by Natalie Grey
“What?” His gaze darted over her face.
“They were resistance fighters.” She wanted to stop herself, but she couldn’t. “After the first time, we knew to be afraid. We’d try to hide them whenever the Dragons came, but we couldn’t. They always found them.”
“That isn’t possible.” His head was shaking, a tiny movement Intelligence doesn’t make mistakes like that.” He looked over at Talon. “They impersonated us.”
“They didn’t,” Talon said. There was pity in his eyes. “I ran all of those missions, Williams, every single one of them. I was there. I know now that she’s right.”
“Intelligence doesn’t make—” Cade began again.
“No. They don’t.”
The two men stared at one another, and then Cade’s face went grey. “No.”
“Yes.” Talon was staring back at him.
“It’s…no.”
Talon looked down at his hands, steepled in front of him. He paused.
“Who?” Cade asked him. “It could only be Soras, or Gerit, or—”
“Soras.”
“For fuck’s sake, do you really expect—”
“I found out a few weeks ago,” Talon interrupted. “I have run every verification that exists. I have followed the trail. It’s true, Williams. You already know it’s true. The Warlord always wears a mask.” To Aryn, he added, “’Soras’ would be Admiral Aleksandr Soras. He was a legend in the Alliance Navy, and then fifteen years ago he changed careers. Now, he runs Alliance Intelligence.”
“Which means,” Cade added, when he saw that Aryn still did not understand, “he commands the Dragons. They report to Intelligence, not the Navy.”
“And he’s the Warlord?” Aryn wanted to laugh. “You’ve both gone insane. There’s no way. He couldn’t possibly get away with it.”
“On the contrary, he’s the very best person to get away with it.” Talon met her eyes sadly. “Sixteen years ago, the Dragons led an assault on Ymir, did you know? They nearly succeeded in taking it from the Warlord. They almost certainly would have, because they had reinforcements coming in. But the transport crashed.”
“A Navy transport,” Cade said. There was grief in his voice.
“No one had told Soras what the ships were doing, I’m sure. Intelligence played it close to the chest—maybe they’d realized there was a leak somewhere. But once Soras figured out what was going on…” Talon rubbed at his forehead, a nearly identical gesture to Cade’s.
“He took them out.” Cade let his eyes drift closed.
“And remember…” Talon prompted.
“I know.” Cade nodded back.
“What?” Aryn looked between them. It was like they were talking in code.
“The head of Intelligence was assassinated,” Cade explained. “James Hoa. By the Warlord. And of course, then no one else wanted the job after that, which suited him just fine.”
“They took Soras on without even a vote.” Talon’s voice was shaking. “As it says in the transcripts, they trusted him to avenge the soldiers that had been lost.”
“And the Dragons didn’t know,” Aryn whispered. She shook her head. All these years, and it only now made sense. She heard people speak of the Dragons in hushed tones at Society events, and even though so many of the rich on New Arizona were the Dragons’ enemies, they never spoke of them with anything less than admiration. It had a romantic quality: the most elite forces of the Alliance, fighting for justice and peace.
And they had thought they were. She wanted to cry.
“That’s why you wanted me back.” Cade looked at Talon. “Why didn’t you tell me the truth?”
“I couldn’t afford to until I knew you’d be loyal.”
“I was a Dragon!”
“So is everyone on my squad,” Talon spat. “But at least two of them were his.” He was on his feet now.
“That leaves—”
“A few. They’re here with me, and Kuznetsova’s team is also on the way.”
“You can trust her?” Cade was lost in thought, and Aryn watched curiously. He was all business, and while she’d seen him like this on his own, she’d never had a window into his thought process when he was around other Dragons. It was fascinating.
“Yes. She figured it out on her own when she was hired to assassinate me. Three other teams … may or may not have figured it out, but they disobeyed his orders to take me out and went dark. Lord knows where they are now, and I can’t blame them. They had to do right by their crews.” Talon sounded frustrated, however. “There might be others who would help, but … I don’t know who to trust any longer. I need to get in there somehow, and….” He paced, sinking his head into his hands. “And I needed a team. People like you—people who wouldn’t rest until the Warlord was taken down.”
Aryn looked between them.
“And of course you knew I’d find out.” Cade let out a deep breath and looked at the ceiling. “Did Ellian ever even want a bodyguard?”
“Oh, he did. I just took advantage of the opportunity.” Talon waved a hand at Aryn. “Same way I took advantage when she went looking for weapons. We’ve been trying to arm the resistance, but we couldn’t get the funds. At first, when I saw her reaching out, I thought it was you.”
“I can’t blame you for that.” Cade looked over at Aryn, his mouth twisting into something like a smile. “I could hardly believe it when she told me.”
“Why is it so hard to believe?” Aryn demanded heatedly.
“Because very few people in this world take action.” There was approval in Talon’s eyes. “It takes a rare person to do what you have done.”
“Don’t encourage her,” Cade said sounding pained.
“No?” Talon grinned. “We’re all in this rebellion together, now. Their intel. Our fighting. We can finally take this damned planet back.”
