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

by Zen DiPietro

“Fair enough.” He cleared his throat. “After I left here, I hightailed it to PAC command.”

  “I’m serious,” she interrupted.

  “No, really,” he insisted. “If you go down to the stem section of Dragonfire and look out porthole RTG-2817 right now, you’ll see an ultralight racer docked there.”

  Fallon had to tighten her jaw to keep it from dropping. “An ultralight.”

  “Yeah.”

  “You’re telling me you crawled into one of those coffins, put on a contained rebreather and a thermal suit, then flew all the way to headquarters and back?”

  The man must be crazy. Which probably meant she was also crazy. This did not bode well.

  “Yep.” He looked quite pleased with himself.

  “That’s ridiculous. One teeny meteorite and you’d be dead.”

  “Exactly why I avoid them,” he agreed.

  “Why an ultralight?”

  “It’s the only way to slip under command’s notice. They don’t routinely look for anything that small, and as long as I kill all the systems and coast into the correct range, which I happen to know, then there’s nothing for them to detect. Bang—there I am, right on their hull. In the exact sort of surveillance blind spot that you have right where the ultralight is docked now.”

  “Other than porthole RTG-2817,” she pointed out.

  “No video there, but yeah. Visible if someone looked out the porthole. But no one will. It’s a terrible place to dock, all the way down there.”

  Knowing that there was a dark spot on her security surveillance was annoying, and she’d have to install a new video feed once all this was over. He was right that no one would be down there, and even if someone did dock there, anyone besides Raptor would be unable to breach the station. Still. It was a matter of pride.

  “So why did you want to be on the hull of headquarters?” she prompted. She had an idea, but wanted him to spell out the details.

  “To exploit a fail-safe. Every twenty-six hours, the entire network backs itself up. There’s a brief window when I can punch into the system from the outside and extract data without it being detected.”

  “How brief?”

  “Two-point-three seconds.”

  “Wow. That’s brief.” To get into the system in that amount of time would be impossible for her, much less to do it and extract data.

  “Plenty enough if I’m ready for it. But I have to know exactly what I’m after. If I need more than one file, I have to wait until the next backup.”

  “Which means you have barely enough time to get back there, if you leave within the hour,” she predicted.

  He grinned and bumped her on the shoulder with his fist. “You got it. See, you’re still the Fury.”

  “Yeah, I’m still not excited about that name. Let’s stick with Fallon. So what are you leaving me with, then?”

  He got right back to business. “Your current active file. The real one.”

  Active file. That meant her vital statistics and career history, but no detailed information from further back in her past, such as officer training school or her planet of origin.

  “And you want me to analyze it while you go back to get…what?”

  “Peregrine’s file. Then the next one will be Hawk’s.” His eyes narrowed.

  “What about yours?” she asked.

  “Already on there.” He gestured toward the data chip he’d given her. “First thing I got before I came here to find you.”

  “So how did you know I was on Dragonfire without my active file?”

  His grin came back. “Your name. Clearly, you used your code name as your surname so that I could find you. And I did.”

  “Emé Fallon. Right.” Did that mean she’d known something strange was going on before she even arrived at Dragonfire? Disturbing, if true, but at least it had led Raptor to her.

  “So while you’re gone, you want me to dig through our active files and see what I can figure out?”

  “Exactly. We need to find Peregrine and Hawk immediately. They could be in danger. So could we. We’ve got to be back together again, where we’re strong.” He stood.

  She had so many more questions, but time would not wait. She clasped his hand, and swore, “Blood and bone, Raptor.”

  He repeated the motto, grabbed his bag, and walked out the door.

  Fallon squinted at the screen, trying to squeeze out another scintilla of information. No luck. She’d gleaned everything she could. It had been quite a bit, though. Far less than her life story, but a lot more than she’d had before.

