Coalescence (Dragonfire Station Book 3)

by Zen DiPietro

  “Suits you, being captain of a space station.”

  “I never thought of that. Funny.” She straightened. “So do I get to ask you a question now?”

  Suspicious, Fallon asked, “Is that why you offered to answer a question? To get to ask one in return?”

  One corner of Hesta’s mouth lifted. “No. Sometimes a suggestion is only a suggestion, Fallon. No ulterior motive.”

  “Really?” Fallon affected a surprised expression. “What’s that like?”

  Hesta smiled. “Somehow, I think you’re being more honest than you are joking. Which would be disturbing if I took time to really think about it.”

  “So what’s your question?”

  Hesta’s expression grew thoughtful. Finally, she asked, “After you lost your memory and you ‘met’ me for the first time, what did you think of me?”

  “Is this a trick question?”

  Hesta arched an eyebrow. “No. I’m curious about your impressions.”

  “I thought you were regal. Respectable. Beautiful. And I thought you hated me.”

  “I never hated you. I resented that you were forced on me. But life happens the way it happens, doesn’t it?”

  “Sometimes.” Fallon preferred to shape the way things happened, but that hadn’t worked well for her lately.

  Hesta drew a swirling pattern on the table. “Funny how when things go wrong, as in really wrong, that you never know if it’s a long-term disaster or a greater-good opportunity. Don’t you think? It’s only when we look back on history that we apply those labels of good and bad. Or barbaric and heroic.”

  “How do you think people will look back on what’s happening right now?”

  “That depends on what happens from here. Can we turn it and make it into a chance for improvement, for growth and learning, or does it become something with long-term impact for the worse?”

  “It could go either way. But it’s probably always like that during pivotal moments. Is it my turn for another question?”

  Hesta nodded.

  “Do you regret any of your choices, up to this point?”

  Hesta’s eyes unfocused as she weighed and measured her life. Finally, she fixed her gaze on Fallon and said decisively, “No. I’m not much of a regrets person.”

  Fallon raised her glass. “Me neither.”

  They toasted with the remnants of their drinks. Hesta didn’t order another, so neither did Fallon.

  “My turn for a question.” Hesta’s expression became sly. “What’s Ross’ story?”

  Fallon had anticipated a number of questions, but not that. “You like Ross.”

  “I’m not nine years old,” Hesta chided. “But he does interest me.”

  “He’s a good guy. I’ve always liked him. I don’t know him especially well from a personal standpoint, given that he was an instructor. He’s been a good addition to my team. That says a lot, considering how closely the rest of us have worked together for so long.”

  Hesta only nodded, so Fallon asked, “Want me to ask him if he likes you?”

  “Shut up.” Hesta smiled. “If I decide I’m interested, I definitely don’t need any help.”

  Fallon pointed a finger gun at Hesta, who blinked. “What’s that?”

  “A thing Trin does. No one seems to know why. Do you know him?” Fallon would bet she didn’t.

  “No. I barely know the Onari crew.” Her expression darkened.

  “Since they’re based here for the time being, it’s probably time to change that.” Fallon supposed she might be overstepping, but didn’t give a damn.

  “Yeah. Probably.”

  “I’ll introduce you around. Don’t worry.” Fallon reached across the table and patted Hesta’s hand.

  “It’s not that. I was wondering if people around here think I’m a hardass.”

  “Well, yeah,” Fallon admitted. “But all of my friends are hardasses. If they weren’t, I don’t think they’d be my friends.”

  Hesta smiled. “Makes sense. All right.” She lifted her glass. “To hardasses.”

  A familiar voice came from behind Fallon. “Now that is a toast I can get behind.” Hawk nudged Fallon over and sat beside her. “I’m not intruding, am I?”

  “Yes,” Fallon answered.

  “But it’s fine,” Hesta added. “Please join us.”

