by Amie Kaufman
The Longbow screams as we whip across the rocks with a staccato series of crashes, gouging our hull as we pass.
Nobody’s counting now, but the numbers are dropping in my head.
Seven. Six. Five.
All the lights on the control panel go out, and Cat curses, pushing the yoke away with trembling arms.
Four. Three. Two.
We slam into the sand, lift off again, crash down, then skid uncontrollably. The whole ship’s shaking so hard I can barely breathe, the noise is deafening, our belly skipping along the waterline. The Longbow hits something hard, and we’re yanked around in a half circle until we finally come to a halt. I can see the path we’ve carved through the beach behind us, and so will anyone else overhead. It’s the largest YOU ARE HERE arrow we could possibly ask for.
But we’re alive.
The silence is broken only by the soft pings of our cooling hull. I’m heaving for breath, a dozen silent alarms all over my suit informing me that I’m under extreme physical duress—thanks, I hadn’t noticed—and nobody speaks. Slowly, Tyler and Cat swivel around to take a look at the rest of us and confirm we’re all in one piece.
“Well,” I say, trying to keep my voice steady. “I don’t want to be a downer, but I don’t think we’re getting our deposit back on this thing.”
Scarlett’s the first to laugh, unbuckling with shaky hands and doubling over to brace her elbows against her knees, her head in her hands. And one by one the others follow, unbuckling, rising from their chairs, standing, stretching, shaking.
I stay where I am for now, because I’m waiting for enough motor control to raise my hand and hit the release button in the middle of my chest, but nobody seems to realize it’s not a choice.
“Do we have any power left?” Goldenboy asks, not sounding that hopeful.
“Not even enough to run my favorite toy,” Cat says, running a hand over her console. “And that thing gets amazing battery life.”
He shoots her a grin, reaching across to squeeze her shoulder. “That was something, Cat. That was…that was flying.”
She smiles in reply, letting out a shaky breath. “They do say you should try everything once. But that was my once. Never again.”
Everyone laughs for that—we’re all too ready to laugh at anything, too jittery still. But Tyler’s already getting back to work.
“Zila, pull out the biosuits and distribute them. I don’t want anyone breathing one molecule of air without protection. Kal, break out the heavy weapons. We don’t have scopes, so we’ll have to keep watch for pursuers the old-fashioned way. And we’ll need to look over the Longbow, figure out what she needs to get her space-worthy again.”
Aurora is standing now, staring at the displays of the world waiting for us outside. Her eyes are wide, her face pale.
Zila hands out the suits, and Kal and Ty and the others start to wriggle into theirs. But Scar rests her hip against the central console in front of me, no doubt noticing I’m still exactly where I was when we landed. With a wink, she leans forward to press my release clasp, and the restraints slither back over my shoulders to retract inside my seat.
“You always could press my buttons,” I tell her, and I sound pretty damn close to myself. But she’s a brilliant Face, as good at her job as her brother is as an Alpha. Of course she was the one who noticed something was off with me.
“Need a hand getting into your biohazard gear?” she asks.
“What, now you’re trying to get me to put even more clothes on? I’m going backward here.”
“It’s no trouble,” she says, lowering her voice to keep the conversation between the two of us. “How’s your exosuit?”
Truth is, it’s sluggish, reacting slower to my movements than it should be. The EMP that knocked out our Longbow systems hit my suit, too. It’s shielded against that kind of thing, but apparently not perfectly—I’ve never exposed it to a nuclear explosion in space before. And no way do we have the time for me to spend several hours servicing it.
“It’s good,” I insist.
“Fin?” She’s not buying it, but the question’s still gentle. And that’s what slugs me in the guts. I don’t want it from her, of all people. If she looks like she’s sorry for me, like she wants to say something to make me feel better, I’ll…
But when I look up, her blue eyes don’t hold the pity I’m expecting. There’s nothing there except a touch of worry. And I think that’s why I speak, keeping my voice as low as hers. Saying something I’ve never said out loud.
