by Natalie Grey
“Go.” Her voice didn’t even sound like hers.
“What?” Kreuger’s brow furrowed.
“Go. Don’t finish this deal. Call it off, make it not happen, and then disappear. Disappear so well I can’t find you, because if I do, I will not only kill you, I will personally kill every one of your associates—and I bet some of them were misled, as well. You have one day to stop this deal in its tracks, or you will have aided a massacre and I will kill you for your part in it. There will be nowhere you can run.”
“What are you—”
“I will kill you. I will kill your crew. I will kill anyone who is still involved in this deal by the end of today. Do you understand me?”
“But you can’t—”
“Don’t. Push me.” Tera felt the gun jerk slightly in her hands. What the hell was she doing? She gestured down the street, back the way the woman had come. “Go, undo what you’ve done, and disappear. I don’t give second chances—don’t make me regret this one. You have no idea how much I could make you regret that.
Satomi turned and ran, and Tera looked around herself, almost superstitiously. There were no cameras and no bystanders. She had chosen her place for that very reason, as she always did. And yet, she was afraid there were some.
Because she was about to lie to the one person she loved in this world. She pulled out a comm unit and typed a brief message, her fingers shaking: Kreuger dead, pursuing associates.
When it was sent, she sagged against a wall and felt tears on her cheeks.
What had happened to her? Who had she just let walk free? Had she been played?
She looked down at her hands, knowing the tracery of metal that lay beneath the brown skin, and she made a promise to herself: she would find the person who had misled Kreuger, and she would kill them, instead.
Only then would she tell her father what she had done.
18
“You did a good thing.” Her father’s voice was deep.
Tera nodded. She could feel herself splitting in two: one part the confident, unforgiving assassin, determined to save the innocent by destroying the guilty; the other part, unsure and guilty.
Had this always been coming? Was there just a point, after so many lives taken, that one could not ignore the guilt any longer?
She had so prided herself on her lack of guilt. Guilt was for those who could not see clearly that some deaths were necessary.
But here she was.
“Tera?”
She looked up and met the brown eyes, and the sure part of her smiled. “I’m tired,” she said, by way of explanation. “There was a lot to clean up.”
“If I had known—”
“What? What could you have changed?” She gave him a smile, weary and affectionate. “Our deadlines aren’t arbitrary, they’re set by our enemies. It was a deal in bits and pieces, just taking her out would have left too much in motion.”
Her father sat back with a nod, and sipped at his coffee.
He had come to see her in her little apartment on the outskirts of town. She lived with the maids and the dock workers of Seneca in the cheap, small apartments that nestled around the heating and cooling conduits of one of the less fashionable buildings. Her neighbors weren’t nosy enough to notice or care when she came back streaked in sweat and grime. They didn’t try to get to know her. They probably didn’t even notice her.
It didn’t make sense to her father that she, raised on his elegant estates off-world, should choose to live in this place. Every time he came here, he told her she should move. Every time he told her that, she told him it suited her.
He always came up with an objection when he came here. The last time, he had barely been here a minute before it spilled out. There aren’t even any windows, Tera.
Over the years he had disparaged everything from the neighbors to the plumbing, so she could tell how troubled he was, now, by the fact that he did not remark on his surroundings. He didn’t even seem to notice the coffee, something she stocked only for guests—which was him. She didn’t have guests.
Who else would she have over, anyway? Apollo? Her lips twitched.
“I don’t like this,” her father said finally.
Tera went absolutely still. Every sense was trilling danger. He knows. He knows what you did.
“It’s all slipping out of place.” Her father’s eyes were distant. He lifted the cup to his mouth again, the gesture automatic. “For years, everything was stable. Then there were the weapons deals, and now the Dragons are insisting on going in. What changed? What’s different now?”
Tera said nothing. Her heart was racing and she reminded herself not to take a slow, forced breath. Her father was ex-Navy, not an ex-agent, but he was still one of the most observant people she knew.
When he looked up at her, she saw he had actually been waiting for an answer, and she gave an incredulous laugh before she could stop herself.
“You’re asking me?”
“Why not?” He almost sounded offended. “I trained you. You’re as intelligent as any of my agents.”
“I don’t—it’s not—I haven’t studied the Warlord.” She spread her hands helplessly.
He watched her carefully. “Think, Tera. You can often see things my agents can’t. If I had sent Apollo after Kreuger, he would have killed only her, and left the job unfinished. You see things. What’s going on here?”
It was flattery, and she knew it. They had both accepted that she was right about being better than Apollo, there was no need for him to say it.
She still liked hearing it.
So she did him the courtesy of thinking about it: the Dragons, insisting that now was when the Warlord should be destroyed; the Warlord, choosing now for a back-alley weapons deal. The simple answer was that he was responding to the threat they posed, but her father was right, Ymir had been on more lips than usual lately.
“Sometimes, people just reach a breaking point.” To her surprise, it was the new her that spoke, the uncertain part, the weak part. “There’s been a resistance on Ymir this whole time, right? But….”
“But?” His rich voice prompted her now, as he had prompted her through these exercises in her childhood, making her examine the issue from all sides.
She bit her lip and closed her eyes as she fought.
