Lost Alliance (Dragonfire Station Books 1-3): A Galactic Empire series

by Zen DiPietro

  That got a guttural laugh out of her. Though she didn’t discount what he’d said, she knew his primary motivation was his sense of duty and loyalty.

  “I’ll be sure to remember all of you little people when I’m wildly powerful.” She smirked. She doubted that would ever come to pass. She’d be happy enough remaining a security chief for the rest of her life, so long as it didn’t come with any more threats to her life or losses of memory.

  When Em did her rounds on Deck One, she found everyone in higher spirits than normal. Shopkeeps enjoyed booming business, and residents roamed the boardwalk in crowds much larger than usual. It took her twice as long to do her rounds because she was constantly stopping to talk to people. Along the way, she ran into several crew members from the Onari, including its captain, Jerin Remay.

  “Chief, it’s so good to see you. I’m on my way to meet with Brannin, but I do want to be sure to have a good visit with you before we leave.” The doctor spoke in the same cultured, elegant way that Brannin did. Em always found Bennite accents so soothing. Jerin also shared Brannin’s dark-skinned good looks, though of course in a feminine variety. Em wondered briefly about the possibility of a romantic connection between the two doctors. They had so much in common. It was certainly none of her business if they did, but she tried to be aware of the relationships going on around her, to help her do her job.

  “I invited Brak to dinner tonight. Why don’t you join us?” Em hoped Wren hadn’t already made dinner plans. She needed to be sure to send her wife a message as soon as possible to prevent complications.

  Jerin, as she’d insisted on being called, looked delighted. “I’d love to.”

  “I’ll have to message you with the time, after I coordinate with Wren. I’m kind of springing this on her.”

  Jerin chuckled. “Of course. My schedule is wide open so just let me know.”

  After the doctor left, Em finished her tour of the boardwalk. She saw Cabot talking enthusiastically just outside the door of his shop with a young nurse’s assistant. A Trallian. Cabot was trying to sell her something, no doubt. Em hoped the girl bargained for a good deal. She liked Trallians, she realized. They were a small-statured people, with thick brown skin, big eyes, and sweet smiles. Though, of course, she knew that appearances could always deceive. Maybe that was what she liked about the Trallians—that they had a built-in characteristic that might well prove to be misleading. It made them interesting.

  Once back in her office, Em let Wren know about their impending dinner guests. Fortunately, Wren was delighted.

  Em then opened up the communications files and resumed her slow slog through them. It was dreadfully dull work. But then, intelligence work usually was. Sure, moments of discovery were exciting, but they could only come after hours, and sometimes weeks, of tedious scrutiny. Very little security work actually involved fighting or intrigue. Mostly, it was an excruciating eye for detail while maintaining the ability for fighting and intrigue. Far less thrilling than most people probably imagined.

  Poring through screen after screen of data, Em found that Nevitt didn’t send many personal communications. Occasionally she sent voice-only or text-only messages, but Em couldn’t find any video-feed messages or conversations that weren’t work related. That didn’t provide any clues, but it was a curiosity. All of Nevitt’s official communications were completely by the book. Em cross-referenced every event and personnel issue and found nothing amiss.

  She leaned back in her chair and rubbed her eyes. Hours had drifted by and she was nearing the end of her shift. She’d need to get home on time to start getting ready for dinner.

  She still had the better part of an hour, though, so she began digging deeper. She applied message-recovery algorithms to search for deleted communications, as well as ones that might have been routed through non-communications servers to keep them off the record.

  A short list of files was the reward for her efforts, but she quickly discarded most of them. That left her with three. One described plans for a janitorial worker’s birthday. One had been sent from a Rescan cargo ship to Cabot, and she saved that to investigate the next day. The third turned out to be a recipe for blistercakes.

  “Scrap.” She rubbed her eyes again. They felt scratchy, like they were full of sand. She’d turned up nothing at all, for all her work.

