Ravyn's Flight Read online

  She’d been so young when her father had died that, except for a stray memory or two, her only knowledge of him came from pictures and the stories her mother had written down for her. She remembered his smile and how he would sit for hours with her playing tea party, but not much else.

  Her stepfather, Gil, was much clearer in her mind. He had been Spec Ops too. She made a face at Damon’s back, still irritated by his tirelessness. Ravyn winced when she imagined she heard Gil laughing at her childish expression.

  Mom had met Gil when he’d helped bring in the remaining members of an ambushed patrol. All of them had been injured. Gil had always downplayed his part in the rescue, but Ravyn had looked up to him with awestruck eyes anyway. No matter what he said, she knew he’d been a hero.

  Just like her father.

  They reached dry land again and Ravyn could have dropped to her knees and kissed the ground. Her heartfelt relief didn’t last long. They started going uphill. It wasn’t steep, the terrain around the facility was mostly flat, but after all her body had already endured, it might as well have been a mountain. The thick undergrowth grabbed her ankles and slapped at her body. Ravyn ducked under the branch Damon held for her and barely kept from groaning as she straightened. As soon as she was clear, he continued on. She bit back a whimper and followed.

  Good girl.

  Thanks, Gil. Ravyn decided to go with the hallucinations. They helped and she enjoyed “seeing” her family again anyway. Gil had been a great dad. She had been as devastated by his death as that of her mother. The only family she had left was Alex.

  Thinking of Alex brought a smile to her face. Guilt quickly wiped it away. How could she smile? Tears started to fill her eyes and Ravyn blinked hard until she’d beaten them back. Think of something else, she told herself. She couldn’t remember. Not now. Not when falling apart could endanger Damon’s life.

  Ten years her senior, Gil’s son hadn’t wanted a little sister. It hadn’t taken long, though, before she’d had him playing dolls with her. If her stepfather was home, he would join in. Ravyn’s lips twitched. Just thinking of sixteen-year-old Alex and Gil, the grizzled warrior, sitting on the floor with dolls in their hands made her want to laugh. When she recalled the time Alex’s friends had shown up and caught him, she wanted to roar. He had been sitting alone, surrounded by all her dolls and their accoutrements, while she had run up to her room to get another outfit. She knew he’d been harassed unmercifully after that day, but he’d still played with her when she’d asked.

  Big brothers like that didn’t come along every day.

  And eight years later, when her mother and his father had died, Alex had finished raising her. It would have been easier for him to let strangers take her. He had followed his father into Spec Ops and though they’d been between wars, there had still been skirmishes and clandestine missions.

  She wondered if Damon and Alex knew each other.

  Her smile faded completely as she questioned whether she’d see Alex again. Just as he was the last of her family, she was the last of his. It would kill something inside him if she died too. With renewed determination, Ravyn grit her teeth and followed Damon. She wasn’t going to die. Not from physical exertion and not from some monster murderer. And when she heard Gil say “good girl” again, she nodded her head sharply and continued walking.

  *** *** ***

  Damon looked at Ravyn and frowned. She lay flat on her back, taking deep breaths. The wheezing had stopped, thank God. He wasn’t angry with her, but she sure as hell should have told him she was having difficulty. He’d pushed them hard, wanted them as far away from the carnage as they could get, but they could have taken a few rest stops along the way. When she hadn’t complained, he had assumed she could handle the pace he’d set.

  He should have known better.

  He had a good eight inches on her. What he considered a brisk pace would have been close to jogging for her. And she’d kept up with him through the rough terrain without complaining, without whining, without slowing them down.

  She was one hell of a woman.

  “Think you can sit up now?” he asked when her breathing approached normal.

  She did it without his help, but he didn’t miss the way she flinched. Hell, he thought, he’d already screwed up and a full day hadn’t passed. Apparently, he hadn’t learned a damn thing. Wordlessly, he passed her his canteen. She sipped the water slowly. When she passed it back to him, he drank too, then put the cap on again.

  “You should have told me you were having trouble.” He kept his tone even with effort.

  “We needed to put as much distance between us and the facility as possible.”

  “Yeah, we did,” he agreed, “but we could have done it without pushing you to this point. You’ve got to be able to walk tomorrow.”

  “I will.”

  He admired her determination, but she’d be lucky if she could stand, let alone walk, by morning. Damon knew he wasn’t going to push her any more today, even though they had enough daylight left to add a couple more kilometers to their total. Running a hand across his mouth and chin, he considered the situation. They needed food and they needed sleep. He took another look around and knew they couldn’t stay here. There were too many ways for someone to approach them undetected.

  He’d studied maps of Jarved Nine extensively before leaving Earth and had the big picture down, but he still wished he had a map now. Hell, there were a lot of things he wished he had. Nothing had survived the fury unleashed in the transport and it had been too dangerous to go back to the facility for any reason.

  That nineteen people had been killed without one of them running away or having defense wounds was bad enough. CAT team members didn’t have the training to deal with the massacre that had taken place. It was in the realm of possibility, no matter how slight, that they had panicked and been picked off like sitting ducks. His men, however, weren’t just military. They were Special Operations and had received training far beyond the average soldier. His men had been in combat, not one member was green, and yet the death toll on Jarved Nine had gone up by six.

