The Dragon Corps

by Natalie Grey

  Arlon gave a contemptuous laugh. He looked around himself, clearly expecting support. When he saw the other members’ faces, however, his smile faded.

  Samara closed her eyes for a moment. Why hadn’t she done this sooner?

  “I’m the one that managed to get a call off-planet,” she said finally. “I’m the one who’s been assembling teams. I’ve been shoring up our defenses. I run this cell now. I’ve been as good as running it this whole time, while you’ve been throwing away our chances. The next time something like this comes along—” her throat ached when she thought about how long that would be, but she pressed on “—we’ll be ready.”

  Arlon looked at her incredulously. “You can’t be ser—”

  “Get out,” Samara said flatly.

  To her surprise, he actually left. He was stumbling, disbelief in his eyes.

  She looked around herself, and had the urge to make a speech. She tamped the urge down and scooped the papers carefully into a pile.

  “Keep going,” she said to everyone. “Fenty, we need the ammo counted and stored. Stefan, if you’d keep looking over these with me, we’ll need to see if we can find a different vulnerability.”

  Stefan nodded. He was smiling, clearly pleased with the change of affairs, and as he came to join Samara at the table, she tried not to smile as well.

  When we get another chance, we’ll be ready.

  14

  Tall and lanky, Mase Hernandez was the type of person who lit up a room when he walked into it. His mouth seemed perpetually set in a smile, and he wore his good looks with an easiness that kept him from being unapproachable. His ship, the Loy, had landed by the time Talon got back to the docking bays, and Mase pulled Talon into a hug and clapped him on the back.

  “Good to see you. Hear you were at Selection—anyone promising?”

  “Mmm.” Talon liked Mase. He had tremendous respect for the man. He didn’t like him enough to spill the beans on Loki, though. He gave a noncommittal shrug. “I’m sure there’s whatever you’re looking for.”

  “Not really looking.” Mase’s already wide smile got even wider. “We’re getting jaded, you know. First few years it was like being a kid in a candy store, huh? Now we look at ‘em all and go, ‘eh.’”

  Talon laughed. Mase had a way with words. The two of them had become commanders right around the same time, and Mase was right—for the first few years as a commander, Selection had been something Talon would drop nearly anything to be at right from Day 1. He’d agonized over some picks.

  This year, satisfied with his crew, he hadn’t even remembered it was happening.

  “So. Nyx said you wanted to speak to me?”

  “Yeah.” Mase looked around the launchpad. “Is she here?”

  “Are you trying to poach her off my team? Because if you are, let me tell you, I’ll kill you in your sleep.”

  “I’ve offered,” Mase said, unrepentant. “She turned me down. So did Jester.”

  “You tried to take my pilot?”

  “You’d still have Sphinx. But, no—I was going to see if you wanted to tag along to Ymir. I figured you might not have gotten the call yet.”

  “Ymir?” Every sense was on high alert. “More targets?”

  “Eh, well, we wouldn’t be going to Ymir, exactly. Word on the street—well, Central Intelligence—is that the Warlord’s been ordering weapons. A lot of weapons.”

  Talon’s eyebrows shot up. “And we’re charged with intercepting them?” Hell, if they played their cards right, they wouldn’t even have to change the ship’s trajectory—just deliver the weapons to the resistance, instead of the Warlord.

  “More like, we’re supposed to nip it all in the bud—find out who’s trying to broker the deals, and take those links out.”

  “That’s the worst way to do that,” Talon argued. He braced his feet wide, crossed his arms, and frowned off into the middle distance. “If we keep nipping it in the bud, it’s not like he’s going to give up. Though—wait a moment….” His frown deepened. “You’re sure the weapons are for the Warlord.”

  “Who else would they be for?”

  “The resistance.”

