She released the girl as soon as they leapt on, heading for the cockpit. “Time.”
“Eighty-four seconds,” the ship told her calmly.
“Lift off at eighty-three and a half.” She met Ruby’s eyes and pointed to the bench along the far wall, where Lieutenant Treharne had been sitting when they arrived … forty-six minutes ago.
Christ.
“Sit down, buckle up, and be still,” she commanded. Ruby did as she was told, and Elena thought her quick obedience had probably helped her survive this far. She stepped over to Jimmy, who had strapped Niree down onto another bench and was applying the ship’s med scanner. “Will she make it?” she asked.
He looked at her, his expression unreadable. “We didn’t do her any favors, hauling her out like that.” At her look, he acquiesced. “Yes, I think so.”
“Strap in for takeoff, then.”
She heard the engines igniting and checked the time. Twenty-eight seconds—he wasn’t going to make it. They would come back for him, of course, for what it was worth, but not even Dmitri Keita was going to survive a day and a half in this place.
Climbing into the pilot’s seat, she did a perfunctory preflight check. She keyed in the course home, compensating for the rapidly contracting weather pattern.
“Flight in this weather is not recommended,” the ship told her. “Heavy turbulence is likely.”
I know, I know … “Hang on,” she called to the others. “This won’t be comfortable.”
At seven seconds, she heard feet outside the door and saw Savin tense. But then Keita was on board, drenched and covered in mud, something dark and wet clutched against his chest. “Go!” he shouted at her.
She was ready for him. She jerked the controls, and the ship jolted off the ground with three seconds to spare.
Normally Elena was a careful pilot. The infantry liked to fly with her. When there was turbulence, she would engage the artificial gravity just enough to temper the disruption of the atmosphere.
Today was definitely not normal.
She shot them straight up, as fast as they would go, allowing the planet’s gravity to press down on them. She stared into the atmosphere, peering at the darkening clouds, looking for the fastest path out of the weather.
Through her concentration she heard a sound behind her, and she wondered if Keita’s bundle was a cat.
Her viewscreen began to glow red, and her attention was dragged back to the task of flying. Great, she thought, the planet’s particulate atmosphere is ripping into our hull. Elena whispered a quiet apology to the ship, thinking herself ahead twenty minutes, picturing herself home on Exeter, standing in the shuttle bay while her chief berated her for the state of her vessel. She would be days repairing it.
“Inversion in five,” she told them, and counted down the seconds.
Moments later the artificial gravity engaged, abruptly reorienting them. She heard retching behind her; that was likely the girl. Elena usually took pride in gentle inversions, but today it had seemed slightly less important.
The night opened up before her, dark and pure and scattered with stars, and the glow of heat faded as the vacuum of space cooled their exterior. She sat back and closed her eyes. They were alive.
Most of them.
That sound again. She frowned. It wasn’t Ruby—she could hear the girl alternating between retching and sobbing, Jimmy offering her quiet words of comfort. She turned around. Savin, still relaxed, was watching over Niree as Jimmy rubbed Ruby’s back and held a bucket before her.
Keita sat in the corner, looking down at a bundle of muddy, sodden rags in his arms. She heard the sound again, and then a quiet response from him.
Is he singing?
She got to her feet and walked the length of the ship to stand over him. In his arms, wrapped in what looked like old shirts, was a baby. Elena knew little of such things, but she guessed it was no more than a few hours old. It was wide-awake, but it was not crying. Instead, it was studying Keita with enormous, somber purple eyes, that odd color some babies were born with. Every few moments it opened its mouth to make that small sound, a mew of greeting or protest; and Keita responded each time, rocking the infant gently.
“Jimmy should look at it,” she said.
“Her.” Keita’s eyes never left the infant’s. “And she’s fine.”
She stood for a moment, watching the incongruous scene, then retreated, making her way back to the pilot’s seat. She would have to comm Exeter, let them know Treharne was dead and that they had rescued only two of the colonists. In a day and a half a larger crew would go down, more heavily armed, properly prepared after the report she would give them.
She wondered how many colonists would be left.
She closed her eyes, remembered aiming her rifle, her futile warning. On that planet, killing would have been a mercy. He had been emaciated, close to death, or at least close to the point where his companions would pull him apart to keep themselves alive a little longer. He had been trying to kill them, too; but really, she had done him a favor.
She saw the flame bloom in his chest, saw him drop.
Elena opened her eyes, sat up straight, and opened a channel to make her report.
Orunmila
Guanyin was always amazed by how well puppies could sleep.
Samedi had slid into the narrow space between her pregnant belly and the wall, his body twisted like soft pastry, and was snoring blissfully into her ear as she stared at the ceiling. When he had first dozed off she had tried blowing on his nose. The first two times he had twitched, but the third time he was oblivious. She could almost certainly get out of bed without disturbing him, but she needed him as an excuse. If she sat up she would feel obligated to stand, and if she stood, she would feel obligated to talk to Cali about the warship Central Corps had just dropped in their backyard.
Cali would expect her to have worked it out, to have a plan of action. She had always looked to Guanyin for direction, even when they were children. Cali was three years older, but she had always been more comfortable as Guanyin’s foot soldier than as her mentor. Guanyin knew many in her crew expected her to choose Cali as her second-in-command, and certainly she could trust Cali with her life. But for a first officer, Guanyin needed an adviser, someone who could help challenge her thinking. That was not Cali.
That was Chanyu, the ship’s former captain, but he had retired. They had left him on Prokofiev’s third moon, waiting for a shuttle to the Fifth Sector. She could probably find him if she needed to, but she knew what he would say. “You must find your own way, Guanyin. Orunmila is yours now. She lives or dies under your command. And remember, dear girl, she wouldn’t be yours if they didn’t believe in you. All you need to do is be worthy of them.” Chanyu had raised her, and she loved him like a father, but she never could stand it when he spouted that sort of useless rubbish.
Guanyin was twenty-nine years old, pregnant with her sixth child, and captain of a starship that was home to 812 people. She had no second-in-command and no advisers, and it was down to her to figure out how to respond to a deployment buildup from the largest, best-armed government in