by Zen DiPietro
“I’ll see you in two hours, then.”
After he left, Hawk stood, stretching his arms. “I’m going to give his wisdom thing a try and see if I can sleep for a while.”
“I’ve always said you could use some wisdom.”
He lightly bopped her on the head on his way out. That left her staring out into space, flying them toward their goal.
Which was how she liked it.
A day and a half later, they made it to Zerellus.
As soon as the airlock to the docking station opened, Avian Unit pushed through it. They rode the orbital elevator down to the planet’s surface, primed and eager.
All five wore a backpack, carefully filled with the items they’d need. Raptor had planned this maneuver in intricate detail. Since Ross had no transmitter tattoo, he’d stick with another team member at all times.
Wearing casual clothes, they followed Peregrine’s lead. Since she was a native Zerellian, it made perfect sense for her to bring a group of friends to her home planet. They chatted casually through the transport station and during their taxi ride, with Peregrine telling them about the planet as if none of them had ever been there.
As they neared their destination, Peregrine promised, “You’re going to love this restaurant. Best rastor dumplings in the quadrant.”
“Ugh,” Fallon said. “Maybe I should wait outside.” The stench of them seemed to fill the air already.
“In the dark?” Peregrine teased. “No way. Seriously though, don’t worry. They make plenty of other things.”
“If you say so.”
Peregrine paid their driver, and they stepped out in front of the Blue Elephant restaurant. “Ready?” she asked. When the rest of them nodded, she said, “You’re on, Raptor.”
Their jovial façade faded as he led them into the restaurant. They nodded to the hostess and walked past the main dining area, toward the wing where VIPs entertained private parties. They followed the hallway, turned left, followed another long hallway, and entered the last room.
Fallon’s attention went to a long table, already laden with food. Mashed root vegetables covered in heavy sauce, glistening cuts of juicy meat, and thick slabs of bread beckoned. The mix of aromas almost made her hungry, even filled as she was with anticipation for the job they were here to do.
She had to give the Zerellians credit. They knew how to cater a private party with a lot of money to spend. Raptor had indicated their impending arrival, and the meal had been laid out in style. Most importantly, no staff would return to the room until summoned.
“Sure we can’t take a few minutes to eat first?” Hawk joked.
“Later,” Raptor snapped, all business. “Any questions?” When there were none, he touched a microcomputer on his wrist. “I’ve deactivated the door sensor. Let’s go.”
They stripped off their outer clothes, revealing the sleek black jumpsuits beneath. Raptor then led them out the back of the room, where they dashed across the barren courtyard behind the building. There, they scaled a three-meter-high wall and dropped behind an outbuilding at the rear of a personal estate.
Raptor glanced at his wrist, then nodded at Fallon.
Under the cover of the outbuilding, Fallon lowered her backpack to the ground and sat next to it. In seconds, she’d extracted a hand-sized dark-gray drone, its controls, and two VR headsets. She handed one to Raptor and put the other on her own head.
With the tiniest movement of her fingers, she launched the drone and it immediately became invisible. Even in daylight it would have been hard to spot.
Via the headset, the drone’s perspective filled her vision as she flew it around the estate. She saw the outbuilding and her team, as well as the top of her own head, then zoomed off to canvas the entire area. She noted two guards and a security camera at every entrance. Every window also had a camera. Seated next to her, Raptor saw everything she did through the second pair of goggles.
She took him on a tour of every feature of the place. She kept her altitude low, to avoid tripping any passive detection. Most planets had such systems, but an able pilot with the latest technology would always be ahead of them.
She felt a hand press her thigh. Raptor had what he needed. She brought the drone back, landed it, and removed her VR gear.
Raptor had already taken his off. He made a series of gestures, instructing Hawk to follow him and Peregrine to lead Ross and Fallon two minutes behind.
By the time the second group arrived, Raptor and Hawk had taken out the two guards, opened the door, and dragged the pair inside. Ross and Peregrine stripped the guards of their uniforms and put them on over their jumpsuits. They took special care of the guards’ comports, which would no doubt send an alarm if they were out of position for much longer. Then they took the guards’ places at the door.
Fallon trailed Raptor while Hawk followed on her heels as they rushed down the hallway, careful not to make noise on the black-and-white tiled floor.
From here, Raptor would be working from blueprints of the building that had been filed with the housing commission when it was built. If any unreported restructuring had happened since, Avian Unit could be in trouble. But Raptor led them decisively down one hall, took a left, then stopped at a security breakstop—a solid metal wall that was vacuum sealed and locked. To get to Colb, Raptor had to find a way past it. He gestured for Fallon and Hawk to cover him while he worked at the electronic mechanism.
The moment Fallon started to worry, she heard a soft beep and a woomph as the seal broke. The wall retracted to the side.
“Here we go.” Raptor opened the door behind the breakstop.
They rushed in, ready to take on however many dozens of guards Colb had, only to stop short when they saw the man himself, standing in the middle of the room. Smiling.
“Greetings, my young friends,” Colb said, bowing to them as a teacher would to a student. Or a parent to a child. “I’m glad you’ve finally made it.”
