Cut to the Bone: Chains of Command Book 3

by Zen DiPietro

  As much as she hated to admit it, she didn’t know that one. His joking tone had subsided and he now seemed deadly serious.

  She shifted to meet him look for look. “I never aimed at being an angel.”

  He stared at her, unmoving, and it was only then that she realized how close they were. “Remember that,” he said softly. “When the worst happens, remember that.”

  It was a strange moment. She felt like time was spiraling out away from the ship in every direction, but they were frozen together in the center of everything.

  “Minho.” She intended to follow that up with more words, but none occurred to her. She was too full of sudden questions.

  “Not my real name,” he said softly. “Even though it feels like it is.”

  What was he trying to tell her? He was always teaching her, preparing her for the future, but he’d never been so cryptic before.

  “I don’t understand,” she said.

  “Then don’t try.” He straightened and looked toward the exit, breaking the weird energy between them. “When you’re ready, you’ll understand without having to try.”

  She didn’t like the feeling of this conversation. It felt like a warning.

  “I’m going to get some sleep,” he said. “I’ll relieve you in four hours.”

  With that, he left, leaving her uneasy and uncertain.

  Fallon sat through her shift at navigation with an unsettled feeling. In less than two days, they’d meet the Briveen, hand off the brivinium, then await their new orders.

  She expected to be recalled to Jamestown to rejoin Avian Unit. She hoped that Minho would receive the same orders.

  She suddenly felt less confident about that being a possibility.

  When he came to take a shift on the bridge, he’d returned to his amiable self, but she remained bemused. She went to the ship’s small but plush gym and ran hard on a treadmill to tire her body and reboot her thought process.

  She ran hard for a full hour, showered, and fell into bed.

  Alarms woke her.

  Leaping out of bed, she ran for the bridge before she’d even registered the time or the type of alarm.

  Shaking off the haze of sleep, she burst onto the bridge, where Minho sat at the helm, leaning forward, shoulders rounded.

  “What is it?” she snapped, throwing herself into the copilot’s seat.

  “Pirates. Intercept course. No response.”

  She looked at the voicecom to size up the situation for herself.

  Blinking hard, she tried to clear her vision. What she saw made no sense.

  “There are three ships.” She stated the obvious because it was so improbable. Pirates didn’t work together. They preyed on ships in major traffic paths.

  She and Minho most definitely were not in any variety of traffic path. They’d arranged a rendezvous as far from anything as they could manage.

  And yet, here were three ships, coming at them from different directions. She recognized the make of each immediately, and though they were all inferior to the Kiramoto, they had the advantage of numbers.

  A Kiramoto class-six was immensely valuable. The pirates probably had a setup that allowed a scout to relay information about potential targets.

  However they’d been spotted, it was bad freaking luck.

  Two ships of equal or lesser capability, she could handle.

  “I can’t outmaneuver these three ships with no backup.” She said it flatly, feeling a disconnect with their reality. “They’ll converge on us no matter what we do. They’ve positioned themselves so that wherever I navigate to, one of them will be able to intercept us. Even if we destroy them—and we probably have better firepower—they’ll be able to delay us enough to allow the other ships to overtake us. How far out is the Briveen ship?”

  “Too far.” Minho’s voice was grim. “We’re on our own.”

  “Switch with me,” she said, already moving toward the pilot’s seat.

  Minho rose halfway and slid around her, moving into the copilot’s seat.

  She called on everything she’d ever learned in every aspect of her life to aid her now. She calculated scenario after scenario, looking for any possibility of success.

  She found none. Not even a weak hope of escape.

  Taking a deep breath, she calculated another scenario. If she couldn’t win, she’d work toward a different objective—a stalemate, to buy time.

  “What are you doing?” Minho asked when he saw her consulting star charts of nearby systems.

  “We can’t win, but we can delay. Even with three ships, we can use their maximum speeds and maneuverability to plot a path for ourselves that will coincide with stellar phenomena. They’ll have to alter course slightly, and we can delay their overtaking us.”

  When he looked over at her, his eyes dark and grim, she added, “All we have going for us is our superior ship and the fact that we have three axes to work with. If our only goal is to delay and evade, we can avoid a confrontation for approximately…”

  She trailed off, pouring herself into her calculations.

  “Thirty-eight hours,” she finally said. “If the Briveen increase their speed beyond tolerance, they could make it.”

  She and Minho silently looked at each other. No words were needed.

  Would the Briveen be willing to burn out their systems to reach them before the pirates could? It would mean putting themselves at extreme risk, since the Briveen would be brought into the fray with the pirates while on board a damaged ship.

  “They’re a deeply honorable people,” he said softly. “Maybe.”

  Maybe. Their survival depended on an extreme that dangled on the end of an uncertain decision.

  “You send the request to the Briveen. I’ll set the evasion course.” She focused on the task ahead of her, not indulging in any errant thoughts.

  She heard him speaking, but tuned it out. If she sealed off all parts of the ship outside of the bridge, she could conserve energy that she could shunt into propulsion. Sure, the mechanical methodology was far from PAC-approved, but she wasn’t too concerned about protocol at the moment.