“Scarlett, I don’t want to be the guy who needs help. Every time I’ve shown what others think is weakness, I’ve paid the price for it. Full gravity’s hard? Send me away from Trask, from my friends and family. Need low grav at night to give me a rest? Stick me in academy quarters on my own, no roomie like everyone else. Suit malfunctions? Your brother’ll keep me out of the action, put all of you in danger. And you never get back what you lose, once they see it. So please, don’t make a big deal out of it. And if you could hold off your customary scarcasm, that’d be great too.”
Scarlett quirks one sculpted eyebrow. “Scarcasm?”
“Yeah, fits, right? I thought that one up last night.”
Great Maker, Finian, did you just let her know you were thinking about her last night…?
“Nobody here is going to think less of you if you accept help, Fin,” she says.
“Easy for you to say,” I reply, waving at my exosuit. “There’s a reason I got picked last out of every Gearhead in the Draft.”
Ever so slowly, Scar pouts. “Finian?”
“…Yeah?”
“Do you ever wonder if the reason you were picked last might not be the suit?” She pins me with her eyes. “I’m not saying people don’t notice it. I’m just saying that maybe…just maybe, you got picked last because you spend all your time convincing the galaxy you’re an insufferable asshole?”
I don’t know how to reply to that. Knocked all the way back on my heels.
“It’s okay, Fin,” she says quietly. “Your family seals your den, right?”
And I know, in that moment, that she’s figured me out. A Betraskan wants a group to be a part of—needs one on a deep, instinctive level. It’s not just cultural for us, it’s a part of our very DNA. Much as I pretend, we don’t like to be alone.
And though I’d rather tango with Casseldon Bianchi’s favorite ex-pet than say it out loud, all this time, a part of me’s been hunting for a connection. I can’t help it—I lean toward it like a flower following the sun. And looking around the bridge, I realize maybe, just maybe, I’ve found my clan in this squad.
So, I thump my hand into hers, and with a nearly invisible heft, she has me on my feet. For a moment, we’re only a few centimeters apart. Big blue eyes staring right into mine.
Maker’s bits, I really like her.
And then she throws me a wink, holds up a biosuit between us. The silvery material is like water in our hands, and Scarlett just happens to be down on one knee to straighten the foot of hers at the right time to shift mine and help me get a leg into it more easily, with nobody else the wiser.
But by the time we’re all suited up, I know I’m actually in trouble. It’s hard to move, harder to walk, and my suit’s flashing warning signals at me that I silence with the press of a couple of buttons.
Zila reports there’s nothing unfriendly in the skies overhead, and Cat and I head into the Longbow’s belly to check the state of Engineering. Surprisingly, it only looks about half as bad as I feel. Peering about, I can see our hull’s been punched through like wet paper. The hole is reparable, but our baby’s heart has been cut up pretty bad by the railgun round.
“How’s it looking in here?” Tyler asks, mooching up behind us.
“Messy,” Cat replies, pointing at our power core. “Reactor’s totally spanked.�
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“I realize being Mr. Sunshine isn’t usually my job, but it’s not all terrible news,” I note. “The hull will get taken care of by the auto-repair systems. The core’s a discrete part, so we could switch it out easy enough. Assuming we can find some heavy radioactives to replace the fuel cells with.”
“Okay, but where are we going to find some of those?” Tyler asks.
“I was aiming for the settlement as we came in,” Cat says. “It should be about ten klicks from here.”
Color me six shades of impressed that she managed to even get that close. But it seems like a solid plan.
“Then we want to find the colony spaceport,” I say. “I presume they had one, and odds are good that the folks here never evac’ed, or more people would know that the Interdiction was a lie. That means their ships should still be on the ground. In the right conditions, and with a little spit and polish, we might get a working reactor core out of this yet.”
“Sounds good,” Ty nods.
“Yeah, sure,” Cat scoffs. “I mean, for a definition of good that includes a ten-klick forced march over hostile territory with walking wounded toward a colony that wasn’t supposed to exist and TDF birds likely to fall from the sky and land on our heads at any moment.”
