by GARY DARBY
“Ugh,” she muttered through clenched teeth. “I think I see every star in the galaxy.”
“Sorry,” Dason replied. “But, we’ve got to move away from this opening. I can hear those things slithering up the rock slide.”
Dason put his head under Alena’s arm to support her, and together, the two stumbled across the brittle grass for some distance until Dason could set her down gently against the trunk of a nearby tree.
Straightening, he stared at the cave’s dark opening. Almost in a daze, he took several stumbling steps toward the entrance.
He stretched out a hand , as if willing Shanon and Sami to come striding out of the darkness. However, no one appeared, only the cave’s empty blackness remained.
Alena called to him softly. “Dason, I am so sorry, I truly am.”
Dason turned to look at Alena. The pain and hurt that he felt was mirrored in her eyes. He knelt beside her and opened his med kit to take out a pain capsule. “Here, take this,” he coaxed. “It’ll help.”
She reached for the little orb and placed it in her mouth. “Good ol’ fuzz brain,” she murmured while she closed her eyes and lay back to pillow her head on an arm.
Dason raised his eyebrows at her comment. The medication Dason had given her was standard issue for Star Scout med kits.
However, the name “fuzz brain” was Star Scout lingo for the drug’s sometimes unwelcome consequence of slowing one’s mental processes and inability to think clearly at times.
He wiped the sweat away from his brow and looked into Alena’s face. She knows how to use a LifeSensor, he thought, moves like a cat through the forest, knows how to use a Star Scout-issue L-gun, being stranded on an alien world doesn’t shake her, and she knows about the side effects of morphinate.
Dason gave his head a little shake. Just what, or, rather, who are you Alena?
He settled his back against the red giant’s rough bark. Not that this was the time to question; besides, right now it didn’t seem crucial.
Scanning the immediate area, he didn’t see anything that spoke of danger. But he couldn’t stop his gaze from coming to rest on the dark cave nor could he stop the tears that welled up in his eyes.
Dason hung his head down, brought his knees up close to his body, and cradled his head with both hands.
I lost my team, he thought, just like my father. I—
He started at the soft touch on his arm. “You did the best you could,” Alena said. “That’s all anybody can ask for—that’s all they asked for.”
Dason shook his head at her. “Did I?” he replied in a sharp tone. “I lost my whole team, couldn’t save any of them.”
He gazed at her and stammered, “I—I wanted to be a Star Scout, to explore the cosmos.”
Waving a hand at the sky, he said bitterly, “To see the great Out Here.” He bit down on his lip hard. He took one fist and pounded it on a knee over and over.
Dason sucked in a breath through clenched teeth before he said in an angry tone, “But, if this is the price you have to pay, then it’s too much, and I don’t want any part of it.”
Alena raised herself up until she was shoulder to shoulder with Dason. Neither spoke for a long time until Alena said, “You know, back at the river, I tried to blame you for what happened to Nase.”
She hesitated and then said, “I was wrong. You were right; you had to make a decision, and you tried to make one that was the best for the whole team.
“And you were right too, about Nase. He is a hero, just like TJ, Sami, and Shanon. And I think that if they were here, none of your teammates would blame you one iota for what happened, so don’t blame yourself either.”
She cocked her head to one side, staring off into the distance. “I didn’t think I would ever say this to you, but you didn’t leave them. Even when you had the chance to cut and run, when the odds were stacked against you, or when it was obvious that they were gone—you didn’t desert them.”
Turning, she faced him squarely. “You are not the man I thought you were, Dason Thorne. You are much more than I ever expected.” A wave of pain caused her to grimace, and she slid down to cushion her head with one arm.
Dason stared at her, taken aback by her comments and unsure of just what she meant.
For several minutes, Dason kept vigil over Alena until he saw the first of the creatures slide across the mouth of the dusky entrance and move out into the short grass.
“Sorry,” he said to Alena, laying a hand on her shoulder, “but we’ve got to move.”
“S’kay,” she mumbled. “The head is only partially splitting now instead of totally splitting.”
