recognize Straker’s voice,
which is probably what keeps me from jumping when I see her green
eyes glowing in the dark.
Rashid is already up, jerking his boots on. My father
is a little slower. And I… I can’t seem to shake off sleep. I feel
numb, drugged, sloppy. I figure I may be hypoxic from sleeping in a
mask, if it slipped loose.
“Leave the shelters,” Straker insists quietly but
urgently. “Get cover in the rocks. We need to back out of here.
Fast!”
I get my boots on, seal my coat, grab my cloaks and
my gear and my rifle. I fumble like a child.
“What’s happening?” my father asks.
“I couldn’t sleep, so I went back in the ship,”
Straker explains quickly. “The beacon—it didn’t come from the
ship’s transmitters. The ship doesn’t have any—they’ve been pulled.
Someone had wired link gear through the ship’s array. It was rigged
to the cockpit hatch. Opening it is what shut it off.”
“Alarm,” Rashid understands.
“Subtle,” Straker excuses, probably feeling the most
stupid of all of us. “It didn’t send an alarm, it just stopped
sending.”
“We just assumed the power failed,” my father
remembers his own guess, sounding like he feels foolish for it.
“Whoever’s listening has had eight hours to respond,”
she calculates unhappily.
We’re up and moving. Out of the shelter in the dark,
heat signatures masked under our cloaks, keeping low until we find
rocks big enough to hide behind (though we can’t be sure which
direction attack is coming from). I can barely see, but I think
what movement I can see is the Katar, fanning out into the green. I
have no idea where the Ghaddar or Murphy are.
We hunker down in the cold. The rocks are slick with
a glazing of ice.
Nothing happens.
While we sit in the silence, I look up. I can see
more stars in the sky through the green now than I could when we
went to bed. The leaves of many of the species do close up at night
to resist freezing. And that means whatever visual cover the forest
provides has gotten more transparent. But an enemy would still need
night vision to…
I hear the distinctive whistle of a bullet, followed
by an impact on metal, followed by a clattering thud, somewhere to
my right. Someone got hit, probably a Katar. The muffled twang of a
bow answers back, then another.
More bullets come our way. I can see muzzle flashes
in the dark, giving me a sense of their positions. Straker steps
out of cover, stands up in plain view, her Blade in front of her. I
expect she can easily see whoever’s shooting at us with her Modded
eyes. And she can do another trick. First one bullet, then another,
bursts and flares against her Blade. I’ve seen this before: If
something’s coming her way, her Blade will draw it in, consume its
energy and materials. That means behind her is a pretty safe place
to be.
“Rashid, Ishmael, fire past me,” she orders. “Targets
in the rocks, sixty meters…”
We get our rifles up, switch our scopes to night
vision, scan the forest. It takes Straker eating four more rounds,
but then I catch a glimpse of Unmaker Heavy Armor in the rocks
about where Straker said they’d be. I find a reasonably exposed
helmet, send a shot, miss. Rashid scores one. I aim again, and see
something amazing: my target gets hit by an arrow that finds a gap
in his plate at the neck. It hit him at a fairly extreme angle, as
if lobbed over a high trajectory, catching him over top of his own
rocky cover.
But there are a lot more to keep firing back. I see
at least two dozen armor shells, and they’ve had plenty of time to
set up their positions.
Straker makes her eyes glow bright. She’s
intentionally making herself a tempting target. But the
Unmakers—Keepers—are smart enough to stop wasting ammo on whatever
she is and pick at targets that are more vulnerable.
I hear the distinctive bang and see the flash of
Murphy’s revolver, see him rolling away from his position as soon
as he fires to keep from being
which is probably what keeps me from jumping when I see her green
eyes glowing in the dark.
Rashid is already up, jerking his boots on. My father
is a little slower. And I… I can’t seem to shake off sleep. I feel
numb, drugged, sloppy. I figure I may be hypoxic from sleeping in a
mask, if it slipped loose.
“Leave the shelters,” Straker insists quietly but
urgently. “Get cover in the rocks. We need to back out of here.
Fast!”
I get my boots on, seal my coat, grab my cloaks and
my gear and my rifle. I fumble like a child.
“What’s happening?” my father asks.
“I couldn’t sleep, so I went back in the ship,”
Straker explains quickly. “The beacon—it didn’t come from the
ship’s transmitters. The ship doesn’t have any—they’ve been pulled.
Someone had wired link gear through the ship’s array. It was rigged
to the cockpit hatch. Opening it is what shut it off.”
“Alarm,” Rashid understands.
“Subtle,” Straker excuses, probably feeling the most
stupid of all of us. “It didn’t send an alarm, it just stopped
sending.”
“We just assumed the power failed,” my father
remembers his own guess, sounding like he feels foolish for it.
“Whoever’s listening has had eight hours to respond,”
she calculates unhappily.
We’re up and moving. Out of the shelter in the dark,
heat signatures masked under our cloaks, keeping low until we find
rocks big enough to hide behind (though we can’t be sure which
direction attack is coming from). I can barely see, but I think
what movement I can see is the Katar, fanning out into the green. I
have no idea where the Ghaddar or Murphy are.
We hunker down in the cold. The rocks are slick with
a glazing of ice.
Nothing happens.
While we sit in the silence, I look up. I can see
more stars in the sky through the green now than I could when we
went to bed. The leaves of many of the species do close up at night
to resist freezing. And that means whatever visual cover the forest
provides has gotten more transparent. But an enemy would still need
night vision to…
I hear the distinctive whistle of a bullet, followed
by an impact on metal, followed by a clattering thud, somewhere to
my right. Someone got hit, probably a Katar. The muffled twang of a
bow answers back, then another.
More bullets come our way. I can see muzzle flashes
in the dark, giving me a sense of their positions. Straker steps
out of cover, stands up in plain view, her Blade in front of her. I
expect she can easily see whoever’s shooting at us with her Modded
eyes. And she can do another trick. First one bullet, then another,
bursts and flares against her Blade. I’ve seen this before: If
something’s coming her way, her Blade will draw it in, consume its
energy and materials. That means behind her is a pretty safe place
to be.
“Rashid, Ishmael, fire past me,” she orders. “Targets
in the rocks, sixty meters…”
We get our rifles up, switch our scopes to night
vision, scan the forest. It takes Straker eating four more rounds,
but then I catch a glimpse of Unmaker Heavy Armor in the rocks
about where Straker said they’d be. I find a reasonably exposed
helmet, send a shot, miss. Rashid scores one. I aim again, and see
something amazing: my target gets hit by an arrow that finds a gap
in his plate at the neck. It hit him at a fairly extreme angle, as
if lobbed over a high trajectory, catching him over top of his own
rocky cover.
But there are a lot more to keep firing back. I see
at least two dozen armor shells, and they’ve had plenty of time to
set up their positions.
Straker makes her eyes glow bright. She’s
intentionally making herself a tempting target. But the
Unmakers—Keepers—are smart enough to stop wasting ammo on whatever
she is and pick at targets that are more vulnerable.
I hear the distinctive bang and see the flash of
Murphy’s revolver, see him rolling away from his position as soon
as he fires to keep from being
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