The suppression field dropped as the
door flew open and Major Donkenny charged in, still in his sweat stained gym
clothes.
“Damn it, Wolf, I’ve been trying to
get you on your implant. We’ve got big problems. Two of our J/CO gunships are down over
by Summerfield.”
Youngblood stood, grabbed his holster
from the back of the chair and started to buckle it in place. “Do we know what
happened?”
“The pilot radioed in to say his
wingman was down and he was taking fire…”
Youngblood’s head snapped around.
“Fire? From whom?”
“That’s just it. He said there was
nothing up there with him. Even our scans show only the one ship. Then we lost
contact with him. Whatever was out there had to be fully stealthed.”
Fitz’s stomach dropped. Lizzy.
She’d left her ship parked on a ridge north of the base with orders to avoid
all contact, both mercenary or civilian. Had something happened while she was
out of contact to cause Lizzy to go off on her own and attack the
gunships? If new orders had been tight beamed to her, overriding the
communication’s blackout order, then the crap could have hit the impeller blade
back home and she wouldn‘t know anything about it. Without her spike in place
there was no way she could contact Lizzy and find out what was going on.
“I’ve rolled a crash team,” Donkenny
said. “And a medevac flyer.”
Youngblood nodded, cinching the tie
down straps on the holster tight against his leg. “Have them pull me out
another gunship. I’m flying shotgun with them.”
He turned to Fitz, his blue eyes
glittered with cold rage. “FitzWarren, if I bloody well find out you had
anything to do with this—I promise you—I will send you back to your Triumvir in
tiny chufting pieces.”
Refusing to wilt under that withering
gaze, Fitz clinched her jaw and snarled, “Don’t be such an ass, Youngblood.
I’ve been sitting here busting my butt to get you to cooperate with me. Why
would I go out of my way to antagonize you? I’m not that stupid.”
Damn it, if he quirks that eyebrow at
me, I swear I’ll slap it right off his face.
She studied his enraged features,
thought she saw the instant reason forced anger back into its box and slammed
the lid on it. “I can help,” she said. “I’ve worked crash teams before.”
“This is Gold Dragon business. We’ll
take care of it.” He turned and walked away, rolling up his sleeves. Fitz
followed him out of the conference room.
“But I want to help,” she said,
surprising herself, because at some time during the day, the Gold Dragons had
turned from a faceless group of mercenaries to real living beings with histories
and dreams of their own, beings she could care about. Particularly one.
In the outer office, Donnkenny,
incongruous in his sweats, choreographed a scene of frenetic activity. He
looked up from his pad when Youngblood approached. The easy camaraderie of
earlier was gone, replaced by proper military procedure. “Colonel, they’ve got
a gunship prepped for you at hangar 3.”
With a nod of acknowledgement,
Youngblood spun and sprinted down the hall, Fitz effectively dismissed. The
staff and even the guards were engrossed by the frenzied events playing out on
their screens, leaving Fitz unnoticed. No doubt, they expected her to find her
way back to her room unescorted and wait for the crisis to play itself out. Instead,
she dashed after Youngblood. He hadn’t
exactly said she couldn’t come with him.
He’d opted for the emergency exit
over the lift and the door to the stairwell rapidly slide shut behind him. If
she didn’t get to it before it closed, the palm lock wouldn’t recognize her and
she be stuck on this side. Putting on a burst of speed, she stuck out her hand
and caught the door just before it slammed shut, cursing as it smashed her
fingers. She pushed through and took the steps three at a time, hearing his
footsteps echoing up the vertical shaft. By the time they reached the ground
floor, she had almost caught up with him and pounded out of the building on his
heels. They struck off across the base.
Fitz’s lungs and cardiovascular
system had been enhanced to handle the stresses of hyperkinetic movement. Even
with her augmentations off line, she had the ability to run flat out for hours,
making up the advantage his longer legs gave him. They dashed into an alley,
hurdling over a stack of crates. The same alley, Fitz recalled, she’d crept
down only this morning.
