“Go to hell, Chavez,” Lenata growled, but she didn’t move. She did a pretty good job of keeping her eyes on Chavez. Hopefully he wouldn’t realize that Lenata couldn’t see him any better than a big fuzzy shape. Jenna eased toward the door. If he was focused on Lenata and Jenna was able to get close enough, maybe she could tackle him. It would at least distract him enough that Lenata might be able to get her own weapon out.
“Got her, Finn,” Chavez said into the transmitter on his lapel. “Lenata too. The little girl isn’t here, though.”
They couldn’t hear the response, but the man stayed where he was, still aiming his gun directly at Lenata. Jenna edged just a bit nearer, and her movement caught his eye. His attention flicked to her, and she froze. “Osburn’s got a score to settle with you, Forrest,” Chavez said with a malicious grin. “He got dunked in the Sauro, and he’s not the kind to enjoy a swim.”
Jenna’s stomach fluttered unpleasantly. So Osburn had survived the fall. Yes, she could imagine he was particularly steamed at her. Was he here also?
“Osburn will be here to pay his respects in a moment,” the Raviner said, as if he could read her mind. “He might even leave your pretty face untouched if you cooperate.”
The words had barely left his mouth when another man climbed through the open door. Jenna’s chest turned to ice. She’d only gotten a glimpse of the tall man with the shaven head and the glinting nose jewel, but she recognized the man she’d shoved backward off the tree platform. He also held a weapon, although his gun was not nearly so large as Chavez’s. In such small quarters, it was unlikely to matter. Even a half-blind crippled asteroid miner could manage to hit a target less than a meter away. Could she knock his gun to the floor? Could Lenata see enough to help? If both of them attacked at once, there was a chance they could overpower the men before anyone got off a shot.
Osburn’s eyes devoured Jenna. They burned with hatred, but he didn’t speak a word. Instead, he backed out of the ship, his eyes darting all around.
“All right, Forrest, you first. No sudden moves, or I shoot. Just ease yourself out that door,” Chavez ordered firmly. “Don’t go gettin’ no ideas. Nico, Osburn and Finn are waitin’ on ya out there.”
Jenna flicked her eyes at Lenata, who jerked her head just the tiniest bit. Assuming that Lenata meant for her to comply, Jenna slowly passed in front of the Raviner to the open doorway. Ducking through, she found herself flanked by two men in familiar black slimsuits, though neither wore a mask this time. Osburn grabbed her upper forearm hard enough to cut off her circulation. Without thought, Jenna turned, twisting her arm and pulling her body down, wrenching herself free from Osburn’s grip. Her other hand lashed out and knocked the gun from Osburn’s grasp. Lenata appeared at the doorway just as Osburn roared and lunged at her. Jenna sprang for the break in the thick ferns but cried out in pain as someone behind her caught her hair and yanked. Stumbling backward, she lost her balance and crashed to her knees. The hard barrel of a laser pressed against her skull.
“Go on,” hissed a deep voice, the one she recognized as belonging to Osburn. “Keep fighting. Give me a reason, mud rat.” Jenna froze, straining her ears. She could hear someone heavily panting, a little behind her and to the left. Where was Lenata? Had she taken advantage of the confusion to escape? Or was she still standing there helpless at the pilot’s pod door?
“Now,” Osburn continued, his voice a little more even, “you are going to stand up, and we are going to walk away from here without so much as a squeak out of your mouth. I’d rather take you alive; you’re worth more that way. But your dead body will be good enough for me.”
Jenna’s breath hitched. Was that true? She had banked on the fact that handing her over to the creepy mystery buyer was so important that they wouldn’t risk killing her. What if it didn’t matter anymore? What if they were willing to simply kill her and carry back her corpse without resistance?
Lenata’s voice spilled into the night. “And me? Do you plan to slit my throat as well? Or do you want to walk to a more convenient place for an execution?”
“Shut up, traitor. Chavez, tie her up. We need to move before any of those crazy villagers finds us here,” a third voice growled. Jenna didn’t dare turn around, but she thought she recognized the voice. This was Finn, leader of the group that had attacked Kip’s house. “Nico, check the inside of that ship for any supplies. And do it fast!” he snapped. “We have six hours before the client severs the deal and comes in himself.”
