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

by Zen DiPietro

  “They’ll be strip-mining entire planets and raising prices to the point that less prosperous planets begin to starve.” Outrage flooded through Fallon. The Barony Coalition was barely contained under the best of circumstances. They followed the very letter of the law, but exploited any gray area. Fallon didn’t want to find out how far they’d go to take advantage of the PAC’s difficulties.

  “Do they know that command is under more stress than just a terrorist threat?” Raptor asked.

  “We have to assume they at least suspect so.” Krazinski seemed reluctant to admit it. “We’ve done remarkably well, all things considered, at selling that story, but I never expected the Coalition to buy it. Still, I’d hoped to keep them pacified and uncertain long enough to allow us to handle Colb and reassert ourselves.”

  “Which means we need to contain Colb so that he can’t do any further damage, shore up all of our treaties in good faith, and then soothe or scare the Barony Coalition back into compliance.” Fallon frowned. It was more than she’d bargained on.

  “I’d say that sums it up,” Krazinski said.

  Raptor stood. “Well, we’ve already started on a plan to get our hands on Colb. How do we handle the rest?”

  Krazinski sent a final message out to the point-to-point network before joining Fallon and Raptor on the Nefarious.

  They’d debated having Krazinski remain on the moon to maintain the communication relay, but ultimately decided that he could be put to better use in ensuring that Colb got snared in the web they were weaving. John Krazinski was a hell of an officer, and they needed all the help they could get.

  After a quick debriefing, Fallon got herself to the bridge and began the sequence to get them off this dark little moon.

  Peregrine sat in the chair beside her, looking pensive. “Ever hear of the warrior’s dilemma? Realizing that what you’re fighting for isn’t the fight for right that you first thought it was?”

  Fallon had heard of it, but wondered why Peregrine would be asking about it at this moment.

  She lifted them off the moon’s surface before she answered. “You mean us, right? When Colb was trying to use us against the PAC. You’re wondering what would have happened if we’d blindly followed our orders. If Raptor hadn’t gotten our team back together so we could fight back.”

  “Yes.” Peregrine sounded thoughtful. More philosophical than Fallon had ever heard her. “Would we have been like Stone Unit? They were good people. Probably still are. They’re just on the wrong side of the fight.”

  Fallon understood what Peregrine was getting at. “In war, nobody ever thinks they’re the evil one.”

  “Yeah, and it could have been us. Colb thought we’d be his secret weapon, but we backfired on him.”

  Fallon turned sideways to face Peregrine directly. “Is that how you see it?”

  “Of course. Don’t you? It’s your head he carved into. Your life he wiped away. And here we are, about to be the ones to take him down.” Instead of sounding fired up, Peregrine sounded frustrated. The prospect of being used to do wrong had clearly been weighing on her.

  Fallon established a flight path, and engaged the autopilot for a moment. She moved to the edge of her seat, leaned way over, and kissed Peregrine on the forehead. “We did what we were born to do. We figured it out, and got to work on fixing it. If you think about it, we had to be the ones all this happened to. Who else could have gotten underneath it all so we could stop it?”

  Peregrine chewed on her thumb, thinking. “I guess you’re right. When you put it that way, of course it had to be us.” A tiny grin appeared on her face. “Nobody’s as good as Avian Unit.”

  Per’s rare grin let Fallon know that her partner had put things back into perspective.

  Fallon returned to the controls. “Not even close. We’re going to kick Colb’s ass harder than any other team could dream of doing.”

  “And Hawk will tell the story at all the bars, and we’ll get free drinks for life.”

  Obviously he couldn’t tell the real story, but he could probably cobble together enough of it to make that happen.

  “I could use a few drinks. Once we get Colb, let’s make Hawk buy us a few rounds.”

  Per’s mood had lightened, and she seemed like the Peregrine that Fallon knew, sure of herself and ready to take on anything. “You know, once all this is over our unlimited stolen funding from Blackout will end.”

