Dark Solstice (21 page)

Nodding, Justice began searching more quickly and they finally found helmets, boots and gauntlets. The suits kept out the bitter cold to a degree by themselves but with the damaged life support, they not only had to lift the fact plates on the helmets to breathe, they didn’t have the heat the unit would ordinarily have supplied.

Climbing from the wreckage, they searched the ground for footprints and finally found three sets heading in a north easterly direction and set out, moving as fast as they could. The brisk pace warmed them a little, but it also made it necessary to stop more often and lift their visors to replenish their oxygen supply.

Raathe was traveling on grim determination before they even left the wreckage behind, focusing on putting one foot in front of the other and little besides. By they time they’d been walking at a steady climb for an hour he could feel his reserves winding down to nothing. He’d long since lost feeling in his feet and his knees began to feel as awkward and insubstantial as water. They wobbled worse with every step he took until they finally gave out and he dropped to his knees. Shivering, he lifted the visor and took several reviving drags of air to try to chase the darkness into abeyance again. He’d already shut his helmet and sucked at his water tube before he remembered the unit wasn’t attached.

Justice, who’d continued moving for a few minutes, finally discovered he was alone and stopped, gasping for breath as he turned to look for Raathe. Seeing he was down, he debated briefly with himself and finally stumbled back.

“Get up!” he growled.

Raathe shook his head, but it was more as if he was trying to stay conscious than in negation of Justice’s demand.

“Get up, god damn it! I can’t fucking carry your sorry ass!”

Raathe nodded, closing his helmet. “Not much water.”

“Because it relies mostly on catching the condensation in our breath and we’re not connected,” Justice growled at him angrily. “We’ll get water when we get to the caves.”

Nodding, Raathe struggled to get to his feet. After watching him irritably for several moments, Justice grasped his arm and hauled him up. He had to steady him once he was on his feet. Muttering under his breath, he dragged Raathe’s arm across his shoulders and glanced worriedly at the cliff in the distance that he hoped was going to prove to be the entrance Rhea had told them about.

There was no sign of her or Grimes or Cook, though, and that worried him. He couldn’t seem to focus enough to figure out the time line, but it didn’t seem to him that the group would’ve had time to completely outdistance them. Then again, it had taken him and Raathe a while to find PECs and get into them and a good bit longer to find the life units and accoutrements.

“Whoever was in those ships won’t be far behind us,” he muttered.

“Might be Rhea’s only hope,” Raathe responded in a slurred voice.

“You think they’re going to give a fuck about taking her back alive?” Justice ground out. “They’ll just shoot us and follow them and kill them, too. They’re escapees. We all are. They don’t have to take us in alive.”

Raathe straightened, taking most of his weight off of Justice.

Justice flicked a glance at him, wondering if he looked to be in as sorry a shape as Raathe. He felt like it, had begun think neither of them were going to make it. They couldn’t leave Rhea in the hands of Grimes and Cook, though. Somehow, they were going to have to suck it up and keep going. “She’s my woman, you know,” Justice added provocatively. “She told me she’d contract with me when got out of this.”

Raathe stiffened, pulling away completely and glaring at him. “Like fucking hell she will!” he growled, sounding more like himself. “She’s in love with me.”

Despite the fact that he’d started the argument to distract Raathe, the comment brought a surge of anger. “Where the hell did you get that idea?”

“From her,” Raathe said, a note of complacency in his voice.

“She told you that? Or you decided it for yourself?” Justice snarled.

“She’s mine,” Raathe growled, as if that settled the argument. “Get over it!”

“I’m going to kick your fucking ass the first chance I get.”

“You couldn’t kick my ass if I had both hands tied behind my back!” Raathe snarled.

“You think, because I took it easy on you in the arena, that you can take me, Raathe?”

“I know I can take you, jackass!”

“We’ll see about that, asshole!”

An explosion of sound interrupted the argument before it could escalate any further. Both men stopped abruptly and whirled in opposite directions to discover the source.

“Rock slide!” Raathe announced, fear and anger lacing his voice.

