He hesitated, the cuffs a few inches from her skin.
Tera waited. The touch of metal, when it came, was soft; he held them away from her wrists with his own fingers, and his skin burned like a brand against hers. She stared down at her restraints, at the bound hands and his lingering touch—
“Thank you,” he said again, quietly.
And now she could not seem to smile. She walked back to the brig in miserable silence, feeling his curiosity and lingering softness of his fingers on her wrists, and she turned away before he could say goodbye at the door. He waited there after it closed, for almost a minute. Then he turned to go, and she sank down onto the bench, her head cradled in her hands.
Someone has to get out with the information.
I’d never leave you behind.
Good fight.
She’d meant every word. Tera clenched her fists and tried not to scream. What the hell was going on in her head? If they’d seen her father there, on Akintola Station, would she have killed him before she remembered herself? And would she still have the resolve to do what must be done when she had the opening to kill the Dragons?
She would, she told herself fiercely. She thought of the little message, broadcasting into the black, that she had sent from the security offices: I’m safe. I won’t fail you. –T
Guilt wormed in her chest and she superstitiously pressed a hand over her stomach. She knew where her loyalty lay.
I won’t fail you.
15
The lines of the star chart wavered in front of Talon’s eyes. He rubbed at his forehead, feeling the tension aching through his shoulders and down his spine. How long since he’d had a good night’s sleep? Months, perhaps. His dreams had been blood-soaked and filled with gunfire since he learned of the Warlord’s identity, and his sleep had been troubled, too, since Tera came to the ship. His words to Nyx the other day still echoed in his head: I just want it to be simple.
Nothing ever was. A Dragon, of all people, should know that.
“Sir?” Loki’s voice was tentative.
“Hmm?”
“We were thinking of knocking out one of the buoys temporarily.” Loki’s finger tapped one of the isolated sections of the map. “The last thing we want to do is bring Giles Corp out looking for us.”
Talon nodded. That was especially true if, as he suspected, Aleksandr had a controlling interest in the company. Lesedi and Tersi were seven hours into an attempt to trace ownership, and they still had nothing to show for it.
“Did Tera behave herself on Akintola?” Talon asked absently. His finger was tracing over the route from here to the shipping lanes, but his mind was in the brig, watching Tera turn away from him. “Did she say anything odd to you?”
He saw the Dragons in the room exchange a quick look, and fought to keep from clenching his hands. He couldn’t possibly be talking too much about her. He hardly ever mentioned her, in fact. No matter how his thoughts drifted.
“She…” Loki seemed to be trying to figure out what Talon wanted to hear.
“The truth, Loki.”
“She did everything a Dragon would’ve done,” Loki said promptly. “She heard the patrol coming before I did—I don’t know how, she shouldn’t have been able to. But she did, and she made sure I was hidden before she hid. I think she knew if they ran her info, it wouldn’t link back to you before we had time to get out. And she helped me when the cage came up.”
“And she didn’t seem … reserved?”
“She always seems reserved. Except when she’s fighting, I guess. Well, even then.”
Not to me. But Talon could not say that. He tried to force his attention back to the chart, and finally gave up. “Find a way to knock out the comm buoy that could only possibly come up in their scanners as debris. I’ll be back.”
No one asked where he was going. He had the strong suspicion that they all knew, and what bothered him most was that he didn’t even care what they suspected. What he cared about was Tera, sitting alone and miserable in her little cell.
When the door slid open, Talon hesitated before entering.
“Hello.” Her voice echoed from inside the room; she’d known the sound of his footsteps, then.
“Hello.” He entered and shut the door carefully behind him.
She regarded him coolly from her place on the floor. “D’you need more information?”
He opened his mouth to come up with something, and then closed it. “No.”
To his surprise, he did not see the start of a smile at her mouth. She turned her head away instead, lips pressing together. It was like a slap, this coldness.
“I’ll leave you.”
“You don’t have to.”
“You clearly want to be alone.”
“I don’t.” Her response was immediate. “I want a lot of things, but not that.”
There was no lie there. Talon tilted his head to the side, already lost in this conversation, and caught the quick, darting glance she sent his way before looking away again.
“Loki passes along his compliments on your fighting skills.”
He had seen enough to know that she was one of the best. Almost, he expected her to flare up and say that she needed no compliments. But she smiled distractedly.
“He’s a puzzle, that one. It’s rare that I misjudge someone.”
The name Aleksandr Soras hung in the air between them, unspoken.
“How did you misjudge Loki?”
“I’m sure you know.” For the first time since he got here, he saw the gleam of her humor. “That face doesn’t match what he can do.”
“He nearly got you both caught,” Talon observed. He took a seat.
“He’s young. He’ll learn.” There was no doubt in her voice. Finally she looked back at him. “Why did you come?”
There it was a
gain: coldness, distance. She was a warm person, he thought, quick to anger but quick, too, to laugh. The crew was beginning to forget their distrust, and Talon could see why. It made her manner now all the more puzzling.
“I wanted to talk to you.”
“About what?”
“I don’t know.”
She blinked at him, faint wariness in her gaze.
“I suppose I wanted to explain to you how this happened. All of this.”
This. This was what he had wanted to say for days. Even when he distrusted her, when he did not know her, he had known on some level that he was going to kill the man who saved her as a child. The part of him that was a soldier insisted that he needed no justification, and the part of him that was human, that saw a daughter mourning her father, wanted to insist that he would not do this without cause.
She swallowed, a rare moment of unguarded emotion. “You don’t have to do that.”
“If you don’t want me to, I won’t. But I wanted to tell you that I didn’t always have it out for him.”
Her head jerked back at that, and he almost thought he saw fear there.
“When I found the evidence….” His voice trailed off. “It made so much sense, it was the only possible answer to questions I had been asking, and I still didn’t believe it. I told myself that it was lies, even though I could see for myself that it was true. I ran that information through every check there was. I called in more favors than I had, in order to do that.” He raised his eyebrows. “And I had a lot of favors to call in.”
“You didn’t think it could be true,” she echoed. She was looking away again.
“No.” He had not. It had been a blow to finally believe it. “You should know what he was to us. I never would have guessed he would adopt an orphan, but he was kind. He asked after Dragons who were injured, he fought to get us the best equipment, anything we needed. When people asked questions about what we did, he was always there. None of us saw this coming.”
“Do you still doubt it?” Her voice was a breath of sound.
“To doubt it would be to doubt everything that I am,” he said finally. “They’ll have told you, maybe, that I’m vengeful. I swear to you, I didn’t even know what vengeance meant until now. Until this.” He sank his head into his hands, clenching his fingers against the close-cropped hair.