Bea kissed the pendant, and tears tracked down her face. She wiped them with one gloved hand, and drops of water lifted off her glove and floated through the air.
Maeve’s mouth went dry as she locked eyes with Bea, and time slowed for just a moment. They shared a look—a terrifying sort of resigned acceptance—the sort of look only two people who knew they were about to die could share.
It didn’t matter what this girl believed or what she didn’t believe. It didn’t matter how she’d treated Maeve back on the London. Two beating hearts, two equally vulnerable bodies that would burn up just the same in atmo when this all went wrong.
The tech floated between them to help Maeve into her helmet, and Maeve let out a breath. When he finished, he returned to his seat, and the pilots commed the flagship Paragon.
Maeve’s helmet picked it up, since they were all linked together now. The Kyoto transport had completed entry, and the Perth transport was waiting on the London transport to descend.
“What’s the status?” the pilot asked. “Did they make it?”
“We lost contact,” came a tinny voice from the Paragon. “Forwarding revised landing data to your transport for entry.”
The line went utterly silent, until quiet muttering filled Maeve’s helmet.
“We’re all dead. We’re all dead. I gotta get out of here.”
Maeve recognized the voice right away and turned to her left.
Fenton was hugging himself, sweat streaming down his face under his helmet. “Dead, dead, dead. We’re all gonna die.”
“If we’re all gonna die,” Maeve said brightly, “I sure don’t want your voice to be the last thing I hear. And if you’re wrong, well, ya better get your kak together. Piss that suit now, and you’ll be tastin’ it for the next eight hours.”
Edgy laughter echoed on the comms, but thankfully Fenton shut up.
And then it was time for the London’s transport to descend.
They activated the shielding, and Maeve placed one gloved hand on her thigh where the star pendant was. Terror rushed through her, and she screwed her eyes shut.
This is it.
This was what she’d wanted, wasn’t it? She shouldn’t be this scared. If she burned up, if they crashed… it would happen fast. Just as fast as if she’d airlocked herself.
I wanted to die. I was ready to end it.
The transport entered the atmosphere with a shudder and started to shake so violently, Maeve’s teeth chattered in her head. A loud roar filled her ears, and her head slammed back against her seat, immobilized.
Down, down, down. She sweat freely as the interior temperature seemed to get hotter than a power core.
Ma and Papa. They’d believed in duty just as much as Dritan did. Would they be proud of her for what she’d done, even as she hurtled toward death?
Dritan. His expression when he’d found her in the airlock, the way he’d held her and promised to pair with her, even though he knew the truth about her.
And Cassia. Kissing her, touching her… the look in her blue eyes afterward.
Something snapped on the transport, and a terrible cracking sound reverberated through Maeve’s skull. The transport tilted and began to spin sideways. Something was wrong. Very wrong.
The fear was so intense, Maeve wanted to cry, but the velocity made it impossible. She was going to be a coward ‘til her last breath.
No.
A coward never would have volunteered for this.
She clung to that thought as they plummeted toward the ground.
She’d made a choice to airlock herself. It had been the coward’s way out, but in making that choice, she’d changed.
She chose to stand up to Fenton when his orders were wrong. When Dritan was unfairly drafted, she volunteered in his place. And when Cassia came to her, she acted. Exposing herself and being vulnerable with Cassia had terrified Maeve more than the airlock. Yet she’d done it.
Bravery wasn’t the absence of fear.
It wasn’t controlling every situation and avoiding pain.
And bravery wasn’t accepting your lot in life without resistance.
You have to take your power back.
She’d done that. Instead of just letting life happen to her, she’d made things happen.
Bravery was making choices and then facing the consequences head-on, all while knowing the outcome was uncertain. Fear didn’t make her a coward. Letting her lot in life dictate the course of it had.
And she’d chosen to live or die on this mission.
I’m not a coward.
I’m brave.
“Dropping… the… gear.” The pilot’s voice cut in and out.
A stream of light peeked through the rivets across from Maeve, and her heart nearly stopped as the bright light illuminated the colonists on that side. She locked eyes with Bea again. Hers were enormous, terrified like the rest of them.
Nothing Maeve could do. Nothing anyone could do.
The panel across from Maeve tore off and took six seats with it.
Bea was gone.
Six of them were gone.
Alarms erupted in the ship as it spun, and on every stomach-lurching rotation, Maeve glimpsed the soil through the gaping hole.
The dim, reddish surface of the planet rushed up at them. Red sand. Rocks. Too fast. The pilots shouted something, and the ship wobbled and almost righted itself… but didn’t. Couldn’t.
Maeve didn’t know much about flying, but she knew they couldn’t slow down in time. She kept her eyes open. If death wanted to take her, she’d see its face before she surrendered.
The transport shuddered forward and leveled slightly before smashing into the sand.
Maeve’s head snapped back against the seat.
Bright lights. Alarms. And deafening screams that weren’t her own.
Nothingness beckoned, and Maeve fought until she couldn’t any more. Then the darkness swallowed her whole.
When Maeve’s eyes opened, the world still spun. She nearly puked from the vertigo but managed to hold it back. Puke in spacegear once, you never made that mistake again.
