Page 62 of Warrior’s Mate

"We're going to find out."

--- Kaiven heard the tunnel collapse through Maelis's comm.

The sound was brief: a violent concussion, stone, someone shouting. Then the channel dissolved into static. Every instinct in him turned south.

His body actually moved before discipline caught up with it. One step away from the command position. One step toward an aircraft he could commandeer, a ground team he could pull off the ridge, anything that would put him closer to the place where Maelis had disappeared.

"Captain!"

The northern line commander—young, bleeding from one temple, still trying to coordinate three retreating units—looked at him with the expression of someone who had just seen the man responsible for the withdrawal abandon his post. Kaiven stopped.

Below the ridge, the last civilian transport was lifting. Sargan fighters were descending through the smoke. His people needed another twelve minutes to clear the defensive line.

Maelis had needed forty. She had asked him to keep the sky off them. He could not promise trust and then make trust meaningless the first time it hurt.

Kaiven keyed his comm. "Maelis, report." Static. He tried again.

Her reply came broken but recognizable. "—twenty-eight people cut off—Ridge Three—main freight tunnel collapsed—" Relief hit so hard his vision narrowed. Alive.

She was alive. He opened the tactical map, found the tunnel coordinates, and calculated the nearest available rescue team. There wasn't one.

Every unit close enough was engaged in the withdrawal.

"Daratu to Torren. I can't reach you. Hold position."

Her answer arrived beneath interference.

"Negative. Do not divert. We will find another route."

Then silence. Kaiven closed his eyes for half a heartbeat. Of course she would say that.

The north line officer stared at him. "Captain?" Kaiven opened his eyes.

"We hold for twelve more minutes."

"Sir, the eastern battery is almost gone."

"Then we make eleven minutes look expensive."

He turned back toward the ridge. Somewhere beneath it, Maelis was trapped. He loved her.

The realization arrived without ceremony or biological certainty. Solmatu recognition had told him she could be the one person his body and mind were built to know in that ancient Uatu way, but it had not told him this.

This was choice. And because he loved her, he stayed where she had trusted him to stay.

Chapter 12 — Maelis's Route

The sealed seed vault smelled like old earth.

Maelis noticed that before anything else once they broke through the stone arch. The air beyond was stale but breathable, rich with the dry mineral scent of storage rooms that had not been opened in decades. Their lamps revealed rows of recessed chambers carved directly into the ridge, most empty, some still holding cracked ceramic bins marked with agricultural guild symbols from before Maelis was born.

One of the older evacuees touched a wall as she passed.

"My mother worked here," she whispered.

Maelis looked at her. "You know the layout?"

"A little. I was a child when they closed it."