“And of course by that point, the team you normally would have sent out had already been sidelined.” Fallon frowned.
“Avian Unit was the best Blackout team, in my opinion. I never understood why Colb seemed to favor Stone Unit over you. And I objected when he sent you out on individual deep-cover missions. I wanted you back, but he insisted he had you on critical assignments. He backed it up with details, but I still felt another team should be doing that work.”
Fallon’s attention caught on the mention of Stone Unit. “Do you know that I killed Granite? I didn’t know who he was at the time. I intended to question him but I injured him too badly.”
Krazinski winced. “Yes. I did know.”
He said nothing more, but Fallon distinctly sensed that he blamed himself for not seeing it all much sooner.
Disasters and betrayals were always like that. They seemed impossible right up until they happened.
“Any idea why Fallon was singled out to get an implant?” Raptor asked. “Colb had a lot of BlackOps to choose from.”
“I can only speculate. Either he wanted to separate your unit to keep you from being able to work against him, or he did it specifically to get access to Fallon. Maybe because of her extraordinary memory?”
Fallon only nodded. She was disappointed he didn’t have more to add about what had happened to her, but clearly those answers could only come from Colb himself.
Krazinski continued, “When he knew I suspected him, he began to squeeze me out. Tried to discredit me. Prove that I was unreliable. He connected some of his own dealings to me, making it seem I was the cause of it all. He managed to confuse the others in Blackout long enough to get his ass to Zerellus and make himself conspicuous.” Anger darkened his face. “Of course we could do nothing at that point but try to keep him isolated.”
“Because a public death or apprehension would have brought all the treaty violations to light,” Fallon finished.
“Yes. And it gets worse,” Krazinski said.
“Oh good, I was hoping you’d say that.” Raptor sighed.
Krazinski ignored him. “The Barony Coalition has begun strategic attacks on small outposts on the fringes of the PAC zone. Testing our strength and tolerance. They’re aware of at least some of the treaty violations—thanks to Colb, I’m guessing—and their goal will be to shift the balance of power so that they can take over the PAC.”
“They’ll be strip-mining entire planets and raising prices to the point that less prosperous planets begin to starve.” Outrage flooded through Fallon. The Barony Coalition was barely contained under the best of circumstances. They followed the very letter of the law, but exploited any gray area. Fallon didn’t want to find out how far they’d go to take advantage of the PAC’s difficulties.
“Do they know that command is under more stress than just a terrorist threat?” Raptor asked.
“We have to assume they at least suspect so.” Krazinski seemed reluctant to admit it. “We’ve done remarkably well, all things considered, at selling that story, but I never expected the Coalition to buy it. Still, I’d hoped to keep them pacified and uncertain long enough to allow us to handle Colb and reassert ourselves.”
“Which means we need to contain Colb so that he can’t do any further damage, shore up all of our treaties in good faith, and then soothe or scare the Barony Coalition back into compliance.” Fallon frowned. It was more than she’d bargained on.
“I’d say that sums it up,” Krazinski said.
Raptor stood. “Well, we’ve already started on a plan to get our hands on Colb. How do we handle the rest?”
Krazinski sent a final message out to the point-to-point network before joining Fallon and Raptor on the Nefarious.
They’d debated having Krazinski remain on the moon to maintain the communication relay, but ultimately decided that he could be put to better use in ensuring that Colb got snared in the web they were weaving. John Krazinski was a hell of an officer, and they needed all the help they could get.
After a quick debriefing, Fallon got herself to the bridge and began the sequence to get them off this dark little moon.
Peregrine sat in the chair beside her, looking pensive. “Ever hear of the warrior’s dilemma? Realizing that what you’re fighting for isn’t the fight for right that you first thought it was?”
Fallon had heard of it, but wondered why Peregrine would be asking about it at this moment.
She lifted them off the moon’s surface before she answered. “You mean us, right? When Colb was trying to use us against the PAC. You’re wondering what would have happened if we’d blindly followed our orders. If Raptor hadn’t gotten our team back together so we could fight back.”
“Yes.” Peregrine sounded thoughtful. More philosophical than Fallon had ever heard her. “Would we have been like Stone Unit? They were good people. Probably still are. They’re just on the wrong side of the fight.”
Fallon understood what Peregrine was getting at. “In war, nobody ever thinks they’re the evil one.”
“Yeah, and it could have been us. Colb thought we’d be his secret weapon, but we backfired on him.”
Fallon turned sideways to face Peregrine directly. “Is that how you see it?”
“Of course. Don’t you? It’s your head he carved into. Your life he wiped away. And here we are, about to be the ones to take him down.” Instead of sounding fired up, Peregrine sounded frustrated. The prospect of being used to do wrong had clearly been weighing on her.
Fallon established a flight path, and engaged the autopilot for a moment. She moved to the edge of her seat, leaned way over, and kissed Peregrine on the forehead. “We did what we were born to do. We figured it out, and got to work on fixing it. If you think about it, we had to be the ones all this happened to. Who else could have gotten underneath it all so we could stop it?”
Peregrine chewed on her
