by Toby Minton
Maybe a little sugar coating would have been fine.
“What’s the plan, Sam?” She put on a smile that was braver than she felt at the moment.
“Best thing to do would be to leave you right where you are and call for evac,” he said.
“I love it. Wake me when your ride shows up,” she said, easing her head back and closing her eyes.
“That’s a negative, Nikki,” he replied. “You might have a concussion. I need you to stay awake for me.”
“And we were getting along so well.” She opened her eyes and gave him a mock glare, feeling another wave of nausea rising. “What’s the other bad news I see on your face?”
“We can’t stay here,” he said evenly. “I counted twenty men outside the lander that set down in the center of this ghost town. It won’t take them long to realize these five aren’t really on the way back. They’ll converge on us pretty fast at that point.”
“So let’s do this evac now,” she said.
“No can do,” he said with a scowl. “I can’t call out from here. Something is blocking long range coms. I’m guessing the lander. That’s why these guys are using those old-school short-range radios. Savior wasn’t taking any chances.”
“How long before more of these guys find us?”
“Maybe half an hour, if we’re lucky,” he replied. “We need to be away from here well before then.”
Nikki felt her heart drop and the tremor start up again in her stomach.
“I can’t,” she breathed, hearing the little girl in her voice. She couldn’t walk. Not a chance. And the thought of Sam carrying her with her side and ribs the way they were almost made her lose the battle with the nausea again.
“You don’t expect me to believe that, do you?” he asked, his stare holding hers. “I saw the vids of you in action. I’m betting nothing makes you back down.
“Since you were smart enough to knock down all this wood, I have what I need to splint the leg,” he went on, glancing around them again. “And I can bind up your arm to help with the ribs some. It won’t be perfect, but I don’t need you to walk far. Just into the trees enough to put a little distance between this place and us. I can work out something else after that.” He met her eyes again. “OK?”
“OK. Your show, Sam.”
She eased her head back again as Sam quietly gathered what he needed and set to work. She tried her best not to fall asleep before he got started on her leg. Once he did start, she tried her best not to scream.
Chapter 9
Nikki
“What do you know about growing avocados?” Sam asked just as Nikki’s eyes were drifting closed.
Are you kidding me? she thought, struggling to swallow the frustration that flared up each time her nap got thwarted. “What’s less than nothing?”
Sam had been at this game since he’d started splinting her leg back at her crash site. He’d gone on at exhausting length about everything she never wanted to know about growing fruits and vegetables. The man knew a surprising amount about gardening. Apparently he spent a lot of time in his garden, when he wasn’t out sniping search parties and bandaging girls who fell off trains.
“I’m thinking of starting some this year,” he went on quietly, as if she’d actually gone along with the conversation. He was crouched against one of the small trees in the shadowed woods, staring out at whatever the moonlight was letting him see. Probably more trees. She had no idea where they were, other than the land of rocky hills and trees. That was pretty much all she’d seen since they got clear of the town and Sam had strapped her into the litter he’d fashioned and started dragging her around.
She knew what he was up to with the questions. He’d started in on this to distract her from the pain while he set her leg and bandaged her up. He wasn’t causing her eye-crossing pain anymore, but she’d coughed up more blood twice since then, and if she looked even half as bad as she felt, she must look like death on the corner eating crackers. And her eyes were just so heavy. They just kept drifting shut.
“I won’t get any good fruit for a few years, but once I do…You ever eat fresh avocado, Nikki? Not store fresh. Still-warm-from-the-sun fresh.”
So now when he wasn’t disappearing to cover their trail, he was trying to make her talk. She was on to him though. He just didn’t want her to sleep. He was afraid she might not wake up or something. The ass. “If you say one more thing about gardening, I swear to god I’ll mind bullet you.”
Sam laughed softly. “Fine.” He looked over and nodded at the transmitter in her hand. “Try it again.”
Nikki keyed in the string of numbers Sam had given her earlier and hit the connect button. She clicked the transmit switch three times then changed to pre-set channel number three. Then they waited.
Sam had given her the transmitter and the complex instructions for using it the last time she’d bitched about his constant yapping. Now it was her job to send out a number of clicks over what he called “the Padre channel” and then switch to the channel that matched the number of clicks and wait for Command to contact them. Apparently Sam and somebody named Kate had come up with this paranoid system for use in emergency situations when they suspected their coms were being monitored.
Right now, Nikki would give anything for monitored coms, as long as somebody was on the other end. So far they’d heard nothing.
“Something’s not right,” Sam said once it was clear nobody was going to call. “We should be far enough away from that lander by now.”
He was quiet for a minute, staring out into the night. Then he moved over to where Nikki’s litter was propped against a low rock. He barely made a sound when he moved, even though the ground that she could see was covered with loose rocks and dry branches. He was going to have to show her that trick once she had two working legs.
“Here,” he said, pulling out one of the radios he’d taken off the search team. He messed with the knobs before setting it on the litter on her good side and handing her the shoulder mic. “Keep the volume low and keep it against your ear to listen when you’re not talking. We’re on a channel they shouldn’t be using, but assume they can hear whatever you say.”
