Dragon's Promise

by Natalie Grey

  “No.” The answer surprised her. Mala had never been possessive of her work, as some people were, but now she understood the inclination. “I was the only one to noticed this. I’m going to see it through.”

  “No,” Nyx said. She shook her head. “No. You can’t.”

  “I can’t?”

  “Mala, you have no idea what you’re meddling in.”

  “I don’t?” Mala felt the surge of anger rise in her again. She was wasting her time here. “After years of working in Intelligence, you think I don’t know—you know what, I think I should just go.”

  “Promise me!” The woman’s voice was urgent.

  “No,” Mala told her flatly, and she slammed some cash down on the bar, grabbed her bag, and left. She did not look back to where Nyx—Melissa, she reminded herself—was staring after her. She forged blindly ahead through the crush of evening revelers. Tears were rising in her eyes again, and she dashed them away angrily.

  She was such a fool. What did she think was going to happen? Had she really believed she would tell Melissa about her job and the woman would realize Mala was all grown up now? Had she truly thought that a woman who was practically Kiran’s twin would look twice at his little sister? Anyone with half a brain would have realized that thirty minutes at a bar and two drinks weren’t going to undo a lifetime of knowledge.

  But inside the front door of her apartment building, Mala slumped back against the wall and closed her eyes, tears trickling out from between her lashes. For a few minutes, it had seemed like someone in the world really saw her.

  And it had all been an illusion.

  6

  She worked in silence, peering through a magnifying glass as she carefully laid a strip of metal down and soldered one end in place. Laying the tools aside neatly, Mala sat up and stretched, then rubbed her eyes and examined her work. Everything she’d done today had been tiny enhancements, and the engine itself didn’t look any different. But Mala’s hands were covered in grease, the carefully-tended nails ringed by grime. She gave a decisive nod and began to clean the tools before putting them away.

  Though she did this often, today there was a lump in her throat. Kiran was the one who had first taught her to work on machines. He was impatient with her, determined to make her pay for the undeniable sins of being four years younger than him and his sister, but her determination to do what he did was stronger than his contempt. He was the one who’d showed her how to work the different tools, how to clean them, how to store them. Kiran was always methodical.

  He would have made a good Dragon. Mala felt a lump in her throat and pushed the thought away.

  She rolled her tools neatly into their leather case and sat back, rubbing the back of one hand across her forehead and then grimacing. She’d just gotten grease on her face. Then again, after a day or so of working steadily, she could hardly have avoided that.

  She strolled into the kitchen and began to wash her hands carefully. She never washed them in the pale ceramic sink that people might see, and she never let herself go to bed before she had erased any trace of engine grease from her hands and painted her nails brightly. She bent her face close to her hands as she scrubbed, almost relishing the sting of the brush on her skin. She could not seem to cure herself of doing mechanical work, but she never allowed her inclination to hold her back; she was stylish and well put together.

  As she imagined Eve would have been.

  Mala turned her face away sharply, wincing. No. It was clear that Melissa hadn’t guessed. Of course—a bitter smile touched Mala’s lips—how could she? She’d put the information together as best she could.

  But she was dangerous. Mala should remember that. She should most certainly not have called the woman, and she should not have spent the past twelve hours checking her comm obsessively. Which she did again, soapy hands gesturing to the monitor before she could stop herself.

  Melissa—she could not stop herself from shaping the name Nyx silently—had not called back, but there were two more messages from Sela and one from Jessica, none of which Mala was particularly interested to hear.

  She should be. She bent to rub her face with her soapy hands, and tried to picture Sela’s gorgeous red hair and blue eyes. The woman looked like a model in the expensive dresses she wore, and she knew it. From the very start, Mala had known how lucky she was that Sela even looked twice at her, and she tried to imagine the line of the woman’s neck, the sheen of her hair, the—

  It didn’t matter. All she could come up with was dark brown curls and eyes with flecks of gold, arms with a few scars that Mala wanted desperately to know about…

  “Goddammit.” She rinsed her face, patted it dry and made her way into the living room. At the antique bar, she pulled out a few bottles and mixed herself something, only half paying attention to it as she shook and strained the drink into a waiting glass. It burned her throat; that was good. She looked over, moodily, at the comm. “Why aren’t you calling back?”

