by Natalie Grey
Well, it was easy to question your decisions when your soldiers broke from following your orders. Talon told himself he had made his peace with it, but he was beginning to wonder if that was really true.
But what he thought about it wasn’t really the question here. Why had Nyx brought it up? “What about it?”
“I still regret it.” She did him the favor of being blunt. “I still wonder what chances we missed. If we’d taken more time, if we’d found a way to get them off the ship and take the syndicate down. It made sense every step of the way until we were there and then it was a nightmare. I heard you two arguing about it on the bridge and I….”
Talon could not look away from her. They had never spoken about this, the two of them. Nyx had accompanied him to Seneca, part of his command crew, never complaining that her career was on the line for a decision he’d made while she wasn’t even in the room. She had backed him up when the senators tried to divide them, and she had explained the mission starkly enough that more than a few people walked away with a new appreciation of just how ugly it could get on remote planets.
And just why the Dragons existed.
He had been glad to have her there with him. He was surprised, now, to remember that they had not even discussed their testimony as they traveled back to give it. He’d had no doubt that she would tell the truth, and she hadn’t come to him about it.
She didn’t look at him now. She was lost in memory.
“I was glad I didn’t have to make the call,” she said finally. “I was glad I wasn’t where you were, and I was glad I wasn’t where Cade was. I was so ashamed of that. I went into that senate hearing thinking, ‘don’t ask me what I would have done.’”
“Would you have made a different call?”
“It doesn’t matter.” She still would not look at him. She looked down at her hands, instead, at the callused fingertips and the faint scars that had accumulated over the years from injuries and surgeries. “What matters is I wasn’t prepared to make one. That’s what I can’t forgive myself for. It’s why I’m afraid of what to do if they offer me a command.”
Talon leaned his elbows on his knees, and his chin on his hands. “I’ve never seen you waver. In battle, you make calls when you have to.”
“It only takes once.” She looked haunted. “You didn’t hesitate on the Blood Moon.”
“There’s a difference,” Talon said, into the quiet, “between doubting, and hesitating.” He considered. “Not ‘doubting.’ Knowing you might regret something.”
“And you just….”
“Stop thinking, and do it.”
She nodded after a moment. “Can I ask … what changed this time? Just one too many missions, or what?”
“It’s not that, it’s….” He closed his eyes, and saw Jacinta’s face.
She was haunting him.
“They weren’t afraid to die this time. That’s new. That’s dangerous.” His hands clenched. “And he doesn’t deserve it. Of all the people in the fucking universe, the Warlord of Ymir? That’s who she was dying for? I thought I knew what I needed to know about him, but it’s clear I don’t. Something isn’t adding up.”
“So you’re going to talk to Soras.” She was withdrawn.
“Go on, tell me it’s a bad idea. Everyone thinks so.”
Unexpectedly, her face split in a grin. “If we were a font of good ideas, we wouldn’t have joined the Dragons. You don’t get to be a Dragon with an especially well-developed sense of self-preservation.”
Talon gave a bark of laughter.
“It’s not doing it that I disapprove of, or even telling Lesedi—you shocked Mars, though, showing her those briefs. Kiddo asked me if you normally showed her classified things.”
“And you said?”
“That when it came to Lesedi, classified meant about five minutes more work before she knew it.” Nyx’s smile was lazy now. “And that she’s one of the good ones. I don’t think he believed me.”
“He’ll learn.” Talon had only been about halfway through the first mission he’d commanded before he realized he needed more information than Intelligence could give him. “And, back to the point: you don’t object to me doing this, or telling her … but…?”
“But maybe you shouldn’t broadcast it.” She met his gaze. “You go into Intelligence and say that, it’s going to be all ‘round the department in weeks, all ‘round the Dragons and all of their information brokers, most likely. And you don’t know where the Warlord has ears. You know as well as I do that when that carrier went down, it wasn’t an accident. He’s got resources we can’t begin to guess at. Everyone knows he killed Hoa.”
Hoa was James Hoa, Aleksander Soras’s predecessor. He’d been a good man and a good spy, and after the Navy had nearly taken back Ymir, he’d been found murdered in brutal enough fashion that most of the rest of Intelligence leadership had resigned.
The agents, however, insisted that the most horrifying thing about his murder had been that anyone had been able to get the drop on him. Whoever it was, they insisted, must have been superhuman, and stalking him for a very long time. It was impossible that anyone else could have taken him out.
“Figuring out his resources will be step one, then.” Talon pressed his palms together. “Look … I know maybe it doesn’t make sense, but—”
“You don’t have to justify yourself to me.”
“I’m going to anyway—I need someone to tell me if I’m being dumb as hell. And I know it doesn’t make sense, but Soras took over Intelligence when no one else would. That means he isn’t scared by what happened, or at least he knows it’s worth doing anyway. I think he’s sitting on some intel. He doesn’t want to send us to a certain death.”
“And that’s where you’re taking us now,” she said quietly.
“No. Maybe.” Talon considered. “Would you follow me if I was?”
“If you think we’ll win, yeah.”
“You sure?”
“Yeah.” She smiled. “Not saying I wouldn’t prefer a less lethal mission, but if that’s how it has to go down, then that’s how it has to go down.”
“That’s what Tersi said, too.”
“That’s the team you built, boss.” She pushed herself up. “You should try to sleep. If you’ve made your decision, stop worrying about it.”
In the doorway, though, she paused.
“Boss? You still in there?”
“I was hoping you’d talk me out of it.” The admission surprised him. He hadn’t known it until then.
She paused. “Because? Don’t want to die? No one’s going to think less of you for not running the op.”
“Because it’s the wrong decision.” That was what had been eating at him. “And fuck if I can figure out how. I can’t figure out what else to do, but all of this is wrong. The way I’m going about it….” He shook his head. “I just can’t think of a better way. And something needs to happen.”
“Well, you know what they say.” She raised an eyebrow. “Mistakes have a way of making themselves real clear. Just keep an eye out. We’ll adjust when the time comes.”
The door closed softly behind her and Talon looked after her, eyes focused in the middle distance. That was why he couldn’t settle: it wasn’t the right plan. His every instinct was screaming at him to walk away.
The problem was, as Nyx had mentioned, Dragons didn’t have a particularly good sense of self-preservation.
I hope you enjoyed this excerpt of The Dragon Corps! To find out what happens with Talon, Nyx, Samara, and the rest, grab a copy HERE on Amazon (or click the picture below!)
Happy reading!
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