  Fallon let Hawk take over the conversation, as he so loved to do, and watched her captain expertly engage with his robust personality.

  Seeing Hesta let herself become a part of the crew would be fun.

  “I should have met with you sooner, but it’s been one thing after another.” Fallon sat across from Arin in her office the next day.

  “Is something wrong?” Arin shifted nervously.

  “No. Well, yes. Obviously, things aren’t right when PAC command is hiding out. But that’s why I want to talk to you.”

  “Okay.”

  “You know from what happened after my memory loss that I’m not just a security officer.”

  He nodded slowly. “Yes.”

  “Have you ever had any interest in being more than a security officer yourself? Going classified?”

  “You mean intelligence? Of course. But intelligence officers start that track right out of the academy. I clearly didn’t make that cut.”

  “You’ve made the cut now, as far as I’m concerned.”

  His eyes widened. “You can do that?”

  “Well, there are some details I’ll need to explain, but first I have to know that you’re all in. Because this is one of those choices that means no going back. So be sure.”

  He pursed his lips. “I don’t need time to think about it. I’m in.”

  “Good. Let’s dig right in. First off—have you ever heard of an organization called Blackout?”

  Three hours later, Arin looked shell-shocked.

  “Still glad you opted in?” Fallon asked.

  “I think so. Ask me in a week.”

  She appreciated his attempt at humor. Overall, he’d handled her revelations awfully well. “You’ll have questions. You can talk to Avian Unit, Ross, Captain Nevitt, and Captain Jerin Remay. I’ll have a meeting for everyone soon, to gel the team. We must take all due precautions when discussing sensitive topics, of course. We’re working with classified and off-book intel.”

  “Right. I will. Of course I knew things were going on, but the reality of it all is something else.” He shook his head. “And I thought that once my people escaped Atalus, we’d be living in a free and progressive society.”

  “We are. We will be. We just have to take out the trash.”

  “You make it sound easy.” He scratched at his ear distractedly.

  “It isn’t. The goal is clear-cut but the means are anything but. Speaking of which—I have two things I want you working on.”

  “I’ll do whatever I can,” he promised.

  “Kellis needs training. Security, hand-to-hand combat, weapons. Basically, a crash course in everything you learned in security school.”

  His voice rose in surprise. “Kellis?”

  “She knows about Avian Unit, but we haven’t discussed details. Mostly she’s aware that we’re at odds with the PAC and trying to right what’s going wrong. She accompanied us for the attack on the Tokyo base, but it really rattled her. She’s not going to be any use to us until she has some training.”

  “I can start working with her this evening, if she’s available,” he said.

  “Good. I’ll talk to her, let her know what’s going on. Then you two can work out the schedule on your own.” She paused. “Now the second job. I’ve left a stone unturned, and I need you to help me flip it over and inspect it.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “I need information about events on the station that occurred in the year before I arrived. Maybe even two years. First, we’ll search the official records, then we’ll need to dig deeper. I’ll need your personal recollections so we can search personal logs and communications. I may need yo
u to question people about that time. Do not mention any of this to anyone else.”

  Arin wore the look of a man who was about to stand in front of a firing squad, but was prepared to meet his fate. “Okay. When should we start?”

  “Now.”

  Sometimes you go looking for something you don’t want to find, and then you find it. It only took a few hours for Fallon to unravel this particular knot. But now that she had, she needed some time to think about her next steps.

  She gave herself the night to mull it over. The next day, she’d have to act on what she’d found. It would have both personal and professional ramifications. She wanted to be alone to give it some deep thought, but she didn’t want to be in her quarters or her office. Going to the boardwalk was out of the question. But she knew the perfect place, with no risk of interruption.

  Her serious expression and brisk pace kept anyone from sidelining her as she walked through the station, and she avoided areas likely to be well populated. On Deck Five, she bypassed the crew quarters to head straight for the center of the deck. Several layers of security later, she stood alone in crisis ops control. It seemed like a fitting location, and absolutely no one would come here. She’d run training drills in crisis ops, but a situation had never arisen to warrant using it for real. It would have been exciting if one had, but she cared deeply about this community, and was glad one hadn’t.