  “You have a high opinion of their capabilities. How the hell would they buy weapons? No one’s financing them.” Mase considered. “Though someone should. When the Warlord gets offed, it’s going to be a fight for those mines, and if they take control….” He gave a low whistle and rubbed his fingers and thumb together to indicate a windfall. “Hell, if I had money, I’d think of loaning them some, just for the return.”

  “You missed your calling as a merchant,” Talon said with a grin. “But, to answer your question: a call for weapons for the resistance went out just a few days ago.”

  Mase frowned. “And you know this from….”

  “People.” Talon gave a bland smile.

  “Mm-hmm. Well, if the Warlord knows—and he has to, doesn’t he?—he’s probably stocking up, too.”

  “That makes no sense. He doesn’t broker little weapons deals with petty smugglers. He’d just order one shipment. And what the hell does he need guns for, anyway? All of his guards have weapons. More guns aren’t going to help unless they all grow a second set of arms.” Talon drummed his fingers on his gauntlets. “No. These have to be the weapons deals for the resistance, and Intelligence got it backwards.”

  “Intelligence doesn’t get things backwards,” Mase said drily. “Not that backwards, anyway.”

  Talon swallowed. He liked Mase. He trusted Mase.

  But with that sentence hanging in the air, one thing had become abruptly clear: with the resources and collective brainpower of Alliance Intelligence, it was not only unlikely that they would have failed so many times at finding a way to take out the Warlord once they already had boots on the ground—it was impossible.

  Which meant someone in Intelligence was in the Warlord’s pocket.

  How had he not understood that earlier? It was the only logical conclusion. Hell, even Soras had been halfway to realizing it the last time they talked. There was no reason that his agents should have failed to get the correct information so many times. He had to be wondering, in the same, not-quite-conscious way Talon had, who could be trusted and who could not.

  “Look,” Talon said finally. “Do me a favor.” He waited for Mase’s cautious nod. “Forward me the briefing—”

  “You should have it.”

  Talon was not willing to bet on that. “Forward it anyway. And any Dragons you come across personally, ask them to disregard it, too. I’m going to double-check them with a source I have.”

  “Intelligence will have checked them.” Mase looked incredibly uncomfortable now, and Talon didn’t blame him. When you were the one who pointed a weapon and shot, you had to trust implicitly that the people who gave you targets could be trusted.

  “How often have we had communications from the resistance on Ymir?” he asked lightly, making a joke of it. “Maybe they know something I don’t. Maybe the Warlord is trying to get weapons by posing as the resistance, eh?” It was, in fact, a legitimate possibility—flushing potential allies to the resistance out into the open. “Just … give me a few days to check on it, will you?”

  Mase hesitated, but he had known Talon too long to think this was an idle request. He nodded. “I’ll spread the word.”

  “Thank you.” Talon looked over his shoulder to where Nyx was heading down the path. “I think I’m needed. I’ll see you soon—maybe on Seneca, if you’re going back to check out Selection.”

  “Eh.” Mase lifted his shoulders in an elaborate shrug. “I’ll wait to hear from you.”

  He headed back to his ship, and Talon tapped his comm unit. “Mars, would you get a message to Aleksander Soras?”

  “Sure.” Mars’s voice was heavy with unasked questions.

  “Tell him I’d like to talk about the weapons deals for Ymir. I think I may have some intel he should see, and I want him to hold off on asking the Dragons to strike just yet.�
�

  “Anything else?”

  “That’s all. I’ll tell him Lesedi’s info in person. Set up a call with her, too, will you? I need to get her these targets to cross-reference.”

  “Of course. Call to your cabin?”

  “Yeah.” Talon headed up the ramp, his brows drawn together in a frown.

  He didn’t like this at all.

  The call came in from the Delta Atheni system, and Lesedi frowned at the data signature before accepting it.

  “Either you’re calling to congratulate me on my sleuthing, or tell me—” She broke off when she saw Talon’s face. “Ah. I see it’s the second option. What happened to Manes?”

