by Natalie Grey
It was still in port. Soras hadn’t been fool enough to have all of his accounts in the same place. He wanted to make sure that if part of his holdings were found, he could still escape.
That hadn’t worked out for him, but it would be useful to Estabrook.
In the hallway, going to get his weapons and his bag, he ran straight into Grunt.
“Hey.” Estabrook forced a smile, though the last thing he wanted to do was talk to Grunt right now about whatever was bothering him.
“Heading out onto the station?” Grunt asked.
“Yeah. Unless you need me for anything.” In which case he would pretend to do it and then head out as soon as Grunt’s back was turned.
Two days was not a big head start when it came to Talon Rift.
“No. You do.” Grunt looked sad for some reason. He didn’t ask why Estabrook wanted to go. “I’ll, uh … I’ll see you later.” He stared at Estabrook for a long time, and Estabrook thought he saw betrayal there.
There was no time to think about what that meant. Estabrook gave another forced smile and went to grab his bag and get out onto the station.
No one else was going, which was odd, but he’d take that as a blessing. He needed to stop at a bank and get supplies. He didn’t want anyone seeing him and guessing what he was up to.
With any luck, he could be long gone by the time Grunt thought to look for him.
On the Ivory Coast, the ship holding Dragon Team 7, JD leaned over the side of his bunk with a frown when his comm unit beeped. He’d been reading a history of the first human colonies and he wasn’t particularly eager to deal with any impromptu chores.
Since Aleksandr Soras had been caught, JD had hidden himself away more than usual, becoming even more spectacularly boring than he usually was.
He’d walked a fine line for all of his time here, giving just enough details so that his reticence wasn’t noteworthy. He was a middle class kid from a relatively well-known planet and a good career in the Navy—it would have to be, in order for him to be here. He had a younger sister, both his parents were still alive, and he’d had a sweetheart who had moved on when he left for the Navy.
He didn’t offer much more than that, which was quite an accomplishment after so many years living with this team.
But JD was very, very good at not offering up information. Most of them hadn’t even thought to ask. Even now, after some of them had known him for almost half a decade, their eyes still tended to slide over him like he was a part of the furniture.
When he saw the message, he sat up sharply.
He was sweating now.
“Everything okay?” His bunkmate, Loon, looked down at him. JD didn’t tend to do things suddenly.
“Not feeling well,” JD said. He shook his head. “Something at dinner didn’t sit right. I’m going to go use the latrines at the aft.”
“Thanks, man.”
JD managed a weak smile and tottered out of the room. In the corridors, he moved quickly, knowing that his pale face and intent look would be more noteworthy than usual. Whenever anyone approached, he slowed down and pressed a hand over his stomach, and they gave him a sympathetic look and moved onward.
It occurred to him now, just how much he hated every single one of them.
He had a plan, of course. He’d always had an exit plan. He knew just where he was going to go and how he was going to get there. He slid a tiny computer chip out of the bracelet he always wore and, in the shuttle bay, pressed that chip into the control panel.
Everything flashed, and then went dead.
He waited until his comm unit buzzed that the program was active, and then he took the shuttle and started the command sequence to open the doors. The shuttle would now no longer show up on the Ivory Coast’s scanners, and Loon wouldn’t think to come look for him for hours. No one was going to want to get involved when someone else was puking their guts out—or worse.
And in a few short days, JD should be comfortably ensconced in a place even Talon Rift could never get to him.
8
The Conway docked and the Dragons streamed out, weapons conspicuously holstered but hands ready. Foxtail and Halo had remained on board, Foxtail managing the process of keeping the ship invisible to anyone doing a hack of Akintola’s systems, and Halo at the flight controls.
Centurion, bugged and unarmored enough not to raise suspicions on the main concourse of the station, headed to the main levels while Nyx accompanied the rest to the loading bay. They would be listening via the bugs, ready to drop into action as soon as Centurion led their target into place.
