Dark Space: The Invisible War (23 page)

The man groaned again and his eyelids fluttered. Destra began nodding, as if she’d acquiesced. “All right, shoot him then and we can go.”

Lessie’s brow furrowed and she took half a step back from the wounded officer.

“What’s wrong? If we leave him here, he’ll die, either from his wounds, or from Sythians finding and eating him, so the kind thing to do would be to put him out of his misery.”

“I . . .” Lessie shook her head. “You do it. It’s your idea.”

Destra snorted. “No, it’s yours. You just don’t have the guts to call it what it is. Leaving him here is murder, and I’m not going to have his death on my conscience.” With that, she turned back to dressing the man’s wounds.

“Fine!” Lessie hissed, and turned away with a scrunch of gravel grinding underfoot.

Destra finished binding the man’s wounds and administered a sedative to keep him quiet. That done, she moved him onto a hover gurney she’d found for transporting cargo in the back of the transport. She had to lift his feet onto the gurney first and then his torso, since Lessie was sitting in the transport with her arms crossed, refusing to help. As soon as she was done, she triggered the gurney’s controls, causing it to rise off the ground, and then she pushed it into the back of the transport.

All the way back from Covena they heard the man moaning deliriously, and every time he did Lessie shot her a scathing look. Destra ignored her.

“Don’t you think Digger will mind us bringing him back?” Lessie asked.

“It doesn’t matter. We didn’t have a choice.”

“There’s no room for him.”

“We’ll find a space, even if he has to sleep on the gurney or the couch.”

“Digger might kick us out. . . .”

“Hoi! We’re done talking about this. You let me deal with Digger.”

“Fine.” Lessie crossed her arms once more. “But if he asks it was your idea.”

Destra turned to glare at the blond-haired woman sitting beside her. What was it about disaster which brought out the worst in people? This was hardly a time for humanity to be sabotaging the collective survival of the species with a
it’s either me or you, survival of the fittest
attitude.

When they drew near Digger’s hideout, Destra drove down off the road to the forest and parked by the trees again, but this time she found holo sheets in the back of the hover and spread them out over the transport to camouflage it. The sheets made the hover completely invisible to the naked eye, so Destra took a moment to turn in a slow circle to get her bearings and make sure she could find her way back to the spot. Satisfied that she knew where she was, Destra turned to Lessie, who was standing by the hover gurney, covering the trees with the ripper rifle as her eyes darted among the shadows between the trees. Below the gurney Lessie had managed to tie up all of the food they’d scavenged with some netting they’d found in the back of the hover along with the holo sheets.

“Are you finally done?” Lessie asked. “I feel like someone’s watching us . . .” she said, glancing around nervously.

“Let’s go,” Destra said. She didn’t bother to offer any trite reassurances. They both knew that a whole
army
of Sythians could be standing right behind them, and the only sign of them would be the wind they’d feel from the aliens breathing down their necks.

Destra moved to take charge of the gurney and then they started into the forest. Lessie went ahead while Destra brought up the rear, pushing the gurney along. They moved as quietly as they could, but every crunch of needles and leaves underfoot sounded like an earthquake to their ears. Destra’s foot caught on a root and she stumbled, reaching for the gurney for support. She accidentally grabbed the man’s injured side, and he screamed.

Lessie shot Destra a horrified look, and they both abruptly stopped to listen to the fading echoes of that scream—and to the response it might have provoked.

When no other sounds came from the forest, Destra allowed herself a sigh of relief. The man on the gurney moaned once more, but more softly now as he fell back to sleep.

“Frek, Destra!” Lessie whispered as she gave a shuddering sigh of her own. “You’re going to get us killed like that! Let’s try to keep it down.”

And that was when they heard a distant roar of engines starting up. Lessie’s eyes met Destra’s once more, but this time there was no mistaking the fear in them. “Run!” she screamed, and both of them snapped into action. Lessie began running through the forest at top speed, leaping over fallen logs and ducking under low branches. She didn’t bother to cover the trees with her rifle anymore, and she didn’t look back to make sure that Destra was still with her.

Destra struggled to keep up while pushing the gurney along in front of her. They kept glancing at the sky as they went, and the sound of engines roaring grew closer and closer until Destra felt sure the enemy ship was right above them, but there was no sign of it.
Could it be cloaked?
she wondered.

They reached the growing-together of two oakal trees which marked Digger’s hideout, and Lessie hurried to trigger the camouflaged hatch in the ground. It opened with a groan of rusty gears grinding together. Peering into the hatch, Destra quickly realized it was too small for the hover gurney to fit.

“Help me get him in!” Destra said, struggling to lift the man off the gurney by herself.

Lessie turned to look with a kind of childish shock written on her face. Her features were slack with horror. She appeared to consider helping for a moment, but then she shook her head. “I’m sorry, Destra,” she said, and with that she jumped into the hole.

Destra gritted her teeth and scowled. She keyed the hover gurney to settle to the ground, and then she dragged the man off and rolled him over to the open hatch, ignoring his feeble moans and flailing protests. Just as she was about to push him inside, a whir of motors started up, and the hatch began to close. Destra couldn’t believe her eyes. She lunged over the injured man’s body and grabbed the hatch, trying to force it back open, but the motors connected to it were surprisingly strong, and even fighting them with all of her strength, she was barely slowing them down.

