Faja! There was no time to reflect on what she had learned as fifty or more expectant frightened faces turned to her.
She forced herself to speak. ‘W-we will meet up with Cass Mulravey at. the parking bay. She will have her barge waiting. But we must stay together. No matter whom you see that you know, we must stay together. Do you understand?’
The women nodded fearfully.
‘We will walk four abreast. Stay close to the ones in front and behind: ‘bini in the centre. I will lead. I want all those who have trained with me to take a position on the outside of the group.’ Mira picked out one of the young familia women. ‘Josefia, you come in the last line.’
Josefia Genarro nodded.
Mira addressed them all again. ‘If you break away from the group you will become lost. Now ... Crux help us.’ The familia women crossed themselves.
Chaos met them outside. Men running in all directions, some armed with shovels and picks, others with rifles. The Saqr were heading towards the town centre, they said, and they shouted for the women to ‘git back inside’.
But Mira ignored them, leading the group by the most direct route to the parking bay. She’d instructed the korm to take Vito and find Cass or Mesquite—Marchella—if she, Mira, was injured or killed.
‘Stay close!’ She shouted the words over and over as they moved forward but still some of the women panicked and broke away to join with others. A woman to her right fell as another group of women charged into them at an intersection.
The two groups dissolved into a milling crowd. ‘Bini wailed as they became separated from their mamas.
‘Stay close!’ Mira screamed again. She ran along one side of the group, pushing them together.
Josefia Genarro added her voice to Mira’s from the other side. ‘We will make it,’ Josefia cried. ‘We will. Stay together.’
The women began to grab each other, interlinking arms, thrusting the ‘bini back into the middle.
Mira ran to the front and urged them to follow her. The group lumbered forward again.
Rast drove past her, heading out of town, with Catchut at her back nursing the GRG. ‘FortunaP Rast shouted.
Or was it Mira’s own cry? She no longer knew if she was speaking aloud. Her throat was dry with ragged breathing and her body was prickling hot and cold. On all sides now they were jostled—everyone seemed to be moving in the same direction towards the bay. Everybody wanted an escape vehicle. Some grabbed at the women, begging for help. Others attached themselves to the group, pulling Mira’s people back as they attempted to keep up.
Mira stumbled over broken packing crates of food that had fallen from the back of” a TerV. She snatched up a jagged shard of crate and waved it aloft so that the women could see. Some of them stooped to arm themselves, causing the group to spread dangerously.
‘No. No. Stay together,’ Mira cried.
But they did not listen.
Panic began to overtake Mira’s purpose. Will Cass wait for us? What if Innis has taken the barge? What if the Saqr are already at the parking bay? Her fear mounted. Marchella Pellegrini had asked her to do the impossible—save these women from the Saqr. I cannot save anyone.
A TerV passed them, blaring its horn, and she felt an impulse to throw herself under it. She stepped towards it.
Josefia called after her. The korm screeched. Sheets of dust sprayed from the TerV as it braked to avoid her. None of it meant anything until Mesquite’s voice pierced the confusion. ‘Vito!’ she roared as she led another group of women in from a side road, carrying a rifle.
Vito! Vito! The ‘bino was on her back. Panic had made her forget him. Instantly Mira threw herself sideways to avoid the grinding metal tracks. Vito bawled as she landed heavily on her side, trapping one of his legs.
Marchella ran to her and dragged her to her feet, gripping her arm with strong, unforgiving fingers. ‘Think of the women,’ she whispered fiercely. ‘Think of Vito.’
Mira reached behind, cupping Vito’s leg, feeling for breaks. He gave little grunts of discomfort but no hurt- animal cry. ‘I-I...’
‘But Marchella pushed her back towards the women.
They huddled around her and Marchella, drawn back together.
They would think she had not seen the TerV. They would not know what she had intended. Only Marchella knew...
Marchella raised her voice and her fist. ‘The barge is close. We will survive! We will survive!’
In a moment they joined with her, chanting the words as she led all of them around the final corner.
