by Natalie Grey
“It’s a whole formation,” Loki whispered. “They sent a formation after us.”
Jester and Talon exchanged a look. The Ariane could fly silent, not attracting the attention of the destroyers, but it could not do so while accelerating into hyperspace—the one place it could reliably outrun the mercenary cruisers behind them.
“What if they aren’t here for us?” Talon asked quietly, his eyes on the destroyers ahead of them.
“Too big a risk.” Jester shook his head. “You know it.”
He did. If they’d wanted to talk, they would have sent a carrier and taken the crew of the Ariane on board as prisoners.
Destroyers, on the other hand, had only one purpose.
“Can you outrun the cruisers?” he asked Jester. With anyone other than his crew, Talon would not even have asked. With anyone other than his crew, it would be impossible.
“I’ll do what I can.” From a Dragon, that was the gold standard. “I’ll need to go back into the moons.”
“Do it.” It was dangerous, but not nearly as dangerous as taking on eighteen destroyers. Talon went to the copilot’s chair and waited as Jester took them in a slow arc around the outermost moon. Then he opened a channel.
“St. Krell, this is the Ariane. What is your purpose in following us?”
“Have you talked to your pilot?” The answer was immediate and annoyed. This was Dreth, the insignificant little man they had met on the planet.
“I did.” Talon settled back in the chair, wishing Tera was here to make the man cower. “I assumed she must have misheard you. What, exactly, were your demands?”
Nyx’s mouth quirked in a smile, and Tersi gave a snort of amusement.
“You will return Aleksandr Soras’s daughter to our custody at once,” the man said huffily.
“She doesn’t want to go.”
For a moment, he thought the man was going to argue with him, and then the voice dropped. Talon had the distinct mental image of the man holding himself away from the others on the bridge. “That doesn’t matter at all,” he said quietly. “And I think you know it.”
“I beg to differ.” Talon steepled his hands and let his breath out slowly. “When the woman in question is one of the most accomplished assassins in human space, I should think you wouldn’t be so eager to take her somewhere she doesn’t want to go.”
There was a pause, and he almost heard the man swallow.
“I’m not going to cross my employer,” he said at last, and his voice was shaking.
“See, normally that would be a wise choice.” Talon could almost sympathize with the man. “However, in this case I’d ask yourself if you want to put up with the possibility that Soras blames you for this, or the very real danger of an angry assassin on your ship. Have you ever seen Tera fight, Captain Dreth?”
“No.” It was a strangled whisper.
“Have you ever seen a Dragon fight?”
“Once.” The man’s voice said that it was not a pleasant memory.
“Let us simply say that there’s not a member of my crew I’d pit against her with any certainty.”
There was a long silence. Talon watched Jester guide the ship into a series of turns, skipping across the gravity well of one moon to leap the straight channel the other ship was traveling through. A few of the other Dragons were nodding approvingly.
And then: “I feel certain that Miss Soras will not attempt to harm our crew for following her father’s orders.”
Talon let out a genuine snort of laughter and did not bother to keep the other man from hearing it. “She killed the other assassin he sent after me.”
“Mr. Rift, I will not allow you to intimidate me.” Omitting his title. Petty.
“He’s coming around,” Jester murmured. “And they’re faster than we are without hyperdrive.”
“Do what you can,” Talon said in an undertone, muting the transmission. “The rest of you, arm yourselves.”
“We could give her up,” Tersi said suddenly.
“Do you think for a moment that they’ll let us live if they take her?” Talon asked him simply.
After a moment, Tersi shook his head.
“Neither do I.” Talon met his eyes. “So we fight this battle on our terms.”
“Which is them storming the ship?” The man flared up again.
“In this case, yes. They’ll smell a trap if we let them on board. If they think they’ve broken in, however, catching us despite our very best attempts to escape….”
Tersi looked very much like he wanted to object, but he nodded, and the Dragons left to sound the alarm.
“Captain Dreth.” Talon’s voice was exquisitely polite, the tone that tended to make his enemies break out in a cold sweat.
“Yes?”
“See you in hell.” Talon cut the transmission and looked over at Jester. “Do what you need to do to make sure they get a clean seal on the hull without damaging the ship.”
He nodded, and Talon left the cockpit with Nyx.
“Be careful,” she told him bluntly. “There have to be two or three hundred of them on that cruiser.”
“Are you sure it’s not you getting soft in your old age?” he asked her, trying to take the grim expression from her face.
“Tersi’s right.” She would not meet his eyes. “Something about her is … off. For a while, I thought it might all make sense.”
“Do you think she wants to go with them?”
“No,” she said at once. Now she looked at him, and her brown eyes were troubled. “But I don’t know why.”
“I’ll figure it out.”
“Lie to her if you have to,” she said simply. “Whatever you have to do. Don’t be honorable. We all knew this might kill us, but I’ll be damned if I get killed because he sent someone sneakier than us.”
