34The bolt takes Divya straight through the neck, exploding through her nervous system and dropping her in a single instant. She hits the floor with a loud thud, limbs sprawling gracelessly out around her, just as a barrage of stun shots sizzles out over the supply cache.
Tseee! Tsee, tseeee!
A bolt of red screams through my peripheral vision, and I throw myself back into a shelf of supplies. Heat flashes past my face, crackling with red fire, and a massive brown sack explodes just behind me. Flour bursts around my head in a cloud of white, flying up my nose and into my mouth and eyes. Blinded and coughing, I instinctively throw myself down to the floor just as another salvo rings out. Rubbing my eyes hard, I look up through tear-ridden pupils, searching for the source of the attack. Through the settling flour particles, I just manage to make out the shooters where they perch on the upper-level balcony, half a dozen at least, partially tucked behind railings and pillars as they shoot down at us.
An involuntary curse escapes my lips. Slag! That level was supposed to be clear!
Quickly, I case the scene, but it only takes a moment to see that the situation is hopeless. In addition to Divya, there’s at least one more body on the ground, and two others are clearly pinned down by fire, unable to move. The other four attempt to return fire, but their efforts are mostly in vain. The enemy has the high ground, and with their superior vantage point and high-tech weapons, it’s only a matter of time before they take the rest of us down. Our only chance is to get out, and get out now!
Decision made, I queue up my chit. “All hands, retreat! Jovan, Trey, and Ri—get ready to grab the wounded! Kieran—light ’em up!”
Kieran has barely linked an affirmative before he’s bounding out from cover, a silver sphere clutched in his hand. With a yell, he winds up, whipping his arm around like a star grav-ball player before hurling the orb into the air. It flies up and over the second-floor balcony, bouncing off the railing to land with a thud just beyond it.
Ka-shhhooom!
The stun grenade goes off with a massive white flash, disrupting the firestorm and sending the enemy diving for cover. No time to waste, I call into my chit, “Let’s go!”
We manage to make it out, though just barely, pulling together just long enough to grab our wounded and retreat back into the jungle from which we came. Any semblance of discipline falls away during the chaotic stampede, as elbows are thrown and bodies shoved. Only the grace of Iolanthe allows us to escape, the forest covering our tracks as quickly as we make them, and I know that if it weren’t for our superior knowledge of the area, we would have come away far worse. I’m so angry I can’t even speak, can barely even breathe, limiting my words to the bare minimum required to get us home. Only once we’re safely back at the camp do I let them have it.
“What the hell happened back there?!”
Vida crosses her arms over her chest and says, with a stiff nod at Djen and Jovan, “Why don’t you ask them? They were the ones who were supposed to make sure the upper level was clear!”
“Us?” Djen whines. “The second level was your job!”
“What are you talking about? I was on the back stairs—which were secure, I might add—”
“Frag that!” Jovan puts in. “I bet that’s where the enemy got in. I saw you in the main storage room. If you hadn’t left your post—”
“Screw you, Jovan!” Vida yells back. “If anyone abandoned their post early, it was you. You and Djen both! Admit it! You completely fragged up, and now you’re trying to make it look like it was my fault! Or maybe you didn’t frag up, maybe you did it on purpose—”
“On purpose? Are you completely lunar?!”
“Why not? Anything to make the rest of us look bad and get all the glory for yourself!”
More voices come tumbling into the fray, some backing Vida and others backing Jovan, and it doesn’t take a genius to figure out that this fight is about far more than one botched mission. I endure the chaos for as long as I can, then—
“Just seal it, all of you!”
The argument barely pauses, and I have to repeat myself twice more before the voices reluctantly start to peter out. Chest throbbing and heart racing, I wait for complete silence to fall, and then let them have it.
“Enough! You should all be completely ashamed of yourselves! This was an easy mission, and you completely botched it! Now, I don’t know what the frag happened back there, but you can bet I will do everything in my power to figure it out. And if find that anyone on this team deliberately sabotaged this mission in any way, I will stun you, tie you to a tree, and leave you for the enemy myself. Is that clear?”
