Critical Path (The Critical Series Book2) (15 page)

Layla must have seen the concern on her face. She finished packing her backpack and came around the fire to sit next to her. Khan remained on the other side, but like Maria, he leaned into the fire. Warming his hands.

Despite the bright sunshine beyond the canopy, the trees insulated the woods, keeping it cool. Without trekking through the dense growth, it seemed everyone was starting to feel the cold.

“He’ll be fine,” Layla said. “You don’t have to worry so much.”

“Oh? I’m not worried about Gregor. He’ll do whatever he wants.”

Layla shook her head. “I meant Denver.”

A heat, not from the fire, warmed her face. She’d totally forgotten about Denver. How could she forget about him?

“Sorry,” Maria said. “I was just deep in thought and misunderstood. I’m just not handling this whole situation too well. I thought—before the revelation about the pods—that things were getting settled, that we were finding our way. But now…”

Layla put her arm across Maria’s shoulder and gave her a quick hug. “We’ll still find our way, Maria. You just need to have a little faith.”

“It’s the not knowing how things will turn out that worries me.”

“There’s just, I don’t know. I’m used to things being more… linear, to use one of Mike’s words. I had tasks, and I knew what I was doing back on the harvester.”

“But you had no freedom. No choice,” Khan said. “Out here, we’ve got it all to ourselves mostly.”

“I’m not like you, Khan. I can’t just live off the land like you and be on my own. I’m too used to being with a tight-knit group of people. It just feels like our group is fracturing.”

“Evolving,” Khan added. “That’s the worst thing about humans. They’re too adaptable, always changing and evolving from one generation to the next.”

Layla screwed up her face. “What? How do you arrive at that?” she said, with a hint of incredulity to her voice. “That we evolve and adapt is the reason why we’re still here. Otherwise we would have all perished in the ice age.”

“The croatoans don’t evolve,” Khan said. “They just wait, always staying the same, remaining focused on what they’re good at. Crocodiles and sharks too. Both of those have been around since the dinosaurs and have barely changed. When you have a good design, it makes sense to stick to it.”

“What about snakes?” Layla said. “They’ve evolved to adapt to almost every climate the world over. If they didn’t evolve, they’d likely not have survived for as long as they have.”

Khan took a sip of his tea and thought about her point. “For humans,” he said, steam billowing from his mouth, “they evolved to forget who and what they were. It’s how the croatoans managed to nearly wipe us all out. We were too focused internally and not paying enough attention to the signs out there.”

“Look,” Maria said. “All this doesn’t change anything, does it? Evolve, adapt or not, it doesn’t matter. All that matters right now is that Charlie could be alive and we have a rogue community of aliens and humans to deal with. We have to manage the threat.”

“Do we?” Khan said. “This is partly what I’m talking about. Though don’t get me wrong, I’m happy to come along to help, but at some point humanity has to come to terms with the fact that it’s a flawed species, seeing wars and conflict ahead of an alternative approach.”

“And what would that be?” Layla asked. Though from her expression, Maria could see she’d heard this argument plenty of times before.

“Coexist. Live and let live.”

“You’re unreal,” Layla said. “Were you even around when the aliens first came up? They weren’t exactly bringing chocolates and sweets with them in an act of peace.”

“Maybe not,” Khan said. “But they’d spent tens of thousands of years observing us. You have to wonder what they learned about us during all that time.”

“Guys, let’s not argue. This situation is bad enough already without us bickering over stuff in the past,” Maria said. She stood and poured the tea onto the ground and walked off, wanting to get some space before tensions got any higher.

She stepped past the fire and Khan and headed for the trees. She got to a few meters before the small camp finished and the dense trees started when the sound of twig and branch displacement made her stop in her tracks.

The alien they had caught earlier came through first. Ropes and shackles around its wrists and ankles led back into the gloom—until Gregor appeared. He grinned wide when he saw Maria.

“Ah, how sweet. A welcoming committee.”

Great, that’s all she needed—another instigator. “Where’s Denver?” she asked, trying to absolve the guilt of forgetting about him earlier.