Her vision cleared, and she focused on a sphere of light reflecting off metal. The cargo hold door. A figure in spacegear was trying to pry the door open, but he seemed to be at a strange angle…
Maeve looked straight ahead, and the place where Bea and the others had been was filled with dark sand. The transport had landed on its side.
Two colonists remained in the opposite aisle, and Maeve nearly threw up again at the sight of them. Crushed skulls, faces barely recognizable. Their helmets had smashed on impact, and blood coated everything, even their suits. At least they’d probably died instantly.
Nothing but silence from the cockpit—two bodies up front twisted at awkward angles. Dead. For sure.
A crack of light entered the cabin as the survivor succeeded in making the cargo hold door move.
Clear head. Determination. Maeve had to find her voice and get out of here.
“Help.” The single word was barely a whisper, and her comm probably hadn't picked it up. She fumbled with her straps, trying to release them. With strength she shouldn’t have had, she got her fingers to comply and pressed down on the clasps. They let go, and she crashed to the sand below.
Maeve checked her oxygen levels. Holding firm. No tears in her suit. It was hard to breathe for some reason, but she was alive. Maybe I got some lucky genes of my own after all.
The figure ahead whirled and stumbled over. “I thought you… thought you were all dead,” he slurred.
Maeve saw her own reflection in the man’s helmet, but then her eyes focused on his face behind the glass, then the wound on his head. His hair was caked with blood, and she traced its path as it flowed down his cheek. Some part of her brain recognized him as the flight tech who had strapped her in. His helio moved, and it lit up the two subs above them that had been sitting to Maeve’s right. Their heads slumped forward, arms and legs hanging down limply. More blood.
Lots of it. And cracked helmets. Definitely dead.
“Gotta… we gotta get out.” The tech extended a hand.
Maeve took his arm and scrambled to her feet, hissing in a breath as something stabbed her deep in the ribs. She gritted her teeth to help the tech pry the cargo hold door the rest of the way open, and light flooded the space. As the tech squeezed over the edge, Maeve began to count.
Six ripped from the ship during the landing.
Four dead in the back. Both pilots dead in the cockpit.
Two alive.
Fourteen.
One left.
She spun, looking back. Fenton was still strapped into the seat to the left of where she’d been.
“Oxygen tank’s leaking,” the tech said from the hold, his voice crackling over the comm.
Maeve had to climb on top of the dead techs to get to Fenton, and she tried not to think about what she stood on as their broken bodies squished beneath her boots.
When she reached Fenton, she tapped his helmet. Still intact. His eyes opened, and for a moment, his dilated pupils found hers and seemed to light with recognition. But then his lids slid shut again. Alive. Three of them alive.
Blue sparks lit up the ceiling, jumping from exposed wiring, and she jerked back. No fires yet, but if the oxygen was leaking…
“There’s another survivor,” she said.
But the tech was gone, and he didn’t answer. Maeve glanced toward the open cargo hold, to the bright light, to freedom, to life. And then back up to the sparking wires and Fenton.
He was a piece of kak, but he was one of them, and he didn’t deserve to die like this. Maeve had to stand on tiptoes, almost losing her balance on the unstable bodies beneath her boots. But she found the clasps on Fenton’s harness and struggled to press them, dizziness sweeping over her. Something in her chest was wrong, painful if she moved too fast, making it hard to breathe.
She fumbled, panic rising within her as more sparks jumped from the wires. Finally, one strap gave. As Fenton’s harness let loose, his unconscious body fell on top of her, pinning her to the mangled flight tech beneath them. She let out a grunt and hauled him off her.
It took every last ounce of her dwindling strength to pull Fenton toward the light. Her chest screamed at her to stop as she hauled his body over the threshold and into the cargo hold. A loud hissing sound filled her ears, even through her thick helmet. The tech had been right—the oxygen was escaping, the tank cracked.
The tech lurched back into the hold and pulled a case away from one wall.
“Help,” Maeve gasped.
The tech narrowed his eyes in confusion, like he’d forgotten she was there, but then he dropped the case and helped her lug Fenton out into the blinding light of the planet. The comm line filled with their panting as they half-carried, half-dragged Fenton a few yards away from the crash site.
They collapsed on the ground, and Maeve squinted against the harsh light, trying to see. The pain in her ribs faded away as her eyes adjusted, and a lightness flooded her. Elation stole away the pain.
The star in this system looked like a helio, streaming light through a red-tinged sky.
A sky. No observation deck could compare to what a sky looked like. Expansive, enormous, filling up everything as far as Maeve could see. She flopped over on her side and took a handful of the soil, watching as the fine dust ran through her fingers, turned her glove red. Like asteroid dust, or metal dust, but… different.
She looked out over the land, breathing too fast. A mound of smooth rock rose tall on one side of her, but everywhere else…
Sand. Miles and miles of it, dotted with more stone formations. Huge rocks rose far in the distance, forming chains so high she couldn’t imagine climbing over them.
So beautiful. The scene was so painfully beautiful, in a way the dark expanse of space couldn’t compete with. A lump formed in Maeve’s throat. It felt like home, like she’d been living a false life surrounded by metal, and she’d finally found truth.
