by Zen DiPietro
“Actually, there are a few things in my compartment we could use, too,” Raptor said.
“Same here,” Peregrine said.
Not surprising that they’d all put some things away for a rainy day. And it was raining like hell now.
“I imagine Hawk does as well. Okay. We’ll take the time to grab our stuff. But let’s be quick. Change of plans. Peregrine, you can come with me, then relieve Hawk in the brig so he can get his stuff. Raptor, finish up here, get your stuff, and get to the ship as soon as possible. Twenty minutes with regular check-ins. No longer.”
As she and Peregrine made their way to the lift, she felt empty. Their pivotal moment hadn’t gone like she’d expected. She had no resolution. No answers. Just another crisis and a lot more questions that made her worry for the people of the PAC.
At least the lifts still worked. They ran on self-contained power with backups. Knocking them out would have required an EMP.
She and Peregrine didn’t talk as they descended into the lower decks of Jamestown. When the lift doors opened, Fallon ignored how eerie it felt to walk through corridors that should have been bustling with activity. The light source from the pressure suits centered them in an illuminated bubble, surrounded by a massive, shadowy ghost station. She ignored the four bodies that appeared in the sphere of light, and disappeared again once she and Per walked past.
At least the open voicecom link in her helmet distracted her from the silence. Stations weren’t supposed to be silent. Panels on the walls should have been lit and ready for access. The whole place should have been bursting with life. She was walking in a tin can full of dead bodies.
She focused on the task at hand—getting to the storage bays. She and Peregrine shared space in the same one, as did Raptor and Hawk. They found their units and as soon as Fallon used her code and retina scan for access, she grabbed a large rucksack inside, dumped out the survival supplies, and loaded it with the items that would be of use. Ammunition. Weapons. Covert operations gadgets.
Finally she put the rucksack on and hauled out the cases with her heavy artillery as well as an anti-grav cart. She loaded it with three personal laser cannons. One RPG launcher. One anti-aircraft weapon for use within planetary atmospheres. She debated bringing that last item, but figured better safe than sorry and stacked it with the rest.
She secured her storage space and turned to see Peregrine weighed down with various bags and cases. She hadn’t even bothered with a cart. Show-off.
“I like that we’ve all stockpiled for doomsday.” Peregrine almost smiled.
“We’ve got to have hobbies, right? Let’s go.”
Back on the Nefarious they stored the heavy gear in weapons lockers, then Fallon headed to the bridge. Peregrine went to keep an eye on Colb while Hawk returned to Jamestown to grab his own belongings.
Fallon dropped into the pilot’s chair and stabbed the initialization sequence. Ross had scooted over to the adjacent seat when he’d seen her, without saying a word. She wondered what it had been like for him, listening to events unfold while he remained here. She wouldn’t have handled it well.
As soon as everyone returned, Fallon launched the ship. She burned the engines hard just long enough to get a good distance from the station, then continued at a more reasonable pace.
Raptor and Peregrine joined her and Ross on the bridge. Hawk had returned to keeping an eye on Colb. She wished she could turn Colb in to PAC command, but even if she could have trusted them, she didn’t know where the remaining members and support staff of PAC command were now.
And where was the noise about that? The datastreams should have been alive with the story of Jamestown going dark. So it must have happened very recently.
She wanted to bury her face in her hands and wallow in frustration for a minute or two, but had no time for that. She had a team to lead.
“Here.” Raptor held something out to her and she extended her palm. He dropped a tiny chip into it.
“What is it?” She turned it over with her fingertip, but it revealed no distinguishing characteristics.
“I was doing an encryption algorithm search. It didn’t yield any data, but it told me that PAC files had been downloaded and encrypted. That means they took with them the data that they wiped. I also found what’s on that chip.”
“What is it?”
“A message, I think. I didn’t take the time to look at it. I almost didn’t find it, but I noticed an odd pattern in the sequence of the systems had been deleted. It was a code.”
“What was the message?”
“Not really a message. It was the date of our first day at the academy. Not a series of numbers that would be significant to anyone else. When I followed it back, I found this little file tucked away in a location that matched our graduation year.”
“Wow. Nice work, Raptor.” Fallon was already sliding the chip into a slot, but she paused. “And you’re sure it’s not a virus or something that’s going to blow up in our faces.”
“Positive.”
She inserted the chip and an image of Krazinski appeared on her panel, apparently seated at a voicecom and staring into it. He looked rough. He had dark circles under his eyes, and his uniform had a small tear in the fabric at his shoulder. He began speaking gibberish.
She looked to Raptor, who rushed forward and leaned over her to fiddle with the display. She opened a channel to Hawk. “Hawk, we need you up here for a minute.”
After a few minutes Raptor said, “There. The admiral sure didn’t want this being seen by the wrong person.”
“Just play it.”
“Fallon,” Krazinski said. “By now you know that Blackout has been corrupted. I realized too late, and wasn’t able to protect you and the rest of Avian Unit. I’m sorry for that, and for your headache. I can only hope we can reverse what’s been done to you. And now I’m forced to leave my own station.” His gaze tracked to the left, away from the voicecom, then flicked back. “I don’t have time to tell you everything I need to, and I couldn’t risk that information falling into the wrong hands, anyway. What I can tell you right now is that Masumi Colb is the one behind all this. I’ve known this for over a year, and have been working to quietly take care of the problem. I don’t have to tell you that if certain facts become publicly known, the entire Planetary Alliance Cooperative will be at risk.”
