Coalescence (Dragonfire Station Book 3) Read online

  Coalescence

  Dragonfire Station Book 3

  Zen DiPietro

  Parallel Worlds Press

  Contents

  Copyright

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Message from the author

  About the Author

  Copyright

  COALESCENCE (DRAGONFIRE STATION #3)

  COPYRIGHT © 2017 BY ZEN DIPIETRO

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, organizations, events, and incidents are either products of the author’s imagination or used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events, business establishments, locales, or persons, living or dead, is coincidental.

  All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means (electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise) without express written permission of the publisher. The only exception is brief quotations for the purpose of review.

  Please purchase only authorized electronic editions. Distribution of this book via the Internet or via any other means without the permission of the publisher is illegal and punishable by law.

  ISBN: 978-1-943931-07-1 (ebook)

  Cover Art by Maciej Rebisz

  Published in the United States of America by Parallel Worlds Press

  1

  Fallon sat in the Outlaw, waiting for the right moment to detach from the belly of the Nefarious. Piloting her little race car of a ship always got her blood pumping. She and her team were closing in on the class-six cruiser and she itched to get to the big moment.

  Finally, they got into range. As she initiated the separation she barked, “Ross, break left!”

  She dropped just in time to avoid getting hit by the much-larger Nefarious as her old combat instructor banked hard. Then she broke right, allowing the two to double-team their target.

  “Hawk, energy charges!”

  She imagined him over there leaning into the console while the Nefarious fired on the cruiser. Meanwhile, she used the Outlaw’s size to maneuver close, positioning herself alongside its docking port. She allowed herself a whoop of success when she achieved capture of the smaller craft.

  “Target acquired,” she announced to her teammates on the other ship. “Nice job.”

  Rather than board the vessel, she released it. “We can do it faster, though. Let’s try it again.”

  She imagined Hawk’s groan of frustration and smiled. “Acknowledged,” Ross’ voice came back over the voicecom after a brief pause. “Resetting the drill.”

  “Doing the same here. You ready to go again, Per?” Her gaze went to the cruiser, piloted by Peregrine and Raptor.

  Peregrine’s voice came over the voicecom. “Let’s do it.”

  Three more practice runs had Fallon sure they could pull off the maneuver in a real firefight. Which ticked one tactic off her list and left a few dozen more. She had big plans for her team, and she wanted them to be ready for anything.

  “You’re shaping up,” she teased Ross after they’d docked the three ships on the stem portion of Dragonfire Station and gone aboard. She’d had to work at reframing her view of him over the last few weeks. When he’d brought her team proof of Krazinski’s betrayal of the PAC, he’d been a former authority figure, but now, he was just an older colleague, and a part of her team.

  “And you’re a relentless taskmaster.” Hawk eyed Fallon with disdain.

  “Like you’d want her any other way.” Peregrine smirked.

  Hawk’s blue eyes twinkled. “Well, you got me there.”

  Fallon and Ross fell in behind Peregrine and Hawk as they walked down the corridor. Raptor trailed behind.

  Ross remarked, “I’m already twice the pilot I was when we started a week ago.”

  “Flatterer.” Fallon narrowed her eyes at her former instructor. “That’s a good way to make me suspicious. But you don’t give yourself enough credit. You’re a decent pilot.”

  Since recovering her memories, she’d had to reconcile her new acquaintance of Ross Whelkin with her older recollections. She’d briefly experienced an odd sort of double vision that caused her to experience a sense of duality. She’d mostly reconciled her two perspectives, which was a relief.

  Ross smiled at her. For an older guy, he was good-looking in a beachy way. “Nothing like you. You’re one of the best pilots I’ve ever seen. I always knew you were a fantastic fighter, but piloting skills came as a fun surprise.”

  “I didn’t realize you were unaware of my flying abilities.”

  He shook his head as they arrived at the lift. “Details on BlackOps are need-to-know. I didn’t need to know. Once you guys left the academy, I was out of the loop.”

  The lift opened.

  “I’m hungry enough to eat mandren,” Hawk said, and led them onto the lift. “Anyone want to hit the boardwalk for some dinner?”

  “Sure, unless you’re serious about the mandren.” Raptor grimaced. “The smell of that stuff turns my stomach.”

  “Just an expression,” Hawk assured him. “How about you two?” He looked from Per to Fallon. He could have added one of his mock-sleazy leers just for kicks, but he was all seriousness. For the moment.

  Per nodded, but Fallon had to decline. “I have to meet with Captain Nevitt.”

  “Better you than me.” Hawk slapped her on the shoulder.

  “Your support is underwhelming.”

  Raptor and Ross chuckled.

  The lift stopped and the door opened to Deck One. Hawk patted her shoulder, gently this time. “You’ll do fine.”

  Per gave her an encouraging nod as she passed on her way out of the lift. Raptor smiled at her as the doors closed.

  Fallon steeled herself as the lift ascended to Deck Five. She’d gotten a better understanding of Hesta Nevitt, but it wasn’t every day that Fallon asked an upstanding PAC captain to commit treason and turn her station into a rebel headquarters.

