It’s a relief—the idea of keeping her safe weighs me down, my shoulders tense and my gut roiling. No matter how irritating she is, she’s a long way from home. If she’s going to get through this, it’s all on me. Sometimes I feel like I spend my life trying to keep other people safe.
By the time we reach the base of the rise, she’s panting despite her clear intention to look like she’s got it together. But we can’t afford to rest again if we want to get back to the pod before dark. We both scramble up the incline, and when I take her hands to haul her with me, she doesn’t bother to look scandalized, too exhausted to waste time on pretense.
It turns out to be a craggy hill, the land sloping up one side, then falling away steeply down the other in a rocky cliff. The crest provides exactly the vantage point we need, and we stand side by side to take in the view.
I wish I’d come alone.
She gasps, breaking her panting for a noise that’s part sob, part wordless distress. Mouth open, she’s staring, and so am I, neither of us capable of processing what we’re seeing. It’s quite possible nobody’s ever seen something like this before.
I try her name. “Lilac. Lilac, don’t watch.” Low and gentle, trying to cajole that recruit in the field into lifting her foot, taking a step, getting out of there. “Look at me, don’t watch it happening, come on.” But she can’t drag her gaze away any more than I can, and we stare together, turned to stone.
Before us, pieces of debris are streaming down from the sky in long, slow arcs, burning as they fall like a meteor shower or incoming missiles. They’re only a sideshow, though.
The Icarus is falling. She’s like a great beast up in the sky, and I imagine her groaning as she wallows and turns, some part of her still fighting, engines still firing in an attempt to escape gravity. For a few moments she seems to hang there, eclipsing one of the planet’s moons, pale in the afternoon sky. But what comes next is inevitable, and I find myself reaching out to put an arm around the girl beside me as the ship dies, pieces still peeling away as she makes her final descent.
She comes in on an angle, heading for a mountain range beyond the plains. Debris the size of skyscrapers goes flying, and one side begins to shear away as the friction becomes too much for her. Smaller shards of fire stream off of her as she goes, arcing across the sky like shooting stars. With a jolt of horror, I realize that they’re escape pods. Pods that didn’t make it off the ship before she went down—pods that didn’t have Miss LaRoux to jar them free of their docking clamps.
The Icarus hits the mountains like a stone skipping across water, before vanishing behind them. She doesn’t rise again.
Suddenly everything is still and silent. Clouds of steam and black smoke rise from behind the distant mountains, and together we stare down at this unthinkable thing.
“You’d been in survival situations before.”
“That’s true.”
“But never like this?”
“I never had a debutante in tow, if that’s what you mean.”
“I meant that you didn’t know where you were at that stage.”
“I wasn’t focused on that.”
“What were you focused on, Major?”
“Working out where the rescue party would land, and getting there.”
“And that was all?”
“What else was there?”
“That’s what we’d like you to tell us.”
SIX
LILAC
HE’S LEADING ME AWAY FROM THE BLUFF, his hand wrapped around my wrist. His fingers are five individual points of contact, rough and hot, too tight. I think my eyes are closed. Whether they are or not, the only thing I see is the fall of the Icarus, a river of fire in the sky, great storm clouds of smoke and steam. It’s burned into my retinas, blinding me to anything else. He could pull me off the cliff and I wouldn’t notice until we hit the ground.
My ankles wrench and twist as I stumble along in his wake, the heels of my shoes rolling on the uneven ground or else sinking into the earth and tripping me. Why don’t ladies dress for such occasions? Surely the occasional hiking boot with evening wear would make a statement.
A bubble of laughter tears out of my throat, and he pauses only long enough to glance over his shoulder at me before shifting his grip on my arm.
“Only a little farther, Miss LaRoux. You’re doing well.”
I’m not doing much at all. I might as well be a rag doll. Comes complete with matching shoes. Spine sold separately.
I’ve got no clue where we are or how far behind we’ve left the pod, but as a branch hits me in the face, I’m forced to close my eyes again. The ship is still there, a painting of muddled afterimages. The sunlight’s lancing almost horizontally through the trees, alternating flashes of glare and shadow that shine red through my eyelids. How long were we on that bluff?