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  The commandant fumbled his response. “General . . . I don’t see . . .”

  “Precisely. What possible good could this ragtag band do? The answer most certainly is, none whatsoever. But that is not the point.” Brodwyn returned to her place behind the desk. “Our ruling council ordered me to bring the Outer Rim under control. Our army failed. Our army, Commandant. They failed. So I ask you. What possible answer can we offer the inspectorate when they arrive?”

  When the commandant did not respond, Vance offered, “That we have continued to try.”

  “Exactly. But the minister of defense, my direct superior, did not gain his position by sacrificing good men on futile gestures.” She pointed to Nicolette. “Do you understand why I am divulging state secrets?”

  Nicolette nodded. “Because you think—”

  “I do not think, soldier. I know.”

  “—you’re sending us on a suicide mission.”

  Brodwyn let the silence own them for a time. “Well?”

  Nicolette’s voice did not waver. “Asked and answered, General. We will not fail.”

  8

  Sean returned to Georgetown alone. He waited in a café a block away from the senator’s home. An hour and a half later, confirmation arrived of Landon’s safe retrieval and the kidnappers’ arrest. Sean’s rewards were a hug from Carey and a handshake from John, which was far more than Dillon received.

  Sean transited to the Institute just as the apprentice Diplomats filed into the dining hall. The student center had long, cafeteria-style tables where most Attendants were expected to take communal meals. This was another of the relentless rules—start practicing diplomacy through interaction with classmates. Senior instructors were on constant patrol via cameras that flitted about the public rooms. Enough down-checks and students spent years inside windowless vaults, sorting planetary archives. But after returning that evening he had no interest in company, no matter how many down-checks he earned.

  He selected his food and headed for a table by the window where he could be alone. Some students came from worlds where certain meals required solitude. He decided that was what he would say if asked—the primitive culture on his outpost world demanded that he be alone. But no one approached. He watched the courtyard fountain through the window to his right and did his best to ignore the stares from other students that were reflected in the glass.

  His meal finished, he pushed the tray to one side, opened his tablet, and began studying the lesson he had missed. Sean was certain Kaviti would pounce on him the next day. Soon he was lost in the convoluted mess that formed the political status of Cygneus Prime. Their politics actually made for a fascinating read. After centuries of rejecting the invitation, Cygneus had recently requested to join the Assembly.

  Still today, the nine inhabited Cygnean planets were ruled by hereditary fiefs, with warrior tribes and liege lords and a whole host of menacing despots. According to some reports, a few deposed rulers had actually taken their entire populations into space, from where they preyed on the weak and sought to defeat their ancient foes.

  “How’s the food here?”

  Sean looked up to see his brother standing next to the table. “Better than at Josef’s school,” he replied. “Marginally.”

  Dillon had changed into another uniform of cadet green. “You think anybody will object if I loaded up a tray?”

  “Why don’t you go see?”

  Dillon sped through the line and returned with enough food for three people. “What are you studying?”

  “Cygneus Prime.”

  Dillon ate at a ravenous pace. “Space pirates, right?”

  “Give the guy a medal.” Sean watched his brother wolf down the meal. “Work up an appetite, did we?”

  “Bad habit,” he said between bites. “I just finished twenty days of battlefield training. We only got a few minutes to eat.”

  Sean stowed his tablet and waited for Dillon to finish. Then he said, “This isn’t just a friendly visit.”

  Dillon pushed his tray aside. “Nope.”

  “I’m thinking you came to warn me there might be some blowback.”

  Dillon wiped his mouth, then balled his napkin tighter and tighter. “I could have been wrong, involving you in this.”

  “Hey, we’re a team.”

  “You may not feel that way once they start blasting away.”

  “Dillon, that gig was the first serious fun I’ve had in months.”

  His brother showed him the schoolyard grin. “For real?”

  Sean’s response was cut off by a Messenger bong, the loudest he had ever heard.

  Dillon pushed back his chair. “Stand up.”

  The second chime carried enough force to compress Sean’s chest. Bong. The third was louder still. BONG. Three Messengers appeared before them. At least, Sean assumed they were Messengers. But their uniforms were an electric blue. And in their hands were . . .

  “Dillon Kirrel, Sean Kirrel, by the authority of the Human Assembly, I am hereby placing you under arrest.”

  Sean had heard about the devices the guards carried. They looked like black steel cuffs. Clamps. They formed the worst of the student’s tales, the ones that were whispered about late at night. They anchored the wearer and temporarily erased the power of transit.

  Sean fought down nausea for the second time that day.

  The guard stated, “If you attempt flight, the tribunal will take this as an admission of guilt.”

  “We’re not going anywhere,” Dillon said.

  “The act of fleeing will be taken as a presumption of guilt. Your punishment will be set at the most extreme level allowed by law.”

  “This is us not running,” Dillon said.

  The guard stepped forward and gripped Sean’s arm with the finality of a prison door. “Come with us.”

  9

  Thirty-three hours after their meeting with General Brodwyn, Logan’s team departed for the Outer Rim.