  This would not be an easy conversation.

  Fallon activated the chime for Nevitt’s quarters. She wondered what the captain thought of her request to meet there. She’d never even seen Nevitt’s personal living space. At the least, she hoped her request had given the captain some forewarning of the seriousness of their meeting.

  The doors swished open and Captain Nevitt stood there in all her formidable glory. “Chief.” She gave Fallon a deep bow that indicated respect, and Fallon bowed yet lower, showing great esteem.

  As the doors closed, Nevitt gestured Fallon to the seating area. “Judging by that bow, you’re about to ask me for something big. I assume you’re sufficiently recovered to follow up on whatever that might be?” She eased into a tall-backed chair with the air of a monarch sitting on a throne.

  Fallon resisted the urge to get a good look at the captain’s living space. She kept her attention fully on Nevitt as she settled across from her.

  “Yes. It was kind of you to give me time to get my bearings. But it’s been over a week, and we can’t lose any more time.”

  “Of course. So say whatever it is you so clearly do not want to say.”

  Fallon considered leading into it gradually, but doubted Nevitt would appreciate the evasiveness. So she dove right in. “I want to set up a rebel headquarters here on Dragonfire.”

  Nevitt’s eyebrows moved toward her hairline. “Is that all?” Her quiet words blistered with sarcasm.

  “Before I left her
e, you said you wanted to join the upper echelons of the PAC, so you could make changes for the greater good. This is your chance.”

  Despite the bombshell, Nevitt remained composed. The time she took to respond was the only indication of the magnitude of what Fallon had laid on her.

  “And you have a plan to do that?” Nevitt sounded skeptical.

  “Not a precise plan. More like an agenda of potential tactics, each of which will require their own contingencies. But I need to get your approval before we go deep into the logistics.”

  “What if I say no?” Nevitt’s gaze didn’t waver.

  Fallon met her eyes. “Then we select another, less ideal site. Someplace less protected, where we have fewer assets and allies. But we’ll still go after Blackout.”

  “And if I say yes?”

  “Then you’ll be putting the lives of everyone on this station in jeopardy. You’ll become an enemy of the state. And you might just save the PAC from intergalactic war.”

  The quiet of Nevitt’s quarters roared in Fallon’s ears as she waited for a reply.

  “Agreed.” Nevitt snapped the word out like a stinger blast. “But I have some conditions.”

  “State your terms.”

  “Protecting this station and the people on it will be among your top priorities. You will remain security chief here.” She ticked off the points on her fingers as she went. “You will not fail to fix whatever’s wrong with Blackout. And, finally, I will be consulted on all matters regarding the safety of Dragonfire and the progress of your mission—” she broke off and corrected herself, “—our mission.”

  Fallon opened her mouth to speak but Nevitt cut her off. “Don’t give me a bunch of scrap about top secret protocols or giving me plausible deniability. If you want to operate on my station, I’m going to be part of the team. That’s not negotiable.”

  Fallon met her captain’s narrowed eyes. “Agreed.”

  Nevitt’s brow furrowed in puzzlement. Or surprise, perhaps. Fallon had never seen such an uncertain expression on Nevitt, so she wasn’t entirely sure.

  Nevitt’s brow smoothed, and her lips curved into a smirk. “I can’t believe you agreed to that.”

  The absurdity of it all struck Fallon, and she laughed. To her even-greater surprise, Nevitt chuckled.

  “Considering that my team has stolen data, broken into a PAC base, and taken down an illegal research lab manufacturing treaty-prohibited items, I’d say your lack of proper security clearance is a minor offense. And it makes sense that you should be informed.”

  Nevitt’s amusement faded to seriousness. “It sounds like you need to fill me in on some things before we proceed.”

  For the next two hours, Fallon did her best to bring Nevitt into the loop on all of Avian Unit’s activities and intentions. Nevitt’s expression grew increasingly grave.

  When Fallon finished, Nevitt said, “There’s one more condition I want to add.”

  “If it’s one I can’t agree to, it would put me in a very tricky position, given all that you now know.”

  Nevitt ignored her. “When you’ve taken control of Blackout and gotten things sorted, I will be part of the new administration.”

  Fallon wouldn’t have had it any other way. “Agreed.”

  Getting things hammered out with Nevitt left Fallon feeling energized. She decided that while she was riding high on that success, she’d handle something she’d already put off for too long. She’d made excuses for herself, mainly that she was supposed to avoid excessive stress while her head healed or that she was too busy, but the truth was that she just didn’t know how to approach such a dicey situation that involved…feelings. Ugh. Not her forte.

  When she walked into the maintenance bay—or the “shop,” as the mechanics called it—she saw Wren sliding beneath a propulsion chamber, which must have been removed from some ship. That would be one heck of a repair. Fallon felt a slight chill. The shop was always just a couple degrees below comfortable, for the benefit of all the expensive technology within.

  Fallon imagined polymechrine filling her spine. She’d avoided Wren since returning to the station, not knowing how to deal with the mountains that stood between them. But now that she was about to become deeply entrenched in everyday life aboard Dragonfire, she needed to deal with the issue.

