by L. V. Lane
“They planted something during the construction phase?” I asked.
“No, I don’t believe so. It was far too subtle. Human intervention must have been involved.”
“Are you trying to set yourself up for persecution? Please, tell me you haven’t voiced these opinions to anyone else.”
“Of course not.” Riley’s gray eyes hardened. “But my voicing is somewhat academic. I’m not alone in understanding this. The technical experts who report to me have mentioned on numerous occasions that the first failing was sabotage. The timing, so close to the successful drone launch. Cathy had personally reviewed the component that failed during the pre-stasis checks… She could have made a mistake—could well be deflecting—but I don’t believe so. Her emotions are too clear, too righteous, and too visceral. She hates me, and I cannot say I blame her.”
I leaned forward in my chair, placed my elbows on my knees, and rubbed my tired eyes with the heel of my hands. “Before we left, just before the drone, I met with Eva.” Riley froze, but it was hard to read what the reaction might mean. For better or worse, Eva trusted Riley, and I was trying hard to hang onto that. “She spoke of dissension within the personnel, of corruption at work, of bought passages, and of faked tests. I didn’t think she was talking about the Federation at the time, and I assumed a case of desperate people using underhanded means to escape. But amid corruption aimed at desperate people, it would be easier for them to find a way in.”
Riley’s lips trembled, and her normally bright gray eyes appeared dull. “I’ve been living on borrowed time, and I’ve enjoyed every precious moment of it… They will kill me, or worse, they will kill us all.”
Defeatist statements had never sat well with me, but then again, I’d never lived a subservient life. “We don’t know that yet. We don’t know anything yet.” Well, we knew one Technologist was among us.
“I know,” Riley said with a quiet conviction that made the hairs on the back of my neck stand to attention.
Perhaps she does. “I could have you placed under a more stringent watch. I’ve had both Eric and Marik watching you since we left the ship. I realized you might become a target, but not quite in this way. You should have brought this to me sooner.” I wanted to trust Riley because Eva had trusted her. But was I reading the situation wrong? Had Eva uncovered a truth about Riley that the Technologist had taken actions to hide? The faulty scanner, now lost with the ship, had dispensed a drug that had left Eva mentally impaired. I could think of no credible way that Riley had been party to that. There were too many variables, and further, Riley had been with me and Eric when the incident occurred. Still, she was a Technologist, and her skills were far beyond even our best experts.
I suffered mixed feelings about Brent. While Eva’s sedation and his blatant disregard of the abandonment call back on the ship sat on one side. He was highly competent otherwise and appeared genuinely remorseful. Then this morning, Cathy had come in claiming that sabotage was beyond question and that Riley was withholding information, a fact Riley had now verified.
“I know. I have been in denial,” Riley said. “Searching desperately for evidence that I was wrong, hoping Eva might recover and reveal the truth to be not so dire after all.”
I thought Riley’s words were poignant. There is no place for poignancy in war. I stopped caring about what was right or wrong. I protected those I viewed as mine, and I would do whatever it took to survive. The bottom line was that I had never considered Riley part of my protective circle and I doubted that would change.
“They cannot protect me. And to try would draw attention to the fact that you know something is wrong, or worse, make the other colonists think I’m under suspicion. Some have become aggressive in vocalizing their distrust. A guard would make it worse. If people are determined, it would only endanger those who try to protect me. Besides, you don’t have the resources to waste watching me. We are all struggling as it is… I think it would also be wise if I keep my distance from Eva. I have seen less of her lately, but still.”
A part of me wanted to argue the case further. I could see why Eva liked Riley; on the surface, she presented an altruistic facade perfectly aligned to the Predictive. In a better time, such people would be nurtured and allowed to flourish in a new world without prejudices. We hadn’t found that utopia world, though, and our troubles and prejudices had followed us here.
I thought it probable Riley would be killed, whether the aggressor would be Aterran or Federation remained to be seen.
I evaluated the options, and as I did, I recognized how a determined individual seeking Riley’s demise could exploit each and every one. There was a time when I would have tried those options, even knowing they would fail, but they had picked me to lead this colony for a reason. “Yes, I agree, that would be for the best.”
She nodded, but made no move to leave, and I knew something big was about to be unloaded.
I leaned back and made that little circular motion with that hand that was universal ‘for spill the news’.
“There’s a reason I’ve not been able to get the communications working,” she said. “I believe they are being blocked.”
CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE
Eva
I STRUGGLED INTO my shell armor, which Landon had helpfully sent over after catching me outside in standard fatigues. Muttering something about animal attacks, and me doing food preparation if I defied him. I elected not to test him. He had tasked me with recording stock movements. If it wasn’t the most brain-numbing task in the universe, then it had to be a close second. I still believed such duties were beneath me, although even stock management was better than my twice-daily meeting with the psychologist, Doctor Shenson Sull.
Clipping the armor shut, I anticipated another day battling with the hideous thing. It had to be at least three sizes too big and made me walk like a deranged robot. My alarm bleeped, and I all but fell out of the tent and into Jax, who was passing by as prearranged. It was dry and windy outside, but I didn’t hang around to make a full weather assessment.
