by Natalie Grey
His surveillance systems are unsurpassed. I won’t risk the world learning about you just so you can take out an arms trafficker who could be replaced in half a day.
She still had regrets about listening to him on that one.
She had woven a net over the computer systems in the city, set to look for cargo crates moving that had no contents listed, or whose contents did not seem to match their posted weight. She was proud of that one. No one would risk giving an incorrect weight to their pilot—the guidance systems relied on such facts to lift off.
Therefore….
She was pacing around the room, trying to figure out where the Warlord’s own money was coming from, when her computer gave a strange noise and she hurried over to look.
She frowned. Someone else was trying to insert themselves into the databases at the spaceport. They were looking for alerts on the same sorts of things, and there was a virtual tripwire set up to offer a reward to spaceport staff for any information leading to illegal weapons trades. The programming led back to….
Ellian Pallas. Tera stared at it for a moment, eyes narrowed in thought.
Then, with a small smile, she went into the system and made a few small tweaks. It wasn’t anything extravagant. Not even something they would notice as they looked at things from their end. As far as they would see, unless they looked at all of their code again, their alerts were still set up.
But nothing would be sent to them, and—God willing—the Warlord would know nothing about the weapons until they appeared on Ymir.
Tera nodded in satisfaction, closed out of the programs carefully, and went to get herself a cup of tea.
It was the only possible answer. Alina Kuznetsova paced around the captain’s quarters of the Krasniy Oktyabr and turned the problem around every way she could, looking for the answer.
There wasn’t any point to that, of course. It was so simple, and so obvious, that she had missed it until now. Talon Rift had always wanted to take out the Warlord, and now he’d made a proclamation that he wasn’t waiting for Intelligence to recommend an opening. Aleksandr Soras wanted Talon Rift dead. The Warlord of Ymir had defenses that were impressive, but nonetheless should have been breached years ago.
Aleksandr Soras was either in league with the Warlord of Ymir, or he was the Warlord of Ymir.
“Commander?” Her XO appeared in the doorway. Tall and lean compared to Alina’s own compact build, Zeke Grimshaw had been an eminently capable second-in-command. He and Alina shared an outlook on life. Neither of them shrank from doing the best thing for the most people, no matter how unpleasant it was at the time. Zeke carried out her orders to a T and kept the crew in line.
He had also been sending unauthorized transmissions she could not read—to Seneca.
How could you? Alina wanted to say. I trusted you. A crew has to trust one another.
But that was stupid, and she wasn’t stupid. She wasn’t going to give him an opening. She smiled over her shoulder at him to keep his guard down, even as she tripped the automated defense systems embedded in the doorway.
He went down with a thump and she dragged his body over to a chair and secured him, laying a small device on his skin that would send little jolts of pain through his implants.
When his head jerked up at last, she was sitting on the bed, waiting.
“First question,” Alina said calmly. “How many more spies are there on my team?”
25
“Is he any better?” Arlon’s voice was quiet.
Samara jumped. She hadn’t truly spoken to Arlon in weeks. Since she took over their resistance cell, in the face of his unwillingness to mount any operations at all, he’d been inclined to sulk.
She swallowed, trying to figure out if she should say something about that—what would Jacinta do?—and decided not to. She looked down at Stefan, who was sleeping on one of the cots. She’d been by his side since she got back from the mines after her shift.
“I think he’ll be all right,” she said, after a moment. “They didn’t have him for very long. No broken bones. No internal bleeding, as far as we can tell.”
Arlon nodded. He watched Stefan’s chest rising and falling. “If he were one of the guards, they’d be able to fix him up in a few minutes, like he’d never been hurt at all, and we’re still cleaning wounds with water and binding them up with cloth—and we don’t have enough of either.”
Samara said nothing.
“I’m glad you got him back,” Arlon said finally.
“You’re not….” Samara looked over at him. How to say this? They’d been close, but only ever as it related to their work in the resistance. When they began to disagree on that, there wasn’t anything to hold them together.
“Angry?” Arlon finished for her.
“Yeah.”
“I was furious when I saw the note. I thought to myself it was too big a risk, especially for you, and you shouldn’t even have authorized the mission where he was taken, and I thought, Jacinta wouldn’t have gone for him.” Arlon’s eyes were locked on Stefan, but Samara knew his mind was far away. “And then I thought, it doesn’t matter what Jacinta would do. She’s gone, and you’re in charge. And even if it was a risk to go, you made sure they could only get so much from you—and if I’d been in that cell, I know it would have killed me to know that no one was coming for me.”
Samara looked over at him with a frown. “I’d have gone for you, too, you know.”
“I do. Now.” Arlon shook his head. “But I wouldn’t have guessed it before this. I don’t think Stefan knew, either. I think he thought we were going to leave him there to die, and just change every plan he knew about so he couldn’t rat us out. But you were better than that.”
“Not better,” Samara said quietly. Arlon’s approval made it easier for her to acknowledge the stupidity, somehow. “I should have left him.”