  Their preparations became a madcap adventure all their own. No matter how fast Logan moved, the clock still beat him ragged. For all the orders he and Vance and Nicolette shouted, a hundred things were left undone. None of them slept. There was no time for a decent meal, hardly enough for a long breath.

  From a distance, their ship looked like any number of free traders that plied the empty reaches. Up close it looked even worse, with pockmarked sides and a rusting undercarriage that seemed barely able to support its weight. Most of the vast interior was given over to the cargo that Logan hoped would pave their entry. The cramped chambers assigned to his team stank of long use and too many previous occupants. This was as it should be, for a most profitable outbound cargo was men. Aldwyn consumed miners at a voracious pace. Even so, the few who survived usually came home rich. There were always more willing to accept the hazards and near-certain death.

  The ship’s true value was hidden deep, for at its heart burned a ditrinium engine. A ditrinium motor transformed a ship, even one as nasty and battered as this, into a sleek jungle beast. This was one reason why the rare metal was so highly valued. The military-grade engine granted their vessel five times the legs of any standard transport and could outrun all but the swiftest fighters. As far as Logan was concerned, having the general assign him this vessel was Brodwyn’s way of saying “good hunting.”

  Aldwyn was completely out of sync with the Cygnean system’s other worlds. The rogue planet swam in an elliptical orbit. The farthest point of its nine-year cycle lay beyond the twin gas giants. Then it swung back inside all but the two worlds closest to their sun. Some said the months of endless dark drove everyone except the strongest mad.

  Aldwyn was now approaching Cygneus on the inward swing. This meant most Cygnean ports were clogged with ships and men. But not theirs. At Logan’s request, Brodwyn assigned them to the remotest military base with its own private landing site. The Outer Rim had spies of its own, and Logan could not risk word reaching Aldwyn of their approach.

  Their base stood on a
n island just outside their planet’s arctic circle. Even in the middle of summer the temperature remained frigid. There was neither snow nor ice, however, because the confluence of ocean currents kept all storms at bay. The island held one small village, nestled inside a rock-walled harbor. Otherwise the landscape was scrub and migrating birds and misery. But the ocean currents formed the richest fishing territory on Cygneus.

  Nicolette stepped up beside Logan, who stood on the transport’s rear deck, scowling at the windswept landing strip. “Something the matter?”

  “I know I’ve forgotten something.”

  “You’re exhausted. We all are.” She glanced back at where the two squads were finishing their first hot meal in two days. “They did an amazing job.”

  “When we’re a million miles out and it’s too late, I’ll realize what it is I’ve left undone.”

  “That’s the sign of a good leader, worrying,” Nicolette replied. “Where’s Vance?”

  “Coming.”

  She snorted. “If he’s late, you should make this place his next assignment.”

  “Vance is never late.”

  “He deserves this place. He can spend his days romancing the gulls.” She squinted against a blast of frigid wind. “And the eels. They’re made for each other.”

  Logan pointed into the gloom. “Here he comes now.”

  “Pity, that.”

  “Nicolette . . .”

  “I told you I’ll work with him and I will. But I don’t have to like it.”

  When the base transport halted before the ship’s loading platform, Logan realized Vance was so hungover as to appear near death. Two grinning squaddies stepped down, then gently lifted Vance from the rear seat. The subaltern squinted against the half-light. The soldiers gripped his arms and half dragged, half carried him into the hold.

  Nicolette greeted him with, “You truly are disgusting.”

  “Softly, softly,” Vance moaned. “You are in the company of the sorely afflicted.”

  “How did you find the time? How did you find the drink?”

  “Don’t forget the ladies,” one of the soldiers added. “Three of them.”

  Vance winced as the ship sounded its alarm and the portal rumbled shut. “Deposit me in some dark corner, that’s a good lad,” he said.

  Logan pointed the soldiers toward the officers’ quarters, then said to Nicolette, “Inform the pilots we are good to go.”

  The captain was named Hattie. She and her six-man crew only entered the hold twice during the five-day voyage. Both times they were taciturn to the point of rudeness. Logan found no fault in their attitude. Hattie flew a small bevy of troops to what she assumed was certain death. Neither she nor her crew had any interest in getting to know soldiers who would soon become corpses.

  The steel hatch between the hold and the control room remained locked from the other side. Their isolation suited Logan perfectly. He spent the entire journey preparing his team.

  Until that point, only Vance and Nicolette knew what he had in mind, and for them it was all theory. They had come with him primarily on trust. Now they saw the truth revealed.

  It all came down to the secret Logan had carried since childhood. Three days after his ninth birthday, he had developed an enhanced awareness. He called it a new sense of smell.

  He had no other way to describe the change. His nostrils played no part, and yet he smelled a difference in one of his friends. They were all scavengers who flitted from shadow to shadow within the capitol’s winding ways. Poverty-stricken and always hungry, they clustered together for survival. Logan had not much cared for many of them. But affection played less of a role than the need for combined strength.