  All of them had taken the situation seriously when the beacon had deployed. Especially after he’d mentioned he had a bad feeling about it. They’d gone into the building by the book and on full alert. There was a zone you hit in war, when sounds became magnified, vision sharpened and the rapport between teammates became nearly psychic. After finding the bodies, the seven of them had automatically switched into that mode.

  His men had been finishing up in the communal room when Damon had walked with Ravyn to the kitchen. They’d stopped what they’d been doing out of consideration for her. All of them had seemed to realize how shaky she’d been. How long had it taken for the water to come to a boil for her tea? He knew it couldn’t have taken much more than ten, maybe fifteen minutes for Ravyn to tell him what had occurred at the CAT facility.

  He tried to recall when he had stopped hearing the sounds his men had made as they went about their duties, but couldn’t. There had been nothing to tip him off that there was a problem.

  Damon scowled. He hadn’t heard the comm equipment being smashed. No way could that have been done silently. He hadn’t heard his men leave the building. The kitchen was on the side nearest the clearing. The prefab wall shouldn’t have been able to block all noise, yet he hadn’t heard his men being murdered. If they had managed to get a shot off before being stripped of their weapons, he hadn’t heard that either.

  How could he not hear anything, not see anything? How could he not realize there was a situation until Ravyn had told him she hadn’t set off the emergency beacon? It didn’t make sense.

  Crossing one booted foot across the other, Damon tried to sort out his thoughts. The murderer had been close enough to lure his men outside, yet he hadn’t searched the building. If he had, he and Ravyn would be dead now too.

  Somehow the killer had made it to the sub-basement. The only stairs were in the kitchen, which meant he had to
have been in the facility while he and his men were there. Yet no one had noticed anything. They’d searched the entire structure while he’d watched over Ravyn. Nothing should have been able to escape their notice. Somehow the killer had eluded his men. But how? They’d searched in teams and the layout of the place didn’t lend itself to sneaking past anyone into an area that had already been checked out. He didn’t like it. He didn’t like it at all.

  Damon rubbed his eyes. He was giving himself a headache trying to work this all out. What should have been impossible had happened. He wasn’t going to be able to make sense of it, but he did have to factor all these puzzles into his plans.

  He looked over at Ravyn again. She had her back propped against a tree and her eyes closed. How was he supposed to tell her that they had to walk a little farther? As if she felt his scrutiny, her eyes opened and she looked at him. For a moment, they stared, measuring each other, then Ravyn said, “What?”

  Damon hesitated, hating to say the words. “We can’t stay here.” He read the dismay on her face before Ravyn banished it. Then she looked around, and when she turned back to him, she appeared resigned.

  “We need a more defensible position,” she said.

  “Yes.”

  “Damon?”

  “What?” he prompted when she didn’t continue.

  “Do you have a destination in mind or are we just running?”

  The corners of his lips tilted up in a slight smile. “We’re heading for the Old City.”

  Ravyn’s eyes widened. He didn’t blame her. Even in a transport or rover, it was a long journey and they were on foot. It would take them days to reach it walking the quickest route and they weren’t going to be taking any obvious paths.

  “Come on. Let’s find somewhere to settle for the night and I’ll tell you why we’re heading there,” Damon said.

  He held out a hand and she stared at him for a moment before accepting his assistance. He pulled her to her feet, doing most of the work to spare her overused muscles. Her knees buckled as soon as she stood and Damon quickly slipped his arm around her waist until she had her legs back under her. He could see the red flare of embarrassment across her cheekbones.

  “My legs feel like cooked noodles,” she told him, her voice apologetic.

  “I know, sweet pea. I pushed you too hard today. Once we find somewhere safer, you won’t have to move again till morning.”

  “Sweet pea?”

  Now it was his turn to be embarrassed. Damon started walking, pretending not to hear her question. He didn’t know where the endearment had come from himself. He kept his pace slow, despite his desire to be out of earshot.

  She didn’t say another word.

  *** *** ***

  Ravyn frowned down at the comm equipment. Damon had lugged most of it for no reason. The transmitter was missing from the radio, so they couldn’t send a spoken message to Earth and the long-range emergency beacon was mangled, something that should have been impossible. The lightweight case consisted of an alloy stronger than steel, yet it had been crushed and twisted as easily as a piece of paper. She decided not to dwell on what had that kind of strength.

  “Do we have any tools?” Ravyn asked, her voice subdued.

  Damon was off on the perimeter, setting up the warning system. Each Boundary Alert System module, more commonly referred to as BAS, emitted a frequency connecting it to the next device. If anything crossed between them, the connection was broken and an alarm would go off. The four units they had didn’t cover much ground, Ravyn decided as she eyed the small area. Anything trespassing would be on top of them almost before they could react. Not exactly a reassuring thought.

  When he finished, he came over and crouched in front of her. He moved easily, while her legs felt like she had lead in her pants. Life was so unfair. Then she remembered how lucky she was to be alive and couldn’t believe she was complaining about being tired. Any of the twenty-five people who had died would be more than happy to change places with her.