  The comm, being inanimate, said nothing at all. Mala drained her glass, wishing the drink would hit her now, and managed to get to one of the living room couches before her legs gave out, shaky. Why couldn’t she let this go?

  Because it was intoxicating to think that someone might actually see her. Her. Not Kiran, and not Eve.

  She let out a breath slowly and considered the ceiling. At some point in the past few months, it had become stylish to cover the ceiling in swirling arabesque patterns, and Mala had dutifully covered hers. It seemed like the sort of thing Eve would do in her place, and in any case, she’d been able to pick a deep blue that matched her eyes. It was a ridiculous conceit, setting herself off to advantage in an apartment that no one ever saw, because she never invited anyone over. There were no dinner parties in the gorgeous dining room that overlooked the capitol buildings, no evenings of drinks on the genuine leather sofas, and no guests staying in the perfectly-appointed guest bedroom.

  Well, it had been perfectly appointed right up until she decided to put an engine in there.

  It was, she decided now, a self-destructive move disguised as being realistic. She should commit to life on Seneca.

  She did not want to.

  The thought was chilling enough for her to sit up, stone cold sober despite the heavy shot of alcohol in her blood. She ran her now-clean hands through her black hair, tugging it from its loose braid. She was exhausted, having skipped all meals in favor of working on the engine—something she had hoped would drive away thoughts of last night.

  The panic was starting as it always did, as a flutter in her chest that made her breath come in little gasps. She was going to die here alone. The world was going to close over her like the surface of still water, and there would not even be a ripple to betray that she had ever been here.

  She should go running. She knew it helped, sprinting on the treadmill in the workout room until her body had no choice but to draw in deep breaths. The steady pound of her feet would calm her, the rush of endorphins into her blood would soothe her, and her body would demand that she feed it. She could get something nourishing into herself and drop off to sleep easily.

  Instead, she reached for the comm on the coffee table. She held it for a moment, trying to lose herself in staring at its smooth surface while her heart raced faster and faster and the world began to swim in her vision. And then she pressed a few buttons, connecting her to the number that she most feared—because at least right now, it was impossible to panic more than she was already doing.

  She closed her eyes as the line rang, trying to will Nyx to pick up. Her mouth shaped itself around the name; it suited her, Mala decided. Nyx. Goddess of the night. She wanted to ask about the missions that had earned the woman her call sign, and knew Nyx would never tell her.

  You’ve reached Commander Alvarez. If this is an emergency, please contact Sarah Evans at…

  Mala closed her eyes. Nyx was avoiding her. Of course she was. When the message beeped, she wavered, trying to decide whether t
o hang up. But fear had a way of speaking for itself.

  “It’s Mala. I can’t stop thinking about…” You. “Last night. I want to…” She knew Nyx might come back if she said she wanted to apologize, but she didn’t want to apologize. She swallowed. “If you’re still on leave, I’d love to meet up. End things on a better note.”

  She hung up the comm and her head jerked as a knock sounded at the door. She should be expecting Sela, or even Jessica, come to check on her—the woman was unusually determined to be helpful. But there was only one thought in Mala’s mind, and that was of a woman with lopsided smile on her red lips, with brown eyes that Mala could drown in, with a body that spoke of combat and strength and a whole world that was far, far away from the endless, sycophantic uselessness of everyone on Seneca. Mala crossed the room without a thought, breaking into a run and pulling the door open.

  She froze.

