The Dragon Corps

by Natalie Grey

  The boy charged, a glorious flail of limbs—

  Nyx was gone, rolling easily to her feet. Undeterred, the boy charged again, and a few moments later was staring up at the ceiling as he landed flat on his back. Nyx broke off and sank to a crouch to wait while he recovered his breath.

  Once again, he charged, not checking to see if she was ready. There was a murmur of approval from the group at that. He wasn’t standing on ceremony or fighting fair. They liked that.

  He was still outmatched. Once again, he wound up on his back, and this time, Nyx offered him her hand to help him up. He took it, only to have her yank it away halfway through hauling him upright, and slam her fist full into his face.

  This time, he stayed down, though his eyes were still open.

  Talon adjusted his auditory implants with a flick of one finger and leaned his head to listen. He suspected the other commanders were doing the same.

  “That’s how it’s done.” There was no rancor in Nyx’s voice. “That’s what it takes to be a Dragon. You’re strong and you’re fast, kid, but you’ll need a lot more than talent for this.”

  In her rooms, Aryn Beranek sat patiently as her maid undid the necklace and laid it on a bed of velvet, then took off the silk evening gown and hung it carefully in the closet.

  “Is there anything else, miss?”

  “No, thank you, Emala.” She smiled at the woman. “Go get some rest. I’m sorry I kept you up late.”

  “It’s no trouble, miss.” Emala was hiding a yawn as she left, however.

  Aryn wrapped a robe around herself and went to stand at the floor-to-ceiling windows that looked out on New Arizona. She knew that she should sleep, too, but she could not even imagine trying to go to bed now.

  Since she spoke with Ellian, earlier that day, she had not been able to banish the slow creep of thoughts about home.

  She knew what Ellian would say if she told him: This is your home now.

  It did not feel like home. It still felt like a part of her lived on Ymir, going down into the mines each day and coming up battered and bruised each night.

  Or … it didn’t. Not anymore. Somewhere along the way, she’d begun to forget, and she knew exactly why: the thought of it made her feel too guilty. She was here, and she was safe, and everyone she loved was still there.

  She remembered Samara’s reassuring smile. Don’t be silly, Aryn. What good does it do for you to be here, too? Anyone who can get out, should.

  The words made sense, but Aryn couldn’t stop the slow creep of guilt in her blood. She stayed where she was, arms wrapped around herself, forehead pressed against the cold glass, for a very long time, staring out into the night.

  It wasn’t right that she had left Ymir the way it was.

  But how could she change what the entire Alliance hadn’t?

  9

  “Who the fuck designed all these forms?” Talon clenched his hands and tried to breathe deeply. If he swept the forms off onto the floor, he was going to have to pick them up and re-sort them.

  He didn’t want to do that.

  “The origin of the word ‘bureaucrat’ is the French for ‘salary’ and ‘paperwork,’” Tersi said.

  Talon blinked at him. “Really?”

  “I have no idea. Might as well be, though.” He waved disgustedly at the form he was presently filling out. “Who cares if we stock ibuprofen on the ship?”

  “The ibuprofen lobby,” Nyx opined. She signed a form with a flourish and looked up, her eyes twinkling. “I’ve been signing all of them, ‘fuck you.’ Real flowery. We’ll see if anyone notices.”

  Talon choked on his water.

  “Ah, command,” Tersi said wistfully. “‘Move up the ranks,’ they said. ‘Lead soldiers into battle,’ they said. Load of bullshit. It was a fucking trap, they just wanted us to fill out paperwork.” He swept his into a stack and stared glumly at them. “And that’s what I have to show for my evening. I’m going to go send them in before I give up the will to live.”

  “‘Night,” Nyx called after him. She rolled her shoulder as she settled down to work on another form.

  “Pull something?” Talon looked up. “Apparently we have ibuprofen.”