“Frek you, Lessie!” Destra roared into the rapidly closing hole. Destra jumped back as the hatch cover shut, almost taking her fingers with it. The corner of her shirt snagged in the hatch and tore, leaving a ragged piece of red cloth to mark the ground. Destra glared at it and cursed Lessie and Digger once more. She bent down and felt around for the hatch release, but it wouldn’t respond to her touch. Somehow, while Destra had been struggling to get the man off the gurney, Lessie had rushed to the control panel below, and then she’d closed and locked the hatch.

Fuming, Destra thought about alternative ways she could get inside, but the ground-level exit which they’d used to leave the stim lab earlier that morning was all the way on the other side of the escarpment, and even if she could get to it before the Sythians found her, it would just be locked, too. She could dig her way in over here, but that would take time, and without the grav field activated, she’d fall some twenty meters to the ground and break her neck. Even then, there was still the matter of getting through the concealed doors and into the lab itself, and she had no weapons to confront Digger and Lessie besides the pistol at her hip, and it would be no match for ripper rifles.

She was stuck. Destra couldn’t imagine what had prompted Lessie to lock her out, except maybe her selfish fear that bringing another mouth to feed would get them kicked out of Digger’s hideout. Whatever the woman’s motivation, Destra was on her own now. She stood listening to the roar of engines drawing near, her eyes on the sky. She couldn’t see anything, but whatever it was, it was
close.
Then the sound abruptly changed in pitch and volume.

It’s landing!

She didn’t have much time. Destra turned in a quick half circle under the cover of Digger’s tree, searching the sky for the source of the sound, but she didn’t see anything; Sythian ships were cloaked.
I guess this is it,
she thought, glancing down at the man lying at her feet on a bed of crunchy brown needles and red oakal leaves.
It’s just you and me—whoever you are. No weapons, nowhere to go, and no time to get there. Survival of the fittest at its best—

Or survival of the most ruthless,
she thought, eyeing the sealed hatchway and thinking about Lessie, safely ensconced in the stim lab by now. Would they watch her die on the cameras the way that they had with the unfortunate group of survivors they’d seen fleeing through the forest last night?

Destra had just one chance. She had to get back to the hover and hide under the camo sheets. Eyeing the man at her feet speculatively, she quickly thought about ways to bring him with her, but there was no way to do that without slowing herself down and attracting more attention than she wanted.

Destra frowned. She couldn’t leave him. That would make her as bad as Lessie. Casting about quickly, she spied a nearby pile of leaves at the bottom of a short hill leading away from Digger’s tree.
It’ll have to do,
she thought.

Rolling the man back onto the gurney and shushing him every time he moaned, Destra powered up the gurney once more and rushed down the hill to the leaves. She lowered the gurney into them and then worked quickly to cover it up. The pile was deeper than it looked, and Destra had no trouble shoveling enough leaves, dirt, and needles over both the man and his gurney so that his shallow breathing couldn’t be detected beneath the mountain of leaves. The sound of engines dwindled from a roar to a whistle and then to terrifying silence. Destra’s head snapped up, and she quickly scanned the trees, her heart pounding, her eyes wide. There was no time to get away.

Glancing down, Destra frowned at the pile of leaves.
Hope you don’t mind the company.

Less than a minute later she was completely buried and working hard to still the too-loud sound of her breathing and of her racing heart. She could see a fractured glimpse of the outside world through the leaves, and she hoped that didn’t mean she could be seen from the outside, too.

She listened intently but there were no sounds besides the ones she was making. Gradually her breathing and her heart rate slowed. Minutes passed, turning into what seemed like hours.

And then abruptly, she heard rustling leaves and her eyes flicked toward the sound. It was coming from Digger’s tree. As she watched, a pair of tall, broad-shouldered bipeds appeared out of nowhere. They were covered in shiny black armor and their helmets contained glowing red slits for their eyes.

Sythians.

Destra’s heart pounded. If they had lifeform scanners in those suits that were anywhere near as good as human ones, then her hiding place was already uncovered.

One of the Sythians looked around, while the other bent down to pick something up. He held out a ragged piece of red cloth to the other, who took it and studied it.

My shirt!
Destra thought.
Frek! I’ve given them away!

Both aliens stared down at the hidden hatch as though they could see straight through it to the chamber below. One of them gestured to the ground where the hatchway was, while the second went down on his haunches for a closer look.

The man beside Destra groaned, and she shushed him once more, but the two Sythians didn’t react. They were too focused on what they’d found.

Destra was torn between leaping out of her hiding place with her pistol blazing, and just leaving Digger and Lessie to the Sythians. She was more inclined to do the latter until she remembered—

Dean.

The little blond-haired boy hadn’t done anything to deserve that fate.
The Sythians will eat them,
she reminded herself, trying to spur her frozen limbs into action. But what about her responsibility to the man lying helpless beside her? And how would she be able to help Dean anyway? All she had was a plasma pistol that likely wouldn’t even breach the Sythians’ armor. She’d have a better chance with it set to stun, and who knew if what stunned a human would stun a Sythian?
At least Lessie and Digger have rifles. . . . and by now they’ve already spotted the Sythians on the cameras, so at least they’ll have some warning.