Exiting it, they crossed a road,
heading for a row of hangers. In front of one, Fitz could see a ground-tech
unhitching a tow-bot from the front skids of an Akton Virmana MkIII. The
Virmana was bigger than the J/CO, with a compartment behind the pilots large
enough to carry an assault team and their gear. While Youngblood consulted with
the crew chief, Fitz began her walk around. She knew the ground crew had already
checked the ship for airworthiness, but she hated to trust her backside to any
aircraft without at least a cursory preflight of her own.
She pulled the engine covers and
stuffed them into the arms of the surprised ground-tech, then continued down the
fuselage checked to make sure everything was tight and all the control surfaces
moved freely. As she rounded the tail, she ran into Youngblood, mirroring her
actions on the other side of the ship. Their eyes met for a second and she
thought she saw a grudging approval in his gaze before he turned away.
She ran to the front, starting to
climb into the Virmana when a hand grabbed the back of her coveralls pulling
her up short.
“Uh-uh,” Youngblood said. “I’ll
pilot, you ride in the right seat.”
Ducking under the nose, she climbed
into the copilot’s seat, starting to bring up the avionics suite. “I could sync
in directly and get this down a lot faster if you’d let me use my spike.”
“There’s a cheat-sheet in the side
pocket if you’ve forgotten how to do it manually,” he answered and Fitz figured
that was a no.
Her fingers dancing deftly across the
console, she brought all flight systems on line, one after the other flashing
their readiness. “I’ve got a green board over here.”
Youngblood nodded his acknowledgment
as he took the weapons systems hot, and then put them in stand-by. “Check you
side.”
Fitz glanced behind her and saw the
ground crew had retreated to a safe distance and shouted, “Clear.”
Finding his side clear, Youngblood
hit the ignition and the Virmana’s engines spooled up with a howl and the airframe
vibrated like an animal trying to twitch off a fly. Fitz noticed three people
in hospital whites laden with gear running toward them waving to get their
attention. She tapped Youngblood’s arm and pointed. At his nod, she hit the
door switch and the trio climbed into the back, stowing their equipment. The
sole woman in the group studied her keenly. She looked to be about a decade
older than Fitz, with ginger hair going gray and a long face covered with freckles.
“Good afternoon, Doctor,” Youngblood
said. “Things a bit slow at the hospital today?”
“Nah, just thought I’d get out and
get a little fresh air.” She settled between the two med-techs, putting on a
headset and fishing out her harness.
“Major Rauschtonkowski is my Chief
Medical Officer,” he said to Fitz.
Fitz clasped the hand the woman
offered and introduced herself, stumbling on the unfamiliar name.
“Ah, don’t worry about it,” the
doctor said. “Just call me Doc Ski like everyone else does. If my patients had
to say that entire name, they’d be dead before they got it all out.” She
struggled into her restraints, snugging down her shoulder belts. “I’d tighten
my harness if I were you. I’ve flown with him before.”
Fitz checked her belts and was trying
to put on her helmet, when Youngblood fire-walled the throttles and the Virmana
took off like it had been spit out of a mass driver. Her stomach plunged to
just above her boot soles and she fought g-forces to raise the helmet to her
head.
The screams of the engines reverberated
off the buildings as the gunship gained altitude, hurtling across the perimeter
fence and out over the surrounding jungle. The canopy tossed like an angry
green sea in their backwash. A flock of multicolored lizards with four wings exploded
out of the trees, scattering in panic and Fitz was grateful for the gunship’s
shields. One of those through the windscreen or an engine intake would put a
quick and disastrous end to this expedition.
With her helmet finally on, the
engine noise receded into the background. Fitz patched into the frequency the
crash teams were using to bring herself up to speed on the rescue.
