We take as many supplies from the hovercraft as we can: meal rations, water canteens, sleeping rolls, and extra ammunition stuffed into backpacks.
Darren helps me dress the bullet wound on my shoulder, and I treat his leg. The damaged tissue below his knee is starting to fester. I wipe it as best I can with the antiseptic packets in the medi-kit, but he needs stronger antibiotics or the infection’s going to get worse. One more reason we need to get off the Surface as soon as possible.
With our sacks slung over our shoulders, we take one last look around the battlefield. Dean and the corporal, Cormac, moved the bodies of the dead soldiers into the hovercraft and shut the air-lock doors behind them. Normally we would’ve set their bodies on fire, but we didn’t want to attract any more raiders to the hilltop while we’re still in the area. Now all that’s left of the battlefield is the silent hovercraft, the smoke trailing from the piles of rubble, and the lingering smell of the poison gas.
My stomach pinches at the sight of it. If the raiders found our group and attacked us out here in the middle of nowhere, I can only imagine how they’ve ravaged the city halfway across the Surface. The settlement where I grew up.
“We must be too late,” I say.
“For what?” Darren asks.
“To save the Surface city.”
“Hopefully the commander’s plan worked,” Skylar says, adjusting the straps of her sack on her shoulders. “If he triggered the Strykers, the Mardenites were destroyed along with the people.”
I snort. “You saw how big the fleet is. Those bombs couldn’t have crippled even half the raiders. Thanks to your precious commander, thousands of people are dead for nothing.”
Dean hesitates. “We don’t know that for sure.”
“We will soon enough.”
Skylar’s cheeks pinch together, but all she says is, “Let’s move out.”
* * *
Dean leads the way into the forest, away from the silent battlefield. He keeps a compass in his hand to make sure we’re moving in the right direction. He and Skylar plotted out the quickest path to the Pipeline using a map we found in the cockpit. At a fast pace, we can reach the transmission station in three hours, just before sunrise.
I’m worried it’s going to take us a lot longer. We’re all exhausted from fighting and from lack of sleep. Especially once we have to hike uphill in the snow, it’s going to get difficult to keep going.
Darren’s breath hitches with every step as he walks beside me. We’re a few feet away from the others, walking on the other side of some of the trees. The wind is freezing cold, and my teeth won’t stop chattering.
“You can lean on me if you need to,” I say.
“My leg isn’t the main problem,” he says, though he touches my shoulder to steady himself. “It’s that vruxing poison gas. My skin is still burning.”
I bite my lip. “I’m sorry.”
“Guess I should just be glad I’m alive, instead of a corpse in the engine room or a prisoner of those aliens.” Darren’s jaw tightens and he shakes his head in disbelief. “I can’t believe we lost everyone else.”
“We’ll see them again,” I say firmly. “We’re going to find a way out of this. We have to.”
Darren doesn’t say anything in reply, just exhales a heavy sigh.
I glance over at Sam, crunching through the leaves on the other side of the trees. He catches me looking at him and meets my gaze head-on. There’s a threat in his eyes, and his fingers play with the gun in his holster.
Pressing my lips together, I turn my head away. We’re stuck with him and Skylar and Dean because there’s no one else left, but we need to remember they’re not our allies. Even Dean is only helping so he can hand me over to Charlie again.
* * *
The air grows even colder as we begin the trek up the mountains. The storm has finally passed on, but there are fresh patches of snow glistening between the trees. The higher elevation makes it harder to breathe, and my legs are becoming heavier and heavier to lift. I don’t see how I’m going to make it much farther.
The Pipeline is just on the other side of these mountains, and so is the transmission station. Another hour and we’ll be there. If we take much longer, we’ll lose the cover of darkness.
Still, when Darren finally asks if we can rest for a little while and the others agree, I’m glad. All I need to do is close my eyes for a few minutes and I should be able to keep the pace.
“We’ll stop for half an hour,” Dean says, setting his pack at the base of a tree. He’s shivering and his face is soaked in sweat.
Sam has a hand pressed to his helmet like his head is hurting. Cormac unrolls his bedroll, wincing with every movement.
Skylar takes a seat on a boulder and continues fiddling with the hand-comm she brought from the hovercraft. She seems less sick than the others, though her eyes are also slightly bloodshot. She’s been trying to make contact with someone in the Core, now that there’s less interference from the raiders.
“This is Cadet Skylar,” she says for the fiftieth time, her voice scratchy from weariness. “I’m with Lieutenants Sam and Dean and we are stranded in Surface Sector H-9, close to the Pipeline transmission station. We are in need of a rescue team. Does anyone copy?”
“Just give up,” Sam says, rummaging through his pack for his water canteen. “If they’d heard our transmission, someone would’ve answered by now.”
“We might not be able to hear their answer through the interference,” Skylar says.
“That doesn’t mean you need to keep saying the same thing over and over. It’s not going to make them get here any faster.”
Skylar catches my gaze and rolls her eyes at Sam’s comment. I start to smile back, then stop. Rolling eyes at each other and smiling is something friends do, and she and I aren’t friends. Not anymore.
I turn away from her. Out of the corner of my eye, her expression hardens and she turns away too.
I take out my sleeping roll and set it on a semi-dry area of the ground, as far away from Sam as possible. I’m anxious to get a few winks of sleep, but first I need to relieve myself. And I’m not going to do it in front of everyone.
“I’ll be right back,” I tell Darren, and slip away from the group, moving through the trees.
Soon the camp is out of sight, but I don’t stop walking yet. It’s nice to finally get away from everyone. It’s still dark out, but there’s enough moonlight that I can see where I’m going.
I find a bush and unzip the outer layer of my safety suit. There’s a special apparatus in the suit that lets me go without being exposed to the air. It’s kind of a pain, but it’s better than risking moonshine.
It hits me that all the time we’ve been out here in the mountains, I haven’t seen any animals. Not a krail or mountain bird in sight. When Commander Charlie took the acid shield down and the acid seeped into the atmosphere, it must’ve killed thousands of animals. But then, he never intended for the Surface to continue existing at all. If he’d had his way, his bomb would’ve blasted the outer sectors apart so his Core battleship could fly far away to Marden, to take back the planet that was our home long ago.
But Beechy, Oliver, and I used his bomb to destroy the acid generator on the moon instead, so Charlie couldn’t go through with his plan. Not that it would’ve worked, anyway. The Mardenite army was already on its way.
I’ve finished relieving myself and just re-zipped the outer layer of my suit when there’s the crunch of boots in the snow behind me.
I spin around as Sam steps out from between the trees.