by Zen DiPietro
Something tickled her forehead. She lifted her hand to rub at it and heard a chuckle. Opening her eyes, she saw Raptor.
“Glad to see you getting some sleep. You needed it, whether you admit it or not.”
Right. After Nevitt had left, she’d gone to bed early. Brak had encouraged her to be well rested for the implant surgery. Fallon struggled to sit up. Her oversized robe had tangled around her. Damn thing. “What’s up?”
“Team meeting. Everyone else is already out there.”
“Right. I’ll throw on a uniform and be out in a minute.” She rolled off the bed and untied the belt of the robe.
“Might want to do something about that hair.” He pantomimed an explosion with his hands, all around his head.
She threw the robe at his back.
“We’ve located Admiral Colb,” Raptor announced as soon as Fallon walked in and half sat on the arm of the couch.
“Alive, I hope.” She didn’t have great faith in the life expectancy of anyone not under Krazinski’s thumb.
“Alive,” Ross confirmed. He sat with his right knee bent so that his foot could rest casually on his left thigh. He looked like he was discussing brunch options, rather than planning a precision strike. “We want to approach him in person. Avoid using any long-range transmitters, stay out of the datastream. All that.”
She nodded. Of course they didn’t want to just call him up, when Krazinski was no doubt listening as hard for them as they were for him. “Plan?”
“Here.” Raptor pushed infoboards at her, Per, and Hawk. “All the specs.”
Fallon’s eyebrows rose as she read the intel. Colb appeared to have holed up on Zerellus, hiding in plain sight. Not a bad strategy if he could manage the details.
“You’re sure this is legit?” She worked at committing it all to memory.
“As sure as we can be. Anything can change at any moment, and anything can be planted. But Ross and I agree, this looks like good intel.” Raptor stood behind the couch, arms folded.
Hawk and Peregrine nodded as they lowered their infoboards, and all eyes cut to Fallon. Right. Leader. She got the final say.
“Let’s do it.”
While the rest of her team made preparations for their trip to Zerellus, which hopefully would be the first step toward taking out Krazinski, Fallon had her own personal mission to attend to.
She walked into Dr. Brannin Brash’s infirmary with an odd sense of déjà vu. This was where she’d first woken up on Dragonfire, her memory blanked and her future unclear.
Which now brought her around full circle. She could only hope that the three doctors could give her back what was rightfully hers.
“Fallon,” Brannin stepped ahead of the others to greet her with a friendly smile and a bow. His kind, dark eyes welcomed her. “Or can I still call you Chief?”
She returned his bow. “Jury’s out on that one. Guess I’ll have to ask the captain.”
He nodded. “Of course. I’m sure you double-checked it yourself, but all of my staff has been dismissed for the time being, and all security devices blanked. There will be no records of your visit here.”
She had, in fact, ensured that, but she only said, “Thank you.” She shifted her attention to Jerin and Brak, both wearing surgical scrubs. In spite of the circumstances, she felt a surge of pleasure at seeing them again. The reunion would have to wait, though. “Are we ready?”
Jerin’s eyes registered concern. “You’re sure about this?”
“Absolutely.”
Jerin shared a glance with Brak, who then said, “We’re ready.”
They guided her onto a techbed and began preparing her. A mild sedative, some synaptic stimulators. More injections that they named, but the medical words slipped past her like encrypted lines of code. Her thoughts had gone elsewhere.
She revisited her life, as she remembered it, all seven months’ worth. Plus her recovered memories, which existed in her mind like items on a shelf. Hers, but in a disembodied way.
If the procedure didn’t work, and Brak had warned her that it might not, she could lose all of this.
Should she be scared? She wasn’t. She had faith in Brak. The technology stolen from the lab on Taravok had further improved Brak’s confidence in the procedure. And Fallon had faith in herself, as well. If she lost her memories, she’d be far better off than she’d been the last time it had happened. She’d recorded a series of messages for herself that would explain and re-educate. Plus, she had a lot of people to help get her back up to snuff.