  She gave her chair a push and spun in slow circles. What now? Did a lack of evidence mean her accident had truly been an accident? Maybe she should stop looking. She’d settled into her life, and she liked it. There was no reason she couldn’t be happy on Dragonfire.

  Except for the mystery of the skills she shouldn’t have. What about that?

  She stuck her foot out, making the chair come to a drag-stop. What about her own private files? She’d never searched them for hidden messages. What if she’d been the one hiding something?

  She applied a new set of algorithms to her private files, both the personal and the official ones. Her lips parted as her screen began to populate with recovered files. There were two dozen of them, dating from her arrival on the station to six months later.

  Em tore through them, her heart racing. She read them all, then read them again. Finally, she closed all the files and sagged in her chair.

  She’d been looking at everyone but herself. She pressed her palm to her eye socket, trying to reorganize everything in her mind. She’d thought she’d been solving a puzzle, when in fact, she hadn’t even realized what the pieces looked like.

  What would she tell Wren? She’d made a mistake, confiding in her. And Endra.

  She was the one who’d been lying, all along. She’d been sent to Dragonfire to investigate Wren for smuggling. She was not who she’d thought she was, and sometime soon, someone was sure to show up and yank her back to where she was supposed to be.

  Em walked alongside Jerin in the arboretum. After dinner, the doctor had suggested they walk off the heavy meal they’d enjoyed. Em could almost believe they were walking outdoors. The radiant heat of the lights approximated the warmth of the sun on her skin. The air smelled fresh and herbaceous.

  The arboretum was the only room on the station that matched the gymnasium in size. Even the larger cargo bays, which could house commercial shuttles and small cruisers for maintenance, weren’t this big. Designed to give the illusion of being planetside, it provided walking paths, benches, and even grassy areas for picnicking. It took a small cadre of horticulturists to tend it, but it also served as a learning lab for the youth on the station. Here among the leafy trees and reedy grasses, they could study horticulture, botany, entomology, and hydroponics.

  Jerin paused to admire a purple-and-white flower the size of her head with long, feathery petals. “These were everywhere on Corvin VIII.” She stroked a finger over a petal, watching the soft fronds float with the movement.

  “That’s part of the Barony Coalition, isn’t it? At the edge of PAC space?” Em didn’t know much about the planet, other than that it was a farming world.

  “That’s right. A non-PAC world. We were there about three weeks ago. They were having an outbreak of bovine flu. A nasty business.” She stepped back from the flower and they continued down the path, some distance behind Wren and Brak.

  “Were you able to get it under control?”

  “Yes. It took us three weeks, but we quarantined the infected and treated them with aggressive antivirals. There were only five deaths, which happened before we arrived.” She shook her head, regret clear on her face.

  “That must be terribly hard, dealing with so many suffering people.” Em peered up at a tall tree as they meandered by it. Apparently she’d never studied plants, because the names of the trees and flowers did not come to her.

  “Unfortunately, viruses and bacteria are always mutating. When that happens and there isn’t sufficient healthcare available locally, it can go very bad, very fast. If they can’t afford to have a hospi-ship come, the death toll can rise quickly.”

  It sounded horrific to
Em, but Jerin remained matter-of-fact. It was, no doubt, an all-too-common occurrence to her.

  “Hopefully the PAC can establish accords with Corvin VIII that will help get them better access.”

  New PAC allies joined every year, but it was a slow process. A planet had to prove it was self-sustaining and could offer reciprocal benefits to other planets. It also had to prove a standard of ethical and humane policy.

  Jerin seemed unconvinced. “That is always the hope. I’d like nothing more than to be put out of the humanitarian business because there’s just no need for the Onari’s services.”

  “What would you do then?” Em asked.

  Jerin slowed, then stopped as she reached to touch a branch of spiky needles. “Oh, probably the same thing I’m doing now. Except the Onari would become a fully research-oriented ship. We have some research and development going on already, like with Brak, but imagine if we could do it exclusively.”