  Nyx snorted. “No need for anything so paperwork-intensive. And I pulled it while fighting the kid. He’s fast—faster than you’d expect. I mean, we were both watching him, but when you’re facing him down, it’s really something. He very nearly won.” She looked up, and there was no shame in her gaze. Nyx was all about the facts. “You know who he reminded me of.”

  It wasn’t a question, and in a flash, Talon did know. “Cade.”

  Abruptly, he wanted a drink. He missed Cade, from the unexpectedly wicked sense of humor, to the way the man had kept everyone on their toes in sparring. He missed Cade’s fierce sense of honor, and he sure as hell missed going into combat knowing that Cade was one of the people who had his back.

  “I wonder, sometimes, where he went.” Nyx’s voice was quiet.

  “He’s a busboy on New Arizona.”

  She gave a laugh, uncertain, until she realized it wasn’t a bad joke, but instead a statement of fact. “You’re kidding. Cade Williams. A busboy.”

  “I’m not kidding. I got him the job.”

  “You—” She gave up trying to fill the form in and set her pen down.

  “He’s one of my team,” Talon said, by way of explanation.

  “He isn’t, anymore.”

  “He is. Everyone who’s been on my team, ever, always will be.”

  She was quiet. “I wouldn’t have guessed he would want any favors from any of us.”

  “I didn’t tell him I got him the job. I just made a few polite suggestions.” There was more to it than that, of course. Talon had been following Cade’s career, such as it was, very closely. Every few months, Cade lost his job, sometimes from events outside his control, more often because he refused to fight back against those who wanted to make his life a living hell, and walking away was the only way to do that.

  He had sworn, when he quit, that he would never fight again. Talon hadn’t believed him—a talent like that would be sacrilege to waste—and he’d always had the fear that he would end up on the other side of a battlefield from Cade. It happened often enough with people who left the Dragon Corps.

  And Talon won. He always won.

  But Cade had stuck to his word, and that was impressive enough for Talon to pull a few strings. Lesedi kept an eye out for news of him, one of the smallest and most personal jobs she had ever taken.

  “Is he well?” Nyx sounded sad now.

  “Not … really. If I could help him….”

  “What? If you could help him what?” Her eyes met his. “Forget what happened? Not care so much?”

  “Be at ease with what he did. It was my order.” Talon was prepared to have it on his conscience. “He’s alive, anyway. Rest has to be up to him. I’d have him back in a heartbeat, and he knows that.”

  Nyx nodded. She returned to her paperwork, though Talon thought it was probably more a way to give him space than anything else.

  “And that was a nice little speech in the gym.” Talon dug deep for the humor. “About him needing more than speed and strength. You’re not normally the speech-giving type.”

  “He will need more than speed and strength.” She was nettled by the joke, even though she knew it for what it was. “I wasn’t trying to tear him down. You know what Dragon selection is about. They come in all cocky, thinking they passed the tests and they just have to show off for us. Or, at least, I did.”

  If only everyone were as honest as Nyx.

  “I did, too.” Talon could only laugh. “God, I was such an ass. And I got beat down so hard.”

  “Exactly.” Nyx leaned forward. “That’s what Selection is about: wiping the floor with them, and seeing who gets up, and who doesn’t.”

  “So what matters….” Talon let his voice trail off.

  “Is what this kid does with the experience,” Ny
x finished. She nodded and stood, sheaf of finished forms held neatly under one arm. “We’ll see. Next time we go back, we’ll see how he’s doing.”

  Talon nodded absently. “I’ll be interested to see if he can beat you.” He looked up to see Nyx smiling. “What?”

  “He’s as good as on the team now.”

  “We don’t have space,” Talon said flatly.

  “We’ll see.”

  “You keep saying that, I’ll make you do all the paperwork.”

  “Message received, boss.” Nyx beat a hasty retreat.

  “What’s the point of it, though?” Austin Poole, one of the independent assassins who served Intelligence, lounged in the doorway of the surgical room and crossed his arms.

