by Merry Farmer
Grace jumped up, pushing her chair back. Her heart hammered against her ribs, but she forced herself to calm.
“It’s probably just a drill. You know the procedure. Follow the beacons on the floor,” she ordered the others, starting toward the door with her arms outstretched to guide them. “Leave your things here. There’s an escape corridor ten feet down the hall to the left.” She slipped easily into the role she had been trained for.
Like they had during other drills, the ten people in the room followed her order without hesitation. They sprang from their seats and headed for the door, muttering in confusion laced with fear. She reached the door first and opened it into the hallway.
The door across the hall hissed open and Carrie rushed out, brow knit as if someone were playing a bad joke, likely Danny by the way she glared at him.
“What’s going on?” she demanded.
Sean emerged beside her, followed by the other group that had broken out of their main meeting.
“Head down the hall to the escape corridor,” she directed them.
“No one told me a drill was scheduled,” Sean said.
“Surprised that they don’t tell you everything?” Danny snapped, one step behind Grace.
Sean turned to tell him off. Grace pushed them both and rushed on.
Alvin and some of the others from her group had already turned down the escape corridor and were shepherding people along the passage toward the emergency ship. A number five was painted above a number seventy-five, indicating that this was Emergency Ship Five and could hold seventy-five passengers. It was enough for all of them.
“We’ll sort it all out once we’re in there.”
Sean nodded to her and grabbed Carrie’s elbow, marching her down the hall. Carrie glanced over her shoulder from Sean to Danny to Grace, her anger melting to panic. Grace sent her friend a reassuring nod.
Another door further down the hall opened and the dim corridor filled with more people heading for ES5. Their anxious chatter grew as loud as the alarms. Grace slowed to help them.
“You too.” Danny placed a protective hand on her back and nudged her along.
“I have to make sure everyone gets out.”
“And you’re doing a fine job. But you have to move. We don’t have time to argue.”
“But—”
“We’ll talk about it later.”
The flickering lights, blaring sirens, and continued warnings of the PA system were muffled as they picked up their pace. Now the loudest sound was the buzzing and questions of their confused team members.
ES5’s doorway stood open with Alvin and Sean on either side, helping people in. Danny all but shoved her into their waiting grasp then forced his own way past them.
The interior of the ship was quiet but for confused whispering. It was designed to look like any other community room with the exception of the seats that lined the walls and the stacks of emergency supplies behind mesh netting toward the back. The ship’s lights worked independently of the Argo and the brightness was a comfort. Grace made her way to one of the small portal windows, but ES5 was still secure inside of the Argo. There was nothing to see but a metal wall.
She searched across the filling room for Carrie. Everyone from their meeting wandered around the wide space, swapping looks of confusion and speculating reasons for the emergency.
“This is a drill, right?” Beth asked.
“Yes, I’m sure—”
A loud click was followed by the groan of metal against metal. Sean and Alvin swore and jumped through the doorway, dragging a last young woman with them as the bulkhead door to the corridor snapped down. It locked into place with a resonant thunk, sealing them in.
“Watch out!” Sean shouted, pulling people away from ES5’s door as it whirred to life and shut automatically. It sealed with a loud hiss, trapping them inside.
Grace’s heart twisted to her throat at the sound of banging from the other side of the bulkhead door.
“Open the door,” she shouted. “We still have plenty of room.”
ES5’s engines roared to life. Seconds later the cabin lurched. Gravity vanished for a dizzy second. Grace scrambled for something to hold on to. Another sick second later, artificial gravity kicked in. Everyone who had floated up was thrown to the floor as ES5 shot away from the Argo and into space.
Grace landed on her knees, sharp pain anchoring her in reality. The pressure around her increased as ES5’s support systems rushed to life. They raced away into interstellar blackness.