The two ships had crashed about ten
klicks apart. The southernmost one had exploded in the air and was little more
than scattered, burning wreckage. The second one had come down relatively
intact and there was a chance of survivors. She felt Youngblood swing the
Virmana’s nose more to the northwest in response to that information.
In the distance, she could see the
lowlands spread out in a tapestry of greens, broken only by two columns of
greasy black smoke. Beneath them she glimpsed the silver glint of a river. The
waters poured off the mountains and over the escarpment in a cloud of vapor
that the afternoon sun spun into rainbows.
Crossing over the precipice,
Youngblood pushed the gunship’s nose down and Fitz’s stomach—which had only
recently migrated back to its accustomed location—climbed into her throat. They
leveled out just above an expanse of bright green vegetation, quickly catching
and passing the slower emergency flyers.
What Fitz has first thought was grass
appeared to be over two meters tall. “What is this stuff?”
“Sugar cane,” Youngblood answered.
“And at the price they get for real sugar these days you can bet that the Rainy
who owns this field is already on the com to his attorney about how much he can
sue us for over this little debacle.”
Reducing air speed, he put the
gunship into a low tight circle over the crash site. “The external fire
suppression systems knocked down most of the flames and the cabin looks pretty
much intact.”
“Intact enough that someone may have
survived.” Ski said. “I need to get down there right away.”
“There’s a clearing on the other side
of that ditch.” Fitz pointed out the windscreen.
Landing next to a structure that looked
to be a pumping station for the irrigation system, the med-techs jumped out and
began unloading equipment. Reaching under his seat, Youngblood pulled out a
leather scabbard, extracting a long wide bladed knife.
“Keep an eye out for marquarks.” At
Fitz’s puzzled gaze, he elaborated, “It’s a poisonous lizard that lives in the
cane fields.”
“The Rainies call it the ‘Oh, Shit
Lizard’,” said the doctor. “Cause if it bites you, you’ll only have about enough
time to say ‘Oh, Shit’ before the neurotoxin paralyzes your cardiopulmonary
system and you’re dead.”
Wonderful, thought Fitz as she jumped out of
the Virmana. Poisonous lizards. One
more thing to add to my why
I hate planets list.
Fitz clambered down the loose sand of
the embankment. The muck at the bottom of the ditch was too wide to jump, so
she waded in, the muddy water coming up over her knees and sloshing down into
her boots, soaking her socks. As she started up the other side, Youngblood
reached down a hand and pulled her up, then turned to help the doctor.
The sugar cane towered over her in an
impenetrable wall of rustling green. Green. Rainbow was a veritable symphony of
greens. Stinging, itching, humid greens. Fitz was growing to despise the color.
“Don’t follow me too closely,” said
Youngblood. Sighting on the thin column of smoke rising over the vegetation, he
plunged into the field hacking a path through the thick stalks with the
machete.
Even with him clearing the way, the
going was far from easy. Broken stalks fouled her legs and her feet slipped and
slid in her water filled boots, threatening to twist her ankle at every step.
Her world narrowed down to a green tunnel with the flash of Youngblood’s white
shirt ahead of her and the stumbling curses of the three medicos behind. The
leaves razored tiny cuts on her face that stung as sweat rolled out of her hair
and down her cheeks.
Fitz squawked as a flood of tiny pink
balls of fluff poured over her boots. She tried to jump out of their way but
her body responded sluggishly and her feet became entangled in the stubbly
vegetation. She began to fall. A sinuous shape exploded out of the wall of
green, hurtling toward her face. There was a momentary impression of a thickly
muscled body beneath pebbled red, yellow and black skin. A rank stench of
reptilian musk washed over her. The mouth opened impossibly wide and Fitz could
see droplets of venom hanging from its fangs.
A glimmer of silver flashed at the
bottom of her vision, rising in a metallic arc. The blade slashed through the marquark, severing the body cleanly and
sending the pieces tumbling away. Youngblood reached a hand to her, pulling her
to her feet.