  “Dead,” Talon said shortly. He didn’t seem to feel the need to explain. Once Talon had picked a direction for the conversation, Lesedi had found, he was rarely in the mood to be distracted by such trivialities as whether or not everyone knew what was going on.

  It was what made him so intriguing to talk with. She always came away with more questions—and in Lesedi’s line of work, knowing what questions to ask was more than half the battle.

  “I see.” She tilted her head slightly to examine him. He did not seem to be particularly bloody or dirty. Whatever had happened, it had clearly happened before the battle had been joined. “What can I do for you, then?”

  “I need to run some names past you.” Talon’s fingers moved, somewhere off screen, and she heard keys being pressed with more force than was strictly necessary. “I’d pull them out of the brief, but there isn’t time, and some of them aren’t even named in the first place. I need you to look at these immediately—if the weapons are for the Warlord, I want to stop them. If they aren’t, I need to call off the rest of the Dragons.”

  Lesedi, in the act of looking over at another screen for the data transmission, stopped to gaze back at him.

  There was a great deal he wasn’t saying.

  “Talon.”

  “Yes?” His voice did not sound welcoming of argument.

  “When you started this, I told you to be careful.”

  He stared at her in stony silence.

  “And you didn’t listen at all, did you? Because if you’re asking the question, I think we both know someone is sending the Dragons after resistance targets. And you’re right in the middle of it.”

  For the first time since she had known him, Talon Rift looked uncertain. She saw his urge to end the call at once and pretend he had not heard the words she said.

  “They assassinated Heo,” he said finally. “They’ve been feeding false intel up to us for years. They’ve been telling us to pull out when we got too close, haven’t they? It was them.”

  “Who? Talon, it was who?” Lesedi found herself leaning forward.

  “He bought an agent. He has to have. He has the money, Intelligence is big, someone had to have gotten through.” Talon had been looking away, but now he looked directly at Lesedi, and it was all she could do not to flinch at the look in his eyes. She was not often scared, but she understood the thirst for raw vengeance when she saw it. “I don’t know who they are,” Talon said softly. “But I will find them, Lesedi. Find out for me if these people are the Warlord’s, or if they’re helping the resistance. I’ll be in touch with more questions.”

  Lesedi nodded. She closed the call and found herself staring at the dark screen.

  She had never doubted that the Warlord would have agents in Intelligence, but it had not occurred to her until now that they would feed false information to Dragons, even in the midst of their operations.

  But it made sense. The question was, who were they?

  She shuddered slightly. She did not envy them their fate when Talon caught up with them.

  Julian Abraveya opened the folder carefully and paused, reading the top few sentences of each memo before placing them carefully on Aleksander Soras’s desk.

  He had been Soras’s personal assistant for several years now, a silent and very pale shadow at the man’s side. Most people didn’t notice him, and he sometimes wondered if Soras only knew he was there by habit, holding out a casual hand for the briefings that Julian always had ready, inclining an ear to be informed of recent developments—thought he did not need, as some did, to be reminded of names or relevant facts as people approached him. He never forgot a face, or a personal history.

  By now, he must know the majority of the agents who worked in the Intelligence offices on Seneca, but he had been asking questions lately. He wanted to know more of them. He was looking for something specific.

  Julian’s fingers paused as he read the last memo. Talon Rift requested a halt to a certain Dragon mission. His lips curving as if at a private joke, Julian closed the folder without placing Rift’s request on the desk.

  Aleksander Soras would not need to see it.

  15

  Annika Lukin had been nicknamed Wraith by the members of Team 11, and Liam could tell why immediately. Her hair was about as pale as sunlight, but was thick and heavy in a French braid that looped over one shoulder. Tall and sturdily built, she had high cheekbones, a generous mouth, eyes of a pale ice blue, and skin that showed the thin tracery of blue veins on her forearms.

  As XO to Mallory Saga—commanders tended to go by their names—Wraith had been tasked with interviewing Liam for a place on Team 11. She was waiting when he was brought to the interview room, chair flipped around for her to rest her arms on the back. She gave a smile, and despite himself, Liam smiled back.

