by Merry Farmer
Grace leaned back against the wall, crossing her arms and waiting for Dave to realize his mistake. Dave tried a roundhouse kick which Carrie easily dodged, spinning and landing her heel in his side. He stumbled but shrugged the blow off with a sniff.
“He’s going to hurt her.” Sean strolled up to her side with a frown. He’d just arrived at the gym and hadn’t seen the earlier display.
“No he’s not,” she replied, focused on the fight. Sean hadn’t seen the antics of the last hour.
He huffed. “Dave can beat me. He shouldn’t be sparring with a woman.”
They watched as Carrie faked with her right and crunched a blow to Dave’s bicep with her left.
Sean shook his head. “I’ve got to put a stop to this.”
“Don’t,” she warned.
He turned to her with a scoffing grunt. “I think I know a little more about combat and conflict than you do. I’m ex-military.” He continued toward the practice mat. Neither Carrie nor Dave noticed him.
She acted without thinking, rushing to plant herself between Sean and the sparring match on the mat. She held out her arms to stop him.
“No, really. Don’t interrupt them.”
“Grace, come on.”
He made the mistake of trying to force her aside. She grabbed his forearm as he came at her and twisted down, using his own weight to throw him off balance. Sean flipped off his feet, crashing to the floor on his back, stunned.
Grace’s arms ached with the effort of displacing that much weight and she was sure she’d be sore in the morning, but she wasn’t about to let him know that.
“I told you to stop.”
Carrie and Dave halted their mock battle and gaped at the two of them. Sean struggled to roll to his side and then to his hands and knees.
“You could have at least waited until I was on the mat,” he complained.
Grace flushed red. “Sorry.”
Carrie snickered, but Dave wasn’t amused. “Goddammit, Grace. I’m teaching you to defend yourself, not to drop people for the hell of it.”
“Hey!” Carrie rushed to her defense, baring her teeth in a snarl as she lunged and planted her foot in the small of Dave’s back. He collapsed like a rag doll. “You teach us to defend ourselves and you’re going to have to expect us to do just that.” Carrie tossed her words to Dave’s feet and stepped over him with a sniff.
Grace tried to apologize to Dave with a glance but Carrie had other plans.
“Come on.” She hooked her arm through Grace’s as she left the mat. “Let’s go paint our nails and do our hair and gossip.”
The thumping of Grace’s heart had as much to do with the thrill of expectation as the hours of walking. Every time they climbed to the crest of another hill she expected to see charred wreckage and people on the other side. So far she had been disappointed.
The sun was high in the sky and Chronis had climbed into full view above the trees when they reached a hillside with a clump of tall bushes surrounded by a scattering of rocks and boulders. She stopped with a sigh and sat on one of the rocks. The others in her group noticed and headed toward her. She unslung her canteen from its shoulder strap and unscrewed the cap to take a long drink.
“These valleys look like good farmland,” she spoke her thoughts aloud to Carrie as her friend slumped on the ground at the base of Grace’s rock. “But I would hate to be the one who has to plow it all for the first time.”
“Oh I’m sure you’ll get your chance,” Carrie said between draughts from her canteen. “We’re all in this together, right? So we’ll all have to share in the dirty work.”
“Mmm.”
Grace studied her friend as she wiped the sweat from her brow with the back of her hand. The same tense worry lines creased the sides of Carrie’s eyes as had been there the day before. Her shoulders were bunched under her shirt. She was still anxious. There were some things you couldn’t hide from the people who knew you best. At least she was entertaining the idea of permanence now.
Grace watched the others making their way toward the shady rocks. Sean took his time, scanning the tree line and the horizon with grim concentration, hand flexing on the butt of his rifle. She needed to find something meaningful for him to do before he became a problem.
Danny approached her with wide strides and a distracted spark in his eyes. He had a variety of flowers and greens in his hands. When he reached Grace he propped his foot on her rock and handed her a thin green stalk with a heavy clusters of seeds on one end.
