These Broken Stars Part 4

"All right," I say, in the same gentle voice that worked on me the first time I froze, dropping to one knee in front of her and helping her with her straps. "All right, hang on a moment, breathe in through your nose." She whimpers and scrambles free of the straps, dropping to her knees on the metal grid floor. That'll leave a mark later.

I flip up the seat of the spare chair, and sure enough there's a storage locker underneath it. I lift out the toolbox and set it aside. She understands my intention and leans past me to grip the edges of it, back arching as she retches. I leave her to it, getting to work hauling open the hatches of the lockers and storage compartments built in all over this thing. There's a water tank, the silver wrappers of ration packs, a first-aid kit marked with a red cross, the toolbox. I find a slightly grubby rag stashed inside one, and hold it out to her as she lifts her head. She stares at it dubiously-still blessedly silent-but finally takes it gingerly, using the cleanest corner to wipe her mouth.

Crash-landed on an unknown planet, a black eye on the way, and the contents of her stomach now in the underseat storage locker, and she still feels the need to act like she's above it all.

She coughs, trying to clear her throat. "How long do you think it will be before the shuttles will find us?"

I realize that she thinks the Icarus is still okay-that they're doing repairs as we speak. That her surface-going craft will come scoop us up at any moment, that this is all some fleeting nightmare. My annoyance fades a little as I think about telling her what I saw. The Icarus dipping, wallowing in the atmosphere of this planet, fighting a losing battle against gravity.

No, telling her will just send her into hysterics, like it would any of those people I met in the first-cla.s.s salon. Best to keep some things close to my chest.

"First things first," I say instead, hunting for something I can use to pour her a cup of water. This works with the recruits too-a firm, businesslike tone, cheerful but not quite friendly, pus.h.i.+ng them toward tasks they can focus on. "Let's learn what we can about where *here' is."

As I speak, I'm watching the heat s.h.i.+elds retract on the windows, and something releases inside my chest as I look outside. Trees. "We're in luck. This place looks like it's terraformed. There must be sensors for checking the air quality outside."

"There are," she agrees. "But the electrical surge fried them. We don't need them, though. It's safe."

"Glad you're so sure, Miss LaRoux," I retort before I can stop myself. "I think I'd rather an instrument told me so. Not that I don't trust your extensive training."

Her eyes narrow, and if looks could kill, then toxic atmospheres would be the least of my problems.

"We're already breathing the air," she replies tightly, lifting one hand to gesture toward the lockers by her feet.

I crouch to get a look at where she's pointing, and for an instant I stop breathing, lungs seizing. You can't see it unless you're down low, but the pod's been ripped like a ma.s.sive can opener ran along one side of it. I remind myself that n.o.body's started choking and force myself to inhale.

"Well, look at that. Must have happened on landing." I listen to my own voice. Sounds calm. Good. "So the terraforming is in advanced stages for sure. And that means-"

"Colonies," she whispers, closing her eyes as she completes my sentence.

I don't blame her. There's a crack on the tip of my tongue about how soon she'll be able to find company she prefers to mine, but the truth is I'm just as relieved. The companies that own this place will have colonies all over the planet's surface. Which means somewhere on this planet, maybe even nearby, folks are wondering what the h.e.l.l is going on up there. They'll probably show up ready to fight, expecting hijackers or raiders, but I don't think we'll have a hard time convincing them we're crash survivors. I could live without being in my fatigues, though. Most of the settlers on the remote colonies aren't too fond of my kind.

"Keep sitting," I say, rising to my feet and filling the canteen from my pack at the water tank. "I'm going to stick my head outside and see if the communications array is okay."

She raises an eyebrow at me, her mouth curving to a tiny smile that somehow manages to be superior, despite the hair everywhere, and the blood, and the black eye. I feel myself bristle as that smile echoes every condescending moment I've ever experienced at the hands of her people.

