22

“You know what I’ve always wondered?” Boris suddenly broke the silence.

I snapped my eyes open and looked around. The crater was empty. I’d nodded off. I’d needed it. I glanced at the time stamp floating over the visor. I’d been asleep for twenty minutes.

Damn. I could have been killed in my sleep. Melted by one of those explosions from the ship.

“I’ve always wanted to know what struthiforms think of breakfast burritos,” Boris continued.

“What?” Amira’s voice sounded crusty and strained.

“It’s the eggs, yeah?” Boris sniffed. “I mean, scrambled eggs. They’re giant ostriches, how does that look?”

“Well, like us eating a small mammal, like a pig,” Ken chimed in.

“Veal,” Amira said. “Baby mammal.”

“Hmmm . . .” Boris sounded unsure. “I guess so.”

I opened my mouth to tell them about Shriek, and that the struthiforms were all dying because they couldn’t go back to their home world.

But since we didn’t know whether we were about to lose ours, why harsh everyone’s mellow? “What does it look like out there? They still hunting us?”

Quiet.

“Hello, can you guys hear me?”

“Devlin”—Amira sounded worried—“what have you been doing the last half hour? Sleeping? We’ve been calling for you.”

“Well . . .” I cleared my throat. “Yes, sorry. I nodded off.” The regular rhythm of the bombing had become constant. A background noise.

“Damn,” Boris said. “You’re all ice. You slept through all that? Shit, I’m still vibrating.”

I opened my mouth to reply. To tell them I was so exhausted, I couldn’t help it, and that thinking about the dead just on the other side of the ridge was too much.

“They left,” Ken reported. “Ten minutes and nothing has moved near me or Amira. No more explosions. No hunting parties.”

“Could be a trap,” Amira said. “We’ve been discussing that. Then Boris changed the subject.”

“You were all boring me,” Boris said. “I’m hiding under shuttle debris, and I can’t so much as twitch, and you two are just going around and around. Not discussing. Arguing.”

I looked around the crater I’d hidden inside. Nothing.

The debate started up again, Amira assuming that there were at least crickets out hiding away, as still as we were, waiting to get triggered. Ken insisting that he could move around his hiding spot.

I tumbled out onto the dirt and rock. I didn’t want to put anyone else at risk, and we couldn’t wait here forever. Even­tually, someone had to be the first to put themselves in the crosshairs. If there were any.

My joints protested, but after a few seconds of movement, they warmed and loosened up. It felt good to stand.

Nothing moved but me. The attack I’d been half tensing for didn’t come.

I scrabbled up to the rim and bounced off across to the ridge. “I’m out in the open,” I reported. “Nothing coming after me.”

“Shit,” Ken said. “I knew it. I’m—”

“Why don’t you two stay where you are,” I interrupted. “Boris, you too. In case the enemy is waiting for more movement.”

“Okay,” they muttered.

I slithered up the rim and looked out over toward the Con­glomerate ship. It hung over the main base again, tentacles down. There was nothing out on the plain between us but newly pockmarked ground.

“Did Efua make it to the mines?” I asked.

“We are here,” Efua said. “We found some air canisters. We think. We’re trying to understand how to hook them up to our suits.”

“Can you call out from there?”

“No,” Efua said. “We are still being jammed.”

I looked at the ruins of the base, thinking. “Efua, you said the crickets came and took Commander Zeus away. To the officers’ quarters?”

Efua was quiet for a second. “I think so. In that direction, at least.”

Amira jumped in. “Zeus’s transponder is there. Whether that means Zeus is there or not, I can’t say. I’d need to get closer to verify, grab some higher bandwidth, line-of-sight comms.”

“What about our rank transponders?” I asked quickly, thinking back to Amira’s lecture that the tattoos had trackers in them.

“I, obviously, killed them a long time ago,” Amira said, almost as if she were talking to a child. “Or we’d be toothpaste under troll toes.”

Sure. That made sense.

“What are you thinking?” Ken asked.

I looked off in the direction of the launcher. Safety. For now. What would a fighter do here? Hide like a cockroach? Until his air ran out?

Or . . .

Or what?

“Zeus and the other Arvani in their quarters, and the struthiforms, if they’re alive, have heavier armor. They’re trained for this. They’re officers. They know what our options are. They’ve fought the Conglomerate before. We’re untrained recruits. I think we need Zeus back.”

“That sadistic bastard?” Ken asked.

“Captain Calamari is crazy,” Amira agreed. “But Devlin has a point: We could aim that crazy at the Conglomerate bastards.”

Boris laughed. “Captain Calamari? Why didn’t I think of that? You even demoted him . . . to an appetizer! We called him Sergeant Suckers. I do have some leftover explosives for getting inside the Arvani quarters.”

“Or we can just get me close enough that I can pop the locks. What are you thinking, Devlin?” Amira asked.

“We take our time. Shadow to shadow. Total sneak mode. If it feels risky, don’t move. We have our suits, and we have all day to get there. We’re going to converge on it from all points. No rush.” We were going to be good little stealthy cockroaches. “If we get spotted, scatter and hide again. Once inside, kill anything in our way, get the commander and any other Accordance survivors.”

“I like it,” Ken said. “We take the fight back to them.”

“And what about us?” Efua asked.

“Give us twenty-five hours from now. If we go silent, try to get out from the jamming and get a signal back to Tranquility.”

“Good luck,” Efua said.

“You too,” I replied, and began to slither to the nearest rock.