His eyes flicked to the side and back again. “Colb was bringing you here to get you to attack the command. He intended to take over Jamestown in order to complete his plans. I had no choice but to make the place useless to him and to purge the people who were about to stage an uprising to assist him. Unfortunately Jamestown is now also useless to us, without months’ worth of repairs. I can’t tell you where we are now, as this file could become compromised. But if you put your head to the ground, you’ll figure it out.” His gaze jerked to the left.
“I have to go. I hope to see you soon. Whatever you do, don’t trust Colb.”
The image disappeared, but Fallon kept staring at the screen.
Hawk arrived, and they replayed the message. Fallon didn’t get anything more the second time around, but it gave her time to think.
“Hang on,” Hawk said. “Krazinski isn’t the bad guy here?”
Fallon weighed the facts in her head. Losing Jamestown was devastating, even if they’d managed to take the databanks with them. Krazinski wouldn’t have leveraged the entire station as an attempt to convince her team he wasn’t guilty. He’d only do so in response to a much greater threat.
She rubbed her hand over the short, bristly side of her hair. “Per, is ‘put your head to the ground’ one of your odd Zerellian phrases?”
Peregrine shook her head. “No. Never heard it. I wondered what he meant by that.”
“It’s an odd thing to say.” Fallon kept rubbing her hair. The sensation against her fingers helped her think.
“I could research the language circuits. See if it’s a translation of something,” Peregrine offered.
/> “It’s worth a try.” She suppressed a sigh. “Do you all think it’s worthwhile to talk to Colb?”
“You could try,” Raptor said, sounding doubtful. “He didn’t seem inclined to do anything but bait you.”
“No.” Hawk’s voice rang with authority. “He’s too much like us. He’ll lie, he’ll weave stories, and you’d never know what was true and what wasn’t.”
“Yeah. You’re probably right. But he mentioned Wren.”
Raptor frowned. “Tactics 101. Keep your opponent off-balance, and make them think you have something they want.”
She straightened. “Agreed. He’ll stay in the brig. With a guard, whenever possible.”
“Standard brig security not enough for you?” Ross asked. “If he tries to tamper with the system, he’ll get thirty milliamps and find himself not breathing. He knows that.”
“Call it paranoia,” she answered.
“I’m good with paranoia,” Hawk said.
“Okay. So we need a new plan. I’m open to suggestions.”
“Dragonfire?” Hawk suggested after a moment of silence.
“Yeah. That’s what I’m thinking too. We’ll have the best defensive capability in case some friend of Colb’s comes looking for him. The brig there is first-rate. It’s the best option until we have more to go on.”
“By the time we get to Dragonfire, there may be a panic about Jamestown. The first shouts will go up when someone goes to dock there, or communications don’t get returned.” Peregrine chewed on the pad of her thumb.
“Nothing we can do about that,” Raptor said. “We can hope it happens later rather than sooner, but that’s it.”
“PAC allies will get very nervous once they know, and those who are not our allies will sense an opportunity.”
“No pressure,” muttered Hawk.
Fallon took a deep breath. “Fun time’s over. Back to work.”
“Where was I for fun time?” wondered Peregrine, but a hint of humor glinted in her eyes.
“Fun time was when we were going to storm the castle. Had my ass-kicking pants on and everything.” Hawk ran his hands down his thighs.
“We all wear the same style of jumpsuit,” Raptor pointed out.
“We were all wearing ass-kicking pants,” Hawk explained.
“Still are,” Peregrine reminded him.
“There will be no ass-kicking today,” Fallon decreed. “Unless something unexpected comes up. But we will kick ass another day. Guaranteed.”
Fallon spent her off shifts pacing her quarters end to end. She needed a new angle, a new strategy. A way to discover where the command staff from Jamestown had gone. They had answers she needed.
If Colb had been the one working against the PAC all along, did that mean that Krazinski was necessarily innocent? All the data pointing at Krazinski had been verified as genuine. But Colb could have created genuine documents that contained falsified information.
What about Krazinski’s attempt to blackmail Brak into creating neural implants that were in violation of the PAC’s treaties? The only way that added up was if Krazinski had been testing Brak—either to see if she’d do such a thing, or if she had already been asked to. Which could make sense, if Krazinski were trying to shut Colb down from the inside.
But why did Colb want treaty-breaking technology? And why install it in her head? He’d had many people to choose from, so why her? Maybe because he’d known her for so long. Or maybe he’d perceived her as a threat to his long-term plans.
She had all the questions, but none of the answers. And though she doubted he’d give her any real information, she wanted to look at Colb’s face while she asked him the questions. Even if he told her only lies, she might come up with some useful tidbit. Besides, she had nothing more productive to do.
“Kiyoko-chan. It’s so good to see you.” Colb looked tired, but well enough. The brig wasn’t big on privacy, but it provided adequate comfort.