  Maybe medicine would figure out how to prevent outbreaks instead of rushing to battle them. Or maybe it could cure the diseases that so far no one had figured out.

  Jerin broke into her thoughts. “What would you do?”

  “What?”

  “If you weren’t in security.”

  Em drew a blank. “I don’t know.”

  “Did you grow up dreaming of becoming a security officer?”

  She had no idea. Em glanced around, ensuring no one was closer than Brak and Wren. “Did Brannin tell you about my recent accident?”

  Jerin gave her a puzzled look. “No. Should he have?”

  “Well, he never mentioned to me that he wanted to, or asked if he could.” Though he could have asked Jerin theoretical questions without naming Em and still been in the clear with patient confidentiality.

  “He wouldn’t discuss a patient without permission. Brannin is as ethical as they come.”

  “I’ve heard the same about your crew,” Em told her.

  Jerin gave her a small bow of thanks, but remained quiet. Doctors seemed to have a knack for drawing out information with silence. It was a tactic Em admired and one she preferred for security purposes as well.

  “Is there anyone on the Onari who specializes in neuroscience?”

  Jerin gestured to a nearby bench, as she and Em had simply stalled out on the path. Wren and Brak had moved up out of sight.

  Once seated, Jerin asked, “Do you mean cybernetic implants? Brak and I often work together to install the neural implants that control her cybernetics.”

  “No, I mean brain injury. Memory loss.”

  Jerin’s brow furrowed. “Are you saying you’ve suffered memory loss?”

  Em glanced around again. She felt squeamish about revealing information, but she found herself with few options. Soon, people would be looking for her, and she needed to get her bearings before that happened. She nodded. “Only a select few know about it, though.”

  “Brak and I might be able to help. If we can’t, perhaps Trin can.”

  “Isn’t he a physical therapist?” Em couldn’t exactly do aerobics with her brain to make it remember.

  “Yes, but rehabilitation means more than just bones and muscles. Depending on the nature of the injury, cognitive therapy might be a possibility.” Jerin sat up straighter, suddenly electric with purpose. “This isn’t the place to talk about private matters, but I want to help however I can. Can we arrange an appointment for tomorrow?”

  “Of course. Just let me know what time works for you.”

  Jerin touched the side of her nose where the ruby stud pierced it, thinking. “I’ll check with Brak and Brannin, and send you the time in the morning.”

  “Brannin?”

  “As your primary physician, he should be included. Unless there’s a reason you don’t want him to be?” Jerin’s tone turned the statement into a question.

  Em felt like she’d been letting too many people in on her secrets. Her instinct said she should involve as few as possible. But Brannin already knew about her memory loss. Why hadn’t he suggested a consultation with Brak and Jerin? Her mind clouded again with suspicion.

  “No, of course he should be,” she said a beat too late.

  Jerin pretended not to notice. “Good then. Should we go find Brak and Wren? I’m afraid they’ve left us far behind.”

  “I wouldn’t be surprised to find them in a mech shop, with Wren asking Brak for advice on something metallic and greasy.”

  Jerin laughed. It was a pretty, musical sound.

  “We’d better get to them, then, before we lose them completely. Next thing we’d know, they’d have Kellis in there too and be up all night, engineering something that would take over the universe.”

  They both snorted with laughter as they strode quickly down the path.

  During dinner and the subsequent walk in the arboretum, Em had managed to keep her contact with Wren to a minimum. Back in their quarters, she was forced to confront her problem.

  The previous night, Em had been perfectly at ease with Wren. Now she felt jumpy and nervous. She was certain Wren had known nothing of the investigation that had brought Em to Dragonfire. That meant Em had lied to Wren for the entirety of their relationship. Was their marriage even genuine? Maybe Em had married her for covert reasons.

  Em had begun to think that her developing love for Wren had been old feelings seeping through. A vestigial memory of the past. But maybe her feelings for Wren were actually new. Possibly based on the assumption that she had felt that way previously. Had she talked herself into caring for Wren?

