Remnants of Trust. Elizabeth Bonesteel

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      Next to her Keita let out a chuckle. “Anything goes until they touch your baby, right, Songbird?”

      Elena aimed at one of the colonists, then dropped the nose of her rifle and shot toward the ground. A chunk of cement erupted a meter in front of him. He started, and as he turned, she risked speaking.

      “Get away from that ship or we will kill you!” It wasn’t much of a threat, but there was little else she could do.

      The man—boy, woman; she could not tell from this distance what the emaciated figure had been—shot toward her voice. The round exploded the corner of the building they were crouched behind. She swore again, then did what she had heard Keita do: she inhaled, exhaled, and fired.

      The figure’s chest burst with a brief flame, and he dropped.

      Somewhat startled by having hit her target, Elena aimed at another, but the rest turned and ran, leaving their fallen comrade behind. She kept her rifle pointed at the motionless form, aware of Keita next to her doing the same. After a moment, Jimmy and Savin came around them, running for the ship, and it was clear Elena’s target wasn’t getting up.

      She engaged her comm. “Open the door,” she told the shuttle.

      The door slid open. She saw Jimmy haul himself inside and begin to lower Niree to the floor. Savin took an instant to stop by the man Elena had shot—the man she had killed—and scoop up his weapon. Then he, too, jumped onto the ship, crouching in the open doorway to provide cover.

      She straightened, ready to run; and only then did she notice Keita looking off to one side. He was frowning, his whole body alert. Next to him, Ruby was staring at their ship, her expression dazed and faintly hopeful.

      “Keita.”

      “Ssh,” he said brusquely. “Can’t you hear it?”

      She listened. She heard rain, Ruby’s breathing, her own heartbeat. “Keita, we have to go now.”

      He turned to her. His anger was gone, replaced by something urgent and determined. “I need two minutes.”

      “We do not have two minutes!”

      “Then give me what we do have.”

      He stared at her steadily, unwavering. She wondered, if she tried to order him, if he would listen to her. She wondered what she would do if she had to leave without him.

      It was not her choice.

      “We take off in ninety-six seconds,” she told him.

      In a flash he was gone, dashing off into the darkening city. Without looking she clapped her hand around Ruby’s scrawny arm and pulled her forward, running full-tilt for the ship.

      She released the girl as soon as they leapt on, heading for the cockpit. “Time.”

      “Eighty-four seconds,” the ship told her calmly.

      “Lift off at eighty-three and a half.” She met Ruby’s eyes and pointed to the bench along the far wall, where Lieutenant Treharne had been sitting when they arrived … forty-six minutes ago.

       Christ.

      “Sit down, buckle up, and be still,” she commanded. Ruby did as she was told, and Elena thought her quick obedience had probably helped her survive this far. She stepped over to Jimmy, who had strapped Niree down onto another bench and was applying the ship’s med scanner. “Will she make it?” she asked.

      He looked at her, his expression unreadable. “We didn’t do her any favors, hauling her out like that.” At her look, he acquiesced. “Yes, I think so.”

      “Strap in for takeoff, then.”

      She heard the engines igniting and checked the time. Twenty-eight seconds—he wasn’t going to make it. They would come back for him, of course, for what it was worth, but not even Dmitri Keita was going to survive a day and a half in this place.

      Climbing into the pilot’s seat, she did a perfunctory preflight check. She keyed in the course home, compensating for the rapidly contracting weather pattern.

      “Flight in this weather is not recommended,” the ship told her. “Heavy turbulence is likely.”

      I know, I know … “Hang on,” she called to the others. “This won’t be comfortable.”

      At seven seconds, she heard feet outside the door and saw Savin tense. But then Keita was on board, drenched and covered in mud, something dark and wet clutched against his chest. “Go!” he shouted at her.

      She was ready for him. She jerked the controls, and the ship jolted off the ground with three seconds to spare.

      Normally Elena was a careful pilot. The infantry liked to fly with her. When there was turbulence, she would engage the artificial gravity just enough to temper the disruption of the atmosphere.

      Today was definitely not normal.

      She shot them straight up, as fast as they would go, allowing the planet’s gravity to press down on them. She stared into the atmosphere, peering at the darkening clouds, looking for the fastest path out of the weather.

      Through her concentration she heard a sound behind her, and she wondered if Keita’s bundle was a cat.

      Her viewscreen began to glow red, and her attention was dragged back to the task of flying. Great, she thought, the planet’s particulate atmosphere is ripping into our hull. Elena whispered a quiet apology to the ship, thinking herself ahead twenty minutes, picturing herself home on Exeter, standing in the shuttle bay while her chief berated her for the state of her vessel. She would be days repairing it.

      “Inversion in five,” she told them, and counted down the seconds.

      Moments later the artificial gravity engaged, abruptly reorienting them. She heard retching behind her; that was likely the girl. Elena usually took pride in gentle inversions, but today it had seemed slightly less important.

      The night opened up before her, dark and pure and scattered with stars, and the glow of heat faded as the vacuum of space cooled their exterior. She sat back and closed her eyes. They were alive.

      Most of them.

      That sound again. She frowned. It wasn’t Ruby—she could hear the girl alternating between retching and sobbing, Jimmy offering her quiet words of comfort. She turned around. Savin, still relaxed, was watching over Niree as Jimmy rubbed Ruby’s back and held a bucket before her.

      Keita sat in the corner, looking down at a bundle of muddy, sodden rags in his arms. She heard the sound again, and then a quiet response from him.

      Is he singing?

      She got to her feet and walked the length of the ship to stand over him. In his arms, wrapped in what looked like old shirts, was a baby. Elena knew little of such things, but she guessed it was no more than a few hours old. It was wide-awake, but it was not crying. Instead, it was studying Keita with enormous, somber purple eyes, that odd color some babies were born with. Every few СКАЧАТЬ