  Crisis ops had half the space of the regular ops control and was stocked with emergency medkits and rations of food and water. Weapons too. Stingers, low-grade projectile weapons that weren’t a risk for hull puncture, and edged weapons.

  She really hoped Dragonfire never saw an event that required the use of this room.

  She eased into the command chair. It wasn’t as comfortable as the one in regular ops, but she didn’t care. She wasn’t there for comfort. She needed to think about the decisions she’d made in the past couple of years. She analyzed everything, trying to determine whether her actions had caused her current troubles. Whether she’d missed something that would have changed everything.

  She couldn’t be sure. Had she been blind? Had she helped create this entire situation?

  By the time she returned to her quarters, Fallon had performed a factory reset on herself. She’d never been a very emotional person. She was logical. Tactical. Someone who didn’t get so caught up in her relationships with people that she missed something.

  She needed to go back to being that person.

  To say that Raptor’s presence on the couch in her quarters was bad timing would be an understatement. She stopped just inside the doors as they whisked closed behind her, her armor up and her stupid heart silenced.

  Raptor’s wolfish grin faded. He stared at her, and the light seemed to leak out of him. “Well, fuck.”

  “I need to focus on what we’re doing. No more personal stuff until I get it all sorted.”

  “We’ve never been anything but focused on getting the job done.” His voice was flat. “What happened?”

  “I screwed up. Let myself get distracted. It’s not your fault—it’s mine.”

  His mouth pressed into a hard line. “Humans are supposed to have feelings. I thought you’d figured that out.” He searched her face. “Damn, Fallon, what happened?”

  His hurt almost broke her resolve. She stood still, her eyes fixed on a spot on the wall. She had to do it this way if she wanted to trust her own judgment, because if she opened her mouth she’d lose it. And the fact that he could make her lose her willpower was exactly why she needed to keep it. This wasn’t about what she wanted. The safety of everyone she cared about depended on her objectivity.

  She continued to stare at the wall, standing at attention.

  “Right.” He stood and strode past her to the door. He paused before triggering the door sensor. “If you decide to tell me what’s going on, come talk to me. Otherwise, I won’t bother you again. All business, just like you want. Blood and bone.” His bitter tone made their motto sound like a curse.

  Then he was gone. She should have felt bad, but she didn’t. She didn’t feel stripped, or hollowed. She didn’t ache to call him back. No, she felt nothing.

  Fallon slept little. Her task for the next day pressed down on her too hard. After giving herself the night to think about her situation, she now had to act. To address the betrayal. Finally she got up and went to work early, skipping her usual run.

  In her office she completed regular security checks with obsessive precision while waiting for Arin to escort the person behind her current difficulties.

  When they arrived, she nodded at them both, remaining seated.

  For the first time in her life, she didn’t want the answers she was about to demand.

  “Thank you, Arin. You’re dismissed to your duties.”

  He covered his puzzlement quickly as he bowed and left.

  She steeled herself. She felt only her sense of duty. Only the need to do her job.

  She focused on the traitor across from her, trying to decide just how long the deception had been going on. Finally, she asked the question she most needed to have answered. “How long have you been in collusion with Admiral Masumi Colb?”

  Wren’s eyes widened and she sucked in a noisy breath. “What?”

  “Drop the act. You know what I am. You know what I do. It took me longer than it should have to connect you to him, but I’ve corroborated it with eyewitness reports and surveillance recordings. You started meeting with him eight months before my arrival on Dragonfire. Did you know him before that?”

  Wren wrapped her arms around herself and rocked gently back and forth. “Oh no,” she whispered.

  “I’m glad that you’ve decided not to play dumb.” Fallon watched her fair-skinned former wife grow even paler.

