Abigail breathed in small gasps, and she looked up at the sky in fear. “Shit… We’re not ready for this.”
“I gave you a week’s warning, girl!”
She looked at me, and I could tell she was doing some hard thinking. “I’ve been avoiding coming out here, you know.”
“I noticed. It’s been kind of lonely.”
As I said this, a second volley of missiles leapt up into the sky. The defensive batteries had reloaded, and they weren’t taking any chances. We couldn’t talk for a while due to all the roaring of rocket engines.
I got the feeling from Abigail’s visit that she thought we were doomed. I figured she was probably right.
After the roar died down from the second launch, Abigail looked at me again. “I… I didn’t trust myself. I’ve been lonely on this rock, too.”
That kind of surprised me. I’d figured she didn’t give two shits about me. Hmm… Her admission had possibilities.
“Uh…” I said. “How could you be lonely? As far as I can tell, you’re the only female on this base.”
“So what?”
“Well, I thought that with all these men around… you know, dog-people are probably into humping legs. Then there are several Clavers of various flavors.”
“My brothers and these stinking dogs? You thought I would be interested in them? Ew! No way, McGill. What do you take me for?”
“Uh… sorry, I guess I wasn’t thinking like a girl.”
While we talked, we couldn’t help but watch the sky. The first volley of missiles had broken the line of clouds to the west by this time. Without warning, they all blossomed into brilliant points of light. A rippling set of flashes went off, and we both averted our eyes, cursing.
When I got up off the piss-stained floor of my dungeon, I saw Abigail’s head was up as well. She had sand dripping off her face.
“How did they set off all the warheads?” she asked.
“I don’t rightly know. Some kind of field-manipulation, I’d suspect. Our ships are getting more advanced these days, you know—oh, and you should probably take cover.”
“Why’s that?”
“The shockwave will be coming our way in the next few—”
I broke off, because I saw a white wall of mist, water and force spreading toward us. It came over the sea at about three thousand kilometers an hour, if I remembered my schooling correctly from my days of being a weaponeer.
Abigail made a noise—it was kind of a little squeak. She looked around desperately, but there was no bunker in sight she could reach before that wave hit us.
Feeling an ounce of pity, I popped loose one of the bars I’d been grinding on over the last week. It came free like an old tooth and made a space just wide enough. I reached out a long arm and dragged her down into my dungeon with me.
She struggled a little, and she might have even bitten me, but I ignored all that. I got her down by my side, hugging the wall and crouching.
Then, the blast-wave rolled over the island. Dirt and debris shot straight through the bars of my crappy window, and I couldn’t hear a thing for about thirty seconds.
When the smoke cleared, we were both choking and wheezing. Alarms were beeping everywhere. It sounded like we’d tried to steal every aircar in a parking lot at once.
“James? Are you going to let go of me?”
I blinked and tried to wipe my eyes clear of dust, but it was a losing proposition. My sweat and spots of blood had turned the coating on my arms into gray grime.
“You got any water?” I asked her.
She handed me a bottle, and I squirted it into my eyes. I’d let her go by then, but she didn’t even try to climb out of my cell again.
“Do you think we got a dose of radiation?” she asked.
“I don’t see how we could have avoided it.”
“Dammit. My brothers were crazy to start all this up again with Earth. We’re going to lose all over again.”
“That’s what Armel said. He figured the rebels almost always lose rebellions, so he switched sides again.”
“Then he’s not as dumb as I thought. Shit…”
“We should be getting out of here.”
I could see her face now, and she looked at me in honest concern. “Why? Are they going to bomb us next? You think they’d use their broadsides?”
“Maybe, but I doubt it. They’ll want prisoners. They’ll want to see if this has spread to more planets.”
She dared to peek up out through the bars again. “They’ll land, then? A drop from space?”
I shook my head. “Not yet. That’s not protocol. We’ve still got air defenses, so they’ll send a wing of fighters first, to knock out all your guns and missiles. After that, the troops will land.”
“I don’t believe this is happening… come on, let’s get out of here.”
Abigail took my hand, but she didn’t go to the barred window and wriggle her way out. Instead, she pressed her arm against the door where the door handle should have been. It recognized her tapper and popped open.
Frightened dog-men growled at us, but they let us go. She ordered them out to man the AA guns. They humped away with a loping gait.
“They looked like they were about to shit themselves,” I laughed.
“They should. Come on, that door has an alarm on it. My brothers already know you broke out of prison.”
“Uh… okay.”
I felt like mentioning this was all her idea, and she was the one that had done all the breaking-out, but there was no point to that. I was either in this escape or not, and I didn’t see any percentage in waiting in my cell until I was atomized.
We ran down a few