  She’d rather face a deep-space pirate attack.

  She picked up an axial microtuner from a tool tray and squatted next to Wren’s feet, which protruded from beneath the hulking propulsion system.

  “Here.” She extended the tool beneath it, toward Wren.

  Her former wife glided out from under the machinery on an anti-grav creeper, her expression guarded. She lay there, wordless.

  “Thought I’d give you the one you asked for this time. Better late than never, right?”

  Fallon and Wren had first met in this very spot. Wren had called out to her colleague for an axial tuner, but Fallon had mistakenly given her a radial one instead.

  Wren’s face stayed unnaturally still as she sat up, then pulled herself to her feet. “You remember that?”

  “I remember everything. Want to have lunch?”

  Fallon sat across from her not-wife at the Bennite restaurant as they sized each other up.

  “You remember everything?” Wren’s pale cheeks had an attractive pink glow, but otherwise, she kept her expression carefully guarded. Fallon was glad for that.

  “Yes,” Fallon confirmed. “I imagine that you have a lot of questions for me.”

  “You could say that. I’ll come back to the ‘how’ part of regaining your memory later. What I really want to know is why you married me. Was it some tactic, from your…employers?”

  Fallon appreciated Wren’s caution. Privacy or no, there was no good reason to mention Blackout in public. Most people still thought the organization was a myth.

  “No. I married you for all the normal reasons that people get married.”

  “Why?” Wren’s fingers drummed on the otherwise-forgotten menuboard. “You made it clear that getting married is just not done in your profession.”

  “Believe me, I’ve gotten a lot of shit about it from my teammates. But you pursued me, remember. Relentlessly. And when we started dating, I found that our relationship was something I’d never had before. Nurturing. Caring.” Fallon fought the urge to squirm at saying such touchy-feely stuff. “I never thought I’d be interested in a domestic situation, but with you it felt…right.” Fallon shrugged, fighting down a swell of remembered feeling. She had no room for that in her life.

  “You loved me,” Wren translated.

  “Yes.” Fallon didn’t care to put so fine a point on it, but she knew it was the answer Wren needed. And Wren wouldn’t stop asking until she got it.

  “And no other reason? No ulterior motive?”

  “I was sent to investigate you for smuggling, but it was a bogus assignment. I knew that before I even came to Dragonfire. I knew something was wrong in—” she caught herself and adjusted her words, “—the upper levels. That’s probably why my team was split up on different assignments, to get us out of the way while they decided what to do with us. Or it might also have had something to do with this.” She tapped her temple.

  “Right.” Wren’s mouth squinched up as if she’d eaten a lemon. “I won’t ask about your team, or any of that. Clearly, it’s not for my ears.”

  Fallon must have let a hint of surprise escape because Wren smiled wryly. “I was a security chief’s wife for six months. I’d gotten quite used to knowing there were things you couldn’t discuss with me.”

  “Makes sense. Do you have any other questions?”

  Wren’s eyes lit with the irreverent gleam that Fallon knew so well. “Sure. I’d love to know where you’ve been for the last six months and your history with those four you brought back with you. And yeah, I know it’s four. I hear things. But,” she continued, “like I said, I’m not going to ask about all that. I guess my only question now is, where does all this l
eave us? You and me?”

  “Where do you want it to leave us?”

  Wren tucked a stray pink tendril of hair behind her ear. “I’m not sure. I still have feelings. But I don’t know about dealing with all the baggage you bring. And, knowing you, you have some strong feelings about how I reacted to the things that happened.”

  The reminder sent a streak of resentment through Fallon, though it faded as quickly as it came. “Yeah, you could say that. That was some pretty poor shit.”

  Rather than being stricken, Wren smiled. Fallon had always liked how resilient Wren was. She had a way of finding the humor in things that would shock or crush other people. It was one of the things about Wren that Fallon had fallen for.

  “You swear a lot more now,” Wren observed.

  Fallon hadn’t thought about it, but she suspected Wren was right. She blamed Hawk and Peregrine’s influence for that. “Things change.”

  Wistfulness filled Wren’s eyes. “Yeah. They do.” She studied Fallon. “But what does it all mean for us? What are we to each other?”

  “I don’t know. Some sort of friends?”

  “The kind of friends that used to be lovers? Or the kind that sometimes still are?”

  She should have been able to answer that question, but she could only shrug.

  “Sarkavians are good with letting relationships be whatever they are at the moment, but would that kind of ambiguity work for you?” Wren didn’t look doubtful, merely curious.

  “I guess we’ll see.”

  Wren studied Fallon. “I guess so. Does it make any difference that I’ve started seeing someone? Just a casual thing. I wouldn’t even mention it, but since you wanted monogamy before…” She trailed off.

  That had been before Raptor returned to her life, and their relationship had changed. He hadn’t mentioned exclusivity, but Fallon had grown up in a very traditional Japanese family, with a strong foundation in loyalty, devotion, honor, and yes, monogamy. She always thought others should do whatever worked for them, but could she feel honorable in that situation herself?