Dragon's Nemesis (The Dragon Corps Book 7)

by Natalie Grey

  THE BLAST DOORS of the Ariane’s airlock slid open and one of the Dragons preceded Dess out into the hallway of Heritage Station. As neutral territory controlled by the immensely powerful Tian Syndicate, it was a place both the Dragons and Ghost’s followers could be considered safe.

  The Tian Syndicate was a grey-market syndicate, and while they strictly controlled the passage of goods into their territory, they did not keep the Alliance from collecting taxes—nor were there any indications that their citizens were harshly treated. It was not, therefore, worth it for the Alliance to take them on, either in a formal or informal capacity. Even the Dragons on board the Ariane didn’t seem to have anything bad to say about the Syndicate.

  The one thing everyone agreed on was that the first person to shoot in an altercation on Heritage Station was deeply going to regret it. The Tian Syndicate didn’t start fights—it ended them.

  Dess, accordingly, did not expect there to be any sort of security problem. Still, if anyone could, or would, use this as an opportunity to prove a point, it would be Ghost. She followed the Dragon—the others called him Jim, which didn’t make any sense to her, as everyone else had nicknames—into the hallway at his signal and turned confidently towards the neutral meeting rooms.

  She had been here before, of course. A great deal of hostage negotiations took place here, and the corridors were familiar to her. She even recognized a few of the guards, who nodded at her. If they were surprised that she had shown up with Dragons this time after showing up with Ghost’s organization the past few times, they didn’t show it.

  Then again, all of the staff here in the neutral wing, both guards and everyone else, were trained to see everything, and pretend to see nothing. The Tian Syndicate might not make money brokering information, but they liked to keep tabs on anything and everything they could.

  Lighted arrows on the floor showed them to a particular room. They were the only ones in the hallway, which was general procedure to prevent enemies from running into each other. Dess would enter from one door, and Regina from the other. Their ships would even dock on opposite sides of the station.

  At the door, two guards stepped forward and gave Dess a thorough search, both with hands and wands. The Dragons, they kept back. This, too, was standard for a hostage negotiation. Video feeds would be provided to whichever ships each faction wished, but no wires were allowed, for them to give instruction to the negotiators, and no armed guards were allowed, either.

  Dess was used to this, but she still felt a stab of nerves as Jim and Aegis stepped back. Both gave her slight nods and she squared her shoulders as she opened the door of the room.

  The woman she knew as Aunt Gee wasn’t here yet, so Dess sat quietly at the table and waited. The silence and uncertainty of waiting pressed in on her, as Aunt Gee undoubtedly meant it to. Some of the family made a point of being cruel, flaunting their knowledge of other people’s weak spots. Aunt Gee wasn’t one of those … but she knew what she needed to know, that much was always clear.

  Dess kept her fingers from straying to her pocket, where a scrap of paper held a handwritten note: From one survivor to another, do the things you’ve always known you should do. Listen to the voice that told you when you were making a bad decision or that knuckling under was ridiculous.

  Who had written the note, she wasn’t sure. She didn’t know of anyone on the crew of the Ariane who might have grown up in such an environment. Whoever they were, they had left the note and then been gone again silently, without her ever having a hope of finding them—and other than that, she had been left alone.

  Tersi had not come to see her. Talon, thankfully, had not come to see her. Even Aegis, who had held her while she cried as if he were well-versed in comforting people, had not come to see her again.

  She was staring down at the table when the door on the opposite wall opened and Regina came in.

  “Aunt Gee.” Dess stood. One stood in the presence of a senior family member, and Regina was senior in every way to Dess: of an older generation, and of the main branch of the family, while Dess was a more distant cousin.

  But a smile had also broken across her face. The Taspers were, indeed, a smaller branch, but they had always been close and favored. Dess had grown up playing in the big gardens of the central estate on Eternas, with Regina’s children as her playmates. She’d been held on Regina’s lap sometimes while they sang Happy Birthday to someone, or Silent Night at Christmas.

