Shades of Treason (13 page)

His
cracked
viewshield.

Hell.

He funneled power to his shielding. It cost him speed but kept his transport together. Once he was stabilized, he leaned forward, putting his mouth as close to the comm unit as his restraints would allow. In a low, edged voice, he said, “I’m not letting you go. Get that through your head. You want to commit suicide, you want to kill your fail-safe, then keep your nose down and burn.” He thought he heard a strained sound come through the comm, but there was so much static and noise—the roar of heated air and the groaning of a hull under far too much pressure—he couldn’t be sure.

When Ash didn’t respond, he continued. “I know the loyalty training isn’t broken. I know how you’ve subverted my commands. What I don’t know is how long you’ve plotted your treason. But I will find out, Ash. I’ll pry every secret from your mind. You’ll tell me everything you don’t want me to know. Then you’ll spend the rest of your life as a lab rodent on Caruth.”

His throat clogged on the last word. Too much damn heat, and something—fuel or gas or the war-strafed planet’s noxious smog—leaked into his cockpit and scratched at his lungs. Sweat plastered his uniform to his body. He’d suffocate if he didn’t increase power to enviro soon, but so would Ash. She had to be feeling the dry, blistering heat too. She might be running out of air now. She might be in there dying.

She might already be dead.

That thought battered him harder than Ephron’s atmosphere. Despite everything, he still cared what happened to her.

“Ash?”

“I’m still kicking, Rip.”

Barely. He could picture her hunched over in the CR2’s cockpit, sweating, swearing, and searching for options she didn’t have.

“This isn’t what I wanted. Sir.”

Sir
. She always punctuated that word with pauses on both ends, but it signaled she was starting to break.

“It’s not what I wanted either,” he said. “You chose this.”

Another piece of Ash’s hull separated from the CR2. Red lights flashed across Rykus’s displays. He pulled up a damage report, checked it for something he could fix, but he wasn’t a mechanic. He wasn’t an anomaly. He wasn’t even a member of the fucking Fleet.

He reached across the console and tweaked his power settings again.

“Rykus!”

The DDT bucked. His neck popped. He shook his head to clear his vision and saw the crack in his viewshield grow and splinter. Half his displays sparked, then went black, and every warning alarm in his transport wailed.

“Ash,” he gritted out. The shuttle vibrated too hard and too loud to hear a response. His restraints tightened, squeezing him into the cushioned seat of his chair. A Mayday sounded from his console. His communications display, scrambled and flickering, but functional, lit up, telling him it was broadcasting his status and location to every emergency beacon in the vicinity.

A brightening yellow circle in the top right corner of the enviro display caught his eye. He cursed, grabbed the arms of his chair and—

The ejection came hard and hell wrenching. It flattened him into his seat as it propelled him beneath the console and into a survival casket.

His vision fled. So did the air in his lungs. He clung to consciousness, the scream of wind and pressure pummeling the small pod.

Automatic settings kicked in, slowing the jettisoned casket. Rykus’s vision cleared. His mind returned. Groaning, he reached for the switch that would change the settings to manual. It wouldn’t give him much maneuverability. Casket was an apt name for the tiny escape pod. It was created to bring bodies to the ground, dead or alive, not to pursue another craft, but he wouldn’t let Ash escape. He’d land on top of her if he could.

Wrapping his hand around the single stick control, he switched the display at eye level to a camera angle that showed hazy ground below. Luck was with him. His DDT burned hot and bright in the middle of purple-leaved trees, an indication he was heading the right direction. He had only twenty, maybe thirty seconds of fuel to burn. Not enough to reverse course or stay in flight for long. He needed to get his bearings and find Ash’s crash site.

A quick switch to another camera angle and he knew where he was. He’d spent two years on Ephron recovering from the injury that had nearly cost him his life. The majority of that time, he lived in the capital city, which lay burning to the east. The Tor River was below him, and…

There. Ash’s CR2. She’d brought the shuttle down in the river. The hunk of metal had settled lopsided on the bank. It was damaged and smoking, but the crash might be survivable. A few meters more to the north, or a few dozen to the south, and the CR2 would have been destroyed by the strong, towering ever-woods of the Sambori Forest.

