by Natalie Grey
Those people, she turned away.
Which meant that by any measure, this job should be one she would take. If anyone had pure motives and basically no downside, it was the resistance movement on Ymir. Lord knew, they were suffering—and the Warlord killed them indiscriminately whether or not they rebelled.
But the thought of helping them was reminding her just how true the adage about morals not paying really was.
Never had she been so sure that completing a job was the right thing to do, and yet never had she been so sure that getting these weapons would result in incredible amounts of death: for those who wielded them, those who fought the revolutionaries, and those who were caught in the crossfire. That was the problem with fighting for freedom, of course. it invariably happened in the immediate vicinity of innocent bystanders.
Never had she completed a job where the odds were so stacked against the people she was trying to help. What she was doing would be so little help, once weighed against the Warlord’s might, that she felt bad accepting money for it.
They were going to die, and die horribly.
But it was that, or die horribly in the mines. She squeezed her eyes shut and had the thought that it would have been nice to be born in an era where morals weren’t quite so confusing or demanding of quick action.
Had there ever been such an era?
And, to add to the fact that once these people got weapons, they were going to have a snowball’s chance in hell … what was going to happen if the Warlord and his cronies found out there were weapons going to Ymir?
They would kill everyone before there was even a chance to use the guns Satomi was providing.
But she knew the truth: the people who shouldn’t know about this deal, almost certainly already did. By the time the call got to her, other people would be in motion.
If the resistance on Ymir wanted to strike, she needed to get them weapons as fast as she possibly could. She looked up, and saw that she’d been thinking long enough for her computer to go into low power mode. She met the gaze of her own reflection, and set her jaw.
“It’s now or never, Kreuger.”
What happens now is in the hands of God.
They waited in one of the smaller caves, Stefan and Samara trying to be calm, the newer members clearly trying to follow their lead, and Eytan in the corner, white-faced and shaking.
Well, at least he wasn’t screaming. That was something.
They had to wait. It had taken them a day and a half to make their way back into Io District, and they still had to wait to get back to their homes. It was impossible to tell if the roads were being watched, and the only way to have even a fighting chance of not being noticed on the security cameras would be to wait until a shift change and blend into the crush of people. That was still three hours away.
“Do you think they’ll get the weapons?” Stefan asked finally.
Samara looked over at him incredulously.
No. She had opened her mouth to say the word before she remembered the younger ones watching them. She closed her mouth and considered.
Stefan, however, had seen the answer in her eyes. “They might. You don’t know.”
“But I do know.” Samara leaned her head back against the wall. “If anyone was coming to help us, they would have already done it. It was foolish to try to call off-planet.”
“Maybe people have been working to help us all along,” one of the younger members said.
Samara stared at her and tried to remember the woman’s name. Merit? Maria? Something with an M. Whatever her name, she clearly saw the sadness in Samara’s eyes, and rejected it outright.
“We don’t know what’s happened beyond Ymir,” she said, almost defiantly. “It could be anything. They could be readying an invasion.”
“It’s been forty years,” Samara said quietly. “And now their Dragons come to help the Warlord. The Alliance won’t help us.”
“Doesn’t have to be the Alliance, does it? There are other people. The people we called weren’t on an Alliance outpost.”
She was speaking about a world she didn’t understand in the least: a government that had never cared about her, people who traveled to and fro without the Warlord’s guards watching them, people who had never been inside the mines in their life. And it gave her hope.
Once, it had given Samara hope, too.
“Listen to me,” she said quietly. “I want you to have hope, I want you to do what you can to help us win. But you can’t ever pin your hopes on the people off-planet. If they haven’t tried to help us, then we’re on our own. If they have and it hasn’t worked, then we might as well be on our own. It’s all the same.” She held up a hand to stave off the protest. “It’s fine to hope. But we have to come up with a plan that doesn’t rely on them.”
“There’s one person who would help us.” Stefan’s voice was quiet. He stared at Samara.
“Who?” She frowned.
“Aryn.”
“No,” Samara said flatly.
“For God’s sake, of all the people who could get us weapons—”
“No!”
“Why the fuck not?” He threw the challenge down at her, and Samara swallowed convulsively.
“Because she doesn’t know,” she said finally.
“…What?”
“She doesn’t know what Ellian does for a living.” Samara was shaking. “We only found out a few days before she was supposed to leave, and … we decided not to tell her.”
Stefan’s jaw dropped open. “You mean to tell me….” He tapped his fingers together as his voice trailed off. “You mean to say, she’s married to the man who supplies the Warlord with weapons, and she doesn’t know that?”
“Yes.” It seemed a hopelessly inadequate answer, but that was all she had.
“How could you not tell her?”
“What was I supposed to do?”
“Literally anything else.”
Samara dropped her head into her hands. She had received a message from Aryn just the other day, and she had not answered it. She had done that too many times since the other woman left, half from guilt, half due to the fact that every time she thought about Aryn, it hurt.
