Fractured Stars

by Lindsay Buroker

  “Its claws got me a few times, but I don’t think anything went too deep.” He didn’t sound that certain. “I’m encouraged that you’re fondling my chin, though you better grab a hand warmer and put your glove back on.”

  McCall opened her mouth to reply, but Jae-yoon spoke first.

  “Marco is dead.”

  Dash’s shoulders slumped, and he didn’t make any more comments about fondling. He squeezed her shoulders and released her, then walked over to join the others.

  “Who else has injuries?” Rose asked. “Can everybody left walk?”

  “Yes,” everyone muttered, though many people had droplets of blood in the snow around them. Even Walters didn’t appear any worse than he had before, but he was uncharacteristically subdued as he looked toward Marco’s dead body.

  McCall felt guilty that she hadn’t been hurt. Should she have tried harder not to let the creatures get by her? But she had helped. It wasn’t as if she had stood aside and done nothing. She told herself it was only dumb luck that she hadn’t been hurt. Given that she could trip and skin her knee on her own spaceship, she would likely end up injured before they made it to those mountains. Then she could join the others in leaving blood droplets.

  She shuddered and hoped there weren’t any flesh-and-blood predators out here that would follow the scent. Though at least the blazer rifles should work better on real animals.

  “How many stun guns do we have left?” Rose asked.

  “Just one,” Jae-yoon said.

  “Ah.”

  Rose walked over to Marco’s body, bowed her head, and touched her chest where a Xerikesh monk’s prayer beads would have dangled. “Blessings of the Suns Trinity, my friend,” she said. Then she crossed her chest in a religious gesture less acceptable in the empire and murmured a quiet prayer.

  “Let’s get over those mountains and to the dome,” Dash said when she was done. “Before whoever sent those robots out realizes they were destroyed and sends more.”

  “No arguments here,” someone muttered. “No arguments here.”

  12

  They reached the mountains without being attacked again by robotic creatures. Dash was relieved, since they only had one stun gun left, but the white peaks weren’t any less formidable.

  The good news was that they found a natural pass through the mountains. The bad news was that it turned out to be a highway for the wildlife. Mostly predatory wildlife. Dash occasionally saw something akin to a mountain jakloff high up among the ice-covered rocks, but more often, he glimpsed large shaggy animals similar in appearance to the robotic creatures.

  He wondered what the herbivorous jakloffs ate until he spotted a group of them nibbling on blocks of frozen green matter that appeared to have been airdropped into the mountains. Later that day, he saw some of the predators chomping on smaller blocks of frozen meat. It seemed the Frost Moon 3 government wanted to keep the wildlife here alive, the better to impede escaped prisoners. Though Dash imagined some of the dome denizens might also pay for the privilege of coming out and hunting for sport.

  “I think we should stop early for the night,” Rose said as the group trekked through the pass, slogging through deep snow drifts their boots weren’t designed to handle. She pointed toward ominous gray clouds hanging low over the mountains.

  She was tramping along beside Dash. Somehow, they had become the leaders for the group. For her, it made sense, since she was a higher-up in the Alliance. He wasn’t sure how he had come to be an advisor on surviving here since he hadn’t spent a lot of time in harsh wildernesses. Maybe because the others had even less experience. A somewhat alarming thought, but two days into this march, they were still alive. Most of them. The group was moving more slowly than he would have wished, but half of them were injured by now, including Dash.

  “I agree,” Dash said, eyeing snow skidding down a slope, driven by a sweeping wind that left ice coating his half-shredded parka and made him shiver. If not for the hand warmers, which he’d been tucking all over his body, they all would have lost digits to frostbite by now. “It was snowing hard when we first landed on the moon, and the visibility was horrible. We would have a hard time finding our way in snow like that.”

  “Think there are any caves along the pass?”

  “I’ll keep an eye out.” Dash looked toward the route ahead, then back at the rest of the group to check on McCall.