“A resistance movement is kept in check by fear,” she heard herself say. “They want their freedom, but they’re afraid of what will happen if they’re caught and they’re afraid of dying if they fight.” Her eyes opened. “And sometimes there’s just a breaking point. When you found me on Osiris, I already knew that not fighting was just as dangerous, that acquiescing would gain me nothing. The resistance on Ymir? They’ve realized the same thing.”
Still he said nothing, prompting her with his silence.
“There’s no stopping it now,” Tera said. “That isn’t something you unlearn. I’ll bet that’s why the Dragons are going.” She had thought of joining the Dragons once, before her father had asked her to work for him. Of all people in Intelligence and the military, she admired them above all. “They may not understand it, but somehow, they know. They were on Ymir, weren’t they? The ones who are insisting that now’s the time. They … caught it.”
“Yes.” Her father’s voice was quiet. “They were on Ymir.”
“They saw something there,” Tera told him. “And the Warlord knows—he must, the same way they did, just a feeling, just a hunch—that his time is up. They won’t stop fighting until he’s dead, because every fighter he snuffs out, another will rise up. All across allied space. With the Dragons leading the charge now, he’s on borrowed time. They won’t back down.”
She was looking at him as she spoke, her face flushed, her smile wide, and that was when she saw it. What it was, she couldn’t say—a tightening at the mouth, something at the corners of the eyes. He didn’t seem to move at all, and yet … she caught the fear.
“Are you all right?”
“Yes.” But there had been an infinitesima
l pause before he spoke. “Tera. I want you to do something for me.”
“Yes?”
“I want you to go to my estates on Barrush.”
“And?”
“And … stay there.” He swallowed. “Train, read.” He forced a smile. “Lord knows, you haven’t had a vacation in—ever.”
“A vacation?” She laughed, but her smile faded when she saw he was serious. “Why?”
Unexpectedly, he did not make an elegant comment, or try to explain it away. “Because I’m afraid. Something is coming, something has shifted and pieces are falling … and I don’t want you caught up in it.”
“But you’ll need me,” Tera said. She did not understand.
“Everyone else is second best,” he said. “But I am selfish, Tera. You are my only child, and I think I have earned this obedience from you. This, of all things. I am not asking much—just for you to go somewhere you will be safe.” He saw the confusion in her eyes. “Please,” he said simply.
She could not deny him.
“Of course.”
He stood up and came to kiss her forehead. “I will send a car to be here in an hour. It will take you to my shuttle at the spaceport.”
“No.” She smiled up at him. “I’m not here, remember? I don’t exist. No cars. I’ll make my own way to the shuttle. This is no time to get sloppy.”
He smiled. “It’s never the time to get sloppy,” he agreed. “I will try to come see you on Barrush, but know that if I cannot … I love you. I know you hate boredom, but Kreuger was just the tip of the iceberg.”
Tera swallowed. She could picture herself opening her mouth to tell the truth: she isn’t dead, I couldn’t kill her.
But she didn’t. She only nodded, wondering what force kept her mouth glued shut and smiling, and she stood to kiss him on the cheek and show him to the door.
“I love you, too,” she whispered, as he walked down the hallway to the stairs.
She would obey him in this.
For now.
“What?” Talon’s hands clenched into fists.
“She’s missing.” The voice that filtered back through the comm unit was carefully neutral. “That’s all that can be said in perfect accuracy. Missing. Not yet found. In reality? She’s dead.”
Talon sank his head into his hands.
He couldn’t deal with this right now. He let it run on autopilot in the back of his mind as he picked his head up and stared at the black screen. Nyx was jabbing at it and gesturing at her own face, and he nodded.
“So why aren’t you showing me your face right now?”
There was a long pause while the bridge crew of the Ariane traded meaningful looks. Then there was a click, and Talon’s eyebrows shot up. Nyx and Tersi piled behind him to look as well.
“Yes,” Lesedi said crisply. “I know.”
“What happened?” Tersi demanded.
“Someone tried to kill her,” Nyx said, as if it were perfectly self-explanatory. “Probably with a bomb?”
“Yes.” Parts of Lesedi’s face carried the sheen of recently-burned skin, and there was soot on her clothes. “I think we can all guess why it happened and agree that the specifics aren’t terribly important. When I know who it was who did it—and I will find out, I promise you that—I will let you know, in case you’ve ever run across them. In the meantime….”
“You’ve gotta feel pretty good,” Nyx remarked. Tersi and Talon gave her incredulous looks, and the woman raised her shoulders. “What? She survived an assassination attempt from the Warlord. The head of Alliance Intelligence didn’t fare as well. Besides, Lesedi knows a compliment when she hears one.”
Lesedi was, in fact, smiling. “Yes, it is gratifying when security measures work out. On the other hand, I had just gotten that office set up the way I liked it. And I don’t like this apartment as well.” There was a little silence while her smile faded and she met Talon’s eyes. “You know what I’m going to say, don’t you?”
“‘Back off’?” His voice was bitter.
“No. You should know better than that by now.” She shifted in her chair, and her fingers curled around the arms of the chair. “Be careful, Talon. You’re very good because you train harder than anyone, but you get to a point where you stop being careful. I’ve seen it before, and I’m seeing it now.”
