Chapter 60
Chapter Sixty
When Kalpana threw up an arm to signal a halt, Connor almost sighed in relief. She was still a golden glow of fire in the infrared from his visor, brilliant against the midnight blue.
His back spasmed after far too many kilometers with Martienne on his shoulders, and his mouth was so dry that his tongue stuck to the roof.
A rest. She had to have found a place for them to stop.
The scout waved him forward and pointed to a small, upward sloping clearing about fifteen meters ahead. “One of those mounds Lem and I can watch from.”
Connor sucked in deep gulps of the night air, no longer caring that it wasn’t as cool as he would’ve liked or that he stank from the exertions and the gore covering him.
He nodded. “Perfect.”
It wasn’t, of course. The rise toward the mound wasn’t enough to slow the lizard things if they charged, and there was nothing to take cover behind. Although a clearing meant things couldn’t sneak up on them, it also meant the bugs could drop from the sky.
Except the last of the bugs had abandoned them for now. Only the croaking and chittering of the lizards echoed through the woods.
He waited for the others to reach the tree where he and Kalpana had taken cover.
Selen looked the site over. “It’ll have to do.”
That was good enough for now, even if she’d delivered it with a sour, resentful tone that drew a glare from Kalpana and a few others.
Mosiah helped Aubriella to the base of the mound and dropped down beside the young woman. The others spread out, taking positions all around the ovoid, honeycombed rock.
Connor set Martienne down and a second later slid to the hard moss himself. He nearly emptied his canteen, leaving just enough to get through the last leg of the journey.
When he leaned back, he realized the pilot’s eyes were open.
She blinked. “What happened?”
“I don’t know. I think you and Gregor got separated from Kalpana.”
The pilot pulled her helmet off and stared at the visor. In the glow of Connor’s flashlight beam, the hardened material spiderwebbed out from a deep dent. “A shadow, it fell from the the darkness.”
“A bug.” Connor rubbed a gloved finger over the dent and came away with a sticky residue that was a wicked green in the light. “That helmet saved you from its stinger.”
She shuddered. “I remember screams.”
“Drew. She died.”
“Oh.” The pilot’s eyes widened. “Oh. Terrible.”
“We lost Rudy, too.”
Martienne cupped her face in her hands and looked away. “No.”
“He took two of those things down with him.”
Her shoulders shook. “That does not bring him back.”
It didn’t. “I’m sorry. He was a good man—our anchor.”
Soft sobbing escaped from her hunched form. “Yes.”
Connor gently patted her shoulder. “We’ll make it. He saved lives.”
Like Vicente had said about Aubriella, there would have to be time for people to process the losses. Connor was even more torn about what had happened to Drew. It had seemed so wrong…unfair.
After a while, Martienne settled back, wiping her face with the back of her hand. “He will not be alone.”
“I’m sorry?”
“Rudy. Before long, we will be with him.”
The painful honesty in her voice surprised Connor. “We’ll get out of here.”
“Without him? Without our engineer? No. We will not leave this place.”
“This team still has a lot of experience. Yemi can help me with the repairs.”
“That old fool?” Martienne snorted. “I will tell you something: In life, if you survive certain death, it is the one miracle you will ever know. The one. I have had mine already.”
“Your helmet just did its job, Martienne. That’s not a miracle.”
She shook out her hair, then her hand went to the bandage from where he’d relieved pressure on her brain. “I mean a mission.”
“A different mission?” Connor couldn’t recall anything close to the threat the team faced now.
For him, certainly, there had been the improbable survival of the Nyango Revolt, but that hadn’t been a miracle, and that hadn’t been the team. Zacharias Wentz had been the only reason Connor had survived.
Then it dawned on him. “You mean when you were a blockade runner?”
“Yes.” She stared at her hands. “Long ago.”
“It wasn’t that long.” She couldn’t even be fifty yet, but war aged a person.
“It was during one of the wars that was not called a war. The Directorate wanted to teach the Coil government a lesson, you see? Blockade a planet where illness was raging.”
That sounded vaguely familiar. “And you tested the blockade?”
“Three times. The last one, my friends told me, ‘No. This one is bad.’”
He knew that feeling now: a premonition of things being wrong. “Did they join you?”
“Yes. Six of them. Excellent pilots, all of them, you see. Veterans.”
“Brave.”
“No, no—determined. If I was to go, they felt they too must go. And I did not feel this was such a dangerous mission.” She snorted. “Young and stupid.”
“You survived.”
“I did. I was the only one. We got through the blockade, you understand? We delivered the medicine. Lives were saved. But when we tried to escape, all of what we knew proved wrong.”
“What happened?”
Her hands shook. “Before we arrived, the Directorate had sent in new corvettes to strengthen the fleet. They were fast and had missiles.”
Like the ones that had come after them over Mara, when they’d tried to flee. Connor wanted to comfort her, but she was somewhere else, living through something from decades before.
She sucked in a stuttering breath. “Henri, he was my…mentor. My protector, you see? All I knew, he knew. He sensed them before the instruments. He got out a warning before the sensors told us what was coming.”
“And…?”
“Henri had said before we launched that something was wrong. He felt something was out there. Then, a missile turned his ship into a star. Just for a second.”
Connor had seen ships blow up like that. “It was instantaneous.”
“For him, yes. For me, seeing them all die.” She exhaled—long and deep. “This time, I will not escape.”
“Don’t be morbid. We’ll make it.”
“No. Connor, listen to me.” Her eyes came up, wet and sad. “I tell you, none of us will leave here. I am sure of it.”
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