by Natalie Grey
Cade gave him a look. “Well, you’re not, and this is not that kind of vacation.”
“What kind of vacation involves guns?”
“One with you on it.”
Cade’s look was a warning, but there was enough good humor there that Talon just grinned back at him. “I’ve been informed by Tera that I am to attempt to let injustice and shadiness go unpunished for the next few weeks.”
“Good.”
Tera, meanwhile, stuck her head back around a corner. “Are you two coming? …What, why are you both looking like that?”
Talon looked around himself. “I’ve just never been somewhere so quiet, except—well, even the Warlord’s palace had servants.”
As soon as the words were out of his mouth, he could have kicked himself for mentioning that. Even though he knew very well that the Warlord was Tera’s father, the fact didn’t seem to fit in his head. The Warlord was three people for him: a murdering despot, hell-bent on keeping control of a planet full of slaves; Aleksandr Soras, a highly decorated veteran of the Alliance Navy, and the genial head of Alliance Intelligence; and Tera’s father, who had somehow managed to raise a daughter with a sense of right and wrong, despite being a total asshole in pretty much every other respect.
Tera smiled at him, though. “I still catch myself thinking of him as two people, too,” she admitted. “I read the headlines about him and still process it like it’s someone I don’t know.” Her face fell for a moment, and then she shrugged her shoulders. “It is what it is. We won’t get anywhere pretending it’s not….”
“Totally fucked up?” Cade supplied.
“That’s a good way of saying it.”
“I thought so.” He hoisted his bags and nodded down the hall. “Come on, let’s find our rooms and have a good meal. I’m sick of ship food.”
Tera was grinning. She nodded her head down the corridor as the two of them came to join her, and they saw Aryn peering out one of the windows, totally captivated by the view. Her bags were strewn around her on the floor—mostly, Talon knew, her study materials for the piloting exam.
“Aryn likes it here,” Tera said quietly.
As she had predicted the other night, Cade’s face softened. He nodded, starting to relax, and he and Tera continued up the hallway as Talon’s comm unit rang. Nyx. He gave a chuckle. He’d made sure she didn’t know about his recommendation that she be left in charge, and he was guessing there was going to be a healthy mix of panic and excitement on the other end of the line.
“What’s up, boss?”
“What the—” Whatever Nyx had been planning to say, Talon had totally derailed her. “Don’t call me that, that’s just wrong.”
“You’re in charge of the Ariane now, aren’t you? Seems right to call you ‘boss.’”
“No. No.” There was the panic. “No, I am not ‘boss.’ No.”
“Oh, come on, you aren’t even a little excited to be able to tell Jester what coordinates to lay in? Push all your paperwork off on other people? Give random-ass orders just for the hell of it? Not that I ever did that last one,” he added.
“Of course not. I’m sure you had a very good reason for insisting we grow a pineapple tree in the engine room.” But, behind the trademark humor, there was worry. “Talon, tell me you actually wanted this. Tell me they didn’t try to … I don’t know. Tell me this was your choice, really your choice.”
“It was. I requested the time off before they even brought it up.” Talon stopped to lean on one of the windowsills and look at the beach outside. He could just make out the waves breaking from where he stood. “I wanted Tera to have the time to figure out what she was doing. I wanted the time to get used to not going after the Warlord. I wasn’t sure what I’d be like in command until I came to terms with him being….” He closed his eyes for a moment. “Alive,” he finished at last.
In the end, he and Tera had decided to bring Aleksandr Soras back to Seneca with them, to stand trial. It was the worst punishment he could imagine for the man: to have everyone know who he was and hate him, to have to live without the life he’d built for himself, to have to know Ymir was free and he was not….
To know that he had lost the love of his daughter.
And yet Talon still wished, every day, that he had killed the Warlord with his bare hands.
“Look,” Nyx said finally. “Friend to friend, man. Free offer: if you get back and you still can’t live with it, we’ll break into the prison and kill him.”