Cade groaned softly.
“Cheer up, Williams. Life is about to get interesting again.”
3
Tera hung from the metal rafters on the ceiling of the shuttle hangar. Sweat was beading on her forehead, beginning to run into her eyes, and her fingers were aching—but she welcomed that. Since yesterday, she had been unable to sit still. The only thing keeping her sane was setting herself ever more ridiculous challenges. Presently, she was scaling the inside of the hangar bay and making her away across the ceiling.
She let her head drop down, upside down, and studied her path. Up along the arch of the ceiling, to the retractable portion of the roof, a leap across a gap in the steel girders, and down the other side.
The breath was coming hard in her throat by now. She’d had all the standard upgrades, and all of the less standard ones—including an increased efficiency in processing oxygen, with the ability to “store” some for later. It was useful, and even she could rarely push herself hard enough to get out of breath.
After three rounds of this, though, she was getting close.
Her jaw set as she slid her fingers under a girder and crept along upside down, very aware of the three-story drop behind her back. She had managed to undo one single piece of the Warlord’s plans, and then….
And then there had been a disturbance in the New Arizona spaceport, with security feeds deactivated and a truly astounding number of mercenaries and she hadn’t been there for any of it, because she was stuck on some ridiculous, fancy estate on a backwater planet.
Her lip curled and she let her legs swing down, one arm coming away as well, using the momentum to swing herself along. When she felt like this, stir crazy, angry, the only thing that calmed her was to put herself in situations like this: the type where she could not afford to make a single mistake.
She should be out there, she thought resentfully. She should be helping.
But what could she say to the Dragons? No, really, I’m an Intelligence operative, too. I’m just not on any payroll and legally speaking, I literally don’t exist. No one in their right mind would believe that.
And her father wo
uld be furious….
Tera curled herself up onto a girder again and studied the gap that was now just ahead of her. It was only a couple of feet, but with her muscles trembling and her fingers aching, it was a more difficult jump than she would normally do.
She did it the simple way: let herself down, swing the legs in ever-increasing arcs, and let the momentum help her bridge the gap. When she was safely on the other side, she let her breath out slowly and began to work her way down.
She needed to get out of here. The more she thought about it, the angrier she got. The Alliance was moving against the Warlord and she could help. Her father had never once been one to hold back when he thought she could be of use.
What was getting to him now? What was making him—
She stopped, swallowed.
And, traitorously, her mind finished the thought: what was making him such a coward?
She came to a decision, so easy and logical that she did not have to process it on any conscious level at all. She took the descent quickly, remembering the holds and the faint imperfections in the metal she had found last time, mindful of her surroundings as she swung herself down. When her feet hit the ground with a faint, echoing sound, she paused, still crouched, waiting to see if any of the ever-present servants would come to see what the noise was.
They didn’t. She’d been well-behaved enough that they had stopped watching her all the time.
So much the better. She dusted her hands off and headed out of the hangar bay, detouring through the kitchen to pick up an apple and exchange a few words with the cook, Lucca. She liked Lucca, and if anyone was watching, they would recognize that she was behaving entirely normally—exercise, then a snack. She even left going the usual direction, toward her rooms.
The usual direction, however, also took her toward her father’s study. Tera moved as quietly as she could, ears attuned for the faint sounds of anyone moving behind or ahead of her, and—satisfied that no one was listening—she ducked down the side corridor and toward the study.
She paused outside the door, listening once again, and then dropped down to a crouch to study the lock. There was biometric authorization, yes, but there had to be more, too—the servants had to get in here to clean somehow, surely.
Yes. Her fingers, tracing along the woodwork, found a faint catch, and a piece of the wood lifted to reveal a keycard slot. Tera smiled, slid out a copy of the Steward’s key—she’d copied it in the dead of night during her first week here, crouched in the darkness next to his bed—and opened the door, slipping inside.
If her suspicion was correct, she’d find evidence on the forms and briefs related to Ymir, but her father could not know she was looking. She sat at his desk for a moment, making her plan. She had seen the servers in the basement of the house, she knew she wouldn’t have to connect to the Alliance servers. Which meant….
It was child’s play to unhook the computer from its connections and boot it in black mode. Hell, she’d written some of her father’s security procedures. She knew how to deactivate the alerts that would be sent to him. She hooked it back up to the internal servers and began querying.
The answer was there on the first brief, but she made sure. She made very sure. It stretched back for years, forms submitted here or there, policy recommendations summed up to be presented to her father. All of them recommended leaving Ymir alone, but when she went back to the forms they’d been based on, those forms showed subtle alterations.
And every brief was signed off on by Julian Abraveya, her father’s personal secretary.
Tera didn’t stop moving while her mind chewed over the information. She backed out of the system quietly, carefully, on autopilot, her thoughts racing.
She could tell her father, but she knew how that would go:
He’s gone bad.
He’s trustworthy, Tera, you just don’t understand. Let me handle it.
