She jammed her heel into the cat’s chest. It yowled in her face, launching back to strike again.
Grey had heard it said that when you were about to die your life sometimes flashed before your eyes. But all she could think about was that she was about to die in the same way General Yurkutz had been killed.
A laser blast exploded by her ear.
The cat thudded to the ground, and she scrambled to get away from it.
“Are you okay?” The end of her mother’s rifle still smoked as she yanked Grey further away from the animal. Grey scrambled to her feet.
She nodded several times, unable to bring any words to her tongue. The skin on her calf was burning, but that was all.
Grey grabbed her mother in a fierce hug. They might’ve lost five years, but they still had now. She should never take that for granted. There wasn’t time for unforgiveness in a place where deadly, unheard-of animals roamed on a planet that fought against you. She let Mom go and turned to examine the puma-like cat that had nearly killed them both. Her mother’s glove illuminated the nightmarish creature. Twice the size of any cougar, its fur spiked up on the neck and shoulders and its teeth were longer than Grey’s hand.
“What . . . is it?”
Her mother touched the beast with her boot. The body remained still.
“If I didn’t know better I’d say it was a saber-tooth.”
Great. Another extinct man-eater.
The door to the ship flew open, and Dad and Lieutenant Johansson rushed out, brandishing pistols.
Mother and daughter took one last look at the unfortunate cat and turned to join their compatriots. It was going to be a long night.
Chapter 14
You could’ve been killed!”
Grey finished dabbing antiseptic on the scratches to her leg then pulled her shredded pants down over them. They were oozing, but they weren’t deep. It would be better for them to heal with air than covering them up with bandages.
“Rin, I’m fine.”
“I am not losing you again.”
Grey pulled her sister aside, resting her hands on Rin’s shoulders and lowering her voice. “You gotta keep yourself together. These people are counting on us.”
“It’s my fault. I should’ve gone with you.”
“It was a wild animal doing what wild animals do. We’ve seen that before. It happens, and I’m okay.”
“You don’t understand.” Rin’s eyes filled with tears.
Where had her I-want-to-fight sister gone?
Grey held Rin at arm’s length. “What’s going on?”
“You’ll think I’m crazy.” Rin sniffed. “Maybe I am. I don’t know.”
“Tell me.”
“I was with Tram and Trif. The winds came, and just as they died down I looked up at Tram and this vivid picture flashed in my mind.”
She had a feeling she knew where this was going. “What kind of picture?”
“A huge tiger about to pounce. Almost as if Tram became the tiger.” Rin glanced over her shoulder at the zorses’ stalls. “They were warning me about the cat, but I didn’t listen. I didn’t understand. I’m sure that’s what I saw, the cat that attacked you out there. Only it wasn’t really there.”
Grey took a minute to digest what her sister was implying. She had thought Rin’s imaginations were due to posttraumatic stress from all they’d been through or meds or something explainable. But her sister was taking it further now, and any meds they’d given her in the ward would’ve worn off long ago.
Somehow Grey had to calm her. What her sister was experiencing was obviously very real to her, but could it be true? Rin had always had an uncanny connection with animals. Could she have sensed the zorses’ distress or transferred her own fears onto them?
“You’re good at reading animals,” Grey said.
But Rin was already shaking her head. “It wasn’t like that. I’m telling you, it was”—Rin touched the front of Grey’s tunic—“almost like it was standing in front of me. Just like you are.”
“I’m not saying it didn’t seem real.”
“I know how it sounds. But I’m not making this up. And this isn’t the first time.”
She decided to play along for now. “I believe you.”
“But if I’d said something right away . . .”
“Rin, nothing happened. I saw it in time.” Grey glanced around at the crowd that had gathered around her parents for an explanation. When they’d heard about the encounter with the saber-tooth, half of the passengers wanted to run outside and see it for themselves. It took Lennox barring the way with his weapon to squash that. But the news had changed the atmosphere. Grey could feel it. Distrust laced through the hold like ozone before a storm, and her parents were getting the brunt of it.
One couple she thought she might recognize from her trip here on Genesis was gesticulating with their hands and arguing with Mom and Dad. They were older than her parents and dressed in one-piece coveralls like those worn by some of the Yien drones. She wondered what had happened to their clothes. Off to the side, the guy who’d sat beside her for part of the Genesis flight was watching everything with his arms crossed. What was his name? Paul something.
“I better go check them again,” Rin said, and before Grey could stop her she scurried off toward the zorse stalls at the far end of the hold.
“Nice going, Alexander.”
Grey turned around to see Dana Yurkutz watching from her wheelchair. Dana gave Grey a mock salute. Sooner or later they needed to talk. Now was as good a time as any.
“You just can’t stay out of trouble, can you?” Dana eyed Grey’s shredded pant leg. As she shifted in the chair, Grey saw her right wrist was tied to the armrest with a tight wire restraint.
“I’m assuming you heard about the cat,” Grey said.
“How could I not?” Dana made a check mark in the air with her finger. “Another heroic moment for Grey Alexander.”
She rolled her eyes. “It wasn’t like that.”
