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What is inside me?
I climb up the tree and shimmy along its branches, hurling myself along them to follow until they drop down and the tracks continue through the snow. A stitch has made its way into my side by the time I catch up to them atop the hill. Volga’s lying on her belly wheezing for air. Victra’s squatting behind a rock, peering down at the crash site.
“Bloodydamn,” I mutter as I fall into the snow beside them.
“Told you she’d spot the tracks,” Victra says to Volga.
Volga looks at me in confusion, then points at Victra’s belly. “How fast are you without that?”
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“It would be rude to brag.”
Still heaving for air, I pull myself up on a rock to look over. The shuttles are just setting down. No thermal readouts come this time. Several dozen shouting Reds pour out the back. I hand Victra my oculars. She pushes them away as if I insulted her. I pull them up to look through them, but Volga takes them away to use for herself. Muttering, I watch with my naked eyes as the Reds search the interior of the crash site. A lone figure stands apart from the rest of them.
“Well, damn my eyes,” Victra says with narrowing eyes. “The chief bitch herself. What in Jove’s name is she doing here?”
“Who?” I ask.
Victra considers, then refuses to answer. Volga’s gone stiff. I reach to take my oculars back. Volga surrenders them reluctantly. Victra snatches them away. “Doesn’t matter,” she says.
“Let her see,” Volga says. “She has a right.”
“See what?”
“Time to go,” Victra says.
“Give me the oculars.” I snatch at them, but she pushes me off like a child. Simmering, I glare back over the rock at the lone figure. There’s an ache at the base of my skull. Slowly the blurry figure begins to sharpen. Not magnify exactly, but become substantial, recognizable to my brain even though she is little more than a pinprick.
When she turns, I go very still. Her face is as I remember it. Half beauty. Half horrible scar. It was stained green by the gunfire that killed my brother when she pulled the trigger.
“I know that woman,” I whisper.
Volga frowns. “How can you—”
“Her name is Harmony,” Victra says, watching me with curiosity. “The bad seed of Ares. And the leader of the Red Hand. I see you remember her.”
“She attacked 121,” I murmur. Heat radiates down my spine, deepening until a pinching sensation grips the back of my skull. Pixels flash across my vision. My heart begins to race as my limbs prick with sensation. It’s like I can hear everything around me. The gurgling of gastric fluids in Volga’s empty stomach. The sound of each flake of snow falling. The purr of the distant ship. Even the movement of Victra’s baby in her womb. Then the orb whispers again from Volga’s side.
Victra frowns at me, noting a change. “So your file reads. Kavax let her slither away.”
“She killed your brother,” Volga asks. “Scars, yes?” I told her that in the notes.
My hearing reverts to normal. I nod my head, torn between confusion and rage. “And my father, and my sister, and her children. Why is she here?”
“Her husband and children died in a mine my family owned,” Victra says. “That woman is why Sevro’s father ended up with his head in a box. Couldn’t stand that Ares was a Gold. As for how she knew I was here…” She chews her lip in thought.
“Do you want me to kill her?” Volga asks, shifting her rifle.
“No,” Victra says.
“I was not asking you.”
I stare at Harmony. She’s clearer even than before. She’s lighting a burner as two men with long metal sniffer modjobs instead of noses begin sniffing the snow. “Could you hit her from here?”
“Probably.”
“Don’t mock the poor girl,” Victra says. “It’s one point two kilometers. You’d need a drift scope in this wind. With that pulseRifle’s muzzle-flash, you’ll bring those shuttles down on our heads.”
