Chapter 41
Chapter Forty-One
Wiry, gray-green moss slushed and popped beneath Connor’s booted feet as he hauled the last of the heavy cargo cases from the Lucky Sevens passenger bay. He set the case down at the edge of the semicircle he and Selen had created with the gear unpacked from the shuttle.
There were twelve containers in all, half of them the standard gray and olive cases that filled much of Lucky Sevens’s cargo hold. The other half were Mosiah’s reinforced containers, which seemed to be loaded with gold or lead.
Selen had stripped out of her armor for the work. Now her black T-shirt clung wetly to her long frame. She looked dangerously lean, as if the planet were sucking away her strength. “That’s it.”
“We can pull out tools and empty oxygen tanks.” Connor scraped his boots against the bottom of the case, peeling moss from the soles.
“Do it. Every kilogram matters.”
“All right.” Salty sweat dripped into his mouth.
As if perspiration was going to help cool him down in such thick air.
He brushed his dark, wet hair back, then took his armored top off and draped that over the case he’d just set down, then pulled off his shirt and T-shirt. They were both soaked through.
“You giving the ladies a show?” Selen smirked, but she stared, too.
“I think we’re all too concerned with survival to care.”
He wrung out his T-shirt, wincing at the sweat that dripped out and the musky smell that remained. They should have taken pills to prepare for the humidity. Even basic powders could help by closing off pores for several hours without causing overheating.
It was one of many details missed.
Because who could have thought things would go so bad?
She yanked the bottom of her T-shirt out of her pants and fanned herself with the material, which made a sucking plop on her skin with each pull. “Three days of food and water. Double that if we ration carefully.”
Connor swatted at a buzzing sound that had to be a bug he couldn’t see in the twilight. “It won’t be food or water that gets you if we’re gone that long.”
“Optimism looks so hot on you.”
“I mean it. There’s something terrible in there.”
Selen’s face twisted in a snarl. “The way you described it, that whole place sounds pretty terrible.”
“It is. Like one big corpse slowly being decomposed or something.”
“Thanks. That’s cheerful.”
“A place like this—I’m finding it pretty easy to believe Gregor’s story.”
“You said yourself that we had to take this job.”
“We did.” Connor searched around for Mosiah, who was standing beside Rudy and Kalpana, caught up in a conversation. “I didn’t realize Mosiah was going to be such a problem.”
“I warned you.”
“You did.”
Selen pursed her lips, then dug inside one of the team’s battered cases and pulled out a big hand light. “You want a last inspection?”
He waved her toward the shuttle, then pulled his T-shirt back on.
Drew and Yemi were still under the shuttle, but now they were scraping the belly. Sheets of something dark peeled away beneath the tips of their screwdrivers.
It was the ichor, Connor realized.
Martienne had a panel open at the rear, next to one of the rocket nacelles. She muttered what must have been French curses under her breath until Selen rapped on the fuselage.
The pilot’s head came around the panel, red hair washed to a dark gray in the early night. “Oui?”
Selen indicated Connor with a thumb. “Crucial decision time.”
A scowl settled on the pilot’s face. “The fuel line, it is sealed.”
He squinted at Drew, who had stopped scraping the spacecraft’s belly. “Can we get it airborne?”
The engineer nodded
Martienne harrumphed. “Airborne? Yes. Is she space worthy? This I do not know.”
Connor turned back to the pilot. “What about fuel? How much do we have?”
“Enough for maybe twenty minutes.”
“Is that enough to get us back to Lucky Sevens?“
“If we use the jet fuel first and nothing else breaks, yes.” Martienne turned her scowl on Selen. “Such a thing, it is risky. We will have no maneuvering thrusters, and if we fail to break atmosphere, we will plunge to the ground.” The pilot slapped her hands together. “No maneuvering. No safe landing.”
Whatever was making the buzzing sound was back now. Connor swatted at the sound, then backed away from it. He apparently smelled tasty to the thing.
The buzzing receded.
He pointed to Drew. “Here’s the plan: Drew and I head up in the shuttle with Martienne.”
Yemi stopped scraping. “Yemi pilots shuttle better.”
Connor held up a hand to stop the mechanic. “We’ll need you down here. You’re a crack shot.” And Martienne wasn’t. “The three of us head up, everyone else huddles down here and rides things out as long as you can.”
“Yemi gets more from rockets—”
Martienne shook her screwdriver at the mechanic. “It is you who crashed the shuttle three years ago!”
“Yemi crashes the shuttle after Martienne breaks the wing actuator!”
Connor got between the two, hands raised. “We can argue this later, over a beer. All right? Right now, we have to get up to the Lucky Sevens. Right?”
Both of them looked away.
At least they’d stopped the bickering for a second. Connor waved for Drew to come out from under the shuttle. “You going to be okay on this flight?”
The engineer bowed her head. “Is there a choice?”
“Not really.”
She looked up from beneath the thin curves of her eyebrows. “Then I’m okay.”
“All right. Stay with me.”
Selen hissed softly as the younger woman all but nestled against Connor’s side.
Connor had a lot of work to do to salvage Drew’s job, no matter how the evidence came out.
He shook hands with Yemi, then held his hand out for Selen.
She kept her hands on her hips. “How long do you think repairs will take?”
“A day. Two.” He stepped closer to the woman who’d been his boss for years now. “If it looks too messy, we’ll brink the Lucky Sevens down.”
“She can’t handle this place.”
“I’m not leaving you down here, Selen.” He had to fight the urge to hug her. “None of you. We all go home together.”
What he saw on her face was a certainty that none of them were leaving.
Ever.