The battle’s aftermath was patchwork to Pru. She remembered the thud at the back of her brain, when Alex and the dragon landed somewhere opposite the cabin. Cut forward a bit in her memory, and she’d hit the sight of Coalition personnel ushering survivors to safety, or speaking in authoritative voices with the gape-jawed No Man’s Land security personnel. Some bodies on the beach, still breathing, were loaded onto med evacuation craft. Other bodies, like Masterson’s, found shrouds. Body bags lined up on the black-scorched, red-stained beach. Not as many as Pru had feared. But body bags, all the same.
Someone dropped a blanket over her shoulders. “Prudence.”
Pru’s gaze jerked upward, unfocused, toward the blanket’s source. Her own body felt far too heavy, stuck in gravity’s embrace, too close to that scorched and stained stand. Gradually, Jay Park’s features fell into focus. How nice. “Are the others okay?” croaked Pru.
Jay didn’t have to ask which others she meant. “Your three conniving friends are miraculously uninjured, alive, and accounted for.” More wryly, he added, “Though whether you’ll all remain that way depends on how black of a mood Hakeem’s in, once he’s properly briefed on the extent of your activities. A party full of rich Incorporated douchebags, at No Man’s Land, no less? Really?”
“Blame your cousin.” Pru pulled the blanket tighter around her shoulders. “She thought it would be a good chance to get some Incorporated war profiteers drunk and learn a thing or two about their latest military tech.”
Jay sucked a breath in between his teeth. “Well, you certainly accomplished that much.”
“I think she was also trying to get laid,” said Pru.
Anabel’s cousin mugged a slightly scandalized expression. “Thanks, but I really don’t need your briefing on that part.”
“Talking about me?” Anabel materialized, Cat at her elbow. Both were pale, sporting deep shadows beneath the eyes, but their gaits held steady.
Jay rounded on his cousin. “This isn’t actually surprising, coming from you. You would waltz into one of the most controversial society parties of the season. What surprises me is how you convinced not one but three of your friends to go along with you.”
“I’m charismatic,” rasped Anabel. She coughed. “Doing Grandfather’s legacy proud. My reputation precedes me.”
“Also, one of us is already a juvenile delinquent anyway,” Cat put in helpfully.
“Thanks,” said Pru.
“I only speak the truth.”
Jay groaned, rubbing his temples. “I would blame the folly of youth, but I don’t think even I was this foolhardy at your age, and I’m related to you.”
“Please,” said Anabel, “you’re, like, five seconds older than I am.”
“I’m eleven years older than you are, thanks. What were you thinking? You could have died.”
“I was thinking that a terror attack on both Barricaders and UCC Inc. personnel was definitely not what the party itinerary meant by ‘fireworks display sponsored by Harold Jellicoe,’ so you can quit laying the blame for tonight on me.” Anabel’s voice was almost flawlessly cool, except for the crack on the last word. In a smaller voice, she said, “My job is information gathering. I just took what I heard at face value. Naive of me, really. I should have expected him to do this. It’s Jellicoe.” Her hands, empty of plasma guns or microphones, looked delicate and very small when she twisted them together.
Jay covered them with his own. “Your job is being a high school student. And a teenager. I just wish you’d told me.”
“Would you have stopped us?” asked Cat, eyebrows arched. She looked genuinely curious.
“Oh, he would have tried, but I would have overruled him. I believe in allowing precocious children long leashes.” Emerging from the crowd of Coalition personnel just outside the cabin entrance, Hakeem Bishop strode toward them, a vision right out of the war reels with an old Barricaders’ military jacket draped over his shoulders. It was the jacket, as much as the look on his face and heavy step of his gait, that reminded Pru of exactly what tonight’s events would mean to a man with Bishop’s history. A veteran who’d survived the wyverns of one Partition War in time to see a new flock return to the continent. Pru swallowed hard.
Beside Bishop, bearing the same under-eye shadows and pallid features as Anabel and Cat, was Alex, slightly shaky limbed. His eyes, dark and wide, locked on Pru’s. Outside the dragon’s cockpit, his voice no longer echoed inside her skull. The space between them, silence across two minds, felt oddly lonely.
Without really thinking about it, Pru closed the distance, and wrapped her fingers around his. To her surprise, he squeezed back, so hard she swore she felt her bones creak. Neither of them moved to let go.
Jay, meanwhile, had gone wry mouthed, but his face remained impressively free of any other indicator of surprise. “Hakeem. I didn’t expect to see you out here in person. It’s the middle of the night.”
“My sixth sense for troublesome youths tingled,” drawled the Chief of Staff. Bishop’s gaze raked back toward Alex, and zoomed in. “Young Monsieur Lamarque. For the record, if you think I don’t pay off snitches on both sides of the Barricades to keep an eye on your whereabouts, boy do you have another think coming.”
“Interesting,” mused Jay. “So you didn’t predict that Jellicoe’s demo would turn into an ambush either. Or you’d never have let Alex get within fifty miles of No Man’s Land.”
“No, I did not,” Bishop admitted. “An error in judgment, on my part. But not one I can regret. You saved lives tonight “
“Not their job!” snapped Jay, head jerking up. His eyes, usually lidded half-mast, had gone wide and angry. Those eyes locked on the Chief of Staff’s. An unspoken something shifted between the two men, some battle of wills neither seemed keen on copping to.
“Hakeem,” said Alex. It was the first time Pru had heard him refer to the Chief of Staff by first name, but it held the lilt of the familiar. Gently detangling his fingers from Pru’s, Alex turned toward Bishop, imploring, no longer the ace mech pilot, but a boy seeking counsel. “What do you know about the wyverns?”
Bishop’s eyes softened on him. He sighed. “I know you won’t get anywhere shooting them down one by one like we did tonight. You need to go after the—”
“Alpha, yes, we know,” interrupted Cat, cybernetic eye glittering in the dark. “Take the alpha out, and you kill the wyvern nest for good. The problem is, we don’t know who or what or where the alpha is. Any help, there?”
“For starters, the alpha isn’t one piece on the board,” said Bishop. “It’s two.”