“You can call me Fallon.” She sat opposite the force field that kept him contained and exposed to scrutiny.
“Fallon. I’ve been hoping you’d come see me. I feel awful about what I said before. I was angry at being accused, but I can see how you’d suspect me. It’s the hazard of what we do. When things go wrong, we’re paranoid enough to suspect everyone.”
What he said was true. But he’d had three days to think about his approach. She had to admit it was a good one, and he seemed utterly sincere.
“You mentioned Wren.” Her tone was as hard as her gaze.
“Yes. Again, I apologize. I was just trying to keep myself out of the brig long enough to explain things to you. I knew your wife would be a tender spot that would get your attention.”
“So you’re no longer saying that there was some additional significance to my meeting her.”
“Well there was,” Colb said. “But only in that your assignment on the station was to investigate her.”
“To keep me busy? Out of the way? With the rest of my team scattered in various places on equally bogus assignments?”
“I didn’t think your assignment was bogus.” Colb sat still, hands folded in his lap. “There was a legitimate concern of smuggling on Dragonfire, involving an insider.”
“So you’re maintaining your innocence. You’re the good guy, fighting against the corruption.”
“Of course. I still don’t understand what caused you to suspect me. Clearly, I’m not the one who attacked Jamestown. I had to leave there months ago.” His forehead furrowed with puzzlement.
He didn’t know that she’d suspected him before they even arrived at PAC command. And he wasn’t aware that Krazinski had left her a message. She could almost believe she’d made a mistake. That she’d misjudged Colb and reframed everything assuming his guilt. It all hinged on her belief that her parents wouldn’t tell him that she’d visited them on the run from Blackout. If she was wrong about that, all of this could be upside down.
But she was sure she wasn’t wrong.
She let doubt flicker briefly on her face as she thought. Any more than that and he’d be on to her. Maybe he already was. They were two trained liars, lying their best. She’d played the game plenty of times, but the stakes had never been this high.
“So tell me your story,” she said. “Convince me.”
She left Colb an hour later, feeling indecisive. She’d promised to go talk to him the next day, after they returned to Dragonfire. He’d made a convincing argument for himself while spinning a story that fit with Krazinski’s supposed guilt. But she wasn’t buying it.
She usually loved head games, but not this time. Losing meant a lot more than a failed mission or her own death.
She wedged herself into her bunk and closed her eyes. She’d be taking the last shift on the bridge before their arrival at Dragonfire, so she’d need the few hours of sleep she could squeeze in.
Before they even arrived at the station, Fallon had instructed her security staff there to prepare for a protected guest. She told them nothing of who the guest was, or why that person needed protected status. She simply ensured that when Colb arrived, the team could usher him to a private holding cell with no witnesses or security feeds.
She had Peregrine and Hawk handle that transfer while she went to update Hesta on what had occurred. She didn’t resent the necessity of reporting to someone who was technically lower than her in the hierarchy, despite possessing a higher officer rank. Covert officers had elevated security ratings and didn’t typically take orders from anyone less than an admiral, unless maintaining a cover identity. But Fallon had always reported to someone, and this was Nevitt’s station.
Fallon hadn’t been on Dragonfire long when her comport alerted her to a message from Wren. Fallon would have to wait until after her shift to answer it. She didn’t have time for a personal call.
She went from one thing directly to the next, making sure Colb was secure, talking to her team, telling Raptor to search for clues about where they might find Krazinski
and the rest of the PAC command. Then she attended to her job as security chief on the station. She got a status report from Arin, checked the station’s systems, and looked at the reports that had been filed during her absence.
All the while, she kept thinking about what Krazinski had said about putting her head to the ground. So far they hadn’t turned up any phrase matching, except for the colloquialism “keep your ear to the ground,” which meant to pay attention to everything around her, particularly what people were saying. Did he mean that things happening at Dragonfire had greater meaning than they seemed to? That she might be missing some clue? Or maybe that she should be paying more attention to the datastreams because something of significance was happening there? It was just too vague a clue.
In her security office, she did a thorough search of all trending topics on the public voicecom channels, but nothing seemed relevant to her situation. So far, no one had raised the alarm about Jamestown, which was a relief. She was sure PAC command had done all they could to reroute signals and discourage ships from the area, but it was only a matter of time before someone noticed things were not as they should be.
She pushed back from her desk and sent her chair into a slow spin. Closing her eyes to accommodate an epiphany did not cause one to arrive. A shame.
She checked the time. Already well past the end of her shift. Wren would probably be asleep by now. She sent a text-only message for Wren to find when she woke, apologizing for not getting back to her sooner and telling her to get in contact the next day.
Finally, she locked up her office and went to get some sleep. Her rest schedule had been inconsistent because of her shift rotation on the Nefarious, and she’d need a good long slumber to get herself recalibrated.
Maybe she’d come up with an answer in her dreams. But then she thought of the strange memory dreams she’d had during her amnesia, and she hoped any big revelations waited until she woke up.
As she was about to get into bed, her door chime sounded. She expected to see Raptor or Hawk, but the door opened to reveal Wren’s sparkling eyes and impish smile.