Ash might be alive.

No, she
would
be alive. Ash was like all other anomalies. She thought she was indestructible, and as inaccurate as that belief was, it made her partly so. Anomalies survived in situations where any other man or woman wouldn’t.

Ash would survive this one.

He burned five seconds of fuel, swerving slightly to the right, then he delayed the release of the casket’s parachute. The altimeter counted down the distance to the ground. He waited, waited, waited, until the details of the trees and river became clear on his display. Then he punched a button.

Pain lurched through every limb of his body. His restraints cut into his skin, and he lost his vision again. When it returned, Rykus’s weight was in his feet. The parachute had released from the rear of the casket, effectively putting him in a standing position. The display flickered as the pod drifted toward the ground, but when it came back on, he saw he was exactly where he wanted to be, drifting to the ground almost on top of Ash’s CR2. He searched it, looking for signs of life, but the only movement was the twitching of leaves and limbs in the breeze and the water lapping against the shuttle’s damaged hull.

Had Ash already run? She wouldn’t linger around the crash site. Admiral Bayis would send a troop transport down. Of course, with so many fires burning on the planet and so much debris from space, it might take a while for the Coalition to locate the crash site.

He reached for his comm-cuff, intending to expedite the arrival of the troops, but his fingers met bare, chilled skin.

Looking down, he saw a long, angry red scrape stretching from his wrist to elbow. No cuff. Not anywhere in the tiny casket.

He held back a string of choice curse words. They wouldn’t make his cuff magically reappear. He didn’t have time to contact Bayis anyway. Ash emerged from the wreck. She wasn’t alone. She dragged the war chancellor from the CR2, shoved him to the ground, then pointed a gun at Hagan’s head.

Ah, hell.

Rykus was still thirty feet above the ground, but he grabbed the emergency strap that would open the casket’s canopy and yanked hard.

Ash’s scream tore through Rykus. It wasn’t a pain-filled sound; it was a sound of anguish. Frustration.

“
Stand down, Ash
,” he yelled. He doubted his command would work—hard to get his voice and tone right when he was yelling from twenty-five feet above her head—but maybe it would distract her.

He slipped out of his restraints and stepped to the edge of the casket. Ash looked up. Bright red blood covered the right side of her face. She stared at him as he dropped to twenty feet.

Fifteen feet.

Ten.

Grabbing a bright orange emergency backpack off the ground, she ran.

Damn it.

“Stop!” He jumped, landed, and rolled. The impact sent a sharp pain up through his legs and into his spine, but he launched himself after Ash.

She was only a few feet away from the tree line and freedom.

She was an anomaly. Hurt or not, he wouldn’t catch her if she made it that far.

Concentrating on his breathing, he made certain his intonation was perfect and said, “
Sit.
”

Ash fell to her knees. Then to her hands. Slowly, as if she was fighting a multifront battle against every muscle in her body, she turned and sat on her ass.

“I’m. Not. Your. Fucking. Pet.” Her rage-filled eyes lifted and met his.

For the first time in his life, he wished she was a slave to his commands. He wished she’d never learned how to wriggle out of his compulsion.

“
Drop the g
—”

Grass and dirt erupted beside him. He threw himself to his stomach, pushed up in time to see Ash rise, his Covar held steady between her hands.

“Say another word, Rip, and I won’t miss.”

She wasn’t aiming the gun at him; she was aiming it at Hagan. The war chancellor was on the ground, curled up into a ball with his bound hands shielding his head. He peeked out from under his arms. “You’ve lost your fucking mind!”

Slowly, Rykus rose to his feet. He had a duty to keep Hagan safe, but he wasn’t going to lose this standoff again.

“
Put down the weapon
.”

Ash’s gaze jerked to him. Her hand shook, but his command had been perfect. She set the gun on the ground. When she straightened, her eyes were pinched shut. Her body was tense, her hands in fists, and one tiny vein stood out on her forehead. As strong, resilient, and resourceful as she was, she couldn’t fight him. Not anymore.

“Kick it over here,” he told her.

She did, harder than was necessary. He picked it up, checked the magazine.

“Toss over the backpack too,” he said.

