These Broken Stars (8 page)

By the time we reach the base of the rise, she’s panting despite her clear intention to look like she’s got it together. But we can’t afford to rest again if we want to get back to the pod before dark. We both scramble up the incline, and when I take her hands to haul her with me, she doesn’t bother to look scandalized, too exhausted to waste time on pretense.

It turns out to be a one-sided hill, the land sloping up one side, then falling away steeply down the other in a rocky cliff. The crest provides exactly the vantage point we need, and we stand side by side to take in the view.

I wish I’d come alone.

She gasps, breaking her panting for a noise that’s part sob, part wordless distress. Mouth open, she’s staring, and so am I, neither of us capable of processing what we’re seeing. It’s quite possible nobody’s ever seen something like this before.

I try her name. “Lilac. Lilac, don’t watch.” Low and gentle, trying to cajole that recruit in the field into lifting her foot, taking a step, getting out of there. “Look at me, don’t watch it happening, come on.” But she can’t drag her gaze away any more than I can, and we stare together, turned to stone.

Before us, pieces of debris are streaming down from the sky in long, slow arcs, burning as they fall like a meteor shower or incoming missiles. They’re only a sideshow, though.

The
Icarus
is falling. She’s like a great beast up in the sky, and I imagine her groaning as she wallows and turns, some part of her still fighting, engines still firing in an attempt to escape gravity. For a few moments she seems to hang there, eclipsing one of the planet’s moons, pale in the afternoon sky. But what comes next is inevitable, and I find myself reaching out to put an arm around the girl beside me as the ship dies, pieces still peeling away as she makes her final descent.

She comes in on an angle, heading for a mountain range beyond the plains. Debris the size of skyscrapers goes flying, and one side begins to shear away as the friction becomes too much for her. Smaller shards 
of fire stream off of her as she goes, arcing across the sky like shooting 
stars. With a jolt of horror, I realize that they’re escape pods. Pods that didn’t make it off the ship before she went down—pods that didn’t have Miss LaRoux to jar them free of their docking clamps.

The
Icarus
hits the mountains like a stone skipping across water, before vanishing behind them. She doesn’t rise again.

Suddenly everything is still and silent. Clouds of steam and black smoke rise from behind the distant mountains, and together we stare 
down at this unthinkable thing.

“You’d been in survival situations before.”

“That’s true.”

“But never like this?”

“I never had a debutante in tow, if that’s what you mean.”

“I meant that you didn’t know where you were at that stage.”

“I wasn’t focused on that.”

“What were you focused on, Major?”

“Working out where the rescue party would land, and getting 
there.”

“And that was all?”

“What else was there?”

“That’s what we’d like you to tell us.”

He’s leading me away from the bluff, his hand wrapped around my wrist. His fingers are five individual points of contact, rough and hot, too tight. I think my eyes are closed. Whether they are or not, the only thing I see is the fall of the
Icarus
, a river of fire in the sky, great storm clouds of smoke and steam. It’s burned into my retinas, blinding me to anything else. He could pull me off the cliff and I wouldn’t notice until we hit the ground.

My ankles wrench and twist as I stumble along in his wake, the heels 
of my shoes rolling on the uneven ground or else sinking into the earth and tripping me. Why don’t ladies dress for such occasions? Surely the occasional hiking boot with evening wear would make a statement.

A bubble of laughter tears out of my throat, and he pauses only long enough to glance over his shoulder at me before shifting his grip on my arm.

“Only a little further, Miss LaRoux. You’re doing well.”

I’m not doing much at all. I might as well be a rag doll. Comes complete with matching shoes. Spine sold separately.

I’ve got no clue where we are or how far behind we’ve left the pod, but as a branch hits me in the face, I’m forced to close my eyes again. The ship is still there, a painting of muddled afterimages. The sunlight’s lancing almost horizontally through the trees, alternating flashes of glare and shadow that shine red through my eyelids. How long were we on that bluff?

My father’s ship is in ruins. I watched her fall from the sky. How many souls fell with her? How many couldn’t launch their pods?

