On the floor, Jess moaned. Ellis looked away from Max, feeling a physical ache in his stomach at the sight of his friend. Jess was on his back, his swollen eyes closed.
“Jess? Are you—can you hear me?” Lara asked, and let out a small cry as Keene gave her a rough
shake. Jess cracked his eyes open, rolling slowly onto his side, breathing shallowly.
“Yeah,” he said, wincing. “Yeah, I hear you . . .” “Stay on the floor,” Keene ordered, his Nordic face still flushed from beating Jess, from exertion or pleasure or both. “Get up and I’ll kill you.”
Ellis looked at Max again, feeling as though his heart would break. They’d been getting closer since their joining, their thoughts running through his mind now and he’d been a fool, Max still had multiple—
—77.52, one hundred M309 rounds each—
—cartridges for the pulse rifle, at least twenty HEAP grenades left, and most of its secondary M210 tank was still full of napthal. Worst of all, Ellis knew that feeling sorry for what he hadn’t done didn’t matter at all, it didn’t help and they were still going to be killed by Briggs for information that they didn’t even have—
“Ellis, what’s wrong?” Lara said sharply, a thread of terror in her voice.
Ellis turned his head, confused, saw that both Keene and Lara were looking at him—
—and then Lara was moving, bending her knees and slipping out from beneath Keene’s hand, coming up from her crouch with her arm straight, her hand flat—
—and Ellis felt Keene’s fingers clench and relax on his shoulder as Lara chopped the side of her hand into his throat, a sound like some crisp vegetable being snapped erupting from the blond’s quivering lips. He grabbed at his neck with both hands, his eyes wide, his face purpling in seconds.
Lara was in a fighting stance, her hands up, ready to hit again—but Keene was no longer a threat. He crumpled to the floor still clutching at his throat, his mouth opening and closing soundlessly. A few seconds later, he wasn’t moving at all.
Ellis crouched next to him, putting a shaky hand over Keene’s mouth. He wasn’t breathing.
“You killed him,” Ellis said wonderingly.
Lara was already moving toward Jess, rubbing at her shoulder. “I used to be a Marine,” she said. “People seem to keep forgetting that.”
Together, they knelt next to Jess, Lara helping him to sit up. Jess groaned again but managed to stay upright, holding his head in his hands. He squinted at Lara from red eyes, the welts on his face already darkening to black.
“Jesus. Remind me not to fuck with you,” he said softly.
Lara smiled a little. “Yeah, well. I was tired of waiting for you to make your move.”
the floor of the shuttle trembled, the platform beneath seeming to tilt a little more. The distant alarm continued to blare. Jess finally raised his head and sat up straight, gritting his teeth against his pain.
“We gotta get out of here,” he said. “Can we take off?”
Lara shook her head. “We wouldn’t make it more than a few klicks, we need to refuel. And we don’t have VTOL, I have to program some kind of a flight plan.”
Jess looked at Ellis, studying his face. “Kid, you with us?”
Ellis nodded, not sure what Jess was asking, knowing only that he had to make up for his failure. “Yeah. Of course.”
With help from both of them, Jess crawled to his feet, swaying for a moment—
—.37—
—before he found his balance. Lara crouched next to Keene and rifled through his suit, pulling out the semiautomatic that had been taken earlier.
“Get on the program,” Jess said. “Ellis, I’m going to need your help. Come on.”
Ellis nodded, wondering why so much of this felt like a dream, why the numbers in his mind wouldn’t stay, wouldn’t take the place of the turbulent and unpleasant emotions that continued to plague him. He felt
confused and unsure of himself—but as he followed Jess out into the strange night, he swore that he wouldn’t give in to his feelings, and that whatever it took, he wouldn’t screw up again.
Johnathon Callistori, aka John C., made it to control without going outside again, using one of the maintenance stairwells and coming in from the corridor that led to the central lift. The door had been blocked, but he was let in once he’d screamed his name a few times, babbling his story out to the scared young archaeologist who opened the door. He’d had to jump over Cabot’s body, dragging Di along with him, and before they made it to the tunnel she had been grabbed away, hot blood from her cut throat splashing against the backs of his legs as he crawled into the dark.
Control was packed, people crying and semihyster-ical and pale with shock. Windy and then two others had been murdered just outside, the sight of their bloody bodies feeding their collective terror. Cabot was dead, Vincent wasn’t there, and there were a few more screaming, pounding knocks at the inner door, frightened researchers tumbling in with stories of alien howls and invisible beings, of friends and coworkers slain. In all, it took a few moments for any kind of order to be established. One of the pilots, Lee Goldmann, finally called for a head count. There were thirteen Bunda people missing, eight confirmed dead, and no one had any idea what had attacked them.
Goldmann and the other Bunda pilot, Les Drucker, called for an immediate evac. No one disagreed, except for Chris Aquino, who didn’t want to leave without his missing lover, and a woman named Irwin, the Sun Jumper pilot who was waiting for her boss to show up. John C. thought they were nuts, but then, he wasn’t all that sure of his own sanity anymore; the feel of Di’s blood cooling against his calves was a nightmare like no other, turning part of his mind into a vague and shadowy place that he did his best to stay out of.
Goldmann took charge, sending two of the more together biotechs to the supply room for what weapons Bunda had and getting Evans to set up the AD signal on a pulse to the next outpost. Once they were armed, they’d move out to the transports en masse and go. There was no real discussion about waiting for the missing few to show, the subject unanimously ignored; maybe they’d hear the ships warming up and make it out to the LZ in time to board. If they didn’t, they were probably dead already.
Together, they waited for Karen and Rich to get back with weapons, silent and afraid as they listened to the open intercom, listened for screams. After Evans had sent out their auto-distress, he tried to get some of the others to join him in prayer, but he didn’t have many takers. John C., a lapsed Catholic, thought that if Evans had seen what he had, he’d realize that God had nothing to do with what had happened on Bunda; the Devil was more like it, the planet his now. If God had any interest at all in taking care of matters, there was going to be a war—and all John C. wanted was to get the hell out of Their way.
19
Noguchi walked purposefully through the ship, the three yautja she passed ignoring her completely. If they saw the burner strapped to her back, they didn’t think it important. She’d been dishonored, after all; what did they care if she chose to wander around in full armor, armed or not? That was her assumption, anyway, and all that mattered was that no one try to stop her as she made her way to operations.
The Shell’s control room wasn’t overly large, one long console running the length of the room with two bolted chairs, a wide front viewscreen, and the main terminal for the ship’s computer. Everything in Clan culture was based around the Hunt, their technology advanced enough to make things like piloting extremely simple; Hunters didn’t waste time or energy in areas where there was no honor to be gained.
She stood just outside control in the large, empty shuttle dock where Topknot’s transport usually sat, preparing herself for her first action. The two yautja in operations were older Hunters, past their prime, as
most shipworkers seemed to be. The attitude of yautja toward their elders was respectful, a kind of unspoken understanding existing that the “retired” could Hunt, but had simply decided not to; in this way, old Hunters that weren’t lucky enough to have died in battle were still worthy of regard.
They don’t Hunt anymore, but that doesn’t mean they’re any less dangerous. If anything, the fact that they’d survived to become old in such a violent culture spoke very highly of their skills. They wouldn’t be expecting to be attacked on a ship, but she’d still have to be fast and efficient, not a movement wasted.