  Dess had come partway around the table, and when Regina only went to her seat and sat down with a cool nod, her smile faltered. She returned to her seat as well, looking down and swallowing as she composed her features. When she looked up, she had fixed a smile on her face.

  “Thank you for sending the message to meet. Mr. Hugo sends his thanks as well. I have no doubt Rhea is anxious to see her father again.” This was an early framing technique, reminding the negotiator of Rhea as a person and as part of a family unit. In itself, it was not enough to turn the tide, but a hostage negotiation was not a game of trying different techniques and seeing which worked.

  It was a game of slowly wearing away at one’s opponent.

  Her Aunt Gee looked at her with one raised eyebrow. “Is that really what you want to talk about?”

  Harry. Dess felt a stab of pain as she pictured her brother’s carefree smile and his tousled brown hair. That was how she remembered him, but it was all too easy to picture him screaming in agony, begging for a reprieve that wouldn’t come—

  She was shaking, and her smile was clearly fake, but she lifted her chin slightly.

  “This meeting is to discuss the terms of Rhea Hugo’s return.” She folded her hands in her lap and felt the clamminess in her palms.

  “Aren’t you even going to ask how he is?” The woman’s voice was smooth and sweet. “He’s been asking for you, Dess.”

  For a moment, Dess felt like she was going to throw up. She closed her eyes and focused on breathing. I am coming to get you, Harry. I’ll get you out of there. She had told herself not to make promises she couldn’t deliver on, but those promises were the only way she was going to make it through this. She thought of her father, wasting away in the apartment on Seneca, and her mother watching his self-destruction helplessly. None of us have forgotten you.

  It took her a moment to be able to speak.

  “That’s a separate issue,” she said, when she had regained her composure. “To begin with, can you provide evidence that Rhea Hugo is alive and in good health as of this moment?”

  Regina blinked, looking momentarily off-balance, but she recovered well. She opened the briefcase she’d brought with her and sorted through the materials before passing a small video screen to Dess. Dess watched her search, and then leaned close to examine the video: a small girl was sitting alone in a room. There were some toys around her, neatly placed at one side of the room. Rhea looked bored, but neither terrified nor injured.

  Dess nodded and passed the holo screen back, watching as Regina searched for the power button and stowed it once more.

  “The most important thing, of course,” Dess said quietly, “is what Ghost wants in exchange for Rhea’s return.”

  “‘Ghost’?” Regina asked, her tone dripping with sarcasm.

  “It is how she names herself, is it not?” It was hardly even the strangest name Dess had uttered in an investigation. It turned out there were more than a few drug dealers and smugglers who liked to think of themselves as kings—or gods.

  Regina, however, was unimpressed. “She’s your aunt, Ms. Tasper. Are you so far gone from the family that you refuse to deal with her as a person, or do you not want to say her name out of respect for the woman you betrayed?”

  “I didn’t betray her!” The words burst out of Dess, uncontrolled. She swallowed hard and realized she was gripping the table. “We didn’t betray her.”

  “‘We’? Careful, Dess. You might be suggesting that you and Harry weren’t just pawns in your father’s game. You might be
suggesting that you all decided together what you were going to do. Which would make you your father’s accomplice. A thief.”

  “A thief?” Dess felt tears starting in her eyes. She dashed at them angrily. “We stole nothing.”

  “You’re a talented hostage negotiator.” Regina lifted a brow as she surveyed Dess. “Theoretically. Your brother certainly is a talented ship engineer. Your father and mother both assisted the family business, or so we thought. You have taken something of value from the family. You are all thieves.”

  “We don’t owe you—” Dess broke off. She stopped, took a deep breath. “What does Aunt Maryam want?”

  “She wants not to deal with you in the future, for one thing. Not in this capacity. All she wanted was to determine if that idiot was foolish enough to use you, and if you were foolish enough to think you could save Harry.” Regina looked faintly bored. “It seems you both were. In the future, however, I will speak directly to him. At this station. We have Rhea here, and we will wait for him to be brought here.”

  Dess tried to recover her balance. “I will relay the message. What may I tell him are the demands?”