  None of the group had been jovial since they’d lost Marco and the deadly dangers of the wilderness had grown concretely real, but McCall worried him with how little she had spoken during the trek. While he wouldn’t deem her chatty under any circumstances, she had been happy enough talking about on-demand electricity generating systems and detailing all the diseases that could be transmitted through saliva. She hadn’t said a word all day. When he’d brushed her mind with his senses a few times, she had been thinking about finding her ship and getting it back. An understandable goal, but there’d been an obsessive repetitiveness to the thoughts that he wasn’t sure was healthy.

  Not that there was anything healthy about their current circumstances. He just wanted to make sure she held up since they weren’t making the best time, and it would probably take three more days to reach the dome. Assuming they didn’t get socked in for a week by the impending storm. Marco had done an admirable job getting as many provisions as he had in the chaotic darkness of the power outage, but between the extreme cold and the effort of hiking through unbroken snow, their group was going through the ration bars quickly.

  “Is your friend doing all right?” Rose glanced back, following his gaze.

  “I think so.”

  “She wasn’t injured, was she? Jae-yoon has some ugly gashes that I’m worried will get infected. He’s been trying to keep them hidden.”

  “We’ll get to medical care soon.” Dash touched his chest where he was being circumspect about his own wounds. The deep gouges liked to crack open and start bleeding anew whenever he moved too abruptly. His entire body hurt, but he kept telling himself that all they had to do was survive until they reached the dome, and then… He wasn’t sure. He hoped they would be able to get care, but they were escaped felons, at least in the eyes of the empire. Would they be arrested as soon as they walked into the dome?

  “Is she against the Alliance?” Rose asked.

  “McCall?”

  “I’ve noticed she doesn’t talk to any of us. It doesn’t matter if she is, as long as she’s not going to turn us all in as soon as we get into the dome. Maybe she thinks she can buy her own expiation by pointing the law toward our group?”

  Dash shook his head. “That’s not on her mind at all. She’s thinking about how she can get her ship back once we have access to the sys-net and resources again.”

  Rose squinted thoughtfully at him.

  Dash, remembering Walters’ questions about how he and McCall had gotten past the guards, reminded himself to be careful. He’d caught the kid looking thoughtfully at him a few times since then.

  He had better not claim to know what McCall was thinking, especially when she hadn’t confided those things to him. She hadn’t been talking to him much more than she had the others. He thought that was because she was tired and in a funk, though, not that she was displeased with him or pondering turning them in. She’d even fondled his chin the other day.

  He smiled faintly, touching the spot where a scab had grown and remembering the little tingle he’d felt at her simple gesture.

  “If you say so,” Rose said dubiously.

  “She would be a good person to get on our side. She has computer skills and is good at finding people. I imagine she could find resources for the Alliance too. And she owns her ship outright, if we—she—can get it back.” Funny how he imagined himself helping her reacquire it. Or maybe not. He had said he would. And it was his asshole of a sheriff who’d taken it. “The Alliance can always use more ships, especially fast ones that could act as couriers.”

  “That night when you were in tro
uble in the bay, I asked if she would join if we helped you. She said no. She said we should help you just because you were with the Alliance.”

  “Sounds reasonable.” He didn’t point out that McCall, who was not with the Alliance, had been much quicker to assist him in that fight than anyone else here.

  “Sounds like someone loyal to the empire.”

  “I suspect she, like many people, tolerates the empire and does her best to navigate the murky space the government creates between the suns.” Dash thought of that quotation about freedom that McCall had hanging in her ship. “I doubt she’s going to turn any of us in. Maybe you should talk to her sometime. You could sell the benefits of the Alliance. I suggested it myself, but I…” He didn’t want to nag her, nor could he be sure he only had the Alliance’s interests in mind. He’d never met anyone who wasn’t a Starseer who had learned about his telepathic abilities and not been alarmed—or worse—and she’d had his back even before he’d proven he was worth helping, at least from her point of view. “I don’t want to push her too much,” he finished, aware of Rose looking at him.

