Dragon's Echo

by Natalie Grey

  Now she did smile. She looked away, chewing on her lip.

  Her mother’s voice came back to her: Sometimes things have to die to make way for new things. Nyx couldn’t even remember when her mother had said it, why she’d given the advice, but it had stayed with her for years.

  And she’d ignored it this whole time, hoping that if she ignored it, it would go away.

  “What is it?” Talon asked.

  “Nothing. It’s nothing.” She shook her head. “Listen, you go kick some ass. I’ll kill Tristan, we’ll meet up with the Io when we’re done. Maybe we can find somewhere to touch down.”

  He nodded, still looking a bit curious. He hesitated. “Keep your visor down.”

  She choked on a laugh and nodded. “Will do. See you later.”

  He gave a little salute and signed off, and Nyx closed her eyes and counted to ten.

  “All right,” she said when she was done. “Enough wallowing.” She reached out and pressed a button. “Wraith, Centurion—want to come brief me on the plan?”

  “We’ll be right there.”

  When they arrived, she was suiting up in the thin layer that went under her armor plates.

  “What’s the plan after Tristan?” Wraith asked curiously.

  “Get drunk,” Nyx said succinctly. She pulled the shirt over her head and pulled her ponytail free, then let her hair out and began braiding it. Buns didn’t fit under helmets. “Talon’s handling Estabrook.” She sighed and gave up partway through the braid. “Look. I, uh … Victus, the attack on the Ariane … you said you’d know how to handle it with Mallory. For the record….” She opened the closet and pulled out the drawer that held the whiskey. “‘Glass of whiskey and a bunch of shit I can’t say in front of the crew’ is how I deal. Or sparring.”

  “You want to go now?” Centurion asked, raising an eyebrow. “I could get that throw in. I’ve come up with a way I’m almost certain will work.”

  Nyx laughed. “You know … yeah. Let’s go. Better than drinking before an op. After, though….”

  Wraith peered at the whiskey and whistled through her teeth.

  “You like whiskey?” Nyx asked.

  “Hate it. But I know that’s some good stuff. I’ll bring tequila.”

  “You’re kidding me.”

  “I’m not, and you will like tequila by the time I’m done with you.”

  “I highly doubt that.” Nyx ushered them out of the room, but she was laughing. “All right, brief me on the plan while Centurion tries—and fails—to throw me.”

  29

  “I, um….” Mala stared at the guards. She could do this. She had interacted with the absolutely paranoid guards in Intelligence every time she worked late. What was an excuse they’d accept?

  Ah.

  She fumbled on her torso and, when their hands tightened on their guns, she put her hands up hastily and nodded to her front pocket. “My ID card is right there, can I get it to show to you?”

  “Who has ID cards around here?” The lead guard’s eyes narrowed. “Keep talking. You’re digging your own grave. James, shut the corridor down.”

  “Yes, sir.” One of the two guards disappeared down the hallway.

  Mala gulped as the man advanced on her. “But they gave me a card when I got here. They said I needed to keep it on me all the time. I’ve worn it everywhere—they said even in the shower.” She was babbling, trying to sound like the nervous new recruit who didn’t know what was going on.

  The nervous part was real, anyway.

  “You know, the guy with the dark hair? He printed it out. Please, can I just get it out so you can see it, maybe it’ll—”

  “Oh, come on, give it up.” He strolled towards her as the guard he’d sent away came back to stand at his right shoulder again. “I don’t know who you are, but if you got into this station, you should have a better story than that. And I bet you do. I bet it’s not one you want to tell, but you will tell it. Trust me.”

  The guard to his left shoulder dropped like a stone and his head whipped around. He looked down at the ground and then over—

  And took Cade’s elbow to the jaw. He staggered sideways and righted himself just in time for Cade to grab him by the vest and drag his torso down, driving his knee up at the same time. Cade hauled him up, the guard swaying, and punched him twice in the face.

  The man crumpled to the floor and Cade bound both of them quickly, putting gags in their mouths and taping over them.

  “Sorry about that.” He flashed Mala a smile.

  “The other guard—you got him?”

  He only smiled. Both of them looked up as Tera came around the corner, looking smug and now with three more guns.

  “The people in the offices are going to get pretty restless in a few minutes,” she said shortly. “They’re used to being able to see out of their offices and a lockdown makes the doors opaque both ways. I say we get in position—” she gestured at herself and Cade “—and you get back to the shuttle. When we let people out, they’ll want to stretch their legs, go to the bathroom….”

  “What if JD doesn’t come here?”

  “Then we wait. He’ll come back.”

  “What if he goes in with someone else?”

  “Did you look at the read-outs? The bathroom is all individual stalls. Can’t have anyone else see you pee when you’re in the mob, you know. Or something. No idea.” Tera gestured at Mala to go. “Just get back to the ship, and get Lesedi when you go, will you? She’s like a kid in a candy shop and this particular candy shop is full of bombs.”

  “Right.” Mala pointed at the various panels. “How do we release the security lockdown?”

  “I’ll do it.” Tera held up one finger, where a programming chip could be seen faintly blinking under the skin.