"Major," she says, speaking slowly, as if to a child, "all we have to do is stay put. Even if the communications array is gone, the colonists will have seen the crash. My father's teams are probably already on their way."

I wish I could afford to be so sure someone was going to swoop down and save me, but I've never been able to count on that in the past. Then again, I'm not Roderick LaRoux's only child.

I leave her sitting on one of the seats, arranging her skirt artistically and clasping her hands in her lap, and head for the door. It takes the weight of my whole body behind my shoulder to ram it free of its warped frame. It gives with a screech that the uncharitable might suggest sounds just like Miss LaRoux, when displeased.

Outside, everything's quiet. The chilly air is rich-not thin and spare like it is on some of the younger colonized planets. In fact, I don't think I've ever breathed anything so pure, not even at home. I shove that thought away. I can't let myself be distracted by thinking of home, of my parents. I'm stranded with the richest girl in the galaxy, and I need to make sure that when her daddy shows up to find us, we're out in plain sight.

I can't hear birds, or any of the small scuffles that might suggest there's local wildlife on the move. Then again, our pod's cut a furrow through the surrounding woods that stretches nearly a klick, huge trees laid out flat and ground into the mud along the length of the scar. Perhaps the local fauna's just hiding up trees and down holes, waiting for the end of the world to continue.

The trees are tall and straight, their lower trunks mostly devoid of limbs, their foliage a dark green with a distinctive smell, crisp and clean. I've seen them before. I don't know their technical name, but we call them pole trees. They're the first trees the terraforming crews get in, once all the organic muck has provided a basic layer of soil. They grow quickly, and make good building material with those tall, straight trunks. It's later that the ornamental and the harvest trees are planted. So, perhaps this is my first hint at where we might be. Since I see pole trees and not much else, we're probably on a newer planet, despite the rich air.

But they're large enough that the ecosystem has clearly had a while to take. In fact, they're huge, bigger than any pole trees I've ever seen. They stretch up skyward at least half as tall again as usual, their spindly tops bending under the weight of the branches. How did they get so big? By this point, the terraformers should have introduced all manner of other species that would've edged the pole trees out of the ecosystem.

Any hopes I had for the communications array are answered with a glance. It's been ripped off, and if it wasn't fried by the surge or burned up when we entered the atmosphere, then it's probably lying somewhere back along our swath of destruction, reduced to its component parts. So my cranky heiress might be right, and her father might show up any minute, but more than likely we're going to look like one of ten thousand pieces of debris scattered across the planet. We need to find a bigger crash site, a more prominent place, so we'll be somewhere the rescue party will definitely land.

I study the trees around me that are still standing. Like regular pole trees, they get narrow toward the top, so there's no way I'm climbing high enough to see any distance. She's lighter and might manage, but I'm grinning just thinking about it. Come on, Miss LaRoux. Your evening gown will match the trees. The nature G.o.ddess look is all the rage in Corinth, trust me. I wonder if she's ever even seen real leaves.

That's when I realize, standing there in the middle of this disaster, aching all over from being jerked back and forth against my restraints, but grinning like an idiot-I kind of like this. After weeks trussed up on board the s.h.i.+p, chest covered in medals and days taken up by people who don't like their war too real, I feel like I'm home.

There's a hill some way off to what I arbitrarily call the west, because the sun's setting in that direction. The land rises, and with any luck it'll offer the view we need. It'll be a long walk, and as I climb back up into the ruined pod, perhaps it's my newfound good mood that has me feeling a little sorry for the girl inside. I might be back in my world, but she's out of hers. I know well enough how it feels.

"Our communications are gone," I tell her.

I half expected tears-instead she just nods as if she already knew. "They would've been useless anyway. Most of the circuits got shorted during that electrical surge."

I want to ask her how she knows, where she learned to do what she did, but instead the question that emerges is: "What was that? The surge?"