“I told you to watch out for the marquarks.” He turned back to hacking at
the cane before she had time to retort. She drew a shaky breath and stumbled in
his wake.
They broke out into the furrow the
gunship had plowed as it careened through the field. Clambering over piles of
dirt and broken vegetation, she picked her way along the side of the gunship.
Something in the twisted metal of the J/CO’s tail section caught her attention,
but she filed it away in her mental investigate that later file and
continued on to the door on the copilot’s side, peering through the window.
Beneath the instrument panel electronics
arced and smoldered, filling the cockpit with smoke. Either the internal fire
suppression system had failed to activate automatically, or it was manual and
neither occupant had been able to hit the release. A stanchion had broken loose
and impaled the pilot, killing him, but the woman in the right seat was not
only alive but conscious, weakly trying to get her attention. Fitz hand signed keep
still, hoping the woman understood. Girl, really. She looked to be
barely out of her teens and the fear made her look even younger.
This one’s alive,” she yelled and
slapped the release on the door. It popped open a few centimeters and stopped.
Hooking her fingers under the edge, she pulled but it refused to budge, even
when Youngblood added his strength to the effort.
“It’s jammed by the impact,” he said.
“It’s going to take more than the two of us to get this open and the crash
team’s still five minutes out. See it you can find something to use as a pry
bar.”
Fitz put her hand on his arm, halting
him. “You brought my spike, didn’t you?”
His eyes narrowed as he studied her
face, but he nodded.
“I can get her out before that flyer
even gets here. I know you’re not sure you can trust me, but don’t let your
stubbornness cost that kid her life. I want to help. Please.”
He reached into one of the clip cases
on his shoulder harness and pulled out a slender object wrapped in a scrap of cloth.
“Turn around.”
As he pushed her hair out of the way,
his fingers on her neck sent a shiver through her body like an electric shock.
He slipped the spike into its socket, giving it a quarter turn to snap it into
place. Because she hadn’t been able to properly shut it down before he’d yanked
it out, all her systems came back on in a crash of sensory overload that
buckled her knees. A strong arm slipped around her waist, pulling her tight
against his body. His other hand cradled her head, guiding it back to rest on
his chest. With her audio enhancements she could hear the rapid pounding of his
heart.
“Take deep breaths. It’ll pass in a
few seconds.” His voice was soft, muttered into her hair.
Fitz began shutting down the
unnecessary systems and the chaos inside her head subsided. “I’m okay,” she
said and when he didn’t respond right away she added, “You can let go of me
now.”
He released her so quickly she
stumbled and his voice took on the snap of command. “Take these.” He shoved a
pair of gloves into her hands and pushed her toward the gunship.
She hooked her gloved fingers under
the edge of the door and pulled. When nothing happened, she exerted more
pressure. Her enhancements were layered over her normal muscle strength, servos
meshing with her body so seamlessly that she couldn’t tell when one ended and
the other began. When she’d first been augmented, the hardest adjustment had
been to moderate that power, so that she wasn’t always knocking holes in doors
and crushing coffee cups.
The door began to peel up with a
series of juddering screeches, then tore loose with a metallic protest, opening
only a short distance before it hung up on a mound of dirt and debris. Fitz
shoved, bulldozing the obstruction out of the way until the door swung free,
slamming back against the side of the gunship. She dived through the opening, smashing
her palm on the release for the fire system and cold foam drenched her and the
cabin, knocking down the flames.
Checking the copilot, she found the
girl had a weak pulse and possible internal injuries. The instrument panel had
buckled, pinning her legs and probably breaking them. Youngblood pushed in
beside Fitz, dagger in hand, slicing the seat belts and radio connections.
“Can you free her legs?”
