Trevor jumped up as the three tube-launched warheads went off, saw Caine heave a grenade. Good: he’s putting down a path of smoke to get to her. “Stosh: get up here now!” Gotta wait, watch—Caine threw another smoke. Still no counterfire from the south arbor.
Keep waiting…
Just as Stosh came shoulder to shoulder with him, the coil gun resumed its shrill screaming. Trevor heard the crackling of the supersonic rounds, made his eyes follow the path of the sound his ears had detected, saw disturbance in the underbrush. Dumping his magazine at it, he yelled. “Suppression!”
The volume of human fire erupting from the shed flowed into a high tide just as the skies broke again and the rain came down in sheets. Opal could sense, more than see, feet running past her, streaming up into the south arbor that had hidden the second squad of Hkh’Rkh and their coil gun.
And then a face was over hers, close, almost nose to nose. That nose was dripping rain onto her nose. It was a nose she knew as well—maybe better, now—than her own nose. She smiled. “Caine.”
Then the firing, which had apparently moved around to the other side of the shed, ebbed, died away like a tired tide. Good. It’s going to be all right, just as soon as I get my breath back—
Oh Christ, I’m such a liar. Even to myself.
The smoke from the grenades swirled around them, the drifts struggling up against the battering rain. It washed the dirt off Caine; it washed the blood away from the two gaping holes in the front of Opal’s right torso. It kept washing more blood away. He forced himself to smile, touch noses—she liked that—and lifted his head to call for help, hoping he’d discover a way to do so without alerting her to the severity of her wound.
Trevor came up, took one look, turned away, cupping his hand over the audio pickup on his headset, speaking urgently.
Looking down again, he saw she was smiling. “Caine,” she said again, her eyes very bright, brighter than he had ever seen them, other than the time in the deputation module, right before her first interstellar shift, right before they first made love.
He held her hand. “We’ll get you something for the pain.” Caine held her hand more tightly. “And don’t worry; you’re going to be all right.”
She tried to laugh through her tears, couldn’t, gasped against the pain. “Not me—not me that I’m crying for.”
“Then who—?”
She shook her head. “For the baby.”
He hadn’t heard her correctly. “For the what?”
“For our baby.”
His eyes and nostrils suddenly ached and stung all at once, and his vision became as blurred, as if he were looking through a rain-drenched windshield. He wiped a hand across his eyes, leaned over to smile reassuringly.
But she was dead.
Trevor looked at Opal, at Caine kneeling, back to him, the rain hammering his soaked shirt flat against him. And all he could think was: you never deserved her.
It was bullshit—pure, irrational bullshit—to think that, to feel that. But that was all he could think or feel.
“Trevor. Here, mate. Look who I found!” It was Tygg’s voice, speaking to him from the end of some long tunnel.
Trevor turned, saw Tygg, whose ready smile seemed to shoot off his face sideways, as if slapped out of existence. “Trev, what is it? What’s happ—?”
And then another face was in front of Tygg’s. He thought he might be hallucinating, but then he saw that this face was just as rainsoaked, as tired, as his own. “Elena.” He didn’t think to say it, but he heard his voice make those sounds.
She looked at him, then over toward Caine and the body, and back to him. She closed her eyes, turned away.
“Sir”—it was Winfield, now—“we’ve got things under control. We—that is, Commander Ayala and your sister—linked up with Lieutenant Tygg in the first courtyard and got the drop on the Sloths that were working their way behind you. I think we’ve pretty much secured this part of the compound.”
“Good.”
Trevor felt Elena’s hand rest gently on his shoulder. He wished he didn’t need it, was glad she had placed it there, wished it was his father’s.
Winfield didn’t stop. “Rulaine went back with Cruz to reorganize the insurgents, assign some new leaders to replace the ones we lost. Where’s Stosh?”
“Back in the shed.”
“What’s he doing?”
“Nothing. He’s dead.”
Chapter Fifty-Two
Darzhee Kut watched as the human called Wu rose, apparently receiving a call from his superiors. As soon as he had moved out of ready earshot, Hu’urs Khraam spoke weakly. “Darzhee Kut, come closer. I cannot see you.”
“I am here, Hu’urs Khraam. Here is the claw of your rock-son.”
“Would you had been. No matter. This day, you are. Is Urzueth Ragh there as well?”
“I am, Esteemed Hu’urs Khraam.”
“Then bear witness to what I decree. Darzhee Kut, I name you Delegate Pro Tem, plenipotentiary in regard to our presence in this system. It is to be explicitly understood that this confers authority over the fleet as well, just as I possess. Urzueth Ragh, forgive me for not naming you to this responsibility, but at this hour, the song we need is that of a diplomat, not an administrator.”
“I harmonize, Esteemed Hu’urs Khraam.” Darzhee thought that he had never seen Urzueth Ragh look so nervous, or relieved, in all the years he had known him.
“Darzhee Kut, it falls to you to perform the final task we must perform.” The old Arat Kur was silent.
“Esteemed Hu’urs Khraam, I do not know the task to which you refer.”
“Do you not? Darzhee, they—the humans—they must never learn what we know of them. They must never learn it of themselves. This is a mercy to both our races.”
“But Hu’urs Khraam, when you surrendered our ships, surely you understood they could not help but learn. They would go through our computers, our records, and they would discover that—”
“And that is why you must give the order, the Final Directive, that will protect the secrets kept in the deep caves of the Homenest, Darzhee Kut. And you must remind your rock-siblings what the Wholenest needs of them in this dark hour.”
“Hu’urs Khraam, I cannot do this.”
“Darzhee Kut, you must. You must—and it is late. My father sings; I have not heard him for so long. I know the harmony. It is a minor—”
Hu’urs Khraam breathed in sharply. The breath escaped slowly, as it will from a corpse.
Darzhee Kut looked up at Urzueth Ragh. “He could not mean it, rock-sibling.”
“Certainly he did, rock-sibling.”
“But our promise to surrender to the humans, and all the lives of our own—”
“Rock-sibling, Darzhee Kut. They matter not. The fleet must be destroyed.”
Caine looked up from Opal’s bone-white face, turned to look for people he knew—for Trevor in particular—but he was surrounded by insurgents, some Australian commandoes, some very short Chinese soldiers. So where is everyone I know? Are they all dead? Who are these people? How long have I been here, with her?
He saw the garden shed, remembered it: maybe, with the rain coming down, Trevor and the others had gone back in there. Caine rose, remembered his weapon, reached down slowly, lifted its strap over his shoulder. He let his feet take him to the shed and through the doorway he had sprinted out of to try to save her life ten minutes or ten hours or ten days ago.