The Gauntlet

by Megan Shepherd

How could she continue without Lucky?

  She sniffled, running a hand beneath her nose. He’d never be back amid his family. No oak trees and lemonade. No summer wildflowers and fresh-cut grass.

  She heard footsteps and glanced over her shoulder. Bonebreak and Anya were coming back from the Axion station, loaded down with various containers and bags. She wiped at her nose again—she could smell Bonebreak’s reek even from this distance. Anya trailed behind him, eyes darting between the shallow grave and the ship. Her forehead was pinched tightly, as though something were bothering her. Cora’s worry returned. Had something happened in the station?

  Bonebreak handed her two of the heavy containers before she could ask. “Your hair fetched us twenty tokens’ worth of supplies! They said they haven’t gotten such long hair in a hundred rotations. Now the next stop is Drogane. My brother and his family. Hospitality. Good food.”

  “And the Gauntlet,” Cora prompted.

  “Yes, yes.” He waved dismissively. “Freedom for your people and all that. But first, food.”

  He climbed into the ship. Willa made a few of the sign language symbols to Anya, who turned away as though she hadn’t seen and started to climb the ladder. Cora rested a hand on her shoulder, stopping her.

  “Hey, you okay? Did something happen in there with the Axion?”

  Anya shook her head. “I’m fine. It’s . . . it’s just a headache.” Her eyes drifted to the crumpled wildflower she had dropped before. “Probably because of the weird gravity.”

  She pressed her hands against the sides of her forehead. Something felt off, and it took Cora a second to realize that Anya’s hands, for once, weren’t shaking.

  Anya climbed the ladder, leaving Cora below with Willa, who stared after Anya. Willa turned to Cora and raised an eyebrow in question, then jotted down a note.

  Seems like more than just a headache to me.

  Cora nodded, staring after Anya, and then looked at the crumpled flower. “Yeah, you might be right. Maybe she’s still upset because the plants here are so much like on Earth. Because she can’t remember what home was like. Just give her time. She’s been through so much.”

  Willa nodded, then looked uneasily back at the Axion station.

  Cora traced her gaze and said hesitantly, “I heard it was the Axion who experimented on you.”

  The light in Willa’s eyes dimmed, and Cora couldn’t be certain whether Willa feared the Axion, or was grateful to them, or felt something else entirely.

  “Do you know why they did it?”

  Willa shook her head. She cradled her skull in one hand as though remembering something painful, then climbed the ladder, anxious to escape those memories.

  Cora was left alone on Fuel Station Theta.

  She turned back to take in Lucky’s grave. She wanted to remember every detail about it. The willowlike tree. The flowers. The breeze.

  “Good-bye, Lucky,” she whispered.

  She climbed into the hatch.

  In another few moments, they were far from the Axion fuel station, headed for Drogane.

  12

  Rolf

  AS THE SUN BEGAN to sink toward Armstrong’s horizon, Rolf doubled over, coughing from the thick dust that still filled the air after the main tent had collapsed. Overhead, bright lights flashed as the Kindred shuttle took off.

  Rolf spit a curse after them. “Good riddance. I hope you never come back!”

  He heard footsteps and turned quickly, ready to fight off any of Ellis’s rogue deputies who had survived the tent collapse, but was surprised to see Dane, limping slightly, his uniform singed.

  “I thought you were leaving with Cora,” Rolf said warily.

  “I thought so, too,” Dane said, breathing hard. “But . . . plans changed. There was only time for one of us to board, either me or Willa, and I . . . I sacrificed myself so that Willa could escape.”

  Rolf raised his eyebrows.

  Dane motioned to his limp. “I had a tussle with some Kindred guards who were chasing us, but they let me go. It was Cora they were after, not me.” He looked up toward the sky. “At least she’s safe now.” He sighed dramatically. “That’s what’s important.”

  Rolf observed cautiously as Dane sank onto a crate, wincing. Rolf hadn’t known Dane, other than what Cora had told him, and those stories were hardly flattering. But wounded, Dane seemed in no condition to be an immediate threat. “You really did that? Sacrificed yourself?”

