Chapter 95
Chapter Ninety-Five
Coated in wet bug guts, reeking like something that had crawled from a sewer, Connor could only stare at Martienne’s torn corpse. She’d been staring at the sky, as if she might be dreaming of escaping the horrible planet with her ship.
It wouldn’t happen, though. He’d failed the team, and she’d paid the cost.
He spat out a mouthful of bug goo, which quickly sank into the thirsty moss.
The ringing in his head subsided. That was the work of his helmet, which had spread the impact of the blast as widely as possible. When he heard muted chatter among the team, it really was soft rather than his ears failing him.
Vicente backpedaled from where he and Elise had been watching the tree line. “Boss?”
Connor mechanically went through the routine of checking Martienne’s weapon: still functional, ammunition still in the magazine. “Yeah?”
“Good call. On that explosive, I mean.”
Lem helped Tom up. “The flank would have been overrun.”
Selen unfastened Martienne’s backpack. “We should have seen them.”
“The bugs must have massed somewhere out of sight, Captain. We—”
“You didn’t see them.” Selen emptied the backpack with an angry shake, then unzipped the interior and pulled out the black liner.
Connor helped her unfold the material, which extended out into a bag. Teeth clenched, he lowered the pilot’s legs into the bag, then her torso.
This was his mistake, his loss.
Kalpana was at Connor’s side, thigh pressed against his shoulder.
He was about to snap at her, to yell at her that this wasn’t the time, to get control of whatever was messing with her head.
Then he saw that she had a hand extended, the fingers wrapped around something.
Connor opened his palm, and she dropped four bullets into it.
They were different sizes, one of them from her sniper rifle.
Her face was stilled by an absolute calm as she twisted and took a step toward Selen. “Jams. That’s what killed her.”
Selen snorted. “Weapons jam all the time.”
“Not my rifle.”
“You can’t use that excuse.”
“Bad bullets. Four.”
“You don’t know that.”
Kalpana glanced back at Connor. “We will.”
He stared at the bullets. They hadn’t fired. All at about the same time. What were the odds of that? He couldn’t remember the last misfire or jam. It didn’t happen with his team.
Selen brushed past the shorter woman and held a hand out. “I’ll look at them when we get back to the Lucky Sevens.”
The team stopped what they were doing and slowly turned toward Connor.
He closed his fingers over the bullets again. “I’ll examine them.”
“I just said I would. Connor.”
Heat flashed through his face. Fighting over dud rounds after losing someone to an attack made no sense, yet that’s exactly what Selen wanted. She wasn’t going to back down, and if he did, it would be a betrayal of the team.
He shoved the bullets into a pants pocket. “We’ll check them together.”
Vicente shifted around, trying to make the casual repositioning seem accidental when he shoved his beefy shoulder between them. “Hey, Captain, we getting out of here?”
Kalpana turned, her rifle pointing vaguely in Selen’s direction, even though the barrel was angled to the ground. “More coming.”
The Moon twins positioned themselves at either end of the bodybag.
But it was the way they held themselves, weapons readied exactly like Kalpana’s—vaguely threatening.
Selen had been warned to repair relations but hadn’t.
This was her team, but she was pushing everyone away.
She took in a deep breath. “All right. We’ll resolve this when we get back to the ship.” But the glare she threw at Connor could have burned a hole through a meter-thick steel plate.
Kalpana took the lead, and Vicente fell to the rear. Each of them gave Connor a look that said he’d done the right thing.
At what cost, though?
There would be reprisals. Even if he could pull up the data from the integrated combat network and show just how absurdly improbable the failures had been and how the timing made it not improbable but impossible, Selen was still going to have her two kilograms of flesh.
As they ran through the jungle, Selen drifted over to Connor’s position. Instead of a reprimand or threat, she sighed between deep gulps of air. “You realize we’re down to one pilot.”
“I know.” It was the one position a team never ran short on.
“And despite anything Yemi says, he’s not the pilot Martienne was.”
“I know. Almost anyone can get a ship off the ground and onto the tarmac.”
“I was considering trying that rappel maneuver you said you used to get the cargo out of that mercenary wreckage, fly over the pit area and drop down on the roof of one of the high buildings. Not with Yemi.”
“Even with Martienne, those structures might buckle under the down blast.”
“Might.” Selen jogged along in silence for a while.
“Selen—”
“You turned my team against me.”
She’d turned them against her, but Connor wasn’t about to point that out to her. The bullets rattled in his pocket, a reminder of what had pushed things to this point.
He shook his head. “They’re still your team.”
“You know they are. And when we get back to civilization, you’re gone. Don’t expect a recommendation from me, either.”
Connor’s guts twisted. He was too important for her to fire him just yet, but he was on notice.
And he couldn’t blame her. This had been building…
Ever since Dr. Litvinenko, it had felt inevitable.
He smiled. “At least we know we can trust Elise.”
Selen scowled. “You sure of that?”
“The camp was a great tip. We’ve got food, ammunition, explosive. We’ve got a chance now. And she fought against the bugs. She did well.”
“Where was she when you were trying to put your firing ranks together?”
Rather than wait for Connor to attempt an answer, Selen returned to her position on the other flank.
As if sensing the question, Elise turned from her position in the center of the formation.
And smiled.
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