Beneath me, Leela moans. “What the—”
Snick. Snick. Snick.
“Run!” I scream to Chris, throwing my arms around Leela and rolling as shards smack into the grass all around us. He grabs Leela’s arm and hauls her into his arms instead.
I roll to my feet and lurch between my friends and the Takers who are storming out of the Trailblazer.
The tall one spins their battle hammer as they stride toward me. I know I must be afraid, but I’m not feeling it now. I’m not feeling the pain I know is burning through my chest, either. All that matters is staying between that hammer and Leela and Chris.
The Taker winds up, two hands gripping the glittering hammer.
Time slows to a crawl, and I can see individual colors refracting through the crystal as it catches the dancing light of the burning shuttle.
When that thing connects with my torso, I’m going to die.
At least it’ll be quick.
A flat crack echoes from behind me, so loud it makes my ears ring. The hammer drops from the Taker’s suddenly limp hands. Their body follows, bioluminescent hot-pink blood spurting from a bullet wound in their chest.
The other Takers charge.
More gunshots roar behind me in quick succession.
Neon blood spatters over black robes.
The Takers fall. One. Two. Three. Four. Five.
A white-hot roar of Sorrow sonar slams into me as the last Taker throws themselves off the ramp. They hit the ground, but not before they are shredded by bullets.
Then there’s nothing but my heart hammering in my ringing ears.
I crawl back to Leela and Chris. She’s sitting up now and shaking her head repeatedly, like she can get her ears to work right again if she just jiggles them around some more.
“Are you okay?” I shout over the screaming of my own eardrums.
“Define ‘okay,’” she shouts back.
Then Jay and Hart are there, slip-sliding over the icy grass to crouch beside us.
“Good shooting, bro,” Hart says. “I think you got ’em all.”
“Lim, cover us,” Sergeant Nolan calls, striding past with a pair of marines I can’t identify under their helmets. “Hart, scramble a fire-suppression team. Get them back here ASAP.”
“Yes sir!” Hart calls, racing toward the 3D shop as Sarge turns to me.
“Watson, how many Takers are still on that ship?”
“I think there’s one more Sorrow on board,” I say. “But I don’t think they’re a Taker, so they might not be armed.”
“Copy that,” Sarge says, waving to two other marines to follow him up Trailblazer’s ramp.
“The kids—” I start to ask Jay, but he waves the question off.
“They’re safe,” he says, swinging his rifle to his shoulder as he pivots to scan the airfield. “Shhh.”
Leela, Chris, and I huddle next to him as a handful of minutes stumble past. Slowly the ringing in my ears begins to fade, only to be replaced by screaming pain in the rest of my body. I shift my weight, trying to find a position where my ribs don’t feel like they’re going to tear out of my chest. That’s when I hear a jagged moan. My head snaps up just in time to see the gray-robed Sorrow scrambling down from the Trailblazer’s emergency hatch.
“Jay!” I hiss, as the Sorrow races for the burned-out shield perimeter.
Jay pivots, training his rifle on the dulled glow of the fleeing Sorrow. I can feel his body go tense against mine
I brace for the crack of the shot.
It never comes.
Jay tracks the slightly glowing form until they disappear, then swears and drops to his haunches.
“Damn it,” he mutters.
“That Sorrow was running away,” I say. “And I don’t think they’re armed. It wouldn’t have been right to shoot them.”
A piercing Sorrow scream rips through the night.
Pain explodes through my head. I clutch my temples and twist, searching for the source of that terrible sound.
“No!” Jay shouts. I follow his gaze up the airfield, where the gray-robed Sorrow Jay didn’t shoot is running straight at a marine. The Sorrow screams again and the sound pounds into my ears like nails. The marine collapses and the Sorrow bolts away into the night.
Jay races toward the fallen soldier. I limp after him, texting Doc as I go. Whoever that is, they clearly need a medic.
But when I get there, I can see it’s already too late.
Jay is cradling Hart’s head in his lap. The private’s eyes stare wide into the starry sky, empty and red with burst blood vessels. More blood runs from his ears.