“Let’s not beat around the bush, okay? I know my mother’s dead, and I want to know what happened. You were there. March says you didn’t kill her. Who did?”
Was there a reason Dana hadn’t yet been told? Grey didn’t want to share Yien secrets, but if she were in Dana’s shoes she’d be pressing for answers too.
“Please. I need to know.”
“After you went down she turned to shoot me again. I knew she was going to kill me, but I didn’t know Kildare Rooley had followed us with his tigers. It all happened so fast, but one of them jumped her on his command.” She pictured the moment again in her mind. As evil as General Yurkutz was, Grey recoiled at the memory of her head twisted unnaturally to the side, and the way her unseeing eyes had stared at Grey even after she was dead.
“It was quick,” she added.
Dana sat up straighter. “What did they do with her body?”
“I don’t know.”
Grey stared down at Dana. She knew little about this girl, but clearly she was a proud young woman who’d ended up on the wrong side. “Why did you save my life?”
A moment of silence spread between them, and Dana glanced away. “I didn’t agree with my mother about everything.”
“Thank you.”
Dana slapped herself on the thigh. “Great reward I got, huh? A prisoner and a cripple.”
There wasn’t anything Grey could say to make things better, but there was one thing she could do. She was a Yien operative now and decided not to ask for permission. Grey reached into her pocket and pulled out a small, circular piece of metal with a fork-like prong on the end.
Dana looked at the device as if it could bite. “What is that?”
Leaning over the girl, Grey touched the prong to the joint of Dana’s restraint. It snapped open.
“A skelette,” she said. “Unlocks almost anything.”
Dana rubbed her wrist. A red line was etched into her flesh.
Grey threw a glance over her shoulder at where L
ennox had been standing in front of the ship’s side access door. “It shouldn’t be that tight.”
“Tell me about it.”
“I can’t take it off permanently, but I can loosen it.”
She allowed Dana to stretch her arm for a minute before re-attaching the restraint in a more comfortable position. Then Grey pulled back the sleeve of her tunic and showed Dana the line of pink scarring on her own wrist. General Evangeline Yurkutz hadn’t been so kind to her.
“Compliments of your mother,” Grey said. Dana started to say something, but Grey stopped her with an upraised hand. “You need to know the truth about her.”
“I’m sure she had her reasons,” Dana said.
“I’m sure she did too. But they weren’t good ones.”
Dana’s lips pursed.
“All I’m saying is whatever good you remember in her was gone by the time she got to me and my family.”
“You’re wrong,” Dana snapped. “All of you are.”
“I know you have to say that, but do you really believe it?” Grey pocketed the skelette. “Maybe that’s something you should think about.”
Chapter 15
Grey, wake up.”
Someone was gently shaking her. She’d sat down for a moment’s rest against the Jeep’s tire still lashed to the floor, but she hadn’t meant to drift off.
“Come with me,” Mrs. March said in a whisper, holding out her hand to help Grey to her feet.
She didn’t ask where. The only place they could possibly have privacy was in the cockpit, and Grey followed Mrs. March’s thin form into the cramped quarters. Her parents and Rin were already waiting.
Mrs. March closed the door.
Grey rubbed at her eyes and focused on the commander, who’d surprised her more than once in the past few weeks. Despite the rigors of the flight and the mental and physical demands she had no doubt experienced back at Orion Settlement, she seemed as sharp and in control as any time Grey had seen her. The only indication she was feeling the strain of war was the shadows under her eyes.
Mrs. March took in a deep breath and let it out slowly. “What I am about to say doesn’t leave this room.”
Rin and Grey exchanged a glance, but all four of them agreed.
“As your family can attest, there are costs to keeping secrets.” Mrs. March rested her hand on the back of the copilot’s seat. A piece of fabric had ripped away from a brass rivet and hung like an errant leaf.
“Since our path has taken us down a different road than anticipated and none of our futures are secure, I must relay some information.”
Her father took a step closer to the commander. “Fleur, you don’t have to.”
Grey had never heard him use Mrs. March’s first name, and it brought home exactly what she was saying. There were many things she did not know.
Mrs. March gave him a look Grey imagined a mother giving a loyal son.
“My dear Alexander family.” Commander March’s voice got deeper. “You all mean a great deal to me.”
“And you to us,” Mom said.
“Earlier today, before Mazdaar attacked, I received new orders.” Mrs. March’s hand tightened around the back of the chair. “It is true that I joined you on this escape mission because Jet Yien wanted me out of harm’s way, but I was also given orders beyond what we’re doing here with the civilian people.”
Grey edged closer to her sister and parents. Isn’t this what she’d always wanted, to know the whole truth? Then why was she feeling uneasy about Mrs. March’s tone?
“As you are aware, I spent forty years serving Mazdaar before finding my faith and joining the Yien resistance. Mazdaar was in my blood. My mother’s family was well known for their contributions to the banking industry, and my father was vice chancellor.”
Grey had to stop her to clarify. “Of Mazdaar?”
“Yes.”
She glanced at her parents. Mom quirked an eyebrow, and Grey guessed this was news to her as well.
“I have not publicized that for obvious reasons,” Mrs. March said.
