by Merry Farmer
Kutrosky hesitated. He studied Kinn with deep suspicion. His eyes traveled over Grace’s shoulder to her people with equal distrust. Grace turned her head enough to see Danny cross his arms and Carrie step forward, expression flatter than she’d ever seen it.
A hint of a grin tweaked the corner of Kutrosky’s mouth before he spoke. “Our emergency ship’s engine failed when we hit the atmosphere. The pilots brought her down the best they could, but we made a hard landing. Three dead. A dozen injured.”
“Do you need help?” Danny asked, his voice low and cautious.
Kutrosky looked him up and down, recognition and repulsion sharp in his eyes. “I think you’ve done enough, doctor.”
Danny backed away, patches of red standing out on his pale cheeks.
“You’re keeping some dangerous company, Grace Hargrove,” Kutrosky barked, narrowed eyes slipping from Danny to Kinn. “Some very dangerous company.”
Grace’s frustration level was close to boiling over. “I’m sure they’d say the same about you,” she replied, then moved on. “Have you had enough to eat and drink since you crashed?”
“Our ship was designed to sustain three hundred people for six months. We have less than half of that. We’re fine.” He turned and glared at Kinn. “Except that this yahoo has blocked our access to the only fresh water source we’ve been able to locate for miles.”
“The river?” Sean spoke up.
“Yeah, the river.”
Grace turned to Kinn for answers. His expression and stance confirmed Kutrosky’s accusation, but made no apologies and offered no explanations.
“We shouldn’t be keeping each other away from the river or anything else,” she told him. “We need to pool our resources and come together into one colony.”
Kutrosky snorted in derision.
Kinn shook his head. “No. No way.”
“The only way we’re going to be able to survive—”
“I don’t want any of my people going within a hundred yards of that murderous bunch of soldiers,” Brian interrupted her. “All I want is access to the river.”
Grace had to battle the urge to scream. She wanted to argue, to make the two men see reason. It was clear as day from each of their defensive stances and the glances at their weapons that for the time being they were in a reason-free zone.
“Kinn, you at least should be able to see that if we bring all of the survivors together, then—”
“No.”
Grace let out a breath, rubbed her forehead. There was more behind his refusal than she could explain. Ridiculous male stubbornness had not been a topic covered in her emergency management training.
“All right then, can you allow Brian access to the river?” she settled for second-best.
Kinn held perfectly still as he considered. He narrowed his eyes and scanned the bulk of Kutrosky’s fighters as they watched from their rocky cover. More than a dozen of his men had come out from the tree line to hear the negotiations.
“Tell you what,” he rumbled. “Since you won’t let me take this criminal into custody like you should….” He paused to send her an irritated stare. “We’ll let his people come to the river to get what they need. But if any of them try to cross the river or if my men catch so much as a glimmer of his bald head, we shoot them.”
Grace’s body ached with the agony of the counterproductive truce. She kept her emotion to herself and turned to Kutrosky with raised eyebrows.
Kutrosky’s face was red with fury. “Deal.”
Kinn wasn’t done. “No one comes to our side of the river.” He glanced to Grace, his expression unreadable. “No one.”
“This is madness. We have a future to build, a civilization to….” Her words trailed off when Kinn glared at her. She sucked in a breath, hating the concession she had to make. “All right.”
“Fine,” Kutrosky sniffed.
“I’m posting guards,” Kinn added.
“Well so am I.” Kutrosky took half a step toward him. “No one comes past this field or over that hill.” He pointed to the hill behind him. A long line of people, mostly women, had formed at the top, watching the turmoil in the rocky valley.
“You’d all better stay out of our forest too.” Sean shocked everyone by throwing down his own ultimatum. Grace turned to glare at him, but he went on. “We’ll set markers at the top of our hill on the other side of our valley and I don’t want to see any of you,” he aimed his words at Kinn, “any of you crossing them.”