  She would have given just about anything for a good mechanic just then.

  Over the next hours, she worked countless scenarios, adjusting energy output versus resource consumption while keeping them out of reach of the pirates.

  “Forty-two hours,” she finally said in a low voice. “That’s the best we can hope for.”

  Had she come this far, only to go out like this? Minho’s quiet gaze was somehow louder than the facts, saying that, perhaps, this was it.

  She tried to imagine Peregrine, Hawk, and Raptor reuniting on Jamestown without her. Getting news of her demise. Trying to continue as a team without her.

  No. It couldn’t happen that way. She was their leader. She owed it to them to take care of them.

  There had to be an answer somewhere. She didn’t need much—just a few hours. All the information she had indicated that they’d exhausted their possibilities.

  They had to find new possibilities.

  As the hours ticked down, Minho grew quieter and more subdued. Neither of them slept. They kept digging, kept searching, for new answers, to no avail.

  At thirty hours, he asked, “Have you created a message for delivery to your next of kin?”

  A feeling of coldness pooled in her chest. “No.”

  “Go do it,” he said. “Nothing’s going to change here.”

  She hesitated.

  “Go.” He sounded colder and more authoritative than he ever had. “That’s an order.”

  She went.

  At twenty hours, Minho suggested she sleep, but how could she sleep away her remaining time?

  “I wouldn’t be able to fall asleep.” She remained at the helm.

  “So you’re telling me that if we get a chance to make a stand, you’re going to make me stand with someone who’s sleep-deprived?” he asked.

  She missed the old Minho, who joked even in dire
situations.

  “Tell me how,” she said.

  “If you can’t put your team, me, and the PAC above your feelings, then focus your feelings on what you can do to serve them.” His eyes were dark. Fathomless.

  She bowed her head, then left the bridge.

  In her quarters, she put on pajamas, as if she were going to bed on any other night. She brushed her teeth. She lay down and pulled the blanket up to her chin and imagined her mind as a one-way path from this moment to the next moment that she could help the PAC.

  All she had to do was sleep. She closed her eyes.

  At ten hours, Fallon ate. The food tasted like nothing, but it would flow through her blood and keep her strong.

  At five hours, she ran more scenarios, but nothing had changed.

  At three hours until the pirates closed in on them, she accepted that she and Minho weren’t going to make it out of this.

  She’d always expected to die as a Blackout agent. She just hadn’t expected it to happen so soon.

  “Who are you really?” she asked Minho. “There’s nothing to protect now, is there? My birth name was Kiyoko.”

  She wanted him to see her—really see her.

  He turned in his seat toward her, and she did the same. Their knees almost touched.

  “Is that who you really are, though?” he asked. “Are you Kiyoko—whoever that was?”

  She pictured her parents, her childhood home, and the fighting competitions she did growing up.

  That girl was buried inside her like an insect preserved in amber, but Kiyoko was just an ingredient in what Fallon had developed into.

  Nor would the people who knew her then recognize her. Other than bearing the same physical features, she didn’t think she resembled the same quiet, removed girl who had only felt anything resembling passion when she was fighting or flying.

  She hadn’t had any close friends then. She’d recognized herself as too different, and hadn’t wanted to force herself into the mold of pretending to be like them.

  “No,” she said quietly. “I’m not Kiyoko anymore.”

  “Then who are you really?” He asked her the same question she’d asked of him.

  “I’m Fallon.”

  He leaned forward and took her hands in his. “You are. And you’re fantastic. And that’s enough. Talking about where we once came from won’t help us know each other any better than we already do.”

  She looked at their hands. “You’re right.”

  He smiled. “Of course I am. That’s my thing.”

  His gentle humor made her smile.

  “I guess this is the time to tell you that I haven’t hated knowing you,” she said.

  His smile bloomed into a grin. “I haven’t hated knowing you, either. Much.”

  She laughed. Fallon and Minho wouldn’t get maudlin and say a bunch of emotional crap. They would look at their target, take aim, and give it everything they had, until the end.

  He looked into her eyes, still smiling, gave her hands a small squeeze, then let go.

  “Let’s get ready,” he said. “We’ll make it good.”

  “The good news,” Minho said, “is that the Briveen ship has been able to increase their speed enough to get here within an hour of the pirates pinning us down.”

  “The bad news,” Fallon said, frowning at the voicecom showing the three ships, which continued to tighten their perimeter around the Kiramoto, “is that an hour is more than long enough for them to disable and board the ship, then kill us.”

  There was no doubt that killing her and Minho would be their top priority, along with dealing minimal damage to the Kiramoto.

  Minho nodded. “Our options are either to pretend to negotiate with them to buy time, or wait as long as possible and put up a fight. I know which one I’m voting for.”

  She smiled. “Make it two votes. We fight. There’s no point in attempting negotiations. They can see that Briveen ship coming just as well as we can, and will assume it’s coming to assist us. Besides…I’d always rather fight.”