Team 9 was blocking some of the other main egress routes, and still others were being controlled remotely by Lesedi. Akintola Station was its own entity, and management wasn’t always happy to work with the Alliance—or the Dragons.
Everyone knew Dragons liked to go around sticking their noses where they didn’t belong and interrupting perfectly legitimate business dealings.
They would need to control Estabrook without going through official channels, and they were prepared.
In the loading bay, Nyx watched Wraith’s orders to the team and their pattern of dispersion across the area. Indira Venter, known to the team as Doc, was Team 11’s medic. To keep out of the fray until she was needed, she tended to hang back with a sniper rifle. Choop and Sunshine seemed to work in a pair, and Loki—who, after all, had briefly been a part of Team 11 before coming over to Talon’s team—seemed to have a similar understanding with Gambit. Tomasin Silk, known confusingly as ‘Chief’—“couldn’t Mallory have picked any other name?” Nyx had asked Wraith skeptically, to which the other woman had rolled her eyes and shaken her head—clearly liked to fight hand to hand, and lingered as close to the doorway as he could.
Soon she would know all of them well and she would direct them according to their talents. For now, Nyx resisted that urge. She should let them work together they way they did best, observe, and go from there.
A faint scratch in their earpieces let them know that Estabrook had come into Centurion’s line of sight. They didn’t want to risk Estabrook catching sight of Centurion’s lips moving—a sure sign of a hidden wire. Therefore, one of the bugs was hidden inside a stud on his pants, easy to scratch a fingernail across without attracting attention.
“Both moving,” Jim reported. Nyx’s former teammate had arrived early enough to take up position in the ceiling tiles above the main concourse and was watching the action unfold through a scope. “Centurion going to intercept.”
Crouched in the shadows behind a girder, Nyx let her eyes drift closed. As a rule, she disliked the parts of an operation where she could not affect the outcome of events.
A few moments later, Centurion’s voice broke over the channel: “Julian sent me,” he murmured urgently. It was the name of Soras’s personal assistant, and had been something he and Nyx had devised in the armory as a good code phrase to open with—a reasonable way to get someone’s attention if they were part of Soras’s organization.
“That got his attention,” Jim reported.
There was a pause.
“I beg your pardon?” Estabrook’s voice was wary and cold.
“I needed to know you were—well, what I guessed you were.” Centurion sounded hesitant. Nyx hoped that was a play and not genuine discomfort with acting. He cleared his throat. “I need your help. If they’re not onto me yet, they will be soon.”
Estabrook said nothing.
“Look,” Centurion said, his voice angry now. “I’d have talked her out of it if I could, but she never came to us about it! I didn’t know what she was planning to do! I’d have told him that if he bothered to ask, but instead he sent Cusack and once the crew had him up on the ropes, I could hardly out myself for him, could I?”
“Cusack,” Estabrook said slowly. He might not know Centurion, but Charlie Cusack’s name rang a bell.
“Idiot,” Centurion said with feeling, and Nyx knew this part of the speech wasn’t feigned at all.
“Did he think he could just kill her, get to me, kill me, too—and waltz off a ship into open space?”
“Kill you?” Estabrook sounded surprised.
“Yes,” Centurion said impatiently. “Because I didn’t stop her from tipping off Rift. Which, again—she didn’t talk to us about it. There was no chance to talk her out of it.”
“And ‘she’ would be—”
“Mallory! Look, we do not have time for this. Did you get the message? They’re coming for us, and if my dear new captain doesn’t know who I am yet—” Centurion’s voice dripped with derision “—she’ll figure it out soon. Hugo’s on her side, of course. Carte blanche to assassinate any of us she wants, apparently. You should hear her talk about it.”
Estabrook said nothing for a long moment and Nyx had the niggling sense that the mission was sliding out of focus. Something was wrong. He was spooked. How she knew, she couldn’t say, but she had learned to trust that instinct.