“What does that look like?” he asked, studying her slender hand as much as the stalk.
“Grass,” Carrie answered with a cursory glance up at the stalk and a longer scowl for Danny. “It looks like grass and more grass.”
A grin tugged the corners of Grace’s mouth. She flickered an eyebrow at Danny.
“It’s a grain of some sort,” she answered. “It’s not ripe yet. Do you think it’s edible?”
He shrugged and took the stalk from her hand, replacing it with a long, furry frond.
“What about that. What does that remind you of?”
She stroked the downy leaf. It tickled her hand. A sweet scent like springtime rose from it.
“Some kind of fern maybe?” She tried to remember if ferns had any medicinal properties.
Danny raised his eyebrows as if he knew what she was thinking and pulled the soft fern from her fingers. He handed her a large, flat flower with scores of slender maroon petals around a bright yellow center. “What’s that?”
She blinked and studied the flower, twirling it between her fingers. She’d never seen anything like it, nothing half as vibrant. It was beautiful.
“I don’t know,” she shrugged.
He leaned closer, his face inches from hers, eyes sparkling, and whispered, “It’s a flower, Grace.”
A heartbeat of silence passed between them. Their eyes locked for a moment before she dropped her gaze to his mouth, soft and warm in his lop-sided grin. Then he winked and stood, pushing away from her rock and walking to sit with his back against a boulder several yards away.
Heat flooded Grace from head to toe, coalescing deep in her core. She stared at the flower, a grin spreading across her lips and through her soul. She raised the flower to breathe in its heady scent as her heart purred in her chest. A wealth of ideas of how she could repay Danny’s kindness bubbled through her. How deliciously, instinctively inconvenient.
“What’s that?” Sean clipped her back to her senses. He leaned against the boulder next to her and took a swig from his canteen, wiping the sweat from his face with the back of his muscled arm.
“It’s a flower, Sean,” she echoed Danny’s words as their meaning reverberated lower and lower in her core.
Sean looked once and sniffed, his brow knit. He glanced away at the forest.
“You’ve got yellow on….” He gestured vaguely to her face without looking, a jolt of tension tightening around his eyes.
Her hand shot up to rub the end of her nose as her cheeks burned brighter. She glanced from the smudge of yellow pollen on her fingers to Danny as he leaned against his rock. He fiddled with his backpack, tucking the rest of his plant specimens into its pockets. His grin was wickedly self-satisfied even as he appeared to be concentrated on his task. Her chest squeezed around her heart.
She swallowed the impulse to grasp for something more with him and thought about business. She tucked the flower into the braided knot of hair at the back of her neck. There was work to be done and it wouldn’t get done if she indulged in an emotional tug-o-war between duty and desire.
She shifted on her rock to check on the other members of her team. They were resting in the shade, drinking and chatting. None of them were used to the level of physical activity they had set for themselves, but it was heartening to know that they were willing to push on. The oxygen-rich air was helping.
“What did you find, Rhiannon?” she asked the blond woman who had been on her Terra Project team.
&n
bsp; Rhiannon’s hands were clasped around a furry ball. It poked a shiny black nose between her fingers. “It looks like a hamster. I had one as a pet when I was a kid. I can’t believe it let me pick it up. It wasn’t afraid at all.”
The memory of the giant cat from that morning flashed back to her. She had been more afraid of it than it was of her.
“I wonder if they know we’re—”
Her thought was cut short by a series of sharp popping noises from the other side of the hill. They were matched in return by a string of loud cracks. She knew the sound.
“Gunfire,” Sean spoke her thoughts aloud.
Her stomach twisted as she jumped to her feet. She secured her canteen over her shoulder and scrambled the rest of the way up the hill. Sean and Carrie rushed to flank her sides. Danny followed with Rhiannon and the rest of their team only a step behind.
When they reached the top of the hill Sean motioned for them to stay low. They crouched to hands and knees as the scene in the next valley unfolded below them.