  “I will tell him.”

  “Auntie Gee—”

  “No.” Her voice was cold as ice.

  “Auntie Gee, please—”

  “Dess. You are no longer a part of this family. I am not your aunt—”

  “Auntie Gee, tell me he’s okay!” She wanted to sob. “Please. Please, tell me he’s okay. Tell me Harry is okay.”

  In the war room of the Ariane, Tersi leaned against the back wall and tried not to groan aloud. It was taking all of his self-control not to leave, but he knew he had to see this. Talon could easily have barred him from this, but he’d let Tersi continue his normal duties without comment.

  And this was what it came to.

  Dess had done her best, but she was breaking. Regina had her too far off-balance, and had too much leverage on her.

  The older woman was smiling cruelly. “Of course he’s okay,” she said, and her tone sent shivers even down Tersi’s spine. “He’s somewhere he can be of many uses, my dear. What could be better than that?”

  “Please don’t hurt him.” Dess’s voice was a squeak. “He’ll be terrified that—” She broke off and buried her face in her hands. “And he’s all alone.”

  “You left him alone. Now he has only Rhea to comfort him, hmm?”

  Dess whispered something that the speakers did not quite catch.

  “I can’t hear you, Dess.”

  “I said, please let me come back. You’re going to take him so far away.” Dess wiped at her nose. “And … and….” Her face crumpled. “And I’ll never see him again.”

  “You should have thought of that before you left, shouldn’t you have, darling? Because now you won’t be coming along. Not home, and not with us. Your aunt Maryam knows you can’t be trusted. Which is why we can’t negotiate with you anymore, isn’t it?” Regina stood up. “Tell John Hugo he has a week to get here without anyone in the Alliance knowing, or there won’t be anything left to negotiate for. And tell the rest of the Taspers that they know what they have to do to make sure Harry survives.”

  She left, slamming the door behind her, and Dess doubled over in her chair, face buried in her hands. There was a stricken silence on the line.

  Talon sighed. “Go get her,” he said finally into the comm channel, speaking to Jim and Tersi. “Get her back here. Don’t discount an assassination attempt.”

  Aegis’s voice was level. “On our way, boss.”

  But Tersi could hear Talon’s regret and Aegis’s worry, and he found himself wishing that he could turn the clock back and beg Dess not to go. They shouldn’t have let her go. If he hadn’t been such a blind fool, he would have seen that.

  And Talon, despite everything, had trusted Tersi’s judgement that Dess could do this. Tersi clenched his hands and did not look over at where his captain stood. The words of the apology would not come out, not because he did not mean them, but because they were beyond inadequate.

  In this line of work, there were no do-overs. If you messed up, if you miscalculated…..

  Innocent people died.

  When Talon headed out of the war room and down the corridors that would take him to the airlock, Tersi followed. He wanted very much to run in the opposite direction, but he was not going to do so. He needed to see this through.

  And Dess….

  Despite everything, if Dess needed someone’s shoulder to cry on, Tersi wanted to be there for it to be him.

  So he was immensely surprised when the blast doors opened and Dess stepped through them. She didn’t look at him—no, she looked at Talon.

  And she gave the coldest, most self-satisfied smile Tersi had ever seen.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

  DESS GRINNED as Talon’s eyebrows quirked. He hadn’t been sure how to approach this, and he certainly did not expect her to be happy with the outcome of the meeting.

  “Er….” He chewed on his lip and she could tell he hadn’t put the pieces together yet.

  “Do you have a call connected to Lesedi and Mr. Hugo?” Dess asked him. For the first time in weeks, she felt like herself again. The confidence pulsing through her was so heady that she thought her heart might beat right out of her chest.

  She wasn’t confident enough to look at Tersi, of course. Maybe she’d work up the courage sometime in the next decade or so. For now, she was confident enough to face the people who’d thought she was going to fail at this.

  She’d already faced one of them, after all, a woman whose hatred was so poisonous that Dess could still feel it eating away at her like acid.