Jenna cocked her head. A deadline before their client “severed the deal”? Still sounded like they needed her alive.
A sudden gunshot echoed through the trees, making Jenna’s ears ring. She turned just in time to see Chavez sliding to the ground as the door to the pilot pod crashed shut.
Osburn stepped away from Jenna and tried to yank the door back up. But Lenata must have found a way to lock it, because he yanked on the handle in vain. He swore. “Nico’s in there.”
“Leave them,” Finn ordered immediately. “Those villagers may be as crazy as deep-space baboons, but they do have guards, and that gunshot will draw them right to us. We need to disappear now.” He shoved Jenna forward, and she stumbled into a thorny bush, ripping new gashes in her arms and legs. She stood up slowly as Finn had directed, but before he could prod her forward, she tensed her legs and then sprang away, dashing headlong through the bushes, heedless of the thorns, stumbling over tree roots but pushing forward as fast as she could. She had no idea what direction she was going, and she could barely see, but she refused to give up.
Just as she reached a mossy fallen tree, one of the men slammed into her from behind, pitching her forward against the trunk. She took the full impact on her chest, and her breath wooshed out of her lungs, leaving her gasping like a beached fish. Before her breath evened enough for her to try scrambling to her feet, she felt the gun pressed to the back of her head once again. She wasn’t going to get away. These men were going to hand her off to a buyer, and she wouldn’t be able to help Kendra. A desperate idea popped into her head, and she snatched at it. It was a terrible plan, risky and still not likely to succeed, but better than letting these men drag her off through the forest. It depended wholly on the assumption that they really needed her alive, but at this point she was willing to take the risk. Filling her lungs deeply, Jenna screamed as if all the wattenwil roaches in the forest were converging on her at once.
She barely had time to register with grim satisfaction that her attacker didn’t fire his gun when his arm snaked around her neck and squeezed, choking off her scream. She clawed at his arm for a moment, her face tingled oddly, and then the next thing she knew she was lying in the mud, something jabbing her painfully in the back. A gag had been tied around her mouth.
“She dead?” a man asked nervously. What was she doing on the ground? Her head felt odd—a little buzzy and warm, like she’d just downed a shot of Zenithian Blue.
There was a snort. “I wish. Haven’t you ever seen a blood hold before? A little pressure on the carotid artery and down they go.” Osburn’s voice. He sounded bitterly disappointed. This “client” they referred to must be offering a lot of money to get her alive, or Osburn would surely have killed her by now.
“She better not be dead.” Finn’s voice shook with suppressed rage. “She’s the only bargaining chip we have, don’t you get that? The Ravine base got raided. Archer’s message said Shiz bailed on us, and everyone else is dead or captured. We can’t go back. We need the client to pick us up, and he’ll only do that if we have her in hand.”
Someone’s hands grabbed Jenna’s arms and yanked her back to her feet. “Walk,” ordered Finn flatly.
They’d barely taken five steps through the trees when a large Roran warrior stepped from behind a tree into their path, his spear nearly touching Finn’s chest. Jenna turned her head to see that they were surrounded by Roran guards on every side.
&nb
sp; From the corner of her eye, she saw Finn start to raise his gun, and she threw herself to the ground and started to crawl. Several guns fired, leaving her ears ringing, and then guttural yells and screaming filled the air. She only made it under one bush before a Roran guard stopped her with a spear point pressed to her back. Jenna froze immediately. The guard harshly ordered her to rise, and she slowly raised onto her knees and then pushed to her feet. The spear stayed firmly pressed against her back. She looked over her shoulder to see that the guard was an older man with grizzled hair and a beard, but his body was lean and wiry. She wouldn’t win a fight here.
“Turn around,” he ordered grimly. Jenna slowly turned to face him, hoping he wouldn’t see her as a threat.
Past him the fight was already over. All three of the Raviners were on the ground, one of them screaming in agony. She averted her eyes from the sight of his mangled abdomen. One of the Rorans was probably down also, judging by the small knot of guards surrounding a figure on the ground. One of the men broke away from the huddle and strode toward her.