“Fuck knows,” Gregor said. “But our friend here decided to start talking. We’ve got plans to make.”

***

A long, slow hour passed. Maria stood with her back against a tree, not wanting to be within the group right now, with Gregor staring at her at every possible opportunity. His leering grin made her skin crawl now that Layla had explained the truth about Gregor and he’d failed to convince her with regards to his position as an elder.

The farther she could be away from him, the better. Even more so when he was crowing about his achievements with the alien and the possible demise of Denver. The radio silenced bothered her greatly.

Even if Denver had gone off on his own, he wouldn’t stay in complete silence like this just for the sake of it. At the very least he would keep in touch with Layla. She’d tried the radio every few minutes since Gregor got back and received no answer.

“I’m telling you,” Gregor said, pointing a finger at Layla, “if we act now and stick to the plan, we’ll be able to take out key positions of the settlement. Meglain here would be perfect bait for this. They have a community now. These aliens aren’t just mindless resources, they have a free will and a desire for survival—we can use that to our advantage.”

Khan remained passive throughout Gregor’s frenzied plan-making and grand ideas of overwhelming a settlement. It was as if he was trying to convince himself it was doable, perhaps remembering his old days when he used to have power and influence.

But at this precise moment, Maria saw a sad old man trying to relive his youth at the expense of everyone else. Maybe Khan had a point about humanity? Being so new to the world outside of the harvester, Maria didn’t have the history like Layla to disprove his hypothesis.

It put her in a strange situation as she looked upon the others from both a metaphorical and literal outside position. Who were these people, really? Who were humans, and what did they stand for? She couldn’t imagine they were all like Gregor, or even all like Layla, for that matter.

From Mike to Denver to Charlie and Layla, everyone she had come across so far were so driven, so sure of themselves—until Khan. She questioned her role in all this. Was she really a part of this group? At times she felt she had more in common with the croatoans than the humans, despite her actual biological race.

Gregor stood up and kicked dirt onto the fire. “Right, everyone, get your gear ready, and check your weapons. We move out in five.”

Was that a smile she saw on Meglain’s face? It was hard to tell, but Maria was sure she saw the alien’s expression changed for a moment. It looked away into the woods before slowly raising its head to stare above.

Maria traced his gaze up.

She saw them before she heard them. And she heard them too late.

A group of five hover-bikes flew overhead. Gregor, Layla and Khan jumped up, but it was too late to do anything. The bikes descended like stones, moving agilely under the controls of a mixed group of human and croatoans. Within seconds, they were surrounded. Gregor struggled to reach his rifle propped up by a tree.

Two croatoans wearing rags and denims fired over his head with their triangular pistols. The rounds splintered the trunk, making Gregor freeze on the spot. He raised his hands and turned around with a sneer on his face.

“No one move,” a female human said. She held a long spearlike weapon. A metal prong on the end crackled with electricity. Eight others, mixed species, circled them, aiming their weapons. Two young men untied Meglain and checked him over. They said something to each other using words Maria didn’t understand.

“In the middle,” a croatoan behind her said, pressing a rifle barrel against her back.

Gregor and the others were encouraged into the middle of the circle until they were standing back to back.

“Well?” Gregor said to the woman with the crackling spear. “What now, eh? Gonna butcher us like you did the others?”

“No,” she said. “We’re taking you to speak with Aimee. You’ve kidnapped one of our kind. You’ve some explaining to do. Take them away,” she said.

“Wait,” Maria cried out. “We can explain. Let’s talk about this.”

The barrel pushed harder into her spine. The woman, a blonde with piercing green eyes and wearing a patched-up set of army fatigues, stepped to her. “You should have thought about that before you sent a spy. Say another word and you all die right here, right now.”

Maria pressed her lips together and tried to stop herself from shaking with fear.

“Tie ’em up and take ’em,” the blonde said. “Shoot ’em if they speak again.”