“Cat,” Tyler says, flashing a pair of dimples that could explode ovaries at twenty paces. “I keep on telling you. You gotta have faith.”
* * *
• • • • •
Twenty minutes later, we’re standing on the Longbow’s loading ramp, almost ready to get under way. Of course, I’m the walking wounded Cat was referring to—I guess it’s more obvious than I hoped—but I’m also the one with the best chance of jacking a working core for us, so at least I won’t get left behind at the ship. The ocean stretches out behind us, a short stretch of sand dunes ahead of us, blue-green hills beyond. The sound of the waves seems strangely out of place.
“Which way to the colony?” Ty asks.
Cat purses her lips, tapping her finger against the visor of her biosuit. “I think it’s maybe west? Although now I think of it…”
“It’s that way,” Aurora says, pointing.
“You sure?” Ty asks.
She nods, and when she speaks, her voice is certain. Stronger than I’ve ever heard. “I studied this place for two years to get my spot on the Hadfield. I was supposed to be in Cartography when I arrived. We’re about twelve kilometers northwest of the colony site. Rough ground. Maybe three hours away on foot.”
Ty nods, impressed. “We better get moving, then.”
The rolling dunes are eerily quiet as we trudge down the ramp, the planet around us is all smooth lines and endless sky. The air is laden with what I mistake for snow at first, and it covers the ground too, but stepping out of the Longbow’s loading bay, I realize it’s some kind of…
“Pollen,” Zila says, peering at the semi-luminous dust falling from above.
I swallow hard, holding out my hand to the tumbling blue.
Aurora leads us over the dunes, away from the crashing waves, our wounded ship. There’s an audible hiss from my exosuit every time I take a step, and I struggle on the incline, sand crumbling away beneath my boots. Scarlett hovers nearby, close enough to let me know she’s there if I need her. But I push on, finally cresting the hill and looking out at the landscape beyond.
“Maker’s breath,” I whisper.
Past the beach, the rocks, the ground, everything is covered with a low scrub that has teardrop-shaped, juicy leaves—just like the ones we saw bursting out of the late Patrice Radke’s eye socket. It almost seems to be all one plant, a continuous, creeping spread. The trees are choked with it, long tendrils twisting up and spreading across the bark. There are long patches of flat, silvery grass, too—it reminds me of the mossy growths we saw on the faces of those GIA goons.
“…Is it supposed to look like this?” Tyler asks.
“No,” Aurora replies, shaking her head. “No, it’s not.”
There’s an old communications tower a few hundred meters off—the only visible sign a human colony once existed here. But it’s cocooned in that same weird plant growth, thicker stalked, heavier, winding around the supports like the tentacles of an Ospherian seldernaut. The plants look ready to pull the whole structure down beneath the dirt, like a ship vanished beneath the sea.
It’s like fungus, almost. And it covers everything.
“I’ve…” Aurora blinks rapidly. “I’ve seen this before.”
“Me too…,” I whisper, unsteady.
The squad looks at me questioningly. I reach toward the Maker’s mark at my collar, but it’s covered by my biosuit. My heart is thumping in my chest.
“I dreamed it,” I say, looking at Auri. “What I thought was blue snow falling out of the sky. It was everywhere…just like this. But it wasn’t here on Octavia. The planet I dreamed about…” I shake my head, looking to the others. “It was my homeworld. Trask.”
“I would advise nobody touch anything,” Kal says.
“Roger that,” Tyler nods, his face pale. “Everyone keep your eyes open and hands to yourselves.” He hefts his disruptor rifle. “Let’s move out.”
With nothing really left to say, we set off again, out into the swaying blue-green scrub. Aurora’s expression is hard, her eyes locked on the ground and the plants in front of her. Kal stalks along behind, violet eyes smoldering, a disruptor rifle in his hands, too. Every so often Auri turns her head just enough to check he’s close. But they don’t make eye contact.
