Page 18 of Alien Burn

“We can't get a line through that fire,” she said. “Not with anyone on it.”

“The adjoining slope?”

She shifted the view. Burning wreckage had struck across it, and loose stone was still coming down through the trees.

He stared at the image.

“How long?”

“Until suppression clears a route. Then we assess the ground.”

“There are people down there.”

“I know, Gol-Vett.” She met his eyes. “If I send my crew into that now, there will be more.”

He looked at the coils of line. The climbing harnesses. Equipment that would have let him do something, if the ground below had been different.

The crew leader put a hand on his arm.

“We need you here.”

Dhomhes almost shook her off.

“Stron is trying to get everyone counted,” she said. “No one knows how many came off the ship. Help him. I'll contact you as soon as we have a route.”

He hated that there was sense in it.

“Contact me the moment you can descend,” he told the crew leader.

She nodded.

She released his arm and turned back to her crew.

The food intended for a celebration was being passed among the survivors. Floating beds crowded the walls. A cleaner kept trying to polish the same strip of floor until someone finally moved it out of the way of the medics.

Dhomhes accepted a data pad from a GA crew member and asked for the departure roster.

“I'm accessing the backup.” The man looked at the pad as though he had forgotten how to use it. “It's taking time.”

“What do you have now?”

A list of names, incomplete. They started with that.

People crowded around them, asking questions. Where were they going? Was another ship coming? Had anyone found the missing?

Dhomhes answered what he could and refused to guess at the rest. By the third time he said he didn't know, he wanted to break something.

Roemary found him near a table where volunteers were collecting water.

“Gol-Vett.”

She had a small tear in her veil. Nothing about the way she held herself suggested an injury, though shock could hide those. He had seen several women collapse after insisting they were well.

“Have you seen a medic?” he asked.

“I'm unharmed. Though I certainly might not have been.” Her eyes filled, and she put a hand over her mouth. “Those poor people.”

He watched her lower the hand.