Talon managed to laugh at that, and clapped her on the shoulder as he left. He rotated his arms as he made his way to the brig, wincing at the feel of armor that had been on for too long; none of them had taken the time to de-arm when they came back to the Ariane.
Tera stood when he entered, her eyes scanning the ceiling as the sounds of clanking echoed through the ship. Whatever she saw in his face, any hope in her expression died.
“You’re turning me over to them,” she guessed. From her expression, Nyx was correct: Tera did not want to go back.
Unfortunately, Nyx was also correct that none of them knew the real reason why. Talon forced himself to acknowledge that truth. Something Tera’s story didn’t add up.
“No,” he told her. “I’m not turning you over to them.” But dammit, tell me what’s going on.
“Let me out,” she whispered, the fierceness in her eyes driving the words out of his mouth. “I can help. Let me out.”
He needed to come up with something to say, anything to keep her in here until he could figure out what was going on. If they took her….
He should not flinch from that thought. Soras would not hurt her.
Talon just did not want her to leave.
“They’re going to drag you back to him if they can.”
“Which will be more difficult if I’m armed,” she said hotly. She took a step forward, hands held out beseechingly. “Talon, listen to me, they’re here to kill you.”
“And I need my crew to fight as well as they can,” he told her brutally, the facts unmistakable. “That means having you here. They don’t trust you, and they won’t fight well if they’re focusing on watching you.”
He saw the answers flash through her mind, the protestations and the angry words showing clearly enough though her lips were pressed shut. Then she turned herself away from him and sat.
“Tera.” I trust you.
But she said nothing, and as the first shouts sounded upstairs, he did the only thing he could. He left and locked the door behind him.
20
She knew the sound of an airlock being forcibly opened—but she had never been on this side of it. Tera sat on the bench, her po
sture straight and her hands clenched, and she shook. She was not prey. She had sworn the day she left Osiris that she would never be prey again.
As the first rattle of gunfire echoed through the inside of the Ariane, she pressed her lips together and tried not to let out a scream of frustration. Why had she not taken the comm and gone to another room, told her father all of her plan?
Because she had been furious that he doubted her. From the moment she saw Apollo’s ship docked with the Blad, weeks ago, anger had ruled her. Or was it pride? Difficult to tell the sins apart, she supposed. And she had never paid much attention when the nuns talked to her on Osiris.
She wondered, amused for a moment, what they would say about all of this.
Then a yell echoed upstairs and fear clutched her heart. Green eyes flashed in her head, and the image of blood spreading across tanned skin, the eyes drifting closed as he bled out. She heard a whimper, and realized it was her own. He was in danger, and she was here when she might be helping him.
She could break out. She had discovered that the first day, examining the locks on the door. She would still, of course, have the handcuffs to contend with—unless she wanted to give away the fact that she could break the chain on her own—but if she were to get out of the brig, Talon would surely undo them and let her join the fight. He was a practical man.
And then she would have shown her hand. Tera jerked her head back to slam against the wall and tried to sink into the pain, but it did nothing. She had gotten in over her head, just as her father had predicted. Best to go back and let him handle it. Best to admit that this was a fight she could never win. She was not smart enough, it appeared, to pretend someone was an ally without believing the lie.
When the door slid open, she turned with the words on her lips: I’ll go.
She froze when she saw the mercenaries. For a moment, she saw the fear in their eyes. They wanted to shoot her—they knew what she was. And the old Tera, the girl from the streets, spoke from instinct. She said what she had to say to save her own skin.
“Finally.”
They smiled at that, and she stood and held out her wrists. “Get these off me? They’re driving me crazy.”
“We heard you didn’t want to come with Dreth.”
Tera snorted. “Who would you bet on in a fight? Dreth, or fifteen angry Dragons?”
They laughed, a bit shamefacedly, and one of them undid the cuffs. For a moment, everything felt right with the world. Aleksandr had sent her resources she could use, he was rescuing her again and she was free, and she could protect him now.
Then she remembered what that meant. She tried not to swallow hard.
She hadn’t expected this to come so soon.
She knew she had to do it now, before she lost her nerve. She jerked her head. “This way.”
“We’re got them pinned against a destroyer formation, but we should get off the ship before they fire. We need to go. Our orders were to take you directly back to the ship.”
“Because your orders were to take a woman who didn’t want to go.” Tera looked at them coolly. “But you know Dreth doesn’t really give the orders. So you tell me: what do you think Aleksandr Soras would prefer? That you bring me back to the ship, or that you help me take down the Dragons?”
They hesitated, but only for a moment. One of them handed her gun over automatically when Tera held out a hand, and they crept through the halls to where Tera knew the airlock lay. They followed her, but their steps dragged—they did not want to face the Dragons.
Neither did she, but there was no choice. They’d signed a contract, and she owed more to her father than she could ever repay. Even this, she told herself firmly, would not wipe away the debt. She could have slit the throat of every Dragon and their family, and it still would not pay the debt.