  Tera neither answered, nor looked over. Poole was everything she hated in an assassin: flashy, sloppy, and self-important. He’d put gold accents onto his armor, most of which was far more impressive-looking than useful, and nicknamed himself Apollo.

  She hoped the first person he’d told that to had laughed in his face. She certainly had.

  He didn’t like her very much.

  “I said—”

  “I heard you.” Tera kept her eyes fixed on where Dr. Browman was finishing up some stitches, and trying to pretend he didn’t exist.

  She waited for the retort she was sure was coming, only to be met with silence. When she looked around curiously, she saw that Poole had fallen back, into the corridor, and a man in military dress was standing in the doorway.

  Browman ducked his head so hard he practically bowed, and disappeared with just the tiniest swish of an alcohol swab on Tera’s skin. He and Poole were gone a moment later, and Tera stood to meet her father’s eyes.

  “Hello.” She always felt overwhelmed when she saw him, and she had decided recently that it was because he seemed to be so many different people.

  There was the man who had rescued her on the streets of Osiris, with a ready smile, the man who had held her small, dirty hand as his ship lifted off. There was the man who had taught her to read and do math; he had always been stern, never accepting anything less than perfection from her: you must learn all of this until it is as natural to you as fighting with your fists and your feet.

  And there was the man who was the head of Alliance Intelligence, who she had seen take command without fear in the wake of tragedy, who was determined to fight on the offensive, not the defensive. She, more than most, knew how determined he was to do what must be done.

  That he loved her, she had no doubt. But he had trained her for a purpose, and in many ways, she knew that purpose was more important to him than sentiment. She had never wondered at the fact that he had not married. He was a driven man. He would not be a conventional husband, and certainly he was not a conventional father.

  She did not care. She was not a conventional daughter, either, so they were suited to be a strange little family. She loved him fiercely.

  In the face of her awkwardness, he smiled and held out his arms. She went to him for an embrace.

  “How are you?” He took her hand and turned it to examine her wrist. “Dr. Browman said there was a problem?”

  “Not a big one.” She lifted a shoulder. “It is to be expected with a new type of implant. I am learning to work with it. He will make better versions in time.”

  He smiled bemusedly. “You keep getting better, I will give you that. And I will approve any upgrades you say you need.”

  Tera smiled back at him. Even Dr. Browman was hesitant about the upgrades Tera asked for. He made them, but he asked her often if it was ‘too much,’ or if she was scared to change herself.

  She did not understand the worry. Each upgrade made her better, giving her the edge when she fought her enemies. The problems she might experience from her upgrades seemed no different to her from the injuries or illnesses that might strike any human body at any time. And she did not fear to become something different from what she was, when each implant brought her closer to her ideal self.

  “So. Your last mission.” Her father’s smile was gone now.

  Tera blinked at him. He was unhappy with something, that much was clear, but she could not imagine what it would be. The mission had been very clean.

  “Yes?” She knew she sounded uncertain, and she hoped Poole was not still in the hallway to hear this.

  “The rest of the compound.” Her father took a seat on the surgical chair. His dark brown eyes fixed on her. “You left the rest of them."

  “I didn’t have intel on them.” Tera ran through the mission in her head, turning the decisions over in her head. Every one of them had seemed simple at the time. She had not doubted, or even debated herself.

  The man running the compound, who went simply by Turner—no one seemed to know if it was a given name or a surname—had been implicated in knowingly moving weapons to slave traders. Tera had no problems removing him from the ecosystem of the slavers, but she had not known whether the others in the compound knew where the money came from. They had been growing their own food, tending to animals, eking out little more than bare subsistence.

  “They were farmers,” Tera said simply. “They grew vegetables.”

  “They grew … vegetables?” Her father sounded incredulous. “Does that signify?”

  “They weren’t slavers,” Tera said blankly. “Perhaps they knew how he brought them money, but I could not be sure. I could not kill them if I was not sure.”