She hesitates, her eyes on the trees visible outside the viewport. "The Icarus came out of hypers.p.a.ce when it wasn't supposed to. Something happened, I don't know what. Didn't you learn about hypers.p.a.ce jumps in school?" There's disdain in her voice, but she doesn't stop long enough for me to reply. Just as well, because all I know about hypers.p.a.ce is that it gets you from A to B without taking two hundred years.

"The way s.h.i.+ps skip through dimensions, folding s.p.a.ce-there are huge quant.i.ties of energy involved." She glances at me, as though trying to figure out if I'm following. "Usually when a s.h.i.+p leaves hypers.p.a.ce there's a long series of steps that prevent that energy from backlas.h.i.+ng. Whatever's going on, the Icarus got pulled out of hypers.p.a.ce early."

I shouldn't be surprised that the daughter of Roderick LaRoux, engineer of the largest, finest hypers.p.a.ce fleet in the galaxy, knows any of this. But it's hard to reconcile her vapid laughter and scathing insults with someone who'd pay two seconds of her attention to physics lessons.

I certainly never knew there was this level of danger involved with traveling via hypers.p.a.ce. But then, I've never heard of this happening before. Ever.

I'm turning over her explanation in my mind. "Since we came out of hypers.p.a.ce early, we could be anywhere in the galaxy, then?" No communications. No clue where we are. This just keeps getting better and better.

"The Icarus got emergency power back," Miss LaRoux says coolly. "They would've gotten distress calls out."

a.s.suming there was anyone alive in the comms room after that surge. But I don't say it aloud. Let her think this will all be over sooner rather than later. I know she has to be struggling. "There's a rise to the west. I'm going to climb up before it gets dark, figure out where we should head. I can get some of the ration bars out for you, in case you get hungry while you wait."

"No need, Major," she says, climbing to her feet, then grimacing as one of her heels falls through the grating in the floor. "I'll be coming with you. If you think I'm giving you the opportunity to abandon me here, you're sorely mistaken."

And just like that, I'm not feeling sorry for her anymore.

Abandon her? If only my duty or my conscience would let me. The galaxy would be better off, if you ask me. Who'd even know we were in the same pod?

Except that I would know. And that would be enough.

"I'm not sure your shoes-" I try, before she cuts me off.

"My shoes will be fine, Major." She comes sweeping across the floor and miraculously keeps her heels from sliding through again, then descends the steps. Her head is up, shoulders back, movements ludicrously graceful-like she's descending a staircase to a ballroom dance floor. I leave her to examine her new kingdom, and climb up to open up my grab bag, rifling through the contents. This is the emergency gear we all carry, and I've never been more grateful for all the time I've spent lugging it places over the last two years.

Mine has all the usual-my cla.s.sified intel on encrypted memory storage, flashlight, water-purifying canteen, matches, and razor blade, plus a few personal items: a photograph of home and my notebook. On board the Icarus, it held my Gleidel as well, since it was uncouth to carry a visible sidearm.

I haul out my gun, curling one hand around the grip and quickly checking the charge to make sure the kinetic battery's working properly. At least I don't have to worry about it running down while we're here. I settle it back into its holster and strap it on to my belt, then scoop a couple of ration bars out of the overhead storage locker. After picking up the canteen from where Miss LaRoux dumped it on the floor, I head back out and wrestle the door closed behind me. No need to offer the local wildlife the opportunity to take revenge for our invasion by feasting on our rations.

The hike is one of the most G.o.dd.a.m.n awful things I've ever done.

It's not a difficult walk, though the underbrush is thick, and there are fallen trees to scramble over, rough bark grabbing at my clothes and sc.r.a.ping my skin. The temperature's not cold enough to keep the sweat from dripping down my spine, but the air carries a chilly bite that aches in my lungs. None of the plants are quite familiar, but none of them are completely unknown-just a little different, a twist on what I'm used to. There are dips and hollows waiting to wrench my ankles, and p.r.i.c.kly plants snag my s.h.i.+rt, leaving little barbs to stick my arm later.