My legs stop working. He nearly jerks my arm out of its socket in his attempt to keep me on my feet, and some detached part of my mind notes how much that’s going to hurt later. Another tug, and I can’t quite help the moan that squeezes past my lips. After a second he seems to accept that he cannot drag me through the forest without some assistance from me.

He drops my arm and I collapse in a heap, barely catching myself on my forearms before my face hits the half-rotted gunk coating the forest floor. It smells like coffee and leather and garbage—nothing like the sweet, homogenous earth in the holo-gardens on Corinth. So much for trying to get through this with some dignity. So much for making him think I haven’t fallen apart.

I’m given a moment to pant, the force of my breath blowing bits of leaf and dirt away. When he crouches beside me, I can’t help but flinch back.

“Lilac.” The gentleness in his voice is more arresting than any barked order could be. I lift my head to find his brown eyes not far from mine. It’s like I can see the
Icarus
’s fall etched on his face, the way I know it is on mine.

“Come on. It’s going to be dark soon and I want us back safe in the pod before that happens. You’re doing so well, and it’s only a little further.”

I wish he’d kept being an ass. Dislike is so much easier to handle than sympathy. “I can’t,” I find myself gasping, something tight and cold inside me cracking open. “I can’t, Major. I won’t do any of this. I don’t belong here!”

He lifts his eyebrows, the expression taking away some of the grim-ness about his face. There’s a curious warmth to his features when he lets them relax. This, more than anything, jars me from my haze of grief and denial. Then he speaks, and ruins it.

“Just try and stay on your feet. Do you think you can manage that much, Your Highness?”

Much better.
“Don’t patronize me,” I snap.

“Only an idiot would patronize you, Miss LaRoux.” The warmth is 
gone again, and he stands up in one smooth motion.

He takes a few steps away, scanning the forest around us as though he recognizes something in it. He’s at home here. He can read this place like I read the tiny shifts in a crowd, the back-and-forth of couples and conversation, society executing its slow revolutions around me like the stars in the heavens. Known. Charted. Familiar.

The forest has nothing of this. To me it’s a haze of green and gold and gray, every tree like the next, nothing of sense to be gleaned from them. I’ve been in nature before, but then, all it took was the flick of a switch to change the holographic projector from perfectly sculpted and manicured garden terraces to a sunny, songbird-filled forest. It smelled of airy perfume, and all the trees were hung with flowers. The earth was rich and uniform and never stained my clothes, and the ground was soft enough to sleep on.

When I was little my father used to bring me to that forest for picnics. I’d pretend the forest with its cathedral canopy was my mansion and I was the hostess, serving him invisible cups of tea and sharing the inconsequential secrets of my life. He was always solemn, playing along without hesitation. As the light waned I’d pretend to fall asleep in his lap, because then he’d carry me home in his arms.

But this forest is thick and alien and full of shadows, and the ground has rocks in it, and when I try to use a nearby tree for support, its bark scratches my hands. This can’t be real—this is a nightmare.

And yet the Major nods to himself, like he’s read the next step from some instruction manual I can’t see. A surge of jealousy runs through me so violently that my arms quiver where they’re holding me up.

“I don’t know how much battery power the pod has,” he says, “so we’ll use as little as possible. I’ll get you a bed set up in there and we’ll keep the lights off, and tomorrow I’ll figure out if there’s any chance at all we’re sending a signal for rescue ships to read.”

He’s still talking, taking so little notice of me that he might as well be talking to himself. “I think for tonight we’ll concentrate on taking stock, having something to eat, getting some rest. I promise you the pod is only a short distance away. Can you stand?”

I push myself onto my knees. Now that we’ve stopped, my ankles have stiffened, and I’m forced to bite down on my lip to keep from letting out a sob. I’ve sprained an ankle or two on the dance floor while 
smiling as though nothing was wrong, but it was nothing like this. Then, all I had to do was summon a medic and the discomfort melted away.

I swat his hand away when he extends it.

“Of course I can stand.” Pain makes my words come out clipped, angry. His expression locks down tight, and he turns to lead the way back.

