Born of Sand (Tales of a Dying Star Book 5) (29 page)

Chapter 19

It had been so long since she'd heard or spoken the honorific with another of her kind. The words felt strange on her tongue.

"I gave you a weak bag," he explained, "so I could keep you lucid enough to talk when they were gone. But you're going to need the heavy stuff, and it's
very
unlikely that you will be in good enough shape to leave tomorrow." He pulled a chair over to the table by her leg and sat down. "Now. Would you kindly mind explaining why you are here with a handful of Freemen, risking years of my own cover?"

"I need to use your computer terminal. Have to contact the orbital station to check in." She explained her situation, the base and the impending attack, the orbital strike that never struck, the plan to get inside the palace cells and bring back the pilots.

Leo listened quietly while cleaning her leg with gauze-covered prongs. "Unfortunately, my terminal has not yet been connected. And won't be, for several months more. I am still trying to reestablish my reputation since the raid on the Station."

Star shit
. So much for contacting the base. "How do you communicate with your command, then?"

"I don't," he said. "Long-term cover, with a binary communicator to indicate when I have what I need and am ready for extraction."

She winced as he cut away a flap of skin with a
snip
. "Fine then. I need you to go to the nearest security station and return with a brash of peacekeepers. They just have to capture Farrow. He's the mouthy one." After a moment she added, "And the girl. She's harmless."

Leo shook his head. "Not gunna happen. I can't break cover until I find out where Bowl Belly's gang is getting all the parts for their cruisers."

"My mission should override yours," she sighed. The cruiser gangs that sometimes raided outposts were hardly more than a nuisance. "Triple-A priority, twice over because of the impending attack."

"Mine's triple-A too," Leo said. "Need a command officer to set priority beyond that."

Triple-A for a bunch of bandits? How did that make any sense? "This is the end, Leo. The
Children
are attacking soon, both here and on Melis. Bowl Belly's gang is meaningless."

He spoke calmly while hunched over her leg. "That's not my decision. Nor yours."

"Leo, be reasonable. This is a huge attack, hundreds of bodies and electroids. We have the leader of the Freemen sleeping in the room next door. I just need some help sending the message."

"Get me a command override and I'll be as helpful as you want. Stars, you're lucky I'm helping you at all."

"I can't get a command override," she said through gritted teeth, "without some help. If you hadn't noticed, I'm somewhat incapacitated."

"Not my problem."

If she could have raised her upper body enough to stab him, she would have.

"Why didn't you capture them sooner?" he asked. "With the element of surprise you should have been able to take them out, escort them into safe hands."

His tone was far too lecturing. "If my leg wasn't a giveaway, we ran into problems along the way."

"You're thinking too hard." He rose to retrieve some bandages from the wall. "You're going to the Governor's palace. Right? Through the tunnel? Simply announce yourself there, or alert the guards. They'll already be by the cells, so you'll save everyone a few steps. Simple. You don't need to bust my cover here."

"That requires me to actually
get up
in the morning. You said I wouldn't be in good enough..."

"I have ways," he whispered. "Some stimulants that'll make you forget you ever knew what pain felt like."

He was right, of course. Farrow was practically marching himself to his own capture. And there were terminals in the gaoler's office, adjacent to the cells. It would be easy, provided she could get there in one piece. She glanced down at her leg. Leo was using a needle to sew up the wound. "And my stitches won't burst open the first time I make a sudden movement?"

"Oh, they will," he said. "This is just for tonight. I have a more robust technique I'll use before you leave." With the stitching done he grabbed the red bag and hung it from a hook, then switched tubes. "Don't think about that now. Here comes the heavy stuff, and the blood you lack. You'll need a good, deep sleep before you go."

A pang of alarm struck her. "I don't want to risk sleeping too long that they leave without me."

He fiddled with the bags. "You'll be fine. I'll wake you."

"No," she said, raising her pistol. "Nothing too heavy."

"Too late. Already connected. If you shoot me then you won't have
anyone
to wake you in time."

She was about to argue some more but the words would not come. Her head gently rested back on the table as the darkness invaded her vision. She bowed to the inevitable.

She dreamed vivid dreams of her siblings. Beth and Pavani running through the fields. Alard squatting in the mud, probing for worms with a finger. He found one and held it up for his sisters to see. Beth wanted to take it and smush it with a rock, but Alard cradled it to his chest and insisted nobody harm it.
Alard was the best of us,
the thought drifted across Kari's mind.

Acteon sat in a chair watching his children play. He always liked to watch, when he was home from a tour.

A violent trembling woke Kari, throwing her into alarm, until she realized it was only Leo shaking her by the shoulder. "Kari. Can you hear me? Focus on my voice." She felt a pinch of something in her right elbow. Which was strange, since the intravenous drip was in her left arm.

She groaned and mumbled something at him.

"Okay, very good. Now, can you sit upright? Just enough to get on your elbows."

Kari's head felt like a swishing bowl of soup, but she did as he commanded. There was a worried tone in his voice. Not a
shade
anymore, just the concerned doctor he pretended to be. Which meant...

"If she can stand, she can go," Farrow said at the foot of the bed. "Only then."

Leo put up his hands. "Look, I don't want any trouble. But she threatened me last night, said if I don't let her go she'll..."