Talon guffawed. “You’ve got yourself a deal.” There was a pause, while he knew the question that was coming and waited for her to ask it. And then he remembered that right now, at this exact moment, he wasn’t her commanding officer. “Nyx, you got this. I promise you. I recommended you and he went through the motions of looking over the paperwork, but he never doubted I had the right idea. And do something for me, okay?”
“Anything,” she said at once. “Whatever you need.”
“Trust yourself enough not to call,” Talon said. “I’m here if you need me, you know that. But you’ve got good instincts. You can command perfectly fine without me. You know I’d never give you the Ariane and that crew if I didn’t think you could do it.”
That, at least, seemed to make sense to her. “Okay. Fine.” She was trying to sound surly, but it wasn’t really coming off. She was pleased.
He felt a twist of sadness and pushed it away. He’d always known that Nyx was going to be given her own command someday. She was the best XO a captain could ask for, but he couldn’t expect to keep her forever. He couldn’t hold her back.
He couldn’t stay on this call or he was going to say emotional stuff she’d never let him live down. He cleared his throat. “Look after the kid, all right?” Their newest team member, Loki, was only 17 years old, and was both an unsettlingly efficient killing machine, and just a normal 17 year old kid from a farm on Crius.
“Of course,” Nyx promised him. “And I won’t get so much as a scratch on the ship, promise. Dragon’s honor.”
“You’d better not. Now go, go, get some good stories for when I get back. Oh, and one other thing.”
“Yeah?”
“There’s a crate for you all at the docks.”
“Is it new rocket launchers?” Her voice was suddenly like a kid in a candy store. “Tell me it is, I’ve been eyeing the M-562 for months and—”
“Mmm, not quite that.” He was sad he wasn’t going to see their faces when they saw what was inside: dress clothes, all perfectly tailored already, and vouchers for a week out on the town in Seneca, from the finest restaurants and bars, to a few shows at the opera house. Tera had wanted to do something nice for the team, and Talon had agreed it was a good idea.
And, Lord knew, with Soras’s estate already passed to her name after his conviction, she had money to burn, even after funneling the majority of it back into Ymir.
“I’ll talk to you soon,” Talon told Nyx. “Be safe. Shoot all the bad guys.”
“Right-o, boss.” She hung up before he could correct her on the title.
Talon pushed himself up from the window, told himself firmly that it was a good thing Nyx was having her own trial command, and followed the sound of his friends’ voices down the hall to his rooms.
He was going to learn how to relax. He was absolutely determined to. After all, he was a Dragon. He didn’t fail at things.
“There’s a first time for everything, Rift,” he muttered to himself. “Don’t fuck up.”
2
“This thing must have been made in hell,” Nyx said, a few hours later. She fought her way through a tangle of red cloth. “Fuck.”
“What’s wrong?”
“Nothing. I’m fine. I’m—seriously, how the hell does this dress work?” Nyx flailed and the dress fell obligingly down in a pleasing ripple. “Is this right?”
“Well, for one thing, your arms are supposed to go through the arm holes.” Tersi leaned against the door frame, clearly trying not to laug
h at her.
“Crap. Why don’t women wear suits? One second.”
“Lift your arms, I’ll help.”
“I shouldn’t need help,” Nyx said grumpily. She twitched her fingers as Tersi adjusted the dress and wriggled to get the fabric back down, then turned to survey the effect in the mirror. “I look…”
“Very nice,” Tersi said firmly. “Like a lady out on the town should look. And before you say you’re going to stay in, I’d like to remind you that the steaks at Kirov’s are the best on any planet, and you can stay here if you want, but I am not going to miss them.”
“Is the Commander ready?” a plaintive voice called from the main room.
“One second, hold your horses!” Nyx leaned forward at the mirror and adjusted her eyeliner. She enjoyed wearing makeup when she was somewhere with unlimited water for washing. She brushed lipstick on carefully and smiled at her reflection. “All right. I still wish I was wearing pants, but I’ll give this a go.”