A chorus of subdued affirmatives and nods meet my ultimatum. Out of breath and too furious to say anything more, I dismiss them with a curt order, watching them disperse toward the tents and showers, no longer the triumphant freedom fighters they were this morning but the downcast losers who barely made it out with their lives. Still fuming, I go back to my shelter, where I discover that the throbbing in my chest and my difficulty breathing are probably as much due to the fledgling bruises rising across my rib cage as they are to my fury. Probably obtained from a flying elbow during our panicked flight out.
Downing some painkillers, I sit down at my desk, where I spend the next two hours going over my mission logs in an attempt to put the pieces of our failure together. Though as far as I can tell no one deliberately sabotaged anything, the real reasons underlying our failure—ego and division—aren’t much better. Even from in here, I can hear the discord, the arguments and discontent that have only continued to dog the camp more and more with every week that passes.
“. . . if you hadn’t . . . to go looking for . . .”
“Me . . . not like everyone else wasn’t . . .”
“. . . should’ve been paying attention . . .”
“Well, if I’d been in charge, the whole thing would have gone completely different.”
My lip curls at Jovan’s spurious claim. This isn’t the first time he’s tried to undermine me behind my back, attributing my successes to himself, assigning others’ failures to me, or just asserting that whatever I’ve done, he could do it better. Typical Jovan! Scornfully shaking my head, I turn back to my tip-pad, then—
“Maybe you’re right, Jovan.”
My blood runs cold as the girl’s voice—Amilee’s, I think—drifts through the tent. I half rise from my chair, every muscle in my body suddenly alert, listening.
“It couldn’t have gone worse,” someone else admits.
“No kidding.”
“That’s not fair,” a girl—Dani, I think—objects in a timid voice. “I’m sure she did her best.”
“Oh yeah?” a guy counters. “She yelled at us, but she was there too, and I didn’t hear her taking any responsibility for what happened. Did you?”
“Well, no . . .”
The argument fades away as the speakers move out of range, but I remain, still half in my chair as I consider what I just heard. Jovan’s antics are getting out of hand. Ever since my little coup d’état at the lazaretto, he’s been gunning for my position—attacking me at every opportunity and stealing credit for my ideas—but in the wake of our successes, his assertions have rung hollow among all but his closest supporters. Now it’s a different story. Between our recent setbacks and what happened today, his words are finally starting to gain traction, to find support among a group that’s becoming ever more divided.
With a shake of my head, I sink back into my chair with a pained groan. Between the divide caused by the breakup and Jovan’s machinations, this camp is starting to come apart at the seams. I’ve tried to ignore it, but every day it gets harder and harder. As commander, I should find some way to fix it, but how do I do that? I have strategies to combat ghouls and squatters and drones and anything else the enemy might throw at us, but the one thing I don’t have a plan for, the one thing I don’t have a clue how to do, is mend a pair of broken hearts.
Wrapping my arms around my throbbing chest, I let out a painful sigh. Now that the adrenaline has worn off, the pain is even worse. Even the simple act of breathing is enough to bring tears to my eyes. I suddenly wish with all my heart that Dad were here—or better yet, Mom. My naval captain mother can do anything. She would never have let the camp fall apart like this. She would never have brooked such insubordination. She would know how to fix it all.
Activating my chit, I pull up the most recent digital I have of her, all strong and beautiful and perfect in her crisp black-and-golds, and a pang of longing sings through me. I miss her so much. Would she be proud of me if she could see me here today? Or disappointed that I couldn’t manage to live up to her impossibly-high example? Perhaps I’ll never know.
Leaning back in my chair, I stare at her image and wonder if I’ll ever see her again, or if like Dad, she’s already gone to the stars, and I don’t even know it.
The storm kicks up out of nowhere late evening. One moment it’s clear, and the next, thunder and lightning are raging across the sky. Rain pours down in sheets, pounding so hard even the largest trees can’t help moaning and shuddering, and more than a few smaller ones splinter and go down.
I toss and turn in my tent, unable to sleep, watching as the flashes of light flicker over the skin of my tent. Another lightning storm, perhaps the dozenth since our first attack on the enemy’s solar array, on a planet where it rains but never thunders. Or at least, it never used to thunder. Now storms whip up at random intervals, the steady rains replaced by stretches of dryness interspersed with furious tempests.