“It’s going wrong,” she told Talon over their channel.
“It’s fine,” he told her soothingly.
“It’s not.” She made a split second decision, slung her rifle onto her back and slid down the girder. “Estabrook hasn’t made contact with the other three yet. This whole thing is going wrong. I’m going in.”
“Don’t spook him.”
“He’s already spooked and Centurion will need backup.” She motioned for everyone else to stay in place as she left out of the loading bay, running for the main level.
“I knew a Cusack,” Estabrook was saying, “but I didn’t know anyone named Mallory, and I don’t know what you’re talking about. Sorry for whatever’s going on with you, but I have business I need to attend to.”
“He’s leaving,” Jim reported.
“Listen,” Centurion said grimly. “You can run from this and you can leave me to die because you think I failed you all, but I have good information. I have their tactics. I can be useful until he gets out, dammit, and once I can talk to him—”
“Until he gets out?” Estabrook sounded genuinely amused. Then his voice closed off again. “I don’t have the first idea what you’re talking about.”
“The fuck you don’t.”
Nyx shook her head and her jaw set. Centurion wasn’t accomplished enough at lying to reel Estabrook back in. Right now, Centurion’s anger could just as easily play as a thwarted double agent, instead of what it actually was: someone who was used to playing straight, who was furious to come face to face with a traitor.
But sooner or later, he’d slip up and the truth would come out. People like Estabrook could lie as easily as they breathed, letting veiled comments slip at some times, and giving entire falsehoods at others. They would say whatever they needed to say to get out of a situation.
Estabrook would never admit who he was—and eventually, driven by a desire for revenge and justice, Centurion would.
She was in the main concourse now and she moved to a half-crouch, forging her way through the crowd with as little a disturbance as she could manage.
Centurion must have grabbed him, because Estabrook said tightly, “Let go of me.”
“Nyx, he’s moving toward the hangar bays.” Jim must have seen her. “Door 9, the section for smaller ships.”
Nyx adjusted her course.
Centurion gave one more good shot at it. “You need to help me,” he said urgently. “You need to get me out of this. When they find out what I am, they will kill me. And that will be the nicest thing they do to me. You didn’t see what happened to Cusack.”
“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” Estabrook said.
“The hell you don’t! I tracked you down, and you’re a damned idiot if you think they can’t do the same, so if you just listen a moment—”
That got Estabrook’s attention and the swirl of the crowd in front of Nyx cleared just in time for her to see Estabrook pause.
Centurion took his opening with a flash of speed. He flipped his knife up and his hand shot forward. He would have buried the blade in Estabrook’s throat, but the other Dragon wasn’t as green as Mars and Camorra had been when they attacked Talon—or when Charlie Cusack had gone for Mallory.
Estabrook had been waiting for this.
He made it out of the way of Centurion’s thrust, but just barely, and the fight was joined the next moment, the two of them grabbling, taking hits and evading them, misdirecting power, twisting to avoid throws or try them.
They were well-matched and they were quick, and it was easy to see that they knew what they were about. People scattered with warning shouts. They knew better than to get caught in one of these altercations.
Knowing better than to give up her advantage of surprise, Nyx melted back with the crowd, waiting. Until she sensed Centurion was out of his depth, she would let him handle this.
“I know who you are,” Estabrook hissed. His voice was distorted, dim around the whistle of air as the two of them grappled and broke apart. He gave a grunt as Centurion caught him hard with an uppercut. “You’re her pet just like you were Mallory’s. I know he never recruited you. Now you think you’re gonna help them come after us? We have resources you can’t imagine. You’ll never get all of us.”
“You’re weak,” Centurion growled back. “I have two teams at my back, and what do you have? The dregs. Soras sent Cusack in blind because he knew the kid would sing if we got our hands on him, and he did, disloyal little fucker. Soras had tools, not allies, and now he’s rotting in a jail cell and you—”
Estabrook threw him, then, and made a break for it. He sprinted for the doors of Dock 9.