About a dozen men and a few women in a combination of olive-drab and fur and skin clothes sheltered behind the trunks of trees that bulged into a rocky field from the forest. They carried a few firearms but most of them wielded crossbows, firing occasional shots.
Their targets were the handful of men and women spread out in the field, crouched behind boulders and a few strands of trees or bushes. The bulk of the cracking gunfire came from these people, women and men in civilian clothes armed with rifles and handguns. The acrid smell of gun smoke wafted up from the miniature battle to where Grace crouched.
“What the hell?” Carrie hissed as the rest of their team spread out along the ridge of the hill, watching in disbelief.
“Look,” Sean growled, pointing to the line of trees. “There’s your buddy Kinn.”
Grace sat up on her haunches to get a better look. She raised a hand to shield her eyes. Sean was right. Kinn fought at the front of the pack of soldiers, crossbow raised as he aimed with precision.
She stood, mouth open in distress.
“Grace, look. I think that man down there is Brian Kutrosky.” Rhiannon shifted past Sean to her side.
Grace followed Rhiannon’s outstretched arm to one of the larger boulders. She blinked when she saw a man in a tattered shirt with thinning hair aiming a rifle at the line of trees.
“Oh my God,” Carrie gasped behind her.
“How on earth….”
Grace’s thought was buried under the popping of a volley of gunfire from Kutrosky’s side.
“We’ve got to stop this.”
“Grace, wait!”
Before Carrie could hold her back, Grace rushed down the hillside into the rocky valley. She ignored Carrie’s and then Sean’s shouts, focusing on the violent conflict below.
“Stop!” She held out her arms to either side, raising her voice in a firm command. “Stop!”
Heedless of her own safety, she kept going, willing the crossfire to miss her.
One or two more shots were fired, but the shock of an outsider, a woman in a pink shirt, careening into the line of fire made both sides hesitate. Kinn’s rumbling voice shouted an order and the soldiers on his half of the field lowered their weapons. The men and women on the other side stepped out of their cover.
Grace continued into the field of battle, face set in fierce determination. A flicker of movement drew her focus to the left. Kinn strode away from his tree line toward her, face and huge arms slick with sweat, fire in his eyes, crossbow held ready.
She snapped to look in the other direction. Brian Kutrosky cautiously emerged from his boulder and stalked forward with equal intensity, rifle aimed at Kinn. Four of his people, three women and a man, walked with him, covering him.
She heard the pounding of footsteps running down the hill half a second before Sean grabbed her shoulders and spun her to face him.
“Grace, what the hell do you think you’re doing?”
The click of Kinn’s crossbow as he surged toward them split the air. “Let go of her, now.”
Sean didn’t back down, even with Kinn’s crossbow aimed straight at him. Carrie and Danny reached them a moment later. Carrie was red with anger but Danny’s face was as white as a sheet and his blue eyes bulged with fear and anger behind his glasses. He would give her hell later, but now she had a job to do.
She jerked out of Sean’s grip and turned to face Kinn and Kutrosky.
“What is going on here?” she demanded with every ounce of command she could muster.
Kutrosky narrowed his eyes, but Kinn was first to answer.
“I was charged with neutralizing this criminal.”
“Think you’re gonna do it, jarhead?”
Kutrosky raised his rifle and aimed at Kinn’s chest.
“Put that down,” Grace said.
Kinn hesitated, shifting his weight and flicking a glance at Grace, then lowered his crossbow. He stared at Kutrosky as if he were a flea. Kutrosky didn’t flinch, although the four of his people with him bristled with tension.
“I said put that down,” Grace demanded.
Kutrosky darted a glance to her, then back to Kinn. He shuffled in his spot, then lowered his gun and narrowed his eyes as he looked to her again.
“Well, well. Grace Hargrove.”
“Brian Kutrosky.” Grace nodded then pressed on. “You of all people should know that this is insanity.”
Kinn’s glance snapped back to her. His whole body was tense with battle.
Kutrosky frowned, changing his grip on his rifle and lowering it further. “Tell that to soldier-boy here.”
