An hour later, Peregrine arrived. An hour after that, Raptor sauntered onto the bridge. They sat together, telling old stories, insulting one another, and watching the distance between them and their target shrink.
Fallon got her first glimpse of Jamestown on long-range sensors. “Here we go,” she intoned. “Hawk, call up Ross and Colb.”
“Will do.” But before bringing up the others, he stepped forward and extended his fist. “Blood and bone, my friends. It’s been a pleasure serving with you.”
Fallon smiled and touched her fist to his. Raptor and Peregrine followed. For one moment, they were together, united, and everything they’d ever intended to be.
“Blood and bone.”
Fallon’s first close-range look at Jamestown made her heart leap. Sure, it was a cold gray monster of a flying saucer with barely any stem section. It didn’t have Dragonfire’s elegance. It didn’t need it. Jamestown was strong, imposing, and huge—about four times the size of Dragonfire. Fallon always viewed it with a smidge of childish awe.
“Do they see us?” Raptor edged closer, looking at the display.
“If they do, they’re not letting on, but it’s entirely possible they have the technology to see through our disguise.”
“Proceed as planned,” Colb ordered, as if he had an actual say in how events would unfold from here on out.
But Fallon played along. “Aye, sir. Establishing a brute docking attitude.”
Ahh, brute force. It was her favorite kind.
She came in faster than a ship normally would, but any jarring she caused only worked in her favor. So she hit Jamestown with as much force as the Nefarious could tolerate without structural damage.
She interfaced with the dock, ignoring the usual safety protocols. She latched onto it, then blasted Jamestown with a program Raptor had devised to keep it from rejecting them. In seconds, they’d rewritten the docking system’s protocols. Raptor’s subroutines would keep the mainframe computer from overriding his code. The man was a genius. She shot him a grin.
He grinned back, and she returned her attention to the controls. “Pressurizing the airlock.”
The people inside would now scramble a security team, then send them to the breached dock. Fallon was ready for the fight.
“Go!” she ordered.
Avian Unit bolted, with Ross escorting Admiral Colb. Fallon was the last to leave the bridge. She patted her chair.
She ran through the airlock with a stinger in each hand. Then she stopped. No security team had come. Emergency lighting dimly lit the airlock, but beyond it, she saw no light at all.
“Did you already kill everyone?” she joked in confusion.
“No one came.” Peregrine’s frown seemed etched into her face.
“What does that mean?” Colb asked, sounding baffled.
Like you don’t know, Fallon thought grimly at him. But she wasn’t ready to show her hand. “I don’t know. Maybe they’ve set up an ambush somewhere?”
It didn’t make sense, because no security protocol would fail to respond to a breached dock and an incursion. But she had no other suggestions.
“No,” Raptor said, frowning at a voicecom terminal. “Most of the station’s been depressurized. Something is very, very wrong here.”
Depressurized? She sensed that everything was about to take a big left turn. “Put on pressure suits and continue as planned,” she ordered. Though “as planned” meant one thing to Colb, and another to the rest of them.
Once suited up, Hawk and Peregrine edged forward, leading them into the depressurized corridor. They all turned on the light sources in their suits to provide adequate illumination in what would otherwise be pitch black. Raptor assisted Colb, and Fallon brought up the rear. She was poised for the slightest sound, for the sense of a presence.
But they made their way through the corridor unimpeded.
“I’m getting a bad feeling about this,” Hawk’s voice transmitted to the receiver in her helmet. His light, like hers, penetrated several feet into the gloom, creating a small zone of bright light surrounded by utter darkness. It was creepy as hell.
Finally, they made it to ops control. The immensity of it didn’t fail to impress Fallon, even as she and Raptor rushed to consoles. She refused to think about how eerie it felt to see it abandoned. The others covered the entrances, just in case.
She quickly assessed the situation, which sucked the recirculated air from her lungs and the feeling from her gloved fingertips. But she rechecked. And examined all auxiliary systems that might prove that the other systems were lying.
But it was true. The camera feeds were genuine.
“We’re alone here,” Raptor said.
Dead silence filled the channel.
Finally, Hawk turned away from the door. “What do you mean, ‘alone’?”
Fallon answered, “He means that the only people on the station are dead ones. About three hundred of them, from the look of it.”
She felt sick. Hollow. This was the headquarters of the entire PAC, not just Blackout. The identities of the dead became a critical concern.
“Split up and begin identifying the dead.” Scanning their IDs wouldn’t take long. She added, “I’ll escort Admiral Colb.” She had to fight to keep bitterness from twisting her mouth as she spoke the words. He knew what had happened here, though it clearly wasn’t what he’d expected.
If what she suspected was true…their situation was even worse than she’d thought. So much worse.
6
“About half of the department heads are dead, along with a variety of other officers and enlisted. A few civilians.” Hawk’s expression was blank as he relayed the information to Fallon. She was aware of Colb’s presence, even as she processed her own horror.
“How did they die?” she asked, toneless. Professional.
“Close-range energy weapons for some. Stingers, most likely. Others appear to have suffocated under depressurization.”
“What happened here?” Raptor wondered.
“I don’t know,” Peregrine said. “But it’s messy. Not a precision strike.”
Fallon had a lot to take in and little time to do it. She kept Colb in her peripheral vision. He’d proven entirely useless on this trip. He hadn’t led them into a trap, whether he’d intended to or not.
“You seem surprised, Admiral.” She turned her full attention on him.
“Of course