None of these things is the problem.

The problem is Miss LaRoux, who's trying to keep up with me in heels. I wish she'd just stayed behind, because I could move a lot faster without her. But every time I turn to ask if she wants to head back, she gives me a frigid look, lips set, stubborn.

I offer her my hand to help her clamber over obstacles, though it's getting to the point where if she fell down a hole, I'm not sure I'd bother fis.h.i.+ng her out. At first she looks at my hand as though she might catch something from skin-to-skin contact. It's like she's determined to make it through this hike looking like it's no more difficult than a stroll through a meadow. But after a few near misses, she's gingerly resting her fingers on my palm every so often, doing the very least possible to accept my a.s.sistance. She's still looking white despite her squared jaw, and I stay close enough that I'll be able to get between her and the nearest hard surface if she decides to top it all off by fainting.

Eventually I give up. "Would you like a rest?" I'm trying not to be too obvious about checking the progress of the sun toward the hill. I don't want to be out here once the sun sets. It's hard enough dragging this brat through the woods without her breaking an ankle trying to walk in the dark.

She considers the question, then nods, reaching up to tuck her hair back where it belongs. "Where will I sit?"

Sit? Why, on this comfortable chaise longue I've carried here for you in my pocket, Your Highness, so glad you asked.

I clamp my mouth shut, struggling not to say it aloud. Miss LaRoux notices me biting back a response and her expression darkens. But I can see where the holes punched by her earrings are still oozing, and that her nose is swelling up from the blow she got while hot-wiring the escape pod, and that her lips are chapped and raw. It's a wonder she hasn't completely fallen to pieces-it's what I would've expected of someone like her.

So instead, I haul off my jacket and lay it out on a log for her. She twitches her skirts into position and then lowers herself onto it, accepting the canteen and taking a delicate sip. She averts her gaze as I take it back and lift it for a long swallow, before capping it once more. I walk the edge of the clearing, pausing every so often to listen. The rustle of small creatures in the undergrowth has returned, and I'm hoping against hope she doesn't hear-let alone see-anything making those noises.

The fact that I can hear the local wildlife adds another layer of information to the picture I'm slowly building-it wouldn't be here unless the planet was in the final stages of terraforming. It ought to be br.i.m.m.i.n.g with colonies, the skies full of shuttle craft and planes. So why are the only sounds the rustle of the undergrowth, the whispering of the wind through the leaves, and the sound of Miss LaRoux trying to catch her breath as quietly as she can?

I'm about to suggest she turn back and retrace our path, when she rises to her feet of her own accord, leaving the jacket for me to retrieve. I half expect her to stalk off back toward the escape pod without a word, but instead she actually gestures for me to precede her, in the direction we were traveling. Her jaw's squared as we set off, and as she takes my hand to climb over a log in those ridiculous shoes, I'm forced to concede that she's tougher than she looks.

It's a relief-the idea of keeping her safe weighs me down, my shoulders tense and my gut roiling. No matter how irritating she is, she's a long way from home. If she's going to get through this, it's all on me. Sometimes I feel like I spend my life trying to keep other people safe.

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 craggy 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 n.o.body'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 s.h.i.+p 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 skysc.r.a.pers 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 s.h.i.+p before she went down-pods that didn't have Miss LaRoux to jar them free of their docking clamps.

The Icarus. .h.i.ts the mountains like a stone skipping across water, before vanis.h.i.+ng 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."

SIX.

LILAC.

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 s.h.i.+fting his grip on my arm.

"Only a little farther, 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 s.h.i.+p is still there, a painting of muddled afterimages. The sunlight's lancing almost horizontally through the trees, alternating flashes of glare and shadow that s.h.i.+ne red through my eyelids. How long were we on that bluff?

My father's s.h.i.+p 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 a.s.sistance 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, h.o.m.ogenous 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 farther."

I wish he'd kept being an a.s.s. 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!"