She ignored the pain and pushed to her feet, scanning the jumble of people on the floor for Carrie, Sean, and Danny. Carrie had the good luck of falling into one of the seats against the wall. Danny was already crawling from person to person, checking for injuries. Sean and his buddy Dave were on their feet, rushing to the cockpit where Alvin clutched the door.
She stumbled her way to the nearest porthole and pressed her face against it, shielding her eyes. Her gut clenched at the sight that met her. Dozens of emergency ships of all sizes darted away from the Argo, tiny pricks of light shooting from the center like a sparkler. One was close enough for her to see several frightened faces pressed against other portholes.
She looked back to the Argo. Angry cracks of red and orange appeared around the seams and in the windows. They spread, highlighting the Argo’s seams with a horrific glow that lit up the blackness of the void.
An instant later the entire vessel exploded in a silent cloud of flame.
She jerked back from the window with a gasp, drawing stares. But there was no need to ask what had startled her. The terrible glow of the explosion grew, filling ES5 with eerie light. She flinched, squeezing her eyes shut to keep from being blinded. Then the shockwave hit.
Grace stumbled back, grabbing in vain for anything to keep her steady. Turbulence threw her to the floor. Still all she could hear was a low rumble and the growl of ES5’s engine whisking them away.
As the shockwave passed she rolled to crouch on the floor. Others recovered faster, scrambling up to gape out the portholes. Their wordless exclamations and cries of shock launched Grace to her feet. She scrambled to a porthole. All that was left to see was glittering debris burning itself out as ES5 rocketed away.
Ten minutes ago she had been sitting in a meeting, bored. Now the Argo was gone. They were alone in space.
Ten minutes.
The riverbank grew rocky again at the far end of the next curve. Grace pushed her memories aside and climbed the jetty. Danny and Alvin were out of sight somewhere in the trees and Carrie was preoccupied watching the opposite bank and chewing her lip. Grace left them behind to follow her curiosity.
The river narrowed on the other side of the jetty, bubbling over rocks in white-tipped rapids. The riverbank on Grace’s side formed a cliff that was slashed with spikes of rock where the forest leaned closer.
In the distance, Grace saw what looked like a bridge spanning the rapids. A jolt of anxious curiosity caught her heart in her throat.
She scrambled the rest of the way down the jetty and into the shallows of the stream to avoid the rocks and trees. The current was fast and dragged at her ankles and the hem of her skirt. A loud voice in her head told her she was a fool to continue upstream in the water. She should go back through the forest. But that would either mean climbing the three-foot cliff or backtracking over the jetty. She chose the river.
She’d only waded a few yards upstream against the current when she stumbled and tripped. She yelped before she could stop herself and splashed to her knees. The current pushed her back a few feet, but she managed to grab a root to keep from falling completely.
“Grace, are you okay?” Danny’s voice echoed through the trees above her.
“Yeah, I’m fine,” she shouted back. “I tripped in the water is all.”
“Stay right there, I’ll come get you.”
With a grunt, she muscled herself to her feet. Her dress was soaked to her thighs and the bodice was streaked with m
ud.
“Dammit.” She wiped her forehead and pushed on. If Danny was coming for her he would find her upriver.
She slogged on to the next section of wide, sandy bank where the current slowed, stopping to assess the damage. Her knees were scuffed and scraped and she had a cut on her palm. Nothing serious. More importantly, her dress hadn’t torn. “Grandmother would be so proud,” she mumbled.
Carrie would have laughed at her for caring what the grandmother she’d left behind thought. Her friend would have misunderstood. Food you could find. Shelter you could build. But if you lost the clothes off your back you had a problem. The Argo’s emergency ships were equipped with one change of clothes each for seventy-five people. It was hardly enough for thirty-eight people for the rest of their lives. You could make clothes, but not overnight. Carrie wouldn’t laugh once she explained they were going back to wearing fig leaves.
Grace waded back into the river, thigh-deep in the slower-moving water, and scooped a handful to wash the mud off of her bodice. She splashed another handful over her head. When was the last time she’d had a real shower? She didn’t even want to think about the answer.