She gripped the bright orange strap, looked like she was about to throw it to him, but her gaze went to the sky.

He heard it a second later, the low, dull roar of approaching sub-atmo engines. He risked a glance over his shoulder and saw three small craft on the horizon.

He squinted as they approached. He wasn’t an expert on ship types. The birds definitely belonged to the Coalition, but they didn’t look like troop transports.

“Predators,” Hagan said. “Flag them down.”

“They see us,” Rykus said. They were headed straight for their crash site. There was no place for them to land, but at least—

Tiny specs dropped from beneath the craft.

“Are they attacking?” Hagan asked the same instant Ash bit out, “River. Run.”

Rykus was already moving. He pulled the chancellor to his feet, then shoved him toward the bank. “Dive. Deep as you can.”

He didn’t wait to see if Hagan followed his instructions; he leapt into the river after Ash. Cold water closed over his head, his torso, his legs. He kicked his feet, parted the water with his arms, and swam down, down toward the bottom of the river.

The deeper he swam, the darker the muddy water became. His vision was almost completely black when everything suddenly turned orange. His ears popped. The river churned heavy and hot, and a sizzling roar filled his head.

He swam deeper.

Thirty seconds passed.

Forty.

The water heated. Burned. At the surface, it would be boiling.

He kicked again, and his fingertips found mud and rocks. He ignored the strain on his lungs and stayed there, fighting the instinct to return to the surface.

Fifty seconds. Fifty-five.

The fiery orange tint faded and shadows crept in. Not the muddy water this time. Tunnel vision. An indication he wasn’t getting enough oxygen.

No shit.

He blew out the stale air and followed the bubbles up.

The water burned like a too-hot sauna. Survivable, but unpleasant as hell. He had no choice but to endure it. He needed air.

He broke the surface, coughing and choking.

“We have to move,” he heard Ash say. “They’ll come back.”

Rykus blinked the scalding water from his eyes and saw her pulling Hagan onto the bank. The chancellor’s face was bright red and blistered. He fell to his elbows and knees, wheezing. The trees and ground were charred, but very little fire remained. The Predators had attacked with brimfire, an incendiary that burned hot and fast, eating the oxygen until it quickly snuffed itself out. The stuff was lethal and poisonous. They couldn’t linger here.

Rykus swam toward them. He pulled himself out of the water just as Ash turned.

“Status, sir?”

“I’m—” He stopped. Stared. Hagan’s hands were unbound now, the wire unknotted at his feet.

Ash had taken the time to help the chancellor. She could have disappeared into the forest. Why the hell was she still there?

He took a step forward and placed his hand on the gun he’d instinctively holstered when he’d run. Water in its barrel might cause its accuracy to be off, but he’d modified it well enough that it would still work. It would still kill.

“Hands on your head,” he said.

Her lips pressed together. Her shoulders tensed.

The loyalty training. That had to be the reason she was still there. There was no other explanation for why a traitor would risk her freedom to help others.

“Hands on your—”

Hagan cursed, leapt to his feet, and fled.

Rykus didn’t have to search the sky to know why. He met Ash’s gaze as the whistle of inbound brimfire filled their ears.

“Kind of hard to run with my hands over my head.”

She’d done it before on Caruth. He was tempted to make her do it again, but that despicable, irrational part of his brain that wanted her to be innocent kicked in, and instead of shooting her like he should have, he left the Covar holstered.

“
Don’t leave my sight
,” he commanded. Then he shoved her after Hagan.

CHAPTER TWELVE

THE PILOTS MADE a mistake. They attacked south and west of the river. Ash hauled ass to the east, the brimfire burning hot enough to make it feel like her clothes were fusing to her skin. The weight of the soaked emergency pack pulled on her shoulders, but she didn’t slow, she didn’t look back, she didn’t veer off course, not even to make sure her fail-safe was behind her. If Rykus and Hagan didn’t keep up, they were dead. Checking on them wouldn’t change that.

She sprinted up a steep slope, sweat pouring down her body. Her legs burned from the exertion, her lungs from the heat, but she dug her fingernails into her palms and kept running.

She wanted to never stop. She wanted to go and go and go until her body, and more importantly, her mind, shut down.