Ahead, between them and the parking bay, ten or more Saqr clustered around a TerV. Some crawled, others wavered awkwardly in an upright stance as if they had just hatched from their globes.
like, Jancz’s pilot, stood among them, puncturing their chitin with hypodarts from a large pistol. She wore no protecsuit and her stocky Balol shape and long spines were unmistakable.
‘What is it? What is the Balol injecting them with?’ asked a woman behind her.
Marchella shook her head, then turned to Mira. Pulling her velum aside, she stared into Mira’s velum. Her eyes were bloodshot and ferocious. ‘There is a name you must remember. It is Tekton.’
Mira nodded, confused.
‘Say it. Say the name.’
‘Tekton,’ said Mira.
‘He owes me a debt. He owes this world a debt. Go to him and free our women. Now lead them around the Saqr and DO NOT STOP.’
‘Marchella—’
But she had already lifted her rifle and turned towards the Saqr.
Mira felt another intense surge of desperation. A mesur away she saw Cass standing on the back of the barge’s doorbridge. ‘There!’ She pointed to the women.
Several of the Saqr changed direction away from Marchella towards Mira and the women. Kristo fired on them from the top of the barge as the women raced over the last stretch.
Cass and Thomaas helped them inside. The barge was already crowded with women and ‘bini from another dorm.
Mira was the last to get there. She grasped Cass with blood-slick hands. ‘We have to wait for Marchella.’
‘Who?’
Mira struggled to recall her other name. ‘M-Mesquite.’
Cass pointed across the dust of the parking bay. Several ‘esque bodies lay sprawled in the awkward angles of death. The Saqr were bent over them, mouth- needles prodding their flesh. ‘She fired on them. I didn’t see what happened but we have to go now. Medic is strapped to the inside of the hatch.’ She slapped the doorbridge mechanism and it began to close.
Mira scrambled to get down. ‘No—’
But Cass shoved her hard off balance into the mass of bodies. Before Mira could recover the door had clicked into place.
* * *
Mira’s flight to Ipo paled beside the flight out. The suffocating dark, the smell of bodies crushed together so tightly that breathing was difficult. And the noise: the agonised cries of the injured women and ‘bini, the faint whine of the barge’s motor, the squealing Saqr rage as their prey escaped.
Bodies thumped against the barge’s canopy, climbing the outside. The barge began to slew back and forth. Then the external noises stopped abruptly. Mira’s thoughts flashed to the ragazzo in Loisa who had fallen under the tracks. Who had just died?
The barge rumbled for an interminable time before she could shake the numbing horror from her mind. She tried to think of what Faja would do. Or Marchella. What would be practical? Useful?
She folded back her velum and touched the woman next to her. ‘There is a medi-pack on the door. Can you help me?’
The woman took Vito from her and leaned hard
against the next female, giving Mira space to uncramp her legs. She grasped for finger holds on the wall as she stood up and pulled the pack free. Hands reached out to steady her as she sank back. The barge whined on and weapon fire started up again. She raised her voice above it.
‘Pass the word to shuffle the worst-injured to me,’ she said.
<
br /> The instruction echoed into the depths of the barge. While some protested that it was too cramped, others began the process of shuffling bodies around.
‘Is anyone trained in medico?’ Mira asked.
No one spoke up but a woman close to her passed an injured body across. ‘It’s my daughter. Please see to her first.’
‘What is her name?’ Mira asked.
‘Davina. The things... they clawed her head. Save her, Baronessa Fedor.’
Mira started. ‘You know me?’
‘Si. Most do.’
Davina moaned and twitched.
Mira stripped off her gloves and felt carefully over the child’s head. Blood trickled from wounds. Nothing serious, she thought. Then, as she moved her unsteady fingers down one side of the ragazza’s skull, her finger dipped into a warm, sticky hollow. Mira’s heart faltered. ‘I need light!’ Hysteria made her voice sound sharp. She did not want to see the injury. She did not want to stare at death.
The child moaned and her arms spasmed.