  “I said hello to her a couple of times, and she just grunted at me.”

  “She’s…” Aloof, he almost said. That was what he’d always heard about McCall before he’d met her. “Not that natural with people,” he said instead. “She’s worth the effort though.” He touched his scab again, thinking about how he might be as dead as Marco if she hadn’t thought of turning her stun gun battery into an explosive.

  “Hm.”

  Not exactly a promise to attempt to recruit McCall, but Dash decided to leave it at that. “Do you know of any people in Dome Seven who will be friendly to some Alliance fugitives looking to get back to their base?”

  He intended to help McCall find her ship, but he needed to think about his future, too, and how they were going to get off this ice ball of a planet.

  “Is that where you’re going?”

  “I have to report in that my cover was blown. I either have to go back to bounty hunting or see if the Alliance has got something for me to do full time. Money doesn’t matter that much. I just need room and board.”

  Dash imagined being in some barracks room somewhere, eating in a mess hall, and not seeing McCall again. Even though he hadn’t known her that long, the idea saddened him. But he couldn’t truly see her giving up her life and her career to join some scrubby misfits forced into hidden asteroid bases scattered throughout the system. Unless Axton’s report to Law Enforcement Headquarters about her stolen android resulted in an arrest warrant for her, and she had to go into hiding. He decided he would be an asshole if he hoped for that and for her to end up in an Alliance base down the hall from him.

  “That’s about all the Alliance can offer, as you know,” Rose said. “But as for going full time? We might all be doing that soon. Things were getting serious when I was captured. Pilots will be in demand. Even better if you bring in someone with a ship.”

  “Or if you do,” Dash said, smiling.

  “Hm,” Rose repeated and looked toward the darkening sky. “We’d better find that cave.”

  He sighed, hoping again that the storm wouldn’t delay them for too long.

  Inside a dim cave, McCall sat against a rocky wall as comfortable as the inside of an iron maiden. Even with her knees drawn up to her chin and her arms wrapped around her legs, she was freezing. As she had been ever since they’d stepped out of the prison dome. This place was miserable. Her brain was stuck in a rut, and all she could do was fantasize about stunning that Sheriff Axton and harnessing up Junkyard to drag his big cyborg body off the ship like a sled dog. Oh, Scipio could lift the brute with one hand, but the sled-cyborg image was more appealing to her.

  Dash walked over and touched her shoulder. “Doing all right?” he asked, sitting down beside her.

  Irritation at being disturbed—at having to talk—flashed through her, but she did her best to quash it. Dash had become a friend, and she would be an idiot to drive him away. He deserved far better than that. It wasn’t his fault that she was in a grumpy mood and poor company even to herself.

  “Yeah.” Her voice felt raspy from disuse.

  Had she spoken to anyone that day? She wasn’t sure. She had lost track of what day it was. The fourth since they left the prison? The fifth? They had been stuck in a cave with a storm raging outside and snow piling into the mountains for a small eternity.

  The others sat around the single light stick they dared waste, chatting as if they were on a campout and had nowhere better to be. When McCall wasn’t fantasizing about Junkyard dragging Axton off her ship, she was worrying about how the Star Surfer was getting farther and farther away with each hour and how hard it would be to find—or get out of some law-enforcer impound lot.

  “Are you regretting yet that you stood up for me and got stuck down here?” Dash asked, his tone light.

  “Every other minute,” she grumbled.

  She sensed that he wanted to make her feel better, and she appreciated it, but the only thing that would work would be escaping the moon.

  Her gut gurgled, and her stomach growled.

  Getting some decent food might help too. Food without any ingredients that made her sick. That was probably part of why she felt so moody and glum. She remembered a lot of days like this when she’d been younger, before she had figured out that she could feel better on a different diet. Of course, from what she’d heard, there weren’t that many ration bars left, so maybe it would soon cease to be a problem.

