Page 85 of Enthraller

“Kine and Crach were both there,” Renard said. “Made sense to bring the two who had already been here.”

She eyed the men for a beat then turned to Wren. “Where were you?”

“Hiding.” Wren waved her hand vaguely. “I could barely see my hand in front of my face, the rain was coming down so hard. And I didn’t see anything like that,” she said, looking at the pile of equipment they had stripped instead of looking for her.

“Besides, we shot you, didn’t we?” Kine said.

She shook her head, because there had been no sign of the shot by the time she’d reached the SF base on Ytla. It had been a glancing strike, but it had been a strike, nevertheless. “Came close, but you didn’t hit.”

“I got a hit signal,” Kine insisted.

“Maybe you hit the edge of the wreck where I went to ground,” she said with a shrug. “Ask Navar. I didn’t have any laz wounds on me when I got to base.”

“That’s true. But you weren’t in great shape, in spite of that. Three days on the run with no food took its toll.” Navar wasn’t paying attention to her, he was staring at the wreckage, face alight with awe.

“She looked the worse for wear?” Linao asked, and something about the question caused the banked fear in Wren to whoosh to life.

“Of course.” Navar looked over at her at last. “She was running for days through rough terrain in wild weather. She was close to collapse.”

“How quickly did she bounce back?” Linao asked.

Navar shook his head. “They took her off planet straight away, to the med unit of the Ern, the battleship that was patrolling this part of Aponi territory.”

“I wonder what those medical records will say?” Linao asked.

Wren met her suspicious gaze. “I imagine you can intimidate or bribe someone to have a look.” She twisted her lips. “What are you getting at, Linao?”

Linao looked like she wanted to explain, but also didn’t, because of their audience.

She suspects about us, the nanos said.

Yes. Wren wondered how. It sounded like the warriors who carried nanos on Fjern transformed bodily, which was nothing like how it worked for her. Were there others in the VSC who, when they’d found a wreck, they’d found the nanos that went with it?

The last place a wreck had been discovered was on Fynian, a habitable moon just like Ytla, and before that, it had been Faldine, the new planet the VSC was establishing. There had also been the ghost ship the Raxians had found even longer ago. An ancestral battleship just floating in space. What had happened to the nanos that might have been on those vessels?

Also, she recalled the Protection Unit soldier that Ed was sure had seen her silver shield when the observatory maintenance team had been killed. He could well have passed that information on to Linao.

In the distance, the sound of rumbling grew solidly louder, and Wren turned in that direction. “Looks like a storm,” she said.

“A couple of tents would be handy right now,” Linao said, shooting a look at Renard. “Is there a place to find cover in the wreck?”

“Yes.” Kine moved forward, walking down the line of metal ribs and then disappearing from sight.

After a moment Linao started after him, her laz still pointed in Ed’s general direction as the stretcher hover moved along with her.

Kine was pulling back branches that had been blown against a large opening, and Crach stepped up to help him. After a moment, Fenton joined them.

When they’d cleared the entrance, Wren could see a room with a floor of soil and leaves. The ceiling was low, but Wren guessed the original floor was several feet lower than it was now, and that a few thousand years of wind had slowly filled in the space with debris.

The first hard, stinging raindrops began pelting down, and they all moved inside. It was instantly warmer. Calmer.

Better.

“Why didn’t you store the equipment you found in here?” Linao asked, irritated.

Kine waved at the door. “Because while I could see there was a room beyond, it was just myself and Crach, and we didn’t have the time to move the branches. And given the weather, they would probably have blown away, anyway.”

She stepped to the doorway, looked out at the rain that was now sheeting down. “How long will this last?”

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