Dragon's Nemesis (The Dragon Corps Book 7)

by Natalie Grey

  Reis’s thin atmosphere meant that the landing pad could be separate from the main buildings, as anyone in a half-decent space suit could make the walk between the two. A few other companies had taken the chance to establish outposts here as well, and the planet was technically under the ownership of Seneca.

  Nyx suspected that some of the corporate rents for Reis managed to find their way into the pockets of the senators, and she gave a tiny, disgusted shake of her head as she walked toward the building.

  She did what she did for citizens, not politicians. Every time she forgot that, the politicians seemed to find a way to remind her of it.

  Inside the airlock, a woman was waiting for them. She wore a grey suit and very tall heels, which nonetheless left her shorter than all three Dragons. Her hands, presently holding a leather folio, had perfectly manicured nails, and her hair and makeup were equally well-tended. She might have been in any of the business districts of a main planet or station, instead of an out-of-the-way moon.

  “Ms. Silvis,” she said, extending a hand. “I am Helena Montclair.”

  Nyx shook her hand without comment and took off her helmet, looking around herself as she did so. She had given them her grandmother’s maiden name, thinking that her own might be too much of a calling card where Ghost was concerned.

  She hoped that the signal blockers were working, but it wouldn’t be too long, she was sure, before Ghost knew that something strange had occurred on Reis.

  She had to make this meeting count for something.

  “Do you have the pilots ready to go?” Nyx asked brusquely. Doc and Maple had coached her on the general demeanor of cargo guards, and had assured her that they were very to the point and unconcerned with pleasantries.

  This, in Nyx’s opinion, was a part she had been born to play.

  Helena Montclair gave a practiced smile. “Not yet, Ms. Silvis. We will require a contract—and payment, of course—before any of our staff could possibly—”

  “We came to sign the contract,” Nyx said rudely. “We have the payment. What we don’t have is time to hang around.” Establish a time constraint, Doc had told her, worryingly self-assured when it came to conning people. Don’t give her time to think, put her in a mindset where she’ll be more likely to disregard internal protocols.

  The woman seemed thrown for a moment, but her smile fixed itself back in place and she gestured down the hallway. “I’m sure we can come to an agreement,” she said smoothly. “My office is just this way. We’ll get all of the paperwork out of the way immediately. Your time is, of course, very valuable.”

  Nyx nodded curtly and followed her down the hall. It was a nice place—nicer than any out-of-the-way staffing company headquarters had a right to be. It clearly wasn’t the owner’s estate, and no big clients could be expected to show up here when Integrative Staffing Solutions had offices on Seneca, itself.

  No, there was something more to this.

  They were halfway down the hall when Helena’s earpiece buzzed. She put a hand up and tilted her head to listen, a pleasant smile on her face. For a moment, she reminded Nyx of nothing more than a robot, but when Helena turned her head, it was clear from the beat of blood in her throat and the minutiae of her expression that she was at least partly organic.

  And she’d received some news that had worried her. She was tenser now, though she masked it well.

  “I beg your pardon,” she said regretfully, “but there’s an emergency that requires my attention. My office is at the end of the hallway and the guards have been briefed to show you inside. I will be with you as soon as possible.”

  She left, her heels clicking on the stone floors as Nyx looked after her. It was a good act, and gracefully done, but Nyx already knew what she would see when she looked the other way down the hallway: guards, ready to deal with the “problem” of Nyx’s team. She made a tiny gesture with her fingers, sliding her helmet back into place and flipping the visor down.

  “You two take the guards,” she said over the comm channel, and then she turned and went for Helena.

  There was a distant shout from the guards, who were watching this unfold, and Helena gave one look over her shoulder, eyes wide with fear, and took off like a startled rabbit.

  Whoever and whatever she was, the woman had some enhancements. She was faster than she should be in high heels, and she struggled gamely against Nyx’s chokehold. She was not armed, however, and she was not trained to match an actual soldier when it came to combat. As soon as the cold metal of Nyx’s metal pressed against her temple, all of the fight went out of her.