“I can’t—” A very unmanly grunt escaped him as I dragged him into my tent. Well, he allowed me to drag him into my tent. He had to have a hundred pounds on me. I wasn’t moving him anywhere without his will, and definitely not while wearing this suit.
“I—dammit. I can’t do this today,” he growled in a way that might have stirred my interest in the past. “I’ve got five minutes before I’m out on patrol and you’re not making me late again!”
Zipping the tent shut while he complained, I effectively locked him in. “I need an update.”
He ran tense fingers through his hair. “I shouldn’t even be here. You’re on lockdown and your brother’s looking for an excuse to bust my balls. I swear he’s having me watched!”
“Eric’s not here.”
“You sure? Even if he’s not, I guarantee one of his minions is watching for him, and Landon has threatened to—”
“Landon is always threatening this or that,” I said. “He almost never follows through.”
“Trust me, it’s really not an idle threat, yesterday—”
“It’s fine. Everyone assumes we’re having sex,” I said practically.
Grinning, he reached for my collar and tugged me closer. “I wish we were having sex.” He tried to put his arm around me, and then looked down and burst out laughing. “What the hell are you wearing?”
I slapped his hand. “Focus! I need an update.”
“Jeez, you’re a killjoy. Did anyone ever tell you that?”
“Many times,” I said honestly.
“Fine. The team they sent to the city are dead. Marik came back yesterday, and said their weapons were all melted and twisted. Nothing we have here can do that.”
My heart stuttered at that news, but I could not identify the underlying threat. “Does Landon think it’s something to do with the city?”
“Don’t know. Marik and his team found them close to Base-44.” He checked his wrist pl
ate. “Four minutes.”
“You are such a terrible liar. You always take ten minutes off the time you tell me because you know I question you anyway. I’m not even in the mood to humor you today.”
He folded his arms and his jaw locked, giving me the impression that torture wouldn’t extract the information from him now. “I thought you couldn’t predict.”
“Deception is completely different to prediction.” It wasn’t technically different in my case, but he had just exaggerated the time, and I wasn’t about to reveal I had some of my predictive capability either way.
“I don’t think we should keep doing this.”
Predictive truth: he meant this. He genuinely worried, and that brought me up. “Why not?”
“I don’t want to be the one who breaks you, Eva.” His earnest tone softened me toward him even though I was still vexed that he was wasting time that was better spent updating me.
I waved a dismissive hand.
“I’m serious.”
“I have told you before that I can handle whatever you have to offer.”
Wiggling his eyebrows suggestively, he said, “Oh yeah?” He yanked me back against him again. Stumbling forward, I stood on my own foot, head-butted his chest, and somehow ended up on my ass.
I flailed about in the damn suit.
“Did you just giggle? There I was thinking, it was my lucky day, and you giggle. My ego is sorely wounded.”
Looking up from my new location on the floor where I was impersonating an overturned beetle, I found Jax grinning. He offered me his hand.
“You don’t have an ego,” I said. It was a fact, an absolute fact. He was the least egotistical person I knew.
“That sounded very predictive.” He frowned as he heaved me back to my feet.
I fidgeted with my shell armor, trying to make it comfortable. “You can’t predict a fact.”
“No, but you said it in that authoritative way you used to predict.”
I sighed.
“Are you predicting, Eva?” he asked softly.
There were no dark undertones to the question, and his interest was genuine. He hadn’t said anything about that day when Brent had drugged me. I should have called Jax before leaving my room. I wouldn’t be in this situation if I had. At times though, he looked my way and his jaw locked and I knew he was berating himself for what had happened to me, although he had no reason to.
“No, not anymore. I have become just like everyone else.”
The silence between us was filled by the gentle patter of leaves against the roof of the tent. Was I hurting him by lying? Compounding his sense of failure?
“There’s something I’ve observed about you,” he said. “You’ve changed, and for a while, just after Brent, the fuckwit, drugged you, I did wonder if you had—you know—lost it. I was so damn angry with myself, and with you. And that you always think you know what’s best because, mostly, you do. You never lost your ability to predict, did you?”
My heart thudded, and the fear of exposure blossomed like cold dead flowers in my chest.
“Eva, please, look at me.”
That tone, so earnest, and so Jax, persuaded me to comply. His eyes were a bright, clear blue, and he was the most handsome man I’d ever met. He was a good person, I’d sensed it from our very first meeting, and an exceptional Marine, yet he suffered no ego. Despite his glowing credentials, both personal and professional, he wasn’t what I wanted.
Wasn’t only what I wanted.
“It’s okay. I’ll keep your secret. If you’re hiding it, then you have your reasons. Everyone has written you off. We’re busy surviving, so I get they might not have noticed. You’re reserved with people, except for—” His gesture encompassed the length of my body. Which was a fair point because I’d never been reserved about that. “I’m getting off topic. What I’m trying to say is Riley ought to notice too, but she’s not having it so good. Landon was having her watched for her own protection. But for whatever reasons, he pulled them off. So, if you have any predictions lurking that might help her, you should voice them sooner rather than later.”