“Well, if it isn’t our Outsider.” Jenna stiffened at his voice. It was impossible to be sure with only faint shafts of moonlight penetrating the trees, but she had heard that voice only a few hours ago. “Running off with your Raviner friends?”
Floyd stopped right in front of her and stared down into her face. He was at least half a head taller than she was, and one of the few guards that looked beefy rather than wiry. Another fight she had little chance of winning. She suspected that telling him she had been running away with Lenata, not these foolish Raviners, would not help her case. Of course, she was gagged. She could use that to her advantage.
“Well?” Floyd’s tone was impatient. Jenna gestured at the gag. Floyd reached up and roughly yanked it down. Jenna rubbed at the sides of her mouth.
“They are not my friends,” she spat bitterly, letting her real hostility color her voice. “They broke into the hut and took me out. Apparently they needed me to trade to some rotten perv in exchange for a ride out of the forest.”
“You expect me to believe that these noisy, pathetic Raviners managed to sneak into our village and break you out of the cell hut without being seen?”
Jenna shrugged. “It’s the truth. Believe it or not. But if you think I would have left my daughter alone in your village to escape with this scum . . .” She tossed her head. There was no way under heaven and all the stars she would have done that, and Floyd must have recognized it. Not to mention that she had been gagged. Why would allies gag her? Hopefully it wasn’t obvious to him that she had only been wearing it for a few minutes. She tried to meet his gaze fearlessly. After staring at her for a long moment, Floyd jerked his head at the man still poking his spear into her chest. “Take her back to the village. I’ll follow after we’ve seen to the fallen.”
The guard was joined by three other men who started to herd her back into the trees, presumably toward the village. Her plan had worked. Now she just had to survive it.
49. Strangers
Kendra sat nervously on the edge of the bed. It wasn’t like any bed she had ever slept in—it was a net made of very soft ropes strung across the room. A fluffy blanket covered the ropes. It was beige and smelled like some kind of animal. Not a nice smell, Kendra thought, wrinkling her nose. She fingered the cloth nightgown they had given her. It was scratchy and thin, and it already stuck damply to her back. It was hot even at night here.
No one would tell her where Mommy was. And Dina wasn’t talking to her right now. She had given Kendra a garbled explanation about needing to rest, though Kendra had never known Dina to be tired before. It was strange. She had asked for Dina’s help in that horrible pit when the roaches had swarmed her and Mommy, and Dina had kept them away, but she hadn’t heard from Dina since. Just that one confusing thought that she couldn’t even be sure came from Dina. Maybe her own mind had made it up.
Kendra had never felt so alone in her entire life.
The woman who had shown her the room had been so eager, so proud. She’d shown Kendra the hut with the bare wooden floor and strange rope bed as if she was showing her a fancy hotel room in Omphalos, like the ones she and Berry had looked at on a feed about famous screen stars.
There wasn’t even a bathroom. The closest thing they had here was a wooden shack with some kind of rough wooden canister with a seat. When she’d opened the lid, she’d been appalled to see that it led to a deep, stinking pit in the ground. Flies buzzed everywhere. The whole time she’d worried she was going to fall in. And what if she needed to go in the middle of the night? Would she have to find her way back to that place in the dark?
Two tears slipped down her cheeks, and she bit her lip. She wasn’t going to cry like a baby. She was seven, and Daddy always said she was the bravest girl he knew. She would be brave for him. For Mommy too.
What did these strange people want with her? Why did those awful roaches always run straight at her? For a moment she remembered the shouting people and the platform in the pit, the terrifying moment when the rocks hit the platform and she crashed down to the ground. She thought for sure they were going to attack her just like they had attacked Lenata—that they would burn her until she screamed and she couldn’t see anymore. She shook away the memory. It was too scary to remember, and she couldn’t stand to think about it when she was all by herself.
Where was Dina? Dina had always been there, had always been willing to talk whenever Kendra needed comfort. Had she left Kendra by herself because she was scared? Kendra knew that she was, even though Dina had never said so. She didn’t know how she knew it, but she did. Besides, Dina had urged her—more sternly than Dina had ever done anything, ever—not to tell any of the Rorans that Dina could talk to her. She hadn’t even wanted to help Kendra get out of that hole in the ground, though she had protected Kendra when asked.