A life for a life, Tera? You’ve already repaid him a hundred times over. She shook her head at her own foolishness and continued on. If she did not complete this mission, it would haunt her forever. She would know that she had left Aleksandr vulnerable, and she would wonder every day if she would have had the strength to do what must be done.
It would destroy her.
As they crept up the stairs, Tera silent and wincing at every inelegant clang of the soldiers’ boots, she could see glimpses of the battle that raged. The Dragons had formed a makeshift shelter and were holding their own, blocking off one route to the brig.
Protecting her? She thrust the thought away. Let them be weak. She had fooled them, and that would be their undoing.
Cries from the hallway beyond told her that the boarding party was not faring well. The soldiers behind her, when she looked, seemed about ready to throw up as they heard their comrades fall and die.
From here, the precision of the Dragons was a thing of beauty, their movements practiced and their aim perfect. From the other side, it must be terrifying.
She motioned for the other soldiers to stay back, but they shook their heads. They must be terrified of her father if they were willing to follow her this way. She bit her lip and leaned to take aim. And as she did, one of the Dragons turned their head to reload their weapon.
Loki. He had his visor down, but she recognized the way he moved.
Did she have it in her to do this? The man was in the wrong place at the wrong time, led into battle by a man who believed lies. His only crime was doing what his leader told him to, and God knew that was expected of a soldier. Tera’s finger trembled on the trigger and she forced herself to curl it softly inward. This was a good death—a death in battle.
As she watched, the line was breached and mercenaries poured into the hall. Loki thrust the gun to one side and charged, launching into motion. Tera tracked him with her weapon, eyebrows raising in admiration. She could admire her opponents’ skill, surely?
Of course she could. That was just good sense. She watched as he was overwhelmed, trying to keep herself still. Let the mercenaries take as many as they could. She was proud of her skills, but not foolhardy.
It was when Talon charged into battle, coming to Loki’s defense with a roar, that she had to act. Even with the visor pulled down over his face, there was no mistaking who it was. She would know the man anywhere from the way he moved, and from the pure, elegant violence of his movements.
She would end it now. It was the logical choice. As Loki stumbled back into her sights, her finger pressed down on the trigger, the metal biting into her flesh. First the fast one, the one she always underestimated. Then Talon, and she could go back to her father and tell him they had an enemy planting false data. They would ferret it out together, the two of them.
But what flashed in her head was not her father’s smile, not his arms around her or the quiet pride in his eyes when she first showed him what his training had wrought. It was Talon’s rough voice and the pain in his eyes. It was the memory of him telling her, without a trace of a lie in his voice, that her father had feared she would learn the truth.
And she had to know. In a flash, she realized that this question was the one that would really destroy her. If she left now, she would always wonder if Talon had been right.
It was not only failing her mission that would destroy her. It was also the thought that she might leave allies to die, and that she might learn the truth too late.
She did not allow herself to think, only turned and swung the gun. One soldier went down before he had even registered the movement, and the other only had time for her lips to form the word, “Please.” She was dead before the word was even finished, and Tera was running, throwing herself into a skid to take out one of Talon’s attackers at the ankles.
She had to know the truth.
21
Loki stumbled to his knees, mercenaries drawing their weapons, and fury filled Talon’s chest. It was not right, swarming a better fighter, mobbing him and dragging him down. It was the choice of cowards. Loki deserved a better end than this. He was seventeen. Talon’s jaw clenched. Seventeen. Of all of them, Loki shou
ld survive this mission. Talon threw himself into the fray with a yell, pulling the mercenaries off and throwing one directly into the wall. He heard the crunch of bone and looked just closely enough to make sure the mercenary wasn’t going to get up.
They weren’t.
Shots were echoing through the ship as he ducked, rolled, and tackled another mercenary, and Talon did not at first notice that there were shots sounding here, closer to home. It was only as he stood, the second mercenary falling limply to the floor, that he became aware of footsteps pounding and Loki’s eyes fixed behind Talon.
Talon turned just quickly enough to see Tera go past him in a blur. Loki was fast; she was faster. She was on the mercenaries a second later, unarmed and unarmored, and Talon felt a stab of fear. She seemed so small next to all of them, defenseless.
That illusion lasted no more than a split-second before her hands and feet lashed out, snapping limbs and crushing chest cavities with the brutal force that Talon associated with brawlers. Her strikes, he noted distantly, were precise and elegant, but there was nothing civilized about this. Tera might be a woman who would take out her target from half a kilometer away with a sniper rifle, and he had no doubt that she preferred to do so; it did not keep her from being effective at close range.
Somewhere, somehow, she had gotten a gun. As he watched, her arm swung to take out one of the mercenaries coming in the airlock, and the recoil sent her stumbling back. The look of distaste on her face was immediate. This gun was a mercenary weapon, Talon realized; he looked over to where two dead mercenaries lay on the stairs, and looked back to note that the handcuffs were not broken at the chain, as he had first supposed, but missing entirely from Tera’s wrists. They had let her out, then. After all this, after everything, they had expected her to be loyal to them—or too stupid to realize she was deceiving them.