He helped Alena to her feet and motioned toward a distant grove of trees. “Think you can make it at least to there?” he asked.
Without nodding, Alena answered, “Just point me in the right direction. I can make it.”
With one hand under Alena’s arm to steady her, Dason marched them to the concealment of the large trees.
While Alena rested against a crinkled tree trunk, Dason did a quick survey. All seemed quiet. He returned to where Alena sat and asked, “How’s the head?”
She squinted at him. “In all honesty, much better, but little dancing fairies keep making their appearance and at times you seem to be listing several degrees to starboard.”
Dason frowned in response. “I’m not a medico but you may have a concussion. Can you walk?”
“Not much choice, is there?” she replied. “Wait,” she gave him a slight smile. “I seem to recall someone saying to me that there’s always a choice.”
Holding a hand to her head, she asked, “Where to?”
Dason shrugged. “Same as before, I guess. Try for that second crash site.”
He gestured to his right. “That’s the general direction we want to go. I think we came out on the hill’s backside from where we started.”
Hesitating for a second, he then said, “By the way, thanks for pulling me out of that hole.”
“You’re welcome,” Alena replied. “Thanks for not letting me drop into that hole.”
Dason rose and reached down to help her up. “Your hands!” Alena exclaimed upon seeing his blistered and bloodied palms.
“Slight rope burn,” Dason returned.
“Slight!” she retorted. “Those are second-degree burns, scout.”
She bit down on her lip and said, “You got those when you stopped my fall.” Reaching up, she pulled him down with an emphatic, “Sit.”
While Dason sat, she reached into his med kit, pulled out a tube of InstaSkin and with quick, deft strokes applied a copious amount of the healing cream over his palms.
She pulled back his ripped uniform at the shoulder to reveal a nasty gash from the croc-snake bite. With a practiced hand, she applied InstaHeal to the slash and worked the gray cream deep into the open wound.
Drawing back, she closed the tube and looked at him. “You know,” she said in a faint voice, “after the way I treated you and everyone else, I’m surprised you didn’t let me drop into that pit.”
She shuddered to think of what might have happened if Dason hadn’t stopped her fall and then said, “I wouldn’t have blamed you if you had.”
He shook his head at her. “You and I are the last of our team,” he muttered. “I wasn’t going to let you go, no matter how big a brat you were.”
Wrapping a sterile bandage around Dason’s hands, she stopped at his words and raised her eyes to his. “Our team?” she whispered with a glistening in her eyes.
“That’s right,” he rumbled, “our team.”
They held each other’s eyes for just a moment before Alena glanced down and completed shaping the thin gauze-like substance to fit the contours of Dason’s hand and fingers.
Finished, she again lifted her eyes up to Dason. “I never understood what it meant, what it felt like, to lose someone who counted on you.”
Her eyes glistened as she said, “Back in the cave, I made a split-second decision and it cos
t Shanon and Sami their lives . . .”
Both grew silent. Above them, a gust of wind rustled the wispy blue leaves and a little whirlwind stirred up a tiny cloud of dust across the short, yellowish grass.
Dason flexed his hands. The searing pain had subsided, and the healing cream had staunched the small amount of bleeding.
He cleared his throat. “Alena,” he said, “My scoutmaster once said that none of us can see even one second into the future, we can only see the exact moment we live in, and nothing beyond that instant of time.
“But if we do our best at that moment, then that is the best that anyone can ask of us, or that we can ask or expect of ourselves.”
He took in a breath. “Like you said, all they asked was that we do our best and I think we did.”
Alena bit down on her lip and took her time in placing the small tubes back into Dason’s med kit as if she was considering hiss words.
After a while, she lifted her head and said, “Let that dry for a few minutes and your hands should start to feel better.”
“They do already, thanks,” he replied.
Neither spoke for several seconds before Alena raised her head. “Back in the cave, what did you mean when you said, ‘I’m not going to be like . . .’ You sounded as if you were comparing yourself to someone else.”