“Shit!” Justice exclaimed at almost the same moment. “They’ve found the wreckage!”

Raathe turned to look behind them as Justice turned to look ahead to confirm.

“They’ll have to find a place to set down,” Raathe said. “We need to move!”

After pausing long enough to take a few drags of air, they set out again with more speed and less caution, stumbling in the deepening darkness in their rush to reach the area where they’d spotted the rock slide, knowing it must have been Grimes and Cook attempting to breach the fissure that led into the cave system. The found it almost by accident, guided by a faint phosphorescent glow. Huffing breath, nearly frozen, they stumbled up to the narrow opening and squeezed through, too desperate to get inside even to consider that Grimes and Cook might be waiting to jump them.

Fortunately, neither Grimes nor Cook had considered the possibility that Raathe and Justice would be behind them. They were convinced they’d killed both men. They
had
considered that the warden’s men wouldn’t be far behind, though, and they hadn’t paused near the entrance but had immediately plunged deeper into the cavern system.

Anxious due to the fact that they’d had to stop long enough to clear the opening to get in to start with, Grimes had given Rhea a shove to get her moving a little faster, nearly shoving her down. Rhea caught her balance with an effort. She’d managed to get her hands on a broken shard of plasti-metal after the crash and slipped it into her gauntlet to conceal it, but it restricted the movement of her hand and wrist.

It comforted her to have it. She tried not to think about using it, because she meant to, and she didn’t want to have to battle last minute nerves or a reluctant conscience. It hadn’t been as difficult to subdue her conscience as she’d thought it would, or as it might have been in other circumstances. She’d allowed her grief over Raathe and Justice to harden into a cold anger, though, that gave her more purpose even than her determination to protect herself.

She didn’t know if the will to survive alone would’ve given her the strength of purpose she needed, but it wasn’t an issue. She was going to kill them for what they’d done to Raathe and Justice and she was going to enjoy it, she told herself. She only wished she could’ve devised a similar death for the two bastards, left them to freeze and slowly suffocate, damn them!

“They’ll stop to search the wreckage for bodies first,” Grimes said, almost as if his thoughts were in sync with hers.

Rhea felt her throat close. She had to struggle to draw a breath around the pain that tightened in her chest.

“Might be too dark to do more by the time they finish searching,” Cook agreed, snickering. “Good thing we left Raathe and Justice for them to find.”

“The fucking bastards were planning to off us,” Grimes growled. “Serves them right.”

They should’ve killed
them
right off! Rhea thought angrily, feeling desolation sweep through her that threatened to weaken her resolve.

She couldn’t afford it. She hurt all over and the pain was debilitating even without serious injury. She wasn’t certain if it was from the crash itself or from the battering Grimes had dealt out before that—probably a combination of the two, though they’d managed to get strapped into the sleep pods before the crash and she was pretty sure there was no real damage.

She couldn’t be entirely certain she hadn’t sustained injury. Shock, she knew, could prevent her from feeling pain she might have otherwise. A mental inventory hadn’t turned up anything that seemed localized, though, or worse than the general throbbing pain that seemed to be robbing her of strength faster than the exertion.

“What’re the chances, you think, that they stopped to continue the search at day break?” Grimes asked after they’d walked for perhaps an hour.

“Doan know,” Cook said.

“I’m thinking we should find a place to rest. The munch is staggering. She ain’t gonna go much further.”

Cook snorted. “She ain’t the only one.”

“We can stop and rest a few minutes and eat something,” Grimes decided. “If it don’t look like they’re right behind us, we can sleep a couple of hours before we go on.”

Rhea was so tired by the time they found a place they liked that she knew she was completely defenseless. She just hoped they were too focused on getting away to spare the time to attack her.

“I have to … go,” she said uncomfortably.

“So piss. You gotta suit on,” Grimes said sneeringly.

Rhea stared at the man in disgust and dawning outrage. It had been bad enough she’d had to ask, worse that she was afraid it would be just the thing to set them off. If she hadn’t been so desperate she wouldn’t even have considered it at all. “I’m wearing a flight suit under it! Besides, there aren’t any facilities to get rid of it!”