He’s true to his word, and in only a few minutes the pod comes into view through the trees. From this direction I can’t see the impact of our crash: the flattened trees and the deep groove in the earth carved by the pod as it rolled and skidded to where it rests. I see only trees, hear only incomprehensible rustling and shuffling. Even the stench of scorched plastene and corroded metal is fading, swallowed by the smell of green and wet and earth.

I drag forth enough energy to look up. Not a single rescue ship in sight—not even a shuttle or a plane from a colony. The sky is empty but for a pale sliver of moon overhead, and a second moon just clearing the trees. Shading my eyes with my hand, I look for the beacon light that should indicate that we’re broadcasting our signal to the rescue ships. There’s only the broad expanse of pitted, twisted metal. So much of the pod is wrecked—how did we survive?

How could anyone else?
But I push that thought down, lock it away. This will all be over in a matter of hours—a ship as famous and as respected as the
Icarus
can’t go down without setting off a thousand alarms all across the galaxy.

The Major has continued on into the pod without a word, but he is only a few steps away, and I cannot let myself grieve yet.

I cannot think of Anna, and her face as she was swept on down the corridor by the panicked crowd, stripped suddenly of its coy confidence. Maybe she got into a pod. Maybe there was a mechanic who got hers free in time.

I cannot think about the fact that we have no signal light, no beacon, nothing to tell our rescuers where to look for us. My father will come for me, no matter what. He’ll move heaven and earth and space itself to find me. Then I’ll never have to see this soldier again, never have to feel 
so incapable.

When I step over the lip of the doorway into the pod, the Major is going through his pack again, doing one of his supply checks. Like he thinks he can somehow make rescue come more quickly by taking inventory.

How can he just stand there, hunting through that stupid bag? I want to shake him, scream at him that our rescue ship isn’t in that bag, that nothing’s going to have magically appeared inside it to put the
Icarus
back into the sky where she belongs.

“Well?” I manage to sound civil. “You always know what the next 
step is—what now?”

He doesn’t lift his head until he’s finished his check, infuriating in and of itself—but when he does glance over at me, he only gives a slow blink. “Right now we sleep. Then tomorrow, if we’re not broadcasting, we’ll head out and find a better place to be seen. Maybe the wreck itself, if we don’t come across a colony between here and there.”

The wreck? The man’s insane. It’s days away at least. “Head
out
? Speak for yourself. I’m not going anywhere. They’ll see our crash site. If we leave, my father won’t know where to look for us.” And he
will
come for me.

His look is dubious, almost insolent. “You may be content to wait for your white knight, my lady, but I’m not going to sit around while our supplies run out.”

My lady?
Does he know how crazy his faux courtesy makes me? Surely no one could be so aggravating by accident or coincidence. I cling to that anger, trying not to let it fade as I look at him. It’s safe, this fury. I can’t afford to feel anything else.

The anger is a shield, and if I relinquish it, I’ll shatter.

A tiny piece of me wonders if he knows that. On the ship he was out of his element, awkward and almost tentative. Here, he’s certain. Everything he does has a purpose. Maybe some part of him is deliberately goading me, keeping me strong.

Or maybe he’s just an ass.

I stew in silence as he goes through that pack of his again, and then 
the lockers. He piles a coarse reflective space blanket with a softer one he finds in a locker near the roof, then looks across at me expectantly.

When I just gaze back at him, confused, his jaw tightens.

“Abhorrent though it may seem to you, we
are
going to have to spend the night together. Brace yourself.”

With a jolt, I realize it’s not supposed to be a random pile of fabric, but a bed. Just the one bed. The words fly from my lips before I can stop them. “Absolutely
not
.” My voice has the same cold steel my father’s does—at least I can put what I’ve learned from him to good use. “If you will leave me some water, you can take the rest of the supplies and sleep out there, in the forest you enjoy so much.”

I’m watching him carefully, so I see his hands curling slowly into fists. An odd flare of pleasure runs through me. If he’s infuriating me on purpose, then at least I can give as good as I get. “Maybe while you’re at it you can stand on top of the pod and flag down the rescue teams when they come in the night.”