and an earthshattering crump, the lander’s fusion plants lost containment and the entire craft went up in a towering pillar of gray-white smoke. For one awful moment, Michael thought the huge slab of rock would drop onto their heads, as the shock wave lifted the slab up a few centimeters before dropping it back. After one last pass and more cannon fire for good measure, the Kingfishers left, climbing nearly vertically under full power, their sound and fury fading slowly into the distance.
For a full two minutes-it seemed like a lifetime-he lay still. He did not want to leave, and only the nagging fear of being recaptured got him moving again. He turned to see how Yazdi was doing. She groaned; her eyes opened, unfocused and glazed, as she struggled to get a grip on reality.
“Corp, Corp!” Michael hissed urgently. “Corporal Yazdi! We’ve got to go.”
Slowly, Yazdi came to. She stared up at him, her face a waxy gray under a thin sheen of sweat cut through by red-black trails of blood from a badly gashed forehead.
“Fuck,” she croaked, “you look like I feel.”
“Welcome back, Corp,” Michael whispered. He struggled to keep the concern out of his voice. Yazdi did not look good. “Don’t worry about me. Only a few cuts. How do you feel?”
Yazdi took a long time to reply, her voice slurred and faltering when she finally spoke. “Piss weak. Headache. Can’t see too well. Ribs bad. Feel sick. Give me a minute. I’ll be okay.” She tried to sound confident but failed miserably.
“Let me check.” He accessed her neuronics, then wished he hadn’t. Her vital signs were all in the red. A brain bleed probably, Michael thought. Yazdi needed a regen tank, and soon. Michael smashed a fist onto the ground. There was not a damn thing he could do to help her.
“Corp,” he said. “We can’t stay here. We’re too close to the crash site. We have to go. Can you walk?”
“Probably not,” Yazdi said, a crooked smile breaking through her pain, “but I am a marine, so I will, anyway. Help me out of this stinking rat hole.”
A few minutes later and after a drink of water, Yazdi was as ready as she would ever be. Leaning heavily on Michael, she started to walk.
They almost made it out of the valley.
Yazdi struggled from the start. Approaching the shallow saddle that led away from the crash site, her body sagged heavier and heavier against him. Michael could feel her strength ebbing away with terrible speed. He pushed on, desperate to get clear.
Without warning, Yazdi slipped out of his grasp and slumped to the ground. The climb had been too much for her. “Sorry,” she said softly. “Sorry, can’t do this. Got to. .” Her eyes closed, her head rolling to one side.
A quick look and Michael knew they could not go on. Yazdi’s face was a dirty gray death mask, her breathing shallow and ragged as she drifted in and out of consciousness, mumbling incoherently.
Michael cursed savagely under his breath as he dragged her into the shelter of a hollow protected by two creeperdraped boulders.
Quickly, with Yazdi settled, he pulled his cape off his shoulders. Dragging Yazdi’s cape out of her pack, he lay down beside her, pulling the two chromaflage capes across their bodies. A quick check confirmed that the capes looked like the dirty gray dirt below them. He lay back. There was nothing more he could do now-not for Yazdi, not for himself. Michael did not like their chances. If they were found, they would not see another Commitment day; after the humiliation they had inflicted on the Hammer, a quick shot to the head was probably the only offer they would get from DocSec. He smiled grimly. Truth was, a shot to the head probably would be for the best. He could do without another meeting with Colonel Hartspring and his sadistic sergeant. What was his name? Oh, yes, Sergeant Jacobsen, may he rot in hell. He closed his eyes and tried to doze off.
All too soon the sound of heavy-lift transporters began to fill the valley.
Sunday, December 19, 2399, UD
“What a waste of fucking time.” The DocSec trooper’s voice was bitter.
“Don’t tell me.” The second trooper sounded equally pissed. “Tell that useless moron in charge. What in Kraa’s name does he think we’re going to find? For Kraa’s sake, just look at the damn lander. How the hell does Major Dickwad think anyone could get out of that alive? Asshole.”
There was a long pause. One of the troopers, clearing his throat of a troublesome obstruction, spit down into the delicately flowered creeper that was Michael’s only protection.
“Yeah, what an asshole.”
Another long silence.
Michael could hardly breathe. The two DocSec troopers had been standing on the rock directly above the hollow hiding him and Yazdi for a good five minutes. Go away, he urged them silently.
The troopers’ radios crackled into life. “All units, this is Eagle One. End of search. Return to crash site. All units, acknowledge. Over.”
Michael allowed himself to hope as, one by one, the Doc-Sec search units responded.
“About time.” The trooper spit again. “What a clusterfuck. Come on, let’s go.”
“Yeah.”
The two troopers jumped down to make their way back to the crash site, accompanied every step of the way by a vociferous and unflattering commentary on the doubtful ancestry of all DocSec officers in general and the major in charge in particular. As they walked away, Michael offered up a small word of thanks. The on-scene commander had not been well briefed. The man clearly thought that the lander had exploded on impact and had concluded, not unreasonably, that whoever had hijacked the lander had died in the crash. More important, so had his troopers. The search was a token effort; it was an exercise in ass covering, nothing more, nothing less, and the DocSec troopers forced to walk their overweight and unfit bodies up and down the hillsides knew it.
At long last, heavy lifters carrying the DocSec search teams away climbed into the evening sky, and Michael and Yazdi were safe. Well, Michael thought, for the moment at least. It had been a close thing.
By the time DocSec finally had left, Michael had fallen asleep, the stress of the long day demanding that he rest. He woke with a start an hour later, lying absolutely still as he listened for anything unusual. There was nothing. The only sound was the wind, whistling softly as it moved through the grass and scrubby vegetation. Reassured, he slipped out from under the chromaflage cover and crawled to the mouth of the hollow for a look around. The valley was empty, and the light was fading fast. The Hammers had not put guards on the wreckage, but that happy state would not last. They had to be back to clean up sometime. Michael had no doubt what he and Yazdi had to do: get clear of the area and then hole up until she was well enough to resume their desperate push north. After a final long, careful look around, he decided they really were alone. DocSec had gone. Even better, there was no sign of any surveillance drones, and he doubted the idle bastards would have bothered to deploy remote holocams. If all went well, they should be able to get clear unseen.
Michael crawled back into the hollow and pulled back Yazdi’s chromaflage cape. He shook her gently. She had been asleep for hours. Michael could only hope she had recovered enough to be able to walk out.
Michael frowned. He shook Yazdi again, but she seemed strangely unresponsive, her head drooping to one side, hair falling down across her face. When he shook her one more time, something terrible, something icy, took his heart in its hand and squeezed it hard. Desperately, he shook her again before putting his face down to hers, praying he would feel a faint warmth as she breathed out. There was nothing. He felt her face. She was cold and clammy, her skin a waxy gray. He swept her hair back off her face, and all he could see was her eyes. They were wide open, staring at something Michael could never see, empty and accusing. Frantically, praying that he had gotten it wrong, he checked for a signal from her neuronics. There was nothing.
Corporal Yazdi was dead.
Michael rocked back on his heels, barely able to take it all in, the terrible realization that he was now completely alone crushing the last faint hope that he might make it off this godforsaken shithole of a planet. He had always known their chances were slim to nonexistent, but Corporal Yazdi’s unwavering confidence that they would