She dunked under the river. The current was swift, but she’d swam through much worse. How good would it feel to go swimming again? She stood, embracing the joy of that thought, cold water rippling down her body. It dripped from her shoulders to her knees, plastering her dress against her body.
She glanced down and blushed bright pink.
“Brilliant, Grace,” she muttered to herself and waded faster upstream. “You should know better than to go swimming in a white dress when Danny is looking for you.”
She glanced back over her shoulder. Murphy’s Law said that Danny would pick that moment to climb over the rock jetty and see her standing there with the finest Project-issued underwear clear as day through her wet clothes. Lucky for her he was nowhere in sight. She breathed a sigh of relief and kept going.
A second later she jerked to a dead stop, sucking in a breath and nearly losing her balance. There was a man standing on the bridge-like span in the middle of the stream ahead.
He stood stock still, legs braced apart, staring at her. He held something in his hands, a weapon.
Grace swallowed as he started to move with perfect balance across the narrow bridge to her side of the river. He was huge, easily as tall as Sean with legs the size of tree trunks and arms bulging with intimidating muscles. She was drenched, weaker than she wanted to admit to after more than a year of interstellar travel, and out of breath from hiking and swimming. Fighting wasn’t an option. Running wasn’t an option. So she stood where she was, painfully self-conscious, and waited, hands shaking.
“I know you,” the man called, his voice deep and demanding. He reached the riverbank and jogged toward her, weapon held ready but not raised. It was some kind of crossbow.
“Grace,” she answered, forcing her voice to be steady. “My name is Grace.”
He slowed his approach. The government men and soldiers on the Argo had worn the same olive-drab, army-issued pants covered with pockets that he had on. With them he wore a rough vest fashioned out of some kind of animal hide. His thick muscles were tense and waiting, his eyes vivid. That flicker of human emotion was almost enough to settle Grace’s nerves. Almost.
He approached the last few yards with cautious steps. “Where did you come from?”
Grace blinked. “Our ship just crashed an hour ago, maybe longer.”
He lowered his crossbow to his side, but continued to stare at her with awed eyes, saying nothing.
She was certain she knew why he stared, but refused to draw attention to her exposed state by fussing with her damp dress. The silence between them stretched on, making the hair on the back of her neck stand up.
“You were on the Argo too, weren’t you?” She pointed at his clothes, talking to fill the awkwardness. “I recognize the uniform. You’re a soldier. And I…I think I’ve seen you before. Were you part of the squadron that was being sent to hunt the breakaways?”
He continued to stare. Her nerves bristled. She shifted her weight, raised a hand reflexively to her hair, and was about to repeat her question when he answered, “Yeah. I was. I’m Kinn.”
“Kinn.” She repeated the name. Did it sound familiar? “Nice to meet you, Kinn.”
Every negotiation tactic she’d learned in the Project said it was foolish to alienate someone who might need help by being stand-offish. Even if her instincts told her to run.
She waded to the riverbank where he stood.
“I assume your emergency ship crashed here too. How long ago?”
He watched her without answering, eyes narrowed. She hit her toe on a submersed rock and stumbled, cursing. He jumped forward. His large hand closed around her arm, tight enough to bruise. He plucked her out of the water like a twig, lifting her to shore. She glanced up at him, fear returning. He was at least a foot taller than her.
“Two months ago,” he answered at last, his voice a gravelly bass. “I think. It’s not the same here.”
He glanced up to the sky and she followed his gaze. The sun was a sharp, bright ball high above them. She could also make out the fuzzy orange line of Chronis’s rings. If they had been standing on the hill instead of in the valley she was sure she would see the planet too.
“Right.” She nodded. She took a breath, steadying herself and falling back on her training. “How many people were in your ship? Did you make the landing all right? Is anyone injured? Do you need medical help?”