  “At least we can bank on the fact that they’ll be trying to disable us rather than cause significant damage to the ship.” Minho slowly rubbed his hands together, deep in thought.

  He murmured, “It’s a shame we don’t have a shuttle, or at least an evacuation pod or something. Anything to create a little confusion.”

  Fallon frowned in thought. “What about drones?”

  His attention snapped to her. “What do you mean?”

  “There are ten of them on board. Let me think for a second.” She pursed her lips, thinking about how they could use the drones to buy them some time. While she was no mechanic, drones were fairly simple machines.

  Working through the thought as she spoke, she said, “If I were to cross-connect them, I could control them all at one time. I could also boost the signal gain enough to emit an energy reading that could serve as a distraction to the pirates.”

  Minho straightened, his eyes making tiny, quick movements from side to side even though his gaze was unfocused. “We could make it look like a ship, suddenly coming out of nowhere.”

  “Nothing that big,” Fallon said. “Even spoofing a shuttle’s signal would require us to mount something to it that could generate a much bigger energy output. It wouldn’t have to be tiny, because it would be out in space, but for maneuverability, it would need to be small. We don’t have anything like that.”

  “How small?” he pressed.

  “I’m not an engineer,” she said. “I don’t know how far we could push it. To be safe, I’d say about the size of your head, and weighing maybe two kilograms.”

  He stood. “I’ll be right back.”

  She remained on the bridge, wondering what he was doing. His nervous energy suggested that he had an idea.

  She really hoped he did.

  He rushed back in and thrust something toward her. “How’s this?”

  She examined it, but she’d never seen anything like it. “The measurements seem good, but what is it?”

  Shaped something like an eyeball, the item was encased in a smooth, black material.

  “It’s an EMP pulse bomb.”

  She stared at him.

  He shrugged. “I asked for one to be put on the ship. Just in case.”

  “I don’t really feel good about the fact that it’s been here all this time and I didn’t know,” she said.

  “Yeah, that’s why I didn’t mention it,” he said maddeningly. “But it’s far less dangerous than the brivinium,” he pointed out. “This will only blow out electrical systems in the vicinity.”

  “Which would result in the deaths of everyone on these ships, including us,” she noted, then paused. “Hang on. If we were already in containment suits when we set it off, we’d be able to survive until the Briveen got here.”

  She looked at him. This was a way for them to survive, but they’d have to kill everyone on those three ships.

  He nodded. “That’s exactly what I was thinking when you brought up the drone idea. Using the drone might allow us to get the thing far enough away that we won’t experience a total power failure. If we make sure all three ships are within range, we can wipe them out and then wait for rescue. The Briveen could even tow the Kiramoto back for repairs.”

  She’d always known that being a Blackout operative meant she would eventually have to kill. Her thoughts went to the people on those ships. If they were all pirates, all willingly engaged in piracy in the PAC, then the deaths would be justified. But what if there were unwilling participants on board? Hostages, maybe. Passengers. Children, even.

  They had no other choice but to take that risk, unless they wanted to die. She only hoped there were no innocents on those ships.

  “How long will it take you to get the drones ready?” he asked.

  “Ten drones, a minute each to link, then a few minutes to mount this.” She cupped the EMP pulse bomb carefully in her hands.

  “Okay. Go. I’ll grab containment sui
ts and we can help each other get them on when you’re done. Meanwhile, I’ll plan this out.”

  During her training to be a clandestine operative, she had often imagined a dire scenario like this. She’d wondered how it would truly feel, and how she would react. Whether the pressure might make her falter.

  Without hesitation, she ran, clutching the pulse bomb to her chest.

  A strange sense of power filled her. It shouldn’t—she was far from being in a dominating position. In fact, she and Minho had been backed into a corner and forced to take extreme actions.

  But the feeling that rose within her, first like a breeze then growing into a whirlwind, felt like power. Electricity.

  It was way better than any physical battle she’d ever engaged in, or any flight she’d ever taken.

  She felt more fully alive than she ever had, like all her latent senses had, at long last, roared into life.

  She felt incredible. Limitless.

  In the docking bay, she gathered the drones together on the floor and connected them, both physically and mechanically. The pulse bomb, she anchored in the center of them so that the entire structure was ball-shaped. She hoped to protect the most critical part as much as possible, in the event of space junk or some action on the pirates’ part.

  She finished the physical work, then put on her VR gear and carefully raised the multi-drone unit into the air, testing it to make sure it was fully operational.

  It was.

  She gently landed it on the floor of the bay. The maneuver was made particularly tricky due to its shape and the fact that the drones weren’t intended to be used in that way.

  Minho rushed in and dropped the containment suits. “Status?”

  “As planned. It’s ready.”

  “Good. Let’s suit you up first.”

  While containment suits were designed so that a person could get into one on their own, it was a whole lot easier and quicker to have help.

  Minho helped pull the suit up over her legs, pull it down over her arms, check all the internal mechanisms, then close it up. “We’ll put the helmets on last.”