And nothing would get done—or, worse, her father would confront Julian, and Julian would kill him. Tera went pale at the thought. She shouldn’t be here, she should be at her father’s side, protecting him, or, better, striking out at the warlord herself.
She’d remove the threat. Then she’d tell her father.
The ship would arrive the day after tomorrow.
The Warlord drummed his fingers on the desk and studied the briefs in front of him.
On the one hand, there were only two ships scheduled to arrive in the next couple of days: a standard supply ship, and the Niccolo, Ellian Pallas’s ship, though it was carrying his wife this time, and not Pallas, himself.
Neither of those ships could be expected to have illicit weapons aboard. On the other hand, the weapons had apparently left New Arizona, which meant they almost certainly were on one of those two ships. Where else could they be?
A black ship. That was possible. He considered. Talon could be bringing the Ariane, though it was a risk. The defense satellites were notoriously difficult to take down. The Warlord deactivated them only when he sent the Dragons in to kill resistance leaders. A cold smile touched his lips. It had been a risk, but it still amused him that he’d pulled that off for so many years.
It didn’t matter, the Warlord decided finally. The weapons had left New Arizona, and it appeared that Talon Rift had as well, though the Ariane—or a ship remarkably like it—was still docked in the city.
Ellian Pallas, therefore, had failed. Which meant he must be punished. The man could not be allowed to get sloppy. If he were smart, he would never have allowed his wife to come to Ymir. Losing her would be painful.
But a necessary lesson. Perhaps, the Warlord thought, he could simply hold her for a few days, to give Ellian the incentive to do all of his work correctly. Then he would kill her.
And Ellian.
He was still smiling when the call came in, and he raised his eyebrows as he took the call. “Pallas.”
“Sir.” Ellian’s face held a strange excitement. “I will be en route with the weapons you requested shortly. I should arrive within an hour of the Niccolo.”
“Oh?” This was a pleasant surprise. Traveling that fast was dangerous. It spoke well of Ellian’s commitment to this mission. “So, you’ll be joining us, after all.”
“Yes.” Ellian inclined his head. “With the schematics I sent before, and the poison I am bringing, you will be able to dispose of the resistance quite easily—or a larger target, if you wish,” he added delicately.
“Good,” the Warlord said simply. “Any other updates for me? The weapons, perhaps? Talon Rift?”
“None yet.” If the Warlord hadn’t been looking, he would have missed the faint flicker in Ellian’s expression. The man was a consummate liar. “I hope to have good news by the time my ship docks.”
“Indeed.” He stared at Ellian. “I want to see Rift’s body, Pallas. The man’s slippery. I need to be sure.
Ellian looked a little queasy. “Yes,” was all he said.
The Warlord ended the call and considered this. It was possible, of course, that Ellian did have a plan—the ships would be destroyed, the weapons jettisoned into space, Rift killed.
On the other hand, he’d seen the flash of fear in Ellian’s eyes. The man had been in this business too long to be missish, so he must be worried about something else. He must be worried that he could not provide evidence of Rift’s death.
Very likely, he had no plan at all.
The Warlord took a deep breath and prayed for patience.
He would see this through. He was fair. He would give Ellian a chance to recover. But if there was no verifiable news by the time Ellian arrived….
It would be Aryn who would pay for it.
Ellian looked around his study one last time and, on a whim, picked up a small bauble and tucked it into his travel bag. It was cheap and out of style, nothing more than a polished orb of marble, but his nephew had sent it to him, and he liked it.
The rest of it…. He looked around the room and let his lip curl. From the priceless pain
tings to the hardwood furniture and the hand-piled rugs on the floor, the room was an extravagance, and he was not going to miss it in the slightest. It was the symbol he had wanted, not any individual item. He had wanted to show how successful he was.
How had he been so misguided, for so long?
Still….
Something rather like sadness twisted in his chest as he picked up his bag and made his way out into the entryway. This had been his life for so long that it was impossible not to be sad that he would never return.
He was, above all, a realist. He knew he would never come back here.
He settled into his car with a nod to the driver, and opened a small tablet computer. He waited as the building receded behind them and they pulled into the spaceport. He was a patient man. And then, as he forged his way through the chaos of the main terminal, Ellian pressed a single button.
He could see, in his mind’s eye, the fire and explosions ripping through the apartment. There would be chaos, police vehicles and the fire department, and it would be months before anyone was able to determine for sure what had happened—and whether Ellian, himself, had survived.
He might not be coming back … but he sure as hell had no intentions of letting the Warlord kill him.
4
Alina Kuznetsova was not inclined to waste her time wishing for things that could not be, but she had to admit that, all else being equal, she’d prefer it if they weren’t going up against the head of Alliance Intelligence.
She’d also prefer it if they’d been able to make his identity public before running this mission.
But she knew why Talon had not done so. If given half a chance and even a few hours of wiggle room, Aleksandr Soras would find a way to convince the government that Talon was deluded—or, worse, accuse Talon of being an agent of the Warlord, provide a pile of manufactured evidence, and have the man hanged.
