Callina was on her knees on the ground, one hand pressed to her side. “I can’t climb a tree, are you people crazy?”
“Climb or die; it’s simple.” Tilting his head, Red told Meg, “Don’t wait, keep going higher. I’ll need room on the branch for these two.”
“Right.” She followed the route Trever had taken, hard as it was to make herself leave Red.
Taking a break at the next branch to check on the passengers’ progress, she was encouraged to find Bettis had his wife’s arm, trying to get her to her feet. “You can do it, honey. The stewardess is doing it.”
Red made it easily to the first branch. Kneeling, one hand locked on the bark, he stretched the other hand toward Mrs. Bettis. “Last chance, lady. Take my hand now and I’ll get you started. We’re not going to carry you and I’m not waiting for you. You can try running through the forest if you want.”
She stared to the north, as if staying on the ground appealed to her. She took a half step.
Her husband restrained her. “But we’ll die, right?” Bettis said, craning his neck to stare at Red.
“Or get recaptured, and I don’t think the Shemdylann are going to be in a good mood.” Red turned to follow Meg and Trever.
The idea of him abandoning them seemed to galvanize the reluctant Mrs. Bettis. “Wait, wait, I’ll do it, I’ll do it.” She stretched one hand toward Red beseechingly, rising on her tiptoes.
“Keep your voice down.” Red grabbed her arms as her husband boosted her, and a moment later she was on the branch. Bettis scrambled awkwardly, his flimsy beach shoes slipping on the bark as he sought footholds. “You might do better barefoot than with those.” Shaking his head, Red pointed his finger at the man for emphasis. “Your wife’s your responsibility. I can’t set a slower pace for the two of you.”
“I understand. We’ll do our best.” Bettis puffed his chest out. “I jog every morning in the executive exercise suite back at corporate HQ.”
Not answering, apparently having said all he was going to on the subject, Red ascended the tree. Meg had already walked carefully along a huge branch to the next tree and was waiting for him. Trever stood off to the side, tapping his foot impatiently. Red ran across the branch like it was nothing and caught Meg by the waist, giving her a smacking kiss on the lips before releasing her. “I thought you were dead.”
“I was afraid you were,” she replied, a little dazed. “Then I worried about you all day, stuck in that cage.”
“It was like being in an old fashioned zoo, or a jail from the history trideos.” Callina gave a nervous-sounding giggle from where she clung to the tree, taking a break from climbing. “But scary.”
Red sighed. “No time to talk right now. Keep moving, don’t wait for the Bettises if they can’t keep up, and don’t wait for me. I’ll double back on occasion to see what the enemy is doing but I’ll rejoin you, no problem.
“Promise?” The idea of losing him again made Meg nauseous.
“Don’t worry; I’m a hard man to lose. Go generally west.” He shook a finger at Callina. “And be quiet.”
“Right.” Meg pointed to the next branch and the woman started walking.Red touched her elbow. “And, Meg? This was an inspired idea. Shemdylann aren’t too smart and may never think to check in the trees.”
Warmed by his praise, she followed Trever along the maze of interlocking branches, high above the forest floor. Sneezing occasionally, the athlete stayed ahead of her, complaining when he had to backtrack if Meg decided another path was safer to follow.
Meg’s thighs ached as if she’d hiked along the branches for hours before Red called a halt. She tried to stay fit while on the cruises she worked, but clearly she hadn’t been exercising hard enough. Of course, she’d never expected to be called upon to traverse the planet on foot.
All five of them huddled against a massive tree trunk, hundreds of feet in the air. She distributed what plain liquids she had in the pack she’d grabbed, giving Red the only other energy drink. She needed him to be at his best or none of them might survive.
Trever curled his lip at the small packet she handed him. “Water? Hardly my usual choice of beverage.”
“Fugitives can’t be choosers,” she said, twisting the old adage in an attempt to lighten the mood.
“Next time you escape a burning building, grab the feelgoods, would you?” The businessman drank his serving in a single gulp and handed her the empty container. Meg couldn’t decide if he was joking or not.
