These Broken Stars

THIRTEEN

TARVER

THE CAMPFIRE’S DOWN TO COALS when I wake. my eyes snap open, and as always, there’s that brief moment of disorientation as I soak in everything around me, wait to know where I am.

This time it doesn’t take long to remember. Our camp is near the end of the woods and the start of the plains. I built the fire up high before we slept, still thinking of the monster that nearly killed Lilac.

I roll over onto my back to find her blocking out the unfamiliar stars, standing above me like a ghost in the night. Something must have prompted her to come around to my side of the campfire—she’s still insisting on separation—and I’m reaching for my Gleidel as I blink up at her.

“Miss LaRoux?” I ask, quiet and careful. I don’t want to give her a fright and get a kick for my troubles. Assuming she’s real at all, looming up there like a specter. Even as a ghost, she’s something to see.

“Major, there’s somebody out there,” she whispers. “Can you hear? There’s a woman crying out there in the trees.”

A shiver of apprehension runs through me, and I tilt my head to one side, surprised the noise didn’t wake me. As far as I can tell, there’s nothing to break the silence. I shift and sit up, noticing I’ve still got my boots on. I think I remember deciding to sleep in them.

“There it is again, Major,” she insists, still soft.

“I can’t hear it,” I whisper, stretching my protesting muscles.

Her eyes widen as though she’s having trouble believing that’s true.

“What direction?”

She lifts a hand to point unhesitatingly toward where the trees give way to the plains, and I climb to my feet, reaching out to scoop up my grab bag and sling it over one shoulder. Oldest trick in the book—lure folks away from their fire, then swipe their stuff. I’ve done it myself more than once, stuck out on the border planets, pitched against the latest colonist rebellion. If they’re lurking out in the woods and not approaching us directly, I don’t trust them.

It’s my turn to lift my hand, and I raise a finger to my lips to signal she should be silent. She nods and follows as I ease away from the fire.

Once we’re a short distance from the flames, I pause in the shadows, looking back at her. Miss LaRoux is focused on the task at hand, not even seeming to register discomfort from her bare feet. I tilt my head at her. What about now? Hear anything?

She shakes her head, perplexed, neat brows drawn together. “She’s stopped,” she whispers. “She sounded like she might have been hurt, Major. She could be unconscious now.”

I open my mouth to reply—or she could be a trap—but I don’t get a word out. Miss LaRoux’s decided to take matters into her own hands.

“Hello,” she calls out, stepping away from the tree. “Are you—”

She gets no further than that. She only makes it to three words because I’m so appalled it takes me a few moments to mobilize. I lunge, clamping a hand over her mouth and hauling her in against me, holding her tighter than I should. She makes a muffled sound, then goes still, frightened and tense. We stand like statues, straining to listen. I keep hold of her, and despite the danger, there’s a part of my mind that insists on noticing her closeness, her body pulled against mine.

Out in the woods, there’s no sound. Not the snap of a twig, not the brush of one branch against another.

Very slowly, she presses a finger against my hand in a silent request to be released. I ease my grip an inch or two and she breathes out. I tuck my chin to whisper in her ear. “Still hearing her?”

She shakes her head a fraction, leaning up to whisper in mine, breath tickling my skin. “Nothing. What if she’s passed out? She could be hurt, she could be—”

I know what she really means. She could be one of her friends. She could be one of those girls who looked at me like some kind of specimen. If she exists at all. I can’t believe that in a place like this, with my every nerve on edge, I could have slept through what woke Lilac. It’s more likely she woke herself from a dream. Still, there’s only one way to be sure.

“Stay here,” I whisper, my cheek brushing against hers. She’s still flushed with sleep and her skin’s warm, so much smoother than mine. I’m sure she’s never encountered anything as uncultured as a guy in need of a shave before. But she only nods in silent understanding. She’s shaking violently, and I realize she’s left her blanket behind. I take off my jacket and wrap it around her shoulders, and she sinks down to sit in the shadow of the tree to wait.

It’s not the worst night of my life. I’m sure that prize will forever belong to a particular night on Avon. The whole platoon, me included, were so green we were practically sprouting leaves, and the night’s entertainment was a group of rebels with an oversupply of pulse lasers. Not a nice thing on watery ground. To top it off, I missed a date with one of the local girls, and it’s not like recruits get a lot of those lined up.

Still, on my list of worst nights, this comes close.

It’s almost impossible to move through the undergrowth without making a sound, with great thorny arms reaching up to tangle in the fabric of my pants, and dry twigs concealed under the leaf litter waiting to crack and snap like bones breaking in the dark. On any other planet I’d be confident, but here I know anything could hurt me, anything could be just a little different from the way it’s supposed to be. I’m forced to move forward a fraction at a time, with frustrating slowness. The hairs on the back of my neck are standing up, and I’m alive because I’m not in the habit of ignoring that.

I pass by Lilac three times in the first hour of searching. She’s obediently huddled at the base of the tree, wrapped in my jacket, her legs tucked up inside it. She insists she can still hear the voice. I stand in the shadow of a tree and look out across the moonlit plain, in the direction she swears the voice is moving. Except that there’s nothing there, and even the smallest critter would cast a shadow by the light of the two moons.

When I return to her a fourth time she shakes her head at me—the noise is gone. She seems so small inside my jacket, but I can tell she’s trying to look like she’s bearing up well. She doesn’t want me to stop searching.

I hold up a hand to warn her to remain in place, and she nods as I back away from her. Time to try a different approach. I walk fifty painstaking paces, then settle with my back against a tree, the Gleidel in my hand on full charge. “Is anybody out there? We’re friends.” My voice splits the silence. Nobody within a klick could have missed it. Lilac and I both stay frozen in place, listening as our heartbeats count away the seconds. Nothing.

So I resume my search. It’s another hour of wading through the undergrowth and past the smooth-trunked trees before I have to concede that if there’s somebody out here, I’m not finding her until daylight.

I make my way back to where Lilac, miraculously, is actually dozing against the tree. She was trembling for hours—the strain must have finally worn her down. She starts when I crouch down beside her, and blinks at me apologetically—or it could be apology, anyway, and I choose to believe it is. I don’t need to tell her we’re staying away from the campfire, which shines in the darkness like a beacon to anything with sinister intentions that might be out there.

I ease in to sit beside her, Gleidel in hand. She’s still half asleep, and she shifts her weight to settle her head against my shoulder. Looks like I’ve been promoted from the other side of the fire, for one night only. I wrap an arm around her, and with her leaning against me—small and warm and alive—I tip my head back to rest it against the tree trunk.

I bite the inside of my cheek to keep myself awake, fighting the urge to lean my head on hers, and settle in to wait for dawn.

“So then you made your way across the plains toward the mountains?”

“That’s correct.”

“What were your thoughts at that stage?”

“It was clear we were unlikely to find other survivors, but I remained alert. I didn’t expect them to be kindly disposed toward a LaRoux, if they were around.”

“Why was that?”

“Her father built the ship we’d been on. Terraforming companies are rarely popular with the colonists, and you know as well as I do that Central sends in the troops to back up the corporations’ rights. Colonists hate us, too.”

“Did you have any other thoughts?”

“I was beginning to wonder why we weren’t seeing rescue flyovers.”

“Did you mention that to Miss LaRoux?”

“No.”