“I keep thinking about that border patroller.”
The man she shot back in the Preserve haunted her, and being in that gunner’s turret brought it all back.
“He would’ve killed us without hesitation,” Rin said. “It was self defense.”
“I really thought he was a drone, but I should’ve found some other way. Maybe I could have dropped him without killing him.”
Grey rubbed her eyes with the heel of her hand. She would fire her coilgun again to protect her sister, but it didn’t change the guilt she felt over spilling someone’s blood.
Now with the revelation of Mrs. March’s husband and her new orders to find him, Grey’s thoughts were a jumbled mess. She was glad Mrs. March trusted their family enough to share what surely was confidential information, but what did it all mean for their survival? Mrs. March would probably be leaving them when they reached their destination. There hadn’t been time to discuss things further before the altercation with that Schuman couple who were even now giving Grey and Rin nasty looks from across the hold.
Grey nudged Rin’s shoulder with her own. “What’s with them, anyway?”
“Scared, I guess.”
Join the club.
Liftoff came a moment later, and Grey took a deep breath, wishing they’d been able to sit up in the cockpit. She was blind back here. But maybe that wasn’t such a bad thing. If they were about to die at least she wouldn’t have to see it coming.
Chapter 19
Dana normally relished the exhilarating rush of flight. When G forces made others sick they made Dana euphoric. She’d flown thousands of miles as a girl under Mazdaar and traveled thousands more under Yien leadership, but for the first time in her life Dana Yurkutz felt nervous during liftoff.
She turned toward Lieutenant Johansson. “Where are we going?”
“You know I can’t tell you anything.”
Dana glanced at Grey and Rin Alexander huddled together near the Jeep. She had to give it to them. Their love and loyalty ran deep. She couldn’t remember ever loving someone enough that she’d be willing to die for them, but that’s exactly what Grey had done when she allowed herself to be captured by Mazdaar rather than reveal her sister’s location. And those scars on her wrists. Shock cuffs were debilitating. Dana still meant what she said—that General Evangeline Yurkutz must have had her reasons for using them—but why had Mazdaar found it necessary to torture a teenage girl for information? Weren’t they powerful enough to find the elder Alexanders on their own?
Dana wrapped her hands around the armrests of the wheelchair and kept her eyes focused straight ahead on the Alexanders.
Lieutenant Johansson nodded surreptitiously toward Grey Alexander. “Why did you save her?”
“None of your business.”
“You could’ve gotten away with your mother.”
Sweat was forming on Dana’s palms, making them slick on the polymer coating of the armrests. It would do zero good for her to alienate this soldier who’d already shown restraint and an odd kindness beyond the call of duty, but this was not a subject she wanted to discuss.
“You grew up under Mazdaar, defected, then switched loyalties again? Sounds to me like you aren’t sure whose side you’re on.”
“What do you want me to say, Lieutenant, that I wish Grey Alexander had died?”
“I’m just trying to understand.”
She shifted in the wheelchair. They hadn’t cuffed her after Beatrice Schuman’s attack, but she still felt shackled. “I picked the wrong side. End of story.”
“You do realize you’re the reason your mother’s dead,” Johansson said.
Dana might’ve lost the use of her legs, but her hands were perfectly capable of sending a sideways punch toward this woman’s face. But violence would only land her in worse trouble. She needed to pacify this officer assigned to keep her alive if she expected to stay that way. But Johansson’s words sliced.
“Don’t think I haven’t figured that out,” Dana conceded.
# # #
For one brief moment Rin forgot about her visions, but they came rushing back as soon as she felt the ship rise. A part of her wanted to tell Grey everything, but she’d seen the expression on her sister’s face when she brought it up before. Grey would worry, and she might tell Mom and Dad. Rin couldn’t have that. It was bad enough that everyone still treated her like a child. Having them think she was losing her grip would not help.
But how did she really know she wasn’t?
Rin kept her eye on Tram and Trif’s stalls as the ship shot into the sky. It was true she’d always felt a kinship with animals. She was the one with the idea to tame the wild zorses in the first place. Grey had resisted at first, thinking it was too dangerous, but she finally relented after Rin pestered her enough.
It took six months of daily training for them to fully tame the beasts to come inside and live underground. They gave Rin a purpose, but having them also added a ton of extra work as they cleaned up after the animals every day and constantly gathered their fodder. They probably spent a full month out of the year cutting and drying enough grass to hold the zorses over during winter.
Rin tried not to worry about where they’d get suitable food for the zorses here on Jupiter now that they had to flee from Orion. Dad had helped her stuff enough hay into one of the huge crates to keep them for a few days, but after that? Some of the Yien soldiers had ribbed her about eating zorse steak, and she couldn’t forget it.
“Did Mom tell you where we’re going?” Rin whispered to Grey whose face had paled.
“Not exactly.” Her sister visibly swallowed. “I saw it on a map at Orion, but I don’t know if things changed when we had to run. Or when Mrs. March’s orders changed.”
Rin felt the ship change its path to fly horizontally. They must’ve cleared the canyon. She scanned the other passengers. Everyone but the Schumans and Paul had strapped themselves down in groups in the back of the hold, almost as if they feared being close to an Alexander. Like they were some disease.