“Where are you going?” she asked, noticing the odd sound of her voice again. There was a funny delay when she talked, like she was sending the words to her tongue but her mouth was taking a second to get them out. And even when they came out they were a little slower than they should be.
“This plan is taking too much time,” he said softly. “I’m going to find out what’s blocking our signal.”
“And then what?” she said.
“And then I’m going to stop it. You just keep trying that transmitter. And keep talking to me,” he said as he stood. “If I hear more than a minute of silence over this channel, I’ll start telling you about perennials. You won’t believe how much variety—”
“God! Please stop,” she closed her eyes and moaned. “I’ll tell you everything you want to know.”
“Good,” his quiet voice said from the mic by her ear. “Just remember to press the button to talk.”
She opened her eyes to find herself alone.
She pressed the button. “Jesus, Sam. You’re like some kind of gardening ninja. How do you move that fast that quietly?”
“I’ll show you when this is over,” he said, and in her head she could see him smiling as he said it.
She really was starting to like Sam. She could see them hanging out, especially if he liked a good rave. He was probably pushing thirty—well beyond her cutoff age—and he was nowhere near her type, of course, but she liked him. So she’d let him down easy if he started to get too attached, which always seemed to happen with guys who wanted to be her friend. Of course, if he talked about gardening this much all the time, she’d let him down as hard as she could manage.
“That all you got?” his voice said from the mic. “For a girl, you sure don’t talk much.”
“How would you know? You never shut up,” she repl
ied. Then she remembered she had to push the button and tried again. “Well you talk more than any girl I’ve ever known.”
“Not usually,” he said. “I haven’t talked this much at one time…well, ever. And I’m going to deny doing it if you tell anybody,” he said, his voice even quieter than before. She wondered what he was doing. She imagined him springing from branch to branch in the treetops, or teleporting from one shadow to the next.
Her thoughts made her giggle, and that brought her attention back to her stomach. The nausea was building again, and her whole midsection was starting to feel tight and heavy.
“You want me quiet, you have to talk,” he said. “Tell me a story or ask me something.”
“OK. Fine,” she grumbled. “Why do they call you Padre? I thought you said your family was Indian or Arizonian Canadian or something, not Mexican or Spanish.”
“Yeah, well, your squad comes up with your call sign. You don’t pick your own.”
“Okay,” she said, drawing the word out the way Michael hated, just to annoy him. Then she remembered she wasn’t talking to Michael. Her head really was getting foggy. “But still, why Spanish?”
“Some of the guys on my squad couldn’t tell an Indian from a Mexican if their lives depended on it,” he said softly, and she could almost see him laughing at that. “Don’t forget to try the transmitter.”
“Ugh. You’re worse than Michael,” she mumbled.
Then she jumped through all the hoops to send the channel number. She waited a while, on channel five this time, but nothing came through. And she wondered, not for the first time, if maybe this whole transmitter dance was something he’d just made up to keep her awake. Clever of him, if so. And she’d make him pay for it later.
“Nothing,” she said, twice. She forgot to push the button again the first time. There was such a long pause after the second, she was starting to wonder if she’d hit the button that time.
“I’m going silent for a while,” he whispered. “Keep talking. That’s an order.”
“Did you really just give me an order?” she asked. She was answered by silence, of course.
“That’s real cute, ass hat,” she said. “I know you’re just trying to piss me off so I’ll stay awake while you’re taking a wiz, or whatever you’re doing, but I don’t take orders from anybody. Ever.”
She waited what felt like an appropriate amount of time before she said, “You got that?”
“I order you to be quiet for a minute,” his whispered voice said through the mic.
“Oh, you did not just—” The tirade she launched into was probably one of her best, but the delay between her brain and mouth kept distracting her and making her stumble over the words. She pushed on through anyway, keeping up the cursing and threatening for who knew how long, until she finally triggered a coughing fit. And that gave the nausea the upper hand again.
When she’d wiped the blood from her mouth and caught her breath, she gave Sam another few gravelly curses, just to sledgehammer her point home. But when Sam finally responded, he didn’t mention her tirade at all, which was more than a little frustrating at first.
“I found help, Nikki,” Sam said at an almost normal volume. “We’re coming to you now.”
The relief that washed over Nikki almost brought a genuine smile to her face, but the effort of making her face match the emotion was too much. She’d never realized how much energy it took to smile.
Soon now, she thought. Help on the way means I’ll be able to go to sleep soon without anybody hassling me.
In fact, Nikki could already hear them moving through the undergrowth. And she thought she could see Sam’s shadowy form heading toward her little propping spot.
“Sounds like this help you found needs that ninja class you’re going to give me,” she said with a smile. “He must be crushing every dead branch out there.”
There was a pause, and when Sam answered, the tone of his voice made her cold before her foggy brain even registered the words.
“Nikki, that’s not us,” he said. “I want you to take a deep breath, and then do exactly as I say.”