“Think so.” Fitz’s position was
awkward, reaching across the girl’s lap, but she was able to lift the panel
enough for him to slide her out and onto the back board the med-techs had
brought up to the side of the aircraft. Carrying her to their staging area, the
tech began checking her over, starting a line and putting in an airway. Doc Ski
ran the wand of a portable scanner over her body, intoning a litany of
injuries, punctuated by profanities.
“Both her chufting collar bones are
broken, a couple of ribs. Ah, chuft, she’s got internal bleeding. Both legs are
broken. Where’s that chufting medevac flyer?”
Fitz couldn’t see anything over the
towering green walls around them, but she could tell from the sound it was
close.
“They’re almost here. Should be down
in a couple of minutes. Is she going to make it all the way back to the base hospital?”
Fitz asked.
“Don’t have to,” said the doctor,
winding up the leads on the scanner, preparing to move out. “We’ve got a stasis
box on board the flyer.”
The null-time field of the stasis
cabinet would buy the girl all the time they needed to get to an operating
room. A portable med scanner and a stasis box were particularly high tech—and
expensive—equipment. Not what she’d expect to find in a mercenary unit, but
then the GDs and their enigmatic leader had turned out to be not at all what
she’d expected.
She followed Youngblood back to the
crashed gunship, helping him extract the dead pilot. By the time they got him
out and sealed into a body bag, the medevac flyer had landed and the doctor’s
crew had loaded the injured woman aboard. They stowed their equipment and the
flyer lifted off, its engines whipping the sugar cane into a frenzy and pelting
them with shredded leaves and grit.
Fitz remembered the anomaly that had
caught her attention earlier, so while Youngblood helped the crash crew
extinguish the last of the sluggish fire in the sugar cane field, she went back
to study the wreckage, hoping her initial split second assessment had been
incorrect. It hadn’t.
She called her ship. Using a civilian
frequency, she scrambled and disguised it to look like nothing more threatening
that a farmer reprogramming a robo-harvester.
“Lizzy?”
“What’s wrong, Commander?” answered
the ship’s computer. “I thought we agreed on radio silence…”
Fitz overrode her. “Lizzy, where are
you?”
“I’m…right were you left me,” she
said, growing circumspect.
“You haven’t moved?”
“Of course not, Commander. Has
something happened?”
“Two of the Gold Dragons’ gunships
have been shot down and the preliminary evidence leads me to believe it was an
Imperial ship. A stealthed Imperial ship.”
“And you think I did it?” For a
computer generated voice, she managed to show a lot of indignation.
“Sorry, Lizzy, but I had to be sure.
You weren’t by any chance scanning this area in the past hour or so, were you?”
“Of course not. You specifically
ordered me not to, for fear the Gold Dragons would be able to detect it. Not
that a bunch of jumped-up play soldiers would be able to spot my scans.”
Fitz was glad the ship couldn’t see
her smile. “Would you please do a scan now? You would be able to pick up a stealthed
ship, wouldn’t you?” While she waited for the ship’s answer, Fitz wondered if
the living Elizabeth Angstrom had been so crotchety before she’d been imprinted
on the computer.
“Beyond a welter of commercial
traffic and a dozen or so heavy haulers taking quarrberries to market,
I’m reading nothing. And, yes, I would be able to pick up the atmospheric
anomaly of a cloaked ship. If it was out there. It’s no doubt left the area. I
know I would’ve if it had been me.
“Nothing out there,” Fitz mused,
rubbing her hands on her upper arms as if to soothe away the prickle of
gooseflesh. She scanned the sky, in visual and infrared. In the fading
afternoon sun, the sugar cane threw long, shifting shadows. A hundred shuttles
could hide out there. Grounded and buttoned up, they would be almost impossible
to detect.
“Does this compromise our mission,
Commander?” Lizzy asked.
“For right now, I’m operating under
the assumption that it doesn’t, but it looks like someone at DIS wants
Youngblood dead. There’s already been one attempt and I suspect our mysterious
ship was dropping off another assassin. Whether that has anything to do with us
being here or not, I can’t be sure. But it’s certainly suspicious that all this
is happening at the same time.”