“You did the right thing.” Arlon looked at her. “The Warlord doesn’t give a damn about any of us. We’re just bodies in a mine to him—and bodies that have enough opinions of our own that he still needs the mercenaries. We’re not human to them, either, though. We’re rats to be put down, or we’re toys for them to play with, but we’re not people. Jactina was hard on us because she wanted us to be strong, but we were still just pieces of a puzzle to her. Just tools. You…. You went for Stefan not because it was the smart thing to do, but because you cared.”
Samara bit her lip.
“You don’t get it, do you?” Arlon was staring at her. “That’s not a weakness. You take risks, and it scares the hell out of me. But now I know that when things go wrong, you’re going to be leading the charge to make them right again. I know the lengths you’ll go to, to keep us safe—because you care about us. That, I can follow.” He stood and pulled her up to clasp her arm. “So what do you need from me? What can I do?”
Samara wanted to bury her face in his shoulder and cry, but there was no time for that. She managed a smile.
“We got the device on the comm unit, so we’re in their system, and our sources off-planet are getting a fairly steady stream of information about Blackout. They’re formulating a plan and—what’s that?”
Alarms were sounding outside and Samara ran for the surveillance feeds in the back of the cave. It was one of the things their source had been able to get them: a way to see the streets without leaving the safety of the cave.
Her heart fell as she saw the lines of guards taking up positions in the streets.
“Lockdown,” Arlon said grimly. “And close to a shift change, too. If they don’t lift it before that….”
He looked around, indicating the other resistance fighters in the hideout. A good number of them were here, and their absence in the mines would be noted if they weren’t able to get out of the cave.
And then she understood.
“They won’t lift it,” she said quietly. “They know we must have a hideout somewhere, and they’re shutting the district down so we can’t get to our shift. In
a couple of hours … they’ll have a list of names.” She was shaking. “Not all of us.”
But damned close—and almost everyone here had family in the district, none of whom had any good way to run anymore.
“Your allies off-planet.” Arlon was dead white. “They’re coming with weapons, aren’t they?”
“Not soon enough,” Samara whispered.
Not soon enough.
“I have to admit, I’m pleasantly surprised.” Captain Eddis sat back in his chair with a smile. Behind him, the members of her patrol squad were sitting on benches, awaiting their next orders.
India ground her teeth. The man had been too busy to see her for days, and the minute she screwed up, he was here watching her every move. She knew better than to be snide, though. She gave him a smile.
“What’s your next move?”
Oh, no, she wasn’t going to fall for that. India let her smile become the very sweetest she’d ever given.
“I don’t mean to take up your whole day, Captain.”
“It’s no trouble, really. I—”
“Because I know how busy you’ve been,” India said, marching sweetly onwards. “And I know the normal day to day business of a district has … what was it you said the other day? Ah, yes: ‘hundreds of pieces of paperwork every day.’ You didn’t even have time for a brief meeting. I can’t let you spend any more time on this, not when everything is well in hand.”
He wanted to object, but there was no good way for him to do so. His eyelids flickered, and then he gave a smile and stood. He leaned over her for just a moment as he left, and he made no effort to lower his voice.
“This is a longer game than one operation, Sergeant. I’d be careful about leaving a trail of enemies in your wake.”
She stared coldly after him as he left. He thought that just because he’d survived this long, he knew everything there was to know?
He’d survived this long and he was still living in Kell District, still nothing more than a mercenary. India meant to go farther.
“Let me make one thing quite clear,” she said to the patrol squad. “The security forces in this district have failed miserably at subduing the rebellion. I am the one who is changing that. Should any of you think you can take credit for my work, you will earn yourself a world of hurt. Is that understood?”
There was a pause, and then all of them nodded.
“Ma’am.” It was Officer Wheeler. “Should we be ready to move on that list tonight?”
“Not yet.” India smiled. “There will undoubtedly be a few who will try to get into the hideout, wherever it is—perhaps to bring supplies. We wait. Even if no one is stupid enough to lead us right to them, or none of them are stupid enough to try to sneak out and warn their families, we’ll still have most of them under lock and key. And they’ll starve eventually.”
She considered.
“Nevertheless, the Warlord will want to see results. I’ll go to the capital as soon as we have the list, and present it to him. He should know I’m making progress.” It was a ballsy move, but India had learned over the years that if she didn’t put herself forward, no one else would.
This operation would make her reputation.
“I’ll go to the capital as soon as we have the list, and present it to him. He should know I’m making progress.”
Lesedi frowned at the screen. If the sergeant were patient, she would wait until the whole thing was wrapped up. This would do little for her reputation.
Unfortunately, it would also be a death knell for the resistance. It was even odds that the Warlord would move on the list without waiting for the sergeant’s plans to come to fruition. He was running scared, his arms dealer buying up every weapon for sale in New Arizona, his systems on lockdown, his guards authorized to hurt whoever they had to hurt, kill whoever they had to kill, to wipe the resistance out.
And on some level, he had to know it wasn’t going to work. It was never going to work.
She shook her head. It was certainly not the time for philosophical questions. Whatever the Warlord’s eventual goals … he could not get that list. She began typing.