“I just—”
“No. D’you know why I’m alive right now?”
Talon looked at her mutely.
“Ask your Chief,” Lesedi said.
Talon looked over at Tersi, who raised one eyebrow. “Because she was prepared and she didn’t let her goal cloud her perception.”
Nyx made a small sound of agreement. “She knew when she was outmatched, too.”
“Precisely.” Lesedi leaned forward slightly. “Talon, your team is made for every member to complement the others. Nyx and Tersi are more methodical than you are, more cautious, more likely to back down. You listen to them now, because otherwise you may get in over your head. With someone like the Warlord, you have to pick your shot. Promise me you’ll do that.”
Talon rubbed at his forehead.
“I’m not playing, Talon. I just survived a bombing that claimed 78 other lives.” Her voice was sharp. “Promise me.”
“Seventy-eight?” Talon’s stomach twisted. The Warlord could never be accused of not taking threats seriously enough, but somehow, those 78 lives on Akintola Station were bringing into sharp focus just how brazen he was. “I promise, Lesedi.”
“Nyx, does he mean it?”
Nyx, to Talon’s chagrin, bent her head to look. She took her time before answering. “Yes.”
At Talon’s other side, Tersi was nodding.
“This is humiliating,” Talon muttered.
“It’s necessary,” Lesedi said. “Particularly right now. The security systems inside my office were hardly the only ones I had. The assassin should never have gotten that far. And whatever they did to Satomi, she undid every part of that deal before she disappeared. There’s no trace of it anymore, and people who should have picked it up, haven’t. I don’t know if every one of them received part of her in a box, or what—” Tersi grimaced “—but he is moving on this threat, and he is moving hard.”
And then it clicked.
“So why aren’t you just telling me to give up?” Talon leaned in. “Why do I have to promise to be careful?”
Now it was Lesedi’s turn to smile. “Because I have a lead. Someone who just might know the Warlord’s name.” She spread her hands. “From there, you do a DNA trace, you run some security footage—standard stuff—and no matter what he’s changed his name to, no matter where he’s hidden, we have the start of a good trail.”
“So?” Talon was leaning forward, Tersi crushed against his side, Nyx braced on his shoulder. “So?”
“Well, this is the tricky part. He’s an information broker who now works solely for—and out of the headquarters of—the Alveni Syndicate.”
Nyx groaned, and Tersi started laughing. The Alveni Syndicate was grey market—not illegal enough to be criminal, but definitely not good little form-filing, tax-paying citizens. Their annual profits rivaled the GDP of some planets, and their fleet might have a good chance against the Alliance Navy if the two ever went head to head. They kept the peace and their citizens seemed to have no complaints, so the Alliance had not intervened.
But getting to one of the information brokers was another matter.
Talon, however, settled back with a grin on his face. He looked up at Nyx.
“What? Why’re you smiling?” She’d known him for long enough to know she should be unsettled.
“Ed,” he said, by way of explanation. When she groaned, he knew he’d hit the mark. “Oh, come on, why not?”
“Pick a reason, any reason.”
“Who’s ‘Ed?’” Lesedi asked suspiciously.
“You’re not the only one with secrets, you know.” Talon gave her a cheerful wave. “Stay safe.”
“Oh, one mor
e thing.”
“…Yes?”
“That boy you so loved. The Dragon recruit.”
Talon’s finger paused near the END CALL button.
“I’m told he’ll be joining Mallory’s team. They leave port on Friday.”
“Why are you telling me? I don’t have any openings on the team.”
“Just thought you’d want to stay up to date. And remember, you promised to be careful.” She gave him a look, and ended the call.
Talon sat back in his seat.
“You can always try to get him later, boss.” Tersi clapped him on the shoulder.
“Oh, for—we’re not taking him on. I don’t know why everyone keeps bringing it up.”
“Because he’s good?” Tersi asked.
“Because he’s really good?” Nyx tilted her head to the side.
“Because Nyx admitted to me that he almost beat her?”
“Both of you, shut up.” Talon looked heavenwards for patience. “Nyx, get us back towards Seneca, and send a message to the last drop point where we found Ed.”
“Boss, he’s not going to—”
“Let’s try, huh?” Talon pushed himself up. He was suddenly in the mood to hit a lot of things very hard, though he couldn’t have said why. “Then we’ll try other options.”
He left the two of them staring contemplatively after him.
“You’re the one who pissed him off, you know.” Tersi grinned as he settled into the copilot’s seat.
“Maybe he’s just tired.” Nyx brought up the navigational computers. “The ship’s been acting up lately.”
“No, she hasn’t.” Tersi put a protective hand over his console. “She runs like a dream, you take that back.”
“No.” Nyx gave a shrug. “She’s makin’ weird noises these days. Sounds like sex. All hours of the night.” She gave a bland look over at Tersi. “You’ve heard it, right?”
The look Tersi gave her was somewhat like a deer in the headlights. “Right.”
A hallway away, paused just out of sight, Talon gave a snicker and headed off to the gym with his mood noticeably lighter.
19