Chapter 10
Nikki
Nikki was struggling to do as Sam had said when the soldiers spotted her. One of them shouted something to the others, and two of them stepped out of the shadows enough for her to make out the same uniforms and armor as the first group who’d found her, but she ignored them and kept her breathing as steady as she could to focus on what she was doing.
It would have been a simple task if she’d had two free arms, but Sam had bound her left arm bent up against her side. Her hand was free, but it was up against her collarbone and all but worthless for doing anything she had to see. So she had to do all the delicate work with her free left hand and use her T-Rex hand just to hold the mic.
“This is team five,” one of the soldiers stepping closer to her said into his radio. “We have the girl. Send backup to…”
Nikki blocked his words out as best she could, focusing her attention on the radio. Volume all the way up. Check. Set to first channel. Check. She looked up at the soldiers and clicked the mic button twice. Nothing. Next channel.
“Where’s your help, girl?” one of them said, standing over her right in what little moonlight she had to work with.
She clicked the mic button twice. Nothing. She switched to the next channel.
“I said, where’s your help?” he barked louder.
She held down her mic button and heard a click from the soldier’s. Then she pressed the red button Sam had described, and held it down. A loud tone blared from her radio and was echoed through every radio on the same channel, including the three right next to her, which caused a feedback squeal that was even louder.
Nikki wanted to laugh at the pained looks and head jerks from the three soldiers as they fumbled for their volume knobs. Priceless.
The echoes from the soldiers’ radios died away as they cut the volume, but Nikki continued to blare the tone from hers like Sam had said. Doing so was a little too close to following an order for her liking, but she owed him one for giving her a way to fight on when her body was pretty much shot. This annoying tone is for you, Sam Sam, she thought drowsily. I hope you’re enjoying it as much as I am.
The soldier looming over her jerked the radio from her hands, ending her fun and causing a tearing sensation with a brand new searing type of pain under her strapped up arm.
Nikki focused a frown and her slightly blurry stare on the soldier, and tried to memorize his features. He was going on her list. He was now in the proud ranks of those Nikki would go out of her way to piss off or pound on every chance she got.
“You’re all kinds of trouble, aren’t you, girl,” List Guy said. “Shame we have to bring you in alive.”
Then he started to give some orders to the other two about securing the area, but something so confusing happened that Nikki lost what he said. Her vision was going a little blurry, she knew, but something even blurrier streaked across between the two soldiers farther from her, and the one in the back’s head snapped around like he’d taken one of Nikki’s best punches. He dropped, out cold. And all hell broke loose.
Both soldiers started shouting, one into his radio, which came out of the radio List Guy dropped next to Nikki as he grabbed for his gun.
Nikki stretched her good hand out and fumbled through the rocky dust for it, finally snagging the mic cord and dragging the radio back up onto her litter. She looked up in time to see the blur slam another soldier’s back into a tree hard enough to splinter the wood.
The blur turned out to be a guy. Nikki caught a glimpse of a pale bald head and sharp features. Then the guy spun, way fast, slinging the soldier he was holding between him and List Guy, who fired a stream of bullets into his buddy’s back. The bald guy darted back into the trees, picking up speed with each step until he was out of sight.
List Guy fired blindly into the trees two more times, drowning out his own shouting each time. He
had his back to Nikki and was trying to watch every direction at once. And even though it seemed to be getting even darker under the low canopy, Nikki could tell he looked ready to jump out of his skin.
So she pressed the red button again, and held it down.
List Guy jumped and spun toward the blaring tone.
Nikki just smiled.
“Goddammit, girl—” List guy started to bellow—and down he went under three rapid cracks of gunfire.
Sam ran into Nikki’s narrowing field of view behind the falling soldier, holstering his pistol as he slowed.
“Impact, their radios,” he said, and the bald guy jogged into the clearing behind him. “Kill the power. Something in the radios is causing the jamming.”
The bald guy went to the downed soldiers as Sam knelt next to Nikki and eased the radio from her hands. “Nice work, Nikki.”
“I know, right?” she mumbled. It was getting so dark. “List Guy prolly shit himself.”
Sam gave a soft laugh. “More importantly, you led Impact right to you. Hey! Stay awake, Nikki.”
Nikki opened her eyes, but it was getting so dark, everything looked about the same as with her eyes closed.
“That’s the last one,” somebody said. Must have been the bald guy.
She felt Sam grab the transmitter off her stomach. Through the darkness, she could barely see him keying in the sequence and clicking the button. Maybe he hadn’t just been trying to keep her awake after all. She’d have to give him a rain check on the payback she’d planned.
“You’re not going to sleep on me again, are you?” Sam said, but Nikki couldn’t even summon up frustration or a comeback. She just opened her eyes again to the darkness.
“How can you guys see anything? It’s pitch black in here,” she said. At least that’s what she sent to her mouth. What came out didn’t sound like her at all.
“I know Nikki, just stay with us,” Sam said quietly. “Nikki, this is Impact. Impact, meet Nikki.”