Sgt Quince intends to present list of known resistance fighters to Warlord. She must not get out of the district.
26
Aryn was swimming, an event Cade would classify as a unique and innovative form of torture. On a professional level, he was impressed with the craftsmanship of the torment: seemingly innocuous, subtle, and insidious. On a personal level, however, he was beginning to wish that Talon had left him out in the cold to die. Aryn’s body cut through the water cleanly, her strokes perfect, her movements slightly too graceful to be precise. The woman would make a terrible soldier.
Cade had taken to listing her faults to keep himself sane, and so far he had only come up with the fact that she didn’t like peaches—who didn’t like peaches?—that she didn’t look very good in green, and the aforementioned issue of being terrible in the military. Of course, there was also the fact that she might be a consummate liar, and that she was almost certainly hiding something from both him and her husband, but all of that seemed to fade into the background when Aryn was present.
As the days passed and there were no more incidents with Ellian, Cade had expected his protectiveness to wane. But he could hardly be in the same room as Ellian now. He spent dinners in a misery, calming himself as best as he could while his heart raced.
“Cade?” Her voice called him back to reality, and he looked down to see her, swim cap in hand, treading water by the edge of the pool.
“Yes?”
“You’re blocking the ladder,” she said, almost apologetically.
“My apologies.” He backed up.
Without any thought at all, his hand came up to help her as she climbed, and even as he realized what he was doing and moved to pull his hand back, hers came down to rest in it. She flashed him a grateful smile.
He had stopped disbelieving the servants when they told him that Aryn was kind. Eyes open now, he watched her with them. He saw her little smiles. She knew the names of their spouses and children. She kept her room tidy so that Emala would not have to clean as much. Aryn, Cade’s grandmother would have said, had been raised properly. Indeed, Aryn had even begun to thaw toward Cade himself—her smile said as much.
But only begun. As he watched, the warmth died from her face, and she stepped back, swallowing. She would have plunged back into the pool if he had not caught her, and what should have been an amusing moment was instead marked by sudden, unmistakable heat as Cade’s arm curved around her waist and Aryn’s wet hands grabbed at his shoulders. For one moment, their bodies were pressed together—
And then Cade swung her abruptly to the side, hardly caring that he’d picked her up and set her down like a sack of flour, and Aryn turned away without a word to pick up her towel.
They walked back to her rooms in silence, Aryn’s back very straight and Cade trying not to think about how charming she looked when she was resolute about something. This was how it started, he knew. He was not a fool. But Aryn was very clearly untouchable, and even if she could have any man she wanted… Cade’s heart twisted. She deserved better than a killer. He held open the door to her rooms, and she stopped, ducking her head rather than look at him.
“You don’t have to follow me in again, you know.”
The problem with her was that he could never tell whether her factual statements were expressions of hope, or the desire not to be a trouble to anyone. And in any event, Cade reminded himself, it did not matter. He looked down at Aryn with a half smile.
“Mr. Pallas believes there might be a threat,” he said simply.
Aryn only shot him a look.
Why Ellian should insist there was a threat in Aryn’s bedroom, of all places, was a mystery to Cade. He had been over the place seven times in the past day and a half, sending robots down the air vents and pulling each article of clothing out of the drawers and off the hangers while Aryn gathered them up with
what seemed to be amusement. Cade had contractors lift the bathtub, remove the counters, and take off the headboard. He had tried anything and everything he could think of, and there was not a single thing he could find that was wrong with the room.
And he might as well not have gone to the trouble at all, because Ellian was still convinced, and he had asked Cade to sleep at the foot of Aryn’s bed. Was the man trying to drive him mad?
As Aryn changed and showered, Cade stood staring out at the city. Aryn had the best view in the penthouse: not the financial district glittering in the foreground, but the faraway haze of the western mountains. They were, Cade knew, remarkably dangerous terrain, but the idea of climbing the side of the mountain with pick-axes appealed to him…and it seemed simpler, somehow, than the struggle to survive in the city.
As he turned, shaking his head, his gaze caught something poking from beneath the couch. His heart seemed to stand still. Kicking the couch over in one fast movement, a roar erupting from his chest, he drew his gun and pointed it at…
A book.
Aryn was at the door of her dressing room, hand at her throat—and, a moment later, her lips pressed shut to hold back a smile. She met Cade’s gaze with impressive aplomb.
“Thank you for acting quickly,” she managed, and she whisked back into the dressing room before a smile could break across her face.
Cade replaced his weapon, resisting the urge to sink his head into his hands. A brief radio call to Ellian assured the man that all was well. He righted the couch, hoping no one would notice he’d knocked one of the arms askew, and sat down to examine the book. His bemusement only grew from there.
“You’re studying interplanetary piloting?” he asked when Aryn came back into the room.
“Yes.” She looked like she was holding something back.
“Because….” he prompted.
To his surprise, she threw up her hands.
“I like it.” She shrugged and sat in one of the chairs nearby, frowning at him. “Emala was telling me about it because her husband is a pilot, and it got me thinking. So I ordered the book.”
