by Amie Kaufman
The wreck? The man’s insane. It’s days away at least. “Head out? Speak for yourself. I’m not going anywhere. They’ll see our crash site. If we leave, my father won’t know where to look for us.” And he will come for me.
His look is dubious, almost insolent. “You may be content to wait for your white knight, my lady, but I’m not going to sit around while our supplies run out.”
My lady? Does he know how crazy his faux courtesy makes me? Surely no one could be so aggravating by accident or coincidence. I cling to that anger, trying not to let it fade as I look at him. It’s safe, this fury. I can’t afford to feel anything else.
The anger is a shield, and if I relinquish it, I’ll shatter.
A tiny piece of me wonders if he knows that. On the ship he was out of his element, awkward and almost tentative. Here, he’s certain. Everything he does has a purpose. Maybe some part of him is deliberately goading me, keeping me strong.
Or maybe he’s just an ass.
I stew in silence as he goes through that pack of his again, and then the lockers. He piles a coarse reflective space blanket with a softer one he finds in a locker near the roof, then looks across at me expectantly.
When I just gaze back at him, confused, his jaw tightens.
“Abhorrent though it may seem to you, we are going to have to spend the night together. Brace yourself.”
With a jolt, I realize it’s not supposed to be a random pile of fabric, but a bed. Just the one bed. The words fly from my lips before I can stop them. “Absolutely not.” My voice has the same cold steel my father’s does—at least I can put what I’ve learned from him to good use. “If you will leave me some water, you can take the rest of the supplies and sleep out there, in the forest you enjoy so much.”
I’m watching him carefully, so I see his hands curling slowly into fists. An odd flare of pleasure runs through me. If he’s infuriating me on purpose, then at least I can give as good as I get. “Maybe while you’re at it you can stand on top of the pod and flag down the rescue teams when they come in the night.”
He throws his pack down, making me jump. When he speaks, though, his voice is calm, controlled. “Miss LaRoux,” he says softly. “All due respect, but I’m not sleeping outside when there’s a perfectly good shelter here.”
My satisfaction at having stung him falters. If the rescue teams do find us in the night, Merendsen’s war hero status won’t last long in the face of my father’s wrath.
I take a deep breath, trying to backtrack. Maybe anger wasn’t the way to go. “Major, the circumstances might be unconventional, but that’s no reason to abandon—”
“Screw the circumstances.” Despite everything, the flash of annoyance across his features prompts an answering surge of satisfaction in me. At least there’s one thing I can do well in this godforsaken wilderness. “It’s going to be cold out there, and it’ll be warmer in here with two. I’m as tired as you are and I’m not going to stay up all night on watch. I also don’t think much of being eaten.”
That makes me pause. “Eaten?”
“Tracks,” he says shortly. “In the woods, a ways back. Big ones.”
He’s trying to scare me, I know. I saw no tracks, and he certainly never pointed them out to me. Besides, terraforming companies would never introduce large enough predators to their ecosystems to endanger human inhabitants. I grit my teeth.
Even if he was telling the truth, the risk of predators would be less than the risks he’d face if found with me. “Major Merendsen, believe me, if my father finds us together—”
“—then you’ll have to find a way to explain it to him. I’m not going out there in the face of all good sense. You can have the bed, I’m fine in one of these chairs. Sleep or don’t sleep as you like, but if we have to move out tomorrow, I expect you to keep up a decent pace. Good night.” It’s an order: Good night, Private, or else. Without another word, he jerks the string tight on his bag, slouches in his chair, and stretches his long legs out in front of him. His chin to his chest, he closes his eyes and clicks the flashlight off, leaving me in darkness. The only sound is his breathing as it immediately begins to slow.
Without his face distracting me, it’s easier to be furious. How can he have been so abrupt with me? Doesn’t he realize that I’m only trying to keep him from losing his commission—or worse? I struggle with the urge to wake him up and insist. I wish I were brave enough to sleep outside, but lie or no, his talk of big animal tracks is enough to keep me from moving.
