Page 273 of Every Almost

And it had been shaking ever since. Every one of the tremors were shifting a pile of rubble another fraction of an inch.

"Tavi," Charlie said. Her voice came out low.

"Tavi, they didn't get everybody."

REYNA

"Bridge, this is Breck."Tavi's voice came through the Bridge speakers, worried."We have three signatures. Residential ring,four hundred meters from the shuttle site. Captain, they're alive."

Reyna was on her feet.

"Torvax?"

"Confirming." He was already reading. "Three humanoid. Confirmed from orbit, Captain."

"We ran it three times up here before we called it?—"

"The colony reported zero," Reyna said.

Torvax pulled up the record. "Breck, Nine hours ago, full sweep was confirmed, certified, filed with the beacon. Signed by their evacuation coordinator."

"The colony was wrong, Bridge."Tavi replied."The Palus were sitting on top of the read. Twenty-two thousand kilos of armor between the scanner and those people for nine hours. The colony ran the same sweep we did. They got the same answer."

A pause on the channel.

"It was a good sweep."

Nobody on the Bridge said anything.

The colony had run the scan, and the scan had been clean. But it had been clean because of the two animals they were leaving behind.

"Kess," Reyna said. "Read."

"Three humanoid. Two stable." Kess looked up from her station. "One is not. Captain, that reading is consistent with sustained compression. Whatever is on top of them has been on top of them a long time and it has not been idle."

Reyna looked at the display.

"Torvax. Tell them to get those people out and get off that rock."

"Yes, Captain." He keyed it in. "Breck, the Captain directs full team recovery. Get them out and clear the surface."

"Bridge, this is Wickett. Negative on that."

Charlie's voice, and it was flat.

Reyna had heard it flat once before, ninety-two seconds from the wrong end of a cascade, while a woman with her arms inside a live conduit talked her through what she was doing.

Reyna's hand closed on the arm of her chair.

"The Palus are loaded."Charlie was walking. Reyna could hear her breathing between the words, every step labored on a world that heavy. "Bridge, that shuttle has to go now. The Palus have been in that hold eight minutes. It's only rated for one hour of transit, not an hour of sitting on a planet. Every minute they're on the deck compresses their joints under their own weight. They're already at the edge of it. If that shuttle sits here while we dig, we save three people and we lose both animals."

"Bridge,"Tavi's voice again."Charlie's not full of shit."

"Thank you, Tavi,"Charlie stated over the shared comms."So the shuttle takes them up. It comes back for me and the colonists. And while it's gone, I dig them out."

"Like hell you are."

She said it out loud at full volume on the Bridge. No one on Korallis Minor heard a word of it.