Collision Course (Class 5, #6)

Chapter 5

CHAPTER 5

A siren blared suddenly in the bay, and Rose lifted her head to look up at where it was coming from.

Dav and Sazo, she thought. They would be losing their minds.

One of the group broke away, talking urgently into what she assumed was a comm device, and then turned to have a rapid-fire conversation with the group.

“Go back into your ship,” one of them told her, pointing up the ramp.

It suited her fine, so she complied, closing up behind her. If she had been able to understand them, she might have slow walked it a little, just to get an idea of what was happening, but as she couldn’t, she decided being strapped up in the runner was probably the safest place for her.

When she was all strapped up, she looked out of the window, but it was on the wrong side, and she couldn’t see anything useful.

She closed her eyes, trying to think through her options, and then the whole ship lurched and she guessed the ship she was inside was moving.

It seemed to shudder and then spin, and she remembered Irini’s ship spun, too, when it was doing its short light speed hops.

So they were on the run from Sazo and Dav, most likely.

She tried to keep herself calm as they twisted and spun for what seemed like half an hour before coming to a stop.

When the ship began moving again, it felt to Rose as if they were dropping down, and when they came to an eventual stop, it was to a shudder, as if landing on a solid surface.

Someone pounded on her door, and she unstrapped and opened up, to find two of her original welcoming party standing below.

“You need to come with us.”

She joined them at the bottom of the ramp, and finally found herself looking at them, face to face.

“Where are we?”

“Somewhere that your people cannot find you,” one of them said. He gestured to the side. “Follow me.”

She did, aware that the other person was following behind her, her breathing audible, as if she was stressed.

If Sazo and Dav ever came after her, she’d be stressed, too, Rose thought.

They reached a door to one side, and with a touch, it opened.

Light from outside flooded in, and Rose felt a spike of excitement at the thought of an on-planet excursion.

She loved being on solid ground.

The person in front of her leaned out, reached out a hand to grab something, and swung out. He disappeared below and when Rose reached the doorway, she saw there was a ladder to climb down.

She wasn’t in peak ladder climbing shape right now, but she followed carefully behind him and studied the landscape with interest once she reached the bottom.

The air felt more substantial here, and she wondered whether the necklace was having to work harder or not. It looked to her as if both the man who’d proceeded her and the woman behind her were struggling a little. They weren’t in helmets or suits, so the air must at least be close to what they breathed on their native planet.

The area where they’d landed was rocky. Grass grew between broken stones, but mainly they were surrounded by high rocks of dark gray and black. Where the ship had set down was relatively flat, although not completely, which explained the shuddering stop earlier.

The ship looked almost invisible when she turned back to it, the surface so reflective, it practically disappeared.

Someone called out to their left, and Rose turned to see two people, obviously also part of Irini’s grynicha, coming from between two rocks.

The breeze was light, but it cut through her, cold in a way that spoke of snow on higher ground. While they waited for their welcoming party to join them, Rose looked up into the sky, and saw a big gas planet high above, and nothing else.

Wherever they’d hopped to, it wasn’t anywhere she recognized from the solar system the Barrist and Sazo had been traveling through earlier.

The newcomers eyed her with interest, and then the four of them spoke in explosive, choppy tones.

“You will stay here on Dimal,” the woman who’d met her in the launch bay said. “We will come for you when we have our people.”

“You won’t have your people,” Rose said carefully. “I was told they killed themselves so that the Tecran would not have access to the technology of the ship they stole. They torched the inside of it.”

There was a moment of absolute silence, and then the man reached forward and hit her across the face.

She staggered back, astonished, her hand to her cheek.

He shouted something at her, and she said nothing, staring at him with big eyes as he ranted.

The other three looked visibly shocked at his behavior and the woman snapped something at him, the tone harsh, her expression angry.

He spat something back, but she did not back down, shouting something at him and then making a downward chopping motion with her hand.

He went quiet, and took a few steps away from the others.

“Why did you not say this before?” the woman asked her.

“You said you wanted to swap me moments before the siren, then you sent me inside my runner.” Rose slowly let her hand drop from her cheek.

One of the newcomers audibly gasped and Rose wondered if there was a mark on her skin.

She lifted her hand again, and felt a slight swelling.

“When were you told this, about our people?” the woman asked.

Rose thought about it. “Five months ago. Less than half a year, in my time.”

“Who told you?” The woman who’d come through the rocks asked her.

“One of the other prisoners of the Tecran, the people who stole your ship. This prisoner was kept in the same place as your stolen ship—a warehouse on a moon. When they were rescued by the people I travel with, that is when the truth about what the Tecran had done came out. That is why we traveled here. To make contact with you and tell you what happened.”

There was more conversation, from which the man who slapped her was completely excluded.

The woman seemed to want to leave, urgently, or at least return to the ship, presumably to pass the information along.

She seemed to be telling the two who’d been waiting for them what to do, then turned and began climbing the ladder back into the ship.

She was almost at the top when the man who’d been standing by himself moved to the ladder, and began to climb. He didn’t look at Rose.

She looked at him, though, staring at him to make sure she would know him again.

He seemed to feel her eyes on him, because he turned to look back at her, then quickly faced forward again and hauled himself up to the top.

“Binnos lost a family member,” the woman who was standing beside her said, as if in explanation.

“I lost my whole world,” Rose said. “I was stolen away, and there is no way back for me. By the same group who took your people.”

There was silence at her words, and she didn’t look around to see how they had been taken. She stood, arms crossed, as the ship fired up and shot into the sky.

It’s just you and me, baby , she said as she smoothed her hands over her bump.

When she turned, both the man and woman she was left with were watching her strangely.

“Crythis says you are not very familiar with this language,” the man said.

She assumed the woman who’d just flown away was Crythis. “I am not.”

He indicated the direction they had come from with his hand. “We will have to be careful to not misunderstand each other.”

As she followed him, picking her way across the rocky ground, she wondered if that was a threat.