  She and Raptor were the same age. That made sense, given that they’d been in school together. After she’d been shipped off to Dragonfire, he’d been assigned to a remote lunar location, supposedly to track some suspicious signals that might contain plots against the PAC.

  She doubted his assignment had been anything legitimate. Hers certainly hadn’t been, given her clandestine investigation that had come to nothing. How better to keep an intelligence officer busy? Have them investigate a squeaky-clean suspect. A good officer would assume she was being thwarted and work that much harder. But Fallon had eventually caught on. She didn’t have communications logs, but the fact that she’d married Wren six months into the assignment seemed significant. She must have been certain well before that point that Wren had been innocent. Blackout had made Dragonfire her home assignment until the rest of her team had completed their own special assignments. Supposedly.

  Blackout had shelved her and she’d been happy to go along with it, given her newly married status. Which also explained why she’d even been permitted to marry. She shouldn’t have been. BlackOps couldn’t afford weaknesses, and spouses and children were nothing but weakness. A soft spot for exploiting. Even having a family back home was a vulnerability, which was why Blackout had a high percentage of orphaned officers.

  Fallon sighed and rubbed her eyes, wishing she had her office chair so she could go for a slow spin. Her bum and back hurt from sitting hunched forward for the past three hours.

  She stood and stretched her arms over her head, arching her back. She should get back to her quarters. Keeping her regular routine was the best way to avoid suspicion, so sleeping in her own bed would be the right move. She pulled the chip from the voicecom display, then made sure she’d scrubbed the unit right down to the factory specs. She might not have had Raptor’s skills, but she still had far more than even a top-shelf sysops analyst.

  No one was there to see her leaving the quarters, which left her home free. She walked with purpose, just as she would when answering a security call.

  She’d have to update Nevitt the next day, in a way that gave no details about what had happened, for the captain’s own good, yet still let her know that Fallon was making progress. Fallon would worry about how to word that in the morning. Right now, she felt tired, all the way down to her bones.

  Once back in her room, she changed into lounge clothes and fell right into bed. She quickly descended into a deep sleep, where she dreamed about hurrying down corridors and looking for Wren, only to catch a glimpse of her before she slipped around another corner.

  With the exception of her private report to Captain Nevitt, the next day proved to be entirely routine for Fallon. She made her rounds at the normal time, then checked up on that odd group of traders she’d asked her officer to keep an eye on. They’d departed the station earlier that morning, leaving no trail of mischief behind them. Maybe she’d been wrong about them.

  She checked in with everyone as usual, remained busy throughout her shift, and in the evening shared dinner with Arin and a few other security staff. Jerin and her crew were scheduled to leave the next day, which left Fallon with the decision on whether or not to fill Brak in on some of the new developments.

  On one hand, the less Brak knew, the better for her. On the other, Fallon felt obligated to her, given that Brak had already taken risks on Fallon’s behalf. When she considered that she might well need Brak’s help in the fut
ure, and that Brak would not appreciate being left out, Fallon made an appointment to speak with her privately the next day. No sense in doing it today, since she suspected Raptor would show up again tonight with additional information.

  With that in mind, she made a few programming changes to her security system, determined to detect him. In a way that only she would recognize, of course, but still. It was her station, after all, and a matter of pride. Even a ghost shouldn’t get past her, as far as she was concerned.

  She returned to her quarters after dinner, but didn’t dress for bed. She was too on edge, waiting. But the signal she’d been waiting for didn’t happen. Finally, halfway through the night, her comport chirped.

  She leaped up and charged out of her quarters, slowing to a businesslike pace through the corridors to the lift. She arrived at Raptor’s guest quarters just as he did.

  “Hah!” He ducked in behind her and the doors closed. “Nice try, polarizing the docking clamp. Like I wouldn’t see that coming.”

  Yeah, so that part hadn’t worked. “Still got you though.”

  “Only because you expected me, and knew where I’d be headed. How did you do it?”

  “I calculated your likely rate of speed and your three most likely routes, and programmed the computer to alert me when something matched those parameters. With a certain amount of variance, of course.”