A clap of thunder booms directly overhead, so loud it seems to shake the tent. I gasp and wrap my arms protectively around my middle. Squeezing my eyes shut, I try to sleep, but as the winds continue to howl and cry, I can’t help wondering if it’s not just a storm but Iolanthe herself screaming into the night.
Eventually I sleep, but if I’d hoped that a night’s rest would bring some relief to my bruised ribs, I was dead wrong. Just sitting up is enough to elicit a mournful groan. I take a couple more painkillers, pause, eye the container, and then take a few more. They help, but not much. Nothing else to do, I go see our resident medic.
Megumi takes one look at my chest, winces sympathetically at the swollen flesh, and then proceeds to scan my rib cage with the medical scanner attached to her chit hand. “You have a bruised rib,” she declares matter-of-factly. “Nothing too serious, but you’re going to need to take it easy for a while.”
“I can’t do that,” my mouth objects even as my rib says otherwise. “Please tell me you can fix it.”
“Sorry, my tech’s not that advanced.” She offers me a bottle of over-the-counter meds. “Painkiller?”
“Already took some,” I admit. “Thanks anyway.”
Leaving the med tent, I head back toward my shelter, but instead of going in, I continue on, walking out into the forest beyond. Only safely away from the others do I finally give some vent to my pain, exchanging the screaming I so badly want to do for more rib-friendly whimpers. Gingerly raising my top, I glance down at my chest. Bruises spread across the right side of my rib cage in a patina of mottled discoloration. Just looking at them seems to intensify the pain.
A noise from the brush has me whirling around, hands thrown protectively over my chest. I let out a sigh of relief when I see it’s not a wild animal come to tear me apart. Well, not technically. I scowl at the newcomer. “What are you doing here?”
“I . . . nothing!” Vida ducks her head and takes a quick swipe at her reddened eyes before wrapping her arms defensively around herself, appearing like nothing so much as a wounded animal who has dragged itself into the woods to die. In her defensive posture, she seems strangely diminished, smaller, more like the anguished girl I found at the entrance to her family’s homestead than the larger-than-life Queen Bitch I’ve gone toe-to-toe with so many times.
I frown, wondering if I should say something, but she beats me to the punch, eyes widening as she suddenly catches sight of all my bruises. “What the hell happened to you?”
“Caught an elbow on the way out of the storage facility yesterday, courtesy of Ri,” I grit out. “Or maybe it was Jovan. I don’t know.”
At the mention of her ex, a dark cloud falls over Vida’s face. She stares at me for a second, then abruptly turns on her heel and stalks off. Just as well. Tears of pain are already pricking the backs of my eyes, and every movement only threatens to make them fall. The last thing I need is to have Vida staring at me like a null while I’m ready to die. Or worse, cry.
Only no, she’s not actually leaving, I realize, but walking to a nearby tree, where she plucks a yellow-and-orange-striped gourd approximately twice the size of her fist. She bashes it against the hard trunk. The gourd splits down the middle to reveal a whitish pulp inside. Without a word, she hands it to me.
I sniff at the pulpy interior. “What is this?”
“Ychava gourd. Used topically, it’s a natural anti-inflammatory and pain reliever.”
I raise a wary eyebrow, wondering if she’s really on the level or if this is some sort of twisted ploy. While I don’t think Vida would actually poison me, I wouldn’t be surprised if this gourd bleached my skin white or gave me a rash or did something else equally unpleasant. Poking at the interior, I cautiously ask, “Is it safe?”
Vida crosses her arms over her chest. “My bisabuelo lived to be a hundred and twelve, and he used it all his life.”
Settler’s pride colors her every syllable, and I find myself believing her. I slowly nod, satisfied by the endorsement. Plants mutate at an astonishing rate on Iolanthe, a combination of the growth hormones used by the original terraformers and the planet’s own unique biochemistry. Just because a plant is safe one day doesn’t necessarily mean it will be safe the next. But a plant that’s retained its identity for a century? If it were going to mutate into something poisonous, it probably would’ve done it by now.
Dipping my fingers into the gourd, I gently smooth a bit onto my bruised skin. Within seconds, a cool soothing sensation radiates out over my chest. I let out a relieved sigh and immediately began piling on more pulp. A sweet, nutty smell emanates from the gourd as I work, and out of curiosity, I ask, “Is this edible?”