  Dane nodded. “It was the least I could do.” He wiped his forehead and motioned to the collapsed tent. “The battle?”

  “It ended when the tent collapsed. Half the deputies suffocated. Most of the ones who got out are badly wounded. The mine guards and the tent guards called an emergency truce. They moved the wounded to the wives’ tents.”

  “A truce?” Dane shook his head. “It won’t last. Not until there’s a new sheriff to replace Ellis.” He stood up, hobbling toward the tents.

  “Where are you going?”

  “If everyone else is occupied with the wounded,” Dane said, “they don’t need us there. We’d be more useful here, burying the dead.”

  Rolf frowned. “You should go to the wives’ tents too, and get patched up. That leg looks bad.”

  “I’m okay. Besides, that sun’s getting lower. We should bury the bodies before it gets dark.” He hobbled toward the tent with determination.

  Rolf glanced over his shoulder at one of the smaller tents, where Keena and the other deputies had taken Nok for safety. He should go to her, make certain she was all right. He took a step toward the tent.

  “Hey, I think this guy’s alive!” Dane called.

  Rolf paused, then turned back and hurried to help Dane. If there were survivors, he had to do what he could. Dane knelt near the edge of the collapsed tent, where a pale hand stuck out. Rolf helped Dane lift the heavy canvas and pull the man’s body out. It was one of the deputies, the young one with the weak chin who had almost revealed Nok was pregnant during their processing. They dragged the body into the sand and Rolf crouched beside it, feeling for a pulse.

  He shook his head. “He’s gone.”

  Dane started pulling out another body, calling to Rolf to help. Rolf glanced again at Nok’s tent, wanting to check on her, but Dane was right—the day’s heat had made the bodies begin to putrefy. They needed to bury them soon, and anyway, he hated the idea of Nok seeing so much death like this. It was grueling work, but soon they had a row of bodies lined up on the sand. No survivors.

  Dane was pacing, agitated. “None of them are Ellis. We have to find Ellis.”

  Rolf scrunched up his nose. “She’s dead. She isn’t going anywhere.”

  “Rolf!”

  He turned at the sound of his name. Nok was coming out of the tent with Keena on one side and Loren on the other. Dane abruptly stopped searching the bodies, stepped back, and wiped his face of sweat. Nok ran up and threw her arms around Rolf. She wasn’t wearing the apron, and he felt the full press of her belly against his own.

  “You’re feeling okay?” he asked.

  She nodded, then looked at Dane. “What’s he doing here?”

  Dane held his hands up in a gesture of peace. “You can trust me—just ask Rolf. I had the chance to leave, but I stayed behind. I wanted to help.”

  Keena snorted, which turned into one of her deep coughs. “He’s a mutineer. We should send him headfirst into the mine.”

  “We were planning to overthrow Ellis,” Dane agreed quickly. “But only because she was a tyrant. And it wasn’t even my idea. I’m not interested in leading. Only peace.”

  “Is that right?” Keena eyed the row of corpses. “Then why are you out here digging through the dead bodies?”

  “We’re . . . we’re burying them,” Rolf explained. Wasn’t it obvious?

  Keena shook her head. “I know what you’re up to, Dane. You’re looking for Ellis’s body. You want to get your grubby hands on that badge, don’t you?”

  Dane glared at her in sile
nce.

  “He thinks whoever has the badge automatically becomes sheriff,” Keena said. “But that isn’t how it works. Though the badge is important.”

  Keena coughed harder and then signaled for two deputies to lift the heavy canvas of the tent closest to where the platform had been. “Ellis took power by killing the previous sheriff, Randall,” she explained. “Randall took power by killing the sheriff before that, and . . . well, you get the idea.” Keena peeked inside, made a face at the rank smell of bodies in the heat, and then took out her handkerchief and coughed more. “I’m afraid you’re the only one small enough to climb in there, Rolf.”

  Rolf folded his arms. “You want me to go in there? For a piece of metal?” He shook his head.

  “Please, Rolf,” Nok said softly.

  He sighed. She could ask him to jump off a ten-story building and he’d do it.

