It isn’t the first time someone’s death has been my fault, but that doesn’t make it any less impossible to bear.
My father is light-years away, perhaps being told at this moment what happened to the Icarus. And he has no one there to lean on, without me. Since my mother’s death when I was little, we’ve never been apart for more than a few weeks at a time—and never without the ability to speak to each other at the touch of a button on a console.
And now I’m stranded on an alien planet with a soldier who hates me and everything I aspire to.
For the first time in my life, I’m alone.
I cover the sounds my tears make, tossing and turning in my makeshift bed, so the space blanket crinkles noisily. I expect him to chastise me for being such a princess, but he says nothing and his breathing doesn’t change. He doesn’t even hear me. I give up and just let myself cry.
“At that stage your expectation was that you would be rescued promptly?”
“I was with Miss LaRoux. I imagined she’d be their top priority.”
“What did you make of your companion?”
“It was a change of pace from a platoon.”
“That’s not a substantive response, Major Merendsen.”
“I hadn’t had long to form an opinion. The situation wasn’t ideal.”
“For you or her?”
“For either of us. Do you know anyone who’d have been pleased in our places?”
“We’ll ask the questions, Major.”
SEVEN
TARVER
I’M ABOUT TEN SECONDS AWAY from turning on the flashlight and searching the first-aid kit for a way to sedate her when she finally stops crying. Eventually, I sleep.
It’s late when I wake, sometime after midnight. For a long moment I sit perfectly still, letting my senses inform me. I feel cold metal and hard lines pressed against my skin, I smell the lingering odor of melted plastene. I hear some creature give a croak outside, and closer, inside the pod, a small sound as someone moves.
Memory bubbles to the surface and spreads out through my body, racing down my arms so my fingers tighten around the armrests. I haven’t opened my eyes yet, and as I let my mind drift and deliver information, I hear the soft scrape of movement again. Light flashes across my eyelids. She’s got the flashlight.
Dammit, doesn’t she need to sleep? I sneak open one eyelid. She’s at the electrical panel again, fussing with the wires. She’s backlit by the flashlight, nibbling her lower lip. She looks different in this light. I can’t make out the fancy hair or the remains of her makeup, and the black eye is concealed by the shadow. She looks clearer, cleaner, younger. More like somebody I could talk to.
I wonder what my parents would make of her. Their faces swim up, and my throat tightens. If the Icarus lost contact with LaRoux Industries when she fell out of hyperspace, then maybe my parents haven’t heard anything about a crash yet. Maybe they think the ship is just missing. I’m okay, I think, wishing I could beam that thought straight to them. I don’t even know which way to aim it—this planet could be anywhere in the galaxy.
As I watch, the girl expertly snaps a wire into place. I remember the way she stripped them with her fingernails before takeoff. We would have gone down still attached to the ship if she hadn’t. My mind’s eye conjures up the image of the other escape pods, streaming ribbons of fire as they split off from the Icarus during the crash.
Without a doubt, Lilac LaRoux saved our lives. That’s a little hard to swallow.
I clear my throat to give her some warning before I speak. “Miss LaRoux?”
Her head snaps up. “Yes, Major?” She’s keeping her voice polite and even, like she’s at a garden party and I’m some annoying aunt who just won’t back off.
Maybe if I shut up, she’ll electrocute herself. “Need a hand there?”
She huffs a soft, derisive breath. “Unless you know how to bypass the comms relays, I can’t see how you’re in a position to help. If I can force the enviro circuit board to take over for comms, maybe I can use the pod itself as an antenna. It’s made of metal.”
We’re silent for a moment. We both know that I couldn’t point out the environmental controls circuit board with a gun to my head.
She takes my silence as a victory, and smiles that infuriatingly superior smile at me. “If I can get us a signal, then will you admit it’s better to stay put and wait, rather than go trekking across unknown territory by ourselves?”
I take a deep breath through my nose and let my head fall back again. She turns back, crouching in front of the panel. I watch her covertly out of the corner of my eye, as much fascinated by her unlikely expertise as by the sight of the LaRoux heiress absently moving the flashlight to her mouth so she can hold it in her teeth as she works.
It’s another glimpse of the girl I saw in the salon, the one who stood up for a man accosting her instead of letting her lackeys deal with him. Where’s that girl the rest of the time? With a wrench of my stomach I realize that the man in the salon, the reason I talked to Lilac LaRoux in the first place, is probably dead now. Did anyone else survive? Did any of the escape pods break away before the Icarus hit the atmosphere?
At some point, between one blink and the next, I fall asleep.
“What did Miss LaRoux think of the situation?”
“I didn’t ask her.”
“What was your impression, then, of the way Miss LaRoux was coping?”
“Better than expected.”
EIGHT
LILAC
I WAKE CURLED UP AGAINST A WALL, a blanket around me, my face aching. For a moment I lie there trying to remember what I did the night before, dreading the return of memory, certain that my hangover will be the least of my concerns. Then the unmistakable smell of half-melted plastene jerks me awake, and I wish it was a hangover making my head pound—not the aftereffects of having a spaceship hit me in the face.
I glance at the broken communications array I tried to salvage last night. The wires are fused and melted beyond repair. The whole motherboard short-circuited, leaving nothing an entire team of electricians could salvage, much less me.
I should have just left well enough alone and gotten some rest.
The morning is quiet, which terrifies me. There has always been noise around me, even in our country house. The sounds of air filters and the garden shifting from roses to daffodils with the deft, mechanical click of its holographic projectors. Servants bustling here and there, Simon tossing pebbles at my window to wake me in the night. My father on the holowire at the breakfast table, delivering orders to his deputies back on Corinth while pulling faces to make me laugh.
Here, the only sounds are the faint noises of birds, and leaves whispering against each other high above.
Knowing that the major is going to insist we move out, I brace myself, trying to summon courage or strength or, at the very least, some dignity. A whole day of him marching me along, telling me every five minutes that I need to keep moving, walk faster. A whole day of slowing him down.
A sudden dread prickles in my stomach. I’m sitting up almost before it registers—I already know its source. The chair the major had been sleeping in is empty, and his bag of supplies is gone.