  “What’s the prognosis?”

  “Not good,” Ravyn told him. “The only thing that I may be able to fix is the short-range beacon.”

  “What’s wrong with the emergency beacon?”

  Ravyn pointed to the twisted metal.

  “Hell.”

  Damon the Tireless started to look weary. Ravyn guessed she’d passed weary at least ten hours ago and edged on comatose now. Still, it was discouraging to be so cut off. The weak signal from the short range beacon could only be picked up by someone already on the planet.

  He reached for the vest she had left lying beside her, and pulled out what looked to be an antique pocket knife. “No tools. This is it.”

  Ravyn took the gadget from him. She’d work with what she had and hope it was enough. “Does this thing have something I can use to undo the screws on the casing?”

  Damon took the knife back and pulled out one of the components before returning it. “Screwdriver slash can opener,” he told her, his tone matter-of-fact.

  “Thanks. This looks old.” She concentrated on removing the protective covering from the short-range beacon. The knife felt awkward in her hand. She was used to the sleek, small tools she usually worked with.

  “It belonged to my grandfather. He gave it to me when I joined up.”

  When Ravyn was able to examine the beacon more closely, she grimaced.

  “How bad is it?”

  “It’s fixable,” Ravyn said, looking up at him. “It’s going to take a while, though. The question is, do we want to fix it?”

  “Yes.”

  “How long before help arrives on Jarved Nine?”

  Damon sat facing her. “The emergency transmission we picked up was from the facility’s long-range beacon. It takes approximately thirty-six hours for a signal to travel from here to Earth. They’ll try to contact the CAT team by radio and my superiors will try to contact my team. It depends on how long they wait for a response before launching a rescue team. My guess is three to five days.”

  “It’ll take them more than a month to get here.” Sheer willpower kept the despair out of her words.

  Damon smiled slightly. “Not quite that long. This will be a military operation and our ships move a little faster.”

  Ravyn figured that was an understatement, but didn’t press for a more exact answer. She doubted she would get one anyway. “What about the ship you came in on? Won’t the crew hear our distress call first?”

  Damon shook his head. “We traveled on an automated cargo ship destined for Cymara. We launched the transport when we were close enough to Jarved Nine.”

  “And automated ships don’t respond to emergency beacons.”

  “No point in it.”

  “No,” Ravyn agreed. “How were you getting back?” Maybe a ship was already en route to pick up the Spec Ops team.

  “Automated cargo ship from Cymara to Earth with a quick stop here to pick us up. The ship’s not due for about two months. The rescue team will reach us first, but it doesn’t matter. You saw how damaged the transport was.”

  So they waited for the rescue team. Even if the military had ships that could travel in half the time of the CAT team ship, and Ravyn would not be surprised if they did, help was still almost three weeks away. She looked down at the short-range beacon for a minute, then back up at Damon.

  “I don’t think we should trigger this until help is here.”

  “Why?” he asked. His voice sounded noncommittal, but Ravyn had the impression he agreed with her, that he wanted to hear her reasoning. It made sense he’d want to know how her mind worked. The more he knew about how she thought and how she acted, the easier it would be for him to predict her behavior in a crisis situation and that might save both of their lives.

  A quick replay of what he’d seen of her so far flashed through her head. She willed herself not to flush in mortification as she remembered him finding her hiding under her bunk like a child. Wouldn’t Alex have been proud of her if he’d se
en her cowering in fear? Almost as soon as the thought crossed her mind, Ravyn knew it wasn’t fair. Alex would want her to stay alive any way she could.

  “Because I didn’t set off the beacon at the facility. I think whoever killed the rest of the CAT team did it to lure in anyone else on Jarved Nine.”

  “And since he knows our communications systems, he could track us,” Damon added.

  “Instead of alerting our rescuers,” Ravyn said, “this could be broadcasting our exact position to the murderer.”

  CHAPTER THREE

  She was calm.

  Too calm, and that made him edgy.

  He kept waiting for her to crumble, but it wasn’t happening.

  With one eye on Ravyn, Damon finished stowing the last of their meager equipment. He’d taken each item out of the vests, checked its condition and then tucked it away again. After jettisoning the broken comm equipment from the pack, he’d been able to make Ravyn’s vest much lighter for tomorrow’s journey.

  Dusk encroached, but Ravyn, her brows furrowed, still worked on the short-range beacon. She muttered something under her breath and Damon fought a smile. He sobered quickly as he wondered if he’d become too desensitized. How could he find anything amusing after what he’d seen today?

  Damon had been trained to compartmentalize. He had fought in the last Oceanic War and in various flare-ups since. He had watched friends, acquaintances and strangers die and he had been responsible for the deaths of others. As part of a team sent on an intel mission to one of the prison camps, he had seen men who had been tortured. And he had seen the bodies of men who had not survived the torture. His background gave him the ability to push aside what he’d witnessed until he had the time and safety to look at it. But even so, he found it disquieting that he could forget, even for a second, what had happened on Jarved Nine. Ravyn didn’t have his experience. She shouldn’t be this self-controlled. It made him wonder when she would break.