Brannin gently guided a stabilizer around her neck, then closed another one around her temples and forehead. “Ready?” he asked, leaning in so she could see his face. She was surprised to realize she’d missed him. Thus far, he knew nothing of the bigger picture, only that Brak had engineered a treatment for Fallon, and that Jerin had approved of it. What ignorant bliss he lived in, for at least a little while longer.
“Absolutely.” She had no doubts.
Jerin’s voice floated to Fallon’s ears from behind her head. “Administering the sedative now. You’re going to sleep through this, Fallon. We’ll see you on the other side.”
Brak leaned into her field of vision. Fallon admired her draconian beauty—her features and blue-green scales, shining with iridescence. Fallon let out a small sigh. She felt good, and knew that meant she’d be asleep in a moment.
“We’re going to do this,” Brak said. “Try not to be anxious.” She reached for Fallon’s hand and gripped it, offering reassurance. Fallon squeezed back, remembering the time Brak had revealed the secret of her prosthetic arms to her. She trusted Brak.
“I’m not,” Fallon said. She meant it. All things considered, she should probably be deeply worried, but she had no fears. Only plans for what came next.
Fallon felt nothing until she found herself in the corridors of her memory. Huh. She hadn’t expected to come here. She was pretty sure she should have gone dark. Something was going on. Something important, but she couldn’t quite recall what.
She found a tall, rectangular door, the sort she’d learned to prefer. They tended to have the most involved and relevant memories. She reached for its handle, but when she touched it, the door popped like a soap bubble, leaving her in shadow again.
“Well, that was weird.”
She moved on, floating past the round and square doors until she found another tall rectangle. A purple one. She reached for it, and it also popped, more like a punctured balloon. An edge of the door slapped her hand before it winked out of existence.
Very weird.
She moved on, faster now, and the little doors began to ripple, falling open and revealing glimpses of lakes, books, glasses of liquid, and other odd assortments. The open doors quivered, as if made of jelly, then became one-dimensional, rolled up into themselves, and dissolved. She started to feel an odd pressure, pushing her down.
Fallon moved around a corner and found a big, glorious rectangle of a door. It glittered with gold, reminding her of Briveen scales. She hesitated, afraid that touching it might make it disappear like the others. But the pressure was forcing her down. Her knees were bending. She’d be on the floor in a second.
She reached for the door and flung it open, and it actually worked. She fell through the doorway as the pressure closed in behind her, brushing her heels as it rushed in.
The room was bathed in light. She looked up and saw Brak. The scent of anise assailed her, indicating Brak’s concern. Odd. These memories hadn’t included much smell before, but this felt really real.
“How do you feel?” Brak asked.
Feel? Why? Fallon didn’t understand. No one ever talked directly to her in the memories.
Oh. Realization coalesced among her scattered thoughts.
“This is real?”
Brak dipped her chin in acknowledgement. “This is real. You’re awake. How do you feel?”
The techbed still held her head immobile, but she checked in with her body and found nothing a
miss. “Fine. Good.”
Brak nodded, presumably to Jerin and Brannin behind Fallon. “We’re going to taper off the sedative, and it will clear your system within a few minutes. Just lie quietly.”
Sure, no problem. She’d just lie here. She gazed up at the ceiling. She breathed. In, out. In, out. She wiggled her toes.
“Still doing okay?” Jerin’s voice asked.
“Yup.”
The restraints around her head released and she tilted it from side to side, seeing how it would feel. No soreness.
A minute later, Brannin came into view. “We’re going to sit you up now.”
The techbed began to shift, moving her into a seated position.
The three doctors faced her, all looking serious. “Can you tell us your name?” Brannin asked.
Her name. Right. She opened her mouth, then paused. “My name,” she repeated.
The doctors’ eyes lit with worry.
Fallon laughed. “Which one?”
Brak watched her cautiously. “You remember more than one?”