  There were several bursts of gunfire from behind them and a moment later, Centurion’s “all clear” sounded in Nyx’s earpiece. She hauled Helena up, one arm looped casually under Helena’s and wrapping up around the back of her neck. Helana said nothing—neither babbling nor pleading.

  “So, what was the message you got?” Nyx asked conversationally.

  Helena sagged against her in defeat. “You were to be eliminated immediately.”

  “And that’s something you do often, then? Interesting. One might almost think your company is a bit more … hmm, involved, shall we say—yes, more involved than the average staffing company.”

  Helena turned her head, face ugly, but she seemed to remember herself a moment later and her face went carefully blank. “One might almost think you’re not simply a prospective buyers,” she said, after a moment.

  “One might,” Nyx agreed. “So, here’s how this is going to go: we’re going to go to your office—your actual office, not whatever death trap is at the end of this corridor—and we’re going to have a chat there. You aren’t going to try to sic any more of your guards on me, because I swear if you do, I’m going to kill you without a second thought and take what I want from this place. And if you’re thinking I won’t make it through all of the guards you have here, you are massively fucking mistaken. Is that clear?”

  Helena stood rigid for a moment, but eventually she nodded in defeat. She nodded to a side corridor with her head and Nyx gave her a little push to start walking. She kept her gun up as they walked down the corridor, Loki and Centurion coming to flank her with Centurion facing back to catch any ambushes.

  “You ready?” Nyx asked quietly on her channel to Maple.

  “Yep,” the woman’s voice came back. “Just release those bots and keep her talking for a while. We’ll get everything out of their systems and then we can figure out what to do with them from there.”

  “They seem to have a good setup here,” Nyx said. With her visor down, it was unlikely that Helena could hear her, but she still wanted to be careful. “See if you can figure out the general pattern of their communications, set some up to mimic it—along with one saying we have been taken out—then cut them off. They’ve got supplies, and with any luck, whoever ordered us taken out will believe the fake message long enough for us to get out of here.”

  “Right-o,” Maple said cheerfully. “And don’t worry, I’m keeping an eye on the scopes for any incoming vessels. For now, it’s just the guards massing to storm the lady’s office.”

  “And don’t worry,” Wraith cut in, “my team is on that. Tell us when to make some noise for effect, and we can do that.”

  “I love you guys,” Nyx said affectionately. “All right, let’s get some intel and head out.”

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  A WEEK. He’d been in this hell for a week and there was no end in sight. John Hugo sat in the shadowed corner of his apartment’s main room and struggled to breathe.

  He’d had enough in him to send for “L,” as well as for Dess—if ever there was a time for the girl to step up, now was it. He knew the pressure she was under, but he needed her. The entire damned Alliance needed her. He had set Dess to the Dragons, and now….

  Now he had to hope that the Dragons would pursue this with the same singleminded intensity they had given to Aleksandr Soras.

  Hope. He, John Hugo, a man who had spent his life in
careful action, now found himself completely powerless, relying on hope to get him from day to day—and hope was a commodity he did not seem to possess. He had become a hermit, first relying on his aides to bring him reports, then asking them to summarize for him, and now, finally, leaving the office entirely and sitting here, alone, in his apartment.

  Where Anna’s blood was still on the rug.

  He pressed a shaking hand over his brow. It was hoped that Anna would recover. She’d been dead for several minutes by the time paramedics reached her, but with a few weeks of suspended animation and some careful attention to detail as her brain repaired itself, there might yet be a recovery. He would like to be able to tell her family that their daughter would suffer no ill effects from this, that she would survive and be safe.

  He would not wish his own pain on anyone.