  “It’s not that.” Wren licked her lips. “I just want you to be safe. But now…” Her voice broke. “I don’t know what’s going to happen.”

  “Start at the beginning. When did Colb first contact you, and how did he identify himself to you?”

  “Like you said, eight months before you arrived on the station. I’d never met him before that. He found me in the shop and said he needed to talk to me about vital security. He showed me his identification as a PAC officer, and I was able to confirm with intelligence that he worked for them as an operative.”

  “He’s a little more than that.”

  “I found that out. I didn’t know anything about Blackout at that point. When I learned he was an admiral, I couldn’t imagine what he’d want with me. But he said he needed my help to find a clutch of smugglers that had been operating through this station. Chief Pirlin, who was here before you, wasn’t as thorough. Things weren’t like they are now. I agreed to hand over packages on three different occasions to smugglers, who acted as the middlemen to get the items where they needed to go.”

  “What was in the packages?” Fallon asked.

  “Medicine. Supplies that were being stolen from PAC aid shipments to planets that were in desperate need. They were being sold on the black market instead of getting delivered. And Colb’s operation worked. The smugglers did what Colb needed them to do and I never saw them again. Colb thanked me. I thought that was it.”

  “But it wasn’t.”

  Wren shook her head. “He contacted me again soon after. Said that since he knew he could trust me, he wanted me to continue helping him get those medical supplies to where they were supposed to go. Legitimate smuggling, more or less. Keeping the goods hidden so they didn’t invite theft.”

  “Right.” Fallon had to admit it was a plausible story. The PAC had resorted to such tactics in the past.

  “I’d pass on a package every day or so. It was nothing. Took a few minutes out of my day. I felt proud to be helping the PAC and the people who needed those supplies.”

  “So then what?” Fallon asked. Perhaps the biggest mysteries in life were buried in that midpoint between Point A and Point B.

  “Nothing. It continued on
that way. I didn’t hear from him again until he came to the station a week before you arrived. He said that our new chief of security was like a daughter to him and he hoped I’d look out for her in whatever way I could. He said that there was some power shift in your department and he’d assigned you to Dragonfire to keep you safe from all that. I thought it was normal politics. I didn’t know then you were in intelligence.” Wren’s face was pinched, worried.

  So what Colb had said implying that her meeting Wren had not been a coincidence was true. It should have hurt. Should have made her go cold, then flush with anger. But she was hard. She was polymechrine incarnate. And she was ready to cut to the chase. “When exactly did he give you a force-field disruptor and a class-eight plasma torch? I’m guessing you hid those in your shop somewhere?”

  Wren’s eyes widened with the understanding that Fallon knew everything. “I put them in a restricted-access locker, where only I could get to them. Colb gave the items to me right after you and I got married.”

  “Strange wedding present.”

  “It wasn’t that. He said that the power shift had become something more, and that if we ever needed to escape the station quickly, we should use these.”

  Fallon squinted. “That didn’t seem strange to you?”

  “Of course it did! That was my first clue that I’d gotten in over my head, that all this was more than I’d thought. I’m not…I mean, I’m just a mechanic who wants people to be safe and fed and taken care of.” Tears of frustration formed in her eyes. “Especially you.”

  Fallon searched Wren’s face as she talked, looking for any hint that would give her away. Prove she was an enemy. But she didn’t find it. She only saw a bewildered and frightened woman.

  “How did Colb alert you to break him out of the brig?”

  Wren stared down at her hands. “An automated message. It told me that if I received it, he’d been taken into custody. That the situation with the PAC command restructuring had become an all-out coup, and your commanding officer, who was the real enemy, had convinced you that Colb was the one responsible for everything.”

  “And you just did what he said? What about coming to me? Telling me what you knew? Letting me do what I do best? Instead, you acted appalled that I hadn’t told you about being a covert operative!” In spite of herself, Fallon found her voice rising.