“Oh, yeah. I remember them all. I remember everything.”
When the doctors finally released her, with all due caveats and what-to-watch-out-fors, Fallon wasted no time in returning to her team. They’d huddled up together to wait in the small suite shared by Hawk, Raptor, and now Ross too.
Fallon felt silly about activating the chime, but it seemed rude not to. Everyone stared at her in silence as the doors closed behind her.
It was strange, seeing them all again. As if she were looking at them through two sets of eyes. One that showed them from a limited—yet more objective—perspective. And another that revealed all their secrets and idiosyncracies.
She wanted to say something clever. Something funny. But the anxiety on their faces was too intense. She couldn’t toy with them.
So she simply said, “I’m back. Intact. All of me.”
She hadn’t expected the celebratory shout, or the way Hawk knocked his chair over in his eagerness to get to her. He picked her up and swung her around as she laughed, reminding her of their graduation from the academy. The memory of him, young and jubilant, warmed her.
They talked and shouted, asked questions, and Fallon could barely make sense of who was saying what. She tried to answer, and ended up laughing whenever Hawk gave her another twirl, since he hadn’t yet put her down. Eventually he handed her off to Raptor, who immediately put her on her feet, but didn’t drop his arms from around her.
“Hey,” he said softly in her ear, for only her to hear. “Regretting anything now?”
“Not a thing.” She leaned out of his grasp, causing his arms to fall away. “Does this change things?”
He looked happy and relaxed. “Nothing. Everything. I have no idea.”
“I guess we’ll find out.”
He grinned. “Right.”
Peregrine handed her a glass of champagne that Hawk had poured, then surprised Fallon with a kiss on the temple. “Glad you’re back, partner.”
The gesture touched Fallon, as she knew Peregrine didn’t express affection easily. Her difficult teen years had made her resistant to that sort of sentiment. “Thanks, Per.”
Fallon had work to do. She needed to get her ass to Captain Nevitt to make a full report right away, or face the withering consequences of the captain’s displeasure.
Then she had an underground intelligence agency to take down and put back together. And a former wife whom she needed to say a few things to.
It would all have to wait. Her team was giving her a proper celebration, and they deserved to enjoy the moment.
“Blood and bone,” Hawk announced, raising his glass.
She, Per, and Raptor raised theirs as well, shouting, “Blood and bone!” in return. Ross tilted his glass with a wry grin of not quite fitting in. But he was one of them too, in his way.
“Blood and bone don’t quit,” Fallon finished, taking a hearty drink of her champagne. The tiny bubbles burst in her mouth, tickling her tongue.
Yeah, she had work to do. A lot of it. But she was going to savor this moment first. She predicted it would become one of her favorite memories. She had so many now. And there were a lot more of them just waiting to happen.
She had her team. She had Dragonfire. And she had her friends on the Onari. She laughed. Blackout wouldn’t know what hit them.
Part III
Coalescence (Book 3)
16
Coalescence Chapter 1
Fallon sat in the Outlaw, waiting for the right moment to detach from the belly of the Nefarious. Piloting her little race car of a ship always got her blood pumping. She and her team were closing in on the class-six cruiser and she itched to get to the big moment.
Finally, they got into range. As she initiated the separation she barked, “Ross, break left!”
She dropped just in time to avoid getting hit by the much-larger Nefarious as her old combat instructor banked hard. Then she broke right, allowing the two to double-team their target.
“Hawk, energy charges!”
She imagined him over there leaning into the console while the Nefarious fired on the cruiser. Meanwhile, she used the Outlaw’s size to maneuver close, positioning herself alongside its docking port. She allowed herself a whoop of success when she achieved capture of the smaller craft.
“Target acquired,” she announced to her teammates on the other ship. “Nice job.”
Rather than board the vessel, she released it. “We can do it faster, though. Let’s try it again.”
She imagined Hawk’s groan of frustration and smiled. “Acknowledged,” Ross’ voice came back over the voicecom after a brief pause. “Resetting the drill.”
