Dragon's Promise

by Natalie Grey

  Nyx paused, and Mala knew her mind was caught by the idea of someone alone with the stars, piloting a ship over the cold reaches to a dead planet, overgrown and forgotten and too out of the way to be viable. There were still humans there, but they weren’t part of Allied space. It was a mystery, that planet.

  Nyx, Mala knew, wanted to ask more. She knew there were more stories to tell.

  But she was a Dragon, and too disciplined for that.

  “So she gave you everything she had, just because she had no one else?”

  “She said I reminded her of her at that age.” Mala remembered how she’d flushed with pleasure when Eve, worldly and self-possessed, had confided that.

  “And you even turned out like her.”

  “I didn’t,” Mala said instantly. “She didn’t tell me any of that stuff, she just altered the ID card and gave me the money and told me where the apartment was. She didn’t even say she had a job lined up or anything.”

  “She had to know they’d come after you.” Nyx was shaking her head, frowning. “Eventually, someone would.”

  “Maybe she thought I was a better person than I was,” Mala said finally.

  “What?” Nyx frowned.

  “Maybe she thought I’d only use her name until I could establish myself as me.” Mala met the other woman’s eyes, and saw the grim certainty that she was right. She felt the horror creep up on her. All those years, terrified that someone would find out her secret, she had justified it with the belief that Eve had told her to do this. But what if she’d been wrong all this time?

  What if the excuse, thin as she knew it was, wasn’t even correct?

  “And instead….” Nyx sighed.

  “You don’t need to say it.” Mala knew all too well.

  “I think I do.” Nyx’s voice was hard. “Let’s go over what you did, shall we?”

  “You can just go. I know what I did.”

  “You left your home with no degree, no experience, nothing lined up. How the hell did you sell that one to your parents after what happened to Kiran? Did they just assume you wouldn’t do something so stupid?” Nyx’s voice was rising.

  “Melissa—”

  “Because that’s what I assumed.” The other woman was furious. “I didn’t even dream that you would go out there without a plan. Fuck, Mala, you know what the world does to people like you and me if we don’t have a plan. Don’t you? Didn’t you get the same lectures I did every day, it felt like, about how people would take advantage of me and use me and fucking sell me as a slave if I wasn’t careful?”

  “You didn’t need to get off Dobrevi!” Mala shot back. “It wasn’t the same for you.”

  “Not the same? What the hell was different?”

  “Kiran! Kiran was what was different!” She pushed herself up, balling her hands into fists. The wall made a very appealing target right about now, but she knew she’d regret the punch.

  “What the hell does Kiran have to do with any of it? You know he’d have wanted—”

  “Oh, what he’d have wanted? Believe me, I know what he’d have wanted. Everyone told me what he’d have wanted. Everyone told me what I meant to him. But no one actually meant it!” Mala was yelling and she didn’t care, not even when Nyx shot a glance at the hallway. So the rest of the crew was hearing this. Let them. “No, what everyone meant was that I was supposed to be me and Kiran, for the rest of ever. It didn’t matter to anyone what I wanted to do with my life!”

  “What did you want to do with your life?” Nyx was frowning at her.

  “I didn’t know!” Mala turned, clenching her hands in her hair. “I wanted to be a mechanic. Maybe. Maybe I wanted to be a painter or something. I didn’t know. But it was okay that I didn’t know, it should have been okay!

  “And instead I was the only one left. I was the kid that couldn’t go out at night because if they lost me, they lost everything. I was the kid that had to make perfect grades, because Kiran wasn’t there anymore to be perfect. I was the kid who had to listen to them talk and ask about their day and everything else they convinced themselves that Kiran would do, and you know what? It doesn’t even fucking matter that I would have done it all anyway.

  “Because they were going to kill me, don’t you see? I was going to die there, torn into little pieces this way and that by all the things everyone thought I should be and Kiran should be and what Kiran would want for me, and no one gave a single second to think what I wanted. I was going to live my whole damned life on Dobrevi and die there, and the world was never going to know I’d existed.”

  Nyx was staring open-mouthed.

  “So don’t tell me what Kiran would have wanted,” Mala said furiously. “Who he’d have wanted me to date, what he thought I could accomplish in my life, who he thought I could be. I don’t fucking care anymore. I can’t care, or it’ll kill me. Those two years before I turned twenty nearly did. So go on telling me what I should have done. I know what I should have done, and I know I didn’t do it, and I don’t know what to do now. Because there’s no way to go back. I even uncovered this plot, and that’s not enough for you.”

  “Because you haven’t taken responsibility for any of it,” Nyx said finally. She stood up, her eyes dark. “You’re not the only one who lost something when Kiran died.”

  “You lost a friend,” Mala spat. “I lost my whole life.”

  “And you took someone else’s,” Nyx shot back. “And now it’s come around to bite you.”

  “Are you going to turn me in?” Mala crossed her arms, leaning against the wall. She was shaking with rage, and she knew the gesture would infuriate Nyx. To her surprise, however, the other woman only smiled tightly.

  “No,” she said finally. “I’m not. I’m going to drop you back off on Seneca and you can do whatever you think is best. Samuels’ll throw you under the bus, but that’s not my problem anymore.” She went to the door and paused, looking over her shoulder. “My debt to Kiran is paid.”