  “Not bad,” he allowed. “But you only found me because you knew I was coming. And if I was really trying, I would have used an illogical route.”

  He was right. Still. “I would have anticipated that, too.”

  He laughed, then made an almost gross scoffing sort of snort. “You keep telling yourself that.” He rubbed his hands together. “So, what did you come up with?”

  “For one thing, that my marriage to Wren was the real thing. It worked in Blackout’s favor that I was content enough to stay here and play house. I didn’t marry her to protect her, or to try to get information from her. That has to mean I married her only because I wanted to.”

  “Makes sense.” He stretched out on the couch, kicking his shoes off and letting out a groan. “I’ll tell you, if I never fly in an ultralight again, I will be a happy man.”

  “I bet. How do you avoid getting sick?”

  “My instinct tells me to be cool, but I can’t lie to you.” He gave her a crooked grin. “There’s a reason I travel with spare clothes.”

  She laughed, and he chuckled with her. She wondered about their ability to laugh in such circumstances. Were they nuts? Or just hardened? Perhaps both.

  “So are you going to tell the wife? Ask her to come back to you?” His expression didn’t suggest judgment, only curiosity.

  “No. At least not until I have the full story on my background. Or if I get my memory back. Either way, she deserves more certainty than I can give her at this point.”

  He nodded, but she caught a hint of something in his eyes. “What? You think that’s wrong?” she demanded.

  “I’m not saying that. I just wonder how she’ll feel about it if you tell her months from now that you’ve known all along that you were for real about marrying her. Seems to me she’ll be pissed.”

  She sighed. “Yeah. But either way, I figure she’ll be pissed. So I’m going with the option that keeps her out of Blackout’s way.”

  “Yeah.” He stared down at his hands for a long time, then repeated more softly, “Yeah.” He shook his head. “No way I’m ever getting married.”

  “Never know. You might find someone who makes it all worth it.” She sat down next to him, nudging him over to make room.

  Before moving, he snaked his arms around her and pulled her in for a hug. “Nah. She’s already taken.”

  Fallon looked at him sharply, but he burst into laughter. “Should have seen your face.” He scooted over, giving her just barely enough room to sit. Apparently, he was a space hog. He had the whole other side of the couch he could move over to.

  She wrinkled her nose at him.

  He ignored her expression. “What else did you learn?”

  “That your assignment was as bogus as mine. Which makes me think that the same is likely for Peregrine and Hawk.”

  He nodded.

  “How are you even here? You’re supposed to be on some minor moon, sifting the radio spectrum for pretend transmissions.”

  “It’s not hard to spoof myself being somewhere else when there’s no one to physically check. All the right patterns and signals are coming off that blasted moon, and all the proper responses will go back to routine inquiries. Any communications that require my personal attention will come my way here, and then I’ll spoof them back over. No problem.”

  Actually, that did seem very doable. She could probably manage the same thing, though without his finesse.

  “Do you have any idea why they’d want us out of the way?” she asked. “Surely you’ve thought about it.”

  “Of course I have. But none of my ideas worked. Maybe they wanted to replace us with another team. But why? They’d just need to give them the orders instead of us. No reason to separate us and have us do busywork. It doesn’t make sense to spend years training operatives, only to waste our talents by having us do nothing.”

  She thought that over. “True. And if we’d done something wrong, something worth punishing, we’d either be censured or somehow find ourselves unable to breathe anymore.”

  “Exactly. So that means that someone else is doing something on the wrong side. Something they don’t want us to figure out. Something that, if we did find out about it, would turn us against them. Right?”

  “That’s what I was thinking,” she admitted.

  He pumped his fist in the air. “Yes! Fury’s got nothing on me.”

  She ignored him. “So what do you have for me?”

  “Hawk’s active file.”

  “Not Peregrine’s?” She’d thought that was his plan.