  “Not every minute? Goodness, your days must be brighter and more joy-filled than I realized.” Dash bumped his shoulder against hers.

  She didn’t have a witty retort, but she let herself lean against his shoulder. She didn’t like feeling that she needed anyone for support, but… she reluctantly admitted that it helped now.

  “What’s going on?” someone demanded—Aleksei.

  McCall straightened, at first thinking he had seen her leaning against Dash. Not that such a thing should constitute something “going on.”

  “Somebody’s been taking extra ration bars.” Aleksei frowned around the cave, people’s faces haggard in the wan light from the luminescent stick. “There should have been eighteen left, two more for each of us, but there’s only thirteen. How are we supposed to split these fairly?”

  “You’re the one who’s been carrying them,” Jae-yoon pointed out.

  “Yeah, but everybody comes and picks out their own at night.”

  McCall leaned her head back against the stone wall, not caring about the bars. She just wanted to—

  “I bet it was her.”

  Dash stiffened next to her. McCall opened her eyes to spot Aleksei pointing at her.

  “What?” She hadn’t touched the box once on the trip. Dash had been doling her ration bars out to her.

  “She doesn’t talk to the rest of us,” Aleksei said. “She’s not Alliance. What does she care if we all starve?”

  “She hasn’t taken anything, Aleksei,” Dash said. “Relax and pass out what’s left. People can ration them however they want. The storm will end soon, and we’ll find more food when we get to the dome.”

  Walters looked at Dash, his expression hard to read. McCall hadn’t been paying much attention to anyone else during their long treks, but she had seen Walters observing Dash from time to time, as if he expected to catch him at something.

  “What if it doesn’t end soon? It’s been two days, and it’s not showing signs of letting up.” Aleksei thrust his arm toward the cave entrance and the snow piling up in front of it. “What if the suns-cursed thing goes on for months? Who really knows anything about this planet? We can’t have someone here sabotaging the group and taking more than their fair share.”

  “Let’s not throw accusations around,” Rose said. “Did you see her take them?”

  “I saw her near my stuff last night,” Aleksei said.

  What? McCall didn’t even know what stuff was his. None of them had
more than the survival gear Marco had gotten for them that first night.

  “Trust me,” McCall grumbled, “I barely wanted the bars I’ve been given.”

  But nobody looked like they were interested in trusting her. She shifted uncomfortably, the cold rock digging into her back. She didn’t want to be turned into some pariah because she wasn’t in the Alliance club.

  She could understand people being hungry and frustrated with this whole situation—she definitely was—but this was ridiculous. What happened if they kicked her out of the group? She didn’t have a compass or know how to navigate by the stars. And with the snow blowing outside, how far would she get if she had to leave the cave? She would never find shelter.

  “She didn’t take them,” Dash said coolly, staring Aleksei in the eye. “You took them. You’re only raising a stink so people won’t think it was you when someone else does a count.”

  Aleksei rocked back. “That’s not true.”

  McCall looked at Dash, his face in profile next to her. He looked as pissed as he sounded. With his telepathy, he would know the truth. Was he angry on her behalf? She felt a surge of relief that he was there and on her side.

  “It’s not true,” Aleksei said, spreading his hands as he addressed the faces now turned toward him. “He’s lying to protect her. There’s no way he could know—”

  “I saw you sneak out to eat two extras last night,” Dash said. “When you were supposedly taking a piss. Everybody else has been using the back of the cave since it’s so cold out there, but you went out in private so nobody would see you chowing down. Selfishly. We’re all hungry, you know.”

  Aleksei’s face went pale at what must have been a precise description of what had happened.

  “I didn’t,” he said, lifting his hands defensively. “I swear.”

  Two of the men muttered between themselves. McCall hoped they had decided to shift their accusatory beliefs.

  But Walters wasn’t muttering. He was squinting suspiciously at Dash. Could he know Dash hadn’t witnessed Aleksei’s legerdemain? At least not with his eyes?