I take a deep breath and try to think. My father isn’t completely unreasonable—surely he’ll understand. Especially since it’s quite clear the Major doesn’t want anything to do with me. Perhaps it isn’t the end of the world if he stays here, just for tonight.
And a tiny, tiny part of me points out that I’d rather have him here, beside me, in case anything does come in the night.
I slide between the two blankets, trying not to wince at the coarseness of the space blanket against my skin. It’s barely better than sleeping on the floor, the metal grid cutting into my hip, and I begin to think maybe the Major has the smarter idea. I’ll be damned before I imitate him, though, so I curl up beneath the blanket, pillowing my head on my arm.
Maybe there’s something I can do with the remnants of the communications array. Get some sort of signal transmitting, to tell people we’re here. If I can prove we’re signaling, maybe the Major won’t drag me across this nightmare of a planet.
I’m inching toward sleep when my cousin’s face flashes in front of my eyes. My throat seizes so suddenly it’s as though invisible hands are strangling me. She was only doing what my father forced her to do; she was still my best, my only friend. I should have gone back for her, tried to find her in the crowd, brought her with us. And instead, I left her there.
My lips shape the words in the darkness. I left her there to die.
I think of Elana, her mindless devotion to chasing the trends I set. I think of Swann, the ragged edge to her voice as she tried to fight her way back through the crowd to get to me as the Icarus began to break apart. Did they find escape pods that worked? Or did Swann spend too long trying to find me in the midst of the crowds, and go down in flames with my father’s ship?
It isn’t the first time someone’s death has been my fault, but that doesn’t make it any less impossible to bear.
My father is light-years away, perhaps being told at this moment what happened to the Icarus. And he has no one there to lean on, without me. Since my mother’s death when I was little, we’ve never been apart for more than a few weeks at a time—and never without the ability to speak to each other at the touch of a button on a console.
And now I’m stranded on an alien planet with a soldier who hates me and everything I aspire to.
For the first time in my life, I’m alone.
I cover the sounds my tears make, tossing and turning in my makeshift bed, so the space blanket crinkles noisily. I expect him to chastise me for being such a princess, but he says nothing and his breathing doesn’t change. He doesn’t even hear me. I give up and just let myself cry.
“At that stage your expectation was that you would be rescued promptly?”
“I was with Miss LaRoux. I imagined she’d be their top priority.”
“What did you make of your companion?”
“It was a change of pace from a platoon.”
“That’s not a substantive response, Major Merendsen.”
“I hadn’t had long to form an opinion. The situation wasn’t ideal.”
“For you or her?”
“For either of us. Do you know anyone who’d have been pleased in our places?”
“We’ll ask the questions, Major.”
SEVEN
TARVER
I’m about ten seconds away from turning on the flashlight and searching the first-aid kit for a way to sedate her when she finally stops crying. Eventually, I sleep.
It’s late when I wake, sometime after midnigh
t. For a long moment I lie perfectly still, letting my senses inform me. I feel cold metal and hard lines pressed against my skin, I smell the lingering odor of melted plastene. I hear some creature give a croak outside, and closer, inside the pod, a small sound as someone moves.
Memory bubbles to the surface and spreads out through my body, racing down my arms so my fingers tighten around the armrests. I haven’t opened my eyes yet, and as I let my mind drift and deliver information, I hear the soft scrape of movement again. Light flashes across my eyelids. She’s got the flashlight.
Dammit, doesn’t she need to sleep? I sneak open one eyelid. She’s at the electrical panel again, fussing with the wires. She’s backlit by the flashlight, nibbling her lower lip. She looks different in this light. I can’t make out the fancy hair or the remains of her makeup, and the black eye is concealed by the shadow. She looks clearer, cleaner, younger. More like somebody I could talk to.