  There was a pause while they stared at one another, and her father broke first. He sighed and looked away, and though her heart ached for him to be more proud of her, she could not find a way to regret what she had done.

  “Tera….” He passed a hand over his forehead. “What will happen when the slavers go there for the weapons Turner had bought them?”

  Tera felt a chill. “They will kill them.”

  “No.” He gave a sigh and looked away. “They will become the new contacts,” he explained. He sounded impatient. “They will become weapons traders as well.”

  “You cannot know that.”

  “It is a near certainty!” His voice had risen. He met her eyes, just as angry and implacable as his own, and sighed again. “What if they had attacked you?”

  “Then I would have killed them.” Tera frowned.

  “You might have been hurt.”

  “I’m … an assassin.” She had no idea what to make of this conversation. “I might always be hurt.”

  He stared at her, still angry. “You were sent with a broad objective, not a specific one. Whatever you must do to achieve it, you must not shrink from—”

  “I would not!” How could he doubt her? “If you sent me to destroy the slave trade in that sector, I would do it. I would do anything that needed to be done. But you sent me to punish him for what he did. Destroy everyone in the compound and I still would not have stopped the slavers. Just because it might be easier for them to turn these people in the compound, surely that cannot justify killing them.”

  She was heaving for breath when she finished. Her fists were clenched. There had been children in the compound. Who would care for them if she had killed all the adults?

  A moment later, he nodded. “I … you are right. You saw them, I did not. It is only conjecture that they were his accomplices.”

  “If you had seen them, you would understand,” Tera assured him. “They lived simply. Had we not had intel on Turner, himself, I would not have believed he would do such a thing. The place seemed … homey.”

  “Even a terrible person may put on a good face.” His voice was grim, but he did not seem angry anymore. “It is good to know that you will not kill without cause, Tera.”

  Tera managed a small smile.”You are not angry with me?”

  “No.” He reached out and squeezed her hand, careful to avoid the new stitches, and stood. “Have Dr. Browman finish the stitching, and then rest. There are no missions for you right now.”

  “Then I will train,” Tera said. “Not rest. To rest
is to get soft.”

  Her father dropped a kiss on her forehead. “That is why you are the best, Tera. I love you.”

  “I love you, too.” She was almost glowing as he left. She knew she was better than Apollo, but it was good to know that her father knew it, too.

  She flexed her fingers and wiggled them. The implant was seated much more securely this time. It would make her even better, even faster. She could defeat … anyone.

  She frowned. Men like Turner were remote, best suited to a single assassin, but she had begun to feel that her talents were being wasted. She would never question her father, of course, but she began to wonder if he was trying to keep her safe.

  You might have been hurt.

  She looked at the door where he had disappeared, and chewed her lip as she thought. Someday, she would pick her own target, and it would be someone truly worthy of her. She would know that she had not simply taken out a link in a larger chain, but instead, she had gone straight to the top.

  She just had to find someone worthy.

  “Hey.”

  Liam opened one eye, and closed it again hastily. Light hurt. Moving his face hurt. He’d already known from the voice that it was Victoria.

  “Are you all right?” She sounded concerned. He heard the creak as she sat on the cot next to his.

  “Healing,” he managed. “They say it’ll be better tomorrow.”

  “They could have fixed it all now.” She sounded annoyed. “Doctors can be assholes sometimes.”

  “No, it’s … I told them not to do anything special.” It was a choice he’d spent the past little while regretting.

  “Why?” Victoria clearly agreed with his regrets.

  “It seemed like … I should hurt.” He opened his eyes again and pushed himself up to sit with a wince and a gasp. “I lost.”

  “Punishing yourself for that seems pointless.”

  “I’m not punishing myself, I’m allowing myself to have a learning experience.” His grandfather had called a lot of things learning experiences: falling off the roof of the stables, getting chased by a flock of angry chickens, getting bitten by one of the goats. As much as he hated the pain at the time, Liam had never made those mistakes again.