Page 75 of The Garnet Daughter
“Voices carry. Caught attention with your screaming.” She sticks her head out next to me and points to a man pacing in a wide circle around the wreckage with his gun in hand, like he’s guarding the area. His concentration is on the ridge we are currently hiding on.
“I only see one.”
“Always more than one of that kind,” she informs me grimly.
There is movement by a large pile of debris. A man is cuffed and sitting on the ground, guarded by a second soldier staring in our direction.
“It’s August. Those are the soldiers that hijacked our ship,” I barely manage to say aloud, afraid he will vanish into the sand if I hold hope that I found him too tightly.
“Prisoner. Won’t last long.”
I grit my teeth. If the guards heard me screaming down in the valley below, then he did as well. I tuck down against the boulder, leaning my back to it and gesturing for Sav to join me.
“We have to go. Pod scrap isn’t worth dying over,” Sav whispers.
“No,” I spit and then steady my voice to convince her to help me. “That is a Viathan fleet ship. The cargo hull is full of supplies and scrap, more than anything a pod could offer.”
She ponders for a moment and nods.
“We need a plan.” I can’t just fold down there, unarmed. August is cuffed, and the soldiers have weapons with access to all the ones on board.
She peeks out again, then her eyes go wide.
“What?” I slowly lift my head, mustering all the control I have not to do so quickly and give away our location.
The scene is much different now. The First Son soldier guarding August has left his post to join the other, both pointing up the ridge seemingly right at my face. They know we are up here, and it’s only a matter of time before they investigate.
“Look,” Sav whispers.
August slinks in a low crouch toward his guard, his hands still cuffed but now in front of him and ready.
The blood surging in my eardrums is audible as I watch him get closer and closer, praying the guard does not notice.
If either of them take their attention off the ridge, they could easily shoot him and I would witness the whole thing.
Without thinking, I stand from my hiding spot and climb to the top of the rocks we hide behind.
Sav curses me from below, her voice fading as the sound of crunching rock follows. Likely fleeing. She agreed to help me, but we have no plan. I only have this, waving my arms in the air and capturing the attention of the soldiers so that it is not on August.
The guard in the front sees me first, looking through the scope of his weapon. I’m hundreds of paces away and higher than they are, but I have no idea if whatever violence comes out of the end of his gun can reach me.
“Here!” I close my eyes and bellow as loud as my lungs will allow. “Here . . . please,” I plead lower, and when I look again, my stomach flips.
August silently leaps on top of his guard, wrapping his cuffed hands over the top of him and pinning his torso. He pulls him backward, leveraging his body down into the sand and pointing his gun at the soldier watching me through his scope.
The weapon fires and the soldier drops to his knees and goes limp, falling to the ground forehead first.
“August!” I scream as he struggles to gain control with the guard he has in his grasp. He lies flat in the sand, pulling the gun farther back against the chest of the man on top of him. They are parallel, fighting for dominance over the angle of the long barrel.
Another sharp pop rips through the valley, bouncing off the rocks.
I can’t stop the yelp that escapes me, ducking on reflex.
The guard on top of August is lifeless as he rolls to the side. The weapon lodged up under his chin falls with him.
My body moves on its own, leaping down from my rock platform and into the sand. I slide and stumble over the terrain, desperate to descend the ridge to get to August.
He sees me, looking up briefly and then squatting over the corpse of his guard.