This was what everyone dreamed of. Solid ground beneath them, air and sky above. No. Not this. But like this, only green with oxygen and plentiful water.
“We’re way off course,” the tech’s slurred words broke through her elation. “The gear. Sandstorms. A storm’ll tear us apart if we don’t get to shelter. I… the tracker.” The tech got to his feet. “We need the tracker to find… Perth transport.”
“Wait,” Maeve said weakly, sitting up. “The oxygen tank’s leaking. It could blow.”
“Have to get the tracker.” He jogged away, wavering on his feet, not moving in a straight line, but he made it back to the twisted hulk of their transport.
A few cases lay scattered in the sand, and Maeve glanced at Fenton beside her, at his chest rising and falling with breath, then back at the transport. She got up, gasping from the pain, and dragged Fenton another few feet through the sand until they were both behind the smooth rocks. Then she fell to her knees, panting, watching the transport for sign of the tech.
Hurry.
They needed him. He’d been trained for this, knew how to use the tracker, how to survive until the next wave arrived. Without him…
Relief coursed through Maeve as she glimpsed a flash of white at the end of the hold. The tech stumbled back outside, tripping through the wreckage with a black case in his arms.
“I got—”
A flash of fire leapt from the cargo hold and ignited the tech’s suit.
Fuck. Maeve sank down behind the rocks, curling into herself. The explosion was deafening.
All she heard was a high-pitched ringing as shards of twisted metal flew past and landed in the sand, smoking.
When her hearing returned, she waited a few minutes in the silence, then got to her feet and scrambled back toward the remains of the transport. The tech’s body lay off to the side, mangled, his spacegear blackened in places. One of his legs was missing. She swallowed back bile and looked for the case he’d gone in for.
It was laying a few yards away, and she limped in that direction and sank down on her knees in front of it. Her thoughts were a chaotic jumble, and the adrenaline surging through her made her hands shake so badly, she couldn’t get the case open.
Clear head, M. Focus.
She took a deep breath and tried to pretend this was a job in the sublevels. It just happened to be a job with a kak survival rate.
She tried to wipe the sweat off her face, but her glove met glass. The drops slid into her eyes, burning them.
“Get the tracker working, find a medkit, wake up Fenton, get to the Perth transport.” She recited her tasks over and over to herself, until her hands steadied and she could open the case.
The gear inside resembled a handheld shift card scanner, but with a 2D display instead of a hologear hookup. Maeve had never used any of that, but how hard could it be?
She fumbled around with the buttons until the display blinked on. A blue dot appeared on a grid, and she stood up and walked back toward the smooth rocks. The dot moved with her and stopped when she stopped.
The scanner was the blue dot. She tapped some of the commands, but nothing happened. Fear rose in her again, but she repeated her task list in her mind to calm herself.
She hit another command, and the grid got smaller. A red dot appeared, blinking at the far edge of it. She tapped the red dot, and a list of numbers appeared followed by a single word.
PERTH.
The Perth transport.
A laugh bubbled out of Maeve’s mouth. Task one complete. Task two, medkit. The tracker had an armband attachment, so she slid it around her bulky suit. Then she sucked in another pained breath and searched for the helix symbol among the debris around her. There. A twisted piece of hull, engraved with one half of the infinity symbol. The helix and triquetra symbol peeked out at her from a case buried beneath it.
Maeve dug it out and, with shaking hands, readied a full-body painmod vial and twisted it onto the medport on her suit. It triggered the injection
, and the sharp pain in her ribs faded as most of her body went numb. Getting back to Fenton was the easiest part. She injected him with a vial of Perc.
His eyes snapped open, and he jerked into sitting position, gasping and holding his abdomen in pain. “My stomach…” Then he noticed their surroundings, eyes wide and glassy. “We’re here. We’re alive.”
She grabbed him by the shoulders to make him stay still, then injected painmod into his port to balance out the Perc.
He winced, but the crazed look in his eyes faded. “I think I broke something.” He patted his abdomen.
“Your oxygen levels?”
He looked down at the packs in his suit. “Holding.” He stumbled to his feet, and went still when he saw the wreckage. “Where is everyone?”
“Dead. All of ‘em.”
His eyes narrowed, squinting at her. “In the transport… did you…?”
“Yeah, I saved your stupid ass.” Maeve shoved the medkit into Fenton’s arms. “Come on. We got a long walk.”
The hot sand seemed to waver before them, and Maeve squinted against the bright light, trying and failing to gauge how far they needed to travel. Endless red stretched before them… no sign of the Perth transport. How far? The damn tracker didn’t say how far away the red dot was, though it probably would if she hit enough buttons. But then she risked screwing up the display and losing the map again.
One step. Then another. Her suit seemed to get heavier with each minute that passed. Was it the gravity here? The weight on her shoulders felt so heavy, like it was trying to convince her to fall to the ground and just give up. Her gear was keeping her about as cool as any job near the power core, and her inner suit was soaked through with sweat already. She took a sip of water from the recyc tube. Tasted of piss.
But at least she was alive.
Fractured Era: Legacy Code Bundle (Books 1-3) (Fractured Era Series) Page 6