I wonder what my parents would make of her. Their faces swim up, and my throat tightens. If the Icarus lost contact with LaRoux Industries when she fell out of hyperspace, then maybe my parents haven’t heard anything about a crash yet. Maybe they think the ship is just missing. I’m okay, I think, wishing I could beam that thought straight to them. I don’t even know which way to aim it—this planet could be anywhere in the galaxy.
As I watch, the girl expertly snaps a wire into place. I remember the way she stripped them with her fingernails before takeoff. We would have gone down still attached to the ship if she hadn’t. My mind’s eye conjures up the image of the other escape pods, streaming ribbons of fire as they split off from the Icarus during the crash.
Without a doubt, Lilac LaRoux saved our lives. That’s a little hard to swallow.
I clear my throat to give her some warning before I speak. “Miss LaRoux?”
Her head snaps up. “Yes, Major?” She’s keeping her voice polite and even, like she’s at a garden party and I’m some annoying aunt who just won’t back off.
Maybe if I shut up, she’ll electrocute herself. “Need a hand there?”
She huffs a soft, derisive breath. “Unless you know how to bypass the comms relays, I can’t see how you’re in a position to help. If I can force the enviro circuit board to take over for comms, maybe I can use the pod itself as an antenna. It’s made of metal.”
We’re silent for a moment. We both know that I couldn’t point out the environmental controls circuit board with a gun to my head.
She takes my silence as a victory, and smiles that infuriatingly superior smile at me. “If I can get us a signal, then will you admit it’s better to stay put and wait, rather than go trekking across unknown territory by ourselves?” I take a deep breath through my nose and let my head fall back again. She turns back to the panel, crouching in front of the panel. I watch her covertly out of the corner of my eye, as much fascinated by her unlikely expertise as by the sight of the LaRoux heiress absently moving the flashlight to her mouth so she can hold it in her teeth as she works.
It’s another glimpse of the girl I saw in the salon, the one who stood up for a man accosting her instead of letting her lackeys deal with him. Where’s that girl the rest of the time? With a wrench of my stomach I realize that the man in the salon, the reason I talked to Lilac LaRoux in the first place, is probably dead now. Did anyone else survive? Did any of the escape pods break away before the Icarus hit the atmosphere?
At some point, between one blink and the next, I fall asleep.
“What did Miss LaRoux think of the situation?”
“I didn’t ask her.”
“What was your impression, then, of the way Miss LaRoux was coping?”
“Better than expected.”
EIGHT
LILAC
I wake curled up against a wall, a blanket around me, my face aching. For a moment I lie there trying to remember what I did the night before, dreading the return of memory, certain that my hangover will be the least of my concerns. Then the unmistakable smell of half-melted plastene jerks me awake, and I wish it was a hangover making my head pound—not the aftereffects of having a spaceship hit me in the face.
I glance at the broken communications array I tried to salvage last night. The wires are fused and melted beyond repair. The whole mother-board short-circuited, leaving nothing a whole team of electricians could salvage, much less me, alone.
I should have just left well enough alone and gotten some rest.
The morning is quiet, which terrifies me. There has always been noise around me, even in our country house. The sounds of air filters and the garden shifting from roses to daffodils with the deft, mechanical click of its holographic projectors. Servants bustling here and there, Simon tossing pebbles at my window to wake me in the night. My father on the holowire at the breakfast table, delivering orders to his deputies back on Corinth while pulling faces to make me laugh.
Here, the only sounds are the faint noises of birds, and leaves whispering against each other high above.
Knowing that the Major is going to insist we move out, I brace myself, trying to summon courage or strength or, at the very least, some dignity.
A whole day of him marching me along, telling me every five minutes that I need to keep moving, walk faster. A whole day of slowing him down.
A sudden dread prickles in my stomach. I’m sitting up almost before it registers—I already know its source. The chair the Major had been sleeping in is empty, and his bag of supplies is gone.
I’m not ready for the panic that washes over me. I want to scream his name, and only fear tightening my throat prevents me. Yes, I was alone even with him there, but he knew things—the forest, how to walk, how to live—that I could never hope to learn.