“Samara … if she finds out on her own—”
“Believe me, he’s not planning to tell her.” Samara gave a bitter laugh.
Stefan looked stricken. “Does he know she was in the resistance?”
“No. I mean—he can’t. If he did … well, then the Warlord would know, and Aryn’s family would be—I mean….” Samara’s voice stuttered to a stop. “No,” she said finally. “He’d never have married her if he knew, right? The Warlord would never have let her go. But if you were him—her husband, I mean—you wouldn’t tell her, would you? He actually loved her.”
Stefan snorted. “The man’s a mass-murderer.”
“Say what you want, he loved her.” And maybe, just maybe, that made her a bit too sympathetic to him. “He’s not going to risk telling anyone from Ymir that he supplies the Warlord with weapons. Even we only found out by accident.”
“They’re married, he has to tell her something.”
“Yes, and a man who supplies weapons could never possibly come up with a lie. Come on, Stefan.”
“Samara….” His voice ached. “What if she finds out?”
Samara rubbed at her forehead.
“And she will,” Stefan added. “Someday, she will. Shouldn’t we use her? Shouldn’t we try to get her to help us?”
“I don’t want her coming back just to be in danger.”
“Jacinta didn’t want us in danger, either.” His gaze was sad. “But she knew it wasn’t her choice to make for us. And it’s not your choice to make for Aryn—just like it wasn’t your choice to make not to tell her who Ellian was.”
“I didn’t—”
“It wasn’t your choice to make.” And he turned his head away, and their little group spent the rest of their three hours in silence.
The intel was u
nambiguous. Alone in his office, Aleksander Soras stared at the stack of briefs before him and tried to formulate his thoughts.
The number of weapons deals taking place across the Allied systems had spiked within the past 48 hours. That was not a matter that was up for debate. Nor was it a matter up for debate that many of the weapons were reported to be for Ymir.
One must always follow money. It was a fact of politics, warfare, and the world in general that nothing happened without money. Weapons were no different. Therefore, the weapons were being paid for. There was one resource on Ymir that was worth any money—two, if you counted the workforce; Soras did not—and one man controlled that. Which meant….
Soras pushed himself up to pace.
The black market was a thorn in the side of any political leader. It squeezed through the blocks they so carefully tried to make between society and chaos. In this case, it gave weapons to those who should not have them, who thought they had some God-ordained right to slaughter their enemies. The market supplied. The market found a way. The black market, following absolutely impartial and unimpeachable logic, created chaos.
But he had chaos at his beck and call, as well. He pressed a buzzer, and waited until his aide, a young man so pale he fairly glowed in the evening light that slanted through the windows, came in almost silently.
“About the briefs you sent along.” Soras did not look around.
The man waited.
Soras stared out onto the square. Chaos swirled there, as well. It was the sort of chaos that came from not knowing just how dangerous life could be.
A thought for another time. He turned to the boy and gave a short nod. “Send a list of targets to the Dragons.”
Ymir had been teetering on the brink of anarchy for years. Whatever he thought of Talon Rift’s capabilities, he was not going to throw several thousand weapons into the mix.
12
“They might be friendly,” Talon said, to no one in particular.
A series of snorts came back from across the shuttle bay.
“And I might be Queen of Seneca,” Camorra said drily. She holstered her sidearm and raised an eyebrow.
“Anything is possible.” Talon slid his greaves into place and double-checked the fastenings. He gave a sigh. “But you’re right. I’d say the odds of those two things are roughly equivalent.”
“If you are Queen of Seneca,” Jim offered, “I’ve always wanted to be knighted.”
“You want to be knighted, you pick a cooler name.” Camorra pointed at him with her knife. “I refuse to call anyone ‘Sir Jim.’”
“Finally, someone else is on my side.” Talon gave her a meaningful look. “I’m going to remember this.”
“Hey, I thought we all had a deal.” Jim was grinning. For years, he had resolutely rejected every nickname Talon had come up with, with the infuriating rationale that he was absolutely going to make Talon introduce his team with all their nicknames, ‘and Jim.’ More infuriatingly, the rest of the team agreed with him.
After his first time through of introducing ‘Nyx, Mars, and … Jim,’ Talon had stopped taking him on shore missions.
“That deal was before I was Queen of Seneca.” Camorra grinned smugly at him. “Now I have more pressing concerns—like whether my knights are called Sir Jim. And whether or not Talon is an over-optimistic unicorn.” She shot him a look. “They’re going to shoot at us.”
Talon nodded glumly.
Mullia wasn’t so much a moon as a floating hunk of rock that happened to contain large amounts of taconite. Accordingly, several groups over the years had decided to make their living mining the ore and refining it on-site before running it to the main shipping routes for the big cargo trawlers to pick up.
Taconite, being not exactly the most profitable way of finding iron, meant that the base had—up until recently—been only moderately well defended. The people who had chosen to defend it moderately well were now more than moderately dead, and the group controlling Mullia had installed far more impressive defenses.