“If Youngblood’s killed…”
“Yeah, I know. We’re pretty much
screwed. Keep scanning and contact me it you find anything.”
“Should I place the Gold Dragons in
the “friendly” column now?”
“Let’s just say “not hostile” for the
time being. Fitz, out.”
She located Youngblood, whistled to
get his attention and waved him over.
The recruiting poster perfection
she’d admired earlier was gone, submerged under layers of grit and soot. The
once pristine white shirt was torn and discolored with stains from blood and
vegetation. His hair hung in a tangled mess.
“Did you see this?” She indicated the
twisted wreckage at the tail of the aircraft.
“Yes, I noticed it when we first
arrived.”
“It looks like it was made by a small
air-to-air missile. A Sagaris or maybe an SDM-247.”
“That would be my assessment also,”
he said, warily scratching his jaw.
“Anyone around here have that kind of
armament?”
“Besides us? No. And I don’t think
they shot each other down.”
“The armament coupled with the fact
that it didn’t show up on your scans, means we’re dealing with an Imperial vessel,
probably an assault shuttle. Since they aren’t hypercapable, it had to have
been brought into the system by a larger vessel.”
His eyes narrowed as he studied her
with a sidelong gaze. “And I do know there happens to be one of those on planet
at the present time. FitzWarren, where is your ship?”
“You don’t think...” she began and
then remembered her first thought had been that Lizzy might have gone rogue.
“She’s where I left her, parked up on the plateau near your base, buttoned up
to prevent detection and because of that, she wasn’t scanning at the time this
attack took place, or we might already have some answers. She says the bogie
appears to have hightailed it out of the area, but would give me a hail if it
shows up again.” From his speculative look, Fitz realized she might have
disclosed more about Lizzy’s capabilities that she had intended. She quickly
redirected the conversation.
“The shuttle pilot must have thought
the shooter had been compromised and the gunships had been sent after him, so
he took them out. He might have returned to the main ship, but as far as the
assassin’s concerned, the hit is still on and he’ll be coming after you. Maybe
you can stop this one, but Tritico will only send another and another until he
finally kills you. How many of your people are you going to let become
collateral damage while all this is going on?”
He wheeled on her, stepping in close
to tower over her. It took all of Fitz’s will power not the retreat before the
rage she saw glittering in his eyes.
“I’ve got three people dead and one
in the hospital that Ski is fighting to keep alive. Damn it, FitzWarren I’ve
known Annie Perez virtually her entire life, ever since she was so little she
had to sit in her father’s lap to see out the windscreen. All she ever wanted
to be was a Gold Dragon and fly gunships like her old man.”
“Perez? She’s your steward’s…”
“Daughter,” he finished her sentence.
“And this is all because of your bloody meddling.”
“My meddling?”
“You and your bleeding Triumvir. I
don’t give a flipping damn if all the factions in the empire blow each other in
tiny chufting pieces, just leave me out of it.”
“Well, you’re in it now…”
He pointedly ignored her remark,
looking away as one of the crash crew hailed him, gesturing toward two people
who’d just stumbled out of the sugarcane.
The taller one wore a wide brimmed
hat and utilitarian coveralls. His heavy boots and the machete hung from his
belt identified him as a farmer. The second man appeared out of place and
uncomfortable in a business suit.
Youngblood took a deep breath and
held it, controlling his anger. “That would be the man who owns this field and,
if I’m not mistaken, his attorney. That didn’t take long,” he said. “If you’ll
excuse me, I have to go unruffled some feathers.”
As he turned away, Fitz’s hand on his
arm stopped him. “Youngblood, you watch your back.”
“I always do, FitzWarren.”