My glares and jabs have driven him away. I lurch to my feet and stumble to the door of the pod, pushing it open and clinging to the frame. It’s barely dawn, and I can see only a few meters into the dark woods. There’s no pattern to the trees—each one is slightly different, undergrowth haphazardly scattered. There are no paths, no flowers. Nothing moves, but for a branch waving gently in the breeze.
Every scowl of his, every irritated twist of his mouth flashes before my eyes. Tarver, screams my mind. Come back. I’m sorry.
With a rush, the pain of my twisted ankles, the weakness of having slept so little, the fear—it all sweeps over me and I fall heavily against the wall of the pod, eyes still staring at the unreadable mess of leaves and branches.
And then the clang of my body hitting the doorframe isn’t the only sound. A twig snaps, electric in the silence, and somewhere in the shadow something moves. I freeze, breath catching in my throat like a sob.
Tracks, he said. Big ones.
I’m only given a moment to imagine what creature might make even a war hero pause, before the source of the sound comes looming out of the dark wood.
Major Merendsen raises his eyebrows at me, and I know he can see my panic in the moment before I school my features. His mouth quirks in faint amusement. “Sorry to disappoint you, but it’s going to take more than a few dirty looks to drive me off.”
All my panic and helplessness and relief collapse into red-hot humiliation. This time there’s nothing to stop me from lashing out at him.
“Don’t flatter yourself, Major.” I sound like Anna, instantly superior. The thought makes my throat constrict, my voice strangle. “Your whereabouts are the least of my problems. But what exactly do you think you’re doing, traipsing around out there? Anything could have come in! I could have—” My throat closes as I run out of words. I know I’m not angry with him. But screaming helps.
Major Merendsen watches me mildly, slipping his pack off his shoulder and settling it at his feet before arching his back in a stretch. I watch him as my anger ebbs, leaving me ashamed. It’s a few seconds before I look away. The shirt of his casual uniform stretches in a way I can’t ignore, and the last thing I want is for him to notice me staring. I glare at the furrow in the ground caused by our crashing pod
instead.
“Breakfast, Miss LaRoux?” he asks blandly.
I could slap him. God, I could kiss him—he hasn’t abandoned me. If I were home I would stalk out of the room in deafening silence, finding a place to collect myself in peace. But if I were home, I’d have no reason to be relieved at the presence of someone I’d so much rather never see again. If I were home … I close my eyes and try to collect myself.
His footsteps move past me, soft in the thick springy bits of leaf coating the forest floor. I can almost smell him, something sharp and different behind the assault of green smells I’m not used to.
“If you’re not hungry,” he adds, “then I suggest we get moving.”
“What were your views of the planet at that stage?”
“Obviously it was in the advanced stages of terraforming. We were waiting for rescue teams to arrive.”
“What made you so sure they’d come?”
“Why spend the resources to terraform a planet if you’re not going to profit from the colonies? We were sure the settlers would have seen the Icarus crash, and somebody would be along to investigate.”
“Your key concerns at that stage?”
“Well, Miss LaRoux had a party she didn’t want to miss, and I—”
“Major, you don’t seem to understand the seriousness of your situation.”
“Sure I do. What the hell do you think our key concerns were?”
NINE
TARVER
The sun’s slanting through the trees by the time we get moving. I’m aching, covered in bruises from the dozens of times I was thrown against my straps as our pod screamed in to land. My grab bag’s on my back, stuffed with everything I could find use for in the pod’s lockers—ration bars, the blanket, a pathetically inadequate first-aid kit, a length of spare cable, and a mechanic’s suit I haven’t yet dared suggest Miss LaRoux substitute for her totally impractical dress. My silver photo case, my battered notebook full of half-written poems. The canteen, with the built-in water filter we’ll need so badly now. For better or worse, we’re walking, following a creek through the forest.