They searched the place to be sure it wasn’t a trap. But there was no one there pulling Colb’s strings. A message to Peregrine and Hawk had them arriving a few minutes later, looking wary. Fallon felt the same.
“Ah.” Colb bowed to them, and they returned the bow. “Now we can begin. Shall we sit?” He indicated a traditional tea table.
The members of Avian Unit exchanged uneasy looks.
“You’re wondering why I didn’t simply summon you, right?” He looked from one face to another. “Well, I’ll be honest. I didn’t know exactly who I was waiting for. I’d hoped that someone would figure out what Krazinski was up to. But until someone came looking for me, I couldn’t know who was in his pocket and who wasn’t.” He looked directly at Fallon. “I’m glad it was you.”
“How do you know we’re not here to capture you for him?” Peregrine asked.
“Because he wouldn’t want you to, if you were working for him. He’d want to keep me right here, frozen in a prison of my own making, unsure of who I can trust.”
Fallon searched his elderly, familiar face as he talked. He was only a little older than her father, but time and the loss of Colb’s wife had taken a great toll on him. She saw nothing that indicated insincerity though. He looked just as he had when he’d read her stories when she was a little girl.
“Is that why your security was so easy to break?” Raptor asked.
“Well, it was enough to keep out the looky loos,” Colb answered. “But I needed you to be able to get in.”
“Hell of a risk,” Hawk noted. Clearly, he’d dispensed with proper protocol for addressing a senior officer.
Colb smiled, ignoring the breach. “Not really. You were my last hope. If it turned out I truly had no allies, then I might as well meet the wrong end of a stinger. At least that would raise questions.”
Fallon exchanged a look with her team. His story made sense. But could they trust him?
“I understand that you’re skeptical. But I have data. Proof. I can show that Krazinski’s been involved in treaso
nous deals for over two years now. He squeezed me out because I tried to stop him. I wasn’t fast enough to maneuver him out before he did it to me.” He slapped the edge of the table, his cheeks red.
“We have data too,” Fallon said. If Colb couldn’t give them more than that, he wouldn’t be very useful to them. “The trouble is that we don’t know who we can trust at PAC command. We don’t know how many people he controls. Jamestown Station might be teeming with people loyal to him.”
Colb nodded. “I have some suggestions. So let’s talk about how we’re going to get this done.”
Fallon sent a questioning glance at her team members, but saw agreement in their eyes. They’d needed an ally of his stature, someone who still had ties within the bureaucracy, and now they had one.
“Okay,” she said. “What’s next?”
They tabled the discussion until they could get Colb up to the Nefarious.
They covertly returned to the restaurant. After putting street clothes over their jumpsuits, they ate enough of the rapidly cooling food to make it appear as if a dinner party had taken place. Hawk did the majority of the eating, while Peregrine disguised Colb for the trip back to the Nefarious.
Once on board the ship, they spent the next three hours talking, first suggesting tactics, then hacking them all apart. Finally, exhausted, Hawk suggested they get some sleep. They’d start on their way back to Dragonfire after they rested.
In her quarters, Fallon got dressed for bed, but only stood staring at her bunk. It didn’t look inviting.
Instead she went next door to Raptor’s berth and touched the chime.
“Thought you were tired.” He looked like she might have woken him, but he moved back so she could enter.
“I’m practically asleep right now.” She eyed his narrow bunk. “Mind if I sleep here?” She willed him not to make a big deal about it.
“Sure. But I get the wall side. If someone’s falling out, it’ll be you.”
She smiled. “It’s happened before.”
“That’s why I want the wall side.”
He sat on the bed, and she waited for him to lie down before she hit the light panel and squeezed in next to him. “Goodnight.”
“Night,” he answered, his voice rough with fatigue.
Despite her own tiredness, she listened to his slow, even breathing for several minutes before closing her eyes.
Fallon took the first flight shift, to be sure they got properly under way and because she was somewhat domineering about the pilot’s chair. Afterward, she was glad for a chance to sit down with Colb in his quarters and get reacquainted.
“You’ve been well?” she asked, seated across from him. He looked healthy enough, albeit weathered, for a man of his age. Andra’s death three years earlier had taken such a toll on him.
“So they tell me.” His smile brought back images of her childhood. He and Andra had shared many meals at the Kato household. Her mother had enjoyed hosting them, and afterward, Colb was always happy to play whatever game Fallon suggested. His own children had been a good deal older, and he’d seemed to have a particular fondness for young Kiyoko, as he’d known her then. He’d been so close to the family that he’d called her Kiyoko-chan, just as her mother and father did.
His fondness for her hadn’t changed as she’d aged. He’d been the one to sponsor her application to the PAC academy. Perhaps he’d even put her name in front of the people who ran Blackout, though he’d never hinted at such.
He and Andra had been like family—a favorite aunt and uncle. Even now, seeing him without her honorary aunt seemed strange to her.
“How are Rolly and Jenna?”
He smiled ruefully. “Oh, you know how it is with grown children. They go off to this galaxy or that and you end up hearing from them only on odd occasions. But last I talked to them, they were both busy and happy. Jenna had a second baby and Rolly still hasn’t settled down.”