  She was unusually tall, but the two men outside the door dwarfed even her, and their height was not slim, as hers was. They were both bulky, with broad shoulders and thick hands, their hair cut to velvet-short bristles. They were the sort of men who should be covered in tattoos and wearing ripped tee-shirts, but instead they had been put in suits, expertly tailored not to strain across bulging biceps, but not to hide their strength, either. Both of them wore sunglasses, and she could see the very faint distortion of a weapons belt under both suit jackets.

  “Can I help you?” She was suddenly very aware that her hair was a mess, that her breath smelled like alcohol, that she was wearing a man’s tank top with engine grease on it.

  “We’ve been asked to escort you to a meeting, ma’am.” One of them offered a smile that might or might not have reached his eyes.

  “The car is waiting downstairs,” the other added.

  Mala flushed hot, and then cold. The panic attack that had been brewing was long gone, and she found that she missed it. She could feel nothing at all except a sense of recklessness that she knew from experience never led anywhere good.

  “This isn’t a good time for me.”

  They stared at her impassively, and it occurred to her that some things about the world never changed. Humanity might have come far enough to cure almost any injury within hours, travel between star systems in mere days, and build skyscrapers miles high, but when it came time to scare the crap out of someone, people still resorted to bulky men in black suits.

  “I don’t have a choice, do I?”

  One of them shook his head.

  Who do you work for? But she knew they wouldn’t answer, and the part of her brain that should be sorting through possibilities seemed to be entirely gone.

  “Can I get my coat?” Her lips were numb, her voice very small.

  One of them nodded wordlessly. They watched her as she stepped across the room and picked up the black leather coat from the back of a chair. They watched as she checked the sink and the stove, stalling uselessly, and they watched as she went for her purse.

  She was almost entirely certain that they didn’t catch the dart of her fingers to one of the control panels. A picture uploaded instantly, and with shaking hands, Mala pressed a single button on the comm she still held before she lay it down on the table. She could only pray that Nyx saw this before she was off-planet.

  Then, shaking with fear, Mala swung her bag over her shoulder and left with the two men.

  7

  “And you just let her go?” Tersi’s voice was incredulous. It echoed slightly in the armory.

  “I just let her go,” Nyx confirmed. She unleashed a flurry of punches on the bag and danced back as it swung, driving a knee up for a double roundhouse kick. Sweat was dripping into her eyes but she didn’t care. She just wanted to get tired enough to make her brain calm itself, and while that had seemed like a good idea at the start of things, she was beginning to doubt that it was going to work.

  “You could have apologized,” Tersi offered, after a moment. His face, still pale, turned to watch her as she moved.

  “For what?”

  “For treating her like she didn’t know what she was getting into.”

  “Well, she doesn’t know what she’s getting into.” Nyx took a long pull from her water bottle and studied him. “She’s … she grew up on Dobrevi.”

  “Yeah, where is that?”

  “Nowhere. It’s nowhere, with nothing in particular to make it noteworthy.”

  “It accepted terraforming.”

  “Well, nothing other than that.” Nyx stretched her neck out and rotated one arm carefully in its socket. “It’s not on any of the major trade routes, but it’s not really subsistence, either. It’s peaceful, though. It’s not like New Arizona or something.” Lying on the edges of human space, New Arizona had been a backwater for years until some of the galaxy’s richest and most subtle criminals set up shop there. Now its capitol city rivaled Seneca itself, and even the legitimately rich of the galaxy liked to travel there. She shook her head, trying to explain Dobrevi. “It’s … I don’t know.”

  “Well, still, she wasn’t born yesterday.”

  “She’s only twenty-six!” She shot him an annoyed glance.

  “Okay, well, that’s young. But by that time, you’d been in the Navy for three years and you were signing up for the Dragons.”

  “That’s different,” Nyx said reflexively.

  “How, exactly?” Tersi raised one eyebrow.

  She considered this. “I’d already been in the Navy. I knew what I was getting into.”

  “Okay, then, when you were three and a half years younger than our dear Mala, not knowing what you were getting into, you were signing up to get shot at.”