She fingered the rawhide lacing on Dad’s knife sheath and wondered if she would’ve been as brave as Grey when faced with death. Could she kill someone if her life depended on it? If it were Grey’s life? Rin had to admit she wasn’t sure. She had talked big about fighting Mazdaar, but when it came down to it, she might not have the guts. Killing someone was clearly tormenting Grey even now.
“It’s my fault about the patroller,” she said softly. That day she’d forgotten to turn on her auris plug and keep watch. The patroller had managed to sneak up on them because she hadn’t been diligent.
“Rinny . . .”
“It is.”
“I made the choice, not you.”
“Only because he was aiming at me.”
“It doesn’t change anything either way,” Grey said.
That was true.
“Let’s live in the moment, okay?”
Rin guessed her sister was right. If they survived this ordeal there’d be time for making it up to Grey later.
Chapter 20
What are they like?” Grey asked as the ship banked, straightened, and then banked the other way. The floor rumbled under their legs. They’d dimmed the lights to save power, and Grey’s face was in shadows.
Rin knew what her sister was asking but wanted to make her spell it out just in case. “What’s what like?”
“You know.” Grey leaned toward her. “The pictures you’ve been seeing.”
Rin had never hidden anything from her sister. If anyone would understand, it was Grey. Still, it was hard to put into words.
Rin shrugged.
“Come on, Rinny. You can talk to me.”
“You think something’s wrong in my head, don’t you?”
“I didn’t say that.”
“You didn’t have to.”
“I admit I don’t understand, but that doesn’t mean I don’t believe you.”
“It was so real.” Rin closed her eyes and probed for
the image she’d seen moments before that saber-tooth tried to jump Mom, but it was now a wispy mirage in the recesses of her memory. “It came really fast too,” she said. “Like a blink. One moment I’m looking at Tram, and the next I see a tiger with teeth bared, ready to jump. Then it was gone.”
“This only happens after the winds?”
“So far.”
Grey shook her head. “There’s gotta be so many things about Jupiter we don’t understand.”
“What if the rumors about the prisoners are true? What if it’s happening to me?”
“It’s not.”
“But if you’re insane you don’t realize it, right?”
“Those around you do.” Grey gently tapped Rin on the nose. “I’d know if you were crazy.”
Rin felt the corners of her mouth pulling downward. She didn’t want Grey to see her cry, but it wasn’t exactly the first time. Her big sister had rocked her to sleep more than once when she was little after Mom and Dad disappeared.
“I’m scared,” Rin said.
“I think we all are.”
Rin looked over at Grey. A spot of dried blood still smudged her forehead above her cut. “Remember that verse?”
“Yeah,” Grey said.
“Tell it to me again.”
“Rin, you know it.”
“We need to hear it. Both of us.”
“Then why don’t you tell me?”
Maybe Grey was right. She had been their de facto leader for years because she was older. Sometimes Rin had resented it when her sister wouldn’t let her do something, as if she was the mother and Rin the child, but Rin knew she always tried to be fair. Maybe it was time Rin picked up the slack for Grey. She glanced down at her sister’s scarred wrist, which was only one reminder of the pain Mazdaar had inflicted on her. Grey had already been through so much.
“If I go up to the heavens, you are there,” Rin said quietly. “If I say, ‘Surely the darkness will hide me and the light become night around me,’ even the darkness will not be dark to you; the night will shine like the day, for darkness is as light to you.”
Grey rested the back of her head against the Jeep and closed her eyes. “Think it’s true?”
“It’s the Bible.”
“I know, but it’s hard to understand sometimes.”
“I thought you believed it now.”
“I want to.”
# # #
As the ship soared through choppy space, Grey wished she had insisted she and Rin ride in the cockpit whether there was room for them or not. If they could make their way without injuring themselves in the process, she would’ve made the dash even now.
A scream caught in her throat when the ship dropped out from under them. A moment later it felt like something grabbed the vessel and shook it. Even tied down, the cargo rattled. Mom had said this might happen if they had to fly directly through the winds. Grey gripped Rin’s hand so tightly she was probably hurting her sister, but she couldn’t let go. Dana clung to her wheelchair. Its wheels were strapped down like the Jeep, but it still rattled. A few feet away from Dana, the Schumans and Paul Alvarez clung to wall nets.
Beatrice Schuman’s face was as red as Jupiter’s eye. “You’re mother’s going to kill us!”
Good riddance, Grey thought then immediately chastised herself. She was assigned to help these people. Mrs. March had entrusted their safety to her as much as her parents and the soldiers. The day she stopped caring for others was the day she might as well join Mazdaar and be done with it. She could not afford to lose her humanity, no matter how difficult it might be to hold on to it.
She loosened the rope around her waist to give herself slack and stood to her feet. Rin glanced up at her, but Grey decided fear had to go. These people were counting on her, whether they realized it or not.
Grabbing a ring on the wall near her head, Grey focused on Beatrice.
“It’s just turbulence from going through the winds,” she called above the noise.
“We’re not going to make it!”