Nothing made any sense.
Finally, exhausted from her long hike through the jungle and the scary pit trial, she pulled herself onto the swinging bed and tried to get comfortable. It took a few minutes of shifting, and the swinging motion made her feel a little sick, but she finally settled into stillness, closing her eyes. In her mind she pictured all the people she loved most in her life. Mommy, Daddy, Berry, and Erik. Mrs. Smitz and Uncle Jax. Grandma and Grandpa. Dina. She tried to picture them all together, having a picnic at the park down by the bay, and drifted off before the tears could come.
●●●
In the morning, Kendra was just trying to wriggle back off the swinging rope bed when someone clapped outside her door. She was unsure what she was supposed to do. Ask who it was? Open the door? Before she could decide, the door swung open, and the tall woman who had taken care of her the day before swept into the room, her ragged brown dress swishing around her legs.
“Good. You’re awake. There’s no time to lose.”
“What is it?” Kendra asked tremulously.
Mrs. Luna didn’t answer. She held out a small, shapeless dress, made out of the same brown material that Mrs. Luna herself wore. “I’ve been saving this scrap for many years. Thank goodness I still have it. Put it on quickly,” she ordered briskly. Kendra pulled the crumpled nightgown off and exchanged it for the dress. The dress material was much softer. It almost felt like normal clothes.
Then Mrs. Luna produced a comb from somewhere and attacked Kendra’s hair. Kendra grimaced as she impatiently dug her way through the snarls, but luckily Mommy had just combed the knots out of her hair at Kip’s house. It was over pretty quickly. Then Mrs. Luna pulled her hair back tightly, wrapping it with some braided cord, and then tied another ugly brown scrap of material on her head. Mrs. Luna studied her critically. It was hot, and it made Kendra’s forehead itch. She wrinkled her nose and resisted the urge to tear it off her hair. “It should do,” Mrs. Luna said, tucking a few hair strands out of sight. Then she ordered Kendra to put her shoes on and follow her outsi
de.
Kendra had to jog to keep up with the lady. She had seemed nicer yesterday, but then again, she’d been excited about Kendra surviving the giant hole with dangerous bugs. Maybe she was mean normally. Still, there was a chance that Mrs. Luna was taking her to Mommy, and Kendra wanted that enough to blindly follow wherever she led. Soon it became obvious they were headed to the same space as a lot of other people. Villagers strode along the muddy paths between the huts in the same direction—in fact, everyone they passed seemed to be hurrying to the same place. Finally, they rounded a hut, and there was a large space where the day before Kendra had seen rows of vegetables growing. Now there was a large ship squashing the plants, a ramp already lowered from the door to the ground. A crowd of people surrounded it. Kendra couldn’t see over anyone’s head, but she could see that everyone else was facing the ship, and it was very, very quiet. She stopped craning her neck and listened instead.
“We know they are here. Give us the woman and her daughter, and we will leave you in peace,” a man ordered. His voice was calm but loud enough to ring through the clearing.
“In peace!” retorted an angry man. “You have destroyed a whole field of crops. We need those to survive!”
“This is your last opportunity. Allow us to take the woman and her daughter with us, and we will leave you to your own devices. They are not of your people, and they don’t belong here.”
“We have no Outsiders here!” the man said dismissively. Kendra frowned. That wasn’t true. She was here, and the villagers called her an Outsider. Were the visitors looking for her? For her mother? For Kip?
She started forward, but Mrs. Luna held her back. “Shh!” she said warningly. Kendra strained upward again, standing on her tiptoes and trying to catch of glimpse of the visitors. Were they dangerous?
The first man spoke again, though he was still calm. “Take your squad and search the village.” The villagers in front of her parted reluctantly, and Kendra finally saw a group of four men that looked like soldiers, with guns drawn and pointed at the crowd. The soldiers moved toward Kendra and Mrs. Luna, their faces scanning the villagers as they strode in the direction of the huts. Mrs. Luna shifted in front of Kendra, and they passed without even noticing her.
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