  Fallon hadn’t yet thought of that. She’d have to go back to requesting funds the official way. Pisser. “Guess we’ll have to make sure we enjoy our drinks extra hard, then.”

  “A last hurrah?”

  “Or a first one, while we contemplate our future.”

  They both knew they had to survive their current endeavor to get to that point, so they fell into a companionable silence.

  The next two days of waiting on the Nefarious to make their rendezvous passed with surprising calm. Fallon felt an odd sense of normalcy leading up to something that would be anything but normal. The end of this ordeal was coming. She could feel it.

  She could only wonder how far-reaching the effects would be, once they’d captured Colb and ended his efforts.

  Fallon and the others spent a fair amount of time talking to Krazinski, both giving and receiving details of the past couple of years. It made Fallon think again about the strange trajectory she’d been on all this time. How none of it should have ever happened, and how if it hadn’t, she’d have continued her regularly scheduled life.

  As she listened to Raptor breathe in the darkness of her quarters, she knew she probably would have spent the occasional night with him, but that too would have been very different. They wouldn’t have an easy affection developing between them, or the open acknowledgement of the soul-deep connection they’d spent a decade denying. Yes, that had been her fault. She looked forward to spending the rest of her life making up for it.

  She’d never been one to want an adventure to end, but this time she did. She wanted the PAC to be secure, and she wanted Colb to never see the stars again. Whether that meant imprisonment or death, she didn’t care. She just wanted everyone to be safe.

  Only then could she lean in to Raptor’s sleepy warmth and not feel guilty to be glad for the way her life had been altered.

  Fallon woke alone and lay in Raptor’s bunk debating whether to work out or get some breakfast. Her rumbling stomach won out.

  She heard no sound as she approached the mess, making her think it must be empty. But when she entered, she saw Krazinski sitting at a small table, staring out a porthole.

  “Good evening, Fallon. Though I guess for you it’s morning. I always find it difficult to keep track of the time of day when I’m on a ship. Strange, since a station isn’t so different.”

  She grabbed two protein packs and a fresh tango fruit before sitting across from him. “It feels different though, doesn’t it? A large station is like a tiny planet. It has its own community, its own culture. Even between Dragonfire and Blackthorn, there are differences. And Jamestown is its own thing altogether.” She left off there, hoping to draw Krazinski out. He seemed melancholy, which was a bad mindset to have right before a battle.

  “I’m an old man. I thought I’d managed to live my entire life without experiencing a major disaster. I flattered myself, thinking I’d had a part in that. And now look at us. Command in hiding, Jamestown critically disabled. The PAC in jeopardy. I didn’t do such a good job, after all, did I?”

  Self-pity did not look good on him. “Old man, my ass. You’re as fit as my father, and he can throw down like a member of my team.”

  He smiled sadly. “I failed in recruiting Hiro into Blackout. I tried for years. He’d have none of it. Didn’t even want to know it existed.”

  “And then I joined up. Ironic.”

  “He couldn’t have been prouder of you. Worried, sure. But he knew you’d never be happy doing anything else.”

  That made her wonder about his own daughter. “How’s Hollinare?”<
br />
  “Just before we evacuated it, she came to Jamestown to discuss a proposed new process for streamlining the admission of new planets into the cooperative. I didn’t like her being there during the battle with Colb’s people, but no part of that was what I would have wanted, even though we ultimately succeeded. Anyway, she’s with command, and at the moment there’s no safer place for her to be. It’s a great relief to me, but I feel guilty thinking about all the parents out there who can’t protect their children the same way.”

  “The universe is an unfair place,” she observed.

  “It is. The PAC is supposed to level the playing field, to help ensure a future for everyone’s children. And it may fall. On my watch.”

  “Which part hurts more? The possible fall, or your part in it?”

  “Depends on whether it happens or not. Even if it doesn’t, I’ll go to my grave knowing how close we came.” He ran a hand through his steely but thick hair. He claimed to be an old man but Fallon didn’t see it. He was fit and strong, albeit jaded.

