Page 5 of Needed in the Night
Thirty meters beyond the kitchen door’s threshold were the landing pad and cargo carrier, its massive hold doors open and ramps extended like waiting arms.
A familiar and comforting weight settled onto my upper back as Brae sank his claws into the padded shoulders of my coverall for a better hold. In shadow form he was nothing but a wisp of darkness, and on the coverall he was all but invisible, even up close or in bright sunlight.
Four bored palace guards stood outside the doorway. I smothered a spike of dread and anxiety with sheer will. To her credit, Novee didn’t react as they scrutinized us and our sleds.
“What happened to this crate?” a guard asked, indicating Ergin’s sled.
“Isssss damage,” Ergin replied, her voice suddenly thick with a feigned accent to disguise her own natural way of speaking. She waved her hands as if in warning. “Rot. Isssss smell very bad.”
With a grimace and sound of disgust, the guard motioned us to continue. I didn’t feel any relief, though. We still had a long walk ahead of us.
With the other two crew members in front, Novee and me in the middle, and Ergin behind us, we made our way across thirty meters of sun-warmed walkway. The only sounds were the hissing of our respirators and the hums of the antigrav sleds.
My ears strained, listening for any alarms or noises behind us. I’d never been so acutely aware of my back—to the point I itched between my shoulder blades, and not because of the rough material of my coverall or the plate of body armor.
No weapons fire and no shouting, but the silence did nothing to ease my nerves. Why hadn’t the guards started closing the kitchen doors?
Even with Brae keeping watch behind and around us and the ship now only fifteen meters away, that fluttery, gut-churning feeling came back with a vengeance.
No, something was wrong. Something was very,verywrong. Every cell in my body activated, flooding me with adrenaline. My chest heaved, and my breaths rattled in the respirator.
Brae, go!I thought.
The gentle weight on my shoulders vanished as he took to the air with a flap of shadowy wings.
Twin blasts of plasma shot from the shadows under the carrier’s enormous landing struts, striking the two crew members in front of us.
As they went down, holes smoking in their chests, something punched me in the back and sent me sprawling face down on the rough surface of the palace’s cargo port.
At first I didn’t feel pain—just numbness. Through my respirator, I caught the acrid smell of burned fabric, hair, and flesh, and the odor of superheated body armor. Had I been shot in the back?
Then the agony arrived and took my breath away. My cry of pain had no air to give it sound. I choked on it instead. The filthy sons of bogworms had shot me with a plasma rifle. If I hadn’t been wearing the body armor, I would be dead.
Darkness threatened to sweep me away. As much as I wanted to escape the agony of my wound, I feared falling into an abyss I might never escape.
Desperately, I clawed at the ground, my fingers in their thick gloves scrabbling as though I could stay awake and alive and not be dragged into unconsciousness or death if I were able to hold onto something.
Fragments of memory tumbled through my mind, each blurring into the next in a cascade of painful moments. My own captivity. The tearful faces of those I’d rescued. The haunting visions of all those still living in torment we hadn’t yet freed.
I shut my eyes, but that didn’t stop the torrent of nightmares. I let out a broken kind of sound. All the gods above and below, don’t let those memories be the last things I see…
More bolts of plasma fire seared the air over my head. Through a fog of pain, I struggled to drag myself out of the past and make sense of anything going on around me.
A battle had broken out between the crew of the carrier and the palace guards. How did they know? Where had we erred in our planning? What had given us away?
Get up!Brae shouted in my mind.Get up and get Novee to the ship!
Oh, gods…I hurt so badly. There was no way I could stand up. But there was also no way I was going to just lie here and wait to die either.
So I got my hands under me, and then pushed myself up to my knees. I shook my head to clear it.
The air was thick with billowing smoke that hid both the palace and the carrier. I hadn’t heard an explosion. Ergin must have detonated something to conceal us from weapons fire.
Novee lay next to me, groaning and wheezing. The back of her coverall was burned away, exposing the scorched and broken layers of body armor hidden inside it and her bloodyskin. The armor had mostly absorbed that first shot, but offered no protection now. I was certainly in no better shape.
Ergin had taken a hit to her right shoulder, but she was on her feet, firing a plasma gun back through the smoke toward the palace and keeping the guards at bay.
“Go,” she rasped at me. “Take her and go. I will follow.”
