“Yes.But only if we’re in one piece.So shut up and let me fly.”
More shots pinged the outside of the ship.“Aren’t you going to do something?”I yelled over my shoulder at Dax.
“Burn and Orion will take care of it.”He sounded way too calm for me.
I took a moment to glance back.Burn and Orion were each hanging out one of the open doors.They were firing at whoever was following us.Burn was laughing like an idiot, the same way she had when we’d picked her up from Pangaea.
“You guys are crazy,” I muttered.
“Get higher,” Mercer said.“They might have more trouble hitting us.”
I increased our altitude and aimed for town.And hoped our ammunition outlasted our pursuers.
56
Dax
Burn,Mercer, Orion, and I hung out the open doors of the shuttle as Lacy circled the landing zone twice to see what kind of welcoming party was waiting for us.But, like the compound, there was nobody out there.
I levered myself back inside the shuttle and looked at the others.“I didn’t see anything, did you?”
Mercer shook his head.Burn said, “No, Sarge,” and Orion kept looking another minute before he returned inside and pulled up the infrared goggles.“Nothing.”
“That’s really fucking weird, isn’t it?”Burn asked.“I keep waiting for the other shoe to drop.”
“He said he didn’t want to hurt me.”Layla spoke for the first time since she’d puked outside the compound.Head back against the seat cushion, she didn’t open her eyes or look at us.
I dropped back into the seat next to her, gently so I didn’t jostle her.“What?Who said that?”
“Johnstone Farrow,” she said in a deep voice that weirdly suited the name, because that was exactly how you’d expect that name to be said.
“The guy you met from the forum?”
That got her to crack an eye open.“You know about the forum?”
“I know all about your files,” I said.“Your research project.”
She opened her second eye.“Lacy really does trust you.”
Burn sat on the other side of her.“So have you found the treasure?”
“So you all know then?”
Mercer and Orion nodded.
“Fucking perfect,” she muttered in the exact tone Lacy would use.“No, I haven’t found the ship yet.”
Burn’s face fell.“Dammit!”
“But I’m close.I know it.Farrow knows it now too.”
“You gave him your research?”
“No!”She sounded offended I would even ask.“He said he had journals from the original crew.Said his family had been on an escape pod from theQueen of Starsthat landed here on Kottke.”
“And you believed him?”There was Mercer’s cynicism.
Layla shot him a dark look.“No.Do I look like an idiot?I vetted everything he said.Questioned it all.But he had information that, well, the only place he could have gotten it was from someone who’d lived it.”
