by Merry Farmer
“You think we have a future here?” Kutrosky barked at her.
“Of course we do,” she snapped. “I joined The Terra Project because I wanted a better future than the life I had in the past. I need that life.”
“And what you were heading for was life as his lab rat and then death.” Kutrosky pointed past her shoulder at Danny.
“She knows.” Danny was tense, eyes shifting back and forth between Kutrosky and the growing doubt in Grace’s eyes. “Don’t think you can dodge the inevitable by throwing my past mistakes at her.”
“Oh, your past mistakes, huh? Would those include the blood of every man and woman who didn’t make it off the Argo in time?”
Grace panted with frustration, glancing around for answers. Sean did the same, as did Gil and Stacey. The majority of the armed fighters on both sides were just as lost. The only ones who didn’t seem surprised were Danny, Carrie, and Mina.
Danny stared back at Kutrosky, cold and calculating, while Carrie flushed bright red and avoided anyone’s eyes.
“Danny didn’t blow up the Argo.” Grace forced herself to defend him even as her certainty crumbled. “He told me so and I believe him.”
“You’re right.” Kutrosky shrugged. Relief surged through Grace. “My people were responsible for that. I take full credit for it. Proudly.”
Sean took a step toward Kutrosky but stopped when he heard the click of a rifle being cocked.
“Go ahead, pretty boy,” Kutrosky taunted him. He turned back to Grace with an arrogant smirk. “My people are everywhere, Grace. They’ve been two steps away from you since day one. You should have figured that out by now.”
Grace shot a glance to Carrie. Her friend looked away, near tears. Carrie had been by her side from the beginning. Betrayal from the first step. Grace rocked on the balls of her feet, wanting to run, hands clenching into fists.
“You were never going to make it to Terra in the first place,” Kutrosky went on. “It was never part of the plan. Although in a way I have you to thank for it. I’m not sure I would have been able to give the final command if I had been locked up near the engine. And my people certainly wouldn’t have been able to free me.”
“You think you have that much control?” Her voice was almost too quiet to be heard.
“Of course I do. I still do.” Kutrosky chuckled. “And your four-eyed geneticist friend knew it. He knew about the plan, knew about the explosives smuggled aboard, knew about my network of spies, knew about the plan to destroy the ship and The Terra Project in one blow. He knew all about it. And do you know what he did? He helped us.”
She wanted to be surprised. She wasn’t.
Swallowing, she turned to Danny. “You knew.”
He met her fierce glare with a passion and protectiveness that revealed his reasons even as it condemned him.
“I found out a couple of months into the mission,” he confirmed.
“And you didn’t alert the authorities?”
His eyes didn’t hold a shred of regret. “I fell in love with you the moment I saw you, Grace, and the moment after that I knew that I would never have you. Until suddenly the way to save you, to get us both out of The Terra Project fell into my lap.”
“But…how did you find out?”
“I told him.” Carrie finally spoke.
Another surprise that wasn’t a surprise at all. She glanced between Danny and Carrie, the two best friends she had ever had. The two worst betrayals she could imagine.
“Grace, I’m—”
“It doesn’t matter.” She cut Carrie off, meeting Danny’s eyes to make sure he knew she was speaking to him as well. She took a deep breath, turned to Kutrosky. “It doesn’t matter. Terra is gone. Earth is gone. This is what we have now. It doesn’t matter how we got here, who had a hand in what kind of deception. We have the same concerns now that we had before we walked over that hill.”
“You really think so, don’t you?” Kutrosky smirked.
“Yes, I do.” Grace hardly recognized the tired gravel of her own voice. “It will be winter soon.” She glanced back to Gil who nodded in agreement, eyes round with shock at what was unfolding. “Your camp is not prepared, Brian, no matter how much you might smile and tell us otherwise. It doesn’t matter that you’re a conniving bastard who killed thousands of innocent people for some nebulous cause that has effectively ceased to exist.” Her voice cracked in sharp hate. “You have too many women. Kinn has too few. His settlement is advanced and the women, all of us, would be better off on his side of the river. All of us. Kinn may be a liar and a monster, but he has everything we need. We need to forget our stupid prejudices and form a future here, now.”
She took a breath and forced everything aside but her original concerns. “I think I have more than enough influence to work out a deal with Kinn to give you permission to move into his camp if—”
“There is no future here.” Kutrosky cut her off with a laugh. “His marvelous camp? I couldn’t care less. You people can mark your territory up all you want. What do you think this is, Paradise? This is a pit stop.”
He paused, shaking his head at Grace as if she were a foolish child and glaring at Danny. When he saw that no one had a response for him he went on.
“There is another ship. One of our ships. Vengeance. It was launched a month after the Argo.”
Grace stopped breathing.
“Another ship?” Gil’s voice broke through the intensity of the shock that had seized her. “No, no, no.” He rushed forward. “There were no other ships. The Argo was the only vessel capable of interstellar space travel. The cost of building that ship practically—”
“You’re wrong,” Kutrosky contradicted him with a smile. “There is another. Vengeance is on its way.”
“You’re lying.” Sean shook his head.