  “Missed it. I barely managed to grab his. I’ll get hers when I go back.”

  “Then what?” she asked.

  “Then I’ll get whatever you tell me we need at that point. I’m hoping something about the assignments puts you on to something. An angle to work.”

  “Right. Well, let me see it.” She held out her hand, and he placed the tiny chip into it. “When do you have to leave?”

  “Thirty-five minutes. Would it be okay with you if I slept? I can’t sleep while I’m flying, and—”

  She cut him off. “You probably haven’t slept for days. Yes.” She got off the couch and pantomimed him opening it. “Sleep. I’ll take this to my quarters and study it there. I’ll be ready for Peregrine’s when you get back.”

  “I know you will.” He stood and gave her a quick hug, which she found oddly comfortable.

  She reflected on that on the way back to her quarters. She didn’t have a normal security job anymore, and she didn’t have a wife anymore, either. But she did have this new partner, and hopefully two more to find very soon. She needed them, badly, to find some sort of purchase in the universe. To find her footing. To keep her from flying off into the blackness of space like a random piece of flotsam.

  “You can’t give me more information?” Brak asked. The Onari would leave at noon, and Fallon had invited her to breakfast, which they’d eaten in Fallon’s office. Takeout from the Tea Leaf was surprisingly good. Fallon would have to get her breakfast there more often.

  “You have the important details already,” Fallon told her. “I’m just leaving out names and locations, to keep both you and my unit safe. As safe as I can manage, anyway.”

  Fallon smelled the onion scent of frustration. “I wish we could tell Jerin. She’d be a strong ally for you.”

  “That would be an unnecessary risk to her and your ship. I couldn’t do that. Besides, I don’t see the tactical advantage.”

  Brak clicked her teeth softly. “That’s because you don’t know Jerin as well as I do. She looks refined and sophisticated, but in her way, she’s a
warrior too. You’ve been wronged, and if anything makes her scales itch, it’s when someone has been treated wrongly. And if there’s an entire section of a government that’s gone corrupt—” She broke off and uttered a growling, hissing sound that made Fallon simultaneously edgy and impressed. “She would be angry if you didn’t let her help.”

  Fallon smiled faintly at the idea of Jerin having scales. Sometimes one species’ idioms didn’t quite fit seamlessly with the realities of other species. The meaning was clear, though.

  “Okay. I’ll tell you what. If, at some point, I think Jerin could be helpful enough that it justifies the risk, I’ll bring her in. How’s that?”

  “Too many qualifiers,” Brak huffed. “But I know it’s the most you’ll promise.”

  Fallon felt a fondness for the Briveen. She’d miss her. Other than Raptor, Brak was the only person she could really talk to about the serious things going on in her life. Captain Nevitt knew the basics of the situation, and had surprised Fallon with her shrewdness and social conscience. There was a lot more to the woman than Fallon had suspected before, but that didn’t make her a friend.

  “I’ll miss you too,” Brak said.

  Fallon smiled. That Briveen sense of smell. No doubt they made very good lie detectors. A shame they couldn’t get some of Brak’s people in Blackout. Well, maybe they had, for all Fallon knew.

  “We’ll be in communications range for some time yet. Let me know how you’re doing, in whatever vague way you can.” Brak’s head tilted with amusement.

  “I’ll keep in touch,” Fallon promised.

  “And if we can be of help…”

  “I’ll contact you.”

  Brak fell silent, drumming her fingers in a slow cadence on the table. “I hope so. I knew when Krazinski asked me for those neural implants that something was wrong. I was afraid of what would happen. The fact that all of this is unfolding in front of me does not feel like coincidence. On Briv we have a phrase that translates roughly to, ‘An eviscerated animal does not get its guts back when no one’s looking.’”

  That made zero sense to Fallon, so she waited for the explanation. Brak did not disappoint. “It means that even if you regret what you’ve done, you can’t ignore it. You must act and make things right.”