Mira fumbled blindly in the pack for a skin adhesive and antibiotics. As she sprayed the synthetic
membrane over the fracture the child convulsed and went still. Too late. And now she had wasted precious medic. Mira found herself clutching the small body, wishing that she could peel the adhesive off. She made herself let go, shocked by the callousness of her own thoughts.
‘Davina is dead,’ she said flatly. ‘Who is alive?’
As the barge lumbered on, she blocked out the moans from Davina’s mother as she clutched her ragazza’s body.
Other injured people were passed to her and she laboured on, doing what little she could to help them.
When the barge finally stopped, Mira was drifting, no longer sure if the darkness before her eyes was the crowded barge or a state of waking sleep.
Cass opened the doorbridge and peered in. ‘The Saqr stayed in Ipo. We’re on our own now and Kristo has found us a water station.’
Water. Fresh water.
A small cheer went up and Mira’s spirits lifted. The women surged down the doorbridge. When the last of them was out, Cass peered in again.
‘Fedor?’
Mira crawled out and blinked at the light.
Cass recoiled. ‘Crux. Look at you.’
Mira’s fellala was dirty and blood-soaked and flecks of human tissue had dried between her fingers and under her nails. ‘I couldn’t do anything for her.’
‘Who?’ Cass herself was covered with the white sap of Saqr blood. It had dried on her arms like peeling scabs.
Mira looked for the distraught mother carrying her dead ragazza among the crowd of women. ‘They put a
hole in her head. My fingers ... my fingers touched ... do you know what I thought?’
Cass waited in silence, letting her speak.
‘I thought... I wished I had not wasted the antibiotic on her.’
Cass gripped Mira’s shoulders and shook her a little. ‘What you thought was practical, Mira. Practical is what we need.’
‘Is it?’ Mira said hoarsely. ‘And afterwards ... who will I be?’
Cass let go of her and looked at her squarely. ‘Just who’s guaranteeing an afterwards?’
* * *
The bore had been sunk at the base of a rocky dune, surrounded by a light scattering of rust-brown thorn bushes that survived on the hint of spilled underground water. From the top of the dune it could be seen that the plains stretched all around, bare and red. Heat shimmers distorted the horizon and Ipo might have been on another world—there was no sign of it, nor of anything else.
Cass asked Josefia to find women to keep watch from the roof of the barge while she and Marrat unloaded the little stockpile of food that Marchella had insisted they should hoard. They began dividing the kranse into bite-size sections and laying it out on the flat housing of the bore. The able-bodied women queued to wash and drink at the small trough, scaring away the spiny lizard-brown checclias lurking around the pump.
Mira took her place in the line.
‘Shame we can’t eat ‘em,’ muttered the woman ahead
of her. ‘Only meat in these Crux-forsaken plains and it’s poisonous.’
‘I have never seen so many,’ Mira said. ‘They were eradicated on Pell.’
‘Yeah, I hear you had purrcocks and laba-deer. Only civilised animals for you aristos,’ she jeered.
Mira wished she had not spoken. She waited in silence for her turn but sluicing the blood from her hands and fellala made her feel no less filthy. Afterwards, though, a peculiar and inexplicable vigour took hold of her. She sought out Marrat, who was checking the ammunition.
‘Which implement will allow me to dig?’ she asked abruptly.
Marrat gave her a curious look. ‘Tool compartment sits above the tracks. Help yourself but make sure you put it back when you’ve finished.’
Mira located the box and wrenched it open. She selected a long-handled tool with a sharp metal end and walked a short distance from the barge into the thorn scrub.
Kristo followed her. ‘What are you doing, Baronessa?’
‘We can’t take the dead with us when we move on.’
He glanced back towards the barge and the small row of lifeless bodies laid out underneath it. One was so much smaller than the rest. With a sigh he disappeared back to the barge and returned with another tool. ‘You loosen the ground with the pick, then I’ll shovel it away,’ he instructed.
They worked together in silence. After a while Mira insisted that Kristo should take the pick and she shovelled inexpertly until the shallow hole was wide enough to hold the dead, and her underliner was sweat-soaked beyond absorption. Her arms trembled fiercely with the exertion and she had to stop.
