23
Noguchi ran through the dark scrub as though she were dancing, dodging branches and leaping over fallen trees with the grace and stamina of an expert gymnast—and she did it almost silently, making Lara wonder if the woman were a synthetic. She and Jess could barely keep up, and between them, they made enough noise to alert the dead.
What did she hear, where are we going, how the hell are we going to hold our own against a race of bug hunters?
The questions whipped through her mind, unanswerable, everything happening too fast. There was a growing ache in her right knee that got a little worse with each running step, making her wonder just how bad she’d screwed it up when the platform had gone down—and though they were veering away from the burning rubble of the station, smoke-thick, ambient light still layered through the trees, enough for her to see that Jess wasn’t doing so great, either. She clutched the heavy weapon against her chest and struggled on, darting looks back at Jess to make sure he was still with them.
Just as Lara thought she might have to fall back, Noguchi slowed, holding up one gloved hand. The smaller woman raised her burner, cocking her head as if listening for something. Lara couldn’t hear anything over the rapid thumps of her own heart, and Jess was trying not to gasp without much success.
This is crazy and we left Ellis behind, we have to—
Lara froze, hearing the hiss, the sweat on her skin turning cold. She raised her own weapon, darting a look back to see that Jess had also heard. The rising, breathing hiss of a drone or drones, close, nearly impossible to pinpoint—
—and Noguchi fired, the burner making a brrrp sound, a strobe of brilliant blue-white exploding through the hanging branches and vines, BOOM! Plant matter flew, and Lara heard the shriek of a second bug even as the first was finally visible, making itself seen in bloody death. Noguchi’s shot had blown through the drone’s midsection, cutting it in two, both pieces crashing through the shadowed green on a spray of acid.
Before Lara or Jess could find the second screamer, Noguchi fired again, just to the right of the first. Again, they saw the drone as it died, the bug’s scream shattering out the back of its black skull. Leaves smoked and sizzled, a fresh smell of burning in the already soured air.
Didn’t even see them—
Lara heard another alien trumpet, and another, ahead of them and at two o’clock. The bugs weren’t close enough to attack, not yet, but the jungle was suddenly alive with crashing movement, with the approach of many.
“Nest,” Jess spat, and Lara knew it was true, knew that there wouldn’t be such a deliberate attack unless they were near a breeding area.
Noguchi knew it, too. “Turn around,” she said, her voice hollow from beneath her alien mask. She swept the trees with her burner, backing away from the hiss-
ing, the popping snaps of branches, from the distant shrieks growing by the second.
Lara turned, stepping in front of Jess and moving quickly back the way they’d come. She could hear Jess’s ragged breathing behind her as she jumped a huddle of stocky plants, and from farther back, the ripping sound of Noguchi’s burner as it fired again.
Back to that ship, maybe the damage isn’t so bad and we can—
To Lara’s left, a bug lunged out from behind a stand of trees, grinning and hissing, its clawed hands snatching. Lara stumbled as she brought the awkward rifle around, fumbling for the trigger—
—and brrrp-BOOM, a bolt of lightning tore through the air from behind her, from Jess’s weapon, melting through the alien’s spindly body, its left side disappearing in a liquid splash.
They didn’t have time to stop, to regroup; if they didn’t get out of the designated no-man’s-land, the drones would keep coming. Lara glanced back, saw that Jess was on his feet, and sprinted ahead. She had no doubt that Noguchi was still bringing up the rear, not with how fast she’d wasted those first two—
“Stop!” Noguchi hissed, and Lara stumbled to a halt, every muscle in her body telling her to run, her soldier’s mind obeying the voice of command—and a strange smell washed over her, like some rotting, oily fruit.
“Toward the station, go!” Noguchi said.
Lara turned right and saw Jess already a step ahead. Together they ran toward the glow of the fire, and it occurred to Lara that in a matter of minutes, they had accepted the unusual woman as their leader—and maybe as their only real chance to get off of Bunda alive.
The shuttle had landed on its side at an angle, the few things that had been aboard spilling out of the open hatch—including Keene’s body, his dark suit smeared
with the contents of a few food packets, a spongy chunk of soypro actually stuck to one of his glazed, bulging eyes. Only his upper half was outside, his chest crushed between the doorframe and the ground, gluts of drying blood coming from every visible orifice. Ellis barely noticed, interested only in Max’s condition as he crawled over the corpse’s legs, searching the shadows beneath the webbed cots that hung down from what was now the ceiling. He stood up in the stilling dark, everything that had happened in the past hours jumbling together, focusing his energy on the joining to come.
They need us now, they need what we can do.
There had been a terrible crash, an alien ship twice as big as the Nemesis plowing through the trees, almost hitting Lara and Jess. Ellis had just reached the shuttle, their crashed transport close enough to the fire that one side was smoking, when he’d seen the ship come down. He’d had to run back, to make sure they hadn’t been killed. A glimpse through the trees, the two of them standing in front of the ship, and the relief that had flowed through him had been incredible—not just because they were still alive, but because he still had a real reason to interface again with Max. As long as they were alive on this dangerous planet, they needed what he and Max had to offer.
It’s who I am now. I thought I was sick, I thought the numbers and nonfeelings were a sickness, but they weren’t. They aren’t.
“They’re us,” Ellis breathed, talking to the thickening of shadow in the back of the transport. His glasses had been lost, he couldn’t remember when, but it was okay. Max would see for them both.
He felt his way through the dark, falling to his knees and crawling when he tripped over something, reaching out to touch Max. The heated air made the metal warm, as though Max had been waiting, warming its empty guts for Ellis to slip inside.
Max was on its left side, its rifle arm pinned be-
neath its giant torso. Ellis crawled over the metal body, feeling for the circuit hatch set at the lower back. He found it and found the controls that would ready Max, his hands knowing what to do even without the years of training in hydraulic chem or the Company course; this was Max, as much a part of him now as he was of it. He stroked the chords that would sing it to life, grinning with excitement as he turned on the vocal transmit option, no headsets here, and they’ll hear my voice, mine, speaking for us as we lead them to safety . . .
Next, the release on its back panel. With a silent plea, Ellis twisted the lock for the cavity.
Yes! It hadn’t been jammed. Metal slid against metal, the hatch rising, stopping short of its full length when it hit the back wall. There was just enough room for him to slip inside.
Ellis wormed his way into the suit, wishing absently that he’d thought to look over Max’s condition when they’d still been drifting in the void. Before they’d joined on the station, he’d only had a moment to make adjustments—resetting the interface arm at the back of the head, switching off the IV pumps and monitors, doing all he could so that they could work together without a comp-synth implant. Toward the end of their time together, when his body had started to—
—die—
—rebel against Max, he’d had to randomly shut down some of the systems. It had been a blind and desperate act, but it had worked, giving him enough control over Max for them to make it off the station. He knew now, though, that it had been such a struggle, his body failing as it had because he’d worked to dominate the machine.
“Not again,” he said, working his legs into Max’s, his feet finding the stirrups set just above the suit’s knees. He reached back and closed the hatch, the interior’s temp jumping several degrees, from hot to suffo-