Grace’s heart broke as she said, “If anyone needs help or needs to contact any other group, send a single unarmed messenger with a white flag.”
Kinn nodded, the predatory grin sliding back to his eyes as he watched her. “Whatever you say, Grace.”
Kutrosky nodded his consent. He shot a warning glare to someone past Grace’s shoulder.
Kinn bent over to retrieve his crossbow, then turned to march away as if nothing unusual had happened. One tiny motion to his men and they blended into the forest and disappeared. Kutrosky snatched up his gun and walked away without another word or another glance for Grace or any of her team. He stormed his way across the valley toward his hill.
Too frustrated and heart-sick to speak, Grace spun on her heel and started back to the hill she’d come from, not looking at any of the baffled members of her team. She could feel them follow her and picked up her pace. It was hard not to feel like a dog with its tail between its legs as she shuffled down the other side of the hill, nine people trailing behind, into the deceptively tranquil valley.
“Grace, I—” Sean started, but something silenced him.
She ignored it and him. The situation roiled through her gut as she grasped to come up with a solution. Survival on any sort of long-term scale depended on maintaining the peace, coming together. Peace couldn’t be maintained in a bog of distrust and contention. Plowing virgin fields and living in a forest full of wild animals would be simple compared to healing the bristling fracture she’d just witnessed. But she had to find a solution, bring about a reconciliation. She had to convince the blockheads to form one colony. For all of their sakes.
As she passed the cluster of rocks and trees where they had rested earlier, Danny caught up to her. He grasped her elbow. His fingers were hard on her arm and he forced her to change direction toward a spot of shade. Her stomach exploded into butterflies, as if she was a child who had been naughty.
“You go on ahead,” Danny told the others as they walked past, voice cold.
Sean hesitated, taking half a step toward them, brows knit in a sharp frown.
“Go! That way.” Danny pointed across the valley. He had been pale before, but now his cheeks were splashed with deep color, making the blue of his prominent eyes stand out in sharp focus behind his glasses.
Sean was equally flushed, only stepping away when Grace nodded. He joined Carrie as she continued on through the field. Carrie leaned close to whisper to him. Sean shook his head and doubled their pace.
Danny didn’t let go of Grace’s arm. He steered her down to the far end of the copse, stopping in the shade of a wide-spreading tree. She jerked free of his grip and spun to face him, but before she could speak he clamped both hands on her upper arms, staring her down with a livid intensity that sealed her lips.
“Don’t you ever walk into harm’s way like that again. It’s a miracle you weren’t shot.”
She couldn’t hold eye-contact. Her whole body sagged as she lowered her head with a shaky sigh. “How can we expect to stay alive, Danny, to create a functioning society with long-term viability when we start day one with a war?”
She glanced up to him, filled with hopeless worry. His stony anger melted and the strain in his arms and shoulders relaxed with his grip.
“Grace,” he sighed her name, squeezing his eyes shut. “This war didn’t start here.” He opened his eyes and pulled her closer. “It started on the Argo, long before that even, on Earth. You heard what Kinn said. Brian Kutrosky was convicted of conspi
racy.”
“Yes.” Prickles of irritation frayed her already shot nerves. “He was convicted of a conspiracy to undermine the colony on Terra. This is not Terra. It’s not Earth either. His conviction is meaningless. We need him, we need everyone together, to start anew.”
“Exactly. Enough people have died already and I—” He stopped, jaw tightening. Emotion cut sharp lines in his face. He drew in a calming breath, rubbing her arms. He glanced over her shoulder, gathering his thoughts before meeting her eyes.
“Once again, I hate to agree with him,” he said, “but Kinn is right. Kutrosky is dangerous.”
“How can he be—”
“You can’t change what’s already happened, Grace. Not at Kutrosky’s sentencing hearing and not now. Neither can I.” He moved his hands to hold the sides of her face, brushing a thumb over her cheek. “I know this whole mess upsets you. I know you want to be a part of a colony that can make up for the disappointment of your childhood.”