  The deputies lifted the flap higher, and Rolf reluctantly got to his hands and knees and disappeared under the tent flap into the darkness, the heavy fabric stirring up noxious smells. He pressed his sleeve over his mouth, crawling as quickly as he could. The stench of death was suffocating. Bodies brushed against his sides, but in the dark he pretended they were just statues. He finally found the platform. He felt along the edge until his fingers touched charred hair. Ellis’s body.

  He recoiled.

  Suppressing the urge to gag, he felt along the cadaver’s shoulder to her neck, then to the charred face. His fingers touched metal. He hissed and drew back—the edges were still hot. He had to dig his fingernails carefully into her cheek to free it. As soon as he had it, he crawled out of the tent as fast as he could and emerged into daylight, coughing, gagging.

  The badge was slick with blood and singed skin from where he’d pried it from Ellis’s cheek. The metal wasn’t nearly as finely made as it had looked from a distance. This wasn’t anything Kindred made, that was for sure. Someone had roughly hewn this from whatever scrap metal was available on Armstrong.

  “Here,” he said, handing it to Nok. He wiped his fingers off on his pants—he’d never missed soap and hot water more in his life.

  Nok cradled the badge in her palm. There had been a time, Rolf knew, when just the smell of it would have made her retch. Now she ran her finger over it admiringly before passing it along to Keena.

  But the old woman held up a hand, refusing to take it. “I don’t think you understand, Nok.”

  Nok wrinkled her face. “Understand what?”

  Keena exchanged a long look with Loren and Avery before turning back to Nok. “Dane thinks that whoever controls the badge controls Armstrong,” she said, “because that’s what the mine guards told him. But it’s only half true. The Kindred who oversee this place acknowledge the owner of the badge as sheriff; that’s the only person they’ll do business with. But the humans here don’t care about a scrap of metal. They care about tradition. Tradition that goes back generations, since Armstrong was first founded.”

  Rolf eyed the badge in Nok’s hand. He was getting a bad feeling about this.

  “What tradition?” Nok asked.

  Keena picked up a piece of loose thread from the fallen canvas tent, stringing it through the badge as a makeshift necklace.

  “Round up any deputies you don’t trust,” Keena said to Loren and Avery, “and take away their firearms. Especially the mine guards. They’ve been demoted. Tell the slaves they’ll be treated fairly now in return for fair work. The days of Armstrong being a dictatorship are over. There’s a new sheriff in town.”

  Rolf let out an uneasy breath. Now he had a really bad feeling.

  “I don’t get it,” Nok said. “Who’s the new sheriff?”

  “Randall killed the sheriff before him,” Keena explained. “And Ellis killed Randall. That’s the tradition. Whoever kills the old sheriff becomes the new one.” She handed Nok the badge looped over string. “And you killed Ellis.”

  Nok gaped.

  “We’ll help you, all of us tent guards. We know this place. We know how to run it, how to improve it.” She coughed more, and Rolf wondered how long she could help before the sand-cough rendered her too ill. “But we can’t officially hold the title of sheriff. Only you can.”

  The badge tumbled out of Nok’s hand. It landed in the dirt, where Rolf stared at the charred flesh at the edges. The reflected light stung his eyes, but he didn’t look away.

  “Sheriff?” Nok sputtered.

  Rolf glanced over his shoulder at Dane, who was hanging around just to the side, arms crossed, a nasty smirk on his face. Had he really sacrificed himself to make sure Cora got off the moon? Rolf raised his eyebrows as he realized that now that Dane knew the path toward leadership, he only had to do one thing to be sheriff—kill the current one.

  Kill Nok.

  And Rolf took his new role seriously: Father. Protector. He was damn sure not going to let that happen.

  13

  Cora

  CORA STOOD OVER BONEBREAK’S shoulder, gazing at the ship’s view screen. “Is that Drogane?” she asked. It was hard not to be awed by the green-and-blue planet that filled the sky. It looked so similar to Earth, except the blue color of the water was two shades lighter, and the shapes of the continents were all different. Regardless, it made her heart ache with longing. Lyrics drifted into her mind.

  Home is more than a house . . .