“It’s getting dark,” Callina said, craning her neck to peer through the leafy canopy far above them. “Are we going to sleep here, in the branches?” Her husband rubbed her shoulders and guzzled the juice Meg had handed him.
“I want to get a little further to the west today, but yes, we’re going to camp in the air.” Red’s tone was decisive. “Even if the Shemdylann find us, it’ll be hard for them to recapture us. We can scatter along the branches. When I reconnoitered, the enemy hadn’t made much more than a token effort at a ground search. Their beach party was going full steam, more raucous if anything, in alien style. I guess shore leave matters more to them than a few escaped prisoners at the moment.”
“I’m surprised they haven’t flown over, done scans, something,” Meg said.
“Their inattention to escapees works in our favor. Five more minutes and then we move.” Finishing his drink, Red crushed the packet and stuck it in his pocket. “Don’t leave anything behind to provide a trail for the enemy in case someone higher up issues orders to venture deeper into the forest, tracking us.”
Eyes wide, Bettis stopped in the act of crumpling the container in his hand. “Oh, yeah, of course. Good precaution.”
“I dropped mine already,” his wife said, eyes downcast and shoulders hunched, as if afraid of what Red might say or do.
“Can’t be helped now,” Meg said hastily. “Please be more careful from now on.”
“Our survival is going to depend on how much the Shemdylann commander’s personal honor is invested in losing us,” Red said. “The big money for him is the ransom Finchon’s going to pay. How many times did you hear him say we’re not worth much?”
“He said you were,” Callina pointed out.
“That’s why the pirates took poor Harelly to feed the eels instead of you,” Bettis said.
“Yeah, I’d forgotten, the enemy passed right over you.” Trever spun on his heel and rejoined them. “What makes you so special, Third Officer Thomsill? Something we should all know perhaps?”
“Maybe the Shemdylann like tattoos.” Eyes narrowed, Red gave him a hard stare, and the man subsided. “I guarantee you I’m not worth a massive effort to find us in this place.” He gestured at the trees. “And I suspect the foliage may block the enemy scanners to some extent, if our pursuers do a cursory search. These trees must absorb quite a few trace minerals. Root systems are usually two to three times the size of the tree’s crown, so the circulation in the trunk will draw nutrients from deep in the soil. I’ve seen the botanical mechanism before on other worlds.”
“Dantaralon has troops of arboreal mammals,” Meg added, recalling bits and pieces of the rangers’ briefings on previous stops on this world. “We just haven’t met any. Better hope we don’t, as the primates can be fierce in a pack. Of course, enough of them might confuse the alien scanners too. Oh, and did I mention there are some gigantic tree snakes, by the way?”
“Better and better.” Callina shivered. “Can we get going now?”
By the time Red signaled a halt for the night, visibility was limited. It might only be sunset above the trees, but under the dense canopy, the light cut out sooner. Meg came to a place where a tree had branched into two massive, joined trunks and there was extra space where the branches met the trunk. “How about here?” she said. “Plenty of room.”
“Fine. Any restless sleepers in the bunch?” Red asked.
Meg wasn’t surprised when Mrs. Bettis raised her hand. Red retraced his footsteps along the last branch
he’d traversed and returned with some vines he’d slashed free with the knife Meg had salvaged from the ranger station. He handed some to Bettis. “Here, lash yourselves together.”
The five of them sat, close together for warmth, Red in the middle, with Meg curled under his right arm and the Bettises on the other side. Trever maintained his distance from them, and still there was quite a bit of room on their makeshift platform. Meg did a quick survey of the remaining food in her pack and set half aside for tomorrow. She gave Red a double serving, telling him as he protested, “We need you to be at full strength, so eat. That’s an order.”