“Why do you think I haven’t wasted any of my time on your silly future?” Kutrosky snapped. “Do you think I’m an idiot? No. I have no interest in wasting my time and energy when rescue is on the way.”
“It can’t be,” Danny argued, face pale, eyes huge behind his glasses.
“Oh yes it can. I have a homing beacon.” Kutrosky grinned, victorious. “It may take Vengeance some time to scour this sector of the galaxy to find the signal, but it’s a strong signal and they will find it.”
Carrie lowered her gun, shuffled in her spot, trying desperately to catch Grace’s eye. Grace pursed her lips and ignored her, looking to Danny instead. His pale, shocked expression said it all. He hadn’t known about the other ship any more than she had. They were on equal ground for a change.
“You think you’re here permanently, Grace?” Kutrosky pulled her attention back to himself. “Think again. This will all be over soon.” He smiled. “Vengeance is coming. Why worry about the future? If I were you I would worry about cozying up to the one person who can speak on your behalf to keep you away from the execution squad when they get here. You spoke on my behalf, after all. I can save you, Grace, but whether you like it or not you’ve got some dangerous friends.” He pointed to Danny. “That one will be the first to go.”
Grace couldn’t think. Her head pounded. She closed her eyes, unable to comprehend the mountain of information that Kutrosky had just poured down on top of her. She refused to accept that all of her efforts, all of her plans, had been for nothing. She wouldn’t believe that the future she had just been resigning herself to was an illusion, the sacrifices she had made herself commit to for the greater good were in vain. Why should she sacrifice one more thing for anyone?
“We’re done here,” she hissed at Kutrosky.
She turned and stormed away without waiting to see if the others would follow. She had had too many things taken from her in the last two days, least among them her pride. But Kutrosky had stolen her hope. She wasn’t about to sit by and let him get away with it.
Sick though it made her, she knew exactly how to stop him, exactly who could stop him.
“Grace, where are you going? Yo
u’re going the wrong way.” Danny broke away from the others and ran to catch up with her.
“Fire at them,” Kutrosky shouted.
The tension throughout the camp erupted.
“Run,” Sean shouted as Danny caught Grace around the waist and sprinted through the startled guards and women hovering near the ruin of the wreck.
Gunshots sounded behind Grace. She ran on instinct alone, numb with fear.
“Faster, Boss, faster,” Stacey shouted. “Let’s get out of here.”
The gunshots grew spotty as they rushed away. Shouts of confusion replaced them. Grace ran until her lungs hurt, diving into the forest. She slowed only to be sure that all of her people were safe, then picked up speed, breaking away from Danny and dodging through the trees.
“Why aren’t they following?” Gil panted.
“They don’t want to risk it,” Sean answered.
“Grace, slow down,” Danny called after her.
“Stay away from me, Danny.” Anger brought hot tears to her eyes.
He ignored her command and caught her, grabbing her arm and spinning her to face him.
“Let me go.” She struggled against him. “I don’t know who you are.”
“I tried to tell you. So many times, I tried to tell you. You kept telling me that you didn’t want to know. On the ship, once we crashed here, over and over. You said you didn’t want to know. So I didn’t tell you.”
“There are a lot of things you didn’t tell me,” she seethed.
“I love you, Grace.” He tried to grab her other arm and hold her but she yanked away, taking a step back. The stricken look in his eyes made her want to run to him as much as it made her want to slap him.
“You love me enough to let thousands of people die for me.”
“I love you enough to do what I had to do to save your life. To be with you.”
“Danny.” She panted, clutching the sides of her head, tears burning down her face, “You let thousands of people die to be with me and then you let me march into the bed of a monster over a lie?”
His eyes flew wide with indignation. “I tried to stop you. You refused to let me.”
She would not see his point.
“They all took orders from you,” she said, glancing to the tense circle of her friends. “You…you’ve been the leader of our people all along, haven’t you? You just let me think I was responsible.”
“What was I supposed to do when people came to me for advice? It was your vision, Grace, only yours.”
“Well you can have my vision now. I’m through with it.” She ended the argument and continued to storm into the forest along the rough path to the river.
“Wait, Grace!” Stacey called after her, jogging to catch her. The others were right behind her. “What are we supposed to do about Kutrosky? Mina says—”
“If he doesn’t want to worry about the future then we won’t worry about it,” she spat, wanting to break into a run to get away.
“Come on, Grace, don’t lose it now.” Sean matched his long stride to hers.
“You tried to betray us,” Grace shouted at him, walking faster. “You were ready to throw us all under the bus. Why? Because Danny took your place?”
“Because he took you,” Sean roared.
Grace gaped at him. “You’re no better than Kinn.”
“I refuse to—”
“And you’re as big of a liar as Kutrosky.” Grace cut Sean off and turned on Danny again.
“Kutrosky isn’t lying.” Carrie spoke with more certainty in her voice than Grace had heard since they had crashed months ago.
They all stopped and turned to her.
“Tell me who you are, Carrie,” Grace demanded. “Tell me who you are.”
Carried faced her, panting. “We don’t have time for—”
Grace pivoted to walk on.