With that, the group reversed the roles on them. Maria and the others became the captured and shackled as they were led onto the hover-bikes, their legs cuffed to steel rods on the sides of the bikes and their hands tied down to small handlebars, pinning them in place.

Maria strained her neck to look to her right to see Layla. Layla gave her an encouraging smile, but it didn’t help, Maria could still see the fear in her eyes. Her legs shook as she gripped the bike tight. The rider in front fired the engines, and they lifted up into the air with a sudden jolt. Her stomach knotted with the sudden movement. She closed her eyes and held on as they sped off toward the settlement. Maria thought this was likely it. She doubted they would keep them alive if the video of that battle was anything to go by.

She tried to make peace with the situation, that her life was rapidly coming to an end, but she couldn’t do it. She wanted to live. She wanted to survive, and that’s when she realized that it was this thinking that made her human—and vulnerable.

And she didn’t like it.

CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

The swelling on the back of Denver’s head throbbed and made him feel sick. He looked around the prison cell in which he was thrown. For what seemed like an hour he’d been left there to stew about how stupid he was in letting someone come up behind him like that.

He wondered if it wasn’t because of the lack of root dulling his senses, taking the edge off his mind. He sat back on the filthy mattress, leaning his back against the cold stone. The walls were rough-hewn lumps piled on top of each other to make a room no larger than three meters in any direction.

Raw, damp dirt lay beneath his feet. He coughed, the stench of carrion wafting through the bars of the door from somewhere off down the corridor. The groans of other prisoners echoed down the narrow passage.

At least he wasn’t the only one here. Maybe one of the other cells contained his father. Looking at the door, he wished he still had his weapons on him. The bastards had even found the bush knife strapped to his calf. With that, he could have hacked away the wooden frame and door and got to the hinges, but with nothing but his clothes and bare hands, he was stuck.

Checking the mattress and the dark corners of the room, Denver sought anything at all that could prove useful, but he came up blank. Nothing but dirt and worms and the frayed fragments of someone’s old clothes.

They probably died in here, he thought.

Through the cracks where the wooden beams of the ceiling were crudely cemented into the stone walls, a beam of light filtered through, shining against the iron bars within the door.

No way of telling what the exact time was or how long he had been out. Could have been an hour, could’ve been a day. Without the root in his system, the unconsciousness mixed with his general tiredness could have lasted a lot longer than usual.

Either way, it didn’t help him out much.

Standing to stretch his legs and help clear his head, he paced the small cell, walking off the cramp that had set in to his calves and thighs. The swelling on the back of his head felt like a tennis ball.

Whoever it was, human or croatoan, really went to town with the blow.

Remembering the others, he searched the pockets of his fatigues in vain to find the communicator, but as was expected, they, whoever his captors were, had already taken it. That probably spelled danger to Layla and the others if they gave anything away over the comm line before they realized who was on the other end.

But nothing he could do about that.

At least they had Gregor with them. As despicable as he was, he afforded them a certain level of protection. Assuming he hadn’t got them to do anything stupid like storm the settlement.

Of course! The settlement… Denver moved to the far end of the cell and, on tiptoes, lifted his face to the crack. Although the aperture only gave him a narrow angle of view, he could see the rooftops of other buildings and in the distance a building on top of a landmass.

Beyond that, and surrounding his view, he saw the steps cut into the high sides of the town. He wondered if this wasn’t once a quarry or a lake given the bowl shape of it with the high sides. A shadow cut the beam of light. A man, or woman perhaps, in robes walked across his vision. He made to shout out, but something about it made him stop. Something familiar…

The way they walked and held themselves prickled at the edge of his recognition, but with his head throbbing with pain he couldn’t quite place it. He did, however, recall seeing the group of robed people through his scope before he was knocked out, but that wasn’t what was ringing bells for him, there was something more fundamental with their body language that screamed at him to remember.

He’d have to leave it for when his head cleared a little.

Whenever that might be. His captors hadn’t even provided him with any water or food. Even an interrogation would be better than nothing. At least then he’d have an opportunity to gather some information on what was happening.