“What’s your name?” Elena asked her.
A spark of hope rose in those eyes, and Elena could follow her thinking: perhaps I’ll be rescued after all. “Ruby.”
“Ruby.” Elena nodded. “If you slow us down, or give even the slightest indication that you are conspiring against us, I will shoot you myself. Understood?”
Those innocent eyes widened, and Elena saw tears filling them again. But Ruby nodded, and Elena turned away from her. “Can you fire and carry her at the same time?” she asked Jimmy.
“How many arms do you think I have?”
Just then Savin returned, and marching next to him was Keita, rifle still in his hands, the nose pointed at the ground. He would not meet her eyes, but Savin looked at her and gave her a nod.
“Okay.” She faced the others. “Two groups. Savin, you stay with Jimmy and Niree.” Savin was a dead shot; she wanted him protecting their wounded. “Keita, you’re with me and Ruby. We’re heading back to the ship. We leapfrog each other, providing covering fire.” She looked at them, one after another. “We’re more than a kilometer off, and we’ve got less than sixteen minutes to get there, so nobody stops. For anything. Clear?”
Three nods, including the child. Elena stared at Keita.
“Clear?” she repeated.
His eyes came up, dark and deadly, boring angrily into hers. “Clear.”
Jimmy and Savin went first, Jimmy slinging Niree awkwardly over one shoulder. He was a tall man, but slight—medics did not have to maintain the same fitness levels as the infantry, and with this planet’s Earth-point-two gravity, it was slowing him down. Of course, mechanics didn’t have to maintain infantry fitness levels, either, but she did it anyway, in part to prove to herself that she could, and in part to ensure nobody could accuse her of taking the easy way out.
If she had taken the easy way out, she might not have been a pilot as well as a mechanic. She might have missed this mission altogether. She might have been safe in Exeter’s engine room while her friends were running for their lives.
Better, or worse?
Shaking off the thought, she silently forgave Jimmy his high-gravity stumbles and beckoned to Keita, drawing her own weapon.
They proceeded through the ruined city a few hundred meters at a time, and Elena’s universe contracted into a short routine: watch, aim, wait … then run like hell to the next bit of shelter. The gravity fatigued her with alarming quickness, and she could feel a faint sting developing on her skin from the long exposure to the polluted rain. She felt increasingly conscious of the time as the visibility contracted with the waning afternoon, but she kept moving—silent, methodical—Keita’s footsteps solid and constant next to hers. It crossed her mind that she should not feel so comforted by the presence of a man who had just threatened to kill her, but there was no one else she would have chosen to be at her side in a fight.
It was almost a relief when the colonists started shooting.
She heard the pulse impact and Ruby’s shriek at the same moment. They were still a meter away from the shattered storefront they had chosen as their latest shelter, and the shot blasted a fireball into the ground just before them. As one Elena and Keita dodged around it, their strides lengthening, and they dove into the dirt behind the wrecked building. There was another shot, and for a moment Elena thought they had lost the girl. But an instant later she scrambled in between them, arms over her head, abruptly willing to risk sharing the shelter of the soldier who had wanted her dead.
“Where?” Elena asked.
Keita nodded behind them. “That garage we passed, just after Savin’s spot.”
“Long range?”
He checked his ammunition. “I’ve got three.”
“I’ve got five.”
“You’re a crappy shot with a rifle.”
Fair point.
He took aim and squeezed the trigger. An instant later the roof of the garage blew apart, leaving a corner of the structure on fire. A volley of shots came their way, peppering the ground before their ruined shelter. The colonists were not terrific shots themselves, she reflected, but it was enough—Jimmy would never get Niree through that.
She aimed her own rifle and fired back conventional pulse shots as Keita took aim again. She heard him inhale, then exhale. An instant later the rest of the structure burst into flames. Five seconds, ten: no more fire. Are they waiting? She caught sight of Jimmy and Savin through the smoke and flames, running across the remains of the city block. Savin had placed himself between Jimmy and the garage, and was firing one-handed as they ran past.
She thought they might make it.
Elena kept up her shooting as they ran, although she never saw anyone hidden in the dense rubble of what was left of the city, never knew what she was aiming at. Ruby had grown silent, and the one time Elena looked at her she saw the girl’s eyes had gone dull and cold.
Probably for the best.
At long last, with less than four minutes left, they caught sight of the ship, waiting in what had once been the town square. Four of the colonists swarmed around it, running their hands over it, and Elena swore.
Next to her Keita let out a chuckle. “Anything goes until they touch your baby, right, Songbird?”
Elena aimed at one of the colonists, then dropped the nose of her rifle and shot toward the ground. A chunk of cement erupted a meter in front of him. He started, and as he turned, she risked speaking.
“Get away from that ship or we will kill you!” It wasn’t much of a threat, but there was little else she could do.
The man—boy, woman; she could not tell from this distance what the emaciated figure had been—shot toward her voice. The round exploded the corner of the building they were crouched behind. She swore again, then did what she had heard Keita do: she inhaled, exhaled, and fired.
The figure’s chest burst with a brief flame, and he dropped.
Somewhat startled by having hit her target, Elena aimed at another, but the rest turned and ran, leaving their fallen comrade behind. She kept her rifle pointed at the motionless form, aware of Keita next to her doing the same. After a moment, Jimmy and Savin came around them, running for the ship, and it was clear Elena’s target wasn’t getting up.
She engaged her comm. “Open the door,” she told the shuttle.
The door slid open. She saw Jimmy haul himself inside and begin to lower Niree to the floor. Savin took an instant to stop by the man Elena had shot—the man she had killed—and scoop up his weapon. Then he, too, jumped onto the ship, crouching in the open doorway to provide cover.
She straightened, ready to run; and only then did she notice Keita looking off to one side. He was frowning, his whole body alert. Next to him, Ruby was staring at their ship, her expression dazed and faintly hopeful.
“Keita.”
“Ssh,” he said brusquely. “Can’t you hear it?”
She listened. She heard rain, Ruby’s breathing, her own heartbeat. “Keita, we have to go now.”
He turned to her. His anger was gone, replaced by something urgent and determined. “I need two minutes.”
“We do not have two minutes!”
“Then give me what we do have.”
He stared at her steadily, unwavering. She wondered, if she tried to order him, if he would listen to her. She wondered what she would do if she had to leave without him.
It was not her choice.