  Talon gave a silent gesture to someone and led the way to the War Room, where the call was connected by the time they arrived. Nyx was lounging sideways in a much more comfortable chair, overstuffed and incongruously bright blue, and Lesedi sat with John Hugo in a room that must have been in his apartment.

  “Did you watch the negotiations?” Dess asked without preamble.

  All of them nodded.

  “Good.” Dess wished she had some papers to spread out, or an exhibit to arrange. Really, anything to do with her hands. She settled for sitting down, spreading her hands flat on the table and meeting John Hugo’s eyes. It was always best to reassure the parents first. “Her proof of Rhea’s good health was viable, and Regina’s reactions betrayed that there are no plans to hurt her.”

  Hugo looked as though the wind had been knocked out of him. He closed his eyes briefly as, at his side, Lesedi tilted her head slightly and asked, “I don’t doubt you, my dear, but would you be willing to explain at some point just how you reached that conclusion?”

  “Certainly.” Dess gave her a small nod. “Another time. Suffice to say, there are certain conventions in this sort of exchange. Ghost is familiar with them, as am I. Regina is not. She is not particularly skilled at this sort of negotiation—which was both very advantageous to us, and very informative.”

  Everyone was paying very close attention now. Nyx had swept her feet down to the floor and was leaning her elbows on her knees, while her XO and chief crowded into the frame behind her. Lesedi was watching with a bemused smile, and Talon had the absolutely blank expression of someone who had no idea what was coming.

  Dess still didn’t have the courage to look at Tersi.

  “First and foremost,” Dess said crisply, “she was not there to bargain for Rhea’s release. In that sense, it was a bad faith meeting. She wanted to punish my family for having defected, she wanted information from me, and she wanted to buy our continued silence—or obtain it however she could. You’ll have noticed us speaking in very couched terms about Eternas, as if I were being careful not to tip my hand.”

  There was a round of nods around the room.

  “The purpose of this meeting,” Dess said, “was to destroy Mr. Hugo’s faith in me and bring him here, himself. We can decide later if we think that is a wise thing to do.”


  “Do we have a choice?” Hugo asked. His voice broke. “If Rhea is there—”

  “Rhea is not here,” Dess said. She tried to keep pity out of her mind, because she knew he would hear it in her voice if she dwelled on it. “That was a ploy, Mr. Hugo. Rhea will be kept far from the negotiations. Bringing the hostage to the negotiation is a risk no one would take. That would give us a chance, however small, of recovering her. Regina—” it seemed too familiar to call her Aunt Gee now, and in any case, Dess wasn’t feeling any familial kindness just now “—slipped when I spoke about Harry, and told me that he and Rhea are in the same place.”

  Everyone blinked. At the side of the room, Talon was beginning to smile. He had started to put the pieces together, though he still looked bemused. Lesedi was also staring at Dess with a pleased, assessing sort of expression.

  “Here is my guess,” Dess said, “and it is a very educated one. Ghost is preparing to abandon Eternas with the core of the family and some amount of … the lower classes. She believes Eternas will shortly be found, and she is using the leverage of Rhea as a list-ditch attempt to have Mr. Hugo either block Eternas’s discovery somehow, or—more likely—settle all of her scores on the way out and ensure her family’s safe passage out of Alliance space. At this point, she’s not sure what we know, and she’s not sure which is the best path to take.”

  There was a brief silence, and then Talon asked, “How did you guess that?”

  Dess looked over her shoulder at him. “I noticed in my perusal of Ghost’s meetings and senate-floor testimony that she was very opposed to something called the Advanced Terraforming Initiative—it provides private companies with certain tax incentives to take a shot at terraforming worlds previously deemed uninhabitable. It should have passed a long time ago, to be honest, but she’s exerted all of her influence to keep it both less-publicized and to steal its votes every time someone managed to get it to the Senate floor.

  “Well, now it’s about to pass—and that means people might be looking at worlds like Eternas. Eternas is mapped, it’s just been deemed uninhabitable. Now the companies will be swarming all over planets that might be advantageous, and Eternas would fit nicely into the trade routes.”