“A good decision,” Tersi agreed with a grin. “I know I wouldn’t want to tell Tera I’d rejected her gift.”
“Precisely.” The erstwhile assassin and their one-time captive had presented everyone on the team with hotel rooms, clothing, and vouchers for their stay on Seneca, and she was a woman one did not question lightly. Nyx took one last look in the mirror and swept out into the main room. “All right, everyone. Shoes, and I’m ready to go.”
“Wow.” Loki looked up from his place on one of the couches. “You look good.”
“Yeah, yeah.” But Nyx knew he was right. Her brown-black hair fell in shiny half curls around her shoulders, and the red of the gown set off the honey color of her skin to wonderful effect. Her brown eyes were accentuated by smoky shadow, and her lips glowed a darker red than the gown. Tall, with the hard-earned physique of a Dragon, she knew she was just as impressive in her clothes as the rest of them were in their suits. “Let’s not make a big deal of it. Let’s just go get steaks and get sloppy drunk.”
“I predict we’re all going to have a very good time under Alvarez’s command,” Tersi predicted with a grin. He levered himself up with a wince, still moving gingerly after his days in the hospital.
“You call me Nyx, or I’ll thump you.” But she moved to help him along, her hand steady under his arm.
“She gets touchy when you bring up command,” Loki observed. He held the door for the rest of the Dragons and closed it carefully after them.
“Because it’s….” Nyx shook her head as they walked.
“A very natural progression in your career? Yes, I can imagine how jarring that must be.”
Nyx looked down at her hands. “It feels wrong,” she said quietly, ignoring the joke. “The Ariane is Talon’s.”
“You wouldn’t command the Ariane for the long—”
“I know.” She crossed her arms, swallowing slightly. As they settled into the elevator, Tersi leaning against the back wall, she surveyed her crew. These sorts of reservations should be kept from them, that much she knew, and now was hardly the time to be maudlin. So she gave a bright smile. “I’m just going to miss you all if I get my own crew, that’s all.”
“That’s a good point. We are the best Dragon crew there is.” Jester adjusted his cuffs, grinning. “But I’m sure you’ll be able to whip another crew into shape.”
“Yeah, well, don’t think I’ll go easy on you all just because the Major is gone.” Nyx grinned back at him. Jester was not boasting about commendations, simply sharing the self-assurance of every Dragon crew—that they were the best, that their teammates could not be rivaled. And it was this easy good humor that she so cherished about life as part of the Corps.
“So where are we going, Commander?” Loki looked over, one eyebrow raising.
“I haven’t decided yet,” Nyx said loftily, pretending that she hadn’t spent most of the morning in a bar, staring a glass of whiskey and using all of her self-control not to go back to Director Hugo and say she couldn’t do it.
“Let’s go to Ragnarok again,” Jester suggested.
“Sure. I know I like freezing to death.” Loki fell into step beside him.
Nyx smiled around at all of them, watching as Esu forged through the crowd ahead. Heads turned as the Dragons passed by; no one was ever quite sure what they were seeing when they beheld Dragons out of armor, but it was impossible to miss the self-assured, predatory grace of the team.
Her team. That part still did not feel real.
“How are you doing, Commander?” At her side, Tersi was struggling to keep the pace.
“Surprised,” Nyx admitted.
“Really? The Major was always talking about getting you a promotion.”
Nyx considered her response, eyes on the strands of lights that stretched between the skyscrapers above. The air here was heavy with moisture, flowers blooming in heavy urns all along the sidewalk and a faint breeze giving life to the summer warmth. “Would you have seen the last few months coming?” she asked finally.
She regretted the question as soon as she had asked it. Why had she asked Tersi, of all people?
“No.” Tersi’s answer was immediate, and tinged with as much wry humor as sadness. From the point that they deposed a despotic warlord, a normal enough mission for them, their lives had taken an abrupt series of turns. Ordered to come back and give up their quest against the Warlord, they had instead mutinied, and his capture had sent ripples through the upper echelons of the Alliance.