“That’s not fair.”
“Maybe not, but it’s true. I know you. You’re a good person, a compassionate person.” His voice grew gentle. “I wish there was something more I could do about it. I honestly do. But I….” He let out a breath. “Nothing can be done to change the past. Don’t trip yourself up trying.”
“That might work for you,” she muttered, pulling away, “but the fact remains that the thirty-eight of us can’t survive on our own in the long-term.”
He sighed, shoulders sagging. “You’re an idealist, Grace. You always have been. You have no idea how much I…admire you for that.” He stroked her jaw and lifted her chin to force her to meet his eyes. “But the Project sheltered you too much. That’s what was wrong with it. That’s why—”
He blew out a breath and shifted his weight. “We are not operating under ideal circumstances. We’re scrambling to make the best of a bad situation, not blissfully birthing a utopia. I know you think you’re in the right, but you can’t charge headlong into a battle and expect it to stop.”
“It did stop.”
He grew rigid with frustration. “Making a martyr of yourself is not going to bring peace or cause civilization to take hold.”
She shook her head, brushing his hand away. “I will do whatever it takes, Danny, whatever it takes for us to survive. For all of us to survive. It’s my job. It’s my responsibility.”
“Are you going to blame yourself every time something happens? Every time someone dies? Do you blame yourself for Peter? For your mother?” He arched an eyebrow, nailing her down with his point. “Because people die, Grace, with or without you.”
“No.” She turned away. “They can’t.”
“Grace.” He caught her, stepping closer. “There are other things you need to pour your energies into if we are going to build a colony here. This is only day one. So we start out divided into tribes with stupid conflicts. So what? You said so yourself, we’re stuck here. This is our life now, this is our home. Think, Grace. What’s the next step? What do we need to do to survive and thrive? What do we need to do to build your world? Tell me what to do next.”
He curled a loose lock of her hair around his finger then tucked it behind her ear. Her eyes dropped to his small, crooked mouth. Her limbs were tired and weak and she wanted nothing more than to sink into his arms, let him hold her the way she wanted so desperately to be held. He was right. She couldn’t control the circumstances of their world any more than she could control her mother’s cancer. All she could do was set an example and guide people forward.
And pray that they stayed in one piece.
Whether Danny could sense her thoughts or whether he had an agenda of his own Grace didn’t know and didn’t care. He pulled her closer, circling his arms around her waist and holding her against his chest. She rested her head against his shoulder and let out a sigh, closing her eyes. It would be so easy to give in, to toss aside responsibility and think only about herself. The steady pounding of Danny’s heart against hers was her anchor.
“Everything will be all right, Grace,” he whispered, his breath warming her. “The war can’t go on forever.”
His words were too cliché to comfort her. She clenched her fist around a handful of his shirt and breathed in the scent of his skin before straightening and pushing away.
Carrie and Sean and the others were already at the other side of the valley. She ran a hand across her hair, startled when her fingers hit the flower still tucked in her bun. Her eyes met Danny’s, heavy with sadness. She sighed.
“Let’s go home and deal with it then.”
Chapter Six – The Leader
Grace stayed silent on the long hike back to the wreck. She avoided Carrie’s eyes as she and Danny caught up to the others, side-by-side but each lost in their own thoughts. None of Carrie’s anxious, questioning glances could pry a syllable from her, not even when the two of them broke apart from the others to walk through the fields and over the hills on their own.
It was clear Carrie wanted to know what Danny had said, but the conversation was still too raw for her to talk about. The best she could offer was to hook her arm through Carrie’s as they walked and to take strength from her friendship. They would both need it in the days ahead.
When they rounded the crest of the last hill, Grace spotted Gil and an assistant setting up an array of posts in a circle in the valley. She went weak with relief. At last someone was doing something that would have long-term benefits to their colony.
She broke away from Carrie and ran ahead of her team, skipping through tall grass that sliced at her legs to reach Gil’s circle of posts.