Dason stared at Alena but didn’t speak. A puff of air swirled around them. Its coolness felt good but didn’t quell the churning fire of emotions that blazed within Dason at her question.
He didn’t know why he had blurted that out. It had just come—unbidden in the crucible of that horrific, soul-wrenching experience.
Or was that what actually happened? Dason wondered. In the pain and rage of that minute, the doubts, the uncertainty, the lack of answers all seemed to congeal within him.
His mother had believed in his father’s innocence, though she hadn’t known what he had learned about Veni and Deklon Marrel’s link to the Gadion Faction and the missing Kolomite.
He would never stop searching for the truth, but he had to admit the revelations in the scoutmaster’s office had indeed left doubt in his mind. It had also caused him to wonder if in some way, in some deep, dark way, he might be like his father.
Alena had asked a question and by the look on her face, he could tell she expected, no wanted very much to hear his answer.
He glanced around. The field was quiet, peaceful—nevertheless it was an odd place to tell this virtual stranger his family’s history.
No one knew about his past but Scoutmaster Tarracas and Instructor Scout Grolson, but for some reason he felt compelled to tell Alena. It was an intense, overpowering, pent-up need that for some reason he couldn’t resist.
In rapid words, he told the story, almost like a confession. The more he spoke, the faster the words came. It gushed out of him, a catharsis of feelings long held back, that came in a deluge, a torrential flood of emotions and thoughts.
When he finished, he turned to Alena, who stared at him, her face impassive, without a hint of emotion.
He swallowed and said, “I have no idea why I’m telling you this. Maybe so that, if you at least get out of this, if anyone asks, you can tell them that the son of Deklon Marrel didn’t desert his team, wasn’t like . . .”
He stopped, unable to continue.
Alena dropped both hands in her lap as if they had lost all feeling and gone limp. She stared off into the distance, not saying a word.
Dason waited a long time for her to speak. When she did, it was to ask a question in a small, quiet voice. “You have some doubts about your father’s innocence, don’t you?”
There it was.
She had stated what he was not only afraid to say, but terrified to confront. It was his turn not to speak, to stare off into the distance.
After a minute or so, he nodded and said, “One part of me wants to believe that he’s the man that my mother had faith in.”
He choked and said, “The man I want to believe in.”
Drawing in a raspy breath, he murmured, “The other part says, what if it’s true, what if he . . .” his voice trailed off, unable to finish.
For several minutes, they both sat, neither speaking, each lost in their own thoughts. Dason glanced up at the lowering sun and said, “Alena, we’ve got to get moving.”
She didn’t respond, but rolled over and pushed herself upright. Reaching into her waistband, she slipped out Dason’s knife, and held it out to him hilt first, without saying a word.
Dason shook his head. “You keep it. We’ll each have one.”
He turned and led them across the meadow, skirting around spindly, vinelike vegetation that dotted the glen.
They plodded along, neither speaking. Alena, in particular, seemed preoccupied with her own thoughts and was content to let Dason lead the way.
The terrain broke into a rolling plain with large swaths of dense groves of short, knotty trees with aqua-tinted leaves. Dason pointed to a rounded knoll with a crown of trees.
“Let’s make for that high ground,” he said. “Might be able to get an idea of the lay of the land ahead.”
They started up the long, extended slope and began to push through wheat like grass, with crowns of brown kernels, which came up to their waists. Dason eyed the stalks that swayed in the breeze with distaste.
He turned to Alena and muttered, “I don’t like this, anything could be hiding in this field, and we wouldn’t see it until it jumped us.”
Peered intently at her, he observed, “Besides, the way you look, I doubt if you could run ten meters.”
Alena didn’t reply, giving Dason a listless nod. He motioned to their left, where the grass thinned out. “Let’s skirt this tall patch and come up on the hill from the other side.”
They sidestepped to the left while keeping a wary eye on the waving grass. With his knife in one hand, Dason led them into a clear area where they turned upslope.