Hart is dead.
Thirteen
For a while, things happen faster than my brain can process them. Everything is a mash-up of sounds and sensations and images. Cold. Angry voices. Dr. Kao’s hands on Jay’s shoulders. Leela and Chris being loaded onto a hover carts. Pain radiating through my ribs. Familiar hands on my chest and shoulders. A pain patch on the back of my neck. The stiff, metallic sound of the zipper on a body bag, closing over Hart’s empty eyes.
“Joanna.” Doc’s gentle voice slips through the fog in my brain. “We need to move him now, dear.”
I look up and see Doc and Dad standing over me.
Jay is gone.
I look past them, scanning the airfield for him. Battlefield, a little voice whispers in the back of my head. That’s what this is now.
The fires are out and someone has set up work lights to illuminate the wreckage. There’s a lot of wreckage. The crashed Sorrow flyer is twisted in a deadly embrace with the flyer it fell on. Across the field, engineers are swarming over the Trailblazer. Her fuselage is a charred mess, and it looks like there might be hull damage. Leela must have cut just enough of the power regulator to make the inexperienced Sorrow pilot overload the engines.
The Vulcan is crouched beside her. The little ship looks undamaged. So does 3212.
I step back, giving Dad and Doc room to pull the hover cart close. Then I help them heft Hart’s body onto it. The pain in my ribs is dulled by the patch, but it’s there. So is the biting wind, which cuts effortlessly through my thermal. My arms ache, too, in the dull way of overstrained muscles. I’m sure my whole body will hurt by morning, but pain is better than the formless unreality of shock.
“How many people did we lose, Dad?”
Dad sighs. “Six. But they took a lot of Sorrow with them . . . we’ve found a dozen Taker corpses so far.”
Eighteen beings. Dead. For some raw.
For a moment, I think I’m going to throw up.
“I think you should come back to medical with me, young woman,” Doc says. “Chris and Leela are already there.”
“No!” I blurt the word out louder than I mean to. “No, please, I want to help. I need to . . . please.”
“If Doc wants you in medical, you’re gonna go, kiddo,” Dad says.
But Doc shakes his head.
“Sometimes, the needs of the mind outweigh the needs of the body,” he says. “Do what you feel you must, Joanna.”
“And after that, you hit medical,” Dad insists. “You read me?” Then he gently pulls me close. I wrap my arms around him and squeeze. Hard. I don’t care if it hurts. “You terrify me, kid,” he mutters into my hair. “You and Leela are lucky you didn’t fry yourselves alive with that stunt.”
With that, he helps Doc push the hover cart with Hart’s body on it back to the 3D shop, where a line of other carts bearing black-shrouded bodies is waiting.
I didn’t see the dead after Ord attacked us using the raptors. I was in medical, being treated for the concussion and dislocated shoulder he left me with. By the time I got out, the dead were just gone. A list of names on the memorial stone.
I don’t even know who else is in those body bags. Marines, I’m sure. But which ones? Are they from the Pioneer squadron? Familiar faces twist through my mind. Or are they Prairie squadron? Is that little boy going to lose more than his bear tonight?
&nb
sp; “You should get out of here.”
I turn toward Jay’s voice to find him trudging across the field carrying a half dozen empty fire suppressors in each hand. His face and hair are caked with soot.
“Are you okay?” I ask, hurrying to take some of the canisters from him.
“That isn’t even relevant,” he says. “I’m doing my job. Too late. But I’m doing it.”
“What are you talking about?” I say. “You saved my life tonight. And Leela and Chris.”
“And I got Hart killed.”
“What?” I nearly choke on the word. “Jay. You didn’t—”
“Exactly. I could have shot that Sorrow. Easily. Hart would still be alive if I had.”
“You don’t know that,” I say.
He laughs, harsh and bitter.
“Yeah. You’re right. I could have missed. Then I’d just be a bad shot instead of a coward.”