“The doors are closing.” Foxtail’s voice was tight. “But he’s gonna make it.”
Nyx was already in motion. She put everything she had into the sprint. Her world narrowed to the closing panels and the figure in front of her. As if in slow motion, she watched Estabrook give the very last of his energy to fling himself through the doorway just before the dropping panel reached the level of his head, and she gave two more good steps, pushing off as hard as she could before throwing herself sideways into a skid.
She just cleared the gap—and felt the whoosh of air as the heavy, blast-proof panel slammed down where her head had been a second before. She rolled to stand—
And froze. Estabrook was backing away from her, a dock worker held in front of him and a gun at the younger man’s throat.
“So you finally came out of the woodwork yourself, did you?” His eyes were narrowed at her. “The first step in Talon’s coup of Intelligence—get every one of his fucking favorites into place as Dragon commanders. Tell me, did he pick Hugo personally?”
He was so bitter that Nyx would have laughed if there hadn’t been a hostage’s life in the mix. She stood tall and holstered her weapon obviously. Every primal urge was screaming at her to engage, smash Estabrook’s skull on this floor and watch him bleed out—
She had to de-escalate.
“You have no idea how we found him in the end,” she guessed. “But when he called people back, you guessed it was over—you and your friends. All four of you, and the ones who stayed and got found out. You guessed it was on the downhill, didn’t you?”
He stared at her in pure hatred. Then he smiled and it sent a chill all through her.
“I’m taking this one,” he said easily, arm tightening around the captive dock worker. “Insurance, you understand. Can’t have you shooting my ship down on the way out, can I? That is, unless you’re willing to have his death on your conscience.”
She almost fired, then and there. If she killed Estabrook here and now, the dock worker might die, but any other lives Estabrook might have taken in the future would be saved. And Estabrook would kill again—he had proven that. He was a dangerous weapon with no morals and no compunctions, and he was searching for another master who would tell him who to kill.
In that sense, it made the most sense to kill him now.
In a flash, however, Nyx guessed that Estabrook was
the common thread that would keep the other three on the grid. He hadn’t communicated with them yet because he hadn’t been planning to. Because all of them would go to ground separately.
And Centurion’s words had been a warning to him: I have two teams at my back and you? You have the dregs.
Centurion had spoken in anger, not with a plan, but his challenge had been the perfect groundwork for a trap. Whether or not he realized it, Estabrook would seek out his defenses now. He would reach out to the other three, seeking his ‘team.’
And together, the four of them would leave enough clues that no matter where they ran, vengeance could find them.
Estabrook simply had to think he’d won this encounter.
She let her eyes drift to the dock worker’s and swallowed when she saw his terror.
“Are you so far gone that you’d kill a civilian just to kill?” she asked, her voice low and desperate—as if she were pleading for this man’s life.
He threw his head back and laughed. His confidence was back. He shook his arm, making the younger man’s head bounce against the muzzle of the gun. The dock worker drew in his breath sharply.
“Of course not,” Estabrook said. “I’ll keep him on my ship, keep him around. And if you ever find me again—you’re canny, I’ll give you that—then I’ll just make you watch him die. So you think about that before you come for me. And enjoy your surprise in the meantime.”
He dragged the dock worker up the gangway of his ship and the airlock slammed closed behind him.
Nyx watched, breathing slowly, her eyes faintly narrowed. “Tracking the ship?”
“On it,” Tersi and Foxtail said in unison.
“It’s a gamble,” Talon said privately. “I see why you did it, but it’s a gamble, Alvarez.”
“I know.” Nyx watched as the ship disengaged from the station and blasted into the endless night outside. “Any idea what surprise he was talking about? Is the whole station rigged to blow?”
“Tersi says not. My guess is someone will try to get Soras out—or another one of the four will go for a captain. Hell if I know, though.” He sighed. “Christ. I was hoping we’d get this bastard today.”
