by Zen DiPietro
“It’s nothing.” Peregrine looked pleased, though. “Good luck.”
“No problem,” Raptor declared. “Easy in, easy out.”
“Let’s hope,” Peregrine muttered.
Raptor reached out and gave the end of Peregrine’s ponytail a gentle tug, which made her lips turn up into an almost-smile.
“Don’t worry, Masquerade. Blood and bone.”
She nodded. “Blood and bone, Ghost.”
Fallon immediately loved Caravon. The buildings rose hundreds of floors into the air, all metallic-shiny and blinking with lights. Groundcars didn’t even exist. Hovertaxis delivered people directly to upper-level platforms on the skyscrapers. A ludicrous expense. Clearly, Caravon had a point to make about what kind of planet it was.
Standing on the ground and looking up, Fallon saw the air transected by so much traffic that it looked like a swarm of many different types of bugs, all swirling around in chaotic patterns.
“You look too happy. Stop it,” Raptor teased.
“I’m loving the fresh air. And the sunshine,” she admitted.
“I can tell. That’s why I didn’t hire a taxi.” He patted her shoulder in a way that was far too geriatric for a middle-aged man and she snorted at him.
“You’d make a cute grandpa,” she teased as they walked across the large square that separated the transport station from the other central buildings.
He made a sound of disgust. “To be a grandpa, I’d have to be a dad first, and no way in hell I’d ever curse some kid or some woman with that burden.”
She laughed. Not being parent material herself, she knew exactly what he meant.
“Here we are. After you, my dear.” He gestured for her to enter the hotel ahead of him. “Restaurant’s on the eighty-second floor. I hope it’s as good as everyone says.”
So they were in character now. Fallon walked into the hotel lobby, saying, “I’m sure it is. Everyone keeps telling us we have to try it.”
While waiting in the lobby for a lift to take them up, they pleasantly debated the benefits of staying at a large hotel versus a small one.
When they arrived, Fallon took a long moment to admire the restaurant, which had not spared a single expense. Ridiculously costly laser-etched mosaics practically sprang out of the walls and sprawled across the ceiling. The chandeliers alone would have bankrupted some small planets. The effect was sleek, sparkling, and entirely decadent.
She and Raptor kept up their banal patter as they perused the menus, made selections, and waited for their meals. After the server brought their drinks, Raptor excused himself to use the necessary.
“Don’t be too long, the food will be here soon,” she called.
She got the boring job of doing nothing at all, while he did his magic. On the ninety-third floor, the hotel had a PAC-access dataport, hardlined into the planet’s official datastream. The entire floor was reserved for PAC guests. Fallon didn’t worry that Raptor might be caught. He was the Ghost.
She smiled, thinking of the name. It had begun to grow on her.
She just hoped that no one would blunder out of some room and somehow recognize him. It was their only worry. Raptor had already keyed into all of the hotel’s security feeds and ensured that none of them would see him.
Fallon dug into her steak when it arrived. She wasn’t about to let good food go to waste. She nearly swooned when the morsel touched her tongue and melted into a pool of pure flavor and bliss. Screw Raptor. If he didn’t get back soon, she’d polish off her food and start in on his, too. The tender leeks and brussels sprouts put shame to all others she’d ever tasted.
Fifteen minutes after he’d left, Raptor returned. “I see you’ve started without me.”
“You’re lucky there’s anything left.” She put her last bite of steak into her mouth and chewed, eyeing his food meaningfully.
He grinned. “Don’t even think about it.”
She ordered dessert instead. Five-layer chocolate walnut cake with a fudge ganache. Seeing her order it on the tableside menuboard, Raptor requested one for himself, as well.
When they were both too full to eat another bite, they waddled out, heaping praises on any staff they saw. They weren’t just acting either. Fallon didn’t know if she’d ever had such a delicious meal. They rode the elevator down, casually walked across the square, and returned to the station.
“Twenty minutes to the next elevator,” Raptor told her, after checking at the window.