  And she was gone.

  39

  Nyx rested her elbows on the hardwood planning table, running her fingers over its dented surface and taking refuge in this small bit of familiarity. In unfamiliar quarters, taking unfamiliar command, with a woman in her bed who might as well be a stranger, the familiarity of the Ariane itself was more of a comfort than she could say. She still always went for the cup with the dented rim, the chair at the table that squeaked.

  The table was a strange thing to be familiar, strikingly at odds with the interior of the ship. Whatever type of wood it was, it was heavy, its legs ornately carved with motifs no one recognized. It was one of Talon’s few extravagances—aside from the quality of the whiskey he drank, apparently—and though a great many free drinks had gone into loosening his lips, he’d never confessed either to how he got it, or how he got it onto the ship.

  Nyx made a promise to herself that she would get the story out of him one day, and forced her attention back to the matter at hand. Lesedi, her voice filtering from the comm in the middle of the table, had been muttering to herself as she ran over the data they had on the senator.

  “I have to say, I’m impressed.” She sounded contemplative now, a sure sign that the rest of her brain was running in the background on a particularly deep problem. “The signs were here, the market is closely watched, but no one noticed. Nyx, my darling, how on earth did your insider find this?”

  “I don’t really care,” Nyx said flatly. And then, because she knew that statement said a good deal more than she had meant it to, she added, “I’ll put you two in contact when this is over.”

  “Indeed.” Lesedi shuffled papers on her desk and they heard her sigh to herself. “Well, if you want the senator’s political career ruined, I can do that for you. There’s more than enough in the money trail. You say the word, and I’ll send it.”

  “To whom?” Nyx smiled.

  Lesedi laughed. “That depends on what you think of your new director.”

  “Send it to him.” Nyx thought
back to the slight, formidably intelligent man and his calm acceptance of the need to rebuild Intelligence. “Add a message from me, will you? Say I hope he’s serious about it being okay to go after officials.”

  There were a few keystrokes on the other end of the line.

  “Done.” Lesedi was smiling. “I’m also sending it to you, and I’ll have a message held in reserve for the press.”

  “How do you manage without an assistant?” Nyx shook her head, smiling. “Never mind, I’d never ask your secrets.”

  “You should sometime. They’re quite interesting, if I do say so myself.”

  “Noted.” Nyx braced herself on her knuckles and considered. “So, that’s her political career. I haven’t heard any happy statements about her career as a smuggler, though.”

  “Mmm, and I’m afraid you’re not going to.” Lesedi sounded genuinely regretful. “The more I look, the more codenames I find, and even if only half of them are actually Ghost, the woman has more weapons than a mid-sized army. So when you get to her, I have to say honestly that I have no idea of your chances.”

  “Does that mean you know where she is?” Nyx felt herself perk up. She had spent five hours with Tersi trying to trace their target’s fluctuations in the sensor, determining when Ghost had split off from the ship they followed to Ragnarok, and their efforts had gotten them nowhere.

  “Yes. As soon as you told me you were looking at launch data, I knew I could look at other things, and my guess is this: she was on Ragnarok, and took a different ship out.”

  “Goddammit.”

  “It’s always the simplest explanations, my dear. Rest assured, however, that what I’ve found on the Ragnarok compound suggests an assault would have been counterproductive.”

  “We were already in.”

  “Were you? How did you accomplish that?”

  “It’s a long story.”

  “Mmm, well. If you got in there, perhaps you’ll have no trouble with where she ended up. Hang on and I’ll have the readouts to you shortly.”

  Nyx waited, drumming her fingers on the table as she waited. They had gotten into Ragnarok; she should remember that. They had gotten vital information at the warehouse, and from Mala’s recovered documents, and through Lesedi. Dragons triumphed because they were trained, and because they used their resources well. Not for the first time, however, Nyx wished that she was anywhere else than here. She liked being a soldier.

  She wasn’t sure she liked leading soldiers. If she failed at this, people died, and if she succeeded….

  She would leave the Ariane. It didn’t matter to her that there would be another team, another crew, more of the work she loved. What did any of it matter if she gave these people up? She looked over at Tersi for a moment, at Loki, at Aegis and Jim, and wanted to cry.

  She shoved the thought away as the readouts began to appear, and felt her eyebrows shoot up. Esu swore under his breath, Tersi gave a low whistle, and Loki leaned so close his nose was practically touching the screen.

  “I cannot be reading these right.” His voice was incredulous.

  “You are.” Nyx groaned slightly, losing herself gratefully in the distraction of work. “This is worse than Ragnarok.”

  “A lot worse,” Esu concurred.

  It was a space station, and not just any space station, but one that appeared to be armed to the teeth. Nyx squinted as she tried to picture it in her head. It would look almost normal to any ships passing by, perhaps with a few too many solar arrays. Old freighters were repurposed into stations frequently, drifting with small communities inside who mined moons or become tiny trade hubs; this station’s outer plating was close to that shape.