“Because people would question your loyalty,” Tanner said with a nod.
“Exactly.” Fingering the frayed piece of fabric, Mrs. March paused, and Grey wondered if she was weighing how much more she should reveal.
“I believed Mazdaar was the world’s solution. I truly did. I was convinced people just needed to be shown, and then they too would join us in our great society. I trained to become a pilot so I could take my father and men and women like him to the ends of the Earth. But my father was assassinated.”
Grey felt her eyes widen.
“A Yien operative was blamed for the hit.” Mrs. March glanced down at the floor then straightened and faced the Alexanders again. “I enlisted in the Mazdaar Fighting Legion bent on destroying anyone and everyone who even smelled of the Yien rebels.”
Rin raised her hand. “Wait, who killed him?”
“A Yien assassin.”
“But I thought they had a treaty about that.”
“Yien believes evil must be eradicated at all costs,” Mrs. March said. “Do I agree that my father should’ve died? How can I possibly? But I realize the father I knew was not the man I thought he was.”
Grey glanced at her dad and imagined losing him to an assassin. Not something she wanted to think about after just getting him back.
“I spent twenty years full of hate for Yien and did everything in my power to wipe out every rebel I could.” Mrs. March shook her head and focused on each of them in turn. “It is something of which I am now ashamed.”
She’d known March had once been devoted to Mazdaar, but seeing her now looking so vulnerable wasn’t something she could ever remember. Mrs. March had always been a pillar in Grey’s life. Strong, solid, always there. She hadn’t taken time to imagine the woman’s family.
“One man tried desperately to convince me I was wrong,” Mrs. March continued. “He attempted to show me I was traveling down a dark road, but I didn’t listen to him.”
Silence filled the cockpit for a moment. Grey could hear the soft, underlying hum of voices outside the door, but she tuned them out.
Mrs. March cleared her throat. “As I continued down my path of revenge, his path led him toward the truth. He begged me to change and come with him, but when he defected I did not.” Mrs. March raised her chin, but her voice faltered. “Instead I reported him.”
“Fleur,” Tanner started.
Mrs. March raised her gloved hand. “You need to know.”
“I don’t care what you did,” Sue said. “That’s not who you are now.”
“Yet it’s woven into the fabric of my being. And it always will be. I remember so I don’t repeat the same mistakes. That man was captured and tried in front of the High Council because of me.”
Grey glanced at her parents. Did they know any of this?
“He was sentenced to Jupiter as one of the test subjects in the Orion Project,” Mrs. March said. “And ironically, I was the one who flew him and hundreds of other prisoners here.”
She’d heard some of this back in the Preserve. It had shocked her then to learn Mrs. March had flown prisoners to Jupiter, but it didn’t now. Something about seeing her white-haired neighbor decked out in battle armor changed her perspective.
“I’m sorry,” Mom said.
“Not as much as I am.” Mrs. March took a step toward the Alexander family in the tight quarters and got a faraway look on her face. “Because that man was my husband.”
Chapter 16
Dana counted thirty-two restless civilians whispering and milling around the hold. Something was brewing, and Dana wasn’t the only one to feel it. She saw Commander March wake Grey and take her up to the cockpit where the rest of the Alexander family had already gathered, and Dana hated the sliver of envy she felt imagining them up there discussing plans. Only a few days ago she would’ve been with them.
You’re being used, RedStar had said in a message several months ago. They do
n’t care about you.
Then why had Commander March trusted her?
Dana focused on her legs. They were useless because of the Alexander family. If Dana hadn’t gone soft and taken the violetflare shot meant for Grey, she wouldn’t be a paralyzed prisoner.
Her mother would still be alive.
Grey would be dead.
And March would’ve ended up in a torture chamber.
Is that what she really wanted?
The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness can never extinguish it.
Dana balled up her fist as the verse drifted unbidden across her mind. March had quoted the words to her so many times Dana could hear them in the old woman’s voice. Why had she believed them, like a gullible slave? Had she really been in darkness before Yien rescued her? That’s what they would say.
All Dana knew for sure was that her life would have been completely different if she’d never believed her mother’s guard who promised hope and freedom. RedStar was right. Yien had used her for its own purpose. Rattling the cuff on her wrist, she reminded herself they would soon lock her up and destroy the key.
That’s because you betrayed them, idiot.
Did it really matter? If she wasn’t a prisoner before, she was now.
A commotion near the Jeep pulled Dana from her thoughts. The couple who had been arguing with Tanner and Sue Alexander earlier were staring at her. She couldn’t hear every word they threw to the young man with the haircut straight out of Mazdaar Fashion World but she caught “liability” and “traitor.”
And then they were coming for her.
# # #
Grey wasn’t sure why her former neighbor having a husband surprised her when Mrs. had been part of her name for as long as Grey could remember.
Commander March paused and took a deep breath. “I realized too late he was right.”
Rin was the one who broke the tension. She went over and gave Mrs. March a hug. The gesture opened a well of emotion in Mrs. March that Grey rarely saw. Her eyes wet, Mrs. March held on to Rin and whispered something in her ear Grey couldn’t hear.
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