Cook snickered.

Grimes grinned at her.

Oh! They
needed
killing!

She sat down, glaring at the soil at her feet because she wasn’t angry enough to provoke them by glaring at them. They didn’t offer her any of the food—no doubt because they saw no sense in wasting their precious supply on a woman they planned to kill anyway—or the water they’d lugged with them despite her assurance that there was water in the cave. She was more interested in her aching bladder anyway and trying to figure out what to do about it.

It occurred to her that she didn’t really need the PEC. They hadn’t spared the time to stop and remove them—Grimes and Cook were probably convinced they still needed them.
She
would if she left the cavern, but she had no intention of doing so. She hadn’t actually thought beyond killing them. She supposed that was because she really didn’t expect to manage it and live through it, which she probably wouldn’t.

The shard was her only weapon, though, and she couldn’t risk dropping it or allowing them to discover she had it. She tried working it surreptitiously up her sleeve. She managed to get it most of the way before it snagged on the sleeve of her suit—she wasn’t certain
which
sleeve, the PEC or the flight suit, unfortunately, but she finally decided she had to do something.

Removing one of her gauntlets, she dropped it to the ground and then reached inside the one concealing her weapon and pushed it under the edge of her sleeve before she removed that one.

“What the fuck are you doing, you stupid cunt?” Grimes growled.

“I don’t need the PEC.”

He surged to his feet when she reached up to remove the helmet. “You crazy bitch!”

Rhea gritted her teeth and resisted the urge to throw it at him as she removed it. She set the helmet on the ground beside her and flicked a pointed look at him before she reached for the closure of the PEC and parted it. She had both men’s full attention, which wasn’t something she wanted, but she didn’t see that she could really do anything about it beyond turning her back on them.

Her flesh crawled as she stood up to finish removing the PEC and turned her back on them. The fine hairs on the back of her neck lifted, sending a shiver down her back, but she pushed the boots off and finished removing the PEC before she stepped into the boots again.

It was uncomfortably cool in the cave, but not the life threatening temperatures of the world outside. The shivers prickling her skin, she knew, were almost entirely from her fear and revulsion of the two men and she thought being cooler might keep her more alert.

She needed any advantage she could manage.

The flight suit, fortunately, was unisex. She removed the shard from her sleeve and tucked her weapon carefully between her breasts before she reached between her legs to open the crotch and squatted to relieve herself.

Both men cursed.

She discovered when she turned around that the ground dipped toward them and the flow of urine was following.
Piss upon you
, she thought with grim amusement. She was careful to hide it, though. Grimes gave her a look like he was contemplating finishing what he’d started on the ship. Both men grabbed their packs, though, and moved to higher ground.

So they were nasty, disgusting bastards but they weren’t crazy about being pissed on!

She crouched down and dug in the pack she’d carried to find food, trying to think how she was going to get the shard back into her hands. Upon reflection, tucking it between her breasts hadn’t been the brightest thing she could’ve done. There wasn’t much doubt in her mind that they meant to rape her at the first opportunity, which meant they’d tear her suit open. She needed to have the shard in her hand if she was going to have a chance to use it.

They watched her through narrowed eyes while she ate. She didn’t look directly at either man, but she could feel their gazes crawling over her.

Good, she thought, shaking the fear that was trying to get a toe hold. The sooner they attacked the better for her. She was tired. She was only going to get more tired if they continued pushing her, and she might lose her nerve besides.

She stiffened when both men stood up and began to remove their PECs. Uncertain if it was only for their comfort or if they were planning on using the opportunity to rape her while they could, she used the distraction to move the shard from the front of her suit to the long pocket on one leg. She would’ve preferred the sleeve since it would’ve been closer to her hand, but the sleeves were loose. She would have to hold the piece in place, which they were bound to notice.

It was just as well, she decided. If the ends of the sleeves had been snug enough to hold the thing in place, she would’ve had trouble getting it in her hand anyway.