  Oh, it was such a mess. She had enough on her hands without adding this. She managed to delay a conversation with Wren while she swept the quarters for monitoring devices, ensuring no low-pulse energy readings registered on the small scanner she now carried with her at all times. But once that was done and she’d put away her equipment, there was nothing left to do.

  Wren sat on the couch while Em tucked the scanner back into her belt. It was a modified diagnostic tool, designed to seek out any electronics that had an open connection. A perfectly normal device for a security officer to have. Not so normal to use obsessively in her home and office, but her life could hardly be called typical.

  “I had a great time,” Wren said, stretching out and flipping her hair back so that it hung down behind the couch. “I’m glad you invited Brak. I hadn’t gotten a chance to talk with her at length before, and it was great getting to know her better. She’s positively brilliant. A fun sense of humor, too.”

  “Yes, I like her too.” That, at least, she could say honestly.

  “How’s the search going on the communications files?” Wren propped her feet up on the edge of the table, resting her heels against an understated decorative curve. She tilted her head back and stared up at the ceiling rather than looking directly at Em.

  “No luck. I got through all of Nevitt’s files and didn’t come up with anything.” Her own files, of course, were a different matter altogether. And now she was back into lying territory. Scrap.

  Wren made a soft sound of sympathy. “No wonder you seem down. What do we do now?”

  Em wondered that herself. She couldn’t just come out and tell Wren their marriage might be a lie. It would be too cruel to put her into the same limbo Em was living. But maintaining the charade, if that was what it was, might be even worse in the long run. Alternatively, she imagined one day telling Wren that she’d discovered her own possible duplicity and then chosen to keep Wren in the dark. Augh. It was an impossible situation.

  “I have an appointment with Brak and Jerin tomorrow. Maybe they can help with my memory.” She paced slowly around the quarters, avoiding sitting on the couch.

  Wren sat up and looked directly at her. “Oh, do you think so?”

  “No idea. But it’s definitely worth trying.”

  Wren nodded enthusiastically.

  “Wren, what if…” She trailed off, considering how to phrase it. “What if I never remember anything? How would you deal with being mar
ried to someone who isn’t really who you thought you were marrying?”

  Wren stood and closed the distance between them. “I’d deal with it fine, because it’s you I’m married to either way. You’re still the same you, regardless of whether you remember me or not. You haven’t changed, even the slightest bit. Of course I want all of our shared memories back, but my real worry is that you might decide you don’t want to be with me.”

  Wren caught Em’s hand and twined their fingers together. She looked so vulnerable. Em fought the urge to pull away. She wanted to comfort Wren but didn’t know if she had the right. She felt like a total asshole.

  Instead, she said, “All I can say is that right now, the last thing I want to do is hurt you. I can’t give you any promises about anything else.”

  Wren seemed reassured by that, and she pulled Em into a long hug before patting her on the shoulder. “You should go on to bed. I can tell you’re exhausted.”

  “Sure. I’ll just take a quick shower first.”

  Wren smiled. “I knew you would.” She sent her a cheeky wink and picked up an infoboard. “I’ll be in shortly.”

  Em watched Wren for a long moment, as she punched up a screen and peered at it intently, before turning toward the bedroom.

  On the way to her morning run, Em received a call from Jerin about meeting. They agreed on an appointment that gave her just enough time to get in a good run, shower off, and then make her daily report to Captain Nevitt. Em wondered if Nevitt ever took days off work. Every PAC officer was entitled to two days off every weekly rotation, unless an emergency or operational necessity precluded it. Em’s own schedule showed that she usually took her days off one at a time, except when she had plans to visit Sarkan with Wren. Nevitt, though, seemed to live solely for her job.

  In the infirmary, Brak, Brannin, and Jerin awaited her. Brannin guided them to one of the private rooms in the back, to ensure that none of the other doctors or nurses were aware of her situation.

  “Am I late?” She checked the chronometer on her comport.