There were no predictions regarding Riley. I wished there were, but we hadn’t spoken since I first arrived and was now worried that she might be in danger. “I don’t want Riley to get hurt. Emotions are high among the colonists. They might seek to eliminate her.”
“You’re being a little dramatic. But, I must admit there’s a certain allure to eliminating the competition, given she gets to share the tent with you.” He winked.
I could point out that Riley hadn’t been to visit for a long while, and that the Technologist was only ever here as a friend, but it seemed inconsequential against the backdrop of my worries.
“I don’t want Riley to die.” I pressed my palm against his cheek.
His sharp intake of breath and the look he shot me said I wasn’t being fair. He was right, I wasn’t being fair, but didn’t care so long as it achieved the desired outcome. “You’re asking me to go against Landon’s orders.”
“She’s not a bad person. And she’s not a threat.”
He sighed. “Yes, I know. I’ll look out for her if I can.”
This time he took a firm hold of both me and the expansive armor as he pulled me close for a kiss.
For a second, as our lips touched, I could almost wish there was more time.
CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR
Eric
IT WAS EARLY morning when I made my way through the camp. I was one of the lucky ones getting a tent to myself but I still wasn’t sleeping well. It was hunger keeping me awake. My size and need for food to fuel it hadn’t figured high in personal observations until they started with the rations.
Then there was Riley…
I wasn’t a person who spent a lot of time worrying about stuff but I’d taken to worrying about Riley. Weirdly, I missed her and her odd, despondent ways.
“Uf!”
The grunt accompanied a tiny body plowing into me.
“Riley?”
“Look where you are going!”
I thought about pointing out that her head is way below my eye-line, but I was distracted by her unusually grumpy facade.
She sent a withering look my way before trying to dart around.
“Hold on a moment,” I said. And putting my arm out, blocked her escape.
She sent a furtive glance my way. “You can’t be seen with me. No one can.”
I frowned. “Like I give a fuck about being seen with you,” I said.
As I watched, her shoulders slumped and a stifled sob erupted from her chest. My gut clenched. “Hey?” She tried to dart around again, but I was having none of it.
“Don’t!”
I shouldn’t put my hands on her without permission. A lifetime of Aterran conditioning came to the fore. But fuck it.
“You are going to get yourself killed if anyone sees us together!”
I chuckled at her ridiculous determination that I might be in danger, and hugged her tighter. “Just one tiny bundle of joy there, Riley.”
Her huffed snigger put a smile on my face. I could admit that hugging her felt nice… and this probably wasn’t the best time to be thinking about the shape of her ass… or my many inappropriate thoughts about admiring it while I—
“You can let go now,” she said, voice muffled against my chest.
Yeah, probably for the best… When I took a step back, she wouldn’t meet my eyes. She looked tired. I’d heard through the grapevine that she was working long hours, and I could see it was taking its toll.
“I’ve got to go,” she said. This time when she slipped around me, I didn’t try to stop her.
My wrist plate bleeped with a message from Landon. I stomped up the ramp leading to the operations center, my boots echoing against the metal. At the top of the ramp, I unclipped the shell armor and squinted as my eyes adjusted to the dim lights after the brightness outside.
Landon was talking to Brent, nodding at something the youn
ger man was saying before noticing me. He beckoned me over. Brent still wasn’t winning any personality awards as far as I was concerned, and while I knew I should cut him some slack, I still wished I’d punched him for what he’d done to Eva.
“We’ve had more cases of illness in a satellite camp,” Brent informed me. “Not the flu this time, but it appears to be the same people who are susceptible.”
Brent wasn’t as neat as he’d once been and his nose was red and puffy. He’d caught the flu. I grinned a smile full of teeth.
“I’ve agreed that Brent can visit,” Landon said.
Brent smiled at me now. “Base-7,” he confirmed. “They seem to have a high percentage of infected.”
“Take a team to escort him over there tomorrow,” Landon said, confirming this was real.
My smile faltered. “I thought we were keeping medical centralized?” I could think of several thoroughly unpleasant tasks I would rather do than spend a day traveling to Base-7 with Brent. Still, if I had to go then I would make sure Brent didn’t enjoy it. Maybe I could double-time it? I could just imagine Brent wheezing and puffing through his blocked nose. “And that camp has barely been set up.”
“I know, but Brent is right, and we do need someone there to find out what the root cause is. Base-44 also has a high number of infected, but that’s a week’s trek away and I still want to base Brent here.”
“I’ll go and begin packing!” Brent said before stomping off down the ramp.
Much as I took unhealthy pleasure in riling Brent, he was a competent doctor—mostly—and we needed everyone back on their feet and contributing. Food stocks were on emergency rations, had been for days, and natural food sourcing was sporadic even after we’d started dispersing the people to satellite locations. I’d eaten natural food on plenty of occasions; it held a certain rustic appeal. While there were other edible items in the vicinity, there wasn’t anywhere near enough. It was still many days until the second ship’s arrival… assuming it still arrived. Meat had proven the easiest supplementary find to bolster the dwindling stocks. The sight of a dead animal or fish repulsed many of the colonists. They were even less attracted to the idea of cooking it and putting it in their mouths.