  His greatest fear was that Ghost would stack the deck—her own life against Rhea’s. In any other case, Hugo knew what he would have advised the Dragons to do. It was the sort of cold, dispassionate judgement that had earned him his place as the Head of Alliance Intelligence, and it was the same judgement that Talon Rift, at least, had shown on several occasions.

  One life, Rhea’s, measured against the hundreds—thousands—Ghost would take if she were left unchecked. The decision, when put that way, was simple.

  Simple, but Hugo’s mind scrabbled for any justification to make a different call. If government workers’ children were being assassinated, they would lose their best and brightest. It would send shockwaves through the entire Alliance. The Senate would be in shambles, other assassins would be emboldened. They could not have that.

  If it came down to it, however….

  He gave a little sound of agony and pressed his eyes shut. Every second was a struggle not to go mad. He did not know how to contain himself within his skin. Merely existing was too much to bear.

  There was a sudden glow of blue light and he realized a screen had gone on somewhere behind him.

  “Hello, Mr. Hugo,” said a familiar voice.

  He turned his head slowly. He had watched every video he could find of Maryam Samuels, from her fiery testimony in the Senate, to her public interviews. She had been cool and collected, hardly changing at all over the years. There had been the subtle signs of age—grey hairs, faint lines at her eyes and mouth—but it was as if she had been born implacable, a force of nature that could neither be changed nor dimmed with age.

  Now, however, she looked different. She sounded different. The voice was clearly modeled on her own, but it came from a speaker now, or so he guessed.

  And the face was a nightmare come to life. Skin stretched passably well over the metal struts of her face on one side. Her mouth was complete, as was her nose. One eye socket was bare, however, and the gaping hole where her other cheek should be showed a black cavern.

  Was there a processing chip there, he wondered? Where did Ghost exist?

  This was the sort of thing he should care about, but he did not. He was expending all of his energy not pleading for his daughter’s life.

  She knew it, too. She gave what was likely a smile.

  Hugo took a deep breath, forced himself to look at her, and waited. He knew in that split-second that he would give her anything she asked for the mere chance of seeing Rhea again. If Ghost asked him to find a pistol and blow his brains out, he would do it. If she asked him to drink poison, he would only beg her for enough time to find some.

  Anything to keep his daughter safe.

  “Nothing to say?” Ghost asked.

  There was a silence, and Hugo shook his head slightly. No, he had nothing to say.

  “Oh, come now.” The voice, such as it was, was amused. “No questions, perhaps? No requests?”

  “Tell me. What you want.” He broke. He was going to go mad, and she was taunting him with this. He could not play a game, he would lose his mind if he listened to this for even a moment longer.

  “You know, Mr. Hugo, I think not.” She had seemed mechanical before, a parody of a human with a robotic voice and her half-made face, but in this moment, she was eerily perceptive. She saw every tremor in his face, every moment of weakness. She saw things other humans would never notice.

  And she was making the choice to prolong his suffering, for whatever ends she was playing to. Though she must see how broken he was, she had enough time, and enough latent cruelty, that she would simply let him sit and go mad rather than ask him for what she wanted.

  What, then, might she want? What would he not give her now, when he was utterly desperate?

  Total despair filled him.

  “Goodbye, Mr. Hugo.”

  “No! Wait!” He turned, scrabbling to look at her. He thought he saw satisfaction in that mechanical face and he felt only dull despair at that. “Wait, please—”

  She waited, but said nothing.

  His hands clenched on the fabric of the chair and he felt tears start. He had always been a man of quiet dignity, if not a soldier’s stoicism. He believed he was not easily broken, and yet here he was, not even caring if she saw his despair.

  “Please,” he whispered. “Tell me what you want.” He forced himself to look at her, at the horrifying other-ness of her. Who could say what she would do? Who could say what she would have done if she were still Maryam Samuels, still in a human body? She had tortured civilians, executed even her allies. She had been ruthless then—what calculus did she use now to make her decisions?

  What she thought as she looked at him, she did not know. When she spoke, her voice was remote.