  It’s more than a room . . .

  Home means loved ones and . . .

  “That’s Drogane, all right. It’s got a similar atmosphere to your planet, but the air has a higher nitrogen content. Swallow these—oxygen adjusters. You’ll be able to breathe.” He handed her three white pills, which she weighed in her hand hesitantly, then distributed to Anya and Willa. She swallowed her own down dry. Bonebreak began the procedure to slow the ship and then started muttering as he fumbled with the controls. “Damn Axion technology. Where’s the blasted . . . oh.”

  The ship lurched sharply to the left, and Cora clutched the back of his chair to steady herself.

  “Go sit with the others,” Bonebreak said, waving toward the corner where Anya and Willa were seated. “You make me nervous hovering so close.”

  Cora sat on the floor next to Willa, who slid a paper her way.

  You know you cannot trust the Mosca, don’t you?

  Cora glanced at Bonebreak and tried to keep her voice low. “I actually think he’s not so bad,” she whispered. “But just in case, that’s why Mali and Leon went back to the aggregate station. If Bonebreak tries to claim ownership and sell us, Cassian will stop him. Technically, Cassian’s still our owner. Once they find him, they’re going to meet us on Drogane.”

  Willa wrote something else.

  Was it true what Dane said? That you love this Kindred?

  Cora read the note and felt her cheeks warm. The first time she’d seen Cassian, she’d certainly been intrigued. Drawn to him, even. And she had to admit that there were times when she’d lain awake at night, thinking of their kiss, breathless at the memory. But love? How could she love someone who wasn’t even human?

  And then she pictured him being tortured.

  She closed her eyes.

  Images filled her head: him with those snaking wires attached to his skin, and then flashes of her nightmare too, bullet holes ripping through him. They mixed together in a guilty haze that she could barely swallow down. If she really loved him, how could she have let that happen?

  And yet, she told herself, it had been his choice.

  Love was always about choice.

  “I do care about him. And he does for me. But it isn’t as simple as it sounds. It isn’t love like regular couples back home. It’s more like . . . a connection. Like we see something special in each other, something no one else fully sees. It’s just . . .” She opened her eyes. “How can you really love someone you can never fully understand? A different species?”

  Willa nodded thoughtfully and then wrote:

  Anya and I are different species and yet we care abo
ut each other. Not romantic love, but still the care you describe. A connection. A recognition of something special. That kind of bond is not easily broken. Perhaps different species have more in common than you believe.

  As Cora read the note, her guilt lessened, and a thrill ran through her. It was true that the bond she felt with Cassian was powerful: it had been built slowly, over many trials, and was all the stronger because of it.

  She felt herself shaking a little with hope.

  Could she and Cassian actually have a chance for a future together?

  She glanced over the paper at Anya, who was turned toward the view screen, silently watching the stars, knees hugged in close. Even if she hadn’t known Anya long, she too felt a connection, and not just awe at the girl’s unnatural brilliance. Anya was the only other human she’d been able to communicate with telepathically.

  She closed her eyes and tried to reach into Anya’s mind to send a message of reassurance. Everything will be all right. The wolves are strong, but the rabbits are clever.

  But her thoughts hit a wall. It felt odd, as though there were something mentally blocking her. Anya only continued staring at the screen as though she hadn’t sensed anything at all.

  “Anya?” she asked aloud.

  The girl turned and smiled, flashing a thumbs-up.

  Her thumb didn’t shake.

  The ship began to rumble as they entered Drogane’s atmosphere. Cora folded the paper and stashed it in her pocket. Strange curled clouds flew by, giving way to a ridge of mountains in the distance. The mountains were mostly bare patches of steep rock with a few clusters of trees nestled in the lower elevations, towering over lakes and oceans shimmering in the valleys. The entire planet looked pristine and untouched.

  “Where are the cities?” Cora asked.

  “The climate is too volatile for any species to live permanently on the surface,” Bonebreak explained. “The mountains are hollow. We make our cities there, where it is safe from the storms.” He wagged a finger at the beautiful blue sky. “Don’t trust clear skies. You take a breath and next thing you know there’s a snowstorm.”