Their priority now was to get off the planet. They hadn’t said a word about what Raptor had done on the ninety-third floor, even obliquely. They just needed to get their asses back to the Onari.
Fallon liked it, though. The adrenaline. The excitement. This was her life, no doubt about it. She liked wondering if there was an ambush around the corner or a fight about to find her. She almost hoped there would be. Almost. The exhilaration of the game made her feel alive in a way that nothing else ever had.
Raptor eyed her knowingly and a rueful smile curled his lips. She raised her eyebrow at him, but he only shook his head. They took seats on the orbital elevator and waited out the long ride quietly, like a middle-aged couple who’d already had all of life’s urgent conversations.
Their stopping at Caravon also meant Mara’s departure. It was the perfect place for her to get a safe, reliable ride back to her homeworld, which Jerin had already arranged. The crew of the Onari gathered at the airlock to see the girl off.
Mara said many thank-yous and gave too many hugs to count. When she came to Fallon, she hugged her fiercely. Touched, Fallon hugged her right back. Then she handed her a small, rolled bundle.
“Here you go. So you can keep practicing. I expect you to get good and win some competitions.”
Mara’s mouth rounded around her “Oh!” of surprise when she realized what Fallon held. “Your knives? I can’t.”
Fallon waved a dismissive hand. “They’re just a practice set. I have another. They’re high quality, though, so take good care of them like I showed you.”
“I will. Thank you!” She gave Fallon another, even more squeezy, hug and then Trin walked with her into the docking station. He’d ensure that she got on her ship safely.
“That was very nice of you,” Jerin murmured.
“Not a big deal.” Fallon shrugged. “I don’t need two sets.”
Jerin just smiled.
“I heard you’re one hell of a knife thrower.”
Fallon stared, nonplussed, at Dr. Yomalu. She hadn’t had a proper conversation with the guy in the past three months, and here he stood outside her quarters with a game smile and a bottle of Zerellian ale. Quite a cheeky move. She’d been on her way to meet Brak for their morning run.
But there was no sense in turning down good ale. She accepted the bottle and tucked it under her arm. She didn’t invite him in, though. She remained in the open door of her quarters.
“You heard right.” No sense in false modesty, either.
“I’ve come to bribe you for some lessons.” Yomalu was some mix of ethnicities she couldn’t identify just by looking. She knew from his record that he’d been born in the Orestes cluster, but had moved from place to place ever since. He didn’t have good looks, height, or an impressive physique, but he did have a winning smile that spread from ear to ear. And ale.
“Bribe?” she repeated.
“Enjoin.” When she remained blank-faced, he tried again. “Entreat. Incentivize. Corrupt?” His light-gray eyes widened, as if the last option were his most favored possibility.
“How would you do that?”
He glanced to the left, then the right, and leaned forward conspiratorially. “Word has it you have an appreciation for that stuff.” He nodded at the bottle under her arm. “I happen to be a collector. Three centuries’ worth of vintages. What you have right there is a hundred-year bottle from the Devandor region. Super rare.” He smiled pleasantly.
“Keep talking.”
“If you’d be willing to give
me some lessons, I’d be happy to gift you several bottles of your choosing.”
An offer way more than worth her time. “Define several.”
“Four lessons a week, a bottle upon every fourth lesson.”
“My instruction is far more valuable than that. Two bottles,” she bargained. “And this one doesn’t count.”
“Five lessons, two bottles. And fine.”
She’d have done it for his original offer. Heck, she’d have done it for free. She had time on her hands, after all. “Deal.”
He grinned, his forehead crinkling too much for a man of his middle years. No doubt he spent an excessive amount of time being exposed to solar rays. A doctor should know better. The wrinkles made him look amiable, however, in addition to his huge smile. She found herself liking him.
“Can we start this afternoon? During my lunch break, maybe?” he asked.
She mentally ran through her to-do list. “That works.”