  “I’m not in the habit of comforting admirals.” She crumpled the wrapper of a protein pack between her palms. “Shouldn’t you be the voice of experience, telling me it will be all right?”

  “That’d be nice. The PAC has certainly overcome many obstacles. But nothing like this. So unfortunately I don’t have any experience to offer on this one.”

  She leaned back in her chair and crossed one leg over the other, feigning a nonchalance she didn’t feel. “Your pep talk sucks.”

  His startled look gave way to a sudden laugh. “I guess it does. Sorry.”

  She spread her arms expansively, then let them drop. “Here’s how I see it. You’ve been out of the field for a long time now. Tucked away at headquarters, pushing buttons behind the scenes. It’s been too long since you knew how it felt to be the tip of the sword.”

  His forehead creased, as if he was unsure what to think.

  She continued, “Your chance is coming up. Be the sword. Remember what it feels like to win. And use that to lead us the hell out of this mess.”

  His mouth curved into a real smile. “You might be right. I’ll give it my best.”

  “Screw that defeatist talk. You’ve forgotten how to ego-trip yourself into a false sense of immortality. A critical skill in this occupation.” Her voice rose as she talked, becoming louder and more forceful.

  “Uh, right. So…we’ll win! We’ll kick Colb’s ass, then kick the asses of anyone who thinks they can threaten the PAC.” His back straightened and he made a fist, and Fallon perceived a glimmer of the young officer he had once been.

  “That’s right!” she barked. “Those pieces of shit are nothing compared to the PAC. They’ll be sorry they even thought about taking us on.”

  Krazinski stood and said in a stage whisper, “I think this is working.” He continued loudly, “We’ll smash those bastards and send their ashes home in envelopes!”

  She froze. “Oh dude, no, too far.”

  “Really?” Krazinski frowned.

  “Just kidding! When we’re done with them, there won’t even be any ashes to send!”

  “And…and we’ll confiscate all of their holdings and use them for the very thing they hate most—the PAC!”

  It was the worst bit of trash talk ever, but Krazinski seemed enthusiastic now, so whatever. If it was helping him, she’d play along. “Yeah! We’ll liquidate all their assets!”

  Raptor appeared, looking perplexed by the things he’d heard as he entered the mess hall. He looked from Fallon to Krazinski and back, then shrugged. “Tried your comport but you didn’t answer. We’ve got the ships on long-range scanners, if you want to see them.”

  She was already on her feet.

  Peregrine watched as Raptor and Krazinski followed Fallon onto the bridge, but Fallon had eyes only for the screen. There she saw them—two large people carriers, being very obvious about what and where they were. Just as they’d been directed to do.

  She leaned over Hawk’s shoulder to see their ETA. Eight hours. Longer than she’d have liked. She felt like a kid at an amusement park, always in the line waiting to get on the ride. But she could see it now. They were close.

  “All right.” She decided to let Ross sleep, since he’d just come off his shift and would need the rest. She’d fill him in later. “Let’s go over it again.”

  Krazinski’s presence on the Nefarious made for the perfect opportunity.

  He was the one who sent the message, relayed through one of the transport ships, to Dragonfire Station. It would make sense to Colb that PAC command would set up there as they prepared to repair and occupy Jamestown. Fallon was already established there, and the proximity was as good as they’d get.

  And Colb knew that command would take risks to return themselves to Jamestown, in order to soothe their allies and restore confidence. He also knew that protocol in such a situation was not to have escort ships with heavy firepower that would only draw attention to the VIPs within.

  Colb would recognize this as the perfect opportunity to take out the entire PAC command at once.

  In retrospect, Fallon would have gone with smaller, less conspicuous ships. She’d expected to have to use smoke and mirrors to imply the presence of important people. Krazinski had made all that unnecessary, and now she worried that her ships were too obvious.

  Well, she could do nothing about all that now. She could only play the game with the pieces already on the board.

