Black hair tangles around a small face grey with blood loss, the features lost beneath a cake of dried gore and sand. Desperately, I check the skull, searching for wounds. When I find the contusion on the scalp, three inches long and bleeding sluggishly, I let out a breath. If that is the only damage – and if the child regains consciousness – they should live.
Just as I bend to pick the child up, something strikes me hard in the side, sending me sprawling. Choking on dust, I scramble for my knife, cursing myself to falling into an ambush…
But no. There are no other blows, no figures emerging from foxholes dug into the sand, no swooping crafts. Reddened eyes stare back at me. The man is awake.
He croaks a word, blood staining his teeth, and his eyes go to the knife, then to the child. He tries to rise, only to fall again with a gurgle of pain.
‘No harm,’ I tell him, holding up my hands. ‘No harm. Medic.’
‘You… touch her,’ he says, in an accent I can’t place. ‘You die.’
He is not in a position to be making any kind of threats, but I nod. ‘I need to fetch my kit. I have supplies. I can treat you both.’
‘Where?’ He half lifts his head to stare around, ropes of strain in his neck. ‘Where is here?’
‘The Barrens. North of Redcrop.’
He raises his eyes to the sky, losing its beauty now, turning flat white. ‘Where?’ he insists.
I follow his gaze up towards Brovos, pinkish-red and just visible in the sky. The last planet in the system, and beyond its orbit, nothing but the Void. Has he fallen from so far he doesn’t even know which moon he is on?
Above, invisible in the air, they sway and shift the lights of other worlds.
‘Factus,’ I tell him, turning away. ‘We’re on Factus.’
* * *
The man’s eyes follow my movements as I haul the tarp from the back of the mule. He’s more alert now, but that does not mean he will live. Folk often have a wave of consciousness before the end. I once read about forest trees on Earth, and how they did much the same: used the last of their strength to send their life force through the roots and into the soil, giving it to others. That was what this stranger had done, in all likelihood, for this child. So be it. One life is better than none at all.
I set up a shelter from the rising sun, stretching the tarp from the post anchored on the mule across to the wreckage. I try to work fast, my eyes on the child, not yet conscious.
‘You,’ the man croaks. ‘Woman. Your name.’
‘Hafsa Gellam,’ I lie, as I tie off the tarp.
I feel his eyes travelling across my sunburned face, half-hidden by the scarf that wraps my neck from collarbone to chin, across my shorn head, my old jacket, my hands, roughened by the winds.
‘Which side?’ he asks.
I open the medkit to check its contents which, in truth, are pitiful. I haven’t been able to bring myself to stop at a trade post for some time and here is the evidence: two rolls of squashed bandage, a bottle of cleaning fluid, a few ampules of analgesics and tranqs and boosters, needles, thread.
‘What does it matter?’ I say, searching for my cleanest rag. ‘War’s over.’
‘Which side?’
‘I didn’t fight.’
‘Everyone fought.’
‘Not here.’
He grunts, as if to say that’s something I can well believe, but when I take out a roll of bandage, his eyes narrow. The bandages are black market, lifted long ago from a consignment headed for the First Accord. At the sight of the double yellow triangles stamped upon the wrappings, he seems to relax.
Whoever he is, he’s given himself away. One way to find out for sure. Kneeling, I unclip the shattered helmet from his flight suit and work it free. As the man gasps in relief, I see the tattoo on his temple, half-hidden by tangled copper hair. The same double triangles that mark the bandages. Beneath them is a thick line. A lieutenant, then. I glance at the ruined craft – a defector? I start to unclip the rest of the suit.
‘No.’ He knocks my hands away. ‘Her.’
‘Your injuries are worse.’
His face is a bad grey colour but he lifts an arm to hold me off. ‘Her first.’
I shrug. Whoever he is, whatever trouble he’s in, it’s likely I won’t be able to do much more than make him comfortable. Either way, I have to be fast. Desolate as this place is, Seekers have sentries, and even the heat won’t keep them at bay.
When I release the child’s flight suit, I see that I was right; she is a lot smaller than the garment implied. I would guess at around twelve or thirteen years old. She wears a beige thermal shirt and trousers, like pyjamas. The collar is soaked with blood, and a tear at the elbow and smears of oil speak of a hasty escape. Had she been sleeping when the ship’s distress call went out, whisked from her bed into an escape craft by this man?
Perhaps. Though something tells me he is not her father. A bodyguard, then? A kidnapper? Whoever they are, they aren’t new settlers, or farmers from Brovos. They look too healthy for that and rich folk don’t venture out this far if they can help it. The modern lifecraft and brand-new flight suits could have come from Prosper, or Jericho, or some inner-system enclave.
I test the child’s limbs. They are all mobile, no sign of trauma. The blood pasting her face seems to come only from the scalp wound, which is ragged, though shallow. But when I wipe the mess away, I see something that stops my hand.
Beneath the blood, a tattoo stands out dark on her temple. The same double triangle.
I draw back. ‘Who is she?’
‘She needs help.’ The man looks at me, half-desperate, half-hostile. ‘You said