  “I want one of those,” Mala muttered, but she went without complaint. “Just let me get out of the corridor before you release the hold, okay?”

  “Yep.”

  In the office, JD watched as Fanti gave another frustrated look at the opaque door. It was remarkably soundproof, which meant that with it closed, they had no idea what was going on out in the hall.

  “How often are there security alerts?” JD asked him.

  Fanti gave him an unfriendly look. “Is it important?”

  “I’m trying to assess that,” JD said. He let his voice grow slightly dangerous. “We don’t know what’s out there and I don’t know what caliber of threat it’s likely to be. Are there break-ins here? Is there a jail? Or do they just do a security lockdown when a higher-up is sloppy drunk and no one’s supposed to see?”

  Fanti’s eyes flashed. “You’ll want to watch your mouth if you stay with the mob. You can’t be saying things like that. If you weren’t useful, I wouldn’t even have bothered to warn you.”

  “Noted. Thank you. That still doesn’t answer my question—and may I remind you that you are presently stuck in this office with a former Dragon who, if shit goes south, can choose whether to fight his way out on his own, or stick around and help you?”

  Fanti’s face betrayed his shock and JD smiled coldly. His suit was tailored to de-emphasize his muscles, part of the image he so carefully cultivated. At first glance, he could be nothing more than a fairly fit businessman.

  Fanti had forgotten what he was dealing with.

  And a reminder might be good for negotiations.

  A moment later, the color flowed out of the doors. “The security hold is over,” reported a male voice. “Thank you for your patience.”

  Fanti frowned slightly and JD took his opportunity to let the lesson of his words sink in slightly. “I’m going to run to the bathroom. Left down the hall?”

  “Yes.” Fanti nodded distractedly.

  “Out of curiosity, how often are there people who get onto this station unauthorized?” JD paused, a thought occurring to him.

  Estabrook had been making an almighty fuss lately, going after Talon with everything he had. He wouldn’t be coming after JD, wo
uld he? He felt a chill of premonition.

  Fanti only laughed. “No one does. Trust me. People try every other week. You may have noticed all the dust hitting the hull on your way in.”

  JD smiled and nodded. “Good. The last thing you want on this station is an angry Dragon.”

  “Is that a threat?”

  “No.” JD sighed. “It was a piece of advice not relating to me. With that said, you seem to be disregarding many of the talents I could bring to your organization. When I return, why don’t we talk about that in more detail?”

  He left before Fanti could say another word, making his way down the hallway toward the bathroom.

  He didn’t see the mechanic anywhere. Perhaps she’d tripped a circuit breaker accidentally or something. He wondered idly what happened to you if you messed up maintenance work on a mob-owned station and shook his head.

  Anyone dealing with the mob had to know it was a dangerous place to be.

  He pushed his way into the main part of the bathroom and tried one of the doors. Locked. So was the next one. Annoyed, JD went to the final door and let himself into that room. He didn’t even need to be here, he just couldn’t handle Fanti’s smug—and frustratingly shrewd—bargaining anymore without punching something.

  The sound that caught his attention was so faint that he assumed it was outside in the main part of the bathroom. He opened the door and looked around. It must have been in one of the other stalls.

  But when he looked around once more, he found himself staring down not one, but two combatants in full armor—a man with sandy brown hair and a tall woman with copper skin and an expressive mouth set in an almost impish smile.

  He barely had time to blink before the man charged him, and when JD slid out of the way by instinct alone, the woman’s hand shot out to lock around his throat. He struggled, but there was something more than human in that strength.

  She dragged him close.

  “How disappointing,” she said. “My father really did get the worst of the Corps, didn’t he?”

  JD gaped at her. Her father? But that would mean—

  And Soras’s proclivities had been, if not well known, at least suspected among many of his associates.

  “Now we have to kill him,” the man said. “You realize that, right?”

  “Yes. But be honest, you don’t like torturing people, do you?”

  “Not particularly. I just wondered if he had any useful information.”

  They had underestimated him. They weren’t paying attention. JD surged forward, only to have the woman slam him back against the door like a rag doll.

  “So you thought you’d come sell Alliance secrets to the mob now that there was no one else paying you, hmm?” Her eyes were narrowed. “Secrets like what?”

  There were spots dancing in front of his vision. He should strike out at her, but his hands were moving on their own, grabbing at her fingers and trying to wrench them aside. Instead, they began to squeeze.

  “Your … father was….”

  “Yes.” The beautiful face was impassive. “Didn’t you wonder how he got caught? He was so careful—with everyone except me.” There was a moment of hurt in those eyes. “Or perhaps especially me, but this is hardly the time for that discussion. It occurs to me that between his databases and the rest of the Dragons, there’s really nothing you have that we don’t know.” Her fingers tightened sharply. “What have you told them already?”

  “Nothing! We’re still in—negotiations—”

  She looked over at the other man. “No signs of lies. I think he’s telling the truth.”

  “Well, then.” The man reached for something at his belt.

  He was fast. He was so fast that JD only caught the hint of movement out of the corner of his eye, before the man’s knife embedded itself below JD’s ear.

  JD slumped to the ground, a patch now clamped over the wound to keep it from bleeding all over everything.