  “You’re impossible.”

  “So I’ve been told.” Tersi grinned at her. “Look, boss, she’s an intelligence analyst. She’s hardly an innocent.”

  Nyx flushed and turned away abruptly. She knew what the man meant, but the word innocent called far different concepts to mind than that. What was it Mala had said? Her name is Sela. Talking about dating as if she were some career-driven playboy, leaving a trail of gorgeous, broken-hearted women in her wake.

  Which, Nyx reflected, she might well be. Mala seemed not to have the first idea of how beautiful and enticing she was, and that was a sort of innocence, the sort Nyx would very much like to chase away with—

  Her heart was going to leap out of her chest if it beat any faster.

  “Boss?”

  “I’m fine,” Nyx managed. She told herself firmly to get over this. The world was full of beautiful, intelligent women. There was one, only one, that was off-limits to her. That was good odds, wasn’t it? Never mind the fact that last night, for the first time that she could remember, she had actually wanted to go home with someone. No. This was very much not what Kiran had had in mind when he asked her to look after Mala. Even if Mala had mentioned that she wasn’t seeing anyone.

  Good grief. As if someone like Mala would be interested in her. Nyx shook her head.

  “What’s going on?” Loki poked his head around the door. “Is the punching bag free?”

  “Go for it.” Nyx gestured at the bag and began stretching.

  “You look weird,” Loki observed.

  Nyx looked up with a laugh. “Thanks.”

  “No, I mean … your face looks weird.”

  “Seriously, I can’t hear that enough.”

  “No, I … Tersi. Doesn’t she look weird?”

  “She’s thinking about the lovely woman she failed to go home with last night,” Tersi said from his spot on the crates.

  “Hey!” Nyx looked up and jabbed a finger at him threateningly. “She is like a sister to me.”

  “The way you were looking at her last night wasn’t very sisterly,” Loki observed. He bounced on the balls of his feet, watching Nyx as if he might have to make a quick getaway.

  Nyx only gave him a look. She wasn’t going to dignify that with a response, and in any event, she knew better than to try to catch Loki when he didn’t want to
be caught. The kid was faster than anyone she’d met. “If you must know, her older brother died some years back and asked me to look after her.”

  Tersi’s face sobered as he remembered their talk the night before, but Loki only grinned.

  “So marry her. She likes you, too. I could tell.”

  “She….” Nyx choked on her water, her cheeks flaming. “She does not,” she said firmly. “And she has a nice job as an intelligence analyst, and is hardly going to want to be a Navy wife.”

  “So you have thought about it!” Loki said triumphantly.

  “Oh, for the love of….” Nyx shook her head and looked over as her personal comm buzzed. When she saw who it was, she swallowed hard.

  “Boss?” Tersi craned his head.

  “It’s nothing.”

  “It’s her. I bet you 50 credits.” Loki nodded at Tersi.

  “I’m not taking that bet.”

  Nyx groaned and rubbed at her forehead. She clenched one fist around her towel to keep from reaching out to pick up the comm. The Ariane was still technically in port, hooked to one of the lower-orbit stations that floated above Seneca. She would have time, if she wanted, to go down to the surface and say goodbye to Mala.

  Best not to even think about it. She shook her head and let the call go to voicemail, taking another sip of water and sighing. She heard Loki open his mouth to speak, and faintly caught the jerk of Tersi’s hand. Loki shut up, and there was an awkward silence.

  “So,” Tersi said finally. “Where are we going first, boss?”

  “I don’t know.” Nyx let out her breath and turned to look at them both. “I hadn’t even thought. There was an interesting report of a smuggling ring for Gerren’s Ore…”

  “Impossible,” Tersi said immediately.

  “That’s what I said. But the source is damned sure of it.” And like hell she was going to say who that source was.

  “It’d have to be run through the senate for it not to be noticed.”

  “Interestingly, that’s exactly what they reported.”