He lowered his gaze and stared long and hard at her before answering. “We had a smooth landing. Our camp is….” He turned to glance across the river and narrowed his eyes. With a flick of his head he told her, “We’re on that side.”
“Do you have enough supplies? Food?”
He turned back to her with a sudden grin. His teeth were startlingly white against the deep tan of his skin. “We’re fine. How about you?”
There was no sense in lying. “I think we’re all right. Like I said, we only just crashed. One death, a few injuries, but Danny, our doctor, treated them.”
“You got a doctor?” Kinn’s deep voice rose.
“Yes. Do you need one?”
“No,” he snapped.
She waited for him to say something else. He didn’t.
“How many of you are there?”
He studied her, his dark gaze drilling into her, sweeping her from head to toe like a wilderness predator. Her face burned. There was no mistaking his thoughts about her. They were as blatant as the color that flushed his face, leaving her feeling like prey. He shifted his weight, planting one booted foot on a large rock and leaning on his leg in a failed attempt to appear casual.
“There are a hundred and three of us,” he said, a note of pride in his words. “We’ve got fire if you need it, meat, skins.”
“Thanks.” She smiled, glancing up the hill to where she was sure the others should be. “We have supplies to last a while, but since you are already established, we should bring everyone to your camp. If you tell me where that is, I can get my people to—”
“No.”
Grace blinked, off-balance. “No?” He didn’t elaborate. “But you’re already established. There’s safety in numbers. If we come together—”
“No,” Kinn repeated. His stance relaxed and he shrugged. “Not ’til you’ve been vetted.”
“Vetted?”
Again he didn’t answer. Grace stared at him in dumb amazement, her mind working to catch up.
“We…we saw something that looked like a bear further down the stream.” She tried a different line of logic. “Do you know what it was?”
“A bear.” His answer held no trace of humor. “These woods are wild. You got weapons?”
“Probably.” She considered their situation from a new angle. Danny had wished for a weapon as they started their exploration. Maybe he was right. “Not many.”
“You need weapons,” Kinn said. “T
he bears and all don’t know we’re a threat yet, but they’re fast learners.”
“Grace!” Danny’s muffled cry echoed from the trees crowding the hill beside her.
Grace and Kinn turned toward the sound of rustling in the undergrowth as it grew louder, followed by Carrie’s echoing cry of, “Grace!”
In a flash, Kinn raised his crossbow.
Grace spotted Danny first as he reached the tree line.
“Stop!” She pushed Kinn’s arm down before he could fire. “They’re my friends.”
Danny burst out of the trees, skittering down the hill, his blue eyes wide behind his glasses and his mouth open. Carrie and Alvin shot out after him. Alvin noticed Kinn and bent to pick up a fist-sized rock to throw.
Kinn raised and fired his crossbow in a flash. With a swish and thunk the bolt sunk into Alvin’s thigh and he fell. Grace shouted and lunged toward Alvin at the same time as Danny.
Carrie’s face twisted in rage. She took half a step toward Kinn before he turned the crossbow on her. A second bolt was poised to fire. Carrie backed up, holding out her hands.
“What did you do?” Danny demanded as he studied Alvin’s leg. Alvin groaned and writhed in pain.
Kinn took his time replying, staring at Danny with narrowed eyes. “Neutralized the threat.”
Grace pivoted on her knees and glared at him. “He wasn’t going to hurt you. All he had was a rock.”
“He was a threat.” Kinn defended his actions with a careless shrug.
“Don’t you have any concern for human life?”
“He’ll be fine. It’s a flesh wound.” He narrowed his eyes at Carrie and lowered his crossbow. He checked the bundle of bolts at his belt.
“Are you crazy?” Carrie hissed, keeping her distance.
Kinn didn’t answer, didn’t acknowledge her.
Grace turned back to Alvin, helping Danny by holding him down. The bolt had pierced Alvin’s outer thigh as cleanly as could be hoped for. It had gone nearly all the way through at such close range, but without hitting bone. Most of it protruded from the back of his leg.