“That Sorrow was running away. You couldn’t have known—”
“EXACTLY!” Jay roars, dropping the suppressors and spinning on me. “I didn’t know where that thing was going or whether they were armed or how many ways they might be able to kill us without a weapon. But I knew the Sorrow were attacking us. Killing us. I knew our people were counting on me. And I failed.”
“Damn straight, Private.” Shelby sneers, striding up the field toward us. “But that’s a big-ass club today. You want to start making up for it? Fall in.”
Jay follows orders without another word, marching stiffly up the field behind her. Other marines join them as they go, falling into two straight lines behind Shelby. They march to the six float carts bearing human bodies. Each pair takes the handles of one cart.
Shelby calls out, “Honor guard, at-ten-TION!”
The whole airfield goes quiet as the marines snap to attention. Shelby lets the moment hang for a few seconds. Then she calls out, “Honor guard, MARCH!”
The silence lingers as the marines slowly walk their dead comrades up the street toward the medical center, and for several minutes after. Their grief is almost as palpable as the lingering smoke.
“Hello, Little Moth.”
I turn to find Grandpa standing a few meters behind me. He’s streaked in soot and blood and grease. The skin of his face is red, like he got too close to the fire at some point.
“Are you okay?” I ask.
“I think that’s my line,” he says, a spare smile touching his lips. “Dr. Divekar’s last report said you had broken ribs and possibly whiplash. Shouldn’t you be in the medical center?”
“Probably,” I say. “I wanted to help. But . . .”
“It’s easy to feel helpless in the face of such violence,” he says, understanding what I’m trying to say more clearly than I do.
“I don’t like it,” I say.
“Neither do I,” he says.
We stand there, quietly taking in the smoking wreckage around us. Then he asks me, “After the Sorrow brought down the Landing’s shield, you took the Vulcan, and your friends, straight here. You didn’t know our marines were waiting, did you?”
“No,” I say, the word dry and crumbling in my mouth. “Leela was worried . . . we thought Mrs. Divekar and the kids were here alone.”
“So you three decided to risk your lives, and a ship with technology on it that could kill us all, to try to help them,” he says. His voice sounds strange. Tense. Almost tearful.
“I’m sorry, Grandpa,” I say, startled. “I know it was a risk—”
“A risk I wouldn’t have taken,” he says, cutting me off. “And my caution would have cost us dearly. If you hadn’t been here, we wouldn’t have known they were after the Trailblazer. Not until it was too late. We’d never have recovered from the loss of that much raw. Much less what they might have done, had they been able to reach orbit.” He drags his hands through his white hair, just like Mom does when she’s upset. “Everything I did could have been for nothing, Little Moth.”
He drops to his knees in the fire-scarred grass, like he suddenly lacks the strength to stand.
I don’t know what to do. Mom’s meltdown was awful, but this is worse.
This is Grandpa.
He’s lived through every kind of trouble. He never loses his cool. But right now his eyes are wide-open windows to the raging storm of pain inside his head.
A faint memory surfaces at the thought.
Grandpa, in his cabin, sitting in a deck chair looking out on the lake. I must have been little. The chair looks huge in my memory. I could hear the murmur of Mom’s and Dad’s voices in the background but didn’t know what they were saying. I was totally focused on Grandpa. On the burning coals of his eyes as he stared out at the water.
It’s just a fragment. I don’t remember anything happening when I was little that could have put that look on Grandpa’s face. I don’t remember anything really bad happening at all in my life, until Teddy died. But clearly, there are things about Grandpa’s life I don’t know.
“It’s okay, Grandpa,” I say, quietly. “We stopped the Sorrow. They didn’t get the raw or the shuttle. The fires are a setback, but we still have nine weeks before the survivors have to come down. We’ll find a way.” I take one of his hands in mine and tug. I need him to get up. I need him to keep going. “Just gotta catch one little fish at a time, right?”
He looks at me and his face creases into a smile so sad, it makes me want to weep.
“Have I ever told you how much you remind me of your grandmother, Little Moth?” he says.