Fallon nodded. She’d never known his children well. They’d been adults by the time it had occurred to her to wonder about them.
“I imagine it’s hard to have your kids so far away,” she said.
“Yes, but they’re happy, and that’s what matters.” He gave her a knowing look. “No doubt your parents were thrilled to see you.”
She chuckled. “That hardly describes it, but yes. I hadn’t been home for a long time.” When she’d visited a few months ago, her parents had been strangers to her. Now that she’d recovered her memories, she wanted a real visit with them. She knew that her near future had no trip to Earth in it, but maybe her parents could come visit her.
“I imagine they were beside themselves.” Colb folded his hands over his knee. “I’ve never seen parents as proud of their child as they’ve always been of you. And your brother, of course,” he added quickly.
“Kano was always the more easygoing of the two of us,” she admitted.
“Still quite the achiever, though.”
She gave him a small, seated bow in acknowledgement of the compliment to her brother.
He waved his hand. “No need to be formal with me. I knew you when your mother still put your hair in pigtails.”
She let out a long sigh. “How did it all come to this? Fighting the very thing we’ve always wanted to be a part of.”
Sadness washed over his face. “I’ve spent a lot of time wondering that, myself. Some people don’t recognize what they have. It makes them blind to the tiny changes that lead to disaster. When they finally realize what’s coming, it’s too late.”
“What did Krazinski miss?” Fallon leaned forward, watching him intently.
“The fact that the galaxies are always changing. Power is always shifting. We have to keep ourselves informed, so that we have time to adapt. I think John was complacent for too long, and when he realized the PAC was losing its authority, he panicked. Turned to illegal methods.”
“How were we losing authority? I never heard anything about that.”
Colb frowned. “Of course not. The only thing worse than losing a political advantage is advertising that the advantage has been lost. The entire power dynamic would shift. Planets would reconsider their allegiances.”
“So what was happening?”
“Neighboring galaxies were infringing on our sovereignty. Nothing major, but they were pushing at their limits. Seeing how close they could get to breaking a treaty. They knew we would tolerate more than we should, for fear of touching off a war. And that put us on the defensive. In the weaker position.”
“How do we put a stop to that?”
Colb’s face hardened. “We have to draw a harder line. Punish infractions. Even push back if we must. Being tolerant of incursions on our sovereignty makes rivals think we’re an easy mark.”
“Sounds like that will be our first order of business once we get Krazinski out,” Fallon agreed.
“It’s imperative, if we don’t want the PAC to fall.”
“So how do you suggest we get him out?”
Colb tilted his head. “Shouldn’t we bring your team in to discuss this together?”
“I’ll fill them in. I’m the team leader. They’ll follow my lead.”
Colb smiled at her. “That’s my girl.” He rubbed his palms together gently. “You know, in some ways, you are more like a daughter to me than my own Jenna. I love her dearly, don’t get me wrong, but I don’t understand her art. You, though, were always what I imagined my child would be like.”
“I’m flattered. You’ve always been family, as far as I’m concerned. So let’s talk strategy.”
For the next hour, she picked Colb’s brain on the inner workings of Blackout bureaucracy and how they could take control.
She wished she could call a team meeting as soon as she left his quarters, but she’d have to wait.
Finally, after Colb retired for the night, she called Avian Unit, including Ross, up to the bridge. As they gathered around, she studied their faces.
She regretted what she had to tell th
em. “We have a problem.”
“I’ve known Masumi Colb all my life. He’s practically family to me. But he’s lying.” Fallon paused for a moment to let her team digest that fact. “I’ve come to the conclusion that he’s working with Krazinski to bring us in.”
A heavy silence fell as her team worked that idea through.
“How do you know?” Hawk’s mouth set in a grim line.
“He knew that I’ve been to see my parents. I didn’t mention that, and my parents wouldn’t either. He thinks that I assume they would, but I know better.”
“So Blackout knows we saw your parents when we were on Earth.” Peregrine’s typical frown had deepened into something much more grave.
“Apparently. And Krazinski and Colb set up a plan to make Colb look like a potential ally because they assumed I’d trust Uncle Masumi.”
Raptor scowled. “We took that bait, and now here we are, being led into the dragon’s mouth.”
“Pretty much,” Fallon agreed.
“So what do we do?” Hawk shifted restlessly. “Confront him now and force the truth out of him?”
Ross spoke up. “We have the splitter I brought in Fallon’s vault on Dragonfire. We could take the answers if he doesn’t offer them.”
Fallon had thought of that. She’d been forced to decide whether to commit an atrocity for the safety of her galaxy. As a Blackout operative, if she’d been ordered to use illegal tech that amounted to torture, she’d have done her job like a good little soldier. But she no longer had the luxury of relying on others to determine what lines must be crossed for the greater good.
“No. We will not.”
Her teammates’ faces registered relief.
“What, then?” Hawk asked.
“Krazinski and Colb have a plan for us. Let’s find out what it is. We’ll play the part that they would have us play.”
A shadow of a smile flitted over Peregrine’s mouth. “They’ll think they have us where they want us, and we’ll flip it all right around on them.”