  “Why did you tell him who you were?” Cade asked curiously.

  “So I’d have to kill him.” Tera looked down at him. “He was going to try to talk his way out of it and say he could be useful and that he knew things about what my father had done in the Corps, and it wouldn’t be clear what was true and what was lies … and while he was alive, he was dangerous.”

  Cade considered this.

  She looked over at him frankly. “Whatever he knew wasn’t worth it, but now that I know some of them, I have a hard time staying objective. I’d have kept him alive just in case and that would have made me weak.”

  “Your reasoning always has a certain flair to it, you know that?”

  She gave him a small smile. “Yes. Shall we go?”

  “Yes.” He tapped his comm. “We’re heading back. Mala? …Aryn?”

  There was a faint scuffling noise.

  “Aryn?” His voice dropped.

  “Cade, Tera.” It was Lesedi’s voice. “We need you here now. They’ve found the shuttle and they’re on it.”

  Cade wrenched the door open and started running.

  30

  Curiosity Colony was on the largest continent of Yee. While the other continent had quickly taken to terraforming and agriculture, this one had not, and it was holding back the advancement of the atmosphere.

  The colonists of Curiosity, all trained in agriculture and botany, had been working for seven years now to create varieties of plants that would take to the continent’s strange soil. They were making some progress, which in turn was helping them create enough atmosphere to live inside their large, enclosed greenhouse complex.

  But it wasn’t much.

  Just enough to make a helpless target, really—which was exactly what Tristan needed it for.

  The cargo ship flared on the Conway’s scanners as it approached Yee. They were still far out, and comm signals from their ship indicated that they were expecting more of Ghost’s ships.

  “We’re cutting it close,” Halo murmured. He held the Conway motionless and cloaked.

  “They aren’t expecting us now at all,” Nyx said. Armor on, she leaned against the door frame into the cockpit and studied the bright speck of the cargo ship. “We got here before their backup—we can call it off if we can get to their bridge.”

  “I say take the ship out here,” Halo pressed. “Ma’am, letting him get closer means he actually has a shot at the colony.”

  “He has a plan of attack for the Conway. He knows our abilities.” Nyx shook her head. “That attack on the docks wasn’t just to tell us how close he could get, it was to learn about our ship. Ghost is efficient. The way to win a ship-to-ship battle with him is not to fight him at all. That looks like a cargo ship, but I am not willing to bet that’s all it is—especially in her organization. We board.”

  “Yes, ma’am.” He looked back at the screens.

  Nyx nodded to him and to Chief. “Any last questions before we go?”

  They shook their heads.

  “All right, then. Put us in line and we’ll get ready.”

  The Conway turned and hung, accelerating gently to come close to the cargo ship’s speed and angle. Halo’s touch on the controls was deft; autopilot could do what Nyx was asking him to do, but he did it himself with an innate understanding of the ship’s movement.

  Nyx watched for only a moment before heading down to the shuttle bay. The rest of the crew waited there by the airlock, and as soon as she stepped past the line, the blast doors slid closed and the room began to vent slowly.

  The crew waited, attaching themselves to the cable they were planning to use. Cargo ships often had in-built systems, hardwired to set off alarms if another ship docked.

  But they weren’t prepared for people in space suits to try to board directly. As the cargo ship approached and the Conway continued to accelerate, the members of Team 11 leaned out of the now-open airlock port to watch the hull slide by—slower, slower….

  It held steady, and Nyx took the lead, swinging herself down over the edge of the airl
ock port, bringing her feet up to the hull of the Conway, and pushing off gently toward the cargo ship.

  She grabbed onto one of the gun turrets to steady herself so that she would not have her feet hit the hull. Who knew what crew members might be on board, listening? Another push off, and she found what she was looking for: a hydraulic door leading out to the turrets.

  She scanned the area as thoroughly as she could, but saw no alarm circuits. That probably meant that there was a secure door at the end of the airlock chamber, but she’d deal with that when she got to it.

  She attached the cable to the nearby turret and got to work, cranking a wrench in the outer screws as the crew floated down the cable one by one. Doc helped her pull the door’s first panel back and press the catch to open the door.

  The chamber had already been in a vacuum, and so the door opened easily—though they all drew back to avoid the rush of escaping air, just in case.

  Nyx, Loki, Maple, and Choop, floated into the room first and shut the door behind themselves. Nyx attached a small device over the keylock and waited as it began to hack the entry codes. When at last it flashed green, she set it to remember the code and waved Choop through first.

  The rest followed, closing the door behind them.

  “B Group, into the airlock.”

  “Yes, ma’am.” It was Centurion, ushering four more in with him.

  Scans indicated that the bridge was set directly under the hull near the top of the ship, as protected as possible from the radiation contained in the modules below. It shouldn’t be far from where they were now.

  Maple reached up to lay a capture device on one of the data cables and a few moments later, Gambit’s voice came through, low, on their comm channel:

  “It looks like he’s the only one on the ship.”

  Nyx smiled slightly. That was convenient. The quicker they got onto the bridge, the quicker they could call off Tristan’s backup.

  “It looks like he still has no idea we’re here,” Gambit added.