“Okay, okay.” Carrie stopped her, holding her hands up. She took a deep breath, glancing at the others, met Danny’s shadowed eyes, and swallowed.
“After the second mission to Terra, information leaked about the breakaways, the real purpose of The Terra Project.” She scowled at Danny. “The government tried to cover it up, but its opponents decided to take matters into their own hands. We had funding from some bigwigs in the opposition party. They helped us infiltrate the Project and build another ship. It took years, decades. We were supposed to blow up the Argo and wait on the emergency ships for Vengeance to come and get us and take us back to Earth where we would expose The Terra Project and the government that sponsored it.”
“You’re terrorists?” Grace shook her head. She pressed her mouth shut and kept marching toward the river.
“Yeah, we’re terrorists a little.” Carrie chased after her. “But it’s a hell of a lot easier to blow up people you don’t know than it is to kill your friends.”
A bitter twist pulled at Grace’s mouth as her brow darkened. “That’s why we were ten yards away from ES5 when the alarm sounded.”
“Yep,” Carrie answered without remorse.
“And that’s where the treasure chests came from.”
“That was Danny’s idea,” Carrie confessed, withering when Grace turned her fury on her.
Grace wanted to get as far away from them as she could. It was all she could think about. She rounded on Danny. “The box. The locked box that you’re always trying to get me to open. You put that there.”
“No, I didn’t. I have no idea where that came from. That’s why I want you to open it.” He had never looked so old as he did then.
“I put it there,” Carrie answered.
It was all Grace wanted to know. She started running for the river.
Her dream for a better world crumbled all around her. Terra had been a light of hope on the horizon, the promise that the human race could start again, could put war and politics and self-interest behind it and come together to create. She had been foolish enough to believe it was possible. War would always be at the forefront of mankind’s mind. There would always be people like Kutrosky who thought of themselves first, people like Kinn who took what they wanted without concern for others. People like Danny and Carrie who justified atrocities in the name of a greater good. There would never be peace. And yet for a short time it had seemed so bitterly close.
She burst out into the clearing near the bridge first, the others shadowing behind her. Kinn sat on the roots of the fallen tree, carving something as he waited. He glanced up when Grace stormed into the clearing, a fond grin lending a shade of possession to his hard face.
“Hey Grace. So what’s the story?”
As she marched toward him and his men, Kinn’s glance shifted to Danny and Carrie behind her, Sean and Stacey and Gil and their guards spilling out of the woods. His soldiers jumped to alert, weapons ready.
“What’d’ya bring them for?” Kinn glowered.
Grace ignored his question, planting herself solidly in front of him, fire in her eyes. “He said no.” She forced the words out through anger that didn’t want to let her speak.
Kinn shrugged. “Are you really surprised?”
If he was at all affected by her fury he wasn’t showing it. She opened her mouth to speak, to tell him his grand village with its cabins and well and oven was pointless, to tell him that he could go to hell and the rest of them would follow on his heels. But something stopped her.
She turned and glanced back to the others. Carrie was beside herself with worry. Danny watched her with barely contained heartbreak. She couldn’t look at either of them without feeling stabbing pain through her chest. The rest of her people bristled with confusion.
She shifted her weight and turned to Kinn. “He said no,” she repeated. “I say yes.”
Kinn blinked. Her friends shifted anxiously, stepping forward either to back her up or pull her away. She stepped up on the dead branches that formed stairs up to the bridge across the river, turning to face Kinn and the others together.
“I say go in there and take what
you want. Take it by force. I don’t care who gets hurt. Kill them if you have to. Do your worst. He deserves it.”
She spun to charge across the bridge.
“Hey, Grace,” Kinn called after her.
She stopped and turned back to him. “What?”
“Where do you think you’re going?”
She looked straight at Danny, heart breaking. Danny’s expression had turned so dark she couldn’t read whether he was angry or surprised or hurt. She loved him, but her faith in him was dead.
She narrowed her eyes at Danny then at Kinn, unable to escape the inevitable. “I’m taking what I want, the future I sacrificed everything for. I’ve made my choice.”
Without another word she turned and crossed the bridge to the other side of the river.
Keep clicking to read the first chapter of Fallen from Grace, book two in the Grace’s Moon series.
About the Author
I hope you have enjoyed Saving Grace. If you’d like to be the first to learn about when the next books in the series come out and more, please sign up for my newsletter here: http://eepurl.com/RQ-KX And remember: Read it, Review it, Share it!
Merry Farmer lives in suburban Philadelphia with her two cats, Butterfly and Torpedo. She has been writing since she was ten years old and realized one day that she didn’t have to wait for the teacher to assign a creative writing project to write something. It was the best day of her life. She then went on to earn not one but two degrees in History so that she would always have something to write about. Today she walks along the cutting edge of Indie Publishing, writing Historical Romance and Women's Sci-Fi. She is also passionate about blogging, knitting, and cricket and is working toward becoming an internationally certified cricket scorer.
You can email her at [email protected] or follow her on Twitter @merryfarmer20.
Merry also has a blog, http://merryfarmer.net,
and a Facebook page, www.facebook.com/merryfarmerauthor