Indignation bristled through Grace, but she kept it in check and turned to Kinn.
“You can’t kill him, Kinn. You can’t kill anyone.” She turned back to Kutrosky. “No one can kill anyone.”
“He’s a dangerous criminal, Grace.” The edge of impatience in Kinn’s rumbling voice was palpable.
Kutrosky barked out a laugh. “Sure. Right. I’m a dangerous criminal.” His words dripped sarcasm. “Somebody stop me before I sabotage The Terra Project.”
Kinn snapped his crossbow to ready again, finger twitching over the trigger, jaw flexing in anger.
“Drop it,” Sean shouted, but was ignored.
Kutrosky’s rifle was back at his shoulder in a flash and the clicks of guns being cocked echoed all around them.
“Stop it!” Grace held up her hands, this time shaking with rage. “Please. Put your guns down. All of you. On the ground. Now. You too, Kinn.”
Her heart hammered in the silence that followed. Nobody moved. Even the breeze seemed to hold its breath. Slowly, reluctantly, Kinn lowered his crossbow and tossed it to the grass.
Kutrosky shifted, blinked, glanced to Grace and around at his people. He swallowed and stood straight, lowering his rifle and dropping it at his feet. His people did the same.
Any of them could have picked up their weapons in half a second, but for the moment Grace was dizzy with relief. She lowered her hands, panting. Sweat dripped between her shoulder blades. “That’s better.”
“How come they get to keep their guns?” Kutrosky jerked his head past her to the members of her team.
Grace turned to find Sean and Rhiannon and the others holding their weapons at the ready. Anger licked at her already frayed nerves.
“Sean, put the gun down,” she seethed, glancing past him to Rhiannon.
Rhiannon swayed, then sighed and threw down her gun. The others did the same.
Sean flexed his grip on his rifle, breathing heavily. “This is a bad idea.”
He stared at her, ready to argue further.
“Sean, please.”
He held his ground as long as he could, finally dropping the rifle to his waist before grimacing and letting it fall.
“I’m picking it up again the second I think you’re in danger,” he told her loud enough for everyone to hear.
It was the best she was going to get. She spun back to Kinn and Kutrosky
, letting her fury give power to her words. “What were you planning to do once you apprehended him?” she demanded from Kinn.
He stood perfectly still, staring straight at her, expression fierce. She thought she would have to ask the question again until he sucked in a breath and said, “Hand him over to you.”
She blinked. “What? Why me?”
His expression softened into the grin that made the hair on the back of her neck stand up. “You’re the superior officer.”
“She’s not an officer.” Sean stepped in to defend her. “I am.”
“I didn’t ask you,” Kinn growled at Sean without looking at him.
Grace held up a hand to halt the impending fight. She kept her face neutral as the weight of responsibility heaved down on her.
“Fine.” She nodded to Kinn. “So you’d give him to me. I would let him go.”
“Grace.” Kinn was outwardly emotionless, though his eyes blazed. “That’s not right.”
She shook her head. “We can’t afford to start a war.” Her eyes locked with his, will battling iron will. It was a battle she had to win. “We’re all stuck here together. We have no way to leave this moon. No one is coming to get us. No one knows we’re here. We should be banding together, focusing on survival, on building a colony, a civilization, not on holding the past against each other.”
Kutrosky snorted as he straightened out of his defensive posture. He squared his shoulders, lip curled in a sneer as if he’d just won an argument. The gesture turned Grace’s stomach.
Kinn tore his eyes away from her long enough to catch Kutrosky’s arrogance. He balled his hands to fists and jerked toward him. Kutrosky lost his swagger and stumbled back.
“Kinn,” She shot him a warning. His eyes flickered to hers. “Stand down.”
It made her feel sick, like she’d lost something, to play along with his mindset. She drew in a deep breath and turned to Kutrosky.
“Brian, some of my people met a scouting party of yours yesterday and they said you sustained casualties in the crash?” She had to focus on the details she could control.