He subsided, grumbling but with a grin. She saw him tuck some of the food into his pants pocket, but she chose not to say anything. He knew what he needed and what he could do without. “We have a full day of travel tomorrow, and by midafternoon the day after we should arrive at the research station,” he said. “I’m not expecting much there besides shelter. The scientists probably didn’t leave anything behind, especially since the place shut down a few years ago, before whatever caused this crisis we’re stuck in. I’m assuming the owners left in an orderly fashion. So, no cache of goodies. But if I can get the systems activated, we might be able to call for extraction. And the place appeared pretty well built on the maps, a lot of it below ground, so even if the Shemdylann find us somehow, burning us out won’t be an option for them.”
Lower lip quivering, Callina appeared to be counting the noodles in her small serving. “If the people who were working there took all their equipment and food, what are we going to eat? How will we survive?”
“Dantaralon is a lush planet,” Meg said. “We can forage for nuts and berries once we’re on the ground.”
“There are small mammals to hunt,” Red added. “I bet tree snake is pretty tasty if you cook it right.”
Thinking about how helpless she’d been while the one crawled over her at the burned-out ranger station, Meg repressed a shudder. But if I get hungry enough, I probably could eat it. “We’ve had survival training,” she said, indicating Red and herself. “We’ll manage.” Of course, her survival training had been one day in the middle of general cruise readiness training, but the lessons had come back to her pretty handily over the past forty eight hours. And she was sure Red could have been marooned anywhere with absolutely no resources and emerged unscathed, given his military training.
“So, you’re telling me it’s an adventure.” Eyebrows raised, Callina seemed dubious.
“That’s one way to think about the situation,” Trever agreed, his tone sour.
Although it grew dark, Meg was surprised how much moonlight filtered through the leaves. Of course, Dantaralon did have four moons. Small iridescent insects flitted over their heads, the buzzing an annoyance once the novelty of the pretty glow wore off. The Bettises talked between themselves quietly for a bit and then settled to sleep. Trever continued his pattern of keeping pretty much to himself and was soon snoring on the edge of the group. Fortunately, his noise blended in with the calls of the night creatures.
Curled against Red’s reassuringly warm bulk, Meg could tell he was awake. Although his breathing was even, his muscles were tense, as if he was poised for action. “I can split the night watch with you,” she whispered. “You need sleep too.”
“I’ll be fine, cat naps, remember?” His voice held a hint of amusement. Then his tone dropped into a serious register. “Meg?”
“Yes?”
“I’m sorry I couldn’t reach you, there in the cabin, when it was on fire. I was going to regret my failure to my dying day.”
She patted his hand and then curled her fingers around his. “I survived. You rescued Callina; that’s not trivial.”
He hugged her closer to him and dropped a kiss on the top of her head. “I’ve been wondering all day—how did you get out?”
She told him a brief version of her escape, omitting the utter terror.
When she was finished with her bare bones recitation, he was silent for a moment, rubbing his thumb across her hand, before asking a new question. “What made you think of taking to the trees?”
“I grew up on a frontier planet in Sector Forty, with four older brothers. Climbing trees is one of the ways we spent our time when we weren’t in school. Or in detention.” She chuckled at the memories, keeping her mirth quiet, mindful of their sleeping passengers. Since he seemed to be in the mood to talk, she decided to probe a bit at his personal history. “What about you, any brothers or sisters?”
Stretching to unkink his back and then settling against the tree trunk, pulling her close, he grinned. “Yeah, I’m the youngest of six brothers. We homesteaded on the frontier as well. Most of us guys on my homeworld joined the military when we were old enough. The war with the Mawreg is a lot more real out there than it is to the Inner Sectors, I think.”
“It was real to us on my planet. We had shelters and drills and a lot of military presence.” She considered for a moment. “I rarely hear anything about the war nowadays, at least not while on a cruise. Of course, our passengers are trying to escape reality or they wouldn’t be sailing with us. What made you decide to join the Special Forces?”
“Some of the more specialized branches of the military recruit for frontier kids. Our kind of survival skills are at a premium, and difficult to teach to soft Inner Sectors cadets.” He nudged her gently in the ribs. “If you’re not going to sleep, turnabout is fair play tonight—how did you follow a career path that brought you to a staff position on a luxury charter in the mid Sectors?”