“Sure, if you don’t mind puking your guts out afterward.”
Ah. Well, if nothing else, I have to give her points for honesty. In the good old days, she probably would’ve said yes, and then sat back and laughed her ass off while I puked those aforementioned guts out. Oh, for the good old days, when the worst thing I had to worry about was being slipped some Puke Gourd by Sheridan’s number-one mean girl. Now I’m voluntarily rubbing said Puke Gourd all over my side. Isn’t irony a bitch?
Though the thought of showing the slightest drop of gratitude to my worst enemy is as repugnant as it is alien, honesty compels me to reluctantly mutter, “Thanks.”
Vida doesn’t answer. Apparently, she doesn’t want to accept my gratitude any more than I want to give it. Rolling my eyes, I drop the empty half of the gourd into the bushes and tuck the remaining half into my pocket for later. No telling when this stuff will wear off. In fact, better grab a few more while I’m out here.
Going to another tree with those same striped gourds, I start to reach for one, and stop. There, in the bushes, lies a body.
I stumble back, a small shriek escaping my lips in spite of myself. At my cry, Vida comes jogging over. She peers around my shoulder at the creature on the ground.
“What is that?” I ask.
“I think . . . it’s an Iorat,” she answers after a minute.
She’s right, I realize once I examine it further. It is an Iorat. Well, sort of. I’ve seen Iorats up close—dozens, in fact—but this one is barely recognizable as the creature I dropped down the enemy’s air shafts.
I carefully prod the surrounding vegetation back from the body so I can better examine it. The coarse coat, once shiny and slick with mucous, is now dried and patchy. Chunks of fur are completely missing, and embedded in the exposed skin is a multitude of angry-looking lesions seeping with some sort of foul-smelling pus. More sores dot the inside of its mouth, leaving smears of discolored blood on its jagged teeth and snout. The eyes are bloodshot and staring.
A slight movement catches my eye, and against my better judgment, I reach out and touch the small creature. Its skin is hot, and through the thinning fur, I can feel its tiny heart thrumming far too fast. Not dead, but—
“It’s sick.” A rarity in the Rainforest, where there’s so much competition that any animal unfortunate enough to become ill or injured doesn’t last long. Though I’m no expert in disease, something about its condition doesn’t feel natural. “What do you think caused it?”
Vida merely shakes her head.
For some reason, the field of dead solar-flits flashes into my mind. Rising to my feet, I search for the Iorat’s nest, finally locating it beneath a nearby shrub. Several babies lie within, all with the same symptoms and all dead.
Getting to my feet, I slowly walk through the area, eyes peeled for anything that might explain the situation. At first, everything appears as usual, but as I look closer, I start noticing things—dried-up cloudvines, flower petals curled up and browning, unusually large amounts of shed leaves and bark rotting in the sun. I lightly flick a nearby rover, but rather than skitter away, it only flutters its leaves weakly at my touch.
A vague feeling of unease whispers through me. Though the Rainforest is fast growing and ever-mutating, something about this all feels wrong—like the forest isn’t changing so much as sickening.
I turn to Vida, wondering if she’s ever seen anything like this, but before I can ask, a chorus of voices rings out from the direction of the camp. Unable to help myself, I swing my head toward the noise. What is it now? Irritation sparks within me at the thought of having to break up yet another fight. I cock my head and listen, wondering who the primary instigators are this time, but the tenor of the shouts doesn’t sound angry. It sounds . . .
Scared.
Forgetting the gourds, the Iorats, and everything else, I start moving in the direction of the shouts, Vida at my heels. Camp waits just ahead, and through the trees, I can just make out the indistinct forms of people running. I’m about to link Zane for an update when a distant roaring sound reaches my ears. I stop, listening as the noise grows ever louder. Like thunder it rumbles, crackling and rolling through the air in an ever-pressing hum. A strange hissing noise, breathy and keen, emerges from the din, like a distant teakettle just about to boil. It rises in pitch and volume, cartwheeling through the air until it’s practically on top of us, and I suddenly realize: It’s not that the sound is getting louder.
It’s getting closer.
A trickle of fear seeps into my stomach. Clutching my heart, I glance over at Vida. Our eyes meet for one terrified second . . .
. . . and then as one we both go running for the camp.