“Doing the same here. You ready to go again, Per?” Her gaze went to the cruiser, piloted by Peregrine and Raptor.
Peregrine’s voice came over the voicecom. “Let’s do it.”
Three more practice runs had Fallon sure they could pull off the maneuver in a real firefight. Which ticked one tactic off her list and left a few dozen more. She had big plans for her team, and she wanted them to be ready for anything.
“You’re shaping up,” she teased Ross after they’d docked the three ships on the stem portion of Dragonfire Station and gone aboard. She’d had to work at reframing her view of him over the last few weeks. When he’d brought her team proof of Krazinski’s betrayal of the PAC, he’d been a former authority figure, but now, he was just an older colleague, and a part of her team.
“And you’re a relentless taskmaster.” Hawk eyed Fallon with disdain.
“Like you’d want her any other way.” Peregrine smirked.
Hawk’s blue eyes twinkled. “Well, you got me there.”
Fallon and Ross fell in behind Peregrine and Hawk as they walked down the corridor. Raptor trailed behind.
Ross remarked, “I’m already twice the pilot I was when we started a week ago.”
“Flatterer.” Fallon narrowed her eyes at her former instructor. “That’s a good way to make me suspicious. But you don’t give yourself enough credit. You’re a decent pilot.”
Since recovering her memories, she’d had to reconcile her new acquaintance of Ross Whelkin with her older recollections. She’d briefly experienced an odd sort of double vision that caused her to experience a sense of duality. She’d mostly reconciled her two perspectives, which was a relief.
Ross smiled at her. For an older guy, he was good-looking in a beachy way. “Nothing like you. You’re one of the best pilots I’ve ever seen. I always knew you were a fantastic fighter, but piloting skills came as a fun surprise.”
“I didn’t realize you were unaware of my flying abilities.”
He shook his head as they arrived at the lift. “Details on BlackOps are need-to-know. I didn’t need to know. Once you guys left the academy, I was out of the loop.”
The lift opened.
“I’m hungry enough to eat mandren,” Hawk said, and led them onto the lift. “Anyone want to hit
the boardwalk for some dinner?”
“Sure, unless you’re serious about the mandren.” Raptor grimaced. “The smell of that stuff turns my stomach.”
“Just an expression,” Hawk assured him. “How about you two?” He looked from Per to Fallon. He could have added one of his mock-sleazy leers just for kicks, but he was all seriousness. For the moment.
Per nodded, but Fallon had to decline. “I have to meet with Captain Nevitt.”
“Better you than me.” Hawk slapped her on the shoulder.
“Your support is underwhelming.”
Raptor and Ross chuckled.
The lift stopped and the door opened to Deck One. Hawk patted her shoulder, gently this time. “You’ll do fine.”
Per gave her an encouraging nod as she passed on her way out of the lift. Raptor smiled at her as the doors closed.
Fallon steeled herself as the lift ascended to Deck Five. She’d gotten a better understanding of Hesta Nevitt, but it wasn’t every day that Fallon asked an upstanding PAC captain to commit treason and turn her station into a rebel headquarters.
This would not be an easy conversation.
Fallon activated the chime for Nevitt’s quarters. She wondered what the captain thought of her request to meet there. She’d never even seen Nevitt’s personal living space. At the least, she hoped her request had given the captain some forewarning of the seriousness of their meeting.
The doors swished open and Captain Nevitt stood there in all her formidable glory. “Chief.” She gave Fallon a deep bow that indicated respect, and Fallon bowed yet lower, showing great esteem.
As the doors closed, Nevitt gestured Fallon to the seating area. “Judging by that bow, you’re about to ask me for something big. I assume you’re sufficiently recovered to follow up on whatever that might be?” She eased into a tall-backed chair with the air of a monarch sitting on a throne.
Fallon resisted the urge to get a good look at the captain’s living space. She kept her attention fully on Nevitt as she settled across from her.