  “Goodbye, Mr. Hugo.” The screen flickered off.

  He gave a cry of anguish. He had slipped off the chair and he buried his face into the cushion of it and screamed. How final was that goodbye? Would Rhea die now? What had he done, what had he failed to do, what could he do to get her back? He would find no trace in his computer systems, he knew that well enough.

  There was gun in his bedroom. It had been calling his name for days now, offering an end to the pain and now he could not think of anything but oblivion.

  He would not, he told himself. Not until he knew Rhea was safe. Safe, or—

  He wrapped his fingers around the edge of the chair and squeezed them until the edges bit into his hands. He would not. Not while his daughter was still in danger. That would be a coward’s act, giving himself freedom from this while she still suffered.

  He would not, he would not. But it took everything he had not to.

  Behind him, there was a small sound, and when he lifted his face and turned, desperate to see Ghost and plead with her, he saw Aleksandr Soras’s daughter, instead.

  Her gaze flicked over him. For a moment, he was, to her, nothing more than a pitiable curiosity. She assessed him as if he might someday be her enemy, but he saw that it was nothing more than habit where she was concerned.

  And then real sympathy appeared in her eyes and she came to offer him her hand. She helped him up as a man followed her into the room. Hugo had not seen this one before. He was even taller than Tera, with blue eyes and the figure of a Dragon, though he wore not even a single touch of red. He examined the room while Tera stood with Hugo, and a few moments later, he gave a low whistle.

  A woman entered. Short and self-possessed, she wore a style of suit Hugo had only seen before on Akintola Station. Her brown eyes were both warm and quick as they darted over him, and when her lips broke into a smile, he somehow felt as if he had known her forever. She extended a hand, her brown skin taking on a deep hue in the evening light.

  “Mr. Hugo,” she said, and the same mode of address sounded entirely different from Ghost’s cold words. “I am Lesedi.”

  The world seemed to shift under him. Tera had brought messages before, but she had never betrayed L’s full name. Now he knew.

  “She called,” he told this woman, and there was hope in his voice. He had not thought he still possessed any. “She won’t tell me what she wants.”

  Lesedi did not seem the lea
st bit surprised. She nodded. “If you’ll sit,” she said quietly, “we have some new information.”

  “What if she sees you?” Ghost was in his systems, as untraceable as a phantom.

  Lesedi gave him a self-satisfied smile, and he had the sense of staring at a natural predator. She did not move with the dangerous grace of either Tera or the other bodyguard, but she was, in her own way, just as lethal.

  “Ghost is not the only one who can manipulate surveillance,” she said quietly. “Sit, Mr. Hugo. Cade….”

  The man nodded and went to the kitchen. Hugo could hear him preparing something to eat, and realized belatedly that it must be for him. “I don’t think I can—”

  “Very few problems,” Lesedi said crisply, “are not made worse by lack of food and sleep. You’ll eat something while we talk.” It wasn’t precisely an order. An order carried the possibility of refusal, and she was simply explaining the way life would be for him. “I just have to connect a few calls first.”

  “What did you find?” His voice was dull, but he knew he should ask.

  Lesedi turned to give him a smile. “We found Eternas,” she said.

  “Eternas?”

  She pressed a button, and one of the computers created a hologram, a planet spinning slowly, with blue oceans and green continents, weather systems of fluffy white clouds.

  “Eternas,” Lesedi said quietly, and there was satisfaction in her voice. “An answer to a question none of us thought to ask.”

  CHAPTER NINE

  “HOW IN FUCK’S NAME,” Nyx said, “is there a whole planet we didn’t know about?” She was lounging in the war room of the Conway, trying to get comfortable in one of the chairs.

  Talon would bet a fairly large sum of money that by the time he saw her next, she’d have bought a large, overstuffed chair of some sort to replace the standard-issue metal ones that everyone hated.

  She had a good point about the planet, though.