How a minor mining syndicate had acquired a wanted criminal, and then decided to execute him, even Lesedi could not say. Maybe they’ll tell you, she had suggested.
Talon was not hopeful on that front. The operations on Mullia, including the precipitous transfer of ownership, lay in the grey area between legality and the sort of activity Dragons concerned themselves with, but that did not mean any of them were going to get along particularly well, and it did not, in fact, meant that the syndicate would welcome his ship in any capacity.
He knew that. Accordingly, as the Ariane slid every closer in the blackness, sleek and effectively invisible on any sort of location tracking, the team suited up in full armor. Best to be prepared.
“Tersi.” Talon tapped his wrist-comm. “Send the message, would you?”
“Sounds good, boss.” Tersi’s voice filtered through the main unit in the shuttle bay.
Sphinx looked up from where she was cramming her flyaway blonde hair into its usual array of clips, elastics, and braids. She was smiling reflexively at the sound of Tersi’s voice, and Talon saw a few of the other team members exchange grins.
They really were cute, the two of them. Sooner or later, Talon was going to have to let on that he knew they were an item. For one thing, the opportunities for making fun of them were just too good to keep passing up.
“And put it all on the main speakers,” Talon called.
“Sure.”
A few moments later, Talon’s own voice came over the comms.
“Mullia Syndicate, this is Talon Rift of the Ariane. We have received information that you are holding Anier Manes, pending his execution. We request to speak with him, as we believe he may have information relating to an ongoing mission. Please advise which docking bay we should use.”
“How very polite,” Nyx commented. “‘Please advise.’ ’We request.’”
“For now,” Talon said, unconcerned. He flexed one hand, frowned, and readjusted the gauntlet.
“Boss?”
“Yeah?”
“Looks like they’re spinning up their anti-aircraft. Not sure we’re gonna get a—”
The voice that cut him off was brusque, and sounded like the owner had been smoking cigarettes from dawn to dusk, his entire life.
“Permission to land not granted. We are tracking your position. Break off your approach.”
“Well, that’s disappointing.” Talon heaved a sigh. “Tersi, patch me through?” He checked the sight on his rifle and slung it onto his back.
“Live in 3, boss.”
Talon waited the requisite three seconds until he heard the static of a line connecting. “Mullia Syndicate, be advised that we can produce all necessary subpeonas and do not intend to interfere with the execution. Any delays on that front will be brief, after which we will leave promptly and without further interference.”
The launch alarms went off with a wail.
“Break off your approach,” the voice repeated. “You will be shot down if you do not comply.”
“I’ll be honest with you that that’s unlikely.” Talon gave an annoyed glance at the comm unit. “We can do this the easy way or the hard way. Easy way, no one gets hurt.”
“Boss, they’ve cut off the call. And they’re launching more missiles.”
“Hard way it is.” Talon grinned at his crew. “Is it bad that I was kind of hoping for that? Take us in, Tersi.”
“Taking us in, boss. Everybody hang on.”
The sleek little ship put its nose down and accelerated sharply, weaving between the missiles as they shot uselessly off into empty space.
“Should I prime more missiles?” One of the newer syndicate members looked up nervously.
“Yes, you should prime more missiles. Who the fuck are these guys?” James Kochinski leaned down over her chair to stare at he screen. “What did he say his name was? And the ship ID? Someone run a search on that. Not you,” he added, to the girl next to him. “Missiles. Un
til further notice, that is your whole job. Keep. Shooting. Missiles.”
He should have known better than to hire someone with the name Peace Merryweather. It was just a bad sign. She’d come with good recommendations and he’d thought he was being unfair to her, not liking her name.
Should’ve trusted his instincts.
“You know what? Jilly, you take over on the missiles. Peace, you run the search.” God, even saying her name made him wince. What kind of parents gave their kid a name like ‘Peace’ in this galaxy?
There was the hollow reverberation of the anti-aircraft launchers as the latest round of missiles made its way toward the ship … which did not slow down by so much as a hair. If anything, it was continuing to accelerate.
“Sir, the ship is the Ariane? That’s what he said? And … Talon Rift? You’re sure?”
Kochinski gave her a forcedly pleasant look and reminded himself not to throttle her. It wouldn’t be any paperwork—he ran the syndicate, he didn’t have to do any damned paperwork if he didn’t want to—but he was going to have trouble replacing her once word got out that he was killing his employees.
“Yes,” he said, with all the civility he could muster. “Search for those names.”
“Well, I … I did, sir. I was just checking that we were sure that’s what he said.” She quailed in the face of his annoyance, and then turned her screen toward him. “Because, ah … well, it’s…. It’s Dragons.”
Kochinski swallowed. He couldn’t quite feel the ground under his feet.
Thank God he hadn’t let them land.
“Everyone out,” he snapped. “Jilly, put the guns on autotarget and keep them firing every ten seconds.”
“That’ll use up all of our—”
“I don’t care! Get to the inner rooms and prep the airlock doors. I don’t know what the fuck Dragons want here, but we do not want to know.”