Scarlett’s sauntering along beside me as if her fine silver biosuit is a Feeney original design and she’s got a catwalk to slay. Cat’s just kind of trudging in front of us, no doubt coming down from the kick of getting the Longbow on the ground in the first place. Tyler and Zila are bringing up the rear. He’s carrying the containment system we need for the replacement core elements, and she’s—well, exactly as expected. Stoic. She’s walking with a pair of telescopic binoculars pressed to her eyes, looking up into the sky instead of at what’s directly in front of her. There’s no signs she intends to shoot anyone, though, so that’s a bonus.
The undergrowth gets thicker as we travel, and we find ourselves walking in what might’ve been light woodlands before it was overrun with this…whatever it is. I’m walking in silence, still thinking about my dream, and maybe it’s because I’m so tuned in to the soft, distressed whines and hisses of my suit that I think I hear the sound.
Behind us.
Rustle, rustle.
I stop, peer over my shoulder with narrowed eyes.
“All right, Finian?” Goldenboy asks, coming up beside me.
“…Do we know if there was any native fauna here?”
Zila glances at me. “Is there a reason for your query?”
“I thought I heard something,” I admit, my pulse pounding a little too quick.
“Most of the fauna on Octavia wasn’t very complex,” Auri says from up ahead. “At least from the early surveys and reports from the Biology department. There were mice in the labs, though. And chimps, too. My dad worked with them.”
“There were what now?” My imagination’s supplying a steady stream of things that could match that name, most of them with claws and teeth I would not like to say hello to. Kal’s on alert immediately, his grip tightening on his disruptor rifle.
“Chimps,” Auri repeats.
“Pan paniscus,” Zila supplies helpfully.
“They’re almost the size of a regular person,” Auri explains. “Same basic build as us, same family tree. They’re covered in black hair, though. They climb really well.”
“So they’re just hairy humans?” I ask. “What’s the difference between a chimp and— Did you guys ever meet O’Donnell? There was a guy who sat behind me in mechaneering, and let me tell you—”
“They’
re not human,” Tyler replies. “They’re highly intelligent, but they’re animals. What were they doing on the colony, Auri?”
“Initial environmental testing,” she said. “They’re the nearest thing to a human, without being one. Our DNA is almost identical. That’s why they were in the very first rockets ever launched from Earth as well.”
“Wait,” I butt in. “These things are smart enough to pilot spacecraft?”
Kal has his disruptor rifle up now, turning in a slow circle.
“They sound a deadly foe….”
“No,” Auri corrects us. “Look…They’re not dangerous. And they didn’t fly those early ships, they were just passengers. We put them into space to see how it would affect them. Because physiologically, they’re a lot like humans.”
Pixieboy and I share a long look.
“But if these chumps—” I begin.
“Chimps,” she corrects.
“If they couldn’t fly the ships…how did they land them?”
“They didn’t have to,” says Auri. “It was automated.”
“So,” I say carefully, “just let me understand this. You dirtchildren took these animals nearly as smart as you and shoved them in rockets and hurled them into space to see if it would melt their insides?”
“It wasn’t us personally,” Cat points out, defensive, and there’s a fair amount of foot shuffling going on among Team Terran.
“Wow,” I say, looking about the group. “Did we Betraskans know about all this choomp murder when we allied with you?”
“Enough, Finian. Even if there were chimps here, that was two centuries ago, and…” Tyler trails off, no doubt thinking the same thing as the rest of us. Patrice Radke and her fine, ferny friend were here two centuries ago as well. Didn’t seem to stop them from roaming the galaxy.
Maker’s bits…
“Weapons,” says Kal simply, and when we continue, everyone’s holding one.
I don’t hear the rustle-rustle again.
Aurora leads us on through the spiny fronds, the suffocated trees, thick pollen falling around us like sticky blue rain. Our biosuits are soon covered with it, and we have to be careful about the fronds, too—the suits are tough, but not indestructible. It’s a couple of hours and several battles with the undergrowth later that we crest a hill and find Butler colony in the valley before us.