“Grace.” Gil blinked in surprise as she drew nearer. “Aren’t you back early?”
“Define early.” She gave him a thin smile and continued with, “I mean that literally. Have you discovered anything more about how time works here?”
Gil pushed his fingers through his long hair and stared at his set-up, calculation battling with worry in his eyes.
“Well, um….” He reached into his pocket and pulled out a stopwatch. “Stacey found this in the treasure chests.” He handed it to Grace. It was running. “It was too late to start timing the length of our days at sunrise, so I’m going to start it at sunset to come up with the figures instead.”
“What are you timing now?”
“How long you’ve been gone.”
Grace took a second look at the flashing numbers. Eight hours and sixteen minutes. It felt like years. The sun had barely moved two thirds of the way across the sky.
“Thanks Gil.” She handed the watch back to him. “Keep up the good work.”
She left him and continued toward the hill that led to their wreck. Carrie left Sean and the rest of their team to intercept her. Past Carrie, Danny was watching. He nodded once then started up the hill.
“Come on.” Carrie grabbed Grace’s arm when she came near. “You and I need to talk.”
“If you’re going to yell at me for running into a gunfight you can save your breath. Danny did it quite effectively.”
“That’s his job.” Carrie dragged Grace toward the hill.
Grace could feel every ache in her worn-out muscles as they climbed.
“Don’t tell me you agree with Danny all of a sudden.”
“I hate his guts.” Carrie spoke fast, distracted. “He’s creepy and spineless and would do anything to keep you for himself.”
“I hardly think that’s any of your—”
“What are we going to do about Brian Kutrosky?”
Grace stopped, unable to gauge whether Carrie held the same opinion of Kutrosky as Kinn or Sean did. “Nothing.”
Carrie shook her head and blew out a breath, eyes unusually intense. “Nothing is not an option with him. He’s smart and he has an agenda, and as soon as his plans don’t work out, he’ll go ballistic.”
Carrie was nervous, afraid even. It was something Grace could manage.
“You have nothing to worry about, Carrie. Brian was convi
cted of conspiracy, not murder or rape or anything that would get in the way of our efforts to survive. Right now the worst he’s going to do is keep the people who were on his ship from joining the rest of us.”
Carrie took so long to reply that Grace began to doubt her own opinion.
“Kutrosky was convicted of attempting to sabotage operations at Base One, Grace,” she said at last, voice tight. “He wanted to destroy The Terra Project and everything it stood for. No matter what you tried to do for him at his sentencing, his whole purpose is to destroy what you love.”
“Yes, I know. But seriously, think about it. The result of what he intended to do would have been to put everyone on Terra in exactly the situation we’re already in here: no electricity, no technology, no contact with Earth. It doesn’t matter.”
She pushed past Carrie and continued marching up the hill.
“They say he was in league with some pretty serious people,” Carrie jogged to catch up with her. “That the breakaways—”
“What breakaways? There are no breakaways,” she grumbled.
“The Terra Project may officially deny them, but you and I both know—”
“Carrie.” Grace stopped and scowled. “There are no breakaways here. There is no Terra Project here. There aren’t even three hundred people on this moon, as far as we know. It doesn’t matter.”
“Do you know why the breakaways left Base One, Grace? Do you know who they were running from? The Terra Project was just—”
“It doesn’t matter. That part of our lives is done. Worry about what we’re going to do to survive here, now.”
Grace trembled on the verge of saying more that she would regret. She gave up and exhaled, leaving Carrie to her worries. She stormed over the top of the hill and down the other side.
Their camp was quiet, more than half of its inhabitants still gone. Sean had beaten her over the hill and sat next to the fire pit they had made close to the spot where the two of them and Carrie and Danny had slept the night before. He drank from his canteen and stared at Grace as if he wanted to give her a piece of his mind. She walked past him without meeting his eyes. Carrie went to sit with him. Grace caught the beginning murmurs of their conversation before continuing on down the hill toward the wreck.