  Underneath the plates, however, were engines and gun turrets, tracking beams, and vicious-looking probes that Nyx suspected were intended to rupture the hulls of incoming ships. The docking port, sealed behind three sets of locked doors, was lined with weaponry. Ghost wasn’t taking any chances.

  “There are three places you would conceivably be able to dock.” Lesedi was businesslike once more. “That is, assuming you’re using the standard Z-class shuttle.”

  “I don’t even want to know how you heard about Z-class shuttles.” Nyx gave the comm an exasperated look. “But, yes. We are.”

  “Good, then my measurements are correct. If you follow a very specific approach and dock at the points marked, you’ll be safe from the turrets. If you’ve got cloaking, I would say to use it, except the whole thing is moot because I can’t think of a single way you’ll get the side doors open, other than a bomb. A standard nuclear device should work, if you’re interested—but I’m guessing you’re not.”

  “Who uses nuclear anymore?”

  “You’d be surprised who still has stockpiles. I can get you one if you want. I take it that’s a no, however.”

  “That’s a no,” Nyx agreed. If they melted Samuels along with her space station, there was going to be nothing in the way of evidence—and despite the many accusations leveled at them following their last mission, this crew had always preferred bringing criminals in for trial rather than enacting vigilante justice.

  Nyx considered, tapping her fingers on her arms.

  “And you know where this space station is?”

  “I do. You may want to call for backup before you head out there, though. It’s … one moment, transmitting.”

  “In the middle of absolutely nowhere,” Nyx observed. “Well, that fits. I wonder what her plan is.”

  “She can survive there for a while, I should think.”

  “Not for us—her long term plan.” Nyx considered. “She has the house on Ragnarok. She eschewed a job offer with lobbyists in favor of running for a third term. But she’s clearly been working on this for a while—you don’t get where she is in the game by slacking off. So was she planning to make a go of it as a criminal mastermind, or fade away?”

  “I suspect she doesn’t have a plan.” To Nyx’s surprise, it sounded as if Lesedi had considered the same thing. “She’s fooled herself into believing she can walk away from one or the other without anyone noticing, but she knows she has no plan if it all goes wrong. That’s what makes her dangerous, Commander.”

  “I know.” Nyx heard the note of worry in the other woman’s voice and was unexpectedly touched by it. “I don’t forget that. And you know, actually, it wouldn’t be all that hard to…”

  “To…?” Tersi prompted. When Nyx said nothing, he craned to look at her. “Boss?”

  Nyx muttered an oath and rubbed at her eyes. “If we had someone who knew how to hot-wire that sort of door structure, we could probably get in.”

  “But we don’t have anyone who knows that.” Tersi’s face was pale. Sphinx had been that person for them, and he never forgot her.

  Nyx only looked down the long hallway that led to the crew quarters, and their passenger sitting alone on her bunk.

  “Yeah,” she said, sighing. “We do.”

  40

  In her weeks aboard the ship, Mala had learned the sound of everyone’s footsteps. She didn’t yet know everyone’s names, as Dragons could be impressively reticent, but she knew them all by sight and by sound. Tersi moved with a lingering slowness, Loki landed every step on the balls of his feet, and Nyx moved decisively, without the faintest hint of uncertainty in her step.

  So when she arrived after the planning meeting, her steps hesitant, Mala felt her anger melt into curiosity.

  She pretended to read, her gaze locked on the tablet she held in one hand. There was a prickle of awareness as she felt Nyx’s gaze on her, and Mala closed her eyes briefly at the picture she presented: hair un-brushed, dressed in someone else’s baggy uniform, nail polish chipped to hell and engine grease still lingering at the tips of her fingers.

  Anger burned low in her chest. Nyx was making Mala speak first. It was the Dragon’s ship, her turf, and she had a whole crew behind her. Did she need to do something so petty as this? Mala sat up, turning her head sharply. She was ready to get thi
s over with.

  Only it wasn’t pettiness that kept Nyx rooted in place, but hesitation. There was a printout of something in her hand, and she swallowed when Mala looked at her.

  “I can come back.”

  “Wait.”

  Mala’s voice caught her as she turned, and Nyx looked back.

  “I’m … not exactly busy.” Mala waved the reading tablet.

  “You didn’t seem like you wanted to—”

  “Well, now I’m curious.” Mala held out her hand until Nyx reached.

  The woman paced in the hallway as Mala read, throwing glances over her shoulder and chewing at a thumbnail, a habit that made Mala shudder and rub her fingertips over the smooth curves of her own nails. Eventually, Nyx’s patience broke.

  “So?”

  “I don’t know, what am I looking at?” Mala shuffled through the papers again. “You want a new door or something? Because I don’t know if I have the tools to build this thing. I mean, is that a fucking cannon? Like, in the door?”

  “In the—good Lord. Yes, I think it is.” Nyx was craning to look over her shoulder. “And it’s not for me—us—the Ariane. This is Ghost’s hideout.”

  “You found the schematics for the hideout?” Mala couldn’t keep the surprise out of her voice. “You have any of the electrical ones? Because you’re going to need them.”

  “That’s what we don’t have.” Nyx sighed and rubbed her forehead. “I was hoping you’d be able to give us some pointers on getting them open from the outside.”