“Excellent.” He gave her a jaunty salute. “See you then!”
She smiled as she went back into her quarters, letting the doors close behind her. She studied the ale bottle’s label and, after a brief argument with herself, decided it was far too early in the day for ale. Too bad. She tucked it away for later. She had a workout to take care of.
After freshening up after her workout, Fallon’s next stop was Hawk’s quarters. He’d promised to tell her about their mission to Artelon Three, which had apparently been a messy one. She looked forward to hearing the tale.
After his initial grumbling about delving into the past, he’d settled into the storyteller role. She’d known he would, given how much he liked telling tales at the bar.
He handed her a tall glass of cold tea and palmed one for himself. He settled on the couch while she took the chair opposite him.
“So what are we talking about today?”
She knew he knew. Which he also knew. But she played along. “Artelon Three.”
“Oh, right. Nasty business. One of our worst. Everything that could go wrong, did. No clean in and out on that one. We barely got out at all.”
He tapped a finger on the side of his glass, ruminating. Fallon waited patiently, enjoying the anticipation of getting to see the action through his eyes.
Hawk smoothed his hands over his uniform. His palms always got sweaty during a job. Not from nervousness, but adrenaline. The feeling that he was about to do what he did best, alongside others who were the best at what they did. This was what he lived for.
“I’m in.” In the corner of the huge room, Raptor had plugged in to the station’s central processing core. The technology was the same as what the PAC used, but this dingy little station was anything but PAC. This place operated on the dark side of an unpopulated moon, and Blackout had discovered that it had become a hub of people trafficking.
Just thinking about it made Hawk want to tear someone apart. The idea of people capturing other people—mostly refugees of war, though the slavers weren’t too particular if they thought they could pick off someone who wouldn’t be missed… A rage grew up from Hawk’s bones that threatened to shatter the room around him. He hated this room. Hated its bareness, hated the two security podiums he and Fallon were handling, and the core in front of Raptor, too. Hated the very existence of the station. Hated that he couldn’t single-handedly eradicate slavers and exploiters from the universe.
He held it all in, though. He’d gotten good at that, thanks to the academy and OTS. Somehow, the academy had seen the good beneath the simmering wrath, and given him an outlet for both. Thank Prelin. He had no idea what he would have ended up doing if he hadn’t been recruited.
“Almost done? Time’s ticking.” Hawk looked over his shoulder to Raptor and saw Fallon behind him, holding her palm to the identifier screen in front of her, just as he was. The security on this crappy little station was as tight as anything Hawk had seen outside of PAC headquarters. All three of them had to work in tandem to make Raptor’s data-stripping program run. If they didn’t get what they needed in the next thirty seconds, though, the room’s periodic DNA scan would detect them and blow their operation all to hell.
“Seventy-three percent,” Raptor called. Hawk and Fallon exchanged a worried look.
“Eighty-eight percent.” Ten seconds.
“Ninety-three percent.” Two seconds. Too late.
The air intakes hissed, adjusting the room’s internal pressure for the scan.
“Off the floor!” Fallon ordered.
He lifted his hand from the screen and heaved himself up onto the small podium. His feet couldn’t even go hip-width apart, but at least he could stand solidly. Fallon fit more comfortably on top of the other podium. Raptor gritted his teeth, balancing on the core’s console with his toes.
The sweep began at the floor, and Hawk watched the cozy-looking orange light rise slowly, searching for life readings. The only way to turn off the sweep was out of reach—on the outside of the room’s doorway.
“Catch me!” Fallon shouted.
She launched herself at Hawk, and he had barely enough time to brace himself before she slammed into him. He somehow managed to keep his inadequate toehold on the podium. There wasn’t room enough for her to put her feet down with his.
“Now what?” He held her securely, her back to his front.
“Over there!” She pointed to a tiny ledge next to the door. The emergency door release, smaller than one of his feet. But the release wouldn’t work with a DNA sweep in progress.