  When a trio of ships crossed their vector a mere ten thousand kilometers away, the crew of the Nefarious braced themselves. But the ships were only rusty trawlers that puttered right by.

  Nothing.

  They arrived at Dragonfire as scheduled. So they followed out the farce. They gave all the proper docking signals and informed the station of three hundred passengers to board.

  Avian Unit remained in the Nefarious for two days, docked and ready to meet an enemy at any moment.

  But still nothing. Fallon and her team, including Krazinski now, finally had to admit that the plan hadn’t worked. They boarded Dragonfire and met with Hesta to decide what to do next.

  “Either Colb saw through it, or he decided not to risk taking us on in that situation,” Krazinski said, sitting at the head of the table in an executive boardroom.

  Hesta’s decision to make their meetings more formal due to Krazinski’s presence amused Fallon, but she kept that to herself. Rank didn’t mean as much to Fallon as it once had, but she couldn’t blame Hesta for not feeling the same way.

  “We need another plan to draw him out,” Hawk said.

  “No. That didn’t work before. Repeating the process won’t be any more effective.” Fallon traced a whorl in the design of the tabletop, then froze. Details shifted around in her mind to take on a new pattern.

  “He doesn’t want to destroy the PAC. He wants to run it.” She continued to stare at the curving lines of the whorl, letting the new mental image coalesce. “He thinks he has a better way. One that somehow involves illegal technology.”

  She ignored the voices around her. Kept them at a distance, a murmur in the background. She was busy chasing the logic, letting it lead her to the truth. She blinked slowly. The universe shrank down to include just her and the whorl.

  Colb didn’t want the people of PAC command dead. And if he didn’t want to destroy the PAC, he had to be concerned about the Barony Coalition, which was its biggest immediate threat. That meant Colb must want the same thing that the rest of them did—to reestablish PAC command at headquarters. Keeping the allies from knowing there was a true danger. Preventing everything in the PAC zone from going to shit.

  “He’s at Jamestown,” she said. “He’s gotten around your safeguards and he’s repairing it. If he succeeds, he’ll be the only person who can offer us a chance to keep the peace. We’d have to take it. Which would mean letting him run command his way.”

  She ran through the logic a second time, looking for flaws. But nope. It was the o
nly thing that made sense.

  Krazinski said, “Jamestown will take months to repair. Even with an army of engineers he can’t hope to bring it back to full function and pretend nothing happened.”

  Hesta spoke up. “He doesn’t need full function. He only needs to make it appear restored, and to lock you out. To make himself the face of salvation.”

  “And give us no choice but to work for him,” Peregrine added.

  “It makes sense.” Hawk didn’t seem happy about it, but he appeared entirely convinced. At least he wasn’t swearing.

  Fallon assessed her people. Raptor, Peregrine, and Hawk looked ready to burst into action. She hadn’t been sure how Krazinski, Ross, and Hesta would take her conclusions. She didn’t have the same bond of trust with them. She hadn’t saved their lives repeatedly, as many times as they’d saved her life. She hadn’t worn their blood, or they hers.

  But they sat up straight, with their shoulders back. Ready to roll.

  Hesta was the first to speak. “Sounds like you all need to get your asses back to Jamestown Station.”

  Fallon stood. “I’m ready. How about the rest of you?”

  They stood.

  “Good. Ross, you begin preflight on the Nefarious. Hawk and Peregrine, you’ll be in charge of getting your hands on any repair tools and parts that might be useful.”

  Hawk frowned. “How do we know what gear we can grab, and what might be of use? We could use some engineering help.”

  Fallon smiled. “I’m way ahead of you.”

  Fallon sent Raptor to collect Kellis and Arin.

  Krazinski’s job was to order any PAC vessels with firepower, whether military or not, that were within a day’s distance to maximum burn their way to Jamestown. Since he no longer had a direct connection to central command, that meant trying to track down individual ships that were within range. It was slow work, and Fallon could only hope Krazinski managed to rally some support.