  The thing was, he didn’t want to like her. She wasn’t Nyx, and she wasn’t working for Talon Rift.

  He’d done his research when they left. The recruits didn’t know anything about the woman who had fought Liam, but the trainers did, and Liam’s persistence in questioning them had paid off eventually.

  The more he’d heard about Nyx, the more impressed he was that he’d managed to last even 10 seconds into a fight with her—and the more he heard about Talon, the more he was absolutely certain that Team 9 was the only team he wanted to join.

  And then he found out that Talon had left, and had a full crew anyway.

  Victoria had talked him into staying, but he wasn’t sold on the idea—and he was trying to think up any way, any way at all, to get out of joining Team 11 without being rude.

  Wraith watched the expressions flicker over his face and gave a curious look. She gestured to the other chair.

  “Don’t look so nervous. No one’s going to shove you in a vat of ice water, I promise.”

  Liam laughed. “Has that always been part of Selection?”

  “It’s, uh … effective.” She gave a rueful shrug. “I heard we were modeled on a branch of fighters from Old Earth, who were Navy, so they trained in cold water a lot—but who knows the truth? Fact is, ice water has a way of sorting out who panics and who survives, and you … seem to be one of the survivors.”

  Liam looked down, suddenly conflicted. Her approval was clear, and he could see where this was going. He was being offered a place in a world few could dream of joining, and a week ago, that would have been all he wanted.

  “What is it?” Wraith sounded curious. “Heard stories about Team 11? The cavalry charge was a challenge. It was definitely not because we made the engine on the ATV explode.”

  “I—” Liam considered this. “Since you’ve brought it up, I don’t suppose you’d be willing to tell the story?”

  “Only if you tell those fuckers in training that this is how it really went down.”

  “I promise.” He couldn’t tell if she was serious or joking.

  “Right. It was….” She tapped her fingers on one elbow and considered. “Probably 5 years ago. We were a pretty new team, truth be told. Mallory had taken over the year before, and I’d transferred on from 19 when my old commander got out. We’d been working together just long enough to start feeling invincible. That’s when it gets dangerous, let me tell you. I’d been through it before, I should’ve known.”

  Liam examined her closely. From how she
was talking, she must be older than she looked, but he saw little sign of it. Of course, grey might not show up in hair that pale.

  “We’d been stalking this total bitch of a mercenary commander for a while.”

  “For?”

  “Tax evasion.” She saw his frown and gave a shrug and a grin. “It’s an old joke in the Dragons. A lot of the people we go after, they’re … they don’t even pretend. They’re slavers, or drug traffickers, and they don’t care who knows it. Every once in a while, though, there’s someone who manages to keep themselves just this side of the law, in name only. It’s clear what they’re doing, but they know exactly what the law needs for conviction, and they never let themselves get caught. So, in legal terms, you don’t nail them for whatever it was they really did—you get ‘em for ‘tax evasion.’ Some branch of government calls in a request to Intelligence, and they send the mission to all of us. We love those cases.”

  “Why?” Liam couldn’t stop himself from leaning forward.

  “They’re slimy as fuck.” Her eyes were alight with humor. “That means two things: first, it’s a challenge—and Dragons love a challenge—and second, they’re smug bastards, and nothing is as satisfying as nailing someone who thought they’d get off scot-free. That moment, when they finally realize they’re not going to weasel out of it this time? The look in their eyes….” She kissed her fingers. “Priceless.”

  Liam was smiling. This was what he had always wanted: to be a part of the teams that went after the bad guys and Got Shit Done, no red tape in their way, no higher calling than their conscience. He could sense the easy camaraderie that had been both the most vital thing about his life on Crius, and the thing he most lacked. The closeness of everyone who worked on the farm had made the loss of them—as his grandfather declined, and they could not afford to stay—all the more devastating.