‘It’s right to respect the dead,’ said Kristo. ‘You thought well.’ His breathing rate had not altered with the digging. He was a strong man, Mira realised, and his few words lifted her spirit.
While he finished, Mira went to find Cass.
She was delving into the medico pack. ‘Precious little here,’ she grumbled.
‘We should bury the dead now, before the midday heat. Kristo and I have prepared a grave.’
‘You?’
Mira ignored her surprise. ‘Waiting... will make it worse.’
Cass nodded, put down the pack and climbed the open doorbridge to address the women. ‘We should bury our dead. Come.’
They assembled in an exhausted fashion along the sides of the single large grave. Kristo and Marrat laid the bodies next to each other. Davina’s was last.
Davina’s mama howled in sorrow and threw herself down among the bodies, pulling them apart from each other.
Cass, Kristo and Marrat—everyone—stared helplessly.
Only Mira reacted. She knelt down at the side of the grave and took the woman into her arms. ‘What is it?’
The woman slumped against her, sobbing. ‘You canna leave her on the edge. She’ll be scared. She’s just a ‘bino.’ She gripped Mira’s velum, pleading for understanding.
Mira looked to Kristo.
He nodded and lifted Davina into the middle of the grave.
‘Thank you,’ the mother whispered, weeping quietly into her fingers.
Mira helped her up and away from the grave. They leaned against each other in the shadow of the barge, listening to Cass.
‘Rest here in Araldis’s soil, mia sorellas. We will all be together again, soon enough ...’
* * *
They rested inside the barge and under the bore housing through the afternoon heat. At dusk, before the nightwinds sprang up, they ate small servings of kranse bread soaked in glutinous gravy.
Kristo and Marrat removed the barge’s outer canopy and settled it on the ground, pegging it down. When all were fed they spread across it and slept.
Tiesha rose, casting a pale light. When Semantic joined her later for the brief minutes before Tiesha set, the sky would be almost as bright as daylight.
Cass stirred the men fr
om where they sat near the trough to keep watch over them. Marrat and Kristo walked to opposite ends of the camp but Innis refused to get up.
‘Why do they get to sleep?’ he complained.
‘Everyone will take their turn,’ Cass said with tired patience. ‘Tonight, though, these women need to rest.’
Mira listened to their conversation from where she lay on the edge of the canopy. She had not been able to settle, even though her body ached with fatigue. Vito slept next to the korm’s roost, a frail bundle of bones that appeared barely to breathe. She could not bear to watch him. ‘I will go.’
She climbed to her feet and went to a third point near the barge. As her eyes adjusted to the deeper dark, she could just make out the scrapings of the grave. She rubbed her fingers together, trying to rid herself of the lingering viscous feel of Davina’s brain tissue.
Without warning, Cass appeared next to her. She handed the rifle to Mira. ‘It is best that you have it. You or Kristo.’ She did not have to say any more.
Cass turned and climbed up onto the barge’s huge metal tracks, peering not at the graves but up at the night sky.
Mira shifted her own gaze upward to Tiesha, wishing she were there. Araldis’s moon looked so serene.
‘Where do you think we should go?’ asked Cass quietly.
‘Mar— Mesquite said we should head south of Pellegrini B, to the Pablo underground.’
‘Back in Ipo you called her something else.’
Mira shrugged. ‘Marchella Pellegrini, her real name. She had only just told me.’
They sat in silence while Cass digested the information. ‘Franco’s sister?’ ‘Si.’
Cass gave a low whistle. ‘Why underground?’
Mira considered how to answer. Cass was no friend of the Pellegrinis, nor was she loyal to the familia, and Mira knew that Marchella would have had good reason for giving the directions she had. ‘We will find out when we get there.’
‘You would go there on faith?’
‘Si.’
‘And what if Franco’s sister is wrong? Pellegrini B is over three hundred mesurs from here. If the winds stay down we might make it. Food is the main problem.’
Dark Space (Sentients of Orion) Page 26