They hadn’t gone far when Alena stopped and said, “Listen.” She raised her head toward the sky. “It’s coming our way.”
Dason turned and scanned the light-gray sky, shielding his eyes from the bright sun and listening keenly. “Tell me that’s what I think it is,” he said in a pleading voice as the noise grew perceptibly louder.
He broke out in a wide grin. He’d know that distinctive muted warble anywhere. He caught the glint of sunlight off metal.
It was a scouter and close.
Dason sprinted to ground that was more open and waved his arms. “Scouter! Scouter!” he shouted over his comms. “We’re at your nine o’clock and one kilometer distant. Stranded scouts!”
With a quick tilt of its nose, it veered toward them. Seconds later, it passed over and began to land near the hill’s crown of trees.
Dason turned to Alena and grabbed her arm. “C’mon!” he yelped. “The cavalry has arrived!”
At a dead run, Dason made for the ship. He hadn’t gone far when he noticed that Alena lagged behind. He stopped to wait while she caught up.
Breathing hard, Dason said, “Sorry, I shouldn’t have left you like that. Can you make it?”
The expression on her face said that she was troubled, not just from physical pain, but from something else, too. As if she reeled from a deep-seated emotion that throbbed in her, as searing and hurtful as the contusion on her skull.
She waved a listless hand at him. “Go on; I’ll keep up.”
“Are you sure?” Dason asked. “You don’t look—”
He spun with knife in hand at a faint rustling in the nearby bushes. A tall Star Scout with wavy gray hair stepped from behind the thin-limbed brush and stood facing Dason and Alena.
Dason broke into a broad grin. The Star Scout gazed at Dason and his mouth sagged open for a second before he closed it and smiled.
In a gruff voice, he asked, “Thorne?”
Relief washed over Dason as he said, “Yes sir, that’s me.”
With a deep breath, the man stepped forward. “I didn’t b
elieve in miracles before this, but I’m a believer now.”
In his hand, he held an L-gun aimed right at Dason’s middle.
Without warning, a fierce human-tiger blind-sided the older scout. For a second, Dason couldn’t move but watched while Alena fought the man with mindless ferocity. Her savage attack drove the Star Scout to the ground.
Somehow, she wrestled the weapon out of his grasp and rolled away. She twisted to her feet and brought the L-gun to bear on the amazed Star Scout.
In a small, throaty voice, she snarled, “Don’t . . . move.”
Their breaths came short and raspy while the two glared at each other over the short distance. The older man’s expression registered complete shock. He snapped out, “What—give me that weapon.”
Not understanding any of what he saw, Dason took a step toward Alena. “Alena, stop! What are you doing?”
Alena turned her head toward Dason, before swinging the weapon to aim it straight at him. In a husky voice, she said, “Dason, please. Don’t move. I don’t want to do what I came here for.”
“What?!” Dason began in a sputtering voice. “What are you talking about?”
Alena straightened to her full height. Her face and eyes were a contortion of pain, anger, and sorrow.
Her hand trembled and the weapon quivered but she kept it centered on Dason. “I’m here to kill you Dason Thorne because your father murdered my mother.”
Chapter Twenty-Five
Star Date: 2443.064
Unnamed planet in the Helix Nebula
Rocking back on his heels, Dason’s mouth dropped open and he gaped first at Alena and then to the Star Scout and back again. His whole being was a mixture of incomprehension, doubt, uncertainty. “What—what are you talking about?”
Alena returned Daon’s stare. “Veni,” she stated in a flat voice. “Star Scout Sergeant Bethany Simms was my mother. She was on your father’s team on Veni. The team that your father deserted—left behind to die horribly. He lived, but my mother didn’t.”
Dason’s mouth dropped open, and his eyes widened. Without thinking, he advanced a few steps toward her, his hands outstretched.
Just as Dason started forward, the Star Scout also moved, edging toward Alena. Seeing the Star Scout’s movement, Alena whipped the weapon back to him. “Don’t!” she hissed. “You know I can’t miss, not at this range.”