  One of his favorite friends had been the first new scent he had detected, a rat-faced girl who at first had no idea what he was talking about when he said she could move from place to place without walking. He did not think this. He knew. Just as he knew that this was a secret he could share with no one. The legends of the ghost-walkers and the Assassins formed their favorite childhood game. Ghost-walkers could travel in an instant, they threatened the fabric of reality and fiefdoms, the Assassins wiped them out. They had not existed within the Cygnean system for over a thousand years. Only Logan and his scrawny friend knew different.

  Then he smelled a second. And a third. And three more. By then, seven years had passed. Logan was old enough to think and to plan.

  They broke off all contact with the others and formed a new gang. Logan continued to find others. He came upon them in the alleys and the gutters. He had to find them young, before the harsh life quenched the soul’s fragile flames. They had to be able to listen, to obey, to bond. Older than eleven or twelve and they were feral beasts in human skin, good for nothing but trouble. And that was the one thing Logan knew they had to avoid. Their survival depended upon going unseen, which required discipline.

  Discipline was what drew him into the military. He needed to learn how to lead by following. He needed to find a place where they might forge a bond and survive beyond the next theft. For they were all stealing now, taking what they needed in order to survive. Never too much, and never from the same place twice. Despite his best efforts, however, rumors had begun surfacing that ghost-walkers were about. Logan heard about secret police who were ordered to kill on sight. He knew their time was running out.

  The only way they could survive was by proving their worth. Doing the impossible. Succeeding because of their secret gift. Swearing allegiance to a leader strong enough to keep them alive.

  When they lifted off from the island keep, Logan’s team numbered nineteen.

  Nineteen civilian ghost-walkers, thirty unseasoned troops, and three officers. Hardly a force to be reckoned with.

  Which was precisely what Logan had in mind. He would enter an impossible situation against insurmountable odds and give his leaders a victory they had never imagined possible.

  Then again, they might all die. The risk was both real and almost likely. But Logan had lived with deadly secrets for so long, he could find a faint peace in doing his best and not succeeding. So many lives he had known were wasted upon the next drink, the next wench, the feeble excuse of pleasures that came hard and left easy. At least he and his team would give their all for a reason greater than just another forlorn hour.

  They trained hard. Logan and his two officers explained the plan through practice. They introduced the wide-eyed squad of regular troops to the concept of being transported instantly from one hold to the next. Back and forth, fashioning teams of three and four, creating a flexible pattern that could be redesigned to suit whatever terrain or threat they encountered. Working on speed and stealth and silent attack. Hour after grueling hour. Logan was never satisfied, but he praised them just the same. And then sent them back to do it all again. Only Vance refused to be transported. He observed, he commanded well, but he held back. Logan did not insist. Nor did he allow Nicolette to mock Vance.

  Four days after liftoff, Logan arranged a feast. He invited the pilots and was glad when they declined. The ship carried a wealth of fresh produce, and the meal was splendid. When they had all eaten their fill and the songs had been sung and the peace was strong between them, he rose to his feet and called for silence.

  They were a motley crew, the civilians streetwise and scrawny and feral and squinty-eyed. The squaddies who had volunteered for this duty were mostly dross as well. They were the leftovers no one wanted, but because they had managed to scrape by in basic training, they were called soldiers. Theirs was a feeble future of clerking and following someone else’s orders, years of shelving boots and classing uniforms and preparing supplies for those who went off to fight. But the same desperate need radiated from all their faces. They were soldiers because they belonged nowhere else, and because of this they were superior to almost everyone in Logan’s eyes.

  “When I was very young, my father sang me to sleep,” he began. “It is the only clear memory I have of the man, other than watching h
im swing from the palace ramparts after they hung him for being the marauder he was. He sang to me the outlaw tunes, the legends that fashioned the earliest memories of my clan. The Hawks were known as the fiercest of warriors. But their time of true glory was long ago. The Hawks I knew were a defeated lot who fed themselves more on myth than reality. But I have studied our race’s history, and I know that at least some of the legends are borne on truth. Our world was once ruled by dragons.”

  He began pacing back and forth. “The finest tales, the ones I loved hearing most, were about the heroes who defeated the dragons and claimed this world for humankind. Nowadays our leaders have ordered that the legends be erased from memory. But the family that enslaved my mother traded secretly in the ancient scrolls. I read all I could find, and I tell you the ghost-walkers were how the dragons were finally defeated. After that final battle, clan leaders who feared the ghost-walkers’ power sent out Assassins to eradicate them and all their families. And so they vanished. Never to be seen again.”

  Logan turned to face his crew. “Until now.”

  He let the words hang in the air, then began pacing once more. “The dragons were feared for their size and their ferocity, but even worse was how they had the ability to spout death. Some shot an unseen fire so fierce it melted the thickest armor, others an invisible poison that ate the bones of men. But most dread of all were the beasts that breathed a potion of pure, distilled fear that turned the stoutest hearts to vessels of terror.

  “When the ghost-walkers became soldiers and were sent out to do battle with the beasts and their lords, they took this dread weapon as their name. The walkers became known as Dragon’s Breath. And that is the title I give to us today. We are the invisible bringers of doom to all who stand in our way.”

  Logan stopped and waited.

  Vance snarled, “Troops, atten-shun!”

  If anything, Nicolette’s command was fiercer still. “Dragon’s Breath, salute!”