It was a mission that had exposed any Dragon team’s absolute loyalty to its commander … and one that had taken the lives of two members of the team. One, Sphinx, had been Tersi’s lover. His quiet grief had shaken the team, and Nyx had begun to wonder lately if Tersi wished his own wounds had killed him during that battle.
He must have sensed her question, because he looked over at her. “I’m all right, boss.”
She looked away. There was an easy trust in those words that brought tears to her eyes. She wanted to let it rest, and yet she knew she could not. Talon would have pressed him on it, and she was taking Talon’s place. “Are you? Really? You could sit this one out if you wanted. You know I’d make sure you got your pay.”
“Not a chance,” he said seriously. “I don’t….” His voice broke.
There was such a deep grief in his eyes that she stopped, taking his hands in hers. “Tersi.”
“I don’t know how to live. Anymore.” He said the words flatly.
She opened her mouth, and could find nothing to say.
“I keep going because there isn’t anything else to do.” He squeezed her hands, as if to assure her that he was here, alive, and would stay that way. “But I don’t know how to live without her. Sitting alone here on Seneca would destroy me.”
“Yes. Of course.” Nyx nodded. She squeezed his hands, returning the gesture, and released them.
“And I talked to Jester. I can pilot. I can work on hacks. It’s not … perfect. But it’ll do.” He nodded to himself as they started walking, then frowned at her. “Unless you were asking because you think I’d hold the team back.”
“Not at all.” It’s just hard to see you like this. But she, of all people, knew what it was to seek refuge in the Dragons after losing someone. Unexpectedly, she saw Kiran’s face in her mind: the broad-set blue eyes, the shock of black hair over his pale skin. How long since she’d thought of him?
Too long. Guilt wormed in her chest.
“Boss?”
She hesitated. “You came up through the Navy, too, right?”
“I got recruited while I was finishing up my PhD.” Tersi nodded.
“Computer science?”
“Poetry.” His face was so blank that she could not tell if he was joking, and, with his trademark humor, he let her wonder.
“Well, I went through basic training with one of my friends right after college. Kiran.” She saw his look, and shook her head. “It wasn’t like that with us. We were…” She struggled to find the words. “Like
twins, I guess. We didn’t need words to know what the other was thinking. We could always find one another. We were sent out as a scout pair because they learned that about us. And when we were 26, we decided to try for the Dragons.”
“He didn’t make it,” Tersi guessed.
“He died,” Nyx said flatly.
“In training?” His voice betrayed his horror.
“No. They found the cancer while he was being evaluated. It was tiny, had probably been there since he was a kid, and it might have just stayed there for years. But they wouldn’t let him into the Corps with it.” She closed her eyes briefly. “The treatment … was experimental.” She didn’t say more; she knew she did not need to.
“I had no idea,” Tersi said finally, and it occurred to them both at the same time what a strange thing it was to say. People always did, as if they wanted to be excused from not having offered condolences sooner. Now, Tersi shook his head. “I’m sorry. That was—”
“Everyone says it.” Nyx looked down at her hands. “I don’t why I thought of him now. Sphinx, I guess. It feels odd, but I haven’t thought about him in so long. I feel….”
“I know.” Tersi nodded.
“You do?”
“They gave me this stupid pamphlet in the hospital about the stages of grief.” He rolled his eyes. “Of course, it had some good points.”
Nyx gave a choking sort of laugh and wiped at her eyes. “Like?”
“Like the part where it feels weird to move on. But that’s what happens, isn’t it? We get better.”
“Yeah.” Nyx nodded. “That’s what happens.” She squeezed her hand into a fist, trying to stave off the feelings of betrayal with the pain of nails biting into skin, and then she shook her head. “Well, this isn’t a good start to a night of drinking.”
“Let’s at least go get a steak,” Tersi said, and he clapped her on the shoulder as they turned into the restaurant. “And I make a wonderful wingman, I’ll have you know. What do you like in a guy?”
“Well, first of all, I prefer for him to be a girl.”
“What, really?”