“I should ask you how you became crew on the same boat,” she said. “Not much to tell about me, you know as well as I do there aren’t too many ways off a frontier world other than the military. I didn’t want to live and die on one planet. I didn’t see myself as a soldier, present circumstances excepted. One of my mother’s cousins was pretty high in the Guild and she pulled strings to get me into training. I flew the outer runs, then immigrant ships, then cryo passenger vessels with a few cabins, and finally worked my way into charter.”
“You ever think of signing on with one of the big lines, or an intermediate like CLC?”
She bit her lip. Now he was talking about her impossible dream. “Who hasn’t? I’ve heard CLC’s about the best for crew, since the SMT line went bankrupt. CLC pays a fair salary; you’re not just living on tips. And the working conditions would be so much better. Our captain on the Far Horizons is—was—a pretty decent man, but you’re at the mercy of the draw who you ship out with on these short charters. Can’t refuse a berth, not more than once or twice. Guild frowns on exercising your options, no matter what the fine print says about crew rights. But the competition for the big liner slots is fierce.”
“I have a berth waiting for me, working Security on a top of the line CLC cruiser, the Nebula Princess. We survive this dilemma, we’re in; I can get you hired on.”
She craned her neck to stare at him. “If you have a position with CLC, why are you wasting time crewing for this small outfit?”
She thought he wasn’t going to answer because he was silent for so long. She turned to watch a pair of nocturnal winged insects wafting by on the breeze, wishing he would say more, explain himself.
Red took a deep breath. “Well, I met a girl and she works for this charter company. And I can’t get her out of my mind, you see.”
Meg turned to him and found him staring at her in the moonlight, eyes gleaming. She couldn’t look away as he lowered his head, closing her eyes only as their lips met. His tongue swept the seam of her lips, and she parted them to grant him entry. But when Meg adjusted to make the embrace less awkward, looping her arm around Red’s neck, Callina murmured in her sleep, stretching a bit.
Red broke off the kiss reluctantly, but continued to hold her close against him. She could hear his heart beating—a steady, reassuring sound in this tropical forest full of noisy night creatures. “Just tell me you don’t hate the idea,” he whispered, lips close to her ear. “Please.�
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“Idea?” Caught in the emotion of the moment, she wasn’t sure if he was talking about working together for the CLC Line or referring to the attraction blossoming between them in this unlikely time and place.
“Us. Us together, anywhere you want to be,” he said, as if reading her confusion.
“No, I-I don’t hate the idea.” Hand on the back of his head, threaded in the incredible softness of his hair, she guided him to an angle where their lips met in a quick kiss. Regretting this wasn’t the time or place to explore the intriguing possibilities flooding through her mind, Meg ended the embrace all too soon. Survival was the top priority. “You get me the interview, and I’ll do the rest on my own merits, though,” she said, poking him in the chest with one finger.
He laughed. “I’ve no doubts.”
CHAPTER FIVE
When she woke in the morning, Red was nowhere to be seen, but there were two huge, bowl-shaped green leaves filled with water sitting a short distance away on the branch. Yawning and stretching, she eyed her companions. “Did anyone see where Mr. Thomsill went?”
The others shook their heads or gazed at her in sleepy confusion. As she was becoming concerned about him, Red climbed onto the branch from below, her pack, now full of berries, looped over one of his broad shoulders.
“You took the risk of going down there?” she asked, pointing at the forest floor so far below.
He nodded. “Gathered dew for you first, before I descended to check for enemy activity. As long as I was on the ground reconnoitering anyway, decided I’d pick some berries. We’re about out of food, right?”
“How do we know these are safe to eat?” Leaning over her husband’s shoulder to see the offering better as Red set the bulging pack on the branch, Callina was dubious.
“All kinds of small mammals were eating them and one large bearlike creature. I had to find my own patch, wasn’t going to fight him for breakfast. Must have outweighed me by two hundred pounds.” Red popped several of the sapphire blue berries in his mouth, chewed and swallowed with enthusiasm. “I’ve already had quite a few and you don’t see me keeling over.”
Star Cruise: Marooned: (A Sectors SF Romance) Page 7