“Um, no,” I say, confusion twining around my sadness and fear and exhaustion. I’ve seen footage of my grandmother Cleo. She was petite and blond and elegant. I’m none of those things.
“She never let me give up,” he says. “I wouldn’t be here if not for her.” Longing washes over his face. “Some days I wonder . . .”
He trails off, his gaze slipping away from mine again.
“What do you wonder, Grandpa?”
He looks surprised at the question, like he didn’t mean to say that out loud. “Nothing, Little Moth,” he says, taking my offered hand and using it to lever himself to his feet. “Just an old man’s wandering mind.”
He shakes his whole body like he’s flinging the stress and sadness away. Then he grins. The expression is so out of place that it isn’t at all comforting. “I told you that you’d earn that promotion.”
“I, ah, yeah. I guess you did,” I say, trying to not sound freaked out by the sudden turn in mood and conversation.
“You’re a bright, passionate girl,” he says. “A credit to humanity.” He gazes back at what’s left of our shuttle and the charred remains of the new construction beyond it. “But this is not your burden, Little Moth. It’s mine. And I will make it right, without any more bodies being carried through these streets.”
“Admiral.” Grandpa and I both turn to find Shelby standing behind us. “We need to talk.”
“I know,” he says. There’s so much pain in his voice. It makes me ache. “Joanna, if you’ll excuse us.”
“Sir—”
“Don’t make the admiral ask you twice, Junior,” Shelby snaps. “Get moving.”
Grandpa doesn’t contradict her, so I leave, the ruins of everything I wanted this world to be sprawling out behind me.
Fourteen
I thought my ribs hurt before, but now that my body has had time to stiffen up, I can hardly put one foot in front of the other. I need pain patches. So, so many pain patches.
When I get to medical, Leela is curled on a scanner bed with a nebulizer over her nose and mouth. She aspirated some fuel while cutting the power regulator. Chris is sitting on the scanner bed next to hers, tapping his foot impatiently as Dr. Kruppa fits a sling over his wounded arm.
“It feels fine,” he complains. “I don’t need this.”
“Maybe not,” Kruppa fires back. “But the dermaglue does. If you rip that wound open again, the nanobots will leak out and it’ll take weeks to heal. Do you want that?”
>
“No,” I supply, sliding onto the bed next to his. “He doesn’t.”
“What I want is some food,” Chris grumbles.
Kruppa rolls her eyes. “Then what are you still doing here?”
She doesn’t have to ask Chris twice.
“Catch you later,” he calls out as he flees.
I try not to doze as Dr. Kruppa checks me over. It turns out I don’t have whiplash, but I do have four cracked ribs. Kruppa draws some blood and then disappears into Doc’s lab to program a nanobot injection that will help them heal faster.
I haven’t had nanobots in my system in months, not since the Sorrow healed my cardiovascular system. I am unreasonably squigged out by the thought of having a couple of million robots smaller than my blood cells running around my body again. When Kruppa comes back with a syringe full of gently sparkling liquid, I almost say no. My ribs will heal on their own, after all. It’ll just take a lot longer. But then I look at Leela, trying to sleep through her treatment, and the dozen injured marines and civilians in the beds all around us.
There’s no time for me to sideline myself being squeamish.
Kruppa makes me stay for another hour, so she can make sure the nanobots are working. By the time she releases me, it’s so late, it’s early. The Landing feels too quiet without the gentle hum of the shield. I can’t believe the force field is still down. It’s been hours. The damage must have been extensive.
It isn’t just the shield. The streets are empty, except for one grim, soot-caked marine standing guard in front of Ground Control. Even when no one’s around, the Landing is never this still. You can always hear the murmur of voices or footsteps from somewhere. But not tonight. Tonight, the camp feels like a wounded thing, trying to disappear into stillness.
The silence is broken by Chris’s voice.
“Joey!”
I drag myself out of the bleak maze of my thoughts and turn to see him hurrying across the square toward me.
“What’s wrong?” I say.
The Survivor Page 13