Kari's vision came into better focus. The three in her group stood around her, armed with new rifles and fresh clothes. They were ready to go.

Have to stand. Need to go with them. My mission.

A warm surge ignited in her stomach, urging her up with renewed energy. With steady precision she swung her legs--one of which bore a line of staples sealing her wound--over the edge of the bed and dropped to the ground. Pain flared anew, but she pushed it down and stared at Farrow with what she hoped lucidity. She gripped the table to keep herself from swaying.

"Fine," Farrow said, tight-lipped. "We'll meet you outside in five." He strode through the door with Geral close behind. Mira gave her a sympathetic look before disappearing too.

When they were gone Kari began to waver on her feet. Leo grabbed her by the waist and said, "How you feel?"

"Pain," she said through clenched teeth. "A lot of pain." Not just in her leg, but her hips and ribs felt bruised as well.

"I took you off the drip an hour ago, so you could wake. You nearly didn't, so when they weren't looking I gave you a pinch of adrenaline to speed it up." He shook a tiny needle in front of her face and tossed it on the countertop. "You're welcome. Now hold still for a second while I get you something for the road."

She gripped the observation table while he went to a cabinet and moved pills from one large glass container to a smaller one. "Recommended dose is one pill every four hours, but you can double that if you need to. Three pills at once in an emergency, but don't make it a habit." He handed her the bottle.

"I used some of my femoral injector fighting the stinger. Did you refill it?"

He snorted. "With those pills you won't need your femoral injector."

She looked down at herself. "These staples in my leg. They're better than the stitches? I can make quick movements without them tearing open?"

"Well now," Leo chuckled, "I doubt you'll be able to make
any
quick movements. But if you do, then yeah, you'll run that risk. If they come open you'll have a harder time of it. Gave you a few packs of extra blood but you can't go losing more of it. You're weak enough."

Kari nodded.

"Your gear's in the hall, along with some fresh clothes. Cleanliness room is at the end of the hall." He lowered his voice. "His Luminance's blessing upon you, glorious
shade
."

She returned the sentiment and shambled out of the room.

The clothes were where he said they'd be, plain but free of blood, which was all that mattered. On the way to the cleanliness room she passed the garage, where two men were using handheld polymer guns to repair the door of a cruiser. Kari grabbed an extra gun from the wall when they weren't looking and carried it to the bathroom. After stripping naked, she popped three pills--
fuck your dosage recommendations
--and used the gun to coat her wound with molten plastic. Only biting down on the leather grip of her knife kept her from screaming.

The polymer dried quickly, and she dressed and retrieved her shiny new rifle before meeting the others outside.

She was shocked to find the sky still dark. "Awfully early," she commented.

"Not early," Geral said, glancing at Farrow. "Late. We gave you all day to recoup."

Farrow gave him a look that hinted at an exhausted argument. He turned back to Kari and gave a weak smile.

Geral still appeared unhappy. "Let's go, it's a few blocks this way."

They followed him down the alleyway in the darkness, Kari hobbling along as best she could.

"We should have left you," Farrow whispered after a few minutes. "It would have been the smart thing. Safe. But while you were out I realized how much we rely on you. How much I rely on you. Even injured, you're more valuable than any of the rest of us."

"Thank you."
You'll learn my value soon enough.

If she had slept through the day, that meant she only had one more day until the Freemen back at Victory Base began their attack without Farrow and the pilots. Not a problem, as Kari would reach the palace within a few hours. Once inside she could contact the orbital command, and if they still remained unresponsive she could take Farrow straight the Governor himself. They were marching directly to their own capture, even easier than Kari springing the trap in the desert as originally planned. Some peacekeeper guards may die along the way before she had a chance, which is why she had not done it that way in the first place, but at this point it was an acceptable loss to stop the war.

And then I'll go home.

She nearly didn't remember her other life. It felt like just a dream, vague wisps of memory too distant to grasp. She'd known nothing but Praetar for so many years that even her family's faces were difficult to summon in her mind. She possessed no pictures, of course. Too risky. Would Alard, her brother, even look the same? He'd been so small when Kari left home. She couldn't picture him in a pilot's uniform.

Farrow kept a continuous watch on her, constantly checking to make sure their pace was adequate for her to keep up. Their path took them mostly down dark alleys, though twice they needed to cross a main boulevard with yellow lanterns illuminating the dusty road. Geral paused to wait at those, ensuring no peacekeeper patrols were nearby, before leading them across at a jog. Kari hoped he checked thoroughly, as she was slower than the rest and if any peacekeepers
did
see them she'd surely be picked off with ease. An unfortunate way to go, so close to completion.

The crumbling apartments grew wider as they went. The hum of machinery announced when they reached the industrial district. Black smoke rose from brick stacks above the factories, walls tall and windowless. The triangular shadow of the Governor's Palace stood larger than before. They were only a few blocks from the Palace and the enormous square before it.

Geral stopped in front of one large building, stepping back to examine the outside. He nodded to himself. Instead of entering the factory through the nondescript front door, he turned and guided them along its side into a narrow alley that led to the back. Even at that hour, with darkness all around and the city sleeping, the sound of machinery and workers drifted from inside. Mira looked all around, tensing as they walked.