Arin burst in. “Brief the legate,” she continued. “Arin, report to the captain when you’re up to speed. I’ll keep you posted.”
She ran for the lift. On the way, she used her comport to reach her team and bark out terse orders.
By the time she arrived at her office, her team was already inside. Peregrine sat, straight-backed, on the couch while Ross and Hawk paced. Any other time, she’d have complained about Raptor breaking through her security, but in this case she was glad he was already working on the problem.
“What do you see?”
“I’m isolating the Deck One office and brig’s electrical systems and all components leading to that area,” Raptor reported, his words clipped.
She wished she had a second hardlined voicecom display so she could work too. This was her station, and she didn’t want to stand around. But Raptor was the best, and she had to leave it to him.
“There,” Raptor muttered.
She waited for him to say more, but he only feverishly entered commands. Each time he swore, her anxiety rose.
Finally his fingers stopped their frantic activity and he pressed a hand to his temple, staring at the screen.
“What?” she demanded, moving to stand behind him.
“Two hours ago, someone wired the feed of a different cell to the circuit that was being monitored for Colb, which kept it from alerting anyone. Then they programmed a recurring loop of video, showing him sleeping. Someone cut through the bulkhead above his cell, bored a hole into the force field, and pulled him out.”
Precious few people would have the tools and the skills to do such a thing.
The room went still. Quietly, Fallon asked, “How many ships have departed in the past fifteen minutes?”
Raptor’s voice was equally quiet. “Two.”
“Was either of them fast enough that we won’t be able to find it?”
“One of them was.”
“Then that was his ship.” Her words fell like rocks.
They all stood frozen. Even Hawk was stunned silent. It was impossible. They’d put every security precaution into place.
Finally, Peregrine spoke the words they were all thinking. There was no other conclusion, since Fallon and Raptor had locked Dragonfire down so tightly that even the Ghost himself couldn’t sneak in. They’d also been vigilant about investigating every person they allowed on the station.
“We lost him. And it was an inside job.”
They searched every floor, scanned every conduit. Then they crawled through the triple-reinforced conduit above the brig’s holding cell. Fallon peered through the hole, down to the empty cell below. The tools it would have taken to do that and to create an opening in the force field could be nothing but Blackout issue.
Which begged the question: Who was helping Colb? Maybe someone backed by a rival government? Was the traitor a member of the other half of Blackout? A double agent? Fallon had no answers. Everyone on Dragonfire had been accounted for. As far as they could tell, no one had left with Colb. Which meant Colb’s ally was still on the station.
Once they’d done everything they could, her team, along with the captain, gathered in her office and sat in silence. Fallon knew exactly why no one spoke. Once they did, they’d have to start pointing fingers.
This job had required access, skills, and Blackout tech. That meant the only people on the station who could have pulled off this jailbreak were the five members of Blackout.
After an exhausting conversation, Fallon dismissed everyone, including Hesta, from her office. They’d somehow managed to avoid speaking of the thing they all knew but didn’t want to discuss. They’d focused instead on managing this situation for the citizens of Dragonfire.
Fallon had appearances to keep up and upset people to soothe. As the chief of security, most of this job landed squarely on her shoulders.
She made a station-wide announcement about a fictitious training drill and praised the security team as well as the residents of the station. She extolled the virtues of such a well-protected station and assured them of her continued confidence in its safety.
Her security staff knew it was bullshit. They’d done plenty of drills in the past but never anything like this. And though she’d ordered the staff aware of Colb’s escape to say nothing to anyone, she knew they had many, many questions. But they followed her orders, and several of her more senior officers made themselves conspicuous in public, smiling and making people feel safe.
She would have done the same, but it would have been too much. Too obvious. So she remained in her office until the end of her shift, which was what she’d do on a normal day. But inside, she seethed.
Logic and her training both demanded that she consider Hawk, Peregrine, and Raptor as suspects. But to do so would break something in her she’d never get back. She couldn’t doubt them any more than she could doubt her own innocence.
Outside of her team, who could she trust? Brak? If Brak wanted Fallon dead, she would have died during her brain surgery, and no one would have been suspicious. So Brak was unlikely to be an adversary. Still, Brak had been in contact with Krazinski early on, and those interactions had been part of what had made her believe Krazinski was the one behind it all. And she had the skill to manufacture the things that had been in development at that secret lab.
Nevitt’s treatment of Fallon had changed drastically several months ago. Cold resentment had turned into eager participation in a rebellion. What if Nevitt hadn’t been helping her, but setting her up by letting her think she’d created a safe hideout?
What about Ross? He’d been in on Avian Unit’s inner workings. Had he taken incredible risks to gain their trust?
Fallon didn’t want to pace her quarters, so she walked the station instead. She took a slow, ponderous tour of each deck while she played devil’s advocate to every instinct she had.