She drifted away from the flurry of
activity around the wreckage and found a hillock of dirt and crushed
vegetation. She started to sit, but stopped and looked around to make sure
there were no marquarks lurking under
it to leap up and bite her on the behind. Assured it was safe, she plopped down
and put her head in her hands. Her hair was sticky with fire retardant foam and
smelled like smoke. A tear trickled down the side of her nose, tickling. She
wiped it angrily away. Spec Op agents don’t cry.
She could see the young woman’s eyes
again, pleading with her to help. Annie Perez. Her name made it more personal.
Fitz wondered it Devon Perez had ever baked one of those wonderful chocolate
cakes for his daughter.
She’d known going into this debacle
that people would die, some of them people she knew, she cared about. She might
not survive it. Internecine conflicts were the nastiest sort of warfare.
Friends and relatives forced to opposite sides by political beliefs or the just
plain bad luck of being in the wrong place at the wrong time. Fitz thought that
she’d accepted that, but this was different. The Gold Dragons had been totally
innocent. It wasn’t their fight; they’d had nothing to gain from it. And yet
three people had paid the ultimate price. And Youngblood was correct. It was
her fault. She sniffed and brushed away another tear.
She looked up to watch the three men
arguing in the gathering dusk. The farmer shouted, waving his arms about to
indicate his fields, while the attorney frantically entered data on his pad.
Youngblood stood ramrod straight, his arm folded across his chest, body
language proclaiming his cool aloofness. Even dirty and ragged, the sight of
him sparked a warm tingle deep inside her gut. Fitz cursed the perversity of a
universe that allowed him to look that good nearing the end of his ninth
decade, while she knew she’d never live to see forty five.
The ring of lights the crash crew had
rigged around the wreckage flashed on, painfully blinding her for the instant
it took her night vision to readjust. Blinking away after images, she watched
the crew as they combed the field for parts and secured the gunship for
transport back to the base. By sunup tomorrow there would be nothing beyond
plowed up dirt and broken vegetation to attest to the death here. The J/Co
would be stashed in a hanger, a postmortem would be performed—death by enemy
missile—and the carcass would be picked as clean as a turkzard after
Founder’s Day dinner in the mess hall. There would be nothing left but its alloy
bones and those would be fed to the industrial reprocessors. The loss of two
aircraft would be a blow to the GDs, but loss of three people in such a tight
knit community would be devastating.
She heard footsteps approaching and
smelled sweat, mud, and just a hint of cedar. She turned to face Youngblood.
“How’d that go?” She indicated the two men leaving the clearing.
“Nothing our attorneys can’t handle.”
He scrubbed his face, managing only to smear more dirt on it. “All that bloody
farmer screamed about was his field and not a word about the man who died
here.” He reached down and picked up the machete he’d dropped earlier, wiped it
on his pants leg. “Let’s head back to base.”
Trampled by repeated trips, the way out
of the sugar cane was easier going this time, but her socks were soaked again
as she slogged across the canal. Youngblood found a spigot on the side of the
pumping station and they washed their hands and faces in water that stank of
sulfur. He appeared to have escaped the sugar cane’s wrath, but the backs of
her hands were crisscrossed with tiny cuts, proving to Fitz that planets hated
her as much as she hated them.
They climbed into the cockpit of the
Virmana and, as Youngblood resheathed the machete, Fitz noticed his hands
shaking. Post adrenaline let down or
fatigue? Or is he just showing
his age?
He reached into a pocket and produced
a ration bar, unwrapped it and began to nibble on it. Remembering his manners,
he asked. “I’m sorry, would you care for a piece of this?”
She shook her head and stared out
through the windscreen. Dozens of large white moths fluttered in the glow of a
security light mounted on the side of the pumping shed. A winged shape flashed
out of the darkness, snatched the largest of the unwary insects and disappeared
back into the night.
Fitz wondered if there wasn’t a metaphor for
life in that act of predation. The scream of the Virmana’s engines jerked her
out of her introspection.
Youngblood growled over the wailing din,
“Let’s get the bloody hell out of here.”