“Bee!” This came from the woman’s husband Charles, the first words Grey had heard him speak. “Shut up!”
His wife glared at him, mouth gaping. Grey caught the eye of Paul, and his lips twisted into a grin.
The explosion came with no warning.
One moment Grey was standing, trying to convince the Schumans that it was just turbulence. The next a sonic boom hit her, slamming her up against the wall. Ears ringing, lights flashing behind her eyelids, her first thought was that they’d crashed. But she could still feel the ship pitching and lurching.
The screams of her fellow passengers slapped at her and cleared her focus. Freezing air tore at her clothes and blew her hair into her face. She glanced across the hold. Where the Schumans had sat seconds before, a ragged hole the size of a car had eaten through the wall of the ship, its edges still smoking. The Jupiter sky raced by in a kaleidoscope of swirling clouds.
Chapter 21
The explosion threw Dana to the floor, and she landed facedown. Cold air blew across her body. When she opened her eyes again a severed hand lay next to her face. She heard herself scream as she flung the hand away.
Dana pushed herself up on her elbows, heaving in air and trying not to puke. Oh, dear God, help me! When she saw the gaping hole directly behind her, she knew they’d been hit. Pink insulation flapped amidst torn wires in the twisted, scorched hull. How were they still in the air? The air reeked of sulfur and smoke and Dana coughed, feeling the strain of oxygen deprivation. They needed to get down to the surface fast.
She reached for a notch in the floor where a chain would’ve normally been looped around to secure something. She used it to pull herself closer to the center of the hold, throwing another glance over her shoulder at the hole. The Schumans had either been sucked out or torn into pieces by whatever weapon had blasted through that metal. Dana swallowed back more nausea.
They were listing sharply to the right—slanting toward the hole—and she could barely hold on. Had they lost others? Why hadn’t their shields deflected the blast?
She scanned the area. The Alexander sisters clung to each other by the Jeep. Blood dripped down their faces, but they didn’t seem badly injured.
Over near the cockpit door the young man March had given the rifle to lay crumpled and unconscious. Maybe he was dead. Dana spotted Lieutenant Johansson’s form in the rear of the ship waving and gesturing, probably trying to calm someone.
A wail pierced the air, and then another scream, but Dana focused on getting herself further away from the hole. She could feel it sucking at her boots and pants, Jupiter’s demand that she join the Schumans and breathe her last in a free-fall to the surface.
She tried to get traction with her feet and push off another notch in the floor. Mercifully, she felt her right leg move. It was only a twitch and sent a jolt of fire toward her hip, but her leg responded! She would’ve relished her progress, but there was no time. The ship suddenly lurched, angling her toward the opening again.
Dana willed her hands to hold on, but her fingers slipped even as she desperately squeezed them around the metal divot in the floor.
The ship banked at a forty-five degree angle, and she heard containers crashing against each other. The zorses screamed in protest along with the passengers. She thought she heard Rin Alexander’s voice yelling her name, but she wasn’t sure. She couldn’t take her eyes off the ugly mouth of the hole.
Her fingers gave out, and Dana slid toward nothingness.
Clawing at the floor, she frantically tried to slow her slide, searching for anything to grab. Her wheelchair was still strapped down. If she got close enough to catch her leg against a wheel, she might be able to keep from falling out of the ship.
But she wouldn’t last for long.
Dana’s fingers scraped against something, sending a painful stab up her hand. Maybe this was God’s judgment for betraying her friends. Maybe she should stop fighting and let go. She might never walk a
gain and could spend the rest of her life rotting in prison. Now was her chance to free herself from her twisted body. Everyone would surely be better off, and it would be quick. She wouldn’t have a chance like this again anytime soon.
She loosened her grip and stopped fighting.
Dana Yurkutz slid backward on her stomach toward the gaping hole in the side of the Yien cargo ship that was supposed to save her life but was now going to take it.
The wind roared in her ears, pushing dust into her lungs. She slipped another foot closer, shutting her eyes against the sting of grit sanding her face. Dana didn’t think about the things she’d never do or even her mother. She only saw March’s sorrowful face, and she wondered if her death would be a disappointment for the Yien commander.
Dana’s foot poked out the hole, and the suction nearly tore off her boot.
March would probably have some profound statement about light and darkness and how Dana had given in and been swallowed by—
Someone grabbed her hand.
“Hold on!”
Dana twisted to see Grey trying to brace herself with her feet on the tilting floor. If she did hold on, she risked pulling Grey out with her.
“Let me go,” she said.
But Grey Alexander didn’t. She gripped Dana’s arm with both hands, her face turning crimson as she struggled.
“Give me your other hand.”
“I’ll kill us.”
“Shut up!”
“For once stop being a hero! Let go of me!” She begged the girl with her eyes.
Rin appeared beside her sister with a wad of rope.
Now she’d kill them both.
Unlike her mother, she couldn’t justify murder, and despite her desire to live up to Evangeline Yurkutz’s ideals, she realized in that moment she’d never be like her. And maybe it wasn’t such a bad thing.
“Tie it around her,” Grey instructed Rin, barely able to get the words out. “Hurry. I can’t hold on much longer.”
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