He put his left arm around her waist to hold her up to his shoulder, then put his right hand on her bum. Using his right arm and left shoulder, he launched her on what he hoped was the right trajectory, and not too hard, toward the emergency release.
She got her foot on it as if she had wings, but immediately slammed into the wall like a sack of potatoes. She didn’t fall, though. Nobody had balance like Fallon.
She stood on the emergency release, leaning toward the door, and took a sonic decoupler out of her pocket. Nice. If she could disable the door, they might just make it out alive.
The door slid open, revealing six people holding stingers. Hawk was pretty sure they weren’t the legal, usually-used-in-nonlethal-ways kind of weapon.
Prelin’s ass. He stepped off and dropped behind the podium, reaching for his own weapons and hoping the people at the door didn’t take Fallon out before he could even fire.
Knives appeared in her hands and she flung three in quick succession, hitting two of their opponents in the eye and the last one in the forehead. She dodged a stinger blast with one of her gravity-defying sideways flips, then threw herself to the other side of the doorway to give Raptor and Hawk an open shot.
Rage notwithstanding, Hawk didn’t like to shoot to kill. He did it when he had to, though. He took out the next two people as they stepped over the bodies of their associates, and Raptor shot the last one in the back when he turned to run. Hawk had to give Raptor credit for that. It was a shitty shot to have to make, and one that would burn a hole in him later. But he’d done it, just as he should.
“Full cleanse!” Fallon yelled, not waiting for her partners. She ran, stepping over the bodies.
Which meant they needed to split up and take out anyone left on the station, to avoid blowing their operation. Blackout couldn’t afford for the slavers to know what they were up to. This was supposed to have been an easy op, no detection. Years of work might be wasted in the next minutes.
But there were no others to eliminate. Hawk was almost disappointed. Fallon called to Peregrine on their tiny fighter to get ready as the three of them made it to the docking bay.
As soon as they were on board, Per unleashed a volley of torpedoes specifically designed to make damage appear to have been caused by rapid depressurization. Containment was always a junk-station’s biggest problem, and when one got slagged, it was almost always a pressurization issue. They might not fool the slavers, but hopefully Avian Unit could at least keep them uncertain for
long enough to get their heads right into the noose.
Hawk wanted to be the one to kick the chair out from under them.
Fallon watched the ice shift in her glass as it melted. She’d swallowed all the tea without even noticing, while Hawk talked. She hadn’t realized so much anger ran beneath his skin. She knew he made plenty of bluster, but that stuff was mostly for show. What he’d shared with her was real, and it made her wonder about his life before the academy. Not that she’d ever ask him about it.
His story didn’t seem more dire than Peregrine’s story about the time pirates had followed Avian Unit away from dock, only for the team to find their propulsion drive had been tampered with. But this story seemed to really bother Hawk. She suspected he came from a rough background. He clearly had a need to protect the innocent.
“So you just threw me?” She decided to go with that angle, to lighten his mood a little. “Into a wall?”
His frown lessened. “You told me to. Made a terrible sound, though. Like a fresh steak hitting concrete. Slap-thunk.”
“Yeah, remind me not to try that one in the future. It didn’t even do any good, since those slavers showed up.”
“They might not have been actual slavers, but they were a part of the operation, which made them just as guilty.”
She nodded, in total agreement. There were no innocent bystanders when it came to people trafficking. Anyone aware of it became guilty by association.
“Did we take down the slavers, in the end?”
“Of course we did.” He indulged in a grim smile. “Just took a little longer than we wanted.”
“Good.” She leaned forward and put a hand on his arm. “Thanks for telling me about this one. I can tell you don’t like talking about it.”
He shrugged. “No big deal.”
Preparing to leave, she smoothed out her cargo pants and shirt. She felt a little odd in them after wearing her black jumpsuit for so long, but they were comfortable. “Want to meet for dinner later? Or drinks?” She wanted to be sure he had someone to talk to, in case old demons returned.
