It had been full dark awhile when the slope finally eased; he stood panting there, unable to see anything but a dim glow back the way he had come. He checked his skullphone—a signal, but weak—and called Rodney. “Tell her I had a problem and not to worry. Keep right on. I don’t know when I’ll get back, but I will.” He wondered if the opposition already knew he was on this mountain.
Surely if he just kept going down, he would come to a road or a house or something. It wasn’t long before a cold drizzle chilled him and then the drizzle turned to sleet.
Any sane person would be inside a warm room eating supper. He was hungry, cold, and completely lost. He’d made it over that hill, but he didn’t know where “that hill” was in relation to any road, let alone one that would lead him to shelter and reliable communications. He couldn’t see any lights anywhere. He had to move slowly, careful of each step; the ground sloped mostly down but had unexpected humps and holes in it.
“This sort of thing was a lot easier on a space station,” he said aloud when he’d arrived on softer ground that squished under his shoes. He was answered by a loud breathy sneeze and the sound of hooves squelching away. What made that kind of noise? He had no idea. It sounded big. Did it bite? Kick? Stick you with sharp horns? But he couldn’t stand there all night, not in this weather and with his shoes leaking. He wished he’d kept his jacket. He had to keep moving. He remembered that from the books he’d read as a boy.
Eight steps later, he ran into something large and wet and hairy. Even as he reached out to feel it, understand it, something hard took him in the ribs and knocked him flat. The mystery attacker let out what sounded like a vast groan and squelched away, still groaning. He clambered up as fast as he could. Other groaning animals joined it; the noise of hooves rose around him; the ground trembled. Someone yelled in the distance, below him, and dogs barked in two different tones. He had no idea what to do, and stood there until one of the creatures knocked him down and he hit his head on a rock.
An hour later he was sitting in a warm kitchen, steam rising from his wet clothes spread on wooden chairs, and an entire family of farmers, all taller then he was, arrayed on the other side of a large table, staring at him with a mixture of curiosity and hostility.
“You were lucky I sent the dogs out and didn’t just shoot into the dark,” the taller man said. “I could’ve, ya know. Nobody ’round here’d blame me for shootin’ a stranger out there messin’ with the stock in the middle o’ the night.”
“I wasn’t—” he started, and then shrugged. “I don’t know this area. I came up that hill on the other side; I didn’t know what was on this side; I didn’t know about the livestock. I ran into one in the dark.”
“You got no light?” That was the shorter man, two shades lighter than the taller one, gray eyes instead of brown.
“He’s got one,” the gray-haired woman said. “I found it in his pocket, put it there on the chimney ledge.”
“So you got a light and didn’t use it… skulking along like a thief, eh?”
“A fugitive, anyway,” Rafe said. He was naked under the blanket the farmer had wrapped him in, and had bruises all over his torso from the monsters—cattle—that had knocked him down and—at least two legs of them—stepped on him. His feet were still cold, resting on a thin rug over a stone floor. His wet clothes were hanging on a string; his weapons had been collected and tucked into a drawer in the sideboard. His head ached savagely.
“What you done?”
“Made some people very angry,” Rafe said. Killed some, but that wouldn’t help his cause. He sifted through the facts to see if he could come up with a viable narrative.
“Just tell the truth,” the gray-haired woman advised. “It’s always best.”
Rafe knew better than that, but the way his head felt he had no alternative, if he said anything. “What do you know about the Spaceforce shuttle crash last spring and Admiral Vatta’s survival on Miksland?”
“This got a connection?” The taller man took a swig from his mug and set it down hard.
“Yes. Yes, it does.”
“Well, then: we know the shuttle crashed in the ocean and everybody thought they were all dead until a few weeks ago. But they all caught something and are terribly sick, in quarantine; they think Admiral Vatta might die. Do you know her?”
“Yes,” Rafe said. “But she’s not sick, or in danger of dying from anything caught in Miksland.” Except information someone wanted no one to have.
“That’s not what it said on the news,” the gray-haired woman said. The other woman, younger and darker with a thick head of unruly curls, was leaning against a counter and watching him over her mug. She had startling green eyes. He’d seen another pair of eyes like that, recently… who had it been?
He dragged his mind back to the present: what to say? In for a credit, in for a hundred. “Admiral Vatta is my… we’re going to be married,” he said.
The teenage boy burst out laughing; the tall man flicked him on the head and said, “Quit. Or go to bed now.” The boy stifled the laugh with his hand, but his eyes crinkled with amusement. Rafe wanted to smack him.
“We met years ago,” he said. “Then there was the war, and I was on Nexus and she was in space—”
“Wait a minute,” the younger woman said. “You said she wasn’t sick… what about the others? Nobody’s seen or heard from them since they were rescued. Mally told me—” She stopped and glanced at the taller man.
“Mally’s her cousin,” the gray-haired woman said. “Married to one of them—”
“McLenard. Andrew Hugh McLenard. He’s a sergeant. D’you know if he’s alive?”
“Yes,” Rafe said. “At least, he was when we got him out of the transport.”
“You’ve seen him? Does Mally know yet? I have to call—”
The older woman stepped back and caught her hand. “No, Saneel. Not until we know more. Might not be safe.”
“I don’t know if your cousin knows yet,” Rafe said. “I was with the admiral; she had the whole plan but I didn’t, so I couldn’t be made to tell it. I do know she intended everyone to know, as soon as they were all safe.”
“And they aren’t sick?”
“No. Did you hear about the base on Miksland?”
“Base? There was some kind of mine or something they got into, right?”